title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: For the final destruction of the Genesis planet, footage from the Paramount set had to be carefully matched with ILM effects footage. ILM built scale miniatures cut into sections to portray parts of Genesis's upheaval (rock slides, fissures opening in the ground) that live-action scenes could not easily replicate. One of the largest miniatures, measuring , had trick trees and trapdoors that could be reset, propane jets for gusts of fire, and solenoid-triggered rockfalls. For scenes where Kirk and Kruge battle at a precipice over a pit of lava, the shot combined animated lava, clouds (really cotton daubs on black), lightning, and a matte painting. Overhead shots of the lava were created by lighting a piece of clear Plexiglass with colored gels and covering the plate with methacyl, vermiculite and charcoal; the mixture dripped off the surface and coated the crew underneath. ILM simulated Kruge's demise, a long plunge into the pool of lava, with the help of a stop-motion puppet. Lloyd fell a few feet onto a black mattress; during a lightning flash the actor was replaced by the puppet that fell the rest of the distance. Because the shot was filmed on black instead of the traditional bluescreen, the animators had to remove or rotoscope the black background around Lloyd one frame at a time. The transition between the footage of Lloyd and the puppet was hidden by a single-frame flash as a bolt of lightning struck Kruge. The scene of Kirk and Spock beaming away as the ground collapses was another created at ILM, as the level of destruction was simply not possible for the live-action crew.


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: Among the other effects ILM had to produce were the transporter beam and the warp speed effect. Mullen noted that the effects' look changed depending on who was directing the film; "everyone wants something distinctive, but nobody wants to get far enough away from the TV series to startle the Trekkies". The effect was produced by cutting out or rotomatting the individual to be transported, then making a vertical slot through which a high-intensity light was positioned. A computer-controlled move would cause the light to spread from the center and fade away, then reset its position and repeat the movement on the opposite side. Handmade acetate filters and gels were applied to give the transporter beam color and patterns, followed by small flickering animated highlights called "bugs" which appeared after the character had dematerialized. The Klingons' transporters were given a harsh red look to differentiate them from the smooth blue Federation effect. Whereas many of the multicolored rainbow warp trail shots from "The Wrath of Khan" were stock footage taken from the first film, the producers of the third film wanted something new. A streak effect, in which a beauty pass of the ship was combined with blurred passes for each light intensity, was tried first. The result was disappointing; as the "Enterprise" grew larger the streaks became distorted and out of place. Mullen rejected a straight animation of the warp drive as too bouncy, but the footage was cut in for editing while ILM went through six more approaches to the problem. The final effect, a "vaporous, colorful trail", came together only weeks before the film's release.


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: Composer James Horner returned to score "The Search for Spock", fulfilling a promise he had made to Bennett on "The Wrath of Khan". While Nimoy considered hiring his friend Leonard Rosenman for the score, he was persuaded that Horner's return would grant continuity between "The Wrath of Khan" and the new film. Much like the content of the film, Horner's music was a direct continuation of the score he wrote for the previous film. When writing music for "The Wrath of Khan", Horner was aware he would reuse certain cues for an impending sequel; two major themes he reworked were for Genesis and Spock. While the Genesis theme supplants the title music Horner wrote for "The Wrath of Khan", the end credits were quoted "almost verbatim".


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: In hours-long discussions with Bennett and Nimoy, Horner agreed with the director that the "romantic and more sensitive" cues were more important than the "bombastic" ones. Horner had written Spock's theme to give the character more dimension: "By putting a theme over Spock, it warms him and he becomes three-dimensional rather than a collection of schticks," he said. The theme was expanded in "The Search for Spock" to represent the ancient alien mysticism and culture of Spock and Vulcan.


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: Among the new cues Horner wrote was a "percussive and atonal" theme for the Klingons which is represented heavily in the film. Jeff Bond described the cue as a compromise between music from Horner's earlier film "Wolfen", Khan's motif from "The Wrath of Khan", and Jerry Goldsmith's Klingon music from "The Motion Picture". Horner also adapted music from Sergei Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" for part of the "Enterprise" theft sequence and its destruction, while the scoring to Spock's resurrection on Vulcan was lifted from Horner's "Brainstorm" ending.


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: Nimoy wrote that "The Search for Spock"s major theme is that of friendship. "What should a person do to help a friend? How deeply should a friendship commitment go? ... And what sacrifices, what obstacles, will these people endure? That's the emotion line of the film [and] its reason for existence," he recalled. While Spock's bodily resurrection was complete, his mind was a blank slate—"The Search for Spock", Michele and Duncan Barrett argue, says that the important question is whether an individual's "mind" functions, as this is the key to a meaningful existence.


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: Brown University professor Ross S. Kraemer argues that "The Search for Spock" "became "Star Trek"s first and most obvious exploration of Christian themes of sacrificial, salvific death and resurrection". According to Larry J. Kreitzer, "The Wrath of Khan" provided "its own versions of Good Friday and a hint of the Easter Sunday to come", with the hints fulfilled by Spock's bodily restoration in "The Search for Spock". David and Saavik's discovery of Spock's empty coffin and burial robes parallels the evidence the Apostles found that pointed to Jesus' resurrection in the Gospel of Luke, asserts Kraemer. Spock's resurrection not only proves the Vulcan's belief in the existence of the katra, but also affirms these are not just a belief system but a certainty. Barrett points to the "Star Trek" feature films in general and "The Search for Spock" in particular as a turn away from the irreligious television series. In more practical terms, Jeffery A. Smith pointed to "The Search for Spock" as one of many Hollywood films culminating in a 1990s trend where death has little permanence ("Ghost", "Defending Your Life", "What Dreams May Come", "Meet Joe Black").


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: The Genesis planet became a doomed experiment partly for dramatic reasons; having a time limit for the characters to save Spock added tension. Nimoy was also interested in scientific ethics—how quickly can science move and what are the dangers of that movement. University of Houston professor Dr. John Hansen notes that while Spock's sacrifice in "The Wrath of Khan" is the "archetype of reason and rationality manifesting the archetype of human virtue", a selfless and freely-made choice, the death of Valkris (who has learned too much about the Genesis Device) in "The Search for Spock" is far different: the Klingon willingly accepts her death for the "common good" as determined by the state, relinquishing her liberty and life. Hansen contends that the issues of personal liberty and the exploitation of technology, in this case Genesis, are "intertwined". The Genesis Device was intended as a liberating technology, creating life from lifelessness, but in the Klingon view it is a tool for dominion (contrasting the contemporary views of how technology can promote or constrain liberty).


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: "The Search for Spock" was not heavily marketed. Among the promotional merchandise created for the film's release were "Search for Spock"-branded calendars and glasses sold at Taco Bell. A novelization () was also released, and reached second place on "The New York Times" paperback bestsellers list. President Ronald Reagan screened the film for friends during a weekend away from the White House in 1984, spent with White House staff chief Mike Deaver and the president's own close friend Senator Paul Laxalt. Reagan wrote of the film: "It wasn't too good."


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: "The Search for Spock" opened June 1 in a record-breaking 1,996 theaters across North America; with competing films "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", "Gremlins", "Ghostbusters" and "Top Secret!" released at the same time, more than half of the nation's screens were filled by summer blockbusters. "The Search for Spock" grossed over $16 million in its opening weekend. In its second weekend the film's gross dropped 42 percent. The box office strength of "The Search for Spock" and "Indiana Jones" led Paramount to dominate early summer film business. The film made $76.5 million in North America, for a total of $87 million worldwide.


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: James Horner's soundtrack to the film was released on a 43-minute LP record by Capitol Records in 1984, and also contained a 12" single titled "The Search for Spock", composed by Horner and performed by Group 87, a band featuring composer Mark Isham and Missing Persons drummer Terry Bozzio. It was re-released on compact disc in 1989 by GNP Crescendo. Film Score Monthly released an expanded two-compact disc score June 1, 2010. The Expanded Edition included both the original Capitol Records release from 1984 and an all-new version which featured the complete soundtrack as heard in the film, including alternate versions as well as many cues heard for the first time outside of the film. The soundtrack would be Horner's final contribution to "Star Trek".


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: "The Search for Spock" received generally positive reviews from critics. Richard Schickel of "Time" praised the film as "perhaps the first space opera to deserve that term in its grandest sense". Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" and "Newsweek" wrote that while the film felt weighed down by the increasingly aged actors and television tropes, it was leavened by its dedication. Roger Ebert called the film "good, but not great" and a compromise between the special effects-dependent "The Motion Picture" and the character-driven "The Wrath of Khan". Conversely, "USA Today" praised the film as the best of the three and the closest to the original spirit of the television series. An overwhelmingly negative view of the film was offered by "The Globe and Mail"s Susan Ferrier Mackay, who summed the film up as "ba-a-a-d". In a 2010 retrospective of the film franchise, author Jill Sherwin suggests the aging "Enterprise" served as a metaphor for the aging "Star Trek" franchise. On Metacritic the film has a score of 56/100 based on reviews from 17 critics, indicating mixed to average reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 78% based on reviews from 49 critics.


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: Critics praised Nimoy's direction, to which "USA Today" attributed the film's success in capturing the essence of the television show. "Newsweek" wrote that due to Nimoy the film was the best-paced "Trek" film, and that his familiarity with these actors enabled him to bring out the best from them. "Newsweek", and David Sterritt of the "Christian Science Monitor", appreciated how the film slowed the action down to allow moments of reflection, comparing this with the focus of most contemporary action films on effects rather than actors. "The Washington Post"s Rita Kempley wrote that Nimoy's direction was competent, but his background in television showed—"the film feels made-for-TV", she summarized. Fellow "Post" critic Gary Arnold concurred with Kempley's television film assessment, but also wrote that Nimoy was smart to focus on the essentials of each scene; he "[concentrates] on the actors in ways that flatter and enhance their work."


