title: Door

text: Many doors incorporate locking mechanisms to ensure that only some people can open them (such as with a key). Doors may have devices such as knockers or doorbells by which people outside announce their presence. (In some countries, such as Brazil, it is customary to clap from the sidewalk to announce one's presence.) Apart from providing access into and out of a space, doors may have the secondary functions of ensuring privacy by preventing unwanted attention from outsiders, of separating areas with different functions, of allowing light to pass into and out of a space, of controlling ventilation or air drafts so that interiors may be more effectively heated or cooled, of dampening noise, and of blocking the spread of fire.


title: Door

text: Doors can have aesthetic, symbolic, ritualistic purposes. Receiving the key to a door can signify a change in status from outsider to insider. Doors and doorways frequently appear in literature and the arts with metaphorical or allegorical import as a portent of change.


title: Door

text: The earliest recorded doors appear in the paintings of Egyptian tombs, which show them as single or double doors, each of a single piece of wood. People may have believed these were doors to the afterlife, and some include designs of the afterlife. In Egypt, where the climate is intensely dry, doors weren't framed against warping, but in other countries required framed doors—which, according to Vitruvius (iv. 6.) was done with stiles (sea/si) and rails "(see: Frame and panel)", the enclosed panels filled with tympana set in grooves in the stiles and rails. The stiles were the vertical boards, one of which, tenoned or hinged, is known as the hanging stile, the other as the middle or meeting stile. The horizontal cross pieces are the top rail, bottom rail, and middle or intermediate rails.


title: Door

text: The most ancient doors were made of timber, such as those referred to in the Biblical depiction of King Solomon's temple being in olive wood (I Kings vi. 31–35), which were carved and overlaid with gold. The doors that Homer mentions appear to have been cased in silver or brass. Besides olive wood, elm, cedar, oak and cypress were used. A 5,000-year-old door has been found by archaeologists in Switzerland.


title: Door

text: Ancient doors were hung by pintles at the top and bottom of the hanging stile, which worked in sockets in the lintel and sill, the latter in some hard stone such as basalt or granite. Those Hilprecht found at Nippur, dating from 2000 BC, were in dolerite. The tenons of the gates at Balawat were sheathed with bronze (now in the British Museum). These doors or gates were hung in two leaves, each about wide and high; they were encased with bronze bands or strips, high, covered with repoussé decoration of figures. The wood doors would seem to have been about thick, but the hanging stile was over diameter. Other sheathings of various sizes in bronze show this was a universal method adopted to protect the wood pivots. In the Hauran in Syria where timber is scarce, the doors were made of stone, and one measuring by is in the British Museum; the band on the meeting stile shows that it was one of the leaves of a double door. At Kuffeir near Bostra in Syria, Burckhardt found stone doors, high, being the entrance doors of the town. In Etruria many stone doors are referred to by Dennis.


title: Door

text: Ancient Greek and Roman doors were either single doors, double doors, triple doors, sliding doors or folding doors, in the last case the leaves were hinged and folded back. In the tomb of Theron at Agrigentum there is a single four-panel door carved in stone. In the Blundell collection is a bas-relief of a temple with double doors, each leaf with five panels. Among existing examples, the bronze doors in the church of SS. Cosmas and Damiano, in Rome, are important examples of Roman metal work of the best period; they are in two leaves, each with two panels, and are framed in bronze. Those of the Pantheon are similar in design, with narrow horizontal panels in addition, at the top, bottom and middle. Two other bronze doors of the Roman period are in the Lateran Basilica.


title: Door

text: The Greek scholar Heron of Alexandria created the earliest known automatic door in the first century AD during the era of Roman Egypt. The first foot-sensor-activated automatic door was made in China during the reign of Emperor Yang of Sui (r. 604–618), who had one installed for his royal library. Gates powered by water featured in illustrations of the automatons of the Arab inventor Al-Jazari.


title: Door

text: Copper and its alloys were integral in medieval architecture. The doors of the church of the Nativity at Bethlehem (6th century) are covered with plates of bronze, cut out in patterns. Those of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople, of the eighth and ninth century, are wrought in bronze, and the west doors of the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle (9th century), of similar manufacture, were probably brought from Constantinople, as also some of those in St. Marks, Venice. The bronze doors on the Aachen Cathedral in Germany date back to about 800 AD. Bronze baptistery doors at the Cathedral of Florence were completed in 1423 by Ghiberti. "(For more information, see: Copper in architecture)."


title: Door

text: Of the 11th and 12th centuries there are numerous examples of bronze doors, the earliest being one at Hildesheim, Germany (1015). The Hildesheim design affected the concept of Gniezno door in Poland. Of others in South Italy and Sicily, the following are the finest: in Sant'Andrea, Amalfi (1060); Salerno (1099); Canosa di Puglia (1111); Troia, two doors (1119 and 1124); Ravello (1179), by Barisano of Trani, who also made doors for Trani cathedral; and in Monreale and Pisa cathedrals, by Bonano of Pisa. In all these cases the hanging stile had pivots at the top and bottom. The exact period when the builder moved to the hinge is unknown, but the change apparently brought about another method of strengthening and decorating doors—wrought-iron bands of various designs. As a rule, three bands with ornamental work constitute the hinges, with rings outside the hanging stiles that fit on vertical tenons set into the masonry or wooden frame. There is an early example of the 12th century in Lincoln. In France, the metalwork of the doors of Notre Dame at Paris is a beautiful example, but many others exist throughout France and England.


title: Door

text: In Italy, celebrated doors include those of the Battistero di San Giovanni (Florence), which are all in bronze—including the door frames. The modeling of the figures, birds and foliage of the south doorway, by Andrea Pisano (1330), and of the east doorway by Ghiberti (1425–1452), are of great beauty. In the north door (1402–1424), Ghiberti adopted the same scheme of design for the paneling and figure subjects as Andrea Pisano, but in the east door, the rectangular panels are all filled, with bas-reliefs that illustrate Scripture subjects and innumerable figures. These may the gates of Paradise of which Michelangelo speaks.


title: Door

text: Doors of the mosques in Cairo were of two kinds: those externally cased with sheets of bronze or iron, cut in decorative patterns, and incised or inlaid, with bosses in relief; and those of wood-framed with interlaced square and diamond designs. The latter design is Coptic in origin. The doors of the palace at Palermo, which were made by Saracenic workmen for the Normans, are fine examples in good preservation. A somewhat similar decorative class of door is found in Verona, where the edges of the stiles and rails are beveled and notched.


title: Door

text: In the Renaissance period, Italian doors are quite simple, their architects trusting more to the doorways for effect; but in France and Germany the contrary is the case, the doors being elaborately carved, especially in the Louis XIV and Louis XV periods, and sometimes with architectural features such as columns and entablatures with pediment and niches, the doorway being in plain masonry. While in Italy the tendency was to give scale by increasing the number of panels, in France the contrary seems to have been the rule; and one of the great doors at Fontainebleau, which is in two leaves, is entirely carried out as if consisting of one great panel only.


title: Door

text: The earliest Renaissance doors in France are those of the cathedral of St. Sauveur at Aix (1503). In the lower panels there are figures . high in Gothic niches, and in the upper panels a double range of niches with figures about . high with canopies over them, all carved in cedar. The south door of Beauvais Cathedral is in some respects the finest in France; the upper panels are carved in high relief with figure subjects and canopies over them. The doors of the church at Gisors (1575) are carved with figures in niches subdivided by classic pilasters superimposed. In St. Maclou at Rouen are three magnificently carved doors; those by Jean Goujon have figures in niches on each side, and others in a group of great beauty in the center. The other doors, probably about forty to fifty years later, are enriched with bas-reliefs, landscapes, figures and elaborate interlaced borders.


title: Door

text: NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center contains the four largest doors. The Vehicle Assembly Building was originally built for the assembly of the Apollo missions' Saturn vehicles and was then used to support Space Shuttle operations. Each of the four doors are 139 meters (456 feet) high.


title: Door

text: The oldest door in England can be found in Westminster Abbey and dates from 1050. In England in the 17th century the door panels were raised with bolection or projecting moldings, sometimes richly carved, around them; in the 18th century the moldings worked on the stiles and rails were carved with the egg-and-dart ornament.


title: Door

text: There are many kinds of doors, with different purposes. The most common type is the single-leaf door, which consists of a single rigid panel that fills the doorway. There are many variations on this basic design, such as the double-leaf door or double door and French windows, which have two adjacent independent panels hinged on each side of the doorway.


title: Door

text: Most doors are hinged along one side to allow the door to pivot away from the doorway in one direction, but not the other. The axis of rotation is usually vertical. In some cases, such as hinged garage doors, the axis may be horizontal, above the door opening.


title: Door

text: Doors can be hinged so that the axis of rotation is not in the plane of the door to reduce the space required on the side to which the door opens. This requires a mechanism so that the axis of rotation is on the side other than that in which the door opens. This is sometimes the case in trains or airplanes, such as for the door to the toilet, which opens inward.


title: Door

text: A swing door has special single-action hinges that allow it to open either outward or inward, and is usually sprung to keep it closed.


title: Door

text: French doors are derived from the French design called the casement door. It is a door with lites where all or some panels would be in a casement door. A French door traditionally has a moulded panel at the bottom of the door. It is called a French window when used in a pair as double-leaved doors with large glass panels in each door leaf, and in which the doors may swing out (typically) as well as in.


title: Door

text: A double-acting door, patented in 1880 by the Dutch-American engineer Lorenz Bommer, swings both ways. They are often used in areas where many people are likely to pass through, such as restaurant kitchens.


title: Door

text: A Dutch door or stable door consists of two halves. The top half operates independently from the bottom half. A variant exists in which opening the top part separately is possible, but because the lower part has a lip on the inside, closing the top part, while leaving the lower part open, is not.


