title: Cruelty to animals

text: In criminal law, the situation is different. In December 2012, the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District reformed the existing Penal Code of Mexico City, establishing abuse and cruelty to animals as criminal offenses, provided the animals are not deemed to be plagues or pests. Abandoned animals are not considered to be plagues. A subsequent reform was entered into force on 31 January 2013, by a decree published in the Official Gazette of the Federal District. The law provides penalties of six months to two years imprisonment, and a fine of 50 to 100 days at minimum wage, to persons who cause obvious injury to an animal, and the penalty is increased by one-half of those injuries endanger its life. The penalty rises to two to four years of prison, and a fine of 200 to 400 days at minimum wage, if the person intentionally causes the death of an animal.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: This law is considered to extend throughout the rest of the 31 constituent states of the country. In addition, The Law of Animal Protection of the Federal District is wide-ranging, based on banning "unnecessary suffering". Similar laws now exist in most states.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: The primary federal law relating to animal care and conditions in the US is the Animal Welfare Act of 1966, amended in 1970, 1976, 1985, 1990, 2002, and 2007. It is the only Federal law in the United States that regulates the treatment of animals in research, exhibition, transport, and by dealers. Other laws, policies, and guidelines may include additional species coverage or specifications for animal care and use, but all refer to the Animal Welfare Act as the minimum acceptable standard.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: The Animal Legal Defense Fund releases an annual report ranking the animal protection laws of every state based on their relative strength and general comprehensiveness. In a 2013's report, the top five states for their strong anti-cruelty laws were Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Oregon, and California. The five states with the weakest animal cruelty laws in 2013 were Kentucky, Iowa, South Dakota, New Mexico, and Wyoming.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In Massachusetts and New York, agents of humane societies and associations may be appointed as special officers to enforce statutes outlawing animal cruelty.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In 2004, a Florida legislator proposed a ban on "cruelty to bovines", stating: "A person who, for practice, entertainment, or sport, intentionally fells, trips, or otherwise causes a cow to fall or lose its balance using roping, lassoing, dragging, or otherwise touching the tail of the cow commits a misdemeanor of the first degree." The proposal did not become law.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In the United States, ear cropping, tail docking, rodeo sports, and other acts are legal and sometimes condoned. Penalties for cruelty can be minimal if pursued. Currently, 46 of the 50 states have enacted felony penalties for certain forms of animal abuse. However, in most jurisdictions, animal cruelty is most commonly charged as a misdemeanor offense. In one recent California case, a felony conviction for animal cruelty could theoretically net a 25-year to a life sentence due to their three-strikes law, which increases sentences based on prior felony convictions.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In 2003, West Hollywood, California, passed an ordinance banning declawing of house cats. In 2007, Norfolk, Virginia passed legislation only allowing the procedure for medical reasons. However, most jurisdictions allow the procedure.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In April 2013, Texas Federal Court Judge Sim Lake ruled that the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act of 2010, which criminalized the recording, sale, and transport of videos depicting animal cruelty as obscenity, violates the First Amendment. Judge Lake noted that obscenity tests require an explicitly sexual depiction, which the criminalized videos lack. This follows the precedent set by "United States v. Stevens", which additionally held that restrictions on the possession of animal cruelty videos were unconstitutional.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In November 2019, then-U.S. President Donald Trump signed the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act, making certain intentional acts of cruelty to animals federal crimes carrying penalties of up to seven years in prison. The Act expanded upon the 2010 Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act signed by President Barack Obama that banned the creation and distribution of videos that showed animals being crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated, impaled, or subjected to other forms of torture. The underlying acts, which were not included in the 2010 bill, are part of the PACT Act and are now felony offenses. The bill was unanimously passed in both the House and Senate.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: Venezuela published a "Law for Protection of Domestic Fauna free and in captivity" in 2010, defining responsibilities and sanctions regarding animal care and ownership. Animal cruelty acts are fined, but are not a cause for imprisonment. The law also forbids the possession, breeding, and reproduction of pit bull dogs, among similar breeds that are alleged to be aggressive and dangerous. It elicited reactions from dog owners, who said that aggressiveness in dogs is determined more by treatment by the owner than by the breed itself.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: Israel banned the sale of fur to the fashion industry in June 2021, being the first country in the world to do so.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: As of the year 2006, there were no laws in China governing acts of cruelty to animals. There are no government-supported charitable organizations like the RSPCA, which monitors the cases of animal cruelty. All kinds of animal abuses, such as to fish, tigers, and bears, are to be reported to law enforcement and animal welfare.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In the absence of a unified law against animal mistreatment, the World Animal Protection notes that some legislation protecting the welfare of animals exists in certain contexts, especially ones used in research and zoos.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In September 2009, legislation was drafted to address deliberate cruelty to animals in China. If passed, the legislation would offer some protection to pets, captive wildlife, and animals used in laboratories, as well as regulate how farm animals are raised, transported, and slaughtered.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In 2008, the People's Republic of China was in the process of making changes to its stray-dog population laws in the capital city, Beijing. Mr. Zheng Gang who is the director of the Internal and Judicial Committee which comes under the Beijing Municipal People's Congress (BMPC), supported the draft of the Beijing Municipal Regulation on Dogs from the local government. The law would replace the Beijing Municipal Regulation on Dog Ownership, introduced in 1989. The extant regulation talked of "strictly" limiting dog ownership and controlling the number of dogs in the city. The proposed draft focused instead on "strict management and combining restrictions with management."


title: Cruelty to animals

text: As of 2010, Hong Kong has supplemented or replaced the laws against cruelty with a positive approach using laws that specify how animals should be treated.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: The government department primarily responsible for animal welfare in Hong Kong is the Agriculture, Fisheries, and Conservation Department (AFCD).


title: Cruelty to animals

text: As of 2006, Hong Kong has a law titled "Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Ordinance", with maximum 3-year imprisonment and fines of HKD$200,000.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: According to the newly amended "Indian animal welfare act, 2011" cruelty to animals is an offense and is punishable with a fine which shall not be less than ten thousand Rupees, which may extend to twenty-five thousand rupees or with imprisonment up to two years or both in the case of a first offense. In the case of a second or subsequent offense, with a fine which shall not be less than fifty thousand Rupees, but may extend to one lakh Rupees and with imprisonment with a term which shall not be less than one year but may extend to three years. This amendment is currently awaiting ratification from the Government of India. The 1962 Act is the one that is practiced as of now. The maximum penalty under the 1962 Act is Rs. 50 (under $1).


title: Cruelty to animals

text: Many organizations, including ones such as the local SPCA, PF, A, and Fosterdopt are actively involved in assisting the general population in reporting cruelty cases to the police and helping bring the perpetrator to justice. Due to this, much change has been observed in the subcontinent.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In Japan, the 1973 Welfare and Management of Animals Act (amended in 1999 and 2005) stipulates that "no person shall kill, injure, or inflict cruelty to animals without a due course", and in particular, criminalizes cruelty to all mammals, birds, and reptiles possessed by persons; as well as cattle, horses, goats, sheep, pigs, dogs, cats, pigeons, domestic rabbits, chickens, and domestic ducks regardless of whether they are in captivity.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: Separate national and local ordinances exist about ensuring the health and safety of animals handled by pet shops and other businesses.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: Animal experiments are regulated by the 2000 Law for the Humane Treatment and Management of Animals, which was amended in 2006. This law requires those using animals to follow the principles outlined in the 3Rs and use as few animals as possible, and cause minimal distress and suffering. Regulation is at a local level based on national guidelines, but there are no governmental inspections of institutions and no reporting requirement for the numbers of animals used.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: Cruelty towards animals protected under the Animal Welfare Act (2015) is punishable by a fine of 20–100,000 ringgit and/or imprisonment of up to three years. Cruelty towards animals protected under the Wildlife Conservation Act (2010) is punishable by a fine of 5–50,000 ringgit and/or up-to one year imprisonment.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: Under the AA, a person commits an offense of animal cruelty if they "cruelly beats, kicks, ill-treats, overrides, overdrives, overloads, tortures, infuriates or terrifies any animal.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: Veterinarian Lana Dunn and several Saudi nationals report that there are no laws to protect animals from cruelty since the term is not well-defined within the Saudi legal system. They point to a lack of a governing body to supervise conditions for animals, particularly in pet stores and in the exotic animal trade with East Africa.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: South Korea's animal protection law states that anyone who abuses or is cruel to animals may be sentenced to a maximum of three years in prison or fined 30 million won ($25,494), but the standards to decide penalties have been low as the animals are treated as objects under the current legal system, Choung said.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: The Taiwanese Animal Protection Act was passed in 1998, imposing fines of up to NT$250,000 for cruelty. Criminal penalties for animal cruelty were enacted in 2009


title: Cruelty to animals

text: Thailand introduced its first animal welfare law in 2014. The "Cruelty Prevention and Welfare of Animal Act, B.E. 2557 (2014)" came into being on 27 December 2014.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: The European Union Council Directive 1999/74/EC is a directive passed by the European Union on the minimum standards for keeping egg laying hens which effectively bans conventional battery cages. The directive, passed in 1999, banned conventional battery cages in the EU from 1 January 2012 after a 13-year phase-out.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In France, cruelty to animals is punishable by imprisonment of two years and a financial penalty (€30,000).


