title: Roadside Picnic

text: This explanation implies that the Visitors may not have paid any attention to, or even noticed, the human inhabitants of the planet during their visit, just as humans do not notice or pay attention to grasshoppers or ladybugs during a picnic. The artifacts and phenomena left behind by the Visitors in the Zones were garbage, discarded and forgotten, without any preconceived plan to advance or damage humanity. There is little chance that the Visitors will return again because for them it was a brief stop, for reasons unknown, on the way to their actual destination.


title: Roadside Picnic

text: The novel is set in a post-visitation world where there are now six zones known on Earth that are full of unexplained phenomena and where strange happenings have briefly occurred, assumed to have been visitations by aliens. Governments and the UN, fearful of unforeseen consequences, try to keep tight control over them to prevent leakage of artifacts from the Zones. A subculture of "stalkers", scavengers who go into the zones to steal the artifacts for profit, has evolved around the zones. The novel is set in and around a specific zone in Harmont, a fictitious town in an unspecified English-speaking country, and follows the protagonist over the course of eight years.


title: Roadside Picnic

text: The introduction is a live radio interview with Dr. Pilman who is credited with the discovery that the six Visitation Zones' locations were not random. He explains it so: "Imagine that you spin a huge globe and you start firing bullets into it. The bullet holes would lie on the surface in a smooth curve. The whole point (is that) all six Visitation Zones are situated on the surface of our planet as though someone had taken shots at Earth from a pistol located somewhere along the Earth–Deneb line. Deneb is the main star in Cygnus."


title: Roadside Picnic

text: The story revolves around Redrick "Red" Schuhart, a tough and experienced young stalker who regularly enters the Zone illegally at night in search of valuable artifacts for profit. Trying to clean up his act, he becomes employed as a lab assistant at the International Institute, which studies the Zone. To help the career of his boss, whom he considers a friend, he goes into the Zone with him on an official expedition to recover a unique artifact (a full "empty"), which leads to his friend's death later on. This comes as a great shock when the news reaches Redrick, drunk in a bar, and he blames himself for his friend's fate. While Redrick is at the bar, a police force enters looking for stalkers. Redrick is forced to use a "shrieker" to make a hasty getaway. Red's girlfriend Guta is pregnant and decides to keep the baby no matter what. It is widely rumored that incursions into the Zone by stalkers carry high risk of mutations in their children, even though no radiation or other mutagens had been detected in the area. They decide to marry.


title: Roadside Picnic

text: Disillusioned Redrick returns to stalking. In the course of his joint expedition into the Zone with a fellow stalker named Burbridge (a.k.a. "The Vulture"), the latter steps into a substance known as "hell slime," which slowly dissolves his leg bones. Amputation must be urgently performed in order to avoid Burbridge losing his legs entirely. Redrick pulls Burbridge out of the Zone and drops him off at a surgeon, avoiding the patrols. Later on Redrick is confronted by Burbridge's daughter, who gets angry at him for saving her father. Guta has given birth to a happy and intelligent daughter, fully normal but for having long, light full body hair and black eyes. They lovingly call her the "Monkey". Redrick meets with his clients in a posh hotel, selling them a fresh portion of the Zone artifacts, but what they are really after is "hell slime". It is hinted that they want it for military research. Redrick claims he does not have it yet and leaves. Shortly afterward Redrick is arrested, but escapes. He then contacts his clients, telling them where he hid the "slime" sample that he had smuggled out previously. Redrick insists that all the proceeds from the sale be sent to Guta. He realizes that the "slime" will be used for some kind of weapon of mass destruction, but decides he has to provide for his family. He then gives himself up to the police.


title: Roadside Picnic

text: Redrick's old friend Richard Noonan (a supply contractor with offices inside the institute), is revealed as a covert operative of an unnamed, presumably governmental, secret organization working to stop the contraband outflow of artifacts from the Zone. Believing that he's nearing the successful completion of his multi-year assignment, he is confronted and scolded by his boss, who reveals to him that the flow is stronger than ever, and is tasked with finding who is responsible and how they operate. It is revealed that the stalkers are now organized under the cover of the "weekend picnics-for-tourists" business set up by Burbridge. They jokingly refer to the setup as "Sunday school". Noonan meets with Dr. Valentine Pilman for lunch and they have an in-depth discussion of the Visitation and humanity in general. This is where the idea of "Visitation as a roadside picnic" is articulated. Redrick is home again, having served his time. Burbridge visits him regularly, trying to entice him into some secret project, but Redrick declines. Guta is depressed because their daughter has nearly lost her humanity and ability to speak, more and more resembling an actual monkey. Redrick's dead father is also present, having come home from the cemetery inside the Zone, as other very slow-moving (and completely harmless) reanimated dead are now returning to their homes all around town. They are usually destroyed by the authorities as soon as they are discovered; Redrick, however, had forcibly managed to defend his father from being taken away.


title: Roadside Picnic

text: Redrick goes into the Zone one last time in order to reach the wish-granting "Golden Sphere." He has a map, given to him by Burbridge, whose son, Arthur, joins him on the expedition. Redrick knows one of them has to die in order to temporarily deactivate a phenomenon known as the "meatgrinder" in order for the other to reach the sphere, but he keeps this a secret from Arthur, whom he intends to sacrifice to it in order to make a wish to turn his daughter back to normal. After they get to the location, surviving many obstacles, Arthur rushes towards the sphere shouting out selfless wishes for a better world, only to be savagely dispatched by the meatgrinder. With the "Golden Sphere" in front of him, an exhausted Redrick looks back in confusion and bitterness on his whole life of desperate survival in a harsh world, his servitude and lack of free will, and finds that he cannot articulate what he actually wants from the sphere. After much unaccustomed introspection, Red at first leaves it to the Sphere to look into his untainted soul "to figure out" his wish, because "it can't be bad", effectively making his wish that there is something left in him that would wish for good. In irony he winds up obsessing in the same way the boy had. "HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND MAY NO ONE BE LEFT BEHIND!"


title: Roadside Picnic

text: The story was written by the Strugatsky brothers in 1971. The first outlines were written January 18–27 in Leningrad, and the final version was completed between October 28 and November 3 in Komarovo. It was first published in the literary magazine "Avrora" in 1972, issues 7–10. Parts of it (Section 1) were published in Volume 25 of the "Library of Modern Science Fiction" in 1973. A Russian-language version endorsed by the Strugatsky brothers as the original was published in the 1970s.


title: Roadside Picnic

text: By 1998, 38 editions of the novel had been published in 20 countries. The novel was first translated into English by Antonina W. Bouis. The preface to the first American edition of the novel (Macmillan., New York, 1977) was written by Theodore Sturgeon.


title: Roadside Picnic

text: In 2012, the novel was re-released in English. This was not only re-translated, but based on a version restored by Boris Strugatsky to the original state before the Soviet censors made their alterations.


title: Aurora Teagarden

text: Aurora Teagarden is a fictional character created by author Charlaine Harris. She is the protagonist of a series of eleven crime novels written from 1990 to 2017. In 2014, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries began broadcasting adaptations of the novels as an original film series entitled "The Aurora Teagarden Mysteries", as part of their 'Mystery Wheel' umbrella series with Candace Cameron Bure in the title role.


title: Aurora Teagarden

text: In the first book of the series, twenty-eight-year-old Aurora (Roe) Teagarden is a professional librarian at the Lawrenceton Public Library and belongs to the Real Murders Club, a group of “True Crime“ enthusiasts who gather monthly to study famous crimes from the history of their Georgia town.


title: Aurora Teagarden

text: On June 4, 2014, author Charlaine Harris announced on her Facebook page that the Aurora Teagarden books would be adapted into a series of two-hour films, starring Candace Cameron Bure and would air on the Hallmark Movies and Mysteries Channel. In April 2022, it was revealed that the series was likely over due to Bure moving to GAC Family with a new development deal there.


title: Aurora Teagarden

text: The films in the series are shot largely in Vancouver, British Columbia, while the waterfall seen in the opening sequence of many of the films is Chequagua Falls in the village of Montour Falls, Schuyler County, New York. And while the novels are set in the southeastern American state of Georgia, the TV-movies are set in the Pacific Northwestern state of Washington.


title: Aurora Teagarden

text: The films are broadcast in the United States on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. Channel 5 took over the broadcast rights for the series in the UK. Canada also airs the films on W Network, which acquired all the Hallmark Movies.


title: Aurora Teagarden

text: "Til Death Do Us Part" received two Canadian Screen Award nominations at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022, for Best Actress in a Television Movie (Bure) and Best Actor in a Television Movie (Matter).


title: Bézier curve

text: A Bézier curve ( ) is a parametric curve used in computer graphics and related fields. A set of discrete "control points" defines a smooth, continuous curve by means of a formula. Usually the curve is intended to approximate a real-world shape that otherwise has no mathematical representation or whose representation is unknown or too complicated. The Bézier curve is named after French engineer Pierre Bézier (1910–1999), who used it in the 1960s for designing curves for the bodywork of Renault cars. Other uses include the design of computer fonts and animation. Bézier curves can be combined to form a Bézier spline, or generalized to higher dimensions to form Bézier surfaces. The Bézier triangle is a special case of the latter.


title: Bézier curve

text: In vector graphics, Bézier curves are used to model smooth curves that can be scaled indefinitely. "Paths", as they are commonly referred to in image manipulation programs, are combinations of linked Bézier curves. Paths are not bound by the limits of rasterized images and are intuitive to modify.


title: Bézier curve

text: Bézier curves are also used in the time domain, particularly in animation, user interface design and smoothing cursor trajectory in eye gaze controlled interfaces. For example, a Bézier curve can be used to specify the velocity over time of an object such as an icon moving from A to B, rather than simply moving at a fixed number of pixels per step. When animators or interface designers talk about the "physics" or "feel" of an operation, they may be referring to the particular Bézier curve used to control the velocity over time of the move in question.


