title: Nioh 2

text: Continuing Yoshitsune's mission, Hide encounters the Guardian Spirit, Oh, who leads them to an ancient shrine containing a small box, which upon opened, pours out light which resonates with Sohayamaru. Hide is transported back in time to the middle of the Heian period where they encounters Minamoto no Yorimitsu, who attacks Hide thinking they are one of the hostile yōkai currently attacking the city. When Yorimitsu is called upon by her retainer, Sakata no Kintoki, to head to Rashomon Gate, Hide follows them as they encounter and are captured by the spider Yokai, Tsuchigumo. Hide slays it and frees the two, not before encountering Ashiya Doman, the true culprit, and also Abe no Seimei, who recruits Hide to help deal with Doman. At the Imperial Palace, Hide finds Doman, who summons dark spirits to attack them but is stopped by Nekomata, who is transformed by the spirits into the White Tiger, fighting Hide until he's defeated and restored by Seimei. Resuming the pursuit, Hide defeats Doman first in his human form, then once more when the evil onmyōji sacrifices his body to summon the Lightning God of Yomi. A past version of Kashin Koji, who was slained by Hide in their time, is revealed to have been possessing Doman the entire time as he emerges from the latter's corpse and vanishes. At Byōdō-In, Seimei and Yorimitsu sacrifice themselves to seal the Nine-tailed Fox and Shuten Doji, but not before Yorimitsu shares with Hide her Guardian Spirit, Oh, and urges them to solve the mystery of the young demon slayer, with Hide returning to their time and restoring Yorimitsu's box to the ancient shrine.


title: Nioh 2

text: In a deserted village near the Suzuka Pass, Hide finds another ancient shrine where a Guardian Spirit dragon emerges from a pictured scroll inside it, resonating with Sohayamaru and sending Hide back in time to the early days of the Heian period. Hide hears of their mother telling them the story of Otakemaru, a demon once loved by humans but when they grew fearful of Otakemaru and attacked him, he turned on them, laying waste to the entire village until he's confronted by a mysterious woman and her Guardian Spirit dragon. Hide finds Otakemaru and the two fight, with Hide almost losing control and being turned into a Aratama. However, Hide is rescued by Suzuka, Otakemaru's sister. Trusting Hide, Suzuka heads off in pursuit of her brother, encountering Tate Eboshi, a yokai loyal to Otakemaru. Suzuka is knocked out, leaving Hide to fight and slay the yokai. Having run out of options to defeat her brother, Suzuka uses the last of her strength to give Hide her Guardian Spirit, Sohaya, to them and transform her sword with the Spirit Stones Tate Eboshi gathered into Sohayamaru, the process taking a toll on Suzuka by rendering her amnesiac. With the newly created Sohayamaru in their possession, Hide heads to Onigajo to confront Otakemaru, who transforms his Guardian Spirit into an Aratama, fusing with it to become the Nightmare Bringer. Hide vanquishes the Nightmare Bringer, and Otakemaru, realizing that the half-yōkai Hide was proof that his abandoned dream of humans and yōkai being able to live together had come true, is cleansed of all the pain and hatred. As Suzuka arrives, Kashin Koji begins to materialise from Otakemaru's cut off horn, but Hide seals him away with Sohayamaru, this time permanently, before returning to their time. Suzuka would recount these events as a fairy-tale to the child Hide (not knowing that Hide is the hero of the legend). In the afterlife, Otakemaru, now restored to this original appearance, is reunited with Miyoshino, whose memories as Suzuka have returned, and the two pass on together.


title: Nioh 2

text: "Nioh 2" was announced for the PlayStation 4 at E3 2018 during Sony's press conference. An open beta of the game began on November 1, 2019. It released on March 13, 2020. Versions for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 5 titled "Nioh 2: Complete Edition" featuring all the previous downloadable content were released on February 5, 2021.


title: Nioh 2

text: "Nioh 2" sold 91,892 copies during its first week of release in Japan, which made it the bestselling retail game of the week in the country. It was also the bestselling game during its first week of release in the UK.


title: Nioh 2

text: The game received mostly positive reviews. "IGN" stated, ""Nioh 2" is an impressive evolution of its predecessor, strengthening everything that was already great, while mostly leaving its already existing issues alone. Its stellar combat is elevated by the addition of Soul Cores, Burst Counters, and the ways in which those two main new mechanics affect enemy AI and how you approach battles. It's depth is impressive, even though that can also make it feel a little overwhelming due to how much time must be spent managing "Nioh 2"s many systems. If you're up to the challenge, "Nioh 2" is no doubt one of the most difficult and rewarding games of this generation." While "GameSpot" stated, "Ultimately, that excruciating difficulty and the feeling it evokes are baked into "Nioh"s DNA, though, and its boss fights remain compelling even as they vex and frustrate. Though it sometimes feels like a curse as you play, it is a testament that "Nioh 2" successfully grabs and holds your complete attention so close for so long."


title: Nioh 2

text: By April 2021, the game had shipped over 2 million copies worldwide. In October 2022, the sales of both "Nioh" and "Nioh 2" had exceeded seven million units worldwide.


title: Diffraction grating

text: In optics, a diffraction grating is an optical component with a periodic structure that diffracts light into several beams travelling in different directions (i.e., different diffraction angles). The emerging coloration is a form of structural coloration. The directions or diffraction angles of these beams depend on the wave (light) incident angle to the diffraction grating, the spacing or distance between adjacent diffracting elements (e.g., parallel slits for a transmission grating) on the grating, and the wavelength of the incident light. The grating acts as a dispersive element. Because of this, diffraction gratings are commonly used in monochromators and spectrometers, but other applications are also possible such as optical encoders for high precision motion control and wavefront measurement.


title: Diffraction grating

text: For typical applications, a reflective grating has ridges or "rulings" on its surface while a transmissive grating has transmissive or hollow slits on its surface. Such a grating modulates the amplitude of an incident wave on it to create a diffraction pattern. There are also gratings that modulate the phases of incident waves rather than the amplitude, and these type of gratings can be produced frequently by using holography.


title: Diffraction grating

text: James Gregory (1638–1675) observed the diffraction patterns caused by a bird feather, which was effectively the first diffraction grating (in a natural form) to be discovered, about a year after Isaac Newton's prism experiments. The first man-made diffraction grating was made around 1785 by Philadelphia inventor David Rittenhouse, who strung hairs between two finely threaded screws. This was similar to notable German physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer's wire diffraction grating in 1821. The principles of diffraction were discovered by Thomas Young and Augustin-Jean Fresnel. Using these principles, Fraunhofer was the first who used a diffraction grating to obtain line spectra and the first who measured the wavelengths of spectral lines with a diffraction grating.


title: Diffraction grating

text: Gratings with the lowest line-distance (d) were created, in the 1860s, by Friedrich Adolph Nobert (1806–1881) in Greifswald; then the two Americans Lewis Morris Rutherfurd (1816–1892) and William B. Rogers (1804–1882) took over the lead; and, by the end of the 19th century, the concave gratings of Henry Augustus Rowland (1848–1901) were the best available.


title: Diffraction grating

text: A diffraction grating can create "rainbow" colors when it is illuminated by a wide-spectrum (e.g., continuous) light source. Rainbow-like colors from closely spaced narrow tracks on optical data storage disks such as CDs or DVDs are an example of light diffraction caused by diffraction gratings. A usual diffraction grating has parallel lines (It is true for 1-dimensional gratings, but 2 or 3-dimensional gratings are also possible and they have their own applications such as wavefront measurement), while a CD has a spiral of finely spaced data tracks. Diffraction colors also appear when one looks at a bright point source through a translucent fine-pitch umbrella-fabric covering. Decorative patterned plastic films based on reflective grating patches are inexpensive and commonplace. A similar color separation seen from thin layers of oil (or gasoline, etc.) on water, known as iridescence, are not caused by diffraction from a grating but rather by thin film interference from the closely stacked transmissive layers.


title: Diffraction grating

text: For a diffraction grating, the relationship between the grating spacing (i.e., the distance between adjacent grating grooves or slits), the angle of the wave (light) incidence to the grating, and the diffracted wave from the grating, is known as the grating equation. Like many other optical formulas, the grating equation can be derived by using the Huygens–Fresnel principle, stating that each point on a wavefront of a propagating wave can be considered to act as a point wave source, and a wavefront at any subsequent point can be found by adding together the contributions from each of these individual point wave sources on the previous wavefront.


title: Diffraction grating

text: Gratings may be of the 'reflective' or 'transmissive' type, analogous to a mirror or lens, respectively. A grating has a 'zero-order mode' (where the integer order of diffraction "m" is set to zero), in which a ray of light behaves according to the laws of reflection (like a mirror) and refraction (like a lens), respectively.


title: Diffraction grating

text: An idealized diffraction grating is made up of a set of slits of spacing formula_1, that must be wider than the wavelength of interest to cause diffraction. Assuming a plane wave of monochromatic light of wavelength formula_2 at normal incidence on a grating (I.e., wavefronts of the incident wave are parallel to the grating main plane), each slit in the grating acts as a quasi point wave source from which light propagates in all directions (although this is typically limited to the forward hemisphere from the point source). Of course, every point on every slit to which the incident wave reaches plays as a point wave source for the diffraction wave and all these contributions to the diffraction wave determine the detailed diffraction wave light property distribution, but diffraction angles (at the grating) at which the diffraction wave intensity is highest are determined only by these quasi point sources corresponding the slits in the grating. After the incident light (wave) interacts with the grating, the resulting diffracted light from the grating is composed of the sum of interfering wave components emanating from each slit in the grating; At any given point in space through which the diffracted light may pass, typically called observation point, the path length from each slit in the grating to the given point varies, so the phase of the wave emanating from each of the slits at that point also varies. As a result, the sum of the diffracted waves from the grating slits at the given observation point creates a peak, valley, or some degree between them in light intensity through additive and destructive interference. When the difference between the light paths from adjacent slits to the observation point is equal to an odd integer-multiple of the half of the wavelength, "l"formula_3 with an odd integer formula_4, the waves are out of phase at that point, and thus cancel each other to create the (locally) minimum light intensity. Similarly, when the path difference is a multiple of formula_2, the waves are in phase and the (locally) maximum intensity occurs. For light at the normal incidence to the grating, the intensity maxima occur at diffraction angles formula_6, which satisfy the relationship formula_7, where formula_6 is the angle between the diffracted ray and the grating's normal vector, formula_1 is the distance from the center of one slit to the center of the adjacent slit, and formula_10 is an integer representing the propagation-mode of interest called the diffraction order.


