title: Theory of mind

text: Theory of mind impairment, or "mind-blindness", describes a difficulty someone would have with perspective-taking. Individuals with theory of mind impairment have a difficult time seeing phenomena from any other perspective than their own. Individuals who experience a theory of mind deficit have difficulty determining the intentions of others, lack understanding of how their behavior affects others, and have a difficult time with social reciprocity. Theory of mind deficits have been observed in people with autism spectrum disorders, people with schizophrenia, people with nonverbal learning disorder, people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, people under the influence of alcohol and narcotics, sleep-deprived people, and people who are experiencing severe emotional or physical pain. Theory of mind deficits have also been observed in deaf children who are late signers (i.e. are born to hearing parents), but such a deficit is due to the delay in language learning, not any cognitive deficit, and therefore disappears once the child learns sign language.


title: Theory of mind

text: In 1985 Simon Baron-Cohen, Alan M. Leslie, and Uta Frith suggested that children with autism do not employ theory of mind and that autistic children have particular difficulties with tasks requiring the child to understand another person's beliefs. These difficulties persist when children are matched for verbal skills and they have been taken as a key feature of autism. Although in a 2019 review, Gernsbacher and Yergeau argued that "the claim that autistic people lack a theory of mind is empirically questionable", as there have been numerous failed replications of classic ToM studies and the meta-analytical effect sizes of such replications were minimal to small.


title: Theory of mind

text: Many individuals classified as autistic have severe difficulty assigning mental states to others, and some seem to lack theory of mind capabilities. Researchers who study the relationship between autism and theory of mind attempt to explain the connection in a variety of ways. One account assumes that theory of mind plays a role in the attribution of mental states to others and in childhood pretend play. According to Leslie, theory of mind is the capacity to mentally represent thoughts, beliefs, and desires, regardless of whether or not the circumstances involved are real. This might explain why some autistic individuals show extreme deficits in both theory of mind and pretend play. However, Hobson proposes a social-affective justification, in which deficits in theory of mind in autistic people result from a distortion in understanding and responding to emotions. He suggests that typically developing individuals, unlike autistic individuals, are born with a set of skills (such as social referencing ability) that later lets them comprehend and react to other people's feelings. Other scholars emphasize that autism involves a specific developmental delay, so that autistic children vary in their deficiencies, because they experience difficulty in different stages of growth. Very early setbacks can alter proper advancement of joint-attention behaviors, which may lead to a failure to form a full theory of mind.


title: Theory of mind

text: It has been speculated that theory of mind exists on a continuum as opposed to the traditional view of a discrete presence or absence. While some research has suggested that some autistic populations are unable to attribute mental states to others, recent evidence points to the possibility of coping mechanisms that facilitate .


title: Theory of mind

text: A binary view regarding theory of mind contributes to the stigmatization of autistic adults that do possess perspective-taking capacity, as the assumption that autistic people do not have empathy can become a rationale for dehumanization.


title: Theory of mind

text: Tine et al. report that autistic children score substantially lower on measures of in comparison to children diagnosed with Asperger syndrome.


title: Theory of mind

text: Generally, children with more advanced theory of mind abilities display more advanced social skills, greater adaptability to new situations, and greater cooperation with others. As a result, these children are typically well-liked. However, "children may use their mind-reading abilities to manipulate, outwit, tease, or trick their peers." Individuals possessing inferior theory of mind skills, such as children with autism spectrum disorder, may be socially rejected by their peers since they are unable to communicate effectively. Social rejection has been proven to negatively impact a child's development and can put the child at greater risk of developing depressive symptoms.


title: Theory of mind

text: Peer-mediated interventions (PMI) are a school-based treatment approach for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder in which peers are trained to be role models in order to promote social behavior. Laghi et al. studied whether analysis of prosocial (nice) and antisocial (nasty) theory-of-mind behaviors could be used, in addition to teacher recommendations, to select appropriate candidates for PMI programs. Selecting children with advanced theory-of-mind skills who use them in prosocial ways will theoretically make the program more effective. While the results indicated that analyzing the social uses of theory of mind of possible candidates for a PMI program is , it may not be a good predictor of a candidate's performance as a role model.


title: Theory of mind

text: A 2014 Cochrane review on interventions based on theory of mind found that such a theory could be taught to individuals with autism but claimed little evidence of skill maintenance, generalization to other settings, or development effects on related skills.


title: Theory of mind

text: Some 21st century studies have shown that the results of some studies of theory of mind tests on autistic people may be misinterpreted based on the double empathy problem, which proposes that rather than autistic people specifically having trouble with theory of mind, autistic people and non-autistic people have equal difficulty understanding one-another due to their neurological differences. Studies have shown that autistic adults perform better in theory of mind tests when paired with other autistic adults as well as possibly autistic close family members. Academics who acknowledge the double empathy problem also propose that it is likely autistic people understand non-autistic people to a higher degree than vise-versa, due to the necessity of functioning in a non-autistic society.


title: Theory of mind

text: Individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia can show deficits in theory of mind. Mirjam Sprong and colleagues investigated the impairment by examining 29 different studies, with a total of over 1500 participants. This meta-analysis showed significant and stable deficit of theory of mind in people with schizophrenia. They performed poorly on false-belief tasks, which test the ability to understand that others can hold false beliefs about events in the world, and also on intention-inference tasks, which assess the ability to infer a character's intention from reading a short story. Schizophrenia patients with negative symptoms, such as lack of emotion, motivation, or speech, have the most impairment in theory of mind and are unable to represent the mental states of themselves and of others. Paranoid schizophrenic patients also perform poorly because they have difficulty accurately interpreting others' intentions. The meta-analysis additionally showed that IQ, gender, and age of the participants do not significantly affect the performance of theory of mind tasks.


title: Theory of mind

text: Research suggests that impairment in theory of mind negatively affects clinical insight—the patient's awareness of their mental illness. Insight requires theory of mind; a patient must be able to adopt a third-person perspective and see the self as others do. A patient with good insight can accurately self-represent, by comparing himself with others and by viewing himself from the perspective of others. Insight allows a patient to recognize and react appropriately to his symptoms. A patient who lacks insight does not realize that he has a mental illness, because of his inability to accurately self-represent. Therapies that teach patients perspective-taking and self-reflection skills can improve abilities in reading social cues and taking the perspective of another person.


title: Theory of mind

text: Research indicates that theory-of-mind deficit is a stable trait-characteristic rather than a state-characteristic of schizophrenia. The meta-analysis conducted by Sprong et al. showed that patients in remission still had impairment in theory of mind. This indicates that the deficit is not merely a consequence of the active phase of schizophrenia.


title: Theory of mind

text: Schizophrenic patients' deficit in theory of mind impairs their interactions with others. Theory of mind is particularly important for parents, who must understand the thoughts and behaviors of their children and react accordingly. Dysfunctional parenting is associated with deficits in the first-order theory of mind, the ability to understand another person's thoughts, and in the second-order theory of mind, the ability to infer what one person thinks about another person's thoughts. Compared with healthy mothers, mothers with schizophrenia are found to be more remote, quiet, self-absorbed, insensitive, unresponsive, and to have fewer satisfying interactions with their children. They also tend to misinterpret their children's emotional cues, and often misunderstand neutral faces as negative. Activities such as role-playing and individual or group-based sessions are effective interventions that help the parents improve on perspective-taking and theory of mind. There is a strong association between theory of mind deficit and parental role dysfunction.


title: Theory of mind

text: Impairments in theory of mind, as well as other social-cognitive deficits, are commonly found in people who have alcohol use disorders, due to the neurotoxic effects of alcohol on the brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex.


title: Theory of mind

text: Individuals in a major depressive episode, a disorder characterized by social impairment, show deficits in theory of mind decoding. Theory of mind decoding is the ability to use information available in the immediate environment (e.g., facial expression, tone of voice, body posture) to accurately label the mental states of others. The opposite pattern, enhanced theory of mind, is observed in individuals vulnerable to depression, including those individuals with past major depressive disorder (MDD), dysphoric individuals, and individuals with a maternal history of MDD.


title: Theory of mind

text: Children diagnosed with developmental language disorder (DLD) exhibit much lower scores on reading and writing sections of standardized tests, yet have a normal nonverbal IQ. These language deficits can be any specific deficits in lexical semantics, syntax, or pragmatics, or a combination of multiple problems. Such children often exhibit poorer social skills than normally developing children, and seem to have problems decoding beliefs in others. A recent meta-analysis confirmed that children with DLD have substantially lower scores on theory of mind tasks compared to typically developing children. This strengthens the claim that language development is related to theory of mind.


title: Theory of mind

text: Research on theory of mind in autism led to the view that mentalizing abilities are subserved by dedicated mechanisms that can—in some cases—be impaired while general cognitive function remains largely intact.


title: Theory of mind

text: Neuroimaging research supports this view, demonstrating specific brain regions are consistently engaged during theory of mind tasks. PET research on theory of mind, using verbal and pictorial story comprehension tasks, identifies a set of brain regions including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and area around posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), and sometimes precuneus and amygdala/temporopolar cortex. Research on the neural basis of theory of mind has diversified, with separate lines of research focusing on the understanding of beliefs, intentions, and more complex properties of minds such as psychological traits.


title: Theory of mind

text: Studies from Rebecca Saxe's lab at MIT, using a false-belief versus false-photograph task contrast aimed at isolating the mentalizing component of the false-belief task, have consistently found activation in mPFC, precuneus, and temporoparietal junction (TPJ), right-lateralized. In particular, it has been proposed that the right TPJ (rTPJ) is selectively involved in representing the beliefs of others. Some debate exists, as the same rTPJ region is consistently activated during spatial reorienting of visual attention; Jean Decety from the University of Chicago and Jason Mitchell from Harvard thus propose that the rTPJ subserves a more general function involved in both false-belief understanding and attentional reorienting, rather than a mechanism specialized for social cognition. However, it is possible that the observation of overlapping regions for representing beliefs and attentional reorienting may simply be due to adjacent, but distinct, neuronal populations that code for each. The resolution of typical fMRI studies may not be good enough to show that distinct/adjacent neuronal populations code for each of these processes. In a study following Decety and Mitchell, Saxe and colleagues used higher-resolution fMRI and showed that the peak of activation for attentional reorienting is approximately 6–10mm above the peak for representing beliefs. Further corroborating that differing populations of neurons may code for each process, they found no similarity in the patterning of fMRI response across space.