title: Bézier curve

text: This also applies to robotics where the motion of a welding arm, for example, should be smooth to avoid unnecessary wear.


title: Bézier curve

text: The mathematical basis for Bézier curves—the Bernstein polynomials—was established in 1912, but the polynomials were not applied to graphics until some 50 years later when mathematician Paul de Casteljau in 1959 developed de Casteljau's algorithm, a numerically stable method for evaluating the curves, and became the first to apply them to computer-aided design at French automaker Citroën. Yet, de Casteljau's method was patented in France but not published until the 1980s while the Bézier polynomials were widely publicised in the 1960s by the French engineer Pierre Bézier, who discovered them independently and used them to design automobile bodies at Renault.


title: Bézier curve

text: A Bézier curve is defined by a set of "control points" P through P, where "n" is called the order of the curve ("n" = 1 for linear, 2 for quadratic, 3 for cubic, etc.). The first and last control points are always the endpoints of the curve; however, the intermediate control points (if any) generally do not lie on the curve. The sums in the following sections are to be understood as affine combinations – that is, the coefficients sum to 1.


title: Bézier curve

text: Given distinct points P and P, a linear Bézier curve is simply a line between those two points. The curve is given by


title: Bézier curve

text: which can be interpreted as the linear interpolant of corresponding points on the linear Bézier curves from P to P and from P to P respectively. Rearranging the preceding equation yields:


title: Bézier curve

text: from which it can be concluded that the tangents to the curve at P and P intersect at P. As "t" increases from 0 to 1, the curve departs from P in the direction of P, then bends to arrive at P from the direction of P.


title: Bézier curve

text: The curve starts at P going toward P and arrives at P coming from the direction of P. Usually, it will not pass through P or P; these points are only there to provide directional information. The distance between P and P determines "how far" and "how fast" the curve moves towards P before turning towards P.


title: Bézier curve

text: Writing B("t") for the quadratic Bézier curve defined by points P, P, and P, the cubic Bézier curve can be defined as an affine combination of two quadratic Bézier curves:


title: Bézier curve

text: Any series of 4 distinct points can be converted to a cubic Bézier curve that goes through all 4 points in order.


title: Bézier curve

text: Given the starting and ending point of some cubic Bézier curve, and the points along the curve corresponding to "t" = 1/3 and "t" = 2/3, the control points for the original Bézier curve can be recovered.


title: Bézier curve

text: A recursive definition for the Bézier curve of degree "n" expresses it as a point-to-point linear combination (linear interpolation) of a pair of corresponding points in two Bézier curves of degree "n" − 1.


title: Bézier curve

text: Let formula_11 denote the Bézier curve determined by any selection of points P, P, ..., P. Then to start,


title: Bézier curve

text: The formula can be expressed explicitly as follows (where t and (1-t) are extended continuously to be 1 throughout [0,1]):


title: Bézier curve

text: The points P are called "control points" for the Bézier curve. The polygon formed by connecting the Bézier points with lines, starting with P and finishing with P, is called the "Bézier polygon" (or "control polygon"). The convex hull of the Bézier polygon contains the Bézier curve.


title: Bézier curve

text: Sometimes it is desirable to express the Bézier curve as a polynomial instead of a sum of less straightforward Bernstein polynomials. Application of the binomial theorem to the definition of the curve followed by some rearrangement will yield


title: Bézier curve

text: This could be practical if formula_23 can be computed prior to many evaluations of formula_24; however one should use caution as high order curves may lack numeric stability (de Casteljau's algorithm should be used if this occurs). Note that the empty product is 1.


title: Bézier curve

text: A quadratic Bézier curve is also a segment of a parabola. As a parabola is a conic section, some sources refer to quadratic Béziers as "conic arcs". With reference to the figure on the right, the important features of the parabola can be derived as follows:


title: Bézier curve

text: The "t" in the function for a linear Bézier curve can be thought of as describing how far B("t") is from P to P. For example, when "t"=0.25, B("t") is one quarter of the way from point P to P. As "t" varies from 0 to 1, B("t") describes a line from P to P.


title: Bézier curve

text: For quadratic Bézier curves one can construct intermediate points Q and Q such that as "t" varies from 0 to 1:


title: Bézier curve

text: For higher-order curves one needs correspondingly more intermediate points. For cubic curves one can construct intermediate points Q, Q, and Q that describe linear Bézier curves, and points R and R that describe quadratic Bézier curves:


title: Bézier curve

text: For fourth-order curves one can construct intermediate points Q, Q, Q and Q that describe linear Bézier curves, points R, R and R that describe quadratic Bézier curves, and points S and S that describe cubic Bézier curves:


title: Bézier curve

text: These representations rest on the process used in De Casteljau's algorithm to calculate Bézier curves.


title: Bézier curve

text: The curve at a fixed offset from a given Bézier curve, called an offset or parallel curve in mathematics (lying "parallel" to the original curve, like the offset between rails in a railroad track), cannot be exactly formed by a Bézier curve (except in some trivial cases). In general, the two-sided offset curve of a cubic Bézier is a 10th-order algebraic curve and more generally for a Bézier of degree "n" the two-sided offset curve is an algebraic curve of degree 4"n" − 2. However, there are heuristic methods that usually give an adequate approximation for practical purposes.


title: Bézier curve

text: In the field of vector graphics, painting two symmetrically distanced offset curves is called "stroking" (the Bézier curve or in general a path of several Bézier segments). The conversion from offset curves to filled Bézier contours is of practical importance in converting fonts defined in Metafont, which require stroking of Bézier curves, to the more widely used PostScript type 1 fonts, which only require (for efficiency purposes) the mathematically simpler operation of filling a contour defined by (non-self-intersecting) Bézier curves.


title: Bézier curve

text: A Bézier curve of degree "n" can be converted into a Bézier curve of degree "n" + 1 "with the same shape". This is useful if software supports Bézier curves only of specific degree. For example, systems that can only work with cubic Bézier curves can implicitly work with quadratic curves by using their equivalent cubic representation.


title: Bézier curve

text: To do degree elevation, we use the equality formula_29 Each component formula_30 is multiplied by (1 − "t") and "t", thus increasing a degree by one, without changing the value. Here is the example of increasing degree from 2 to 3.


title: Bézier curve

text: The concept of degree elevation can be repeated on a control polygon R to get a sequence of control polygons R, R, R, and so on. After "r" degree elevations, the polygon R has the vertices P, P, P, ..., P given by


title: Bézier curve

text: The rational Bézier curve adds adjustable weights to provide closer approximations to arbitrary shapes. The numerator is a weighted Bernstein-form Bézier curve and the denominator is a weighted sum of Bernstein polynomials. Rational Bézier curves can, among other uses, be used to represent segments of conic sections exactly, including circular arcs.


title: Bézier curve

text: The expression can be extended by using number systems besides reals for the weights. In the complex plane the points {1}, {-1}, and {1} with weights {formula_41}, {1}, and {formula_42} generate a full circle with radius one. For curves with points and weights on a circle, the weights can be scaled without changing the curve's shape. Scaling the central weight of the above curve by 1.35508 gives a more uniform parameterization.


title: Bézier curve

text: Bézier curves are widely used in computer graphics to model smooth curves. As the curve is completely contained in the convex hull of its control points, the points can be graphically displayed and used to manipulate the curve intuitively. Affine transformations such as translation and rotation can be applied on the curve by applying the respective transform on the control points of the curve.


title: Bézier curve

text: Quadratic and cubic Bézier curves are most common. Higher degree curves are more computationally expensive to evaluate. When more complex shapes are needed, low order Bézier curves are patched together, producing a composite Bézier curve. A composite Bézier curve is commonly referred to as a "path" in vector graphics languages (like PostScript), vector graphics standards (like SVG) and vector graphics programs (like Artline, Timeworks Publisher, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, Inkscape, and Allegro). In order to join Bézier curves into a composite Bézier curve without kinks, a property called "G1 continuous", it suffices to force the control point at which two constituent Bézier curves meet to lie on the line defined by the two control points on either side.


title: Bézier curve

text: The simplest method for scan converting (rasterizing) a Bézier curve is to evaluate it at many closely spaced points and scan convert the approximating sequence of line segments. However, this does not guarantee that the rasterized output looks sufficiently smooth, because the points may be spaced too far apart. Conversely it may generate too many points in areas where the curve is close to linear. A common adaptive method is recursive subdivision, in which a curve's control points are checked to see if the curve approximates a line to within a small tolerance. If not, the curve is subdivided parametrically into two segments, 0 ≤ "t" ≤ 0.5 and 0.5 ≤ "t" ≤ 1, and the same procedure is applied recursively to each half. There are also forward differencing methods, but great care must be taken to analyse error propagation.


title: Bézier curve

text: Analytical methods where a Bézier is intersected with each scan line involve finding roots of cubic polynomials (for cubic Béziers) and dealing with multiple roots, so they are not often used in practice.


title: Bézier curve

text: The rasterisation algorithm used in Metafont is based on discretising the curve, so that it is approximated by a sequence of "rook moves" that are purely vertical or purely horizontal, along the pixel boundaries. To that end, the plane is first split into eight 45° sectors (by the coordinate axes and the two lines formula_43), then the curve is decomposed into smaller segments such that the "direction" of a curve segment stays within one sector; since the curve velocity is a second degree polynomial, finding the formula_44 values where it is parallel to one of these lines can be done by solving quadratic equations. Within each segment, either horizontal or vertical movement dominates, and the total number of steps in either direction can be read off from the endpoint coordinates; in for example the 0–45° sector horizontal movement to the right dominates, so it only remains to decide between which steps to the right the curve should make a step up.


title: Bézier curve

text: There is also a modified curve form of Bresenham's line drawing algorithm by Zingl that performs this rasterization by subdividing the curve into rational pieces and calculating the error at each pixel location such that it either travels at a 45° angle or straight depending on compounding error as it iterates through the curve. This reduces the next step calculation to a series of integer additions and subtractions.