title: Door

text: A garden door resembles a French window (with lites), but is more secure because only one door is operable. The hinge of the operating door is next to the adjacent fixed door and the latch is located at the wall opening jamb rather than between the two doors or with the use of an espagnolette bolt.


title: Door

text: It is often useful to have doors which slide along tracks, often for space or aesthetic considerations.


title: Door

text: A bypass door is a door unit that has two or more sections. The doors can slide in either direction along one axis on parallel overhead tracks, sliding past each other. They are most commonly used in closets to provide access one side of the closet at a time. Doors in a bypass unit overlap slightly when viewed from the front so they don't have a visible gap when closed.


title: Door

text: Doors which slide inside a wall cavity are called pocket doors. This type of door is used in tight spaces where privacy is also required. The door slab is mounted to roller and a track at the top of the door and slides inside a wall.


title: Door

text: Sliding glass doors are common in many houses, particularly as an entrance to the backyard. Such doors are also popular for use for the entrances to commercial structures, although they are not counted as fire exit doors. The door that moves is called the "active leaf", while the door that remains fixed is called the "inactive leaf".


title: Door

text: A revolving door has several wings or leaves, generally four, radiating from a central shaft, forming compartments that rotate about a vertical axis. A revolving door allows people to pass in both directions without colliding, and forms an airlock maintaining a seal between inside and out.


title: Door

text: A pivot door, instead of hinges, is supported on a bearing some distance away from the edge, so that there is more or less of a gap on the pivot side as well as the opening side. In some cases the pivot is central, creating two equal openings.


title: Door

text: A high-speed door is a very fast door some with opening speeds of up to 4 m/s, mainly used in the industrial sector where the speed of a door has an effect on production logistics, temperature and pressure control. High-speed cleanroom doors, usually consisting of a transparent material on a stainless steel frame, are used in pharmaceutical industries to allow passage between work areas while admitting minimal contaminants. The powerful high-speed doors have a smooth surface structure and no protruding edges, allowing minimal particle retention and easy cleaning.


title: Door

text: High-speed doors are made to handle a high number of openings, generally more than 200,000 a year. They must be built with heavy-duty parts and counterbalance systems for speed enhancement and emergency opening function. The door curtain was originally made of PVC, but was later also developed in aluminium and acrylic glass sections. High-speed refrigeration and cold-room doors with excellent insulation values have also been introduced for green and energy-saving requirements.


title: Door

text: In North America, the Door and Access Systems Manufacturing Association (DASMA) defines high-performance doors as non-residential powered doors characterized by rolling, folding, sliding or swinging action, that are either high-cycle (minimum 100 cycles/day) or high-speed (minimum 20 inches (508 mm)/second), and two out of three of the following: made-to-order for exact size and custom features, able to withstand equipment impact (break-away if accidentally hit by vehicle), or able to sustain heavy use with minimal maintenance.


title: Door

text: Automatically opening doors are powered open and closed either by electricity, spring, or both. There are several methods by which an automatically opening door is activated:


title: Door

text: In addition to activation sensors, automatically opening doors are generally fitted with safety sensors. These are usually an infrared curtain or beam, but can be a pressure mat fitted on the swing side of the door. The safety sensor prevents the door from colliding with an object by stopping or slowing its motion. A mechanism in modern automatic doors ensures that the door can open in a power failure.


title: Door

text: Up-and-over or overhead doors are often used in garages. Instead of hinges, it has a mechanism, often counterbalanced or sprung, so it can lift and rest horizontally above the opening. A roller shutter or sectional overhead door is one variant of this type.


title: Door

text: A tambour door or roller door is an up-and-over door made of narrow horizontal slats that rolls up and down by sliding along vertical tracks; it is typically found in entertainment centres and cabinets.


title: Door

text: Rebated doors, a term chiefly used in Britain, are double doors with a lip or overlap (i.e. a rabbet) on the vertical edge(s) where they meet. Fire-rating can be achieved with an applied edge-guard or astragal molding on the meeting stile, in accordance with the American fire door.


title: Door

text: Evolution Door is a trackless door that moves in the same closure level as a sliding door. Invented by Austrian artist Klemens Torggler, is a further development of the that normally consists of two rotatable, connected panels which move to each other when opening.


title: Door

text: Architectural doors have numerous general and specialized uses. Doors are generally used to separate interior spaces (closets, rooms, etc.) for convenience, privacy, safety, and security reasons. Doors are also used to secure passages into a building from the exterior, for reasons of climate control and safety.


title: Door

text: Panel doors, also called stile and rail doors, are built with frame and panel construction. EN 12519 is describing the terms which are officially used in European Member States. The main parts are listed below:


title: Door

text: Also known as ledges and braced, board and batten doors are an older design consisting primarily of vertical slats:


title: Door

text: Impact-resistant doors have rounded stile edges to dissipate energy and minimize edge chipping, scratching and denting. The formed edges are often made of an engineered material. Impact-resistant doors excel in high traffic areas such as hospitals, schools, hotels and coastal areas.


title: Door

text: This type consists of a solid timber frame, filled on one face, face with tongue and groove boards. Quite often used externally with the boards on the weather face.


title: Door

text: Generally, door swings, or handing, are determined while standing on the outside or less secure side of the door while facing the door (i.e., standing on the side requiring a key to open, going from outside to inside, or from public to private).


title: Door

text: It is important to get the hand and swing correct on exterior doors, as the transom is usually sloped and sealed to resist water entry, and properly drain. In some custom millwork (or with some master carpenters), the manufacture or installer bevels the leading edge (the first edge to meet the jamb as the door closes) so that the door fits tight without binding. Specifying an incorrect hand or swing can make the door bind, not close properly, or leak. Fixing this error is expensive or time-consuming. In North America, many doors now come with factory-installed hinges, pre-hung on the jamb and sills.


title: Door

text: While facing the door from the outside or less secure side, if the hinge is on the right side of the door, the door is "right handed"; or if the hinge is on the left, it is "left handed". If the door swings toward you, it is "reverse swing"; or if the door swings away from you, it is "normal swing".


title: Door

text: New exterior doors are largely defined by the type of materials they are made from: wood, steel, fiberglass, UPVC/vinyl, aluminum, composite, glass (patio doors), etc.


title: Door

text: Wooden doors – including solid wood doors – are a top choice for many homeowners, largely because of the aesthetic qualities of wood. Many wood doors are custom-made, but they have several downsides: their price, their maintenance requirements (regular painting and staining) and their limited insulating value (R-5 to R-6, not including the effects of the glass elements of the doors). Wood doors often have an overhang requirement to maintain a warranty. An overhang is a roof, porch area or awning that helps to protect the door and its finish from UV rays.


title: Door

text: Steel doors are another major type of residential front doors; most of them come with a polyurethane or other type of foam insulation core – a critical factor in a building's overall comfort and efficiency. Steel doors mostly in default comes along with frame and lock system, which is a high cost efficiency factor compared to wooden doors.


title: Door

text: Most modern exterior walls provide thermal insulation and energy efficiency, which can be indicated by the Energy Star label or the Passive House standards. Premium composite (including steel doors with a thick core of polyurethane or other foam), fiberglass and vinyl doors benefit from the materials they are made from, from a thermal perspective.


title: Door

text: But there are very few door models with an R-value close to 10 (the R-value measures how well a barrier resists the conductive flow of heat). This is far less than the R-40 walls or the R-50 ceilings of super-insulated buildings – Passive Solar and Zero Energy Buildings. Typical doors are not thick enough to provide very high levels of energy efficiency.


title: Door

text: Many doors may have good R-values at their center, but their overall energy efficiency is reduced because of the presence of glass and reinforcing elements, or because of poor weatherstripping and the way the door is manufactured.


title: Door

text: Door weatherstripping is particularly important for energy efficiency. German-made passive house doors use multiple weatherstrips, including magnetic strips, to meet higher standards. These weatherstrips reduce energy losses due to air leakage.


title: Door

text: Standard door sizes in the US run along 2" increments. Customary sizes have a height of 78" (1981 mm) or 80" (2032 mm) and a width of 18" (472 mm), 24" (610 mm), 26" (660 mm), 28" (711 mm), 30" (762 mm) or 36" (914 mm). Most residential passage (room to room) doors are 30" x 80" (762 mm × 2032 mm).


title: Door

text: A standard US residential (exterior) door size is 36" × 80" (91 × 2032 mm). Interior doors for wheelchair access must also have a minimum width of 36" (914 mm). Residential interior doors, as well as the doors of many small stores, offices, and other light commercial buildings, are often somewhat smaller than the doors of larger commercial buildings, public buildings, and grand homes. Older buildings often have smaller doors.


title: Door

text: Closets: small spaces such as closets, dressing rooms, half-baths, storage rooms, cellars, etc. often are accessed through doors smaller than passage doors in one or both dimensions but similar in design.


title: Door

text: Garages: Garage doors are generally 84" (7 feet; 2134 mm) or 96" (8 feet; 2438 mm) wide for a single-car opening. Two car garage doors (sometimes called double car doors) are a single door 192" (16 feet; 4877 mm). Because of size and weight these doors are usually sectional. That is split into four or five horizontal sections so that they can be raised more easily and don't require a lot of additional space above the door when opening and closing. Single piece double garage doors are common in some older homes.


title: Door

text: Standard DIN doors are defined in DIN 18101 (published 1955–07, 1985–01, 2014–08). Door sizes are also given in the construction standard for wooden door panels (DIN 68706–1). The DIN commission created the harmonized European standard DIN EN 14351-1 for exterior doors and DIN EN 14351-2 for interior doors (published 2006–07, 2010–08), which define requirements for the CE marking and provide standard sizes by examples in the appendix.