title: Theory of mind

text: Using single-cell recordings in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), researchers at MGH identified neurons that encode information about others' beliefs, which were distinct from self beliefs, across different scenarios in a False-belief task. They further showed high specificity between cells based on the content of the others' beliefs and were able to accurately predict whether these beliefs were true or false. These findings suggest a prominent role of distinct neuronal populations in the dmPFC in theory of Mmind complemented by the TPJ and pSTS.


title: Theory of mind

text: Functional imaging also illuminates the detection of mental state information in Heider-Simmel-esque animations of moving geometric shapes, which typical humans automatically perceive as social interactions laden with intention and emotion. Three studies found remarkably similar patterns of activation during the perception of such animations versus a random or deterministic motion control: mPFC, pSTS, fusiform face area (FFA), and amygdala were selectively engaged during the theory of mind condition. Another study presented subjects with an animation of two dots moving with a parameterized degree of intentionality (quantifying the extent to which the dots chased each other), and found that pSTS activation correlated with this parameter.


title: Theory of mind

text: A separate body of research implicates the posterior superior temporal sulcus in the perception of intentionality in human action. This area is also involved in perceiving biological motion, including body, eye, mouth, and point-light display motion. One study found increased pSTS activation while watching a human lift his hand versus having his hand pushed up by a piston (intentional versus unintentional action). Several studies found increased pSTS activation when subjects perceive a human action that is incongruent with the action expected from the actor's context and inferred intention. Examples would be: a human performing a reach-to-grasp motion on empty space next to an object, versus grasping the object; a human shifting eye gaze toward empty space next to a checkerboard target versus shifting gaze toward the target; an unladen human turning on a light with his knee, versus turning on a light with his knee while carrying a pile of books; and a walking human pausing as he passes behind a bookshelf, versus walking at a constant speed. In these studies, actions in the "congruent" case have a straightforward goal, and are easy to explain in terms of the actor's intention. The incongruent actions, on the other hand, require further explanation (why would someone twist empty space next to a gear?), and apparently demand more processing in the STS. This region is distinct from the temporoparietal area activated during false belief tasks. pSTS activation in most of the above studies was largely right-lateralized, following the general trend in neuroimaging studies of social cognition and perception. Also right-lateralized are the TPJ activation during false belief tasks, the STS response to biological motion, and the FFA response to faces.


title: Theory of mind

text: Neuropsychological evidence supports neuroimaging results regarding the neural basis of theory of mind. Studies with patients with a lesion of the frontal lobes and the temporoparietal junction of the brain (between the temporal lobe and parietal lobe) report that they have difficulty with some theory of mind tasks. This shows that theory of mind abilities are associated with specific parts of the human brain. However, the fact that the medial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction are necessary for theory of mind tasks does not imply that these regions are specific to that function. TPJ and mPFC may subserve more general functions necessary for Theory of Mind.


title: Theory of mind

text: Research by Vittorio Gallese, Luciano Fadiga, and Giacomo Rizzolatti shows that some sensorimotor neurons, referred to as mirror neurons and first discovered in the premotor cortex of rhesus monkeys, may be involved in action understanding. Single-electrode recording revealed that these neurons fired when a monkey performed an action, as well as when the monkey viewed another agent performing the same action. fMRI studies with human participants show brain regions (assumed to contain mirror neurons) that are active when one person sees another person's goal-directed action. These data led some authors to suggest that mirror neurons may provide the basis for theory of mind in the brain, and to support simulation theory of mind reading.


title: Theory of mind

text: There is also evidence against a link between mirror neurons and theory of mind. First, macaque monkeys have mirror neurons but do not seem to have a 'human-like' capacity to understand theory of mind and belief. Second, fMRI studies of theory of mind typically report activation in the mPFC, temporal poles, and TPJ or STS, but those brain areas are not part of the mirror neuron system. Some investigators, like developmental psychologist Andrew Meltzoff and neuroscientist Jean Decety, believe that mirror neurons merely facilitate learning through imitation and may provide a precursor to the development of theory of mind. Others, like philosopher Shaun Gallagher, suggest that mirror-neuron activation, on a number of counts, fails to meet the definition of simulation as proposed by the simulation theory of mindreading.


title: Theory of mind

text: Several neuroimaging studies have looked at the neural basis for theory of mind impairment in subjects with Asperger syndrome and high-functioning autism (HFA). The first PET study of theory of mind in autism (also the first neuroimaging study using a task-induced activation paradigm in autism) replicated a prior study in neurotypical individuals, which employed a story-comprehension task. This study found displaced and diminished mPFC activation in subjects with autism. However, because the study used only six subjects with autism, and because the spatial resolution of PET imaging is relatively poor, these results should be considered preliminary.


title: Theory of mind

text: A subsequent fMRI study scanned normally developing adults and adults with HFA while performing a "reading the mind in the eyes" task: viewing a photo of a human's eyes and choosing which of two adjectives better describes the person's mental state, versus a gender discrimination control. The authors found activity in orbitofrontal cortex, STS, and amygdala in normal subjects, and found less amygdala activation and abnormal STS activation in subjects with autism.


title: Theory of mind

text: A more recent PET study looked at brain activity in individuals with HFA and Asperger syndrome while viewing Heider-Simmel animations (see above) versus a random motion control. In contrast to normally-developing subjects, those with autism showed little STS or FFA activation, and less mPFC and amygdala activation. Activity in extrastriate regions V3 and LO was identical across the two groups, suggesting intact lower-level visual processing in the subjects with autism. The study also reported less functional connectivity between STS and V3 in the autism group. However decreased temporal correlation between activity in STS and V3 would be expected simply from the lack of an evoked response in STS to intent-laden animations in subjects with autism. A more informative analysis would be to compute functional connectivity after regressing out evoked responses from all-time series.


title: Theory of mind

text: A subsequent study, using the incongruent/congruent gaze-shift paradigm described above, found that in high-functioning adults with autism, posterior STS (pSTS) activation was undifferentiated while they watched a human shift gaze toward a target and then toward adjacent empty space. The lack of additional STS processing in the incongruent state may suggest that these subjects fail to form an expectation of what the actor should do given contextual information, or that feedback about the violation of this expectation doesn't reach STS. Both explanations involve an impairment or deficit in the ability to link eye gaze shifts with intentional explanations. This study also found a significant anticorrelation between STS activation in the incongruent-congruent contrast and social subscale score on the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised, but not scores on the other subscales.


title: Theory of mind

text: An fMRI study demonstrated that the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) of higher-functioning adults with autism was not more selectively activated for mentalizing judgments when compared to physical judgments about self and other. rTPJ selectivity for mentalizing was also related to individual variation on clinical measures of social impairment: individuals whose rTPJ was increasingly more active for mentalizing compared to physical judgments were less socially impaired, while those who showed little to no difference in response to mentalizing or physical judgments were the most socially impaired. This evidence builds on work in typical development that suggests rTPJ is critical for representing mental state information, irrespective of whether it is about oneself or others. It also points to an explanation at the neural level for the pervasive mind-blindness difficulties in autism that are evident throughout the lifespan.


title: Theory of mind

text: The brain regions associated with theory of mind include the superior temporal gyrus (STS), the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), the precuneus, and the amygdala. The reduced activity in the mPFC of individuals with schizophrenia is associated with theory of mind deficit and may explain impairments in social function among people with schizophrenia. Increased neural activity in mPFC is related to better perspective-taking, emotion management, and increased social functioning. Disrupted brain activities in areas related to theory of mind may increase social stress or disinterest in social interaction, and contribute to the social dysfunction associated with schizophrenia.


title: Theory of mind

text: Group member average scores of theory of mind abilities, measured with the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (RME), are possibly drivers of successful group performance. High group average scores on the RME are correlated with the collective intelligence factor "c", defined as a group's ability to perform a wide range of mental tasks, a group intelligence measure similar to the "g" factor for general individual intelligence. RME is a theory of mind test for adults that shows sufficient test-retest reliability and constantly differentiates control groups from individuals with functional autism or Asperger syndrome. It is one of the most widely accepted and well-validated tests for theory of mind abilities within adults.


title: Theory of mind

text: The evolutionary origin of theory of mind remains obscure. While many theories make claims about its role in the development of human language and social cognition, few of them specify in detail any evolutionary neurophysiological precursors.


title: Theory of mind

text: One theory claims that theory of mind has its roots in two defensive reactions—immobilization stress and tonic immobility—which are implicated in the handling of stressful encounters and also figure prominently in mammalian childrearing practices. Their combined effect seems capable of producing many of the hallmarks of theory of mind, such as eye-contact, gaze-following, inhibitory control, and intentional attributions.


title: Theory of mind

text: An open question is whether non-human animals have a genetic endowment and social environment that allows them to acquire a theory of mind like human children do. This is a contentious issue because of the difficulty of inferring from animal behavior the existence of thinking or of particular thoughts, or the existence of a concept of self or self-awareness, consciousness, and qualia. One difficulty with non-human studies of theory of mind is the lack of sufficient numbers of naturalistic observations, giving insight into what the evolutionary pressures might be on a species' development of theory of mind.