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: "The Search for Spock"s plot solicited comment; Schickel called the film "overplotted" and filled with "heavy expository burdens", comparing it to real opera. Sterritt said that the script occasionally veered in "arbitrary" directions and contained missteps, such as how the "Grissom" and its crew are suddenly lost, but the plot disregards their fate. Arnold wrote that Shatner missed an opportunity to act on par with "The Wrath of Khan"s revelation that Kirk was David's father. The critic considered David's death an attempt at a similar shock, but felt it was not a success. Harry M. Geduld, writing for "The Humanist", criticized the film for what he called "contradictions and implausibilities", such as Scott's sabotage of the "Excelsior" and Spock's regeneration. Pauline Kael wrote that "this new film seems to take a churlish attitude toward its light-hearted, delicately self-mocking predecessor: almost vindictively, the new film requires that Genesis disintegrate."


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: The film's sense of self-seriousness and the camaraderie amongst the characters were generally cited as positive aspects. Maslin wrote that certain tacky elements of the film's television roots were outweighed by the closeness of the "Enterprise" crew and "by their seriousness and avidity about what seem to be the silliest minutiae [...] That's what longtime Trekkies love about the series, and it's still here—a little the worse for wear, but mostly untarnished." The "Los Angeles Times" wrote that despite its spectacle, the film's "humanity once again outweighs the hardware, and its innocence is downright endearing". Mackay offered an alternate view, calling the characters' actions and dialogue "wooden" and saying that the film's monsters had more life than the acting. Lloyd's portrayal of Kruge received praise from "New York"'s David Denby and "The Daily News"'s Hunter Reigler.


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: The film's effects were conflictingly appraised. Schickel wrote that the effects were "technically adroit" and occasionally "witty", and Ebert singled out the Bird of Prey as a "great-looking" ship. Sterritt felt that the settings always felt like they were on soundstages rather than out in space, and Denby wrote that more could have been done with Genesis, and that while it was an interesting concept its special effects execution was lacking. Kempley appreciated the sets' low values, writing that "the fakier the sets", the closer the film felt to its television origins.


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: Colin Greenland reviewed "The Search for Spock" for "Imagine" magazine, and stated that "Well, given that it's his directorial debut, on the messianic story of Spock's resurrection from the dead, the movie is quite fun, and nowhere near the pompous pageant of self-aggrandisement I'd been dreading."


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: In 2018, "Popular Mechanics" ranked the scene where the NCC-1701 "Enterprise" starship is destroyed, the 32nd-greatest scene in the science fiction film and television genre. In 2016, SyFy noted this film for actress Nichelle Nichols' presentation of Uhura, as having her second-best scene in "Star Trek".


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: "The Search for Spock" was released on home video in the United States in February 1985. The initial retail offerings included VHS, Betamax, LaserDisc and CED formats with closed captioning. As part of a plan to support its push of 8mm video cassette, Sony partnered with Paramount Home Video to bring titles like "The Search for Spock" to the platform in 1986.


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: The film was given a "bare bones" DVD release on May 11, 2000, with no extra features—the release was several months earlier than the release of "The Wrath of Khan". Two years later, a two-disc "Collector's Edition" was released with supplemental material and the same video transfer as the original DVD release. It featured a text commentary by Michael Okuda and audio commentary from Nimoy, Bennett, Correll, and Curtis.


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: The film was released on high-definition Blu-ray Disc in May 2009 to coincide with the new "Star Trek" feature, along with the other five films featuring the original crew in "Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection". "The Search for Spock" was remastered in 1080p high-definition from the 2000 DVD transfer. All six films in the set have new 7.1 Dolby TrueHD audio. The disc features a new commentary track by former "", "Deep Space Nine", and "" television writers Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor. On July 7, 2021, it was announced that the first four films in the "Star Trek" franchise would be released on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on September 7 of that year to commemorate the franchise's 55th anniversary, alongside individual remastered Blu-rays of the same films.


title: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

text: The film was briefly removed from Netflix in August 2013 because of missing English subtitles for the Klingon and Vulcan dialogue.


title: Millennium

text: A millennium (plural millennia or millenniums) is a period of one thousand years, sometimes called a kiloannum (ka), or kiloyear (ky). Normally, the word is used specifically for periods of a thousand years that begin at the starting point (initial reference point) of the calendar in consideration (typically the year "1") and at later years that are whole number multiples of a thousand years after the start point. The term can also refer to an interval of time beginning on any date. Millennia sometimes have religious or theological implications (see millenarianism).


title: Millennium

text: There was a public debate leading up to the celebrations of the year 2000 as to whether the beginning of that year should be understood as the beginning of the “new” millennium. Historically, there has been debate around the turn of previous decades, centuries, and millennia. The issue arises from the difference between the convention of using ordinal numbers to count years and millennia, as in "the third millennium", or using a vernacular description, as in "the two thousands". The difference of opinion comes down to whether to celebrate, respectively, the end or the beginning of the "-000" year. The first convention is common in English-speaking countries, but the latter is favoured in, for example, Sweden ("tvåtusentalet", which translates literally as the "two thousands period").


title: Millennium

text: Those holding that the arrival of the new millennium should be celebrated in the transition from 2000 to 2001 (i.e., December 31, 2000, to January 1, 2001) argued that the Anno Domini system of counting years began with the year 1 (There was no year zero) and therefore the first millennium was from the year 1 to the end of the year 1000, the second millennium from 1001 to the end of 2000, and the third millennium beginning with 2001 and ending at the end of 3000. Similarly, the first millennium BC was from the year 1000 BC to the end of the year 1 BC.


title: Millennium

text: Popular culture supported celebrating the arrival of the new millennium in the transition from 1999 to 2000 (i.e., December 31, 1999, to January 1, 2000), in that the change of the hundreds digit in the year number, with the zeroes rolling over, is consistent with the vernacular demarcation of decades by their 'tens' digit (e.g. naming the period 1980 to 1989 as "the 1980s" or "the eighties"). This sometimes referred to as "the odometer effect". Adding to its cultural significance, the "year 2000" had been a popular phrase referring to an often utopian future, or a year when stories in such a future were set. There was also media and public interest in the Y2K computer bug.


title: Millennium

text: A third position was expressed by Bill Paupe, honorary consul for Kiribati: "To me, I just don't see what all the hoopla is about ... it's not going to change anything. The next day the sun is going to come up again and then it will all be forgotten." And even for those who did celebrate, in astronomical terms, there was nothing special about this particular event.


title: Millennium

text: Stephen Jay Gould, in his essay "Dousing Diminutive Dennis' Debate (or DDDD = 2000)" ("Dinosaur in a Haystack"), discussed the "high" versus "pop" culture interpretation of the transition. Gould noted that the high culture, strict construction had been the dominant viewpoint at the 20th century's beginning, but that the pop culture viewpoint dominated at its end.


title: Millennium

text: The start of the 21st century and 3rd millennium was celebrated worldwide at the start of the year 2000. One year later, at the start of the year 2001, the celebrations had largely returned to the usual ringing in of just another new year, although some welcomed "the real millennium", including America's official timekeeper, the U.S. Naval Observatory, and the countries of Cuba and Japan.


title: Millennium

text: The popular approach was to treat the end of 1999 as the end of "a millennium" and to hold millennium celebrations at midnight between December 31, 1999, and January 1, 2000, with the cultural and psychological significance of the events listed above combining to cause celebrations to be observed one year earlier than the formal date.


title: Katarina Witt

text: Katarina Witt (, ; born 3 December 1965) is a German former figure skater. A two-time Olympic champion, Witt is regarded as one of the greatest ladies' singles figure skaters of all time. Her Laureus profile states "she is remembered most for her overall athleticism, her charismatic appeal and her glamorous image on the ice."


title: Katarina Witt

text: Witt won the first of her two Olympic gold medals for East Germany at the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics, before winning a second at the 1988 Calgary Olympics. She is one of only two skaters to defend a ladies' singles Olympic title, the other being Norwegian Sonja Henie. Witt is a four-time World Champion (1984, 1985, 1987, 1988) and two-time World silver medalist (1982, 1986). She won six consecutive European Championships (1983–1988), a feat only equalled by Sonja Henie among female skaters. Between 1984 and 1988, Witt won ten golds from eleven major international events, making her one of the most successful figure skaters.


title: Katarina Witt

text: Retiring from competitive skating after defending her Olympic title in 1988, Witt reappeared at the 1994 Winter Olympics where she represented a reunified Germany while skating a Robin Hood-themed program, a comeback performance which saw her receive the Goldene Kamera award. Since her subsequent retirement, Witt has worked in film and television.


title: Katarina Witt

text: Witt was born in Staaken (at that time a district of Falkensee) in East Germany, just outside West Berlin, which is today part of Berlin. Her mother worked in a hospital as a physiotherapist and her father was a farmer. She went to school in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now reverted to its pre-war name Chemnitz). There, she attended the Kinder- und Jugendsportschule, a special school for athletically talented children.


title: Katarina Witt

text: Witt represented the SC Karl-Marx-Stadt club for East Germany (GDR). Jutta Müller began coaching her in 1977. Witt trained six days a week, sometimes for seven hours a day with three hours spent on compulsory figures.


title: Katarina Witt

text: Witt made her first appearance in a major international competition at the 1979 European Championships, finishing 14th at the event. At the 1981 World Championships, she placed 1st in the short, 3rd in the long, and 2nd in the combined free skate, missing a medal due to low placement in figures. She placed on a major podium for the first time in 1982, winning silver at both the European and World Championships. She had a great shot at winning the 1982 World Championships, which she only required winning the long program to do. However, she stepped out of three jumps, including the legendary triple flip, the complex element she was the very first woman to accomplish, and a relatively easy double axel, which cost her the long program win and the overall gold medal. The eventual winner of the competition was Elaine Zayak, who landed six triples. The next season, she won her first European title but finished off the World podium in fourth place, because she was 8th in compulsory figures despite winning the combined free skating. Had she placed 1st in the long program instead of 2nd (on a 5–4 split) to Sumners, she would have jumped to the silver over both Leistner and Vodorezova. Her free skate with a triple flip and five triples was technically superior to Sumners', and many believed she should have taken the crucial 1st place in this phase.


