title: Rhodes

text: Families in Rhodes often own more than one car, along with a motorbike. Traffic jams are common particularly in the summer months as vehicles more than double while parking spots downtown and around the old town are limited and can't cope with demand. Moreover, the island is served by 450 taxis and some 200 public and private buses adding to the traffic burden.


title: Rhodes

text: Rhodian tradition in cuisine is rich. Koriantolino and Souma (colorless alcoholic beverage produced from grape distillation) are the main alcoholic drinks of Rhodes. Local foods include:


title: Rhodes

text: Rhodes is one of the most attractive tourist destinations in Greece. After Crete, the island is the most visited destination in Greece, with arrivals standing at 1,785,305 in 2013. In 2014 they stood at 1,931,005, while in 2015 the arrival number reduced slightly and stood at 1,901,000. The average length of stay is estimated at 8 days. Guests from Great Britain, Israel, France, Italy, Sweden and Norway are the ones that constitute the biggest portion in terms of the arrivals by country. In Rhodes, the supply of available rooms is high, since more than 550 hotels are operating in the island, the majority of which are two star hotels.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: Endeavor Group Holdings, Inc. (formerly known as William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, WME or WME-IMG) is an American holding company for talent and media agencies with its primary offices in Beverly Hills, California, United States. The company was founded in April 2009 after the merger of the William Morris Agency and the original Endeavor Talent Agency. Endeavor represents artists in film, television, music, theater, digital media, and publishing. It also represents the NFL and NHL. Endeavor owns the Ultimate Fighting Championship. It is headed by CEO Ari Emanuel and executive chairman Patrick Whitesell.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: The group used to own film and television production company Endeavor Content, but sold a majority stake in that division to South Korean entertainment and retail company CJ ENM in January 2022, with the company subsequently being renamed to Fifth Season.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: The Endeavor Talent Agency launched in 1995. By 2009, it was one of the fastest-growing Hollywood talent agencies, with "The New York Times" singling out its reputation for "quick thinking, ferocity and barely bridled ambition".


title: Endeavor (company)

text: On April 27, 2009, WMA and the Endeavor Talent Agency announced that they were forming William Morris Endeavor, or "WME". Endeavor executives Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell were widely seen as the architects of the merger and quickly became the Co-CEOs of WME. Following the official announcement of the merger, nearly 100 WMA employees and former board members were let go. One of those leaving was Jim Wiatt, who came to WMA in 1999 from International Creative Management, where he was vice-chairman. He had joined WMA as president and co-chief executive officers, and had risen to board chairman. Following the merger, WME moved its headquarters into the offices of Endeavor at 9601 Wilshire Boulevard in the heart of Beverly Hills.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: In 2011, Emanuel was quoted in a "Financial Times" profile about the company saying, "We built a culture where people are rewarded for taking risks." Emanuel and Whitesell implemented several leadership strategies to boost the productivity of their agents, most notably, the "Farmhouse" training program.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: Endeavor grew to include several subsidiary companies and expanded divisions. "Fortune" named co-CEOs Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell to their 2010 "Businessperson of the Year" list, acknowledging their corporate growth strategies. Emanuel had previously been recognized as a 21st-century "super agent" by both "The Wall Street Journal" and "The Guardian", as well as an "Advertising Age" "Influencer."


title: Endeavor (company)

text: In July 2011, the company and its foundation created Camp Summer Eagle, which provides donations and activities for schoolchildren at Foster Elementary in Compton, California.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: Shortly after the merger, WME helped launch the investment group Raine, which aligned the company with properties like Vice Media and Zumba Fitness. In 2010, WME partnered with RED Interactive, a digital advertising agency. Two years later, they formed an alliance with the social media management firm TheAudience, partnering with digital entrepreneur Sean Parker and executing social campaigns for properties like the Seth MacFarlane motion picture "Ted" and the Coachella Music Festival. 2013 brought a strategic partnership between WME and creative music agency Jingle Punks, which creates, publishes and licenses music. WME is also an investor in the e-commerce platform [OpenSky], which was named one of America's "Most Promising Companies" by "Forbes". In 2013, Whitesell and Emanuel were profiled in "Fast Company", highlighting the company's digital growth.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: On May 2, 2012, WME and Silver Lake Partners, a technology-focused private equity firm based in Silicon Valley, signed an agreement for Silver Lake to acquire a 31.25% minority stake in the agency for $250 million. A new executive committee, consisting of Co-CEOs Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell and Silver Lake Managing Director Egon Durban, leads the company's growth strategy and investment activities. In July 2013, WME acquired a minority stake in the creative agency Droga5. The partnership combines the companies’ advertising and entertainment resources.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: On December 18, 2013, WME and Silver Lake announced the acquisition of IMG for $2.4 billion. WME’s Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell took over as co-CEOs. On January 21, 2015, it was announced that WME had acquired Global eSports Management (GEM), an international agency representing various esports and professional video game players and personalities. In April 2015 they bought Professional Bull Riders On September 23, 2015, it was announced that WME/IMG would be partnering with Turner Broadcasting to create a televised esports league, the ELeague.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: On September 14, 2015, WME acquired from Donald Trump the Miss Universe Organization, which produces the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA beauty pageants and related content. The organization sells television rights to the pageants in other countries. Financial details were not disclosed.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: Softbank and Fidelity Investments in early 2016 invested in WME-IMG. The company formed a joint venture in June 2016 for China with Sequoia Capital, Tencent and Fountainvest Partners.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: On July 9, 2016, Zuffa, LLC, the parent company of Ultimate Fighting Championship, was sold to a group led by WME-IMG, its owner Silver Lake Partners, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, and MSD Capital, for $4.025 billion, the largest-ever acquisition in the sports industry. On August 22, 2016, WME acquired the literary agency Rabineau Wachter Sanford & Gillett (RWSG); its co-founders, Sylvie Rabineau and Jill Holwager Gillett, head a division of WME involved in the coordination of screen adaptations of literature. WME/IMG purchased in August 2017 a majority stake in Bloom, a film finance and sales company led by Ken Kao and Alex Walton.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: WME-IMG reorganized in October 2017 with the parent company being renamed from WME-IMG to Endeavor. Ari Emanuel became Endeavor CEO and Patrick Whitesell became Endeavor executive chairman. The general talent agency retained the WME name as the sports agency retained the IMG name.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: In October 2017, Endeavor Content was formed from the WME's and IMG's film financing and scripted TV sales units, WME's advisory group for film financiers and content producers and Bloom, which will continue to operate autonomously. Appointed as co-presidents of Endeavor Content were Graham Taylor and Chris Rice with additional hires of Negeen Yazdi as senior vice president of film and Joe Hipps as senior vice president of television.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: Third Coast Content, a faith and family audiences production and publishing company, was founded in February 2018 by veteran film executive Ben Howard as CEO with Endeavor Content as an investor and as its provider of sales and advisory services. In April 2019, Droga5 was acquired by Accenture.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: On May 24, 2019, Endeavor filed forms for an initial public offering (IPO) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that would have valued the company at $7.6 billion. The form detailed Endeavor's revenue was $3.61 billion in 2018 with a net income of $100.1 million after adjustments, and potential risks involved of being potentially sued “over alleged long-term neurocognitive impairment arising from concussions”, "collective bargaining to unionize the MMA athletes", and "five related class-action lawsuits filed against it alleging that UFC violated Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 by monopolizing the alleged market for elite professional MMA athletes' services". Also included in the filing was the statement that subsidiary WME Dragon Holdings LLC, which bought 49 percent of advertising agency Droga5 in 2013, agreed to sell its interest in Droga5 to Accenture Interactive for $233 million.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: On September 26, 2019, a day before it planned to go public, Endeavor Group announced that the IPO had been postponed in order to "evaluate the timing for the proposed offering as market conditions develop." Contributing factors were reported to be the under-performance of the recent IPO for Peloton, and an ongoing lawsuit with several former UFC fighters.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: On March 30, 2021, Endeavor Group announced a new planned IPO for later in 2021, with Elon Musk and Fawn Weaver nominated to join its board of directors. On April 28, 2021, Endeavor Group went public on the New York Stock Exchange. Endeavor subsequently used some of the proceeds from the IPO to buy out Zuffa's other shareholders at a value of $1.7 billion, making Zuffa a wholly-owned subsidiary of Endeavor. On July 19, 2021, Ursula Burns joined the board of directors. On September 27, 2021, Endeavor announced that it would acquire OpenBet for $1.2 billion in cash and stock. In March 2022, Musk resigned from the board.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: In 2019, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) filed a lawsuit against the four major Hollywood talent agencies, including WME, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), United Talent Agency (UTA) and ICM Partners, over their usage of packaging deals (under which a talent agency offers a production utilizing its represented writers, directors, and/or actors as a "package" to prospective studios), which the WGA asserted to be an illegal conflict of interest under state and federal law.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: As part of agreements that would allow them to resume representing writers, the WGA called for talent agencies to reduce their interest in co-owned production companies, as they considered talent agencies owning their own production companies to also be a conflict of interest. In February 2021, Endeavor agreed to a new franchising deal with the WGA, under which it must cease the use of packaging deals, and not hold more than a 20% stake in production companies affiliated with the agency, thus necessitating that it divest at least 80% of Endeavor Content.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: On June 8, 2021, Endeavor began to seek a partner for the division in compliance with the agreement, with the whole sales team returning to the company to start the process. On October 28, 2021, Endeavor started to solicit second-round bids for more than $750 million, with three equity firms and two strategic companies among those in the running. On November 19, 2021, South Korean conglomerate CJ ENM reached a deal to acquire the stake for $775 million. The acquisition primarily covers the company's scripted business, with Endeavor retaining its non-scripted, documentary, and film consulting businesses. The sale is CJ ENM's largest acquisition to-date. The $785 million purchase was completed in January 2022. In September 2022, the company was renamed to Fifth Season; the name stems from Eastern medicine, which recognizes the so-called "fifth season" as a celebratory time of harvest in late summer, thus representing the company's focus on global ideas and content.


