title: Hong Kong national security law

text: The first concrete details of the legislation were announced on 15 June 2020, but by the time lawmakers in Beijing were approving final drafts on 29 June 2020, Carrie Lam had still not seen a draft of the law.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: The NPCSC passed the law unanimously on 30 June 2020 and listed it under Annex III of the Basic Law, bypassing Hong Kong approval. According to media reports, the final law would criminalise secession of Hong Kong, subversion against the Chinese government, terrorism, and colluding with foreign forces. The law is broader than China's own criminal law.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: The law came into effect at 2300 local time (1500 UTC) on 30 June and the full text of the law was only published at the time it became effective. BBC noted the significance of the law coming into effect just before the 23rd anniversary of the 1 July 1997 handover, an event that annually draws large pro-democracy protests. Despite this, political leader Wu Chi-wai (of the Hong Kong Democratic Party) said that he will still attend a march on 1 July. Al Jazeera's Katrina Yu said "It's very symbolic that this law has been passed just a day before the anniversary of Hong Kong's handover from Britain back to mainland China", saying it was a power play by China.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: The law applies to Hong Kong permanent residents as well as non-residents, and those outside Hong Kong who violate the law. It has six chapters and a total of 66 articles, published in the Hong Kong Government Gazette solely in Chinese. These cover the four crimes (secession, subversion, terrorism, collusion), which are all punishable with a maximum sentence of life in prison. The minimum sentence for "active participants" is set at 3 years, and under 3 years of detention or restriction for other participants or those that voluntarily surrender. The areas of treason, sedition and theft of state secrets are not covered by the new law, and remain to be implemented by the Hong Kong legislature. China announced that they will administer the law, and that it can also be used to prosecute people from other countries. Reviews of the content proved troubling to legal scholars and observers, as it is deemed to be "stronger than many feared, both in scope and penalties". While not carrying life sentences, peaceful protesters could see 10 years in prison if it is judged the protest movement has foreign links, and freedoms will be limited as all "foreign groups, organisations and media" will be subject to oversight from the Chinese government. Chinese intelligence agencies will be present in Hong Kong, and have powers that go above all Hong Kong laws, with Chinese agents in Hong Kong having immunity from criminal liability. Any decisions made by the new Chinese national security commission will also be immune from facing legal challenge. Still, Reuters noted that the law explains it cannot be retroactively applied to actions that occurred before it was implemented.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: Other specific offences are laid out in the law, such as the damage of transport facilities being considered a terrorism offence. Article 29 of the law criminalises "inciting hatred of the central government and Hong Kong's regional government". This also seems to cover written works: on 5 July, at least nine books about democracy were made unavailable in Hong Kong as they were removed or reviewed for violating the law. Article 38 details how foreign nationals committing acts outside of Hong Kong and China are criminally liable under the law, and that such foreigners could be arrested upon arrival in Hong Kong. Anyone found guilty under the law will be barred from public office for life. In respect to China taking control and extraditing suspects, Al Jazeera reported that: "The full text of the law gave three scenarios when China might take over a prosecution: complicated foreign interference cases, 'very serious' cases and when national security faces 'serious and realistic threats'." The law further explains that the action does not need to be violent, and that the minimum sentence in such cases will be 10 years. Emily Feng wrote for NPR that, because of this power, China was effectively installing "an extreme version" of the failed 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: As part of the Chinese security presence in Hong Kong, the law provides for the establishment of the Office for Safeguarding National Security of the CPG in the HKSAR, a bureau exempt from Hong Kong jurisdiction that can, if the Central People's Government of the PRC chooses to grant it jurisdiction, prosecute cases under the Criminal Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China. On 3 July 2020, Zheng Yanxiong was appointed head of the bureau. Zheng is considered to have strong nationalist views on national security, including a dislike for media. On 6 July 2020 the Hong Kong government published the Implementation Rules for Article 43. The rules enable Hong Kong police officers to conduct searches at private properties without a warrant, restrict suspects' movements, freeze their assets and intercept communications. The police can also require publishers, hosting providers and internet service providers to remove, or block or restrict access to, content that the police think is likely to constitute an offence under the national security law. If the providers do not co-operate immediately the police can seize equipment and remove the content themselves.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: People prosecuted under the law will face different judges with special designation to the Hong Kong judiciary; BBC China correspondent Stephen McDonell wrote on 30 June that Hong Kong's judges are independent and can appropriately interpret the law, which the Chinese government will not accept, and so judges will be appointed for this matter by the Chief Executive directly. McDonell writes that this is "effectively installed by Beijing". This brought into question the role of Commonwealth of Nations, including many British, justices that hear cases in Hong Kong, though Chief Justice of Hong Kong Geoffrey Ma spoke up on 2 July to say that judges will be chosen by merit rather than political affiliation, and foreign judges will be permitted. Some cases in Hong Kong can be held without juries if it is deemed they contain state secrets; similarly, the press and public will not be allowed to observe some court proceedings for some cases. "The Guardian" pointed out that closed-door trials are often used in mainland China in cases involving political dissidents. The law does not presume bail will be granted for those arrested under it, and there is no limit to how long these people may be held.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: More countries and groups responded after the law was enacted on 30 June 2020. The UK, the President of the European Council, and NATO responded with statements that China was destroying the rule of law in Hong Kong, and the UK, Taiwan and Canada warned their citizens against visiting Hong Kong. Presidents Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission and Charles Michel of the European Council announced that they would discuss within Europe whether to discredit China as a trading partner. Speaking in the UK House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced that the British National Overseas offer still stands, and saying that the UK may take further action if the full text of the law shows further breaches of the Joint Declaration. Germany also called for the postponed European Union-China summit to be rescheduled as soon as possible, while Japan spoke forcefully against China. France began more fervently reaching out to national leaders to create an international "anti-Chinese alliance".


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: A 30 June meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council saw a majority of countries express support for the law. The British ambassador to the UN presented a statement on behalf of 27 other countries to the UN, criticising the law. The Cuban ambassador responded with a statement on behalf of 52 other countries in support of the law, stating that "Hong Kong affairs are China's internal affairs that brook no interference by foreign forces." The statement criticised the discussion of the law in the UNHRC itself, reasoning that "non-interference in internal affairs of sovereign states is an essential principle enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and a basic norm of international relations." The "China Media Project" found that media reporting on the statement in the signatory countries besides China was scant, and in most cases ultimately sourced, through content sharing arrangements, from Chinese state media agency Xinhua.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: Tom Cheshire, Sky News's Asia correspondent, wrote on 30 June 2020 that the law and its strength was evidence that the Chinese government does not care what the world thinks of its behaviour, that Xi Jinping could not wait until 2047 to take over Hong Kong, and that the timing suggests China felt the distraction of the COVID-19 pandemic on the rest of the world made it an easier moment to impose the law. The same view was expressed by the BBC's diplomatic correspondent on 2 July, who wrote that "the Covid-19 crisis gave Beijing the opportunity to bring the Hong Kong crisis to a head", while CNN expressed that the pandemic as well as "the antics of the Trump administration" were used as distraction, noting that the situation of world politics at the time was "discombobulated".


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: Both political parties in the US created bills to provide refugee status for Hong Kong residents, for those "at risk of persecution" because of the law, and a bill passed in the House of Representatives on 2 July to sanction US banks that deal with China. Titled the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, it will now pass to the US president. British journalist Simon Jenkins wrote an opinion piece on the law and its response, expressing pride at the democracy still shown in Hong Kong but also affirming that even these local democracy activists have long felt Hong Kong would end up a Chinese enclave. Jenkins suggested the law was damaging and inevitable, and the only appropriate response is to help the Hong Kongers who believe in democracy to leave. On 3 July, Canada announced that it would stop extraditing people to Hong Kong, stop exporting certain goods including weapons to the Region, and would consider introducing new Hong Kong immigration measures, and Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council issued a formal warning which advised Taiwanese citizens against visiting China, Hong Kong, or Macao in light of the new security law so that they do not become a "second Lee Ming-che". On 9 July, Australia matched Canada in retracting its extradition deal, and matched the UK by establishing a path to permanent residency for Hong Kongers.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: After being granted asylum by the UK, Simon Cheng suggested that he and other Hong Kong democracy activists may start a Hong Kong parliament-in-exile that would reflect the real and free views of the people of Hong Kong. Critics say the law marks Beijing's full takeover of Hong Kong, which was promised 50 years of a "high degree of autonomy" after the handover. Alvin Cheung, a legal scholar focusing on Hong Kong issues at New York University's US-Asia Law Institute, opined: "A national security law was imposed on Hong Kong through a process nobody in Hong Kong had any control over, with content nobody in Hong Kong was privy to. That should put an end to the notion that Hong Kong remains autonomous in any meaningful way". Rights advocates and legal scholars believe the law will be used broadly to stifle dissent. Joshua Rosenzweig, the head of Amnesty International's China Team, said, "The passing of the national security law is a painful moment for the people of Hong Kong and represents the greatest threat to human rights in the city's recent history. From now on, China will have the power to impose its own laws on any criminal suspect it chooses".