title: Katarina Witt

text: In 1984, Witt was voted "GDR Female Athlete of the Year" by the readers of the East German newspaper "Junge Welt". She won the 1984 Olympic title in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, with reigning World champion Rosalynn Sumners of the United States in second. Witt and Sumners held the top two spots heading into the Olympic free skate, which was worth fifty percent of the total score. Witt landed three triple jumps in her free skate program, and the judges left room for Sumners to win the event. Sumners scaled back two of her jumps and Witt won the long program by one-tenth of a point on one judge's scorecard. Witt won the gold medal at age of 18 years and 77 days, becoming one of the youngest Olympic figure skating champions. Witt then went on to win her first World title in dominant fashion (without Sumners) winning all three phases of the competition. She said then she planned to continue a while longer but did not see herself likely making it to the 1988 Calgary Olympics.


title: Katarina Witt

text: Witt successfully defended her World title in 1985. Here, she was solid and clean in all three phases, placing 3rd to her two main competitors, Kira Ivanova and Tiffany Chin, in the compulsory figures, convincingly winning the short program even over the clean skates of Ivanova and Chin. In the long program, she was put under pressure by Ivanova who made a strong bid for the gold with a clean three-triple long program including a difficult triple loop, but Witt trumped her with a four-triple long program, highlighting her superior artistry to Ivanova's and overtaking her by six judges to three in the long program as well as overall. The judges left room for Chin to win the long program and event, but unfortunately she fell on a double axel and did not complete a triple salchow in her performance, settling for the bronze medal. Witt's longstanding dominance of the sport was finally punctured when in an upset she placed second to American Debi Thomas, the new United States Champion, the following year. At those Worlds, she did win the long program over Thomas's clean skate with identical content, scoring two 6.0s for artistic impression, but a combination miss which left her 4th in the short cost her the gold. This was also the first time since 1980 she would lose the short program phase at a World Championship. To win, she would have needed the final skater, Chin, to place between her and Thomas in the long program, but this did not occur. She had been considering making the 1986 World Championships her final event, but stung by the loss, Witt vowed to regain her title and skate on to Calgary.


title: Katarina Witt

text: In 1987, Witt won her third World title. Although Witt finished fifth in compulsory figures, which meant that Thomas could finish second in both the short and long programs and still retain the World title, Thomas' 7th place in the short program (due to a small hand down on her double axel) put the two skaters on a level playing field ahead of the free skate. In fact, five skaters entered the long program in strong contention for the gold: Kira Ivanova, Witt, Thomas, Elizabeth Manley, and Caryn Kadavy, all needing to only win the long program (or win the long program and beat Ivanova by two places in the long program in the case of Manley and Kadavy) to win. Skating last and under immense pressure with both Kadavy and Thomas having earlier turned in brilliant performances, Witt landed five triple jumps, including a clean triple loop jump which was most crucial of all to win. Earlier, Thomas had two footed her triple-loop attempt, and while Kadavy had done two successful triple loops, she had also popped several triple or double-axel attempts. Even on a night of brilliant skating by a majority of the notable competitors, Witt convincingly earned both the best technical and artistic marks of the night, was ranked first by seven of the nine judges, and reclaimed her World title to an appreciative crowd.


title: Katarina Witt

text: In 1988, Witt won her sixth consecutive European Championship, equaling the achievement of Sonja Henie as the most-successful skater in ladies' singles at the European Championships. Both Witt's and Henie's number of European titles have since been surpassed by Irina Slutskaya, but Witt retains the record for most consecutive European titles, sharing it with Henie.


title: Katarina Witt

text: Both Witt and Thomas were favoured contenders at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Their rivalry was known as the "Battle of the Carmens", as each woman had independently elected to skate her long program to music from Bizet's opera "Carmen". They held the top two spots after the compulsory figures and the short program. Witt was third in the compulsories, behind Ivanova and Thomas, before winning the short program with Thomas second. In her long program, Witt landed four triple jumps and downgraded her planned triple-loop jump to a double loop. This left room for Thomas to win the long program, but Thomas missed three of her five planned triple jumps. Canadian skater Elizabeth Manley won the long program convincingly over Witt (seven judges to two), however Witt retained her Olympic title based on her overall scores (she had finished ahead of Manley in both the compulsory figures and the short program). Witt became only the second woman in figure skating history (after Sonja Henie) to defend her Olympic title successfully. Had Manley not narrowly lost second place to Thomas in the short program (by one judge), or Witt not narrowly held onto second place over Ito in the long program (on a 6–3 split), Manley would have defeated Witt for the overall gold medal. To honour Witt and her win in Calgary, North Korea issued miniature sheets with three large pictures of Witt on the ice. "Time" magazine called her "the most beautiful face of socialism."


title: Katarina Witt

text: Witt won a fourth and final World title to end her amateur career at the 1988 World Championships in Budapest, Hungary. She turned in a relatively lackluster long program, popping out of both a planned triple loop and triple salchow, and below the quality of her Olympic performance, but with other top contenders also being mostly subpar and fatigued after the high of the Calgary Games, she won gold with a victory in compulsory figures (just second win in figures in a World or Olympic event, only other instance was 1984 Worlds), 2nd place to Debi Thomas in the short program, and victory in the long program. One of her rivals, silver medalist Elizabeth Manley, later complained about some of what she perceived to be dubious foul play in the event, including Witt's win in the figures where she overcame Manley's lead in the first two figures in the final loop figure, which Manley believed to be her best, and Manley's music not being played properly to start her short program (where Manley had a combination miss and took only 4th place, ending her gold medal chances).


title: Katarina Witt

text: On 1 November 1988, in honor of her victory at the Olympics, a block of stamps was released in the DPRK.


title: Katarina Witt

text: In 1988, Witt started a professional career – rare for East German athletes. She spent three years on tour in the United States with Brian Boitano, also an Olympic champion. Their show, "Witt and Boitano Skating", was so successful that for the first time in ten years, New York's Madison Square Garden was sold out for an ice show. Later, she continued at Holiday on Ice in the United States and in western Europe. She also became an actress in the film "Carmen on Ice" (1989), which expanded upon her gold-medal free program in Calgary. In 1990, she received an Emmy Award for her role in this film. As a professional she was never as successful competitively as an amateur, often placing last of four or five women in her appearances at the two biggest professional championships (Challenge of Champions and World Professional Championships in Landover), but continued to receive great acclaim as an entertainer and show skater.


title: Katarina Witt

text: In 1994, Witt made a comeback to the competitive-skating scene, coached again by Jutta Müller. She was expected to be in a fierce three-person fight for only two spots on the German Olympic team with both young rising star Tanja Szewczenko and veteran Marina Kielmann, who was almost the same age as Witt. She finished second at the German Championships behind Szewczenko, but above Kielmann. Witt's first international competition for the reunified country of Germany, following eleven years competing for East Germany, was the 1994 European Championships, where she finished eighth, again behind Szewczenko who was fifth, but again ahead of Kielmann who was ninth. She and Szewczenko thus gained the two available spots ahead of Kielmann for the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, where she finished seventh. Particularly pleasing to Witt was her clean and very confident short program, where with some of the contenders with more a difficult jump combination (Lu Chen, Josée Chouinard, Yuka Sato, Tonya Harding) faltering, left her 6th, and an inclusion into the final flight of the long program which few gave her any chance of pre-Games. In a dramatic buildup, she would also draw last to skate, and get to close the show in her final Olympic skate, after the medalists had already been determined. Her free program to the music ""Sag mir wo die Blumen sind"" (an arrangement of the Pete Seeger folksong "Where Have All the Flowers Gone") included a peace message for the people of Sarajevo, the site of her first Olympic victory. While she had some technical problems, completing only three of her planned five triples, she delivered perhaps the most emotional and moving performance of the whole evening. She received the Golden Camera for her Olympic comeback.


title: Katarina Witt

text: Witt's taste in figure-skating costumes sometimes caused debate. At the 1983 European Championships, she skated her Mozart short program in knee breeches instead of a skirt. Her blue, skirtless feather-trimmed 1988 costume for a showgirl-themed short program was considered too theatrical and sexy, and led to a change in the ISU regulations dubbed the "Katarina rule" which required female skaters to wear more modest clothing; skirts were required to cover the buttocks and crotch. In 1994, skating a Robin Hood-themed program, Witt stated, "I wore the Robin Hood – like a man's costume – because I didn't want to be accused of seducing the judges this time."


title: Katarina Witt

text: In 1994, Witt published her autobiography "Meine Jahre zwischen Pflicht und Kür" ("My Years between Compulsories and Freestyle"). In 1995, Witt was inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame. Her farewell from show skating tour took place in February and March 2008.


title: Katarina Witt

text: In 1996, Witt had a cameo appearance in the movie "Jerry Maguire" and on the television show "Everybody Loves Raymond".


title: Katarina Witt

text: She starred in a German-language film called "Die Eisprinzessin" - "The Ice Princess", providing the vocals for the theme song, "Skate with Me".


title: Katarina Witt

text: Witt posed nude for "Playboy" magazine, and the pictures were published months later in the December 1998 issue, which was the second ever sold-out issue of the magazine. (The first sold-out issue was the inaugural one including photos of Marilyn Monroe.) Witt said she did not care for the "cute, pretty, ice princess image" of figure skaters and wanted to "change people's perceptions".


title: Katarina Witt

text: In 1998, Witt appeared in the film "Ronin" in a small supporting role with several lines of dialogue. Around this time, she also played a villain in an episode of the tongue-in-cheek television series, "V.I.P." In November 2005, Witt published a novel, "Only with Passion", in which she offers advice to a fictional young skater based on her many years of skating. Since October 2006, she has had her own TV show, "Stars auf Eis" ("Stars on Ice"), on German channel ProSieben. She was invited to Istanbul as an honoured guest for the skating competition TV show called "Buzda Dans" ("Dance on Ice") on 25 February 2007. On 3 December 2011, Witt was confirmed as a judge on the UK TV show "Dancing on Ice", where she made her first appearance on 8 January 2012.


title: Katarina Witt

text: On 7 July 2007, Witt was a competitor at the German segment of Live Earth. She headed Munich's unsuccessful bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics.


title: Katarina Witt

text: In January 2013, Witt appeared on German TV in her first leading role, playing a figure skater who is pursued by a stalker. The made-for-television movie "Der Feind in meinem Leben" ("The enemy in my life") thus has autobiographical elements, as Witt herself had been stalked in the United States 20 years earlier.