title: Endeavor (company)

text: On October 26, 2022, JKN Global Group acquired Miss Universe Organization (MUO) from Endeavor for $14 million.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: Evil Dead is a 2013 American supernatural horror film directed by Fede Álvarez, in his feature directorial debut, written by Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues, and produced by Rob Tapert, Sam Raimi, and Bruce Campbell. Dubbed as a "re-imagining" of Raimi's "The Evil Dead" (1981), it is the fourth installment in the "Evil Dead" franchise. The film stars Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, and Elizabeth Blackmore. The film follows a group of five people being possessed and killed by supernatural entities in a remote cabin in the woods.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: Talks for a fourth "Evil Dead" film began in 2004, with original film actor Bruce Campbell about the possibility for a next film in the franchise. The project was officially announced in July 2011, with Ghost House Pictures producing it, Diablo Cody in the process of revising the script, and Fede Álvarez chosen as the director. Much of the cast joined from January to February 2012. Filming took place in March 2012 and wrapped in May 2012 in New Zealand outside of Auckland, lasting about a month.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: "Evil Dead" had its world premiere at the South by Southwest film festival on March 8, 2013 and was theatrically released in the United States on April 5, 2013 by Sony Pictures Releasing. The film grossed $97 million worldwide against a production budget of $17 million, and received moderately positive reviews from critics. Another installment in the franchise, titled "Evil Dead Rise", written and directed by Lee Cronin, is planned to be released in 2023.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: The film opens in 2008 with a teenage girl running through the woods until she is caught by two pursuing hillbillies. Subdued with a sack over her head, she awakens to find herself tied up in the fruit cellar of a remote cabin, where an old woman is reciting incantations from a strange book. The girl pleads with her father Harold to release her. After he refuses, she reveals her possession by a demonic spirit and threatens to kill him. Harold sets her ablaze and shoots her dead. Three years later, in 2011, David Allen and his girlfriend Natalie arrive at the cabin with their dog Grandpa, where they meet his estranged younger sister Mia and her friends Eric, a high school teacher, and Olivia, a nurse. The group plans to stay in the cabin while Mia overcomes her heroin addiction. Mia begins having serious withdrawal symptoms and complains of an overwhelming scent of decay, which the others ignore. David discovers that the cabin's cellar is littered with rotting animal corpses, a worn double-barrel shotgun, and a book called the "Naturom Demonto".


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: A curious Eric reads an incantation from the book, awakening a malevolent force. Mia begins seeing a bloody girl in the woods and begs the group to leave. They refuse, thinking that she must be seeing hallucinations. Mia steals Eric's car and leaves, but sees a naked girl and swerves, crashing into a tree. She runs into the woods, where vines from a demonic tree trap her. After Mia sees a demonic version of herself, a vine enters her body, possessing her.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: David finds Grandpa beaten to death with a hammer and goes to confront Mia in the shower. He sees her scalding herself and tries to drive her to a hospital, but a sudden rainstorm washes out the road. That night, Mia wounds her brother with the shotgun and vomits a large amount of red bile onto Olivia's face before Eric manages to lock her in the basement. Olivia is later possessed by unseen forces. When Eric discovers her in the shower mutilating her face, she stabs him repeatedly with a hypodermic needle before he bludgeons her to death. Mia lures Natalie into the cellar and bites her before slicing her own tongue apart with a box cutter, and then forcibly kissing her. David helps her escape before locking Mia back in.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: Eric explains that according to the book, the "Taker of Souls" must claim five souls to unleash the "Abomination". Natalie, convinced that her arm is infected, amputates it. Eric explains that Mia must be "purified" either by live burial, dismemberment, or burning. The now-possessed Natalie attacks the pair with a nail gun, but David shoots her other arm off; Natalie returns to normal but soon bleeds to death from her injury.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: David begins to douse the cabin in gasoline, but when Mia starts singing a song from their childhood, he decides to bury her instead. He digs a grave and heads into the cellar to retrieve Mia, who attempts to drown him. Eric intervenes but is fatally stabbed. David sedates and buries Mia, and after hearing her heartbeat stop, quickly digs her up and attempts to use a homemade defibrillator to resuscitate her. After several seemingly failed attempts, David covers his sister and says she's "at peace". Returning to the cabin, he hears a voice behind him and finds Mia alive. David enters the cabin to retrieve his car keys, but Eric's possessed corpse stabs him. David locks Mia out to protect her and shoots a gasoline can, killing both him and Eric in the resulting blaze.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: With David's death, blood begins to rain down from the sky and Mia is attacked by the Abomination in the form of her demonic doppelgänger. Mia finds a chainsaw and severs the Abomination's legs, but it retaliates by overturning David's Jeep which lands on her left arm and traps her. Pushed to her breaking point, Mia frees herself (losing her left hand in the process), grabs the chainsaw, and bisects the Abomination's head before it sinks back into the ground and the rain stops. An exhausted Mia leaves to search for help, unaware the "Naturom Demonto" is still intact, and slamming shut on its own.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: In a post-credits scene, an older Ash Williams (the protagonist of the original three "Evil Dead" films) is seen in shadowed profile. He remarks "Groovy" before turning suddenly to face the camera.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: Additionally, Bruce Campbell appears uncredited in the post-credits scene as Ash Williams. Briefly reprising their roles from the original film through archival recordings, Bob Dorian voices Professor Raymond Knowby and Ellen Sandweiss voices Cheryl Williams, who warns the main characters that they will die. Jack Walley also had a small role in the film as Billy Bob, a truck driver who rescues Mia after she escapes the cabin, though his scene wound up being deleted. It was restored in the extended cut.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues co-wrote the script, which was then doctored by Diablo Cody in an effort to Americanize the dialogue since English was not the writers' first language. The film was produced by Raimi, Campbell, and Robert G. Tapert, who are the producers of the original trilogy.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: Raimi and Campbell had planned a remake for many years, but, in 2009, Campbell stated the proposed remake was "going nowhere" and had "fizzled" due to extremely negative fan reaction. However, in April 2011, Bruce Campbell stated in an AskMeAnything interview on Reddit.com, "We are remaking "Evil Dead". The script is awesome ... The remake's gonna kick some ass — you have my word." The film was officially announced that July.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: Actor Shiloh Fernandez was cast in the lead male role of David. Initially Lily Collins was scheduled to play the lead female role of Mia, but dropped out in January 2012. with Jane Levy replacing her the next month. Lou Taylor Pucci, Elizabeth Blackmore, and Jessica Lucas later joined the cast.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: Álvarez, who also has a background in CGI, also confirmed in an interview that the film does not employ CGI (except for touch-ups): "We didn't do any CGI in the movie ... Everything that you will see is real, which was really demanding. This was a very long shoot, 70 days of shooting at night. There's a reason people use CGI; it's cheaper and faster, I hate that. We researched a lot of magic tricks and illusion tricks."


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: TriStar Pictures released the film theatrically on April 5, 2013, in the United States, with Sony Pictures handling other markets. Fede Álvarez tweeted on January 28, 2013, that the film first received an NC-17 rating, which prompted cuts in order to obtain the contractually obligated R-rating. The film has been rated uncut as an 18 by the BBFC for containing strong "bloody violence, gory horror and very strong language". StudioCanal handled the release of "Evil Dead" in the United Kingdom.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: "Evil Dead" premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX on March 8, 2013. The music for "Evil Dead", composed by Roque Baños, was released by La-La Land Records in a 40-minute digital form and a 70-minute physical release, on April 9, 2013.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: "Evil Dead" was released on DVD and Blu-ray, on July 16, 2013. The Blu-ray exclusives include commentary from three of the cast, and screenwriters Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues, behind the scenes and a featurette, while the regular DVD includes three other featurettes. The Shout! Factory will release the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray containing both cuts of the film and an exclusive poster on September 27, 2022 under their Scream Factory sub label.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: An "extended version" featuring an alternative ending (a deleted mid-credits scene) and various other deleted clips and dialogue, some of which were featured in the original trailer but subsequently removed from the theatrical version, was aired in the UK on Channel 4 on January 25, 2015. No one has confirmed whether this was an intentional debut for the anticipated "extended cut", which fans of the film have asked about since the theatrical release, or whether StudioCanal UK had inadvertently supplied Channel 4 with the wrong copy of the film. Álvarez eventually confirmed on Twitter that the version aired was not the extended cut. Channel 4 subsequently confirmed that the wrong copy of the film was supplied to them and that they had sent it back. They added that they had no other information on the version which aired and since the "extended/incorrect" version had been returned to StudioCanal UK they would not be airing it again. However, the extended version aired two more times, on February 13, 2016 and June 14, 2016.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: On October 10, 2018, Sony Pictures announced the release of the Unrated Cut on Blu-ray Disc in a two disc manufacture on demand combo pack with the theatrical version. It was released on October 23, 2018. The extended cut clocks in at 96 minutes compared to the 91 minute theatrical cut.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: The film grossed $25.8 million in its opening weekend, finishing first at the box office. It went on to gross $54.2 million domestically and $43.3 million internationally, for a worldwide take of $97.5 million, against its $17 million budget, making it a box office success.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 63% based on 201 reviews and an average rating of 6.16/10. The consensus states: "It may lack the absurd humor that underlined the original, but the new-look "Evil Dead" compensates with brutal terror, gory scares, and gleefully bloody violence." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100 based on 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: Evan Dickson from Bloody Disgusting reviewed the film at SXSW and went on to say, ""Evil Dead" is amazingly gory and fun" and gave the film 4/5 stars. Chris Tilly of IGN gave "Evil Dead" 9/10 and called the movie a "terrifying, exhilarating and relentlessly entertaining new chapter in the "Evil Dead" story". John DeFore of "The Hollywood Reporter" also gave the film a positive review, calling it a "remake that will win the hearts of many of the original's fans." Independent horror review site HorrorTalk gave the film four stars out of five saying it is "the most unrelenting and bloody horror film to come out of a major studio in a very long time". Emma Simmonds of "The List" commented, ""Evil Dead" has ample cheap shocks and few bloodcurdling frights but it builds to something gorily bravura and, if that's your bag, you'll come away satisfied. It's a while before anyone picks up a chainsaw, but boy is it worth it when they do." Matt Singer called the film "an assault on the senses" and "a success, one that out-"Evil Dead"s the original movie with even more gore, puke, blood, and dismembered limbs. It may not be wildly inventive, but it is effective, and plenty faithful to the spirit — and tagline — of the first 'Ultimate Experience in Grueling Terror.'"