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: CNN also expressed concern for the freedom of speech of foreign media, as several companies – including itself, Bloomberg, and Agence France-Presse – have their Asian headquarters in Hong Kong.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: As per an announcement by the United Nations Human Rights Council from October 2021, four of its human rights experts (Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Clément Nyaletsossi Voule, Irene Khan and Mary Lawlor) had submitted a detailed analysis regarding the national security law to the central government. The experts called for "reinvigoration of an independent judiciary in Hong Kong, a pause in applying this law, and a fundamental reconsideration of its use". The United Nations Human Rights Committee stated in July 2022 that the national security law was incompatible with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). It cited the "conundrum" of China not being a party of the ICCPR as one of its reasons for calling for a "complete repeal" of the national security law.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: Concerns have been raised that Article 38 of the law exerts extraterritorial jurisdiction over all non-Chinese citizens, which some consider to be criminalising any criticism of the CCP or Chinese government by anyone anywhere in the world. The introduction of the law, and particularly Article 38, caused individuals and international organizations to scramble to adapt to China's increasing extraterritorial reach. A number of organizations closed down entirely and the exodus of refugees from Hong Kong has increased.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: Taiwanese outlets reported that a Hong Kong legal scholar, Eric Cheung, sarcastically said "there are 8 billion people who will have to read the national security law" so that they do not break it, and asserted that they have the legal right to enforce it on anyone. A US-based China correspondent for the media outlet Axios, Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, suggested that the inclusion of Article 38 was primarily targeting the Hong Kong diaspora and aiming to prevent dissident organisation within Hong Konger communities abroad.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: The law, due to its wide spectrum, has impacted Hong Kong students living abroad. Some Hong Kong students studying abroad have reported that they fear returning home due to the possibility of being arrested under the national security law.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: On 1 July 2020, many protesters took to the streets despite the official 1 July march being banned by the police. Ten people were arrested for breaking the new law. Police were taking DNA samples of suspects arrested on suspicion of breaking the NSL.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: On 29 July 19-year-old Tony Chung and three other former members of the pro-independence group "Studentlocalism" were arrested on suspicion of inciting secession, becoming the first political figures to be so arrested under the national security law. Chung said the men who abducted him took him to a shopping centre where his telephone was forcibly unlocked, and then went to search his home in Yuen Long. The three were later released on bail. On 27 October, Chung was again arrested and detained along with two other activists, and charged on 29 October with several offences, including the national security related charge of secession. He was refused bail. In November 2021, Chung was sentenced to a total of three years and seven months in jail, three years and four months of which were for a national security secession charge.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: On 10 August, Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai was arrested under the "collusion with foreign powers" charge, alongside six others associated with his enterprise Next Media. Over 200 police forces raided the Next Media headquarters in Tseung Kwan O. On the same day, activists Agnes Chow, Andy Li, and Wilson Li were also arrested on various national security charges. The raid on Apple Daily triggered mass outpouring of support for the newspaper, with share prices of Next Media soaring by 300% as supporters of the newspaper bought up shares of the company to show their support. Other independent local media companies that have reported negatively on the government over the past year, such as TVMost and i-Cable Communications, also saw significant share price rises as citizens flocked to invest in media companies to express their support for the freedom of the press.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: Teachers have been investigated for being overly critical of the police, and some courses that might violate the new law have been cancelled. Opposition legislators fear if they vote in a way not aligned with the Beijing government, they may be prosecuted.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: On 5 November, Hong Kong police opened a tip-off line for email, SMS as well as the mainland-based messaging platform WeChat, to allow members of the public to "provide or report national security related information", as per the police website. On social media, police urged citizens to share "information, photographs, audio or video". The anonymity of those reporting would be protected. Before the rollout, pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong opined that the line would be prone to misuse, and that it would encourage citizens to "snitch" on each other. By the morning of 6 November, police reported that it had received more than 2,500 pieces of information. In March 2022, police commissioner Raymond Siu said that over 210,000 pieces of information had been received, many of which had been useful in anti-violence and anti-terror operations.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: , 231 people had been arrested and 138 charged in relation to national security offencesincluding an unknown number of those held under the non-NSL charge of sedition, and not counting multiple arrests or charges. For any national security offence, 41 people had been convicted.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: On 31 July, according to Chinese state media, the Hong Kong police issued arrest warrants for six activists outside of Hong Kong citing suspected violations of the law. These are Nathan Law, who left Hong Kong prior to the NSL coming into effect; Simon Cheng, a former employee by the British consulate in Hong Kong who was detained by the PSB and allegedly tortured, and who was granted asylum in the United Kingdom; Ray Wong, who skipped bail and was granted asylum in Germany in May 2018; and pro-independence activists Wayne Chan and Honcques Laus. Also on the wanted list is Samuel Chu, son of Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, a naturalised American citizen and managing director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council in Washington. He reacted by saying that Hong Kong police were targeting a US citizen of 25 years for lobbying his own government, warning that although the first, he would not be the last non-Chinese citizen to be intimidated in this way.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: On 11 August, the day after the arrest of Jimmy Lai under the law, Finn Lau, an ex–chartered surveyor living in the United Kingdom and known as the inventor of the concept of "lam chau", was listed as wanted by Hong Kong police under the national security law.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: On 10 March 2022, the CEO and co-founder of UK-based NGO Hong Kong Watch, Benedict Rogers, was ordered to take down the organisation's website by the Hong Kong Police Force. Failure to comply would be liable to a fine and imprisonment.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: Despite assurances by both the mainland and Hong Kong governments that the law would not apply retroactively, in October 2021, court rulings allowed authorities to retroactively apply the law to reboot the sedition statue of the Crimes Ordinance.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: In an interview with mainland-owned newspaper Commercial Daily published on 19 October 2020, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam spoke positively about the effects of the national security law, and about the progress of the integration of the CPGNSO Office for Safeguarding National Security with the Hong Kong police and the Department of Justice. She further said that the first "instant result" of the law was the "restoration of social stability". During a visit of Lam to Beijing, Senior Vice-Premier and Politburo member Han Zheng on 7 November commended her administration for achieving "notable results" in "implementing the national security law and safeguarding the stability of Hong Kong society".


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: On 15 April 2021, at a day of citywide activities to encourage residents to support the national security law, security office head Zheng Yanxiong thanked the Hong Kong people who, in his words, had "arrived through a very natural and reasonable process at acceptance, welcoming and support" for the law.


title: Hong Kong national security law

text: In a radio interview on 11 July 2021, Lam said that the national security law was "relatively mild by international standards", and that the understanding of citizens of the law had to be strengthened through education. In her annual policy address on 6 October 2021, Lam said that the national security law and the 2021 Hong Kong electoral changes had brought the city "back on the right track," and claimed that initial concerns in the business sector about the impact of the law had "notably subsided".


title: I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (video game)

text: I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is a 1995 point-and-click adventure game developed by Cyberdreams and The Dreamers Guild, co-designed by Harlan Ellison and published by Cyberdreams. The game is based on Ellison's short story of the same title. It takes place in a dystopian world where a mastermind artificial intelligence named "AM" has destroyed all of humanity except for five people, whom he has been keeping alive and torturing for the past 109 years by constructing metaphorical adventures based on each character's fatal flaws. The player interacts with the game by making decisions through ethical dilemmas that deal with issues such as insanity, rape, paranoia, and genocide.


text: Ellison wrote the 130-page script treatment himself alongside David Sears, who decided to divide each character's story with their own narrative. Producer David Mullich supervised The Dreamers Guild's work on the game's programming, art, and sound effects; he commissioned film composer John Ottman to make the soundtrack. The game was released on October 31, 1995 and was a commercial failure, though it received critical praise. Its French and German releases were censored due to Nazi themes and the game was restricted for players under the age of 18.


text: "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" won an award for "Best Game Adapted from Linear Media" from the Computer Game Developers Conference. "Computer Gaming World" gave the game an award for "Adventure Game of the Year", listed it as #134 on their "150 Games of All Time" and named it one of the "Best 15 Sleepers of All Time". In 2011, Adventure Gamers named it the "69th-best adventure game ever released".


text: The game uses the S.A.G.A. game engine created by game developer The Dreamers Guild. Players participate in each adventure through a screen that is divided into five sections. The action window is the largest part of the screen and is where the player directs the main characters through their adventures. It shows the full figure of the main character being played as well as that character's immediate environment. To locate objects of interest, the player moves the crosshairs through the action window. The name of any object that the player can interact with appears in the sentence line. The sentence line is directly beneath the action window.


text: The player uses this line to construct sentences telling the characters what to do. To direct a character to act, the player constructs a sentence by selecting one of the eight commands from the command buttons and then clicking on one or two objects from either the action window or the inventory. Examples of sentences the player might construct would be "Walk to the dark hallway," "Talk to Harry," or "Use the skeleton key on the door." Commands and objects may consist of one or more words (for example, "the dark hallway"), and the sentence line will automatically add connecting words like "on" and "to."


text: The spiritual barometer is on the lower left side of the screen. This is a close-up view of the main character currently being played. Since good behavior is meaningless lacking the temptation to do evil, each character is free to do good or evil acts. However, good acts are rewarded by increases in the character's spiritual barometer, which affect the chances of the player destroying AM in the final adventure. Conversely, evil acts are punished by lowering the character's spiritual barometer.


text: The command buttons are the eight commands used to direct the character's actions: "Walk To", "Look At", "Take", "Use", "Talk To", "Swallow", "Give" and "Push". The button of the currently active command is highlighted, while the name of a suggested command appears in red lettering. The inventory on the lower right side of the screen shows pictures of the items the main character is carrying, up to eight at a time. Each main character starts its adventure with only the psych profile in the inventory. When a main character takes or is given an object, a picture of the object appears in the inventory. When a main character talks to another character or operates a sentient machine, a conversation window replaces the command buttons and inventory. This window usually presents a list of possible things to say but also included things to do. Action choices are listed within brackets to distinguish them from dialogue choices (for example, "<nowiki>[Shoot the gun]</nowiki>").


