title: Madrasa

text: As elsewhere, rulers in the Maghreb built madrasas to bolster their political legitimacy and that of their dynasty. The Marinids used their patronage of madrasas to cultivate the loyalty of Morocco's influential but independent religious elites and also to portray themselves to the general population as protectors and promoters of orthodox Sunni Islam. Madrasas also served to train the scholars and educated elites who generally operated the state bureaucracy. A number of madrasas also played a supporting role to major learning institutions like the older Qarawiyyin Mosque-University and the al-Andalusiyyin Mosque (both located in Fes) because they provided accommodations for students coming from other cities. Many of these students were poor, seeking sufficient education to gain a higher position in their home towns, and the madrasas provided them with basic necessities such as lodging and bread. However, the madrasas were also teaching institutions in their own right and offered their own courses, but usually with much narrower and more limited curriculums than the Qarawiyyin. The Bou Inania Madrasa in Fes, distinguished itself from other madrasas by its size and by being the only madrasa which also officially functioned as a public Friday mosque.


title: Madrasa

text: While some historical madrasas in Morocco remained in use well into the 20th century, most are no longer used for their original purpose following the reorganization of the Moroccan education system under French colonial rule and in the period following independence in 1956. Likewise, while some madrasas are still used for learning in Tunisia, many have since been converted to other uses in modern times.


title: Madrasa

text: As of early 2021, Afghanistan had some 5000 madrasas registered with the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs (unregistered ones being uncounted) with around 250 in Kabul, including the Darul-Ulom Imam Abu Hanifa which has 200 teachers and 3000 students, and in all, some 380,000 students were enrolled in these government recognized madrasas, including 55,000 girls.


title: Madrasa

text: There are three different madrasa education systems in Bangladesh: the original darse nizami system, the redesigned nizami system, and the higher syllabus alia nisab. The first two categories are commonly called Qawmi or non-government madrasas. Amongst them the most notable are Al-Jamiatul Ahlia Darul Ulum Moinul Islam in Hathazari, Al-Jamiah Al-Islamiah Patiya, in Patiya, and Jamia Tawakkulia Renga Madrasah in Sylhet.


title: Madrasa

text: In 2006 there were 15,000 registered Qawmi madrasas with the Befaqul Mudarressin of Bangladesh Qawmi Madrasah Education Board, though the figure could be well over double that number if unregistered madrasas were counted.


title: Madrasa

text: The madrasas regulated by the government through the Bangladesh Madrasah Education Board are called the Alia madrasas and they number some 7,000, offering, in addition to religious instruction, subjects such as English and science, and its graduates often complete their education in secular institutions, to the extent that some 32% of the university teachers in the humanities and the social sciences are graduates of these Alia madrasas.


title: Madrasa

text: In 2008, India's madrassas were estimated to number between 8000 and 30,000, the state of Uttar Pradesh hosting most of them, estimated by the Indian government to have 10,000 of those back then.


title: Madrasa

text: The majority of these schools follow the Hanafi school of thought. The religious establishment forms part of the mainly two large divisions within the country, namely the Deobandis, who dominate in numbers (of whom the Darul Uloom Deoband constitutes one of the biggest madrasas) and the Barelvis, who also make up a sizeable portion (Sufi-oriented). Some notable establishments include: Aljamea-tus-Saifiyah (Isma'ilism), Al Jamiatul Ashrafia, Mubarakpur, Manzar Islam Bareilly, Jamia Nizamdina New Delhi, Jamia Nayeemia Muradabad which is one of the largest learning centres for the Barelvis. The HR ministry of the government of India has recently declared that a Central Madrasa Board would be set up. This will enhance the education system of madrasas in India. Though the madrasas impart Quranic education mainly, efforts are on to include Mathematics, Computers and science in the curriculum.


title: Madrasa

text: In July 2015, the state government of Maharashtra created a stir when it de-recognised madrasa education, receiving criticism from several political parties with the NCP accusing the ruling BJP of creating Hindu-Muslim friction in the state, and Kamal Farooqui of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board saying it was "ill-designed"


title: Madrasa

text: After the establishment of the British Raj and the emergence of Darul Ulum Manazar-e Islam Bareilly Sharif, Indian Muslim Scholars left India to establish madrasas in other regions of the world. Some of the most notable of these madrasas are Darul Ulum Holocombe, which produced scholars such as Shaikh Ibrahim Memon Madani, or Darul Uloom Al-Madania. These offshoot schools symbolise an emotional drive based upon both religion and patriotism that is not evident elsewhere.


title: Madrasa

text: Most of the Muslims of Kerala follow the traditional Shāfiʿī school of religious law (known in Kerala as the traditionalist 'Sunnis') while a large minority follow modern movements that developed within Sunni Islam. The latter section consists of majority Salafists (the Mudjahids) and the minority Islamists (political Islam).


title: Madrasa

text: It is sometimes speculated that parents send their children to madrasas in Pakistan due to the inability to afford a good education. Although Madrasas are free they do provide adequate education for their students. It is sometimes speculated that due to lower quality of education those who finish have a hard time finding employment. Those who attended Madrasas have problem finding a job soon after. The education those receive madrasas in Pakistan closely resembles public institutions in the United States.


title: Madrasa

text: The madrasas rose as colleges of learning in the Islamic world in the 11th century, though there were institutions of learning earlier. They catered not only to the religious establishment, though that was the dominant influence over them, but also the secular one. To the latter they supplied physicians, administrative officials, judges and teachers. Today many registered madrasas are working effectively and coping up with modern education system such as Jamia-tul-Madina, which is a chain of Islamic schools in Pakistan and in European and other countries established by Dawat-e-Islami. The Jamia-tul-Madina are also known as Faizan-e-Madina. Dawat-e-Islami has grown its network of madrasas from Pakistan to Europe. In today's time the most centralized location of madrasas is in Pakistan. Although Pakistan hold the most Madrasas the number is still growing in many different countries.


title: Madrasa

text: Nepal has 907 madrasas recognized on the same level as government schools but the total number in the country is around 4000.


title: Madrasa

text: In Southeast Asia, Muslim students have a choice of attending a secular government or an Islamic school. Madrasas or Islamic schools are known as "Sekolah Agama" () in Malaysia and Indonesia, โรงเรียนศาสนาอิสลาม () in Thailand and "madaris" in the Philippines. In countries where Islam is not the majority or state religion, Islamic schools are found in regions such as southern Thailand (near the Thai-Malaysian border) and the southern Philippines in Mindanao, where a significant Muslim population can be found.


title: Madrasa

text: The number of madrasas more than doubled from 2002/2003 to 2011/2012, going from 63,000 to 145,000, unrecognized madrasas accounting for 17% of all schools in the country while the recognized madrasas account for nearly 1/3 of the secondary schools.


title: Madrasa

text: The word "madrasah" in Indonesia is also refer to secular-style public and private schools with more Islamic subjects in its curriculum. There are several levels of "madrasah": "Madrasah Ibtidaiyah" (MI, the equivalent of elementary school), "Madrasah Tsanawiyah" (MTs, the equivalent of junior high school), "Madrasah Aliyah" (MA, the equivalent of senior high school), and "Madrasah Aliyah Kejuruan" (MAK, the equivalent of vocational high school).


title: Madrasa

text: In Singapore, madrasahs are private schools which are overseen by Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura (MUIS, "Islamic Religious Council of Singapore"). There are six Madrasahs in Singapore, catering to students from Primary 1 to Secondary 4 (and junior college equivalent, or "Pre-U", at several schools). Four Madrasahs are coeducational and two are for girls. Students take a range of Islamic Studies subjects in addition to mainstream MOE curriculum subjects and sit for the PSLE and GCE 'O' Levels like their peers. In 2009, MUIS introduced the "Joint Madrasah System" (JMS), a joint collaboration of Madrasah Al-Irsyad Al-Islamiah primary school and secondary schools Madrasah Aljunied Al-Islamiah (offering the "ukhrawi", or religious stream) and Madrasah Al-Arabiah Al-Islamiah (offering the academic stream). The JMS aims to introduce the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme into the Madrasah Al-Arabiah Al-Islamiah by 2019. Students attending a madrasah are required to wear the traditional Malay attire, including the songkok for boys and tudong for girls, in contrast to mainstream government schools which ban religious headgear as Singapore is officially a secular state. Students who wish to attend a mainstream school may opt to take classes on weekends at the "madrasah" instead of enrolling full-time.


title: Madrasa

text: According to a 2006 International Religious Freedom Report of the US State Department the country has some 2000 madrasas, with half of them located in Mindanao.


title: Madrasa

text: In 2004, madrasas were mainstreamed in 16 Regions nationwide, primarily in Muslim-majority areas in Mindanao under the auspices of the Department of Education (DepEd). The DepEd adopted "Department Order No. 51", which instituted Arabic-language and Islamic Values instruction for Muslim children in state schools, and authorised implementation of the Standard Madrasa Curriculum (SMC) in private-run madrasas. While there are state-recognised Islamic schools, such as Ibn Siena Integrated School in the Islamic City of Marawi, Sarang Bangun LC in Zamboanga and SMIE in Jolo, their Islamic studies programmes initially varied in application and content.


title: Madrasa

text: Since 2005, the AusAID-funded DepEd project Basic Education Assistance for Mindanao (BEAM) has assisted a group of private madrasas seeking a Permit To Operate from the government and implement the SMC. These private madrasas are scattered throughout Davao Region, Soccsksargen and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).


title: Madrasa

text: In Bangsamoro, which succeeded the ARMM, the eligibility of Madrasa teachers are covered by the autonomous region's education code. Prospect teachers barring any exception will have to take special examinations organized by the region's education ministry in order to secure their eligibility.


title: Madrasa

text: In South Africa, the madrasas also play a social and cultural role in giving after-school religious instruction to children of Muslims who attend government or private non-religious schools. However, substantial numbers of Muslim children attend fully-fledged private Islamic schools, which combine secular and religious education. Among Muslims of Indian origin, madrasas also used to provide instruction in Urdu, although this is far less common today than it used to be.