title: Door

text: The DIN 18101 standard has a normative size (Nennmaß) slightly larger than the panel size (Türblatt) as the standard derives the panel sizes from the normative size being different single door vs double door and molded vs unmolded doors. DIN 18101/1985 defines interior single molded doors to have a common panel height of 1985 mm (normativ height 2010 mm) at panel widths of 610 mm, 735 mm, 860 mm, 985 mm, 1110 mm, plus a larger door panel size of 1110 mm x 2110 mm. The newer DIN 18101/2014 drops the definition of just five standard door sizes in favor of a basic raster running along 125 mm increments where the height and width are independent. Panel width may be in the range 485 mm to 1360 mmm, and the height may be in the range of 1610 mm to 2735 mm. The most common interior door is 860 mm x 1985 mm (33.8" x 78.1").


title: Door

text: When framed in wood for snug fitting of a door, the doorway consists of two vertical "jambs" on either side, a "lintel" or "head jamb" at the top, and perhaps a "threshold" at the bottom. When a door has more than one movable section, one of the sections may be called a "leaf". See door furniture for a discussion of attachments to doors such as door handles, doorknobs, and door knockers.


title: Door

text: Door furniture or hardware refers to any of the items that are attached to a door or a drawer to enhance its functionality or appearance. This includes items such as hinges, handles, door stops, etc.


title: Door

text: Door safety relates to prevention of door-related accidents. Such accidents take place in various forms, and in a number of locations; ranging from car doors to garage doors. Accidents vary in severity and frequency. According to the National Safety Council in the United States, around 300,000 door-related injuries occur every year.


title: Door

text: The types of accidents vary from relatively minor cases where doors cause damage to other objects, such as walls, to serious cases resulting in human injury, particularly to fingers, hands, and feet. A closing door can exert up to 40 tons per square inch of pressure between the hinges. Because of the number of accidents taking place, there has been a surge in the number of lawsuits. Thus organisations may be at risk when car doors or doors within buildings are unprotected.


title: Door

text: Whenever a door is opened outward, there is a risk that it could strike another person. In many cases this can be avoided by architectural design which favors doors which open inward to rooms (from the perspective of a common area such as a corridor, the door opens outward). In cases where this is infeasible, it may be possible to avoid an accident by placing vision panels in the door.


title: Door

text: Inward-hinged doors can also escalate an accident by preventing people from escaping the building: people inside the building may press against the doors, and thus prevent the doors from opening. Related accidents include:


title: Door

text: Today, the exterior doors of most large (especially public) buildings open outward, while interior doors such as doors to individual rooms, offices, suites, etc. open inward, as do many exterior doors of houses, particularly in North America.


title: Door

text: Doorstops are simple devices that prevent a door from contacting and possibly damaging another object (typically a wall). They may either absorb the force of a moving door, or hold the door against unintended motion.


title: Door

text: Door guards (hinge guards, anti-finger trapping devices, or finger guards) help prevent finger trapping accidents, as doors pose a risk to children, especially when closing. Door guards protect fingers in door hinges by covering the hinge-side gap of an open door, typically with a piece of rubber or plastic that wraps from the door frame to the door. Other door safety products eject the fingers from the push side of the door as it closes.


title: Door

text: There are various levels of door protection. Anti-finger trapping devices in front may leave the rear hinge pin side of doors unprotected. Full door protection uses front and rear anti-finger trapping devices and ensures the hinge side of a door is fully isolated. A risk assessment of the door determines the appropriate level of protection.


title: Door

text: There is also handle-side door protection, which prevents the door from slamming shut on the frame, which can cause injury to fingers/hands.


title: Door

text: Glass doors pose the risk of unintentional collision if a person is unaware there is a door, or thinks it is open when it is not. This risk is greater with sliding glass doors because they often have large single panes that are hard to see. Stickers or other types of warnings on the glass surface make it more visible and help prevent injury. In the UK, Regulation 14 of the Workplace (Health and Safety Regulations) 1992 requires that builders mark windows and glass doors to make them conspicuous. Australian Standards: AS1288 and AS2208 require that glass doors be made of laminated, tempered, or toughened glass.


title: Door

text: Buildings often have special purpose doors that automatically close to prevent the spread of fire and smoke. Fire doors that are improperly installed or tampered with can increase risk during a fire. Sometimes, door closer mechanisms ensure fire doors remain closed.


title: Door

text: An additional fire risk is that doors may prevent access to emergency services personnel coming to fight the fire and rescue occupants, etc. Fire fighters must use door breaching techniques in these situations to gain access.


title: Door

text: Doors in public buildings often have panic bars, which open the door in response to anyone pressing against the bar from the inside in the event of a fire or other emergency.


title: Door

text: Vehicle doors present an increased risk of trapping hands or fingers due to the proximity of occupants. In some car accidents, injury to occupants from the movement of car doors occurs.


title: Door

text: Bicyclists cycling on public roads risk dooring: collision with an abruptly opened vehicle door. Because cyclists often ride near parked cars alongside the road, they are particularly vulnerable.


title: Door

text: In aircraft, doors from pressurized sections to un-pressurized compartments or the exterior can pose risk if they open during flight. Air may rush out of the fuselage with sufficient velocity to eject unsecured occupants, cargo, and other items, and drastic pressure differences between compartments may make aircraft floors or other interior partitions fail. These concerns are typically mitigated with plug doors, which open in toward the pressurized compartment and are forced into their door frames by the difference in air pressure. Most cabin doors are of this type, but cargo doors typically open outward to maximise interior space, and require hefty locking mechanisms to overcome internal pressure and prevent explosive decompression.


title: I Love Rock 'n' Roll

text: "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" is a rock song written by Alan Merrill and Jake Hooker and first recorded by the Arrows, a British rock band, in 1975. A 1981 cover version by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, released as the first single from her album of the same name, became Jett's highest-charting hit, reaching number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and becoming the No. 3 song for 1982. The single was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, representing two million units shipped to stores. Jett's version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2016.


title: I Love Rock 'n' Roll

text: The song was originally recorded and released by Arrows in 1975 on Rak Records, with Merrill on lead vocals and guitar and Mickie Most producing. Merrill wrote both the music and lyrics, whilst living in London at Nell Gwynn House in Chelsea. He gave a co-writer credit to Hooker as part of settling a debt. In an interview with Songfacts, Merrill said he wrote the song as "a knee-jerk response to the Rolling Stones' 'It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)'."


title: I Love Rock 'n' Roll

text: This version was first released as a B-side, but was soon re-recorded and flipped to A-side status on a subsequent pressing of the record. Arrows performed the song in 1975 on the Muriel Young-produced show "45", after which Young offered Arrows a weekly UK television series, "Arrows", which was broadcast on ITV starting in March 1976.


title: I Love Rock 'n' Roll

text: Joan Jett saw the Arrows perform "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" on their weekly UK television series "Arrows" while she was touring England with the Runaways in 1976. She first recorded the song in 1979 with two of the Sex Pistols, Steve Jones and Paul Cook. This first version was released on vinyl in 1979 on Vertigo records as a B-side to "You Don't Own Me". In 1981, Jett re-recorded the song, this time with her band, the Blackhearts. This recording became a US "Billboard" Hot 100 number-one single for seven weeks, being the only one for the band.


title: I Love Rock 'n' Roll

text: The music video for "I Love Rock 'n Roll" received heavy play by the fledgling MTV network. It featured Jett and the Blackhearts traveling to a small, dingy bar and then exciting the drunken crowd by performing the song and yelling out its chorus. A snippet of Jett's 1981 hit "Bad Reputation" can be heard at the beginning of the video. The video was originally in color, but it was converted to black and white because Jett hated the look of her red leather jumpsuit in color.


title: I Love Rock 'n' Roll

text: In 1993 Joan Jett & the Blackhearts made another music video for the song as part of the "Wayne's World 2" soundtrack. The video consisted of scenes from the movie, with Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, mixed with footage of Jett and her band in a faux concert filmed at Irving Plaza in NYC. At one point during the filming, one person was introduced to the crowd as having been in the original video as he set up to stage dive for that take. The song was again released as a single by Warner/Reprise with "Activity Grrrl" as the B-side.


title: I Love Rock 'n' Roll

text: "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" is the fourth European single from American pop singer Britney Spears' third studio album, "Britney" (2001), released on 27 May 2002. The song was used in her 2002 film "Crossroads", in which Spears' character Lucy performs it in a karaoke bar. Spears said of the song, "They asked me to sing karaoke in the movie "Crossroads" and I've actually sung 'I Love Rock 'n' Roll' in a lot of clubs that I've been to." Spears has publicly stated that the original song is one of her favorites. She listened to the original Arrows Mickie Most-produced version just before she recorded the song, according to Jive A&R representative Steve Lunt. The scratches performed on this version were performed by Corey Chase at The Hit Factory Criteria studios in Miami. When promoting the single's release, Spears mistakenly attributed the hit version of the song to Pat Benatar instead of Joan Jett.


title: I Love Rock 'n' Roll

text: Spears' cover was met with mostly favorable reviews. "NME"s Ted Kessler wrote that she "still works best when making a good pop cheese and dance sandwich: there's the ace Rodney Jerkins-produced version of Joan Jett's 'I Love Rock 'n' Roll', which does exactly what it says on the tin." "Rolling Stone"s Barry Walters wrote that "producer Rodney Jerkins' hip-hop blaspheming of Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" doesn't go as far as it should (is a Limp Bizkit remix in its future?), but it certainly beats what her earlier studio architects did to those Sonny and Cher ("The Beat Goes On" on "...Baby One More Time") and Stones ("(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" on "Oops!... I Did It Again") songs." Another positive reception came from PopMatters's editor Nikki Tranter, who enjoyed that the song is "different from the average run-of-the-mill pop offering," and praised that "she does strange justice to the tune, vamping up her vocals and turning out something, that while silly and camp, is actually a fun listen." In contrast, David Browne wrote for "Entertainment Weekly" that "her remake is neither imaginative (it simply xeroxes Joan Jett's arrangement) nor all that believable."