title: Diffraction grating

text: When a plane light wave is normally incident on the grating, the diffracted light has maxima at diffraction angles formula_6 given by the diffraction equation as


title: Diffraction grating

text: It can be shown that if the plane wave is incident at any arbitrary angle formula_13 to the grating normal, the grating equation becomes


title: Diffraction grating

text: or formula_15 Either choice is fine as long as the choice is kept through diffraction-related calculations. The resulting difference between two choices is the signs of diffraction orders, e.g., formula_16 in the first choice becomes formula_17 in the second choice. When solved for diffracted angle at which the diffracted wave intensity are maximized, the equation becomes


title: Diffraction grating

text: The diffracted light that corresponds to direct transmission for a transmissive diffraction grating or specular reflection for a reflective grating is called the zero order, and is denoted formula_19. The other diffracted light intensity maxima occur at angles formula_6 represented by non-zero integer diffraction orders formula_10. Note that formula_10 can be positive or negative, corresponding to diffracted orders on the both sides of the zero order diffracted beam.


title: Diffraction grating

text: Even if the grating equation is derived from a specific grating such as the grating in the right diagram (This grating is called a blazed grating.), the equation can apply to any regular structure of the same spacing, because the phase relationship between light scattered from adjacent diffracting elements of the grating remains the same. The detailed diffracted light property distribution (e.g., intensity) depends on the detailed structure of the grating elements as well as on the number of elements in the grating, but it always gives maxima in the directions given by the grating equation.


title: Diffraction grating

text: Depending on how a grating modulates incident light on it to cause the diffracted light, there are the following grating types.


title: Diffraction grating

text: An optical axis diffraction grating, in which the optical axis is spatially and periodically modulated, is also considered a either reflection or transmission phase diffraction grating.


title: Diffraction grating

text: The grating equation applies to all these gratings due to the same phase relationship between the diffracted waves from adjacent diffracting elements of the gratings, even if the detailed distribution of the diffracted wave property depends on the detailed structure of each grating.


title: Diffraction grating

text: Quantum electrodynamics (QED) offers another derivation of the properties of a diffraction grating in terms of photons as particles (at some level). QED can be described intuitively with the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics. As such it can model photons as potentially following all paths from a source to a final point, each path with a certain probability amplitude. These probability amplitudes can be represented as a complex number or equivalent vector—or, as Richard Feynman simply calls them in his book on QED, "arrows".


title: Diffraction grating

text: For the probability that a certain event will happen, one sums the probability amplitudes for all of the possible ways in which the event can occur, and then takes the square of the length of the result. The probability amplitude for a photon from a monochromatic source to arrive at a certain final point at a given time, in this case, can be modeled as an arrow that spins rapidly until it is evaluated when the photon reaches its final point. For example, for the probability that a photon will reflect off of a mirror and be observed at a given point a given amount of time later, one sets the photon's probability amplitude spinning as it leaves the source, follows it to the mirror, and then to its final point, even for paths that do not involve bouncing off of the mirror at equal angles. One can then evaluate the probability amplitude at the photon's final point; next, one can integrate over all of these arrows (see vector sum), and square the length of the result to obtain the probability that this photon will reflect off of the mirror in the pertinent fashion. The times these paths take are what determine the angle of the probability amplitude arrow, as they can be said to "spin" at a constant rate (which is related to the frequency of the photon).


title: Diffraction grating

text: The times of the paths near the classical reflection site of the mirror are nearly the same, so the probability amplitudes point in nearly the same direction—thus, they have a sizable sum. Examining the paths towards the edges of the mirror reveals that the times of nearby paths are quite different from each other, and thus we wind up summing vectors that cancel out quickly. So, there is a higher probability that light will follow a near-classical reflection path than a path further out. However, a diffraction grating can be made out of this mirror, by scraping away areas near the edge of the mirror that usually cancel nearby amplitudes out—but now, since the photons don't reflect from the scraped-off portions, the probability amplitudes that would all point, for instance, at forty-five degrees, can have a sizable sum. Thus, this lets light of the right frequency sum to a larger probability amplitude, and as such possess a larger probability of reaching the appropriate final point.


title: Diffraction grating

text: This particular description involves many simplifications: a point source, a "surface" that light can reflect off of (thus neglecting the interactions with electrons) and so forth. The biggest simplification is perhaps in the fact that the "spinning" of the probability amplitude arrows is actually more accurately explained as a "spinning" of the source, as the probability amplitudes of photons do not "spin" while they are in transit. We obtain the same variation in probability amplitudes by letting the time at which the photon left the source be indeterminate—and the time of the path now tells us when the photon would have left the source, and thus what the angle of its "arrow" would be. However, this model and approximation is a reasonable one to illustrate a diffraction grating conceptually. Light of a different frequency may also reflect off of the same diffraction grating, but with a different final point.


title: Diffraction grating

text: The wavelength dependence in the grating equation shows that the grating separates an incident polychromatic beam into its constituent wavelength components at different angles, i.e., it is angular dispersive. Each wavelength of input beam spectrum is sent into a different direction, producing a rainbow of colors under white light illumination. This is visually similar to the operation of a prism, although the mechanism is very different. A prism refracts waves of different wavelengths at different angles due to their different refractive indices, while a grating diffracts different wavelengths at different angles due to interference at each wavelength.


title: Diffraction grating

text: The diffracted beams corresponding to consecutive orders may overlap, depending on the spectral content of the incident beam and the grating density. The higher the spectral order, the greater the overlap into the next order.


title: Diffraction grating

text: The grating equation shows that the angles of the diffracted orders only depend on the grooves' period, and not on their shape. By controlling the cross-sectional profile of the grooves, it is possible to concentrate most of the diffracted optical energy in a particular order for a given wavelength. A triangular profile is commonly used. This technique is called "blazing." The incident angle and wavelength for which the diffraction is most efficient (the ratio of the diffracted optical energy to the incident energy is the highest) are often called "blazing angle" and "blazing wavelength." The efficiency of a grating may also depend on the polarization of the incident light. Gratings are usually designated by their "groove density", the number of grooves per unit length, usually expressed in grooves per millimeter (g/mm), also equal to the inverse of the groove period. The groove period must be on the order of the wavelength of interest; the spectral range covered by a grating is dependent on groove spacing and is the same for ruled and holographic gratings with the same grating constant (meaning "groove density" or the groove period). The maximum wavelength that a grating can diffract is equal to twice the grating period, in which case the incident and diffracted light are at ninety degrees (90°) to the grating normal. To obtain frequency dispersion over a wider frequency one must use a prism. The optical regime, in which the use of gratings is most common, corresponds to wavelengths between 100 nm and 10 µm. In that case, the groove density can vary from a few tens of grooves per millimeter, as in "echelle gratings", to a few thousands of grooves per millimeter.


title: Diffraction grating

text: When groove spacing is less than half the wavelength of light, the only present order is the "m" = 0 order. Gratings with such small periodicity (with respect to the incident light wavelength) are called subwavelength gratings and exhibit special optical properties. Made on an isotropic material the subwavelength gratings give rise to form birefringence, in which the material behaves as if it were birefringent.


title: Diffraction grating

text: SR gratings are named due to its surface structure of depressions (low relief) and elevations (high relief). Originally, high-resolution gratings were ruled by high-quality "ruling engines" whose construction was a large undertaking. Henry Joseph Grayson designed a machine to make diffraction gratings, succeeding with one of 120,000 lines to the inch (approx. 4,724 lines per mm) in 1899. Later, photolithographic techniques created gratings via holographic interference patterns. A holographic grating has sinusoidal grooves as the result of an optical sinusoidal interference pattern on the grating material during its fabrication, and may not be as efficient as ruled gratings, but are often preferred in monochromators because they produce less stray light. A copying technique can make high quality replicas from master gratings of either type, thereby lowering fabrication costs.


title: Diffraction grating

text: Semiconductor technology today is also utilized to etch holographically patterned gratings into robust materials such as fused silica. In this way, low stray-light holography is combined with the high efficiency of deep, etched transmission gratings, and can be incorporated into high volume, low cost semiconductor manufacturing technology.


title: Diffraction grating

text: Another method for manufacturing diffraction gratings uses a photosensitive gel sandwiched between two substrates. A holographic interference pattern exposes the gel, which is later developed. These gratings, called "volume phase holography diffraction gratings" (or VPH diffraction gratings) have no physical grooves, but instead a periodic modulation of the refractive index within the gel. This removes much of the surface scattering effects typically seen in other types of gratings. These gratings also tend to have higher efficiencies, and allow for the inclusion of complicated patterns into a single grating. A VPH diffraction grating is typically a transmission grating, through which incident light passes and is diffracted, but a VPH reflection grating can also be made by tilting the direction of a refractive index modulation with respect to the grating surface. In older versions of such gratings, environmental susceptibility was a trade-off, as the gel had to be contained at low temperature and humidity. Typically, the photosensitive substances are sealed between two substrates that make them resistant to humidity, and thermal and mechanical stresses. VPH diffraction gratings are not destroyed by accidental touches and are more scratch resistant than typical relief gratings.