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In Germany, killing animals or causing significant pain (or prolonged or repeated pain) to them is punishable by imprisonment of up to three years or a financial penalty.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: Acts of cruelty against animals can be punished with imprisonment, for a minimum of three months up to a maximum of three years, and with a fine ranging from a minimum of 3,000 Euros to a maximum of 160,000 Euros, as for the law n°189/2004.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: The "Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013" came into force in 2014, improving animal protection. The maximum penalty is up to €250,000 and up to five years in prison. Sentences of up to three years have been imposed in several cases.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: Since 1 October 2014, violence against animals has been a crime in Portugal. Legislation published in the "Diário da República" on 29 August criminalizes the mistreatment of animals and indicates that "those who, without reasonable cause, inflict pain, suffering, or any other hardship to a companion animal abuse" are to be subject to imprisonment of up to one year. If such acts result in the "death of the animal", the "deprivation of an important organ or member", or "serious and permanent impairment of its capacity of locomotion", those responsible will be punished by imprisonment up to two years.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: As for pets, the new law provides that "whoever, having the duty to store, monitor or pet watch, abandons them, thereby putting in danger their food and the provision of care owed" faces up to six months imprisonment.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In Sweden cruelty to animals is punishable by financial penalty and prison for up to two years. The owner will lose the right to own animals and the animals will be removed from the owner.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: The Swiss animal protection laws are among the strictest in the world, comprehensively regulating the treatment of animals including the size of rabbit cages, and the amount of exercise that must be provided to dogs.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In the canton of Zurich an animal lawyer, Antoine Goetschel, is employed by the canton government to represent the interests of animals in animal cruelty cases.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: Under Turkey's Animal Protection Law No. 5199, cruelty to animals is considered a criminal offence, punishable by up to four years in prison. In July 2021, Turkey banned the opening of circuses which use animals, and dolphinariums. Existing facilities will cease operations in ten years. HAYTAP, the Animal Rights Federation in Turkey, used to believe that the previous law did not contain a strong enough punishment for animal abusers.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In the United Kingdom, cruelty to animals is a criminal offence for which one may be jailed for up to 6 months.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: On 18 August 1911, the House of Commons introduced the Protection of Animals Act 1911 (c.27) following lobbying by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). The maximum punishment was six months of "hard labour" with a fine of 25 pounds.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In the Metropolitan Police Act 1839 "fighting or baiting Lions, Bears, Badgers, Cocks, Dogs, or other Animals" was prohibited in London, with a penalty of up to one-month imprisonment, with possible hard labour, or up to five pounds. The law laid numerous restrictions on how, when, and where animals could be driven, wagons unloaded, etc. It also prohibited owners from letting mad dogs run loose and gave police the right to destroy any dog suspected of being rabid or any dog bitten by a suspected rabid dog. The same law prohibited the use of dogs for drawing carts.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: Up until then, dogs were used for delivering milk, bread, fish, meat, fruit, vegetables, animal food (the cat's-meat man), and other items for sale and for collecting refuse (the rag-and-bone man). As Nigel Rothfels notes, the prohibition against dogs pulling carts in or near London caused most of the dogs to be killed by their owners as they went from being contributors to the family income to unaffordable expenses. Cart dogs were replaced by people with handcarts. About 150,000 dogs were killed or abandoned. Erica Fudge quotes Hilda Kean:


title: Cruelty to animals

text: The Protection of Animals Act 1911 extended the ban on draft dogs to the rest of the kingdom. As many as 600,000 dogs were killed or abandoned.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: The Protection of Animals Act 1911 has since been largely superseded by the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which also superseded and consolidated more than 20 other pieces of legislation, including the Protection of Animals Act 1934 and the Abandonment of Animals Act 1960. The Act introduced the new welfare offence, which means that animal owners have a positive duty of care, and outlaws neglect to provide for their animals' basic needs, such as access to adequate nutrition and veterinary care.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: Under the Criminal Damage Act 1971, domestic animals can be classed as property that is capable of being "damaged or destroyed". A charge of criminal damage may be appropriate for the injury or death of an animal owned by someone other than the defendant, and prosecution under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 may also be appropriate.


title: Cruelty to animals

text: In Australia, all states and territories have enacted legislation governing animal welfare. The legislation is:


title: Cruelty to animals

text: Welfare laws have been criticized as not adequately protecting animals. Whilst police maintain an overall jurisdiction in the prosecution of criminal matters, in many states officers of the RSPCA and other animal welfare charities are accorded authority to investigate and prosecute animal cruelty offenses.


title: Fluoride

text: Fluoride () is an inorganic, monatomic anion of fluorine, with the chemical formula (also written ), whose salts are typically white or colorless. Fluoride salts typically have distinctive bitter tastes, and are odorless. Its salts and minerals are important chemical reagents and industrial chemicals, mainly used in the production of hydrogen fluoride for fluorocarbons. Fluoride is classified as a weak base since it only partially associates in solution, but concentrated fluoride is corrosive and can attack the skin.


title: Fluoride

text: Fluoride is the simplest fluorine anion. In terms of charge and size, the fluoride ion resembles the hydroxide ion. Fluoride ions occur on Earth in several minerals, particularly fluorite, but are present only in trace quantities in bodies of water in nature.


title: Fluoride

text: Fluorides include compounds that contain ionic fluoride and those in which fluoride does not dissociate. The nomenclature does not distinguish these situations. For example, sulfur hexafluoride and carbon tetrafluoride are not sources of fluoride ions under ordinary conditions.


title: Fluoride

text: The systematic name "fluoride", the valid IUPAC name, is determined according to the additive nomenclature. However, the name "fluoride" is also used in compositional IUPAC nomenclature which does not take the nature of bonding involved into account.


title: Fluoride

text: "Fluoride" is also used non-systematically, to describe compounds which release fluoride upon dissolving. Hydrogen fluoride is itself an example of a non-systematic name of this nature. However, it is also a trivial name, and the preferred IUPAC name for "fluorane".


title: Fluoride

text: Fluorine is estimated to be the 13th-most abundant element in Earth's crust and is widely dispersed in nature, entirely in the form of fluorides. The vast majority is held in , the most commercially important of which is fluorite (CaF). Natural weathering of some kinds of rocks, as well as human activities, releases fluorides into the biosphere through what is sometimes called the fluorine cycle.


title: Fluoride

text: Fluoride is naturally present in groundwater, fresh and saltwater sources, as well as in rainwater, particularly in urban areas. Seawater fluoride levels are usually in the range of 0.86 to 1.4 mg/L, and average 1.1 mg/L (milligrams per litre). For comparison, chloride concentration in seawater is about 19 g/L. The low concentration of fluoride reflects the insolubility of the alkaline earth fluorides, e.g., CaF.


title: Fluoride

text: Concentrations in fresh water vary more significantly. Surface water such as rivers or lakes generally contains between 0.01–0.3 mg/L. Groundwater (well water) concentrations vary even more, depending on the presence of local fluoride-containing minerals. For example, natural levels of under 0.05 mg/L have been detected in parts of Canada but up to 8 mg/L in parts of China; in general levels rarely exceed 10 mg/litre


title: Fluoride

text: Fluoride can be present in rain, with its concentration increasing significantly upon exposure to volcanic activity or atmospheric pollution derived from burning fossil fuels or other sorts of industry, particularly aluminium smelters.


title: Fluoride

text: All vegetation contains some fluoride, which is absorbed from soil and water. Some plants concentrate fluoride from their environment more than others. All tea leaves contain fluoride; however, mature leaves contain as much as 10 to 20 times the fluoride levels of young leaves from the same plant.


title: Fluoride

text: In aqueous solution, fluoride has a p"K" value of 10.8. It is therefore a weak base, and tends to remain as the fluoride ion rather than generating a substantial amount of hydrogen fluoride. That is, the following equilibrium favours the left-hand side in water:


title: Fluoride

text: However, upon prolonged contact with moisture, soluble fluoride salts will decompose to their respective hydroxides or oxides, as the hydrogen fluoride escapes. Fluoride is distinct in this regard among the halides. The identity of the solvent can have a dramatic effect on the equilibrium shifting it to the right-hand side, greatly increasing the rate of decomposition.


title: Fluoride

text: Salts containing fluoride are numerous and adopt myriad structures. Typically the fluoride anion is surrounded by four or six cations, as is typical for other halides. Sodium fluoride and sodium chloride adopt the same structure. For compounds containing more than one fluoride per cation, the structures often deviate from those of the chlorides, as illustrated by the main fluoride mineral fluorite (CaF) where the Ca ions are surrounded by eight F centers. In CaCl, each Ca ion is surrounded by six Cl centers. The difluorides of the transition metals often adopt the rutile structure whereas the dichlorides have cadmium chloride structures.


title: Fluoride

text: Upon treatment with a standard acid, fluoride salts convert to hydrogen fluoride and metal salts. With strong acids, it can be doubly protonated to give . Oxidation of fluoride gives fluorine. Solutions of inorganic fluorides in water contain F and bifluoride . Few inorganic fluorides are soluble in water without undergoing significant hydrolysis. In terms of its reactivity, fluoride differs significantly from chloride and other halides, and is more strongly solvated in protic solvents due to its smaller radius/charge ratio. Its closest chemical relative is hydroxide, since both have similar geometries.


title: Fluoride

text: Most fluoride salts dissolve to give the bifluoride () anion. Sources of true F anions are rare because the highly basic fluoride anion abstracts protons from many, even adventitious, sources. Relative unsolvated fluoride, which does exist in aprotic solvents, is called "naked". Naked fluoride is a strong Lewis base, and a powerful nucleophile. Some quaternary ammonium salts of naked fluoride include tetramethylammonium fluoride and tetrabutylammonium fluoride. Cobaltocenium fluoride is another example. However, they all lack structural characterization in aprotic solvents. Because of their high basicity, many so-called naked fluoride sources are in fact bifluoride salts. In late 2016 imidazolium fluoride was synthesized that is the closest approximation of a thermodynamically stable and structurally characterized example of a "naked" fluoride source in an aprotic solvent (acetonitrile). The sterically demanding imidazolium cation stabilizes the discrete anions and protects them from polymerization.


title: Fluoride

text: At physiological pHs, hydrogen fluoride is usually fully ionised to fluoride. In biochemistry, fluoride and hydrogen fluoride are equivalent. Fluorine, in the form of fluoride, is considered to be a micronutrient for human health, necessary to prevent dental cavities, and to promote healthy bone growth. The tea plant ("Camellia sinensis" L.) is a known accumulator of fluorine compounds, released upon forming infusions such as the common beverage. The fluorine compounds decompose into products including fluoride ions. Fluoride is the most bioavailable form of fluorine, and as such, tea is potentially a vehicle for fluoride dosing. Approximately, 50% of absorbed fluoride is excreted renally with a twenty-four-hour period. The remainder can be retained in the oral cavity, and lower digestive tract. Fasting dramatically increases the rate of fluoride absorption to near 100%, from a 60% to 80% when taken with food. Per a 2013 study, it was found that consumption of one litre of tea a day, can potentially supply the daily recommended intake of 4 mg per day. Some lower quality brands can supply up to a 120% of this amount. Fasting can increase this to 150%. The study indicates that tea drinking communities are at an increased risk of dental and skeletal fluorosis, in the case where water fluoridation is in effect. Fluoride ion in low doses in the mouth reduces tooth decay. For this reason, it is used in toothpaste and water fluoridation. At much higher doses and frequent exposure, fluoride causes health complications and can be toxic.