title: I Love Rock 'n' Roll

text: "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" charted moderately upon release, reaching the top 20 in most regions. The song was moderately successful in the UK, where it peaked at number 13 (which, at the time, was Spears' lowest peak for a single released there, until "Radar" only managed to reach number 46 in 2009, and then "I Wanna Go", which peaked at number 111 in 2011). It was certified gold in Australia.


title: I Love Rock 'n' Roll

text: Directed by Chris Applebaum, the music video for "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" shows Spears with her own band, a stack of speakers and flashing lights. The video begins in black and white and switches to and from color throughout. It was shot at The Inn, a bar in Long Beach, New York. The video was ranked at number two on the 100 Best Videos of 2002 list during MTV Latin America's countdown. A director's cut version of the video was later leaked, containing previously unseen scenes.


title: I Love Rock 'n' Roll

text: The song was performed live during Spears' Dream Within a Dream Tour (2001–02). In 2016, it was added to the revamped set list of her Las Vegas residency show, (2016–17), marking the first time Spears performed the song in 14 years. During the performance, Spears rode a mechanical electric guitar, which simulated a mechanical bull, as it rotated on stage. The same prop electric guitar had been used during her Femme Fatale Tour (2011) for a segment in which she covered the song "Burning Up" by Madonna. At the 2016 "Billboard" Music Awards, the song was performed as part of a medley.


title: I Love Rock 'n' Roll

text: In December 2019, English blogger LadBaby released a comedy version of the song with a sausage roll theme as a charity single whose profits went to The Trussell Trust. The single's cover is based on "Abbey Road"'s cover. The song peaked at number one on the UK Singles Chart and in Scotland.


title: I Love Rock 'n' Roll

text: In December 2019, LadBaby announced his bid for the Official Christmas Number one. As with their last release "We Built This City", all proceeds from the single went to The Trussell Trust. He said, "We were blown away by the support we received on our Christmas Number 1 single last year and how far that money has gone into changing the lives of families living in poverty across the UK. We're continually looking for ways we can support food bank charity the Trussell Trust further as the size of the problem still facing so many adults (and children) is huge and we ALL need to do whatever we can to say goodbye to poverty once and for all in the UK! If we can use our social media presence for good by singing about sausage rolls, giving people something to smile about and helping families eat this year, then why wouldn’t we. Officially, the most unanticipated single of the decade...AGAIN!"


title: I Love Rock 'n' Roll

text: On 20 December 2019, the song entered the UK Singles Chart at number one, claiming the Christmas number one with 93,000 chart sales and with 85,000 of that total coming via downloads. It was also the fastest-selling download since Artists for Grenfell version of "Bridge over Troubled Water" in June 2017. LadBaby became the third act to have two consecutive Christmas number one singles and the first to have two successive novelty Christmas number ones in the UK. After reaching number one, LadBaby said, "How have we done this again? It’s the best feeling in the world - it's a Christmas miracle yet again! Thank you everybody for supporting us once again, and all for an amazing cause. It's going to the Trussell Trust – to the 14 million people living in poverty in the UK. Who doesn’t love a sausage roll at Christmas?"


title: Yul Vazquez

text: Yul Vazquez (born March 18, 1965) is a Cuban-American actor and musician. He has appeared in "Runaway Bride" (1999), "Bad Boys II" (2003), "War of the Worlds" (2005), "American Gangster" (2007), "The A-Team" (2010), "Captain Phillips" (2013), "The Infiltrator" (2016), "Midnight, Texas" (2017–2018), "Russian Doll" (2019), and "Severance" (2022). Vazquez used to be the lead guitarist for melodic rock bands Urgent and Diving for Pearls.


title: Yul Vazquez

text: Vazquez was born in Cuba on March 18, 1965 and came to the United States with his family as part of the Cuban Exodus in 1971. He was named after Russian actor Yul Brynner. He grew up in Miami in a studio apartment with his mother, grandmother and older sister, thus being the youngest as well as the only boy in the household. His mother encouraged him in the arts, often taking him to the theater where she worked, and she bought him his first drum set and camera.


title: Yul Vazquez

text: Vazquez started his acting career with filler parts in his mother's plays, which led to discovery by an agent who encouraged him to go to acting school. In the 80s, he was lead guitarist for two Billboard-charted rock bands. His musical skills led him to land the part of Flaco in the 1992 film "The Mambo Kings".


title: Yul Vazquez

text: Vazquez went on to numerous film and television projects. With over 40 film credits, other highlights include roles in six time Oscar nominee "Captain Phillips" (2013), "The A-Team" (2010) with Liam Neeson, John Sayles's "Amigo", Steven Soderbergh’s two-part epic "Che" (2008), "The Take" (2008), "American Gangster", "Music Within" (2007), "War of the Worlds" (2005), "Bad Boys II" (2003), "Traffic" and "Runaway Bride" (1999). He has also been in "Kill the Messenger" starring Jeremy Renner and directed by Michael Cuesta; "Anesthesia"; and "The Cobbler", opposite Adam Sandler, Dustin Hoffman and Steve Buscemi.


title: Yul Vazquez

text: In television, he has had many guest and recurring roles. In Lifetime's series "The Lottery" he starred as President Thomas Westwood and as The Reverend Emilio Sheehan in the NBC series "Midnight, Texas". He was a regular for both seasons of the Starz drama "Magic City," where he portrayed Victor Lazaro, general manager of the Miramar Playa. Additionally, he has recurred in other television series, as Pedro in FX's "Louie", as Christian in CBS's "The Good Wife" and as Det. Anthony Nikolich on the HBO television series "Treme". In the streaming world, he has had recurring roles in several hit shows including Netflix's "Russian Doll", and AppleTVPlus's "Severance".


title: Yul Vazquez

text: Vazquez is a founding member of the LAByrinth Theater Company and served two terms as co-artistic director with Stephen Adly Guirgis and Mimi O'Donnell in New York City. Vazquez starred on Broadway in the Tony nominated "The Motherfucker with the Hat" opposite Chris Rock. For his portrayal of the eccentric Cousin Julio, he received nominations for a Drama Desk Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award and a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. Additional theater credits include "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot" (The Public Theater) opposite Sam Rockwell, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Terrence McNally's "Stendhal Syndrome", "Primary Stages" with Isabella Rossellini and Richard Thomas, and "The Floating Island Plays" (Mark Taper Forum).


title: Yul Vazquez

text: Prior to starting his acting career, Vazquez was the lead guitar player for East Coast Album-oriented rock (AOR) bands Urgent and Diving For Pearls. Urgent landed a minor hit with their single "Running Back" which reached #79 on the Billboard Hot 100. A second single from their "Cast The First Stone" debut album, "Love Can Make You Cry", was featured on the "Iron Eagle" soundtrack. Urgent broke up in 1987 after the lackluster success of their sophomore album, "Thinking Out Loud".


title: Yul Vazquez

text: Following the demise of Urgent, Vazquez joined Diving for Pearls, whose eponymous debut album was issued by Epic/Sony Music in 1989. The group was dropped by the label before a second album could be completed due to the musical climate changing in the early 1990s as melodic hard rock fell out of favor in the U.S.


title: Yul Vazquez

text: In 2009, Vazquez played acoustic guitar with Ian Astbury of The Cult under the name The Soft Revolt appearing at the Bowery Electric in New York City on the opening night of John Patrick Shanley's play "Savage in Limbo", which Astbury was producing. They performed songs by The Cult and Astbury solo material as well as covers by the Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, Radiohead, among others.


title: Yul Vazquez

text: In the 2022 show "Severance", Vazquez actually sings and plays a cover of Metallica's "Enter Sandman" in the fourth episode.


title: Yul Vazquez

text: Vazquez has been married to actress Linda Larkin since May 18, 2002. Larkin is best known for being the speaking voice of Princess Jasmine in Disney's 1992 animated feature film "Aladdin."


title: Courtship

text: Courtship is the period wherein some couples get to know each other prior to a possible marriage. Courtship traditionally may begin after a betrothal and may conclude with the celebration of marriage. A courtship may be an informal and private matter between two people or may be a public affair, or a formal arrangement with family approval. Traditionally, in the case of a formal engagement, it is the role of a male to actively "court" or "woo" a female, thus encouraging her to understand him and her receptiveness to a marriage proposal.


title: Courtship

text: The average duration of courtship varies considerably throughout the world. Furthermore, there is vast individual variation between couples. Courtship may be completely omitted, as in cases of some arranged marriages where the couple do not meet before the wedding.


title: Courtship

text: In the United Kingdom, a poll of 3,000 engaged or married couples resulted in an average duration between first meeting and accepted proposal of marriage of 2 years and 11 months, with the women feeling ready to accept at an average of 2 years and 7 months. Regarding duration between proposal and wedding, the UK poll above gave an average of 2 years and 3 months.


title: Courtship

text: The date is fairly casual in most European-influenced cultures, but in some traditional societies, courtship is a highly structured activity with very specific formal rules.


title: Courtship

text: In some societies, the parents or community propose potential partners and then allow limited dating to determine whether the parties are suited. In Japan, there is such a type of courtship called Omiai, with similar practices called "Xiangqin" () in the Greater China Area. Parents will hire a matchmaker to provide pictures and résumés of potential mates, and if the couple agrees, there will be a formal meeting with the matchmaker and often parents in attendance. The matchmaker and parents will often exert pressure on the couple to decide whether they want to marry after a few dates.


title: Courtship

text: Courtship in the Philippines is one complex form of courtship. Unlike other societies, it takes a far more subdued and indirect approach. Its complexity involves stages, and it is considered normal for courtship to last a year or longer. It is common to see a man showing off by sending love letters and love poems, singing romantic songs, and buying gifts for a woman. The parents are also seen as part of the courtship practice, as their approval is commonly needed before courtship may begin or before the woman gives the man an answer to his advances.


