title: Argentavis

text: "Argentavis" territories measured probably more than , which the birds screened for food, possibly utilizing a generally north–south direction to avoid being slowed by adverse winds. This species seems less aerodynamically suited for predation than its relatives. It probably preferred to scavenge for carrion, and it is possible that it habitually chased metatherian carnivores such as Thylacosmilidae from their kills. The largest land predators in Miocene South America were the giant, ground-dwelling "terror birds", the phorusrhacids. Phorusrhacids were probably the most formidable rivals that "Argentavis" faced, with the largest species weighing about three times as much as the teratorn. Unlike extant condors and vultures, teratorns generally had long, eagle-like beaks and are believed to have been active predators. This is seemingly true as well of "Argentavis" but other teratorns were likely far less ponderous considering the substantial size differences. "Argentavis" may have used its wings and size to intimidate metatherian mammals and small phorusrhacids from their kills. "Argentavis" may have also ambushed some small live prey, i.e. large rodents, small armadillos and the young of large animals such as ground sloths. The species would've required about of meat each day. When hunting actively, "A. magnificens" would probably have swooped from high above onto their prey, which they usually would have been able to grab prey by its bill, kill, and swallow without landing. However, they may too have lain in wait from a ground position, which would render them likely grounded until heavy winds allowed them to fly. Skull structure suggests that it ate most of its prey whole rather than tearing off pieces of flesh.


title: Chiaki Kuriyama

text: She was born in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki. Kuriyama was a popular model during Japan's child model boom in the mid-1990s. In 1997, she appeared in the photobooks "Shinwa-Shōjo" ("Girl of Myth") and "Shōjokan" ("Girl's Residence"), photographed by Kishin Shinoyama. "Shinwa-Shōjo" became a best-seller but, as it contained some nudity, was discontinued by the publisher in 1999 after the institution of new anti–child pornography laws. She also posed as a model for the child fashion magazines "Nicola" (1997–2001) and "Pichi Lemon" (1996–2001).


title: Chiaki Kuriyama

text: She first achieved widespread recognition as an actress in Japan for her starring roles in the horror films "Shikoku" (1999) and "Ju-on" (2000). Chiaki also appeared in the 2000 action film "Battle Royale" as Takako Chigusa.


title: Chiaki Kuriyama

text: Following feature appearances on several notable Japanese television programs (including "Rokubanme no Sayoko"), Kuriyama made her Hollywood debut in director Quentin Tarantino's 2003 film "Kill Bill: Volume 1" as Gogo Yubari, the schoolgirl bodyguard of yakuza boss O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu). Kuriyama's other film appearances include major roles in the ninja drama "" and Takashi Miike's "Yōkai Daisensō".


title: Chiaki Kuriyama

text: In 2010, she released the CD single "Ryūsei no Namida" on DefStar Records under the artist name "CHiAKi KURiYAMA". The song was used as the first ending theme for "Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn". This single was followed by three others under her name as traditionally written in Japanese: "Kanōsei Girl", "Cold Finger Girl", and "Oishii Kisetsu" / "Ketteiteki Sanpunkan"; "Kanōsei Girl" was used as the third opening theme for "Yorinuki Gin Tama-san" and "Cold Finger Girl" was used as the opening for the anime adaptation of "Level E". She followed the singles with an album, "Circus", in 2011.


title: Fabian Forte

text: Fabian Forte (born Fabiano Anthony Forte, February 6, 1943), professionally known as Fabian, is an American singer and actor.


title: Fabian Forte

text: Forte rose to national prominence after performing several times on "American Bandstand". He became a teen idol of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Eleven of his songs reached the "Billboard" Hot 100.


title: Fabian Forte

text: Fabian Forte is the son of Josephine and Dominic Forte; his father was a Philadelphia police officer. He is the eldest of three brothers and grew up in the South Philadelphia's Lower Moyamensing neighborhood.


title: Fabian Forte

text: Forte was discovered in 1957 by Bob Marcucci and Peter DeAngelis, owners of Chancellor Records. At the time, record producers were looking to the South Philadelphia neighborhoods in search of teenage talents with good looks.


title: Fabian Forte

text: Marcucci was a friend of Fabian's next-door neighbor. One day, Fabian's father had a heart attack, and, while he was being taken away in an ambulance, Marcucci spotted Fabian. Fabian later recalled, "He kept staring at me and looking at me. I had a crew cut, but this was the day of Rick Nelson and Elvis. He comes up and says to me, 'So if you're ever interested in the rock and roll business...' and hands me his card. I looked at the guy like he was out of his mind. I told him, 'Leave me alone. I'm worried about my dad.'"


title: Fabian Forte

text: When Fabian's father returned from the hospital he was unable to work, so when Marcucci persisted, Fabian and his family were amenable, and he agreed to record a single. Frankie Avalon, also of South Philadelphia, suggested Forte as a possibility. Fabian later said, "They gave me a pompadour and some clothes and those goddamned white bucks and out I went." "He was the right look and right for what we were going for", wrote Marcucci later.


title: Fabian Forte

text: Fabian was given an allowance from the record company of $30 a week (). He also kept working part-time at a pharmacy as well as studying at South Philadelphia High School, while practicing his singing. Fabian later said "I didn't know what I was doing, but I knew my goal, to try to make extra money. That meant a lot to our family. I rehearsed and rehearsed, and I really felt like a fish out of water. And we made a record. And it was horrible. Yet it got on Georgie Woods. For some reason, Georgie Woods played it."


title: Fabian Forte

text: The song was "Shivers", which was a local hit in Chicago. This helped Fabian meet Dick Clark, who agreed to try Fabian at one of Clark's record hops, where singers would perform to teenage audiences. Fabian lip synched to a song and Clark wrote "the little girls at the hop went wild. They started screaming and yelling for this guy who didn't do a thing but stand there. I've never seen anything like it." Clark told Marcucci "you got a hit, he's a star. Now all you have to do is teach him to sing."


title: Fabian Forte

text: Clark eventually put the young singer on "American Bandstand" where he sang "I'm in Love". Fabian later admitted this song "was not very good either" but "the response – they told me – was overwhelming. I had no idea. All during that period, I was doing record hops. Not getting paid for it, but for the record company promotions. Just lip synching to my records. The response was really good."


title: Fabian Forte

text: Marcucci gave a song written by Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus to Fabian, "I'm a Man" (not the Bo Diddley hit), which Fabian later said he "liked a lot and was very comfortable with. It was giving me more experience, but I still felt like a fish out of water."


title: Fabian Forte

text: Pomus' biographer later wrote Fabian's "labored reading of a macho lyric lent him a vulnerability that couldn't have been missed by his pubescent fans." The song made the top 40.


title: Fabian Forte

text: Marcucci heavily promoted Fabian's next single, "Turn Me Loose", using a series of advertisements saying "Fabian Is Coming", then "Who is Fabian?" then finally "Fabian is Here". It worked and "Turn Me Loose" went into the Top Ten, peaking at number 9.


title: Fabian Forte

text: This was later followed by "Hound Dog Man", (US #9; UK #46), and his biggest hit, "Tiger", which reached No. 3 on the US charts. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA.


title: Fabian Forte

text: Other singles that charted included "String Along", "About This Thing Called Love" and "This Friendly World", which reached No. 12 on the US charts. At age 15, he won the Silver Award as "The Promising Male Vocalist of 1958". His first album, "Hold That Tiger" reached the top 15 within two weeks.


title: Fabian Forte

text: The song "Think of Me", although it did not chart in US, was a big hit in some Asian countries including Sri Lanka in 1964.


title: Fabian Forte

text: In 1959, Forte told a judge he was earning $250,000 a year (). (An earlier report put this at $137,000) He kept up his studies and graduated from high school in June 1960.


title: Fabian Forte

text: During the payola scandal of the 1960s, Forte testified before Congress that his recordings had been doctored electronically to "significantly improve his voice."


title: Fabian Forte

text: His career in music basically ended when he was 18 after he bought out of his contract with Marcucci for $65,000. In 1974, he said, "I felt controlled. I felt like a puppet. It was frightening, like a three-year nightmare."


title: Fabian Forte

text: Marcucci later admitted to punching Fabian on one occasion when the singer sat in the aisle of a movie theatre, not in the middle of the row like Marcucci had asked; Fabian was spotted by a teenage fan who screamed. Marcucci was angry that he did not see the film and hit the singer. In 1963, he signed a contract with Dot Records. He spent the next thirteen years concentrating on acting.


title: Fabian Forte

text: Fabian later said in 1971 that "I must say I never knew [Marcucci] to cheat me out of any money due me and he never promised me anything he didn't deliver." He stated he left his manager because "all the songs were sounding the same. So I bought myself out of the contract. It cost me plenty – a lot more than I thought it would."


title: Fabian Forte

text: 20th Century-Fox had enjoyed success casting teen idol pop stars in movies, such as Elvis Presley and Pat Boone. They decided to do the same thing with Fabian and signed him to a long-term contract. His first leading role was "Hound-Dog Man" (1959), based on the novel by Fred Gipson (who had written "Old Yeller") and directed by Don Siegel. He co-starred with the more experienced Stuart Whitman and sang several songs, including the title track. The "Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film" featured a photo of Forte's screen test where he appeared in the same outfit that Elvis Presley wore in Fox's "Love Me Tender". "Acting came natural to me. I don't know why", Fabian later said.


title: Fabian Forte

text: Fabian's recording of the "Hound Dog Man" title song was a top ten hit but the film was not a financial success – in contrast to Presley and Boone's first films. The studio, however, tried again in two smaller roles, supporting a bigger star – "High Time", with Bing Crosby, and "North to Alaska", with John Wayne. Both films were popular especially the latter and in November 1960 his contract with the studio was amended with an increase in salary – it was now a seven-year deal with an option for two films a year. He later said that "acting wasn't like the singing, because it was very private – quiet on the set. No screaming [teenage fans]. It was a wonderful experience. I got to meet and work with John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Peter Lorre. Elvis came over to meet me when I was on the lot. Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood and Gary Cooper were also on the lot. I was on the plane with Marlon Brando for eight hours coming back from Tahiti."