title: Bézier curve

text: In animation applications, such as Adobe Flash and Synfig, Bézier curves are used to outline, for example, movement. Users outline the wanted path in Bézier curves, and the application creates the needed frames for the object to move along the path.


title: Bézier curve

text: In 3D animation, Bézier curves are often used to define 3D paths as well as 2D curves for keyframe interpolation. Bézier curves are now very frequently used to control the animation easing in CSS, JavaScript, JavaFx and Flutter SDK.


title: Bézier curve

text: TrueType fonts use composite Bézier curves composed of quadratic Bézier curves. Other languages and imaging tools (such as PostScript, Asymptote, Metafont, and SVG) use composite Béziers composed of cubic Bézier curves for drawing curved shapes. OpenType fonts can use either kind of curve, depending on which font technology underlies the OpenType wrapper.


title: Bézier curve

text: The internal rendering of all Bézier curves in font or vector graphics renderers will split them recursively up to the point where the curve is flat enough to be drawn as a series of linear or circular segments. The exact splitting algorithm is implementation dependent, only the flatness criteria must be respected to reach the necessary precision and to avoid non-monotonic local changes of curvature. The "smooth curve" feature of charts in Microsoft Excel also uses this algorithm.


title: Bézier curve

text: Because arcs of circles and ellipses cannot be exactly represented by Bézier curves, they are first approximated by Bézier curves, which are in turn approximated by arcs of circles. This is inefficient as there exists also approximations of all Bézier curves using arcs of circles or ellipses, which can be rendered incrementally with arbitrary precision. Another approach, used by modern hardware graphics adapters with accelerated geometry, can convert exactly all Bézier and conic curves (or surfaces) into NURBS, that can be rendered incrementally without first splitting the curve recursively to reach the necessary flatness condition. This approach also preserves the curve definition under all linear or perspective 2D and 3D transforms and projections.


title: Bézier curve

text: Font engines, like FreeType, draw the font's curves (and lines) on a pixellated surface using a process known as font rasterization.


title: Bézier curve

text: Bézier curves can be used in robotics to produce trajectories of an end-effector due to the virtue of the control polygon’s ability to give a clear indication of whether the path is colliding with any nearby obstacle or object. Furthermore, joint space trajectories can be accurately differentiated using Bézier curves. Consequently, the derivatives of joint space trajectories are used in the calculation of the dynamics and control effort (torque profiles) of the robotic manipulator.


title: House of Borgia

text: The House of Borgia ( , ; Spanish and ; ) was an Italian-Aragonese Spanish noble family, which rose to prominence during the Italian Renaissance. They were from Valencia, the surname being a toponymic from the town of Borja, then in the Crown of Aragon, in Spain.


title: House of Borgia

text: The Borgias became prominent in ecclesiastical and political affairs in the 15th and 16th centuries, producing two popes: Alfons de Borja, who ruled as Pope Callixtus III during 1455–1458, and Rodrigo Lanzol Borgia, as Pope Alexander VI, during 1492–1503.


title: House of Borgia

text: Especially during the reign of Alexander VI, they were suspected of many crimes, including adultery, incest, simony, theft, bribery, and murder (especially murder by arsenic poisoning). Because of their grasping for power, they made enemies of the Medici, the Sforza, and the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, among others. They were also patrons of the arts who contributed to the development of Renaissance art.


title: House of Borgia

text: The Borgia family stands out in history as being infamously steeped in sin and immorality, yet there is evidence to suggest that this one-dimensional characterization is a result of undeserved contemporary critiques.


title: House of Borgia

text: The Borja was a noble house with origin in the town of Borja (Zaragoza) in the then Crown of Aragon. There were numerous unsubstantiated claims that the family was of Jewish origin. These underground rumours were propagated by, among others, Giuliano della Rovere, and the family was frequently described as marranos by political opponents. The rumours have persisted in popular culture for centuries, listed in the "Semi-Gotha" of 1912. The family themselves propagated a spurious genealogical descent from a 12th-century claimant to the crown of the Kingdom of Aragon, Pedro de Atarés, Lord of Borja, who actually died childless.


title: House of Borgia

text: Alfons de Borja (1378–1458) was born to Francina Llançol and Domingo de Borja in La Torreta, Canals, which was then situated in the Kingdom of Valencia.


title: House of Borgia

text: Alfons de Borja was a professor of law at the University of Lleida, then a diplomat for the Kings of Aragon before becoming a cardinal. At an advanced age, he was elected Pope Callixtus III in 1455 as a compromise candidate and reigned as Pope for just 3 years, until his death in 1458.


title: House of Borgia

text: Rodrigo Borgia (1431–1503) was born in Xàtiva, also in the Kingdom of Valencia, to Isabel de Borja i Cavanilles and Jofré Llançol i Escrivà. He studied law at Bologna and was appointed as cardinal by his uncle, Alfons Borgia, Pope Callixtus III. He was elected Pope in 1492, taking the regnal name Alexander VI. While a cardinal, he maintained a long-term illicit relationship with Vannozza dei Cattanei, with whom he had four children: Giovanni; Cesare; Lucrezia; and Gioffre. Rodrigo also had children by other women, including one daughter with his mistress, Giulia Farnese.


title: House of Borgia

text: As Alexander VI, Rodrigo was recognized as a skilled politician and diplomat. However, he was widely criticized during his reign for his over-spending, sale of Church offices, lasciviousness, and nepotism. As Pope, he sought to acquire more personal and papal power and wealth, often ennobling and enriching the Borgia family directly. He appointed his son, Giovanni, as captain-general of the papal army, his foremost military representative, and established another son, Cesare, as a cardinal. Alexander used the marriages of his children to build alliances with powerful families in Italy and Spain. At the time, the Sforza family, which comprised the Milanese faction, was one of the most powerful in Europe, so Alexander united the two families by marrying Lucrezia to Giovanni Sforza. He also married Gioffre, his youngest son from Vannozza, to Sancha of Aragon of the Crown of Aragon and Naples. He established a second familial link to the Spanish royal house through Giovanni's marriage during what was a period of on-again/off-again conflict between France and Spain over the Kingdom of Naples.


title: House of Borgia

text: It is reported that under Alexander VI's rule the Borgia hosted orgies in the Vatican palace. The "Banquet of Chestnuts" is considered one of the most disreputable balls of this kind. Johann Burchard reports that fifty courtesans were in attendance for the entertainment of the banquet guests. It is alleged not only was the Pope present, but also two of his children, Lucrezia and Cesare. Other researchers however, such as Monsignor Peter de Roo (1839–1926), have rejected the rumors of the "fifty courtesans" as being at odds with Alexander VI's essentially decent but much maligned character.


title: House of Borgia

text: Pope Alexander VI died in Rome in 1503 after contracting a disease, generally believed to have been malaria. Two of Alexander's successors, Sixtus V and Urban VIII, described him as one of the most outstanding popes since St. Peter.


title: House of Borgia

text: Cesare was Rodrigo Borgia's second son with Vannozza dei Cattanei. Cesare's education was precisely planned by his father: he was educated by tutors in Rome until his 12th birthday. He grew up to become a charming man skilled at war and politics. He studied law and the humanities at the University of Perugia, then went to the University of Pisa to study theology. As soon as he graduated from the university, his father made him a cardinal.


title: House of Borgia

text: Cesare was suspected of murdering his brother Giovanni, but there is no clear evidence to confirm this. However, Giovanni's death cleared the path for Cesare to become a layman and gain the honors his brother received from their father, Pope Alexander VI. Although Cesare had been a cardinal, he left the holy orders to gain power and take over the position Giovanni once held: a condottiero. He was finally married to French princess Charlotte d'Albret.


title: House of Borgia

text: After Alexander's death in 1503, Cesare affected the choice of a next Pope. He needed a candidate who would not threaten his plans to create his own principality in Central Italy. Cesare's candidate (Pius III) did become Pope, but he died a month after the selection. Cesare was then forced to support Giuliano della Rovere. The cardinal promised Cesare that he could keep all of his titles and honors. Later, della Rovere betrayed him and became his fiercest enemy.


title: House of Borgia

text: Cesare died in 1507, at Viana Castle in Navarre, Spain, while besieging the rebellious army of Count de Lerín. The castle was held by Louis de Beaumont at the time it was besieged by Cesare Borgia and King John's army of 10,000 men in 1507. In order to attempt to breach the extremely strong, natural fortification of the castle, Cesare counted on a desperate surprise attack. He was killed during the battle, in which his army failed to take the castle.


title: House of Borgia

text: Lucrezia was born in Subiaco, Italy to Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia and Roman mistress Vannozza dei Catanei. Before the age of 13, she was engaged to two Spanish princes. After her father became Pope she was married to Giovanni Sforza in 1493 at the age of 13. It was a typical political marriage to improve Alexander's power; however, when Pope Alexander VI no longer needed the Sforzas, the marriage was annulled in 1497 on the dubious grounds that it had never been consummated.


title: House of Borgia

text: Shortly afterwards she was involved in a scandal involving her alleged relationship with Pedro Calderón, a Spaniard generally known as Perotto. His body was found in the Tiber on February 14, 1498, along with the body of one of Lucrezia's ladies. It is likely that Cesare had them killed as an affair would have damaged the negotiations being conducted for another marriage. During this time rumors were also spread suggesting that a child born at this time, Giovanni Borgia, also known as the "Infans Romanus" (child of Rome) was Lucrezia's.


title: House of Borgia

text: Lucrezia's second marriage, to wealthy young Prince Alfonso of Aragon, allowed the Borgias to form an alliance with another powerful family. However, this relationship did not last long either. Cesare wished to strengthen his relations with France and completely break with the Kingdom of Naples. As Alfonso's father was the ruler of the Kingdom of Naples, the young husband was in great danger. Although the first attempt at murder did not succeed, Alfonso was eventually strangled in his own quarters.