title: Diffraction grating

text: A new technology for grating insertion into integrated photonic lightwave circuits is digital planar holography (DPH). DPH gratings are generated in computer and fabricated on one or several interfaces of an optical waveguide planar by using standard micro-lithography or nano-imprinting methods, compatible with mass-production. Light propagates inside the DPH gratings, confined by the refractive index gradient, which provides longer interaction path and greater flexibility in light steering.


title: Diffraction grating

text: Diffraction gratings are often used in monochromators, spectrometers, lasers, wavelength division multiplexing devices, optical pulse compressing devices, and many other optical instruments.


title: Diffraction grating

text: Ordinary pressed CD and DVD media are every-day examples of diffraction gratings and can be used to demonstrate the effect by reflecting sunlight off them onto a white wall. This is a side effect of their manufacture, as one surface of a CD has many small pits in the plastic, arranged in a spiral; that surface has a thin layer of metal applied to make the pits more visible. The structure of a DVD is optically similar, although it may have more than one pitted surface, and all pitted surfaces are inside the disc.


title: Diffraction grating

text: Due to the sensitivity to the refractive index of the media, diffraction grating can be used as sensor of fluid properties.


title: Diffraction grating

text: In a standard pressed vinyl record when viewed from a low angle perpendicular to the grooves, a similar but less defined effect to that in a CD/DVD is seen. This is due to viewing angle (less than the critical angle of reflection of the black vinyl) and the path of the light being reflected due to this being changed by the grooves, leaving a rainbow relief pattern behind.


title: Diffraction grating

text: Diffraction gratings are also used to distribute evenly the frontlight of e-readers such as the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight.


title: Diffraction grating

text: Striated muscle is the most commonly found natural diffraction grating and, this has helped physiologists in determining the structure of such muscle. Aside from this, the chemical structure of crystals can be thought of as diffraction gratings for types of electromagnetic radiation other than visible light, this is the basis for techniques such as X-ray crystallography.


title: Diffraction grating

text: Most commonly confused with diffraction gratings are the iridescent colors of peacock feathers, mother-of-pearl, and butterfly wings. Iridescence in birds, fish and insects is often caused by thin-film interference rather than a diffraction grating. Diffraction produces the entire spectrum of colors as the viewing angle changes, whereas thin-film interference usually produces a much narrower range. The surfaces of flowers can also create a diffraction, but the cell structures in plants are usually too irregular to produce the fine slit geometry necessary for a diffraction grating. The iridescence signal of flowers is thus only appreciable very locally and hence not visible to man and flower visiting insects. However, natural gratings do occur in some invertebrate animals, like the peacock spiders, the antennae of seed shrimp, and have even been discovered in Burgess Shale fossils.


title: Diffraction grating

text: Diffraction grating effects are sometimes seen in meteorology. Diffraction coronas are colorful rings surrounding a source of light, such as the sun. These are usually observed much closer to the light source than halos, and are caused by very fine particles, like water droplets, ice crystals, or smoke particles in a hazy sky. When the particles are all nearly the same size they diffract the incoming light at very specific angles. The exact angle depends on the size of the particles. Diffraction coronas are commonly observed around light sources, like candle flames or street lights, in the fog. Cloud iridescence is caused by diffraction, occurring along coronal rings when the particles in the clouds are all uniform in size.


title: San Gimignano

text: San Gimignano () is a small walled medieval hill town in the province of Siena, Tuscany, north-central Italy. Known as the Town of Fine Towers, San Gimignano is famous for its medieval architecture, unique in the preservation of about a dozen of its tower houses, which, with its hilltop setting and encircling walls, form "an unforgettable skyline". Within the walls, the well-preserved buildings include notable examples of both Romanesque and Gothic architecture, with outstanding examples of secular buildings as well as churches. The Palazzo Comunale, the Collegiate Church and Church of Sant' Agostino contain frescos, including cycles dating from the 14th and 15th centuries. The "Historic Centre of San Gimignano" is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The town also is known for saffron, the Golden Ham, and its white wine, Vernaccia di San Gimignano, produced from the ancient variety of Vernaccia grape which is grown on the sandstone hillsides of the area.


title: San Gimignano

text: The municipality of San Gimignano extends for 138 km² and is located on a hill in Val d'Elsa. The altitude difference is between a minimum of 64 meters a.s.l. in the plain of the river Elsa near Certaldo at a maximum of 631 meters in the area of Cornocchio.


title: San Gimignano

text: In the 3rd century BC a small Etruscan village stood on the site of San Gimignano. Chroniclers Lupi, Coppi and Pecori relate that during the Catiline conspiracy against the Roman Republic in the 1st century, two patrician brothers, Muzio and Silvio, fled Rome for Valdelsa and built two castles, Mucchio and Silvia (now San Gimignano). The name of Silvia was changed to San Gimignano in 450 AD after Bishop Geminianus, the Saint of Modena, intervened to spare the castle from destruction by the followers of Attila the Hun. As a result, a church was dedicated to the saint, and in the 6th and 7th centuries a walled village grew up around it, subsequently called the "Castle of San Gimignano" or Castle of the Forest because of the extensive woodland surrounding it. From 929 the town was ruled by the bishops of Volterra.


title: San Gimignano

text: In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance era, it was a stopping point for Catholic pilgrims on their way to Rome and the Vatican, as it sits on the medieval Via Francigena. The city's development was also improved by the trade of agricultural products from the fertile neighbouring hills, in particular saffron, used in both cooking and dyeing cloth and Vernaccia wine, said to inspire popes and poets.


title: San Gimignano

text: In 1199, the city made itself independent of the bishops of Volterra and established a podestà, and set about enriching the commune with churches and public buildings. However, the peace of the town was disturbed for the next two centuries by conflict between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, and family rivalries within San Gimignano. This resulted in competing families building tower houses of increasingly greater heights. Towards the end of the Medieval period, there were 72 tower houses in number, up to 70 metres (230 feet) tall. The rivalry was finally restrained when the local council ordained that no tower was to be taller than that adjacent to the Palazzo Comunale.


title: San Gimignano

text: While the official patron is Saint Geminianus, the town also honours Saint Fina, known also as Seraphina and Serafina, who was born in San Gimignano 1238 and whose feast day is 12 March. The Chapel of Santa Fina in the Collegiate Church houses her shrine and frescos by Ghirlandaio. The house said to be her home still stands in the town.


title: San Gimignano

text: On 8 May 1300, San Gimignano hosted Dante Alighieri in his role as ambassador of the Guelph League in Tuscany.


title: San Gimignano

text: The city flourished until 1348, when it was struck by the Black Death that affected all of Europe, and about half the townsfolk died. The town submitted to the rule of Florence. Initially, some Gothic palazzi were built in the Florentine style, and many of the towers were reduced to the height of the houses. There was little subsequent development, and San Gimignano remained preserved in its medieval state until the 19th century, when its status as a touristic and artistic resort began to be recognised.


title: San Gimignano

text: The city is on the ridge of a hill with its main axis being north/south. It is encircled by three walls and has at its highest point, to the west, the ruins of a fortress dismantled in the 16th century. There are eight entrances into the city, set into the second wall, which dates from the 12th and 13th centuries. The main gates are Porta San Giovanni on the ridge extending south, Porta San Matteo to the north west and Porta S. Jacopo to the north east. The main streets are Via San Matteo and Via San Giovanni, which cross the city from north to south.


title: San Gimignano

text: At the heart of the town are four squares: the Piazza Duomo, on which stands the Collegiate Church; the Piazza della Cisterna, the Piazza Pecori and the Piazza delle Erbe. To the north of the town is another significant square, Piazza Agostino, on which stands the Church of Sant' Agostino. The locations of the Collegiate Church and Sant' Agostino's and their piazzas effectively divide the town into two regions.


title: San Gimignano

text: The town of San Gimignano has many examples of Romanesque and Gothic architecture. As well as churches and medieval fortifications, there are examples of Romanesque secular and domestic architecture which may be distinguished from each other by their round and pointed arches, respectively. A particular feature which is typical of the region of Siena is that the arches of openings are depressed, with doorways often having a second low arch set beneath a semi-circular or pointed arch. Both Romanesque and Gothic windows sometimes have a bifurcate form, with two openings divided by a stone mullion under a single arch.


title: San Gimignano

text: This Piazza, entered from Via San Giovanni, is the main square of the town. It is triangular in shape and is surrounded by medieval houses of different dates, among them some fine examples of Romanesque and Gothic palazzos. At the centre of the piazza stands a well which was the main source of water for the town's residents. The structure dates from 1346. Although much of it has been renewed in the late 20th century, parts of the paving date from the 13th century.


title: San Gimignano

text: This piazza is to the north of Piazza della Cisterna and is connected by a passage adjacent to an open loggia. To the west, at the top of the square, stands the Collegiate Church, reached by a broad flight of steps. The name of the square would seem to imply that this church was at one time a cathedral, but although it was perhaps planned, this was not the case. Other important buildings on the square include the Palazzo Comunale and the Palazzo Podesta, the house of the mayor. The Palazzo Podesta is distinguished by its huge arched loggia.


title: San Gimignano

text: While in other cities, such as Florence, most or all of their towers have been brought down by wars, catastrophes, or urban renewal, San Gimignano has managed to conserve fourteen towers of varying heights, for which it is known internationally.


title: San Gimignano

text: There are many churches in the town: the two main ones are the "Collegiata", formerly a cathedral, and "Sant'Agostino", housing many artworks from early Italian renaissance artists.


title: San Gimignano

text: The Pieve di Santa Maria at Cèllole, a village in the municipality, is a Romanesque rural church with a baptistery.