title: Theory of mind

text: Non-human research still has a major place in this field. It is especially useful in illuminating which nonverbal behaviors signify components of theory of mind, and in pointing to possible stepping points in the evolution of that aspect of social cognition. While it is difficult to study human-like theory of mind and mental states in species of whose potential mental states we have an incomplete understanding, researchers can focus on simpler components of more complex capabilities. For example, many researchers focus on animals' understanding of intention, gaze, perspective, or knowledge (of what another being has seen). A study that looked at understanding of intention in orangutans, chimpanzees, and children showed that all three species understood the difference between accidental and intentional acts.


title: Theory of mind

text: Individuals exhibit theory of mind by extrapolating another's internal mental states from their observable behavior. So one challenge in this line of research is to distinguish this from more run-of-the-mill stimulus-response learning, with the other's observable behavior being the stimulus.


title: Theory of mind

text: Recently, most non-human theory of mind research has focused on monkeys and great apes, who are of most interest in the study of the evolution of human social cognition. Other studies relevant to attributions theory of mind have been conducted using plovers and dogs, which show preliminary evidence of understanding attention—one precursor of theory of mind—in others.


title: Theory of mind

text: There has been some controversy over the interpretation of evidence purporting to show theory of mind ability—or inability—in animals. For example, Povinelli "et al." presented chimpanzees with the choice of two experimenters from whom to request food: one who had seen where food was hidden, and one who, by virtue of one of a variety of mechanisms (having a bucket or bag over his head, a blindfold over his eyes, or being turned away from the baiting) does not know, and can only guess. They found that the animals failed in most cases to differentially request food from the "knower". By contrast, Hare, Call, and Tomasello found that subordinate chimpanzees were able to use the knowledge state of dominant rival chimpanzees to determine which container of hidden food they approached. William Field and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh believe that bonobos have developed theory of mind, and cite their communications with a captive bonobo, Kanzi, as evidence.


title: Theory of mind

text: In one experiment, ravens ("Corvus corax") took into account visual access of unseen conspecifics. The researchers argued that "ravens can generalize from their own perceptual experience to infer the possibility of being seen".


title: Theory of mind

text: Evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Krupenye studied the existence of theory of mind, and particularly false beliefs, in non-human primates.


title: Theory of mind

text: Keren Haroush and Ziv Williams outlined the case for a group of neurons in primates' brains that uniquely predicted the choice selection of their interacting partner. These primates' neurons, located in the anterior cingulate cortex of rhesus monkeys, were observed using single-unit recording while the monkeys played a variant of the iterative prisoner's dilemma game. By identifying cells that represent the yet unknown intentions of a game partner, Haroush & Williams' study supports the idea that theory of mind may be a fundamental and generalized process, and suggests that "anterior cingulate cortex" neurons may act to complement the function of mirror neurons during social interchange.


title: Steppe

text: In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes.


title: Steppe

text: A steppe may be semi-arid or covered with grass or with shrubs or with both, depending on the season and latitude. The term "steppe climate" denotes the climate encountered in regions too dry to support a forest but not dry enough to be a desert. Steppe soils are typically of the chernozem type.


title: Steppe

text: Steppes are usually characterized by a semi-arid or continental climate. Extremes can be recorded in the summer of up to and in winter, . Besides this major seasonal difference, fluctuations between day and night are also very great. In both the highlands of Mongolia and northern Nevada, can be reached during the day with sub-freezing readings at night.


title: Steppe

text: Mid-latitude steppes feature hot summers and cold winters, averaging of precipitation per year. Precipitation level alone does not define a steppe climate; potential evapotranspiration also plays a role.


title: Steppe

text: The Eurasian Grass-Steppe, with its temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands, had a role in the spread of the horse, the wheel, and the Indo-European languages.


title: Steppe

text: In the eastern Mediterranean space, for example, the Indo-European expansion and diverse invasions of horse-archer civilizations of the steppe eventually led to the rise of Mycenaean Greece by the amalgamation of Indo-Europeans with the autochthonous pre-Greek population and also its destruction (sometimes attributed to the "Dorian invasion" in the Late Bronze Age collapse), followed by the demise of the Achaeans, the spread of the Sea Peoples, and eventually the rise of Archaic and ultimately Classical Greece.


title: Steppe

text: The world's largest steppe region, often referred to as "the Great Steppe", is found in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and neighbouring countries stretching from Ukraine in the west through Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to the Altai, Koppet Dag and Tian Shan ranges in China.


title: Steppe

text: The inner parts of Anatolia in Turkey, Central Anatolia and East Anatolia in particular and also some parts of Southeast Anatolia, as well as much of Armenia and Iran are largely dominated by cold steppe.


title: Steppe

text: Another large steppe area (prairie) is located in the central United States, western Canada and northern part of Mexico. The shortgrass prairie steppe is the westernmost part of the Great Plains region. The Columbia Plateau in Southern British Columbia, Oregon, Idaho, and Washington state, is an example of a steppe region in North America outside of the Great Plains.


title: Steppe

text: In South America, cold steppe can be found in Patagonia and much of the high elevation regions east of the southern Andes.


title: Steppe

text: In Australia, a moderately sized temperate steppe region exists in the northern and north west regions of Victoria, extending to the southern and mid regions of New South Wales. This area borders the semi arid and arid Australian Outback which is found further inland of the continent.


title: Steppe

text: In Europe, some Mediterranean areas have a steppe-like vegetation, such as central Sicily in Italy, southern Portugal, parts of Greece in the southern Athens area, and central-eastern Spain, especially the southeastern coast (around Murcia), and places cut off from adequate moisture due to rain shadow effects such as Zaragoza.


title: Steppe

text: In Asia, a subtropical steppe can be found in semi-arid lands that fringe the Thar Desert of the Indian subcontinent and the Badia of the Arabian peninsula.


title: Steppe

text: In Australia, "subtropical steppe" can be found in a belt surrounding the most severe deserts of the continent and around the Musgrave Ranges.


title: Steppe

text: In North America this environment is typical of transition areas between zones with a Mediterranean climate and true deserts, such as Reno, Nevada, the inner part of California, and much of western Texas and adjacent areas in Mexico.


title: Flag of Iran

text: The national flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran (, ), also known as the tricolor (, ), is a tricolour comprising equal horizontal bands of green, white and red with the national emblem ("Allah") in red centred on the white band and the takbir written 11 times each in the Kufic script in white, at the bottom of the green and the top of the red band. After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the present-day flag was adopted on 29 July 1980. Many Iranian exiles opposed to the Iranian government use alternate flags, including the tricolor flag with the Lion and Sun at the center, or the tricolor without additional emblems.


title: Flag of Iran

text: The parliament of Iran, per the 1980 constitution, changed the flag and seal of state insofar as the Lion and Sun were replaced by the red emblem in the centre of the flag. Designed by Hamid Nadimi, and officially approved by Parliament and the Leader Grand Ayatollah Khomeini on 9 May 1980, this emblem is a highly stylised composite of various Islamic elements: a geometrically symmetric form of the word "Allah" ("God") and overlapping parts of the phrase "lā ʾilāha ʾillā l-Lāh" (There is no God Except Allah), forming a monogram consisting of four crescents and a line in the shape of a tulip. The four crescents read from right to left; the first crescent is the letter aleph, the second crescent is the first laam; the vertical line is the second "laam", and the third and fourth crescents together form the "heh". Above the central stroke is a "tashdid" (a diacritical mark indicating gemination) resembling "W". The tulip shape of the emblem as a whole memorialises those who have died for Iran and symbolises the values of patriotism and self-sacrifice, building on a legend that red tulips grow from the shed blood of martyrs. This emblem is somewhat similar to the Khanda but has no relation to Sikhism and its meaning to that religious community.


title: Flag of Iran

text: Written in white and repeated eleven times on the inner edges of each the green and the red band is the phrase "Allahu Akbar" (God is the greatest) in a stylised version of the kufic script. This symbolises the calls of "Allahu Akbar" on the night of 22 Bahman (11 February 1979) when the national radio of Iran broadcast: "From Tehran, the voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran" and marked the unofficial beginning of the Islamic Republic (with the official day being 2 May). This writing renders the flag non-reversible.


title: Flag of Iran

text: The colours of the Iranian flag are traditional, probably dating from at least the 18th century, and they can be interpreted as representing the Islamic religion (green), peace (white), and courage (red).


title: Flag of Iran

text: Cyrus the Great, a Persian, defeated his grandfather Astyages, the High Judge (King) of the Medes, and founded Iran by uniting the Persians and the Medes. The Iranian flag (which was later designed under Darius I the Great) symbolised this unity and victory (green above white and red) as the flag of the people of Iran.


title: Flag of Iran

text: Physical requirements for the Iranian flag, a simple construction sheet, and a compass-and-straightedge construction for the emblem and the takbir are described in the national Iranian standard ISIRI 1. The flag's aspect ratio is explicitly set at 4:7 in the standard. Several other sizes of parts of the flags are described in the simple construction sheet, but these values are not all consistent with the precise values obtained if following the classical construction.


title: Flag of Iran

text: Flags, standards, and banners have always been important national and imperial symbols for Iranians, both in war and peace. Xenophon reports that Cyrus the Great's standard was a golden eagle with spread wings, mounted on a long shaft.


title: Flag of Iran

text: The best-known symbol of Iran in recent centuries has been the Lion and Sun motif, which is a graphic expression of the astrological configuration of the sun in the sign of Leo, although both celestial and animal figures have long and independent histories in Iranian heraldry. Late in the nineteenth century the Lion and Sun motif was combined with an earlier scimitar motif and superimposed on a tricolour of green, white, and red. With minor modifications, this remained the official flag until the revolution of 1979.


title: Flag of Iran

text: The oldest flag found in Iran is the Bronze Age Shahdad Standard, found in Shahdad, Kerman Province, dating back to c. 2400 BCE, made of bronze. It features a seated man and a kneeling woman facing each other, with a star in between. This iconography can be found in other Bronze Age pieces of art in the area as well.