title: House of Borgia

text: Lucrezia's third and final husband was Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. After her father died in 1503, she lived a life of freedom in Ferrara with her husband and children. Unfortunately, her pregnancies were difficult and she lost several babies after birth. She died in 1519, 10 days after the birth and death of her last child, Isabella Maria. She was buried in a tomb with Isabella and Alfonso.


title: House of Borgia

text: Lucrezia was rumored to be a notorious poisoner and she became famous for her skill at political intrigue. However, some recent revisionists have looked at her in a more sympathetic light, claiming her to be a victim of her family's deceptions.


title: House of Borgia

text: One branch of the family established ifself in the city of Velletri where for many years they served in the administration of the Papal States.


title: House of Borgia

text: The Borgias were infamous in their time, and have inspired numerous references in popular culture. They include novels, such as "City of God: A Novel of the Borgias" (1979) by Cecelia Holland, "The Family" (2001) by Mario Puzo, and "Summer of Night" (1991) by Dan Simmons, plays, operas, comics, films like "The Borgia" (2006), television series like "Borgia" (2011) and "The Borgias" (2011) on Showtime, and video games the likes of "" (2010) by Ubisoft.


title: House of Borgia

text: In series 4 of the sketch comedy TV show "Horrible Histories", a song called "the Borgia Family" was featured in the section 'Radical Renaissance'. The song is a parody of the theme song to the Addams Family.


title: Keratin

text: Keratin () is one of a family of structural fibrous proteins also known as "scleroproteins". Alpha-keratin (α-keratin) is a type of keratin found in vertebrates. It is the key structural material making up scales, hair, nails, feathers, horns, claws, hooves, and the outer layer of skin among vertebrates. Keratin also protects epithelial cells from damage or stress. Keratin is extremely insoluble in water and organic solvents. Keratin monomers assemble into bundles to form intermediate filaments, which are tough and form strong unmineralized epidermal appendages found in reptiles, birds, amphibians, and mammals. Excessive keratinization participate in fortification of certain tissues such as in horns of cattle and rhinos, and armadillos' osteoderm. The only other biological matter known to approximate the toughness of keratinized tissue is chitin.


title: Keratin

text: Keratin comes in two types, the primitive, softer forms found in all vertebrates and harder, derived forms found only among sauropsids (reptiles and birds).


title: Keratin

text: Spider silk is classified as keratin, although production of the protein may have evolved independently of the process in vertebrates.


title: Keratin

text: Alpha-keratins (α-keratins) are found in all vertebrates. They form the hair (including wool), the outer layer of skin, horns, nails, claws and hooves of mammals, and the slime threads of hagfish. Keratin filaments are abundant in keratinocytes in the hornified layer of the epidermis; these are proteins which have undergone keratinization. They are also present in epithelial cells in general. For example, mouse thymic epithelial cells react with antibodies for keratin 5, keratin 8, and keratin 14. These antibodies are used as fluorescent markers to distinguish subsets of mouse thymic epithelial cells in genetic studies of the thymus.


title: Keratin

text: The harder beta-keratins (β-keratin)s are found only in the sauropsids, that is all living reptiles and birds. They are found in the nails, scales, and claws of reptiles, in some reptile shells (testudines, such as tortoise, turtle, terrapin), and in the feathers, beaks, and claws of birds. These keratins are formed primarily in beta sheets. However, beta sheets are also found in α-keratins.


title: Keratin

text: The baleen plates of filter-feeding whales are made of keratin. Recent scholarship has shown that sauropsid β-keratins are fundamentally different from α-keratins at a genetic and structural level. The new term "corneous beta protein" (CBP) has been proposed to avoid confusion with α-keratins.


title: Keratin

text: Keratins (also described as cytokeratins) are polymers of type I and type II intermediate filaments that have been found only in chordates (vertebrates, amphioxus, urochordates). Nematodes and many other non-chordate animals seem to have only type VI intermediate filaments, fibers that structure the nucleus.


title: Keratin

text: The human genome encodes 54 functional keratin genes, located in two clusters on chromosomes 12 and 17. This suggests that they originated from a series of gene duplications on these chromosomes.


title: Keratin

text: The keratins include the following proteins of which KRT23, KRT24, KRT25, KRT26, KRT27, KRT28, KRT31, KRT32, KRT33A, KRT33B, KRT34, KRT35, KRT36, KRT37, KRT38, KRT39, KRT40, KRT71, KRT72, KRT73, KRT74, KRT75, KRT76, KRT77, KRT78, KRT79, KRT8, KRT80, KRT81, KRT82, KRT83, KRT84, KRT85 and KRT86 have been used to describe keratins past 20.


title: Keratin

text: The first sequences of keratins were determined by Israel Hanukoglu and Elaine Fuchs (1982, 1983). These sequences revealed that there are two distinct but homologous keratin families, which were named type I and type II keratins. By analysis of the primary structures of these keratins and other intermediate filament proteins, Hanukoglu and Fuchs suggested a model in which keratins and intermediate filament proteins contain a central ~310 residue domain with four segments in α-helical conformation that are separated by three short linker segments predicted to be in beta-turn conformation. This model has been confirmed by the determination of the crystal structure of a helical domain of keratins.


title: Keratin

text: Fibrous keratin molecules supercoil to form a very stable, left-handed superhelical motif to multimerise, forming filaments consisting of multiple copies of the keratin monomer.


title: Keratin

text: The major force that keeps the coiled-coil structure is hydrophobic interactions between apolar residues along the keratins helical segments.


title: Keratin

text: Limited interior space is the reason why the triple helix of the (unrelated) structural protein collagen, found in skin, cartilage and bone, likewise has a high percentage of glycine. The connective tissue protein elastin also has a high percentage of both glycine and alanine. Silk fibroin, considered a β-keratin, can have these two as 75–80% of the total, with 10–15% serine, with the rest having bulky side groups. The chains are antiparallel, with an alternating C → N orientation. A preponderance of amino acids with small, nonreactive side groups is characteristic of structural proteins, for which H-bonded close packing is more important than chemical specificity.


title: Keratin

text: In addition to intra- and intermolecular hydrogen bonds, the distinguishing feature of keratins is the presence of large amounts of the sulfur-containing amino acid cysteine, required for the disulfide bridges that confer additional strength and rigidity by permanent, thermally stable crosslinking—in much the same way that non-protein sulfur bridges stabilize vulcanized rubber. Human hair is approximately 14% cysteine. The pungent smells of burning hair and skin are due to the volatile sulfur compounds formed. Extensive disulfide bonding contributes to the insolubility of keratins, except in a small number of solvents such as dissociating or reducing agents.


title: Keratin

text: The more flexible and elastic keratins of hair have fewer interchain disulfide bridges than the keratins in mammalian fingernails, hooves and claws (homologous structures), which are harder and more like their analogs in other vertebrate classes. Hair and other α-keratins consist of α-helically coiled single protein strands (with regular intra-chain H-bonding), which are then further twisted into superhelical ropes that may be further coiled. The β-keratins of reptiles and birds have β-pleated sheets twisted together, then stabilized and hardened by disulfide bridges.


title: Keratin

text: It has been proposed that keratins can be divided into 'hard' and 'soft' forms, or 'cytokeratins' and 'other keratins'. That model is now understood to be correct. A new nuclear addition in 2006 to describe keratins takes this into account.


title: Keratin

text: Keratin filaments are intermediate filaments. Like all intermediate filaments, keratin proteins form filamentous polymers in a series of assembly steps beginning with dimerization; dimers assemble into tetramers and octamers and eventually, if the current hypothesis holds, into unit-length-filaments (ULF) capable of annealing end-to-end into long filaments.


title: Keratin

text: Metabolism ceases, and the cells are almost completely filled by keratin. During the process of epithelial differentiation, cells become cornified as keratin protein is incorporated into longer keratin intermediate filaments. Eventually the nucleus and cytoplasmic organelles disappear, metabolism ceases and cells undergo a programmed death as they become fully keratinized. In many other cell types, such as cells of the dermis, keratin filaments and other intermediate filaments function as part of the cytoskeleton to mechanically stabilize the cell against physical stress. It does this through connections to desmosomes, cell–cell junctional plaques, and hemidesmosomes, cell-basement membrane adhesive structures.


title: Keratin

text: Cells in the epidermis contain a structural matrix of keratin, which makes this outermost layer of the skin almost waterproof, and along with collagen and elastin gives skin its strength. Rubbing and pressure cause thickening of the outer, cornified layer of the epidermis and form protective calluses, which are useful for athletes and on the fingertips of musicians who play stringed instruments. Keratinized epidermal cells are constantly shed and replaced.


title: Keratin

text: These hard, integumentary structures are formed by intercellular cementing of fibers formed from the dead, cornified cells generated by specialized beds deep within the skin. Hair grows continuously and feathers molt and regenerate. The constituent proteins may be phylogenetically homologous but differ somewhat in chemical structure and supermolecular organization. The evolutionary relationships are complex and only partially known. Multiple genes have been identified for the β-keratins in feathers, and this is probably characteristic of all keratins.


title: Keratin

text: The silk fibroins produced by insects and spiders are often classified as keratins, though it is unclear whether they are phylogenetically related to vertebrate keratins.


title: Keratin

text: Silk found in insect pupae, and in spider webs and egg casings, also has twisted β-pleated sheets incorporated into fibers wound into larger supermolecular aggregates. The structure of the spinnerets on spiders’ tails, and the contributions of their interior glands, provide remarkable control of fast extrusion. Spider silk is typically about 1 to 2 micrometers (µm) thick, compared with about 60 µm for human hair, and more for some mammals. The biologically and commercially useful properties of silk fibers depend on the organization of multiple adjacent protein chains into hard, crystalline regions of varying size, alternating with flexible, amorphous regions where the chains are randomly coiled. A somewhat analogous situation occurs with synthetic polymers such as nylon, developed as a silk substitute. Silk from the hornet cocoon contains doublets about 10 µm across, with cores and coating, and may be arranged in up to 10 layers, also in plaques of variable shape. Adult hornets also use silk as a glue, as do spiders.