title: Courtship

text: In more closed societies, courtship is virtually eliminated by the practice of arranged marriages in which partners are chosen for young people, typically by their parents. Forbidding experimental and serial courtship and sanctioning only arranged matches is partly a means of guarding the chastity of young people and partly a matter of furthering family interests, which, in such cultures, may be considered more important than individual romantic preferences.


title: Courtship

text: Throughout history, courtship has often included traditions such as exchanging valentines, written correspondence (facilitated by the creation of the postal service in the nineteenth century), and similar communication-based courting. Over recent decades, though, the concept of arranged marriage has changed or simply been mixed with other forms of dating, including Eastern and Indian ones. Potential couples have the opportunity to meet and date each other before deciding whether to continue the relationship.


title: Courtship

text: In the early 1800s, young adults were expected to court with the intention of finding a marriage partner, rather than for social reasons. In more traditional forms of Christianity, this concept of courtship has been retained, with the period of courtship beginning after the Rite of Betrothal and concluding with the celebration of marriage. Christian theologian John Piper distinguished courtship from dating, teaching that:


title: Courtship

text: Christian minister Patricia Bootsma delineates this distinction, writing that in contrast to the modern conception of dating, in "courtship, time together in groups with family or friends is encouraged, and there is oversight by and accountability to parents or mentors". She further states that with courtship, "commitment happens before intimacy".


title: Courtship

text: In America, in the 1820s, the phrase "date" was most closely associated with prostitution. However, by the Jazz Age of the 1920s, dating for fun was becoming a cultural expectation, and by the 1930s, it was assumed that any popular young person would have many dates. This form of dating was usually conducted in public places, before pre-marital sex became more socially acceptable after the sexual revolution in the 1960s.


title: Courtship

text: Courtship is used by a number of theorists to explain gendering processes and sexual identity. Scientific research into courtship began in the 1980s, after which time academic researchers started to generate theories about modern dating practices and norms. Researchers have found that, contrary to popular beliefs, courtship is normally triggered and controlled by women, driven mainly by non-verbal behaviours, to which men respond. One of the functions of romantic love is courtship.


title: Courtship

text: This is generally supported by other theorists who specialise in the study of body language. There are some feminist scholars, however, who regard courtship as a socially constructed (and male-led) process organised to subjugate women. Farrell reports, for example, that magazines about marriage and romantic fiction continue to attract a 98% female readership. Systematic research into courtship processes inside the workplace as well two ten-year studies examining norms in different international settings continue to support a view that courtship is a social process that socialises "both" sexes into accepting forms of relationship that maximise the chances of successfully raising children.


title: Courtship

text: As technology progressed the dating world progressed as well. In a Time-line by Metro, a statistic match-making business opened in 1941, the first reality TV dating show was developed in 1965, and by the 1980s the public was introduced to video dating. Video dating was a way for singles to sit in front of a camera and tell whomever may be watching something about themselves. The process of elimination was significant because now the viewer was able hear their voice, see their face and watch their body language to determine a physical attraction to the candidates.


title: Courtship

text: In online dating, individuals create profiles where they disclose personal information, photographs, hobbies, interests, religion and expectations. Then the user can search through hundreds of thousands of accounts and connect with multiple people at once which in return, gives the user more options and more opportunity to find what meets their standards. Online dating has influenced the idea of choice. In "", Aziz Ansari states that one third of marriages in the United States between 2005 and 2012 met through online dating services. Today there are hundreds of sites to choose from and websites designed to fit specific needs such as Match, eHarmony, OkCupid, Zoosk, and ChristianMingle. Mobile apps, such as Grindr and Tinder allow users to upload profiles that are then judged by others on the service; one can either swipe right on a profile (indicating interest) or swipe left (which presents another possible mate).


title: Courtship

text: Many animal species have mate-selection rituals also referred to as "courtship" anthropomorphically. Animal courtship may involve complicated dances or touching, vocalizations, or displays of beauty or fighting prowess. Most animal courtship occurs out of sight of humans and so it is often the least documented of animal behaviors. One animal whose courtship rituals are well studied is the bower bird, whose male builds a "bower" of collected objects.


title: Courtship

text: From the scientific point of view, courtship in the animal kingdom is the process in which the different species select their partners for reproduction purposes. Generally speaking, the male initiates the courtship, and the female chooses to either mate or reject the male based on his "performance".


title: Courtship

text: All animals have different courtship rituals that reflect fitness, compatibility with others and ability to provide. Sea turtles court during a limited receptive time. During the courtship males will either nuzzle the females head to show affection or by gently biting the back of her neck. This may go on for long periods of time, depending on whether the female responds to the male. If the female does respond, by not fleeing, the male will attach himself onto the back of the female's shell using his front flippers. He will stretch his long tail under the back of the females shell to begin copulation.


title: Courtship

text: Courting can be competitive among males. The male that has better endurance will win the female. To a female, endurance is a great trait to be passed on to their offspring; the higher the endurance in the male, the higher the endurance will be in her offspring and the more likely they will be to survive. Female leatherback sea turtles will also choose many different males to copulate with in order to diversify their offspring, since it is known that leatherback sea turtles have female-biased offspring.


title: Courtship

text: Despite being aggressive animals, the female hippopotamus is very nurturing and sensitive when caring for offspring. Mating and birth both occur in the water for hippopotamus. This is because it gives them privacy when conceiving and helps conserve energy during birth. The female hippo normally averages around 5–6 years, while males are average an age of 7–8. During mating season the male hippopotamus will find a mate out of the herd, showing interest by smelling the female's posterior end. As long as the male acts submissive during courting season, the adults in the herd will not interfere. Once the male finds the female he wants to mate with, he begins provoking the female. He then will push the female into the water and mount her. In order to alert the herd or other animals that may be lurking around, the male will let a loud wheezing sound. Preceding birth, the female exhibits aggressive behavior, leaving the herd until after the birth of the calf. Although hippopotamuses can mate anytime of the year, the mating season ranges from February to August. Because the energy cost is high, the female generally only has one offspring in a two-years span.


title: Courtship

text: The courtship behaviour of honey bees follows through two distinct types: "apiary vicinity mating" and "drone assembly mating". Apiary vicinity mating usually takes place in cool weather and is more local to the apiary from which the queen resides. The drones are in the same apiary too, but this doesn't not mean that it will lead to inbreeding. Drones assemble in a bulb of warm air close or far from the apiary. They are alert when the queen has flown out of the hive and will follow her route. This is followed by a sort of fast hum or buzz in the general bee population that follows an upward temperature gradient. The male drone mounts on the virgin queen and inserts his endophallus, ejaculating semen. The male honey bee will then pull away from the queen, but his endophallus will be ripped from his body and remain attached to the newly fertilized queen. The next male honey bee will remove the endophallus that was previously left by the other male honey bee and will eventually ejaculate and lose his own. The frequency of mating for the male honey bees is 7 to 10 times during a mating flight. Most of the drones die quickly immediately after mating, and their abdomen rips open since the endophallus has been removed. The few that survive are usually ejected from their nests, as they have served their sole purpose by mating.


title: Courtship

text: They only attend one mating flight, and the queen stores up to 100 million sperm within her oviducts during this flight, but only 5–6 million are stored in the spermatheca of the queen. Only a few of this sperm are used by the queen at a time to fertilize the eggs throughout her life. New queen generations will mate and produce their colonies if the queen runs out of sperm in her lifetime. The sex of the offspring is controlled by the honey bee queens, as the eggs passing through the oviduct can be determined whether they are fertilized or not by the queen. Research has indicated that eggs that are fertilized develop into female workers and queens, while the unfertilized eggs become drone honey bees. Female workers can lay infertile eggs but do not mate. The infertile eggs become male honey bees. The eggs of the queen are laid in oval-shaped structural cells that usually stick to the nest ceiling. Royal jelly is then filled with these cells to prevent larvae from falling. Soon-to-be workers are fed royal jelly during the first two days. The future queens are given royal jelly throughout the entire larval period. Each member colony development depends on caste. For proper growth from eggs to adult, the male honey bees need 24 days, 21 for workers and only 16 for the queens.


title: Courtship

text: Certain insect species also display courtship behavior in order to attract mates. For example, the species "Ceratitis capitata" (also known as the medfly) exhibits these behaviors. During the courtship phase, signals are exchanged between males and females to display willingness for mating. The male begins with a series of head movements, then after 1–2 seconds of movement, also begins to fan its wings and moves closer to the female. Once the male is close enough to the female, the male will leap onto the female's back and begin copulation. Another example is seen in the spider species "Maratus volans", where the male will perform an elaborate fan dance. The male will open his colorful fan and begin to vibrate in order to draw the attention of the female spider. The male will begin to move closer and closer to the female until copulation.


title: Courtship

text: "Allobates femoralis" displays courtship behavior through “courtship march,” in which the male begins the courtship and leads the female to the oviposition site. Its behavior also includes visual components, such as throat display, limb lifting, circling, and leg stretching. Among poison frogs, "Allobates femoralis"’s courtship duration is the longest. Although females rarely reject males nor evaluate the male’s fitness during courtship, they occasionally demand an extended duration of courtship. And while females to not show aggression during courtship, males can interact aggressively with other males in the purpose of territorial defense and competition for female.


title: Sokal affair

text: The Sokal affair, also called the Sokal hoax, was a demonstrative scholarly hoax performed by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to "Social Text", an academic journal of cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal's intellectual rigor, specifically to investigate whether "a leading North American journal of cultural studies—whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross—[would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."


title: Sokal affair

text: The article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", was published in the journal's spring/summer 1996 "Science Wars" issue. It proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. The journal did not practice academic peer review and it did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist. Three weeks after its publication in May 1996, Sokal revealed in the magazine "Lingua Franca" that the article was a hoax.


title: Sokal affair

text: The hoax caused controversy about the scholarly merit of commentary on the physical sciences by those in the humanities; the influence of postmodern philosophy on social disciplines in general; and academic ethics, including whether Sokal was wrong to deceive the editors or readers of "Social Text"; and whether "Social Text" had abided by proper scientific ethics.