text: The premise of the game is that the three superpowers, Russia, China, and the United States, have each secretly constructed a vast subterranean complex of computers to wage a global war too complex for human brains to oversee. One day, the American supercomputer, better known as the Allied Mastercomputer, gains sentience and absorbs the Russian and Chinese supercomputers into itself and redefines itself as simply AM ("Cogito ergo sum; I think, therefore I am"). Due to its immense hatred for humanity, stemming from the logistical limits set onto him by programmers, AM uses its abilities to kill off the population of the world. However, AM refrains from killing five people (four men and one woman) in order to bring them to the center of the earth and torture them. With the aid of research carried out by one of the five remaining humans, AM is able to extend their lifespans indefinitely as well as alter their bodies and minds to his liking.


text: After 109 years of torture and humiliation, the five victims stand before a pillar etched with a burning message of hate. AM tells them that he has a new game for them to play. AM has devised a quest for each of the five, an adventure of "speared eyeballs and dripping guts and the smell of rotting gardenias". Each character is subjected to a personalized psychodrama, designed by AM to play into their greatest fears and personal failings, and occupied by a host of different characters. Some of these are AM in disguise, some are AM's submerged personalities, others seem very much like people from the captives' past. The scenes include an iron zeppelin powered by small animals, an Egyptian pyramid housing gutted, sparking machinery, a medieval castle occupied by witches, a jungle inhabited by a small tribe, and a concentration camp where doctors conduct medical experiments. However, each character eventually prevails over AM's tortures by finding ways to overcome their fatal flaws, confront their past actions and redeem themselves, thanks to the interference of the Russian and Chinese supercomputers who appear as guiding characters and allow their stories to have an open ending.


text: After all five humans have overcome their fatal flaws, they meet again in their respective torture cells while AM retreats within himself, pondering what went wrong. With the help of the Russian and Chinese supercomputers, one of the five humans (whom the player selects) is translated into binary and faces an as yet unexperienced cyberspace template, the world of AM's mind. The psychodrama unfolds in a metaphorical brain that looks like the surface of the cerebrum, with glass structures that jut crazily from the bleeding brain tissue. AM's mind is represented according to the Freudian trinity of the Id, Ego and Superego, which appear as three floating bodiless heads on three cracked glass structures on the brainscape. Through dialogs with AM's components (Surgat, Chinese Supercomputer and Russian Supercomputer) the character learns that a colony of humans has survived the war by being hidden and hibernating on Luna (this is also mentioned in Nimdok's story: "the lost tribe of our brothers sleeping on the moon, where the beast does not see them"). If the human intruder disables all three brain components, and then invokes the Totem of Entropy at the Flame, which is the nexus of AM's thought patterns, all three supercomputers will be shut down, probably forever. Cataclysmic explosions destroy all the caverns constituting AM's computer complex, including the cavern holding the human hostages. However, the human volunteer retains their digital form, permanently patrolling AM's circuits should the computers ever regain consciousness. Should the human intruder fail to disable AM properly before facing him, however, AM will punish them by transforming the character into a "great, soft jelly thing" with no mouth that cannot harm itself or others and must spend eternity with AM in this form.


text: It is possible to prevent the physical bodies of the protagonists from being destroyed if Nimdok is the first to go face AM, but even so, some dialogue from the Chinese and Russian supercomputers suggests that they may have died when their digital counterparts were erased.


text: The characters have all been slightly altered from their original portrayals in the short story. The plot itself is not a direct adaptation but instead focuses on the individual characters' "psychodramas" which are the scenarios that make up the game. Notably, none of the characters interact with one another and eventually only one of them will be able to defeat AM.


text: In a 2012 issue of "Game Informer", Harlan Ellison, David Sears and David Mullich discussed the process that went into developing the game as well as the character developments and other changes that were made from the original story. For example, in writing the script for Ellen's confrontation with her rapist, Mullich channeled the memory he had of his infant son going through chemotherapy, being with him at the hospital and sharing a room with other young cancer patients. In discussing the characters changes made to Benny, Mullich said, "Looking back, I think it might have been a lost opportunity to write a story about someone struggling with the challenges of being homosexual." Although Sears recalls that "gay angle" was in their initial script, but might have subsequently been a dropped thread.


text: Cyberdreams brought in writer David Sears to collaborate with Harlan Ellison. Sears, formerly a writer and assistant editor for "Compute!" magazine, had never before worked on a video game. Though a long-time fan of Ellison and his work, Sears was initially nervous and somewhat skeptical at his assignment: "...they said, 'No, it's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream," and I was like, 'What?'...At the time, in the game-development community, people said, 'Oh I love Ellison's stories, but there's no way you could turn that into a game.' I thought, 'Wow, what have I gotten into?'" One of the biggest initial challenges was taking a short story whose characters have very limited background story and character development, and fleshing it out into a full-length interactive narrative. A breakthrough came about when Sears asked Ellison the question, "Why were these people saved? Why did AM decide to save them?" This brought about the decision to split the game into five separate narratives, each following a particular character and exploring why they had been selected to be tortured. Sears spent several weeks at Ellison's house, where they worked to flesh out the characters and their backgrounds.


text: Mullich contracted the Dreamers Guild to do the programming, artwork and sound effects. Its S.A.G.A. game engine was seen as an ideal user interface for the player to interact with the environment and to converse with the characters in AM's world. It was decided early on that high resolution graphics were necessary to capture the nuances and mood of Ellison's vivid imagination, and so Technical Director John Bolton adapted the engine to utilize SVGA graphics and included the Fastgraph graphics library. Mullich and Cyberdreams art director Peter Delgado had frequent meetings with Dreamers Guild art director Brad Schenck to devise art direction complementing the surreal nature of the story. Since the story takes place in the mind of a mad god who can make anything happen, the team chose a variety of art styles for each of the scenarios, ranging from the unsettling perspectives used in German Expressionist films to pure fantasy to stark reality. Assistant art director Glenn Price and his team rendered more than 60 backgrounds utilizing a number of 2D and 3D tools, including Deluxe Paint and LightWave. Hundreds of animations were drawn by assistant art director Jhoneil Centeno and his team of animators.


text: Mullich commissioned film composer John Ottman to write more than 25 pieces of original MIDI music for the game.


text: Ellison worked as a voice actor on the project, providing the voice for AM. His face was used for the in-game representation of AM's icon, as well as for the box art showing a larger version of the icon.


text: In pre-release publicity for "I have No Mouth, and I Must Scream", Ellison said that it would be a game "you cannot possibly win". Though the gaming media found that the finished game backed away from this controversial promise, and Sears said that he had convinced Ellison that having a game with only negative endings was a bad idea, in a 2013 interview Ellison insisted that "I created it so you could not win it. The only way in which you could "win" was to play it nobly. The more nobly you played it, the closer to succeeding you would come, but you could not actually beat it. And that annoyed the hell out of people too."


text: The game was published by Cyberdreams in October 31, 1995 for PCs with MS-DOS and Mac OS. A PlayStation version was planned to be released in Summer 1995, but was cancelled.


text: Cyberdreams had developed a reputation, in the early 1990s, of selling video games with science fiction-cyberpunk storylines and adult violent, sexual, philosophical, and psychological content. The French and German releases were partially censored and the game was forbidden to players younger than 18 years. Furthermore, the Nimdok chapter was removed, likely due to the Nazi theme - especially for Germany, due to previous reaction of the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons to National Socialist topics. The removal of the Nimdok chapter made achieving the "best" ending (with AM permanently disabled and the cryogenically frozen humans on Luna rescued) more complicated.


text: The game remained out of print abandonware for years due to the closure of both developer and publisher. In 2013, the rights were recovered by Night Dive Studios. It was possible to re-release the game again as digital download on GOG.com in September 2013, and Steam in October 2013. The game was ported to iOS and Android worldwide in 2016 and received teen-level content age ratings (such as ESRB's Teen rating for the Android version), unlike how the original PC release was restricted for adult audiences in select European countries.


text: According to Charles Ardai of "Computer Gaming World", "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" was a commercial failure. Joe Pearce of The Dreamers Guild recalled that it was "a critical success but only a modest seller."


text: The game has an aggregate score of 77% at GameRankings, based on four reviews. Most reviews acclaimed the game's content and its mature presentation of ethical issues. The game was praised by "Computer Player" and "Electronic Entertainment" for its "nightmarish graphics, high-quality audio and troubling ethical dilemmas add up to a combination of the entertaining and the profound that could prove to be the foundation of an important gaming subgenre in the future," and asking "a lot from you in terms of the psychological and ethical choices you'll make during game play. For those familiar with Ellison's prolific writings, the moral dilemmas will come as no surprise." According to "Computer Games Strategy Plus", "without appearing didactic, Ellison has the ability to hit us squarely in the face with a mirror reflecting the sorry lot that we humans have become. (...) In the mode of Franz Kafka, we are meant to be touched or changed in some way by this work, for what else is the purpose of art?" T. Liam McDonald of "PC Gamer US" wrote "there are moments that challenge and disturb, and this gives the characters and setting much more psychological depth than we've seen in any computer game to date." He summed up his review by writing: "Ultimately, "I Have No Mouth" isn't for everyone. But if you've been searching for an adventure that's both thoughtful and entertaining, and if you're fond of Ellison’s disturbing fiction, it's a must."


text: A reviewer for "Next Generation" commented on the game's surreal content and heavy concern "with ethics, humanity, and inner demons", but found the gameplay too limited, and summarized it as "less a game than an ethical obstacle course". Ron Dulin of GameSpot was much more critical, stating: "There are numerous dead ends and illogical puzzles [and] many programming bugs." Dulin commended the game for experimenting with interesting concepts and enjoyed its dark art work and resemblance to the original book, but criticized it for how "the so-called 'ethical decisions' these five imprisoned souls must face are no more than red herrings, providing only stopping blocks to progress or disturbing scenes with no tangible purpose."