title: Keratin

text: Abnormal growth of keratin can occur in a variety of conditions including keratosis, hyperkeratosis and keratoderma.


title: Keratin

text: Several diseases, such as athlete's foot and ringworm, are caused by infectious fungi that feed on keratin.


title: Keratin

text: Keratin is highly resistant to digestive acids if ingested. Cats regularly ingest hair as part of their grooming behavior, leading to the gradual formation of hairballs that may be expelled orally or excreted. In humans, trichophagia may lead to Rapunzel syndrome, an extremely rare but potentially fatal intestinal condition.


title: Keratin

text: Keratin expression is helpful in determining epithelial origin in anaplastic cancers. Tumors that express keratin include carcinomas, thymomas, sarcomas and trophoblastic neoplasms. Furthermore, the precise expression-pattern of keratin subtypes allows prediction of the origin of the primary tumor when assessing metastases. For example, hepatocellular carcinomas typically express CK8 and CK18, and cholangiocarcinomas express CK7, CK8 and CK18, while metastases of colorectal carcinomas express CK20, but not CK7.


title: Cold fusion

text: Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature. It would contrast starkly with the "hot" fusion that is known to take place naturally within stars and artificially in hydrogen bombs and prototype fusion reactors under immense pressure and at temperatures of millions of degrees, and be distinguished from muon-catalyzed fusion. There is currently no accepted theoretical model that would allow cold fusion to occur.


title: Cold fusion

text: In 1989, two electrochemists, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, reported that their apparatus had produced anomalous heat ("excess heat") of a magnitude they asserted would defy explanation except in terms of nuclear processes. They further reported measuring small amounts of nuclear reaction byproducts, including neutrons and tritium. The small tabletop experiment involved electrolysis of heavy water on the surface of a palladium (Pd) electrode. The reported results received wide media attention and raised hopes of a cheap and abundant source of energy.


title: Cold fusion

text: Many scientists tried to replicate the experiment with the few details available. Hopes faded with the large number of negative replications, the withdrawal of many reported positive replications, the discovery of flaws and sources of experimental error in the original experiment, and finally the discovery that Fleischmann and Pons had not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts. By late 1989, most scientists considered cold fusion claims dead, and cold fusion subsequently gained a reputation as pathological science. In 1989 the United States Department of Energy (DOE) concluded that the reported results of excess heat did not present convincing evidence of a useful source of energy and decided against allocating funding specifically for cold fusion. A second DOE review in 2004, which looked at new research, reached similar conclusions and did not result in DOE funding of cold fusion. Presently, since articles about cold fusion are rarely published in peer-reviewed mainstream scientific journals, they do not attract the level of scrutiny expected for mainstream scientific publications.


title: Cold fusion

text: Nevertheless, some interest in cold fusion has continued through the decades—for example, a Google-funded failed replication attempt was published in a 2019 issue of "Nature". A small community of researchers continues to investigate it, often under the alternative designations "low-energy nuclear reactions" ("LENR") or "condensed matter nuclear science" ("CMNS").


title: Cold fusion

text: Nuclear fusion is normally understood to occur at temperatures in the tens of millions of degrees. This is called "thermonuclear fusion". Since the 1920s, there has been speculation that nuclear fusion might be possible at much lower temperatures by catalytically fusing hydrogen absorbed in a metal catalyst. In 1989, a claim by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann (then one of the world's leading electrochemists) that such cold fusion had been observed caused a brief media sensation before the majority of scientists criticized their claim as incorrect after many found they could not replicate the excess heat. Since the initial announcement, cold fusion research has continued by a small community of researchers who believe that such reactions happen and hope to gain wider recognition for their experimental evidence.


title: Cold fusion

text: The ability of palladium to absorb hydrogen was recognized as early as the nineteenth century by Thomas Graham. In the late 1920s, two Austrian-born scientists, Friedrich Paneth and Kurt Peters, originally reported the transformation of hydrogen into helium by nuclear catalysis when hydrogen was absorbed by finely divided palladium at room temperature. However, the authors later retracted that report, saying that the helium they measured was due to background from the air.


title: Cold fusion

text: In 1927, Swedish scientist John Tandberg reported that he had fused hydrogen into helium in an electrolytic cell with palladium electrodes. On the basis of his work, he applied for a Swedish patent for "a method to produce helium and useful reaction energy". Due to Paneth and Peters's retraction and his inability to explain the physical process, his patent application was denied. After deuterium was discovered in 1932, Tandberg continued his experiments with heavy water. The final experiments made by Tandberg with heavy water were similar to the original experiment by Fleischmann and Pons. Fleischmann and Pons were not aware of Tandberg's work.


title: Cold fusion

text: The term "cold fusion" was used as early as 1956 in an article in "The New York Times" about Luis Alvarez's work on muon-catalyzed fusion. Paul Palmer and then Steven Jones of Brigham Young University used the term "cold fusion" in 1986 in an investigation of "geo-fusion", the possible existence of fusion involving hydrogen isotopes in a planetary core. In his original paper on this subject with Clinton Van Siclen, submitted in 1985, Jones had coined the term "piezonuclear fusion".


title: Cold fusion

text: The most famous cold fusion claims were made by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann in 1989. After a brief period of interest by the wider scientific community, their reports were called into question by nuclear physicists. Pons and Fleischmann never retracted their claims, but moved their research program from the USA to France after the controversy erupted.


title: Cold fusion

text: Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah hypothesized that the high compression ratio and mobility of deuterium that could be achieved within palladium metal using electrolysis might result in nuclear fusion. To investigate, they conducted electrolysis experiments using a palladium cathode and heavy water within a calorimeter, an insulated vessel designed to measure process heat. Current was applied continuously for many weeks, with the heavy water being renewed at intervals. Some deuterium was thought to be accumulating within the cathode, but most was allowed to bubble out of the cell, joining oxygen produced at the anode. For most of the time, the power input to the cell was equal to the calculated power leaving the cell within measurement accuracy, and the cell temperature was stable at around 30 °C. But then, at some point (in some of the experiments), the temperature rose suddenly to about 50 °C without changes in the input power. These high temperature phases would last for two days or more and would repeat several times in any given experiment once they had occurred. The calculated power leaving the cell was significantly higher than the input power during these high temperature phases. Eventually the high temperature phases would no longer occur within a particular cell.


title: Cold fusion

text: In 1988, Fleischmann and Pons applied to the United States Department of Energy for funding towards a larger series of experiments. Up to this point they had been funding their experiments using a small device built with $100,000 out-of-pocket. The grant proposal was turned over for peer review, and one of the reviewers was Steven Jones of Brigham Young University. Jones had worked for some time on muon-catalyzed fusion, a known method of inducing nuclear fusion without high temperatures, and had written an article on the topic entitled "Cold nuclear fusion" that had been published in "Scientific American" in July 1987. Fleischmann and Pons and co-workers met with Jones and co-workers on occasion in Utah to share research and techniques. During this time, Fleischmann and Pons described their experiments as generating considerable "excess energy", in the sense that it could not be explained by chemical reactions alone. They felt that such a discovery could bear significant commercial value and would be entitled to patent protection. Jones, however, was measuring neutron flux, which was not of commercial interest. To avoid future problems, the teams appeared to agree to publish their results simultaneously, though their accounts of their 6 March meeting differ.


title: Cold fusion

text: In mid-March 1989, both research teams were ready to publish their findings, and Fleischmann and Jones had agreed to meet at an airport on 24 March to send their papers to "Nature" via FedEx. Fleischmann and Pons, however, pressured by the University of Utah, which wanted to establish priority on the discovery, broke their apparent agreement, disclosing their work at a press conference on 23 March (they claimed in the press release that it would be published in "Nature" but instead submitted their paper to the "Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry"). Jones, upset, faxed in his paper to "Nature" after the press conference.


title: Cold fusion

text: Fleischmann and Pons' announcement drew wide media attention. But the 1986 discovery of high-temperature superconductivity had made the scientific community more open to revelations of unexpected scientific results that could have huge economic repercussions and that could be replicated reliably even if they had not been predicted by established theories. Many scientists were also reminded of the Mössbauer effect, a process involving nuclear transitions in a solid. Its discovery 30 years earlier had also been unexpected, though it was quickly replicated and explained within the existing physics framework.


title: Cold fusion

text: The announcement of a new purported clean source of energy came at a crucial time: adults still remembered the 1973 oil crisis and the problems caused by oil dependence, anthropogenic global warming was starting to become notorious, the anti-nuclear movement was labeling nuclear power plants as dangerous and getting them closed, people had in mind the consequences of strip mining, acid rain, the greenhouse effect and the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which happened the day after the announcement. In the press conference, Chase N. Peterson, Fleischmann and Pons, backed by the solidity of their scientific credentials, repeatedly assured the journalists that cold fusion would solve environmental problems, and would provide a limitless inexhaustible source of clean energy, using only seawater as fuel. They said the results had been confirmed dozens of times and they had no doubts about them. In the accompanying press release Fleischmann was quoted saying: "What we have done is to open the door of a new research area, our indications are that the discovery will be relatively easy to make into a usable technology for generating heat and power, but continued work is needed, first, to further understand the science and secondly, to determine its value to energy economics."