title: Fluoride

text: Fluoride salts and hydrofluoric acid are the main fluorides of industrial value. Compounds with C-F bonds fall into the realm of organofluorine chemistry. The main uses of fluoride, in terms of volume, are in the production of cryolite, NaAlF. It is used in aluminium smelting. Formerly, it was mined, but now it is derived from hydrogen fluoride. Fluorite is used on a large scale to separate slag in steel-making. Mined fluorite (CaF) is a commodity chemical used in steel-making.


title: Fluoride

text: Hydrofluoric acid and its anhydrous form, hydrogen fluoride, is also used in the production of fluorocarbons. Hydrofluoric acid has a variety of specialized applications, including its ability to dissolve glass.


title: Fluoride

text: Fluoride-containing compounds, such as sodium fluoride or sodium monofluorophosphate are used in topical and systemic fluoride therapy for preventing tooth decay. They are used for water fluoridation and in many products associated with oral hygiene. Originally, sodium fluoride was used to fluoridate water; hexafluorosilicic acid (HSiF) and its salt sodium hexafluorosilicate (NaSiF) are more commonly used additives, especially in the United States. The fluoridation of water is known to prevent tooth decay and is considered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be "one of 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century". In some countries where large, centralized water systems are uncommon, fluoride is delivered to the populace by fluoridating table salt. For the method of action for cavity prevention, see Fluoride therapy. Fluoridation of water has its critics (see Water fluoridation controversy). Fluoridated toothpaste is in common use. Meta-analysis show the efficacy of 500 ppm fluoride in toothpastes. However, no beneficial effect can be detected when more than one fluoride source is used for daily oral care.


title: Fluoride

text: Fluoride salts are commonly used in biological assay processing to inhibit the activity of phosphatases, such as serine/threonine phosphatases. Fluoride mimics the nucleophilic hydroxide ion in these enzymes' active sites. Beryllium fluoride and aluminium fluoride are also used as phosphatase inhibitors, since these compounds are structural mimics of the phosphate group and can act as analogues of the transition state of the reaction.


title: Fluoride

text: The U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) updated Estimated Average Requirements (EARs) and Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) for some minerals in 1997. Where there was not sufficient information to establish EARs and RDAs, an estimate designated Adequate Intake (AI) was used instead. AIs are typically matched to actual average consumption, with the assumption that there appears to be a need, and that need is met by what people consume. The current AI for women 19 years and older is 3.0 mg/day (includes pregnancy and lactation). The AI for men is 4.0 mg/day. The AI for children ages 1–18 increases from 0.7 to 3.0 mg/day. The major known risk of fluoride deficiency appears to be an increased risk of bacteria-caused tooth cavities. As for safety, the IOM sets tolerable upper intake levels (ULs) for vitamins and minerals when evidence is sufficient. In the case of fluoride the UL is 10 mg/day. Collectively the EARs, RDAs, AIs and ULs are referred to as Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs).


title: Fluoride

text: The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) refers to the collective set of information as Dietary Reference Values, with Population Reference Intake (PRI) instead of RDA, and Average Requirement instead of EAR. AI and UL defined the same as in United States. For women ages 18 and older the AI is set at 2.9 mg/day (includes pregnancy and lactation). For men the value is 3.4 mg/day. For children ages 1–17 years the AIs increase with age from 0.6 to 3.2 mg/day. These AIs are comparable to the U.S. AIs. The EFSA reviewed safety evidence and set an adult UL at 7.0 mg/day (lower for children).


title: Fluoride

text: For U.S. food and dietary supplement labeling purposes the amount of a vitamin or mineral in a serving is expressed as a percent of Daily Value (%DV). Although there is information to set Adequate Intake, fluoride does not have a Daily Value and is not required to be shown on food labels.


title: Fluoride

text: Daily intakes of fluoride can vary significantly according to the various sources of exposure. Values ranging from 0.46 to 3.6–5.4 mg/day have been reported in several studies (IPCS, 1984). In areas where water is fluoridated this can be expected to be a significant source of fluoride, however fluoride is also naturally present in virtually all foods and beverages at a wide range of concentrations. The maximum safe daily consumption of fluoride is 10 mg/day for an adult (U.S.) or 7 mg/day (European Union).


title: Fluoride

text: The upper limit of fluoride intake from all sources (fluoridated water, food, beverages, fluoride dental products and dietary fluoride supplements) is set at 0.10 mg/kg/day for infants, toddlers, and children through to 8 years old. For older children and adults, who are no longer at risk for dental fluorosis, the upper limit of fluoride is set at 10 mg/day regardless of weight.


title: Fluoride

text: According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Dietary Reference Intakes, which is the "highest level of daily nutrient intake that is likely to pose no risk of adverse health effects" specify 10 mg/day for most people, corresponding to 10 L of fluoridated water with no risk. For young children the values are smaller, ranging from 0.7 mg/d to 2.2 mg/d for infants. Water and food sources of fluoride include community water fluoridation, seafood, tea, and gelatin.


title: Fluoride

text: Soluble fluoride salts, of which sodium fluoride is the most common, are toxic, and have resulted in both accidental and self-inflicted deaths from acute poisoning. The lethal dose for most adult humans is estimated at 5 to 10 g (which is equivalent to 32 to 64 mg elemental fluoride per kg body weight). A case of a fatal poisoning of an adult with 4 grams of sodium fluoride is documented, and a dose of 120 g sodium fluoride has been survived. For sodium fluorosilicate (NaSiF), the median lethal dose (LD) orally in rats is 125 mg/kg, corresponding to 12.5 g for a 100 kg adult.


title: Fluoride

text: Treatment may involve oral administration of dilute calcium hydroxide or calcium chloride to prevent further absorption, and injection of calcium gluconate to increase the calcium levels in the blood. Hydrogen fluoride is more dangerous than salts such as NaF because it is corrosive and volatile, and can result in fatal exposure through inhalation or upon contact with the skin; calcium gluconate gel is the usual antidote.


title: Fluoride

text: In the higher doses used to treat osteoporosis, sodium fluoride can cause pain in the legs and incomplete stress fractures when the doses are too high; it also irritates the stomach, sometimes so severely as to cause ulcers. Slow-release and enteric-coated versions of sodium fluoride do not have gastric side effects in any significant way, and have milder and less frequent complications in the bones. In the lower doses used for water fluoridation, the only clear adverse effect is dental fluorosis, which can alter the appearance of children's teeth during tooth development; this is mostly mild and is unlikely to represent any real effect on aesthetic appearance or on public health. Fluoride was known to enhance the measurement of bone mineral density at the lumbar spine, but it was not effective for vertebral fractures and provoked more non vertebral fractures.


title: Fluoride

text: A popular urban myth claims that the Nazis used fluoride in concentration camps, but there is no historical evidence to prove this claim.


title: Fluoride

text: In areas that have naturally occurring high levels of fluoride in groundwater which is used for drinking water, both dental and skeletal fluorosis can be prevalent and severe.


title: Fluoride

text: Around one-third of the human population drinks water from groundwater resources. Of this, about 10%, approximately three hundred million people, obtains water from groundwater resources that are heavily contaminated with arsenic or fluoride. These trace elements derive mainly from minerals. Maps locating potential problematic wells are available.


title: Fluoride

text: Concentrated fluoride solutions are corrosive. Gloves made of nitrile rubber are worn when handling fluoride compounds. The hazards of solutions of fluoride salts depend on the concentration. In the presence of strong acids, fluoride salts release hydrogen fluoride, which is corrosive, especially toward glass.


title: Danes

text: Danes (, ) are a North Germanic ethnic group and nationality native to Denmark and a modern nation identified with the country of Denmark. This connection may be ancestral, legal, historical, or cultural.


title: Danes

text: Danes generally regard themselves as a nationality and reserve the word "ethnic" for the description of recent immigrants, sometimes referred to as "new Danes". The contemporary Danish national identity is based on the idea of "Danishness", which is founded on principles formed through historical cultural connections and is typically not based on racial heritage.


title: Danes

text: Denmark has been inhabited by various Germanic peoples since ancient times, including the Angles, Cimbri, Jutes, Herules, Teutones and others. The first mentions of "Danes" are recorded in the mid-6th century by historians Procopius () and Jordanes ("danī"), who both refer to a tribe related to the Suetidi inhabiting the peninsula of Jutland, the province of Scania and the isles in between. Frankish annalists of the 8th century often refer to Danish kings. The Bobbio Orosius from the early 7th century distinguishes between South Danes inhabiting Jutland and North Danes inhabiting the isles and the province of Scania.


title: Danes

text: The first mention of Danes within Denmark is on the Jelling Rune Stone, which mentions the conversion of the Danes to Christianity by Harald Bluetooth in the 10th century. Between c. 960 and the early 980s, Bluetooth established a kingdom in the lands of the Danes, stretching from Jutland to Scania. Around the same time, he received a visit from a German missionary who, by surviving an ordeal by fire according to legend, convinced Harold to convert to Christianity.


title: Danes

text: The following years saw the Danish Viking expansion, which incorporated Norway and England into the Danish North Sea Empire. After the death of Canute the Great in 1035, England broke away from Danish control. Canute's nephew Sweyn Estridson (1020–74) re-established strong royal Danish authority and built a good relationship with the archbishop of Bremen, at that time the archbishop of all Scandinavia. Over the next centuries, the Danish empire expanded throughout the southern Baltic coast. Under the 14th century king Olaf II, Denmark acquired control of the Kingdom of Norway, which included the territories of Norway, Iceland and the Faroese Islands. Olaf's mother, Margrethe I, united Norway, Sweden and Denmark into the Kalmar Union.