title: San Gimignano

text: The Communal Palace, once seat of the podestà, is currently home of the town gallery, with works by Pinturicchio, Benozzo Gozzoli, Filippino Lippi, Domenico di Michelino, Pier Francesco Fiorentino and others. From Dante's Hall in the palace, access may be made to a "Maesta" fresco by Lippo Memmi, as well as the "Torre del Podestà" or "Torre Grossa", 1311, which stands high.


title: San Gimignano

text: A fictionalised version of San Gimignano is featured in E. M. Forster's 1905 novel, "Where Angels Fear to Tread" as Monteriano.


title: San Gimignano

text: Franco Zeffirelli used San Gimignano as a stand-in for the town of Assisi in his 1972 Saint Francis of Assisi biopic "Brother Sun, Sister Moon". Most of the "Assisi" scenes were filmed here


title: San Gimignano

text: "Tea with Mussolini", a 1999 drama about the plight of English and American expatriate women in Italy during World War II, was filmed in part in San Gimignano. The frescoes that the women save from being destroyed during the German Army's withdrawal are inside the Duomo, the town's main church. The account of this episode is, to a large extent, fictional, because, although there are reports of intended retribution against the town, there is no evidence of a plan to destroy the churches. However, the reference to risk of cultural destruction is historic, as the Allies bombed the area for ten days.


title: San Gimignano

text: In the 2005 novel "The Broker" by John Grisham, Joel Backman takes his second of three wives on vacation in Italy to keep her from divorcing him. They rent a 14th-century monastery near San Gimignano for a month.


title: San Gimignano

text: San Gimignano is headed by a mayor (') assisted by a legislative body, the ', and an executive body, the '. Since 1995 the mayor and members of the ' are directly elected together by resident citizens, while from 1945 to 1995 the mayor was chosen by the legislative body. The ' is chaired by the mayor, who appoints others members, called '. The offices of the ' are housed in a building usually called the ' or "".


title: San Gimignano

text: Since 1995 the mayor of San Gimignano is directly elected by citizens, originally every four, then every five years. The current mayor is Andrea Marrucci (PD), elected on 26 May 2019 with the 70.3% of the votes.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: This is a demography of Argentina including population density, ethnicity, economic status and other aspects of the population.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: In the , Argentina had a population of 40,117,096 inhabitants, and preliminary results from the counted 47,327,407.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: Argentina ranks third in South America in total population and 33rd globally. The population density is 15 persons per square kilometer, well below the world average of 50 persons. The population growth rate in 2020 was estimated to be 0.35% annually, with a birth rate of 11.8 live births per 1,000 inhabitants and a mortality rate of 8.3 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: The proportion of people under 15, at 24%, is slightly below the world average (25%), and the cohort of people 65 and older is relatively high, at 12%. The percentage of senior citizens in Argentina has long been second only to Uruguay in Latin America and well above the world average, which is currently 9.8%.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: The median age is approximately 30 years and life expectancy at birth is of 76 years. According to an official cultural consumption survey conducted in 2006, 42.3% of Argentines speak English (though only 15.4% of those claimed to have a high level of English comprehension), 9.3% speak Portuguese and 5.9% speak Italian.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: Argentina is highly urbanized, with the ten largest metropolitan areas accounting for half of the population, and fewer than one in ten living in rural areas. About 3 million people live in Buenos Aires proper, and the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area totals around 13 million, making it one of the largest urban areas in the world. The metropolitan areas of Córdoba and Rosario have around 1.3 million inhabitants each, and six other cities (Mendoza, Tucumán, La Plata, Mar del Plata, Salta and Santa Fe) have at least half a million people each.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: The population is unequally distributed amongst the provinces, with about 60% living in the Pampa region (21% of the total area), including 15 million people in Buenos Aires Province, and 3 million each in Córdoba Province, Santa Fe Province and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. Seven other provinces each have about one million people: Mendoza, Tucumán, Entre Ríos, Salta, Chaco, Corrientes and Misiones. Tucumán is the most densely populated (with 60 inhabitants/km, the only Argentine province more densely populated than the world average), while the southern province of Santa Cruz has less than 1 inhabitant/km.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: In the mid-19th century, a large wave of immigration started to arrive to Argentina due to new constitutional policies that encouraged immigration, and issues in the countries the immigrants came from such as wars, poverty, hunger, famines, pursuit of a better life, among other reasons. The main immigration sources were from Europe, the countries from the Near and Middle East, Russia and Japan. In fact, the immigration torrent was so strong that Argentina eventually received the second-largest number of immigrants in the world, second only to the US and ahead of such immigration receptor countries such as Canada, Brazil, Australia, etc.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: Most of these European immigrants settled in the cities which offered jobs, education and other opportunities enabling them to enter the middle class. Many also settled in the growing small towns along the expanding railway system and since the 1930s many rural workers have moved to the big cities. Urban areas reflect the influence of European immigration, and most of the larger ones feature boulevards and diagonal avenues inspired by the redevelopment of Paris. Argentine cities were originally built in a colonial Spanish grid style, centered on a plaza overlooked by a cathedral and important government buildings. Many still retain this general layout, known as a "damero", meaning checkerboard, since it is based on a pattern of square blocks. The city of La Plata, designed at the end of the 19th century by Pedro Benoit, combines the checkerboard layout with added diagonal avenues at fixed intervals, and was the first in South America with electric street lighting.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: The table below gives an overview of the number of birth and deaths in Argentina during the past century. Several sources were combined to compile the table.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: The number of births in 2020 (533,299) was 31% below the record set in 2014, while the number of deaths (376,219) was the highest ever recorded - though as the population of Argentina showed a five-fold increase during the past century, the birth rate in 2020 (11.8) was a record low while the death rate (8.3) remained low by historic standards.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: Birth rates were relatively stable from 1934 through 1980, and after declining stabilized from 1995 to 2015 before again declining sharply since then.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: According to the total population was in , compared to only 17,150,000 in 1950. The proportion of children below the age of 15 in 2020 was 24%, 64% was between 15 and 64, while 12% was 65 or older.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: The Population Department of the United Nations prepared the following estimates of vital statistics of Argentina.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: Argentina's population continues to grow but at a slower rate because of its steadily declining birth rate. Argentina's fertility decline began earlier than in the rest of Latin America, occurring most rapidly between the early 20th century and the 1950s and then becoming more gradual.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: European (mostly Spanish) Italian, Portuguese, Brazilian, and mestizo (mixed European and Amerindian ancestry) 97.2%


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: According to the data of INDEC's Complementary Survey of Indigenous Peoples (ECPI) 2004–2005, 600,000 officially recognized indigenous persons (about 1.4% of the total population) reside in Argentina. The most numerous of these communities are the Mapuches, who live mostly in the south, the Kollas and Wichís, from the northwest, and the Guaranis and Qom, who live mostly in the northeast.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: In the census of 2010, 955,032 people self recognized as indigenous or descendants of indigenous peoples, thus representing 2.4% of the national population. This is without prejudice that more than half of the population has at least one indigenous ancestor, although in most cases family memory lost that origin.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: Since 2013, November 8 has been celebrated as the National Day of Afro-Argentines and African Culture. The date was chosen to commemorate the recorded date for the death of María Remedios del Valle, a "rabona" and guerrilla fighter, who served with the Army of the North in the war of Independence.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: The black population in Argentina declined since the middle 19th century from 15% of the total population in 1857 (Blacks and Mulatto people), to less than 0.5% at present (mainly mulattoes and immigrants from Cape Verde).


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: Afro-Argentines were up to a third of the population during colonial times, most of them slaves brought from Africa to work for the criollos. The 1813 Assembly abolished slavery and led to the Freedom of Wombs Law of 1813, which automatically freed slaves' children at birth. Many Afro-Argentines contributed to the independence of Argentina such as María Remedios del Valle who is known as "La Madre de la Patria" (mother of the fatherland in English) and Sgt. Juan Bautista Cabral. Also there is a debate, among the historians, as to whether or not Bernardino Rivadavia, the first president of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (Present Argentina) had African ancestors.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: As with other areas of new settlement such as Canada, Australia, the United States, Brazil, and New Zealand, Argentina is considered a country of immigrants. When it is considered that Argentina was second only to the United States (27 million of immigrants) in the number of immigrants received, even ahead of such other areas of new settlement like Canada, Brazil and Australia; and that the country was scarcely populated following its independence, the impact of the immigration to Argentina becomes evident.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: In the last national census, based on self-identification, 952,032 Argentines (2.4% of the population) declared to be Amerindians. Most of the 6.2 million European immigrants arriving between 1850 and 1950, regardless of origin, settled in several regions of the country. Due to this large-scale European immigration, Argentina's population more than doubled.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: The majority of these European immigrants came from Spain, Germany, Italy, England, Portugal, Brazil, France, Switzerland, Wales, Scotland, Poland, Albania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, Ukraine, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Romania, Bulgaria, Armenia, Greece, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: There was also a substantial number of people fleeing to Argentina in 1945 from Nazi Germany after its loss of World War II in order to escape persecution. It is believed that more than 12,000 Nazis fled to Argentina, with many having been listed to have Swiss bank accounts.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: Italian population in Argentina arrived mainly from the northern Italian regions varying between Piedmont, Veneto and Lombardy, later from Campania and Calabria;


