title: United States Air Force Academy

text: The Acceptance Parade celebrates the end of Basic Cadet Training (BCT) for incoming fourth-class cadets. At the Parade, fourth-class cadets are awarded their uniform shoulder boards in recognition of completing BCT and being accepted into the Cadet Wing. Fourth-class cadets formally take the USAFA Honor Code Oath. The Legacy class, the class that graduated 50 years prior to the incoming class' graduation, presents a copy of the Contrails book to the outstanding Basic Cadet from each of the ten BCT squadrons.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: A few weeks later, over the Labor Day weekend, the Cadet Wing participates in Parents' Weekend. This event marks the first time that fourth-class cadets are able to see their families since Inprocessing Day. After the Cadet Wing Parade, families are invited into the Cadet Wing to attend open houses.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: During the fall semester of the third-class year, cadets choose a class exemplar who becomes the class' namesake. The exemplar is typically a deceased member of the Air Force, Army Air Force, or Army Air Service, with a few notable exceptions like the Wright Brothers and Neil Armstrong. The tradition began with the Class of 2000. The selection of the class exemplar is celebrated with a formal class-wide dinner.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: Commitment Dinner takes place prior to the first day of classes at the start of the second-class fall semester. By attending the dinner, second-class cadets are formally committing serving in the Air Force or Space Force upon graduation. Up until this point, fourth-class or third-class cadets may withdraw from the academy without incurring any financial or military obligations. After Commitment, cadets leaving the Academy may incur financial penalties or be required to serve on active duty in the Air Force or Space Force.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: Each class of cadets designs its own class crest; the only requirements being that each crest include all the elements on the Class of 1959's crest: the class number, the class year, the Polaris star, and the eagle. The final crest is unveiled during the Ring Dance when second-degree cadets receive their class rings. During the first-degree year, the crest is on prominent display on the Crest Wall on the Terrazzo.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: The American college tradition of the class ring began with the class of 1835 at the U.S. Military Academy. From there, it spread to the U.S. Naval Academy in the class of 1869. The Air Force Academy continued the tradition, beginning with the first class, 1959, and so is the only service academy to have had class rings for every class since its founding. The Air Force ring is distinctive for being white gold instead of the yellow gold used at the other academies. One side of the ring bears the academy crest, while the other side bears the class crest; the center bezel bears the words United States Air Force Academy. Cadets choose their own stones for the center of the ring. The rings are received during their second-degree (junior) year at the Ring Dance, at the beginning of Graduation Week festivities for the class ahead. The rings traditionally are placed in glasses of champagne and are caught in the teeth following a toast. During the cadet's first-degree (senior) year, the ring is worn with the class crest facing the wearer; following graduation, the ring is turned so that the class crest faces out. The rings of all the academies were originally designed to be worn on the left hand, so that the wearer reads the name of the academy on the bezel while a cadet or midshipman and others can read it after graduation, the rings are now worn on either hand. The Academy's Association of Graduates (AOG) accepts rings of deceased graduates which are melted down to form an ingot of white gold from which a portion of all future rings are made. Both the academy's Association of Graduates and the Academy Library maintain displays of class rings.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: 100's Night takes place 100 nights before first-class cadets ("firsties") are set to graduate. It is a formal dinner in celebration of all they have accomplished up to this point in their cadet career and their impending commission as Second Lieutenants in the Air Force or Space Force. After the dinner, Firsties are given leave for the weekend to celebrate. While the Firsties are gone, fourth-class cadets decorate their rooms to celebrate.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: The United States Air Force Academy Band provides all ceremonial and musical support for the cadet wing of the academy. It is an active duty band that is composed of full-time musicians, not USAFA cadets. Established in 1948 in Washington, D.C., the United States Air Force Academy Drum and Bugle Corps on the other hand is staffed by cadets of the academy and provides support for all academy events such as football and basketball games. It served the entire Air Force from the capital until its reassignment to the academy in 1963 and the cadet wing in 1972.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: The two bands wear different uniforms when performing, with the academy band performing in a specialized full dress uniform while the drum and bugle corps march in standard cadet uniforms.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: The first honor scandal broke in 1965, when a resigning cadet reported knowing of more than 100 cadets who had been involved in a cheating ring. 109 cadets were ultimately expelled. Cheating scandals plagued the academy again in 1967, 1972, 1984, 2004, 2007, 2012, 2014, and 2019. Following each of these events, the academy thoroughly examined the etiology of the mass cheating in addition to alleged excessive pressures that the academic system at the time placed on cadets and made changes in attempts to reduce the opportunities for future incidents.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: In April 2022, 22 cadets were permanently expelled from the Academy due to a May 2020 final exams cheating scandal in which 245 cadets were investigated.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: The sexual assault scandal that broke in 2003 forced the academy to look more closely at how effectively women had been integrated into cadet life; concerns with sexual assault, hazing of male cadets, and the disciplinary process during this period were detailed in a 2010 book by a former cadet. Following the scandal and rising concerns about sexual assault throughout the U.S. military, the Department of Defense established a task force to investigate sexual harassment and assault at each of the United States service academies. The report also revealed 92 incidents of reported sexual assault. At the same time, the Academy implemented programs to combat sexual assault, harassment and gender bias. The new programs actively encourage prompt sexual assault reporting. The academy's decisive actions of zero tolerance were praised by officials and experts.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: Following the 2003 crisis, the Department of Defense directed its attention to the problem of sexual harassment and assault at the military academies. The Department of Defense claimed that the program was successful although during the school year 2010–11 there were increased reports of sexual assault at the academy; however, one goal of the program is increased reporting. There have been several attempts to prosecute cadets for rape since 2003, but only three have resulted in convictions, citing the confidential informant program that ran from 2011 to 2012. The informant program was led by former AFOSI agent Brandon Enos, AFOSI's most successful agent in Air Force Academy's history in combating sexual assault and drug use among cadets. After the confidential informant program was mysteriously disbanded in 2013 on orders from General Johnson, sexual assault reporting fell by half. On 5 January 2012 rape charges were preferred against cadets in three unrelated cases. To help combat these problems, the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) created a system of cadet informants to hunt for misconduct among students. According to "The New York Times" in academic year 2014, "after the informant program ended with no further convictions, reports fell by half."


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: "The New York Times" cited a letter to Congress from former AFOSI Agent, Staff Sergeant Brandon Enos, who said that Lieutenant General Michael C. Gould, the superintendent from 2009 to 2013 and a former quarterback on the team, had repeatedly interfered in cases involving football players. In turn Gould said to the Times that the suggestion that he had interfered with the investigation "preposterous." Gould was found guilty by a report from the Pentagon in June 2016 of interfering with AFOSI investigations from 2011 to 2012, including blocking an investigation into the football coaches. Gould was subsequently removed from the College Football Selection Committee.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: These and other problems again rose to national prominence in the summer of 2014 when "The Gazette" broke an investigation into behavior by Academy cadets and faculty that included allegations of drug use, alcohol abuse, cheating, and sexual assault. This behavior, described as "so wild that AFOSI leaders canceled a planned 2012 sting out of concern that undercover agents and confidential informants at a party wouldn't be enough to protect women from rape," prompted the Academy superintendent to call for an investigation of the academy's athletic department.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: In 2005, allegations surfaced that some evangelical Christian cadets and staff were effectively engaging in religious proselytizing at the Academy. These allegations, along with concerns over how the Air Force handles other religious issues, prompted Academy graduate Michael L. Weinstein to file a lawsuit against the Air Force. An Air Force panel investigated the accusations and issued a report on 22 June 2005. The panel's investigation found a "religious climate that does not involve overt religious discrimination, but a failure to fully accommodate all members' needs and a lack of awareness over where the line is drawn between permissible and impermissible expression of beliefs." Evidence discovered during the investigation included antisemitic remarks, official sponsorship of a showing of the film "The Passion of the Christ" and a locker room banner that said academy athletes played for "Team Jesus." In response to the panel's findings, the Air Force released new guidelines to discourage public prayers at official events or meetings and to facilitate worship by non-Christian religions.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: In 2010 the academy set up an outdoor worship area for cadets following Wicca, Neo-Druidism, or other earth-based religions to practice their faiths. A survey conducted that same year found that 41 percent of academy cadets who identified themselves as non-Christian reported they were subjected to unwanted religious proselytizing at least once or twice last year at the school. The survey's results, however, showed that the number of cadets who felt pressured to join in religious activities had declined from previous years. Colorado congressman Mike Coffman criticized the academy for resisting calls to release details of the survey's results. Two years later, 66 House Republicans complained about policies set in place the last September to curtail requirements to attend religious events.


title: United States Air Force Academy

text: Beginning in 2012, the Air Force Academy began to receive sustained, negative attention for unofficial hazing rituals carried out by cadets. Following the 2014 investigation into hazing, alcohol abuse, and cheating on the Academy's football team, further investigations in 2017 and 2018 into other teams in the athletic department uncovered similar behavior on the Academy's men's lacrosse and men's swimming teams. In addition to suspending the coaching staff of the lacrosse team, senior cadets on both the lacrosse and swimming teams have had their graduation and commissioning delayed, and potentially revoked, as the Air Force proceeds with its internal investigations. In an April 2018 statement made on the hazing scandal to the Board of Visitors, which reports its findings to the Pentagon and Congress, Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria stated, "Times have changed, and some of these rituals hang on that are completely, ridiculously inappropriate."


title: Abedi Pele

text: Abedi Ayew ( ; born 5 November 1964), known professionally as Abedi Pele, is a Ghanaian former professional footballer who played as an attacking midfielder and who served as captain of the Ghana national team. He is regarded as one of the greatest African footballers of all time. He played for several European clubs and found his fame in the French Ligue 1 with Lille and Marseille, the latter where he won the UEFA Champions League in 1993, among other titles. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of his generation.