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: Richard Roeper rated the film one star out of four, criticizing the film's unoriginality, the characters' lack of intelligence, and the film's reliance on gore for what he felt were cheap scares. He concluded his review by saying, "I love horror films that truly shock, scare and provoke. But after 30 years of this stuff, I'm bored to death and sick to death of movies that seem to have one goal: How can we gross out the audience by torturing nearly every major character in the movie?"


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: At the SXSW premiere, Álvarez announced that a sequel was in the works. In addition, Sam Raimi confirmed plans to write "Evil Dead 4" with his brother; it was later specified that this film would be "Army of Darkness 2". At a WonderCon panel in March 2013, Campbell and Álvarez stated that their ultimate plan was for Álvarez's "Evil Dead 2" and Raimi's "Army of Darkness 2" to be followed by a seventh film which would merge the narratives of Ash and Mia. On October 30, 2013, co-writer Sayagues confirmed to DeadHollywood that he and Álvarez would not return for the sequel. That same month, Álvarez took to his Twitter that the rumor was not true.


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: In November 2018, Álvarez announced that "They're just ideas right now. Nothing to announce officially. We do have a script for "Don't Breathe 2". That's the only difference. We don't have a script for "Evil Dead 2". But we do have a script for "Don't Breathe 2" that we wrote." He also said that "When I tweeted that I was interested in seeing what people prefer. We were having some internal debates about what people would be interested in most. Unfortunately, "Evil Dead 2" won. Which, I guess I would have preferred "Don't Breathe 2" to win because it's one of my own creations. Obviously "Evil Dead" has the bigger following."


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: On July 10, 2019, Raimi discussed the future of the "Evil Dead" franchise, saying that "We'd like to make another "Evil Dead" feature and in fact we're working on some ideas right now." Raimi said that he would be interested in making another film with Campbell, although, Campbell earlier claimed that he has retired from the role of Ash. He also considered another option would be a sequel to the 2013 reboot, but he is unsure if Álvarez would want to make a sequel at this point because the director is a successful "artist in demand" now. By October, Raimi announced at the New York Comic Con, that a new film is in development. Bruce Campbell will serve as a producer, and will not be the star of the film due to his retirement role as Ash Williams. In June 2020, Campbell revealed that Lee Cronin was handpicked by Raimi to write and direct the film, which will be called "Evil Dead Rise".


title: Evil Dead (2013 film)

text: "Evil Dead Rise" is scheduled to be released theatrically on April 21, 2023. The film was originally set for a digital-only release on HBO Max.


title: Carey Lowell

text: Carey Lowell (born February 11, 1961) is an American actress and former model, best known as ADA Jamie Ross in "Law & Order" (1996–2001, 2022) and as Bond girl Pam Bouvier in the James Bond movie "Licence to Kill" (1989).


title: Carey Lowell

text: Lowell was born in Huntington, New York, the daughter of geologist James Lowell. She spent her childhood living in several countries, including Libya, the Netherlands, and France. In the US she also lived in Houston, Texas, and Denver, Colorado, where her family settled when she was 12. After a year at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she considered majoring in literature, she moved to New York City to pursue modeling, and worked for such clients as Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, and at one point attended New York University. She also studied at Manhattan's Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre.


title: Carey Lowell

text: Lowell broke into acting with the film "Dangerously Close" followed by a small role in the Robin Williams movie "Club Paradise". She went on to roles including co-starring as Bond girl Pam Bouvier in the James Bond movie "Licence to Kill" (1989) and, starting in 1996, as Assistant District Attorney Jamie Ross for two seasons on the television drama "Law & Order", a character she reprised in 2005 for a guest role on its spinoff, "", and again on the original series in 2022 when it returned for a 21st season. Immediately before getting that role, however, she had become frustrated with her acting career and had applied to study documentary filmmaking at New York University.


title: Carey Lowell

text: She took a hiatus from acting during the mid-2000s. In 2012, Lowell lent her likeness and voice while reprising her "Licence to Kill" role in the video game "007 Legends". In 2018 she returned to TV, appearing as a guest on the show "Blue Bloods".


title: Carey Lowell

text: Lowell has been married three times. Her first husband was fashion photographer John Stember, to whom she was married from 1984 to 1988.


title: Carey Lowell

text: She was married to actor Griffin Dunne from 1989 to 1995 and has a daughter, Hannah, from the marriage.


title: Carey Lowell

text: Lowell married actor Richard Gere in November 2002, following the birth of their child Homer James Jigme Gere, who was born in February 2000. In September 2013, the two separated after 11 years of marriage. The couple spent three years in highly contested divorce proceedings in New York Supreme Court. The case was settled in October 2016.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: Nirmal Purja (known as Nims or Nimsdai) (; born 25 July 1983) is a Nepal-born naturalised British mountaineer and a holder of multiple mountaineering world records. Prior to taking on a career in mountaineering, he served in the British Army with the Brigade of Gurkhas followed by the Special Boat Service (SBS), the special forces unit of the Royal Navy. Purja is notable for having climbed all 14 eight-thousanders (peaks above ) in a record time of six months and six days with the aid of bottled oxygen. He was also the first to reach the summits of Mount Everest, Lhotse and Makalu within 48 hours. In 2021, Purja, along with a team of nine other Nepalese mountaineers, completed the first-ever winter ascent of K2.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: Nirmal ("Nims") Purja was born in July 1983 in Dana, a small village in Nepal's Myagdi district near Dhaulagiri, at 1,600 m above sea level. At age 4, his family moved lower down to the Chitwan District near Kathmandu. His father was a Gurkha soldier and his mother was from a farming background. Being from two different Nepalese castes, their marriage was frowned upon and they were cut off financially and socially from their respective families. Purja told "National Geographic", "We came from a really poor family", and "As a kid, I remember I didn’t even have flip-flops". His three much older brothers became Gurkha soldiers and they funded Purja to attend an English-speaking boarding school. During his schooling, Purja became proficient in kick-boxing.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: Purja joined the Brigade of Gurkhas in 2003, and was accepted into the Royal Navy's Special Boat Service (SBS) in 2009, becoming the first Gurkha to join the elite British unit. He served in the Special Boat Service as a cold-weather warfare specialist. Ministry of Defence regulations prohibit Purja from discussing his activities with the SBS, however he said that he was involved in all theatres of war that Britain was involved in, and he was wounded after taking a sniper bullet that missed his neck by striking the butt of the stock of his rifle.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: In 2018, he passed on a surprise invitation to join the Special Air Services (SAS) unit, and resigned from the SBS as a Lance Corporal, in order to focus full-time on his high-altitude mountaineering career and projects. At the time, Purja had become an important contributor to his family while serving in the military, and was passing up his army pension (which he called "a life-changing" amount of money).


title: Nirmal Purja

text: He made his first major Himalayan climb in 2012, reaching the summit of Lobuche East without any previous experience as a mountaineer. On 18 May 2014, he made his first ascent of an eight-thousander by summiting Dhaulagiri (8,167 metres) during a return trip of only 15 days. On 13 May 2016, Purja summited Mount Everest, his second eight-thousander.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: On 15 May 2017, Purja led the Gurkha Expedition "G200E", which summited Everest together with 13 Gurkhas to commemorate 200 years of Gurkha service in the British Army. He ascended Mount Everest six times. The third time 27 May 2017, the fourth time 22 May 2019, the fifth time 31 May 2021 and the sixth time 15 May 2022.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: On 9 June 2018, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for his outstanding work in high altitude mountaineering.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: With a plan to complete all 14 eight-thousand metre summits in seven months, Purja summited the first mountain on 23 April 2019 and completed the first six-summit phase of his "Project Possible 14/7" on 24 May 2019: Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, Kangchenjunga, Mount Everest, Lhotse and Makalu. He climbed with Sherpas Mingma Gyabu “David” Sherpa, Lakpa Dendi (Zekson Son), Geljen Sherpa and Tensi Kasang, amongst other mountaineers. The last five summits were climbed in only 12 days. He broke his previous Guinness World Record by climbing Mount Everest, Lhotse, and Makalu within 2 days and 30 minutes.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: Purja completed the second phase in July 2019, climbing Nanga Parbat (8126 m, 3 July), Gasherbrum I (8080 m, 15 July), Gasherbrum II (8034 m, 18 July), K2 (8611 metres, 24 July) and Broad Peak (8047 m, 26 July), all in Pakistan.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: The third and last phase started in September 2019. He summitted Cho Oyu (8188 m, Tibet, China) on 23 September and Manaslu (8163 m, Nepal) on 27 September. On 1 October 2019, Chinese authorities agreed to grant Purja and his team a special permit to scale Shishapangma (8027 m, Tibet, China) in the autumn season, at the request of the Nepali government. Purja left Nepal for Tibet on 18 October 2019, leading a five-member expedition to climb the mountain and completed Project Possible 14/7 with a successful summit on 29 October using supplemental oxygen.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: Other than the fastest ascent with supplemental oxygen of the 14 tallest mountains in the world, Purja broke the following records: most 8000 m mountains in the Spring season, climbing six; most 8000 m mountains in the Summer season, climbing five; fastest summit of the three highest mountains in the world, Everest, K2 and Kangchenjunga; fastest summit of the five highest mountains in the World, Everest, K2, Kangchenjunga, Lhotse and Makalu; fastest lower 8000ers, Gasherbrum 1, 2 and Broad Peak; fastest higher 8000ers, consecutive summits of Everest, Lhotse and Makalu in 48 hours (beats his own previous record of 5 days).