title: Fabian Forte

text: The Fox contract included television series as well as films. Fabian was cast by director Robert Altman as a psychotic killer in "A Lion Walks Among Us", an episode of the television series "Bus Stop". This episode was highly controversial due to its violent content, with many affiliates refusing to run the program, so much so, that it was even mentioned in the US Senate. However, the series was good for Fabian's acting career, and saw him regarded with more respect. He later said he regarded this as his best performance.


title: Fabian Forte

text: Paramount borrowed him from Fox to co-star with teen idol Tommy Sands in "Love in a Goldfish Bowl" (1961). In 1961, Bob Marcucci announced that Fabian and Avalon would star in "Virginia Ridge" by Clarence Fillmore about the Battle of New Market, where Virginia Military cadets took on union soldiers. The movie was never made.


title: Fabian Forte

text: Instead Fabian co-starred opposite Tuesday Weld in an episode of "The Dick Powell Show", titled "Run Till It's Dark". In "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" (1962), he romanced (and sang with) the daughter of a family man played by James Stewart; this was a big hit. So too was "The Longest Day" (1962), Fox's all-star epic about the D-Day landings; Fabian appeared among a number of other teen idols as US Rangers. Less popular, though still widely seen, was "Five Weeks in a Balloon" (1962), Irwin Allen's take on Jules Verne; Fabian sang one song but again it was a supporting role.


title: Fabian Forte

text: When Fox temporarily shut down following cost overruns on "Cleopatra", Fabian was one of the first actors whose options were exercised after the studio re-opened. He was to have supported Stewart again in "Take Her, She's Mine" (1963) but did not appear in the final film. Samuel Z. Arkoff of American International Pictures said he wanted Fabian to play the lead in "Beach Party" (1963) but was unable to do it because of his Fox contract.


title: Fabian Forte

text: Fabian had not become a film star but was in demand as an actor, appearing in episodes of series like "The Virginian", "Wagon Train", "The Greatest Show on Earth" and "The Eleventh Hour".


title: Fabian Forte

text: He had a good role in a surf movie made for Columbia, "Ride the Wild Surf" (1964) (with Tab Hunter), and was reunited with James Stewart for Fox's "Dear Brigitte" (1965) – the film failed to repeat the success of "Hobbs". Harry Alan Towers cast him as one of the victims in "Ten Little Indians" (1965).


title: Fabian Forte

text: In October 1965, Fox announced it had picked up Fabian's option to make three more films for the studio, starting with "Custer's Last Stand". However, that film was not made and Fabian made no further films for Fox.


title: Fabian Forte

text: In November 1965, he signed a seven-picture deal with American International Pictures (AIP). His first film for the company was alongside "Beach Party" stars Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello in the 1966 stock car racing film "Fireball 500". AIP then sent him to Italy to play a role originally intended for Avalon in "Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs" (1966), supporting Vincent Price and directed by Mario Bava. Back in the United States, he made another stock car racing film for AIP, "Thunder Alley" (1967), opposite Funicello and directed by Richard Rush. His fourth movie for AIP was "Maryjane" (1968), where Fabian played a school teacher fighting the evils of the marijuana trade.


title: Fabian Forte

text: He returned to racing car dramas with "The Wild Racers" (1968), partly financed by Roger Corman and shot in Europe. This was not a big hit on release but has developed a cult following; Quentin Tarantino described it as his favorite racing car movie.


title: Fabian Forte

text: "The Devil's 8" (1968) was an AIP rip-off of "The Dirty Dozen" (with a script co-written by John Milius). His seventh and final film for the studio was "A Bullet for Pretty Boy" (1970).


title: Fabian Forte

text: Fabian also played Josh Ashley in "Little Laura and Big John" (1973) for Crown International Pictures.


title: Fabian Forte

text: Forte later admitted the pressures of his career and home life caused him to start drinking in the 1960s. From June 1969 onwards he was billed as "Fabian Forte".


title: Fabian Forte

text: In 1973, he began singing again. To raise his profile, he posed nude for "Playgirl" magazine. "I knew it was a mistake the minute I saw the thing sold in a paper bag. I could barely live with myself."


title: Fabian Forte

text: In January 1974 he started an act at the MGM-Grand in Las Vegas. He was managed at this stage by Allan Carr. In March 1974 he performed at the Blue Max of the Hyatt Regency O'Hara in Chicago. A review said "he seems rather lost in the act he was putting on... he's giving it the old beach party try. But all that, unfortunately, can't distract for long from the basic lack of talent." In October 1974 Carr – by then no longer his manager – said that Fabian was "a sensational lounge act in Nevada and shouldn't play anywhere else except on prom nights. He's not a middle of the road act in a middle of the road room. At the 12.30 am show at the Blue Max, when the conventioneers had had a few drinks it was terrific... This boy probably made $18,000 last year; this year he'll make about $270,000."


title: Fabian Forte

text: He often performed in Las Vegas in the mid 1970s until he fell into difficulties with the authorities after attacking a Las Vegas district attorney, and resultant bankruptcy.


title: Fabian Forte

text: He retired once more in 1977, then resumed performing in 1981. He never regained his teenage popularity, but has continued performing.


title: Fabian Forte

text: The film "The Idolmaker" (1980), written by Edward Di Lorenzo and the first feature film directed by Taylor Hackford, was a thinly disguised biography of Fabian (called Caesare in the film), as well as songwriter/producer Marcucci (called Vinnie Vacarri) and Frankie Avalon (called Tommy Dee). In the movie version, singer Caesare—a pretty boy with little singing talent—goes through a whirlwind of success in a short time, and in a fit of pique, he abruptly fires his songwriters and quits his record label. The real-life Fabian launched a $64 million lawsuit at the time of the picture's release, claiming the film made him look like "a totally manufactured singer, a mere pretty face without any singing ability or acting talent." The filmmakers insisted that the movie presented only fictional characters (although Marcucci was a paid consultant on the film). Forte claimed they settled out of court, where he and his wife received apologies and Marcucci's 7.5% ownership of the film passed to Forte.


title: Fabian Forte

text: He appeared in a 1982 television commercial for "The Idols of Rock n' Roll" and in the documentary film "The Bituminous Coal Queens of Pennsylvania" (2005). In the 1980s, he developed some sitcoms for television. Forte hosted and headlined in the hit show "The Original Stars of Bandstand" at The Dick Clark Theater in Branson, Missouri. The show starred Forte and Bobby Vee and featured The Chiffons, Brian Hyland, Chris Montez and rare footage of the performers and Dick Clark. As part of a long-running concert tour, Fabian has toured with fellow Philadelphian 1950s teen idols Bobby Rydell and Frankie Avalon as Dick Fox's Golden Boys.


title: Fabian Forte

text: He was drafted, but rejected, for military service during the Vietnam War. According to USMC Lt. Col. Arthur Eppley, Forte was declared 4F (unfit for service).


title: Fabian Forte

text: In 1982, he was arrested for reportedly sticking his cigarette into a passenger who asked him to put out the cigarette in a non-smoking section of an aircraft. The passenger turned out to be a district attorney, but ultimately no charges were brought.


title: Fabian Forte

text: In 1978, Fabian was participating in a charity racing event in Watkins Glen, New York. He was practicing at Willow Springs International Motorsports Park under the instruction of professional driver Bill Simpson when he rolled his car and suffered minor cuts and bruises.


title: Fabian Forte

text: In 1982, a jury found him 40% liable for the accident (Fabian testified that Simpson repeatedly urged him to drive faster while Simpson testified that Fabian suddenly accelerated wildly in spite of his orders to slow down). He received $32,000 in an out-of-court settlement ().


title: Fabian Forte

text: Forte has been married three times. His first marriage was to model Kathleen Regan in September 1966. They had two children together, Christian and Julie, before separating in June 1975. In October 1975, Forte was arrested after an argument with Regan in which he was accused of hitting her. He was put on probation for two years. The couple divorced in 1979. "My fault", said Fabian.


title: Fabian Forte

text: In 1998, he married Andrea Patrick, a former Bituminous Coal Queen and Miss Pennsylvania USA. He and Andrea were later sued by the resort where they were married for unpaid bills.


title: Fabian Forte

text: Fabian relocated from Los Angeles to Fayette County, Pennsylvania, to be closer to his wife's family; he and his wife were sued by the builder of their house, also for unpaid bills. They live on in southwestern Pennsylvania in a home that she designed. In 2013, he said he played "25 shows a year. It gets me out of the house... I've never been happier. [At home] I ride my ATV and tractor and cut the grass. Where I grew up, there wasn't any grass."


title: Fabian Forte

text: Fabian and Andrea Forte are actively involved in the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association and Forte has helped raise money for veterans with his Celebrity Golf Tournament in North Carolina.


title: Fabian Forte

text: All albums use Forte's mononymous name Fabian. Before going to Chancellor records, Forte cut two albums on his own, one of which contained the original version of the song "Old Time Rock and Roll", but both albums were a commercial failure.


title: Spanish football league system

text: The Spanish football league system consists of several professional, semi-professional and non-professional leagues bound together hierarchically by promotion and relegation. The top two tiers of the male league pyramid—Primera División ( La Liga) and Segunda División—are administered by the Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional, a sports association with independent legal status from the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), the governing body of football in Spain. Conversely, the top two tiers of the women's pyramid (Primera División and Segunda División Pro) are administered by the RFEF. The lower tiers (6th and below for the men's pyramid; 5th and below for the female one) are run by the regional federations. In addition to clubs from Spain, and under the purview of the additional provision 17 of the 1990 Law of Sport, Andorran clubs affiliated to a Spanish regional federation are allowed to compete in the system.


title: Spanish football league system

text: The RFEF allows reserve teams to compete in the main league system, as is the case in most European domestic leagues. However, reserve teams are not allowed to compete in the same tier as their senior team, and no reserve team has thus competed in the top flight.


title: Spanish football league system

text: La Liga is the highest level in the Spanish football league system and is operated by the Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional.


title: Spanish football league system

text: Segunda División, also called LaLiga SmartBank is the second highest level in the Spanish football league system and is also operated by the Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional.


title: Spanish football league system

text: The Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) created a new tier to begin in the 2021–22 season placed between the Segunda División and the former Segunda División B which had been created in 1977. The federation officially named the third tier, containing two regionalised groups, the Primera División RFEF.