title: Madrasa

text: The first Madressa established in North America, Al-Rashid Islamic Institute, was established in Cornwall, Ontario in 1983 and has graduates who are Hafiz (Quran) and Ulama. The seminary was established by Mazhar Alam under the direction of his teacher the leading Indian Tablighi scholar Muhammad Zakariya Kandhlawi and focuses on the Hanafi school of thought. Due to its proximity to the US border city of Messina the school has historically had a high ratio of US students. Their most prominent graduate Shaykh Muhammad Alshareef completed his Hifz in the early 1990s then went on to form the AlMaghrib Institute.


title: Madrasa

text: On May 26, 2012, Congressman André Carson of Indiana called for additional madrasas in the United States. There is a madrassa in Queens, NY called Shia Ithna-Asheri Jamaat of New York. Presently, the Darul Uloom in New York City, an affiliate of Darul Uloom Haqqania in Pakistan, also serves as a madrassa.


title: Madrasa

text: In the Arabic language, the word "madrasa" (مدرسه) means any educational institution, of any description, (as does the term "school" in American English) and does not imply a political or religious affiliation, not even one as broad as Islam in the general sense. Madrasas often have varied curricula. A large misconception is that madrasas only focused on the study of religion which is not true. Madrasas often included many different topics in their curriculum. Some madrasas in India, for example, have a secularised identity. Although early madrasas were founded primarily to gain "knowledge of God" they also taught subjects such as mathematics and poetry. For example, in the Ottoman Empire, "Madrasahs had seven categories of sciences that were taught, such as: styles of writing, oral sciences like the Arabic language, grammar, rhetoric, and history and intellectual sciences, such as logic." This is similar to the Western world, in which the evolution of universities began with Christian cathedral schools and monastic schools.


title: Madrasa

text: The Yale Center for the Study of Globalization examined bias in United States newspaper coverage of Pakistan since the September 11, 2001 attacks, and found the term has come to contain a loaded political meaning:


title: Madrasa

text: When articles mentioned "madrassas," readers were led to infer that all schools so-named are anti-American, anti-Western, pro-terrorist centres having less to do with teaching basic literacy and more to do with political indoctrination.


title: Madrasa

text: Various American public figures in the early 2000s used the word in a negative manner, including Newt Gingrich,


title: Madrasa

text: "The New York Times" published in January 2007 a correction for misusing the word "madrassa" in a way that assumed it meant a radical Islamic school. The correction stated:


title: Madrasa

text: An article [...] about a pointed exchange [...] over a Web site report that said Senator Barack Obama had attended an Islamic school or madrassa in Indonesia as a child referred imprecisely to madrassas. While some [madrassas] teach a radical version of Islam, most historically have not.There are many other instances where attempts to deem madrasas as just radical Islamic schools were made. In the year 2000, an article from "Foreign Affairs", authored by university professor Jessica Stern, claimed that specifically Pakistani madrasas were responsible for the development of thousands of jihadists/terrorists, and that they were essentially weapons of mass destruction. During the time of the article's release, videos surfaced of young boys intensely memorizing/studying the Quran, thus facilitating the false stereotype that madrasas brainwash and breed children to becoming future jihadists. This stereotype was even further accentuated following the events of 9/11. After this event, the United States implemented a plan to force Pakistan to completely shut down all madrasas that have links to militant groups, and to persuade madrasa students to instead attend public schools. Such a reaction and belief of the ties between Pakistan's madrasas and militancy were especially prominent during these times, and even in modern-day society to a similar extent, due to false assumptions regarding the roles of madrasas in upbringing militant groups, the prevalence of enrollment in such institutions, and more. To touch more on the prevalence of enrollment in Pakistan's madrasas, a 2005 study by Andrabi and others could be looked at. According to the study's results, seventy-five percent of all households that send one child to a madrasa also tended to incorporate public and private schools for the education of the rest of their children (Those who were not sent to a madrasa). Therefore, only twenty-five percent of all households relied solely on madrasas for the education of all their children. When taking this into account, one can see that enrollment in madrasas is not as prevalent as many people would assume due to parental choice being a strong deciding factor.


title: George Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford

text: George John Godolphin Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford (born 28 July 1992), styled as Earl of Sunderland until 2014, is a British aristocrat and polo player. He is a model and brand ambassador for La Martina, an Argentinean polo clothing and accessories company. As the heir apparent to the Dukedom of Marlborough, he uses the courtesy title of Marquess of Blandford.


text: He is the son of Jamie Spencer-Churchill, 12th Duke of Marlborough and his first wife, Rebecca Mary Few Brown. He is also a descendant of Consuelo Vanderbilt (first wife of the 9th Duke of Marlborough).


text: He and his family are notable for being involved in a high-profile legal dispute around 1993, when his paternal grandfather (the 11th Duke of Marlborough) sought to disinherit Lord Blandford's father. Since his father has had a controversial past, including serving time in jail for forging prescriptions and road rage, Lord Blandford was announced as the financial beneficiary of his grandfather's estate. His inheritance was to include Blenheim Palace, a 187-room mansion set in 2,000 acres in Oxfordshire.


text: He was educated at Harrow School, where he was captain of the school's polo team. From 2011 to 2014, he attended University College London, where he studied town planning.


text: In 2015, he started working as an aviation broker at JLT Group in London. In 2019, he became a broker at the London office of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., an American insurance brokerage.


text: He began serving as a model and brand ambassador for the La Martina brand of polo clothes and accessories in 2015. His "Blenheim Polo Team" plays at Cirencester Park Polo Club in Gloucestershire.


text: From December 2018 to January 2019, he and three friends successfully rowed across the Atlantic Ocean in a time of 35 days, finishing second in the 2018 Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. He helped raise over £850,000 for the Starlight children's charity in the process.


text: Lord Blandford married Camilla Elizabeth Antonia Thorp (now styled as Marchioness of Blandford), a descendant of the Tempest baronets of Tong, Yorkshire, on 8 September 2018 at St Mary Magdalene Church, Woodstock. Attendees of the wedding included Lady Violet Manners, Lord and Lady Bamford, Andrew Parker-Bowles, and Lord Milford Haven. They have a daughter, Lady Olympia Arabella Kitty Spencer-Churchill (born 10 September 2020).


title: Ascomycota

text: Ascomycota is a phylum of the kingdom Fungi that, together with the Basidiomycota, forms the subkingdom Dikarya. Its members are commonly known as the sac fungi or ascomycetes. It is the largest phylum of Fungi, with over 64,000 species. The defining feature of this fungal group is the "ascus" (), a microscopic sexual structure in which nonmotile spores, called ascospores, are formed. However, some species of the Ascomycota are asexual, meaning that they do not have a sexual cycle and thus do not form asci or ascospores. Familiar examples of sac fungi include morels, truffles, brewers' and bakers' yeast, dead man's fingers, and cup fungi. The fungal symbionts in the majority of lichens (loosely termed "ascolichens") such as "Cladonia" belong to the Ascomycota.


title: Ascomycota

text: Ascomycota is a monophyletic group (it contains all descendants of one common ancestor). Previously placed in the Deuteromycota along with asexual species from other fungal taxa, asexual (or anamorphic) ascomycetes are now identified and classified based on morphological or physiological similarities to ascus-bearing taxa, and by phylogenetic analyses of DNA sequences.


title: Ascomycota

text: The ascomycetes are of particular use to humans as sources of medicinally important compounds, such as antibiotics, for fermenting bread, alcoholic beverages and cheese. "Penicillium" species on cheeses and those producing antibiotics for treating bacterial infectious diseases are examples of ascomycetes.


title: Ascomycota

text: Many ascomycetes are pathogens, both of animals, including humans, and of plants. Examples of ascomycetes that can cause infections in humans include "Candida albicans", "Aspergillus niger" and several tens of species that cause skin infections. The many plant-pathogenic ascomycetes include apple scab, rice blast, the ergot fungi, black knot, and the powdery mildews.


title: Ascomycota

text: Several species of ascomycetes are biological model organisms in laboratory research. Most famously, "Neurospora crassa", several species of yeasts, and "Aspergillus" species are used in many genetics and cell biology studies.


title: Ascomycota

text: Ascomycetes are 'spore shooters'. They are fungi which produce microscopic spores inside special, elongated cells or sacs, known as 'asci', which give the group its name.


title: Ascomycota

text: Asexual reproduction is the dominant form of propagation in the Ascomycota, and is responsible for the rapid spread of these fungi into new areas. Asexual reproduction of ascomycetes is very diverse from both structural and functional points of view. The most important and general is production of conidia, but chlamydospores are also frequently produced. Furthermore, Ascomycota also reproduce asexually through budding.


title: Ascomycota

text: Asexual reproduction may occur through vegetative reproductive spores, the conidia. The asexual, non-motile haploid spores of a fungus, which are named after the Greek word for dust (conia), are hence also known as . The conidiospores commonly contain one nucleus and are products of mitotic cell divisions and thus are sometimes call , which are genetically identical to the mycelium from which they originate. They are typically formed at the ends of specialized hyphae, the conidiophores. Depending on the species they may be dispersed by wind or water, or by animals. Conidiophores may simply branch off from the mycelia or they may be formed in fruiting bodies.


title: Ascomycota

text: The hypha that creates the sporing (conidiating) tip can be very similar to the normal hyphal tip, or it can be differentiated. The most common differentiation is the formation of a bottle shaped cell called a , from which the spores are produced. Not all of these asexual structures are a single hypha. In some groups, the conidiophores (the structures that bear the conidia) are aggregated to form a thick structure.


title: Ascomycota

text: E.g. In the order "Moniliales," all of them are single hyphae with the exception of the aggregations, termed as coremia or synnema. These produce structures rather like corn-stokes, with many conidia being produced in a mass from the aggregated conidiophores.


title: Ascomycota

text: The diverse conidia and conidiophores sometimes develop in asexual sporocarps with different characteristics (e.g. acervulus, pycnidium, sporodochium). Some species of "Ascomycetes" form their structures within plant tissue, either as parasite or saprophytes. These fungi have evolved more complex asexual sporing structures, probably influenced by the cultural conditions of plant tissue as a substrate. These structures are called the . This is a cushion of conidiophores created from a pseudoparenchymatous stroma in plant tissue. The is a globose to flask-shaped parenchymatous structure, lined on its inner wall with conidiophores. The is a flat saucer shaped bed of conidiophores produced under a plant cuticle, which eventually erupt through the cuticle for dispersal.