title: Nirmal Purja

text: Whilst attempting Project Possible in May 2019, a photo taken by Purja of the overcrowding on Mount Everest went viral and was shown in The New York Times.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: Project Possible has been documented as a Netflix Documentary called "" which was launched on 29 November 2021.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: Nirmal Purja, along with nine other Nepali mountaineers, made history on 16 January 2021 as the first to ascend K2 in the harsh weather conditions of the winter. His team consisting of Mingma David Sherpa, Mingma Tenzi Sherpa, Geljen Sherpa, Pem Chiri Sherpa, Dawa Temba Sherpa and himself, joined by the team of Mingma Gyalje Sherpa (Mingma G), Dawa Tenjin Sherpa and Kilu Pemba Sherpa, and Sona Sherpa from Seven Summits Treks and successfully ascended K2 at 16:58 local time in Pakistan. This is the first successful K2 winter expedition after numerous attempts since 1987. Purja was the only team member to summit without the use of supplemental oxygen, becoming the first person to do so in winter.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: After terrible weather conditions hit the lower camps at the foot of K2 and some equipment was lost, Nepali mountaineers of these three teams decided to join efforts and climb the peak together, as a team.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: In May 2022, Purja set a new speed record for ascending Kangchenjunga, Mount Everest, and Lhotse consecutively without oxygen, with a time of 8 days 23 hours, and 10 minutes. He ascended Kangchenjunga on May 7 at 10:50 am, Mount Everest on May 15 at 8 am (his sixth ascent of Mount Everest), and after 26 hours, on May 16, at 10 am, ascended Lhotse.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: Research published in 2022 could only verify three climbers, including Purja, (the other two being Ed Viesturs and Veikka Gustafsson), to have stood on the true geographical summit of all 14 eight-thousanders. The researchers noted that during Project 14/7, Purja had stopped at the rocky fore summit of Dhaulagiri, and also at the ridge point on Manaslu. However, they noted that Purja had corrected this in autumn 2021 when he went to the true summits of both mountains.


title: Nirmal Purja

text: Purja is of Magar descent. He was raised as a Hindu. He is married to Suchi Purja (the daughter of a Gurkha soldier), and they live in Hampshire. Purja has three much older brothers (who were also all Gurkha soldiers).


title: Brain

text: A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a vertebrate's body. In a human, the cerebral cortex contains approximately 14–16 billion neurons, and the estimated number of neurons in the cerebellum is 55–70 billion. Each neuron is connected by synapses to several thousand other neurons. These neurons typically communicate with one another by means of long fibers called axons, which carry trains of signal pulses called action potentials to distant parts of the brain or body targeting specific recipient cells.


title: Brain

text: Physiologically, brains exert centralized control over a body's other organs. They act on the rest of the body both by generating patterns of muscle activity and by driving the secretion of chemicals called hormones. This centralized control allows rapid and coordinated responses to changes in the environment. Some basic types of responsiveness such as reflexes can be mediated by the spinal cord or peripheral ganglia, but sophisticated purposeful control of behavior based on complex sensory input requires the information integrating capabilities of a centralized brain.


title: Brain

text: The operations of individual brain cells are now understood in considerable detail but the way they cooperate in ensembles of millions is yet to be solved. Recent models in modern neuroscience treat the brain as a biological computer, very different in mechanism from an electronic computer, but similar in the sense that it acquires information from the surrounding world, stores it, and processes it in a variety of ways.


title: Brain

text: This article compares the properties of brains across the entire range of animal species, with the greatest attention to vertebrates. It deals with the human brain insofar as it shares the properties of other brains. The ways in which the human brain differs from other brains are covered in the human brain article. Several topics that might be covered here are instead covered there because much more can be said about them in a human context. The most important that are covered in the human brain article are brain disease and the effects of brain damage.


title: Brain

text: The shape and size of the brain varies greatly between species, and identifying common features is often difficult. Nevertheless, there are a number of principles of brain architecture that apply across a wide range of species. Some aspects of brain structure are common to almost the entire range of animal species; others distinguish "advanced" brains from more primitive ones, or distinguish vertebrates from invertebrates.


title: Brain

text: The simplest way to gain information about brain anatomy is by visual inspection, but many more sophisticated techniques have been developed. Brain tissue in its natural state is too soft to work with, but it can be hardened by immersion in alcohol or other fixatives, and then sliced apart for examination of the interior. Visually, the interior of the brain consists of areas of so-called grey matter, with a dark color, separated by areas of white matter, with a lighter color. Further information can be gained by staining slices of brain tissue with a variety of chemicals that bring out areas where specific types of molecules are present in high concentrations. It is also possible to examine the microstructure of brain tissue using a microscope, and to trace the pattern of connections from one brain area to another.


title: Brain

text: The brains of all species are composed primarily of two broad classes of cells: neurons and glial cells. Glial cells (also known as "glia" or "neuroglia") come in several types, and perform a number of critical functions, including structural support, metabolic support, insulation, and guidance of development. Neurons, however, are usually considered the most important cells in the brain.


title: Brain

text: The property that makes neurons unique is their ability to send signals to specific target cells over long distances. They send these signals by means of an axon, which is a thin protoplasmic fiber that extends from the cell body and projects, usually with numerous branches, to other areas, sometimes nearby, sometimes in distant parts of the brain or body. The length of an axon can be extraordinary: for example, if a pyramidal cell (an excitatory neuron) of the cerebral cortex were magnified so that its cell body became the size of a human body, its axon, equally magnified, would become a cable a few centimeters in diameter, extending more than a kilometer. These axons transmit signals in the form of electrochemical pulses called action potentials, which last less than a thousandth of a second and travel along the axon at speeds of 1–100 meters per second. Some neurons emit action potentials constantly, at rates of 10–100 per second, usually in irregular patterns; other neurons are quiet most of the time, but occasionally emit a burst of action potentials.


title: Brain

text: Axons transmit signals to other neurons by means of specialized junctions called synapses. A single axon may make as many as several thousand synaptic connections with other cells. When an action potential, traveling along an axon, arrives at a synapse, it causes a chemical called a neurotransmitter to be released. The neurotransmitter binds to receptor molecules in the membrane of the target cell.


title: Brain

text: Synapses are the key functional elements of the brain. The essential function of the brain is cell-to-cell communication, and synapses are the points at which communication occurs. The human brain has been estimated to contain approximately 100 trillion synapses; even the brain of a fruit fly contains several million. The functions of these synapses are very diverse: some are excitatory (exciting the target cell); others are inhibitory; others work by activating second messenger systems that change the internal chemistry of their target cells in complex ways. A large number of synapses are dynamically modifiable; that is, they are capable of changing strength in a way that is controlled by the patterns of signals that pass through them. It is widely believed that activity-dependent modification of synapses is the brain's primary mechanism for learning and memory.


title: Brain

text: Most of the space in the brain is taken up by axons, which are often bundled together in what are called "nerve fiber tracts". A myelinated axon is wrapped in a fatty insulating sheath of myelin, which serves to greatly increase the speed of signal propagation. (There are also unmyelinated axons). Myelin is white, making parts of the brain filled exclusively with nerve fibers appear as light-colored white matter, in contrast to the darker-colored grey matter that marks areas with high densities of neuron cell bodies.


title: Brain

text: Except for a few primitive organisms such as sponges (which have no nervous system) and cnidarians (which have a nervous system consisting of a diffuse nerve net), all living multicellular animals are bilaterians, meaning animals with a bilaterally symmetric body shape (that is, left and right sides that are approximate mirror images of each other). All bilaterians are thought to have descended from a common ancestor that appeared late in the Cryogenian period, 700–650 million years ago, and it has been hypothesized that this common ancestor had the shape of a simple tubeworm with a segmented body. At a schematic level, that basic worm-shape continues to be reflected in the body and nervous system architecture of all modern bilaterians, including vertebrates. The fundamental bilateral body form is a tube with a hollow gut cavity running from the mouth to the anus, and a nerve cord with an enlargement (a ganglion) for each body segment, with an especially large ganglion at the front, called the brain. The brain is small and simple in some species, such as nematode worms; in other species, including vertebrates, it is the most complex organ in the body. Some types of worms, such as leeches, also have an enlarged ganglion at the back end of the nerve cord, known as a "tail brain".


title: Brain

text: There are a few types of existing bilaterians that lack a recognizable brain, including echinoderms and tunicates. It has not been definitively established whether the existence of these brainless species indicates that the earliest bilaterians lacked a brain, or whether their ancestors evolved in a way that led to the disappearance of a previously existing brain structure.