title: Spanish football league system

text: Below the new Primera División RFEF sits the fourth tier, the Segunda División RFEF, roughly corresponding to the format of Segunda B, other than that the new format has five regionalised groups whereas the old system contained only four, other than in its final season, 2020–21, unique both due to the transition into the new system and complications caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain which led to more teams being included and a complicated format involving 10 localised leagues half the size of the usual groups, followed by 15 sections to determine which teams would go into the second, third, fourth and fifth levels.


title: Spanish football league system

text: Following the reorganisation, the Tercera División RFEF is the fifth highest level in the Spanish football league system and is operated by the RFEF and 17 regional federations corresponding to each of the autonomous communities of Spain (there are 18 groups – Andalusia is divided into two due to its size). Prior to 2021, this was known as the Tercera División and was the fourth level, but had the same format. In 2020–21 the division also had an atypical format of 36 local subgroups followed by a total of 54 subgroups to allocate promotion, playoff and relegation places.


title: Spanish football league system

text: From level 6, each of the RFEF's 19 regional federations runs its regional league pyramid under its own jurisdiction.


title: Spanish football league system

text: From 1929 to 1940 the Spanish pyramid was similar to the Brazilian system, two simultaneous and independent pyramids, the national pyramid, and the regional pyramid.


title: Spanish football league system

text: The Primera and Segunda was founded by the Royal Spanish Football Association, but since 1984 is operated by the Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional. Since 2015 the Primera División is commonly known as LigaSantander and the Segunda División is commonly known as Liga SmartBank for sponsorship reasons.


title: Aristotle Athari

text: Aristotle Athari (born July 28, 1991) is an American comedian, actor, and filmmaker. Athari was a cast member for "Saturday Night Live"s forty-seventh season.


title: Aristotle Athari

text: After starting his career in stand-up comedy, Athari began collaborating with Muslim-American comedians Hasan Minhaj, Asif Ali, and Fahim Anwar on sketches under the group name "Goatface". An hour-long special of their sketch work aired on Comedy Central in 2018. He had a recurring role on the final two seasons of HBO's "Silicon Valley" as Gabe. Athari also cohosts the improvised podcast "This Is Americans Live," a parody of the radio show "This American Life".


title: Aristotle Athari

text: In 2021, Athari was cast as a featured player on "Saturday Night Live", alongside fellow newcomers James Austin Johnson and Sarah Sherman, for its forty-seventh season. He is the first Middle-Eastern male on the show and the second cast member of Iranian descent in the show's history (following Nasim Pedrad). He did not return for the 48th season of "SNL".


title: Natural killer cell

text: Natural killer cells, also known as NK cells or large granular lymphocytes (LGL), are a type of cytotoxic lymphocyte critical to the innate immune system that belong to the rapidly expanding family of known innate lymphoid cells (ILC) and represent 5–20% of all circulating lymphocytes in humans. The role of NK cells is analogous to that of cytotoxic T cells in the vertebrate adaptive immune response. NK cells provide rapid responses to virus-infected cell and other intracellular pathogens acting at around 3 days after infection, and respond to tumor formation. Typically, immune cells detect the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) presented on infected cell surfaces, triggering cytokine release, causing the death of the infected cell by lysis or apoptosis. NK cells are unique, however, as they have the ability to recognize and kill stressed cells in the absence of antibodies and MHC, allowing for a much faster immune reaction. They were named "natural killers" because of the notion that they do not require activation to kill cells that are missing "self" markers of MHC class 1. This role is especially important because harmful cells that are missing MHC I markers cannot be detected and destroyed by other immune cells, such as T lymphocyte cells.


title: Natural killer cell

text: NK cells can be identified by the presence of CD56 and the absence of CD3 (CD56, CD3). NK cells (belonging to the group of innate lymphoid cells) are one of the three kinds of cells differentiated from the common lymphoid progenitor, the other two being B and T lymphocytes. NK cells are known to differentiate and mature in the bone marrow, lymph nodes, spleen, tonsils, and thymus, where they then enter into the circulation. NK cells differ from natural killer T cells (NKTs) phenotypically, by origin and by respective effector functions; often, NKT cell activity promotes NK cell activity by secreting interferon gamma. In contrast to NKT cells, NK cells do not express T-cell antigen receptors (TCR) or pan T marker CD3 or surface immunoglobulins (Ig) B cell receptors, but they usually express the surface markers CD16 (FcγRIII) and CD57 in humans, NK1.1 or NK1.2 in C57BL/6 mice. The NKp46 cell surface marker constitutes, at the moment, another NK cell marker of preference being expressed in both humans, several strains of mice (including BALB/c mice) and in three common monkey species.


title: Natural killer cell

text: In addition to natural killer cells being effectors of innate immunity, both activating and inhibitory NK cell receptors play important functional roles, including self tolerance and the sustaining of NK cell activity. NK cells also play a role in the adaptive immune response: numerous experiments have demonstrated their ability to readily adjust to the immediate environment and formulate antigen-specific immunological memory, fundamental for responding to secondary infections with the same antigen. The role of NK cells in both the innate and adaptive immune responses is becoming increasingly important in research using NK cell activity as a potential cancer therapy.


title: Natural killer cell

text: In early experiments on cell-mediated cytotoxicity against tumor target cells, both in cancer patients and animal models, investigators consistently observed what was termed a "natural" reactivity; that is, a certain population of cells seemed to be able to lyse tumor cells without having been previously sensitized to them. The first published study to assert that untreated lymphoid cells were able to confer a natural immunity to tumors was performed by Dr. Henry Smith at the University of Leeds School of Medicine in 1966, leading to the conclusion that the "phenomenon appear[ed] to be an expression of defense mechanisms to tumor growth present in normal mice." Other researchers had also made similar observations, but as these discoveries were inconsistent with the established model at the time, many initially considered these observations to be artifacts.


title: Natural killer cell

text: By 1973, 'natural killing' activity was established across a wide variety of species, and the existence of a separate lineage of cells possessing this ability was postulated. The discovery that a unique type of lymphocyte was responsible for "natural" or spontaneous cytotoxicity was made in the early 1970s by doctoral student Rolf Kiessling and postdoctoral fellow Hugh Pross, in the mouse, and by Hugh Pross and doctoral student Mikael Jondal in the human. The mouse and human work was carried out under the supervision of professors Eva Klein and Hans Wigzell, respectively, of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm. Kiessling's research involved the well-characterized ability of T lymphocytes to lyse tumor cells against which they had been previously immunized. Pross and Jondal were studying cell-mediated cytotoxicity in normal human blood and the effect of the removal of various receptor-bearing cells on this cytotoxicity. Later that same year, Ronald Herberman published similar data with respect to the unique nature of the mouse effector cell.


title: Natural killer cell

text: The human data were confirmed, for the most part, by West "et al." using similar techniques and the same erythroleukemic target cell line, K562. K562 is highly sensitive to lysis by human NK cells and, over the decades, the K562 chromium-release assay has become the most commonly used assay to detect human NK functional activity. Its almost universal use has meant that experimental data can be compared easily by different laboratories around the world.


title: Natural killer cell

text: Using discontinuous density centrifugation, and later monoclonal antibodies, natural killing ability was mapped to the subset of large, granular lymphocytes known today as NK cells. The demonstration that density gradient-isolated large granular lymphocytes were responsible for human NK activity, made by Timonen and Saksela in 1980, was the first time that NK cells had been visualized microscopically, and was a major breakthrough in the field.


title: Natural killer cell

text: NK cells can be classified as CD56 or CD56. CD56 NK cells are similar to T helper cells in exerting their influence by releasing cytokines. CD56 NK cells constitute the majority of NK cells, being found in bone marrow, secondary lymphoid tissue, liver, and skin. CD56 NK cells are primarily found in the peripheral blood, and are characterized by their cell killing ability. CD56 NK cells are always CD16 positive (CD16 is the key mediator of antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC). CD56 can transition into CD56 by acquiring CD16.


title: Natural killer cell

text: NK cells can eliminate virus-infected cells via CD16-mediated ADCC. All coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients show depleted CD56 NK cells, but CD56 is only depleted in patients with severe COVID-19.


title: Natural killer cell

text: NK cell receptors can also be differentiated based on function. Natural cytotoxicity receptors directly induce apoptosis (cell death) after binding to Fas ligand that directly indicate infection of a cell. The MHC-independent receptors (described above) use an alternate pathway to induce apoptosis in infected cells. Natural killer cell activation is determined by the balance of inhibitory and activating receptor stimulation. For example, if the inhibitory receptor signaling is more prominent, then NK cell activity will be inhibited; similarly, if the activating signal is dominant, then NK cell activation will result.


title: Natural killer cell

text: NK cell receptor types (with inhibitory, as well as some activating members) are differentiated by structure, with a few examples to follow:


title: Natural killer cell

text: NK cells are cytotoxic; small granules in their cytoplasm contain proteins such as perforin and proteases known as granzymes. Upon release in close proximity to a cell slated for killing, perforin forms pores in the cell membrane of the target cell, creating an aqueous channel through which the granzymes and associated molecules can enter, inducing either apoptosis or osmotic cell lysis. The distinction between apoptosis and cell lysis is important in immunology: lysing a virus-infected cell could potentially release the virions, whereas apoptosis leads to destruction of the virus inside. α-defensins, antimicrobial molecules, are also secreted by NK cells, and directly kill bacteria by disrupting their cell walls in a manner analogous to that of neutrophils.


title: Natural killer cell

text: Infected cells are routinely opsonized with antibodies for detection by immune cells. Antibodies that bind to antigens can be recognised by FcγRIII (CD16) receptors expressed on NK cells, resulting in NK activation, release of cytolytic granules and consequent cell apoptosis. This is a major killing mechanism of some monoclonal antibodies like rituximab (Rituxan), ofatumumab (Azzera), and others. The contribution of antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity to tumor cell killing can be measured with a specific test that uses NK-92, an immortal line of NK-like cells licensed to NantKwest, Inc.: the response of NK-92 cells that have been transfected with a high-affinity Fc receptor are compared to that of the "wild type" NK-92 which does not express the Fc receptor.


title: Natural killer cell

text: Cytokines play a crucial role in NK cell activation. As these are stress molecules released by cells upon viral infection, they serve to signal to the NK cell the presence of viral pathogens in the affected area. Cytokines involved in NK activation include IL-12, IL-15, IL-18, IL-2, and CCL5. NK cells are activated in response to interferons or macrophage-derived cytokines. They serve to contain viral infections while the adaptive immune response generates antigen-specific cytotoxic T cells that can clear the infection. NK cells work to control viral infections by secreting IFNγ and TNFα. IFNγ activates macrophages for phagocytosis and lysis, and TNFα acts to promote direct NK tumor cell killing. Patients deficient in NK cells prove to be highly susceptible to early phases of herpes virus infection.