title: Abedi Pele

text: Abedi Ayew was born into a family in the town of Kibi and grew up in the town of Dome at the northern outskirts of the city Accra.


title: Abedi Pele

text: He attended Ghana Senior High School in Tamale. He was given the nickname "Pelé" due to his ability in football, which evoked comparisons to the Brazilian athlete Pelé.


title: Abedi Pele

text: He was one of the first African players to make an impact on European club football. Abedi Pelé's nomadic career began with Real Tamale United in Ghana in 1978. He left Ghana after the 1982 African Cup of Nations to join Al Sadd in Qatar for a $1,000 transfer fee. After a short spell with FC Zürich, he returned to Ghana but, after both Kotoko and Hearts of Oak failed to sign him, joined AS Dragons FC de l'Ouémé in Benin. He would later return to Ghana and play for Real Tamale United for one season. He began his career in Europe with French side Chamois Niort, subsequently joining Marseille before transferring to Lille on loan.


title: Abedi Pele

text: At club level, he was a key figure in Marseille's dominance of the French league, resulting in four league championships and two European Cup finals appearances. At Marseille, he was a member of the team's "Magical Trio" along with Jean-Pierre Papin and Chris Waddle, spearheading perhaps Europe's strongest league side of the early 1990s, including a European Cup final defeat in 1991. Abedi was the only remaining member of the trio still with the side when Marseille defeated Milan in the 1993 Champions League final in Munich.


title: Abedi Pele

text: He later joined Lyon after his loan spell at Lille. He also played for Torino of Italy and rounded out his European career with 1860 Munich.


title: Abedi Pele

text: Abedi Pele went on to sign a two-year contract with Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates and was nominated one of the best foreign players to play in the UAE league.


title: Abedi Pele

text: Abedi Pele played for Ghana 73 times. He was a fixture in the African Championships of the 1980s and '90s with his national team, and a member of Ghana's victorious team in the 1982 African Cup of Nations, but he never had an opportunity to play in the FIFA World Cup, as the "Black Stars" failed to qualify for the competition during his career. However, he was arguably the most dominant figure on the African football scene for nearly a decade. His performance in the 1992 African Cup of Nations, for which he was voted the player of the tournament, was particularly notable, as he scored in three successive rounds to help Ghana reach the final, but picked up a yellow card in the semi-final against Nigeria that meant he was suspeded for the final; Ghana went on to lose on penalties to the Ivory Coast. The performance earned him the added nickname of "The African Maradona".


title: Abedi Pele

text: Abedi was one of the first African football players to earn a top placing in FIFA World Player of the Year voting, doing so in 1991 and 1992. He won the "France Football" African Player of the Year Award three consecutive years, was the inaugural winner of the BBC African Sports Star of the Year in 1992, and the corresponding Confederation of African Football award twice.


title: Abedi Pele

text: Abedi holds the record for most appearances at the African Cup of Nations. He made his first appearance at the in Libya in 1982 and continued to compete at the tournament for the next 16 years, his last appearance coming in the 1998 edition in Burkina Faso. Aside from his exploits at the 1992 competition, Abedi also earned much acclaim for his three goals at the 1996 competition, where he led Ghana to the semi-finals of the competition despite critics expecting him to be in the twilight of his career.


title: Abedi Pele

text: Ayew has participated in more FIFA organized charity matches than any other African player. Abedi Pele is a member of FIFA's Football Committee, and of the player status committees of both FIFA and CAF. That explains why the South African FA made him a Spokesperson for their 2006 World Cup bid.


title: Abedi Pele

text: In appreciation of Abedi's devout services to the country, the Ghanaian government awarded him the country's highest honour, the Order of the Volta (civil division). He thus became the first Ghanaian sportsman to be so honoured.


title: Abedi Pele

text: Amongst his international accolades, he was often included in FIFA "All-Star" selections and captained the African All-Stars in their victory over their European counterparts in the 1997 Meridian Cup.


title: Abedi Pele

text: On 29 January 1997, the first UEFA–CAF Meridian Cup All-Star Match between Europe and Africa was played in Benfica's Estádio da Luz in Lisbon and was televised in 100 countries worldwide, including 30 in Africa, for an audience of 60 million viewers. Abedi Pele scored a goal early in the first half and, after Vincent Guérin had equalised for Europe just before half-time, it was the 1998 African Player of the Year, Mustapha Hadji, who struck Africa's 78th-minute winner in the 2–1 win.


title: Abedi Pele

text: In 2001, the UEFA–CAF Meridian Cup All-Star Match format was changed slightly for the second All-Star Match to bring together players aged between 35 and 45 who now revel in their 'veteran' status and play the game purely for pleasure. The squad sparked off memories of great footballing moments at club and international level


title: Abedi Pele

text: In June 2001 he was nominated by the present government of Ghana to serve as the next Chairman of the FA, an opportunity he later gave up for a more experienced former coach of Ghana for which in his own words said that this was to be an opportunity to learn from his superiors.


title: Abedi Pele

text: At present he owns a first division club, called Nania, with the future hopes of nurturing the young talent to augment the fledgling league of the country. He has also been involved with various charity work across the African continent.


title: Abedi Pele

text: Abedi Pele was embroiled in a serious alleged Second Division Promotion Play-off bribery scandal for which the Ghana Football Association found him and others guilty. The guilty verdict attracted fines and suspensions of Abedi and others, but these have been quashed by the Appeals Committee of the Football Association after determining that there were irregularities in the initial judgement of the Ghana Football Association. The allegations stem from an astonishing 31–0 victory recorded by his club, Nania FC over a much respected Okwawu United side. A similarly farcical 28–0 result was recorded in another second division match played between Great Mariners and Tudu Mighty Jets on the same weekend. The clubs involved in that Second Division Promotion Play-off Zone III match were also investigated and subject to the prospect of stiff penalties and demotions. Despite his vehement denials, Abedi had been chastised by some members of the Ghanaian media, who were demanding that strong punitive actions be taken against him, by Ghana's football governing body as well as the legal system. His wife Maha Ayew was on 3 November 2008 banned from football against this Manipulations Scandal.


title: Abedi Pele

text: As a playmaker, Pele was known for his speed, close control, and dribbling skills, as well as his passing and goalscoring ability. He usually played as an attacking midfielder or as a forward. He was also given the nicknames the "Maestro" and "The African Maradona."


title: Abedi Pele

text: Abedi is the brother of Kwame and Sola Ayew (ex-Hearts of Oak and Black Meteors). He is also the father of André, Jordan, Rahim, Imani, and is married to Maha. His sons, Ibrahim, André and Jordan, have also become internationals for Ghana. Andre and Rahim - represented Ghana in the FIFA 2010 World Cup in South Africa while Jordan and Andre represented Ghana in the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil and the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.


title: Enter Sandman

text: "Enter Sandman" is a song by American heavy metal band Metallica. It is the opening track and lead single from their self-titled fifth album, released in 1991. The music was written by Kirk Hammett, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. Vocalist and rhythm guitarist Hetfield wrote the lyrics, which deal with the concept of a child's nightmares.


title: Enter Sandman

text: The single reached number 16 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 and achieved platinum certification for more than 1,000,000 copies shipped in the United States, spurring sales of over 30 million copies for "Metallica" and propelling Metallica to worldwide popularity. Acclaimed by critics, the song is featured in all of Metallica's live albums and DVDs released after 1991 and has been played live at award ceremonies and benefit concerts.


title: Enter Sandman

text: "Enter Sandman" was the first song Metallica had written for their 1991 eponymous album. Metallica's songwriting at that time was done mainly by rhythm guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, after they gathered tapes of song ideas and concepts from the other members of the band, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Jason Newsted. Ulrich's house in Berkeley, California, was used for this purpose. "Enter Sandman" evolved from a guitar riff that Hammett wrote, after being "inspired" by Soundgarden's 1989 album "Louder Than Love". Originally, the riff was two bars in length, but Ulrich suggested the first bar be played three times and the second bar only be repeated every fourth time. The instrumental parts of the song were quickly finished, but Hetfield did not come up with vocal melodies and lyrics for a long time. The song was among the album's last to have lyrics, and the lyrics featured in the song are not the original; Hetfield felt that "Enter Sandman" sounded "catchy and kind of commercial" and so to counterbalance the sound, he wrote lyrics about "destroy[ing] the perfect family; a huge horrible secret in a family" that included references to crib death. For the first time in Metallica's history, however, Ulrich and producer Bob Rock told Hetfield that they felt he could write better lyrics. Nevertheless, according to Ulrich, the song was the "foundation, the guide to the whole record" even before it had lyrics.


title: Enter Sandman

text: An instrumental demo was recorded on August 13, 1990. The album "Metallica" was mostly recorded in Los Angeles at One on One Studios, between October 6, 1990, and June 16, 1991, although Ulrich, Hetfield, and Rock also recorded for a week in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, between April and May 1991. As the first to be produced by Bob Rock, it was recorded differently from previous Metallica albums; Rock suggested that the band members record in the studio while playing together, rather than separately.


title: Enter Sandman

text: "Enter Sandman" had what Hetfield described as a "wall of guitars"— three rhythm guitar tracks of the same riff played by himself to create a "wall of sound". According to engineer Randy Staub, close to 50 takes of the drums were recorded because Ulrich did not record the song in its entirety, but rather recorded each section of the song separately. Because it was difficult to get in one take the "intensity" that the band wanted, numerous takes were selected and edited together. Staub mentioned that the production team spent much time getting the best sound from each part of the room and used several combinations of 40 to 50 microphones in recording the drums and guitars to simulate the sound of a live concert. The bass guitar sound also gained importance with Rock; as Newsted states, Metallica's sound was previously "very guitar-oriented" and that "when he [Rock] came into the picture, bass frequencies also came into the picture." As the first single, "Enter Sandman" was also the first song to be mixed, a task that took roughly ten days because the band and Bob Rock had to create the sound for the entire album while mixing the song.