title: Danes

text: In 1523, Sweden won its independence, leading to the dismantling of the Kalmar Union and the establishment of Denmark-Norway. Denmark-Norway grew wealthy during the 16th century, largely because of the increased traffic through the Øresund. The Crown of Denmark could tax the traffic, because it controlled both sides of the Sound at the time.


title: Danes

text: The Reformation, which originated in the German lands in the early 16th century from the ideas of Martin Luther (1483–1546), had a considerable impact on Denmark. The Danish Reformation started in the mid-1520s. Some Danes wanted access to the Bible in their own language. In 1524, Hans Mikkelsen and Christiern Pedersen translated the New Testament into Danish; it became an instant best-seller. Those who had traveled to Wittenberg in Saxony and come under the influence of the teachings of Luther and his associates included Hans Tausen, a Danish monk in the Order of St John Hospitallers.


title: Danes

text: After a failed war with the Swedish Empire, the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658 removed the areas of the Scandinavian peninsula from Danish control, thus establishing the boundaries between Norway, Denmark, and Sweden that exist to this day. In the centuries after this loss of territory, the populations of the Scanian lands, who had previously been considered Danish, came to be fully integrated as Swedes.


title: Danes

text: In the early 19th century, Denmark suffered a defeat in the Napoleonic Wars; Denmark lost control over Norway and territories in what is now northern Germany. The political and economic defeat ironically sparked what is known as the Danish Golden Age during which a Danish national identity first came to be fully formed. The Danish liberal and national movements gained momentum in the 1830s, and after the European revolutions of 1848 Denmark became a constitutional monarchy on 5 June 1849. The growing bourgeoisie had demanded a share in government, and in an attempt to avert the sort of bloody revolution occurring elsewhere in Europe, Frederick VII gave in to the demands of the citizens. A new constitution emerged, separating the powers and granting the franchise to all adult males, as well as freedom of the press, religion, and association. The king became head of the executive branch.


title: Danes

text: ("danskhed") is the concept on which contemporary Danish national and ethnic identity is based. It is a set of values formed through the historic trajectory of the formation of the Danish nation. The ideology of Danishness emphasizes the notion of historical connection between the population and the territory of Denmark and the relation between the thousand-year-old Danish monarchy and the modern Danish state, the 19th-century national romantic idea of "the people" ("folk"), a view of Danish society as homogeneous and socially egalitarian as well as strong cultural ties to other Scandinavian nations.


title: Danes

text: As a concept, "det danske folk" (the Danish people) played an important role in 19th-century ethnic nationalism and refers to self-identification rather than a legal status. Use of the term is most often restricted to a historical context; the historic German-Danish struggle regarding the status of the Duchy of Schleswig "vis-à-vis" a Danish nation-state. It describes people of Danish nationality, both in Denmark and elsewhere–most importantly, ethnic Danes in both Denmark proper and the former Danish Duchy of Schleswig. Excluded from this definition are people from the formerly Norway, Faroe Islands, and Greenland; members of the German minority; and members of other ethnic minorities.


title: Danes

text: Importantly, since its formulation, Danish identity has not been linked to a particular racial or biological heritage, as many other ethno-national identities have. N. F. S. Grundtvig, for example, emphasized the Danish language and the emotional relation to and identification with the nation of Denmark as the defining criteria of Danishness. This cultural definition of ethnicity has been suggested to be one of the reasons that Denmark was able to integrate their earliest ethnic minorities of Jewish and Polish origins into the Danish ethnic group with much more success than neighboring Germany. Jewishness was not seen as being incompatible with a Danish ethnic identity, as long as the most important cultural practices and values were shared. This inclusive ethnicity has in turn been described as the background for the relative lack of virulent anti-semitism in Denmark and the rescue of the Danish Jews, saving 99% of Denmark's Jewish population from the Holocaust.


title: Danes

text: Modern Danish cultural identity is rooted in the birth of the Danish national state during the 19th century. In this regard, Danish national identity was built on a basis of peasant culture and Lutheran theology, with Grundtvig and his popular movement playing a prominent part in the process. Two defining cultural criteria of being Danish were speaking the Danish language and identifying Denmark as a homeland.


title: Danes

text: The ideology of Danishness has been politically important in the formulation of Danish political relations with the EU, which has been met with considerable resistance in the Danish population, and in recent reactions in the Danish public to the increasing influence of immigration.


title: Danes

text: The Danish diaspora consists of emigrants and their descendants, especially those who maintain some of the customs of their Danish culture. A minority of approximately fifty thousand Danish-identifying German citizens live in the former Danish territory of Southern Schleswig, now located within the borders of Germany, forming around ten percent of the local population. In Denmark, the latter group is often referred to as "Danes south of the border" (), the "Danish-minded" (), or simply "South Schleswigers". Due to immigration there are considerable populations with Danish roots outside Denmark in countries such as the United States, Brazil, Canada, Greenland and Argentina.


title: Danes

text: Danish Americans () are Americans of Danish descent. There are approximately 1,500,000 Americans of Danish origin or descent. Most Danish-Americans live in the Western United States or the Midwestern United States. California has the largest population of people of Danish descent in the United States. Notable Danish communities in the United States are located in Solvang, California, and Racine, Wisconsin, but these populations are not considered to be Danes for official purposes by the Danish government, and heritage alone can not be used to claim Danish citizenship, as it can in some European nations.


title: Danes

text: According to the 2006 Census, there were 200,035 Canadians with Danish background, 17,650 of whom were born in Denmark. Canada became an important destination for the Danes during the post war period. At one point, a Canadian immigration office was to be set up in Copenhagen.


title: Danes

text: In Greenland, a self-governing territory under Danish sovereignty, there are approximately 6,348 Danish Greenlanders making up roughly 11% of the territory's population.


title: Plumbing

text: Plumbing is any system that conveys fluids for a wide range of applications. Plumbing uses pipes, valves, plumbing fixtures, tanks, and other apparatuses to convey fluids. Heating and cooling (HVAC), waste removal, and potable water delivery are among the most common uses for plumbing, but it is not limited to these applications. The word derives from the Latin for lead, "plumbum", as the first effective pipes used in the Roman era were lead pipes.


title: Plumbing

text: Boilermakers and pipefitters are not plumbers although they work with piping as part of their trade and their work can include some plumbing.


title: Plumbing

text: Plumbing originated during ancient civilizations, as they developed public baths and needed to provide potable water and wastewater removal for larger numbers of people.


title: Plumbing

text: The Mesopotamians introduced the world to clay sewer pipes around 4000 BCE, with the earliest examples found in the Temple of Bel at Nippur and at Eshnunna, used to remove wastewater from sites, and capture rainwater, in wells. The city of Uruk contains the oldest known examples of brick constructed Latrines, constructed atop interconnecting fired clay sewer pipes, c.3200 BCE. Clay pipes were later used in the Hittite city of Hattusa. They had easily detachable and replaceable segments, and allowed for cleaning.


title: Plumbing

text: Standardized earthen plumbing pipes with broad flanges making use of asphalt for preventing leakages appeared in the urban settlements of the Indus Valley civilization by 2700 BC.


title: Plumbing

text: Copper piping appeared in Egypt by 2400 BCE, with the Pyramid of Sahure and adjoining temple complex at Abusir, found to be connected by a copper waste pipe.


title: Plumbing

text: The word "plumber" dates from the Roman Empire. The Latin for lead is "". Roman roofs used lead in conduits and drain pipes and some were also covered with lead. Lead was also used for piping and for making baths.


title: Plumbing

text: Plumbing reached its early apex in ancient Rome, which saw the introduction of expansive systems of aqueducts, tile wastewater removal, and widespread use of lead pipes. The Romans used lead pipe inscriptions to prevent water theft. With the Fall of Rome both water supply and sanitation stagnated—or regressed—for well over 1,000 years. Improvement was very slow, with little effective progress made until the growth of modern densely populated cities in the 1800s. During this period, public health authorities began pressing for better waste disposal systems to be installed, to prevent or control epidemics of disease. Earlier, the waste disposal system had consisted of collecting waste and dumping it on the ground or into a river. Eventually the development of separate, underground water and sewage systems eliminated open sewage ditches and cesspools.


title: Plumbing

text: Most large cities today pipe solid wastes to sewage treatment plants in order to separate and partially purify the water, before emptying into streams or other bodies of water. For potable water use, galvanized iron piping was commonplace in the United States from the late 1800s until around 1960. After that period, copper piping took over, first soft copper with flared fittings, then with rigid copper tubing using soldered fittings.


title: Plumbing

text: The use of lead for potable water declined sharply after World War II because of increased awareness of the dangers of lead poisoning. At this time, copper piping was introduced as a better and safer alternative to lead pipes.


title: Plumbing

text: A "water pipe" is a pipe or tube, frequently made of plastic or metal, that carries pressurized and treated fresh water to a building (as part of a municipal water system), as well as inside the building.


title: Plumbing

text: Lead was the favoured material for water pipes for many centuries because its malleability made it practical to work into the desired shape. Such use was so common that the word "plumbing" derives from "plumbum", the Latin word for lead. This was a source of lead-related health problems in the years before the health hazards of ingesting lead were fully understood; among these were stillbirths and high rates of infant mortality. Lead water pipes were still widely used in the early 20th century and remain in many households. Lead-tin alloy solder was commonly used to join copper pipes, but modern practice uses tin-antimony alloy solder instead in order to eliminate lead hazards.


title: Plumbing

text: Despite the Romans' common use of lead pipes, their aqueducts rarely poisoned people. Unlike other parts of the world where lead pipes cause poisoning, the Roman water had so much calcium in it that a layer of plaque prevented the water contacting the lead itself. What often causes confusion is the large amount of evidence of widespread lead poisoning, particularly amongst those who would have had easy access to piped water, an unfortunate result of lead being used in cookware and as an additive to processed food and drink (for example as a preservative in wine). Roman lead pipe inscriptions provided information on the owner to prevent water theft.