title: Natural killer cell

text: For NK cells to defend the body against viruses and other pathogens, they require mechanisms that enable the determination of whether a cell is infected or not. The exact mechanisms remain the subject of current investigation, but recognition of an "altered self" state is thought to be involved. To control their cytotoxic activity, NK cells possess two types of surface receptors: activating receptors and inhibitory receptors, including killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptors. Most of these receptors are not unique to NK cells and can be present in some T cell subsets, as well.


title: Natural killer cell

text: The inhibitory receptors recognize MHC class I alleles, which could explain why NK cells preferentially kill cells that possess low levels of MHC class I molecules. This mode of NK cell target interaction is known as "missing-self recognition", a term coined by Klas Kärre and co-workers in the late 90s. MHC class I molecules are the main mechanism by which cells display viral or tumor antigens to cytotoxic T cells. A common evolutionary adaptation to this is seen in both intracellular microbes and tumors: the chronic down-regulation of MHC I molecules, which makes affected cells invisible to T cells, allowing them to evade T cell-mediated immunity. NK cells apparently evolved as an evolutionary response to this adaptation (the loss of the MHC eliminates CD4/CD8 action, so another immune cell evolved to fulfill the function).


title: Natural killer cell

text: Natural killer cells often lack antigen-specific cell surface receptors, so are part of innate immunity, "i.e." able to react immediately with no prior exposure to the pathogen. In both mice and humans, NKs can be seen to play a role in tumor immunosurveillance by directly inducing the death of tumor cells (NKs act as cytolytic effector lymphocytes), even in the absence of surface adhesion molecules and antigenic peptides. This role of NK cells is critical to immune success particularly because T cells are unable to recognize pathogens in the absence of surface antigens. Tumor cell detection results in activation of NK cells and consequent cytokine production and release.


title: Natural killer cell

text: If tumor cells do not cause inflammation, they will also be regarded as self and will not induce a T cell response. A number of cytokines are produced by NKs, including tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα), IFNγ, and interleukin (IL-10). TNFα and IL-10 act as proinflammatory and immunosuppressors, respectively. The activation of NK cells and subsequent production of cytolytic effector cells impacts macrophages, dendritic cells, and neutrophils, which subsequently enables antigen-specific T and B cell responses. Instead of acting via antigen-specific receptors, lysis of tumor cells by NK cells is mediated by alternative receptors, including NKG2D, NKp44, NKp46, NKp30, and DNAM. NKG2D is a disulfide-linked homodimer which recognizes a number of ligands, including ULBP and MICA, which are typically expressed on tumor cells. The role of dendritic cell—NK cell interface in immunobiology have been studied and defined as critical for the comprehension of the complex immune system.


title: Natural killer cell

text: NK cells, along with macrophages and several other cell types, express the Fc receptor (FcR) molecule (FC-gamma-RIII = CD16), an activating biochemical receptor that binds the Fc portion of IgG class antibodies. This allows NK cells to target cells against which a humoral response has been gone through and to lyse cells through antibody-dependant cytotoxicity (ADCC). This response depends on the affinity of the Fc receptor expressed on NK cells, which can have high, intermediate, and low affinity for the Fc portion of the antibody. This affinity is determined by the amino acid in position 158 of the protein, which can be phenylalanine (F allele) or valine (V allele). Individuals with high-affinity FcRgammRIII (158 V/V allele) respond better to antibody therapy. This has been shown for lymphoma patients who received the antibody Rituxan. Patients who express the 158 V/V allele had a better antitumor response. Only 15–25% of the population expresses the 158 V/V allele. To determine the ADCC contribution of monoclonal antibodies, NK-92 cells (a "pure" NK cell line) has been transfected with the gene for the high-affinity FcR.


title: Natural killer cell

text: Natural killer cells (NK cells) and macrophages play a major role in clearance of senescent cells. Natural killer cells directly kill senescent cells, and produce cytokines which activate macrophages which remove senescent cells.


title: Natural killer cell

text: Natural killer cells can use NKG2D receptors to detect senescent cells, and kill those cells using perforin pore-forming cytolytic protein. CD8+ cytotoxic T-lymphocytes also use NKG2D receptors to detect senescent cells, and promote killing similar to NK cells. For example, in patients with Parkinson's disease, levels of Natural killer cells are elevated as they degrade alpha-synuclein aggregates, destroy senescent neurons, and attenuate the neuroinflammation by leukocytes in the central nervous system.


title: Natural killer cell

text: The ability to generate memory cells following a primary infection and the consequent rapid immune activation and response to succeeding infections by the same antigen is fundamental to the role that T and B cells play in the adaptive immune response. For many years, NK cells have been considered to be a part of the innate immune system. However, recently increasing evidence suggests that NK cells can display several features that are usually attributed to adaptive immune cells (e.g. T cell responses) such as dynamic expansion and contraction of subsets, increased longevity and a form of immunological memory, characterized by a more potent response upon secondary challenge with the same antigen.


title: Natural killer cell

text: In mice, the majority of research was carried out with murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) and in models of hapten-hypersensitivity reactions. Especially, in the MCMV model, protective memory functions of MCMV-induced NK cells were discovered


title: Natural killer cell

text: and direct recognition of the MCMV-ligand m157 by the receptor Ly49 was demonstrated to be crucial for the generation of adaptive NK cell responses.


title: Natural killer cell

text: In humans, most studies have focused on the expansion of an NK cell subset carrying the activating receptor NKG2C (KLRC2). Such expansions were observed primarily in response to human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), but also in other infections including Hantavirus, Chikungunya virus, HIV, or viral hepatitis. However, whether these virus infections trigger the expansion of adaptive NKG2C+ NK cells or whether other infections result in re-activation of latent HCMV (as suggested for hepatitis


title: Natural killer cell

text: ), remains a field of study. Notably, recent research suggests that adaptive NK cells can use the activating receptor NKG2C (KLRC2) to directly bind to human cytomegalovirus-derived peptide antigens and respond to peptide recognition with activation, expansion, and differentiation, a mechanism of responding to virus infections that was previously only known for T cells of the adaptive immune system.


title: Natural killer cell

text: As the majority of pregnancies involve two parents who are not tissue-matched, successful pregnancy requires the mother's immune system to be suppressed. NK cells are thought to be an important cell type in this process. These cells are known as "uterine NK cells" (uNK cells) and they differ from peripheral NK cells. They are in the CD56 NK cell subset, potent at cytokine secretion, but with low cytotoxic ability and relatively similar to peripheral CD56 NK cells, with a slightly different receptor profile. These uNK cells are the most abundant leukocytes present "in utero" in early pregnancy, representing about 70% of leukocytes here, but from where they originate remains controversial.


title: Natural killer cell

text: These NK cells have the ability to elicit cell cytotoxicity "in vitro", but at a lower level than peripheral NK cells, despite containing perforin. Lack of cytotoxicity "in vivo" may be due to the presence of ligands for their inhibitory receptors. Trophoblast cells downregulate HLA-A and HLA-B to defend against cytotoxic T cell-mediated death. This would normally trigger NK cells by missing self recognition; however, these cells survive. The selective retention of HLA-E (which is a ligand for NK cell inhibitory receptor NKG2A) and HLA-G (which is a ligand for NK cell inhibitory receptor KIR2DL4) by the trophoblast is thought to defend it against NK cell-mediated death.


title: Natural killer cell

text: Uterine NK cells have shown no significant difference in women with recurrent miscarriage compared with controls. However, higher peripheral NK cell percentages occur in women with recurrent miscarriages than in control groups.


title: Natural killer cell

text: NK cells secrete a high level of cytokines which help mediate their function. NK cells interact with HLA-C to produce cytokines necessary for trophoblastic proliferation. Some important cytokines they secrete include TNF-α, IL-10, IFN-γ, GM-CSF and TGF-β, among others. For example, IFN-γ dilates and thins the walls of maternal spiral arteries to enhance blood flow to the implantation site.


title: Natural killer cell

text: By shedding decoy NKG2D soluble ligands, tumor cells may avoid immune responses. These soluble NKG2D ligands bind to NK cell NKG2D receptors, activating a false NK response and consequently creating competition for the receptor site. This method of evasion occurs in prostate cancer. In addition, prostate cancer tumors can evade CD8 cell recognition due to their ability to downregulate expression of MHC class 1 molecules. This example of immune evasion actually highlights NK cells' importance in tumor surveillance and response, as CD8 cells can consequently only act on tumor cells in response to NK-initiated cytokine production (adaptive immune response).


title: Natural killer cell

text: Experimental treatments with NK cells have resulted in excessive cytokine production, and even septic shock. Depletion of the inflammatory cytokine interferon gamma reversed the effect.


title: Natural killer cell

text: Tumor-infiltrating NK cells have been reported to play a critical role in promoting drug-induced cell death in human triple-negative breast cancer. Since NK cells recognize target cells when they express nonself HLA antigens (but not self), autologous (patients' own) NK cell infusions have not shown any antitumor effects. Instead, investigators are working on using allogeneic cells from peripheral blood, which requires that all T cells be removed before infusion into the patients to remove the risk of graft versus host disease, which can be fatal. This can be achieved using an immunomagnetic column (CliniMACS). In addition, because of the limited number of NK cells in blood (only 10% of lymphocytes are NK cells), their number needs to be expanded in culture. This can take a few weeks and the yield is donor-dependent.


title: Natural killer cell

text: A more efficient way to obtain high numbers of NK cells is to expand NK-92 cells, an NK cell line with all the characteristics of highly active blood Natural Killer (NK) cells but with much broader and higher cytotoxicity. NK-92 cells grow continuously in culture and can be expanded to clinical-grade numbers in bags or bioreactors. Clinical studies have shown NK-92 cells to be safe and to exhibit anti-tumor activity in patients with lung or pancreatic cancer, melanoma, and lymphoma. Because NK-92 cells originated from a patient with lymphoma, they must be irradiated prior to infusion. although efforts are being made to engineer the cells to eliminate the need for irradiation. The irradiated cells maintain full cytotoxicity. NK-92 are allogeneic (from a donor different from the recipient), but in clinical studies have not been shown to elicit significant host reaction.