title: Flag of Iran

text: The Old Persian word for "banner, standard" was "drafša-" (Avestan "drafša-", Middle Persian "drafš", cognate with Sanskrit " drapsá-").


title: Flag of Iran

text: Xenophon in "Cyropaedia" (7.1.4) describes the standard of Artaxerxes II at Cunaxa as "a golden eagle, with outspread wings, borne aloft on a long spear-shaft", the same banner recorded to be used by Cyrus the Great.


title: Flag of Iran

text: According to Herodotus (9.59), each Persian army division had its own standard, and "all officers had banners over their tents" (Xenophon, 8.5.13). One such banner, a square plaque in saltire, is depicted on a Greek vase, the so-called "Douris cup" held by the Louvre. A similar design is known from an Urartian bronze disk from Altıntepe.


title: Flag of Iran

text: Similar square plaques on poles are known from six of the audience scenes of the Throne Hall relief at Persepolis. The Alexander Mosaic of Pompeii, a Roman-era copy of a Hellenistic painting dated c. 320 BCE, also shows the royal Persian standard., depicted as a rectangular plaque, possibly originally in purple, with a dark red border with yellow dots. In the field, a golden bird is only partially preserved. The "royal falcon" of Persia ("varəγna") represented "farr" or "glory", while the eagle was associated with the Achaemenid dynasty itself.


title: Flag of Iran

text: was discovered at Persepolis in 1948. The tile is made of Egyptian blue frit and likely represents Egyptian Horus, but in the Persian context suggests local association with the Avestan "varəγna" or the royal eagle of the Achaemenids.


title: Flag of Iran

text: In Sassanid times the imperial flag was a leather rectangle covered with a thin layer of silk ornamented with jewels, with a four-pointed star at the centre, indicating the four corners of the world. This is the same star referred to as "Akhtare Kaviani" ("the Kaviani star") by Ferdowsi in the epic "Shahnameh" ("Book of Kings"). The flag was larger than the original Derafsh Kaviani apron and suspended from a lance, the point of which appeared above it. Attached to the lower edge were tassels of yellow, magenta, and scarlet, with large pendant jewels. The flag was destroyed by invading Muslim Arabs after their decisive defeat of the Sassanids.


title: Flag of Iran

text: Various emblems and banners have been recorded to be used by the Seljuks in different periods. Early Seljuks were using their traditional emblems, but they gradually adopted local Muslim emblems and banners. The official flag of the empire was most probably a black flag, similar to the flag of the Abbasid Caliphate. The flag was decorated with emblems, which were either superimposed over it or was placed above the flag. This black flag was traditionally presented to the Seljuk sovereigns by the Abbasid caliphs.


title: Flag of Iran

text: The Turkic Ghaznavid dynasty were invested in promoting Iranian culture. They are known to have displayed a number of heraldic emblems that harked back to pre-Islamic Iran, including the Sun and Lion motif, as well as the Griffin motif. Their banners appear to have shown chequered motifs.


title: Flag of Iran

text: The Safavid dynasty (1501–1736) used three green flags, each with a different emblem. Ismail I, the first Safavid king, designed a green flag with a golden full moon. In 1524 Tahmasp I replaced the moon with an emblem of a sheep and sun; this flag was used until 1576. It was then that Ismail II adopted the first Lion and Sun device, embroidered in gold, which was to remain in use until the end of the Safavid era. During this period the Lion and Sun stood for two pillars of the society: the state and religion. Although various "alams" and banners were employed by the Safavids (especially during the reign of the first two kings), by the time of Shah Abbas I the Lion and Sun symbol had become one of the most popular emblems of Iran.


title: Flag of Iran

text: The Safavid interpretation of this symbol is believed to have been based on a combination of historical legends like the "Shahnameh", stories of prophets, and other Islamic sources. For the Safavids the king ("shah") had two functions: he was both a ruler and a holy personage. This double role was considered the patrimony of the Iranian kings, derived from Jamshid, mythical founder of the ancient Persian kingdom, and Ali, the first Shi'a Imam. Jamshid was associated with the sun and Ali with the lion (from his epithet "Lion of God"). The correspondence may originally have been based on a learned interpretation of the "Shahnameh" references to "the Sun of Iran" and "the Moon of the Turanians". Since the crescent moon had been adopted as the dynastic (and ultimately national) emblem of the Ottoman sultans, who were the new sovereigns of Rum, the Safavids of Iran, needing to have a dynastic and national emblem of their own, chose the Lion and Sun motif. The sun had further important meanings for the Safavid world, where time was organised around a solar calendar, in contrast to the Arabo-Islamic lunar system. In the zodiac the sun is linked to Leo; for the Safavids the Lion and Sun symbol conveyed the double meaning of the royal and holy figure of the "shah" (Jamshid and Ali), the auspicious astrological configuration bringing the cosmic pair and the earthly—king and "imam"—together.


title: Flag of Iran

text: Regarding the Safavid understanding of the Lion and Sun motif, Shahbazi suggests that "the Safavids had reinterpreted the lion as symbolizing Imam ʿAlī and the sun as typifying the 'glory of religion', a substitute for the ancient "farr-e dīn"." They reintroduced the ancient concept of God-given glory ("farr") to justify their rulership, attributing these qualities to Ali while tracing the king's genealogy through the Shia Fourth Imam's mother to the royal Sassanian house.


title: Flag of Iran

text: Nader Shah consciously avoided the using the colour green, as green was associated with Shia Islam and the Safavid dynasty.


title: Flag of Iran

text: The two imperial standards were placed on the right of the square already mentioned: one of them was in stripes of red, blue, and white, and the other of red, blue, white, and yellow, without any other ornament: though the old standards required 12 men to move them, the SHAH lengthened their staffs, and made them yet heavier; he also put new colours of silk upon them, the one red and yellow striped, the other yellow edged with red: they were made of such an enormous size, to prevent their being carried off by the enemy, except by an entire defeat. The regimental colours were a narrow slip of silk, sloped to a point, some were red, some white, and some striped.


title: Flag of Iran

text: Although based on the writings of Jonas Hanway, we can see that the flags of the army regiments of King Nader were three-eared, but we cannot come to a conclusion about whether the royal flags of that time were three-eared or four-eared.


title: Flag of Iran

text: The state flag of the Zand dynasty was a white triangular pennant with a green border and a gold lion and sun in the centre. Another version included the same design but with green and red.


title: Flag of Iran

text: Unlike their Zand and Afsharid predecessors, the Qajar rulers used rectangular flags. The flag of Mohammad Khan Qajar was red with a gold lion and sun inside of a pale yellow circle.


title: Flag of Iran

text: Fat′h Ali Shah adopted a lion emblem on a plain red field as his war flag. The main emblem was a lion couchant in front of a sun, but a design featuring a lion passant holding a sword was also in use. There was a green version of the flag for peacetime and a white version for diplomatic purposes.


title: Flag of Iran

text: During the reign of Mohammad Shah, the two different lion emblems were combined into a single flag which featured a lion passant holding a sword in front of a sun.


title: Flag of Iran

text: Under Nasser al-Din Shah, the principal flag was white with a green border on three sides and a lion and emblem in the centre. There was also a naval ensign which had a red and green border and a civil ensign which looked the same as the naval ensign but without the lion and sun in the middle.


title: Flag of Iran

text: The first version of the modern Iranian tricolour was adopted in the wake of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906. The Supplementary Fundamental Laws of 7 October 1907 described the flag as a tricolour of green, white, and red, with a lion and sun emblem in the middle. A decree dated 4 September 1910 specified the exact details of the emblem, including the shape of the lion's tail ("like an italic S") and the position and the size of the lion, the sword, and the sun.


title: Flag of Iran

text: During this period, the colours of the flag were very pale, with the red appearing closer to pink in practice. There were three variants of the flag in use. The state flag was a tricolour with the lion and sun emblem in the centre. The national flag and civil ensign was a plain tricolour with no emblem. The naval ensign and war flag was similar to the state flag, but the emblem was surrounded by a wreath and surmounted by a crown. All three flags had a 1:3 ratio.


title: Flag of Iran

text: The flag was modified twice during the Pahlavi era. In 1933, the colours of the flag were darkened and the design of the emblem was changed. The sun's facial features were removed and the Kiani Crown on the naval ensign was replaced with the Pahlavi Crown. In 1964, the ratio was changed from 1:3 to 4:7 and the emblem on the naval ensign was shrunk to fit entirely within the white stripe.


title: Flag of Iran

text: Following the Iranian Revolution, the Interim Government of Iran removed the crown from the naval ensign. The old state and national flags remained unchanged until 29 July 1980, when the modern Iranian flag was adopted.


title: Flag of Iran

text: The new Iranian government viewed the Lion and Sun symbol as representing the "oppressive Westernising monarchy" that had to be replaced, despite the emblem's traditional Shi'a meanings and the lion's association with Ali, the first Imam of the Shi'a. For that reason, the name of the Red Lion and Sun Society was changed to Red Crescent Society.


title: Flag of Iran

text: Currently, the Lion and Sun flag is used by Iranian communities in exile as a symbol of opposition to the Islamic Republic. Some political groups in Iran, including monarchists, continue to use it as well. In Los Angeles, California and other cities with large Iranian expatriate communities, the Lion and Sun, as a distinguishing marker, appears on Iranian flags and souvenirs to an extent that far surpasses its display during the years of monarchy in its homeland, where the plain tricolour was usually used.


title: Flag of Iran

text: After the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the replacement of the lion and sun flag with the new flag, new designs of this flag are still presented.


title: Flag of Iran

text: The use of the former Pahlavi Iran (1964–1980) flag has resurfaced during the Mahsa Amini protests that began in September 2022.