title: Ascomycota

text: Asexual reproduction process in ascomycetes also involves the budding which we clearly observe in yeast. This is termed a "blastic process". It involves the blowing out or blebbing of the hyphal tip wall. The blastic process can involve all wall layers, or there can be a new cell wall synthesized which is extruded from within the old wall.


title: Ascomycota

text: The initial events of budding can be seen as the development of a ring of chitin around the point where the bud is about to appear. This reinforces and stabilizes the cell wall. Enzymatic activity and turgor pressure act to weaken and extrude the cell wall. New cell wall material is incorporated during this phase. Cell contents are forced into the progeny cell, and as the final phase of mitosis ends a cell plate, the point at which a new cell wall will grow inwards from, forms.


title: Ascomycota

text: Several outdated taxon names—based on morphological features—are still occasionally used for species of the Ascomycota. These include the following sexual (teleomorphic) groups, defined by the structures of their sexual fruiting bodies: the Discomycetes, which included all species forming apothecia; the Pyrenomycetes, which included all sac fungi that formed perithecia or pseudothecia, or any structure resembling these morphological structures; and the Plectomycetes, which included those species that form cleistothecia. Hemiascomycetes included the yeasts and yeast-like fungi that have now been placed into the Saccharomycotina or Taphrinomycotina, while the Euascomycetes included the remaining species of the Ascomycota, which are now in the Pezizomycotina, and the Neolecta, which are in the Taphrinomycotina.


title: Ascomycota

text: Some ascomycetes do not reproduce sexually or are not known to produce asci and are therefore anamorphic species. Those anamorphs that produce conidia (mitospores) were previously described as mitosporic Ascomycota. Some taxonomists placed this group into a separate artificial phylum, the Deuteromycota (or "Fungi Imperfecti"). Where recent molecular analyses have identified close relationships with ascus-bearing taxa, anamorphic species have been grouped into the Ascomycota, despite the absence of the defining ascus. Sexual and asexual isolates of the same species commonly carry different binomial species names, as, for example, "Aspergillus nidulans" and "Emericella nidulans", for asexual and sexual isolates, respectively, of the same species.


title: Ascomycota

text: Species of the Deuteromycota were classified as Coelomycetes if they produced their conidia in minute flask- or saucer-shaped conidiomata, known technically as "pycnidia" and "acervuli". The Hyphomycetes were those species where the conidiophores ("i.e.", the hyphal structures that carry conidia-forming cells at the end) are free or loosely organized. They are mostly isolated but sometimes also appear as bundles of cells aligned in parallel (described as "synnematal") or as cushion-shaped masses (described as "sporodochial").


title: Ascomycota

text: Most species grow as filamentous, microscopic structures called hyphae or as budding single cells (yeasts). Many interconnected hyphae form a thallus usually referred to as the mycelium, which—when visible to the naked eye (macroscopic)—is commonly called mold. During sexual reproduction, many Ascomycota typically produce large numbers of asci. The ascus is often contained in a multicellular, occasionally readily visible fruiting structure, the ascocarp (also called an "ascoma"). Ascocarps come in a very large variety of shapes: cup-shaped, club-shaped, potato-like, spongy, seed-like, oozing and pimple-like, coral-like, nit-like, golf-ball-shaped, perforated tennis ball-like, cushion-shaped, plated and feathered in miniature (Laboulbeniales), microscopic classic Greek shield-shaped, stalked or sessile. They can appear solitary or clustered. Their texture can likewise be very variable, including fleshy, like charcoal (carbonaceous), leathery, rubbery, gelatinous, slimy, powdery, or cob-web-like. Ascocarps come in multiple colors such as red, orange, yellow, brown, black, or, more rarely, green or blue. Some ascomyceous fungi, such as "Saccharomyces cerevisiae", grow as single-celled yeasts, which—during sexual reproduction—develop into an ascus, and do not form fruiting bodies.


title: Ascomycota

text: In lichenized species, the thallus of the fungus defines the shape of the symbiotic colony. Some dimorphic species, such as "Candida albicans", can switch between growth as single cells and as filamentous, multicellular hyphae. Other species are pleomorphic, exhibiting asexual (anamorphic) as well as a sexual (teleomorphic) growth forms.


title: Ascomycota

text: Except for lichens, the non-reproductive (vegetative) mycelium of most ascomycetes is usually inconspicuous because it is commonly embedded in the substrate, such as soil, or grows on or inside a living host, and only the ascoma may be seen when fruiting. Pigmentation, such as melanin in hyphal walls, along with prolific growth on surfaces can result in visible mold colonies; examples include "Cladosporium" species, which form black spots on bathroom caulking and other moist areas. Many ascomycetes cause food spoilage, and, therefore, the pellicles or moldy layers that develop on jams, juices, and other foods are the mycelia of these species or occasionally Mucoromycotina and almost never Basidiomycota. Sooty molds that develop on plants, especially in the tropics are the thalli of many species.


title: Ascomycota

text: Large masses of yeast cells, asci or ascus-like cells, or conidia can also form macroscopic structures. For example. "Pneumocystis" species can colonize lung cavities (visible in x-rays), causing a form of pneumonia. Asci of "Ascosphaera" fill honey bee larvae and pupae causing mummification with a chalk-like appearance, hence the name "chalkbrood". Yeasts for small colonies in vitro and in vivo, and excessive growth of "Candida" species in the mouth or vagina causes "thrush", a form of candidiasis.


title: Ascomycota

text: The cell walls of the ascomycetes almost always contain chitin and β-glucans, and divisions within the hyphae, called "septa", are the internal boundaries of individual cells (or compartments). The cell wall and septa give stability and rigidity to the hyphae and may prevent loss of cytoplasm in case of local damage to cell wall and cell membrane. The septa commonly have a small opening in the center, which functions as a cytoplasmic connection between adjacent cells, also sometimes allowing cell-to-cell movement of nuclei within a hypha. Vegetative hyphae of most ascomycetes contain only one nucleus per cell ("uninucleate" hyphae), but multinucleate cells—especially in the apical regions of growing hyphae—can also be present.


title: Ascomycota

text: In common with other fungal phyla, the Ascomycota are heterotrophic organisms that require organic compounds as energy sources. These are obtained by feeding on a variety of organic substrates including dead matter, foodstuffs, or as symbionts in or on other living organisms. To obtain these nutrients from their surroundings, ascomycetous fungi secrete powerful digestive enzymes that break down organic substances into smaller molecules, which are then taken up into the cell. Many species live on dead plant material such as leaves, twigs, or logs. Several species colonize plants, animals, or other fungi as parasites or mutualistic symbionts and derive all their metabolic energy in form of nutrients from the tissues of their hosts.


title: Ascomycota

text: Owing to their long evolutionary history, the Ascomycota have evolved the capacity to break down almost every organic substance. Unlike most organisms, they are able to use their own enzymes to digest plant biopolymers such as cellulose or lignin. Collagen, an abundant structural protein in animals, and keratin—a protein that forms hair and nails—, can also serve as food sources. Unusual examples include "Aureobasidium pullulans", which feeds on wall paint, and the kerosene fungus "Amorphotheca resinae", which feeds on aircraft fuel (causing occasional problems for the airline industry), and may sometimes block fuel pipes. Other species can resist high osmotic stress and grow, for example, on salted fish, and a few ascomycetes are aquatic.


title: Ascomycota

text: The Ascomycota is characterized by a high degree of specialization; for instance, certain species of Laboulbeniales attack only one particular leg of one particular insect species. Many Ascomycota engage in symbiotic relationships such as in lichens—symbiotic associations with green algae or cyanobacteria—in which the fungal symbiont directly obtains products of photosynthesis. In common with many basidiomycetes and Glomeromycota, some ascomycetes form symbioses with plants by colonizing the roots to form mycorrhizal associations. The Ascomycota also represents several carnivorous fungi, which have developed hyphal traps to capture small protists such as amoebae, as well as roundworms ("Nematoda"), rotifers, tardigrades, and small arthropods such as springtails ("Collembola").


title: Ascomycota

text: The Ascomycota are represented in all land ecosystems worldwide, occurring on all continents including Antarctica. Spores and hyphal fragments are dispersed through the atmosphere and freshwater environments, as well as ocean beaches and tidal zones. The distribution of species is variable; while some are found on all continents, others, as for example the white truffle "Tuber magnatum", only occur in isolated locations in Italy and Eastern Europe. The distribution of plant-parasitic species is often restricted by host distributions; for example, "Cyttaria" is only found on "Nothofagus" (Southern Beech) in the Southern Hemisphere.


title: Ascomycota

text: Asexual reproduction is the dominant form of propagation in the Ascomycota, and is responsible for the rapid spread of these fungi into new areas. It occurs through vegetative reproductive spores, the conidia. The conidiospores commonly contain one nucleus and are products of mitotic cell divisions and thus are sometimes called mitospores, which are genetically identical to the mycelium from which they originate. They are typically formed at the ends of specialized hyphae, the "conidiophores". Depending on the species they may be dispersed by wind or water, or by animals.


title: Ascomycota

text: Different types of asexual spores can be identified by colour, shape, and how they are released as individual spores. Spore types can be used as taxonomic characters in the classification within the Ascomycota. The most frequent types are the single-celled spores, which are designated "amerospores". If the spore is divided into two by a cross-wall (septum), it is called a "didymospore".


title: Ascomycota

text: When there are two or more cross-walls, the classification depends on spore shape. If the septae are "transversal", like the rungs of a ladder, it is a "phragmospore", and if they possess a net-like structure it is a "dictyospore". In "staurospores" ray-like arms radiate from a central body; in others ("helicospores") the entire spore is wound up in a spiral like a spring. Very long worm-like spores with a length-to-diameter ratio of more than 15:1, are called "scolecospores".


title: Ascomycota

text: Important characteristics of the anamorphs of the Ascomycota are "conidiogenesis", which includes spore formation and dehiscence (separation from the parent structure). Conidiogenesis corresponds to Embryology in animals and plants and can be divided into two fundamental forms of development: "blastic" conidiogenesis, where the spore is already evident before it separates from the conidiogenic hypha, and "thallic" conidiogenesis, during which a cross-wall forms and the newly created cell develops into a spore. The spores may or may not be generated in a large-scale specialized structure that helps to spread them.