title: Brain

text: This category includes tardigrades, arthropods, molluscs, and numerous types of worms. The diversity of invertebrate body plans is matched by an equal diversity in brain structures.


title: Brain

text: Two groups of invertebrates have notably complex brains: arthropods (insects, crustaceans, arachnids, and others), and cephalopods (octopuses, squids, and similar molluscs). The brains of arthropods and cephalopods arise from twin parallel nerve cords that extend through the body of the animal. Arthropods have a central brain, the supraesophageal ganglion, with three divisions and large optical lobes behind each eye for visual processing. Cephalopods such as the octopus and squid have the largest brains of any invertebrates.


title: Brain

text: There are several invertebrate species whose brains have been studied intensively because they have properties that make them convenient for experimental work:


title: Brain

text: The first vertebrates appeared over 500 million years ago (Mya), during the Cambrian period, and may have resembled the modern hagfish in form. Jawed fish appeared by 445 Mya, amphibians by 350 Mya, reptiles by 310 Mya and mammals by 200 Mya (approximately). Each species has an equally long evolutionary history, but the brains of modern hagfishes, lampreys, sharks, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals show a gradient of size and complexity that roughly follows the evolutionary sequence. All of these brains contain the same set of basic anatomical components, but many are rudimentary in the hagfish, whereas in mammals the foremost part (the telencephalon) is greatly elaborated and expanded.


title: Brain

text: Brains are most commonly compared in terms of their size. The relationship between brain size, body size and other variables has been studied across a wide range of vertebrate species. As a rule, brain size increases with body size, but not in a simple linear proportion. In general, smaller animals tend to have larger brains, measured as a fraction of body size. For mammals, the relationship between brain volume and body mass essentially follows a power law with an exponent of about 0.75. This formula describes the central tendency, but every family of mammals departs from it to some degree, in a way that reflects in part the complexity of their behavior. For example, primates have brains 5 to 10 times larger than the formula predicts. Predators tend to have larger brains than their prey, relative to body size.


title: Brain

text: All vertebrate brains share a common underlying form, which appears most clearly during early stages of embryonic development. In its earliest form, the brain appears as three swellings at the front end of the neural tube; these swellings eventually become the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain (the prosencephalon, mesencephalon, and rhombencephalon, respectively). At the earliest stages of brain development, the three areas are roughly equal in size. In many classes of vertebrates, such as fish and amphibians, the three parts remain similar in size in the adult, but in mammals the forebrain becomes much larger than the other parts, and the midbrain becomes very small.


title: Brain

text: The brains of vertebrates are made of very soft tissue. Living brain tissue is pinkish on the outside and mostly white on the inside, with subtle variations in color. Vertebrate brains are surrounded by a system of connective tissue membranes called meninges that separate the skull from the brain. Blood vessels enter the central nervous system through holes in the meningeal layers. The cells in the blood vessel walls are joined tightly to one another, forming the blood–brain barrier, which blocks the passage of many toxins and pathogens (though at the same time blocking antibodies and some drugs, thereby presenting special challenges in treatment of diseases of the brain).


title: Brain

text: Neuroanatomists usually divide the vertebrate brain into six main regions: the telencephalon (cerebral hemispheres), diencephalon (thalamus and hypothalamus), mesencephalon (midbrain), cerebellum, pons, and medulla oblongata. Each of these areas has a complex internal structure. Some parts, such as the cerebral cortex and the cerebellar cortex, consist of layers that are folded or convoluted to fit within the available space. Other parts, such as the thalamus and hypothalamus, consist of clusters of many small nuclei. Thousands of distinguishable areas can be identified within the vertebrate brain based on fine distinctions of neural structure, chemistry, and connectivity.


title: Brain

text: Although the same basic components are present in all vertebrate brains, some branches of vertebrate evolution have led to substantial distortions of brain geometry, especially in the forebrain area. The brain of a shark shows the basic components in a straightforward way, but in teleost fishes (the great majority of existing fish species), the forebrain has become "everted", like a sock turned inside out. In birds, there are also major changes in forebrain structure. These distortions can make it difficult to match brain components from one species with those of another species.


title: Brain

text: Here is a list of some of the most important vertebrate brain components, along with a brief description of their functions as currently understood:


title: Brain

text: The most obvious difference between the brains of mammals and other vertebrates is in terms of size. On average, a mammal has a brain roughly twice as large as that of a bird of the same body size, and ten times as large as that of a reptile of the same body size.


title: Brain

text: Size, however, is not the only difference: there are also substantial differences in shape. The hindbrain and midbrain of mammals are generally similar to those of other vertebrates, but dramatic differences appear in the forebrain, which is greatly enlarged and also altered in structure. The cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that most strongly distinguishes mammals. In non-mammalian vertebrates, the surface of the cerebrum is lined with a comparatively simple three-layered structure called the pallium. In mammals, the pallium evolves into a complex six-layered structure called neocortex or "isocortex". Several areas at the edge of the neocortex, including the hippocampus and amygdala, are also much more extensively developed in mammals than in other vertebrates.


title: Brain

text: The elaboration of the cerebral cortex carries with it changes to other brain areas. The superior colliculus, which plays a major role in visual control of behavior in most vertebrates, shrinks to a small size in mammals, and many of its functions are taken over by visual areas of the cerebral cortex. The cerebellum of mammals contains a large portion (the neocerebellum) dedicated to supporting the cerebral cortex, which has no counterpart in other vertebrates.


title: Brain

text: The brains of humans and other primates contain the same structures as the brains of other mammals, but are generally larger in proportion to body size. The encephalization quotient (EQ) is used to compare brain sizes across species. It takes into account the nonlinearity of the brain-to-body relationship. Humans have an average EQ in the 7-to-8 range, while most other primates have an EQ in the 2-to-3 range. Dolphins have values higher than those of primates other than humans, but nearly all other mammals have EQ values that are substantially lower.


title: Brain

text: Most of the enlargement of the primate brain comes from a massive expansion of the cerebral cortex, especially the prefrontal cortex and the parts of the cortex involved in vision. The visual processing network of primates includes at least 30 distinguishable brain areas, with a complex web of interconnections. It has been estimated that visual processing areas occupy more than half of the total surface of the primate neocortex. The prefrontal cortex carries out functions that include planning, working memory, motivation, attention, and executive control. It takes up a much larger proportion of the brain for primates than for other species, and an especially large fraction of the human brain.


title: Brain

text: The brain develops in an intricately orchestrated sequence of stages. It changes in shape from a simple swelling at the front of the nerve cord in the earliest embryonic stages, to a complex array of areas and connections. Neurons are created in special zones that contain stem cells, and then migrate through the tissue to reach their ultimate locations. Once neurons have positioned themselves, their axons sprout and navigate through the brain, branching and extending as they go, until the tips reach their targets and form synaptic connections. In a number of parts of the nervous system, neurons and synapses are produced in excessive numbers during the early stages, and then the unneeded ones are pruned away.


title: Brain

text: For vertebrates, the early stages of neural development are similar across all species. As the embryo transforms from a round blob of cells into a wormlike structure, a narrow strip of ectoderm running along the midline of the back is induced to become the neural plate, the precursor of the nervous system. The neural plate folds inward to form the neural groove, and then the lips that line the groove merge to enclose the neural tube, a hollow cord of cells with a fluid-filled ventricle at the center. At the front end, the ventricles and cord swell to form three vesicles that are the precursors of the prosencephalon (forebrain), mesencephalon (midbrain), and rhombencephalon (hindbrain). At the next stage, the forebrain splits into two vesicles called the telencephalon (which will contain the cerebral cortex, basal ganglia, and related structures) and the diencephalon (which will contain the thalamus and hypothalamus). At about the same time, the hindbrain splits into the metencephalon (which will contain the cerebellum and pons) and the myelencephalon (which will contain the medulla oblongata). Each of these areas contains proliferative zones where neurons and glial cells are generated; the resulting cells then migrate, sometimes for long distances, to their final positions.


title: Brain

text: Once a neuron is in place, it extends dendrites and an axon into the area around it. Axons, because they commonly extend a great distance from the cell body and need to reach specific targets, grow in a particularly complex way. The tip of a growing axon consists of a blob of protoplasm called a growth cone, studded with chemical receptors. These receptors sense the local environment, causing the growth cone to be attracted or repelled by various cellular elements, and thus to be pulled in a particular direction at each point along its path. The result of this pathfinding process is that the growth cone navigates through the brain until it reaches its destination area, where other chemical cues cause it to begin generating synapses. Considering the entire brain, thousands of genes create products that influence axonal pathfinding.


title: Brain

text: The synaptic network that finally emerges is only partly determined by genes, though. In many parts of the brain, axons initially "overgrow", and then are "pruned" by mechanisms that depend on neural activity. In the projection from the eye to the midbrain, for example, the structure in the adult contains a very precise mapping, connecting each point on the surface of the retina to a corresponding point in a midbrain layer. In the first stages of development, each axon from the retina is guided to the right general vicinity in the midbrain by chemical cues, but then branches very profusely and makes initial contact with a wide swath of midbrain neurons. The retina, before birth, contains special mechanisms that cause it to generate waves of activity that originate spontaneously at a random point and then propagate slowly across the retinal layer. These waves are useful because they cause neighboring neurons to be active at the same time; that is, they produce a neural activity pattern that contains information about the spatial arrangement of the neurons. This information is exploited in the midbrain by a mechanism that causes synapses to weaken, and eventually vanish, if activity in an axon is not followed by activity of the target cell. The result of this sophisticated process is a gradual tuning and tightening of the map, leaving it finally in its precise adult form.