title: Cold fusion

text: Although the experimental protocol had not been published, physicists in several countries attempted, and failed, to replicate the excess heat phenomenon. The first paper submitted to "Nature" reproducing excess heat, although it passed peer review, was rejected because most similar experiments were negative and there were no theories that could explain a positive result; this paper was later accepted for publication by the journal "Fusion Technology". Nathan Lewis, professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, led one of the most ambitious validation efforts, trying many variations on the experiment without success, while CERN physicist Douglas R. O. Morrison said that "essentially all" attempts in Western Europe had failed. Even those reporting success had difficulty reproducing Fleischmann and Pons' results. On 10 April 1989, a group at Texas A&M University published results of excess heat and later that day a group at the Georgia Institute of Technology announced neutron production—the strongest replication announced up to that point due to the detection of neutrons and the reputation of the lab. On 12 April Pons was acclaimed at an ACS meeting. But Georgia Tech retracted their announcement on 13 April, explaining that their neutron detectors gave false positives when exposed to heat. Another attempt at independent replication, headed by Robert Huggins at Stanford University, which also reported early success with a light water control, became the only scientific support for cold fusion in 26 April US Congress hearings. But when he finally presented his results he reported an excess heat of only one degree Celsius, a result that could be explained by chemical differences between heavy and light water in the presence of lithium. He had not tried to measure any radiation and his research was derided by scientists who saw it later. For the next six weeks, competing claims, counterclaims, and suggested explanations kept what was referred to as "cold fusion" or "fusion confusion" in the news.


title: Cold fusion

text: In April 1989, Fleischmann and Pons published a "preliminary note" in the "Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry". This paper notably showed a gamma peak without its corresponding Compton edge, which indicated they had made a mistake in claiming evidence of fusion byproducts. Fleischmann and Pons replied to this critique, but the only thing left clear was that no gamma ray had been registered and that Fleischmann refused to recognize any mistakes in the data. A much longer paper published a year later went into details of calorimetry but did not include any nuclear measurements.


title: Cold fusion

text: Nevertheless, Fleischmann and Pons and a number of other researchers who found positive results remained convinced of their findings. The University of Utah asked Congress to provide $25 million to pursue the research, and Pons was scheduled to meet with representatives of President Bush in early May.


title: Cold fusion

text: On 30 April 1989, cold fusion was declared dead by "The New York Times". The "Times" called it a circus the same day, and the "Boston Herald" attacked cold fusion the following day.


title: Cold fusion

text: On 1 May 1989, the American Physical Society held a session on cold fusion in Baltimore, including many reports of experiments that failed to produce evidence of cold fusion. At the end of the session, eight of the nine leading speakers stated that they considered the initial Fleischmann and Pons claim dead, with the ninth, Johann Rafelski, abstaining. Steven E. Koonin of Caltech called the Utah report a result of ""the incompetence and delusion of Pons and Fleischmann,"" which was met with a standing ovation. Douglas R. O. Morrison, a physicist representing CERN, was the first to call the episode an example of pathological science.


title: Cold fusion

text: On 4 May, due to all this new criticism, the meetings with various representatives from Washington were cancelled.


title: Cold fusion

text: In July and November 1989, "Nature" published papers critical of cold fusion claims. Negative results were also published in several other scientific journals including "Science", "Physical Review Letters", and "Physical Review C" (nuclear physics).


title: Cold fusion

text: In August 1989, in spite of this trend, the state of Utah invested $4.5 million to create the National Cold Fusion Institute.


title: Cold fusion

text: The United States Department of Energy organized a special panel to review cold fusion theory and research. The panel issued its report in November 1989, concluding that results as of that date did not present convincing evidence that useful sources of energy would result from the phenomena attributed to cold fusion. The panel noted the large number of failures to replicate excess heat and the greater inconsistency of reports of nuclear reaction byproducts expected by established conjecture. Nuclear fusion of the type postulated would be inconsistent with current understanding and, if verified, would require established conjecture, perhaps even theory itself, to be extended in an unexpected way. The panel was against special funding for cold fusion research, but supported modest funding of "focused experiments within the general funding system". Cold fusion supporters continued to argue that the evidence for excess heat was strong, and in September 1990 the National Cold Fusion Institute listed 92 groups of researchers from 10 countries that had reported corroborating evidence of excess heat, but they refused to provide any evidence of their own arguing that it could endanger their patents. However, no further DOE nor NSF funding resulted from the panel's recommendation. By this point, however, academic consensus had moved decidedly toward labeling cold fusion as a kind of "pathological science".


title: Cold fusion

text: In March 1990, Michael H. Salamon, a physicist from the University of Utah, and nine co-authors reported negative results. University faculty were then "stunned" when a lawyer representing Pons and Fleischmann demanded the Salamon paper be retracted under threat of a lawsuit. The lawyer later apologized; Fleischmann defended the threat as a legitimate reaction to alleged bias displayed by cold-fusion critics.


title: Cold fusion

text: In early May 1990, one of the two A&M researchers, Kevin Wolf, acknowledged the possibility of spiking, but said that the most likely explanation was tritium contamination in the palladium electrodes or simply contamination due to sloppy work. In June 1990 an article in "Science" by science writer Gary Taubes destroyed the public credibility of the A&M tritium results when it accused its group leader John Bockris and one of his graduate students of spiking the cells with tritium. In October 1990 Wolf finally said that the results were explained by tritium contamination in the rods. An A&M cold fusion review panel found that the tritium evidence was not convincing and that, while they couldn't rule out spiking, contamination and measurements problems were more likely explanations, and Bockris never got support from his faculty to resume his research.


title: Cold fusion

text: On 30 June 1991, the National Cold Fusion Institute closed after it ran out of funds; it found no excess heat, and its reports of tritium production were met with indifference.


title: Cold fusion

text: On 1 January 1991, Pons left the University of Utah and went to Europe. In 1992, Pons and Fleischmann resumed research with Toyota Motor Corporation's IMRA lab in France. Fleischmann left for England in 1995, and the contract with Pons was not renewed in 1998 after spending $40 million with no tangible results. The IMRA laboratory stopped cold fusion research in 1998 after spending £12 million. Pons has made no public declarations since, and only Fleischmann continued giving talks and publishing papers.


title: Cold fusion

text: Mostly in the 1990s, several books were published that were critical of cold fusion research methods and the conduct of cold fusion researchers. Over the years, several books have appeared that defended them. Around 1998, the University of Utah had already dropped its research after spending over $1 million, and in the summer of 1997, Japan cut off research and closed its own lab after spending $20 million.


title: Cold fusion

text: A 1991 review by a cold fusion proponent had calculated "about 600 scientists" were still conducting research. After 1991, cold fusion research only continued in relative obscurity, conducted by groups that had increasing difficulty securing public funding and keeping programs open. These small but committed groups of cold fusion researchers have continued to conduct experiments using Fleischmann and Pons electrolysis setups in spite of the rejection by the mainstream community. "The Boston Globe" estimated in 2004 that there were only 100 to 200 researchers working in the field, most suffering damage to their reputation and career. Since the main controversy over Pons and Fleischmann had ended, cold fusion research has been funded by private and small governmental scientific investment funds in the United States, Italy, Japan, and India. For example, it was reported in "Nature", in May, 2019, that Google had spent approximately $10 million on cold fusion research. A group of scientists at well-known research labs (e.g, MIT, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and others) worked for several years to establish experimental protocols and measurement techniques in an effort to re-evaluate cold fusion to a high standard of scientific rigor. Their reported conclusion: no cold fusion.


title: Cold fusion

text: In 2021, following "Nature's" 2019 publication of anomalous findings that might only be explained by some localized fusion, scientists at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Indian Head Division announced that they had assembled a group of scientists from the Navy, Army and National Institute of Standards and Technology to undertake a new, coordinated study. With few exceptions, researchers have had difficulty publishing in mainstream journals. The remaining researchers often term their field Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR), Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reactions (CANR), Lattice Assisted Nuclear Reactions (LANR), Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (CMNS) or Lattice Enabled Nuclear Reactions; one of the reasons being to avoid the negative connotations associated with "cold fusion". The new names avoid making bold implications, like implying that fusion is actually occurring.


title: Cold fusion

text: The researchers who continue their investigations acknowledge that the flaws in the original announcement are the main cause of the subject's marginalization, and they complain of a chronic lack of funding and no possibilities of getting their work published in the highest impact journals. University researchers are often unwilling to investigate cold fusion because they would be ridiculed by their colleagues and their professional careers would be at risk. In 1994, David Goodstein, a professor of physics at Caltech, advocated increased attention from mainstream researchers and described cold fusion as:


title: Cold fusion

text: United States Navy researchers at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego have been studying cold fusion since 1989. In 2002 they released a two-volume report, "Thermal and nuclear aspects of the Pd/DO system," with a plea for funding. This and other published papers prompted a 2004 Department of Energy (DOE) review.


title: Cold fusion

text: In August 2003, the U.S. Secretary of Energy, Spencer Abraham, ordered the DOE to organize a second review of the field. This was thanks to an April 2003 letter sent by MIT's Peter L. Hagelstein, and the publication of many new papers, including the Italian ENEA and other researchers in the 2003 International Cold Fusion Conference, and a two-volume book by U.S. SPAWAR in 2002. Cold fusion researchers were asked to present a review document of all the evidence since the 1989 review. The report was released in 2004. The reviewers were "split approximately evenly" on whether the experiments had produced energy in the form of heat, but "most reviewers, even those who accepted the evidence for excess power production, 'stated that the effects are not repeatable, the magnitude of the effect has not increased in over a decade of work, and that many of the reported experiments were not well documented.'" In summary, reviewers found that cold fusion evidence was still not convincing 15 years later, and they didn't recommend a federal research program. They only recommended that agencies consider funding individual well-thought studies in specific areas where research "could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field". They summarized its conclusions thus:


title: Cold fusion

text: Cold fusion researchers placed a "rosier spin" on the report, noting that they were finally being treated like normal scientists, and that the report had increased interest in the field and caused "a huge upswing in interest in funding cold fusion research." However, in a 2009 BBC article on an American Chemical Society's meeting on cold fusion, particle physicist Frank Close was quoted stating that the problems that plagued the original cold fusion announcement were still happening: results from studies are still not being independently verified and inexplicable phenomena encountered are being labelled as "cold fusion" even if they are not, in order to attract the attention of journalists.


