title: Mary Mallon

text: After Mallon was sent into her initial quarantine, the newspapers changed their opinion on her case. The articles at first talked about how Dr. Josephine Baker claimed Mallon attacked her and the other doctors with forks, and came at them fighting and swearing. Later on the press articles shifted the blame from fully her fault to the opposite stance, the belief that she was unaware she was carrying anything and instead germs that she had no control over were to blame. The newspapers also claimed that Mallon was barred from using the telephone to contact anybody except the surgeons treating her and her guard. Stories that once celebrated the public health department and legal system eventually became sympathetic to Mallon and the events she supposedly encountered. Public health officials claim the opposite, that she was treated to their best ability but in return refused to comply with the requests of the health officials.


title: Mary Mallon

text: Mallon spent the rest of her life in quarantine at Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island. Mallon was quite active until suffering a stroke in 1932; afterwards, she was confined to the hospital. She never completely recovered, and half of her body remained paralyzed. On November 11, 1938, she died of pneumonia at age 69. Mallon's body was cremated, and her ashes were buried at Saint Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx. Nine people attended the funeral.


title: Mary Mallon

text: Some sources claim that a post-mortem autopsy found evidence of live typhoid bacteria in Mallon's gallbladder. Soper wrote, however, that there was no autopsy, a claim cited by other researchers to assert a conspiracy to calm public opinion after her death.


title: Mary Mallon

text: Mallon's case became the first in which an asymptomatic carrier was discovered and forcibly isolated. The ethical and legal issues raised by her case are still discussed. Research has led to an estimate that Mallon had contaminated "at least one hundred and twenty two people, including five dead". Other sources attribute at least three deaths to contact with Mallon, but because of health officials' inability to persuade her to cooperate, the exact number is not known. Some have estimated that contact with her may have caused 50 fatalities.


title: Mary Mallon

text: Other healthy typhoid carriers identified in the first quarter of the 20th century include Tony Labella, an Italian immigrant, presumed to have caused over 100 cases (with five deaths); an Adirondack guide dubbed "Typhoid John", presumed to have infected 36 people (with two deaths); and Alphonse Cotils, a restaurateur and bakery owner.


title: Mary Mallon

text: The health technology of the era did not have a completely effective solution: there were no antibiotics to fight the infection, and gallbladder removal was a dangerous, sometimes fatal operation. Some modern specialists claim that typhoid bacteria can become integrated in macrophages and then reside in intestinal lymph nodes or the spleen.


title: Mary Mallon

text: The ethical question of her arrest and forced quarantine asks if there was a justification for arresting her and isolating her from the world. The answer to this question is complex and is still being debated. Historians frequently bring up the argument of Mallon knowing she was infecting her clients with typhoid based on the frequency of the disease being present after her departure. They also cite the argument that antibiotics did not exist at this time and ten percent of those affected by Mallon carrying the infection died. This argument could also potentially view Mallon as a murderer of those ten percent of people if she knew she was a carrier of the disease, and would be a justification for her arrest.


title: Mary Mallon

text: Others argue that Mallon did not know that she had the bacteria and therefore did not deserve to be arrested when she never committed a crime. At the time, asymptomatic carriers were not understood and Mallon was believed to have said that she did not feel sick, look sick, or have any sort of visible sickness. Although Mallon did not feel ill or look sick, the disease was living dormant in what was assumed to be her gallbladder.


title: Mary Mallon

text: Mallon was the first individual who was found to be an asymptomatic carrier of the typhoid bacterium, and this caused the health officials to have little to no idea of how to deal with someone in her position. However, Mallon's case helped these officials identify other people who carried diseases that were dormant in their bodies based on the information they learned from Mallon's case. Mallon's case created a shift in emphasis around the understanding of personhood and social responsibility. It also was the case that led scientists to shift the idea of the asymptomatic carrier from an idea to an evidence-backed scientific study.


title: Mary Mallon

text: Today, the phrase "Typhoid Mary" is a colloquial term for anyone who, knowingly or not, spreads disease or some other undesirable thing.


title: Mary Mallon

text: Typhoid Mary Fisk, also known as Bloody Mary and Mutant Zero, is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics.


title: Mary Mallon

text: Mallon was portrayed by Melissa McMeekin in season one of "The Knick", in a somewhat fictionalised account of her initial infection of countless wealthy households.


title: Coral

text: Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton.


title: Coral

text: A coral "group" is a colony of very many genetically identical polyps. Each polyp is a sac-like animal typically only a few millimeters in diameter and a few centimeters in height. A set of tentacles surround a central mouth opening. Each polyp excretes an exoskeleton near the base. Over many generations, the colony thus creates a skeleton characteristic of the species which can measure up to several meters in size. Individual colonies grow by asexual reproduction of polyps. Corals also breed sexually by spawning: polyps of the same species release gametes simultaneously overnight, often around a full moon. Fertilized eggs form planulae, a mobile early form of the coral polyp which, when mature, settles to form a new colony.


title: Coral

text: Although some corals are able to catch plankton and small fish using stinging cells on their tentacles, most corals obtain the majority of their energy and nutrients from photosynthetic unicellular dinoflagellates of the genus "Symbiodinium" that live within their tissues. These are commonly known as zooxanthellae and give the coral color. Such corals require sunlight and grow in clear, shallow water, typically at depths less than . Corals are major contributors to the physical structure of the coral reefs that develop in tropical and subtropical waters, such as the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. These corals are increasingly at risk of bleaching events where polyps expel the zooxanthellae in response to stress such as high water temperature or toxins.


title: Coral

text: Other corals do not rely on zooxanthellae and can live globally in much deeper water, such as the cold-water genus "Lophelia" which can survive as deep as . Some have been found as far north as the Darwin Mounds, northwest of Cape Wrath, Scotland, and others off the coast of Washington state and the Aleutian Islands.


title: Coral

text: The classification of corals has been discussed for millennia, owing to having similarities to both plants and animals. Aristotle's pupil Theophrastus described the red coral, "korallion", in his book on stones, implying it was a mineral, but he described it as a deep-sea plant in his "Enquiries on Plants", where he also mentions large stony plants that reveal bright flowers when under water in the Gulf of Heroes. Pliny the Elder stated boldly that several sea creatures including sea nettles and sponges "are neither animals nor plants, but are possessed of a third nature ("tertia natura")". Petrus Gyllius copied Pliny, introducing the term "zoophyta" for this third group in his 1535 book "On the French and Latin Names of the Fishes of the Marseilles Region"; it is popularly but wrongly supposed that Aristotle created the term. Gyllius further noted, following Aristotle, how hard it was to define what was a plant and what was an animal. The Babylonian Talmud refers to coral among a list of types of trees, and the 11th century French commentator Rashi describes it as "a type of tree (מין עץ) that grows underwater that goes by the (French) name "coral."


title: Coral

text: The Persian polymath Al-Biruni (d.1048) classified sponges and corals as animals, arguing that they respond to touch. Nevertheless, people believed corals to be plants until the eighteenth century, when William Herschel used a microscope to establish that coral had the characteristic thin cell membranes of an animal.


title: Coral

text: Presently, corals are classified as species of animals within the sub-classes Hexacorallia and Octocorallia of the class Anthozoa in the phylum Cnidaria. Hexacorallia includes the stony corals and these groups have polyps that generally have a 6-fold symmetry. Octocorallia includes blue coral and soft corals and species of Octocorallia have polyps with an eightfold symmetry, each polyp having eight tentacles and eight mesenteries. The group of corals is paraphyletic because the sea anemones are also in the sub-class Hexacorallia.


title: Coral

text: The delineation  of coral species is challenging as hypotheses based on morphological traits contradict hypotheses formed via molecular tree-based processes.   As of 2020, there are 2175 identified separate coral species, 237 of which are currently endangered, making distinguishing corals to be the utmost of importance in efforts to curb extinction.  Adaptation and delineation continues to occur in species of coral in order to combat the dangers posed by the climate crisis. Corals are colonial modular organisms formed by asexually produced and genetically identical modules called polyps. Polyps are connected by living tissue to produce the full organism.  The living tissue allows for inter module communication (interaction between each polyp), which appears in colony morphologies produced by corals, and is one of the main identifying characteristics for a species of coral.


title: Coral

text: There are 2 main classifications for corals: 1. Hard coral (scleractinian and stony coral) which form reefs by a calcium carbonate base, with polyps with 6 stiff tentacles, and 2. Soft coral (Alcyonacea and ahermatypic coral) which are bendable and formed by a colony of polyps with 8 feather like tentacles.  These two classifications arose from differentiation in gene expressions in their branch tips and bases that arose through developmental signaling pathways such as Hox, Hedgehog, Wnt, BMP etc.


title: Coral

text: Scientists typically select "Acropora" as research models since they are the most diverse genus of hard coral, having over 120 species.  Most species within this genus have polyps which are dimorphic: axial polyps grow rapidly and have lighter coloration, while radial polyps are small and are darker in coloration. In the "Acropora" genus, gamete synthesis and photosynthesis occur at the basal polyps, growth occurs mainly at the radial polyps. Growth at the site of the radial polyps encompasses two processes: asexual reproduction via mitotic cell proliferation, and skeleton deposition of the calcium carbonate via extra cellular matrix (EMC) proteins acting as differentially expressed (DE) signaling genes between both branch tips and bases.  These processes lead to colony differentiation, which is the most accurate distinguisher between coral species. In the Acropora genus, colony differentiation through up-regulation and down-regulation of DEs.


title: Coral

text: Systematic studies of soft coral species have faced challenges due to a lack of taxonomic knowledge.  Researchers have not found enough variability within the genus to confidently delineate similar species, due to a low rate in mutation of mitochondrial DNA.