title: Enter Sandman

text: The simpler songs in the album "Metallica", including "Enter Sandman", are a departure from the band's previous, more musically complex album "...And Justice for All". Ulrich described "Enter Sandman" as a "one-riff song", in which all of its sections derive from the main riff credited to Kirk Hammett. Writers have categorized the song as heavy metal and hard rock.


title: Enter Sandman

text: "Enter Sandman" moves at a tempo of 123 beats per minute for the song length of 5:32 which is slightly above the average song length of the album. It begins with an acoustic guitar intro similar to the main riff; an E minor chord on a guitar using the wah-wah pedal is then introduced, followed by heavy use of tom-tom drums. Distorted guitars then build up to the main riff, which starts 56 seconds into the song and utilizes variations of the E/B tritone. P. J. Howorth, in "The Wah Wah Book", characterized the main riff as "sinister". The song then follows a common structure, playing two iterations of a verse, a pre-chorus, and a chorus. On the chorus and pre-chorus, the song modulates one whole tone, up to F, and after the second chorus, Hammett plays a guitar solo with the main, pre-chorus, and chorus riffs in the background. Hammett makes use of the wah-wah pedal and a wide range of scales, including E minor pentatonic, B minor, F minor, E minor, and the E dorian mode. One of the final licks of the solo was inspired by the Heart song "Magic Man" as used in Ice-T's "Personal". Just a few seconds before the solo ends, the breakdown starts, in which the clean drum intro starts, then the acoustic guitar intro when the last notes of Kirk's solo echo over it into the background, are heard together with Hetfield teaching a child the "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" bedtime prayer and reciting a variation of the lullaby rhyme "Hush Little Baby" where he is heard saying "Hush little baby don't say a word, and never mind that noise you heard. It's just the beasts under your bed, in your closet, in your head". After building again to a chorus, the song starts to fade out while the band plays the same riffs as the buildup intro in reverse order. Lyrically, the song is about "nightmares and all that come with them", according to Chris True of AllMusic. The title is a reference to the sandman, a character from Western folklore who makes children sleep.


title: Enter Sandman

text: Initially, the song "Holier Than Thou" was slated to be the opening track and first single from "Metallica"; according to the documentary "A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica", producer Bob Rock told Ulrich and Hetfield that the album has "five or six songs that are going to be classics", not only with fans but also on the radio, and that "the first song that should come out is 'Holier Than Thou. According to Rock, Ulrich was the only band member who felt, even before recording, that "Enter Sandman" was the ideal song to be the first single. Ulrich has said that there was a "big argument"; however, after explaining his point of view to the rest of the band, "Enter Sandman" eventually became the opening track and first single of the album.


title: Enter Sandman

text: The single was released on July 29, 1991, two weeks before the release of "Metallica". The album debuted at No. 1 on the "Billboard" 200 in the United States and nine other countries, and sold over 22 million copies worldwide, allowing "Enter Sandman" to become, as Chris True describes it, "one of the most recognizable songs of all time in rock". The single peaked at No. 16 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart and at No. 5 on the UK Singles Chart. On September 30, 1991, it became Metallica's second single to achieve gold status in the United States, for shipping more than 500,000 copies. In August 2021, the song re-entered the German Singles Chart at No. 1 after a CD single was re-issued whose profit is set to be donated for charity benefitting the German survivors of the 2021 European floods. In addition to the nominations received by the album as a whole, the song was nominated for Best Rock Song at the 34th Grammy Awards in 1992, ultimately losing to "The Soul Cages" by Sting. It was also voted Song of the Year in "Metal Edge"s 1991 Readers Choice Awards.


title: Enter Sandman

text: "Enter Sandman" was acclaimed by critics. Chris True of AllMusic declared it "one of Metallica's best moments" and a "burst of stadium level metal that, once away from the buildup intro, never lets up". According to him, the song's breakdown "brilliantly utilizes that 'Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep' bedtime prayer in such a way as to add to the scary movie aspect of the song". Steve Huey, in AllMusic's review of "Metallica", described it as one of the album's best songs, with "crushing, stripped-down grooves". Robert Palmer of "Rolling Stone" described "Enter Sandman" as "possibly the first metal lullaby" and wrote that the song "tell[s] the tale" of the album's "detail and dynamic, [...] song structures and impact of individual tracks". Sid Smith from the BBC called the song "psycho-dramatic" and noted that the "terse motifs served notice that things were changing" with Metallica's new album. "Blender" magazine's Tim Grierson says that the lyrics "juxtapose childhood bedtime rituals and nightmarish imagery" and praises the "thick bottom end and propulsive riff".


title: Enter Sandman

text: "Enter Sandman" has received many accolades. "Rolling Stone" magazine listed it as the 408th song on their "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list, and VH1 placed it 22nd in their list of the "40 Greatest Metal Songs of All Time", 18th in their list of the "100 Greatest Songs of the '90s" and 88th in their 2003 list of "The 100 Greatest Songs from the Past 25 Years". "Blender" magazine included the song in their "The Greatest Songs Ever!" series of articles and placed it 65th on their list of "The 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born". "Q" magazine listed it 81st in their list of "The 100 Songs That Changed The World" and 55th in their list of "The 1001 Best Songs Ever". "Total Guitar" magazine readers chose the song's riff as the fifth greatest ever, while "Kerrang!" places it fourth on their list of the "100 Greatest Singles of All Time". The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame includes it in their list of the "500 Songs That Shaped Rock". It was also featured in Triple J's "Hottest 100 of All Time". In 2009, it was named the 5th greatest hard rock song of all time by VH1. In 2010, "Enter Sandman" was included in "Kerrang"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s Top 100, as decided by fans.


title: Enter Sandman

text: Since the song's release, there have been claims that the main riff was taken from the song "Tapping into the Emotional Void" by Excel. "Tapping into the Emotional Void" was released originally on their 1989 album "The Joke's on You". In 2003, it was reported that Excel members were considering legal action against Metallica due to the similarities between the songs. According to Nielsen Music's year-end report for 2019, "Enter Sandman" was the eighth most-played song of the decade on mainstream rock radio with 126,000 plays. All of the songs in the top 10 were from the 1990s.


title: Enter Sandman

text: "Enter Sandman" was the second music video from Metallica and the first from "Metallica". It was also the first of six Metallica music videos directed by Wayne Isham. Recorded in Los Angeles, it premiered on July 30, 1991, two weeks before the release of the album. The plot of the music video directly relates to the theme of the song, combining images of a child having nightmares and images of an old man (R. G. Armstrong) with shots of the band playing the song. The child dreams that he is drowning, falling from the top of a building, covered in snakes, being chased by a truck and finally falling from a mountain while escaping the truck. During the part of the song in which the child recites a prayer, he is being watched by the Sandman. Throughout the video, the picture flickers continuously. The music video won Best Hard Rock Video at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards and was nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Editing. Andrew Blackie of PopMatters has said the video's "narrative suits the sludgy riffs and James Hetfield's twisted lullaby lyric".


title: Enter Sandman

text: "Enter Sandman" has been played in almost every Metallica live performance since its release. The band released live versions of the song in the videos "", "Cunning Stunts", and "S&M" where the band played with the San Francisco Symphony led by maestro Michael Kamen. The song is discussed in the videos "A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica" and "Classic Albums: Metallica - Metallica", and its video is available in "The Videos 1989-2004". Metallica has played the song live at awards ceremonies and benefit concerts, such as the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, the 1992 Grammy Awards, the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, and Live Earth. Explosives are occasionally set off at 0:49 of the song, when the main riffs start. Following its UK terrestrial broadcast of Live Earth, the BBC received 413 complaints and apologized to Metallica fans for cutting the band's set before "Enter Sandman".


title: Enter Sandman

text: The song was also used by NASA mission control CAPCOM B. Alvin Drew to wake up space shuttle astronauts aboard STS-123. The song was selected for Mission Specialist Robert L. Behnken by his fiancé.


title: Enter Sandman

text: During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, uncooperative prisoners were exposed to the song for extended periods by American interrogators. According to United States Psychological Operations, the intention was to "break a prisoner's resistance [... by] playing music that was culturally offensive to them". Upon discovering that the song was used for these purposes, drummer Lars Ulrich commented saying "it all seems so bizarre and so strange that Metallica's music, which generally sort of facilitates bringing people together, is used in these bizarre circumstances. It's certainly not something that we in any way advocate or condone".


title: Enter Sandman

text: When Mariano Rivera was pitching for the New York Yankees, "Enter Sandman" was routinely used as his entrance music; Rivera himself was often nicknamed "Sandman".


title: Enter Sandman

text: "Enter Sandman" is used in the polka melody Polka Your Eyes Out for "Weird Al" Yankovic's 1992 album "Off the Deep End". The song was also sampled by British electronic duo Utah Saints and American rapper Chuck D on their track "Power to the Beats". This was the first time that Metallica had cleared a sample of one of their songs.


title: Enter Sandman

text: Since 2000, "Enter Sandman" has been used as the entrance theme for the Virginia Tech Hokies football team's home games at Lane Stadium. The custom was started when the stadium installed a new scoreboard, and the team debated between using Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" and the Alan Parsons Project's "Sirius" before selecting "Enter Sandman".


title: Enter Sandman

text: Since 2021, "Enter Sandman" has been used as entrance music for the Welsh Rugby Union during their walk out onto the pitch.


title: One (Metallica song)

text: "One" is a song by American heavy metal band Metallica, released as the third and final single from the band's fourth studio album, "...And Justice for All" (1988). Written by band members James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, the song portrays a World War I soldier who is severely wounded—arms, legs and jaw blown off by a landmine, blind and unable to speak or move—begging God to take his life. In the music video, attempting to communicate with the hospital staff he jolts in his bed, spelling "Kill me" in Morse code. Production of the song was done by the band alongside Flemming Rasmussen. The song was the band's first to chart in the U.S., reaching number 35 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. It was also a number one hit in Finland.