title: Brain

text: Similar things happen in other brain areas: an initial synaptic matrix is generated as a result of genetically determined chemical guidance, but then gradually refined by activity-dependent mechanisms, partly driven by internal dynamics, partly by external sensory inputs. In some cases, as with the retina-midbrain system, activity patterns depend on mechanisms that operate only in the developing brain, and apparently exist solely to guide development.


title: Brain

text: In humans and many other mammals, new neurons are created mainly before birth, and the infant brain contains substantially more neurons than the adult brain. There are, however, a few areas where new neurons continue to be generated throughout life. The two areas for which adult neurogenesis is well established are the olfactory bulb, which is involved in the sense of smell, and the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, where there is evidence that the new neurons play a role in storing newly acquired memories. With these exceptions, however, the set of neurons that is present in early childhood is the set that is present for life. Glial cells are different: as with most types of cells in the body, they are generated throughout the lifespan.


title: Brain

text: There has long been debate about whether the qualities of mind, personality, and intelligence can be attributed to heredity or to upbringing—this is the nature and nurture controversy. Although many details remain to be settled, neuroscience research has clearly shown that both factors are important. Genes determine the general form of the brain, and genes determine how the brain reacts to experience. Experience, however, is required to refine the matrix of synaptic connections, which in its developed form contains far more information than the genome does. In some respects, all that matters is the presence or absence of experience during critical periods of development. In other respects, the quantity and quality of experience are important; for example, there is substantial evidence that animals raised in enriched environments have thicker cerebral cortices, indicating a higher density of synaptic connections, than animals whose levels of stimulation are restricted.


title: Brain

text: The functions of the brain depend on the ability of neurons to transmit electrochemical signals to other cells, and their ability to respond appropriately to electrochemical signals received from other cells. The electrical properties of neurons are controlled by a wide variety of biochemical and metabolic processes, most notably the interactions between neurotransmitters and receptors that take place at synapses.


title: Brain

text: Neurotransmitters are chemicals that are released at synapses when the local membrane is depolarised and Ca enters into the cell, typically when an action potential arrives at the synapse – neurotransmitters attach themselves to receptor molecules on the membrane of the synapse's target cell (or cells), and thereby alter the electrical or chemical properties of the receptor molecules.


title: Brain

text: With few exceptions, each neuron in the brain releases the same chemical neurotransmitter, or combination of neurotransmitters, at all the synaptic connections it makes with other neurons; this rule is known as Dale's principle. Thus, a neuron can be characterized by the neurotransmitters that it releases. The great majority of psychoactive drugs exert their effects by altering specific neurotransmitter systems. This applies to drugs such as cannabinoids, nicotine, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, fluoxetine, chlorpromazine, and many others.


title: Brain

text: The two neurotransmitters that are most widely found in the vertebrate brain are glutamate, which almost always exerts excitatory effects on target neurons, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which is almost always inhibitory. Neurons using these transmitters can be found in nearly every part of the brain. Because of their ubiquity, drugs that act on glutamate or GABA tend to have broad and powerful effects. Some general anesthetics act by reducing the effects of glutamate; most tranquilizers exert their sedative effects by enhancing the effects of GABA.


title: Brain

text: There are dozens of other chemical neurotransmitters that are used in more limited areas of the brain, often areas dedicated to a particular function. Serotonin, for example—the primary target of many antidepressant drugs and many dietary aids—comes exclusively from a small brainstem area called the raphe nuclei. Norepinephrine, which is involved in arousal, comes exclusively from a nearby small area called the locus coeruleus. Other neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine and dopamine have multiple sources in the brain but are not as ubiquitously distributed as glutamate and GABA.


title: Brain

text: As a side effect of the electrochemical processes used by neurons for signaling, brain tissue generates electric fields when it is active. When large numbers of neurons show synchronized activity, the electric fields that they generate can be large enough to detect outside the skull, using electroencephalography (EEG) or magnetoencephalography (MEG). EEG recordings, along with recordings made from electrodes implanted inside the brains of animals such as rats, show that the brain of a living animal is constantly active, even during sleep. Each part of the brain shows a mixture of rhythmic and nonrhythmic activity, which may vary according to behavioral state. In mammals, the cerebral cortex tends to show large slow delta waves during sleep, faster alpha waves when the animal is awake but inattentive, and chaotic-looking irregular activity when the animal is actively engaged in a task, called beta and gamma waves. During an epileptic seizure, the brain's inhibitory control mechanisms fail to function and electrical activity rises to pathological levels, producing EEG traces that show large wave and spike patterns not seen in a healthy brain. Relating these population-level patterns to the computational functions of individual neurons is a major focus of current research in neurophysiology.


title: Brain

text: All vertebrates have a blood–brain barrier that allows metabolism inside the brain to operate differently from metabolism in other parts of the body. Glial cells play a major role in brain metabolism by controlling the chemical composition of the fluid that surrounds neurons, including levels of ions and nutrients.


title: Brain

text: Brain tissue consumes a large amount of energy in proportion to its volume, so large brains place severe metabolic demands on animals. The need to limit body weight in order, for example, to fly, has apparently led to selection for a reduction of brain size in some species, such as bats. Most of the brain's energy consumption goes into sustaining the electric charge (membrane potential) of neurons. Most vertebrate species devote between 2% and 8% of basal metabolism to the brain. In primates, however, the percentage is much higher—in humans it rises to 20–25%. The energy consumption of the brain does not vary greatly over time, but active regions of the cerebral cortex consume somewhat more energy than inactive regions; this forms the basis for the functional brain imaging methods of PET, fMRI, and NIRS. The brain typically gets most of its energy from oxygen-dependent metabolism of glucose (i.e., blood sugar), but ketones provide a major alternative source, together with contributions from medium chain fatty acids (caprylic and heptanoic acids), lactate, acetate, and possibly amino acids.


title: Brain

text: Information from the sense organs is collected in the brain. There it is used to determine what actions the organism is to take. The brain processes the raw data to extract information about the structure of the environment. Next it combines the processed information with information about the current needs of the animal and with memory of past circumstances. Finally, on the basis of the results, it generates motor response patterns. These signal-processing tasks require intricate interplay between a variety of functional subsystems.


title: Brain

text: The function of the brain is to provide coherent control over the actions of an animal. A centralized brain allows groups of muscles to be co-activated in complex patterns; it also allows stimuli impinging on one part of the body to evoke responses in other parts, and it can prevent different parts of the body from acting at cross-purposes to each other.


title: Brain

text: The human brain is provided with information about light, sound, the chemical composition of the atmosphere, temperature, the position of the body in space (proprioception), the chemical composition of the bloodstream, and more. In other animals additional senses are present, such as the infrared heat-sense of snakes, the magnetic field sense of some birds, or the electric field sense mainly seen in aquatic animals.


title: Brain

text: Each sensory system begins with specialized receptor cells, such as photoreceptor cells in the retina of the eye, or vibration-sensitive hair cells in the cochlea of the ear. The axons of sensory receptor cells travel into the spinal cord or brain, where they transmit their signals to a first-order sensory nucleus dedicated to one specific sensory modality. This primary sensory nucleus sends information to higher-order sensory areas that are dedicated to the same modality. Eventually, via a way-station in the thalamus, the signals are sent to the cerebral cortex, where they are processed to extract the relevant features, and integrated with signals coming from other sensory systems.


title: Brain

text: Motor systems are areas of the brain that are involved in initiating body movements, that is, in activating muscles. Except for the muscles that control the eye, which are driven by nuclei in the midbrain, all the voluntary muscles in the body are directly innervated by motor neurons in the spinal cord and hindbrain. Spinal motor neurons are controlled both by neural circuits intrinsic to the spinal cord, and by inputs that descend from the brain. The intrinsic spinal circuits implement many reflex responses, and contain pattern generators for rhythmic movements such as walking or swimming. The descending connections from the brain allow for more sophisticated control.


title: Brain

text: The brain contains several motor areas that project directly to the spinal cord. At the lowest level are motor areas in the medulla and pons, which control stereotyped movements such as walking, breathing, or swallowing. At a higher level are areas in the midbrain, such as the red nucleus, which is responsible for coordinating movements of the arms and legs. At a higher level yet is the primary motor cortex, a strip of tissue located at the posterior edge of the frontal lobe. The primary motor cortex sends projections to the subcortical motor areas, but also sends a massive projection directly to the spinal cord, through the pyramidal tract. This direct corticospinal projection allows for precise voluntary control of the fine details of movements. Other motor-related brain areas exert secondary effects by projecting to the primary motor areas. Among the most important secondary areas are the premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. In addition to all of the above, the brain and spinal cord contain extensive circuitry to control the autonomic nervous system which controls the movement of the smooth muscle of the body.


title: Brain

text: Many animals alternate between sleeping and waking in a daily cycle. Arousal and alertness are also modulated on a finer time scale by a network of brain areas. A key component of the sleep system is the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), a tiny part of the hypothalamus located directly above the point at which the optic nerves from the two eyes cross. The SCN contains the body's central biological clock. Neurons there show activity levels that rise and fall with a period of about 24 hours, circadian rhythms: these activity fluctuations are driven by rhythmic changes in expression of a set of "clock genes". The SCN continues to keep time even if it is excised from the brain and placed in a dish of warm nutrient solution, but it ordinarily receives input from the optic nerves, through the retinohypothalamic tract (RHT), that allows daily light-dark cycles to calibrate the clock.