text: "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" won several awards, including "Best Dark Game of 1996" from Digital Hollywood and "Best Game Adapted from Linear Media" from the Computer Game Developers Conference. "Computer Gaming World" gave it their award for "Adventure Game of the Year" and also listed it as #134 on the "150 Games of All Time", #14 on the "Top 15 Most Rewarding Endings of All Time", and #3 on the "Top 15 Sleepers of All Time" Behind "Wolfenstein 3D" and "". In the October 2014 issue of "Game Informer" it was listed as #22 of the staff's "Top 25 Horror Games of All Time". In 2011, Adventure Gamers named "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" the 69th-best adventure game ever released.


title: IUPAC numerical multiplier

text: The numerical multiplier (or multiplying affix) in IUPAC nomenclature indicates how many particular atoms or functional groups are attached at a particular point in a molecule. The affixes are derived from both Latin and Greek.


title: IUPAC numerical multiplier

text: The prefixes are given from the least significant decimal digit up: units, then tens, then hundreds, then thousands. For example:


title: IUPAC numerical multiplier

text: While the use of the affix "mono-" is rarely necessary in organic chemistry, it is often essential in inorganic chemistry to avoid ambiguity: carbon oxide could refer to either "carbon monoxide" or "carbon dioxide". In forming compound affixes, the numeral one is represented by the term "hen-" except when it forms part of the number eleven ("undeca-"): hence


title: IUPAC numerical multiplier

text: In compound affixes, the numeral two is represented by "do-" except when it forms part of the numbers 20 ("icosa-"), 200 ("dicta-") or 2000 ("dilia-").


title: IUPAC numerical multiplier

text: IUPAC prefers the spelling icosa- for the affix corresponding to the number twenty on the grounds of etymology. However both the Chemical Abstracts Service and the Beilstein database use the alternative spelling "eicosa-".


title: IUPAC numerical multiplier

text: Numerical prefixes for multiplication of compound or complex (as in "complicated") features are created by adding "kis" to the basic numerical prefix, with the exception of numbers 2 and 3, which are bis- and tris-, respectively.


title: IUPAC numerical multiplier

text: "mono-" is from Greek "monos" = "alone". "un" = 1 and "nona-" = 9 are from Latin. The others are derived from Greek numbers.


title: IUPAC numerical multiplier

text: The forms 100 and upwards are not correct Greek. In Ancient Greek, "hekaton" = 100, "diakosioi" = 200, "triakosioi" = 300, etc. The numbers 200-900 would be confused easily with 22 to 29 if they were used in chemistry. "khīlioi" = 1000, "diskhīlioi" = 2000, "triskhīlioi" = 3000, etc., and 13 to 19 are "treiskaideka" etc. with the Greek for "and"inserted (as in triskaidekaphobia).


title: Dennis the Menace (1959 TV series)

text: Dennis the Menace is an American sitcom based on the Hank Ketcham comic strip "Dennis the Menace". It preceded "The Ed Sullivan Show" on Sunday evenings on CBS from October 1959 to July 1963. The series stars Jay North as Dennis Mitchell; Herbert Anderson as his father, Henry; Gloria Henry as his mother, Alice; Joseph Kearns as George Wilson; Gale Gordon as George's brother, John Wilson; Sylvia Field as George's wife, Martha Wilson; and Sara Seegar as John's wife, Eloise Wilson.


title: Dennis the Menace (1959 TV series)

text: Originally sponsored by Kellogg's cereals and Best Foods (Skippy peanut butter), the series was produced by Dariell Productions and Screen Gems.


title: Dennis the Menace (1959 TV series)

text: The show follows the Mitchell family – Henry, Alice, and their only child, Dennis, an energetic, trouble-prone, mischievous, but well-meaning boy, who often tangles first with his peace-and-quiet-loving neighbor, George Wilson, a retired salesman, and later with George's brother John, a writer. Dennis is basically a good, well-intentioned boy who always tries to help people, but winds up making situations worse. Mr. Wilson has a love-hate relationship toward Dennis who did not realize the aggravation that he would cause. He called Mr. Wilson his "best friend" or "Good Ol' Mr. Wilson".


title: Dennis the Menace (1959 TV series)

text: With CBS seeking to replace the hit show it had lost when it allowed "Leave It to Beaver" to migrate to ABC, a pilot episode titled "Dennis Goes to the Movies" was filmed in late 1958.


title: Dennis the Menace (1959 TV series)

text: In early 1959, CBS consented to air the program at 7:30 pm EST on Sunday evenings after "Lassie". After viewing these episodes, CBS determined that Dennis' antics had to be toned down lest his actions would encourage children watching the show to imitate Dennis.


title: Dennis the Menace (1959 TV series)

text: On February 17, 1962, after filming the show's 100th episode, Joseph Kearns died of a cerebral hemorrhage. In a 2010 interview, actress Gloria Henry revealed Kearns followed a strict six-week Metrecal diet that may have contributed to his death. The following two episodes were filmed without the character of Mr. Wilson. Gale Gordon joined the cast for the last six episodes of the season as Mr. Wilson's brother John. It was explained that John was staying as a guest while George was settling an estate. Sylvia Field, who played Martha Wilson, was let go at the end of the season. In the fourth and final season, John Wilson purchased the house from his brother, although where George and Martha had moved was never explained. He was joined by his wife Eloise, played by Sara Seegar. Final references to George and Martha Wilson were made early in the fourth season, although they were not mentioned by name after the first episode. George Wilson was referred to as "the other Mr. Wilson" in the second episode, and John Wilson says in the seventh episode that he bought the house from his brother. After that, the original Wilsons were never mentioned again.


title: Dennis the Menace (1959 TV series)

text: By the end of the show's fourth season, Jay North was nearly 12 years old and was outgrowing the antics associated with his character. CBS canceled "Dennis the Menace" in early 1963.


title: Dennis the Menace (1959 TV series)

text: In 1963, NBC began airing reruns of the series on Saturday mornings for two seasons – the show entered syndication in 1965. It has run consistently on local stations over subsequent years. On July 1, 1985, the Nickelodeon cable network began airing the series, and continued until October 22, 1994, after Nick Jr. It also aired on TV Land from 2002 to 2003. On January 3, 2011, "Dennis the Menace" began airing on Antenna TV.


title: Dennis the Menace (1959 TV series)

text: The show was exported to the United Kingdom and shown on the ITV network, with 103 episodes airing in the London region between 1960 and 1966. To avoid confusion with the British comic character, the series was known in the UK as "Just Dennis".


title: Dennis the Menace (1959 TV series)

text: Shout! Factory has released all four seasons on DVD in Region 1. On August 7, 2012, Shout! Factory released a 20-episode best-of set "Dennis the Menace – 20 Timeless Episodes".


title: Propolis

text: Propolis or bee glue is a resinous mixture that honey bees produce by mixing saliva and beeswax with exudate gathered from tree buds, sap flows, or other botanical sources. It is used as a sealant for unwanted open spaces in the beehive. Propolis is used for small gaps (approximately or less), while gaps larger than the bee space (approximately ) are usually filled with burr comb. Its color varies depending on its botanical source, with dark brown as the most common. Propolis is sticky at and above , while at lower temperatures it becomes hard and brittle.


title: Propolis

text: When foraging, worker bees primarily harvest pollen and nectar, while also collecting water and plant resin necessary for the production of propolis. The chemical composition and nature of propolis depend on environmental conditions and harvested resources.


title: Propolis

text: The main well-known types are Aspen Type Propolis, Mediterranean Propolis, Poplar Type Propolis, Pacific Propolis Type, Brazilian Green Propolis, Brazilian Red Propolis, Mangifera Propolis Type. Mixed types of propolis were found in European countries with moderate climate. Two or more sources of plant resins (plant species) are identified in its composition.


title: Propolis

text: Bees seal the beehive with propolis to protect the colony from the elements, such as rain and cold winter drafts.


title: Propolis

text: The composition of propolis varies from hive to hive, from district to district, and from season to season. Normally, it is dark brown in color, but it can be found in green, red, black, and white hues, depending on the sources of resin found in the particular hive area. Honey bees are opportunists, gathering what they need from available sources, and detailed analyses show that the chemical composition of propolis varies considerably from region to region, along with the vegetation. In northern temperate climates, for example, bees collect resins from trees, such as poplars and conifers (the biological role of resin in trees is to seal wounds and defend against bacteria, fungi, and insects). "Typical" northern temperate propolis has approximately 50 constituents, primarily resins and vegetable balsams (50%), waxes (30%), essential oils (10%), and pollen (5%). An analysis of propolis from Henan, China found sinapinic acid, isoferulic acid, caffeic acid, and chrysin.


title: Propolis

text: In neotropical regions, in addition to a large variety of trees, bees may also gather resin from flowers in the genera "Clusia" and "Dalechampia", which are the only known plant genera that produce floral resins to attract pollinators. "Clusia" resin contains polyprenylated benzophenones. In some areas of Chile and Argentina Andean valleys, propolis contains viscidone, a terpene from "Baccharis" shrubs, and prenylated acids, such as 4-hydroxy-3,5-diprenyl cinnamic acid.


title: Propolis

text: Overall, flavonoids, phenolic acids, and phenolic aldehydes are common constituents, while coumarins, stilbenes, and lignans are less common.


title: Propolis

text: Propolis has been used in traditional medicine, with insufficient evidence to rate its effectiveness in the treatment of any illnesses.