title: RS-232

text: In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a "DTE" ("data terminal equipment") such as a computer terminal, and a "DCE" ("data circuit-terminating equipment" or "data communication equipment"), such as a modem. The standard defines the electrical characteristics and timing of signals, the meaning of signals, and the physical size and pinout of connectors. The current version of the standard is "TIA-232-F Interface Between Data Terminal Equipment and Data Circuit-Terminating Equipment Employing Serial Binary Data Interchange", issued in 1997. The RS-232 standard had been commonly used in computer serial ports and is still widely used in industrial communication devices.


title: RS-232

text: A serial port complying with the RS-232 standard was once a standard feature of many types of computers. Personal computers used them for connections not only to modems, but also to printers, computer mice, data storage, uninterruptible power supplies, and other peripheral devices.


title: RS-232

text: Compared with later interfaces such as RS-422, RS-485 and Ethernet, RS-232 has lower transmission speed, shorter maximum cable length, larger voltage swing, larger standard connectors, no multipoint capability and limited multidrop capability. In modern personal computers, USB has displaced RS-232 from most of its peripheral interface roles. Thanks to their simplicity and past ubiquity, however, RS-232 interfaces are still used—particularly in industrial machines, networking equipment, and scientific instruments where a short-range, point-to-point, low-speed wired data connection is fully adequate.


title: RS-232

text: The standard does not define such elements as the character encoding (i.e. ASCII, EBCDIC, or others), the framing of characters (start or stop bits, etc.), transmission order of bits, or error detection protocols. The character format and transmission bit rate are set by the serial port hardware, typically a UART, which may also contain circuits to convert the internal logic levels to RS-232 compatible signal levels. The standard does not define bit rates for transmission, except that it says it is intended for bit rates lower than 20,000 bits per second.


title: RS-232

text: RS-232 was first introduced in 1960 by the Electronic Industries Association (EIA) as a "Recommended Standard". The original DTEs were electromechanical teletypewriters, and the original DCEs were (usually) modems. When electronic terminals (smart and dumb) began to be used, they were often designed to be interchangeable with teletypewriters, and so supported RS-232.


title: RS-232

text: Because the standard did not foresee the requirements of devices such as computers, printers, test instruments, POS terminals, and so on, designers implementing an RS-232 compatible interface on their equipment often interpreted the standard idiosyncratically. The resulting common problems were non-standard pin assignment of circuits on connectors, and incorrect or missing control signals. The lack of adherence to the standards produced a thriving industry of breakout boxes, patch boxes, test equipment, books, and other aids for the connection of disparate equipment. A common deviation from the standard was to drive the signals at a reduced voltage. Some manufacturers therefore built transmitters that supplied +5 V and −5 V and labeled them as "RS-232 compatible".


title: RS-232

text: Later personal computers (and other devices) started to make use of the standard so that they could connect to existing equipment. For many years, an RS-232-compatible port was a standard feature for serial communications, such as modem connections, on many computers (with the computer acting as the DTE). It remained in widespread use into the late 1990s. In personal computer peripherals, it has largely been supplanted by other interface standards, such as USB. RS-232 is still used to connect older designs of peripherals, industrial equipment (such as PLCs), console ports, and special purpose equipment.


title: RS-232

text: The standard has been renamed several times during its history as the sponsoring organization changed its name, and has been variously known as EIA RS-232, EIA 232, and, most recently as TIA 232. The standard continued to be revised and updated by the Electronic Industries Association and since 1988 by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). Revision C was issued in a document dated August 1969. Revision D was issued in 1986. The current revision is "TIA-232-F Interface Between Data Terminal Equipment and Data Circuit-Terminating Equipment Employing Serial Binary Data Interchange", issued in 1997. Changes since Revision C have been in timing and details intended to improve harmonization with the CCITT standard , but equipment built to the current standard will interoperate with older versions.


title: RS-232

text: Related ITU-T standards include V.24 (circuit identification) and (signal voltage and timing characteristics).


title: RS-232

text: In revision D of EIA-232, the D-subminiature connector was formally included as part of the standard (it was only referenced in the appendix of RS-232-C). The voltage range was extended to ±25 volts, and the circuit capacitance limit was expressly stated as 2500 pF. Revision E of EIA-232 introduced a new, smaller, standard D-shell 26-pin "Alt A" connector, and made other changes to improve compatibility with CCITT standards V.24, V.28 and ISO 2110.


title: RS-232

text: Because RS-232 is used beyond the original purpose of interconnecting a terminal with a modem, successor standards have been developed to address the limitations. Issues with the RS-232 standard include:


title: RS-232

text: In the book "PC 97 Hardware Design Guide", Microsoft deprecated support for the RS-232 compatible serial port of the original IBM PC design. Today, RS-232 has mostly been replaced in personal computers by USB for local communications. Advantages compared to RS-232 are that USB is faster, uses lower voltages, and has connectors that are simpler to connect and use. Disadvantages of USB compared to RS-232 are that USB is far less immune to electromagnetic interference (EMI) and that maximum cable length is much shorter (15 meters for RS-232 versus 3–5 meters for USB, depending on the USB version and use of active cables).


title: RS-232

text: In fields such as laboratory automation or surveying, RS-232 devices continue to be used. Some types of programmable logic controllers, variable-frequency drives, servo drives, and computerized numerical control equipment are programmable via RS-232. Computer manufacturers have responded to this demand by re-introducing the DE-9M connector on their computers or by making adapters available.


title: RS-232

text: RS-232 ports are also commonly used to communicate to headless systems such as servers, where no monitor or keyboard is installed, during boot when operating system is not running yet and therefore no network connection is possible. A computer with an RS-232 serial port can communicate with the serial port of an embedded system (such as a router) as an alternative to monitoring over Ethernet.


title: RS-232

text: In RS-232, user data is sent as a time-series of bits. Both synchronous and asynchronous transmissions are supported by the standard. In addition to the data circuits, the standard defines a number of control circuits used to manage the connection between the DTE and DCE. Each data or control circuit only operates in one direction, that is, signaling from a DTE to the attached DCE or the reverse. Because transmit data and receive data are separate circuits, the interface can operate in a full duplex manner, supporting concurrent data flow in both directions. The standard does not define character framing within the data stream or character encoding.


title: RS-232

text: The RS-232 standard defines the voltage levels that correspond to logical one and logical zero levels for the data transmission and the control signal lines. Valid signals are either in the range of +3 to +15 volts or the range −3 to −15 volts with respect to the "Common Ground" (GND) pin; consequently, the range between −3 to +3 volts is not a valid RS-232 level. For data transmission lines (TxD, RxD, and their secondary channel equivalents), logic one is represented as a negative voltage and the signal condition is called "mark". Logic zero is signaled with a positive voltage and the signal condition is termed "space". Control signals have the opposite polarity: the asserted or active state is positive voltage and the de-asserted or inactive state is negative voltage. Examples of control lines include request to send (RTS), clear to send (CTS), data terminal ready (DTR), and data set ready (DSR).


title: RS-232

text: The standard specifies a maximum open-circuit voltage of 25 volts: signal levels of ±5  V, ±10 V, ±12 V, and ±15 V are all commonly seen depending on the voltages available to the line driver circuit. Some RS-232 driver chips have inbuilt circuitry to produce the required voltages from a 3 or 5  volt supply. RS-232 drivers and receivers must be able to withstand indefinite short circuits to the ground or to any voltage level up to ±25 volts. The slew rate, or how fast the signal changes between levels, is also controlled.


title: RS-232

text: Because the voltage levels are higher than logic levels typically used by integrated circuits, special intervening driver circuits are required to translate logic levels. These also protect the device's internal circuitry from short circuits or transients that may appear on the RS-232 interface, and provide sufficient current to comply with the slew rate requirements for data transmission.


title: RS-232

text: Because both ends of the RS-232 circuit depend on the ground pin being zero volts, problems will occur when connecting machinery and computers where the voltage between the ground pin on one end, and the ground pin on the other is not zero. This may also cause a hazardous ground loop. Use of a common ground limits RS-232 to applications with relatively short cables. If the two devices are far enough apart or on separate power systems, the local ground connections at either end of the cable will have differing voltages; this difference will reduce the noise margin of the signals. Balanced, differential serial connections such as RS-422 or RS-485 can tolerate larger ground voltage differences because of the differential signaling.


title: RS-232

text: Unused interface signals terminated to the ground will have an undefined logic state. Where it is necessary to permanently set a control signal to a defined state, it must be connected to a voltage source that asserts the logic 1 or logic 0 levels, for example with a pullup resistor. Some devices provide test voltages on their interface connectors for this purpose.


title: RS-232

text: RS-232 devices may be classified as Data Terminal Equipment (DTE) or Data Circuit-terminating Equipment (DCE); this defines at each device which wires will be sending and receiving each signal. According to the standard, male connectors have DTE pin functions, and female connectors have DCE pin functions. Other devices may have any combination of connector gender and pin definitions. Many terminals were manufactured with female connectors but were sold with a cable with male connectors at each end; the terminal with its cable satisfied the recommendations in the standard.


title: RS-232

text: The standard recommends the D-subminiature 25-pin connector up to revision C, and makes it mandatory as of revision D. Most devices only implement a few of the twenty signals specified in the standard, so connectors and cables with fewer pins are sufficient for most connections, more compact, and less expensive. Personal computer manufacturers replaced the DB-25M connector with the smaller DE-9M connector. This connector, with a different pinout (see Serial port pinouts), is prevalent for personal computers and associated devices.


title: RS-232

text: Presence of a 25-pin D-sub connector does not necessarily indicate an RS-232-C compliant interface. For example, on the original IBM PC, a male D-sub was an RS-232-C DTE port (with a non-standard current loop interface on reserved pins), but the female D-sub connector on the same PC model was used for the parallel "Centronics" printer port. Some personal computers put non-standard voltages or signals on some pins of their serial ports.


title: RS-232

text: "Signal Ground" is a common return for the other connections; it appears on two pins in the Yost standard but is the same signal. The DB-25 connector includes a second "Protective Ground" on pin 1, which is intended to be connected by each device to its own frame ground or similar. Connecting Protective Ground to Signal Ground is a common practice but not recommended.