title: Cold fusion

text: In February 2012, millionaire Sidney Kimmel, convinced that cold fusion was worth investing in by a 19 April 2009 interview with physicist Robert Duncan on the US news show "60 Minutes", made a grant of $5.5 million to the University of Missouri to establish the Sidney Kimmel Institute for Nuclear Renaissance (SKINR). The grant was intended to support research into the interactions of hydrogen with palladium, nickel or platinum under extreme conditions. In March 2013 Graham K. Hubler, a nuclear physicist who worked for the Naval Research Laboratory for 40 years, was named director. One of the SKINR projects is to replicate a 1991 experiment in which a professor associated with the project, Mark Prelas, says bursts of millions of neutrons a second were recorded, which was stopped because "his research account had been frozen". He claims that the new experiment has already seen "neutron emissions at similar levels to the 1991 observation".


title: Cold fusion

text: In May 2016, the United States House Committee on Armed Services, in its report on the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, directed the Secretary of Defense to "provide a briefing on the military utility of recent U.S. industrial base LENR advancements to the House Committee on Armed Services by September 22, 2016."


title: Cold fusion

text: Since the Fleischmann and Pons announcement, the Italian national agency for new technologies, energy and sustainable economic development (ENEA) has funded Franco Scaramuzzi's research into whether excess heat can be measured from metals loaded with deuterium gas. Such research is distributed across ENEA departments, CNR laboratories, INFN, universities and industrial laboratories in Italy, where the group continues to try to achieve reliable reproducibility (i.e. getting the phenomenon to happen in every cell, and inside a certain frame of time). In 2006–2007, the ENEA started a research program which claimed to have found excess power of up to 500 percent, and in 2009, ENEA hosted the 15th cold fusion conference.


title: Cold fusion

text: Between 1992 and 1997, Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry sponsored a "New Hydrogen Energy (NHE)" program of US$20 million to research cold fusion. Announcing the end of the program in 1997, the director and one-time proponent of cold fusion research Hideo Ikegami stated "We couldn't achieve what was first claimed in terms of cold fusion. (...) We can't find any reason to propose more money for the coming year or for the future." In 1999 the Japan C-F Research Society was established to promote the independent research into cold fusion that continued in Japan. The society holds annual meetings. Perhaps the most famous Japanese cold fusion researcher was Yoshiaki Arata, from Osaka University, who claimed in a demonstration to produce excess heat when deuterium gas was introduced into a cell containing a mixture of palladium and zirconium oxide, a claim supported by fellow Japanese researcher Akira Kitamura of Kobe University and Michael McKubre at SRI.


title: Cold fusion

text: In the 1990s, India stopped its research in cold fusion at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre because of the lack of consensus among mainstream scientists and the US denunciation of the research. Yet, in 2008, the National Institute of Advanced Studies recommended that the Indian government revive this research. Projects were commenced at Chennai's Indian Institute of Technology, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research. However, there is still skepticism among scientists and, for all practical purposes, research has stalled since the 1990s. A special section in the Indian multidisciplinary journal "Current Science" published 33 cold fusion papers in 2015 by major cold fusion researchers including several Indian researchers.


title: Cold fusion

text: Electrolysis cells can be either open cell or closed cell. In open cell systems, the electrolysis products, which are gaseous, are allowed to leave the cell. In closed cell experiments, the products are captured, for example by catalytically recombining the products in a separate part of the experimental system. These experiments generally strive for a steady state condition, with the electrolyte being replaced periodically. There are also "heat-after-death" experiments, where the evolution of heat is monitored after the electric current is turned off.


title: Cold fusion

text: The most basic setup of a cold fusion cell consists of two electrodes submerged in a solution containing palladium and heavy water. The electrodes are then connected to a power source to transmit electricity from one electrode to the other through the solution. Even when anomalous heat is reported, it can take weeks for it to begin to appear—this is known as the "loading time," the time required to saturate the palladium electrode with hydrogen (see "Loading ratio" section).


title: Cold fusion

text: The Fleischmann and Pons early findings regarding helium, neutron radiation and tritium were never replicated satisfactorily, and its levels were too low for the claimed heat production and inconsistent with each other. Neutron radiation has been reported in cold fusion experiments at very low levels using different kinds of detectors, but levels were too low, close to background, and found too infrequently to provide useful information about possible nuclear processes.


title: Cold fusion

text: An excess heat observation is based on an energy balance. Various sources of energy input and output are continuously measured. Under normal conditions, the energy input can be matched to the energy output to within experimental error. In experiments such as those run by Fleischmann and Pons, an electrolysis cell operating steadily at one temperature transitions to operating at a higher temperature with no increase in applied current. If the higher temperatures were real, and not an experimental artifact, the energy balance would show an unaccounted term. In the Fleischmann and Pons experiments, the rate of inferred excess heat generation was in the range of 10–20% of total input, though this could not be reliably replicated by most researchers. Researcher Nathan Lewis discovered that the excess heat in Fleischmann and Pons's original paper was not measured, but estimated from measurements that didn't have any excess heat.


title: Cold fusion

text: Unable to produce excess heat or neutrons, and with positive experiments being plagued by errors and giving disparate results, most researchers declared that heat production was not a real effect and ceased working on the experiments. In 1993, after their original report, Fleischmann reported "heat-after-death" experiments—where excess heat was measured after the electric current supplied to the electrolytic cell was turned off. This type of report has also become part of subsequent cold fusion claims.


title: Cold fusion

text: Known instances of nuclear reactions, aside from producing energy, also produce nucleons and particles on readily observable ballistic trajectories. In support of their claim that nuclear reactions took place in their electrolytic cells, Fleischmann and Pons reported a neutron flux of 4,000 neutrons per second, as well as detection of tritium. The classical branching ratio for previously known fusion reactions that produce tritium would predict, with 1 watt of power, the production of 10 neutrons per second, levels that would have been fatal to the researchers. In 2009, Mosier-Boss et al. reported what they called the first scientific report of highly energetic neutrons, using CR-39 plastic radiation detectors, but the claims cannot be validated without a quantitative analysis of neutrons.


title: Cold fusion

text: Several medium and heavy elements like calcium, titanium, chromium, manganese, iron, cobalt, copper and zinc have been reported as detected by several researchers, like Tadahiko Mizuno or George Miley. The report presented to the United States Department of Energy (DOE) in 2004 indicated that deuterium-loaded foils could be used to detect fusion reaction products and, although the reviewers found the evidence presented to them as inconclusive, they indicated that those experiments did not use state-of-the-art techniques.


title: Cold fusion

text: In response to doubts about the lack of nuclear products, cold fusion researchers have tried to capture and measure nuclear products correlated with excess heat. Considerable attention has been given to measuring He production. However, the reported levels are very near to background, so contamination by trace amounts of helium normally present in the air cannot be ruled out. In the report presented to the DOE in 2004, the reviewers' opinion was divided on the evidence for He, with the most negative reviews concluding that although the amounts detected were above background levels, they were very close to them and therefore could be caused by contamination from air.


title: Cold fusion

text: One of the main criticisms of cold fusion was that deuteron-deuteron fusion into helium was expected to result in the production of gamma rays—which were not observed and were not observed in subsequent cold fusion experiments. Cold fusion researchers have since claimed to find X-rays, helium, neutrons and nuclear transmutations. Some researchers also claim to have found them using only light water and nickel cathodes. The 2004 DOE panel expressed concerns about the poor quality of the theoretical framework cold fusion proponents presented to account for the lack of gamma rays.


title: Cold fusion

text: Researchers in the field do not agree on a theory for cold fusion. One proposal considers that hydrogen and its isotopes can be absorbed in certain solids, including palladium hydride, at high densities. This creates a high partial pressure, reducing the average separation of hydrogen isotopes. However, the reduction in separation is not enough to create the fusion rates claimed in the original experiment, by a factor of ten. It was also proposed that a higher density of hydrogen inside the palladium and a lower potential barrier could raise the possibility of fusion at lower temperatures than expected from a simple application of Coulomb's law. Electron screening of the positive hydrogen nuclei by the negative electrons in the palladium lattice was suggested to the 2004 DOE commission, but the panel found the theoretical explanations not convincing and inconsistent with current physics theories.


title: Cold fusion

text: Criticism of cold fusion claims generally take one of two forms: either pointing out the theoretical implausibility that fusion reactions have occurred in electrolysis setups or criticizing the excess heat measurements as being spurious, erroneous, or due to poor methodology or controls. There are a couple of reasons why known fusion reactions are an unlikely explanation for the excess heat and associated cold fusion claims.


title: Cold fusion

text: Because nuclei are all positively charged, they strongly repel one another. Normally, in the absence of a catalyst such as a muon, very high kinetic energies are required to overcome this charged repulsion. Extrapolating from known fusion rates, the rate for uncatalyzed fusion at room-temperature energy would be 50 orders of magnitude lower than needed to account for the reported excess heat. In muon-catalyzed fusion there are more fusions because the presence of the muon causes deuterium nuclei to be 207 times closer than in ordinary deuterium gas. But deuterium nuclei inside a palladium lattice are further apart than in deuterium gas, and there should be fewer fusion reactions, not more.


title: Cold fusion

text: Paneth and Peters in the 1920s already knew that palladium can absorb up to 900 times its own volume of hydrogen gas, storing it at several thousands of times the atmospheric pressure. This led them to believe that they could increase the nuclear fusion rate by simply loading palladium rods with hydrogen gas. Tandberg then tried the same experiment but used electrolysis to make palladium absorb more deuterium and force the deuterium further together inside the rods, thus anticipating the main elements of Fleischmann and Pons' experiment. They all hoped that pairs of hydrogen nuclei would fuse together to form helium, which at the time was needed in Germany to fill zeppelins, but no evidence of helium or of increased fusion rate was ever found.