title: Brain

text: The SCN projects to a set of areas in the hypothalamus, brainstem, and midbrain that are involved in implementing sleep-wake cycles. An important component of the system is the reticular formation, a group of neuron-clusters scattered diffusely through the core of the lower brain. Reticular neurons send signals to the thalamus, which in turn sends activity-level-controlling signals to every part of the cortex. Damage to the reticular formation can produce a permanent state of coma.


title: Brain

text: Sleep involves great changes in brain activity. Until the 1950s it was generally believed that the brain essentially shuts off during sleep, but this is now known to be far from true; activity continues, but patterns become very different. There are two types of sleep: "REM sleep" (with dreaming) and "NREM" (non-REM, usually without dreaming) sleep, which repeat in slightly varying patterns throughout a sleep episode. Three broad types of distinct brain activity patterns can be measured: REM, light NREM and deep NREM. During deep NREM sleep, also called slow wave sleep, activity in the cortex takes the form of large synchronized waves, whereas in the waking state it is noisy and desynchronized. Levels of the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and serotonin drop during slow wave sleep, and fall almost to zero during REM sleep; levels of acetylcholine show the reverse pattern.


title: Brain

text: For any animal, survival requires maintaining a variety of parameters of bodily state within a limited range of variation: these include temperature, water content, salt concentration in the bloodstream, blood glucose levels, blood oxygen level, and others. The ability of an animal to regulate the internal environment of its body—the milieu intérieur, as the pioneering physiologist Claude Bernard called it—is known as homeostasis (Greek for "standing still"). Maintaining homeostasis is a crucial function of the brain. The basic principle that underlies homeostasis is negative feedback: any time a parameter diverges from its set-point, sensors generate an error signal that evokes a response that causes the parameter to shift back toward its optimum value. (This principle is widely used in engineering, for example in the control of temperature using a thermostat.)


title: Brain

text: In vertebrates, the part of the brain that plays the greatest role is the hypothalamus, a small region at the base of the forebrain whose size does not reflect its complexity or the importance of its function. The hypothalamus is a collection of small nuclei, most of which are involved in basic biological functions. Some of these functions relate to arousal or to social interactions such as sexuality, aggression, or maternal behaviors; but many of them relate to homeostasis. Several hypothalamic nuclei receive input from sensors located in the lining of blood vessels, conveying information about temperature, sodium level, glucose level, blood oxygen level, and other parameters. These hypothalamic nuclei send output signals to motor areas that can generate actions to rectify deficiencies. Some of the outputs also go to the pituitary gland, a tiny gland attached to the brain directly underneath the hypothalamus. The pituitary gland secretes hormones into the bloodstream, where they circulate throughout the body and induce changes in cellular activity.


title: Brain

text: The individual animals need to express survival-promoting behaviors, such as seeking food, water, shelter, and a mate. The motivational system in the brain monitors the current state of satisfaction of these goals, and activates behaviors to meet any needs that arise. The motivational system works largely by a reward–punishment mechanism. When a particular behavior is followed by favorable consequences, the reward mechanism in the brain is activated, which induces structural changes inside the brain that cause the same behavior to be repeated later, whenever a similar situation arises. Conversely, when a behavior is followed by unfavorable consequences, the brain's punishment mechanism is activated, inducing structural changes that cause the behavior to be suppressed when similar situations arise in the future.


title: Brain

text: Most organisms studied to date use a reward–punishment mechanism: for instance, worms and insects can alter their behavior to seek food sources or to avoid dangers. In vertebrates, the reward-punishment system is implemented by a specific set of brain structures, at the heart of which lie the basal ganglia, a set of interconnected areas at the base of the forebrain. The basal ganglia are the central site at which decisions are made: the basal ganglia exert a sustained inhibitory control over most of the motor systems in the brain; when this inhibition is released, a motor system is permitted to execute the action it is programmed to carry out. Rewards and punishments function by altering the relationship between the inputs that the basal ganglia receive and the decision-signals that are emitted. The reward mechanism is better understood than the punishment mechanism, because its role in drug abuse has caused it to be studied very intensively. Research has shown that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a central role: addictive drugs such as cocaine, amphetamine, and nicotine either cause dopamine levels to rise or cause the effects of dopamine inside the brain to be enhanced.


title: Brain

text: Almost all animals are capable of modifying their behavior as a result of experience—even the most primitive types of worms. Because behavior is driven by brain activity, changes in behavior must somehow correspond to changes inside the brain. Already in the late 19th century theorists like Santiago Ramón y Cajal argued that the most plausible explanation is that learning and memory are expressed as changes in the synaptic connections between neurons. Until 1970, however, experimental evidence to support the synaptic plasticity hypothesis was lacking. In 1971 Tim Bliss and Terje Lømo published a paper on a phenomenon now called long-term potentiation: the paper showed clear evidence of activity-induced synaptic changes that lasted for at least several days. Since then technical advances have made these sorts of experiments much easier to carry out, and thousands of studies have been made that have clarified the mechanism of synaptic change, and uncovered other types of activity-driven synaptic change in a variety of brain areas, including the cerebral cortex, hippocampus, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and physical activity appear to play a beneficial role in the process.


title: Brain

text: Neuroscientists currently distinguish several types of learning and memory that are implemented by the brain in distinct ways:


title: Brain

text: The field of neuroscience encompasses all approaches that seek to understand the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Psychology seeks to understand mind and behavior, and neurology is the medical discipline that diagnoses and treats diseases of the nervous system. The brain is also the most important organ studied in psychiatry, the branch of medicine that works to study, prevent, and treat mental disorders. Cognitive science seeks to unify neuroscience and psychology with other fields that concern themselves with the brain, such as computer science (artificial intelligence and similar fields) and philosophy.


title: Brain

text: The oldest method of studying the brain is anatomical, and until the middle of the 20th century, much of the progress in neuroscience came from the development of better cell stains and better microscopes. Neuroanatomists study the large-scale structure of the brain as well as the microscopic structure of neurons and their components, especially synapses. Among other tools, they employ a plethora of stains that reveal neural structure, chemistry, and connectivity. In recent years, the development of immunostaining techniques has allowed investigation of neurons that express specific sets of genes. Also, "functional neuroanatomy" uses medical imaging techniques to correlate variations in human brain structure with differences in cognition or behavior.


title: Brain

text: Neurophysiologists study the chemical, pharmacological, and electrical properties of the brain: their primary tools are drugs and recording devices. Thousands of experimentally developed drugs affect the nervous system, some in highly specific ways. Recordings of brain activity can be made using electrodes, either glued to the scalp as in EEG studies, or implanted inside the brains of animals for extracellular recordings, which can detect action potentials generated by individual neurons. Because the brain does not contain pain receptors, it is possible using these techniques to record brain activity from animals that are awake and behaving without causing distress. The same techniques have occasionally been used to study brain activity in human patients with intractable epilepsy, in cases where there was a medical necessity to implant electrodes to localize the brain area responsible for epileptic seizures. Functional imaging techniques such as fMRI are also used to study brain activity; these techniques have mainly been used with human subjects, because they require a conscious subject to remain motionless for long periods of time, but they have the great advantage of being noninvasive.


title: Brain

text: Another approach to brain function is to examine the consequences of damage to specific brain areas. Even though it is protected by the skull and meninges, surrounded by cerebrospinal fluid, and isolated from the bloodstream by the blood–brain barrier, the delicate nature of the brain makes it vulnerable to numerous diseases and several types of damage. In humans, the effects of strokes and other types of brain damage have been a key source of information about brain function. Because there is no ability to experimentally control the nature of the damage, however, this information is often difficult to interpret. In animal studies, most commonly involving rats, it is possible to use electrodes or locally injected chemicals to produce precise patterns of damage and then examine the consequences for behavior.


title: Brain

text: Computational neuroscience encompasses two approaches: first, the use of computers to study the brain; second, the study of how brains perform computation. On one hand, it is possible to write a computer program to simulate the operation of a group of neurons by making use of systems of equations that describe their electrochemical activity; such simulations are known as "biologically realistic neural networks". On the other hand, it is possible to study algorithms for neural computation by simulating, or mathematically analyzing, the operations of simplified "units" that have some of the properties of neurons but abstract out much of their biological complexity. The computational functions of the brain are studied both by computer scientists and neuroscientists.


title: Brain

text: Computational neurogenetic modeling is concerned with the study and development of dynamic neuronal models for modeling brain functions with respect to genes and dynamic interactions between genes.


title: Brain

text: Recent years have seen increasing applications of genetic and genomic techniques to the study of the brain and a focus on the roles of neurotrophic factors and physical activity in neuroplasticity. The most common subjects are mice, because of the availability of technical tools. It is now possible with relative ease to "knock out" or mutate a wide variety of genes, and then examine the effects on brain function. More sophisticated approaches are also being used: for example, using Cre-Lox recombination it is possible to activate or deactivate genes in specific parts of the brain, at specific times.


title: Brain

text: The oldest brain to have been discovered was in Armenia in the Areni-1 cave complex. The brain, estimated to be over 5,000 years old, was found in the skull of a 12 to 14-year-old girl. Although the brains were shriveled, they were well preserved due to the climate found inside the cave.


title: Brain

text: Early philosophers were divided as to whether the seat of the soul lies in the brain or heart. Aristotle favored the heart, and thought that the function of the brain was merely to cool the blood. Democritus, the inventor of the atomic theory of matter, argued for a three-part soul, with intellect in the head, emotion in the heart, and lust near the liver. The unknown author of "On the Sacred Disease", a medical treatise in the Hippocratic Corpus, came down unequivocally in favor of the brain, writing:


title: Brain

text: The Roman physician Galen also argued for the importance of the brain, and theorized in some depth about how it might work. Galen traced out the anatomical relationships among brain, nerves, and muscles, demonstrating that all muscles in the body are connected to the brain through a branching network of nerves. He postulated that nerves activate muscles mechanically by carrying a mysterious substance he called "pneumata psychikon", usually translated as "animal spirits". Galen's ideas were widely known during the Middle Ages, but not much further progress came until the Renaissance, when detailed anatomical study resumed, combined with the theoretical speculations of René Descartes and those who followed him. Descartes, like Galen, thought of the nervous system in hydraulic terms. He believed that the highest cognitive functions are carried out by a non-physical "res cogitans", but that the majority of behaviors of humans, and all behaviors of animals, could be explained mechanistically.