title: RS-232

text: The standard does not define a maximum cable length, but instead defines the maximum capacitance that a compliant drive circuit must tolerate. A widely used rule of thumb indicates that cables more than long will have too much capacitance, unless special cables are used. By using low-capacitance cables, communication can be maintained over larger distances up to about . For longer distances, other signal standards, such as RS-422, are better suited for higher speeds.


title: RS-232

text: Since the standard definitions are not always correctly applied, it is often necessary to consult documentation, test connections with a breakout box, or use trial and error to find a cable that works when interconnecting two devices. Connecting a fully standard-compliant DCE device and DTE device would use a cable that connects identical pin numbers in each connector (a so-called "straight cable"). "Gender changers" are available to solve gender mismatches between cables and connectors. Connecting devices with different types of connectors requires a cable that connects the corresponding pins according to the table below. Cables with 9 pins on one end and 25 on the other are common. Manufacturers of equipment with 8P8C connectors usually provide a cable with either a DB-25 or DE-9 connector (or sometimes interchangeable connectors so they can work with multiple devices). Poor-quality cables can cause false signals by crosstalk between data and control lines (such as Ring Indicator).


title: RS-232

text: If a given cable will not allow a data connection, especially if a gender changer is in use, a null modem cable may be necessary. Gender changers and null modem cables are not mentioned in the standard, so there is no officially sanctioned design for them.


title: RS-232

text: The following table lists commonly used RS-232 signals (called "circuits" in the specifications) and their pin assignments on the recommended DB-25 connectors. (See Serial port pinouts for other commonly used connectors not defined by the standard.)


title: RS-232

text: The signals are named from the standpoint of the DTE. The ground pin is a common return for the other connections, and establishes the "zero" voltage to which voltages on the other pins are referenced. The DB-25 connector includes a second "protective ground" on pin 1; this is connected internally to equipment frame ground, and should not be connected in the cable or connector to signal ground.


title: RS-232

text: "Ring Indicator" (RI) is a signal sent from the DCE to the DTE device. It indicates to the terminal device that the phone line is ringing. In many computer serial ports, a hardware interrupt is generated when the RI signal changes state. Having support for this hardware interrupt means that a program or operating system can be informed of a change in state of the RI pin, without requiring the software to constantly "poll" the state of the pin. RI does not correspond to another signal that carries similar information the opposite way.


title: RS-232

text: On an external modem the status of the Ring Indicator pin is often coupled to the "AA" (auto answer) light, which flashes if the RI signal has detected a ring. The asserted RI signal follows the ringing pattern closely, which can permit software to detect distinctive ring patterns.


title: RS-232

text: The Ring Indicator signal is used by some older uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) to signal a power failure state to the computer.


title: RS-232

text: Certain personal computers can be configured for wake-on-ring, allowing a computer that is suspended to answer a phone call.


title: RS-232

text: The Request to Send (RTS) and Clear to Send (CTS) signals were originally defined for use with half-duplex (one direction at a time) modems such as the Bell 202. These modems disable their transmitters when not required and must transmit a synchronization preamble to the receiver when they are re-enabled. The DTE asserts RTS to indicate a desire to transmit to the DCE, and in response the DCE asserts CTS to grant permission, once synchronization with the DCE at the far end is achieved. Such modems are no longer in common use. There is no corresponding signal that the DTE could use to temporarily halt incoming data from the DCE. Thus RS-232's use of the RTS and CTS signals, per the older versions of the standard, is asymmetric.


title: RS-232

text: This scheme is also employed in present-day RS-232 to RS-485 converters. RS-485 is a multiple-access bus on which only one device can transmit at a time, a concept that is not provided for in RS-232. The RS-232 device asserts RTS to tell the converter to take control of the RS-485 bus so that the converter, and thus the RS-232 device, can send data onto the bus.


title: RS-232

text: Modern communications environments use full-duplex (both directions simultaneously) modems. In that environment, DTEs have no reason to deassert RTS. However, due to the possibility of changing line quality, delays in processing of data, etc., there is a need for symmetric, bidirectional flow control.


title: RS-232

text: A symmetric alternative providing flow control in both directions was developed and marketed in the late 1980s by various equipment manufacturers. It redefined the RTS signal to mean that the DTE is ready to receive data from the DCE. This scheme was eventually codified in version RS-232-E (actually TIA-232-E by that time) by defining a new signal, "RTR (Ready to Receive)", which is CCITT V.24 circuit 133. TIA-232-E and the corresponding international standards were updated to show that circuit 133, when implemented, shares the same pin as RTS (Request to Send), and that when 133 is in use, RTS is assumed by the DCE to be asserted at all times.


title: RS-232

text: In this scheme, commonly called "RTS/CTS flow control" or "RTS/CTS handshaking" (though the technically correct name would be "RTR/CTS"), the DTE asserts RTS whenever it is ready to receive data from the DCE, and the DCE asserts CTS whenever it is ready to receive data from the DTE. Unlike the original use of RTS and CTS with half-duplex modems, these two signals operate independently from one another. This is an example of hardware flow control. However, "hardware flow control" in the description of the options available on an RS-232-equipped device does not always mean RTS/CTS handshaking.


title: RS-232

text: Equipment using this protocol must be prepared to buffer some extra data, since the remote system may have begun transmitting just before the local system de-asserts RTR.


title: RS-232

text: A minimal "3-wire" RS-232 connection consisting only of transmit data, receive data, and ground, is commonly used when the full facilities of RS-232 are not required. Even a two-wire connection (data and ground) can be used if the data flow is one way (for example, a digital postal scale that periodically sends a weight reading, or a GPS receiver that periodically sends position, if no configuration via RS-232 is necessary). When only hardware flow control is required in addition to two-way data, the RTS and CTS lines are added in a 5-wire version.


title: RS-232

text: The EIA-232 standard specifies connections for several features that are not used in most implementations. Their use requires 25-pin connectors and cables.


title: RS-232

text: The DTE or DCE can specify use of a "high" or "low" signaling rate. The rates, as well as which device will select the rate, must be configured in both the DTE and DCE. The prearranged device selects the high rate by setting pin 23 to ON.


title: RS-232

text: Many DCE devices have a loopback capability used for testing. When enabled, signals are echoed back to the sender rather than being sent on to the receiver. If supported, the DTE can signal the local DCE (the one it is connected to) to enter loopback mode by setting pin 18 to ON, or the remote DCE (the one the local DCE is connected to) to enter loopback mode by setting pin 21 to ON. The latter tests the communications link, as well as both DCEs. When the DCE is in test mode, it signals the DTE by setting pin 25 to ON.


title: RS-232

text: A commonly used version of loopback testing does not involve any special capability of either end. A hardware loopback is simply a wire connecting complementary pins together in the same connector (see "loopback").


title: RS-232

text: Some synchronous devices provide a clock signal to synchronize data transmission, especially at higher data rates. Two timing signals are provided by the DCE on pins 15 and 17. Pin 15 is the transmitter clock, or send timing (ST); the DTE puts the next bit on the data line (pin 2) when this clock transitions from OFF to ON (so it is stable during the ON to OFF transition when the DCE registers the bit). Pin 17 is the receiver clock, or receive timing (RT); the DTE reads the next bit from the data line (pin 3) when this clock transitions from ON to OFF.


title: RS-232

text: Alternatively, the DTE can provide a clock signal, called transmitter timing (TT), on pin 24 for transmitted data. Data is changed when the clock transitions from OFF to ON, and read during the ON to OFF transition. TT can be used to overcome the issue where ST must traverse a cable of unknown length and delay, clock a bit out of the DTE after another unknown delay, and return it to the DCE over the same unknown cable delay. Since the relation between the transmitted bit and TT can be fixed in the DTE design, and since both signals traverse the same cable length, using TT eliminates the issue. TT may be generated by looping ST back with an appropriate phase change to align it with the transmitted data. ST loop back to TT lets the DTE use the DCE as the frequency reference, and correct the clock to data timing.


title: RS-232

text: A secondary data channel, identical in capability to the primary channel, can optionally be implemented by the DTE and DCE devices. Pin assignments are as follows:


title: RS-232

text: Other serial signaling standards may not interoperate with standard-compliant RS-232 ports. For example, using the TTL levels of near +5 V and 0 V puts the mark level in the undefined area of the standard. Such levels are sometimes used with GPS receivers and depth finders.


title: RS-232

text: A 20 mA current loop uses the absence of 20 mA current for high, and the presence of current in the loop for low; this signaling method is often used for long-distance and optically isolated links. Connection of a current-loop device to a compliant RS-232 port requires a level translator. Current-loop devices can supply voltages in excess of the must-withstand voltage limits of a compliant device. The original IBM PC serial port card implemented a 20 mA current-loop interface, which was never emulated by other suppliers of plug-compatible equipment.


title: RS-232

text: When developing or troubleshooting systems using RS-232, close examination of hardware signals can be important to find problems. This can be done using simple devices with LEDs that indicate the logic levels of data and control signals. "Y" cables may be used to allow using another serial port to monitor all traffic on one direction. A serial line analyzer is a device similar to a logic analyzer but specialized for RS-232's voltage levels, connectors, and, where used, clock signals; it collects, stores, and displays the data and control signals, allowing developers to view them in detail. Some simply display the signals as waveforms; more elaborate versions include the ability to decode characters in ASCII or other common codes and to interpret common protocols used over RS-232 such as SDLC, HDLC, DDCMP, and X.25. Serial line analyzers are available as standalone units, as software and interface cables for general-purpose logic analyzers and oscilloscopes, and as programs that run on common personal computers and devices.


title: Erin Kellyman

text: Erin Mae Kellyman (born 17 October 1998) is an English actress, best known for her work as Enfys Nest in "" (2018), as Eponine Thénardier in the BBC adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel "Les Misérables" (2019) and as Karli Morgenthau in the Disney+ series "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" (2021), which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.