title: Plumbing

text: Wooden pipes were used in London and elsewhere during the 16th and 17th centuries. The pipes were hollowed-out logs which were tapered at the end with a small hole in which the water would pass through. The multiple pipes were then sealed together with hot animal fat. Wooden pipes were used in Philadelphia, Boston, and Montreal in the 1800s. Built-up wooden tubes were widely used in the USA during the 20th century. These pipes (used in place of corrugated iron or reinforced concrete pipes) were made of sections cut from short lengths of wood. Locking of adjacent rings with hardwood dowel pins produced a flexible structure. About 100,000 feet of these wooden pipes were installed during WW2 in drainage culverts, storm sewers and conduits, under highways and at army camps, naval stations, airfields and ordnance plants.


title: Plumbing

text: Cast iron and ductile iron pipe was long a lower-cost alternative to copper before the advent of durable plastic materials but special non-conductive fittings must be used where transitions are to be made to other metallic pipes (except for terminal fittings) in order to avoid corrosion owing to electrochemical reactions between dissimilar metals (see galvanic cell).


title: Plumbing

text: The difference between pipes and tubes is a matter of sizing. For instance, PVC pipe for plumbing applications and galvanized steel pipe are measured in iron pipe size (IPS). Copper tube, CPVC, PeX and other tubing is measured nominally, basically an average diameter. These sizing schemes allow for universal adaptation of transitional fittings. For instance, 1/2" PeX tubing is the same size as 1/2" copper tubing. 1/2" PVC on the other hand is not the same size as 1/2" tubing, and therefore requires either a threaded male or female adapter to connect them. When used in agricultural irrigation, the singular form "pipe" is often used as a plural.


title: Plumbing

text: Pipe is available in rigid "joints", which come in various lengths depending on the material. Tubing, in particular copper, comes in rigid hard tempered joints or soft tempered (annealed) rolls. PeX and CPVC tubing also comes in rigid joints or flexible rolls. The temper of the copper, whether it is a rigid joint or flexible roll, does not affect the sizing.


title: Plumbing

text: The thicknesses of the water pipe and tube walls can vary. Because piping and tubing are commodities, having a greater wall thickness implies higher initial cost. Thicker walled pipe generally implies greater durability and higher pressure tolerances. Pipe wall thickness is denoted by various schedules or for large bore polyethylene pipe in the UK by the Standard Dimension Ratio (SDR), defined as the ratio of the pipe diameter to its wall thickness. Pipe wall thickness increases with schedule, and is available in schedules 20, 40, 80, and higher in special cases. The schedule is largely determined by the operating pressure of the system, with higher pressures commanding greater thickness. Copper tubing is available in four wall thicknesses: type DWV (thinnest wall; only allowed as drain pipe per UPC), type 'M' (thin; typically only allowed as drain pipe by IPC code), type 'L' (thicker, standard duty for water lines and water service), and type 'K' (thickest, typically used underground between the main and the meter).


title: Plumbing

text: Wall thickness does not affect pipe or tubing size. 1/2" L copper has the same outer diameter as 1/2" K or M copper. The same applies to pipe schedules. As a result, a slight increase in pressure losses is realized due to a decrease in flowpath as wall thickness is increased. In other words, 1 foot of 1/2" L copper has slightly less volume than 1 foot of 1/2 M copper.


title: Plumbing

text: Water systems of ancient times relied on gravity for the supply of water, using pipes or channels usually made of clay, lead, bamboo, wood, or stone. Hollowed wooden logs wrapped in steel banding were used for plumbing pipes, particularly water mains. Logs were used for water distribution in England close to 500 years ago. US cities began using hollowed logs in the late 1700s through the 1800s. Today, most plumbing supply pipe is made out of steel, copper, and plastic; most waste (also known as "soil") out of steel, copper, plastic, and cast iron.


title: Plumbing

text: The straight sections of plumbing systems are called "pipes" or "tubes". A pipe is typically formed via casting or welding, whereas a tube is made through extrusion. Pipe normally has thicker walls and may be threaded or welded, while tubing is thinner-walled and requires special joining techniques such as brazing, compression fitting, crimping, or for plastics, solvent welding. These joining techniques are discussed in more detail in the piping and plumbing fittings article.


title: Plumbing

text: Galvanized steel potable water supply and distribution pipes are commonly found with nominal pipe sizes from to . It is rarely used today for new construction residential plumbing. Steel pipe has National Pipe Thread (NPT) standard tapered male threads, which connect with female tapered threads on elbows, tees, couplers, valves, and other fittings. Galvanized steel (often known simply as "galv" or "iron" in the plumbing trade) is relatively expensive, and difficult to work with due to weight and requirement of a pipe threader. It remains in common use for repair of existing "galv" systems and to satisfy building code non-combustibility requirements typically found in hotels, apartment buildings and other commercial applications. It is also extremely durable and resistant to mechanical abuse. Black lacquered steel pipe is the most widely used pipe material for fire sprinklers and natural gas.


title: Plumbing

text: Most typical single family home systems won't require supply piping larger than due to expense as well as steel piping's tendency to become obstructed from internal rusting and mineral deposits forming on the inside of the pipe over time once the internal galvanizing zinc coating has degraded. In potable water distribution service, galvanized steel pipe has a service life of about 30 to 50 years, although it is not uncommon for it to be less in geographic areas with corrosive water contaminants.


title: Plumbing

text: Copper pipe and tubing was widely used for domestic water systems in the latter half of the twentieth century. Demand for copper products has fallen due to the dramatic increase in the price of copper, resulting in increased demand for alternative products including PEX and stainless steel.


title: Plumbing

text: Plastic pipe is in wide use for domestic water supply and drain-waste-vent (DWV) pipe. Principal types include:


title: Plumbing

text: Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) was produced experimentally in the 19th century but did not become practical to manufacture until 1926, when Waldo Semon of BF Goodrich Co. developed a method to plasticize PVC, making it easier to process. PVC pipe began to be manufactured in the 1940s and was in wide use for Drain-Waste-Vent piping during the reconstruction of Germany and Japan following WWII. In the 1950s, plastics manufacturers in Western Europe and Japan began producing acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) pipe. The method for producing cross-linked polyethylene (PEX) was also developed in the 1950s. Plastic supply pipes have become increasingly common, with a variety of materials and fittings employed.


title: Plumbing

text: Present-day water-supply systems use a network of high-pressure pumps, and pipes in buildings are now made of copper, brass, plastic (particularly cross-linked polyethylene called PEX, which is estimated to be used in 60% of single-family homes), or other nontoxic material. Due to its toxicity, most cities moved away from lead water-supply piping by the 1920s in the United States, although lead pipes were approved by national plumbing codes into the 1980s, and lead was used in plumbing solder for drinking water until it was banned in 1986. Drain and vent lines are made of plastic, steel, cast iron, or lead.


title: Plumbing

text: In addition to lengths of pipe or tubing, pipe fittings such as valves, elbows, tees, and unions. are used in plumbing systems. Pipe and fittings are held in place with pipe hangers and strapping.


title: Plumbing

text: Plumbing fixtures are exchangeable devices that use water and can be connected to a building's plumbing system. They are considered to be "fixtures", in that they are semi-permanent parts of buildings, not usually owned or maintained separately. Plumbing fixtures are seen by and designed for the end-users. Some examples of fixtures include water closets (also known as toilets), urinals, bidets, showers, bathtubs, utility and kitchen sinks, drinking fountains, ice makers, humidifiers, air washers, fountains, and eye wash stations.


title: Plumbing

text: Threaded pipe joints are sealed with thread seal tape or pipe dope. Many plumbing fixtures are sealed to their mounting surfaces with plumber's putty.


title: Plumbing

text: Plumbing equipment includes devices often behind walls or in utility spaces which are not seen by the general public. It includes water meters, pumps, expansion tanks, back flow preventers, water filters, UV sterilization lights, water softeners, water heaters, heat exchangers, gauges, and control systems.


title: Plumbing

text: There are many tools a plumber needs to do a good plumbing job. While many simple plumbing tasks can be completed with a few common hand held tools, other more complex jobs require specialised tools, designed specifically to make the job easier.


title: Plumbing

text: Specialized plumbing tools include pipe wrenches, flaring pliers, pipe vise, pipe bending machine, pipe cutter, dies, and joining tools such as soldering torches and crimp tools. New tools have been developed to help plumbers fix problems more efficiently. For example, plumbers use video cameras for inspections of hidden leaks or other problems; they also use hydro jets, and high pressure hydraulic pumps connected to steel cables for trench-less sewer line replacement.


title: Plumbing

text: Flooding from excessive rain or clogged sewers may require specialized equipment, such as a heavy duty pumper truck designed to vacuum raw sewage.


title: Plumbing

text: Bacteria have been shown to live in "premises plumbing systems". The latter refers to the "pipes and fixtures within a building that transport water to taps after it is delivered by the utility". Community water systems have been known for centuries to spread waterborne diseases like typhoid and cholera. However, "opportunistic premises plumbing pathogens" have been recognized only more recently: Legionella pneumophila, discovered in 1976, Mycobacterium avium, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa are the most commonly tracked bacteria, which people with depressed immunity can inhale or ingest and may become infected with.


title: Plumbing

text: Some of the locations where these opportunistic pathogens can grow include faucets, shower heads, water heaters and along pipe walls. Reasons that favor their growth are "high surface-to-volume ratio, intermittent stagnation, low disinfectant residual, and warming cycles". A high surface-to-volume ratio, i.e. a relatively large surface area allows the bacteria to form a biofilm, which protects them from disinfection.


title: Plumbing

text: Much of the plumbing work in populated areas is regulated by government or quasi-government agencies due to the direct impact on the public's health, safety, and welfare. Plumbing installation and repair work on residences and other buildings generally must be done according to plumbing and building codes to protect the inhabitants of the buildings and to ensure safe, quality construction to future buyers. If permits are required for work, plumbing contractors typically secure them from the authorities on behalf of home or building owners.


title: Plumbing

text: In Australia, the national governing body for plumbing regulation is the Australian Building Codes Board. They are responsible for the creation of the National Construction Code (NCC), Volume 3 of which, the Plumbing Regulations 2008 and the Plumbing Code of Australia, pertains to plumbing.