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: Thousands of immigrants also came from France (notably Béarn and the Northern Basque Country), Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Greece, Portugal, Finland, Russia and the United Kingdom. The Welsh settlement in Patagonia, known as "Y Wladfa", began in 1865; mainly along the coast of Chubut Province. In addition to the main colony in Chubut, a smaller colony was set up in Santa Fe and another group settled at Coronel Suárez, southern Buenos Aires Province. Of the 50,000 Patagonians of Welsh descent, about 5,000 are Welsh speakers. The community is centered on the cities of Gaiman, Trelew and Trevelin.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: According to the INDEC 1,531,940 of the Argentine resident population in 2001 were born outside Argentina, representing 4.22% of the total Argentine resident population. In 2010, 1,805,957 of the Argentine resident population were born outside Argentina, representing 4.50% of the total Argentine resident population.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: Illegal immigration has been a recent factor in Argentine demographics. Most illegal immigrants come from Bolivia and Paraguay, countries which border Argentina to the north. Smaller numbers arrive from Peru and Ecuador.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: The Argentine government estimates that 750,000 inhabitants lack official documents and has launched a program called "Patria Grande" ("Greater Homeland") to encourage illegal immigrants to regularize their status; so far over 670,000 applications have been processed under the program.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: The official language of Argentina is Spanish, and it is spoken by practically the entire population in several different accents. The most common variation of Spanish in Argentina is the Rioplatense Spanish (), and it is so named because it evolved in the central areas around the Río de la Plata basin. Its distinctive feature is widespread voseo, the use of the pronoun "vos" instead of "tú" for the second person singular. Additionally, the Argentinian accent sounds identical to Portuguese in the words that begin with 'll' or 'yo', and all the words in Portuguese that begin with 'ch'. For example, the following sentence English: What is your name? Portuguese: como se chama? Spanish: Como se llama? - 'chama' & 'llama' are pronounced as though they were spelled "Shama"in both Argentinian Spanish and Portuguese. Moreover, the sound shift of all of the words in Spanish that begin with "ll" or 'y' but sound like 'sh' i.e., 'llorar' 'llama, 'llegar' & 'yo'. In Portuguese the words that begin with 'ch' always sound like 'sh'. There are many more words like these shown above. The mutual intelligibility between Spanish and Portuguese is already high, but the 'sh' sound increases the intelligibility between both languages even more.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: Many Argentines also speak other European languages (Italian, German, Portuguese, French, Welsh, Swedish and Croatian, as examples) due to the vast number of immigrants from Europe that came to Argentina.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: English language is a required subject in many schools, and there are also many private English-teaching academies and institutions. Young people have become accustomed to English through movies and the Internet, and knowledge of the language is also required in most jobs, so most middle-class children and teenagers now speak, read and/or understand it with various degrees of proficiency. According to an official cultural consumption survey conducted in 2006, 42.3% of Argentines claim to speak some English (though only 15.4% of those claimed to have a high level of English comprehension).


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: There are sources of around one million Levantine Arabic speakers in Argentina, as a result of immigration from the Middle East, mostly from Syria and Lebanon.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: Standard German is spoken by around 500,000 Argentines of German ancestry, though the number may be as high as 3,800,000 according to some sources. German is the third or fourth most spoken language in Argentina.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: There is a prosperous community of Argentine Welsh-speakers of approximately 25,000 in the province of Chubut, in the Patagonia region, who descend from 19th century immigrants.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but until 1994 the President and Vice President had to be Catholic. The society, culture, and politics of Argentina are deeply imbued with Roman Catholicism.


title: Demographics of Argentina

text: Estimates for the number of Roman Catholics vary from 70% of the population, to as much as 90%. The CIA Factbook lists 92% of the country is Catholic, but only 20% are practicing regularly or weekly at a church service. The Jewish population is about 300,000 (around 0.75% of the population), the community numbered about 400,000 after World War II, but the appeal of Israel and economic and cultural pressures at home led many to leave; recent instability in Israel has resulted in a modest reversal of the trend since 2003. Muslim Argentines number about 500,000–600,000, or approximately 1.5% of the population; 93% of them are Sunni. Buenos Aires is home to one of the largest mosques in Latin America. A study from 2010 found that approximately 11% of Argentines are non-religious, including those who believe in God, though not religion, agnostics (4%) and atheists (5%). Overall, 24% attended religious services regularly. Protestants were the only group in which a majority regularly attended services.


title: MV St. Thomas Aquinas

text: MV "St. Thomas Aquinas" was a Philippine-registered passenger ferry operated by 2GO Travel. On 16 August 2013, the vessel collided with a cargo ship named MV "Sulpicio Express Siete" of Philippine Span Asia Carrier Corporation (formerly Sulpicio Lines) causing it to sink. As of 3 September 2013, there were 108 dead and 29 missing with 733 rescued as a result of the accident.


title: MV St. Thomas Aquinas

text: The ferry was named after the Catholic Saint Thomas Aquinas. The ROPAX ferry measured long and had a gross tonnage of 11,405 tons. The ferry was capable of transporting both passengers and wheeled cargo such as vehicles over a large body of water.


title: MV St. Thomas Aquinas

text: It was launched and originally operated in 1973 by "Meimon Car Ferry (later as Meimon Taiyo Ferry)" () as "Ferry Sumiyoshi" (). It was later sold to "Aboitiz Transport System (ATS)" in the early 1990s for their SuperFerry line. She was renamed as "M/V SuperFerry 2". The ferry was renamed the "M/V St. Thomas Aquinas" as a result of the ATS and Negros Navigation merger. The ship and her sister-ship "M/V St. Joan of Arc (ex-Superferry 5/Ferry Hakozaki)" were around 40 years old at the time of the sinking, making her one of the longest-serving Philippine-based passenger ships.


title: MV St. Thomas Aquinas

text: On Friday, 16 August 2013, "St. Thomas Aquinas" departed from Nasipit, Agusan del Norte, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. At approximately 21:00 PHT (13:00 UTC), it was heading into the port at Cebu City via the Cebu Strait when it collided with the MV Sulpicio Express Siete (IMO 7724344), a cargo ship owned by the Philippine Span Asia Carrier Corporation that was leaving port, approximately from Talisay, Cebu.


title: MV St. Thomas Aquinas

text: "St. Thomas Aquinas" immediately began to take on water, prompting the captain to order an "Abandon Ship" announcement. The crew hurriedly handed out life jackets as hundreds of passengers jumped overboard. Within 30 minutes, the ship sank.


title: MV St. Thomas Aquinas

text: At the time of the collision, "St. Thomas Aquinas" was carrying 715 passengers (58 were infants) and 116 crew members. Many passengers were asleep at the time or otherwise had trouble finding their way to the deck in the dark. A spokesperson for 2Go said there was a high probability that some passengers were in the area of impact and were trapped by the damage. The "Sulpicio Express Siete", which did not sink, had 36 crew members on board and was severely damaged at the bow in the accident.


title: MV St. Thomas Aquinas

text: Local fishermen saw several flares–a sign of distress–being launched from "St. Thomas Aquinas" and helped with initial rescue efforts. "We just picked up the survivors and left the dead in the water," said a rescuer. "I heard screams and crying." The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) conducted rescue efforts. Rescued passengers were taken to local hotels.


title: MV St. Thomas Aquinas

text: On Saturday, 17 August 2013, divers began the process of recovering bodies from the ship, which lay in 30 metres of water, but suspended operations later in the day due to safety concerns. 31 people were confirmed dead with 172 others missing as of midday, when rescue operations were suspended due to rough seas.


title: MV St. Thomas Aquinas

text: By 18 August, there were 35 confirmed deaths and 85 others missing as a result of the accident. On 19 August, the Coast Guard confirmed 55 dead and 65 missing with 750 rescued. Rescue and recovery efforts were hampered by bad weather.


title: MV St. Thomas Aquinas

text: Many of the survivors were sickened after swallowing seawater and oil believed to have leaked from "St. Thomas Aquinas".


title: MV St. Thomas Aquinas

text: In a statement, 2Go said "St. Thomas Aquinas" "was reportedly hit" by Sulpicio Line's cargo vessel, but at the same time refused to directly blame the cargo vessel. 2Go said the Port of Cebu is unusually narrow and that special traffic control measures were in use to try to avoid accidents at the port.


title: MV St. Thomas Aquinas

text: Maritime accidents in the Philippines are common due to a combination of bad weather, poor maintenance, and lax enforcement of safety regulations. The Philippine Span Asia Carrier Corporation (operator of Sulpicio Lines) has been involved in five maritime disasters, most notably the 1987 sinking of the ferry "Doña Paz" that resulted in an estimated 4,000+ deaths.


title: MV St. Thomas Aquinas

text: A Special Board of Marine Inquiry was opened on 23 August in Cebu City, led by Commodore Gilbert Rueras of the Philippine Coast Guard. The captains of the MV St Thomas Aquinas and the Sulpicio Express Siete testified, as did Captain Galipher Ian Faller, captain of a Trans-Asia Shipping Lines cargo ship in the area, the Trans Asia Nine. Captain Galipher of the Trans Asia Nine testified that the Sulpicio Line Siete was in the inbound lane instead of the outbound lane.


title: MV St. Thomas Aquinas

text: Oil and fuel are leaking from the shipwreck. The ferry was carrying of bunker fuel, of diesel fuel, and of lube oil. Owner 2Go used spill-containment equipment in the area, but local fishing was affected. The spilled petroleum is expected to contaminate local beaches and mangrove swamps, further damaging Cebu's ecosystem and economy.


title: Cheer (TV series)

text: Cheer is an American sport television docuseries airing on Netflix starting in January 2020. The six-part series follows the nationally ranked forty-member Navarro College Bulldogs Cheer Team from Corsicana, Texas, under the direction of coach Monica Aldama, as they prepare to compete in the National Cheerleading Championship held annually in Daytona Beach, Florida. The episodes focus especially on five individual Cheer Team members and include elements of the history of cheerleading, including the formation of the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA).


title: Cheer (TV series)

text: As the series begins, the Cheer Team has won fourteen NCA National Championships in the junior college division, as well as five "Grand Nationals" for the highest score of all teams in the competition. One of their closest competitive rivals, also a junior college, is Trinity Valley Community College in Athens, Texas, roughly forty miles away. The final episode addresses the outsized influence of Varsity Brands—just acquired by Bain Capital—that seems to control most aspects of the billion-dollar competitive cheerleading industry, including broadcast rights of the Daytona finals. The second season premiered on January 12, 2022.