title: Coral

text: Environmental factors, such as the rise of temperatures and acid levels in our oceans account for some speciation of corals in the form of species lost.  Various coral species have heat shock proteins (HSP) that are also in the category of DE across species.  These HSPs help corals combat the increased temperatures they are facing which lead to protein denaturing, growth loss, and eventually coral death.  Approximately 33% of coral species are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s endangered species list and at risk of species loss.  Ocean acidification (falling pH levels in the oceans) is threatening the continued species growth and differentiation of corals.  Mutation rates of "Vibrio shilonii", the reef pathogen responsible for coral bleaching, heavily outweigh the  typical reproduction rates of coral colonies when pH levels fall. Thus, corals are unable to mutate their HSPs and other climate change preventative genes to combat the increase in temperature and decrease in pH at a competitive rate to these pathogens responsible for coral bleaching, resulting in species loss.


title: Coral

text: For most of their life corals are sessile animals of colonies of genetically identical polyps. Each polyp varies from millimeters to centimeters in diameter, and colonies can be formed from many millions of individual polyps. Stony coral, also known as hard coral, polyps produce a skeleton composed of calcium carbonate to strengthen and protect the organism. This is deposited by the polyps and by the coenosarc, the living tissue that connects them. The polyps sit in cup-shaped depressions in the skeleton known as corallites. Colonies of stony coral are markedly variable in appearance; a single species may adopt an encrusting, plate-like, bushy, columnar or massive solid structure, the various forms often being linked to different types of habitat, with variations in light level and water movement being significant.


title: Coral

text: The body of the polyp may be roughly compared in a structure to a sac, the wall of which is composed of two layers of cells. The outer layer is known technically as the ectoderm, the inner layer as the endoderm. Between ectoderm and endoderm is a supporting layer of gelatinous substance termed mesoglea, secreted by the cell layers of the body wall. The mesoglea can contain skeletal elements derived from cells migrated from the ectoderm.


title: Coral

text: The sac-like body built up in this way is attached to a hard surface, which in hard corals are cup-shaped depressions in the skeleton known as corallites. At the center of the upper end of the sac lies the only opening called the mouth, surrounded by a circle of tentacles which resemble glove fingers. The tentacles are organs which serve both for tactile sense and for the capture of food. Polyps extend their tentacles, particularly at night, often containing coiled stinging cells (cnidocytes) which pierce, poison and firmly hold living prey paralyzing or killing them. Polyp prey includes plankton such as copepods and fish larvae. Longitudinal muscular fibers formed from the cells of the ectoderm allow tentacles to contract to convey the food to the mouth. Similarly, circularly disposed muscular fibres formed from the endoderm permit tentacles to be protracted or thrust out once they are contracted. In both stony and soft corals, the polyps can be retracted by contracting muscle fibres, with stony corals relying on their hard skeleton and cnidocytes for defense. Soft corals generally secrete terpenoid toxins to ward off predators.


title: Coral

text: In most corals, the tentacles are retracted by day and spread out at night to catch plankton and other small organisms. Shallow-water species of both stony and soft corals can be zooxanthellate, the corals supplementing their plankton diet with the products of photosynthesis produced by these symbionts. The polyps interconnect by a complex and well-developed system of gastrovascular canals, allowing significant sharing of nutrients and symbionts.


title: Coral

text: The external form of the polyp varies greatly. The column may be long and slender, or may be so short in the axial direction that the body becomes disk-like. The tentacles may number many hundreds or may be very few, in rare cases only one or two. They may be simple and unbranched, or feathery in pattern. The mouth may be level with the surface of the peristome, or may be projecting and trumpet-shaped.


title: Coral

text: Soft corals have no solid exoskeleton as such. However, their tissues are often reinforced by small supportive elements known as sclerites made of calcium carbonate. The polyps of soft corals have eight-fold symmetry, which is reflected in the "Octo" in Octocorallia.


title: Coral

text: Soft corals vary considerably in form, and most are colonial. A few soft corals are stolonate, but the polyps of most are connected by sheets of tissue called coenosarc, and in some species these sheets are thick and the polyps deeply embedded in them. Some soft corals encrust other sea objects or form lobes. Others are tree-like or whip-like and have a central axial skeleton embedded at their base in the matrix of the supporting branch. These branches are composed of a fibrous protein called gorgonin or of a calcified material.


title: Coral

text: The polyps of stony corals have six-fold symmetry. In stony corals, the tentacles are cylindrical and taper to a point, but in soft corals they are pinnate with side branches known as pinnules. In some tropical species, these are reduced to mere stubs and in some, they are fused to give a paddle-like appearance.


title: Coral

text: Coral skeletons are biocomposites (mineral + organics) of calcium carbonate, in the form of calcite or aragonite. In scleractinian corals, "centers of calcification" and fibers are clearly distinct structures differing with respect to both morphology and chemical compositions of the crystalline units. The organic matrices extracted from diverse species are acidic, and comprise proteins, sulphated sugars and lipids; they are species specific. The soluble organic matrices of the skeletons allow to differentiate zooxanthellae and non-zooxanthellae specimens.


title: Coral

text: Polyps feed on a variety of small organisms, from microscopic zooplankton to small fish. The polyp's tentacles immobilize or kill prey using stinging cells called nematocysts. These cells carry venom which they rapidly release in response to contact with another organism. A dormant nematocyst discharges in response to nearby prey touching the trigger (Cnidocil). A flap (operculum) opens and its stinging apparatus fires the barb into the prey. The venom is injected through the hollow filament to immobilise the prey; the tentacles then manoeuvre the prey into the stomach. Once the prey is digested the stomach reopens allowing the elimination of waste products and the beginning of the next hunting cycle.


title: Coral

text: Many corals, as well as other cnidarian groups such as sea anemones form a symbiotic relationship with a class of dinoflagellate algae, zooxanthellae of the genus "Symbiodinium", which can form as much as 30% of the tissue of a polyp. Typically, each polyp harbors one species of alga, and coral species show a preference for "Symbiodinium". Young corals are not born with zooxanthellae, but acquire the algae from the surrounding environment, including the water column and local sediment. The main benefit of the zooxanthellae is their ability to photosynthesize which supplies corals with the products of photosynthesis, including glucose, glycerol, and amino acids, which the corals can use for energy. Zooxanthellae also benefit corals by aiding in calcification, for the coral skeleton, and waste removal. In addition to the soft tissue, microbiomes are also found in the coral's mucus and (in stony corals) the skeleton, with the latter showing the greatest microbial richness.


title: Coral

text: The zooxanthellae benefit from a safe place to live and consume the polyp's carbon dioxide, phosphate and nitrogenous waste. Stressed corals will eject their zooxanthellae, a process that is becoming increasingly common due to strain placed on coral by rising ocean temperatures. Mass ejections are known as coral bleaching because the algae contribute to coral coloration; some colors, however, are due to host coral pigments, such as green fluorescent proteins (GFPs). Ejection increases the polyp's chance of surviving short-term stress and if the stress subsides they can regain algae, possibly of a different species, at a later time. If the stressful conditions persist, the polyp eventually dies. Zooxanthellae are located within the coral cytoplasm and due to the algae's photosynthetic activity the internal pH of the coral can be raised; this behavior indicates that the zooxanthellae are responsible to some extent for the metabolism of their host corals. Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease has been associated with the breakdown of host-zooxanthellae physiology. Moreover, Vibrio bacterium are known to have virulence traits used for host coral tissue damage and photoinhibition of algal symbionts.Therefore, both coral and their symbiotic microorganisms could have evolved to harbour traits resistant to disease and transmission.


title: Coral

text: Corals can be both gonochoristic (unisexual) and hermaphroditic, each of which can reproduce sexually and asexually. Reproduction also allows coral to settle in new areas. Reproduction is coordinated by chemical communication.


title: Coral

text: Corals predominantly reproduce sexually. About 25% of hermatypic corals (reef building stony corals) form single sex (gonochoristic) colonies, while the rest are hermaphroditic. It is estimated more than 67% of coral are simultaneous hermaphrodites.


title: Coral

text: About 75% of all hermatypic corals "broadcast spawn" by releasing gametes—eggs and sperm—into the water to spread offspring. A genetic ability to detect blue light allows these sightless organisms to detect a full moon, triggering the simultaneous release. The gametes fertilize at the water's surface to form a microscopic larva called a planula, typically pink and elliptical in shape. A typical coral colony forms several thousand larvae per year to overcome the odds against formation of a new colony.


title: Coral

text: Synchronous spawning is very typical on the coral reef, and often, even when multiple species are present, all corals spawn on the same night. This synchrony is essential so male and female gametes can meet. Corals rely on environmental cues, varying from species to species, to determine the proper time to release gametes into the water. The cues involve temperature change, lunar cycle, day length, and possibly chemical signalling. Synchronous spawning may form hybrids and is perhaps involved in coral speciation. The immediate cue is most often sunset, which cues the release. The spawning event can be visually dramatic, clouding the usually clear water with gametes.


title: Coral

text: Brooding species are most often ahermatypic (not reef-building) in areas of high current or wave action. Brooders release only sperm, which is negatively buoyant, sinking onto the waiting egg carriers that harbor unfertilized eggs for weeks. Synchronous spawning events sometimes occur even with these species. After fertilization, the corals release planula that are ready to settle.


title: Coral

text: The time from spawning to larval settlement is usually two to three days, but can occur immediately or up to two months. Broadcast-spawned planula larvae develop at the water's surface before descending to seek a hard surface on the benthos to which they can attach and begin a new colony. The larvae often need a biological cue to induce settlement such as specific crustose coralline algae species or microbial biofilms. High failure rates afflict many stages of this process, and even though thousands of eggs are released by each colony, few new colonies form. During settlement, larvae are inhibited by physical barriers such as sediment, as well as chemical (allelopathic) barriers. The larvae metamorphose into a single polyp and eventually develops into a juvenile and then adult by asexual budding and growth.


title: Coral

text: Within a coral head, the genetically identical polyps reproduce asexually, either by budding (gemmation) or by dividing, whether longitudinally or transversely.


title: Coral

text: Budding involves splitting a smaller polyp from an adult. As the new polyp grows, it forms . The distance between the new and adult polyps grows, and with it, the coenosarc (the common body of the colony). Budding can be intratentacular, from its oral discs, producing same-sized polyps within the ring of tentacles, or extratentacular, from its base, producing a smaller polyp.