title: Katarina Witt

text: Following the dissolution of East Germany, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Stasi) files were found to show that the secret police had worked hard to keep Witt from defecting by giving her cars, accommodations, and permitted travel. Witt found 3,000 pages on her life from the age of eight.


title: Yuki-onna

text: She may also go by such names as "yuki-musume" ("snow daughter"), "yuki-onago" ("snow girl"), "yukijorō" (雪女郎, "snow woman"), "yuki anesa" ("snow sis"), "yuki-onba" ("snow granny" or "snow nanny"), "yukinba" ("snow hag") in Ehime, "yukifuri-baba" ("snowfall hag") in Nagano. They are also called several names that are related to icicles, such as "tsurara-onna", "kanekori-musume", and "shigama-nyōbō".


title: Yuki-onna

text: Yuki-onna originates from folklores of olden times; in the Muromachi period "Sōgi Shokoku Monogatari" by the renga poet Sōgi, there is a statement on how he saw a yuki-onna when he was staying in Echigo Province (now Niigata Prefecture), indicating that the legends already existed in the Muromachi period.


title: Yuki-onna

text: In legends from the Ojiya region of Niigata Prefecture, a beautiful woman came to visit a man and became his wife from the woman's own desire. This woman was reluctant to go into the bath and when she was made to go in anyway, she disappeared, leaving only thin, fragmented, floating icicles (see also tsurara-onna).


title: Yuki-onna

text: In the Aomori and Yamagata Prefectures, there is a similar story about one called the "Shigama-onna." In the Kaminoyama region of Yamagata, a yuki-onna would come visit an old couple on a snowy night to warm herself by the irori. When late at night the Yuki-onna would again go out on a journey, the old man would attempt to take her hand to stop her, when he noticed that she was chillingly cold. Then, before his eyes, the girl turned into a whirl of snow that exited the house through the chimney. Also, it has some points of similarity with the "kokakuchō"; and on the night of a blizzard, as the Yuki-onna would be standing there hugging a child ("yukinko"), it would ask people passing by to hug the child as well. When one hugs the child, the child would become heavier and heavier until one would become covered with snow and freeze to death. It has also been told that if one refuses, one would be shoved down into a snowy valley.


title: Yuki-onna

text: In Hirosaki in Aomori, it is said that there was a warrior (bushi) who was asked by a yuki-onna to hug a child similarly, but the warrior held a short sword ("tantō") by the mouth and hugged the child while making the blade go close to the child's head, which allowed the warrior to avoid the aforementioned phenomenon. When the warrior handed the child back to the Yuki-onna, the ghoul gave many treasures as thanks for hugging the child. It is also said that those who are able to withstand the ever-increasing weight of the yukinko and last all the way through would acquire great physical strength.


title: Yuki-onna

text: In the Ina region of Nagano Prefecture, Yuki-onna is called "yukionba", and it is believed that they would appear on a snowy night in the form of a "yama-uba". Similarly, in Yoshida, Ehime Prefecture, on a night when snow is accumulating on the ground, a "yukinba" is said to appear, and people would make sure not to let their children outside. Also, in the Tōno region of Iwate Prefecture, and on Little New Year ("koshōgatsu") or the 15th day of the first month, a yuki-onna would take many children along to a field to play, so children were warned against going outside. It can be thus seen that yuki-onna are often considered the same as the "yama-uba", sharing the similarity that they are fecund and take many children along with them.


title: Yuki-onna

text: In the Ito region of Wakayama Prefecture, it is said that there would be a one-legged child jump-walking on a night when snow accumulates, and the next morning there would be round footprints remaining, and this would be called the "yukinbō" (snow child), but the one-legged snow kid is thought to be the servant of a mountain god.


title: Yuki-onna

text: In the village of Oshika, Tōhaku District, Tottori Prefecture (now Misasa), it has been said that a yuki-onna would come during light snow and say "Koori gose yu gose" ("Give me ice, give me hot water")—"gose" is a dialect word for "give me"—while waving around a white wand, and she would bulge when splashed with water and disappear when splashed with hot water.


title: Yuki-onna

text: In the area around the Kumano River in Yoshino District, Nara Prefecture, the "Oshiroi baa-san" or "oshiroi babaa" is also thought to be a type of Yuki-onna, and they are said to drag along mirrors, making clinking sounds while doing so. These characteristics, that of waving around a white wand ("gohei") and possessing a mirror, are thought to be the characteristics of a "miko" who serves a mountain god that rules over birth and harvest.


title: Yuki-onna

text: In Aomori, it is said that a yuki-onna would come down to the village on the third day of Shōgatsu and return to the mountains on the first day of Rabbit, and it is thought that on years when the day of Rabbit is late in arriving, how well the harvest does will be different from before.


title: Yuki-onna

text: In the Iwate and the Miyagi Prefectures, a yuki-onna is thought to steal people's vitality; and in Niigata Prefecture, they are said to take the livers out of children and freeze people to death. In Nishimonai, Akita Prefecture, looking at a yuki-onna's face and exchanging words with her would result in being eaten. In Ibaraki Prefecture and in Iwaki Province, Fukushima Prefecture, it is said that if one does not answer when called by a yuki-onna, one would be shoved down into the bottom of a valley. In the Fukui Prefecture, they are called "koshi-musume" (越娘, "passing girl") and it is said that those who turn their backs to a koshi-musume when being called by one would get pushed into a valley.


title: Yuki-onna

text: In Ibigawa, Ibi District, Gifu Prefecture, an invisible monster called the "yukinobō" is said to change its appearance and appear as a yuki-onna. It is said that this monster would appear at mountain huts and ask for water, but if one grants the request, one would be killed, so one should give hot tea instead. It is said that in order to make the yukinbō go away, one should chant "Saki kuromoji ni ato bōshi, shimetsuke haitara, ikanaru mono mo, kanō mai" (meaning "A "kurujo" in front and a "bōshi" behind, by wearing these tight, nothing is possible").


title: Yuki-onna

text: The Hirosaki, Aomori legend about a yuki-onna returning to the human world on New Year's Day (Shōgatsu) and the legend in Tōno, Iwate Prefecture about yuki-onna taking away many children to play on "Little New Year" (koshōgatsu)- looking at the days on which they visit, both legends offer insight on how the yuki-onna has some characteristics of a toshigami. The story of how when one person treated a yuki-onna with kindness on a blizzard night, the yuki-onna turned into gold the next morning; illustrating how even in old tales such as the Ōtoshi no Kyaku, the yuki-onna has some relation to the characteristics of a toshigami.


title: Yuki-onna

text: Yuki-onna often appear while taking along children. This is in common with another yōkai that takes along children, the ubume. In the Mogami District, Yamagata Prefecture, ubume are said to be yuki-onna.


title: Yuki-onna

text: They often appear in stories about inter-species marriage, and stories similar to Lafcadio Hearn's "Yuki-onna" where a mountain hunter gets together with a woman who stays the night as a guest and eventually births a child. One day the man carelessly talks about the taboo of getting together with a yuki-onna, resulting in the woman revealing herself to be a yuki-onna, but not killing the man due to having a child between them and warning, "If anything happens to the child, you won't get away with it" before going away. These stories can be found in Niigata Prefecture, Toyama Prefecture, and the Nagano Prefecture, which came about as a result of many stories about mountain people where those who break the mountain taboos would be killed by mountain spirits. There is also the hypothesis that the yuki-onna legend was born from a mixture of paranormal stories of mountain people and the paranormal yuki-onna stories.


title: Yuki-onna

text: Old tales about yuki-onna are mostly stories of sorrow, and it is said that these tales started from when people who have lived gloomy lives, such as childless old couples or single men in mountain villages, would hear the sound of a blizzard knocking on their shutter door and fantasize that the thing that they longed for has come. It is said that after that, they would live in happiness with what they longed for in a fantasy as fleeting as snow. There is also a feeling of fear, and like as in the "Tōno Monogatari", the sound of a blizzard knocking on an outer shōji is called the "shōji sasuri" (rubbing a shōji), and there is a custom of making children who stayed up late go to sleep quickly when a yuki-onna rubs a shōji. From real sayings such as the shōji sasuri, it is said that things that one longs for sit back-to-back with fear. Also, winter is the season when gods would come to visit, and if one does not pay respects, terrible things will happen, so even if it is said to be things that one longs for, one cannot put too much trust in that. In any case, it can be said to be related to the coming and going of seasons. Nobuyoshi Furuhashi, scholar of Japanese literature, stated that the novel Kaze no Matasaburō is also probably somehow related.


title: Yuki-onna

text: There are various legends about the yuki-onna's true identity, such as a snow spirit or the spirit of a woman who fell over in the snow. In a setsuwa of the Oguni region of Yamagata Prefecture, a yuki-jorō (yuki-onna) was originally a princess of the moon world, and in order to leave a boring lifestyle came down to earth together with snow but was unable to go back to the moon and so appears on snowy moonlit nights.


title: Yuki-onna

text: Yamaoka Genrin, an intellectual from the Edo period, said that yuki-onna is born from snow. It was supposed that if there were a lot of something, a living thing would come forth from it, giving birth to fish if the water is deep enough and birds if the forest is thick enough. Since both snow and women are "yin", so in places like Echigo it is said that yuki-onna might be born from within deep snow.


title: Yuki-onna

text: Among Japan's traditional culture, Yuki-onna can be seen in kōwaka such as the Fushimi Tokiwa (伏見常磐), which can also be checked in modern times. In Chikamatsu Monzaemon's Yuki-onna Gomai Hagoita, the story is about how a woman who was deceived and murdered became a yuki-onna and took revenge as a vengeful ghost. The bewitching and frightening aspects of a yuki-onna are often used in such depictions. Old tales and legends like these have been confirmed in Aomori, Yamagata, Iwate, Fukushima, Niigata, Nagano, Wakayama, Ehime, among other places.