title: Cheer (TV series)

text: Cheerleading developed from mere boosterism into a sport gradually; as one team would develop pyramids, baskets, throws, and tumbles—combining skills from cheerleading, circus arts (like balancing), and dancing—other teams would emulate and build on those tricks. Unlike most college sports, cheerleading has no professional league after college, so the National Cheerleading Championship held annually in Daytona Beach, Florida is the highest-level event where cheerleaders can compete. As of 2020, competitive cheerleading is a billion dollar industry.


title: Cheer (TV series)

text: Director Greg Whiteley came across competitive cheerleading while filming for his football television series "Last Chance U". He was struck by the cheerleaders' athleticism and highly competitive drive.


title: Cheer (TV series)

text: Navarro College, a “9,000-student community college in Corsicana, Texas, about fifty miles south of Dallas,” has a cheer team coached by Monica Aldama who graduated from Corsicana High School, earned a degree in Finance at the University of Texas at Austin, then a Master of Business Administration at the University of Texas at Tyler. She was a cheerleader in college. Because of her devotion to her extended Texan family, and her husband's desire to raise their children near their families, she accepted the position of cheerleading coach at Navarro College. Starting in 2000, she built the program from the ground up, making it into the best in the nation.


title: Cheer (TV series)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the series holds an approval rating of 96% based on 23 reviews, with an average of 7.75/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "With an inspirational troupe of teens and willingness to engage in the tougher trials facing the sport today, "Cheer" perfectly captures the highs and lows of what it takes to be a cheerleader." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on seven critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Cheer (TV series)

text: "The Washington Post"s Hank Stuever wrote, ""Cheer" quickly and effortlessly becomes all-consuming for the viewer. Whiteley superbly structures the story through six episodes to heighten the anxiety as the competition nears." "Vulture"'s Jen Chaney stated, "while it depicts plenty of conflicts and disagreements between the cheerleaders at Navarro College in Corsicana, Texas, it's an ultimately more uplifting show that uses cheer as a prism through which to explore overcoming all kinds of obstacles." "Rolling Stone" wrote, “...it’s "Apocalypse Now" with pompoms,” and “It’s not tough to see why America is obsessed with "Cheer": At a time when our democratic ideals are smashed to pieces, threatening all our illusions of leadership, "Cheer" offers a fantasy cheer-ocracy, with Monica as a scarily credible cheer-tator.


title: Cheer (TV series)

text: In January 2020, the Navarro cheer team and coach Monica appeared on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show", and performed a full routine; Ellen DeGeneres presented them with $20,000 toward their fundraising goal. The January 25, 2020, episode of "Saturday Night Live" had a sketch spoofing "Cheer" with guest host Adam Driver as one of the coaches apparently unconcerned as team members want to make the mat—the twenty chosen for the finals—so bad they want to cheer despite near-catastrophic injuries. In late January 2020, "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" featured a spoof commercial about mat talk, the boisterous positivity sideline cheers that teammates do for the performing members—for which Jerry Harris was singled-out during the series as excelling in—for their performance. The conceit was a new booster Mat Talk for Regular People program whereby the Navarro Cheer Team members would praise everyday people for mundane activities, and featured La'Darius Marshall, Harris, and Gabi Butler cheering people on, with coach Monica Aldama available for a Booster Shot.


title: Sub Pop

text: Sub Pop is a record label founded in 1986 by Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman. Sub Pop achieved fame in the early 1990s for signing Seattle bands such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney, central players in the grunge movement. They are often credited with helping popularize grunge music. The label's roster includes Fleet Foxes, Beach House, The Postal Service, Sleater-Kinney, Flight of the Conchords, Foals, Blitzen Trapper, Father John Misty, clipping., Shabazz Palaces, Bully, Low, METZ, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, TV Priest and The Shins. In 1995, the owners of Sub Pop sold a 49% stake of the label to the Warner Music Group.


title: Sub Pop

text: The origins of Sub Pop can be traced back to the early 1980s, when Bruce Pavitt started a fanzine called "Subterranean Pop" that focused exclusively on American independent record labels. Pavitt undertook the project in order to earn course credit while attending Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. By the fourth issue, Pavitt had shortened the name to "Sub Pop" and began alternating issues with compilation tapes of underground rock bands. The "Sub Pop #5" cassette, released in 1982, sold two thousand copies. In 1983, Pavitt moved to Seattle, Washington, and released the ninth and final issue of "Sub Pop". While in Seattle, he wrote a column for local newspaper "The Rocket" titled "Sub Pop U.S.A.", a column he ended in 1988.


title: Sub Pop

text: In 1986, Pavitt released the first Sub Pop LP, the compilation "Sub Pop 100", which featured material by artists including Sonic Youth, Naked Raygun, Wipers, and Scratch Acid. Seattle group Green River chose to record their "Dry as a Bone" EP for Pavitt's new label in June 1986; Pavitt couldn't afford to release it until the following year. When finally released, "Dry as a Bone" was promoted by Sub Pop as "ultra-loose grunge that destroyed the morals of a generation". Also in 1987, Jonathan Poneman provided $20,000 in funding for Sub Pop to release the debut Soundgarden single "Hunted Down"/"Nothing to Say" in July 1987, followed by the band's first EP "Screaming Life" that October. Poneman soon became a full partner in the label. Pavitt focused on the label's artists and repertoire aspects, while Poneman dealt with the business and legal issues. Both men decided they wanted the label to focus on "this primal rock stuff that was coming out," according to Pavitt.


title: Sub Pop

text: In early 1988, Pavitt and Poneman quit their jobs to devote their full attention to Sub Pop. Raising $43,000, they incorporated that April. "Of course that was spent in, like, thirty days", Pavitt recalled. "We almost went bankrupt after a month". That August Sub Pop released the first single by Mudhoney, a band featuring former members of Green River. Sub Pop released the Mudhoney single "Touch Me I'm Sick" in an intentionally limited first pressing of 800 copies to create demand. The strategy was later adopted by other independent labels.


title: Sub Pop

text: Pavitt and Poneman studied earlier independent labels ranging from Motown to SST Records and decided that virtually every successful movement in rock music had a regional basis. The pair sought to create a cohesive brand identity for Sub Pop. The label's ads promoted the label itself more than any particular band. The label also sought to market a "Seattle sound", which was accomplished with the help of producer Jack Endino, who produced 75 singles, albums, and EPs for Sub Pop between 1987 and 1989. Endino recorded cheaply and quickly; in order to operate this way, he utilized some consistent studio techniques, which gave the records a similar sound.


title: Sub Pop

text: In November 1988, Sub Pop released "Love Buzz", the debut single by Aberdeen, Washington band Nirvana, as the first entry in the Sub Pop Singles Club, a subscription service that would allow subscribers to receive singles by the label on a monthly basis by mail. At its peak in 1990, the club had two thousand subscribers. The club made Sub Pop a powerful force in the Seattle scene, and effectively made the label's name synonymous with the music of the Seattle area—much in the same way Motown Records was to Detroit—and helped to secure the label's cash flow. The original series was discontinued in 1993, followed by "Singles Club V.2", launched in 1998 and discontinued in 2002.


title: Sub Pop

text: Some commentators have argued that Sub Pop reframed the history of Seattle's music scene as part of their marketing campaign. Even in the late 1980s, the peak of grunge as a regional scene, Seattle's bands could not easily be contained by one genre often experimenting and blending multiple styles and techniques. Different sounds were combined like folk rock, psychedelic rock, garage rock with pop hooks and acoustic harmonics. The "Seattle sound" cultivated and marketed by Sub Pop became known as grunge, while other Seattle bands like The U-Men, who preceded Sub-Pop, became pioneers of avant garde postpunk.


title: Sub Pop

text: Mindful that garnering the attention of the American mainstream music press was difficult for all but the largest indie label, Pavitt and Ponemen took inspiration from alternative bands like Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, and Dinosaur Jr. and sought to publicize the label via the British music press. In March 1989, Pavitt and Poneman flew "Melody Maker" journalist Everett True to Seattle to write an article on the local music scene. As Pavitt had anticipated, the British press became enamoured with Sub Pop and the grunge sound. Pavitt said, "I really felt that the Brits and the Europeans wanted to see something that was unruly and that was more of an American archetype -- something that was really primal and really drew from the roots of rock & roll, which was very American." Poneman explained the label's success:


title: Sub Pop

text: "It could have happened anywhere, but there was a lucky set of coincidences. Charles Peterson was here to document the scene, Jack Endino was here to record the scene. Bruce and I were here to exploit the scene."


title: Sub Pop

text: When Nirvana moved to Geffen Records, Sub Pop received royalties from sales of "Bleach" that kept the label going for years afterwards. A stipulation was also implemented where selected future Nirvana studio LPs were required to carry the Sub Pop logo alongside Geffen's. After the mainstream success of Nirvana, many successful grunge bands had left Sub Pop for major record labels. Soon afterwards, a joint venture was formed with Warner Bros. Records (which had distributed Geffen since that label was founded in 1980; after 10 years under Warner, Geffen was sold to MCA Music Entertainment Group), thereby ending Sub Pop's status as an entirely independent label.


title: Sub Pop

text: Poneman and Pavitt had a disagreement about the direction the label should take, with Poneman wanting the label to become larger and make more money. In 1996, unable to take the new corporate culture following the Warner partnership, Bruce Pavitt left the label and was able to spend more time with his family. The split between Pavitt and Poneman was not amicable, and they did not speak for seven years.


title: Sub Pop

text: The label opened offices worldwide and began major investment in new artists, but without achieving great commercial success, prompting a scaling down and a return to Seattle.