title: Coral

text: Division forms two polyps that each become as large as the original. Longitudinal division begins when a polyp broadens and then divides its coelenteron (body), effectively splitting along its length. The mouth divides and new tentacles form. The two polyps thus created then generate their missing body parts and exoskeleton. Transversal division occurs when polyps and the exoskeleton divide transversally into two parts. This means one has the basal disc (bottom) and the other has the oral disc (top); the new polyps must separately generate the missing pieces.


title: Coral

text: Asexual reproduction offers the benefits of high reproductive rate, delaying senescence, and replacement of dead modules, as well as geographical distribution.


title: Coral

text: Whole colonies can reproduce asexually, forming two colonies with the same genotype. The possible mechanisms include fission, bailout and fragmentation. Fission occurs in some corals, especially among the family Fungiidae, where the colony splits into two or more colonies during early developmental stages. Bailout occurs when a single polyp abandons the colony and settles on a different substrate to create a new colony. Fragmentation involves individuals broken from the colony during storms or other disruptions. The separated individuals can start new colonies.


title: Coral

text: Corals are one of the more common examples of an animal host whose symbiosis with microalgae can turn to dysbiosis, and is visibly detected as bleaching. Coral microbiomes have been examined in a variety of studies, which demonstrate how oceanic environmental variations, most notably temperature, light, and inorganic nutrients, affect the abundance and performance of the microalgal symbionts, as well as calcification and physiology of the host.


title: Coral

text: Studies have also suggested that resident bacteria, archaea, and fungi additionally contribute to nutrient and organic matter cycling within the coral, with viruses also possibly playing a role in structuring the composition of these members, thus providing one of the first glimpses at a multi-domain marine animal symbiosis. The gammaproteobacterium "Endozoicomonas" is emerging as a central member of the coral's microbiome, with flexibility in its lifestyle. Given the recent mass bleaching occurring on reefs, corals will likely continue to be a useful and popular system for symbiosis and dysbiosis research.


title: Coral

text: "Astrangia poculata", the northern star coral, is a temperate stony coral, widely documented along the eastern coast of the United States. The coral can live with and without zooxanthellae (algal symbionts), making it an ideal model organism to study microbial community interactions associated with symbiotic state. However, the ability to develop primers and probes to more specifically target key microbial groups has been hindered by the lack of full length 16S rRNA sequences, since sequences produced by the Illumina platform are of insufficient length (approximately 250 base pairs) for the design of primers and probes. In 2019, Goldsmith et al demonstrated Sanger sequencing was capable of reproducing the biologically-relevant diversity detected by deeper next-generation sequencing, while also producing longer sequences useful to the research community for probe and primer design (see diagram on right).


title: Coral

text: Reef-building corals are well-studied holobionts that include the coral itself together with its symbiont zooxanthellae (photosynthetic dinoflagellates), as well as its associated bacteria and viruses. Co-evolutionary patterns exist for coral microbial communities and coral phylogeny.


title: Coral

text: It is known that the coral's microbiome and symbiont influence host health, however the historic influence of each member on others is not well understood. Scleractinian corals have been diversifying for longer than many other symbiotic systems, and their microbiomes are known to be partially species-specific. It has been suggested that "Endozoicomonas", a commonly highly abundant bacterium in corals, has exhibited codiversification with its host. This hints at an intricate set of relationships between the members of the coral holobiont that have been developing as evolution of these members occurs.


title: Coral

text: A study published in 2018 revealed evidence of phylosymbiosis between corals and their tissue and skeleton microbiomes. The coral skeleton, which represents the most diverse of the three coral microbiomes, showed the strongest evidence of phylosymbiosis. Coral microbiome composition and richness were found to reflect coral phylogeny. For example, interactions between bacterial and eukaryotic coral phylogeny influence the abundance of "Endozoicomonas", a highly abundant bacterium in the coral holobiont. However, host-microbial cophylogeny appears to influence only a subset of coral-associated bacteria.


title: Coral

text: Many corals in the order Scleractinia are hermatypic, meaning that they are involved in building reefs. Most such corals obtain some of their energy from zooxanthellae in the genus "Symbiodinium". These are symbiotic photosynthetic dinoflagellates which require sunlight; reef-forming corals are therefore found mainly in shallow water. They secrete calcium carbonate to form hard skeletons that become the framework of the reef. However, not all reef-building corals in shallow water contain zooxanthellae, and some deep water species, living at depths to which light cannot penetrate, form reefs but do not harbour the symbionts.


title: Coral

text: There are various types of shallow-water coral reef, including fringing reefs, barrier reefs and atolls; most occur in tropical and subtropical seas. They are very slow-growing, adding perhaps one centimetre (0.4 in) in height each year. The Great Barrier Reef is thought to have been laid down about two million years ago. Over time, corals fragment and die, sand and rubble accumulates between the corals, and the shells of clams and other molluscs decay to form a gradually evolving calcium carbonate structure. Coral reefs are extremely diverse marine ecosystems hosting over 4,000 species of fish, massive numbers of cnidarians, molluscs, crustaceans, and many other animals.


title: Coral

text: At certain times in the geological past, corals were very abundant. Like modern corals, these ancestors built reefs, some of which ended as great structures in sedimentary rocks. Fossils of fellow reef-dwellers algae, sponges, and the remains of many echinoids, brachiopods, bivalves, gastropods, and trilobites appear along with coral fossils. This makes some corals useful index fossils. Coral fossils are not restricted to reef remnants, and many solitary fossils are found elsewhere, such as "Cyclocyathus", which occurs in England's Gault clay formation.


title: Coral

text: Corals first appeared in the Cambrian about . Fossils are extremely rare until the Ordovician period, 100 million years later, when Heliolitida, rugose, and tabulate corals became widespread. Paleozoic corals often contained numerous endobiotic symbionts.


title: Coral

text: Tabulate corals occur in limestones and calcareous shales of the Ordovician period, with a gap in the fossil record due to extinction events at the end of the Ordovician. Corals reappeared some millions of years later during the Silurian period, and tabulate corals often form low cushions or branching masses of calcite alongside rugose corals. Tabulate coral numbers began to decline during the middle of the Silurian period.


title: Coral

text: Rugose or horn corals became dominant by the middle of the Silurian period, and during the Devonian, corals flourished with more than 200 genera. The rugose corals existed in solitary and colonial forms, and were also composed of calcite. Both rugose and tabulate corals became extinct in the Permian–Triassic extinction event (along with 85% of marine species), and there is a gap of tens of millions of years until new forms of coral evolved in the Triassic.


title: Coral

text: The currently ubiquitous stony corals, Scleractinia, appeared in the Middle Triassic to fill the niche vacated by the extinct rugose and tabulate orders, and is not closely related to the earlier forms. Unlike the corals prevalent before the Permian extinction, which formed skeletons of a form of calcium carbonate known as calcite, modern stony corals form skeletons composed of the aragonite. Their fossils are found in small numbers in rocks from the Triassic period, and become common in the Jurassic and later periods. Although they are geologically younger than the tabulate and rugose corals, the aragonite of their skeletons is less readily preserved, and their fossil record is accordingly less complete.


title: Coral

text: Coral reefs are under stress around the world. In particular, coral mining, agricultural and urban runoff, pollution (organic and inorganic), overfishing, blast fishing, disease, and the digging of canals and access into islands and bays are localized threats to coral ecosystems. Broader threats are sea temperature rise, sea level rise and pH changes from ocean acidification, all associated with greenhouse gas emissions. In 1998, 16% of the world's reefs died as a result of increased water temperature.


title: Coral

text: Approximately 10% of the world's coral reefs are dead. About 60% of the world's reefs are at risk due to human-related activities. The threat to reef health is particularly strong in Southeast Asia, where 80% of reefs are endangered. Over 50% of the world's coral reefs may be destroyed by 2030; as a result, most nations protect them through environmental laws.


title: Coral

text: In the Caribbean and tropical Pacific, direct contact between ~40–70% of common seaweeds and coral causes bleaching and death to the coral via transfer of lipid-soluble metabolites. Seaweed and algae proliferate given adequate nutrients and limited grazing by herbivores such as parrotfish.


title: Coral

text: Water temperature changes of more than or salinity changes can kill some species of coral. Under such environmental stresses, corals expel their Symbiodinium; without them coral tissues reveal the white of their skeletons, an event known as coral bleaching.


title: Coral

text: Submarine springs found along the coast of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula produce water with a naturally low pH (relatively high acidity) providing conditions similar to those expected to become widespread as the oceans absorb carbon dioxide. Surveys discovered multiple species of live coral that appeared to tolerate the acidity. The colonies were small and patchily distributed, and had not formed structurally complex reefs such as those that compose the nearby Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System.


title: Coral

text: To assess the threat level of coral, scientists developed a coral imbalance ratio, Log (Average abundance of disease associated taxa / Average abundance of healthy associated taxa). The lower the ratio the healthier the microbial community is. This ratio was developed after the microbial mucus of coral was collected and studied.


title: Coral

text: Increasing sea surface temperatures in tropical regions (~) the last century have caused major coral bleaching, death, and therefore shrinking coral populations since although they are able to adapt and acclimate, it is uncertain if this evolutionary process will happen quickly enough to prevent major reduction of their numbers.


title: Coral

text: Annual growth bands in some corals, such as the deep sea bamboo corals ("Isididae"), may be among the first signs of the effects of ocean acidification on marine life. The growth rings allow geologists to construct year-by-year chronologies, a form of incremental dating, which underlie high-resolution records of past climatic and environmental changes using geochemical techniques.


title: Coral

text: Certain species form communities called microatolls, which are colonies whose top is dead and mostly above the water line, but whose perimeter is mostly submerged and alive. Average tide level limits their height. By analyzing the various growth morphologies, microatolls offer a low resolution record of sea level change. Fossilized microatolls can also be dated using Radiocarbon dating. Such methods can help to reconstruct Holocene sea levels.