title: Erin Kellyman

text: Originally from Tamworth, Staffordshire, Kellyman attended Birmingham Ormiston Academy, The Rawlett School and was a graduate of the Nottingham Television Workshop.


title: Erin Kellyman

text: Kellyman appeared in "Raised by Wolves", written by Caitlin Moran and her sister Caroline Moran for Channel 4. She also appeared in the 2016 BBC sitcom "The Coopers Vs The Rest" with Tanya Franks and Kerry Godliman, about a trio of adopted children raised by a suburban couple.


title: Erin Kellyman

text: Kellyman was cast as the marauder Enfys Nest in "" in 2018. The role of Nest in "Solo: A Star Wars Story" has been reported as the "anti-hero we deserve" and "the most important new character introduced in the movie." This role was reported to have given Kellyman "global recognition." For the role Kellyman had to go through three stages of audition. Kellyman only tested with the lead of the film, Alden Ehrenreich, during the third audition, doing both acting and stunt test work.


title: Erin Kellyman

text: Kellyman also appeared in the BBC's adaptation of "Les Misérables" as Éponine alongside Olivia Colman, Lily Collins, David Oyelowo and Dominic West. Kellyman had originally auditioned for the role of Cosette, but was called back for the role of Éponine. Kellyman praised the diversity in the BBC production, admitting she never considered she would be able to play such a role in a period drama.


title: Erin Kellyman

text: Kellyman appeared in BBC Two dark comedy series "Don't Forget the Driver", starring Toby Jones. In 2020, Kellyman played the role of Maya, a child that comes to live with her distant aunt, in the BBC TV drama series "Life".


title: Erin Kellyman

text: Kellyman co-stars in the 2021 Disney+ action series "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" as Karli Morgenthau, the leader of a radical group called the Flag Smashers, alongside Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan.


title: Erin Kellyman

text: Kellyman is multiracial and has said she is happy to play characters who have her heritage for representation of women like herself.


title: Cigar

text: A cigar is a rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco leaves made to be smoked. Cigars are produced in a variety of sizes and shapes. Since the 20th century, almost all cigars are made of three distinct components: the filler, the binder leaf which holds the filler together, and a wrapper leaf, which is often the highest quality leaf used. Often there will be a cigar band printed with the cigar manufacturer's logo. Modern cigars often come with two bands, especially Cuban cigar bands, showing Limited Edition ("Edición Limitada") bands displaying the year of production.


title: Cigar

text: Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities primarily in Central America and the islands of the Caribbean, including Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, and Puerto Rico; it is also produced in the Eastern United States, Brazil and in the Mediterranean countries of Italy and Spain (in the Canary Islands), and in Indonesia and the Philippines of Southeast Asia.


title: Cigar

text: Regular cigar smoking is known to carry serious health risks, including increased risk of developing various types and subtypes of cancers, respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, periodontal diseases and teeth loss, and malignant diseases.


title: Cigar

text: The word "cigar" originally derives from the Mayan "sikar" ("to smoke rolled tobacco leaves"—from "si'c", "tobacco"). The Spanish word, "cigarro" spans the gap between the Mayan and modern use. The English word came into general use in 1730.


title: Cigar

text: Although the origins of cigar smoking are unknown, cigar smoking was first observed by European explorers when encountering the indigenous Taino people of Cuba. A Mayan ceramic pot from Guatemala dating back to the 10th century depicts people smoking tobacco leaves tied with a string. While tobacco was widely diffused among many of the Indigenous peoples of the islands of the Caribbean, it was completely unfamiliar to Europeans before the discovery of the New World in the 15th century. The Spanish historian, landowner, and Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas vividly described how the first scouts sent by Christopher Columbus into the interior of Cuba found


title: Cigar

text: Following the arrival of Europeans with the first wave of European colonization, tobacco became one of the primary products fueling European colonialism, and also became a driving factor in the incorporation of African slave labor. The Spanish introduced tobacco to Europeans in about 1528, and by 1533, Diego Columbus mentioned a tobacco merchant of Lisbon in his will, showing how quickly the traffic had sprung up. The French, Spanish, and Portuguese initially referred to the plant as the "sacred herb" because of its alleged medicinal properties.


title: Cigar

text: In time, Spanish and other European sailors adopted the practice of smoking rolls of leaves, as did the Spanish and Portuguese "conquistadors". Smoking primitive cigars spread to Spain, Portugal, and eventually France, most probably through Jean Nicot, the French ambassador to Portugal, who gave his name to nicotine. Later, tobacco use spread to the Italian kingdoms, the Dutch Empire, and, after Sir Walter Raleigh's voyages to the Americas, to Great Britain. Tobacco smoking became familiar throughout Europe—in pipes in Britain—by the mid-16th century.


title: Cigar

text: Spanish cultivation of tobacco began in earnest in 1531 on the islands of Hispaniola and Santo Domingo. In 1542, tobacco started to be grown commercially in North America, when Spaniards established the first cigar factory in Cuba. Tobacco was originally thought to have medicinal qualities, but some considered it evil. It was denounced by Philip II of Spain and James I of England.


title: Cigar

text: Around 1592, the Spanish galleon "San Clemente" brought of tobacco seed to the Philippines over the Acapulco-Manila trade route. It was distributed among Roman Catholic missionaries, who found excellent climates and soils for growing high-quality tobacco there. The use of the cigar did not become popular until the mid 18th century, and although there are few drawings from this era, there are some reports.


title: Cigar

text: In Seven Years' War it is believed Israel Putnam brought back a cache of Havana cigars, making cigar smoking popular in the US after the American Revolution. He also brought Cuban tobacco seeds, which he planted in the Hartford area of New England. This reportedly resulted in the development of the renowned shade-grown Connecticut wrapper.


title: Cigar

text: Towards the end of the 18th century and in the 19th century, cigar smoking was common, while cigarettes were comparatively rare. Towards the end of the 19th century, Rudyard Kipling wrote his famous smoking poem, "The Betrothed" (1886). The cigar business was an important industry and factories employed many people before mechanized manufacturing of cigars became practical. Cigar workers in both Cuba and the US were active in labor strikes and disputes from early in the 19th century, and the rise of modern labor unions can be traced to the CMIU and other cigar worker unions.


title: Cigar

text: In 1869, Spanish cigar manufacturer Vicente Martinez Ybor moved his "Principe de Gales" (Prince of Wales) operations from the cigar manufacturing center of Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida to escape the turmoil of the Ten Years' War. Other manufacturers followed, and Key West became an important cigar manufacturing center. In 1885, Ybor moved again, buying land near the small city of Tampa, Florida and building the largest cigar factory in the world at the time in the new company town of Ybor City. Friendly rival and "Flor de Sánchez y Haya" owner Ignacio Haya built his factory nearby the same year, and many other cigar manufacturers followed, especially after an 1886 fire that gutted much of Key West. Thousands of Cuban and Spanish "tabaqueros" came to the area from Key West, Cuba and New York to produce hundreds of millions of cigars annually. Local output peaked in 1929, when workers in Ybor City and West Tampa rolled over 500 million "clear Havana" cigars, earning the town the nickname "Cigar Capital of the World". At its peak, there were 150 cigar factories in Ybor city, but by early in the next decade, the factories had closed.


title: Cigar

text: In New York, cigars were made by rollers working in their homes. It was reported that as of 1883, cigars were being manufactured in 127 apartment houses in New York, employing 1,962 families and 7,924 individuals. A state statute banning the practice, passed late that year at the urging of trade unions on the basis that the practice suppressed wages, was ruled unconstitutional less than four months later. The industry, which had relocated to Brooklyn (then a separate municipality) and other places on Long Island while the law was in effect, then returned to New York.


title: Cigar

text: As of 1905, there were 80,000 cigar-making operations in the US, most of them small, family-operated shops where cigars were rolled and sold immediately. While most cigars are now made by machine, some, as a matter of prestige and quality, are rolled by hand—especially in Central America and Cuba, as well as in small "chinchales" in sizable cities in the US. Boxes of hand-rolled cigars bear the phrase "totalmente a mano" (totally by hand) or "hecho a mano" (made by hand). These premium hand-rolled cigars are significantly different from the machine-made cigars sold in packs at drugstores and gas stations. Since the 1990s there has been severe contention between producers and aficionados of premium handmade cigars and cigarette manufacturing companies that create machine-made cigars.


title: Cigar

text: Tobacco leaves are harvested and aged using a curing process that combines heat and shade to reduce sugar and water content without causing the larger leaves to rot. This takes between 25 and 45 days, depending upon climatic conditions and the nature of sheds used to store harvested tobacco. Curing varies by type of tobacco and desired leaf color. A slow fermentation follows, where temperature and humidity are controlled to enhance flavor, aroma, and burning characteristics while forestalling rot or disintegration.


title: Cigar

text: The leaf will continue to be baled, inspected, un-baled, re-inspected, and baled again during the aging cycle. When it has matured to manufacturer's specifications it is sorted for appearance and overall quality, and used as filler or wrapper accordingly. During this process, leaves are continually moistened to prevent damage.


title: Cigar

text: Quality cigars are still handmade. An experienced cigar-roller can produce hundreds of good, nearly identical cigars per day. The rollers keep the tobacco moist—especially the wrapper—and use specially designed crescent-shaped knives, called "chavetas", to form the filler and wrapper leaves quickly and accurately. Once rolled, the cigars are stored in wooden forms as they dry, in which their uncapped ends are cut to a uniform size. From this stage, the cigar is a complete product that can be "laid down" and aged for decades if kept as close to 21 °C (70 °F) and 70% relative humidity as possible. Once purchased, proper storage is typically in a specialized cedar-lined wooden humidor.