title: One (Metallica song)

text: A video for the song was introduced in January 1989 on MTV. Shot in black and white by director Michael Salomon, the video's story is intercut with scenes taken from the 1971 anti-war film "Johnny Got His Gun". Due to routinely being required to pay royalty fees to continue showing the music video, Metallica bought the rights to the film. The video was ranked at number one on MTV soon after its introduction.


title: One (Metallica song)

text: Metallica performed "One" for the 31st Annual Grammy Awards show broadcast from Los Angeles in 1989. The next year, the song won a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance, the first ever to win in that category. The band also performed the song alongside pianist Lang Lang at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards in 2014. The song is one of the band's most popular pieces and has remained a staple at live shows since the release of the album, and is the most performed song from "...And Justice for All".


title: One (Metallica song)

text: "One" was written in November 1987 by Metallica's principal composers James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. The song was released in 1989 as the third and final single of the album. For the first 20 seconds of the song there are a series of sound effects with a battle theme, an artillery barrage and helicopter are heard and continues slightly over a clean tone guitar intro by Hetfield before Kirk Hammett comes in over the top with a clean-toned solo. Ulrich's drums come in and continues until each chorus, when the guitars become heavy and distorted before returning to clean. There is a second solo by Hammett halfway through the song, before lyrics cut out and the song gradually gets more heavy and distorted until the "machine gun" guitar build up (played alongside double bass drums) before the next, often highly praised, guitar solo by Hammett, and a final dual solo by Hammett and Hetfield. The song begins in time, and later as well as .


title: One (Metallica song)

text: In 1991, James Hetfield told "Guitar World" that he wrote the song's opening Bm-G chord change based on an idea prompted by the Venom song "Buried Alive" from their second studio album, "Black Metal".


title: One (Metallica song)

text: The song starts off in a soft melodic setting, but it develops through multiple sections into heavier and faster speed metal sounds, leading up to a tapping solo by Kirk Hammett, and a dual guitar section by Hammett and James Hetfield.


title: One (Metallica song)

text: The song is based on the idea of a soldier losing all of his limbs and jaw and being unable to hear, speak, or see, set to a World War I backdrop. In an interview in New Zealand in 1989, Ulrich describes the movie "Johnny Got His Gun" as having a similar theme, and this was the reason it was incorporated into the video.


title: One (Metallica song)

text: "One" was the first Metallica song for which a music video was created. The music video, directed by Bill Pope and Michael Salomon, debuted on MTV on January 20, 1989. The video, shot in Long Beach, California on December 7, 1988, is almost entirely in black and white, and features the band performing the song in a warehouse. It features dialogue and several scenes from the 1971 film adaptation of "Johnny Got His Gun". Timothy Bottoms can be seen starring as Joe Bonham, the main character in the novel (written by Dalton Trumbo and published in September 1939; the basis for the 1971 film).


title: One (Metallica song)

text: Three versions of the "One" music video were made; the first (the longest, album version) contained scenes of both the band and scenes from the movie. The second was simply a shortened version of the first, and the third, often known as the "jammin' version", lacked scenes from the movie (the song and video fades at the last bridge in the third version).


title: One (Metallica song)

text: Like many other music videos from Metallica, "One" puts great emphasis on the performances of the band members as musicians, with many shots of Hetfield, Jason Newsted and Hammett's hands picking and fretting. The video features the band members in a typical early Metallica fashion: playing (as if in rehearsal) in some sort of warehouse, in tight formation around Lars Ulrich's drum kit, and dressed in casual street clothes and with long untamed hair.


title: One (Metallica song)

text: In the music video, both Hetfield and Hammett play ESP guitars; Newsted is on a 5-string Wal bass. Newsted plays bass with his fingers at the start of the song, but later switches to a pick.


title: One (Metallica song)

text: Two of the three versions of the "One" music video appear on "2 of One", a VHS released on July 1, 1990, and both would again be featured on the band's 2006 music video compilation DVD.


title: One (Metallica song)

text: The music video was ranked at number 38 on "Rock on the Net: MTV: 100 Greatest Music Videos" and number one on Fuse's "No. 1 Countdown: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Special Edition".


title: One (Metallica song)

text: "One" is a fixture of the band's live performances. When played live, the song is usually played with guitars tuned down by one semitone (a permanent fixture of their studio and live work since 1995, save for "Death Magnetic" and "Hardwired... to Self-Destruct" in the case of the former) and is preceded by pyrotechnics and the same sounds of war such as machine guns, and bombs exploding as heard on the recorded version. The song also features heavy strobe lighting during the heavier half of the song, namely before the Hammett solo.


title: One (Metallica song)

text: The song was also featured on "S&M and S&M2", Metallica's albums of live performances in collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Michael Kamen, and Michael Tilson Thomas respectively. Another notable performance was at the Grammy Awards 2014, when pianist Lang Lang accompanied the band on an acoustic grand piano.


title: Helmut Marko

text: Helmut Marko (born 27 April 1943) is an Austrian former professional racing driver and current advisor to the Red Bull GmbH Formula One teams, and head of Red Bull's driver development program.


title: Helmut Marko

text: Marko was born in Graz, Austria. He was a school friend of Jochen Rindt, who became Formula One world champion in 1970. Marko competed in several race series, including 10 Formula One Grands Prix in 1971 and 1972, but scored no World Championship points.


title: Helmut Marko

text: He had more success in endurance racing, winning the 1971 24 Hours of Le Mans, driving a Martini-Porsche 917K with Gijs van Lennep. During that year, they set a distance record which remained unbeaten until the 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans (5,335.313 km, at an average of 222.304 km/h). (Changes to the track reduced the average speed.)


title: Helmut Marko

text: At the Targa Florio, he drove the fastest laps around the 72 km Sicilian mountain circuit in the 1972 race, catching up over two minutes on the leader within two laps to finish second by a mere 17 seconds. His fastest lap in the Alfa Romeo 33 was 33 min 41 sec, at an average of 128.253 km/h.


title: Helmut Marko

text: A few weeks later, during the 1972 French Grand Prix at Clermont-Ferrand, a stone thrown up by Ronnie Peterson's March pierced Marko's helmet visor, permanently blinding his left eye and ending his racing career.


title: Helmut Marko

text: Marko completed a doctorate in law in 1967. He owns two hotels in Graz – the "Schlossberghotel" and "Augartenhotel". He was manager for Austrian racing drivers Gerhard Berger and Karl Wendlinger for some years before setting up and running RSM Marko in 1989, a race team competing in Formula 3 and Formula 3000; running under the name Red Bull Junior Team from 1999 onwards. From 1999 he has also overseen the Red Bull driver development programme, which has steered drivers such as Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo, Carlos Sainz Jr. and Max Verstappen into Formula One. Since 2005 he has been advisor to the Red Bull Racing Formula One team and since 2006 he has also advised the Scuderia Toro Rosso, now Scuderia AlphaTauri Formula One team.


title: Cornwall Capital

text: Cornwall Capital is a New York City-based private financial investment corporation. It was founded in 2003 by Jamie Mai, President and Chief Investment Officer, under the guidance of his father, Vincent Mai, who ran the private equity firm AEA Investors, one of the oldest leveraged buyout firms in the United States. It was profiled in the book "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis as one of a handful of investors in the world that correctly foresaw and profited from the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007. In addition, James Mai's investment strategy was portrayed by Jack D. Schwager in the book "Hedge Fund Market Wizards" (2012), an inside analysis of the world's greatest hedge fund experts and the strategies that they implement. They were featured in the film adaptation of "The Big Short", fictionalized with the names Charlie Geller, Jamie Shipley and Ben Rickert (played by John Magaro, Finn Wittrock and Brad Pitt). This has resulted in them being widely known for their investments running up to the financial crash in 2007–08.


title: Cornwall Capital

text: The firm started as a family office to diversify the capital of James Mai's father. Soon after Cornwall's inception, Charlie Ledley, a former private equity colleague, joined the firm. In 2005, Ben Hockett joined as head trader, bringing extensive knowledge of capital markets, derivatives, and fixed income trading. Charlie Ledley left Cornwall in 2009 to join a large Boston-based hedge fund. Ben Hockett has remained at the firm as the head trader and chief risk officer. Other senior members include partners JC de Swaan and Ian Haft.


title: Cornwall Capital

text: Cornwall seeks highly asymmetric investments, in which the upside potential significantly exceeds the downside risk, across a broad spectrum of strategies ranging from trades that seek to benefit from market inefficiencies to thematic fundamental trades. The firm has produced an average annual compounded net return of 40 percent (52 percent gross).


title: Cornwall Capital

text: Cornwall Capital was one of a few investors who saw and shorted the subprime mortgage crisis market prior to the 2007 collapse; according to Michael Lewis, they were perhaps one out of 20 in the world who did so. This particular trade generated 80 times the initial premium (investment). The founders of Cornwall Capital started a hedge fund in their garage with $110,000 and built it into $120 million when the market crashed.


title: Cornwall Capital

text: James Mai decided to open up the fund to a few like-minded investors with whom he could be transparent and share ideas, starting in May 2011.


title: Cornwall Capital

text: Cornwall Capital was reported to have become in 2013 the largest shareholder of chemicals manufacturer American Pacific Corporation, a NASDAQ listed US company, with close to 15% of the outstanding stock. American Pacific Corporation agreed to nominate Ian Haft for election to its board of directors in order to resolve a potential proxy contest. The company was sold to H.I.G. Capital in January 2014.


title: Ablation

text: Ablation ( – removal) is removal or destruction of something from an object by vaporization, chipping, erosive processes or by other means. Examples of ablative materials are described below, and include spacecraft material for ascent and atmospheric reentry, ice and snow in glaciology, biological tissues in medicine and passive fire protection materials.