title: Coral

text: Though coral have large sexually-reproducing populations, their evolution can be slowed by abundant asexual reproduction. Gene flow is variable among coral species. According to the biogeography of coral species gene flow cannot be counted on as a dependable source of adaptation as they are very stationary organisms. Also, coral longevity might factor into their adaptivity.


title: Coral

text: However, adaptation to climate change has been demonstrated in many cases. These are usually due to a shift in coral and zooxanthellae genotypes. These shifts in allele frequency have progressed toward more tolerant types of zooxanthellae. Scientists found that a certain scleractinian zooxanthella is becoming more common where sea temperature is high. Symbionts able to tolerate warmer water seem to photosynthesise more slowly, implying an evolutionary trade-off.


title: Coral

text: In the Gulf of Mexico, where sea temperatures are rising, cold-sensitive staghorn and elkhorn coral have shifted in location.


title: Coral

text: Not only have the symbionts and specific species been shown to shift, but there seems to be a certain growth rate favorable to selection. Slower-growing but more heat-tolerant corals have become more common. The changes in temperature and acclimation are complex. Some reefs in current shadows represent a refugium location that will help them adjust to the disparity in the environment even if eventually the temperatures may rise more quickly there than in other locations. This separation of populations by climatic barriers causes a realized niche to shrink greatly in comparison to the old fundamental niche.


title: Coral

text: Corals are shallow, colonial organisms that integrate oxygen and trace elements into their skeletal aragonite (polymorph of calcite) crystalline structures as they grow. Geochemical anomalies within the crystalline structures of corals represent functions of temperature, salinity and oxygen isotopic composition. Such geochemical analysis can help with climate modeling. The ratio of oxygen-18 to oxygen-16 (δO), for example, is a proxy for temperature.


title: Coral

text: Time can be attributed to coral geochemistry anomalies by correlating strontium/calcium minimums with sea surface temperature (SST) maximums to data collected from NINO 3.4 SSTA.


title: Coral

text: The comparison of coral strontium/calcium minimums with sea surface temperature maximums, data recorded from NINO 3.4 SSTA, time can be correlated to coral strontium/calcium and δO variations. To confirm the accuracy of the annual relationship between Sr/Ca and δO variations, a perceptible association to annual coral growth rings confirms the age conversion. Geochronology is established by the blending of Sr/Ca data, growth rings, and stable isotope data. El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is directly related to climate fluctuations that influence coral δO ratio from local salinity variations associated with the position of the South Pacific convergence zone (SPCZ) and can be used for ENSO modeling.


title: Coral

text: The global moisture budget is primarily being influenced by tropical sea surface temperatures from the position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). The Southern Hemisphere has a unique meteorological feature positioned in the southwestern Pacific Basin called the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ), which contains a perennial position within the Southern Hemisphere. During ENSO warm periods, the SPCZ reverses orientation extending from the equator down south through Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and towards the French Polynesian Islands; and due east towards South America affecting geochemistry of corals in tropical regions.


title: Coral

text: Geochemical analysis of skeletal coral can be linked to sea surface salinity (SSS) and sea surface temperature (SST), from El Nino 3.4 SSTA data, of tropical oceans to seawater δO ratio anomalies from corals. ENSO phenomenon can be related to variations in sea surface salinity (SSS) and sea surface temperature (SST) that can help model tropical climate activities.


title: Coral

text: Climate research on live coral species is limited to a few studied species. Studying "Porites" coral provides a stable foundation for geochemical interpretations that is much simpler to physically extract data in comparison to "Platygyra" species where the complexity of "Platygyra" species skeletal structure creates difficulty when physically sampled, which happens to be one of the only multidecadal living coral records used for coral paleoclimate modeling.


title: Coral

text: Marine Protected Areas, Biosphere reserves, marine parks, national monuments world heritage status, fishery management and habitat protection can protect reefs from anthropogenic damage.


title: Coral

text: Many governments now prohibit removal of coral from reefs, and inform coastal residents about reef protection and ecology. While local action such as habitat restoration and herbivore protection can reduce local damage, the longer-term threats of acidification, temperature change and sea-level rise remain a challenge.


title: Coral

text: Protecting networks of diverse and healthy reefs, not only climate refugia, helps ensure the greatest chance of genetic diversity, which is critical for coral to adapt to new climates. A variety of conservation methods applied across marine and terrestrial threatened ecosystems makes coral adaption more likely and effective.


title: Coral

text: To eliminate destruction of corals in their indigenous regions, projects have been started to grow corals in non-tropical countries.


title: Coral

text: Local economies near major coral reefs benefit from an abundance of fish and other marine creatures as a food source. Reefs also provide recreational scuba diving and snorkeling tourism. These activities can damage coral but international projects such as Green Fins that encourage dive and snorkel centres to follow a Code of Conduct have been proven to mitigate these risks.


title: Coral

text: Corals' many colors give it appeal for necklaces and other jewelry. Intensely red coral is prized as a gemstone. Sometimes called fire coral, it is not the same as fire coral. Red coral is very rare because of overharvesting. In general, it is inadvisable to give coral as gifts since they are in decline from stressors like climate change, pollution, and unsustainable fishing.


title: Coral

text: Always considered a precious mineral, "the Chinese have long associated red coral with auspiciousness and longevity because of its color and its resemblance to deer antlers (so by association, virtue, long life, and high rank". It reached its height of popularity during the Manchu or Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) when it was almost exclusively reserved for the emperor's use either in the form of coral beads (often combined with pearls) for court jewelry or as decorative Penjing (decorative miniature mineral trees). Coral was known as "shanhu" in Chinese. The "early-modern 'coral network' [began in] the Mediterranean Sea [and found its way] to Qing China via the English East India Company". There were strict rules regarding its use in a code established by the Qianlong Emperor in 1759.


title: Coral

text: In medicine, chemical compounds from corals can potentially be used to treat cancer, AIDS, pain, and for other therapeutic uses. Coral skeletons, e.g. "Isididae" are also used for bone grafting in humans.


title: Coral

text: Coral Calx, known as Praval Bhasma in Sanskrit, is widely used in traditional system of Indian medicine as a supplement in the treatment of a variety of bone metabolic disorders associated with calcium deficiency. In classical times ingestion of pulverized coral, which consists mainly of the weak base calcium carbonate, was recommended for calming stomach ulcers by Galen and Dioscorides.


title: Coral

text: Coral reefs in places such as the East African coast are used as a source of building material. Ancient (fossil) coral limestone, notably including the Coral Rag Formation of the hills around Oxford (England), was once used as a building stone, and can be seen in some of the oldest buildings in that city including the Saxon tower of St Michael at the Northgate, St. George's Tower of Oxford Castle, and the medieval walls of the city.


title: Coral

text: Healthy coral reefs absorb 97 percent of a wave's energy, which buffers shorelines from currents, waves, and storms, helping to prevent loss of life and property damage. Coastlines protected by coral reefs are also more stable in terms of erosion than those without.


title: Coral

text: Coastal communities near coral reefs rely heavily on them. Worldwide, more than 500 million people depend on coral reefs for food, income, coastal protection, and more. The total economic value of coral reef services in the United States - including fisheries, tourism, and coastal protection - is more than $3.4 billion a year.


title: Coral

text: The saltwater fishkeeping hobby has expanded, over recent years, to include reef tanks, fish tanks that include large amounts of live rock on which coral is allowed to grow and spread. These tanks are either kept in a natural-like state, with algae (sometimes in the form of an algae scrubber) and a deep sand bed providing filtration, or as "show tanks", with the rock kept largely bare of the algae and microfauna that would normally populate it, in order to appear neat and clean.


title: Coral

text: The most popular kind of coral kept is soft coral, especially zoanthids and mushroom corals, which are especially easy to grow and propagate in a wide variety of conditions, because they originate in enclosed parts of reefs where water conditions vary and lighting may be less reliable and direct. More serious fishkeepers may keep small polyp stony coral, which is from open, brightly lit reef conditions and therefore much more demanding, while large polyp stony coral is a sort of compromise between the two.


title: Coral

text: Coral aquaculture, also known as "coral farming" or "coral gardening", is the cultivation of corals for commercial purposes or coral reef restoration. Aquaculture is showing promise as a potentially effective tool for restoring coral reefs, which have been declining around the world. The process bypasses the early growth stages of corals when they are most at risk of dying. Coral fragments known as "seeds" are grown in nurseries then replanted on the reef. Coral is farmed by coral farmers who live locally to the reefs and farm for reef conservation or for income. It is also farmed by scientists for research, by businesses for the supply of the live and ornamental coral trade and by private aquarium hobbyists.


title: Lolicon

text: In Japanese popular culture, is a genre of fictional media in which young (or young-looking) girl characters appear in romantic or sexual contexts. The term, a portmanteau of the English phrase "Lolita complex", also refers to desire and affection for such characters (, "loli"), and fans of such characters and works. Associated with unrealistic and stylized imagery within manga, anime, and video games, "lolicon" in "otaku" (manga/anime fan) culture is understood as distinct from desires for realistic depictions of girls, or real girls as such, and is associated with the concept of "moe", or feelings of affection and love for fictional characters as such (often cute characters in manga and anime).


title: Lolicon

text: The phrase "Lolita complex", derived from the novel "Lolita", entered use in Japan in the 1970s, when sexual imagery of the "shōjo" (idealized young girl) was expanding in the country's media. During the ""lolicon" boom" in adult manga of the early 1980s, the term was adopted in the nascent "otaku" culture to denote attraction to early "bishōjo" (cute girl) characters, and later to only younger-looking depictions as "bishōjo" designs became more varied. The artwork of the boom, strongly influenced by the round styles of "shōjo" manga (marketed to girls), marked a shift from previous realism and the advent of "cute eroticism" ("kawaii ero"), an aesthetic now common in manga and anime more broadly. The "lolicon" boom faded by the mid-1980s, and the genre has since made up a minority of erotic manga.


title: Lolicon

text: A moral panic against "harmful manga" in the 1990s has made "lolicon" a keyword in manga debates in Japan. Child pornography laws in some countries include depictions of fictional child characters, while those in other countries, including Japan, do not. Opponents and supporters have debated if the genre contributes to child sexual abuse. Cultural critics generally identify "lolicon" with a broader separation between fiction and reality in "otaku" sexuality.