title: Yuki-onna

text: Yuki-onna appears on snowy nights as a tall, beautiful woman with long black hair and blue lips. Her inhumanly pale or even transparent skin makes her blend into the snowy landscape (as famously described in Lafcadio Hearn's ""). She often wears a white kimono, but other legends describe her as nude, with only her face and hair standing out against the snow. Despite her inhuman beauty, her eyes can strike terror into mortals. She floats across the snow, leaving no footprints (in fact, some tales say she has no feet, a feature of many Japanese ghosts), and she can transform into a cloud of mist or snow if threatened.


title: Yuki-onna

text: There are several variations of Yuki-onna throughout Japan, through which one can fill a whole book only about this yokai. Some notable of them are described below:


title: Yuki-onna

text: Some legends say the Yuki-onna, being associated with winter and snowstorms, is the spirit of someone who perished in the snow. She is at the same time beautiful and serene, yet ruthless in killing unsuspecting mortals. Until the 18th century, she was almost uniformly portrayed as evil. Today, however, stories often color her as mere human, emphasizing her ghost-like nature and ephemeral beauty.


title: Yuki-onna

text: In many stories, Yuki-onna appears to travelers trapped in snowstorms and uses her icy breath to leave them as frost-coated corpses. Other legends say she leads them astray so they simply die of exposure. Other times, she manifests holding a child. When a well-intentioned soul takes the "child" from her, they are frozen in place. Parents searching for lost children are particularly susceptible to this tactic. Other legends make Yuki-onna much more aggressive. In these stories, she often invades homes, blowing in the door with a gust of wind to kill residents in their sleep (some legends require her to be invited inside first).


title: Yuki-onna

text: What Yuki-onna is after varies from tale to tale. Sometimes she is simply satisfied to see a victim die. Other times, she is more vampiric, draining her victims' blood or "life force." She occasionally takes on a succubus-like manner, preying on weak-willed men to drain or freeze them through sex or a kiss.


title: Yuki-onna

text: Like the snow and winter weather she represents, Yuki-onna has a softer side. She sometimes lets would-be victims go for various reasons. In one popular Yuki-onna legend, for example, she sets a young boy free because of his beauty and age. She makes him promise never to speak of her, but later in life, he tells the story to his wife who reveals herself to be the snow woman. She reviles him for breaking his promise but spares him again, this time out of concern for their children (but if he dares mistreat their children, she will return with no mercy. Luckily for him, he is a loving father). In some versions, she chose not to kill him because he told her, which she did not treat as a broken promise (technically, Yuki-Onna herself is not a human and thus did not count). In a similar legend, Yuki-onna melts away once her husband discovers her true nature. However, she departs to the afterlife afterward the same way. In the same version of the story the Yuki-Onna is seen with a stutter saying "It was I-I-I! Yuki it was!".


title: Yuki-onna

text: A long time ago, there lived two woodcutters, Minokichi and Mosaku. Minokichi was young and Mosaku was very old.


title: Yuki-onna

text: One winter day, they could not come back home because of a snowstorm. They found a hut in the mountain and decided to sleep there. On this particular evening, Minokichi woke up and found a beautiful lady with white clothes. She breathed on old Mosaku and he was frozen to death.


title: Yuki-onna

text: She then approached Minokichi to breathe on him, but stared at him for a while and said, "I thought I was going to kill you, the same as that old man, but I will not because you are young and beautiful. You must not tell anyone about this incident. If you tell anyone about me, I will kill you."


title: Yuki-onna

text: Several years later, Minokichi met a beautiful young lady, named O-yuki (Yuki = "snow") and married her. She was a good wife. Minokichi and O-yuki had several children and lived happily for many years. Mysteriously, she did not age.


title: Yuki-onna

text: One night, after the children were asleep, Minokichi said to O-yuki: "Whenever I see you, I am reminded of a mysterious incident that happened to me. When I was young, I met a beautiful young lady like you. I do not know if it was a dream or if she was a Yuki-onna..."


title: Yuki-onna

text: After finishing his story, O-yuki suddenly stood up and said "That woman you met was me! I told you that I would kill you if you ever told anyone about that incident. However, I can't kill you because of our children. Take care of our children..." Then she melted and disappeared. No one saw her again.


title: The Musketeers

text: The Musketeers is a British period action drama programme based on the characters from Alexandre Dumas's 1844 novel "The Three Musketeers" and co-produced by BBC America and BBC Worldwide. The series follows the musketeers Athos, Aramis, and Porthos as they serve King Louis XIII and citizens of 17th-century Paris. The first episode was shown on BBC One on 19 January 2014. It stars Tom Burke as Athos, Santiago Cabrera as Aramis, Howard Charles as Porthos, Luke Pasqualino as d'Artagnan, with Tamla Kari as Constance Bonacieux, Maimie McCoy as Milady de Winter, Ryan Gage as Louis XIII and Alexandra Dowling as Queen Anne. It also features Peter Capaldi as Cardinal Richelieu in the first series, Marc Warren as Comte de Rochefort in the second series, and Rupert Everett as the Marquis de Feron for the final series.


title: The Musketeers

text: Jessica Pope and Adrian Hodges produced the show for the BBC. The programme was largely filmed in the Czech Republic. In February 2015, it was announced that the show had been renewed for a third series, which was announced in April 2016 to be the last. The third series premiered in multiple countries first, before premiering in the UK on 28 May 2016, and concluding on 1 August 2016.


title: The Musketeers

text: In 1630s Paris, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos are a group of highly trained musketeers commanded by Captain Treville who meet d'Artagnan, a skilful farm boy with hopes of becoming a musketeer. The series follows them as they fight to protect King and country.


title: The Musketeers

text: The BBC had been developing the idea of a new series based on "The Three Musketeers" since as far back as 2007, when the project was envisaged as a Saturday evening show to run between series of "Doctor Who". The eventual production of the series was finally announced in 2012, with Adrian Hodges in charge of the project.


title: The Musketeers

text: Paris was not considered as a filming location because over the decades, development had detracted from the grittier architecture wanted. Dublin was also considered before settling on the Czech Republic, which suffered little damage during the two world wars. Many historic buildings were intact and privately owned stately homes were rented for filming.


title: The Musketeers

text: Filming for the series took place mainly in Doksany, 30 kilometres north-west of Prague, where a Parisian square, a number of streets, and the musketeers' garrison were constructed. A disused convent had additional sets constructed including taverns, bedrooms and mortuary.


title: The Musketeers

text: During filming of the first series Peter Capaldi learned that he had been given the role of the Twelfth Doctor in "Doctor Who". The show's executive producer Jessica Pope commented that they would have to "recalibrate" plans for a prospective second series, in order to accommodate Capaldi now being unable to reprise his role. Marc Warren joined the cast for the second series. "The Musketeers" was originally planned to be broadcast in 2013, but was later delayed until 2014.


title: The Musketeers

text: "The Musketeers" initially received mixed reviews from critics. Reviewing the third episode of the drama, Morgan Jeffery, writing for "Digital Spy", praised the development of the characters, stating that there was a "real feeling of growth" and that it delivered "something a little more substantial". "Den of Geek" writer Rob Kemp also gave a positive review, stating that "The Musketeers" had "won a lot of people over with its fun and adventurous take on this well-loved story", but also wrote that some of the dramatic elements felt "shoehorned and deliberate". Overall, Kemp had hope for the series and praised the change in focus in the third episode, saying that the "time was definitely right to start to explore the characters", before going on to say that the series would have "plenty more opportunities for the Musketeers to hit their more (and hopefully, better) dramatic strides".


title: The Musketeers

text: Upon its premiere on BBC America, Alessandra Stanley of "The New York Times" gave the drama a positive review, calling the series "not at all bad, just a bit old-fashioned". She also praised the updates made to the series, writing "purists may be dismayed that Mr. Hodges took so many liberties with the original plot, but purists are rarely any fun".


title: The Musketeers

text: Shown on BBC One, the first series of "The Musketeers" was broadcast weekly at 9 pm on Sunday nights starting on 19 January 2014. The programme was the highest rated drama to debut that year. For the second series, it was moved to 9 pm on Friday nights and screening began on 2 January 2015. The series premiered in the United States on 22 June 2014 on BBC America. The complete first series was "striped" on 3 August 2014 on the Australian Foxtel Cable TV channel BBC First, the day of that channel's premiere. The series started on 18 September 2014 on 'Box' Sky TV in New Zealand.


title: The Musketeers

text: The third series premiered in Canada on Showcase Canada on 10 April 2016. The full series was made available on Netflix Latin America on 16 April 2016, and on Hulu in the United States on 14 May 2016. The series premiered in the UK on 28 May 2016. The series remains on Hulu in the US, and is available to stream on Netflix in Canada.


title: Gnosis

text: Gnosis is the common Greek noun for knowledge (γνῶσις, "gnōsis", f.). The term was used among various Hellenistic religions and philosophies in the Greco-Roman world. It is best known for its implication within Gnosticism, where it signifies a spiritual knowledge or insight into humanity's real nature as divine, leading to the deliverance of the divine spark within humanity from the constraints of earthly existence.


title: Gnosis

text: "Gnosis" is a feminine Greek noun which means "knowledge" or "awareness." It is often used for personal knowledge compared with intellectual knowledge (εἴδειν "eídein"), as with the French "connaître" compared with "savoir", the Spanish "conocer" compared with "saber", the Italian "conoscere" compared with "sapere", the German "kennen" rather than "wissen", or the Modern Greek γνωρίζω compared with ξέρω.


title: Gnosis

text: A related term is the adjective "gnostikos", "cognitive", a reasonably common adjective in Classical Greek. The terms do not appear to indicate any mystic, esoteric or hidden meaning in the works of Plato, but instead expressed a sort of higher intelligence and ability analogous to talent.


title: Gnosis

text: In the Acts of Thomas, translated by G.R.S. Mead, the "motions of gnosis" are also referred to as "kingly motions".


title: Gnosis

text: Irenaeus used the phrase "knowledge falsely so-called" ("", from 1 Timothy 6:20) for the title of his book "On the Detection and Overthrow of False Knowledge", that contains the adjective "gnostikos", which is the source for the 17th-century English term "Gnosticism".