title: Ablation

text: In artificial intelligence (AI), especially machine learning, ablation is the removal of a component of an AI system. The term is by analogy with biology: removal of components of an organism.


title: Ablation

text: Genetic ablation is another term for gene silencing, in which gene expression is abolished through the alteration or deletion of genetic sequence information. In cell ablation, individual cells in a population or culture are destroyed or removed. Both can be used as experimental tools, as in loss-of-function experiments.


title: Ablation

text: Electro-ablation, is a process that removes material from a metallic workpiece to reduce surface roughness.


title: Ablation

text: Electro-ablation breaks through highly resistive oxide surfaces, such as those found on Titanium and other exotic metals and alloys without melting the underlying non-oxidised metal or alloy. This allows very quick surface finishing


title: Ablation

text: The process is capable of providing surface finishing for a wide range of exotic and widely used metals and alloys, including: titanium, stainless steel, niobium, chromium–cobalt, Inconel, aluminium, and a range of widely available steels and alloys.


title: Ablation

text: Electro-ablation is very effective at achieving high levels of surface finishing in holes, valleys and hidden or internal surfaces on metallic workpieces (parts).


title: Ablation

text: The process is particularly applicable to components produced by additive manufacturing process, such as 3D-printed metals. These components tend to be produced with roughness levels well above 5–20 micron. Electro-ablation can be used to quickly reduce the surface roughness to less than 0.8 micron, allowing the post-process to be used for volume production surface finishing.


title: Ablation

text: In glaciology and meteorology, ablation—the opposite of accumulation—refers to all processes that remove snow, ice, or water from a glacier or snowfield. Ablation refers to the melting of snow or ice that runs off the glacier, evaporation, sublimation, calving, or erosive removal of snow by wind. Air temperature is typically the dominant control of ablation, with precipitation exercising secondary control. In a temperate climate during ablation season, ablation rates typically average around 2 mm/h. Where solar radiation is the dominant cause of snow ablation (e.g., if air temperatures are low under clear skies), characteristic ablation textures such as suncups and penitentes may develop on the snow surface.


title: Ablation

text: Ablation can refer either to the processes removing ice and snow or to the quantity of ice and snow removed.


title: Ablation

text: Debris-covered glaciers have also been shown to greatly impact the ablation process. There is a thin debris layer that can be located on the top of glaciers that intensifies the ablation process below the ice. The debris-covered parts of a glacier that is experiencing ablation are sectioned into three categories which include ice cliffs, ponds, and debris. These three sections allow scientists to measure the heat digested by the debris-covered area and is calculated. The calculations are dependent on the area and net absorbed heat amounts in regards to the entire debris-covered zones. These types of calculations are done to various glaciers to understand and analyze future patterns of melting.


title: Ablation

text: Moraine (glacial debris) is moved by natural processes that allow for down-slope movement of materials on the glacier body. It is noted that if the slope of a glacier is too high then the debris will continue to move along the glacier to a further location. The sizes and locations of glaciers vary around the world, so depending on the climate and physical geography the varieties of debris can differ. The size and magnitude of the debris is dependent on the area of glacier and can vary from dust-size fragments to blocks as large as a house.


title: Ablation

text: There have been many experiments done to demonstrate the effect of debris on the surface of glaciers. Yoshiyuki Fujii, a professor at the National Institute of Polar Research designed an experiment that showed ablation rate was accelerated under a thin debris layer and was retarded under a thick one as compared with that of a natural snow surface. This science is significant due to the importance of long-term availability of water resources and assess glacier response to climate change. Natural resource availability is a major drive behind research conducted in regards to the ablation process and overall study of glaciers.


title: Ablation

text: Laser ablation is greatly affected by the nature of the material and its ability to absorb energy, therefore the wavelength of the ablation laser should have a minimum absorption depth. While these lasers can average a low power, they can offer peak intensity and fluence given by:


title: Ablation

text: Surface ablation of the cornea for several types of eye refractive surgery is now common, using an excimer laser system (LASIK and LASEK). Since the cornea does not grow back, laser is used to remodel the cornea refractive properties to correct refraction errors, such as astigmatism, myopia, and hyperopia. Laser ablation is also used to remove part of the uterine wall in women with menstruation and adenomyosis problems in a process called endometrial ablation.


title: Ablation

text: Recently, researchers have demonstrated a successful technique for ablating subsurface tumors with minimal thermal damage to surrounding healthy tissue, by using a focused laser beam from an ultra-short pulse diode laser source.


title: Ablation

text: Antifouling paints and other related coatings are routinely used to prevent the buildup of microorganisms and other animals, such as barnacles for the bottom hull surfaces of recreational, commercial and military sea vessels. Ablative paints are often utilized for this purpose to prevent the dilution or deactivation of the antifouling agent. Over time, the paint will slowly decompose in the water, exposing fresh antifouling compounds on the surface. Engineering the antifouling agents and the ablation rate can produce long-lived protection from the deleterious effects of biofouling.


title: Ablation

text: In medicine, ablation is the removal of a part of biological tissue, usually by surgery. Surface ablation of the skin (dermabrasion, also called resurfacing because it induces regeneration) can be carried out by chemicals (chemoablation), by lasers (laser ablation), by freezing (cryoablation), or by electricity (fulguration). Its purpose is to remove skin spots, aged skin, wrinkles, thus rejuvenating it. Surface ablation is also employed in otolaryngology for several kinds of surgery, such as the one for snoring. Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a method of removing aberrant tissue from within the body via minimally invasive procedures, it is used to cure a variety of cardiac arrhythmia such as supraventricular tachycardia, Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome (WPW), ventricular tachycardia, and more recently as management of atrial fibrillation. The term is often used in the context of laser ablation, a process in which a laser dissolves a material's molecular bonds. For a laser to ablate tissues, the power density or fluence must be high, otherwise thermocoagulation occurs, which is simply thermal vaporization of the tissues.


title: Ablation

text: Rotablation is a type of arterial cleansing that consists of inserting a tiny, diamond-tipped, drill-like device into the affected artery to remove fatty deposits or plaque. The procedure is used in the treatment of coronary heart disease to restore blood flow.


title: Ablation

text: Bone marrow ablation is a process whereby the human bone marrow cells are eliminated in preparation for a bone marrow transplant. This is performed using high-intensity chemotherapy and total body irradiation. As such, it has nothing to do with the vaporization techniques described in the rest of this article.


title: Ablation

text: Ablation of brain tissue is used for treating certain neurological disorders, particularly Parkinson's disease, and sometimes for psychiatric disorders as well.


title: Ablation

text: Recently, some researchers reported successful results with genetic ablation. In particular, genetic ablation is potentially a much more efficient method of removing unwanted cells, such as tumor cells, because large numbers of animals lacking specific cells could be generated. Genetically ablated lines can be maintained for a prolonged period of time and shared within the research community. Researchers at Columbia University report of reconstituted caspases combined from "C. elegans" and humans, which maintain a high degree of target specificity. The genetic ablation techniques described could prove useful in battling cancer.


title: Ablation

text: Firestopping and fireproofing products can be ablative in nature. This can mean endothermic materials, or merely materials that are sacrificial and become "spent" over time while exposed to fire, such as silicone firestop products.


title: Ablation

text: Given sufficient time under fire or heat conditions, these products char away, crumble, and disappear. The idea is to put enough of this material in the way of the fire that a level of fire-resistance rating can be maintained, as demonstrated in a fire test. Ablative materials usually have a large concentration of organic matter that is reduced by fire to ashes. In the case of silicone, organic rubber surrounds very finely divided silica dust (up to 380 m² of combined surface area of all the dust particles per gram of this dust). When the organic rubber is exposed to fire, it burns to ash and leaves behind the silica dust with which the product started.


title: Ablation

text: Protoplanetary disks are rotating circumstellar disks of dense gas and dust surrounding young, newly formed stars. Shortly after star formation, stars often have leftover surrounding material that is still gravitationally bound to them, forming primitive disks that orbit around the star's equator – not too dissimilarly from the rings of Saturn. This occurs because the decrease in the protostellar material’s radius during formation increases angular momentum, which means that this remaining material gets whipped into a flattened circumstellar disk around the star. This circumstellar disk may eventually mature into what is referred to as a protoplanetary disk: a disk of gas, dust, ice and other materials from which planetary systems may form. In these disks, orbiting matter starts to accrete in the colder mid-plane of the disk from dust grains and ices sticking together. These small accretions grow from pebbles to rocks to early baby planets, called planetesimals, then protoplanets, and eventually, full planets.


title: Ablation

text: As it is believed that massive stars may play a role in actively triggering star formation (by introducing gravitational instabilities amongst other factors), it is plausible that young, smaller stars with disks may be living relatively nearby to older, more massive stars. This has already been confirmed through observations to be the case in certain clusters, e.g. in the Trapezium cluster. Since massive stars tend to collapse through supernovae at the end of their lives, research is now investigating what role the shockwave of such an explosion, and the resulting supernova remnant (SNR), would play if it occurred in the line of fire of a protoplanetary disk. According to computationally modelled simulations, a SNR striking a protoplanetary disk would result in significant ablation of the disk, and this ablation would strip a significant amount of protoplanetary material from the disk – but not necessarily destroy the disk entirely. This is an important point because a disk that survives such an interaction with sufficient material leftover to form a planetary system may inherit an altered disk chemistry from the SNR, which could have effects on the planetary systems that later form.


title: Ablation

text: In spacecraft design, ablation is used to both cool and protect mechanical parts and/or payloads that would otherwise be damaged by extremely high temperatures. Two principal applications are heat shields for spacecraft entering a planetary atmosphere from space and cooling of rocket engine nozzles. Examples include the Apollo Command Module that protected astronauts from the heat of atmospheric reentry and the Kestrel second stage rocket engine designed for exclusive use in an environment of space vacuum since no heat convection is possible.