title: Natural killer cell

text: Unmodified NK-92 cells lack CD-16, making them unable to perform antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC); however, the cells have been engineered to express a high affinity Fc-receptor (CD16A, 158V) genetically linked to IL-2 that is bound to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). These high affinity NK-92 cells can perform ADCC and have greatly expanded therapeutic utility.


title: Natural killer cell

text: NK-92 cells have also been engineered to expressed chimeric antigen receptors (CARs), in an approach similar to that used for T cells. An example of this is an NK-92 derived cell engineered with both a CD16 and an anti-PD-L1 CAR; currently in clinical development for oncology indications A clinical grade NK-92 variant that expresses a CAR for HER2 (ErbB2) has been generated and is in a clinical study in patients with HER2 positive glioblastoma. Several other clinical grade clones have been generated expressing the CARs for PD-L1, CD19, HER-2, and EGFR. PD-L1 targeted high affinity NK cells have been given to a number of patients with solid tumors in a phase I/II study, which is underway.


title: Natural killer cell

text: In a study at Boston Children's Hospital, in coordination with Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, in which immunocompromised mice had contracted lymphomas from EBV infection, an NK-activating receptor called NKG2D was fused with a stimulatory Fc portion of the EBV antibody. The NKG2D-Fc fusion proved capable of reducing tumor growth and prolonging survival of the recipients. In a transplantation model of LMP1-fueled lymphomas, the NKG2D-Fc fusion proved capable of reducing tumor growth and prolonging survival of the recipients.


title: Natural killer cell

text: In Hodgkin lymphoma, in which the malignant Hodgkin Reed-Sternberg cells are typically HLA class I deficient, immune evasion is in part mediated by skewing towards an exhausted PD-1hi NK cell phenotype, and re-activation of these NK cells appears to be one mechanism of action induced by checkpoint-blockade.


title: Natural killer cell

text: Recent research suggests specific KIR-MHC class I gene interactions might control innate genetic resistance to certain viral infections, including HIV and its consequent development of AIDS. Certain HLA allotypes have been found to determine the progression of HIV to AIDS; an example is the HLA-B57 and HLA-B27 alleles, which have been found to delay progression from HIV to AIDS. This is evident because patients expressing these HLA alleles are observed to have lower viral loads and a more gradual decline in CD4 T cells numbers. Despite considerable research and data collected measuring the genetic correlation of HLA alleles and KIR allotypes, a firm conclusion has not yet been drawn as to what combination provides decreased HIV and AIDS susceptibility.


title: Natural killer cell

text: NK cells can impose immune pressure on HIV, which had previously been described only for T cells and antibodies. HIV mutates to avoid NK cell detection.


title: Natural killer cell

text: Most of our current knowledge is derived from investigations of mouse splenic and human peripheral blood NK cells. However, in recent years tissue-resident NK cell populations have been described. These tissue-resident NK cells share transcriptional similarity to tissue-resident memory T cells described previously. However, tissue-resident NK cells are not necessarily of the memory phenotype, and in fact, majority of the tissue-resident NK cells functionally immature. These specialized NK-cell subsets can play a role in organ homeostasis. For example, NK cells are enriched in the human liver with a specific phenotype and take part in the control of liver fibrosis. Tissue-resident NK cells have also been identified in sites like bone marrow, spleen and more recently, in lung, intestines and lymph nodes. In these sites, tissue-resident NK cells may act as reservoir for maintaining immature NK cells in humans throughout life.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: Rattle and Hum is a hybrid live/studio album by Irish rock band U2, and a companion rockumentary film directed by Phil Joanou. The album was produced by Jimmy Iovine and was released on 10 October 1988, while the film was distributed by Paramount Pictures and was released on 27 October 1988. Following the breakthrough success of the band's previous studio album, "The Joshua Tree", the "Rattle and Hum" project captures their continued experiences with American roots music on the Joshua Tree Tour, further incorporating elements of blues rock, folk rock, and gospel music into their sound. A collection of new studio tracks, live performances, and cover songs, the project includes recordings at Sun Studio in Memphis and collaborations with Bob Dylan, B.B. King, and Harlem's New Voices of Freedom gospel choir.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: Although "Rattle and Hum" was intended to represent the band paying tribute to rock legends, some critics accused U2 of trying to place themselves amongst the ranks of these artists. Critical reception to both the album and the film was mixed; one "Rolling Stone" editor spoke of the album's "excitement", another described it as "misguided and bombastic". The film grossed just $8.6 million, but the album was a commercial success, reaching number one in several countries and selling 14 million copies. The lead single "Desire" became the band's first UK number-one song while reaching number three in the US. Facing creative stagnation and a critical backlash to "Rattle and Hum", U2 reinvented themselves in the 1990s through a new musical direction and public image.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: While in Hartford during the 1987 The Joshua Tree Tour, U2 met film director Phil Joanou who made an unsolicited pitch to the band to make a feature-length documentary about the tour. Joanou suggested they hire Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, or George Miller to direct the film. Joanou met the band again in Dublin to discuss the plans and again in France in September before the band chose him as director. The movie was originally titled "U2 in the Americas" and the band planned to film in Chicago and Buenos Aires later in the year. It was later decided that the Chicago venue was not suitable, and instead U2 used the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver to film. Following the success of "", which had been filmed in Denver four years earlier, the band hoped that "lightning might strike twice". With production problems and estimated costs of $1.2 million the band cancelled the plans for December concerts in South America. At the suggestions of concert promoter Barry Fey, the band instead booked Sun Devil Stadium at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, the same city where the Joshua Tree tour began.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: The movie is a rockumentary, which was initially financed by the band and intended to be screened in a small number of cinemas as an independent film. After going over budget, the film was bought by Paramount Pictures and released in theatres in 1988, before arriving on video in 1989. It was produced by Michael Hamlyn and directed by Joanou. Paul Wasserman served as the publicist. It incorporates live footage with studio outtakes and band interviews. The album is a mix of live material and new studio recordings that furthers the band's experimentation with American music styles and recognises many of their musical influences. It was produced by Jimmy Iovine and also released in 1988.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: The title, "Rattle and Hum", is taken from a lyric from "Bullet the Blue Sky", the fourth track on "The Joshua Tree". The image used for the album cover and movie poster, depicting Bono shining a spotlight on Edge as he plays, was inspired by a scene in the live performance of "Bullet the Blue Sky" recorded in the film and album, but was recreated in a stills studio and photographed by Anton Corbijn. Several vinyl copies have the message "We Love You A.L.K." etched into side one, a reference to the band's production manager Anne Louise Kelly, who would be the subject of another secret dedication message on several CD copies of the band's later album, "Pop".


title: Rattle and Hum

text: Bono said "Hawkmoon 269" was in part as a tribute to writer Sam Shepard, who had released a book entitled "Hawk Moon". Bono also said that the band mixed the song 269 times. This was thought to be a joke for years until it was confirmed by guitarist the Edge in "U2 by U2", who said that they spent three weeks mixing the song. He also contradicted Bono's assertion about Shepard, saying that Hawkmoon is a place in Rapid City, South Dakota, in the midwestern United States.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: "Angel of Harlem" is a horn-filled tribute to Billie Holiday. The bass-heavy "God Part II" is a sequel of sorts to John Lennon's "God".


title: Rattle and Hum

text: The lead single, "Desire", sports a Bo Diddley beat. During the Joshua Tree tour, in mid-November 1987, Bono and Bob Dylan met in Los Angeles; together they wrote a song called "Prisoner of Love" which later became "Love Rescue Me". Dylan sang lead vocals on the original recording, a version which Bono called "astonishing", but Dylan later asked U2 not to use it citing commitments to The Traveling Wilburys. The live performance of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" (recorded with a full church choir) is a gospel song. "When Love Comes to Town" is a blues rocker featuring B.B. King on guitar and vocals.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: U2 recorded "Angel of Harlem", "Love Rescue Me" and "When Love Comes to Town" at Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, where Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and many others also recorded. They also recorded an unreleased version of "She's a Mystery to Me" and Woody Guthrie's "Jesus Christ", which appeared on "". The band started writing "Heartland", in 1984 during "The Unforgettable Fire" sessions, and it was worked on during "The Joshua Tree" sessions. All of the studio tracks apart from "Heartland" were performed in concert on the Lovetown Tour, which began almost a year after "Rattle and Hum"s release.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: In addition to the nine studio tracks that comprised one half of the double album, a number of additional recordings from the "Rattle and Hum" sessions would be released on various singles and side projects. "Hallelujah Here She Comes" was released as a B-side to "Desire", and "A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel" was released as a B-side to "Angel of Harlem." Covers were released as B-sides for the rest of the singles—an abbreviated cover of Patti Smith's "Dancing Barefoot" would be released as a B-side to "When Love Comes to Town" (the full version would see release on the 12" version of the single and on CD on the 1994 soundtrack album to "Threesome"), while "Unchained Melody" and "Everlasting Love" would be released as the B-sides to "All I Want Is You." A cover of "Fortunate Son" recorded with Maria McKee would not be released until 1992's "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" single; a version of the soul classic "Everybody Loves a Winner" by William Bell, also recorded with McKee, would eventually be released on the 20th anniversary edition of "Achtung Baby".