title: Gnosis

text: The difference and meaning of "epignosis" () contrasted with gnosis is disputed. One proposed distinction is between the abstract or fragmented knowledge ("gnosis") and a clearer or more precise knowledge ("epignosis"). Other interpretations have suggested that 2 Peter is referring to an "epignosis of Jesus Christ", what J.B. Lightfoot described as a "larger and more thorough knowledge". Conversion to Christianity is seen as evidence of the deeper knowledge protecting against false doctrine.


title: Gnosis

text: Gnosticism originated in the late 1st century CE in non-rabbinical Jewish and early Christian sects. In the formation of Christianity, various sectarian groups, labeled "gnostics" by their opponents, emphasised spiritual knowledge ("gnosis") of the divine spark within, over faith ("pistis") in the teachings and traditions of the various communities of Christians. Gnosticism presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable God, and the Demiurge, "creator" of the material universe. The Gnostics considered the most essential part of the process of salvation to be this personal knowledge, in contrast to faith as an outlook in their worldview along with faith in the ecclesiastical authority.


title: Gnosis

text: In Gnosticism, the biblical serpent in the Garden of Eden was praised and thanked for bringing knowledge ("gnosis") to Adam and Eve and thereby freeing them from the malevolent Demiurge's control. Gnostic Christian doctrines rely on a dualistic cosmology that implies the eternal conflict between good and evil, and a conception of the serpent as the liberating savior and bestower of knowledge to humankind opposed to the Demiurge or creator god, identified with the Hebrew God of the Old Testament. Gnostic Christians considered the Hebrew God of the Old Testament as the evil, false god and creator of the material universe, and the Unknown God of the Gospel, the father of Jesus Christ and creator of the spiritual world, as the true, good God. In the Archontic, Sethian, and Ophite systems, Yaldabaoth (Yahweh) is regarded as the malevolent Demiurge and false god of the Old Testament who generated the material universe and keeps the souls trapped in physical bodies, imprisoned in the world full of pain and suffering that he created.


title: Gnosis

text: However, not all Gnostic movements regarded the creator of the material universe as inherently evil or malevolent. For instance, Valentinians believed that the Demiurge is merely an ignorant and incompetent creator, trying to fashion the world as good as he can, but lacking the proper power to maintain its goodness. All Gnostics were regarded as heretics by the proto-orthodox Early Church Fathers.


title: Gnosis

text: In Mandaeism, the concept of "manda" ("knowledge", "wisdom", "intellect") is roughly equivalent to the Gnostic concept of gnosis. Mandaeism ('having knowledge') is the only surviving Gnostic religion from antiquity. Mandaeans formally refer to themselves as "Nasurai" (Nasoraeans) meaning guardians or possessors of secret rites and knowledge. The Mandaeans emphasize salvation of the soul through secret knowledge (gnosis) of its divine origin. Mandaeism "provides knowledge of whence we have come and whither we are going."


title: Gnosis

text: Despite rejection of Gnosticism, Christianity has sometimes used the term or derivatives of it in a laudatory rather than lambasting sense.


title: Gnosis

text: The Church Fathers used the word "gnosis" (knowledge) to mean spiritual knowledge or specific knowledge of the divine. This positive usage was to contrast it with how gnostic sectarians used the word. Cardiognosis ("knowledge of the heart") from Eastern Christianity related to the tradition of the starets and in Roman Catholic theology is the view that only God knows the condition of one's relationship with God.


title: Gnosis

text: "Gnosis" in Orthodox Christian (primarily Eastern Orthodox) thought is the spiritual knowledge of a saint (one who has obtained theosis) or mystically enlightened human being. Within the cultures of the term's provenance (Byzantine and Hellenic) "Gnosis" was a knowledge or insight into the infinite, divine and uncreated in all and above all, rather than knowledge strictly into the finite, natural or material world. Gnosis is transcendental as well as mature understanding. It indicates direct spiritual, experiential knowledge and intuitive knowledge, mystic rather than that from rational or reasoned thinking. Gnosis itself is gained through understanding at which one can arrive via inner experience or contemplation such as an internal epiphany of intuition and external epiphany such as the theophany.


title: Gnosis

text: In the "Philokalia," it is emphasized that such knowledge is not secret knowledge but rather a maturing, transcendent form of knowledge derived from contemplation ("theoria" resulting from practice of "hesychasm)", since knowledge cannot truly be derived from knowledge, but rather, knowledge can only be derived from "theoria" (to witness, see (vision) or experience). Knowledge, thus plays an important role in relation to "theosis" (deification/personal relationship with God) and "theoria" (revelation of the divine, vision of God). Gnosis, as the proper use of the spiritual or noetic faculty plays an important role in Orthodox Christian theology. Its importance in the economy of salvation is discussed periodically in the "Philokalia" where as direct, personal knowledge of God ("noesis") it is distinguished from ordinary epistemological knowledge (episteme—i.e., speculative philosophy).


title: Gnosis

text: Knowledge (or "gnosis") in Sufism refers to knowledge of Self and God. The gnostic is called "al-arif bi'lah" or "one who knows by God". The goal of the Sufi practitioner is to remove inner obstacles to the knowledge of god. Sufism, understood as the quest for Truth, is to seek for the separate existence of the Self to be consumed by Truth, as stated by the Sufi poet Mansur al-Hallaj, who was executed for saying "I am the Truth" (ana'l haqq).


title: Gnosis

text: The Greek word "gnosis" (knowledge) is used as a standard translation of the Hebrew word "knowledge" ( ) in the Septuagint, thus:


title: Swiss people

text: The number of Swiss nationals has grown from 1.7 million in 1815 to 8.7 million in 2020. More than 1.5 million Swiss citizens hold multiple citizenship.


title: Swiss people

text: The largest groups of Swiss descendants and nationals outside Europe are found in the United States, Brazil and Canada.


title: Swiss people

text: Although the modern state of Switzerland originated in 1848, the period of romantic nationalism, it is not a nation-state, and the Swiss are not a single ethnic group, but rather are a confederacy (') or ' ("nation of will", "nation by choice", that is, a consociational state), a term coined in conscious contrast to "nation" in the conventionally linguistic or ethnic sense of the term.


title: Swiss people

text: The demonym "Swiss" (formerly in English also called "Switzer") and the name of Switzerland, ultimately derive from the toponym "Schwyz", have been in widespread use to refer to the Old Swiss Confederacy since the 16th century.


title: Swiss people

text: The ethno-linguistic composition of the territories of modern Switzerland includes the following components:


title: Swiss people

text: The core Eight Cantons of the Swiss Confederacy were entirely Alemannic-speaking, and German speakers remain the majority. However, from as early as the 15th century, parts of French-speaking Vaud and Italian-speaking Ticino were acquired as subject territories by Berne and Uri, respectively. The Swiss "Romandie" was formed by the accession of French-speaking Geneva and Neuchâtel and the partly francophone Valais and Bernese Jura (formerly part of the Prince-Bishopric of Basel) to the Restored Swiss Confederacy in 1815.


title: Swiss people

text: Romansh was formerly considered a group of Italian dialects, but Switzerland declared Romansh a national language in 1938 in reaction to the fascist Italian irredentism at the time.


title: Swiss people

text: Switzerland experienced significant immigration from Italy in the very late 19th and early 20th century, such that in 1910 that accounted for some 10% of the Swiss population. This immigration was halted by the Great Depression and WWII. It restarted after the war ended. As elsewhere in Western Europe, immigration to Switzerland has increased dramatically since the 1960s,


title: Swiss people

text: so that a large proportion of the resident population of Switzerland are now not descended or only partially descended from the core ethno-linguistic groups listed above.


title: Swiss people

text: As of 2016, the most widely used foreign languages were English, Portuguese, Albanian, Serbo-Croatian and Spanish, all named as a "main language" by more than 2% of total population (respondents could name more than one "main language").


title: Swiss people

text: The Swiss populace historically derives from an amalgamation of Gallic or Gallo-Roman, Alamannic and Rhaetic stock. Their cultural history is dominated by the Alps, and the alpine environment is often cited as an important factor in the formation of the Swiss national character. For example, the "Swiss illness", the condition of Swiss mercenaries pining for their mountainous native home, became prototypical of the medical condition of "nostalgia" ("homesickness") described in the 17th century.


title: Swiss people

text: In early modern Switzerland, the Swiss Confederacy was a pact between independent states within the Holy Roman Empire. The populations of the states of Central Switzerland considered themselves ethnically or even racially separate: Martin Zeiller in "Topographia Germaniae" (1642) reports a racial division even within the canton of Unterwalden, the population of Obwalden being identified as "Romans", and that of Nidwalden as "Cimbri" (viz. Germanic), while the people of Schwyz were identified as of Swedish ancestry, and the people of Uri were identified as "Huns or Goths".


title: Swiss people

text: Modern Switzerland is atypical in its successful political integration of a multiethnic and multilingual populace, and is often cited as a model for new efforts at creating unification, as in the European Union's frequent invocation of the Swiss Confederate model.


title: Swiss people

text: Because the various populations of Switzerland share language, ethnicity, and religion not with each other but with the major European powers between whom Switzerland during the modern history of Europe found itself positioned, a policy of domestic plurality in conjunction with international neutrality became a matter of self-preservation.


title: Swiss people

text: Consequently, the Swiss elites during the period of the formation of nation states throughout Europe did not attempt to impose a national language or a nationalism based on ethnicity, instead pushing for the creation of a civic nation grounded in democratic ideology, common political institutions, and shared political ritual. Political allegiance and patriotism was directed towards the cantons, not the federal level, where a spirit of rivalry and competition rather than unity prevailed. C. G. Jung advanced the view that this system of social order was one of a "chronic state of mitigated civil war" which put Switzerland ahead of the world in a civilizatory process of "introverting" warlike aggression.


title: Swiss people

text: A similar view is attributed to Gottfried Keller, who is cited to the effect that the Swiss Confederacy could not exist without the endemic rivalry between cantons.


title: Swiss people

text: From the 19th century there were conscious attempts to foster a federal "Pan-Swiss" national identity that would replace or alleviate the cantonal patriotisms. Among the traditions enlisted to this end were federal sharpshooting competitions or "tirs", because they were one of the few recognized symbols of pan-Swiss identity prior to the creation of the 1815 Confederation and because they traditionally involved men from all levels of society, including the peasants, who in Romantic nationalism had become ideologically synonymous with liberty and nationhood. An additional symbol of federal national identity at the federal level was introduced with the Swiss national holiday in 1889. The bonfires associated with the national holiday have become so customary since then that they have displaced the "Funken" traditions of greater antiquity.