title: Sub Pop

text: In 2006, Sub Pop Records became the first Green-e certified record label. Through work with the Green-e program and the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, Sub Pop "greened" their label by purchasing enough renewable energy certificates to offset 100 percent of the electricity they use in their office, showing their commitment to putting renewable energy in the mainstream as a way consumers can take action to do something about global warming.


title: Sub Pop

text: In early 2007, Sub Pop started a sister label by the name of Hardly Art. This label is also partially owned by Warner Music. In August 2008, Sub Pop relaunched the singles club for one year to celebrate its twentieth anniversary.


title: Sub Pop

text: In 2009, they signed their second hip-hop group, Seattle-based Shabazz Palaces – the first being The Evil Tambourines in 1999. Ishmael Butler, one half of Shabazz Palaces and former member of jazz rap group Digable Planets became A&R for Sub Pop.


title: Sub Pop

text: Domestically Sub Pop has released two albums that have been certified as platinum, for sales of over 1 million units, by the Recording Industry Association of America: "Bleach" by Nirvana and "Give Up" by The Postal Service.


title: Sub Pop

text: Six albums released by the label have been certified gold for sales of 500,000 copies: "Oh, Inverted World", "Chutes Too Narrow" and "Wincing the Night Away", all by The Shins, "Fleet Foxes" by Fleet Foxes, "The Head and the Heart" by The Head and the Heart, and "Everything All the Time" by Band of Horses.


title: Sub Pop

text: Two singles released by the label have also received RIAA certifications: "Such Great Heights" by The Postal Service, which has been certified gold, and "Space Song" by Beach House, which has been certified platinum.


title: Sub Pop

text: Starting in 2008, Sub Pop has released Deluxe Editions of its top-selling albums, which features the remastered album as well as some live tracks. Some of the deluxe editions are known to contain some demos. The albums with deluxe editions include Nirvana’s "Bleach", Mudhoney's "Superfuzz Bigmuff", Sebadoh's "Bakesale", Jason Loewenstein's "Codes", The Postal Service's "Give Up", and Red Red Meat's "Bunny Gets Paid".


title: Sub Pop

text: Sub Pop is famous for its blunt form letter to aspiring artists informing them that they would not be taken on by the label. The letter opens with "Dear Loser".


title: Sub Pop

text: Sub Pop, its founders, and some acts on the label were featured on season 1, episode 5 of Vice Media's "Dark Side of the 90's" entitled "Grunge and the Seattle Sound."


title: Graph database

text: A graph database (GDB) is a database that uses graph structures for semantic queries with nodes, edges, and properties to represent and store data. A key concept of the system is the "graph" (or "edge" or "relationship"). The graph relates the data items in the store to a collection of nodes and edges, the edges representing the relationships between the nodes. The relationships allow data in the store to be linked together directly and, in many cases, retrieved with one operation. Graph databases hold the relationships between data as a priority. Querying relationships is fast because they are perpetually stored in the database. Relationships can be intuitively visualized using graph databases, making them useful for heavily inter-connected data.


title: Graph database

text: Graph databases are commonly referred to as a NoSQL. Graph databases are similar to 1970s network model databases in that both represent general graphs, but network-model databases operate at a lower level of abstraction and lack easy traversal over a chain of edges.


title: Graph database

text: The underlying storage mechanism of graph databases can vary. Relationships are a first-class citizen in a graph database and can be labelled, directed, and given properties. Some depend on a relational engine and "store" the graph data in a table (although a table is a logical element, therefore this approach imposes another level of abstraction between the graph database, the graph database management system and the physical devices where the data is actually stored). Others use a key–value store or document-oriented database for storage, making them inherently NoSQL structures.


title: Graph database

text: , no universal graph query language has been adopted in the same way as SQL was for relational databases, and there are a wide variety of systems, most often tightly tied to one product. Some early standardization efforts lead to multi-vendor query languages like Gremlin, SPARQL, and Cypher. In September 2019 a proposal for a project to create a new standard graph query language (ISO/IEC 39075 Information Technology — Database Languages — GQL) was approved by members of ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1(ISO/IEC JTC 1). GQL is intended to be a declarative database query language, like SQL. In addition to having query language interfaces, some graph databases are accessed through application programming interfaces (APIs).


title: Graph database

text: Graph databases differ from graph compute engines. Graph databases are technologies that are translations of the relational online transaction processing (OLTP) databases. On the other hand, graph compute engines are used in online analytical processing (OLAP) for bulk analysis. Graph databases attracted considerable attention in the 2000s, due to the successes of major technology corporations in using proprietary graph databases, along with the introduction of open-source graph databases.


title: Graph database

text: One study concluded that an RDBMS was "comparable" in performance to existing graph analysis engines at executing graph queries.


title: Graph database

text: In the mid-1960s, navigational databases such as IBM's IMS supported tree-like structures in its hierarchical model, but the strict tree structure could be circumvented with virtual records.


title: Graph database

text: Graph structures could be represented in network model databases from the late 1960s. CODASYL, which had defined COBOL in 1959, defined the Network Database Language in 1969.


title: Graph database

text: Labeled graphs could be represented in graph databases from the mid-1980s, such as the Logical Data Model.


title: Graph database

text: Commercial object databases (ODBMSs) emerged in the early 1990s. In 2000, the Object Data Management Group published a standard language for defining object and relationship (graph) structures in their ODMG'93 publication.


title: Graph database

text: Several improvements to graph databases appeared in the early 1990s, accelerating in the late 1990s with endeavors to index web pages.


title: Graph database

text: In the mid-to-late 2000s, commercial graph databases with ACID guarantees such as Neo4j and Oracle Spatial and Graph became available.


title: Graph database

text: In the 2010s, commercial ACID graph databases that could be scaled horizontally became available. Further, SAP HANA brought in-memory and columnar technologies to graph databases. Also in the 2010s, multi-model databases that supported graph models (and other models such as relational database or document-oriented database) became available, such as OrientDB, ArangoDB, and MarkLogic (starting with its 7.0 version). During this time, graph databases of various types have become especially popular with social network analysis with the advent of social media companies. Also during the decade, cloud-based graph databases such as Amazon Neptune and Neo4j AuraDB became available.


title: Graph database

text: Graph databases portray the data as it is viewed conceptually. This is accomplished by transferring the data into nodes and its relationships into edges.


title: Graph database

text: A graph database is a database that is based on graph theory. It consists of a set of objects, which can be a node or an edge.


title: Graph database

text: A labeled-property graph model is represented by a set of nodes, relationships, properties, and labels. Both nodes of data and their relationships are named and can store properties represented by key–value pairs. Nodes can be labelled to be grouped. The edges representing the relationships have two qualities: they always have a start node and an end node, and are directed; making the graph a directed graph. Relationships can also have properties. This is useful in providing additional metadata and semantics to relationships of the nodes. Direct storage of relationships allows a constant-time traversal.


title: Graph database

text: In an RDF graph model, the addition of information is each represented with a separate node. For example, imagine a scenario where a user has to add a name property for a person represented as a distinct node in the graph. In a labeled-property graph model, this would be done with an addition of a name property into the node of the person. However, in an RDF, the user has to add a separate node called codice_1 connecting it to the original person node. Specifically, an RDF graph model is composed of nodes and arcs. An RDF graph notation or a statement is represented by: a node for the subject, a node for the object, and an arc for the predicate. A node may be left blank, a literal and/or be identified by a URI. An arc may also be identified by a URI. A literal for a node may be of two types: plain (untyped) and typed. A plain literal has a lexical form and optionally a language tag. A typed literal is made up of a string with a URI that identifies a particular datatype. A blank node may be used to accurately illustrate the state of the data when the data does not have a URI.


title: Graph database

text: Graph databases are a powerful tool for graph-like queries. For example, computing the shortest path between two nodes in the graph. Other graph-like queries can be performed over a graph database in a natural way (for example graph's diameter computations or community detection).


title: Graph database

text: Graphs are flexible, meaning it allows the user to insert new data into the existing graph without loss of application functionality. There is no need for the designer of the database to plan out extensive details of the database's future use cases.


title: Graph database

text: The underlying storage mechanism of graph databases can vary. Some depend on a relational engine and "store" the graph data in a table (although a table is a logical element, therefore this approach imposes another level of abstraction between the graph database, the graph database management system and the physical devices where the data is actually stored). Others use a key–value store or document-oriented database for storage, making them inherently NoSQL structures. A node would be represented as any other document store, but edges that link two different nodes hold special attributes inside its document; a _from and _to attributes.


title: Graph database

text: Data lookup performance is dependent on the access speed from one particular node to another. Because index-free adjacency enforces the nodes to have direct physical RAM addresses and physically point to other adjacent nodes, it results in a fast retrieval. A native graph system with index-free adjacency does not have to move through any other type of data structures to find links between the nodes. Directly related nodes in a graph are stored in the cache once one of the nodes are retrieved, making the data lookup even faster than the first time a user fetches a node. However, such advantage comes at a cost. Index-free adjacency sacrifices the efficiency of queries that do not use graph traversals. Native graph databases use index-free adjacency to process CRUD operations on the stored data.


title: Graph database

text: There are multiple types of graphs that can be categorized. Gartner suggests the five broad categories of graphs:


title: Graph database

text: Since Edgar F. Codd's 1970 paper on the relational model, relational databases have been the de facto industry standard for large-scale data storage systems. Relational models require a strict schema and data normalization which separates data into many tables and removes any duplicate data within the database. Data is normalized in order to preserve data consistency and support ACID transactions. However this imposes limitations on how relationships can be queried.


title: Graph database

text: One of the relational model's design motivations was to achieve a fast row-by-row access. Problems arise when there is a need to form complex relationships between the stored data. Although relationships can be analyzed with the relational model, complex queries performing many join operations on many different attributes over several tables are required. In working with relational models, foreign key constraints should also be considered when retrieving relationships, causing additional overhead.