title: Rattle and Hum

text: Studio versions of "She's a Mystery to Me" (a Bono/Edge composition that would eventually be recorded and released by Roy Orbison), Bruce Cockburn's "If I Had a Rocket Launcher", Percy Sledge's "Warm and Tender Love", and "Can't Help Falling in Love With You", while recorded, have yet to be released. (A solo Bono cover of the Elvis Presley classic would be released on 1992's "Honeymoon in Vegas" album, however.) A cover of the Woody Guthrie song "Jesus Christ" was also recorded during these sessions for eventual inclusion on the cover album "". Lastly, a cover of "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" was recorded and released for the first "A Very Special Christmas" album, released at the end of 1987.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: The band chose to film the black-and-white footage over two nights at Denver's McNichols Sports Arena on 7 and 8 November 1987. They chose the city following the success of their "" video which was filmed in Red Rocks Amphitheatre near Denver in 1983. The Edge said, "We thought lightning might strike twice". The first night's performance disappointed the group, with Bono finding that the cameras infringed on his ability to play to the crowd. The second Denver show was far more successful and seven songs from the show are used in the film, and three on the album.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: Hours before the second Denver performance, an IRA bomb killed eleven people at a Remembrance Day ceremony in the Northern Irish town of Enniskillen (see Remembrance Day Bombing). During a performance of "Sunday Bloody Sunday", which appears on the film, Bono condemned the violence in a furious mid-song rant in which he yelled, "Fuck the revolution!" The performance was so powerful that the band said they were not sure the song should have been used in the film. After watching the film, they considered not playing the song on future tours.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: Colour outdoor concert footage is from the band's Tempe, Arizona shows on 19 and 20 December 1987. Tickets were sold for US$5 each and both nights sold out within days. The set was different each night with the band throwing in some rarely performed songs, including "Out of Control", "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)", "One Tree Hill", and "Mothers of the Disappeared". For the latter, all four members played at the front of the stage, each under a large spotlight.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: The album opens with a live cover of the Beatles' "Helter Skelter". Its inclusion on the album was intended by the band to reflect the confusion of The Joshua Tree Tour and their new-found superstar status. Bono opens "Helter Skelter" with this statement: "This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We're stealing it back".


title: Rattle and Hum

text: The album contains a live version of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower". The performance is from the band's impromptu "Save the Yuppies" concert in Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco, California on 11 November 1987. The video intersperses the performance of the song with footage from the band's performance of "Pride" from the same show, during which Bono spray-painted "Rock and Roll Stops the Traffic" on the Vaillancourt Fountain. This caused a bit of controversy, and ultimately, the band paid to repair the damage and publicly apologised for the incident. The phrase "Rock and Roll Stops the Traffic" reappeared 18 years later in the video "All Because of You" when an unnamed fan appeared with the sign at 1:55 in the video. It also reappeared in February 2009, when the band played on the rooftop of the BBC Radio studios in Langham Place.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: Dennis Bell, director of New York gospel choir The New Voices of Freedom, recorded a demo of a gospel version of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". While in Glasgow in late July during the Joshua Tree Tour, Rob Partridge of Island Records played the demo for the band. In late September, U2 rehearsed with Bell's choir in a Harlem church, and a few days later they performed the song together at U2's Madison Square Garden concert. Footage of the rehearsal is featured in the movie, while the Madison Square Garden performance appears on the album. After the church rehearsal, U2 walked around the Harlem neighbourhood where they came across blues duo, Satan and Adam, playing in the street. A 40-second clip of them playing their composition, "Freedom for My People", appears on both the movie and the album.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: During "Silver and Gold", Bono explains that the song is an attack on apartheid. "The Star Spangled Banner" is an excerpt of Jimi Hendrix's famous Woodstock performance in 1969. The noise of the crowd was sampled extensively by The KLF for 'the Stadium House Trilogy' of singles on their 1991 album "The White Room".


title: Rattle and Hum

text: Alternative live concert footage captured for the film in other cities during the 1987 tour (but ultimately not used for the final cut of the film) included:


title: Rattle and Hum

text: The album divided critics when it was released in 1988. Some reviewers panned it, feeling that U2 were making a deliberate and pretentious attempt at rock and roll renown. Jon Pareles of "The New York Times" called it a "mess" that exuded "sincere egomania", and said the "band's self-importance got in the way" of their ambition for the album. He said it was plagued by the group's "attempts to grab every mantle in the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame" and that each one was "embarrassing in a different way". David Stubbs of "Melody Maker" said that "Rattle and Hum" "lacks cohesion" and "is musically, stylistically confused". He criticised Bono's "reverential nods to the great white heroes of rock" and the band's "homages to the bluesmen and gospel greats". Thom Duffy of the "Orlando Sentinel" said that "Rattle and Hum" is "greatly in need of a focal point" and "often sounds like an over-reaching attempt to claim chunks of pop history as [U2's] own story". He believed the group had "merely celebrated its own ascension into the pop history books... and little more". Tom Carson from "The Village Voice" called it an "awful record" by "almost any rock-and-roll fan's standards", and said the group's failure did not "sound attributable to pretensions so much as to monumental know-nothingism". Fellow "Village Voice" critic Robert Christgau was more complimentary, calling the record "looser and faster than anything they've recorded since their first live mini-LP". David Browne of the "New York Daily News" said the album's "scope and disjointedness" recalled double albums such as "Exile on Main St." or "The Beatles", but that until it aged as well as those records, "'Rattle and Hum' just prattles and numbs". Andrew Means of "The Arizona Republic" thought the album was "no substitute" for the "exhilaration and conviction" of the Joshua Tree Tour. He believed that Bono's passion on record was not "quite as mesmerizing as it is on stage" and that the group's new material did not "add significantly" to their message or image. Lynden Barber of "The Sydney Morning Herald" called it "an ambitious project, and the result is almost inevitably a mixed bag". He lamented the songs that presented the band's Christianity "as a fait accompli", as well as their proclivity for "jams around a couple of chords substituting themselves for considered song-writing". A reviewer for Knight-Ridder News said, "this double-album boondoggle manages to make the band sound like quintessential overreachers".


title: Rattle and Hum

text: Writing in "Rolling Stone", Anthony DeCurtis said that the record succeeded at capping U2's rise to stardom "on a raucous, celebratory note", finding it to be "most enjoyable when the band relaxes and allows itself to stretch without self-consciously reaching for the stars". DeCurtis ultimately deemed it a "tad calculated in its supposed spontaneity" and said it demonstrated "U2's force but devot[ed] too little attention to the band's vision". In a rave review for the "Los Angeles Times", Robert Hilburn called "Rattle and Hum" a "frequently remarkable album" that more than matched "The Joshua Tree", and he credited U2 for reviving the "idealism and craft of [rock's] finest moments". J. D. Considine of "The Baltimore Sun" said that the album's songs "draw upon every musical strength U2 has developed over the years" and that the "sheer muscular physicality of its sound" set "Rattle and Hum" apart from its predecessors. He said that despite the record being "occasionally pretentious", the group "never seems out of its depth" amongst the guest artists. Jay Cocks of "Time" said, "U2 has never sounded better or bolder", calling "Rattle and Hum": "the best live rock album ever made. The record, in every sense, of their lives". "Hot Press" reviewer Bill Graham said it was U2's "most ambitious record" yet, while John Mackie of "The Vancouver Sun" said it "should consolidate the band's stature as the Beatles of the late '80s". Cliff Radel of "The Cincinnati Enquirer" said that "Rattle and Hum" "proves the achievements of the band's previous album... were no accident", and that it demonstrated the group's ability to create "highly charged songs in the studio and on stage". In the UK, Robin Denselow of "The Guardian" said that "the whole sounds far greater than the sum of the decidedly variable parts". The review found the cover songs to be the weakest material but judged "Rattle and Hum" overall to be a "solid, versatile piece of work" that "leaves much of the best until last". Stuart Baillie of "NME" gave it a positive 8/10 review. Contentiously, his review replaced a much more negative 4/10 review by Mark Sinker, in which he described it as "the worst album by a major band in years". It was pulled by "NME" editor Alan Lewis, as it was feared that criticism of U2 would affect the magazine's circulation; Sinker resigned in protest.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: At the end of 1988, "Rattle and Hum" was voted the 21st-best album of the year in the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics published by "The Village Voice". In other critics' lists of the year's top albums, it was ranked number one by "HUMO", second by the "Los Angeles Times" and "Hot Press", 17th by "OOR", 23rd by "NME", and 47th by "Sounds".


title: Rattle and Hum

text: According to a "USA Today" survey of reviews at the time of the film's release, "Rattle and Hum" had an average review score of 64/100. According to review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a contemporary "Certified Fresh" rating of 67%. Roger Ebert panned the film as a "mess", saying the concert footage was poorly lit and did not show the audience enough, and that the band being "deliberately inarticulate" in interview segments was "not cute". His review partner Gene Siskel was more complimentary, praising the group's performance with the Harlem gospel choir as "powerful and emotional" and calling Bono's statements during "Sunday Bloody Sunday" the film's highlight. Hal Hinson of "The Washington Post" called the film "an exercise in rock 'n' roll hagiography" and "a fanzine on celluloid", and said that despite its "stunning look", the film came across as "stagy and overproduced". He said that the band's "attempts to place themselves in the rock continuum are fairly strenuous and more than a little presumptuous". Joyce Millman of the "San Francisco Examiner" described it as a "tediously pious and self-important" film that "successfully captured everything the faithful love, and we pagans loathe, about the biggest band of the '80s". She said the film "does nothing to pierce the band's vagueness" and that they were upstaged by B.B. King and the Harlem gospel choir. Millman judged that the cinematography's "gargantuan pomposity... perhaps unintentionally" personified "the essence of U2". Gary Graff of the "Detroit Free Press" called the film "a conceptual mess that lacks focus and flow", and said that it neither chronicles the band's breakout success of 1987 adequately nor offers additional insight into the band. He said that "many of the individual components of [the film] are excellent" but that Joanou failed to tie them together. Carrie Rickey of "The Philadelphia Inquirer" said, "Self-indulgent to the point of absurdity, "U2 Rattle and Hum" might be the silliest concert film ever made." She said it compared unfavourably to other concert movies due to its lack of narrative, and that Joanou's reverence for U2 bordered on "unintentional hilarity", adding, "Rob Reiner and company couldn't do a "Spinal Tap" on this; "Rattle and Hum" is already a parody." Joanou himself called the picture "pretentious".