title: Plumbing

text: Each Government at the state level has their own Authority and regulations in place for licensing plumbers. They are also responsible for the interpretation, administration and enforcement of the regulations outlined in the NCC. These Authorities are usually established for the sole purpose of regulating plumbing activities in their respective states/territories. However, several state level regulation acts are quite outdated, with some still operating on local policies introduced more than a decade ago. This has led to an increase in plumbing regulatory issues not covered under current policy, and as such, many policies are currently being updated to cover these more modern issues. The updates include changed to the minimum experience and training requirements for licensing, additional work standards for new and more specific kinds of plumbing, as well as adopting the Plumbing Code of Australia into state regulations in an effort to standardise plumbing regulations across the country.


title: Plumbing

text: In Norway, new domestic plumbing installed since 1997 has had to satisfy the requirement that it should be easily accessible for replacement after installation. This has led to the development of the pipe-in-pipe system as a de facto requirement for domestic plumbing.


title: Plumbing

text: In the United Kingdom the professional body is the Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering (educational charity status) and it is true that the trade still remains virtually ungoverned; there are no systems in place to monitor or control the activities of unqualified plumbers or those home owners who choose to undertake installation and maintenance works themselves, despite the health and safety issues which arise from such works when they are undertaken incorrectly; see "Health Aspects of Plumbing (HAP)" published jointly by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Plumbing Council (WPC). WPC has subsequently appointed a representative to the World Health Organization to take forward various projects related to Health Aspects of Plumbing.


title: Plumbing

text: In the United States, plumbing codes and licensing are generally controlled by state and local governments. At the national level, the Environmental Protection Agency has set guidelines about what constitutes lead-free plumbing fittings and pipes, in order to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act.


title: The Covenant (2006 film)

text: The Covenant is a 2006 American supernatural horror film written by J. S. Cardone, directed by Renny Harlin and starring Steven Strait, Sebastian Stan, Laura Ramsey, Taylor Kitsch, Jessica Lucas, Toby Hemingway and Chace Crawford. The film, despite being universally panned by critics, was a moderate box office success.


title: The Covenant (2006 film)

text: In the town of Ipswich, four high school boys – Caleb Danvers, Pogue Parry, Reid Garwin, and Tyler Simms, together known as the Sons of Ipswich – are the descendants of colonial witch families and thus wield magical abilities. Their powers manifest on their 13th birthday and grow stronger until they Ascend at 18. Ascending increases their powers significantly but also ties their powers to their life force. The more an Ascended individual uses their magic the more addicted to it they become, which can lead to premature aging and death.


title: The Covenant (2006 film)

text: While attending a bonfire, Caleb meets Sarah Wenham, a transfer student from a public high school in Boston. The Sons also meet Chase Collins, a new student at Spenser Academy. Their meeting is cut short when cops appear to break up the party. The boys escape by using their powers. After a student is found dead near their campus, various paranormal occurrences take place, with Sarah and her roommate Kate Tunney being the focus of it. Upset, Caleb suspects Reid – the most reckless of the warlocks – but he angrily denies the accusation.


title: The Covenant (2006 film)

text: Caleb and later Pogue see a "darkling", a dead spirit and a malicious omen. Meanwhile, Caleb and Sarah become romantically involved. During a swim race, Caleb notices Chase displaying magic usage. After researching, Caleb concludes that Chase descends from a fifth family, one believed long extinct. As the Sons discuss this revelation, Pogue learns that his girlfriend Kate was rendered comatose by a spell. Enraged, he hastily challenges Chase, who swiftly hospitalizes him.


title: The Covenant (2006 film)

text: Caleb visits Sarah, only to fall into Chase's trap. Chase reveals that he was unaware of his magic's origin, having been adopted. After locating his biological father, he learned of the price for Ascension; but it was too late and he has become addicted to using magic. His biological father then transferred his power to him. Chase wants to force other Ascended witches to transfer their power to him as well, starting with Caleb. Despite Caleb's warning that having more power does not save him from aging to death, Chase ignores him. Before leaving, Chase threatens Caleb's family and friends if he does not get what he wants. Caleb reveals the truth to Sarah and takes her to his father, a 44 year old man with a decrepit old body from magic abuse. When Sarah suggests that one of the other three transfer their power to Caleb so he could fight Chase he refuses as it would cost the person offering their life.


title: The Covenant (2006 film)

text: On the night of Caleb's 18th birthday, he leaves to face Chase and has Reid and Tyler safeguard Sarah. However, Chase easily kidnaps her. At an old barn, the two confront each other. Chase reveals a spellbound Sarah and gives Caleb an ultimatum of his life for hers. Caleb Ascends but refuses to give his power. The two duel but Caleb is outmatched. Back at home, Evelyn, Caleb's mother, begs her husband to save Caleb. He transfers his power to his son and dies. Once his father's power is infused within him, Caleb hits Chase with a final blow that engulfs him. Sarah, Kate and Pogue are freed from their curses.


title: The Covenant (2006 film)

text: Firefighters arrive on the scene and inform them that a third person was not found, suggesting that Chase somehow survived and escaped. The pair get into Caleb's car and he casually uses magic to fix the busted windshield, unsettling Sarah as they drive off.


title: The Covenant (2006 film)

text: A comic book prequel to the movie was released by Top Cow Comics. Top Cow Comics founder Marc Silvestri also served as associate producer for the film.


title: The Covenant (2006 film)

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 4% based on 72 reviews, and an average score of 2.84/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""The Covenant" plays out like a teen soap opera, full of pretty faces, wooden acting, laughable dialogue, and little suspense." The film is also on the site's "Worst of the Worst" list, ranking 31st. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 19 out of 100 based on reviews from 16 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Covenant (2006 film)

text: Upon its release in the United States, the film managed to top the box office charts with a $8.9 million opening on what was called a "weak" weekend. By the end of its theatrical run, "The Covenant" earned $23.3 million in the U.S. and $13.9 million in other territories for a total of $37.3 million worldwide). The film cost roughly $20 million to produce, not including marketing.


title: The Covenant (2006 film)

text: "The Covenant" was released on DVD and Blu-ray on January 2, 2007. It went on to sell 1,618,891 units, which translated to revenue of $26,578,576.


title: Sullivan Stapleton

text: Sullivan Stapleton (born 14 June 1977) is an Australian actor who is best known for his roles in the television series "The Secret Life of Us", "Strike Back" and "Animal Kingdom". He also starred in the NBC crime drama "Blindspot".


title: Sullivan Stapleton

text: Stapleton played the lead role, Greek leader Themistocles, in the film "" (2014). In 2013, he was honoured with a Breakthrough Award at an exclusive Australians in Film Benefit Dinner held in Los Angeles.


title: Sullivan Stapleton

text: Stapleton was born in Melbourne, Victoria. He was eight years old when he and his younger sister, actress Jacinta Stapleton, six at the time, joined an acting and modelling agency. The idea first came to their aunt who signed her kids with the agency. She then asked her nephew and nieces if they would like to join and their mother signed them in. Stapleton's younger brother Joshua also launched into acting in early childhood; as well as acting, he pursued talents in dance and musical theatre.


title: Sullivan Stapleton

text: Stapleton's picture caught the attention of a director who invited him to be in his short film (about high school dropouts at a party where girls were dying, without the graphic violence). Pleased by his performance, the director said he was gifted and encouraged him to pursue acting.


title: Sullivan Stapleton

text: Stapleton received training at Melbourne's St. Martin's Theatre. He studied drama and theatre at Sandringham Secondary College (in Sandringham, Victoria, Australia).


title: Sullivan Stapleton

text: Stapleton launched his career in Australia. He got his actors' union card at the age of 9 and at 11 he started working in ads. Stapleton's first onscreen acting performance was in the 1994 Australian TV-movie "Baby Bath Massacre" as Adrian. Between acting jobs, Stapleton did several types of work: modeling, cleaning animal cages in a pet shop, and working as a grip in many films and TV productions. In 1995, Sullivan appeared in Blue Heelers for one episode, and again in 2003 for 3 episodes. ("The Elephant Princess", "Rush", "Tangle") in front and behind the camera, working on building sites, and assisting carpenters.


title: Sullivan Stapleton

text: Before landing a role as Josh Hughes in Australian soap opera "Neighbours" in 1998, he appeared in a string of little-seen features and homegrown dramas. Other notable roles include Justin Davies in the Australian televised serial "The Secret Life of Us" (between 2003 and 2005), Fearless in the motion picture "December Boys" (released in 2007), special agent Wilkins in the mainstream feature, "The Condemned" (an American action film distributed in 2007). But it was with Stapleton's performance in the Academy Award-nominated film "Animal Kingdom", which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, that he made an international breakthrough.


title: Sullivan Stapleton

text: When "Animal Kingdom" won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival interest in him sparked on two continents and his career has taken him across the globe. He made his second appearance in "Underbelly", an Australian true crime drama television series, this time as the lead character, Colin McLaren in "". This was an endurance test for Stapleton and the first challenging shoot of his career. Previously he played Pat Barbaro in "Underbelly" (episode "Suffer the Children") in 2008.


title: Sullivan Stapleton

text: In early 2014, Stapleton was in Thailand for the filming of the TV series "Strike Back". In February, on a night out in Bangkok after work, he fell off a tuk-tuk and suffered a head injury that left him in a coma. He was resuscitated by former UFC Middleweight Champion Michael Bisping, with whom he had been spending his night out. Shooting for the show was paused for six months to allow his full recovery. Airing of the fifth season was also pushed to 2015.


title: Remote viewing

text: Remote viewing (RV) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen subject, purportedly sensing with the mind. Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object, event, person or location that is hidden from physical view and separated at some distance. Physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, parapsychology researchers at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), are generally credited with coining the term "remote viewing" to distinguish it from the closely related concept of clairvoyance. According to Targ, the term was first suggested by Ingo Swann in December 1971 during an experiment at the American Society for Psychical Research in New York City.