title: Graph database

text: Compared with relational databases, graph databases are often faster for associative data sets and map more directly to the structure of object-oriented applications. They can scale more naturally to large datasets as they do not typically need join operations, which can often be expensive. As they depend less on a rigid schema, they are marketed as more suitable to manage ad hoc and changing data with evolving schemas.


title: Graph database

text: Conversely, relational database management systems are typically faster at performing the same operation on large numbers of data elements, permitting the manipulation of the data in its natural structure. Despite the graph databases' advantages and recent popularity over relational databases, it is recommended the graph model itself should not be the sole reason to replace an existing relational database. A graph database may become relevant if there is an evidence for performance improvement by orders of magnitude and lower latency.


title: Graph database

text: The relational model gathers data together using information in the data. For example, one might look for all the "users" whose phone number contains the area code "311". This would be done by searching selected datastores, or tables, looking in the selected phone number fields for the string "311". This can be a time-consuming process in large tables, so relational databases offer indexes, which allow data to be stored in a smaller sub-table, containing only the selected data and a unique key (or primary key) of the record. If the phone numbers are indexed, the same search would occur in the smaller index table, gathering the keys of matching records, and then looking in the main data table for the records with those keys. Usually, a table is stored in a way that allows a lookup via a key to be very fast.


title: Graph database

text: Relational databases do not "inherently" contain the idea of fixed relationships between records. Instead, related data is linked to each other by storing one record's unique key in another record's data. For example, a table containing email addresses for users might hold a data item called codice_2, which contains the primary key of the user record it is associated with. In order to link users and their email addresses, the system first looks up the selected user records primary keys, looks for those keys in the codice_2 column in the email table (or, more likely, an index of them), extracts the email data, and then links the user and email records to make composite records containing all the selected data. This operation, termed a join, can be computationally expensive. Depending on the complexity of the query, the number of joins, and indexing various keys, the system may have to search through multiple tables and indexes and then sort it all to match it together.


title: Graph database

text: In contrast, graph databases directly store the relationships between records. Instead of an email address being found by looking up its user's key in the codice_2 column, the user record contains a pointer that directly refers to the email address record. That is, having selected a user, the pointer can be followed directly to the email records, there is no need to search the email table to find the matching records. This can eliminate the costly join operations. For example, if one searches for all of the email addresses for users in area code "311", the engine would first perform a conventional search to find the users in "311", but then retrieve the email addresses by following the links found in those records. A relational database would first find all the users in "311", extract a list of the primary keys, perform another search for any records in the email table with those primary keys, and link the matching records together. For these types of common operations, graph databases would theoretically be faster.


title: Graph database

text: The true value of the graph approach becomes evident when one performs searches that are more than one level deep. For example, consider a search for users who have "subscribers" (a table linking users to other users) in the "311" area code. In this case a relational database has to first search for all the users with an area code in "311", then search the subscribers table for any of those users, and then finally search the users table to retrieve the matching users. In contrast, a graph database would search for all the users in "311", then follow the backlinks through the subscriber relationship to find the subscriber users. This avoids several searches, look-ups, and the memory usage involved in holding all of the temporary data from multiple records needed to construct the output. In terms of big O notation, this query would be formula_1 time – i.e., proportional to the logarithm of the size of the data. In contrast, the relational version would be multiple formula_2 lookups, plus the time needed to join all of the data records.


title: Graph database

text: The relative advantage of graph retrieval grows with the complexity of a query. For example, one might want to know "that movie about submarines with the actor who was in that movie with that other actor that played the lead in "Gone With the Wind"". This first requires the system to find the actors in "Gone With the Wind", find all the movies they were in, find all the actors in all of those movies who were not the lead in "Gone With the Wind", and then find all of the movies they were in, finally filtering that list to those with descriptions containing "submarine". In a relational database, this would require several separate searches through the movies and actors tables, doing another search on submarine movies, finding all the actors in those movies, and then comparing the (large) collected results. In contrast, the graph database would walk from "Gone With the Wind" to Clark Gable, gather the links to the movies he has been in, gather the links out of those movies to other actors, and then follow the links out of those actors back to the list of movies. The resulting list of movies can then be searched for "submarine". All of this can be done via one search.


title: Graph database

text: "Properties" add another layer of abstraction to this structure that also improves many common queries. Properties are essentially labels that can be applied to any record, or in some cases, edges as well. For example, one might label Clark Gable as "actor", which would then allow the system to quickly find all the records that are actors, as opposed to director or camera operator. If labels on edges are allowed, one could also label the relationship between "Gone With the Wind" and Clark Gable as "lead", and by performing a search on people that are "lead" "actor" in the movie "Gone With the Wind", the database would produce Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland and Clark Gable. The equivalent SQL query would have to rely on added data in the table linking people and movies, adding more complexity to the query syntax. These sorts of labels may improve search performance under certain circumstances, but are generally more useful in providing added semantic data for end users.


title: Graph database

text: Relational databases are very well suited to flat data layouts, where relationships between data is one or two levels deep. For example, an accounting database might need to look up all the line items for all the invoices for a given customer, a three-join query. Graph databases are aimed at datasets that contain many more links. They are especially well suited to social networking systems, where the "friends" relationship is essentially unbounded. These properties make graph databases naturally suited to types of searches that are increasingly common in online systems, and in big data environments. For this reason, graph databases are becoming very popular for large online systems like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and similar systems with deep links between records.


title: Graph database

text: To further illustrate, imagine a relational model with two tables: a codice_5 table (which has a codice_6 and codice_7 column) and a codice_8 table (with codice_9 and codice_6, which is a foreign key from the codice_5 table). In this case, searching for all of Jack's friends would result in the following SQL query.


title: Graph database

text: The above examples are a simple illustration of a basic relationship query. They condense the idea of relational models' query complexity that increases with the total amount of data. In comparison, a graph database query is easily able to sort through the relationship graph to present the results.


title: Graph database

text: There are also results that indicate simple, condensed, and declarative queries of the graph databases do not necessarily provide good performance in comparison to the relational databases. While graph databases offer an intuitive representation of data, relational databases offer better results when set operations are needed.


title: John Agar

text: John George Agar Jr. (January 31, 1921 – April 7, 2002) was an American film and television actor. He is best known for starring alongside John Wayne in the films "Sands of Iwo Jima", "Fort Apache", and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon". In his later career he was the star of B movies, such as "Tarantula!", "The Mole People", "The Brain from Planet Arous", "Revenge of the Creature", "Flesh and the Spur" and "Hand of Death". He was the first husband of Shirley Temple.


title: John Agar

text: Agar's career suffered in the wake of his divorce, but he developed a niche playing leading men in low-budget science fiction, Western, and horror movies in the 1950s and 1960s. John Wayne gave him several supporting roles in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In later years he worked extensively in television.


title: John Agar

text: Agar was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Lillian (née Rogers) and John George Agar, a meat packer. His great aunt was Edna Gladney. He was educated at the Harvard School for Boys in Chicago and Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Illinois. He graduated from Trinity-Pawling Preparatory School in Pawling, New York, but did not attend college. He and his family moved from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1942, after his father's death.


title: John Agar

text: In 1941, Agar joined the Navy Air Corps, had basic training in Texas, and instructed in physical training at March Field in Riverside, California. He was medically discharged from the Navy in 1943 due to an ear infection that affected his balance. He then enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps. He was a sergeant and a physical training instructor at the time he left the AAF in 1946.


title: John Agar

text: After his marriage with Temple in 1945, her boss at the time, David O. Selznick, signed Agar to a five-year acting contract starting at $150 a week, including acting lessons. Agar made his film debut as Temple's love interest in "Fort Apache" (1948), a John Ford western for RKO starring John Wayne and Henry Fonda. It was a financial and critical success.


title: John Agar

text: Agar was reunited with Temple for his second film, a suffragette drama "Adventure in Baltimore" (1949), also for RKO, which was a huge flop.


title: John Agar

text: RKO used him in "The Woman on Pier 13" (1950), an anti-communist drama that was a pet project of Howard Hughes. It was Agar's first movie without Temple, and he was billed after Robert Ryan and Laraine Day. It was another flop.


title: John Agar

text: More successful was a reunion with Wayne and Ford, "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949), in which Agar played the romantic lead. It was a sizeable hit and has come to be regarded as a classic. Even more popular was the World War II film "Sands of Iwo Jima" (1949) where Agar supported John Wayne. Made by Republic Pictures, it was a sizeable hit, earning Wayne an Oscar nomination and getting Agar some good reviews. Toward the end of his life, Agar blamed John Wayne for getting him hooked on cigarettes and alcohol, two addictive habits that would later ruin his life.


title: John Agar

text: Warner Bros put Agar in a war film, "Breakthrough" (1950) which relied extensively on pre-existing war footage. It was a reasonable success at the box office.


title: John Agar

text: Warner Bros used him in "Along the Great Divide" (1951), supporting Kirk Douglas. He made a low budget Arabian Knights film for Sam Katzman with Lucille Ball, "The Magic Carpet" (1951).


title: John Agar

text: In 1952 Agar was fired by Selznick for driving under the influence of alcohol, which affected his career with the large studios in Hollywood.


title: John Agar

text: Agar was third billed in "Woman of the North Country" (1952), a Western for Republic, and also starred in "Man of Conflict" (1953), an independent drama with Edward Arnold.


title: John Agar

text: Agar had support roles in "Bait" (1954), a Hugo Haas drama with Cleo Moore; "The Rocket Man" (1954), a Charles Coburn comedy co-written by Lenny Bruce; and "Shield for Murder" (1954), a film noir starring and co-directed by Edmond O'Brien.


title: John Agar

text: Agar returned to leading roles in "The Golden Mistress" (1954), an adventure film directed by Abner Biberman.