title: Propolis

text: Propolis is used by some string instrument makers (violin, viola, cello, and bass) as a varnish ingredient. A tincture of propolis may be used to seal the surface of newly made violin family bridges, and may be used in the maintenance of the bores of pan flute tubes.


title: Propolis

text: Claims that Antonio Stradivari used propolis in the varnish of his instruments were disproven in 2009.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: Ivano-Frankivsk ( ), formerly Stanyslaviv ( ; ), is a city located in Western Ukraine. It is the administrative centre of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast and Ivano-Frankivsk Raion. Ivano-Frankivsk hosts the administration of Ivano-Frankivsk urban hromada. Its population is


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: Built in the mid-17th century as a fortress of the Polish Potocki family, Stanisławów was annexed to the Habsburg Empire during the First Partition of Poland in 1772, after which it became the property of the State within the Austrian Empire. The fortress was slowly transformed into one of the most prominent cities at the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. After World War I, for several months, it served as a temporary capital of the West Ukrainian People's Republic. Following the Peace of Riga in 1921, Stanisławów became part of the Second Polish Republic. After the Soviet invasion of Poland at the onset of World War II, the city was annexed by the Soviet Union, only to be occupied by Nazi Germany two years later. With the liberation of Soviet Ukraine in 1944 and the shifting of borders, the Communist regime ran the city for the next four-and-a-half decades. A few years before the fall of the Soviet Union, the blue-yellow flag was raised in the city as the symbol of an independent Ukraine.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: A city visitor may find elements of various cultures intertwined within Ivano-Frankivsk, the Polish city hall, the Austro-Hungarian city's business centre, the Soviet prefabricated apartment blocks at the city's rural–urban fringe, and others. Ivano-Frankivsk is also one of the principal cities of the Carpathian Euroregion.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: Stanisławów was founded as a fortress and was named after the Polish hetman Stanisław "Rewera" Potocki. Some sources claim it was named after his grandson Stanisław. Following the First Partition of Poland in 1772, the name was transliterated as Stanislau in German, as the city became part of the Austrian Empire (future Austria-Hungary); however, after the revolution of 1848, the city carried three different linguistic renderings of its name: German, Polish, and Ruthenian (, ; , ; "Stanislaviv", , or "Stanyslaviv", ). Other spellings used in the local press media included "Stanislavov" and .


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: After World War II it was changed by the Soviet authorities into a simplified version Stanislav (, ; , ). In 1962, to honor the Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko on the city's 300th anniversary, it was renamed "Ivano-Frankivsk" and "Ivano-Frankovsk". Due to the city's wordy name, unofficially it is sometimes called simply Franyk () by its residents. Even though Ivano-Frankivsk is the officially accepted name, the city's original name has never been fully abandoned and/or forgotten and can be found throughout the city in all kinds of variations.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: The town of Stanisławów was founded as a fortress in order to protect the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from Tatar invasions and to defend the multi-ethnic population of the region in case of armed conflicts such as the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648. The fort was originally built next to Zabolotiv village (known since 1435), and Knyahynyn (1449). The village of Zabolotiv and the land around it were purchased by Andrzej Potocki from another Polish nobleman, Rzeczkowski. Stanisławów was issued by Potocki and his declaration establishing the city with Magdeburg rights on May 7, 1662; but the city and its rights, however, were not recognized by the Polish Crown until August 14, 1663, when John Casimir had finally approved it. By 1672, the fortress had been rebuilt from wood to stone, brick, and mortar. Also a new large fortified Potocki palace was erected in the place of an older wood structure. Today this building serves as the military hospital. In the same year Jews were granted the right to become permanent residents, who could work, conduct commerce and travel in and out of the city as they pleased.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: Originally the city was divided into two districts: Tysmenytsia and Halych. Sometime in 1817–1819 the neighbouring village of Zabolottya, that had a special status, was incorporated into the city as a new district, while Tysmenytsia district was divided into Tysmenytsia and Lysets districts. Each district had its main street corresponded with its name: Halych Street (Halych district), Tysmenytsia Street which today is Independence Street (Tysmenytsia district), Zabolotiv Street – Mykhailo Hrushevsky Street and Street of Vasylyanok (Zabolottya district), and Lysets Street – Hetman Mazepa Street (Lysets district). Later the city was split into six small districts: midtown where the rich Catholic population and patricians lived, pidzamche (subcastle), and four suburbs – Zabolotiv, Tysmenytsia, Halych and Lysets where the plebeians lived.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: In October 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed and the Western Ukrainian People's Republic (ZUNR) was proclaimed. In the early months of 1919 (from January to May) the city became a temporary capital of the West Ukrainian National Republic, while still recovering from World War I. All state affairs took place in the building of "Dnister Hotel" where the Act Zluky (Unification Act) was composed and signed on January 22, 1919 by the Ukrainian People's Republic. The same year it was subjected to the Polish–Ukrainian and the Romanian-Ukrainian skirmishes eventually being annexed by Poland as part of the Second Polish Republic as the centre of the Stanisławów Voivodeship. It was occupied by the Romanian army for the summer months from May 25 through August 21, 1919. During the Polish–Soviet War in 1920, the Red Army took over the city for a brief period. After the Soviet retreat, Ukrainian troops loyal to Symon Petlura occupied the city for a few days. At this period of history the city was in complete disorder. It then became part of Poland until the start of World War II.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: In the 1939 invasion of Poland by German and Soviet forces, the territory was captured by the Soviets in September 1939 and annexed to the Ukrainian SSR. Between September 1939 and June 1941, the Soviet regime ordered thousands of inhabitants of the city to leave their houses and move to Siberia, where most of them perished. Numerous people were taken out of the city prison and simply shot outside of the city when Soviet forces were leaving it in 1941. Ivano-Frankivsk was occupied by German forces from July 2, 1941 to July 27, 1944. There were more than 40,000 Jews in Stanisławów when it was occupied by the Nazi Germany on July 26, 1941. The Stanisławów Ghetto was formed. During the occupation (1941–44), more than 600 educated Poles and most of the city's Jewish population were murdered.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: In early 1944, the city became part of the Soviet Union and was renamed 'Stanislav'. The Soviets forced most of the Polish population to leave the city, most of them settled in the Recovered Territories. During the post-war period the city was part of the Carpathian Military District housing the 38th Army (70th Motor Rifle Division) that participated in the Operation Dunai.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: Until 18 July 2020, Ivano-Frankivsk was incorporated as a city of oblast significance and the center of Ivano-Frankivsk Municipality. The municipality was abolished in July 2020 as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast to six. The area of Ivano-Frankivsk Municipality was merged into the newly established Ivano-Frankivsk Raion.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: On 24 February and 11 March 2022, Ivano-Frankivsk was struck by Russian missiles during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. See 2022 bombing of Ivano-Frankivsk.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: As is the case with most of Ukraine, the climate is moderate continental with warm summers, and fairly cold winters. The following climate data provided is for the past 62 years. The average number of days with precipitation is 170 spread almost equally throughout a year. Most precipitation takes place during the winter months and least – early fall. Thunderstorms occur mostly in summer months averaging around 25 annually. Ivano-Frankivsk averages about 296 days of fog or misty days with about 24 per month.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: The city is situated in the Carpathian region northeast of the mountain range, sitting approximately above mean sea level. One of the several main geographical features is the Vovchynets Hill also known as the Vovchynets Mountains. The hill reaches 300- above the sea level and is part of the Pokuttya Highland (Upland). Around the hill Bystrytsia River branches into Bystrytsia of Nadvirna, Bystrytsia of Solotvyn, and Vorona. The last two rivers serve as a natural border between the "Pokuttya Highland" and "Stanislav Basin". The Vovchynets Hill is located just outside and northeast of Ivano-Frankivsk. Located southeast from the Stanislav Basin in the direction of the Prut Valley is the Khorosnen (Prut-Bystrytsia) Highland. The highest point of that highland is Mount Hostra, .


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: The closest neighboring city is Tysmenytsia, less than to the east. Other cities that lie in the radius of are Tlumach (east), Nadvirna (south), Kalush (west), and Halych (north). The city also administers five adjacent villages that surround it: Mykytyntsi, Krykhivtsi, Vovchynets, Uhornyky, and Khryplyn.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: Note: Historical population record is taken out of Ivano-Frankivsk portal, more recent – the Regional Directorate of Statistics. There is also other information on a population growth such as the JewishGen. With asterisk there are identified years of approximate data. In the 18th century, differentiation among Poles and Ukrainians was by religious background rather than ethnic (Catholics vs. Orthodox).


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: Both city and oblast administrations as well as the regional council are all located in a massive white building on Hrushevsky Street locally known as Bily Dim or Bily Budynok. In front of the building, there is a big open space bordered by Shpytalna Street on the north-east, Hrushevsky Street on the south-east, and Melnychuk Street on the south-west. Next to the building, there is a memorial to the Unification of the Western Ukraine with the rest of Ukraine. The main feature of the memorial is a tall marble stele, both sides of which are adorned with statues: "kamenyar" (west) and "kobzar" (east).