title: Cigar

text: Some cigars, especially premium brands, use different varieties of tobacco for the filler and the wrapper. Long filler cigars are a far higher quality of cigar, using long leaves throughout. These cigars also use a third variety of tobacco leaf, called a "binder", between the filler and the outer wrapper. This permits the makers to use more delicate and attractive leaves as a wrapper. These high-quality cigars almost always blend varieties of tobacco. Even Cuban long-filler cigars will combine tobaccos from different parts of the island to incorporate several different flavors.


title: Cigar

text: In low-grade and machine-made cigars, chopped tobacco leaves are used for the filler, and long leaves or a type of "paper" made from reconstituted tobacco pulp is used for the wrapper. Chopped leaves and a pulp wrapper alter the flavor and burning characteristics of the result vis-a-vis handmade cigars.


title: Cigar

text: Historically, a "lector" or reader was employed to entertain cigar factory workers. This practice became obsolete once audiobooks for portable music players became available, but it is still practiced in some Cuban factories.


title: Cigar

text: Altadis, a Spanish-owned private concern, produces cigars in the US, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras, and owns a 50% stake in Corporación Habanos S.A., the state owned national Cuban tobacco company. It also makes cigarettes. The Scandinavian Tobacco Group produces cigars in the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and the United States; it also makes pipe tobacco and fine cut tobacco. The Group includes General Cigar Co.


title: Cigar

text: The town of Tamboril in Santiago, Dominican Republic is considered by many as today's "Cigar Capital of the World" housing more cigar factories and rollers than anywhere else in the world. According to "Cigar Aficionado" magazine, 44% of the world's most traded cigars come from the Dominican Republic, the world's largest producer of cigars, especially from the fertile lands of the Cibao capital, where 90% of the factories are located. The area has also been the largest supplier of cigars to the US in the last decades.


title: Cigar

text: Nearly all modern premium cigar makers are members of long-established cigar families, or purport to be, most originally rooted in the historic Cuban cigar industry. The art and skill of hand-making premium cigars has been passed from generation to generation. Families are often shown in many cigar advertisements and packaging.


title: Cigar

text: In 1992, "Cigar Aficionado" magazine created the "Cigar Hall of Fame" and recognized the following six individuals:


title: Cigar

text: Pure tobacco, hand rolled cigars are marketed via advertisements, product placement in movies and other media, sporting events, cigar-friendly magazines such as "Cigar Aficionado", and cigar dinners. Since handmade cigars are a premium product with a hefty price, advertisements often include depictions of affluence, sensual imagery, and explicit or implied celebrity endorsement.


title: Cigar

text: "Cigar Aficionado", launched in 1992, presents cigars as symbols of a successful lifestyle, and is a major conduit of advertisements that do not conform to the tobacco industry's voluntary advertisement restrictions since 1965, such as a restriction not to associate smoking with glamour. The magazine also presents pro-smoking arguments at length, and argues that cigars are safer than cigarettes, since they do not have the thousands of chemical additives that cigarette manufactures add to the cutting floor scraps of tobacco used as cigarette filler. The publication also presents arguments that risks are a part of daily life and that (contrary to the evidence discussed in "Health effects") cigar smoking has health benefits, that moderation eliminates most or all health risk, and that cigar smokers live to old age, that health research is flawed, and that several health-research results support claims of safety. Like its competitor "Smoke", "Cigar Aficionado" differs from marketing vehicles used for other tobacco products in that it makes cigars the main (but not sole) focus of the magazine, creating a symbiosis between product and lifestyle.


title: Cigar

text: In the US, cigars have historically been exempt from many of the marketing regulations that govern cigarettes. For example, the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1970 exempted cigars from its advertising ban, and cigar ads, unlike cigarette ads, need not mention health risks. As of 2007, cigars were taxed far less than cigarettes, so much so that in many US states, a pack of little cigars cost less than half as much as a pack of cigarettes. It is illegal for minors to purchase cigars and other tobacco products in the US, but laws are unevenly enforced: a 2000 study found that three-quarters of web cigar sites allowed minors to purchase them.


title: Cigar

text: In 2009, the US Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act provided the Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over the manufacturing, distribution, and marketing of cigarettes, roll-your-own tobacco and smokeless tobacco. In 2016, a deeming rule extended the FDA's authority to additional tobacco products including cigars, e-cigarettes and hookah. The objective of the law is to reduce the impact of tobacco on public health by preventing Americans from starting to use tobacco products, encourage current users to quit, and decrease the harms of tobacco product use.


title: Cigar

text: In the US, inexpensive cigars are sold in convenience stores, gas stations, grocery stores, and pharmacies. Premium cigars are sold in tobacconists, cigar bars, and other specialized establishments. Some cigar stores are part of chains, which have varied in size: in the US, United Cigar Stores was one of only three outstanding examples of national chains in the early 1920s, the others being A&P and Woolworth's. Non-traditional outlets for cigars include hotel shops, restaurants, vending machines and the Internet.


title: Cigar

text: Cigars are composed of three types of tobacco leaves, whose variations determine smoking and flavor characteristics:


title: Cigar

text: A cigar's outermost layer, or wrapper (Spanish: ), is the most expensive component of a cigar. The wrapper determines much of the cigar's character and flavor, and as such its color is often used to describe the cigar as a whole. Wrappers are frequently grown underneath huge canopies made of gauze so as to diffuse direct sunlight and are fermented separately from other rougher cigar components, with a view to the production of a thinly-veined, smooth, supple leaf.


title: Cigar

text: Wrapper tobacco produced without the gauze canopies under which "shade grown" leaf is grown, generally more coarse in texture and stronger in flavor, is commonly known as "sun grown". A number of different countries are used for the production of wrapper tobacco, including Cuba, Ecuador, Indonesia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Brazil, Mexico, Cameroon, and the United States.


title: Cigar

text: While dozens of minor wrapper shades have been touted by manufacturers, the seven most common classifications are as follows, ranging from lightest to darkest:


title: Cigar

text: In general, dark wrappers add a touch of sweetness, while light ones add a hint of dryness to the taste.


title: Cigar

text: Beneath the wrapper is a small bunch of "filler" leaves bound together inside of a leaf called a "binder" (Spanish: ). The binder leaf is typically the sun-saturated leaf from the top part of a tobacco plant and is selected for its elasticity and durability in the rolling process. Unlike the wrapper leaf, which must be uniform in appearance and smooth in texture, the binder leaf may show evidence of physical blemishes or lack uniform coloration. The binder leaf is generally considerably thicker and hardier than the wrapper leaf surrounding it.


title: Cigar

text: The bulk of a cigar is "filler"—a bound bunch of tobacco leaves. These leaves are folded by hand to allow air passageways down the length of the cigar, through which smoke is drawn after the cigar is lit. A cigar rolled with insufficient air passage is referred to by a smoker as "too tight"; one with excessive airflow creating an excessively fast, hot burn is regarded as "too loose". Considerable skill and dexterity on the part of the cigar roller is needed to avoid these opposing pitfalls—a primary factor in the superiority of hand-rolled cigars over their machine-made counterparts.


title: Cigar

text: By blending various varieties of filler tobacco, cigar makers create distinctive strength, aroma, and flavor profiles for their various branded products. In general, fatter cigars hold more filler leaves, allowing a greater potential for the creation of complex flavors. In addition to the variety of tobacco employed, the country of origin can be one important determinant of taste, with different growing environments producing distinctive flavors.


title: Cigar

text: The fermentation and aging process adds to this variety, as does the particular part of the tobacco plant harvested, with bottom leaves (Spanish: ) having a mild flavor and burning easily, middle leaves (Spanish: ) having a somewhat stronger flavor, with potent and spicy ligero leaves taken from the sun-drenched top of the plant. When used, ligero is always folded into the middle of the filler bunch due to its slow-burning characteristics.


title: Cigar

text: Some cigar manufacturers purposely place different types of tobacco from one end to the other to give the cigar smokers a variety of tastes, body, and strength from start to finish.


title: Cigar

text: If full leaves are used as filler, a cigar is said to be composed of "long filler". Cigars made from smaller bits of leaf, including many machine-made cigars, are said to be made of "short filler".


title: Cigar

text: If a cigar is completely constructed (filler, binder, and wrapper) of tobacco produced in only one country, it is referred to in the cigar industry as a "puro", from the Spanish word for "pure".


title: Cigar

text: The size of a cigar is measured by two dimensions: its ring gauge (its diameter in sixty-fourths of an inch) and its length (in inches). In Cuba, next to Havana, there is a display of the world's longest rolled cigars.


title: Cigar

text: The most common shape is the "parejo", sometimes referred to as simply "coronas", which have traditionally been the benchmark against which all other cigar formats are measured. They have a cylindrical shape their entire length, one end open, and a round tobacco-leaf "cap" on the other end that must be sliced off, notched, or pierced before smoking.


title: Cigar

text: Irregularly shaped cigars are known as "figurados" and are often priced higher than generally similar sized "parejos" of a like combination of tobaccos because they are more difficult to make.


title: Cigar

text: Historically, especially during the 19th century, "figurados" were the most popular shapes, but by the 1930s they had fallen out of fashion and all but disappeared.


title: Cigar

text: They have recently received a small resurgence in popularity, and currently many manufacturers produce "figurados" alongside the simpler "parejos". The Cuban cigar brand Cuaba only has "figurados" in their range.


title: Cigar

text: In practice, the terms Torpedo and Pyramid are often used interchangeably, even among knowledgeable cigar smokers. Min Ron Nee, the Hong Kong-based cigar expert whose work "An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Post-Revolution Havana Cigars" is generally considered to be the definitive work on cigars and cigar terms, defines Torpedo as "cigar slang". Nee regards the majority usage of torpedoes as pyramids by another name as acceptable.


title: Cigar

text: Arturo Fuente, a large cigar manufacturer based in the Dominican Republic, has also manufactured figurados in exotic shapes ranging from chili peppers to baseball bats and American footballs. They are highly collectible and extremely expensive, when available to the public.