title: Ablation

text: In a basic sense, ablative material is designed so that instead of heat being transmitted into the structure of the spacecraft, only the outer surface of the material bears the majority of the heating effect. The outer surface chars and burns away – but quite slowly, only gradually exposing new fresh protective material beneath. The heat is carried away from the spacecraft by the gases generated by the ablative process, and never penetrates the surface material, so the metallic and other sensitive structures they protect, remain at a safe temperature. As the surface burns and disperses into space, the remaining solid material continues to insulate the craft from ongoing heat and superheated gases. The thickness of the ablative layer is calculated to be sufficient to survive the heat it will encounter on its mission.


title: Ablation

text: There is an entire branch of spaceflight research involving the search for new fireproofing materials to achieve the best ablative performance; this function is critical to protect the spacecraft occupants and payload from otherwise excessive heat loading. The same technology is used in some passive fire protection applications, in some cases by the same vendors, who offer different versions of these fireproofing products, some for aerospace and some for structural fire protection.


title: Weight

text: In science and engineering, the weight of an object is the force acting on the object due to gravity. It is a standard mechanical quantity.


title: Weight

text: Some standard textbooks define weight as a vector quantity, the gravitational force acting on the object. Others define weight as a scalar quantity, the magnitude of the gravitational force. Yet others define it as the magnitude of the reaction force exerted on a body by mechanisms that counteract the effects of gravity: the weight is the quantity that is measured by, for example, a spring scale. Thus, in a state of free fall, the weight would be zero. In this sense of weight, terrestrial objects can be weightless: ignoring air resistance, the famous apple falling from the tree, on its way to meet the ground near Isaac Newton, would be weightless.


title: Weight

text: The unit of measurement for weight is that of force, which in the International System of Units (SI) is the newton. For example, an object with a mass of one kilogram has a weight of about 9.8 newtons on the surface of the Earth, and about one-sixth as much on the Moon. Although weight and mass are scientifically distinct quantities, the terms are often confused with each other in everyday use (e.g. comparing and converting force weight in pounds to mass in kilograms and vice versa).


title: Weight

text: Further complications in elucidating the various concepts of weight have to do with the theory of relativity according to which gravity is modeled as a consequence of the curvature of spacetime. In the teaching community, a considerable debate has existed for over half a century on how to define weight for their students. The current situation is that a multiple set of concepts co-exist and find use in their various contexts.


title: Weight

text: Discussion of the concepts of heaviness (weight) and lightness (levity) date back to the ancient Greek philosophers. These were typically viewed as inherent properties of objects. Plato described weight as the natural tendency of objects to seek their kin. To Aristotle, weight and levity represented the tendency to restore the natural order of the basic elements: air, earth, fire and water. He ascribed absolute weight to earth and absolute levity to fire. Archimedes saw weight as a quality opposed to buoyancy, with the conflict between the two determining if an object sinks or floats. The first operational definition of weight was given by Euclid, who defined weight as: "the heaviness or lightness of one thing, compared to another, as measured by a balance." Operational balances (rather than definitions) had, however, been around much longer.


title: Weight

text: According to Aristotle, weight was the direct cause of the falling motion of an object, the speed of the falling object was supposed to be directly proportionate to the weight of the object. As medieval scholars discovered that in practice the speed of a falling object increased with time, this prompted a change to the concept of weight to maintain this cause-effect relationship. Weight was split into a "still weight" or , which remained constant, and the actual gravity or , which changed as the object fell. The concept of was eventually replaced by Jean Buridan's impetus, a precursor to momentum.


title: Weight

text: The rise of the Copernican view of the world led to the resurgence of the Platonic idea that like objects attract but in the context of heavenly bodies. In the 17th century, Galileo made significant advances in the concept of weight. He proposed a way to measure the difference between the weight of a moving object and an object at rest. Ultimately, he concluded weight was proportionate to the amount of matter of an object, not the speed of motion as supposed by the Aristotelean view of physics.


title: Weight

text: The introduction of Newton's laws of motion and the development of Newton's law of universal gravitation led to considerable further development of the concept of weight. Weight became fundamentally separate from mass. Mass was identified as a fundamental property of objects connected to their inertia, while weight became identified with the force of gravity on an object and therefore dependent on the context of the object. In particular, Newton considered weight to be relative to another object causing the gravitational pull, e.g. the weight of the Earth towards the Sun.


title: Weight

text: Newton considered time and space to be absolute. This allowed him to consider concepts as true position and true velocity. Newton also recognized that weight as measured by the action of weighing was affected by environmental factors such as buoyancy. He considered this a false weight induced by imperfect measurement conditions, for which he introduced the term "apparent weight" as compared to the "true weight" defined by gravity.


title: Weight

text: Although Newtonian physics made a clear distinction between weight and mass, the term weight continued to be commonly used when people meant mass. This led the 3rd General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) of 1901 to officially declare "The word "weight" denotes a quantity of the same nature as a "force": the weight of a body is the product of its mass and the acceleration due to gravity", thus distinguishing it from mass for official usage.


title: Weight

text: In the 20th century, the Newtonian concepts of absolute time and space were challenged by relativity. Einstein's equivalence principle put all observers, moving or accelerating, on the same footing. This led to an ambiguity as to what exactly is meant by the force of gravity and weight. A scale in an accelerating elevator cannot be distinguished from a scale in a gravitational field. Gravitational force and weight thereby became essentially frame-dependent quantities. This prompted the abandonment of the concept as superfluous in the fundamental sciences such as physics and chemistry. Nonetheless, the concept remained important in the teaching of physics. The ambiguities introduced by relativity led, starting in the 1960s, to considerable debate in the teaching community as how to define weight for their students, choosing between a nominal definition of weight as the force due to gravity or an operational definition defined by the act of weighing.


title: Weight

text: The most common definition of weight found in introductory physics textbooks defines weight as the force exerted on a body by gravity. This is often expressed in the formula , where "W" is the weight, "m" the mass of the object, and "g" gravitational acceleration.


title: Weight

text: In 1901, the 3rd General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) established this as their official definition of "weight":


title: Weight

text: This resolution defines weight as a vector, since force is a vector quantity. However, some textbooks also take weight to be a scalar by defining:


title: Weight

text: The gravitational acceleration varies from place to place. Sometimes, it is simply taken to have a standard value of , which gives the standard weight.


title: Weight

text: The force whose magnitude is equal to "mg" newtons is also known as the m kilogram weight (which term is abbreviated to kg-wt)


title: Weight

text: In the operational definition, the weight of an object is the force measured by the operation of weighing it, which is the force it exerts on its support. Since "W" is the downward force on the body by the centre of earth and there is no acceleration in the body, there exists an opposite and equal force by the support on the body. Also it is equal to the force exerted by the body on its support because action and reaction have same numerical value and opposite direction. This can make a considerable difference, depending on the details; for example, an object in free fall exerts little if any force on its support, a situation that is commonly referred to as weightlessness. However, being in free fall does not affect the weight according to the gravitational definition. Therefore, the operational definition is sometimes refined by requiring that the object be at rest. However, this raises the issue of defining "at rest" (usually being at rest with respect to the Earth is implied by using standard gravity). In the operational definition, the weight of an object at rest on the surface of the Earth is lessened by the effect of the centrifugal force from the Earth's rotation.


title: Weight

text: The operational definition, as usually given, does not explicitly exclude the effects of buoyancy, which reduces the measured weight of an object when it is immersed in a fluid such as air or water. As a result, a floating balloon or an object floating in water might be said to have zero weight.


title: Weight

text: In the ISO International standard ISO 80000-4:2006, describing the basic physical quantities and units in mechanics as a part of the International standard ISO/IEC 80000, the definition of "weight" is given as:


title: Weight

text: The definition is dependent on the chosen frame of reference. When the chosen frame is co-moving with the object in question then this definition precisely agrees with the operational definition. If the specified frame is the surface of the Earth, the weight according to the ISO and gravitational definitions differ only by the centrifugal effects due to the rotation of the Earth.


title: Weight

text: In many real world situations the act of weighing may produce a result that differs from the ideal value provided by the definition used. This is usually referred to as the apparent weight of the object. A common example of this is the effect of buoyancy, when an object is immersed in a fluid the displacement of the fluid will cause an upward force on the object, making it appear lighter when weighed on a scale. The apparent weight may be similarly affected by levitation and mechanical suspension. When the gravitational definition of weight is used, the operational weight measured by an accelerating scale is often also referred to as the apparent weight.


title: Weight

text: In modern scientific usage, weight and mass are fundamentally different quantities: mass is an intrinsic property of matter, whereas weight is a "force" that results from the action of gravity on matter: it measures how strongly the force of gravity pulls on that matter. However, in most practical everyday situations the word "weight" is used when, strictly, "mass" is meant. For example, most people would say that an object "weighs one kilogram", even though the kilogram is a unit of mass.


title: Weight

text: The distinction between mass and weight is unimportant for many practical purposes because the strength of gravity does not vary too much on the surface of the Earth. In a uniform gravitational field, the gravitational force exerted on an object (its weight) is directly proportional to its mass. For example, object A weighs 10 times as much as object B, so therefore the mass of object A is 10 times greater than that of object B. This means that an object's mass can be measured indirectly by its weight, and so, for everyday purposes, weighing (using a weighing scale) is an entirely acceptable way of measuring mass. Similarly, a balance measures mass indirectly by comparing the weight of the measured item to that of an object(s) of known mass. Since the measured item and the comparison mass are in virtually the same location, so experiencing the same gravitational field, the effect of varying gravity does not affect the comparison or the resulting measurement.


title: Weight

text: The Earth's gravitational field is not uniform but can vary by as much as 0.5% at different locations on Earth (see Earth's gravity). These variations alter the relationship between weight and mass, and must be taken into account in high-precision weight measurements that are intended to indirectly measure mass. Spring scales, which measure local weight, must be calibrated at the location at which the objects will be used to show this standard weight, to be legal for commerce.