title: Lolicon

text: "Lolicon" is a Japanese portmanteau of "Lolita complex" (, "rorīta konpurekkusu"), an English-language phrase derived from Vladimir Nabokov's novel "Lolita" (1955) but in Japan more associated with Russell Trainer's "The Lolita Complex" (1966, translated 1969), a work of pop psychology in which the author uses the term to describe adult male attraction to pubescent and pre-pubescent females. In Japanese, the phrase was adopted to describe feelings of love and lust for young girls over adult women, which remains the phrase's common meaning. Due to its association with "otaku" (manga and anime fan) culture, however, the term today is more often used to describe desires for young or young-looking girl characters (, "loli") which are generally understood to exist and be satisfied in fiction, though the meaning of the term remains contested and for the public at large still carries a connotation of pedophilia. "Lolicon" also refers to sexualized works which feature such characters, and fans of these works and characters. It is distinct from words for pedophilia ("yōji-zuki" or "pedofiria"; clinically, "shōniseiai" or "jidōseiai") and child pornography ("jidō poruno").


title: Lolicon

text: The meaning of "lolicon" in the "otaku" context developed in the early 1980s, during the ""lolicon" boom" in adult manga (see ). According to editor and critic Akira Akagi, the term's meaning moved away from the sexual pairing of an older man and a young girl, and instead came to describe desire for "cuteness" and "girl-ness" in manga and anime. Other critics defined "lolicon" as the desire for "cute things", "manga-like" or "anime-like" characters, "roundness", and the "two-dimensional", as opposed to "real". At the time, all eroticism in the manga style featuring cute girl ("bishōjo") characters was associated with the term, and synonyms of "Lolita complex" included "two-dimensional complex" ("nijigen konpurekkusu"), "two-dimensional fetishism" ("nijikon fechi"), "two-dimensional syndrome" ("nijikon shōkōgun"), "cute girl syndrome" ("bishōjo shōkōgun"), and simply "sickness" ("byōki"). As character body types in erotic manga became more varied by the end of the "lolicon" boom, the scope of the term narrowed to more young-looking depictions.


title: Lolicon

text: "Lolicon" became a keyword in debates after the 1989 arrest of Tsutomu Miyazaki, a serial killer of young girls who was portrayed in media reports as an "otaku" (see ). As "lolicon" was conflated with desire for real children in debates on "harmful manga", the early meaning was replaced among "otaku" by "moe", which refers to feelings of affection and love for characters more generally. Like "moe", "lolicon" is still used by "otaku" to refer to attraction that is consciously distinct from reality; some "otaku" identify as "two-dimensional "lolicon"" ("nijigen rorikon") to clarify their attraction to characters. The term has become a keyword in criticism of manga and sexuality within Japan, as well as globally with the spread of Japanese popular culture.


title: Lolicon

text: In the 1970s, "shōjo" manga (marketed to girls) underwent a renaissance in which artists experimented with new narratives and styles, and introduced themes such as psychology, gender, and sexuality. These developments attracted adult male fans of "shōjo" manga, who crossed gendered boundaries to produce and consume it. The first appearance of the term "Lolita complex" in manga was in "Stumbling Upon a Cabbage Patch", an "Alice in Wonderland"–inspired work by Shinji Wada published in the June 1974 issue of the "shōjo" manga magazine "Bessatsu Margaret", where a male character calls Lewis Carroll a man with a "strange character of liking only small children" in an inside joke to adult readers. Early "lolicon" artwork was influenced by male artists mimicking "shōjo" manga, as well as erotic manga created by female artists for male readers.


title: Lolicon

text: The image of the "shōjo" (young girl) became dominant in Japanese mass media by the 1970s as an idealization of cuteness, innocence, and an "idealized Eros", attributes which became attached to imagery of younger girls over time. Nude photographs of "shōjo", conceived as fine art, gained popularity: a photo collection entitled was published in 1969, and in 1972 and 1973 there was an "Alice boom" in nude photos themed around "Alice in Wonderland". Specialty adult magazines carrying nude photos, fiction, and essays on the appeal of young girls emerged in the 1980s; this trend faded in the late 1980s, due to backlash and because many men preferred images of "shōjo" in manga and anime. The spread of such imagery, both in photographs and in manga, may have been helped by prohibitions on displaying pubic hair under Japan's obscenity laws.


title: Lolicon

text: The rise of "lolicon" as a genre began at Comiket (Comic Market), a convention for the sale of "dōjinshi" (self-published works) founded in 1975 by adult male fans of "shōjo" manga; in 1979, a group of male artists published the first issue of the fanzine "", whose standout work was an erotic parody of "Little Red Riding Hood" by Hideo Azuma, known as a pioneer of "lolicon". Prior to "Cybele", the dominant style in "seinen" (marketed to men) and pornographic manga was "gekiga", characterized by realism, sharp angles, dark hatching, and gritty linework. Azuma's work, in contrast, displayed light shading and clean, circular lines, which he saw as "thoroughly erotic" and sharing with "shōjo" manga a "lack of reality". Azuma's combination of the stout bodies of Osamu Tezuka's manga and the emotive faces of "shōjo" manga marked the advent of the "bishōjo" character and the aesthetic of "cute eroticism" ("kawaii ero"). While erotic, Azuma's manga was also viewed as humorous and parodic; only a minority of readers found his style erotic at first, but a large fan base soon grew in response to the alternative to pornographic "gekiga" that it represented. Erotic manga mostly moved away from combining realistic bodies and cartoony faces towards a wholly-unrealistic style. "Lolicon" manga played a role in attracting male fans to Comiket, an event originally dominated by women (90 percent of participants were female at its first run in 1975); in 1981, the number of male and female participants was equal. "Lolicon", mostly created by and for men, served as a response to "yaoi" (manga featuring male homoeroticism), mostly created by and for women.


title: Lolicon

text: The early 1980s saw a ""lolicon" boom" in professional and amateur art. The popularity of "lolicon" within the "otaku" community would attract the attention of publishers with the creation of specialty publications dedicated to the genre, including "Lemon People" (1982) and "Manga Burikko" (1982). "Lemon People" in particular was one of the first "lolicon" manga magazines published in Japan, with the first issue's cover stating that it "had the monopoly on "lolicon" comic content in 1982", expressing the excitement over the word "lolicon" itself. Other magazines of the boom included , "Melon Comic", and "". The genre's rise was closely linked to the concurrent development of "otaku" culture and growing fan consciousness; the word "otaku" itself was coined in "Burikko" in 1983. Originally founded as an unprofitable "gekiga" magazine, the publication was transformed into a "lolicon" magazine in 1983 by editor Eiji Ōtsuka, whose intention was to publish ""shōjo" manga for boys". Artwork in the magazine continued the trend started by Azuma rooted in the soft styles of "shōjo" manga, with less realism and fewer explicit depictions of sex; in November 1983, "Burikko" editors yielded to reader demands by removing photographs of gravure idol models from its opening pages, printing an issue with the subtitle "Totally "Bishōjo" Comic Magazine". "Lolicon" magazines regularly published female artists, such as Kyoko Okazaki and Erika Sakurazawa, and male artists such as , the "King of "Lolicon"", who produced 160 pages of manga per month to meet demand. Uchiyama's works were published in both niche magazines such as "Lemon People" and in the mainstream "Shōnen Champion". The first-ever pornographic anime series was "Lolita Anime", released episodically in 1984–1985.


title: Lolicon

text: Iconic characters of the boom include Clarisse from the film "" (1979) and Lana from the TV series "Future Boy Conan" (1978), both directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Clarisse was especially popular, and inspired a series of articles discussing her appeal in the anime specialty magazines , , and "Animage", as well as a trend of fan works (dubbed "Clarisse magazines") that were not explicitly sexual, but instead "fairytale-esque" and "girly". Many early "lolicon" works combined mecha and "bishōjo" elements; Kaoru Nagayama highlights the premiere of the "Daicon III Opening Animation" at the 1981 Japan SF Convention as a notable example of the link between science fiction and "lolicon" in the nascent "otaku" culture of the time. Anime shows targeted at young girls with young girl heroines, such as "Magical Princess Minky Momo" (1982–1983), gained new viewership from adult male fans, who started fan clubs and were courted by creators. Helen McCarthy suggests that "lolicon" anime is rooted in magical girl shows such as "Minky Momo", where transforming heroines can blur lines between girls and women.


title: Lolicon

text: While the "lolicon" boom in commercial erotic manga only lasted until 1984, it marked the beginning of its now-dominant "bishōjo" style. Near the end of the boom, because "readers had no attachment to "lolicon" per se" and "did not take [young girls] as objects of sexual desire", a majority of readers and creators of erotic manga moved towards the diversifying "bishōjo" works featuring "baby-faced and big-breasted" characters, which were no longer considered "lolicon". At Comiket, "lolicon" manga had declined in popularity by 1989 with developments in erotic "dōjinshi", including new genres of fetishism and the growing popularity of softcore eroticism popular among men and women, particularly in "yuri" (manga with lesbian themes).


title: Lolicon

text: In 1989, "lolicon" and "otaku" became the subject of a media frenzy and moral panic after the arrest of Tsutomu Miyazaki, a young man who had kidnapped and murdered four girls between the ages of four and seven and committed sexual acts with their corpses. Widely disseminated photos of Miyazaki's room revealed an extensive collection of video tapes, which included horror/slasher films on which he had modelled some of his crimes, and manga, including "shōjo" and "lolicon" works. In the extended public debates that followed, Miyazaki's crimes were blamed on supposed media effects: namely, a reduction in his inhibitions to crime, and a blurring of the lines between fiction and reality. Miyazaki was labelled as an "otaku", and an image of "otaku" as "socially and sexually immature" men, and for some as "pedophiles and potential predators", was established for much of the public. The decade saw local crackdowns on retailers and publishers of "harmful manga", and the arrests of some "dōjinshi" artists. Despite this, "lolicon" imagery expanded and became more acceptable within manga in the 1990s, and the early 2000s saw a small boom in the genre sparked by the magazine "Comic LO".