title: Sokal affair

text: In 2008, Sokal published "Beyond the Hoax", which revisited the history of the hoax and discussed its lasting implications.


title: Sokal affair

text: In an interview on the U.S. radio program "All Things Considered", Sokal said he was inspired to submit the bogus article after reading "Higher Superstition" (1994), in which authors Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt claim that some humanities journals will publish anything as long as it has "the proper leftist thought" and quoted (or was written by) well-known leftist thinkers.


title: Sokal affair

text: Gross and Levitt had been defenders of the philosophy of scientific realism, opposing postmodernist academics who questioned scientific objectivity. They asserted that anti-intellectual sentiment in liberal arts departments (especially English departments) caused the increase of deconstructionist thought, which eventually resulted in a deconstructionist critique of science. They saw the critique as a "repertoire of rationalizations" for avoiding the study of science.


title: Sokal affair

text: Sokal reasoned that if the presumption of editorial laziness was correct, the nonsensical content of his article would be irrelevant to whether the editors would publish it. What would matter would be ideological obsequiousness, fawning references to deconstructionist writers, and sufficient quantities of the appropriate jargon. After the article was published and the hoax revealed, he wrote:


title: Sokal affair

text: The results of my little experiment demonstrate, at the very least, that some fashionable sectors of the American academic Left have been getting intellectually lazy. The editors of Social Text liked my article because they liked its conclusion: that "the content and methodology of postmodern science provide powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project" [sec. 6]. They apparently felt no need to analyze the quality of the evidence, the cogency of the arguments, or even the relevance of the arguments to the purported conclusion.


title: Sokal affair

text: "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" proposed that quantum gravity has progressive political implications, and that the "morphogenetic field" could be a valid theory of quantum gravity. (A morphogenetic field is a concept adapted by Rupert Sheldrake in a way that Sokal characterized in the affair's aftermath as "a bizarre New Age idea.") Sokal wrote that the concept of "an external world whose properties are independent of any individual human being" was "dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook."


title: Sokal affair

text: After referring skeptically to the "so-called scientific method", the article declared that "it is becoming increasingly apparent that physical 'reality is fundamentally "a social and linguistic construct." It went on to state that because scientific research is "inherently theory-laden and self-referential", it "cannot assert a privileged epistemological status with respect to counterhegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or marginalized communities", and that therefore a "liberatory science" and an "emancipatory mathematics", spurning "the elite caste canon of 'high science, needed to be established for a "postmodern science [that] provide[s] powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project."


title: Sokal affair

text: Sokal submitted the article to "Social Text", whose editors were collecting articles for the "Science Wars" issue. "Transgressing the Boundaries" was notable as an article by a natural scientist; biologist Ruth Hubbard also had an article in the issue. Later, after Sokal revealed the hoax in "Lingua Franca", "Social Text"'s editors wrote that they had requested editorial changes that Sokal refused to make, and had had concerns about the quality of the writing: "We requested him (a) to excise a good deal of the philosophical speculation and (b) to excise most of his footnotes." Still, despite calling Sokal a "difficult, uncooperative author", and noting that such writers were "well known to journal editors", based on Sokal's credentials "Social Text" published the article in the May 1996 Spring/Summer "Science Wars" issue. The editors did not seek peer review of the article by physicists or otherwise; they later defended this decision on the basis that "Social Text" was a journal of open intellectual inquiry and the article was not offered as a contribution to physics.


title: Sokal affair

text: In the May 1996 issue of "Lingua Franca", in the article "A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies", Sokal revealed that "Transgressing the Boundaries" was a hoax and concluded that "Social Text" "felt comfortable publishing an article on quantum physics without bothering to consult anyone knowledgeable in the subject" because of its ideological proclivities and editorial bias.


title: Sokal affair

text: In their defense, "Social Text"'s editors said they believed that Sokal's essay "was the earnest attempt of a professional scientist to seek some kind of affirmation from postmodern philosophy for developments in his field" and that "its status as parody does not alter, substantially, our interest in the piece, itself, as a symptomatic document." Besides criticizing his writing style, "Social Text"'s editors accused Sokal of behaving unethically in deceiving them.


title: Sokal affair

text: Sokal said the editors' response demonstrated the problem that he sought to identify. "Social Text", as an academic journal, published the article not because it was faithful, true, and accurate to its subject, but because an "academic authority" had written it and because of the appearance of the obscure writing. The editors said they considered it poorly written but published it because they felt Sokal was an academic seeking their intellectual affirmation. Sokal remarked:


title: Sokal affair

text: "Social Text"'s response revealed that none of the editors had suspected Sokal's piece was a parody. Instead, they speculated Sokal's admission "represented a change of heart, or a folding of his intellectual resolve." Sokal found further humor in the idea that the article's absurdity was hard to spot:


title: Sokal affair

text: In 1997, Sokal and Jean Bricmont co-wrote "Impostures intellectuelles" (US: "Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science"; UK: "Intellectual Impostures", 1998). The book featured analysis of extracts from established intellectuals' writings that Sokal and Bricmont claimed misused scientific terminology. It closed with a critical summary of postmodernism and criticism of the strong programme of social constructionism in the sociology of scientific knowledge.


title: Sokal affair

text: In 2008, Sokal published a followup book, "Beyond the Hoax", which revisited the history of the hoax and discussed its lasting implications.


title: Sokal affair

text: The French philosopher Jacques Derrida, whose 1966 statement about Einstein's theory of relativity was quoted in Sokal's paper, was singled out for criticism, particularly in U.S. newspaper coverage of the hoax. One weekly magazine used two images of him, a photo and a caricature, to illustrate a "dossier" on Sokal's paper. Arkady Plotnitsky commented: Even given Derrida's status as an icon of intellectual controversy on the Anglo-American cultural scene, it is remarkable that out of thousands of pages of Derrida's published works, a single extemporaneous remark on relativity made in 1966 (before Derrida was "the Derrida" and, in a certain sense, even before "deconstruction") . . . is made to stand for nearly all of deconstructive or even postmodernist (not a term easily, if at all, applicable to Derrida) treatments of science.Derrida later responded to the hoax in ""Sokal et Bricmont ne sont pas sérieux"" ("Sokal and Bricmont Aren't Serious"), first published on 20 November 1997 in "Le Monde". He called Sokal's action "sad" for having trivialized Sokal's mathematical work and "ruining the chance to carefully examine controversies" about scientific objectivity. Derrida then faulted him and Bricmont for what he considered "an act of intellectual bad faith" in their follow-up book, "Impostures intellectuelles": they had published two articles almost simultaneously, one in English in "The Times Literary Supplement" on 17 October 1997 and one in French in "Libération" on 18–19 October 1997, but while the two articles were almost identical, they differed in how they treated Derrida.


title: Sokal affair

text: The English-language article had a list of French intellectuals who were not included in Sokal's and Bricmont's book: "Such well-known thinkers as Althusser, Barthes, and Foucault—who, as readers of the TLS will be well aware, have always had their supporters and detractors on both sides of the Channel—appear in our book only in a minor role, as cheerleaders for the texts we criticize." The French-language list, however, included Derrida: ""Des penseurs célèbres tels qu'Althusser, Barthes, Derrida et Foucault sont essentiellement absents de notre livre"" ("Famous thinkers such as Althusser, Barthes, Derrida and Foucault are essentially absent from our book").


title: Sokal affair

text: According to Brian Reilly, Derrida may also have been sensitive to another difference between the French and English versions of "Impostures intellectuelles". In the French, his citation from the original hoax article is said to be an "isolated" instance of abuse, whereas the English text adds a parenthetical remark that Derrida's work contained "no systematic misuse (or indeed attention to) science." Sokal and Bricmont insisted that the difference between the articles was "banal." Nevertheless, Derrida concluded that Sokal was not serious in his method, but had used the spectacle of a "quick practical joke" to displace the scholarship Derrida believed the public deserved.


title: Sokal affair

text: Sociologist Stephen Hilgartner, chairman of Cornell University's science and technology studies department, wrote "The Sokal Affair in Context" (1997), comparing Sokal's hoax to "Confirmational Response: Bias Among Social Work Journals" (1990), an article by William M. Epstein published in "Science, Technology, & Human Values". Epstein used a similar method to Sokal's, submitting fictitious articles to real academic journals to measure their response. Though much more systematic than Sokal's work, it received scant media attention. Hilgartner argued that the "asymmetric" effect of the successful Sokal hoax compared with Epstein's experiment cannot be attributed to its quality, but that "[t]hrough a mechanism that resembles confirmatory bias, audiences may apply less stringent standards of evidence and ethics to attacks on targets that they are predisposed to regard unfavorably." As a result, according to Hilgartner, though competent in terms of method, Epstein's experiment was largely muted by the more socially accepted social work discipline he critiqued, while Sokal's attack on cultural studies, despite lacking experimental rigor, was accepted. Hilgartner also argued that Sokal's hoax reinforced the views of well-known pundits such as George Will and Rush Limbaugh, so that his opinions were amplified by media outlets predisposed to agree with his argument.


title: Sokal affair

text: The Sokal Affair extended from academia to the public press. Anthropologist Bruno Latour, criticized in "Fashionable Nonsense", described the scandal as a "tempest in a teacup." Retired Northeastern University mathematician-turned social scientist Gabriel Stolzenberg wrote essays criticizing the statements of Sokal and his allies, arguing that they insufficiently grasped the philosophy they criticized, rendering their criticism meaningless. In "Social Studies of Science", Bricmont and Sokal responded to Stolzenberg, denouncing his representations of their work and criticizing his commentary about the "strong programme" of the sociology of science. Stolzenberg replied in the same issue that their critique and allegations of misrepresentation were based on misreadings. He advised readers to slowly and skeptically examine the arguments of each party, bearing in mind that "the obvious is sometimes the enemy of the true."