title: Cold fusion

text: This was also the belief of geologist Palmer, who convinced Steven Jones that the helium-3 occurring naturally in Earth perhaps came from fusion involving hydrogen isotopes inside catalysts like nickel and palladium. This led their team in 1986 to independently make the same experimental setup as Fleischmann and Pons (a palladium cathode submerged in heavy water, absorbing deuterium via electrolysis). Fleischmann and Pons had much the same belief, but they calculated the pressure to be of 10 atmospheres, when cold fusion experiments achieve a loading ratio of only one to one, which has only between 10,000 and 20,000 atmospheres. John R. Huizenga says they had misinterpreted the Nernst equation, leading them to believe that there was enough pressure to bring deuterons so close to each other that there would be spontaneous fusions.


title: Cold fusion

text: Conventional deuteron fusion is a two-step process, in which an unstable high-energy intermediary is formed:


title: Cold fusion

text: Experiments have observed only three decay pathways for this excited-state nucleus, with the branching ratio showing the probability that any given intermediate follows a particular pathway. The products formed via these decay pathways are:


title: Cold fusion

text: Only about one in one million of the intermediaries decay along the third pathway, making its products comparatively rare when compared to the other paths. This result is consistent with the predictions of the Bohr model. If one watt (6.242 × 10 MeV/s) of nuclear power were produced from ~2.2575 × 10 deuteron fusion individual reactions each second consistent with known branching ratios, the resulting neutron and tritium (H) production would be easily measured. Some researchers reported detecting He but without the expected neutron or tritium production; such a result would require branching ratios strongly favouring the third pathway, with the actual rates of the first two pathways lower by at least five orders of magnitude than observations from other experiments, directly contradicting both theoretically predicted and observed branching probabilities. Those reports of He production did not include detection of gamma rays, which would require the third pathway to have been changed somehow so that gamma rays are no longer emitted.


title: Cold fusion

text: The known rate of the decay process together with the inter-atomic spacing in a metallic crystal makes heat transfer of the 24 MeV excess energy into the host metal lattice prior to the intermediary's decay inexplicable in terms of conventional understandings of momentum and energy transfer, and even then there would be measurable levels of radiation. Also, experiments indicate that the ratios of deuterium fusion remain constant at different energies. In general, pressure and chemical environment cause only small changes to fusion ratios. An early explanation invoked the Oppenheimer–Phillips process at low energies, but its magnitude was too small to explain the altered ratios.


title: Cold fusion

text: Cold fusion setups utilize an input power source (to ostensibly provide activation energy), a platinum group electrode, a deuterium or hydrogen source, a calorimeter, and, at times, detectors to look for byproducts such as helium or neutrons. Critics have variously taken issue with each of these aspects and have asserted that there has not yet been a consistent reproduction of claimed cold fusion results in either energy output or byproducts. Some cold fusion researchers who claim that they can consistently measure an excess heat effect have argued that the apparent lack of reproducibility might be attributable to a lack of quality control in the electrode metal or the amount of hydrogen or deuterium loaded in the system. Critics have further taken issue with what they describe as mistakes or errors of interpretation that cold fusion researchers have made in calorimetry analyses and energy budgets.


title: Cold fusion

text: In 1989, after Fleischmann and Pons had made their claims, many research groups tried to reproduce the Fleischmann-Pons experiment, without success. A few other research groups, however, reported successful reproductions of cold fusion during this time. In July 1989, an Indian group from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (P. K. Iyengar and M. Srinivasan) and in October 1989, John Bockris' group from Texas A&M University reported on the creation of tritium. In December 1990, professor Richard Oriani of the University of Minnesota reported excess heat.


title: Cold fusion

text: Groups that did report successes found that some of their cells were producing the effect, while other cells that were built exactly the same and used the same materials were not producing the effect. Researchers that continued to work on the topic have claimed that over the years many successful replications have been made, but still have problems getting reliable replications. Reproducibility is one of the main principles of the scientific method, and its lack led most physicists to believe that the few positive reports could be attributed to experimental error. The DOE 2004 report said among its conclusions and recommendations:


title: Cold fusion

text: Cold fusion researchers (McKubre since 1994, ENEA in 2011) have speculated that a cell that is loaded with a deuterium/palladium ratio lower than 100% (or 1:1) will not produce excess heat. Since most of the negative replications from 1989 to 1990 did not report their ratios, this has been proposed as an explanation for failed reproducibility. This loading ratio is hard to obtain, and some batches of palladium never reach it because the pressure causes cracks in the palladium, allowing the deuterium to escape. Fleischmann and Pons never disclosed the deuterium/palladium ratio achieved in their cells; there are no longer any batches of the palladium used by Fleischmann and Pons (because the supplier now uses a different manufacturing process), and researchers still have problems finding batches of palladium that achieve heat production reliably.


title: Cold fusion

text: Some research groups initially reported that they had replicated the Fleischmann and Pons results but later retracted their reports and offered an alternative explanation for their original positive results. A group at Georgia Tech found problems with their neutron detector, and Texas A&M discovered bad wiring in their thermometers. These retractions, combined with negative results from some famous laboratories, led most scientists to conclude, as early as 1989, that no positive result should be attributed to cold fusion.


title: Cold fusion

text: The calculation of excess heat in electrochemical cells involves certain assumptions. Errors in these assumptions have been offered as non-nuclear explanations for excess heat.


title: Cold fusion

text: One assumption made by Fleischmann and Pons is that the efficiency of electrolysis is nearly 100%, meaning nearly all the electricity applied to the cell resulted in electrolysis of water, with negligible resistive heating and substantially all the electrolysis product leaving the cell unchanged. This assumption gives the amount of energy expended converting liquid DO into gaseous D and O. The efficiency of electrolysis is less than one if hydrogen and oxygen recombine to a significant extent within the calorimeter. Several researchers have described potential mechanisms by which this process could occur and thereby account for excess heat in electrolysis experiments.


title: Cold fusion

text: Another assumption is that heat loss from the calorimeter maintains the same relationship with measured temperature as found when calibrating the calorimeter. This assumption ceases to be accurate if the temperature distribution within the cell becomes significantly altered from the condition under which calibration measurements were made. This can happen, for example, if fluid circulation within the cell becomes significantly altered. Recombination of hydrogen and oxygen within the calorimeter would also alter the heat distribution and invalidate the calibration.


title: Cold fusion

text: The ISI identified cold fusion as the scientific topic with the largest number of published papers in 1989, of all scientific disciplines. The Nobel Laureate Julian Schwinger declared himself a supporter of cold fusion in the fall of 1989, after much of the response to the initial reports had turned negative. He tried to publish his theoretical paper "Cold Fusion: A Hypothesis" in "Physical Review Letters", but the peer reviewers rejected it so harshly that he felt deeply insulted, and he resigned from the American Physical Society (publisher of "PRL") in protest.


title: Cold fusion

text: The number of papers sharply declined after 1990 because of two simultaneous phenomena: first, scientists abandoned the field; second, journal editors declined to review new papers. Consequently, cold fusion fell off the ISI charts. Researchers who got negative results turned their backs on the field; those who continued to publish were simply ignored. A 1993 paper in "Physics Letters A" was the last paper published by Fleischmann, and "one of the last reports [by Fleischmann] to be formally challenged on technical grounds by a cold fusion skeptic."


title: Cold fusion

text: The "Journal of Fusion Technology" (FT) established a permanent feature in 1990 for cold fusion papers, publishing over a dozen papers per year and giving a mainstream outlet for cold fusion researchers. When editor-in-chief George H. Miley retired in 2001, the journal stopped accepting new cold fusion papers. This has been cited as an example of the importance of sympathetic influential individuals to the publication of cold fusion papers in certain journals.


title: Cold fusion

text: The decline of publications in cold fusion has been described as a "failed information epidemic". The sudden surge of supporters until roughly 50% of scientists support the theory, followed by a decline until there is only a very small number of supporters, has been described as a characteristic of pathological science. The lack of a shared set of unifying concepts and techniques has prevented the creation of a dense network of collaboration in the field; researchers perform efforts in their own and in disparate directions, making the transition to "normal" science more difficult.


title: Cold fusion

text: Cold fusion reports continued to be published in a few journals like "Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry" and "Il Nuovo Cimento". Some papers also appeared in "Journal of Physical Chemistry", "Physics Letters A", "International Journal of Hydrogen Energy", and a number of Japanese and Russian journals of physics, chemistry, and engineering. Since 2005, "Naturwissenschaften" has published cold fusion papers; in 2009, the journal named a cold fusion researcher to its editorial board. In 2015 the Indian multidisciplinary journal "Current Science" published a special section devoted entirely to cold fusion related papers.


title: Cold fusion

text: In the 1990s, the groups that continued to research cold fusion and their supporters established (non-peer-reviewed) periodicals such as "Fusion Facts", "Cold Fusion Magazine", "Infinite Energy Magazine" and "New Energy Times" to cover developments in cold fusion and other fringe claims in energy production that were ignored in other venues. The internet has also become a major means of communication and self-publication for CF researchers.


title: Cold fusion

text: Cold fusion researchers were for many years unable to get papers accepted at scientific meetings, prompting the creation of their own conferences. The International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF) was first held in 1990 and has met every 12 to 18 months since. Attendees at some of the early conferences were described as offering no criticism to papers and presentations for fear of giving ammunition to external critics, thus allowing the proliferation of crackpots and hampering the conduct of serious science. Critics and skeptics stopped attending these conferences, with the notable exception of Douglas Morrison, who died in 2001. With the founding in 2004 of the International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (ISCMNS), the conference was renamed the International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science—for reasons that are detailed in the subsequent research section above—but reverted to the old name in 2008. Cold fusion research is often referenced by proponents as "low-energy nuclear reactions", or LENR, but according to sociologist Bart Simon the "cold fusion" label continues to serve a social function in creating a collective identity for the field.


title: Cold fusion

text: Since 2006, the American Physical Society (APS) has included cold fusion sessions at their semiannual meetings, clarifying that this does not imply a softening of skepticism. Since 2007, the American Chemical Society (ACS) meetings also include "invited symposium(s)" on cold fusion. An ACS program chair, Gopal Coimbatore, said that without a proper forum the matter would never be discussed and, "with the world facing an energy crisis, it is worth exploring all possibilities."