title: Swiss people

text: Identification with the national symbolism relating to the Old Swiss Confederacy was especially difficult for the cantons which had been joined to the Helvetic Republic in 1798 without any prior membership in the Swiss Confederacy, and which were given the status of Swiss cantons only after the end of the Napoleonic era.


title: Swiss people

text: St. Gallen is a special case in a different sense, being a conglomerate of various historical regions created in 1803; in this case, patriotism may attach itself even to sub-cantonal entities, such as the Toggenburg. Similarly, due to the historical imperialism of the canton of Berne, there is considerable irredentism within the Bernese lands, most visibly in the Bernese Jura but to a lesser extent also in parts of the Bernese Oberland such as Hasli.


title: Swiss people

text: Swiss citizenship is still primarily citizenship in one of the Swiss cantons, and the naturalization of foreign citizens is the privilege of the cantons.


title: Swiss people

text: No Swiss passports were issued prior to 1915, more than 60 years after the establishment of the modern Swiss Confederation. Prior to 1915, citizens held passports issued by their cantons, the Confederation being considered as a federation of the cantons, not a state composed of natural persons as its citizens.


title: Swiss people

text: The Swiss Constitution of 1848 regulated certain rights that the cantons were required to grant to citizens of other cantons, such as the right of residence (in the case of naturalized citizens after a period of five years).


title: Swiss people

text: defined Swiss citizenship as inherited from cantonal citizenship: " Jeder Kantonsbürger ist Schweizer Bürger" ("every citizen of a canton is a Swiss citizen").


title: Swiss people

text: In the preamble to the current Swiss Constitution of 1999, a "Swiss People" ("Schweizervolk") is invoked alongsides "the Cantons" as sovereign entity, and article 1 reads "The People and the Cantons [...] form the Swiss Confederation."


title: Swiss people

text: Article 37 still defines Swiss citizenship as inherited from communal and cantonal citizenship: "Any person who is a citizen of a commune and of the Canton to which that commune belongs is a Swiss citizen."


title: Swiss people

text: As Swiss citizenship is entirely based on "jus sanguinis", the place of origin rather than the place of birth is recorded in identity documents. As Swiss citizenship is tied to the cantonal citizenship associated with the "place of origin" ("Heimatort" or "Bürgerort" "home commune, commune of citizenship"), a citizen's place of origin is inherited from his or her father (from the mother if born out of wedlock or if the father holds no citizenship).


title: Swiss people

text: The significance of the place of origin outside of the naturalization procedure has been gradually abolished in the early 21st century. Since 2012, the municipality or canton of a citizen's place of origin is no longer responsible for providing social welfare to that citizen. Since 2013, a woman no longer acquires the place of origin of her husband upon marriage.


title: Swiss people

text: While the cantons are responsible for naturalization, federal Swiss nationality law regulates minimal requirements necessary for naturalization.


title: Swiss people

text: These requirements were significantly reduced in a 2018 revision of the law, allowing naturalization after a minimal period of residence of ten years, and in certain cases as little as five years (naturalization of spouses and children of Swiss citizens; years of residence at ages 8 to 18 count double).


title: Swiss people

text: A further requirement is that the applicant be "well integrated" and "familiar with life in Switzerland", and must have


title: Swiss people

text: The federal law just specifies minimal requirements for naturalization, and cantons are free to introduce more stringent requirements. In practice, the cantons delegate the actual procedure of naturalization to the communes.


title: Swiss people

text: With 25% of the population resident aliens, Switzerland has one of the highest ratios of non-naturalized inhabitants in Europe (comparable to the Netherlands; roughly twice the ratio of Germany). In 2003, 35,424 residents were naturalized, a number exceeding net population growth. Over the 25-year period of 1983 to 2007, 479,264 resident foreigners were naturalized, yearly numbers rising gradually from below 10,000 (0.1%) in the 1980s to above 40,000 (0.6%) in the 2000s. Compare the figure of 0.2% (140,795) in the United Kingdom (2004).


title: Swiss people

text: The genetic composition of the Swiss population is similar to that of Central Europe in general. Switzerland is on one hand at the crossroads of several prehistoric migrations, while on the other hand the Alps acted as a refuge in some cases. Genetic studies found the following haplogroups to be prevalent:


title: Swiss people

text: Haplogroup R1b-U152 also known as R1b-S28 is the frequent haplogroup of Swiss people, followed by R1b-U106/R1b-S21.


title: Quantum number

text: In quantum physics and chemistry, quantum numbers describe values of conserved quantities in the dynamics of a quantum system. Quantum numbers correspond to eigenvalues of operators that commute with the Hamiltonian—quantities that can be known with precision at the same time as the system's energy—and their corresponding eigenspaces. Together, a specification of all of the quantum numbers of a quantum system fully characterize a basis state of the system, and can in principle be measured together.


title: Quantum number

text: An important aspect of quantum mechanics is the quantization of many observable quantities of interest. In particular, this leads to quantum numbers that take values in discrete sets of integers or half-integers; although they could approach infinity in some cases. This distinguishes quantum mechanics from classical mechanics where the values that characterize the system such as mass, charge, or momentum, all range continuously. Quantum numbers often describe specifically the energy levels of electrons in atoms, but other possibilities include angular momentum, spin, etc. An important family is flavour quantum numbers – internal quantum numbers which determine the type of a particle and its interactions with other particles through the fundamental forces. Any quantum system can have one or more quantum numbers; it is thus difficult to list all possible quantum numbers.


title: Quantum number

text: The tally of quantum numbers varies from system to system and has no universal answer. Hence these parameters must be found for each system to be analyzed. A quantized system requires at least one quantum number. The dynamics (i.e. time evolution) of any quantum system are described by a quantum operator in the form of a Hamiltonian, . There is one quantum number of the system corresponding to the system's energy; i.e., one of the eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian. There is also one quantum number for each linearly independent operator that commutes with the Hamiltonian. A complete set of commuting observables (CSCO) that commute with the Hamiltonian characterizes the system with all its quantum numbers. There is a one-to-one relationship between the quantum numbers and the operators of the CSCO, with each quantum number taking one of the eigenvalues of its corresponding operator. As a result of the different basis that may be arbitrarily chosen to form a complete set of commuting operators, different sets of quantum numbers may be used for the description of the same system in different situations.


title: Quantum number

text: The spin–orbital interaction, however, relates these numbers. Thus, a complete description of the system can be given with fewer quantum numbers, if orthogonal choices are made for these basis vectors.


title: Quantum number

text: Different electrons in a system will have different quantum numbers. For example, the highest occupied orbital electron, the actual differentiating electron (i.e. the electron that differentiates an element from the previous one); , r the differentiating electron according to the "aufbau" approximation. In lanthanum, as a further illustration, the electrons involved are in the 6s; 5d; and 4f orbitals, respectively. In this case the principal quantum numbers are 6, 5, and 4.


title: Quantum number

text: The model used here describes electrons using four quantum numbers, , , , , given below. It is also the common nomenclature in the classical description of nuclear particle states (e.g. protons and neutrons). A quantum description of molecular orbitals require other quantum numbers, because the Hamiltonian and its symmetries are different.


title: Quantum number

text: The principal quantum number describes the electron shell, or energy level, of an electron. The value of ranges from 1 to the shell containing the outermost electron of that atom, that is


title: Quantum number

text: For example, in caesium (Cs), the outermost valence electron is in the shell with energy level 6, so an electron in caesium can have an value from 1 to 6.


title: Quantum number

text: For particles in a time-independent potential (see Schrödinger equation), it also labels the th eigenvalue of Hamiltonian (), that is, the energy , with the contribution due to angular momentum (the term involving ) left out. So this number depends only on the distance between the electron and the nucleus (that is, the radial coordinate ). The average distance increases with . Hence quantum states with different principal quantum numbers are said to belong to different shells.


title: Quantum number

text: The azimuthal quantum number, also known as the (angular momentum quantum number or orbital quantum number), describes the subshell, and gives the magnitude of the orbital angular momentum through the relation.


title: Quantum number

text: The value of ranges from 0 to , so the first p orbital () appears in the second electron shell (), the first d orbital () appears in the third shell (), and so on:


title: Quantum number

text: A quantum number beginning in = 3,"" = 0, describes an electron in the s orbital of the third electron shell of an atom. In chemistry, this quantum number is very important, since it specifies the shape of an atomic orbital and strongly influences chemical bonds and bond angles. The azimuthal quantum number can also denote the number of angular nodes present in an orbital. For example, for p orbitals, and thus the amount of angular nodes in a p orbital is 1.


title: Quantum number

text: The magnetic quantum number describes the specific orbital (or "cloud") within that subshell, and yields the "projection" of the orbital angular momentum "along a specified axis":


title: Quantum number

text: The s subshell () contains only one orbital, and therefore the of an electron in an s orbital will always be 0. The p subshell () contains three orbitals (in some systems, depicted as three "dumbbell-shaped" clouds), so the of an electron in a p orbital will be −1, 0, or 1. The d subshell () contains five orbitals, with values of −2, −1, 0, 1, and 2.


title: Quantum number

text: The spin quantum number describes the intrinsic spin angular momentum of the electron within each orbital and gives the projection of the spin angular momentum along the specified axis:


title: Quantum number

text: In general, the values of range from to , where is the spin quantum number, associated with the particle's intrinsic spin angular momentum:


title: Quantum number

text: An electron has spin number , consequently will be ±, referring to "spin up" and "spin down" states. Each electron in any individual orbital must have different quantum numbers because of the Pauli exclusion principle, therefore an orbital never contains more than two electrons.


title: Quantum number

text: There are no universal fixed values for and . Rather, the and values are arbitrary. The only restrictions on the choices for these constants is that the naming schematic used within a particular set of calculations or descriptions must be consistent (e.g. the orbital occupied by the first electron in a p orbital could be described as or or , but the value of the next unpaired electron in that orbital must be different; yet, the assigned to electrons in other orbitals again can be or or ).