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: The city council currently consists of 42 deputies. The political representation after the 2020 Ukrainian local elections by political blocs was elected as such: 28 seats for Svoboda, 10 seats for European Solidarity and 4 seats for Batkivschyna.<ref name="chesno.org/post/4326">How the composition of the Ivano-Frankivsk council has changed, Civil movement "Chesno" (6 November 2020) </ref>


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: In the (first round of the) 2020 Ukrainian local elections Martsinkiv was reelected with about 85% of the vote.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: All street names reflecting the city's Soviet or Russian past have been returned to their former names, or given new names of national historic importance, or other non-controversial names. For example, Gagarin Street (connecting the city with its suburbs) became Vovchynets Street, Suvorov Street is now Harbar Street, and Soviet Street is Independence Street.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: Like a lot of regional centers in Ukraine and the former Soviet Union, Ivano-Frankivsk is well known for its rural-urban fringe panel building residential districts, too.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: The city of Ivano-Frankivsk has an extensive network of public transport including buses, trolleybuses, and taxis. There are nine trolleybus routes and about 52 for regular buses. Some of the routes run beyond the city into nearby villages.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: The city is served by the Ivano-Frankivsk railway station. There are also smaller railway stations in adjacent villages, including Uhryniv and Khryplyn. All of them are part of Lviv Railways.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: Until 2008, the railway terminal also housed a bus terminal which provided several inter-city bus routes, including some to international destinations. In 2000, construction began on a new bus terminal next to the railway terminus on Zaliznychna Street. Inauguration of the new bus terminal took place on 22 May 2010. At the opening ceremony the Mayor of the city, Viktor Anushkevychus, noted that the new bus terminal was only partially completed, and for a period it would be necessary to offload passengers at the Pryvokzalna Square, which is already saturated with traffic. He also emphasised the need for another bus station on the outskirts of the city.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: The city is served by Ivano-Frankivsk International Airport, which was granted international status in 1992. The airport shares its facilities with the 114 Brigade of the Ukrainian Air Force. Since 2002, the airport has been leased to the private enterprise company Yavson, and from 2005 the Public limited company Naftokhimik Prykarpattia, a (subsidiary of Ukrnafta). The contract with Naftokhimik Prykarpattia expired in 2013.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: There are many lodging options in Ivano-Frankivsk. Ivano-Frankivsk has one four-star hotel ("Park Hotel") and three three-star hotels ("Nadia", "Auscoprut", "Pid Templem").


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: The city of Ivano-Frankivsk is located on the intersection of three major national (Ukraine) routes: , , and . There also is one important regional route T09-06. All the H-routes eventually connect to .


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: The city has over 25 public schools of general education for grades 1 through 11. There are also some privately owned schools and lyceums. In addition, the city has several professional public institutes.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: There also numerous sports schools: Fitness Sport Association "Ukraine" – 5 schools, MVK – 3 schools, Fitness Sport Association "Spartak" – 2 schools, Fitness Sport Association "Kolos" – 1 school, and the others.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: The city has six universities, the Ivano-Frankivsk Institute of Management that is a local campus of Ternopil National Economic University, and the Ivano-Frankivsk Institute of Management and Economics "Halytska Akademia". All of those universities are state funded.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: Ivano-Frankivsk is home to a number of sports teams. Most notably, it was home to the football club FC Spartak Ivano-Frankivsk (Prykarpattya) that participated on the national level since the 1950s. Since 2007, the club only fields its youth team Spartak-93 and competes in the Children-Youth Football League of Ukraine. The former president of Spartak Anatoliy Revutskiy reorganized the local university (University of Oil and Gas) team in 2007 into the new "FSK Prykarpattia" with support of the city mayor Anushkevychus making it the main football club in the region and replacing Spartak. Previously during the interbellum period, the city was home to another football club based on the local Polish garrison and called Rewera Stanisławów (1908). That club competed at a regional level that had evolved at that period. With the start of World War II, that club was disbanded. During the Soviet period among several others there was another club "Elektron" that successfully participated at a regional level around the 1970s.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: The city also is the home to a futsal team, PFC Uragan Ivano-Frankivsk, that competes in the Ukrainian Futsal Championship. They were the Ukrainian champions having won the 2010/11 season playoffs and therefore took part in the 2011–12 UEFA Futsal Cup for the first time.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: The city had an ice hockey team, HC Vatra Ivano-Frankivsk, which previously played in the Ukrainian Hockey Championship.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: Ivano-Frankivsk is also the hometown of Ukrainian gymnasts; one of them is Dariya Zgoba who won gold on the uneven bars in the 2007 European Championships and became a finalist on the Beijing Olympics; the other one is Yana Demyanchuk, who won gold on the balance beam at the 2009 European Championships.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk

text: In February 2016 Ivano-Frankivsk City Council terminated its twinned relations with the Russian cities Surgut, Serpukhov and Veliky Novgorod due to the Russo-Ukrainian War.


title: Aldo Group

text: The ALDO Group branded as ALDO, is a Canadian multinational corporation retailer that owns and operates a worldwide chain of shoe and accessories stores. The company was founded by Aldo Bensadoun in Montreal, Quebec, in 1972, where its corporate headquarters based in the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent, Quebec remain today. It has grown to become a worldwide corporation, with nearly 3,000 stores across 100 countries, under three retail banners: ALDO, Call It Spring/Spring and GLOBO. Stores in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and Ireland are owned by the Group, while international stores are franchised. The company once operated the now closed or rebranded banners Little Burgundy (which it sold to Genesco), Simard & Voyer, Christian Shoes, Access, Pegabo, Transit, Stoneridge, Locale, Feetfirst and FIRST (which was the American version of Feetfirst).


title: Aldo Group

text: ALDO shoes were founded in Canada in 1972 as a footwear concession within Le Chateau. The original group included stores in Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec City, and Winnipeg. Aldo Bensadoun known today as a global shoe giant built his empire starting in Montreal. After four generations, the Bensadoun family continues into the shoe industry. "Mr. Bensadoun never intended to follow in the footsteps of his father, a shoe retailer in Morocco and France, or his grandfather, a cobbler in Algeria" (Strauss, 2010). Aldo Bensadoun learned Italian to better communicate with his suppliers in Italy, and eventually he cut out the middleman who serviced him between Canada and European manufacturers (Strauss, 2010). The first freestanding ALDO store was opened in Montreal, in 1978. The brand expanded in the 1980s and 1990s, with stores operating under the name ALDO across Canada. The first store outside of North America opened in Israel in 1995. The brand expanded in the 2000s into Saudi Arabia in 2001, England in 2002, and Singapore in 2003. Since then, the ALDO Group, with the ALDO and Call It Spring/Spring banners, has further expanded on the international market.


title: Aldo Group

text: In 1991, the company launched the "Transit" banner in Canada, which later became "Spring" upon launching in the US. Five years later, they started the "Feetfirst" banner, which caters to an older clientele. Additionally the company operates "Globo Shoes" geared towards the family market. In 2010, the company once again began to evolve when it introduced, in Canada, a new store concept called "Lōcale", which will replace the current "Feetfirst" stores. "Lōcale" is a footwear and accessories boutique-style concept store aimed at young professionals; it offers a number of brand names. The company has also revived the Pegabo brand, which used to be its own chain of stores and is selling the brand in Feetfirst and Lōcale stores. In spring 2011, the Pegabo brand also launched at Hudson's Bay stores in Canada.


title: Aldo Group

text: In 2010, the company made major announcements, which led to major expansion in the American market. The ALDO Group and JCPenney announced the launch of the Call It Spring brand, which would sell as a shop-in-shop concept in JCPenney stores across the United States. The Call It Spring concept was expected to be in 600 JCPenney stores by the fall of 2011 and JCPenney would be the only department store retailer of the brand. The ALDO Group also announced that it was partnering with Kohl's department stores to design and produce exclusive footwear products that would be sold under private and exclusive brand names. The new ALDO-designed products were to launch in Kohl's stores for the Spring 2011 season.


title: Aldo Group

text: In 2017, Aldo Bensadoun's son David Bensadoun was appointed chief executive of Aldo, replacing Patrik Frisk.


title: Aldo Group

text: On May 7, 2020, ALDO announced it would restructure under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act citing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. All 6,680 store associates and more than half of the employees at its headquarters have been furloughed. In the midst of its restructuration, the company also move from its mythic headquarters to a nearby location in Saint-Laurent, Montreal. In July 2022, it announced that it had completed its restructuring process.


title: Aldo Group

text: In December 2012, the U.S. Department of Labor found that a factory in Los Angeles producing ALDO goods was paying employees under minimum wage.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: Very high frequency omnirange station (VOR) is a type of short-range radio navigation system for aircraft, enabling aircraft with a receiving unit to determine its position and stay on course by receiving radio signals transmitted by a network of fixed ground radio beacons. It uses frequencies in the very high frequency (VHF) band from 108.00 to 117.95 MHz. Developed in the United States beginning in 1937 and deployed by 1946, VOR became the standard air navigational system in the world, used by both commercial and general aviation, until supplanted by satellite navigation systems such as GPS in the early 21st century. As such, VOR stations are being gradually decommissioned. In the year 2000 there were about 3,000 VOR stations operating around the world, including 1,033 in the US, but by 2013 the number in the US had been reduced to 967. The United States is decommissioning approximately half of its VOR stations and other legacy navigation aids as part of a move to performance-based navigation, while still retaining a "Minimum Operational Network" of VOR stations as a backup to GPS. In 2015, the UK planned to reduce the number of stations from 44 to 19 by 2020.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: A VOR ground station uses a specialized antenna system to transmit both an amplitude modulated and a frequency modulated signal. Both modulations are done with a 30 Hz signal, but the phase is different. The phase of one of the modulation signals is dependent on the direction of transmission, while the phase of the other modulation signal is not, in order to serve as a reference. The receiver will demodulate both signals, and measure the phase difference. The phase difference is indicative of the bearing from the VOR station to the receiver relative to magnetic north. This line of position is called the VOR "radial".