title: Remote viewing

text: Remote viewing experiments have historically been criticized for lack of proper controls and repeatability. There is no scientific evidence that remote viewing exists, and the topic of remote viewing is generally regarded as pseudoscience.


title: Remote viewing

text: The idea of remote viewing received renewed attention in the 1990s upon the declassification of documents related to the Stargate Project, a $20 million research program sponsored by the U.S. government that attempted to determine potential military applications of psychic phenomena. The program ran from 1975 to 1995, and ended after evaluators reached the conclusion that remote viewers consistently failed to produce any actionable intelligence information.


title: Remote viewing

text: In early occult and spiritualist literature, remote viewing was known as telesthesia and travelling clairvoyance. Rosemary Guiley described it as "seeing remote or hidden objects clairvoyantly with the inner eye, or in alleged out-of-body travel."


title: Remote viewing

text: The study of psychic phenomena by major scientists started in the mid-nineteenth century. Early researchers included Michael Faraday, Alfred Russel Wallace, Rufus Osgood Mason, and William Crookes. Their work predominantly involved carrying out focused experimental tests on specific individuals who were thought to be psychically gifted. Reports of apparently successful tests were met with much skepticism from the scientific community.


title: Remote viewing

text: In the 1930s, J. B. Rhine expanded the study of paranormal performance into larger populations, by using standard experimental protocols with unselected human subjects. But, as with the earlier studies, Rhine was reluctant to publicize this work too early because of the fear of criticism from mainstream scientists.


title: Remote viewing

text: This continuing skepticism, with its consequences for peer review and research funding, ensured that paranormal studies remained a fringe area of scientific exploration. However, by the 1960s, the prevailing counterculture attitudes muted some of the prior hostility. The emergence of what is termed "New Age" thinking and the popularity of the Human Potential Movement provoked a mini-renaissance that renewed public interest in consciousness studies and psychic phenomena and helped to make financial support more available for research into such topics.


title: Remote viewing

text: In the early 1970s, Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ joined the Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory at Stanford Research Institute (SRI, now SRI International) where they initiated studies of the paranormal that were, at first, supported with private funding from the Parapsychology Foundation and the Institute of Noetic Sciences.


title: Remote viewing

text: In the late 1970s, the physicists John Taylor and Eduardo Balanovski tested the psychic Matthew Manning in remote viewing and the results proved "completely unsuccessful".


title: Remote viewing

text: One of the early experiments, lauded by proponents as having improved the methodology of remote viewing testing and as raising future experimental standards, was criticized as leaking information to the participants by inadvertently leaving clues. Some later experiments had negative results when these clues were eliminated.


title: Remote viewing

text: The viewers' advice in the "Stargate project" was always so unclear and non-detailed that it has never been used in any intelligence operation.


title: Remote viewing

text: In the early 1990s, the Military Intelligence Board, chaired by Defense Intelligence Agency chief Harry E. Soyster, appointed Army Colonel William Johnson to manage the remote viewing unit and evaluate its objective usefulness. Funding dissipated in late 1994 and the program went into decline. The project was transferred out of DIA to the CIA in 1995.


title: Remote viewing

text: In 1995, the CIA hired the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to perform a retrospective evaluation of the results generated by the Stargate Project. Reviewers included Ray Hyman and Jessica Utts. Utts maintained that there had been a statistically significant positive effect, with some subjects scoring 5–15% above chance. Hyman argued that Utts' conclusion that ESP had been proven to exist, "is premature, to say the least." Hyman said the findings had yet to be replicated independently, and that more investigation would be necessary to "legitimately claim the existence of paranormal functioning". Based upon both of their studies, which recommended a higher level of critical research and tighter controls, the CIA terminated the $20 million project in 1995. "Time" magazine stated in 1995 that three full-time psychics were still working on a $500,000-a-year budget at Fort Meade, Maryland, which would soon be closed.


title: Remote viewing

text: The AIR report concluded that no usable intelligence data was produced in the program. David Goslin, of the American Institute for Research said, "There's no documented evidence it had any value to the intelligence community".


title: Remote viewing

text: In 2001–2002 the UK government performed a study on 18 untrained subjects. The experimenters recorded the Electric field and Magnetic field around each viewer to see if the cerebral activity of successful viewings caused higher-than-usual fields to be emitted from the brain. However, the experimenters did not find any evidence that the viewers had accessed the targets in the data collection phase, the project was abandoned, and the data was never analyzed since no RV activity had happened. Some "narrow-band" Electric fields were detected during the viewings, but they were attributed to external causes. The experiment was disclosed in 2007 after a UK Freedom of Information request.


title: Remote viewing

text: Beginning in the late 1970s, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR) carried out extensive research on remote viewing. By 1989, it had conducted 336 formal trials, reporting a composite z-score of 6.355, with a corresponding p-value of . In a 1992 critique of these results, Hansen, Utts and Markwick concluded "The PEAR remote-viewing experiments depart from commonly accepted criteria for formal research in science. In fact, they are undoubtedly some of the poorest quality ESP experiments published in many years." The lab responded that "none of the stated complaints compromises the PEAR experimental protocols or analytical methods" and reaffirmed their results.


title: Remote viewing

text: Following Utts' emphasis on replication and Hyman's challenge on interlaboratory consistency in the AIR report, PEAR conducted several hundred trials to see if they could replicate the SAIC and SRI experiments. They created an analytical judgment methodology to replace the human judging process that was criticized in past experiments, and they released a report in 1996. They felt the results of the experiments were consistent with the SRI experiments. However, statistical flaws have been proposed by others in the parapsychological community and within the general scientific community.


title: Remote viewing

text: A variety of scientific studies of remote viewing have been conducted. Early experiments produced positive results, but they had invalidating flaws. None of the more recent experiments have shown positive results when conducted under properly controlled conditions. This lack of successful experiments has led the mainstream scientific community to reject remote viewing, based upon the absence of an evidence base, the lack of a theory which would explain remote viewing, and the lack of experimental techniques which can provide reliably positive results.


title: Remote viewing

text: Science writers Gary Bennett, Martin Gardner, Michael Shermer and professor of neurology Terence Hines describe the topic of remote viewing as pseudoscience.


title: Remote viewing

text: C. E. M. Hansel, who evaluated the remote viewing experiments of parapsychologists such as Puthoff, Targ, John B. Bisha and Brenda J. Dunne, noted that there were a lack of controls and precautions were not taken to rule out the possibility of fraud. He concluded the experimental design was inadequately reported and "too loosely controlled to serve any useful function."


title: Remote viewing

text: The psychologist Ray Hyman says that, even if the results from remote viewing experiments were reproduced under specified conditions, they would still not be a conclusive demonstration of the existence of psychic functioning. He blames this on the reliance on a negative outcome—the claims on ESP are based on the results of experiments not being explained by normal means. He says that the experiments lack a positive theory that guides as to what to control on them and what to ignore, and that "Parapsychologists have not come close to (having a positive theory) as yet".


title: Remote viewing

text: Hyman also says that the amount and quality of the experiments on RV are far too low to convince the scientific community to "abandon its fundamental ideas about causality, time, and other principles", due to its findings still not having been replicated successfully under careful scrutiny.


title: Remote viewing

text: Martin Gardner has written that the founding researcher Harold Puthoff was an active Scientologist prior to his work at Stanford University, and that this influenced his research at SRI. In 1970, the Church of Scientology published a notarized letter that had been written by Puthoff while he was conducting research on remote viewing at Stanford. The letter read, in part: "Although critics viewing the system Scientology from the outside may form the impression that Scientology is just another of many quasi-educational quasi-religious 'schemes,' it is in fact a highly sophistical and highly technological system more characteristic of modern corporate planning and applied technology". Among some of the ideas that Puthoff supported regarding remote viewing was the claim in the book "Occult Chemistry" that two followers of Madame Blavatsky, founder of theosophy, were able to remote-view the inner structure of atoms.


title: Remote viewing

text: Michael Shermer investigated remote viewing experiments and discovered a problem with the target selection list. According to Shermer with the sketches only a handful of designs are usually used such as lines and curves which could depict any object and be interpreted as a "hit". Shermer has also written about confirmation and hindsight biases that have occurred in remote viewing experiments.


title: Remote viewing

text: Various skeptic organizations have conducted experiments for remote viewing and other alleged paranormal abilities, with no positive results under properly controlled conditions.


title: Remote viewing

text: The psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann attempted to replicate Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff's remote viewing experiments that were carried out in the 1970s at the Stanford Research Institute. In a series of 35 studies, they were unable to replicate the results so investigated the procedure of the original experiments. Marks and Kammann discovered that the notes given to the judges in Targ and Puthoff's experiments contained clues as to which order they were carried out, such as referring to yesterday's two targets, or they had the date of the session written at the top of the page. They concluded that these clues were the reason for the experiment's high hit rates. According to Terence Hines:


title: Remote viewing

text: According to Marks, when the cues were eliminated the results fell to a chance level. Marks was able to achieve 100 percent accuracy without visiting any of the sites himself but by using cues. James Randi has written that controlled tests by several other researchers, eliminating several sources of cuing and extraneous evidence present in the original tests, produced negative results. Students were also able to solve Puthoff and Targ's locations from the clues that had inadvertently been included in the transcripts.


title: Remote viewing

text: Marks and Kamman concluded: "Until remote viewing can be confirmed in conditions which prevent sensory cueing the conclusions of Targ and Puthoff remain an unsubstantiated hypothesis." In 1980, Charles Tart claimed that a rejudging of the transcripts from one of Targ and Puthoff's experiments revealed an above-chance result. Targ and Puthoff again refused to provide copies of the transcripts and it was not until July 1985 that they were made available for study when it was discovered they still contained sensory cues. Marks and Christopher Scott (1986) wrote "considering the importance for the remote viewing hypothesis of adequate cue removal, Tart’s failure to perform this basic task seems beyond comprehension. As previously concluded, remote viewing has not been demonstrated in the experiments conducted by Puthoff and Targ, only the repeated failure of the investigators to remove sensory cues."


title: Remote viewing

text: The information from the Stargate Project remote viewing sessions was vague and included a lot of irrelevant and erroneous data, it was never useful in any intelligence operation, and it was suspected that the project managers in some cases changed the reports so they would fit background cues.