title: Weight

text: This table shows the variation of acceleration due to gravity (and hence the variation of weight) at various locations on the Earth's surface.


title: Weight

text: The historical use of "weight" for "mass" also persists in some scientific terminology – for example, the chemical terms "atomic weight", "molecular weight", and "formula weight", can still be found rather than the preferred "atomic mass", etc.


title: Weight

text: In a different gravitational field, for example, on the surface of the Moon, an object can have a significantly different weight than on Earth. The gravity on the surface of the Moon is only about one-sixth as strong as on the surface of the Earth. A one-kilogram mass is still a one-kilogram mass (as mass is an intrinsic property of the object) but the downward force due to gravity, and therefore its weight, is only one-sixth of what the object would have on Earth. So a man of mass 180 pounds weighs only about 30 pounds-force when visiting the Moon.


title: Weight

text: In most modern scientific work, physical quantities are measured in SI units. The SI unit of weight is the same as that of force: the newton (N) – a derived unit which can also be expressed in SI base units as kg⋅m/s (kilograms times metres per second squared).


title: Weight

text: In commercial and everyday use, the term "weight" is usually used to mean mass, and the verb "to weigh" means "to determine the mass of" or "to have a mass of". Used in this sense, the proper SI unit is the kilogram (kg).


title: Weight

text: As of 20 May 2019, the kilogram, which is essential to evaluate the weight of an object, has been redefined in terms of Planck's constant. The new definition does not affect the actual amount of the material but increases the measurement's quality and decreases the uncertainty associated with it.


title: Weight

text: Prior to using Planck's constant, a physical object was used as a standard. The object, located in a vault in Sèvres, France, has fluctuated by approximately 50 micrograms of its mass since it was first introduced in 1889. Consequently, the following must be true. Mass, which should be the same whether on earth or the moon for example, is only valid on earth since it needs to be referenced. Also, comparing a weight measurement to a standard that changes with time cannot be used as a reference without citing the actual value of it at the time and moment it was used as such. Therefore, to redefine the kilogram all National Metrology Institutes (NMIs) involved determined the new value of Planck's constant by evaluating a mass which was calibrated against the IPK. To this extent one kilogram is equal to h/(6.62607015×10^(-34) ) m^(-2) s which equals 1 m^(-2) s.


title: Weight

text: A kilogram has remained the same quantity it was before the redefinition. But as of May 2019, the weights measured and recorded can be traced back and used as comparison for current and future work.


title: Weight

text: In United States customary units, the pound can be either a unit of force or a unit of mass. Related units used in some distinct, separate subsystems of units include the poundal and the slug. The poundal is defined as the force necessary to accelerate an object of one-pound "mass" at 1ft/s, and is equivalent to about 1/32.2 of a pound-"force". The slug is defined as the amount of mass that accelerates at 1ft/s when one pound-force is exerted on it, and is equivalent to about 32.2 pounds (mass).


title: Weight

text: The kilogram-force is a non-SI unit of force, defined as the force exerted by a one-kilogram mass in standard Earth gravity (equal to 9.80665 newtons exactly). The dyne is the cgs unit of force and is not a part of SI, while weights measured in the cgs unit of mass, the gram, remain a part of SI.


title: Weight

text: The sensation of weight is caused by the force exerted by fluids in the vestibular system, a three-dimensional set of tubes in the inner ear. It is actually the sensation of g-force, regardless of whether this is due to being stationary in the presence of gravity, or, if the person is in motion, the result of any other forces acting on the body such as in the case of acceleration or deceleration of a lift, or centrifugal forces when turning sharply.


title: Weight

text: Weight is commonly measured using one of two methods. A spring scale or hydraulic or pneumatic scale measures local weight, the local force of gravity on the object (strictly "apparent" weight force). Since the local force of gravity can vary by up to 0.5% at different locations, spring scales will measure slightly different weights for the same object (the same mass) at different locations. To standardize weights, scales are always calibrated to read the weight an object would have at a nominal standard gravity of 9.80665m/s (approx. 32.174ft/s). However, this calibration is done at the factory. When the scale is moved to another location on Earth, the force of gravity will be different, causing a slight error. So to be highly accurate and legal for commerce, spring scales must be re-calibrated at the location at which they will be used.


title: Weight

text: A "balance" on the other hand, compares the weight of an unknown object in one scale pan to the weight of standard masses in the other, using a lever mechanism – a lever-balance. The standard masses are often referred to, non-technically, as "weights". Since any variations in gravity will act equally on the unknown and the known weights, a lever-balance will indicate the same value at any location on Earth. Therefore, balance "weights" are usually calibrated and marked in mass units, so the lever-balance measures mass by comparing the Earth's attraction on the unknown object and standard masses in the scale pans. In the absence of a gravitational field, away from planetary bodies (e.g. space), a lever-balance would not work, but on the Moon, for example, it would give the same reading as on Earth. Some balances are marked in weight units, but since the weights are calibrated at the factory for standard gravity, the balance will measure standard weight, i.e. what the object would weigh at standard gravity, not the actual local force of gravity on the object.


title: Weight

text: If the actual force of gravity on the object is needed, this can be calculated by multiplying the mass measured by the balance by the acceleration due to gravity – either standard gravity (for everyday work) or the precise local gravity (for precision work). Tables of the gravitational acceleration at different locations can be found on the web.


title: Weight

text: Gross weight is a term that is generally found in commerce or trade applications, and refers to the total weight of a product and its packaging. Conversely, net weight refers to the weight of the product alone, discounting the weight of its container or packaging; and tare weight is the weight of the packaging alone.


title: Weight

text: The table below shows comparative gravitational accelerations at the surface of the Sun, the Earth's moon, each of the planets in the solar system. The “surface” is taken to mean the cloud tops of the gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune). For the Sun, the surface is taken to mean the photosphere. The values in the table have not been de-rated for the centrifugal effect of planet rotation (and cloud-top wind speeds for the gas giants) and therefore, generally speaking, are similar to the actual gravity that would be experienced near the poles.


title: Pathé

text: Pathé or Pathé Frères (, styled as PATHÉ!) is the name of various French businesses that were founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France starting in 1896. In the early 1900s, Pathé became the world's largest film equipment and production company, as well as a major producer of phonograph records. In 1908, Pathé invented the newsreel that was shown in cinemas before a feature film.


title: Pathé

text: Pathé is a major film production and distribution company, owning a number of cinema chains through its subsidiary Les Cinémas Pathé Gaumont and television networks across Europe. It is the second-oldest operating film company behind Gaumont Film Company, which was established in 1895.


title: Pathé

text: The company was founded as Société Pathé Frères (Pathé Brothers Company) in Paris, France on 28 September 1896, by the four brothers Charles, Émile, Théophile and Jacques Pathé. During the first part of the 20th century, Pathé became the largest film equipment and production company in the world, as well as a major producer of phonograph records.


title: Pathé

text: The driving force behind the film operation and phonograph business was Charles Pathé, who had helped open a phonograph shop in 1894 and established a phonograph factory at Chatou on the western outskirts of Paris. The Pathé brothers began selling Edison and Columbia phonographs and accompanying cylinder records and later, the brothers designed and sold their own phonographs that incorporated elements of other brands. Soon after, they also started marketing pre-recorded cylinder records. By 1896 the Pathé brothers had offices and recording studios not only in Paris, but also in London, Milan, and St. Petersburg. Pathé manufactured cylinder records until approximately 1914. In 1905 the Pathé brothers entered the growing field of disc records.


title: Pathé

text: In France, Pathé became the largest and most successful distributor of cylinder records and phonographs. These, however, failed to make headway in foreign markets such as the United Kingdom and the United States where other brands were already in widespread use.


title: Pathé

text: In December 1928, the French and British Pathé phonograph assets were sold to the British Columbia Graphophone Company. In July 1929, the assets of the American Pathé record company were merged into the newly formed American Record Corporation. The Pathé and Pathé-Marconi labels and catalogue still survive, first as imprints of EMI and now currently EMI's successor Parlophone Records.


title: Pathé

text: As the phonograph business became successful, Pathé saw the opportunities offered by new means of entertainment and in particular by the fledgling motion picture industry. Having decided to expand the record business to include film equipment, the company expanded dramatically. To finance its growth, the company took the name Compagnie Générale des Établissements Pathé Frères Phonographes & Cinématographes (sometimes abbreviated as "C.G.P.C.") in 1897, and its shares were listed on the Paris Stock Exchange. In 1896, Mitchell Mark of Buffalo, New York, became the first American to import Pathé films to the United States, where they were shown in the Vitascope Theater.


title: Pathé

text: In 1907, Pathé acquired the Lumière brothers' patents and then set about to design an improved studio camera and to make their own film stock. Their technologically advanced equipment, new processing facilities built at Vincennes, and aggressive merchandising combined with efficient distribution systems allowed them to capture a huge share of the international market. They first expanded to London in 1902 where they set up production facilities and a chain of movie theatres.


title: Pathé

text: By 1909, Pathé had built more than 200 movie theatres in France and Belgium and by the following year they had facilities in Madrid, Moscow, Rome and New York City plus Australia and Japan. Slightly later, they opened a film exchange in Buffalo, New York. Through its American subsidiary, it was part of the MPPC cartel of production in the United States. It participated in the Paris Film Congress in February 1909 as part of a plan to create a similar European organisation. The company withdrew from the project in a second meeting in April which fatally undermined the proposal.