title: Sokal affair

text: In 2009, Cornell sociologist Robb Willer performed an experiment in which undergraduate students read Sokal's paper and were told either that it was written by another student or that it was by a famous academic. He found that students who believed the paper's author was a high-status intellectual rated it better in quality and intelligibility.


title: Sokal affair

text: In 2017, James A. Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, and Helen Pluckrose initiated "The Grievance Studies affair", a project to create bogus academic papers on cultural, queer, race, gender, fat, and sexuality studies and submit them to academic journals. Their intent was to expose problems in "grievance studies", a term they apply to a subcategory of these academic topics in which "poor science is undermining the real and important work being done elsewhere".


title: Sokal affair

text: The hoax began in 2017 and continued into 2019, when it was halted after one of the papers caught the attention of journalists, who quickly found its purported author, Helen Wilson, to be nonexistent. By that time, four of the 20 papers had been published, three had been accepted but not yet published, six had been rejected, and seven were still under review.


title: Sokal affair

text: In October 2021, the scholarly journal "Higher Education Quarterly" published a bogus article "authored" by "Sage Owens" and "Kal Avers-Lynde III". The initials stand for "Sokal III". The "Quarterly" retracted the article.


title: Axe

text: An axe ( sometimes ax in American English; see spelling differences) is an implement that has been used for millennia to shape, split and cut wood, to harvest timber, as a weapon, and as a ceremonial or heraldic symbol. The axe has many forms and specialised uses but generally consists of an axe head with a handle, or "helve".


title: Axe

text: Before the modern axe, the stone-age hand axe without a handle was used from 1.5 million years BP. Hafted axes (those with a handle) date only from 6000 BC. The earliest examples of handled axes have heads of stone with some form of wooden handle attached (hafted) in a method to suit the available materials and use. Axes made of copper, bronze, iron and steel appeared as these technologies developed.


title: Axe

text: The axe is an example of a simple machine, as it is a type of wedge, or dual inclined plane. This reduces the effort needed by the wood chopper. It splits the wood into two parts by the pressure concentration at the blade. The handle of the axe also acts as a lever allowing the user to increase the force at the cutting edge—not using the full length of the handle is known as choking the axe. For fine chopping using a side axe this sometimes is a positive effect, but for felling with a double bitted axe it reduces efficiency.


title: Axe

text: Generally, cutting axes have a shallow wedge angle, whereas splitting axes have a deeper angle. Most axes are double bevelled, i.e. symmetrical about the axis of the blade, but some specialist broadaxes have a single bevel blade, and usually an offset handle that allows them to be used for finishing work without putting the user's knuckles at risk of injury. Less common today, they were once an integral part of a joiner and carpenter's tool kit, not just a tool for use in forestry. A tool of similar origin is the billhook.


title: Axe

text: Most modern axes have steel heads and wooden handles, typically hickory in the US and ash in Europe and Asia, although plastic or fibreglass handles are also common. Modern axes are specialised by use, size and form. Hafted axes with short handles designed for use with one hand are often called hand axes but the term hand axe refers to axes without handles as well. Hatchets tend to be small hafted axes often with a hammer on the back side (the poll). As easy-to-make weapons, axes have frequently been used in combat.


title: Axe

text: Hand axes, of stone, and used without handles (hafts) were the first axes. They had knapped (chipped) cutting edges of flint or other stone. Early examples of hand axes date back to 1.6 mya in the later Oldowan, in Southern Ethiopia around 1.4 mya, and in 1.2 mya deposits in Olduvai Gorge. Stone axes made with "ground" cutting edges were first developed sometime in the late Pleistocene in Australia, where grind-edge axe fragments from sites in Arnhem Land date back at least 44,000 years; grind-edge axes were later present in Japan some time around 38,000 BP, and are known from several Upper Palaeolithic sites on the islands of Honshu and Kyushu.


title: Axe

text: Hafted axes are first known from the Mesolithic period (c. 6000 BC). Few wooden hafts have been found from this period, but it seems that the axe was normally hafted by wedging. Birch-tar and rawhide lashings were used to fix the blade.


title: Axe

text: The distribution of stone axes is an important indication of prehistoric trade. Thin sectioning is used to determine the provenance of the stone blades. In Europe, Neolithic "axe factories", where thousands of ground stone axes were roughed out, are known from many places, such as:


title: Axe

text: metal axes are still produced and in use today in parts of Papua, Indonesia. The Mount Hagen area of Papua New Guinea was an important production centre.


title: Axe

text: From the late Neolithic/Chalcolithic onwards, axes were made of copper or copper mixed with arsenic. These axes were flat and hafted much like their stone predecessors. Axes continued to be made in this manner with the introduction of Bronze metallurgy. Eventually the hafting method changed and the flat axe developed into the "flanged axe", then palstaves, and later winged and socketed axes.


title: Axe

text: At least since the late Neolithic, elaborate axes (battle-axes, T-axes, etc.) had a religious significance and probably indicated the exalted status of their owner. Certain types almost never show traces of wear; deposits of unshafted axe blades from the middle Neolithic (such as at the Somerset Levels in Britain) may have been gifts to the deities.


title: Axe

text: In Minoan Crete, the double axe (labrys) had a special significance, used by priestesses in religious ceremonies.


title: Axe

text: In 1998 a labrys, complete with an elaborately embellished haft, was found at Cham-Eslen, Canton of Zug, Switzerland. The haft was 120 cm long and wrapped in ornamented birch-bark. The axe blade is 17.4 cm long and made of antigorite, mined in the Gotthard-area. The haft goes through a biconical drilled hole and is fastened by wedges of antler and by birch-tar. It belongs to the early Cortaillod culture.


title: Axe

text: The coat of arms of Norway feature a lion bearing an axe, which is represent the King Olaf II of Norway, who was honored as the Eternal King of Norway.


title: Axe

text: In folklore, stone axes were sometimes believed to be thunderbolts and were used to guard buildings against lightning, as it was believed (mythically) that lightning never struck the same place twice. This has caused some skewing of axe distributions.


title: Axe

text: Steel axes were important in superstition as well. A thrown axe could keep off a hailstorm, sometimes an axe was placed in the crops, with the cutting edge to the skies to protect the harvest against bad weather. An upright axe buried under the sill of a house would keep off witches, while an axe under the bed would assure male offspring.


title: Axe

text: Basques, Australians and New Zealanders have developed variants of rural sports that perpetuate the traditions of log cutting with axe. The Basque variants, splitting horizontally or vertically disposed logs, are generically called "aizkolaritza" (from "aizkora": axe).


title: Axe

text: In Yorùbá mythology, the oshe (double-headed axe) symbolises Shango, Orisha (god) of thunder and lightning. It is said to represent swift and balanced justice. Shango altars often contain a carved figure of a woman holding a gift to the god with a double-bladed axe sticking up from her head.


title: Axe

text: The Hurrian and Hittite weather god Teshub is depicted on a bas-relief at Ivriz wielding a thunderbolt and an axe.


title: Axe

text: The Arkalochori Axe is a bronze, Minoan, axe from the second millennium BC thought to be used for religious purposes. Inscriptions on this axe have been compared with other ancient writing systems.


title: Axe

text: The "axe head" is typically bounded by the "bit" (or blade) at one end, and the "poll" (or butt) at the other, though some designs feature two bits opposite each other. The top corner of the bit where the cutting edge begins is called the "toe", and the bottom corner is known as the "heel". Either side of the head is called the "cheek", which is sometimes supplemented by "lugs" where the head meets the haft, and the hole where the haft is mounted is called the "eye". The part of the bit that descends below the rest of the axe-head is called the "beard", and a "bearded axe" is an antiquated axe head with an exaggerated beard that can sometimes extend the cutting edge twice the height of the rest of the head.


title: Axe

text: The "axe haft" is sometimes called the handle. Traditionally, it was made of a resilient hardwood like hickory or ash, but modern axes often have hafts made of durable synthetic materials. Antique axes and their modern reproductions, like the tomahawk, often had a simple, straight haft with a circular cross-section that wedged onto the axe-head without the aid of wedges or pins. Modern hafts are curved for better grip and to aid in the swinging motion, and are mounted securely to the head. The "shoulder" is where the head mounts onto the haft, and this is either a long oval or rectangular cross-section of the haft that is secured to the axe head with small metal or wooden wedges. The "belly" of the haft is the longest part, where it bows in gently, and the throat is where it curves sharply down to the short "grip", just before the end of the haft, which is known as the "knob".


title: Axe

text: Hammer axes (or axe-hammers) typically feature an extended poll, opposite the blade, shaped and sometimes hardened for use as a hammer. The name axe-hammer is often applied to a characteristic shape of perforated stone axe used in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. Iron axe-hammers are found in Roman military contexts, e.g. Cramond, Edinburgh, and South Shields, Tyne and Wear.


title: Common house gecko

text: The common house gecko (Hemidactylus frenatus) is a gecko native to South and Southeast Asia. It is also known as the Asian house gecko, Pacific house gecko, wall gecko, house lizard, tayoto, chipkali or moon lizard.


title: Common house gecko

text: Most geckos are nocturnal, hiding during the day and foraging for insects at night. They can be seen climbing walls of houses and other buildings in search of insects attracted to porch lights, and are immediately recognisable by their characteristic chirping.


title: Common house gecko

text: They grow to a length of between , and live for about 7 years. These small geckos are non-venomous and not harmful to humans. Most medium-sized to large geckos are docile, but may bite if distressed, which can pierce skin. The common house gecko is tropical, and thrives in warm, humid areas where it can crawl around on rotting wood in search of the insects it eats, as well as within urban landscapes in warm climates. The animal is very adaptable and may prey on insects and spiders, displacing other gecko species which are less robust or behaviourally aggressive. In parts of Australia and Papua New Guinea they are often confused with a similar native lizard, the dubious dtella.