title: Lolicon

text: "Lolicon" media is loosely defined. Some define its characters by age, while others define its characters by appearance (those that are small and flat-chested, independent of age). "Lolicon" works often depict girl characters as innocent, precocious, and sometimes flirtatious; characters may appear in borderline or outright sexual situations, though the term can be applied to works with neither (see ).


title: Lolicon

text: According to Kaoru Nagayama, manga readers define "lolicon" works as those "with a heroine younger than a middleschool student", a definition which can vary from characters under age 18 for "society at large", to characters "younger than gradeschool-aged" for "fanatics", and to "kindergarteners" for "more pedophiliac readers". Elisabeth Klar observes that girl characters in "lolicon" can show an "contradictory performance of age" in which their body, behavior, and role in a story conflict; an example is the "roribabā" ("Lolita granny") archetype, a girl character who speaks with the mannerisms of an old woman. Curvy hips and other secondary sex characteristics similarly appear as features in some of the genre's characters. Plot devices often explain the young appearance of characters who are non-human or actually much older.


title: Lolicon

text: "Lolicon" manga, often published as "dōjinshi" or compiled in anthology magazines, is mostly consumed by male audiences, though Nagayama notes that the works of have "resonated with female readers" and "earned the support of women". Other notable artists include Aguda Wanyan and Takarada Gorgeous. Female creators of "lolicon" works include Erika Wada and .


title: Lolicon

text: "Lolicon" imagery is a prominent theme in Superflat, a manga-influenced contemporary art movement founded by Takashi Murakami. Prominent Superflat artists whose works feature "lolicon" imagery include Mr. and Henmaru Machino. Murakami himself did a "lolicon"-inspired photoshoot with Britney Spears for the cover of the magazine Pop.


title: Lolicon

text: In the 1990s, "lolicon" imagery evolved and contributed to the mainstream development of "moe", the generalized affective response to fictional characters (typically "bishōjo" characters in manga, anime, and computer games) and its associated design elements. The "bishōjo" character form moved from niche, "otaku" publications to mainstream manga magazines, and saw explosive popularity in the decade with the rise of "bishōjo" games and anime series such as "Sailor Moon" and "Neon Genesis Evangelion", which pioneered media and merchandising based on fan affection for their female protagonists. "Moe" characters, which tend to be physically immature girl characters exemplified by cuteness, are ubiquitous in contemporary manga and anime. In contrast to "lolicon" works, sexuality in "moe" is treated indirectly or not at all; the "moe" response is often defined with emphasis on platonic love.


title: Lolicon

text: John Oppliger of "AnimeNation" identifies "Ro-Kyu-Bu!", "Kodomo no Jikan", and "Moetan" as examples of series which challenge the distinction between "moe" and "lolicon" through use of sexual innuendo, commenting that they "satire the chaste sanctity of the "moé" phenomenon" and "poke fun at viewers and the arbitrary delineations that viewers assert". ""Moe"-style" "lolicon" works depict mild eroticism, such as glimpses of underwear, and forgo explicit sex.


title: Lolicon

text: Akira Akagi identified five themes in "lolicon" manga in 1993: sadomasochism, "groping objects" (alien tentacles or robots in the role of the penis), "mecha fetishes" (combinations of a machine and a girl), erotic parodies of mainstream anime and manga, and "simply indecent or perverted stuff", also noting common themes of lesbianism and masturbation. Media scholar Setsu Shigematsu argues that these forms of substitution and mimicry enable "lolicon" to "transform straight sex into a parodic form". More extreme works depict themes including coercion, rape, incest, bondage, and hermaphroditism.


title: Lolicon

text: Nagayama argues that most pornographic "lolicon" manga deal with a "consciousness of sin", or a sense of taboo and guilt in its consumption. Some manga manage this by portraying the girl as enjoying the experience in the end, while others represent the girl as the active partner in sex who seduces men to her. Other "lolicon" manga, where "men are absolute evil and girls are pitiable victims", indulge in the "pleasure of sin" through the breaking of taboos, which he argues affirms the fragility of the characters. He posits that manga depicting sex between children avoid the "consciousness of sin" via mutual innocence, while also thematizing nostalgia and an idealized past, while other "lolicon" manga accomplish this through characters with especially unrealistic and "moe" designs, where "it is precisely because fiction is distinguished from reality as fiction that one can experience "moe"".


title: Lolicon

text: Child pornography laws in some countries, including United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, have expanded since the 1990s to include sexually explicit depictions of fictional child characters, while those in other countries, including Japan and the United States, exclude fiction from relevant definitions.


title: Lolicon

text: In 1999, Japan passed a national law criminalizing the production and distribution of child pornography. The law's original draft included depictions of fictional children in its definition of child pornography; after "criticism from many in Japan", this text was removed in the final version. In 2014, Japan's parliament amended the 1999 law to criminalize possession of child pornography; the 2013 draft introduced by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which maintained the existing legal definition, included a provision for a government investigation on whether manga, anime, and computer-generated images "similar to child pornography" were connected to child sexual abuse, which would be followed by a later decision on regulation. This provision was opposed by anime and manga artist and publishing associations, which argued that regulation would infringe on freedom of expression and negatively impact the creative industry and cited a lack of existing evidence linking fiction and crime. The provision was removed from the law's final version, which took effect in 2015.


title: Lolicon

text: "Lolicon" media is a common target of local ordinances in Japan which restrict distribution of materials designated "harmful to the healthy development of youth", which were strengthened throughout the 1990s and 2000s. An amendment proposed in 2010 to the Tokyo law on material banned from sale to minors (described by Vice Governor Naoki Inose as targeting non-pornographic "lolicon" manga, writing that "We had regulation for "eromanga", but not for "lolicon"") restricted depictions of "non-existent youths" who appeared under age 18 and were portrayed in "anti-social sexual situations". Under massive opposition from manga creators, academics, and fans, the bill was rejected in June 2010 by Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly; however, a revision passed in December 2010 which restricts "manga, anime, and computer games" where any characters engage in "sexual or pseudo sexual acts that would be illegal in real life" depicted in a way that "glorifies or exaggerates" such acts. In 2011, several manga were listed for restriction, including "" ("My Wife Is an Elementary Student"), which had been previously criticized on television by Inose. It was later published online by J-Comi, avoiding restriction.


title: Lolicon

text: Sexualized depictions of young girl characters have also been subject to censorship and restriction outside of Japan. In 2006, North American publisher Seven Seas Entertainment licensed the manga series "Kodomo no Jikan" for release under the title "Nymphet", but cancelled its plans in 2007 after vendor cancellations. In a statement, the company noted that the manga "cannot be considered appropriate for the US market by any reasonable standard". In 2020, Australian senator Stirling Griff criticized the Australian Classification Board for giving ratings to manga and anime depicting "child exploitation", and called for a review of classification regulations; later in the year, the board banned the import and sale of three volumes of the light novel series "No Game No Life" for sexualized depiction of young characters. Some online platforms, including Discord and Reddit, ban "lolicon" content.


title: Lolicon

text: Explaining the exclusion of "lolicon" from the 2014 amendment to Japan's child pornography laws, an LDP lawmaker stated that "Manga, anime, and CG child pornography don't directly violate the rights of girls or boys. It has not been scientifically validated that it even indirectly causes damage. Since it hasn't been validated, punishing people who view it would go too far;" his statement echoes activist arguments. Statistically, sexual abuse of minors in Japan has declined since the 1960s and 1970s while the prevalence of fictional "lolicon" has increased; Patrick W. Galbraith interprets this as evidence that "lolicon" imagery does not necessarily influence crimes and argues that lolicon characters do not necessarily represent real boys or girls, but rather what McLelland calls a "third gender." while Steven Smet suggests that "lolicon" is an "exorcism of fantasies" that contributes to Japan's low crime rates. Galbraith further argues that "otaku" culture collectively promotes a media literacy and ethical position of separating fiction and reality, especially when the conflation of the two would be dangerous. Drawing on his fieldwork as an anthropologist, he writes that the sexual imagination of "otaku", including "lolicon", "did not lead to 'immoral acts', but rather ethical activity". A 2012 report by the Sexologisk Klinik for the Danish government found no evidence that cartoons and drawings depicting fictive child sexual abuse encourage real abuse. Academic Sharalyn Orbaugh argues that manga depicting underage sexuality can help victims of child sexual abuse to work through their own trauma, and that there is greater harm in regulating sexual expression than potential harm caused by such manga.


title: Lolicon

text: Legal scholar Hiroshi Nakasatomi argues that "lolicon" can distort readers' sexual desires and induce crime, and that it violates the rights of children, a view shared by the non-profit organization CASPAR (founded after the Miyazaki case). Some critics, such as the non-profit organization , claim that "lolicon" works can be used for child grooming, and that they engender a culture that is accepting of sexual abuse. Guidelines released in 2019 by the United Nations Human Rights Committee encouraged state parties to include explicit drawings of fictional children in laws against child pornography, "in particular when such representations are used as part of a process to sexually exploit children". Feminist critic Kuniko Funabashi argues that "lolicon" manga contributes to sexual violence by portraying girls passively and by "presenting the female body as the man's possession". Legal scholar Shin'ichirō Harata argues that child pornography laws should not collapse reality and fiction together, but also that fans should not dismiss an ambivalence represented by "lolicon". He describes the practice of keeping the two separated as the "ethics of "moe"", or "responsibility of "otaku"".


title: Lolicon

text: Dilton Rocha Ferraz Ribeiro analyzes the debate over the legal status of "lolicon" works in Japan and finds that both the pro-regulation and anti-regulation coalitions are relatively stable, with each reacting to actions by the other coalition. Catherine Driscoll and Liam Grealy argue that these debates, including international pressure on Japan to regulate these works, create a "discourse of Japanese exceptionalism" to international norms.