title: Quantum number

text: Example: The quantum numbers used to refer to the outermost valence electrons of a carbon (C) atom, which are located in the 2p atomic orbital, are; (2nd electron shell), (p orbital subshell), , (parallel spins).


title: Quantum number

text: Results from spectroscopy indicated that up to two electrons can occupy a single orbital. However two electrons can never have the same exact quantum state nor the same set of quantum numbers according to Hund's rules, which addresses the Pauli exclusion principle. A fourth quantum number, which represented spin with two possible values, was added as an "ad hoc" assumption to resolve the conflict; this supposition would later be explained in detail by relativistic quantum mechanics and from the results of the renowned Stern–Gerlach experiment.


title: Quantum number

text: Many different models have been proposed throughout the history of quantum mechanics, but the most prominent system of nomenclature spawned from the Hund-Mulliken molecular orbital theory of Friedrich Hund, Robert S. Mulliken, and contributions from Schrödinger, Slater and John Lennard-Jones. This system of nomenclature incorporated Bohr energy levels, Hund-Mulliken orbital theory, and observations on electron spin based on spectroscopy and Hund's rules.


title: Quantum number

text: When one takes the spin–orbit interaction into consideration, the and operators no longer commute with the Hamiltonian, and their eigenvalues therefore change over time. Thus another set of quantum numbers should be used. This set includes


title: Quantum number

text: The quantum states in the system can be described as linear combination of these 8 states. However, in the presence of spin–orbit interaction, if one wants to describe the same system by 8 states that are eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian (i.e. each represents a state that does not mix with others over time), we should consider the following 8 states:


title: Quantum number

text: In nuclei, the entire assembly of protons and neutrons (nucleons) has a resultant angular momentum due to the angular momenta of each nucleon, usually denoted . If the total angular momentum of a neutron is and for a proton is (where for protons and neutrons happens to be again ("see note")), then the nuclear angular momentum quantum numbers are given by:


title: Quantum number

text: "Note: "The orbital angular momenta of the nuclear (and atomic) states are all integer multiples of ħ while the intrinsic angular momentum of the neutron and proton are half-integer multiples. It should be immediately apparent that the combination of the intrinsic spins of the nucleons with their orbital motion will always give half-integer values for the total spin, , of any odd-A nucleus and integer values for any even-A nucleus.


title: Quantum number

text: Parity with the number is used to label nuclear angular momentum states, examples for some isotopes of hydrogen (H), carbon (C), and sodium (Na) are;


title: Quantum number

text: The reason for the unusual fluctuations in , even by differences of just one nucleon, are due to the odd and even numbers of protons and neutrons – pairs of nucleons have a total angular momentum of zero (just like electrons in orbitals), leaving an odd or even number of unpaired nucleons. The property of nuclear spin is an important factor for the operation of NMR spectroscopy in organic chemistry, and MRI in nuclear medicine, due to the nuclear magnetic moment interacting with an external magnetic field.


title: Quantum number

text: Elementary particles contain many quantum numbers which are usually said to be intrinsic to them. However, it should be understood that the elementary particles are quantum states of the standard model of particle physics, and hence the quantum numbers of these particles bear the same relation to the Hamiltonian of this model as the quantum numbers of the Bohr atom does to its Hamiltonian. In other words, each quantum number denotes a symmetry of the problem. It is more useful in quantum field theory to distinguish between spacetime and internal symmetries.


title: Quantum number

text: Typical quantum numbers related to spacetime symmetries are spin (related to rotational symmetry), the parity, C-parity and T-parity (related to the Poincaré symmetry of spacetime). Typical internal symmetries are lepton number and baryon number or the electric charge. (For a full list of quantum numbers of this kind see the article on flavour.)


title: Quantum number

text: Most conserved quantum numbers are additive, so in an elementary particle reaction, the "sum" of the quantum numbers should be the same before and after the reaction. However, some, usually called a "parity", are multiplicative; i.e., their "product" is conserved. All multiplicative quantum numbers belong to a symmetry (like parity) in which applying the symmetry transformation twice is equivalent to doing nothing (involution).


title: Vedhika

text: Vedhika Kumar is an Indian actress and model who has established a career in the Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada films.


title: Vedhika

text: She started her acting career with the Tamil film "Madrasi". She made her breakthrough portraying "Angamma" in Bala's period film "Paradesi" (2013), winning critical acclaim and awards for her portrayal. A year later she starred in "Kaaviya Thalaivan" (2014). In 2016, her Kannada film "Shivalinga" went on to become one of the biggest blockbusters in Kannada industry. In 2019, she appeared in the Tamil film "Kanchana 3" which became one of the highest grossing Tamil films of the year. She made her Bollywood debut in 2019, with the film "The Body".


title: Vedhika

text: Vedhika was brought up in Mumbai but their family hails from the border areas of Maharashtra–Karnataka states. Her mother tongue is Kannada.


title: Vedhika

text: Early in her career, she was involved in modelling assignments and did a notable advert for biscuits alongside prominent actor Suriya. She was subsequently approached by Arjun to essay the lead role in his production "Madrasi" and Vedhika accepted the role. Her role went largely unnoticed due to the film being based around Arjun's action image, with a critic labelling her performance as "adequate". After the release of "Madrasi", Vedhika went on to sign a big budget Hindi language film, "Jai Santoshi Maa", a remake of the 1975 film of the same name, but the film failed to subsequently materialize and Vedhika continued acting in South Indian films. She went on to feature in Raghava Lawrence's comedy horror "Muni", but her role was minimal once again and the film went to become an average grosser commercially. Her maiden Telugu venture was in "Vijayadasami", a remake of the Tamil film "Sivakasi", where her performance was described as "okay" and "average" by critics.


title: Vedhika

text: Her first release in 2008, the Silambarasan-starrer "Kaalai", received negative reviews and became a commercial failure. However, the film became notable for the dance number, "Kutti Pisase" with Vedhika's dancing being critically appreciated. She went on to appear in a second successive film which was panned by critics and which became a financial failure with a role in "Sakkarakatti". The long-delayed film featured Shanthnoo Bhagyaraj making his debut in the lead role and A. R. Rahman providing the soundtrack, however Vedhika's role was described as one of the sole positives from the project. Later that year, she starred in a Kannada film, "Sangama" opposite Ganesh, and the film fetched her good reviews for her performance. In 2009, she appeared as the radio jockey Anjali in A. Venkatesh's "Malai Malai" with the film consequently going on to become a success commercially. The film had little scope for Vedhika and reviews cited her role as "pure eye candy" whilst claiming she was "apt" for the role. She made a comeback to Telugu films in the same year, with a role in the critically acclaimed "Baanam". Her role won her plaudits, whilst her on screen presence with Nara Rohit was praised with a critic citing she gives "good company as the naïve girl" and it is "refreshing to see them together". After the release of "Baanam", Kumar went on a sabbatical and did not sign any other films until, despite making an appearance in a notable advert with Karthi for mobile company Airtel. She signed and next featured in the Telugu film "Daggaraga Dooranga" opposite Sumanth, which opened to average reviews in August 2011.


title: Vedhika

text: The actress was signed up by director Bala for "Paradesi" (2013), an adaptation of the 1969 tragic novel Red Tea, set in the 1930s. She had been recommended by actress Sangeetha, signing the film in December 2011 and did not accept to appear in any other project till the release, sporting a significantly de-glamourised appearance and portraying a village character for the first time. The film, which also starred Adharvaa and Dhansika opened to unanimously positive reviews in March 2013 and performed well at the box office. Critics raved about her performance as Angamma, with the critic from The Times of India noting that "after doing roles that only required her to look pretty, Vedhika gets a chance to show off her acting skills" with Indiaglitz.com citing that she "produced a memorable performance". The critic from Rediff.com noted that "Vedhika plays the role of a young village belle to perfection", while Sify.com labelled that she delivered a "spellbinding performance". Her second release in 2013, the Malayalam film "Sringaravelan", became one of the industry's biggest commercial successes of the year.


title: Vedhika

text: Shen then worked on Vasanthabalan's historical fiction film "Kaaviya Thalaivan" (2014), which was set in the backdrop of Madras theatre scene of the 1920s, and featured her alongside Siddharth and Prithviraj. Portraying a character inspired by stage artist K. B. Sundarambal, Kumar noted it was a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" and signed the film straight after being offered it. She prepared for her role by watching early Tamil films and drama videos, but all the actors were asked to "add their personal touch to their respective characters to make everything look authentic". Moreover, for her part of her role, she also perfected her classical dancing skills and worked with choreographer Raghuram for an extended dance sequence in the film. The film opened in November 2014 to positive reviews, with Kumar's performance being unanimously lauded by film critics. A reviewer from Sify.com noted "it is so good to see Vedhicka in a role where she not only looks beautiful but delivers a brilliant performance as Vadivambal", while Behindwoods.com added it is a "role of substance and the big eyed actress has utilized her opportunity completely".


title: Alice in Chains (album)

text: Alice in Chains (occasionally informally referred to as The Dog Album, The Dog Record, and Tripod) is the third studio album by the American rock band Alice in Chains. It was released on November 7, 1995 through Columbia Records, and was the follow-up to the highly successful "Dirt" (1992). This is the band's first full-length studio album to feature bassist Mike Inez; their last album to feature original lead vocalist Layne Staley, who died in 2002; and their last album to be released on Columbia Records. The album debuted at No. 1 on the "Billboard 200" and stayed on the chart for 46 weeks. The tracks "Grind", "Heaven Beside You" and "Again" were released as singles. "Grind" and "Again" were nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. The album received double platinum certification from the RIAA and has sold over three million copies worldwide. The mockumentary "The Nona Tapes" was released to promote the album and became a cult hit.


title: Alice in Chains (album)

text: As with their previous releases, the album's songs focus on heavy subject matter such as depression, isolation, drug use, relationships, anger, and death. The band relies less on metallic riffs and more on melody and texturally varied arrangements, integrating some of the more delicate acoustic moods of their EPs. However, the riffs are mostly down-tuned and atonal, employing a strong doom and sludge metal vibe.