title: Rattle and Hum

text: Michael MacCambridge of the "Austin American-Statesman" disagreed with the film's detractors, calling it a "very good and at times excellent concert movie" whose "studied avoidance of drifting into self-parody" distinguished it from predecessors and headed off comparisons to "This Is Spinal Tap". MacCambridge enjoyed the black-and-white footage of the band "in the middle of becoming legend" and their scenes with B.B. King and the Harlem gospel choir, but thought the switch to colour footage interrupted the film's "pace and momentum". David Silverman of the "Chicago Tribune" said that Joanou "steadily brings the viewer into a relationship with the band and brings an understanding to the new music", while "provid[ing] an innovative, fast-paced insight" to U2. Silverman praised the documentary scenes with the individual band members and the "beautiful artistic" performance footage, and said the director "succeeded in bringing U2 to the screen in a creative, introspective and exciting film that will add to the legend and preserve the integrity of the decade's most influential contribution to rock". Barbara Jaeger of "The Record" called it a "moving, beautifully photographed look at the group" that properly captured the energy of their live performances. She said, "If there is to be a standard against which future rock movies will be judged, 'U2 Rattle and Hum' is it." Mackie of "The Vancouver Sun" said that despite the film offering "few insights into the individual members, the live footage is nothing short of brilliant." He described Bono's speech during "Sunday Bloody Sunday" as a "raw, emotional moment, a spontaneous outburst that crystalizes the powerful message of peace and love that U2 preach". Michael Wilmington of the "Los Angeles Times" said the film "records some savagely compelling live performances" and offers proof of why "this unlikely band... are often ranked by critics as the world's best". He thought that despite Joanou not setting the proper context for the film or conducting an engaging interview with U2, "he matches the impassioned sounds with spectacular visuals".


title: Rattle and Hum

text: Despite the criticism, "Rattle and Hum" was a strong seller, continuing U2's burgeoning commercial success. It hit number one on the US "Billboard" 200 albums chart, remaining at the top spot for six weeks; it was the first number-one double album in the US since Bruce Springsteen's "The River" in 1980. "Rattle and Hum" also reached number one in the UK and Australian charts. In the UK, it sold 360,000 copies in its first week, making it the fastest-selling album at that point (a record it held until the release of Oasis's "Be Here Now" in 1997). Lifetime sales for the album have surpassed 14 million copies.


title: Rattle and Hum

text: In 1989, while at a press tour in Sydney, Australia (where U2 were touring with B.B. King and working on demos for the follow-up album "Achtung Baby"), Bono stated, "making movies: that's the nonsense of rock & roll", which "Rolling Stone" magazine claimed was almost an apology for the film. "Playing shows is the reason we're here", he added. Despite their commercial popularity, the group were dissatisfied creatively; Bono believed they were musically unprepared for their success, while Mullen said, "We were the biggest, but we weren't the best." By the Lovetown Tour, they had become bored with playing their greatest hits. U2 believe that audiences misunderstood the group's collaboration with King on "Rattle and Hum" and the Lovetown Tour, and they described it as "an excursion down a dead-end street". Towards the end of the Lovetown Tour, Bono announced on-stage that it was "the end of something for U2", and that "we have to go away and ... dream it all up again". The band subsequently reinvented themselves in the 1990s, incorporating alternative rock, electronic dance music, and industrial music into their sound, and adopting a more ironic, flippant image by which they embraced the "rock star" identity they struggled with in the 1980s.


title: Erinn Bartlett

text: Erinn Anne Bartlett (born February 26, 1973) is an American actress who also competed in the Miss Teen USA pageant.


title: Erinn Bartlett

text: Bartlett was born in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. She graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in communication.


title: Erinn Bartlett

text: Bartlett first competed in the Miss Massachusetts Teen USA title in 1989, when she placed first runner-up. She went on to win the Miss Massachusetts Teen USA crown in 1991 and represented Massachusetts in the Miss Teen USA 1991 held in Biloxi, Mississippi on August 19, 1991. Bartlett made it to the top twelve of the nationally televised event, placing sixth in interview, last in swimsuit and tenth in evening gown. Her average competition score put her in tenth place overall.


title: Erinn Bartlett

text: She has also appeared in films "Shallow Hal" (2001), "Pumpkin" (2002), "Raising Helen" (2004), "Rumor Has It" (2005).


title: Erinn Bartlett

text: Bartlett became engaged to actor Oliver Hudson, son of Goldie Hawn and Bill Hudson, on February 21, 2004 and the two married on June 9, 2006. The ceremony was officiated by a Buddhist monk. In March 2007 it was announced that the couple were expecting their first child. On August 23, 2007, Bartlett gave birth to a boy, Wilder Brooks Hudson. It was announced in October 2009 that the couple were expecting their second child and their son, Bodhi Hawn Hudson, was born on March 19, 2010. Bartlett gave birth to the couple's first daughter, Rio Laura Hudson, on July 18, 2013.


title: Fourth Estate

text: The term Fourth Estate or fourth power refers to the press and news media both in explicit capacity of advocacy and implicit ability to frame political issues.


title: Fourth Estate

text: The derivation of the term "fourth estate" arises from the traditional European concept of the three estates of the realm: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. The equivalent term "fourth power" is somewhat uncommon in English, but it is used in many European languages, including Italian (""), German (""), Spanish (""), and French (""), to refer to a government's separation of powers into legislative, executive, and judicial branches.


title: Fourth Estate

text: Thomas Carlyle attributed the origin of the term to Edmund Burke, who used it in a parliamentary debate in 1787 on the opening up of press reporting of the House of Commons of Great Britain. Earlier writers have applied the term to lawyers, to the British queens consort (acting as free agents independent of their husbands), and to the proletariat.


title: Fourth Estate

text: In modern use, the term is applied to the press, with the earliest use in this sense described by Thomas Carlyle in his book "": "Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all."


title: Fourth Estate

text: Burke's 1787 coining would have been making reference to the traditional three estates of Parliament: The Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the Commons. If Burke made the statement Carlyle attributes to him, the remark may have been in the back of Carlyle's mind when he wrote in his "French Revolution" (1837) that "A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up; increases and multiplies, irrepressible, incalculable."


title: Fourth Estate

text: In this context, the other three estates are those of the French States-General: the church, the nobility and the townsmen. Carlyle, however, may have mistaken his attribution: Thomas Macknight, writing in 1858, observes that Burke was merely a teller at the "illustrious nativity of the Fourth Estate".


title: Fourth Estate

text: If Burke is excluded, other candidates for coining the term are Henry Brougham speaking in Parliament in 1823 or 1824 and Thomas Macaulay in an essay of 1828 reviewing "Hallam's Constitutional History": "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm." In 1821, William Hazlitt (whose son, also named William Hazlitt, was another editor of Michel de Montaigne—see below) had applied the term to an individual journalist, William Cobbett, and the phrase soon became well established.


title: Fourth Estate

text: In United States English, the phrase "fourth estate" is contrasted with the "fourth branch of government", a term that originated because no direct equivalents to the estates of the realm exist in the United States. The "fourth estate" is used to emphasize the independence of the press, while the "fourth branch" suggests that the press is not independent of the government.


title: Fourth Estate

text: Yochai Benkler, author of the 2006 book "The Wealth of Networks", described the "Networked Fourth Estate" in a May 2011 paper published in the "Harvard Civil Liberties Review". He explains the growth of non-traditional journalistic media on the Internet and how it affects the traditional press using WikiLeaks as an example. When Benkler was asked to testify in the "United States vs. PFC Bradley E. Manning" trial, in his statement to the morning 10 July 2013 session of the trial he described the Networked Fourth Estate as the set of practices, organizing models, and technologies that are associated with the free press and provide a public check on the branches of government.


title: Fourth Estate

text: It differs from the traditional press and the traditional fourth estate in that it has a diverse set of actors instead of a small number of major presses. These actors include small for-profit media organizations, non-profit media organizations, academic centers, and distributed networks of individuals participating in the media process with the larger traditional organizations.


title: Fourth Estate

text: In 1580 Montaigne proposed that governments should hold in check a "fourth estate" of lawyers selling justice to the rich and denying it to rightful litigants who do not bribe their way to a verdict:


title: Fourth Estate

text: This sense has prevailed in other countries: In Italy, for example, striking workers in 1890s Turin were depicted as "Il quarto stato"—The Fourth Estate—in a painting by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo. A political journal of the left, "Quarto Stato", published in Milan, Italy, in 1926, also reflected this meaning.


title: Fourth Estate

text: In response to violence against a textile worker demonstration in Fourmies, France on May Day 1891, Georges Clemenceau said in a speech to the Chamber of Deputies:


title: Fourth Estate

text: Traditionalist philosopher Julius Evola saw the Fourth Estate as the final point of his historical cycle theory, the regression of the castes:


title: Fourth Estate

text: In a parliamentary debate of 1789 Thomas Powys, 1st Baron Lilford, MP, demanded of minister William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham that he should not allow powers of regency to "a fourth estate: the queen". This was reported by Burke, who, as noted above, went on to use the phrase with the meaning of "press".


title: Fourth Estate

text: In the United States government's Department of Defense, the "fourth estate" (also called the "back office") refers to 28 agencies that do not fall under the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Examples include the Defense Technology Security Administration, Defense Technical Information Center, and Defense Information Systems Agency.


title: Fourth Estate

text: In his novel "The Fourth Estate", Jeffrey Archer wrote: "In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the 'Estates General'. The First Estate consisted of three hundred clergy. The Second Estate, three hundred nobles. The Third Estate, commoners." The book is fiction based on the lives of two real-life Press Barons, Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch.


title: Demography of England

text: The demography of England has since 1801 been measured by the decennial national census, and is marked by centuries of population growth and urbanization. Due to the lack of authoritative contemporary sources, estimates of the population of England for dates prior to the first census in 1801 vary considerably. The population of England at the 2021 census was 56,489,800.


title: Demography of England

text: The population of England in 2021 was estimated to be 56,489,800. This is the most recent census. In the previous census, in 2011, the population was 53,012,456.


title: Demography of England

text: In 2019 70.5% of all babies were born to UK-born mothers while 29.5% were born to foreign-born mothers of which 10.8% came from the EU and 18.7% from non-EU countries.


title: Demography of England

text: The data below is based on the 2011 census. In 2001, the mean age of England's population was 38.60, and the median age was 37.00.


title: Demography of England

text: The ethnicity of school pupils in England has been changing since the figures started to be collected in 2002, White British students proportionally have been in decline compared to other groups who have risen.


title: Demography of England

text: <gallery mode="packed" widths="250" heights="185" caption="Ethnicity of school pupils in the school year of 2021/2022">


title: Gravitational acceleration

text: In physics, gravitational acceleration is the acceleration of an object in free fall within a vacuum (and thus without experiencing drag). This is the steady gain in speed caused exclusively by the force of gravitational attraction. All bodies accelerate in vacuum at the same rate, regardless of the masses or compositions of the bodies; the measurement and analysis of these rates is known as gravimetry.