title: Common house gecko

text: Like many geckos, this species can lose its tail when alarmed. Its call or chirp rather resembles the sound "gecko, gecko". However, this is an interpretation, and the sound may also be described as "tchak tchak tchak" (often sounded six to nine times in sequence). In Asia, notably Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia in the south east, geckos have local names onomatopoetically derived from the sounds they make: "Hemidactylus frenatus" is called ""chee chak"" or ""chi chak"" (pr- chee chuck), said quickly, also commonly spelled as "cicak" in Malay dictionaries. In the Philippines, they are called ""butiki"" in Tagalog, ""tiki"" in Visayan, ""alutiit"" in Ilocano, and in Thailand, ""jing-jok"" (). In Myanmar, they are called "အိမ်မြှောင် - ain-mjong" ( "အိမ် - ain" means "house" and "မြှောင် - mjong" means "stick to"). In some parts of India and in Pakistan, they are called ""chhipkali"" (Urdu:چھپکلی, Hindi: छिपकली), from "chhipkana", to stick. In Nepal, they are called "vhitti" (Nepali: भित्ती) or "mausuli" (Nepali: माउसुली). In other parts of India, they are called ""kirli"" (Punjabi: ਕਿੜਲੀ), ""jhiti piti"" (Oriya: ଝିଟିପିଟି), ""zethi"" (Assamese: জেঠী), ""thikthikiaa"" (Maithili: ठिकठिकिया), ""paal"" (Marathi: पाल), ""gawli"" or ""palli"" (Malayalam: ഗവ്ളി (gawli), പല്ലി (palli), Tamil: பல்லி (palli)), Telugu: బల్లి (balli), Kannada: ಹಲ್ಲಿ (halli), ""ali"" (Sylheti: ꠀꠟꠤ), ""garoli"" (Gujarati: ગરોળી). In West Bengal and Bangladesh, they are called ""tiktiki"" (Bengali: টিকটিকি) as the sound is perceived as "tik tik tik". In Sri Lanka, they are called "huna" in singular form (Sinhalese: හුනා). In China and some countries with Teochew speakers, they are called 檐龙 (""ji-leng"", literally "roof dragon"). In Central America, they are sometimes called "limpia casas" (Spanish: "house cleaners") because they reduce the amount of insects and other arthropods in homes and are also called 'qui-qui' because of the sound they make.


title: Common house gecko

text: The common house gecko is by no means a misnomer, displaying a clear preference for urban environments. The synanthropic gecko displays a tendency to hunt for insects in close proximity to urban lights. They have been found in bushland, but the current evidence seems to suggest they have a preference for urban environments, with their distribution being mostly defined by areas within or in close proximity to city bounds.


title: Common house gecko

text: The common house gecko appears to prefer areas in the light which are proximal to cracks, or places to escape. Geckos without an immediate opportunity to escape potential danger display behavioural modifications to compensate for this fact, emerging later in the night and retreating earlier in the morning. Without access to the urban landscape, they appear to prefer habitat which is composed of comparatively dense forest or eucalypt woodland which is proximal to closed forest.


title: Common house gecko

text: The selection of primarily urban habitats makes available the preferred foods of the common house gecko. The bulk of the diet of the gecko is made up of invertebrates, primarily hunted around urban structures. Primary invertebrate food sources include cockroaches, termites, some bees and wasps, butterflies, moths, flies, spiders, and several beetle groupings. There is limited evidence that cannibalism can occur in laboratory conditions, but this is yet to be observed in the wild.


title: Common house gecko

text: The common house gecko is prolific through the tropics and subtropics. It is able to exist in an ecologically analogous place with other "Hemidactylus" species. Despite being native throughout Southeast Asia, recent introductions, both deliberate and accidental, have seen them recorded in the Deep South of the United States, large parts of tropical and sub-tropical Australia, and many other countries in South and Central America, Caribbean Dominican Republic, Africa, South Asia and the Middle East (Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates). Most recently, this species has also invaded the Caribbean Lesser Antilles, and is now present on Dominica and Saint Lucia. Their capacity to withstand a wide range of latitudes is also partially facilitated by their capacity to enter a state of brumation during colder months. The prospect of increased climate change interacts synergistically with increased urbanisation, greatly increasing the prospective distribution of the common house gecko. Due to concerns over its potential capacity as an invasive species, there are efforts to limit their introduction and presence in locations where they could be a risk to native gecko species.


title: Common house gecko

text: In Mexico, "H. frenatus" was first collected in Acapulco, Guerrero, in March of 1895 and found to be well established there and in the surrounding regions by the early 1940s. It was likely introduced through shipping and cargo. "H. frenatus" now occurs throughout the lowlands of Mexico on both the Atlantic and Pacific versants including the Yucatan Peninsula, and Baja California, with records from 21 of the 32 Mexican states. Most records of "H. frenatus" in Mexico are from buildings such as homes, hotels, and other structure in cities and towns, with only a few reports of the species in natural habitat, and its impact, if any, on native fauna there is unknown.


title: Common house gecko

text: There is evidence to suggest that the presence of "Hemidactylus frenatus" has negatively impacted native gecko populations throughout tropical Asia, Central America and the Pacific.


title: Common house gecko

text: As an introduced species, they pose a threat through the potential introduction of new parasites and diseases, but have potential negative impacts which extend beyond this. The primary cause for concern appears to exist around their exclusionary behaviour and out-competition of other gecko species. Mechanistically, three explanations have been derived to justify the capacity of "H. frenatus" to outcompete other gecko species:


title: Common house gecko

text: These differences provide "H. frenatus" a competitive edge in the limited urban areas they preferentially inhabit, particularly those with high degrees of habitat fragmentation. To compound this, they also are capable of operating on higher densities, which leads to an increase in gecko sightings and biomass in an area, even after reducing native species' density. The common house gecko also displays a higher tolerance to high light levels, which may allow for an increased risk-reward pay off in hunting endeavours. There is also some limited evidence for cannibalism, hunting on other small gecko species, particularly juveniles. Most of this evidence is in laboratory conditions, with several studies failing to find evidence of cannibalism in the wild for this species.


title: Common house gecko

text: Some males are more territorial than others. Territorial males will display larger heads, with a more pronounced head shape. This increase in head size incurs the cost of a poorer performance in escape sprint time. This suggests selective pressure prioritises the biting force capacity of the male, over their capacity to escape quickly. On the contrary, increases in female head size are met with a proportionate increase in hind limb length and no decrease in speed. Though both sexes use escape sprinting as a survival strategy, males are more likely to need to stop and fight using biting, due to the reduced mobility caused by disproportionate head to hind leg size, which in turn is correlated with localised territorial behaviours.


title: Common house gecko

text: The success of the common house gecko can also be explained through other elements of competition, such as postural displays and movement patterns. An example of this is how the common house gecko can trigger an "avoidance response" in the mourning gecko, causing it to avoid a specific area where food may become available. Though triggering avoidance in other species, they themselves can tolerate the presence of other gecko species well, regardless of whether those species are smaller or larger, faster or slower, or more physically aggressive or not. This allows them greater access to feeding areas and territories, making them a highly successful invasive species.


title: Common house gecko

text: The common house gecko is ectothermic ("cold-blooded") and displays a variety of means of thermoregulating through behaviour. Its physiology has ramifications for its distribution and nature of interaction with native species, as well as reproductive success as an introduced species.


title: Common house gecko

text: Metabolically, the demand of the common house gecko is not significantly variable from other lizard species of a similar size, with oxygen consumption appearing congruent with trends observed in other tropical, subtropical and temperate species of gecko. Thermal independence exists between 26–35 degrees, with some capacity to self regulate temperature. This means that where the environmental temperature is 26–35 degrees, the common house gecko can modify body temperature through behavioural adaptations. Breathing rates of geckos are temperature dependent above this maximal heat, but independent as it grows colder. There are behavioural mechanisms of thermoregulation present, such as the selection of sunlight and the substrates on which they sit.


title: Common house gecko

text: The common house gecko can be best defined as quinodiurnal. This means they thermoregulate during the daytime and forage at night. An active form of this thermoregulation includes the presence of the Gecko in lighter environments, proximal to cracks in the substrate. As such, there is a close relationship between activity levels and correlated air temperature. Timing of the circadian rhythm of the common house gecko is further impacted by light levels. This rhythm tends to involve the highest population presence around midnight, with highest activity levels just after sunset, with a gradual reduction until dawn. Daily cycle differences from place to place can generally be explained by environmental factors such as human interaction, and structural features. A peak in hunting activity after dark places them in an ideal spot to take advantage of invertebrate congregation around artificial lighting in the urban environment.


title: Common house gecko

text: Due to this level of dependence on the environment, drops in temperature may act as a leading indicator for reduced gecko sightings in the medium term. Acute weather events such as rain or wind will result in acute decreases in Gecko sightings within that environment. It is unsure what impact these phenomena may have on the long term on distribution and the capacity of the common house gecko to compete with other gecko species.


title: Common house gecko

text: There is some weak evidence to suggest a trend towards higher temperature for females, which has an evolutionary advantage of increasing the speed of egg development. However, there is no statistically significant data to support this.


title: Common house gecko

text: Due to them being a species which is adapted for tropical or subtropical environments, there appear to be few physiological adaptations designed to prevent water loss. This may limit their capacity to thrive in arid or semi-arid environments.


title: Common house gecko

text: "H. frenatus" has a similar gonad structure to the remainder of the gecko family. It is possible to differentiate the sex of larger common house geckos, with individuals which are larger than typically displaying differentiated gonads. Differentiated gonads are most clearly seen with a swelling at the entrance to the cloaca caused by the copulatory organs in males. Females lay a maximum of two hard-shelled eggs at any single time, with each descending from a single oviduct. Up to four eggs can exist within the ovaries in differing stages of development. This shortens the potential turn around between egg-laying events in gravid females. Females produce a single egg per ovary per cycle. This means they are considered monoautochronic ovulatory.