title: Remote viewing

text: Marks in his book "The Psychology of the Psychic" (2000) discussed the flaws in the Stargate Project in detail. He wrote that there were six negative design features of the experiments. The possibility of cues or sensory leakage was not ruled out, no independent replication, some of the experiments were conducted in secret making peer-review impossible. Marks noted that the judge Edwin May was also the principal investigator for the project and this was problematic making huge conflict of interest with collusion, cuing and fraud being possible. Marks concluded the project was nothing more than a "subjective delusion" and after two decades of research it had failed to provide any scientific evidence for remote viewing.


title: Remote viewing

text: Marks has also suggested that the participants of remote viewing experiments are influenced by subjective validation, a process through which correspondences are perceived between stimuli that are in fact associated purely randomly.


title: Remote viewing

text: Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) has pointed out several problems with one of the early experiments at SAIC, including information leakage. However, he indicated the importance of its process-oriented approach and of its refining of remote viewing methodology, which meant that researchers replicating their work could avoid these problems. Wiseman later insisted there were multiple opportunities for participants on that experiment to be influenced by inadvertent cues and that these cues can influence the results when they appear.


title: Douglas Hodge

text: Douglas Hodge is an English actor, director, and musician who has had an extensive career in theatre, as well as television and film where he has appeared in "Robin Hood" (2010), "" and "Diana" (2013), "Penny Dreadful" (2016), "Catastrophe" (2018), "Joker" and "Lost in Space" (2019), "The Great" (2021),


title: Douglas Hodge

text: When he was very young, his family moved to Wigmore, Gillingham, Kent. He attended Fairview Primary School and the The Howard School in Rainham, Kent. He was awarded a position as student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), in London, but was not happy with the syllabus and left before graduating. This never affected his hunger to be an actor.


title: Douglas Hodge

text: Hodge has acted in plays by Harold Pinter, including "No Man's Land" at the Comedy Theatre in February 1993; "Moonlight" at the Almeida Theatre in September 1993; "A Kind of Alaska","The Lover"; "The Collection" at the Donmar Warehouse in May 1998; as Jerry in "Betrayal" at the Royal National Theatre's Lyttelton Theatre, in November 1998; and as Aston in "The Caretaker" at the Comedy Theatre in November 2000, co-starring Michael Gambon (Davies) and Rupert Graves (Mick), directed by Patrick Marber – for which he was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. For the National Theatre in May 1994 Hodge played the title role in Phyllida Lloyd's Olivier Theatre staging of Shakespeare's "Pericles" and Al in Stephen Poliakoff's "Blinded by the Sun" directed by Ron Daniels at the Cottesloe Theatre in May 1997.


title: Douglas Hodge

text: In 2002, Hodge played Leontes in an RSC revival of "The Winter's Tale" at the Roundhouse. In April 2003 he portrayed Andrei in Michael Blakemore's revival of Chekhov's "Three Sisters" at the Playhouse Theatre. In 2004, he made his Royal Court debut as Barry in Joe Penhall's study of entrapment journalism "Dumb Show", directed by Terry Johnson. Hodge's directorial debut came in 2004, at the Oxford Playhouse in a double bill of "The Dumb Waiter and Other Pieces". Hodge appeared in the 2005 revival of "Guys and Dolls" at the Piccadilly Theatre playing Nathan Detroit opposite Ewan McGregor playing Sky Masterson. He received an Olivier Award nomination for his performance.


title: Douglas Hodge

text: During the summer of 2006, he acted the title role in "Titus Andronicus", at Shakespeare's Globe. Simultaneously, he made his West End directorial debut with "See How They Run", a 1940s wartime farce by Philip King, preceded by a UK tour. When his production opened in the West End, Nancy Carroll took over from Hattie Morahan in the role of the vicar's young wife. In May 2007 he displayed a lyric tenor voice as Frank, the neurosurgeon in "A Matter of Life and Death" with the Kneehigh Theatre company at the National Theatre, a production with music, based on events in the film of the same name. Also in 2007 he guest starred in the "Doctor Who" audio dramas "Urban Myths" and "Son of the Dragon". In 2008, Hodge starred as Albin in the London revival of "La Cage aux Folles" which played originally at the Menier Chocolate Factory. He later reprised this role at the Playhouse Theatre in the West End and won the 2009 Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical.


title: Douglas Hodge

text: In 2010, The London production of "La Cage aux Folles" transferred to Broadway, at the Longacre Theatre, with Hodge as Albin, and Kelsey Grammer as Georges. Hodge won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical for his performance. A 2011 revival of John Osborne's "Inadmissible Evidence" at the Donmar Theatre, London, offered Hodge another role, as Maitland, the lawyer in crisis. Hodge received an Olivier Award nomination for his performance. In 2012, Hodge returned to Broadway when he starred as Cyrano de Bergerac in the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of "Cyrano de Bergerac" at the American Airlines Theatre. In October 2012, Hodge was cast as Willy Wonka in the musical "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the Musical" at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane London.


title: Douglas Hodge

text: In 2015, Hodge made his debut as a Broadway director, helming a revival of Pinter's 1971 play "Old Times", which starred Clive Owen, Eve Best and Kelly Reilly, and opened at the American Airlines Theatre.


title: Douglas Hodge

text: Hodge wrote a musical with Aschlin Ditta, temporarily called "Meantime". Josefina Gabrielle, Denis Lawson and several others participated in a cast recording, and actors including Rory Kinnear, Indira Varma and Cillian Murphy participated in a reading of the book.


title: Douglas Hodge

text: He wrote the music and lyrics for the musical "101 Dalmatians", based on the novel by Dodie Smith with a book by Johnny McKnight (from a stage adaptation by Zinnie Harris) at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. The musical was due to open in May 2020, however was postponed to July 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Douglas Hodge

text: Hodge has parallel careers as a writer, director and composer, most recently directing "Torch Song Trilogy" at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2012. He was Associate Director at the Donmar Theatre directing "Dimetos" in 2009, "Absurdia" in 2007.


title: Douglas Hodge

text: He directed the world premiere of "Last Easter" by Bryony Lavery at Birmingham Repertory Theatre, and "See How They Run".


title: Douglas Hodge

text: Hodge has received Olivier Award nominations for Best Actor for "Inadmissible Evidence" in 2012 and Best Actor in a Musical for "Guys and Dolls" in 2006, winning Best Actor in a Musical for "La Cage aux Folles" in 2010. He was also nominated for Best Actor in the 2005 Evening Standard Awards for his role in "Dumbshow" at the Royal Court.


title: Douglas Hodge

text: Douglas starred as Albin in the Broadway transfer of "La Cage aux Folles", for which his performance won him a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical, and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical. He originally played the role in London in 2008 at the Menier Chocolate Factory and then at the Playhouse Theatre in the West End.


title: Douglas Hodge

text: With Peter Searles, Hodge co-wrote "Pacha Mama's Blessing" and "Forest People", about the Amazon Rainforest, performed by the National Youth Theatre on BBC Television in 1989. He appeared in the BBC's production "Middlemarch", adapted by Andrew Davies from the novel by George Eliot and directed by Anthony Page. In the US it aired on "Masterpiece Theatre" in 1994.


title: Douglas Hodge

text: His other TV appearances include leading roles in "Behaving Badly" (1989); "Capital City" (1989–1990); "A Fatal Inversion" (1992); "Bliss" (1995); "Only Fools and Horses" (1996) "The Uninvited" (1997); "The Scold's Bridle" (1998); "Shockers: Dance" (1999); "The Law" (2000); the BBC serial adaptation of Trollope's "The Way We Live Now" (2001), as Roger Carbury; "The Russian Bride" (2001); "Red Cap" (2003–2004); "Spooks" (2005); ITV's 2007 adaptation of "Mansfield Park", as Sir Thomas Bertram; and the made-for-TV film "Lift", directed by James Hawes, a 2007 Hartswood Films production for BBC Four, as Paul Sykes, "a constantly exasperated, highly-strung middle-aged businessman with commitments.".


title: Douglas Hodge

text: In 2010, he appeared in the episode "The Restaurant" of the third series of the BBC sitcom "Outnumbered" as Brick Bolenger, an American therapist who is married to Auntie Angela (played by Samantha Bond). The character was involved in a story line of the fourth series in 2011, but never appeared on screen. In 2012, Hodge had a role in the BBC drama "One Night", as well as appearing in the conspiracy thriller miniseries "Secret State", and the ITV-1 drama "The Town".


title: Douglas Hodge

text: In 2016 he featured as Rex Mayhew in the BBC adaptation of John le Carré's "The Night Manager". In 2017, he appeared in "Black Museum", an episode of the anthology series "Black Mirror". He appeared as Inspector Bartholomew Rusk in the series "Penny Dreadful".


title: Douglas Hodge

text: In 2021, Hodge played the role of General Velementov, head of Catherine the Great's armies in "The Great", alongside Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult.


title: Douglas Hodge

text: Doug Hodge released two albums of his own compositions: "Cowley Road Songs" in 2005, and "Nightbus" in 2009. He won the Stiles and Drewe 2012 Best New Song Award for his song 'Powercut' from "Meantime", the musical he co-wrote with Aschlin Ditta.


title: Douglas Hodge

text: "I've been writing songs all my life but — apart from the occasional girlfriend late at night — I'd never sung them to anyone. Then last year I finally started playing at various venues in and around Oxford. Each time I wrote a new song I'd go down the Ex [on Cowley Road] and sing it... Then Rightback Records asked me to record them. We went into the Blue Moon Studios in Banbury for just four days. This [Cowley Road Songs] is what we came out with..." – Douglas Hodge


title: Douglas Hodge

text: Hodge was born in Plymouth, Devon. Until 2013 he was in a relationship with actress Tessa Peake-Jones, with whom he has two children. He subsequently married American wigmaker Amanda Miller.


title: Green's function

text: In mathematics, a Green's function is the impulse response of an inhomogeneous linear differential operator defined on a domain with specified initial conditions or boundary conditions.