title: Lolicon

text: Cultural critics responding to "lolicon" generally emphasize it as distinct from attraction to real young girls. Anthropologist Patrick W. Galbraith finds that "from early writings to the present, researchers suggest that "lolicon" artists are playing with symbols and working with tropes, which does not reflect or contribute to sexual pathology or crime". Psychologist Tamaki Saitō, who has conducted clinical work with "otaku", highlights the estrangement of "lolicon" desires from reality as part of a strict distinction for "otaku" between "textual and actual sexuality", and observes that "the vast majority of "otaku" are not pedophiles in actual life". Manga researcher Yukari Fujimoto argues that "lolicon" desire "is not for a child, but for the image itself", and that this is understood by those "brought up in [Japan's] culture of drawing and fantasy". Cultural historian Mark McLelland identifies "lolicon" and "yaoi" as "self-consciously anti-realist" genres, given a rejection by fans and creators of "three-dimensionality" in favor of "two-dimensionality", and compares "lolicon" to the "yaoi" fandom, in which largely female and heterosexual fans consume depictions of male homosexuality which "lack any correspondent in the real world". Setsu Shigematsu argues that "lolicon" reflects a shift in "erotic investment" from reality to "two-dimensional figures of desire".


title: Lolicon

text: Most scholars also identify "lolicon" as a form of self-expression on the part of its male creators and consumers. Sociologist Sharon Kinsella suggests that for "lolicon" fans, "the infantilized female object of desire [...] has crossed over to become an aspect of their own self image and sexuality". Akira Akagi argues that "lolicon" manga represented a notable shift in reader identification from the "hero" penetrator common to pornographic "gekiga": ""Lolicon" readers do not need a penis for pleasure, but rather they need the ecstasy of the girl. [...] They identify with the girl, and get caught up in a masochistic pleasure." Manga critic Gō Itō views this as an "abstract desire", quoting "lolicon" artist who told him that "he was the girl who is raped in his manga", reflecting a feeling of being "raped by society, or by the world". Kaoru Nagayama posits that "lolicon" readers adopt a fluid perspective that alternates between that of an omniscient voyeur and the multiple characters in a work, reflecting an active reader role and a projection onto girl characters. Writing in "The Book of Otaku" (1989), feminist Chizuko Ueno argued that "lolicon", as an orientation towards fictional "bishōjo", is "completely different from pedophilia", and characterized it as a desire to "be part of the 'cute' world of "shōjo"" for male fans of "shōjo" manga who "find it too much to be a man".


title: Lolicon

text: Several scholars identify the emergence of "lolicon" with changes in Japanese gender relations. Sociologist Kimio Itō attributes the rise of "lolicon" manga to a shift in the 1970s and 1980s, when boys, driven by a feeling that girls were "surpassing them in terms of willpower and action", turned to the "world of imagination", in which young girl characters are "easy to control". Kinsella interprets "lolicon" as part of a "gaze of both fear and desire" stimulated by the growing power of women in society, and as a reactive desire to see the "shōjo" "infantilized, undressed, and subordinate". Media scholar Chizuko Naitō views "lolicon" as reflecting a "societal desire in a broader sense" for young girls as sex symbols in Japan (which she calls a "loliconized society"). Christine Yano argues that eroticized imagery of the "shōjo", "real or fictive", reflects "heteronormative pedophilia" in which emphasis is placed on the ephemerality of childhood: "it is "as child" that [the "shōjo"] becomes precious as a transitory figure threatened by impending adulthood".


title: Lolicon

text: Responding in 1982 to the popularity of Clarisse from his film "Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro", Hayao Miyazaki criticized artists and fans who idolized her in what he considered a demeaning manner, and said that he "hate[d] men who use the word "lolicon"." Despite his apparent rejection, Saitō and Galbraith still find connections between Miyazaki and desire for young girl characters. Interpreting Miyazaki's own words and his acknowledgment of eroticism as key to his creative process, Galbraith suggests that the distance between Miyazaki and the "lolicon" boom was about "shame": he criticized men who were open and playful about "lolicon" desire for having little shame, while he felt embarrassment about his own "longing" for girl characters.


title: Standard Model

text: The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces (electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions - excluding gravity) in the universe and classifying all known elementary particles. It was developed in stages throughout the latter half of the 20th century, through the work of many scientists worldwide, with the current formulation being finalized in the mid-1970s upon experimental confirmation of the existence of quarks. Since then, proof of the top quark (1995), the tau neutrino (2000), and the Higgs boson (2012) have added further credence to the Standard Model. In addition, the Standard Model has predicted various properties of weak neutral currents and the W and Z bosons with great accuracy.


title: Standard Model

text: Although the Standard Model is believed to be theoretically self-consistent and has demonstrated huge successes in providing experimental predictions, it leaves some phenomena unexplained. It falls short of being a complete theory of fundamental interactions. For example, it does not fully explain baryon asymmetry, incorporate the full theory of gravitation as described by general relativity, or account for the universe's accelerating expansion as possibly described by dark energy. The model does not contain any viable dark matter particle that possesses all of the required properties deduced from observational cosmology. It also does not incorporate neutrino oscillations and their non-zero masses.


title: Standard Model

text: The development of the Standard Model was driven by theoretical and experimental particle physicists alike. The Standard Model is a paradigm of a quantum field theory for theorists, exhibiting a wide range of phenomena, including spontaneous symmetry breaking, anomalies, and non-perturbative behavior. It is used as a basis for building more exotic models that incorporate hypothetical particles, extra dimensions, and elaborate symmetries (such as supersymmetry) to explain experimental results at variance with the Standard Model, such as the existence of dark matter and neutrino oscillations.


title: Standard Model

text: In 1954, Yang Chen-Ning and Robert Mills extended the concept of gauge theory for abelian groups, e.g. quantum electrodynamics, to nonabelian groups to provide an explanation for strong interactions. In 1957, Chien-Shiung Wu demonstrated parity was not conserved in the weak interaction.


title: Standard Model

text: In 1961, Sheldon Glashow combined the electromagnetic and weak interactions. In 1967 Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam incorporated the Higgs mechanism into Glashow's electroweak interaction, giving it its modern form.


title: Standard Model

text: The Higgs mechanism is believed to give rise to the masses of all the elementary particles in the Standard Model. This includes the masses of the W and Z bosons, and the masses of the fermions, i.e. the quarks and leptons.


title: Standard Model

text: After the neutral weak currents caused by Z boson exchange were discovered at CERN in 1973, the electroweak theory became widely accepted and Glashow, Salam, and Weinberg shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering it. The W and Z bosons were discovered experimentally in 1983; and the ratio of their masses was found to be as the Standard Model predicted.


title: Standard Model

text: The theory of the strong interaction (i.e. quantum chromodynamics, QCD), to which many contributed, acquired its modern form in 1973–74 when asymptotic freedom was proposed (a development which made QCD the main focus of theoretical research) and experiments confirmed that the hadrons were composed of fractionally charged quarks.


title: Standard Model

text: The term "Standard Model" was first coined by Abraham Pais and Sam Treiman in 1975, with reference to the electroweak theory with four quarks. According to Steven Weinberg, he came up with the term and used it in 1973 during a talk in Aix-en-Provence in France.


title: Standard Model

text: The Standard Model includes members of several classes of elementary particles, which in turn can be distinguished by other characteristics, such as color charge.


title: Standard Model

text: The Standard Model includes 12 elementary particles of spin , known as fermions. According to the spin–statistics theorem, fermions respect the Pauli exclusion principle. Each fermion has a corresponding antiparticle.


title: Standard Model

text: Fermions are classified according to how they interact (or equivalently, by what charges they carry). There are six quarks (up, down, charm, strange, top, bottom), and six leptons (electron, electron neutrino, muon, muon neutrino, tau, tau neutrino). Each class is divided into pairs of particles that exhibit a similar physical behavior called a generation (see the table).


title: Standard Model

text: The defining property of quarks is that they carry color charge, and hence interact via the strong interaction. The phenomenon of color confinement results in quarks being very strongly bound to one another, forming color-neutral composite particles called hadrons that contain either a quark and an antiquark (mesons) or three quarks (baryons). The lightest baryons are the proton and the neutron. Quarks also carry electric charge and weak isospin. Hence they interact with other fermions via electromagnetism and the weak interaction. The remaining six fermions do not carry color charge and are called leptons. The three neutrinos do not carry electric charge either, so their motion is directly influenced only by the weak nuclear force and gravity, which makes them notoriously difficult to detect. By contrast, by virtue of carrying an electric charge, the electron, muon, and tau all interact electromagnetically.


title: Standard Model

text: Each member of a generation has greater mass than the corresponding particle of any generation before it. The first-generation charged particles do not decay, hence all ordinary (baryonic) matter is made of such particles. Specifically, all atoms consist of electrons orbiting around atomic nuclei, ultimately constituted of up and down quarks. On the other hand, second- and third-generation charged particles decay with very short half-lives and are observed only in very high-energy environments. Neutrinos of all generations also do not decay, and pervade the universe, but rarely interact with baryonic matter.


title: Standard Model

text: In the Standard Model, gauge bosons are defined as force carriers that mediate the strong, weak, and electromagnetic fundamental interactions.


title: Standard Model

text: Interactions in physics are the ways that particles influence other particles. At a macroscopic level, electromagnetism allows particles to interact with one another via electric and magnetic fields, and gravitation allows particles with mass to attract one another in accordance with Einstein's theory of general relativity. The Standard Model explains such forces as resulting from matter particles exchanging other particles, generally referred to as "force mediating particles". When a force-mediating particle is exchanged, the effect at a macroscopic level is equivalent to a force influencing both of them, and the particle is therefore said to have "mediated" (i.e., been the agent of) that force. The Feynman diagram calculations, which are a graphical representation of the perturbation theory approximation, invoke "force mediating particles", and when applied to analyze high-energy scattering experiments are in reasonable agreement with the data. However, perturbation theory (and with it the concept of a "force-mediating particle") fails in other situations. These include low-energy quantum chromodynamics, bound states, and solitons.