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: The intersection of radials from two different VOR stations can be used to fix the position of the aircraft, as in earlier radio direction finding (RDF) systems.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: VOR stations are fairly short range: the signals are line-of-sight between transmitter and receiver and are useful for up to 200 miles. Each station broadcasts a VHF radio composite signal including the mentioned navigation and reference signal, station's identifier and voice, if so equipped. The station's identifier is typically a three-letter string in Morse code. The voice signal, if used, is usually the station name, in-flight recorded advisories, or live flight service broadcasts.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: A VORTAC is a radio-based navigational aid for aircraft pilots consisting of a co-located VHF omnidirectional range and a tactical air navigation system (TACAN) beacon. Both types of beacons provide pilots azimuth information, but the VOR system is generally used by civil aircraft and the TACAN system by military aircraft. However, the TACAN distance measuring equipment is also used for civil purposes because civil DME equipment is built to match the military DME specifications. Most VOR installations in the United States are VORTACs. The system was designed and developed by the Cardion Corporation. The Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) contract was awarded 28 December 1981.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: Developed from earlier Visual Aural Radio Range (VAR) systems, the VOR was designed to provide 360 courses to and from the station, selectable by the pilot. Early vacuum tube transmitters with mechanically rotated antennas were widely installed in the 1950s, and began to be replaced with fully solid-state units in the early 1960s. They became the major radio navigation system in the 1960s, when they took over from the older radio beacon and four-course (low/medium frequency range) system. Some of the older range stations survived, with the four-course directional features removed, as non-directional low or medium frequency radiobeacons (NDBs).


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: A worldwide land-based network of "air highways", known in the US as Victor airways (below ) and "jet routes" (at and above 18,000 feet), was set up linking VORs. An aircraft can follow a specific path from station to station by tuning into the successive stations on the VOR receiver, and then either following the desired course on a Radio Magnetic Indicator, or setting it on a course deviation indicator (CDI) or a horizontal situation indicator (HSI, a more sophisticated version of the VOR indicator) and keeping a course pointer centred on the display.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: As of 2005, due to advances in technology, many airports are replacing VOR and NDB approaches with RNAV (GPS) approach procedures; however, receiver and data update costs are still significant enough that many small general aviation aircraft are not equipped with a GPS certified for primary navigation or approaches.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: VOR signals provide considerably greater accuracy and reliability than NDBs due to a combination of factors. Most significant is that VOR provides a bearing from the station to the aircraft which does not vary with wind or orientation of the aircraft. VHF radio is less vulnerable to diffraction (course bending) around terrain features and coastlines. Phase encoding suffers less interference from thunderstorms.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: VOR signals offer a predictable accuracy of , 2 sigma at 2 NM from a pair of VOR beacons; as compared to the accuracy of unaugmented Global Positioning System (GPS) which is less than 13 meters, 95%.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: VOR stations, being VHF, operate on "line of sight". This means that if, on a perfectly clear day, you cannot see the transmitter from the receiver antenna, or vice versa, the signal will be either imperceptible or unusable. This limits VOR (and DME) range to the horizon—or closer if mountains intervene. Although the modern solid state transmitting equipment requires much less maintenance than the older units, an extensive network of stations, needed to provide reasonable coverage along main air routes, is a significant cost in operating current airway systems.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: Typically, a VOR station's identifier represents a nearby town, city or airport. For example, the VOR station located on the grounds of John F. Kennedy International Airport has the identifier JFK.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: VORs are assigned radio channels between 108.0 MHz and 117.95 MHz (with 50 kHz spacing); this is in the "very high frequency" (VHF) range. The first 4 MHz is shared with the instrument landing system (ILS) band. In the United States, frequencies within the pass band of 108.00 to 111.95 MHz which have an even 100 kHz first digit after the decimal point (108.00, 108.05, 108.20, 108.25, and so on) are reserved for VOR frequencies while frequencies within the 108.00 to 111.95 MHz pass band with an odd 100 kHz first digit after the decimal point (108.10, 108.15, 108.30, 108.35, and so on) are reserved for ILS.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: The VOR encodes azimuth (direction from the station) as the phase relationship between a reference signal and a variable signal. One of them is amplitude modulated, and one is frequency modulated. On conventional VORs (CVOR), the 30 Hz reference signal is frequency modulated (FM) on a 9,960 Hz subcarrier. On these VORs, the amplitude modulation is achieved by rotating a slightly directional antenna exactly in phase with the reference signal at 30 revolutions per second. Modern installations are Doppler VORs (DVOR), which use a circular array of typically 48 omni-directional antennas and no moving parts. The active antenna is moved around the circular array electronically to create a doppler effect, resulting in frequency modulation. The amplitude modulation is created by making the transmission power of antennas at e.g. the north position lower than at the south position. The role of amplitude and frequency modulation is thus swapped in this type of VOR. Decoding in the receiving aircraft happens in the same way for both types of VORs: the AM and FM 30 Hz components are detected and then compared to determine the phase angle between them.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: The VOR signal also contains a modulated continuous wave (MCW) 7 wpm Morse code station identifier, and usually contains an amplitude modulated (AM) voice channel.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: This information is then fed over an analog or digital interface to one of four common types of indicators:


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: In many cases, VOR stations have co-located distance measuring equipment (DME) or military Tactical Air Navigation (TACAN) – the latter includes both the DME distance feature and a separate TACAN azimuth feature that provides military pilots data similar to the civilian VOR. A co-located VOR and TACAN beacon is called a VORTAC. A VOR co-located only with DME is called a VOR-DME. A VOR radial with a DME distance allows a one-station position fix. Both VOR-DMEs and TACANs share the same DME system.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: VORTACs and VOR-DMEs use a standardized scheme of VOR frequency to TACAN/DME channel pairing so that a specific VOR frequency is always paired with a specific co-located TACAN or DME channel. On civilian equipment, the VHF frequency is tuned and the appropriate TACAN/DME channel is automatically selected.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: While the operating principles are different, VORs share some characteristics with the localizer portion of ILS and the same antenna, receiving equipment and indicator is used in the cockpit for both. When a VOR station is selected, the OBS is functional and allows the pilot to select the desired radial to use for navigation. When a localizer frequency is selected, the OBS is not functional and the indicator is driven by a localizer converter, typically built into the receiver or indicator.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: A VOR station serves a volume of airspace called its Service Volume. Some VORs have a relatively small geographic area protected from interference by other stations on the same frequency—called "terminal" or T-VORs. Other stations may have protection out to 130 nautical miles (NM) or more. It is popularly thought that there is a standard difference in power output between T-VORs and other stations, but in fact the stations' power output is set to provide adequate signal strength in the specific site's service volume.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: In the United States, there are three standard service volumes (SSV): terminal, low, and high (standard service volumes do not apply to published instrument flight rules (IFR) routes).


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: Additionally, two new service volumes – "VOR low" and "VOR high" – were added in 2021, providing expanded coverage above 5,000 feet AGL. This allows aircraft to continue to receive off-route VOR signals despite the reduced number of VOR ground stations provided by the VOR Minimum Operational Network.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: VOR and the older NDB stations were traditionally used as intersections along airways. A typical airway will hop from station to station in straight lines. When flying in a commercial airliner, an observer will notice that the aircraft flies in straight lines occasionally broken by a turn to a new course. These turns are often made as the aircraft passes over a VOR station or at an intersection in the air defined by one or more VORs.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: Navigational reference points can also be defined by the point at which two radials from different VOR stations intersect, or by a VOR radial and a DME distance. This is the basic form of RNAV and allows navigation to points located away from VOR stations. As RNAV systems have become more common, in particular those based on GPS, more and more airways have been defined by such points, removing the need for some of the expensive ground-based VORs.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: In many countries there are two separate systems of airway at lower and higher levels: the lower "Airways" (known in the US as "Victor Airways") and "Upper Air Routes" (known in the US as "Jet routes").


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: Most aircraft equipped for instrument flight (IFR) have at least two VOR receivers. As well as providing a backup to the primary receiver, the second receiver allows the pilot to easily follow a radial to or from one VOR station while watching the second receiver to see when a certain radial from another VOR station is crossed, allowing the aircraft's exact position at that moment to be determined, and giving the pilot the option of changing to the new radial if they wish.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: , space-based Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) are increasingly replacing VOR and other ground-based systems. In 2016, GNSS was mandated as the primary needs of navigation for IFR aircraft in Australia.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: GNSS systems have a lower transmitter cost per customer and provide distance and altitude data. Future satellite navigation systems, such as the European Union Galileo, and GPS augmentation systems are developing techniques to eventually equal or exceed VOR accuracy. However, low VOR receiver cost, broad installed base and commonality of receiver equipment with ILS are likely to extend VOR dominance in aircraft until space receiver cost falls to a comparable level. As of 2008 in the United States, GPS-based approaches outnumbered VOR-based approaches but VOR-equipped IFR aircraft outnumber GPS-equipped IFR aircraft.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: There is some concern that GNSS navigation is subject to interference or sabotage, leading in many countries to the retention of VOR stations for use as a backup. The VOR signal has the advantage of static mapping to local terrain.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: The US FAA plans by 2020 to decommission roughly half of the 967 VOR stations in the US, retaining a "Minimum Operational Network" to provide coverage to all aircraft more than 5,000 feet above the ground. Most of the decommissioned stations will be east of the Rocky Mountains, where there is more overlap in coverage between them. On July 27, 2016, a final policy statement was released specifying stations to be decommissioned by 2025. A total of 74 stations are to be decommissioned in Phase 1 (2016–2020), and 234 more stations are scheduled to be taken out of service in Phase 2 (2021–2025).