title: Brain

text: The first real progress toward a modern understanding of nervous function, though, came from the investigations of Luigi Galvani (1737–1798), who discovered that a shock of static electricity applied to an exposed nerve of a dead frog could cause its leg to contract. Since that time, each major advance in understanding has followed more or less directly from the development of a new technique of investigation. Until the early years of the 20th century, the most important advances were derived from new methods for staining cells. Particularly critical was the invention of the Golgi stain, which (when correctly used) stains only a small fraction of neurons, but stains them in their entirety, including cell body, dendrites, and axon. Without such a stain, brain tissue under a microscope appears as an impenetrable tangle of protoplasmic fibers, in which it is impossible to determine any structure. In the hands of Camillo Golgi, and especially of the Spanish neuroanatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the new stain revealed hundreds of distinct types of neurons, each with its own unique dendritic structure and pattern of connectivity.


title: Brain

text: In the first half of the 20th century, advances in electronics enabled investigation of the electrical properties of nerve cells, culminating in work by Alan Hodgkin, Andrew Huxley, and others on the biophysics of the action potential, and the work of Bernard Katz and others on the electrochemistry of the synapse. These studies complemented the anatomical picture with a conception of the brain as a dynamic entity. Reflecting the new understanding, in 1942 Charles Sherrington visualized the workings of the brain waking from sleep:


title: Brain

text: The invention of electronic computers in the 1940s, along with the development of mathematical information theory, led to a realization that brains can potentially be understood as information processing systems. This concept formed the basis of the field of cybernetics, and eventually gave rise to the field now known as computational neuroscience. The earliest attempts at cybernetics were somewhat crude in that they treated the brain as essentially a digital computer in disguise, as for example in John von Neumann's 1958 book, "The Computer and the Brain". Over the years, though, accumulating information about the electrical responses of brain cells recorded from behaving animals has steadily moved theoretical concepts in the direction of increasing realism.


title: Brain

text: One of the most influential early contributions was a 1959 paper titled "What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain": the paper examined the visual responses of neurons in the retina and optic tectum of frogs, and came to the conclusion that some neurons in the tectum of the frog are wired to combine elementary responses in a way that makes them function as "bug perceivers". A few years later David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel discovered cells in the primary visual cortex of monkeys that become active when sharp edges move across specific points in the field of view—a discovery for which they won a Nobel Prize. Follow-up studies in higher-order visual areas found cells that detect binocular disparity, color, movement, and aspects of shape, with areas located at increasing distances from the primary visual cortex showing increasingly complex responses. Other investigations of brain areas unrelated to vision have revealed cells with a wide variety of response correlates, some related to memory, some to abstract types of cognition such as space.


title: Brain

text: Theorists have worked to understand these response patterns by constructing mathematical models of neurons and neural networks, which can be simulated using computers. Some useful models are abstract, focusing on the conceptual structure of neural algorithms rather than the details of how they are implemented in the brain; other models attempt to incorporate data about the biophysical properties of real neurons. No model on any level is yet considered to be a fully valid description of brain function, though. The essential difficulty is that sophisticated computation by neural networks requires distributed processing in which hundreds or thousands of neurons work cooperatively—current methods of brain activity recording are only capable of isolating action potentials from a few dozen neurons at a time.


title: Brain

text: Furthermore, even single neurons appear to be complex and capable of performing computations. So, brain models that don't reflect this are too abstract to be representative of brain operation; models that do try to capture this are very computationally expensive and arguably intractable with present computational resources. However, the Human Brain Project is trying to build a realistic, detailed computational model of the entire human brain. The wisdom of this approach has been publicly contested, with high-profile scientists on both sides of the argument.


title: Brain

text: In the second half of the 20th century, developments in chemistry, electron microscopy, genetics, computer science, functional brain imaging, and other fields progressively opened new windows into brain structure and function. In the United States, the 1990s were officially designated as the "Decade of the Brain" to commemorate advances made in brain research, and to promote funding for such research.


title: Brain

text: In the 21st century, these trends have continued, and several new approaches have come into prominence, including multielectrode recording, which allows the activity of many brain cells to be recorded all at the same time; genetic engineering, which allows molecular components of the brain to be altered experimentally; genomics, which allows variations in brain structure to be correlated with variations in DNA properties and neuroimaging.


title: Brain

text: Some archaeological evidence suggests that the mourning rituals of European Neanderthals also involved the consumption of the brain.


title: Brain

text: The Fore people of Papua New Guinea are known to eat human brains. In funerary rituals, those close to the dead would eat the brain of the deceased to create a sense of immortality. A prion disease called kuru has been traced to this.


The United States women's national soccer team (USWNT) represents the United States in international women's soccer. The team is the most successful in international women's soccer, winning four Women's World Cup titles (1991, 1999, 2015, and 2019), four Olympic gold medals (1996, 2004, 2008, and 2012), and nine CONCACAF Gold Cups. It medaled in every World Cup and Olympic tournament in women's soccer from 1991 to 2015, before being knocked out in the quarterfinal of the 2016 Summer Olympics. The team is governed by United States Soccer Federation and competes in CONCACAF (the Confederation of North, Central American, and Caribbean Association Football).


title: United States women's national soccer team

text: After mostly being ranked No. 2 from 2003 to 2008 in the FIFA Women's World Rankings, the team was ranked No. 1 continuously from March 2008 to November 2014, the longest consecutive top ranking of any team. Since FIFA rankings were established in 2003, it has been ranked No. 1 for a total of 13 years; the only other team to be ranked No. 1, Germany, has been there for a total of 4 years. The USWNT has never been ranked lower than second.


text: The team was selected as the U.S. Olympic Committee's Team of the Year in 1997 and 1999, and "Sports Illustrated" chose the entire team as 1999 Sportswomen of the Year for its usual Sportsman of the Year honor. On April 5, 2017, USWNT players and U.S. Soccer reached a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement that would, among other things, lead to a pay increase. In February 2022, numerous current and former members of the USWNT, including Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, settled a lawsuit with the U.S. Soccer Federation for $24 million and a requirement that male and female soccer players be paid equally in the future.


text: The passing of Title IX in 1972, which outlawed gender-based discrimination for federally-funded education programs, spurred the creation of college soccer teams across the United States at a time when women's soccer was rising in popularity internationally. The U.S. Soccer Federation tasked coach Mike Ryan to select a roster of college players to participate in the 1985 Mundialito tournament in Italy, its first foray into women's international soccer. The team played its first match on August 18, 1985, losing 1–0 to Italy, and finished the tournament in fourth place after failing to win its remaining matches against Denmark and England.


text: University of North Carolina coach Anson Dorrance was hired as the team's first full-time head coach in 1986 with the goal of fielding a competitive women's team at the next Mundialito and at future tournaments. In their first Mundialito under Dorrance, the United States defeated China, Brazil, and Japan before finishing as runners-up to Italy. Dorrance gave national team appearances to teenage players, including future stars Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, and Kristine Lilly, instead of the college players preferred by the federation, and called into camp the first African-American player on the team, Kim Crabbe. The United States played in the 1988 FIFA Women's Invitation Tournament in China, a FIFA-sanctioned competition to test the feasibility of a regular women's championship, and lost in the quarterfinals to eventual champions Norway.


text: Following the 1988 tournament, FIFA announced plans for a new women's tournament, named the 1st FIFA World Championship for Women's Football for the M&M's Cup until it was retroactively given the "World Cup" name. The United States qualified for the tournament by winning the inaugural CONCACAF Women's Championship, hosted by Haiti in April 1991, outscoring their opponents 49–0 for the sole CONCACAF berth in the tournament. The team played several exhibition matches abroad against European opponents to prepare for the world championship, while its players quit their regular jobs to train full-time with meager compensation. Dorrance utilized a 4–3–3 formation that was spearheaded by the "Triple-Edged Sword" of forward Michelle Akers-Stahl and wingers Carin Jennings and April Heinrichs.


text: At the Women's World Cup, the United States won all three of its group stage matches and outscored its opponents 11–2. In the opening match against Sweden, the U.S. took a 3–0 lead early in the second half, but conceded two goals to end the match with a narrower 3–2 victory. The U.S. proceeded to win 5–0 in its second match against Brazil and 3–0 in its third match against Japan in the following days, clinching first place in the group and a quarterfinal berth. The United States proceeded with a 7–0 victory in the quarterfinals over Chinese Taipei, fueled by a five-goal performance by Akers-Stahl in the first fifty minutes of the match.


text: In the semifinals against Germany, Carin Jennings scored a hat-trick in the first half as the team clinched a place in the final with a 5–2 victory. The team's lopsided victories in the earlier rounds had brought attention from American media outlets, but the final match was not televised live in the U.S. The United States won the inaugural Women's World Cup title by defeating Norway 2–1 in the final, played in front of 65,000 spectators at Tianhe Stadium in Guangzhou, as Akers-Stahl scored twice to create and restore a lead for the Americans. Akers-Stahl finished as the top goalscorer at the tournament, with ten goals, and Carin Jennings was awarded the Golden Ball as the tournament's best player.