title: Gravitational acceleration

text: At a fixed point on the surface, the magnitude of Earth's gravity results from combined effect of gravitation and the centrifugal force from Earth's rotation. At different points on Earth's surface, the free fall acceleration ranges from , depending on altitude, latitude, and longitude. A conventional standard value is defined exactly as . Locations of significant variation from this value are known as gravity anomalies. This does not take into account other effects, such as buoyancy or drag.


title: Gravitational acceleration

text: Newton's law of universal gravitation states that there is a gravitational force between any two masses that is equal in magnitude for each mass, and is aligned to draw the two masses toward each other. The formula is:


title: Gravitational acceleration

text: where formula_2 and formula_3 are any two masses, formula_4 is the gravitational constant, and formula_5 is the distance between the two point-like masses.


title: Gravitational acceleration

text: Using the integral form of Gauss's Law, this formula can be extended to any pair of objects of which one is far more massive than the other — like a planet relative to any man-scale artifact. The distances between planets and between the planets and the Sun are (by many orders of magnitude) larger than the sizes of the sun and the planets. In consequence both the sun and the planets can be considered as point masses and the same formula applied to planetary motions. (As planets and natural satellites form pairs of comparable mass, the distance 'r' is measured from the common centers of mass of each pair rather than the direct total distance between planet centers.)


title: Gravitational acceleration

text: If one mass is much larger than the other, it is convenient to take it as observational reference and define it as source of a gravitational field of magnitude and orientation given by:


title: Gravitational acceleration

text: where formula_7 is the mass of the field source (larger), and formula_8 is a unit vector directed from the field source to the sample (smaller) mass. The negative sign indicates that the force is attractive (points backward, toward the source).


title: Gravitational acceleration

text: Here formula_12 is the frictionless, free-fall acceleration sustained by the sampling mass formula_10 under the attraction of the gravitational source.


title: Gravitational acceleration

text: It is a vector oriented toward the field source, of magnitude measured in acceleration units. The gravitational acceleration vector depends "only" on how massive the field source formula_7 is and on the distance 'r' to the sample mass formula_10. It does not depend on the magnitude of the small sample mass.


title: Gravitational acceleration

text: This model represents the "far-field" gravitational acceleration associated with a massive body. When the dimensions of a body are not trivial compared to the distances of interest, the principle of superposition can be used for differential masses for an assumed density distribution throughout the body in order to get a more detailed model of the "near-field" gravitational acceleration. For satellites in orbit, the far-field model is sufficient for rough calculations of altitude versus period, but not for precision estimation of future location after multiple orbits.


title: Gravitational acceleration

text: The more detailed models include (among other things) the bulging at the equator for the Earth, and irregular mass concentrations (due to meteor impacts) for the Moon. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission launched in 2002 consists of two probes, nicknamed "Tom" and "Jerry", in polar orbit around the Earth measuring differences in the distance between the two probes in order to more precisely determine the gravitational field around the Earth, and to track changes that occur over time. Similarly, the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory mission from 2011-2012 consisted of two probes ("Ebb" and "Flow") in polar orbit around the Moon to more precisely determine the gravitational field for future navigational purposes, and to infer information about the Moon's physical makeup.


title: Gravitational acceleration

text: The table below shows comparative gravitational accelerations at the surface of the Sun, the Earth's moon, each of the planets in the Solar System and their major moons, Ceres, Pluto, and Eris. For gaseous bodies, the "surface" is taken to mean visible surface: the cloud tops of the gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune), and the Sun's photosphere. The values in the table have not been de-rated for the centrifugal force effect of planet rotation (and cloud-top wind speeds for the gas giants) and therefore, generally speaking, are similar to the actual gravity that would be experienced near the poles. For reference the time it would take an object to fall 100 meters, the height of a skyscraper, is shown, along with the maximum speed reached. Air resistance is neglected.


title: Gravitational acceleration

text: In Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravitation is an attribute of curved spacetime instead of being due to a force propagated between bodies. In Einstein's theory, masses distort spacetime in their vicinity, and other particles move in trajectories determined by the geometry of spacetime. The gravitational force is a fictitious force. There is no gravitational acceleration, in that the proper acceleration and hence four-acceleration of objects in free fall are zero. Rather than undergoing an acceleration, objects in free fall travel along straight lines (geodesics) on the curved spacetime.


title: NTPC Limited

text: NTPC Limited, formerly known as National Thermal Power Corporation Limited, is an Indian central public sector undertaking under the ownership of the Ministry of Power, Government of India which is engaged in generation of electricity and allied activities. The headquarters of the psu is situated at New Delhi. NTPC's core function is the generation and distribution of electricity to State Electricity Boards in India. The body also undertakes consultancy and turnkey project contracts that involve engineering, project management, construction management, and operation and management of power plants.


title: NTPC Limited

text: The PSU has also ventured into oil and gas exploration and coal mining. It is the largest power company in India with an electric power generating capacity of 67,907 MW. Although the company has approx. 16% of the total national capacity, it contributes to over 25% of total power generation due to its focus on operating its power plants at higher efficiency levels (approx. 80.2% against the national PLF rate of 64.5%). NTPC currently produces 25 billion units of electricity per month.


title: NTPC Limited

text: NTPC currently operates 55 power stations (24 Coal, 7 combined cycle gas/liquid fuel, 2 Hydro, 1 Wind, and 11 solar projects). Further, it has 9 coal and 1 gas station, owned by joint ventures or subsidiaries.


title: NTPC Limited

text: It was founded by Government of India in 1975, which now holds 51.1% of its equity shares (after divestment of its stake in 2004, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2016, & 2017) In May 2010, NTPC was conferred Maharatna status by the Union Government of India, one of only four companies to be awarded this status. It is ranked 400th in the Forbes Global 2000 for 2016.


title: NTPC Limited

text: The company was founded on 7 November 1975 by India's former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. as "National Thermal Power Corporation Private Limited". It started work on its first thermal power project in 1976 at Shaktinagar (named National Thermal Power Corporation Private Limited Singrauli) in Uttar Pradesh. In the same year, its name was changed to "National Thermal Power Corporation Limited". In 1983, NTPC began commercial operations (of selling power) and earned profits of INR 4.5 crores in FY 1982–83. By the end of 1985, it had achieved power generation capacity of 2000 MW.


title: NTPC Limited

text: In 1986, it completed synchronisation of its first 500 MW unit at Singrauli. In 1988, it commissioned two 500 MW units, one each in Rihand and Ramagundam. In 1989, it started a consultancy division. In 1992, it acquired Feroze Gandhi Unchahar Thermal Power Station (with from Uttar Pradesh Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam of Uttar Pradesh. By the end of 1994, its installed capacity crossed 15,000 MW.


title: NTPC Limited

text: In the year 1997, the Government of India conferred it with "Navratna" status. In the same year, it achieved a milestone of the generation of 100 billion units of electricity in a year. In 1998, it commissioned its first Naptha-based plant at Kayamkulam with a capacity of 350 MW. In 1999, its plant in Dadri, which had the highest plant load factor (PLF) in India of 96%, was certified with ISO-14001. During 2000, it commenced construction of its first hydro-electric power project, with 800 MW capacity, in Himachal Pradesh.


title: NTPC Limited

text: In 2002, it incorporated 3 subsidiary companies: "NTPC Electric Supply Company Limited" for forward integration by entering into the business of distribution and trading of power; "NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Limited" for meeting the expected rise in energy trading; "NTPC Hydro Limited" to carry out the business of implementing and operating small and medium hydropower projects. In the same year its installed capacity crossed 20,000 MW.


title: NTPC Limited

text: Listing: NTPC got listed on BSE and NSE on 5 November 2004. Against the issue price of ₹62 per share, it closed the first day of listing with ₹75.55 per share. On the day of listing, it became the third largest company in India in terms of market capitalisation.


title: NTPC Limited

text: In October 2005, the company's name was changed from "National Thermal Power Corporation Limited" to "NTPC Limited". The primary reason for this change was the company's foray into hydro and nuclear based power generation along with backward integration of coal mining. In 2006, it entered into an agreement with the Government of Sri Lanka to set up two units of 250 MW each in Trincomalee in Sri Lanka.


title: NTPC Limited

text: During 2008 and 2011, NTPC entered into Joint Ventures with BHEL, Bharat Forge, NHPC, Coal India, SAIL, NMDC and NPCIL to expand its business of power generation. By the end of 2010, its installed capacity crossed 31,000 MW.


title: NTPC Limited

text: The company in 2009 joined forces with other state enterprises Rashtriya Ispat Nigam, Steel Authority of India, Coal India, National Minerals Development Corporation to invest in coal mining operations through a joint venture vehicle named International Coal Ventures Private Limited (ICVL). In July 2014 ICVL acquired a 65 percent stake in the Benga coal mine in Mozambique from the Rio Tinto Group In December 2022, the Market cap of NTPC limited was Rs. 1,66,249.34 crore.


title: NTPC Limited

text: NTPC operates from 70 locations in India, one location in Sri Lanka and 2 locations in Bangladesh.Headquarters: In India, it has 8 regional headquarters (HQ):


title: NTPC Limited

text: Scheduling and generation dispatch: The scheduling and dispatch of all the generating stations owned by National Thermal Power Corporation are done by respective regional load dispatch centers, which are the apex body to ensure integrated operation of the power system grid in the respective region. All these load dispatch centers come under Power System Operation Corporation Limited (POSOCO).


title: NTPC Limited

text: The total installed capacity of the company is 62,110 MW (including 11,755 MW through JVs/Subsidiaries) across the country,(24 Coal based stations, 7 gas based stations, 1 Hydro station, 1 small hydro, 11 Solar PV, and 1 Wind based Station) and 25 Joint Venture stations (9 coal based, 4 gas based, 8 hydro, 1 small hydro 2 Wind, and 1 Solar PV).


title: NTPC Limited

text: The company has also stepped up its hydroelectric power (hydel) project implementation. Some of these projects are:


title: NTPC Limited

text: The company has developed a long-term plan to become a 128,000 MW company by 2032. NTPC Limited is on an expansion spree to meet the power requirements of the country – it has targeted to add 14,058 MW in 12th Plan (from FY13 to FY 17) of which it had already added 4,170 MW in 2012–13, 1835 MW in 2013-14 1290 MW in 2014-15 and 1150 MW from April 2015 to 30 November 2015.