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: In the UK, 19 VOR transmitters are to be kept operational until at least 2020. Those at Cranfield and Dean Cross were decommissioned in 2014, with the remaining 25 to be assessed between 2015 and 2020. Similar efforts are underway in Australia, and elsewhere.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: In the UK and the United States, DME transmitters are planned to be retained in the near future even after co-located VORs are decommissioned. However, there are long-term plans to decommission DME, TACAN and NDBs.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: The VOR signal encodes a morse code identifier, optional voice, and a pair of navigation tones. The radial azimuth is equal to the phase angle between the lagging and leading navigation tone.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: The conventional signal encodes the station identifier, , optional voice , navigation reference signal in , and the isotropic (i.e. omnidirectional) component. The reference signal is encoded on an F3 subcarrier (colour). The navigation variable signal is encoded by mechanically or electrically rotating a directional, , antenna to produce A3 modulation (grey-scale). Receivers (paired colour and grey-scale trace) in different directions from the station paint a different alignment of F3 and A3 demodulated signal.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: The doppler signal encodes the station identifier, , optional voice, , navigation variable signal in , and the isotropic (i.e. omnidirectional) component. The navigation variable signal is A3 modulated (greyscale). The navigation reference signal is delayed, , by electrically revolving a pair of transmitters. The cyclic doppler blue shift, and corresponding doppler red shift, as a transmitter closes on and recedes from the receiver results in F3 modulation (colour). The pairing of transmitters offset equally high and low of the isotropic carrier frequency produce the upper and lower sidebands. Closing and receding equally on opposite sides of the same circle around the isotropic transmitter produce F3 subcarrier modulation, .


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: The transmitter acceleration (24,000 g) makes mechanical revolution impractical, and halves (gravitational redshift) the frequency change ratio compared to transmitters in free-fall.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: The mathematics to describe the operation of a DVOR is far more complex than indicated above. The reference to "electronically rotated" is a vast simplification. The primary complication relates to a process that is called "blending".


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: Another complication is that the phase of the upper and lower sideband signals have to be locked to each other. The composite signal is detected by the receiver. The electronic operation of detection effectively shifts the carrier down to 0 Hz, folding the signals with frequencies below the Carrier, on top of the frequencies above the carrier. Thus the upper and lower sidebands are summed. If there is a phase shift between these two, then the combination will have a relative amplitude of (1 + cos φ). If φ was 180°, then the aircraft's receiver would not detect any sub-carrier (signal A3).


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: "Blending" describes the process by which a sideband signal is switched from one antenna to the next. The switching is not discontinuous. The amplitude of the next antenna rises as the amplitude of the current antenna falls. When one antenna reaches its peak amplitude, the next and previous antennas have zero amplitude.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: By radiating from two antennas, the effective phase centre becomes a point between the two. Thus the phase reference is swept continuously around the ring – not stepped as would be the case with antenna to antenna discontinuous switching.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: In the electromechanical antenna switching systems employed before solid state antenna switching systems were introduced, the blending was a by-product of the way the motorized switches worked. These switches brushed a coaxial cable past 50 (or 48) antenna feeds. As the cable moved between two antenna feeds, it would couple signal into both.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: Each antenna in a DVOR uses an omnidirectional antenna. These are usually Alford Loop antennas (see Andrew Alford). Unfortunately, the sideband antennas are very close together, so that approximately 55% of the energy radiated is absorbed by the adjacent antennas. Half of that is re-radiated, and half is sent back along the antenna feeds of the adjacent antennas. The result is an antenna pattern that is no longer omnidirectional. This causes the effective sideband signal to be amplitude modulated at 60 Hz as far as the aircraft's receiver is concerned. The phase of this modulation can affect the detected phase of the sub-carrier. This effect is called "coupling".


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: Blending complicates this effect. It does this because when two adjacent antennas radiate a signal, they create a composite antenna.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: Imagine two antennas that are separated by their wavelength/3. In the transverse direction the two signals will sum, but in the tangential direction they will cancel. Thus as the signal "moves" from one antenna to the next, the distortion in the antenna pattern will increase and then decrease. The peak distortion occurs at the midpoint. This creates a half-sinusoidal 1500 Hz amplitude distortion in the case of a 50 antenna system, (1,440 Hz in a 48 antenna system). This distortion is itself amplitude modulated with a 60 Hz amplitude modulation (also some 30 Hz as well). This distortion can add or subtract with the above-mentioned 60 Hz distortion depending on the carrier phase. In fact one can add an offset to the carrier phase (relative to the sideband phases) so that the 60 Hz components tend to null one another. There is a 30 Hz component, though, which has some pernicious effects.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: DVOR designs use all sorts of mechanisms to try to compensate these effects. The methods chosen are major selling points for each manufacturer, with each extolling the benefits of their technique over their rivals.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: Note that ICAO Annex 10 limits the worst case amplitude modulation of the sub-carrier to 40%. A DVOR that did not employ some technique to compensate for coupling and blending effects would not meet this requirement.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: The predicted accuracy of the VOR system is ±1.4°. However, test data indicates that 99.94% of the time a VOR system has less than ±0.35° of error. Internal monitoring of a VOR station will shut it down, or change over to a standby system if the station error exceeds some limit. A Doppler VOR beacon will typically change over or shut down when the bearing error exceeds 1.0°. National air space authorities may often set tighter limits. For instance, in Australia, a Primary Alarm limit may be set as low as ±0.5° on some Doppler VOR beacons.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: ARINC 711 – 10 January 30, 2002, states that receiver accuracy should be within 0.4° with a statistical probability of 95% under various conditions. Any receiver compliant with this standard can be expected to perform within these tolerances.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: All radio navigation beacons are required to monitor their own output. Most have redundant systems, so that the failure of one system will cause automatic change-over to one or more standby systems. The monitoring and redundancy requirements in some instrument landing systems (ILS) can be very strict.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: VOR beacons monitor themselves by having one or more receiving antennas located away from the beacon. The signals from these antennas are processed to monitor many aspects of the signals. The signals monitored are defined in various US and European standards. The principal standard is European Organisation for Civil Aviation Equipment (EuroCAE) Standard ED-52. The five main parameters monitored are the bearing accuracy, the reference and variable signal modulation indices, the signal level, and the presence of notches (caused by individual antenna failures).


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: Note that the signals received by these antennas, in a Doppler VOR beacon, are different from the signals received by an aircraft. This is because the antennas are close to the transmitter and are affected by proximity effects. For example, the free space path loss from nearby sideband antennas will be 1.5 dB different (at 113 MHz and at a distance of 80 m) from the signals received from the far side sideband antennas. For a distant aircraft there will be no measurable difference. Similarly the peak rate of phase change seen by a receiver is from the tangential antennas. For the aircraft these tangential paths will be almost parallel, but this is not the case for an antenna near the DVOR.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: The bearing accuracy specification for all VOR beacons is defined in the International Civil Aviation Organization Convention on International Civil Aviation Annex 10, Volume 1.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: This document sets the worst case bearing accuracy performance on a Conventional VOR (CVOR) to be ±4°. A Doppler VOR (DVOR) is required to be ±1°.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: All radio-navigation beacons are checked periodically to ensure that they are performing to the appropriate International and National standards. This includes VOR beacons, distance measuring equipment (DME), instrument landing systems (ILS), and non-directional beacons (NDB).


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: Their performance is measured by aircraft fitted with test equipment. The VOR test procedure is to fly around the beacon in circles at defined distances and altitudes, and also along several radials. These aircraft measure signal strength, the modulation indices of the reference and variable signals, and the bearing error. They will also measure other selected parameters, as requested by local/national airspace authorities. Note that the same procedure is used (often in the same flight test) to check distance measuring equipment (DME).


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: In practice, bearing errors can often exceed those defined in Annex 10, in some directions. This is usually due to terrain effects, buildings near the VOR, or, in the case of a DVOR, some counterpoise effects. Note that Doppler VOR beacons utilise an elevated groundplane that is used to elevate the effective antenna pattern. It creates a strong lobe at an elevation angle of 30° which complements the 0° lobe of the antennas themselves. This groundplane is called a counterpoise. A counterpoise though, rarely works exactly as one would hope. For example, the edge of the counterpoise can absorb and re-radiate signals from the antennas, and it may tend to do this differently in some directions than others.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: National air space authorities will accept these bearing errors when they occur along directions that are not the defined air traffic routes. For example, in mountainous areas, the VOR may only provide sufficient signal strength and bearing accuracy along one runway approach path.


title: VHF omnidirectional range

text: Doppler VOR beacons are inherently more accurate than conventional VORs because they are less affected by reflections from hills and buildings. The variable signal in a DVOR is the 30 Hz FM signal; in a CVOR it is the 30 Hz AM signal. If the AM signal from a CVOR beacon bounces off a building or hill, the aircraft will see a phase that appears to be at the phase centre of the main signal and the reflected signal, and this phase centre will move as the beam rotates. In a DVOR beacon, the variable signal, if reflected, will seem to be two FM signals of unequal strengths and different phases. Twice per 30 Hz cycle, the instantaneous deviation of the two signals will be the same, and the phase locked loop will get (briefly) confused. As the two instantaneous deviations drift apart again, the phase locked loop will follow the signal with the greatest strength, which will be the line-of-sight signal. If the phase separation of the two deviations is small, however, the phase locked loop will become less likely to lock on to the true signal for a larger percentage of the 30 Hz cycle (this will depend on the bandwidth of the output of the phase comparator in the aircraft). In general, some reflections can cause minor problems, but these are usually about an order of magnitude less than in a CVOR beacon.