title: Standard Model

text: The gauge bosons of the Standard Model all have spin (as do matter particles). The value of the spin is 1, making them bosons. As a result, they do not follow the Pauli exclusion principle that constrains fermions: thus bosons (e.g. photons) do not have a theoretical limit on their spatial density (number per volume). The types of gauge bosons are described below.


title: Standard Model

text: The interactions between all the particles described by the Standard Model are summarized by the diagrams on the right of this section.


title: Standard Model

text: The Higgs particle is a massive scalar elementary particle theorized by Peter Higgs in 1964, when he showed that Goldstone's 1962 theorem (generic continuous symmetry, which is spontaneously broken) provides a third polarisation of a massive vector field. Hence, Goldstone's original scalar doublet, the massive spin-zero particle, was proposed as the Higgs boson, and is a key building block in the Standard Model. It has no intrinsic spin, and for that reason is classified as a boson (like the gauge bosons, which have integer spin).


title: Standard Model

text: The Higgs boson plays a unique role in the Standard Model, by explaining why the other elementary particles, except the photon and gluon, are massive. In particular, the Higgs boson explains why the photon has no mass, while the W and Z bosons are very heavy. Elementary-particle masses, and the differences between electromagnetism (mediated by the photon) and the weak force (mediated by the W and Z bosons), are critical to many aspects of the structure of microscopic (and hence macroscopic) matter. In electroweak theory, the Higgs boson generates the masses of the leptons (electron, muon, and tau) and quarks. As the Higgs boson is massive, it must interact with itself.


title: Standard Model

text: Because the Higgs boson is a very massive particle and also decays almost immediately when created, only a very high-energy particle accelerator can observe and record it. Experiments to confirm and determine the nature of the Higgs boson using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN began in early 2010 and were performed at Fermilab's Tevatron until its closure in late 2011. Mathematical consistency of the Standard Model requires that any mechanism capable of generating the masses of elementary particles must become visible at energies above ; therefore, the LHC (designed to collide two proton beams) was built to answer the question of whether the Higgs boson actually exists.


title: Standard Model

text: On 4 July 2012, two of the experiments at the LHC (ATLAS and CMS) both reported independently that they had found a new particle with a mass of about (about 133 proton masses, on the order of ), which is "consistent with the Higgs boson".


title: Standard Model

text: Technically, quantum field theory provides the mathematical framework for the Standard Model, in which a Lagrangian controls the dynamics and kinematics of the theory. Each kind of particle is described in terms of a dynamical field that pervades space-time.


title: Standard Model

text: The construction of the Standard Model proceeds following the modern method of constructing most field theories: by first postulating a set of symmetries of the system, and then by writing down the most general renormalizable Lagrangian from its particle (field) content that observes these symmetries.


title: Standard Model

text: The global Poincaré symmetry is postulated for all relativistic quantum field theories. It consists of the familiar translational symmetry, rotational symmetry and the inertial reference frame invariance central to the theory of special relativity. The local SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1) gauge symmetry is an internal symmetry that essentially defines the Standard Model. Roughly, the three factors of the gauge symmetry give rise to the three fundamental interactions. The fields fall into different representations of the various symmetry groups of the Standard Model (see table). Upon writing the most general Lagrangian, one finds that the dynamics depends on 19 parameters, whose numerical values are established by experiment. The parameters are summarized in the table (made visible by clicking "show") above.


title: Standard Model

text: The quantum chromodynamics (QCD) sector defines the interactions between quarks and gluons, which is a Yang–Mills gauge theory with SU(3) symmetry, generated by . Since leptons do not interact with gluons, they are not affected by this sector. The Dirac Lagrangian of the quarks coupled to the gluon fields is given by


title: Standard Model

text: Notice that the addition of fermion mass terms into the electroweak Lagrangian is forbidden, since terms of the form formula_7 do not respect U(1) × SU(2) gauge invariance. Neither is it possible to add explicit mass terms for the U(1) and SU(2) gauge fields. The Higgs mechanism is responsible for the generation of the gauge boson masses, and the fermion masses result from Yukawa-type interactions with the Higgs field.


title: Standard Model

text: where the superscripts + and 0 indicate the electric charge () of the components. The weak hypercharge () of both components is 1.


title: Standard Model

text: The Higgs self-coupling strength is approximately . This is not included in the table above because it can be derived from the mass (after symmetry breaking) and the vacuum expectation value.


title: Standard Model

text: where are matrices of Yukawa couplings, with the term giving the coupling of the generations and , and h.c. means Hermitian conjugate of preceding terms.


title: Standard Model

text: The Standard Model describes three of the four fundamental interactions in nature; only gravity remains unexplained. In the Standard Model, such an interaction is described as an exchange of bosons between the objects affected, such as a photon for the electromagnetic force and a gluon for the strong interaction. Those particles are called force carriers or messenger particles.


title: Standard Model

text: Despite being perhaps the most familiar fundamental interaction, gravity is not described by the Standard Model, due to contradictions that arise when combining general relativity, the modern theory of gravity, and quantum mechanics. However, gravity is so weak at microscopic scales, that it is essentially unmeasurable. The graviton is postulated as the mediating particle.


title: Standard Model

text: Electromagnetism is the only long-range force in the Standard Model. It is mediated by photons and couples to electric charge. Electromagnetism is responsible for a wide range of phenomena including atomic electron shell structure, chemical bonds, electric circuits and electronics. Electromagnetic interactions in the Standard Model are described by quantum electrodynamics.


title: Standard Model

text: The weak interaction is responsible for various forms of particle decay, such as beta decay. It is weak and short-range, due to the fact that the weak mediating particles, W and Z bosons, have mass. W bosons have electric charge and mediate interactions that change the particle type (referred to as flavour) and charge. Interactions mediated by W bosons are charged current interactions. Z bosons are neutral and mediate neutral current interactions, which do not change particle flavour. Thus Z bosons are similar to the photon, aside from them being massive and interacting with the neutrino. The weak interaction is also the only interaction to violate parity and CP. Parity violation is maximal for charged current interactions, since the W boson interacts exclusively with left-handed fermions and right-handed antifermions.


title: Standard Model

text: In the Standard Model, the weak force is understood in terms of the electroweak theory, which states that the weak and electromagnetic interactions become united into a single "electroweak" interaction at high energies.


title: Standard Model

text: The strong nuclear force is responsible for hadronic and nuclear binding. It is mediated by gluons, which couple to color charge. Since gluons themselves have color charge, the strong force exhibits confinement and asymptotic freedom. Confinement means that only color-neutral particles can exist in isolation, therefore quarks can only exist in hadrons and never in isolation, at low energies. Asymptotic freedom means that the strong force becomes weaker, as the energy scale increases. The strong force overpowers the electrostatic repulsion of protons and quarks in nuclei and hadrons respectively, at their respective scales.


title: Standard Model

text: While quarks are bound in hadrons by the fundamental strong interaction, which is mediated by gluons, nucleons are bound by an emergent phenomenon termed the "residual strong force" or "nuclear force". This interaction is mediated by mesons, such as the pion. The color charges inside the nucleon cancel out, meaning most of the gluon and quark fields cancel out outside of the nucleon. However, some residue is "leaked", which appears as the exchange of virtual mesons, that causes the attractive force between nucleons. The (fundamental) strong interaction is described by quantum chromodynamics, which is a component of the Standard Model.


title: Standard Model

text: The Standard Model predicted the existence of the W and Z bosons, gluon, top quark and charm quark, and predicted many of their properties before these particles were observed. The predictions were experimentally confirmed with good precision.


title: Standard Model

text: The Standard Model also predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, which was found in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider, the final fundamental particle predicted by the Standard Model to be experimentally confirmed.


title: Standard Model

text: Self-consistency of the Standard Model (currently formulated as a non-abelian gauge theory quantized through path-integrals) has not been mathematically proven. While regularized versions useful for approximate computations (for example lattice gauge theory) exist, it is not known whether they converge (in the sense of S-matrix elements) in the limit that the regulator is removed. A key question related to the consistency is the Yang–Mills existence and mass gap problem.


title: Standard Model

text: Experiments indicate that neutrinos have mass, which the classic Standard Model did not allow. To accommodate this finding, the classic Standard Model can be modified to include neutrino mass.


title: Standard Model

text: If one insists on using only Standard Model particles, this can be achieved by adding a non-renormalizable interaction of leptons with the Higgs boson. On a fundamental level, such an interaction emerges in the seesaw mechanism where heavy right-handed neutrinos are added to the theory.


title: Standard Model

text: This is natural in the left-right symmetric extension of the Standard Model and in certain grand unified theories. As long as new physics appears below or around 10 GeV, the neutrino masses can be of the right order of magnitude.


title: Standard Model

text: Theoretical and experimental research has attempted to extend the Standard Model into a unified field theory or a theory of everything, a complete theory explaining all physical phenomena including constants. Inadequacies of the Standard Model that motivate such research include:


title: Devon Larratt

text: Devon Larratt (born 24 April 1975) is a Canadian professional armwrestler, YouTuber and a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces. Devon Larratt is widely considered to be one of the best arm wrestlers of all time, and is currently the #1 ranked arm-wrestler in North America. His contribution in popularising the sport to a wider audience through his countless collaborations with others, his YouTube Channel and simply his domination of the sport was immense.


title: Devon Larratt

text: Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada to a German mother, Devon could speak German until 2 years old. His interest in arm wrestling began as an early teenager. Larratt's first opponent was his grandmother, a farmworker, who claimed to be "the best arm-wrestling woman in Alberta." From there, Larratt progressed to competing on the oil fields of western Canada. Larratt joined the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command at the age of 21, where he served with Joint Task Force 2 for sixteen years. He achieved the rank of master corporal and deployed seven times to Afghanistan where he was wounded in action. Despite his deployments, Larratt managed to train and compete during his military service, and credits the experience gained at different military bases as a large part of his success. Larratt also competed in Judo during his youth.


title: Devon Larratt

text: In 1999, Larratt entered his first international competition, competing at a worlds event in Japan, where he defeated Krister Jonsson and lost to John Brzenk. Larratt placed third in the left handed 100Kg competition.