title: Ascomycota

text: Sometimes the conidia are produced in structures visible to the naked eye, which help to distribute the spores. These structures are called "conidiomata" (singular: conidioma), and may take the form of "pycnidia" (which are flask-shaped and arise in the fungal tissue) or "acervuli" (which are cushion-shaped and arise in host tissue).


title: Ascomycota

text: Dehiscence happens in two ways. In "schizolytic" dehiscence, a double-dividing wall with a central lamella (layer) forms between the cells; the central layer then breaks down thereby releasing the spores. In "rhexolytic" dehiscence, the cell wall that joins the spores on the outside degenerates and releases the conidia.


title: Ascomycota

text: Several Ascomycota species are not known to have a sexual cycle. Such asexual species may be able to undergo genetic recombination between individuals by processes involving "heterokaryosis" and "parasexual" events.


title: Ascomycota

text: Parasexuality refers to the process of heterokaryosis, caused by merging of two hyphae belonging to different individuals, by a process called "anastomosis", followed by a series of events resulting in genetically different cell nuclei in the mycelium.


title: Ascomycota

text: The merging of nuclei is not followed by meiotic events, such as gamete formation and results in an increased number of chromosomes per nuclei. "Mitotic crossover" may enable recombination, i.e., an exchange of genetic material between homologous chromosomes. The chromosome number may then be restored to its haploid state by nuclear division, with each daughter nuclei being genetically different from the original parent nuclei. Alternatively, nuclei may lose some chromosomes, resulting in aneuploid cells. "Candida albicans" (class Saccharomycetes) is an example of a fungus that has a parasexual cycle (see Candida albicans and Parasexual cycle).


title: Ascomycota

text: Sexual reproduction in the Ascomycota leads to the formation of the "ascus", the structure that defines this fungal group and distinguishes it from other fungal phyla. The ascus is a tube-shaped vessel, a "meiosporangium", which contains the sexual spores produced by meiosis and which are called "ascospores".


title: Ascomycota

text: Apart from a few exceptions, such as "Candida albicans", most ascomycetes are haploid, i.e., they contain one set of chromosomes per nucleus. During sexual reproduction there is a diploid phase, which commonly is very short, and meiosis restores the haploid state. The sexual cycle of one well-studied representative species of Ascomycota is described in greater detail in "Neurospora crassa". Also, the adaptive basis for the maintenance of sexual reproduction in the Ascomycota fungi was reviewed by Wallen and Perlin. They concluded that the most plausible reason for the maintenance of this capability is the benefit of repairing DNA damage by using recombination that occurs during meiosis. DNA damage can be caused by a variety of stresses such as nutrient limitation.


title: Ascomycota

text: The sexual part of the life cycle commences when two hyphal structures mate. In the case of "homothallic" species, mating is enabled between hyphae of the same fungal clone, whereas in "heterothallic" species, the two hyphae must originate from fungal clones that differ genetically, i.e., those that are of a different mating type. Mating types are typical of the fungi and correspond roughly to the sexes in plants and animals; however one species may have more than two mating types, resulting in sometimes complex vegetative incompatibility systems. The adaptive function of mating type is discussed in "Neurospora crassa".


title: Ascomycota

text: Gametangia are sexual structures formed from hyphae, and are the generative cells. A very fine hypha, called trichogyne emerges from one gametangium, the "ascogonium", and merges with a gametangium (the "antheridium") of the other fungal isolate. The nuclei in the antheridium then migrate into the ascogonium, and plasmogamy—the mixing of the cytoplasm—occurs. Unlike in animals and plants, plasmogamy is not immediately followed by the merging of the nuclei (called "karyogamy"). Instead, the nuclei from the two hyphae form pairs, initiating the "dikaryophase" of the sexual cycle, during which time the pairs of nuclei synchronously divide. Fusion of the paired nuclei leads to mixing of the genetic material and recombination and is followed by meiosis. A similar sexual cycle is present in the red algae (Rhodophyta). A discarded hypothesis held that a second karyogamy event occurred in the ascogonium prior to ascogeny, resulting in a tetraploid nucleus which divided into four diploid nuclei by meiosis and then into eight haploid nuclei by a supposed process called brachymeiosis, but this hypothesis was disproven in the 1950s.


title: Ascomycota

text: From the fertilized ascogonium, "dinucleate" hyphae emerge in which each cell contains two nuclei. These hyphae are called "ascogenous" or fertile hyphae. They are supported by the vegetative mycelium containing uni– (or mono–) nucleate hyphae, which are sterile. The mycelium containing both sterile and fertile hyphae may grow into fruiting body, the "ascocarp", which may contain millions of fertile hyphae.


title: Ascomycota

text: An ascocarp is the fruiting body of the sexual phase in Ascomycota. There are five morphologically different types of ascocarp, namely:


title: Ascomycota

text: The sexual structures are formed in the fruiting layer of the ascocarp, the hymenium. At one end of ascogenous hyphae, characteristic U-shaped hooks develop, which curve back opposite to the growth direction of the hyphae. The two nuclei contained in the apical part of each hypha divide in such a way that the threads of their mitotic spindles run parallel, creating two pairs of genetically different nuclei. One daughter nucleus migrates close to the hook, while the other daughter nucleus locates to the basal part of the hypha. The formation of two parallel cross-walls then divides the hypha into three sections: one at the hook with one nucleus, one at the basal of the original hypha that contains one nucleus, and one that separates the U-shaped part, which contains the other two nuclei.


title: Ascomycota

text: Fusion of the nuclei (karyogamy) takes place in the U-shaped cells in the hymenium, and results in the formation of a diploid zygote. The zygote grows into the ascus, an elongated tube-shaped or cylinder-shaped capsule. Meiosis then gives rise to four haploid nuclei, usually followed by a further mitotic division that results in eight nuclei in each ascus. The nuclei along with some cytoplasma become enclosed within membranes and a cell wall to give rise to ascospores that are aligned inside the ascus like peas in a pod.


title: Ascomycota

text: Upon opening of the ascus, ascospores may be dispersed by the wind, while in some cases the spores are forcibly ejected form the ascus; certain species have evolved spore cannons, which can eject ascospores up to 30 cm. away. When the spores reach a suitable substrate, they germinate, form new hyphae, which restarts the fungal life cycle.


title: Ascomycota

text: The form of the ascus is important for classification and is divided into four basic types: unitunicate-operculate, unitunicate-inoperculate, bitunicate, or prototunicate. See the article on asci for further details.


title: Ascomycota

text: The Ascomycota fulfil a central role in most land-based ecosystems. They are important decomposers, breaking down organic materials, such as dead leaves and animals, and helping the detritivores (animals that feed on decomposing material) to obtain their nutrients. Ascomycetes along with other fungi can break down large molecules such as cellulose or lignin, and thus have important roles in nutrient cycling such as the carbon cycle.


title: Ascomycota

text: The fruiting bodies of the Ascomycota provide food for many animals ranging from insects and slugs and snails ("Gastropoda") to rodents and larger mammals such as deer and wild boars.


title: Ascomycota

text: Many ascomycetes also form symbiotic relationships with other organisms, including plants and animals.


title: Ascomycota

text: Probably since early in their evolutionary history, the Ascomycota have formed symbiotic associations with green algae ("Chlorophyta"), and other types of algae and cyanobacteria. These mutualistic associations are commonly known as lichens, and can grow and persist in terrestrial regions of the earth that are inhospitable to other organisms and characterized by extremes in temperature and humidity, including the Arctic, the Antarctic, deserts, and mountaintops. While the photoautotrophic algal partner generates metabolic energy through photosynthesis, the fungus offers a stable, supportive matrix and protects cells from radiation and dehydration. Around 42% of the Ascomycota (about 18,000 species) form lichens, and almost all the fungal partners of lichens belong to the Ascomycota.


title: Ascomycota

text: Members of the Ascomycota form two important types of relationship with plants: as mycorrhizal fungi and as endophytes. Mycorrhiza are symbiotic associations of fungi with the root systems of the plants, which can be of vital importance for growth and persistence for the plant. The fine mycelial network of the fungus enables the increased uptake of mineral salts that occur at low levels in the soil. In return, the plant provides the fungus with metabolic energy in the form of photosynthetic products.


title: Ascomycota

text: Endophytic fungi live inside plants, and those that form mutualistic or commensal associations with their host, do not damage their hosts. The exact nature of the relationship between endophytic fungus and host depends on the species involved, and in some cases fungal colonization of plants can bestow a higher resistance against insects, roundworms (nematodes), and bacteria; in the case of grass endophytes the fungal symbiont produces poisonous alkaloids, which can affect the health of plant-eating (herbivorous) mammals and deter or kill insect herbivores.


title: Ascomycota

text: Several ascomycetes of the genus "Xylaria" colonize the nests of leafcutter ants and other fungus-growing ants of the tribe Attini, and the fungal gardens of termites (Isoptera). Since they do not generate fruiting bodies until the insects have left the nests, it is suspected that, as confirmed in several cases of Basidiomycota species, they may be cultivated.


title: Ascomycota

text: Bark beetles (family Scolytidae) are important symbiotic partners of ascomycetes. The female beetles transport fungal spores to new hosts in characteristic tucks in their skin, the "mycetangia". The beetle tunnels into the wood and into large chambers in which they lay their eggs. Spores released from the mycetangia germinate into hyphae, which can break down the wood. The beetle larvae then feed on the fungal mycelium, and, on reaching maturity, carry new spores with them to renew the cycle of infection. A well-known example of this is Dutch elm disease, caused by "Ophiostoma ulmi", which is carried by the European elm bark beetle, "Scolytus multistriatus".


title: Nina Sosanya

text: Oluwakemi Nina Sosanya (born 6 June 1969) is an English stage, television, film, radio actress and narrator. She is most notable for her roles in "Teachers", "W1A" and "Last Tango in Halifax".


title: Nina Sosanya

text: Sosanya was born in Islington, London, to a Nigerian father and an English mother. For a short time, she attended the Vale of Catmose College in Oakham and later trained at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance.


title: Nina Sosanya

text: Sosanya has appeared in many roles in the theatre, on television and in films. Her first big break in theatre was in "Anthony and Cleopatra" at the National Theatre, and with the 2001 series "Teachers". She also appeared in "Sorted", "People Like Us", "Love Actually", "Nathan Barley", "Renaissance", "Casanova", as Karen Blaine in the "Jonathan Creek" episode "The Three Gamblers", "Much Ado About Nothing", "Cape Wrath/Meadowlands", the "Doctor Who" episode "Fear Her", and "FM".


title: Nina Sosanya

text: Sosanya appeared as Colly Trent in series 2 of the BBC television drama "Five Days". She appeared in the BBC Four television series "Twenty Twelve", a comedy about the London 2012 Olympic build up, and the BBC One drama series "Silk" and "Hustle". She also made a brief appearance in the children's CBBC science fiction series, "Wizards vs Aliens" as Benny Sherwood's mother, Trisha.


title: Nina Sosanya

text: Sosanya played the character Alibe Silver in "Treasure Island" (2012). She played a main character, Kate McKenzie, in series 1–3 of the BBC original drama "Last Tango in Halifax" during 2012–2015, and a main character, Lucy Freeman, in the TV series "W1A" in 2014. In 2015, she starred with Catherine Tate and Mark Gatiss in a new play, "The Vote", in the run-up to the UK 2015 general election. In 2016, Sosanya appeared as DCI Laura Porter in the ITV series "Marcella".


title: Nina Sosanya

text: She appeared as Sister Mary Loquacious in the first series of "Good Omens" in 2018. It was announced in January 2022 that she would be reappearing in the second series.


title: Nina Sosanya

text: In 2019, Sosanya narrated the CBeebies bedtime TV series, "Moon and Me" which is set in a toy house & follows the lives of toylike characters: Moon Baby, Pepi Nana, Sleepy Dibillo, Lambkin, Little Nana, Mr. Onion and Collywobble. There are 50 episodes.


title: Nina Sosanya

text: In 2021, it was announced that she had been cast as lead warden Leigh in Channel 4 drama, "Screw". It was broadcast in January 2022.


title: Nina Sosanya

text: In 2003, she played Rosalind in "As You Like It" with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon. In 2008, she returned to the RSC to play Rosaline in "Love's Labour's Lost" and, in 2009, appeared in a radio adaptation of a story from the short story collection "The State of the Art". In January 2010, Sosanya appeared as Mae Pollock in Tennessee Williams' play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" at the Novello Theatre, London. In 2014, she appeared in the world premiere production of "Privacy" at the Donmar Warehouse, London. In 2016, she appeared in the world premiere production of "Elegy" at the Donmar Warehouse.


title: Nina Sosanya

text: Sosanya reads the part of Sephy on the audio book versions of Malorie Blackman's "Noughts and Crosses" series.


title: Mersenne prime

text: In mathematics, a Mersenne prime is a prime number that is one less than a power of two. That is, it is a prime number of the form for some integer . They are named after Marin Mersenne, a French Minim friar, who studied them in the early 17th century. If is a composite number then so is . Therefore, an equivalent definition of the Mersenne primes is that they are the prime numbers of the form for some prime .


title: Mersenne prime

text: The exponents which give Mersenne primes are 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31, ... and the resulting Mersenne primes are 3, 7, 31, 127, 8191, 131071, 524287, 2147483647, ... .


title: Mersenne prime

text: Numbers of the form without the primality requirement may be called Mersenne numbers. Sometimes, however, Mersenne numbers are defined to have the additional requirement that be prime.


title: Mersenne prime

text: Mersenne primes were studied in antiquity because of their close connection to perfect numbers: the Euclid–Euler theorem asserts a one-to-one correspondence between even perfect numbers and Mersenne primes. Many of the largest known primes are Mersenne primes because Mersenne numbers are easier to check for primality.


title: Mersenne prime

text: , 51 Mersenne primes are known. The largest known prime number, , is a Mersenne prime. Since 1997, all newly found Mersenne primes have been discovered by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, a distributed computing project. In December 2020, a major milestone in the project was passed after all exponents below 100 million were checked at least once.


title: Mersenne prime

text: Many fundamental questions about Mersenne primes remain unresolved. It is not even known whether the set of Mersenne primes is finite or infinite. The Lenstra–Pomerance–Wagstaff conjecture asserts that there are infinitely many Mersenne primes and predicts their order of growth. It is also not known whether infinitely many Mersenne numbers with prime exponents are composite, although this would follow from widely believed conjectures about prime numbers, for example, the infinitude of Sophie Germain primes congruent to 3 (mod 4). For these primes , (which is also prime) will divide , for example, , , , , , , , and . Since for these primes , is congruent to 7 mod 8, so 2 is a quadratic residue mod , and the multiplicative order of 2 mod must divide formula_1. Since is a prime, it must be or 1. However, it cannot be 1 since formula_2 and 1 has no prime factors, so it must be . Hence, divides formula_3 and formula_4 cannot be prime.


title: Mersenne prime

text: The first four Mersenne primes are , , and and because the first Mersenne prime starts at , all Mersenne primes are congruent to 3 (mod 4). Other than and , all other Mersenne numbers are also congruent to 3 (mod 4). Consequently, in the prime factorization of a Mersenne number (  ) there must be at least one prime factor congruent to 3 (mod 4).


title: Mersenne prime

text: A basic theorem about Mersenne numbers states that if is prime, then the exponent must also be prime. This follows from the identity


title: Mersenne prime

text: Though the above examples might suggest that is prime for all primes , this is not the case, and the smallest counterexample is the Mersenne number


title: Mersenne prime

text: The evidence at hand suggests that a randomly selected Mersenne number is much more likely to be prime than an arbitrary randomly selected odd integer of similar size. Nonetheless, prime values of appear to grow increasingly sparse as increases. For example, eight of the first 11 primes give rise to a Mersenne prime (the correct terms on Mersenne's original list), while is prime for only 43 of the first two million prime numbers (up to 32,452,843).


title: Mersenne prime

text: The current lack of any simple test to determine whether a given Mersenne number is prime makes the search for Mersenne primes a difficult task, since Mersenne numbers grow very rapidly. The Lucas–Lehmer primality test (LLT) is an efficient primality test that greatly aids this task, making it much easier to test the primality of Mersenne numbers than that of most other numbers of the same size. The search for the largest known prime has somewhat of a cult following. Consequently, a large amount of computer power has been expended searching for new Mersenne primes, much of which is now done using distributed computing.


title: Mersenne prime

text: Arithmetic modulo a Mersenne number is particularly efficient on a binary computer, making them popular choices when a prime modulus is desired, such as the Park–Miller random number generator. To find a primitive polynomial of Mersenne number order requires knowing the factorization of that number, so Mersenne primes allow one to find primitive polynomials of very high order. Such primitive trinomials are used in pseudorandom number generators with very large periods such as the Mersenne twister, generalized shift register and Lagged Fibonacci generators.


title: Mersenne prime

text: Mersenne primes are closely connected to perfect numbers. In the 4th century BC, Euclid proved that if is prime, then ) is a perfect number. In the 18th century, Leonhard Euler proved that, conversely, all even perfect numbers have this form. This is known as the Euclid–Euler theorem. It is unknown whether there are any odd perfect numbers.


title: Mersenne prime

text: Mersenne primes take their name from the 17th-century French scholar Marin Mersenne, who compiled what was supposed to be a list of Mersenne primes with exponents up to 257. The exponents listed by Mersenne were as follows:


title: Mersenne prime

text: His list replicated the known primes of his time with exponents up to 19. His next entry, 31, was correct, but the list then became largely incorrect, as Mersenne mistakenly included and (which are composite) and omitted , , and (which are prime). Mersenne gave little indication of how he came up with his list.


title: Mersenne prime

text: Édouard Lucas proved in 1876 that is indeed prime, as Mersenne claimed. This was the largest known prime number for 75 years until 1951, when Ferrier found a larger prime, formula_6, using a desk calculating machine. was determined to be prime in 1883 by Ivan Mikheevich Pervushin, though Mersenne claimed it was composite, and for this reason it is sometimes called Pervushin's number. This was the second-largest known prime number, and it remained so until 1911. Lucas had shown another error in Mersenne's list in 1876. Without finding a factor, Lucas demonstrated that is actually composite. No factor was found until a famous talk by Frank Nelson Cole in 1903. Without speaking a word, he went to a blackboard and raised 2 to the 67th power, then subtracted one, resulting in the number . On the other side of the board, he multiplied and got the same number, then returned to his seat (to applause) without speaking. He later said that the result had taken him "three years of Sundays" to find. A correct list of all Mersenne primes in this number range was completed and rigorously verified only about three centuries after Mersenne published his list.


title: Mersenne prime

text: Fast algorithms for finding Mersenne primes are available, and , the eight largest known prime numbers are Mersenne primes.


title: Mersenne prime

text: The first four Mersenne primes , , and were known in antiquity. The fifth, , was discovered anonymously before 1461; the next two ( and ) were found by Pietro Cataldi in 1588. After nearly two centuries, was verified to be prime by Leonhard Euler in 1772. The next (in historical, not numerical order) was , found by Édouard Lucas in 1876, then by Ivan Mikheevich Pervushin in 1883. Two more ( and ) were found early in the 20th century, by R. E. Powers in 1911 and 1914, respectively.


title: Mersenne prime

text: The most efficient method presently known for testing the primality of Mersenne numbers is the Lucas–Lehmer primality test. Specifically, it can be shown that for prime , is prime if and only if divides , where and for .


title: Mersenne prime

text: During the era of manual calculation, all the exponents up to and including 257 were tested with the Lucas–Lehmer test and found to be composite. A notable contribution was made by retired Yale physics professor Horace Scudder Uhler, who did the calculations for exponents 157, 167, 193, 199, 227, and 229. Unfortunately for those investigators, the interval they were testing contains the largest known relative gap between Mersenne primes: the next Mersenne prime exponent, 521, would turn out to be more than four times as large as the previous record of 127.


title: Mersenne prime

text: The search for Mersenne primes was revolutionized by the introduction of the electronic digital computer. Alan Turing searched for them on the Manchester Mark 1 in 1949, but the first successful identification of a Mersenne prime, , by this means was achieved at 10:00 pm on January 30, 1952, using the U.S. National Bureau of Standards Western Automatic Computer (SWAC) at the Institute for Numerical Analysis at the University of California, Los Angeles, under the direction of D. H. Lehmer, with a computer search program written and run by Prof. R. M. Robinson. It was the first Mersenne prime to be identified in thirty-eight years; the next one, , was found by the computer a little less than two hours later. Three more — , , and  — were found by the same program in the next several months. was the first prime discovered with more than 1000 digits, was the first with more than 10,000, and was the first with more than a million. In general, the number of digits in the decimal representation of equals , where denotes the floor function (or equivalently ).


title: Mersenne prime

text: In September 2008, mathematicians at UCLA participating in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) won part of a $100,000 prize from the Electronic Frontier Foundation for their discovery of a very nearly 13-million-digit Mersenne prime. The prize, finally confirmed in October 2009, is for the first known prime with at least 10 million digits. The prime was found on a Dell OptiPlex 745 on August 23, 2008. This was the eighth Mersenne prime discovered at UCLA.


title: Mersenne prime

text: On April 12, 2009, a GIMPS server log reported that a 47th Mersenne prime had possibly been found. The find was first noticed on June 4, 2009, and verified a week later. The prime is . Although it is chronologically the 47th Mersenne prime to be discovered, it is smaller than the largest known at the time, which was the 45th to be discovered.


title: Mersenne prime

text: On January 25, 2013, Curtis Cooper, a mathematician at the University of Central Missouri, discovered a 48th Mersenne prime, (a number with 17,425,170 digits), as a result of a search executed by a GIMPS server network.


title: Mersenne prime

text: On January 19, 2016, Cooper published his discovery of a 49th Mersenne prime, (a number with 22,338,618 digits), as a result of a search executed by a GIMPS server network. This was the fourth Mersenne prime discovered by Cooper and his team in the past ten years.


title: Mersenne prime

text: On September 2, 2016, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search finished verifying all tests below M, thus officially confirming its position as the 45th Mersenne prime.


title: Mersenne prime

text: On January 3, 2018, it was announced that Jonathan Pace, a 51-year-old electrical engineer living in Germantown, Tennessee, had found a 50th Mersenne prime, (a number with 23,249,425 digits), as a result of a search executed by a GIMPS server network. The discovery was made by a computer in the offices of a church in the same town.


title: Mersenne prime

text: On December 21, 2018, it was announced that The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) discovered the largest known prime number, , having 24,862,048 digits. A computer volunteered by Patrick Laroche from Ocala, Florida made the find on December 7, 2018.


title: Mersenne prime

text: In late 2020, GIMPS began using a new technique to rule out potential Mersenne primes called the Probable prime (PRP) test, based on development from Robert Gerbicz in 2017, and a simple way to verify tests developed by Krzysztof Pietrzak in 2018. Due to the low error rate and ease of proof, this nearly halved the computing time to rule out potential primes over the Lucas-Lehmer test (as two users would no longer have to perform the same test to confirm the other's result), although exponents passing the PRP test still require one to confirm their primality.


title: Mersenne prime

text: Since they are prime numbers, Mersenne primes are divisible only by 1 and themselves. However, not all Mersenne numbers are Mersenne primes. Mersenne numbers are very good test cases for the special number field sieve algorithm, so often the largest number factorized with this algorithm has been a Mersenne number. , is the record-holder, having been factored with a variant of the special number field sieve that allows the factorization of several numbers at once. See integer factorization records for links to more information. The special number field sieve can factorize numbers with more than one large factor. If a number has only one very large factor then other algorithms can factorize larger numbers by first finding small factors and then running a primality test on the cofactor. , the largest completely factored number (with probable prime factors allowed) is , where is a 3,829,294-digit probable prime. It was discovered by a GIMPS participant with nickname "Funky Waddle". , the Mersenne number "M" is the smallest composite Mersenne number with no known factors; it has no prime factors below 2, and is very unlikely to have any factors below 10 (~2).


title: Mersenne prime

text: In the mathematical problem Tower of Hanoi, solving a puzzle with an -disc tower requires steps, assuming no mistakes are made. The number of rice grains on the whole chessboard in the wheat and chessboard problem is .


title: Mersenne prime

text: The asteroid with minor planet number 8191 is named 8191 Mersenne after Marin Mersenne, because 8191 is a Mersenne prime (3 Juno, 7 Iris, 31 Euphrosyne and 127 Johanna having been discovered and named during the 19th century).


title: Mersenne prime

text: In geometry, an integer right triangle that is primitive and has its even leg a power of 2 (  ) generates a unique right triangle such that its inradius is always a Mersenne number. For example, if the even leg is then because it is primitive it constrains the odd leg to be , the hypotenuse to be and its inradius to be .


title: Mersenne prime

text: A Mersenne–Fermat number is defined as , with prime, natural number, and can be written as . When , it is a Mersenne number. When , it is a Fermat number. The only known Mersenne–Fermat primes with are


title: Mersenne prime

text: The simplest generalized Mersenne primes are prime numbers of the form , where is a low-degree polynomial with small integer coefficients. An example is , in this case, , and ; another example is , in this case, , and .


title: Mersenne prime

text: It is also natural to try to generalize primes of the form to primes of the form (for and ). However (see also theorems above), is always divisible by , so unless the latter is a unit, the former is not a prime. This can be remedied by allowing "b" to be an algebraic integer instead of an integer:


title: Mersenne prime

text: In the ring of integers (on real numbers), if is a unit, then is either 2 or 0. But are the usual Mersenne primes, and the formula does not lead to anything interesting (since it is always −1 for all ). Thus, we can regard a ring of "integers" on complex numbers instead of real numbers, like Gaussian integers and Eisenstein integers.


title: Mersenne prime

text: If we regard the ring of Gaussian integers, we get the case and , and can ask (WLOG) for which the number is a Gaussian prime which will then be called a Gaussian Mersenne prime.


title: Mersenne prime

text: Like the sequence of exponents for usual Mersenne primes, this sequence contains only (rational) prime numbers.


title: Mersenne prime

text: As for all Gaussian primes, the norms (that is, squares of absolute values) of these numbers are rational primes:


title: Mersenne prime

text: One may encounter cases where such a Mersenne prime is also an "Eisenstein prime", being of the form and . In these cases, such numbers are called Eisenstein Mersenne primes.


title: Mersenne prime

text: The other way to deal with the fact that is always divisible by , it is to simply take out this factor and ask which values of make


title: Mersenne prime

text: be prime. (The integer can be either positive or negative.) If, for example, we take , we get values of:


title: Mersenne prime

text: It is a conjecture that for every integer which is not a perfect power, there are infinitely many values of such that is prime. (When is a perfect power, it can be shown that there is at most one value such that is prime)


title: Mersenne prime

text: with , any coprime integers, and . (Since is always divisible by , the division is necessary for there to be any chance of finding prime numbers.) We can ask which makes this number prime. It can be shown that such must be primes themselves or equal to 4, and can be 4 if and only if and is prime. It is a conjecture that for any pair such that and are not both perfect th powers for any and is not a perfect fourth power, there are infinitely many values of such that is prime. However, this has not been proved for any single value of .


title: Mersenne prime

text: When , it is , a difference of two consecutive perfect th powers, and if is prime, then must be , because it is divisible by .


title: PEST analysis

text: In business analysis, PEST analysis ("political, economic, socio-cultural and technological") describes a framework of macro-environmental factors used in the environmental scanning component of strategic management. It is part of an external environment analysis when conducting a strategic analysis or doing market research, and gives an overview of the different macro-environmental factors to be taken into consideration. It is a strategic tool for understanding market growth or decline, business position, potential and direction for operations.


title: PEST analysis

text: PEST analysis was developed in 1967 by Aguilar as an environmental scanning framework. Aguilar argued that firms must scan the economic, technical, political and social categories (ETPS) that may affect strategy, defining environmental scanning as follows, “scanning for information about events and relationships in a company’s outside environment, the knowledge of which would assist top management in its task of charting the company’s future course of action.”


title: PEST analysis

text: The model's factors will vary in importance to a given company based on its industry and the goods it produces. For example, consumer and B2B companies tend to be more affected by the social factors, while a global defense contractor would tend to be more affected by political factors. Additionally, factors that are more likely to change in the future or more relevant to a given company will carry greater importance. For example, a company which has borrowed heavily will need to focus more on the economic factors (especially interest rates). Furthermore, conglomerate companies who produce a wide range of products (such as Sony, Disney, or BP) may find it more useful to analyze one department of its company at a time with the PESTEL model, thus focusing on the specific factors relevant to that one department. A company may also wish to divide factors into geographical relevance, such as local, national, and global.


title: PEST analysis

text: Whereas the PEST analysis is broadly used in business practice, critics argue that it has limitations. PEST analysis can be helpful to explain market changes in the past, but it is not always suitable to predict or foresee upcoming market changes. The reason is that PEST analysis offers a broad range of categories that can be deceivingly simple because they lack specific criteria about what exactly catalyses disruption. In other words, the PEST analysis does not offer guidelines for what to emphasise and what not to emphasise within the categories. As a result, firms can be blindsided by disruptions that cannot be neatly defined within the categories.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: "Home" is the second episode of the fourth season of the American science fiction television series "The X-Files", which originally aired on the Fox network on October11, 1996. Directed by Kim Manners, it was written by Glen Morgan and James Wong. "Home" is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, unconnected to the overarching mythology of "The X-Files". Watched by 18.85 million viewers, the initial broadcast had a Nielsen rating of 11.9. "Home" was the only episode of "The X-Files" to carry a TV-MA rating upon broadcast and the first to receive a viewer discretion warning for graphic content if the system had been present at the time; the TV Parental Guidelines rating system would be introduced two months later, on December 19, 1996. Critics were generally complimentary, and praised the disturbing nature of the plot; several made comparisons to the work of director Tobe Hooper. Some reviewers felt the violence was excessive.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: The series centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), who work on cases linked to the paranormal, collectively called "X-Files". Mulder is a believer in the paranormal; the skeptical Scully was initially assigned to debunk his work, but the two have developed a deep friendship. In this episode, Mulder and Scully investigate the death of a baby born with severe physical defects. Traveling to the small isolated town of Home, Pennsylvania, the pair meet the Peacocks, a family of deformed farmers who have not left their house in a decade. Initially, Mulder suspects the brothers kidnapped and raped a woman to father the child, but the investigation uncovers a long history of incest involving the Peacocks' own mother.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: "Home" marks the return of writers Morgan and Wong, who left the show following its second season. They attempted to make the episode as ambitious and shocking as possible and were inspired by real-life events, including the documentary "Brother's Keeper" and a story from Charlie Chaplin's autobiography about an encounter with a family in rural Wales. The graphic content of the script attracted controversy from early in the production process. Commentators have identified themes within the episode that satirize the American Dream, address globalization, and explore the nature of motherhood. It has been cited as a seminal episode of "The X-Files" by critics and crew members.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: In the small town of Home, Pennsylvania, a woman gives birth to a deformed baby. Three similarly-deformed men bury it near their dilapidated house during a rainstorm. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are sent to investigate after the corpse is found by children during a sandlot-ball game. While talking to Home's sheriff Andy Taylor (Tucker Smallwood), Mulder asks whether the Peacock brothers—the inhabitants of the house nearest to the crime scene—have been questioned about the baby. Taylor informs him that the house dates to the American Civil War and is without electricity, running water, or heat. He also insinuates that the family has been inbreeding since the war. The three Peacock brothers watch the agents from their front porch.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: During an autopsy, the agents discover that the baby suffocated by inhaling dirt—meaning that it was buried alive. Scully suggests that the baby's defects could have been caused by inbreeding. Mulder insists that this would be impossible since the Peacocks seem to live in an all-male household. Suspecting that the Peacocks have kidnapped and raped a woman, Mulder and Scully investigate their now-abandoned residence and discover blood, scissors, and a shovel on a table. In retaliation, the Peacocks enter Sheriff Taylor's house during the night and murder him and his wife, Barbara (Judith Maxie).


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: Laboratory tests indicate that the baby's parents were members of the Peacock family. Believing that the three Peacock brothers must be holding the dead baby's mother hostage, the agents and Deputy Barney Paster (Sebastian Spence) go to arrest them. When Paster breaks down the front door of the house, he is decapitated by a booby-trap, before the brothers rip the body apart. Mulder and Scully then release the Peacocks' pigs to lure them out of the house before searching it. The agents find a quadruple amputee hidden under a bed. She is revealed to be Mrs. Peacock, the mother of the boys, who has been breeding with them for years. The brothers realize that Mulder and Scully are inside their house and attack. The two youngest sons withstand several gunshots before dying, one of them impaled on another booby-trap. Afterwards, the agents discover that Mrs. Peacock and her eldest son have escaped in their car, planning to start a new family elsewhere.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: "Home" marked the return of writers Glen Morgan and James Wong, who had left production of "The X-Files" after the second season to work on other television projects. Before their departure, Morgan and Wong had written many episodes of the series and were instrumental in the success of its first season. The two developed "", a science fiction television series canceled after one season. Subsequently, the two rejoined the staff of "The X-Files" and became writers for the fourth season. To make an impact for their return, they decided to write an ambitious story and attempted to produce a script shocking enough to push the boundaries of television. "Space: Above and Beyond" co-star Kristen Cloke advised them to study books about the "dark" side of nature so they could write about subjects like survivalism.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: Many actors from "Space: Above and Beyond" appeared in the fourth season; the first was Tucker Smallwood, who portrays Sheriff Andy Taylor in "Home". When Morgan first pitched the episode to Chris Carter, he specifically described three actors from the show—James Morrison, Rodney Rowland and Morgan Weisser—as the trio of "big freak brothers". The episode contained references to popular television, such as the use of the names Andy Taylor and Barney, and referring to Mayberry, which are references to characters and fictional town from "The Andy Griffith Show".


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: Sources consulted by the writers included "Brother's Keeper" (1992), a documentary film depicting the story of the Wards, four "barely literate" brothers who lived on a farm that had been passed on through their family for generations. The brothers drew international attention following the alleged murder of William Ward by his brother Delbert. With an estimated IQ of 68, Delbert escaped prosecution by claiming that the police had tricked him during interrogation. Wong chose to base the Peacock family on the Wards, incorporating their lifestyles into the script. The name "Peacock" came from the former neighbors of Morgan's parents.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: Further inspiration came from a story in Charlie Chaplin's autobiography; while touring with a musical theatre production, he stayed at a miner's tenement home in Wales. After dinner, the host introduced Chaplin to a disfigured and legless man named Gilbert who slept in a kitchen cupboard; Glen Morgan incorrectly recalled this as a totally limbless boy who was kept under a bed. Chaplin described the man as "a half man with no legs, an oversize blond flat-shaped head, a sickening white face, a sunken nose, [and] a large mouth" who could jump using his arms, but this was misremembered by Morgan as though the man had no limbs and "flopp[ed] around" while the family sang and danced. Morgan used his memory of this incident within the screenplay, although at Wong's suggestion they changed the character to the boy's mother. The episode was also made as an homage to 1970s horror films such as Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974) and Wes Craven's "The Hills Have Eyes" (1977).


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: It took some time for the concepts to come together into a story; elements first appeared in the second season episode "Humbug", written by Morgan's brother Darin and featuring a cast of circus sideshow performers. The episode incorporated several themes that had an influence on "Home", including the use of a "benign soul trapped in the body of a monster".


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: When director Kim Manners read the script for "Home", he called it "as classic a horror script [as] I'm ever going to see." The producers, on the other hand, felt the show had gone too far, and called it "tasteless". William B. Davis, the actor who portrayed the series' main antagonist The Smoking Man, argued that the screenplay read like Morgan and Wong deliberately wanted to go back to the stylistic origins of the series.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: Like the rest of the fourth season, "Home" was filmed in British Columbia. Most of the scenes depicting buildings were shot in the town of Surrey, British Columbia. As the town's architecture comprised both old and new styles, careful reverse angles were employed to preserve the impression of "small-town America". The building used as the Peacock house had been previously utilized in the season two episode "Aubrey". At that time, the producers noted that the house had been "untouched for years" and was "so good" they had to return to film it again. The car that the Peacock family drives in the episode was found on a farm outside Vancouver. It was rented and restored for use in the episode. Cadillac later sent the producers a letter thanking them for including one of their cars in the show.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: After the episode aired, Tucker Smallwood recalled that the filming was an unpleasant experience. He entered production of the episode with little knowledge of the nature of "The X-Files", and was surprised when he received the screenplay. During his first day on set, he asked other cast members if the series was always so violent. An unidentified crew member said, "this is awful even for us", and commented that it was probably the most gruesome episode of the series run. During the sheriff's death scene Smallwood insisted on performing his own stunts, until he hit his head attempting a dive. Another uncomfortable moment for the actor involved lying face down in a pool of fake blood for more than 90 minutes.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: The episode incorporates the song "Wonderful! Wonderful!" by musician Johnny Mathis. Having read the screenplay Mathis refused to allow his version to be used, owing to the episode's graphic content, and a cover version had to be created. Producer David Nutter, who had a background as a singer, intended to record the vocals but at the last minute another singer who sounded more like Mathis was hired. Manners explained that he wanted to use the song because "certain songs [like 'Wonderful! Wonderful!'] have a creepy, icky quality that none of us have really openly acknowledged".


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: "Home" was first submitted to the censors featuring audio of the baby screaming while being buried alive. Fox executives asked Ten Thirteen Productions to alter the audio so that the baby would sound sick; they noted that the audio change was needed to show the child was diseased and that the Peacocks were not simply killing an innocent child. Manners called the shot, shown from the child's perspective, of the baby's burial as "the most awful shot of my career". He said that he approached filming as seriously as he could because he felt the script was a classic. When production was finished, Manners declared that it was one of his favorites. Duchovny agreed with Manners, saying, "I really like that one. Although it didn't scare me." He explained that it "touched" him with its themes concerning the desire to "live and to propagate."


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: "Home" presents a satirical view of traditional family values, showcasing the conflict between classic American values and more modern culture. It contains parallels to Sam Shepard's play "Buried Child", which ends with a child's corpse (who himself was the product of incest) being exhumed from the cornfield in the backyard. Writer Sarah Stegall viewed the opening as a commentary on the ideology of the American Dream, using the death of a child to "speak to us of buried hopes and fears, and the dark secrets that can hold a family together." The town of Home encompasses the traditional values of the nuclear family—only for it to be victimized by the Peacock family—who represent the darker side of paradise. The town depicted in "Home" showcases the positive qualities of a world without globalization, but the Peacock family exhibit the negative aspects. The episode's closing scene has been described as "quintessentially American", featuring the final Peacock brother driving away in a white Cadillac with his mother "safely stowed in the trunk", ready to explore a brand new life.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: The concept of motherhood is also explored in the episode. According to Elyce Rae Helford, in her book "Fantasy Girls: Gender in the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television", Mrs. Peacock functions as a being who has been reduced "to all female functions" by her sons. She is "the grotesquely willing mother who has lost any sense of individual purpose" other than to do anything for her children. Sonia Saraiya of "The A.V. Club" writes that "Scully's sympathy for a mother that she imagines to be persecuted is turned violently on its head, to reveal a monster whose priorities are not quite so straightforward." The episode is also one of the first to explore Scully's desire to become a mother. Grant Bain states that the episode presents the dual nature of Scully's "modern desire for motherhood", as opposed to Mrs. Peacock's "perverted notion of family". Helford writes that the entry predicts "Scully's fate as the mother of 'immaculately' (technologically) conceived and monstrous progeny". In the fifth season, Scully indeed learns that she is a mother, albeit accidentally, after her ova were harvested following her abduction in second season, and an alien/human hybrid named Emily is the result. With the revelation that Scully is pregnant at the end of the seventh season finale, "Requiem", the concept revolving around Scully as a mother took center stage in seasons eight and nine with the birth of baby William.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: The use of the up-tempo "Wonderful! Wonderful!" during a violent murder sequence attracted attention for its contrasting presentation. Jan Delasara in "X-Files Confidential" called the murder of Sheriff Taylor and his wife the most "chilling moment in the series' run", highlighted by the use of a bouncy, classic pop song. It further establishes the episode's subversion of nostalgia, by using a well-known pop song during a death scene.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: "Home" originally aired on the Fox network on October 11, 1996. It had a Nielsen rating of 11.9, with a 21 share, meaning that roughly 11.9 percent of all television-equipped households, and 21 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was watched by 18.85 million viewers. "Home" was the only episode of "The X-Files" to carry a TV-MA rating upon broadcast and the first to receive a viewer discretion warning for graphic content if the system had been present at the time, with the opening scene being cited in particular due to its gruesomeness and its similarity to "stock horror film conventions". The only other instance of an episode of "The X-Files" earning a viewer discretion warning was in the season eight episode, "Via Negativa". Owing to that content, the network would not repeat the episode, the only time in the history of the series that this happened. In 1997, when the channel FX ran an all-day marathon of the most popular "X-Files" episodes, "Home" was the number one choice.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: Upon its first broadcast, "Home" received several positive reviews from critics, although some were critical of its violence. "Entertainment Weekly" gave the episode an "A", describing it as "one of TV's most disturbing hours" and as "a cinematic feast for the eyes, packed with audacious wit". Sarah Stegall awarded the episode three stars out of five, comparing it positively to the more gruesome work of directors David Lynch and Tobe Hooper. Stegall praised the atmosphere and commented that Morgan and Wong's "long-awaited return" to the series was "definitely disturbing, thought-provoking, and nasty."


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: Among less favorable reviews, author Phil Farrand called "Home" his least-favorite episode of the first four seasons of the show in his book "The Nitpicker's Guide to the X-Files", writing that he "just [did not] get this episode" because "Mulder and Scully seem reckless" and the Peacock brothers "are better suited for comic books". Paul Cornell, Keith Topping, and Martin Day, in their book "X-Treme Possibilities", were critical of the violent content of the episode. Topping called the episode "sick", Cornell felt that Mulder and Scully's wisecracks made them come off as cruel, and Day felt that the violence went overboard. Day, however, offered a few complimentary observations, noting that "Home" did, indeed, have merit, and that the juxtaposition of "Wonderful! Wonderful!" with the violent antics of the Peacocks was something "David Lynch would be proud of".


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: "Home" has continued to receive positive reviews. In a 2011 review, Emily VanDerWerff of "The A.V. Club" gave the episode an "A" rating and wrote that it would be difficult to write an episode like "Home" today, since small towns are no longer as isolated as they used to be, thanks to modern communications technology. She praised the depiction of urban sensibilities and the frightening Peacock family, observing that it represented a "sad farewell to a weird America that was rapidly smoothing itself out." Author Dean A. Kowalski, in "The Philosophy of The X-Files", cited "Home", "Squeeze", and "The Host" as the most notable "monster-of-the-week" episodes.


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: "Home" has often been cited as one of the best "X-Files" episodes. Emily VanDerWerff of "The A.V. Club" placed it among the 10 best chapters of the series and called it one of the scariest hours of television she had seen. In 2009, "The Vancouver Sun" named "Home" one of the best stand-alone episodes of the series and wrote that, because of its horrific theme of incest, the episode "doesn't pull any punches". Den of Geek writer Nina Sordi placed the entry as the fourth best of the series in 2009, viewing its bleak humor and "thought-provoking moments" of dialogue as the factors that made it one of the most popular episodes. In 2008, "Starpulse" gave the installment an honorable mention as one of the 10 best "X-Files" episodes. In 2009, Connie Ogle from PopMatters rated the Peacock family among the greatest monsters of the series and stated that it was a miracle that the program "slipped past" the censors. Kat Hughes of The Companion wrote that "perhaps the most frightening thing of all about 'Home' though, is its ending. Here [the series] ventures into territory that many horror movies dare not – it doesn’t resolve the issue. There is no happy ending, the good guys didn’t win, and the bad guys are still out there, ready to – as Mrs. Peacock states – “begin again”."


title: Home (The X-Files)

text: Critics have also named "Home" one of the scariest installments of the series. Novelist Scott Heim in "The Book of Lists: Horror" rated it as the tenth most frightening television broadcast. Heim wrote that several aspects of the episode were creepy, including the gothic house and the family itself. Tom Kessenich, in his 2002 book "Examination: An Unauthorized Look at Seasons 6–9 of the X-Files", listed the program as the fifth best of the series. Kessenich reported that it was the pinnacle of the horror episodes featured on "The X-Files". William B. Davis said that "Home" was both well written and well directed, but was so gruesome that it led to some fans questioning whether or not they wanted to continue watching the series. He argued that modern horror films were far more violent than anything depicted in "Home" but, at the time, "it was quite disturbing." In 2017, Vulture.com named "Home" the most terrifying television episode to watch on Halloween.


title: Lions for Lambs

text: Lions for Lambs is a 2007 American war drama film directed by Robert Redford about the connection between a platoon of United States soldiers in Afghanistan, a U.S. senator, a reporter, and a Californian college professor. It stars Redford, Tom Cruise, and Meryl Streep. It was the first Cruise/Wagner Productions film since the company joined with United Artists subsequent to Cruise's falling out with Paramount Pictures in 2006.


title: Lions for Lambs

text: With a title that alludes to incompetent leaders sending brave soldiers into the slaughter of battle, the film takes aim at the U.S. government's prosecution of the wars in the Middle East, showing three different simultaneous stories: a senator who launches a new military strategy and details it to a journalist, two soldiers involved in said operation, and their college professor trying to re-engage a promising student by telling him their story. The film was written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, and directed by Robert Redford. It was released in North America on November 9, 2007, to negative reviews and disappointing box office receipts, but ultimately was profitable.


title: Lions for Lambs

text: Two students at a West Coast university, Arian and Ernest, at the urging of their idealistic professor, Dr. Malley, attempt to do something important with their lives. They make the bold decision to enlist in the army to fight in Afghanistan after graduating from college.


title: Lions for Lambs

text: Dr. Malley also attempts to reach talented and privileged, but disaffected, student Todd Hayes, who is not at all like Arian and Ernest. He is naturally bright, comes from a privileged background, but has apparently slipped into apathy upon being disillusioned at the present state of affairs. Now, he devotes most of his time to extra-curricular activities like his role as president of his fraternity. Malley tests him by offering a choice between a respectable grade of 'B' in the class with no additional work required or a final opportunity to re-engage with the material of the class and "do something." Before Todd makes his choice, he must listen to Dr. Malley's story of his former students Arian and Ernest and why they are in Afghanistan.


title: Lions for Lambs

text: Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., a charismatic Republican presidential hopeful, Senator Jasper Irving, has invited liberal TV journalist Janine Roth to his office to announce a new war strategy in Afghanistan: the use of small units to seize strategic positions in the mountains before the Taliban can occupy them. The senator hopes that Roth's positive coverage will help convince the public that the plan is sound.


title: Lions for Lambs

text: Roth has her doubts and fears she is being asked to become an instrument of government propaganda. She informs her commercially-minded boss of her plans to call out the senator's new strategy for what she feels is a ploy, but is shot down. Ultimately, Irving's version of the story is run without the critical interaction. Whether Roth gave in and toed the company line or quit her job is not clear.


title: Lions for Lambs

text: In Afghanistan, a helicopter carrying Arian and Ernest is hit by Taliban insurgents. Ernest falls out, and Arian jumps after him. Ernest's leg is badly wounded, and he suffers a compound fracture, rendering him immobile as the Taliban arrive. After a drawn-out gunfight, the U.S. soldiers run out of ammunition. Rather than getting captured, Arian helps Ernest stand up, facing the enemies and turning their empty weapons against them, an action which prompts the Taliban to kill them. The unit commanders attempt a rescue of the downed soldiers, sending A-10 Warthogs, but the weather, time, and distance interfere.


title: Lions for Lambs

text: Hayes is watching television with a friend. A reporter is discussing a singer's private life, while below runs a strip announcing Senator Irving's new military plan for Afghanistan. Hayes suddenly falls quiet, contemplating the choices with which his professor had left him.


title: Lions for Lambs

text: Matthew Michael Carnahan was inspired to write the script when, while channel surfing trying to find a USC Trojans football game, he saw a news report about a Humvee that had flipped into an Iraqi river, drowning about five U.S. soldiers. Carnahan considered it an awful way to die, and "couldn't get past it fast enough", considering he was too indifferent, "talking so much and not doing a damn thing", and "the same hypocrite that I so can't stand in our country, the kind of people that will flip right past the news to get to "Access Hollywood"". He first considered turning it into a stage play, but the military scenes, in particular the helicopter ones, made him turn it into a film screenplay. The character of Todd Hayes was inspired by Carnahan himself during college.


title: Lions for Lambs

text: When Robert Redford read the script, he became very interested, considering it smart as opposed to Hollywood's many "straight-out entertainment" projects, and also tricky due to the three stories "that seem to be disparate but are connected and have to come together in a vortex at the end", and that needed to be represented in a way the movie "wouldn't be categorized as a lefty film". Redford considered that the movie's focus was for audiences "to be entertained in a way that made them think."


title: Lions for Lambs

text: An Irish newspaper claimed that "The name of the film is derived from a remark made by a German officer during World War I, comparing British soldiers' bravery with the calculated criminality of their commanders". While several reviewers in the UK have criticized the film for misquoting the commonly used phrase of "lions led by donkeys", in an article written for "The Times" on the origin of the title, Brian Dimuccio and Dino Vindeni claimed that:


title: Lions for Lambs

text: One such composition included the observation, 'Nowhere have I seen such Lions led by such Lambs.' While the exact provenance of this quotation has been lost to history, most experts agree it was written during the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest clashes in modern warfare. While some military archivists credit the author as an anonymous infantryman, others argue that the source was none other than General Max von Gallwitz, Supreme Commander of the German forces. In either case, it is generally accepted to be a derivation of Alexander the Great's proclamation, 'I am never afraid of an army of Lions led into battle by a Lamb. I fear more the army of Lambs who have a Lion to lead them.'


title: Lions for Lambs

text: Though "Lions for Lambs" was the first United Artists venture since Cruise and Paula Wagner attained control, executives billed the film as a "Robert Redford vehicle." Filming began on January 29, 2007, and Redford considered the movie "the tightest schedule I've ever worked with," with barely a year between announcement and release.


title: Lions for Lambs

text: "Lions for Lambs" is the first film under Cruise's and Wagner's new venture with film studio United Artists. "MSNBC" reported that Cruise was worried about how the film would perform, because of how the film industry would view him based on its success or failure at the box office.