title: Pathé

text: Prior to the outbreak of World War I, Pathé dominated Europe's market in motion picture cameras and projectors. It has been estimated that at one time, 60 percent of all films were shot with Pathé equipment. In 1908, Pathé distributed "Excursion to the Moon" by Segundo de Chomón, an imitation of Georges Méliès's "A Trip to the Moon". Pathé and Méliès worked together in 1911. Georges Méliès made a film "Baron Munchausen's Dream", his first film to be distributed by Pathé. Pathé's relationship with Méliès soured, and in 1913 Méliès went bankrupt, and his last film was never released by Pathé.


title: Pathé

text: Worldwide, the company emphasised research, investing in such experiments as hand-coloured film and the synchronisation of film and gramophone recordings. In 1908, Pathé invented the newsreel that was shown in theatres prior to the feature film. The news clips featured the Pathé logo of a crowing rooster at the beginning of each reel. In 1912, it introduced 28 mm non-flammable film and equipment under the brand name Pathescope. Pathé News produced cinema newsreels from 1910, up until the 1970s when production ceased as a result of mass television ownership.


title: Pathé

text: In the United States, beginning in 1914, the company built film production studios in Fort Lee and Jersey City, NJ, where their building still stands. The Heights, Jersey City produced the extremely successful serialised episodes called "The Perils of Pauline". By 1918 Pathé had grown to the point where it was necessary to separate operations into two distinct divisions. With Emile Pathé as chief executive, Pathé Records dealt exclusively with phonographs and recordings while brother Charles managed "Pathé-Cinéma" which was responsible for film production, distribution, and exhibition.


title: Pathé

text: 1922 saw the introduction of the "Pathé Baby" home film system using a new 9.5 mm film stock which became popular over the next few decades. In 1921, Pathé sold off its United States motion picture production arm, which was renamed "Pathé Exchange" and later merged into RKO Pictures, disappearing as an independent brand in 1931. Pathé sold its British film studios to Eastman Kodak in 1927 while maintaining the theatre and distribution arm.


title: Pathé

text: Pathé was already in substantial financial trouble when Bernard Natan took control of the company in 1929. Studio founder Charles Pathé had been selling assets for several years to boost investor value and keep the studio's cash flow healthy. The company's founder had even sold Pathé's name and "rooster" trademark to other companies in return for a mere 2 percent of revenues. Natan had the bad luck to take charge of the studio just as the Great Depression convulsed the French economy.


title: Pathé

text: Natan attempted to steady Pathé's finances and implement modern film industry practices at the studio. Natan acquired another film studio, Société des Cinéromans, from Arthur Bernède and Gaston Leroux, which enabled Pathé to expand into projector and electronics manufacturing. He also bought the Fornier chain of motion picture theatres and rapidly expanded the chain's nationwide presence. The French press, however, attacked Natan mercilessly for his stewardship of Pathé. Many of these attacks were antisemitic.


title: Pathé

text: Pathé-Natan did well under Natan's guidance. Between 1930 and 1935, despite the world economic crisis, the company made 100 million francs in profits, and produced and released more than 60 feature films (just as many films as major American studios produced at the time). He resumed production of the newsreel Pathé News, which had not been produced since 1927.


title: Pathé

text: Natan also invested heavily into research and development to expand Pathé's film business. In 1929, he pushed Pathé into sound film. In September, the studio produced its first sound feature film, and its first sound newsreel a month later. Natan also launched two new cinema-related magazines, "Pathé-Revue" and "Actualités Féminines", to help market Pathé's films and build consumer demand for cinema. Under Natan, Pathé also funded the research of Henri Chrétien, who developed the anamorphic lens (leading to the creation of CinemaScope and other widescreen film formats common today).


title: Pathé

text: Natan expanded Pathé's business interests into communications industries other than film. In November 1929, Natan established France's first television company, Télévision-Baird-Natan. A year later, he purchased a radio station in Paris and formed a holding company (Radio-Natan-Vitus) to run what would become a burgeoning radio empire.


title: Pathé

text: But in 1935, Pathé went bankrupt. In order to finance the company's continued expansion, Pathé's board of directors (which still included Charles Pathé) voted in 1930 to issue shares worth 105 million francs. But with the depression deepening, only 50 percent of the shares were purchased. One of the investor banks collapsed due to financial difficulties unrelated to Pathé's problems, and Pathé was forced to follow through with the purchase of several movie theatre chains it no longer could afford to buy. Although the company continued to make a profit (as noted above), it lost more money than it could bring in.


title: Pathé

text: The collapse of Pathé led French authorities to indict Bernard Natan on charges of fraud. Natan was accused of financing the purchase of the company without any collateral, of bilking investors by establishing fictitious shell corporations, and negligent financial mismanagement. Natan was even accused of hiding his Romanian and Jewish heritage by changing his name. Natan was indicted and imprisoned in 1939. A second indictment was brought in 1941, and he was convicted shortly thereafter. He was removed from prison by the French authorities in September 1942, delivered to the Nazis, and deported to Auschwitz where he died in October 1942.


title: Pathé

text: The company was forced to undergo a restructuring in 1943 and was acquired by Adrien Ramauge. Over the years, the business underwent a number of changes including diversification into producing programmes for the burgeoning television industry. During the 1970s, operating theatres overtook film production as Pathé's primary source of revenue.


title: Pathé

text: In the late 1980s, Italian financier Giancarlo Parretti tried to make a bid for Pathé, even taking over Cannon and renaming it Pathé Communications in anticipation of owning the storied studio. Parretti's shady past, however, raised enough eyebrows in the French government that the deal fell through. It turned out to be a fortunate decision, as Parretti later took over Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and merged it with his Pathé Communications Group to create MGM-Pathé Communications in 1990, only to lose it in bankruptcy in late 1991.


title: Pathé

text: In 1990 Chargeurs, a French conglomerate led by Jérôme Seydoux, took control of the company. As a result of the deregulation of the French telecommunications market, in June 1999 Pathé merged with Vivendi, with the exchange ratio for the merger fixed at three Vivendi shares for every two Pathé shares. "The Wall Street Journal" estimated the value of the deal at US$2.59 billion. Following the completion of the merger, Vivendi retained Pathé's interests in British Sky Broadcasting and CanalSatellite, a French broadcasting corporation, but then sold all remaining assets to Jérôme Seydoux's family-owned corporation, Fornier SA, which changed its name to Pathé.


title: Pathé

text: In its home country France, Pathé self-distributes its films through Pathé Distribution (formerly called AMLF ("Agence méditerranéenne de location de films") from 1972 to 1998). On home video, their films are distributed by Fox Pathé Europa, a joint venture between Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, Pathé and EuropaCorp.


title: Pathé

text: From the beginning of the 80's, Pathé released their movies through Guild Film Distribution and Guild Home Video. After Pathé purchased Guild in 1996, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (later Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment) took over as the home video distributor, while the then-renamed Guild Pathé Cinema took over theatrically, which was eventually renamed as Pathé Distribution in 1998. Guild Home Video remained as an in-name only dormant business of Pathé until folding on 17 December 2019.


title: Pathé

text: In 2009, Pathé closed their standalone distribution unit in the UK and instead partnered up with Warner Bros. Pictures to instead release their own produced movies and Pedro Almodóvar's movies theatrically after the U.S. failure of "Doogal" and the U.K. failure of "The Hottie and the Nottie", causing two of their films "Chatroom" and "Dead Man Running" being transferred to the now defunct UK distributor Revolver Entertainment and "The Illusionist" in 2010 being their last standalone distributor film to date, while retaining 20th Century Fox as the home video distributor. On 1 February 2011, Fox took over as Pathé's theatrical distributor as well.


title: Pathé

text: With the purchase of 20th Century Fox from The Walt Disney Company on 20 March 2019, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures took over distributing Pathé's material, releasing "Misbehaviour" and "The Human Voice".


title: Pathé

text: On 7 June 2021, it was announced that Warner Bros. Pictures would return to distributing Pathé films in the UK after the then-current deal with Disney expired on 30 June 2021 with the first films being released under the new deal being "Parallel Mothers" and "The Duke". Unlike the 2009 deal, this new deal will include home video and digital rights as well, which Fox/Disney previously handled.


title: Brahmic scripts

text: The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used by various languages in several language families in South, East and Southeast Asia: Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Mongolic, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, and Tai. They were also the source of the dictionary order ("gojūon") of Japanese "kana".


title: Brahmic scripts

text: Brahmic scripts descended from the Brahmi script. Brahmi is clearly attested from the 3rd century BCE during the reign of Ashoka, who used the script for imperial edicts, but there are some claims of earlier epigraphy found on pottery in southern India and Sri Lanka. The most reliable of these were short Brahmi inscriptions dated to the 4th century BCE and published by Coningham et al. (1996).


title: Brahmic scripts

text: Northern Brahmi gave rise to the Gupta script during the Gupta period, which in turn diversified into a number of cursives during the medieval period. Notable examples of such medieval scripts, developed by the 7th or 8th century, include Nagari, Siddham and Sharada.


title: Brahmic scripts

text: The Siddhaṃ script was especially important in Buddhism, as many sutras were written in it. The art of Siddham calligraphy survives today in Japan. The tabular presentation and dictionary order of the modern "kana" system of Japanese writing is believed to be descended from the Indic scripts, most likely through the spread of Buddhism.


title: Brahmic scripts

text: Southern Brahmi evolved into the Kadamba, Pallava and Vatteluttu scripts, which in turn diversified into other scripts of South India and Southeast Asia. Brahmic scripts spread in a peaceful manner, Indianization, or the spread of Indian learning. The scripts spread naturally to Southeast Asia, at ports on trading routes. At these trading posts, ancient inscriptions have been found in Sanskrit, using scripts that originated in India. At first, inscriptions were made in Indian languages, but later the scripts were used to write the local Southeast Asian languages. Hereafter, local varieties of the scripts were developed. By the 8th century, the scripts had diverged and separated into regional scripts.


title: Brahmic scripts

text: Below are comparison charts of several of the major Indic scripts, organised on the principle that glyphs in the same column all derive from the same Brahmi glyph. Accordingly: