title: Kansas State University

text: Intercollegiate sports began at Kansas State in the 1890s. The school's sports teams are called the Wildcats, and they participate in the NCAA Division I and the Big 12 Conference. The official school color is Royal Purple, making Kansas State one of very few schools (alongside Syracuse and Harvard) that have only one official color. White and silver are commonly used as complementary colors; white is mentioned with purple in the university's fight song "Wildcat Victory." The athletics logo is a stylized Wildcat head in profile usually featured in the school color, called the "Powercat."


title: Kansas State University

text: Sports sponsored by the school include football, basketball, cross country and track, baseball, golf, tennis, rowing, women's soccer, and volleyball. The head football coach is Chris Klieman, the head men's basketball coach is Jerome Tang, the head women's basketball coach is Jeff Mittie, and the head baseball coach is Pete Hughes. In 2012−2013, Kansas State became only the second Big 12 school to win conference titles in football, men's basketball, and baseball in the same school year.


title: Kansas State University

text: Historically, African-American athletes at Kansas State were responsible for breaking the modern "color barrier" in Big Seven Conference athletics. Harold Robinson became the first African-American athlete in the conference in more than two decades and the first ever to receive a scholarship, playing football for Kansas State in 1949. In the spring of 1951 the conference's baseball color barrier was broken by Kansas State's Earl Woods, and in the winter of 1951–1952 Kansas State's Gene Wilson broke the conference color barrier in basketball (together with LaVannes Squires at the University of Kansas).


title: Kansas State University

text: Beginning with the first graduating class in 1867, a number of Kansas State alumni have gone on to distinguished careers. The 46th Governor of Kansas, who served as Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom under President Donald Trump, Sam Brownback, and one U.S. Senator from Kansas, Pat Roberts, are graduates of Kansas State University. Other graduates currently serve as the vice-president of Liberia, the president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the president of the University of the Virgin Islands. Kansas State alumni have been enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the College Football Hall of Fame, served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and have earned Emmy Awards and Olympic gold medals. Geraldine L. Richmond, the National Medal of Science laureate (2013) and Priestley Medalist (2018), received a B.S. in chemistry in 1975.


title: Kansas State University

text: In line with its roots as a land grant college, a number of Kansas State's most eminent faculty in its earliest years were in the areas of agriculture, science and military. For example, famed geologist Benjamin Franklin Mudge was chair of the geology department, while famed Army officer Andrew Summers Rowan, the subject of the essay "A Message to Garcia", served as professor of military tactics.


title: Kansas State University

text: Kansas State faculty have received a number of awards. Fred Albert Shannon was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1929, while teaching history at Kansas State. In 2008, CASE and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching honored Michael Wesch as national Professor of the Year. At least eight Kansas State faculty members have gone on to serve as university presidents, including Naomi B. Lynn, the first Hispanic female president of an American public university.


title: Michael Cretu

text: Michael Cretu (, ; born 18 May 1957) is a Romanian-German musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He gained worldwide fame as the founder and musician behind the musical project Enigma, which he formed in 1990.


title: Michael Cretu

text: Cretu began a music career in 1976 as a solo artist and released numerous studio albums as well as writing and producing albums for his then-wife, German pop singer Sandra. He also worked with artists through the 1980s, including Peter Cornelius, Hubert Kah, and Mike Oldfield. Cretu was sometimes identified as "Curly" or "Curly M.C.", in reference to his curly hair and "creț" meaning "curly" in Romanian.


title: Michael Cretu

text: Cretu scored an unexpected worldwide commercial hit with the debut Enigma album "MCMXC a.D." (1990), helped by its lead single, "Sadeness (Part I)". Cretu continues to produce Enigma albums and singles; the most recent is "The Fall of a Rebel Angel" (2016), its eighth overall. Enigma has sold an estimated 70 million albums worldwide, Cretu's management company Crocodile-Music stated that Cretu's produced recordings have sold 100 million copies worldwide.


title: Michael Cretu

text: Cretu was born on 18 May 1957 in Bucharest, Romanian People's Republic, to a Romanian father and Austrian mother. In 1965, he studied the piano and classical music at Colegiul Tehnic Nr. 2 in Bucharest, followed by further study in Paris for five months in 1968. Around this time, Cretu wished to pursue a career in pop music after listening to "Golden Slumbers" on "Abbey Road" (1969) by The Beatles, calling the song "beautiful". After he informed his mother, Cretu recalled: "She goes, 'Aaargh! Disaster! Do you want to end up starving?'" In 1975, Cretu relocated to Bad Homburg, Germany and studied at the Academy of Music in Frankfurt, where he graduated with a degree in musical composition in 1978. Cretu went on to speak four languages.


title: Michael Cretu

text: After graduating from the Academy of Music, Cretu remained in Germany and took up work as a session musician. Among Cretu's first jobs was being taken on as keyboardist and producer for German recording artist Frank Farian, and playing keyboards on "Rivers of Babylon" by Boney M. In 1981, Cretu co-formed the German new wave band Moti Special with other session players. Their debut album "Motivation" (1985) contained the single "Cold Days, Hot Nights" which became a hit around Europe. Cretu left the group before they released their second album in 1990.


title: Michael Cretu

text: Cretu's first solo album was released in 1979, titled "Moon, Light & Flowers". It contains the singles "Shadows Over My Head" and "Wild River" released in 1978, and "Moonlight Flower" and "Love Me" (the latter two singles became popular hits in the Philippines) from 1979. His second album, "Legionäre", was released in 1983 and features German lyrics sung by him. Cretu's third solo album was titled "Die Chinesische Mauer" and was released in 1985. The literal English translation is "The Chinese Wall". As with the second album, it features German lyrics sung by Cretu and is co-produced by Armand Volker. This album was also released as a separate album with English-language lyrics and a different track listing under the name "The Invisible Man". Several of the tracks on "The Invisible Man" were edited slightly and, therefore, had different lengths than the German-language versions on "Die Chinesische Mauer". This featured the song "Samurai", which became a hit.


title: Michael Cretu

text: In 1985, Cretu produced, arranged, and played the keyboards, drums, and programming on "The Long Play" (1985), the first studio album from German pop singer Sandra. The two began a relationship, and were married in 1988.


title: Michael Cretu

text: In the 1980s, Cretu took over production for the pop quartet Hubert Kah and started writing songs with the band leader Hubert Kemmler, achieving a number of hits. Among his other work, Cretu was also one of the producers of Mike Oldfield's 1987 album "Islands" and the producer of Peter Schilling's 1989 "The Different Story (World of Lust and Crime)" album.


title: Michael Cretu

text: For the third album, Cretu teamed up with Jens Gad to work together on "Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi!" and launched in 1998 a new trance project Trance Atlantic Air Waves and the album "The Energy of Sound".


title: Michael Cretu

text: He owned the A.R.T. Studios in Ibiza before moving to a new mansion in the Ibiza hills. His former house, near Sant Antoni de Portmany on the western coast of Ibiza, was a Moroccan-style mansion that was designed and built by Bernd Steber and Gunter Wagner in more than nine years. It also featured a new recording studio. The Spanish High Court deemed the house to have been built illegally and in infringement of Spanish environmental regulations which led to the €18 million villa being razed in May 2009.


title: Michael Cretu

text: Cretu was encouraged to pursue a solo project by Oldfield, who was impressed by his studio production skills and musical ideas. This led to the creation of his musical project Enigma, which Cretu said was born from the idea of making music that he himself liked, while bringing in a sense of mysticism. The formation of Enigma involved Fabrice Cuitad, under the alias of David Fairstein, and Frank Peterson. The trio worked together to create their groundbreaking debut single "Sadeness (Part I)", which became a surprise international hit. "MCMXC a.D.", the album, which was released in 1990, was hugely successful.


title: Michael Cretu

text: Cretu was not surprised by the album's unexpected success, as he recalled telling his wife before its release, "This will be a huge hit or nothing at all". "Cretu's style of mixing a variety of musical genres, samples and sounds was very unusual to the ears of the listening public at the time, and led to him being described as an "alchemist in sound".


title: Michael Cretu

text: The second album, "The Cross of Changes", was released in 1993. Peterson had disagreements with Cretu by the time of recording and left the project in 1991. Cretu changed Enigma's direction from Gregorian chants to tribal chants for its second album, culminating in its second international hit single "Return to Innocence".


title: Michael Cretu

text: Cretu purposefully reduced the use of Gregorian chants as numerous artists had started to use them in their music, causing "an avalanche of bad copies", but later regarded it as a compliment.


title: Michael Cretu

text: Cretu was approached by Paramount Pictures to write the soundtrack of the film "Sliver" and he came up with another 1993 single "Carly's Song" after the main female character's name.


title: Michael Cretu

text: In 1996 Enigma's third album "Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!" was released. Stylistically, it sounded like a combination of the first and second albums. It did not achieve the same level of success as them, but sold over 1 million copies in the United States and received a Gold certificate in the United Kingdom nonetheless.


title: Michael Cretu

text: In 1999 Cretu steered the project in another direction by using samples of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" for the fourth album "The Screen Behind the Mirror", released in 2000. Andru Donalds and Ruth-Ann Boyle first appeared as features on this Enigma project. Although Jens Gad had been working with Cretu on the earlier albums, this was the first time that he had been given actual credits.


title: Michael Cretu

text: In 2001, Cretu released two Enigma compilation albums: "" and "" that include credits to ATB. By this time, Enigma has clocked close to an estimated 30 million sales worldwide.


title: Michael Cretu

text: Cretu continued to record Enigma albums, releasing "Voyageur" in 2003. Familiar sounds of the Shakuhachi flute, tribal or Gregorian chants were replaced with more commercially-friendly tunes and beat. In March 2006, a new single called "Hello and Welcome" was released in anticipation of another album, "A Posteriori".


title: Michael Cretu

text: Cretu married Sandra on 7 January 1988; together they have twin sons who were born in July 1995. They lived in Ibiza, Spain in a home that also housed A.R.T. Studios, where the Enigma albums were recorded. In November 2007, the couple divorced. The Ibiza home was bulldozed after Cretu lost a legal battle in which he did not obtain planning permission to renovate and build on the site. After the divorce, Cretu remarried. He now lives in Munich.


title: Michael Cretu

text: Cretu became known as an artist who kept a low profile, giving few interviews and avoiding concert tours.


title: Ezra Bridger

text: Ezra Bridger is a fictional character in the "Star Wars" franchise, voiced by Taylor Gray. He is featured as the protagonist of the animated series "Star Wars Rebels" (2014–2018) and appears in related works. Ezra also appears in "Star Wars Forces of Destiny" (2018) with Gray reprising his role. The character will make his live-action debut in the television series "Ahsoka", portrayed by Eman Esfandi.


title: Ezra Bridger

text: In the "Star Wars" universe, Ezra is an orphaned street urchin and con artist who joins the "Ghost" crew in freeing his home planet of Lothal from the tyranny of the Galactic Empire and is taken under the wing of Kanan Jarrus, who trains him in the Jedi arts. Later, Ezra and the crew join the Rebel Alliance to assist them in their fight to free the galaxy as a whole, and face enemies such as the Inquisitors, Darth Vader, and Grand Admiral Thrawn—the latter of whom Ezra sacrifices himself to defeat, disappearing along with him in the Unknown Regions of the galaxy.


title: Ezra Bridger

text: Executive producer Dave Filoni describes the character as a "con artist". Creative executive Rayne Roberts said: "[Ezra] doesn't really trust anyone; that [is] his motto. He has that kind of hard edge at times but knows how to turn on the charm when it comes to getting what he wants and [is] very charismatic — [one] would want to be his friend." The episode "Empire Day" reveals that Ezra was born on the same day the Galactic Empire was inaugurated, and that he has been living on his own since he was seven, after his parents, Ephraim and Mira Bridger, were arrested for speaking out against the Empire. According to Taylor Gray, Ezra lives alone in the streets of Lothal, relying on his "street smarts" – as well as subconscious Force abilities – to survive.


title: Ezra Bridger

text: The character is voiced by Taylor Gray. On his character, Gray stated: "He's a pickpocket, he's a little thief. But he's doing it all because he needs to survive." Executive producer Greg Weisman said: "We see this whole series very much through Ezra's eyes. As his eyes get opened to what the Empire's capable of, his eyes are opened to the fact that there are people who care, who are trying to fight the good fight, and he becomes one of them."


title: Ezra Bridger

text: Ezra made his debut appearance on television in the short film "Property of Ezra Bridger", set before the two-part series premiere "Spark of Rebellion". Ezra first encounters a group of Rebels home to the "Ghost" starship by interfering in their operation. Kanan Jarrus, a Jedi and leader of the group, discovers Ezra's Force-sensitivity. Seeing potential in Ezra, Kanan decides to train him in the ways of the Force. Ezra soon joins the "Ghost" crew and begins his Jedi training.


title: Ezra Bridger

text: In "Path of the Jedi", Ezra is formally inducted into the Jedi Order, when Yoda's voice helps him to find a kyber crystal to create his first lightsaber, which after being constructed, is blue and features a built-in stun blaster patterned after his street urchin trademark weapon, an energy slingshot. In the second-season episode "Legacy", he discovers that his parents were killed in a prison revolt. In "Shroud of Darkness" it is revealed Kanan fears Ezra might turn to the dark side, which partially happens when the former Sith Lord Maul draws him closer in "Twilight of the Apprentice", and in further episodes also keeps calling him "apprentice", showing a marked interest in him. His first lightsaber is also destroyed by Darth Vader. In the season 3 premiere episode "Steps into Shadow", Ezra replaces it with a green-bladed lightsaber. In the same episode, Ezra is promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Commander of the Phoenix Squadron, and also assumes field leadership of the "Ghost" crew, due to Kanan's blindness preventing him from continuing the role. However, due to his reckless leadership at the time, he was suspended from command as Lieutenant Commander until further notice. The episodes "Shroud of Darkness", "Holocrons of Fate" and "Twin Suns" reveal Ezra's main motivation of the third season, to "find the key to destroying the Sith", who he interprets as the exiled Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. After eventually finding and talking to Kenobi however, Ezra realized his true mission is to be with the other rebels and help them fight against the Empire. During the season 3 finale, by taking command of a squad during the battle against Grand Admiral Thrawn's fleet, it shows that at this point, Ezra's status as Lieutenant Commander has been fully restored.


title: Ezra Bridger

text: Ezra becomes somewhat lost after the death of his master Kanan, but begins to understand Kanan's final lessons after he penetrates the Jedi Temple in "A World Between Worlds". His connection to the Force-sensitive creatures of Lothal increases, and in the penultimate episode "A Fool's Hope" and the one-hour series finale "Family Reunion and Farewell" (both of which aired March 5, 2018), Ezra summons both the Loth-Wolves and the Purrgil to defeat Thrawn, Pryce, and the Imperial forces on Lothal. Because the Purrgil have shattered the bridge observation ports on Thrawn's Star Destroyer, onto which he has been taken, Ezra uses the Force to create a protecting air pocket for himself and Thrawn, and deliberately and selflessly allows himself to be taken away with Thrawn by the Purrgil.


title: Ezra Bridger

text: Ezra appears in the "Star Wars Forces of Destiny" episode "A Disarming Lesson", in which Ahsoka Tano provides Ezra a lesson in finding his inner strength and trusting in the Force.


title: Ezra Bridger

text: Ezra will be making his live action debut in the upcoming series "Ahsoka" with Eman Esfandi portraying him.


title: Ezra Bridger

text: On August 5, 2014, Del Rey Books published "Star Wars: Ezra's Gamble", a prequel novel to the "Rebels" short film "Property of Ezra Bridger".


title: Ezra Bridger

text: Ezra appears in the "" episode "Mission to Mos Eisley", which adapts his role in the "Rebels" first-season episode "Droids in Distress". He is voiced by Adrian Petriw.


title: Ezra Bridger

text: A Funko Pop figurine of Ezra Bridger was announced on September 27, 2016. "The Black Series" produced a 6-inch figure of Ezra Bridger as a part of a "Star Wars" and "The Mandalorian" line.


title: Ezra Bridger

text: Ezra Bridger has received generally positive feedback from fans and reviewers. "Screen Rant" ranked him seventh on a list of the best characters from "Star Wars Rebels", saying "his arc across the four seasons is fantastic, and he truly grows and matures into a great character" as well as praising his "beautifully completed [series] personal arc" following the conclusion of the fourth season. "Comic Book Resources" writer Ian Goodwillie praised the character for his second season depiction as "a character [who] had pointed out the inherent reality of the Clone Wars", comparing him to Darth Maul and praising his mentorship with Hondo Ohnaka, while Kelsey Yoor complimated the characters' utilization of "the archetypal teachings of Joseph Campbell, particularly regarding "The Hero's Journey". "Collider" praised Ezra's relationship with Grand Admiral Thrawn and "fitting" conclusion to their character arc, while "Dork Side of the Force" praised him as "one of the best characters in the entire story universe" of "Star Wars" canon.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The Honolulu Rail Transit Project (also known as the Honolulu High-Capacity Transit Corridor Project) is a light metro system under construction in Honolulu County, Hawaii, U.S. The mostly elevated system features design elements from both heavy rail systems and light metros, with a commuter-rail-like design incorporated into trains and suburban stations. It will become the first large-scale publicly run metro system in the United States to feature platform screen doors and driverless trainsets. The first phase of the project, linking East Kapolei on the ʻEwa Plain and Aloha Stadium, is scheduled to open by 2023. Its second phase continuing the line across urban Honolulu to the Ala Moana Center terminus is due to open in March 2031.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: For more than 20 years, debate over the development of a rail system in Honolulu has been a major point of contention in local politics, especially leading into the 2008, 2012, and 2016 mayoral elections. Proponents of the system say it will alleviate worsening traffic congestion, already among the worst in the United States. They assert that the urban agglomeration in south Oahu is ideally suited to rail. In opposition, freeway advocate Panos Prevedouros questions its cost-effectiveness compared to "road widening or lane addition" and claims that it will have marginal impact on traffic congestion. Other groups object to its cost as well as paying for the line without it serving their neighborhoods.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The project is financed by a surcharge on local taxes as well as a $1.55 billion grant from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). After major cost overruns, the tax surcharges were extended in 2016 by five years to raise another $1.2 billion; however that additional funding was only sufficient for construction out to Middle Street in Kalihi. The FTA stated that its contribution is contingent to completion of the line all the way to Ala Moana Center and will not be increased. After much wrangling, the state legislature in 2017 approved $2.4 billion in additional taxes to allow the city to complete the project according to the original plan.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The process to award the contract for building the final section through downtown Honolulu was suspended in 2015. The process was restarted in September 2017 and is expected to take eighteen months. The first major contract for that section, estimated at $400 million, was awarded in May 2018.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The final cost has grown from preliminary projections of $4 billion in 2006 to as much as $12.4 billion by 2021. Critics have called for a "forensic audit" to establish the cause of the increase. The tax increase legislation passed in 2017 also requires the State auditor carry out an audit of the project's accounts and to consider alternatives for completing the system. The projected shortfall for the rail project is roughly $3 billion, with the completion date pushed back to 2031.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: Plans for a mass-transit line to connect Honolulu's urban center with outlying areas began in the 1960s, but funding was not approved until 2005. The controversy over the rail line was the dominant issue for local politics leading into the 2008 Honolulu elections, and culminated in a city charter amendment which left the final decision to a direct vote of the citizens of Oahu. Construction of the rail line was approved with 53% of voters in favor, and ground broke on project construction on February 22, 2011.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: For more than 50 years, some Honolulu politicians have attempted to construct a rail transit line. In 1966, then-mayor Neal S. Blaisdell suggested a rail line as a solution to alleviate traffic problems in Honolulu, stating, "Taken in the mass, the automobile is a noxious mechanism whose destiny in workaday urban use is to frustrate man and make dead certain that he approaches his daily occupation unhappy and inefficient."


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: Frank Fasi was elected to office in 1968, and started planning studies for a rail project, named Honolulu Area Rapid Transit (HART), in 1977. After Fasi lost the 1980 reelection to Eileen Anderson, President Ronald Reagan cut off funding for all upcoming mass transit projects, which led Anderson to cancel HART in 1981. Fasi defeated Anderson in their 1984 rematch and restarted the HART project in 1986, but this second effort was stopped in a 1992 vote by the Honolulu City Council against the necessary tax increase.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: Fasi resigned in 1994 to run for governor, with Jeremy Harris winning the special election to replace him. Harris unsuccessfully pursued a bus rapid transit project as an interim solution until he left office in 2004. His successor, Mufi Hannemann, began the Honolulu High-Capacity Transit Corridor Project (HHCTCP), the island's fourth attempt to build a mass transit system operating in a dedicated right-of-way.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: Hannemann thought it was "prudent to move quickly" to show the FTA that Honolulu was committed to the HHCTCP. An environmental impact study had not been completed at the time of signing the first construction contract with Kiewit. The FTA needed a complete environmental impact statement before moving Honolulu forward in the grand-awarding process. Hannemann's urge to move fast in the project ultimately allowed stakeholders to delay some important foundational work such as the environmental impact study.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The City and County of Honolulu Department of Transportation Services released the first formal study related to the HHCTCP on November 1, 2006, the "Alternatives Analysis Report". The report compared the cost and benefits of a "fixed guideway system", along with three alternatives. The first expanded the existing bus system to match population growth. A second option called for a further expansion to the bus system, with improvements to existing roads. The third alternative proposed a two-lane flyover above the H-1 freeway between Pearl City and Honolulu International Airport, continuing over Nimitz Highway, and into downtown Honolulu. The report recommended construction of the fixed guideway, and is considered the city's official justification for building a rail line.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: A second planning document, the "Draft Environmental Impact Statement" (DEIS), studied possible natural and social impacts of the construction and operation of the HHCTCP. The DEIS was completed and cleared for public release by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) on October 29, 2008. After minor changes were made to comply with state law, the document was distributed via the city's official project website four days later. The DEIS indicated that impacts of the rail project would include land acquisition from private owners on the route, displacement of residents and businesses, aesthetic concerns related to the elevated guideway, and noise from passing trains.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The city was criticized for timing the release only two days before the 2008 general election. City Councilmember Ann Kobayashi, running as a mayoral candidate against incumbent Hannemann, suggested that the city deliberately withheld key information to early voters who had already cast their ballots for the mayoral candidates, and a city charter amendment related to the project. The anti-rail advocacy group Stop Rail Now criticized the report for not further discussing bus rapid transit and toll lanes, options studied earlier by the city in its Alternatives Analysis.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The third and final official planning document, the "Final Environmental Impact Statement" (FEIS), was approved and cleared for public release by the FTA on June 14, 2010. The FEIS addresses and incorporates public comments received regarding the DEIS. The FTA subsequently declared the environmental review process complete in a record of decision issued on January 18, 2011.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The importance of the Honolulu High-Capacity Transit Corridor Project in the 2008 mayoral election led one observer to describe the vote as a "referendum on rail transit". Two challengers emerged as rivals to incumbent Mufi Hannemann: City Councilmember Ann Kobayashi and University of Hawaii professor Panos D. Prevedouros. Kobayashi supported a "rubber-tired" mass transit system, as opposed to the conventional steel-wheel-on-steel-rail system chosen by the Hannemann administration. Prevedouros, on the other hand, opposed any type of mass-transit project, favoring construction of a reversible tollway over the H-1, similar to the Managed Lane option which the Alternatives Analysis studied and rejected as unworkable, and reworking existing road systems to ease congestion. No candidate won a majority of votes in the September 20 non-partisan primary, forcing a runoff between Hannemann and Kobayashi; Hannemann successfully retained his post with 58% of the vote in the November 4 general election.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: On April 22, 2008, the Stop Rail Now advocacy group announced their intent to file a petition with the city to place a question on the 2008 ballot to create an ordinance that read: "Honolulu mass transit shall not include trains or rail". Stop Rail Now attempted to submit the petition with 49,041 signatures to City Clerk Denise De Costa on August 5, but was initially denied after De Costa claimed the city charter did not allow the petition to be submitted less than 180 days before a general election, as the wording of the petition called for a special election. Stop Rail Now filed a lawsuit to force the city to accept the petition, and the courts ruled in Stop Rail Now's favor on August 14. Stop Rail Now's petition drive ultimately failed on September 4 when De Costa deemed only 35,056 of the signatures valid, well short of the 44,525 required.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: In response to the possibility that Stop Rail Now's petition would fail, the City Council had however voted on August 21 to place a proposed amendment to the city charter on the ballot, asking voters to decide the fate of the project. Mayor Hannemann signed the proposal the following day. The City Council's proposed amendment was not intended to have a direct legal effect on the city's ability to continue the project, but was meant as a means for Oahu residents to express their opinions on its construction. The charter amendment was approved with 53% of votes cast in favor of rail and 47% against. Majorities of voters in Leeward and Central Oahu, the areas that will be served by the project, voted in favor of the amendment, while the majority of those living outside the project's scope in Windward Oahu and East Honolulu voted against it. In mid-2010, Hannemann resigned as mayor to run for governor and Kirk Caldwell assumed the position of interim mayor.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: In the 2016 Honolulu mayoral election the main three candidates again took opposing views on rail. Honolulu City Council Member Charles Djou, former mayor Peter Carlisle, and incumbent Kirk Caldwell all ran for mayor with the stated goal of finishing rail. However, Republican Djou ran on drastically cutting spending on rail by cutting funding on buying cars on the rail before its completion, and hiring mainland consultants. Kirk Caldwell also stated that spending on rail should be cut, but instead by shortening the rail to end at Middle Street. Carlisle was the only candidate in support of funding the full rail system and stated that rail has gone too far to be stopped. Kirk Caldwell won the election, and promptly went on to adopt Carlisle's position that rail should be completed.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: Construction on the HHCTCP rail line was originally scheduled to begin in December 2009 but did not occur on that date owing to delays in the project review process and delays in obtaining federal approval of the environmental impact statement.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: In January 2010, Republican Governor Linda Lingle publicly recommended that the city alter plans for the rail line after news reports on FTA documents where the federal agency raised issues over declining tax revenues in connection with a global economic recession, and commissioned a study by the state to review the project's finances in March. The state financial study, publicly released on December 2, 2010, indicated that the project would likely experience a $1.7 billion overrun above the $5.3 billion projected cost, and that collections from the General Excise Tax would be 30% below forecasts. Then Mayor Peter Carlisle (Democrat) dismissed the study as "damaged goods," and "a pre-determined anti-rail rant." He also pointed to several conclusions as "erroneous" and "inaccurate" before concluding that "spending a third of a million dollars for this shoddy, biased analysis is an appalling waste of our tax dollars." Lingle's Democratic successor, Neil Abercrombie, publicly stated that the financial analysis would not affect his decision to approve or disapprove of the project, saying that the state's responsibility is limited to the environmental review process, and that decisions regarding the project's finances belong to the city and the FTA. Governor Abercrombie subsequently approved the project's final environmental impact statement on December 16, 2010. The Honolulu City Council held a hearing on January 12, 2011, about the state's financial review, but the hearing was not attended by any state officials, who had been invited to testify.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: On January 18, 2011, the FTA issued a "record of decision", indicating that the HHCTCP had met the requirements of its environmental review and that the city was allowed to begin construction work on the project. The record of decision allowed the city to begin negotiating with owners of land that will be purchased for the project, to begin relocating utility lines to make way for construction of the line and stations, and to purchase rolling stock for the rail line. A ground-breaking ceremony was held on February 22, 2011, in Kapolei, at the site of the future East Kapolei station along Kualakai Parkway.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: In March 2012, Dan Grabauskas was hired on a three-year contract as CEO and executive director of HART. In 2014 HART CEO Dan Grabauskas blamed lawsuits, launched in 2011, for some of the cost overruns after bids to construct the first nine stations exceeded the budget by $100 million. His claims were disputed by the plaintiffs in one of the cases who said HART could have put the stations out to tender and that HART had deliberately delayed the legal proceedings so a judgement would only be delivered after a significant proportion of the line had been completed.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: Interim service over the first ten miles of the line, between East Kapolei and Aloha Stadium, was scheduled to commence in October 2020. However, complications due to the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the start date back by three months. By November 2020, the opening had again slipped to late 2021 due to delays in testing equipment.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: In December 2020, HART discovered early wear on the track crossings, or "frogs". It was later determined that the trains' wheel flanges were approximately narrower at the frogs, thus affecting the driverless trains' ability to safely navigate certain track crossings at the speeds needed to operate on schedule. During investigation, subpar welding and sandblasting-inducted cracks were also discovered. In November 2021, Roger Morton, director of Honolulu's Department of Transportation Services, stated that a required three months of field testing and certification (to be carried out by Hitachi) was scheduled to begin in January 2022.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: In December 2021, it was decided that temporary welding fixes would be made to allow the trains to run at operational speeds despite the narrower wheels, with plans to swap out wheels with wider ones during future maintenance work. An initial call searching for contractors to perform the manganese welding work failed to return any bids. Due to the lack of local companies able to complete the work, the state's Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs granted HART an exemption allowing mainland contractors to be hired.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: Like most major infrastructure work in Hawaii, construction of the rail line is likely to uncover historic human remains, notably in its downtown Honolulu section. The Oahu Island Burial Council (part of the State Historic Preservation Division, within the State of Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources) refused to sign a programmatic agreement on October 21, 2009, over concerns about likely burial sites located along the line's proposed route over Halekauwila Street in Kakaako. Three construction projects in the area since 2002 have each encountered unforeseen human remains that led to delays, and archaeologist Thomas Dye stated, "The council is absolutely right that you should expect to find burials on Halekauwila Street".


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The Burial Council's core contention was the city's decision to conduct an archaeological survey of the rail line's route in phases, meaning construction on a majority of the line will be complete by the time the survey in the Kakaako area is performed, which in turn increases the likelihood that any remains discovered will be moved instead of being allowed to remain "in situ". In response to the Burial Council's concerns, the city agreed to begin conducting an archaeological survey of the area in 2010, two years earlier than originally planned. The state Department of Land and Natural Resources later signed the city's programmatic agreement on January 15, 2011, over the continuing concerns of the Burial Council.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The city's decision to conduct the archaeological survey in phases subsequently led to a lawsuit filed on February 1, 2011, by the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation on behalf of cultural practitioner Paulette Kaleikini. The suit, which named both the city and the State of Hawaii as defendants, contended that state law requires the full length of the rail line to have an archaeological survey conducted before any construction takes place, and seeks to void the environmental impact statement and all construction permits issued for the project. Kaleikini's lawyers filed on February 18 a request for an injunction to stop work on the project until the case is resolved. The suit was initially dismissed on March 23, 2011, after Circuit Court Judge Gary Chang ruled that state and federal laws allow the archaeological surveys to be conducted in phases. Kaleikini's lawyers subsequently appealed to the Hawaii Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in the case on May 24, 2012. The court ruled on August 24, 2012, that it agreed with plaintiff Kaleikini that the archaeological survey needed to be completed before construction could take place, and that the State Historic Preservation Division did not comply with state law when it approved the project. The case has now been remanded to Circuit Court. On December 27, 2012, the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii granted the plaintiffs' injunction, and ordered that all construction-related activities in segment 4 of the archaeological survey be halted until compliance with the Hawaii Supreme Court decision made earlier this year is met. This ruling does not affect construction activities in the first three segments, nor does it affect construction planning, design, or engineering in segment 4, which is the final segment to be built. The Phase 4 area encompasses the downtown area and its immediate environs, including Chinatown, Mother Waldron Park, and Beretania Street. Judge Tashima, the only sitting judge on the case, ruled on condition of the injunction that the city is required to file periodic status updates on their compliance with the judgment. The injunction will then terminate 30 days after defendants file a notice of final compliance.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The development of this project has been a point of contention among environmental, indigenous, and residential interest groups, as the United States Department of Transportation is accountable for nationwide compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Specifically, residents of the North Shore, Wai‘anae Coast, and Central and East regions of Oahu, home to mostly middle and lower-class communities, but also those of mostly upper class Hawaii Kai, Kahala, and Windward Oahu, pay the higher excise tax without reaping the direct benefits of the Rail Transit project. Indigenous Hawaiians constitute large percentages of the communities scattered along the southwest coast of the island, where residents generally exist under the national poverty line, but the project may possibly serve wealthier, “local” Hawaiian residents while bypassing the poorer indigenous Hawaiian community. Numerous studies have identified various benefits, including increased home values and increased median household income, that fall upon residences located near a rail transit station; public transit implementation thus constitutes a measure of public and private investment in a community.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: After winning the 2004 election, Hannemann announced that construction of a rail line was an administration priority. The following May and upon prompting by the city, the Hawaii State Legislature passed a bill (Act 247) to allow counties a one-half percent increase in the Hawaii General Excise Tax (GET), from 4% to 4.5%, to fund transportation projects. According to the bill, increased revenue would be delivered to counties implementing the raised tax to fund general public transportation infrastructure throughout Hawaii, and to pay for mass transit in the case of the City and County of Honolulu. Money collected from the initial 4% GET would remain state revenue.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: Republican governor Linda Lingle initially threatened to veto the bill, believing that money destined for county governments should be collected by the individual counties. After compromising with legislative leaders and Mayor Hannemann, however, she allowed the bill to become law. On July 12, 2005, the bill was enacted as Act 247 of the Session Laws of Hawaii 2005, without the Governor's signature. A month later, the Honolulu City Council authorized the one-half percent GET increase, and Hannemann signed the measure into law on August 24. Act 247 required Honolulu to use the funds only for the construction and operation of a mass transit system, and barred its use for public roads and other existing transit systems, such as TheBus. Since no other county authorized the excise tax increase before the deadline of December 31, 2005, the Hawaii GET remains at 4% for Hawaii's three other counties. The increase went into effect on January 1, 2007, and was due to expire on December 31, 2022.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The Legislature considered a bill in the 2009 legislative session that would have redirected income from the half-percent increase back to the state to offset a $1.8 billion projected shortfall in the following three fiscal years. The bill was opposed by Mayor Hannemann and other city leaders who believed that redirecting the money would jeopardize federal funding for the project, and was eventually dropped after U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye indicated to the Legislature that he shared the city's concerns.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: In January 2016, the Council extended the GET for another five years to add $1.2 billion in funding to cover a budget blowout. The council also required that the money raised by the extension go into a contingency fund and to pay for disability access to the system. HART was required to provide quarterly financial reports to the council.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: On September 1, 2017, the Legislature, after meeting for a week in a special session on rail financing, approved further taxes to raise $2.4 billion for the project. The taxes include a further three-year extension to the 0.5 percent General Excise Tax surcharge, which will now expire in 2030, and a thirteen-year, 1.0 percent surcharge on the existing 9.25 percent statewide Transient Accommodation Tax (TAT) which is charged to tourists. Efforts to pass a funding bill in May 2017 had failed and the impetus for the special session was a FTA deadline of September 15 for a funding plan to cover the shortfall. The bill also grants the state government oversight over the project including the appointment of two non-voting representatives on the HART board and calls for an audit of HART by the state auditor. It was signed into law by the governor on September 5.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: In mid 2016, the FTA requested that HART develop a "recovery plan" by August 7, 2016. Also in June a separate report by Jacobs Engineering, the project management contractor, said under a worst-case scenario the final cost would $10.79 billion.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: In January 2017, a group called "Salvage the Rail" published a plan, based on Option 2A from six alternatives proposed by the FTA to HART in 2016, that would terminate the elevated section at Middle Street and run at street level to the terminus along a route one block inland from the HART plan. The system would need to be reconfigured to use new driver-operated low floor vehicles, lowering the platforms on the stations already constructed. Proponents say it would save $3 billion and four years of construction, as well as avoid disturbing burial sites under the downtown area.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: After a lodgement extension was granted by the FTA, HART submitted its recovery plan in April 2017 which concluded that completion of the original 21 station route was the only viable option. An alternative "Plan B" to build only 14 stations within the already funded $6.5 billion budget, was ruled out because of lower ridership, legal risks, insufficient contingency and other reasons. The new project cost was $8.165 billion with media reports indicating that after financing charges are included it could be over $10 billion. An updated schedule for opening said the section from East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium will open at the end of 2020 and operation of the full route by December 2025.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: In September 2017, HART submitted an updated recovery plan to the FTA with a new estimate price of $9.02 billion. The plan still includes $8.165 billion in construction costs, but has reduced financing costs of $858 million following state legislation granting both prolonged and new taxes to fund the project. The State Auditor has been tasked to consider alternatives for completing the system, as part of its audit of HART. As of January 2018 the FTA has not formally accepted the new recovery plan but has asked HART for more details including how it came up with its tax-revenue forecasts.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: In February 2019, the FTA served HART with two subpoenas. The first asked the agency to send investigators documents relating to its real estate acquisition program. HART said some of the documents show it overspent on relocating residents and businesses along the rail route, which may have cost up to $4 million. The second sought the minutes from all board of directors meetings from 2011 through 2018, including the board-members’ private discussions in executive sessions.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The project constructs an almost entirely elevated rapid transit line from the eastern edge of Kapolei, near the University of Hawaiʻi – West Oʻahu campus, to Ala Moana Center (East of Honolulu downtown). The line passes through communities along southern Oahu, via Honolulu International Airport and downtown Honolulu. It will have twenty-one stations and run from Kapolei to Honolulu, passing through Waipahu, Pearl City, Waimalu, Aiea, and Halawa. The only at-grade trackage is a section near Leeward Community College. Originally, the line was to fork near Aloha Stadium into two routes, one passing further south via Honolulu International Airport, and the other through Salt Lake, before reuniting at Middle Street in Kalihi. The city council initially decided to build the Salt Lake route before the airport route, as a result of horse-trading with City Councilmember Romy Cachola, whose constituents included Salt Lake residents and whose vote was needed to pass the decision. After the city charter amendment on rail transit passed, the City Council reconsidered the decision, and decided to re-route the rail line to pass by Pearl Harbor and the airport, without a Salt Lake alignment. The airport route is 4% more expensive, but is expected to have significantly higher ridership since it will ferry workers to both the airport and the Pearl Harbor military base.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: In 2016, the western portion of the line ( – ) was scheduled to open in late 2020, and the full line ( – ) in late 2025. In March 2021, this latter date was pushed back to 2031. The project is divided into four segments or sections, with overlapping construction periods and expected revenue service dates.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: When complete, the trains will carry more than 6,000 people per hour, from 4 am to midnight. It is estimated the trains will serve 119,600 daily riders. Passengers will use the HOLO card smart card to purchase fares, and the card will facilitate transfers to TheBus.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The long-term plan includes four extensions: two extensions east of Ala Moana Shopping Center, to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa campus and to Waikiki, one extension west from East Kapolei to Kalaeloa, and the link through Salt Lake which was dropped from the initial plans. In 2010, it was estimated the extensions could be completed after the initial four-section project, possibly as early as 2030. None of these extensions is currently funded, but in November 2017, the rail authority took a first step towards preserving a corridor for the extension between Ala Moana Center and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: On October 21, 2009, the city announced Kiewit Pacific Co. had won the $483 million contract to build the first two sections of the line (the long Farrington and long Kamehameha sections), bidding $90 million under the expected price. The stations were tendered separately.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The construction of the rail line started from suburban areas in Kapolei and Ewa, and progresses east towards the urban center in Honolulu. There will be 112 columns from East Kapolei to Ewa. The choice to start from Kapolei was made because the first phase must include a baseyard for trains, which is more cheaply built away from the center, and also because the city chose to delay construction in the urban center to later phases of the project due to associated major impacts to existing infrastructure and unpopular traffic delays.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: To speed construction, the elevated trackway is built using precast concrete box girder bridge segments. This method was first used for MARTA in the 1980s. The trackway was designed by FIGG Bridge Engineers (who were responsible for the superstructure, referring to the box girder segmental bridge) and HNTB (substructure, referring to the columns). It is supported on single piers, each in diameter at the base and high, flaring at the top to support the lower section of the box girder; the piers are themselves supported by drilled shafts from in diameter.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: Casting of the box girder segments began in 2014 at a rate of 13 segments per day; in total, 5,238 segments will be required for the first phase. The segments are cast locally in Kalaeloa. Each segment weighs and measures (L×W×H, with length measured along the direction of the rails) , and the deck ranges in thickness from . Once the piers were erected, a pier bracket ram was placed and a launching gantry was used to bridge the span between adjacent piers; a deck-mounted crane lifted the precast segments onto the gantry, which supported them while they were tensioned together. In total, 430 of the 438 spans in Phase 1 were assembled using precast box girder segments, at an average rate of 1 to 2 days per span.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: For the eight long spans required to bridge the / Waiawa interchange in Pearl City, a balanced cantilever construction method was used instead. This covers the segments from Pier 252 to Pier 256. Instead of precast segments, Kiewit used segments cast in-place, starting from the piers set in the freeway medians and working towards adjacent piers. The yellow-painted traveling forms at each end were used to cast each segment, then moved to the fresh end to cast the next segment. Each segment required of rebar and of concrete, and weighed . 73 segments were required. The final pour for the balanced cantilever was performed in September 2016.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The third section of the route to be completed will be the Airport section east from Aloha Stadium to Middle Street. It includes four stations, including the Honolulu International Airport station. AECOM won the contract to design the Airport section in 2012 with a $38.8 million bid. The construction contract was awarded to a joint venture of Shimmick-Traylor-Granite (STGJV) in August 2016, who bid $874.8 million; construction started in December 2016.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The Airport section consists of 214 total spans. Like the earlier Farrington and Kamehameha sections, they are constructed using precast concrete box girder bridge segments, but for the Airport section, the segments are lifted and supported by an overhead gantry crane while they are tensioned. Both a conventional overhead gantry and an articulating gantry are being used during the guideway assembly. More than 2700 precast segments are required for the Airport section, which also includes more than 230 columns for the piers and 5400 permanent sound walls. For the pier foundations, shafts were drilled up to deep, including one excavated to with a diameter of . This was believed to have established a new record for a drilled shaft caisson. The column, in Kalihi Stream on Kamehameha Highway between Middle Street and Puuhale Road, will be part of the support for Kahauiki station. Where the guideway contacts the supporting piers, custom bearings have been installed to accommodate movement ranging from and rotation of 0.015–0.03 radians.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The STGJV announced in December 2020 it had completed the last of the 2,708 precast concrete guideway segments for the Airport section, with this last segment scheduled to be installed over Ualena Street near Lagoon Drive in spring 2021. Each segment uses approximately of concrete. Finished segment weights vary between and have dimensions of wide, long, and either high. The lower height is used in several places along the Airport section to accommodate overhead clearances and flight path restrictions.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The fourth and final segment of the route, the City Center section terminating at , may be completed under a public-private partnership (PPP). It is estimated the City Center section will cost $1.6 billion to complete. Under the proposed PPP, the City Center section would be procured under a design-build-finance-operate-maintain (DBFOM) contract, which would award the successful bidder the right to operate and maintain the entire system for a period of 25 years after completing the City Center section. The City of Honolulu would retain oversight over operations and maintenance, public information, and responsibility for fare vending and enforcement. A contract for $400 million to clear utilities in the City Center section was awarded in May 2018.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: HART issued a request for proposals (RFP) for the DBFOM contract for the City Center Guideway and Stations section in late 2018 and announced it had received proposals from several bidders by July 2020. However, the bids for the construction of the City Center Guideway and Stations significantly exceeded HART's cost estimates, at $2.7 billion compared to the $1.4 billion estimate, and HART officially discontinued pursuing a PPP approach to completing the City Center section in November 2020. The bids for the operation and maintenance portion of the contract (ranging from $4.2 to $5.3 billion) were closer to the estimate ($4.95 billion). On December 14, 2020, HART issued a request for information, asking for input from the construction industry for the best way to structure a RFP that would receive realistic bids.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: Local construction company Nan, Inc. won contracts to build six of the nine western stations in 2015; the West Oahu Station Group contract (for , , and ) was worth $56.1 million, and the Kamehameha Highway contract (for , , and ) was worth $116 million. The Farrington Highway Station Group contract (for , , and ) was awarded in 2015 to Hawaiian Dredging for $79 million. The STGJV were awarded the contract to build the four Airport section stations (, , , and ) as part of their $875 million contract for the Airport section.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The Hawaiian Station Naming Working Group (HSNWG), an expert working group, was named by the Honolulu City Council Resolution 09–158 on April 29, 2009, to develop Hawaiian names for each station of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) system. HSNWG proposed Hawaiian names for the nine rail stations on the Ewa end of the rail system (stations west of and including Aloha Stadium) in November 2017, and HART adopted the proposed names on February 22, 2018. On April 17, 2019, HART released a list of Hawaiian names proposed by HSNWG for the remaining 12 rail stations on the eastern end of the rail system, between Pearl Harbor and Ala Moana Center. The 12 names were released for public comment, and the HSNWG will review comments before presenting a final list of names to the HART Board of Directors.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The Rail Operations Center (ROC; also known as the Maintenance and Storage Facility) is the railyard, operations, and maintenance facility, divided into four buildings. It is in Pearl City, between the campuses of Leeward Community College and Waipahu High School, just west of . The design has been awarded LEED Silver certification.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The contract for the ROC was awarded to the Kiewit/Kobayashi Joint Venture in 2011. The contract was initially awarded at a cost of $195 million; when the ROC was completed in July 2016, the actual incurred costs were $274 million.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: Although several other technologies were considered, including rubber tired, maglev and monorail, then Mayor Mufi Hannemann had already decided that it would be steel on steel or nothing at all. “I will not put this city in a position of financial disaster," said Hannemann. "I'll pull the plug. If it's not 'steel on steel,' I'll pull the plug." The line will use four-car train sets, each with the capacity to carry about 780 passengers, similar in weight to light rail systems elsewhere in the United States (such as the MAX in Portland, Oregon), as opposed to heavier, and thus more expensive, lines found on rapid transit systems like the subways and elevated systems of Chicago and New York City. However, the stations will be standalone structures and will be substantially bigger than typical light rail stations. Physically, the Honolulu system will have a good deal in common with light rapid-transit systems such as SkyTrain in Vancouver, British Columbia or the Copenhagen Metro, as well as the Docklands Light Railway in London. The system will be the first metro system in the United States to feature platform gates and will be driverless. Rolling stock for the line will initially include 80 cars in 20 four-car train sets.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: Each car will be long, weigh , and have 36 seats with a listed total capacity of 195 people. The cars will be powered by a third-rail electrification system.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The contract for the rail cars (named the Core Systems Design-Build-Operate-Maintain Services contract) was signed on November 28, 2011, by HART and Ansaldo Honolulu, a joint venture between Hitachi Rail Italy (initially AnsaldoBreda) and Hitachi Rail STS (initially Ansaldo STS). AnsaldoBreda and Ansaldo STS previously collaborated on the construction and operation of vehicles for the Copenhagen Metro and the Brescia Metro. Both companies were later purchased by Hitachi Rail in 2015 and Ansaldo Honolulu was subsequently renamed to Hitachi Rail Honolulu (HRH). Under the $1.4 billion contract, HRH is responsible for designing and fabricating the rail cars ($574 million), a test to validate train performance ($167 million), and operations and maintenance (O&M) during the first five years of revenue service ($339 million), with an option to continue O&M services for HART for an additional five years ($318 million) provided the review of the first five years is favorable.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The two unsuccessful bidders for the rail-car contract, Bombardier Transportation and Sumitomo Corporation of America, filed protests over the award. Both protests were rejected during the administrative process, but Bombardier sought judicial review of their bid protest. The administrative decision against Bombardier's protest was affirmed by both the state Circuit Court and the Intermediate Court of Appeals.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: The first two cars arrived in Hawaii in March 2016, and the first train was unveiled to the public at the Rail Operations Center on May 2, 2016. To meet "Buy America" requirements for federally-subsidized transit projects, the bodyshells are fabricated at the Hitachi Rail Italy plant in Reggio Calabria, Italy, then shipped to HRI's Pittsburg, California plant for final assembly. The Pittsburg factory has since been partially leased to Bombardier Rail, who will assemble cars for BART there.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: In December 2016, Hitachi Rail Italy reported defects were discovered in the welds in the extruded aluminum beams of twenty-seven car shells, four of which were already in Hawaii. The manufacturer will fix the problems, but warned delivery may be delayed as production of new vehicles will be halted. In March 2017 HART said they would meet the interim opening needs after repair of the defective cars and that full opening would not be affected.


title: Honolulu Rail Transit

text: In May 2017, trains were towed on tracks in Honolulu for the first time, to check clearances. Testing of trains under their own power commenced in October 2017.


title: Master's Sun

text: Master's Sun () is a 2013 South Korean television series starring So Ji-sub and Gong Hyo-jin. The romantic comedy is written by the Hong sisters and aired for 17 episodes on SBS TV every Wednesday and Thursday at 21:55 (KST) from August 7 to October 3, 2013.


title: Master's Sun

text: Joo Joong-won (So Ji-sub) is the cold and distant CEO of Kingdom, a conglomerate that includes a major department store and hotel. He meets the gloomy Tae Gong-shil (Gong Hyo-jin), who started seeing ghosts after an accident. Their lives take a new turn as they discover whenever Gong-shil touches Joong-won the ghosts that surround her disappear; after much pleading from Gong-shil to allow her to stay by Joong-won's side in return she must help him recover a fortune that was stolen from him during a kidnapping attempt.


title: Monocoque

text: Monocoque ( ), also called structural skin, is a structural system in which loads are supported by an object's external skin, in a manner similar to an egg shell. The word "monocoque" is a French term for "single shell".


title: Monocoque

text: First used for boats, a true monocoque carries both tensile and compressive forces within the skin and can be recognised by the absence of a load-carrying internal frame. Few metal aircraft other than those with milled skins can strictly be regarded as pure monocoques, as they use a metal shell or sheeting reinforced with frames riveted to the skin, but most wooden aircraft are described as monocoques, even though they also incorporate frames.


title: Monocoque

text: By contrast, a semi-monocoque is a hybrid combining a tensile stressed skin and a compressive structure made up of longerons and ribs or frames. Other semi-monocoques, not to be confused with true monocoques, include vehicle unibodies, which tend to be composites, and inflatable shells or balloon tanks, both of which are pressure stabilised.


title: Monocoque

text: Early aircraft were constructed using frames, typically of wood or steel tubing, which could then be covered (or "skinned") with fabric such as Irish linen or cotton. The fabric made a minor structural contribution in tension but none in compression and was there for aerodynamic reasons only. By considering the structure as a whole and not just the sum of its parts, monocoque construction integrated the skin and frame into a single load-bearing shell with significant improvements to strength and weight.


title: Monocoque

text: To make the shell, thin strips of wood were laminated into a three dimensional shape; a technique adopted from boat hull construction. One of the earliest examples was the Deperdussin Monocoque racer in 1912, which used a laminated fuselage made up of three layers of glued poplar veneer, which provided both the external skin and the main load-bearing structure. This also produced a smoother surface and reduced drag so effectively that it was able to win most of the races it was entered into.


title: Monocoque

text: This style of construction was further developed in Germany by LFG Roland using the patented "Wickelrumpf" (wrapped body) form later licensed by them to Pfalz Flugzeugwerke who used it on several fighter aircraft. Each half of the fuselage shell was formed over a male mold using two layers of plywood strips with fabric wrapping between them. The early plywood used was prone to damage from moisture and delamination.


title: Monocoque

text: While all-metal aircraft such as the Junkers J 1 had appeared as early as 1915, these were not monocoques but added a metal skin to an underlying framework.


title: Monocoque

text: The first metal monocoques were built by Claudius Dornier, while working for Zeppelin-Lindau. He had to overcome a number of problems, not least was the quality of aluminium alloys strong enough to use as structural materials, which frequently formed layers instead of presenting a uniform material. After failed attempts with several large flying boats in which a few components were monocoques, he built the Zeppelin-Lindau V1 to test out a monocoque fuselage. Although it crashed, he learned a lot from its construction. The Dornier-Zeppelin D.I was built in 1918 and although too late for operational service during the war was the first all metal monocoque aircraft to enter production.


title: Monocoque

text: In parallel to Dornier, Zeppelin also employed Adolf Rohrbach, who built the Zeppelin-Staaken E-4/20, which when it flew in 1920 became the first multi-engined monocoque airliner, before being destroyed under orders of the Inter-Allied Commission. At the end of WWI, the Inter-Allied Technical Commission published details of the last Zeppelin-Lindau flying boat showing its monocoque construction. In the UK, Oswald Short built a number of experimental aircraft with metal monocoque fuselages starting with the 1920 Short Silver Streak in an attempt to convince the air ministry of its superiority over wood. Despite advantages, aluminium alloy monocoques would not become common until the mid 1930s as a result of a number of factors, including design conservatism and production setup costs. Short would eventually prove the merits of the construction method with a series of flying boats, whose metal hulls didn't absorb water as the wooden hulls did, greatly improving performance. In the United States, Northrop was a major pioneer, introducing techniques used by his own company and Douglas with the Northrop Alpha.


title: Monocoque

text: In motor racing, the safety of the driver depends on the car body, which must meet stringent regulations, and only a few cars have been built with monocoque structures. An aluminum alloy monocoque chassis was first used in the 1962 Lotus 25 Formula 1 race car and McLaren was the first to use carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers to construct the monocoque of the 1981 McLaren MP4/1. In 1990 the Jaguar XJR-15 became the first production car with a carbon-fiber monocoque.


title: Monocoque

text: The term "monocoque" is frequently misapplied to unibody cars. Commercial car bodies are almost never true monocoques but instead use the unibody system (also referred to as unitary construction, unitary body–chassis or body–frame integral construction), which uses box sections, bulkheads and tubes to provide most of the strength of the vehicle, while the skin adds relatively little strength or stiffness.


title: Monocoque

text: Some armoured fighting vehicles use a monocoque structure with a body shell built up from armour plates, rather than attaching them to a frame. This reduces weight for a given amount of armour. Examples include the German TPz Fuchs and RG-33.


title: Monocoque

text: French industrialist and engineer Georges Roy attempted in the 1920s to improve on the bicycle-inspired motorcycle frames of the day, which lacked rigidity. This limited their handling and therefore performance. He applied for a patent in 1926, and at the 1929 Paris Automotive Show unveiled his new motorcycle, the Art-Deco styled 1930 Majestic. Its new type of monocoque body solved the problems he had addressed, and along with better rigidity it did double-duty, as frame and bodywork provided some protection from the elements. Strictly considered, it was more of a semi-monocoque, as it used a box-section, pressed-steel frame with twin side rails riveted together via crossmembers, along with floor pans and rear and front bulkheads.


title: Monocoque

text: A Piatti light scooter was produced in the 1950s using a monocoque hollow shell of sheet-steel pressings welded together, into which the engine and transmission were installed from underneath. The machine could be tipped onto its side, resting on the bolt-on footboards for mechanical access.


title: Monocoque

text: A monocoque framed scooter was produced by Yamaha from 1960–1962. Model MF-1 was powered by a 50 cc engine with a three-speed transmission and a fuel tank incorporated into the frame.


title: Monocoque

text: A monocoque-framed motorcycle was developed by Spanish manufacturer Ossa for the 1967 Grand Prix motorcycle racing season. Although the single-cylinder Ossa had less than its rivals, it was lighter and its monocoque frame was much stiffer than conventional motorcycle frames, giving it superior agility on the racetrack. Ossa won four Grands Prix races with the monocoque bike before their rider died after a crash during the 250 cc event at the 1970 Isle of Man TT, causing the Ossa factory to withdraw from Grand Prix competition.


title: Monocoque

text: Notable designers such as Eric Offenstadt and Dan Hanebrink created unique monocoque designs for racing in the early 1970s. The F750 event at the 1973 Isle of Man TT races was won by Peter Williams on the monocoque-framed John Player Special that he helped to design based on Norton Commando. Honda also experimented with the NR500, a monocoque Grand Prix racing motorcycle in 1979. The bike had other innovative features, including an engine with oval shaped cylinders, and eventually succumbed to the problems associated with attempting to develop too many new technologies at once. In 1987 John Britten developed the Aero-D One, featuring a composite monocoque chassis that weighed only .


title: Monocoque

text: An aluminium monocoque frame was used for the first time on a mass-produced motorcycle from 2000 on Kawasaki's ZX-12R, their flagship production sportbike aimed at being the fastest production motorcycle. It was described by "Cycle World" in 2000 as a "monocoque backbone ... a single large diameter beam" and "Fabricated from a combination of castings and sheet-metal stampings".


title: Monocoque

text: Single-piece carbon fiber bicycle frames are sometimes described as monocoques; however as most use components to form a frame structure (even if molded in a single piece), these are frames not monocoques, and the pedal-cycle industry continues to refer to them as framesets.


title: Monocoque

text: Various rockets have used pressure-stabilized monocoque designs, such as Atlas and Falcon 1. The Atlas was very light since a major portion of its structural support was provided by its single-wall steel balloon fuel tanks, which hold their shape while under acceleration by internal pressure. Balloon tanks are not true monocoques but act in the same way as inflatable shells. A balloon tank skin only handles tensile forces while compression is resisted by internal liquid pressure in a way similar to semi-monocoques braced by a solid frame. This becomes obvious when internal pressure is lost and the structure collapses.


title: Gelderland

text: Gelderland (), also known as Guelders () in English, is a province of the Netherlands, occupying the centre-east of the country. With a total area of of which is water, it is the largest province of the Netherlands by land area, and second by total area. Gelderland shares borders with six other provinces (Flevoland, Limburg, North Brabant, Overijssel, South Holland and Utrecht) and the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.


title: Gelderland

text: The capital is Arnhem (pop. 159,265); however, Nijmegen (pop. 176,731) and Apeldoorn (pop. 162,445) are both larger municipalities. Other major regional centres in Gelderland are Ede, Doetinchem, Zutphen, Harderwijk, Tiel, Wageningen, Zevenaar, and Winterswijk. Gelderland had a population of 2,084,478 as of November 2019. It contains the Netherlands's largest forest region (the Veluwe), the Rhine and other major rivers, and a significant amount of orchards in the south (Betuwe).


title: Gelderland

text: Historically, the province dates from states of the Holy Roman Empire and takes its name from the nearby German city of Geldern. According to the Wichard saga, the Lords of Pont named the city, who fought and killed a dragon in 878 AD. They named the town they founded after the death rattle of the dragon: ""Gelre!""


title: Gelderland

text: The County of Guelders arose out of the Frankish pagus Hamaland in the 11th century around castles near Roermond and Geldern. The counts of Gelre acquired the Betuwe and Veluwe regions and, through marriage, the County of Zutphen. Thus the counts of Guelders laid the foundation for a territorial power that, through control of the Rhine, Waal, Meuse and IJssel rivers, was to play an important role in the later Middle Ages. The geographical position of their territory dictated the external policy of the counts during the following centuries; they were committed to the interests of the Holy Roman Empire and to expansion south and west.


title: Gelderland

text: Further enlarged by the acquisition of the imperial city of Nijmegen in the 13th century, the countship was raised to a duchy in 1339 by the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV. After 1379, the duchy was ruled from Jülich and by the counts of Egmond and Cleves. The duchy resisted Burgundian domination, but William, Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg was forced to cede it to Charles V in 1543, after which it formed part of the Burgundian-Habsburg hereditary lands.


title: Gelderland

text: The duchy revolted with the rest of the Netherlands against Philip II of Spain and joined the Union of Utrecht (1579). After the deposition of Philip II, its sovereignty was vested in the States of Gelderland, and the princes of Orange were stadtholders. In 1672, the province was temporarily occupied by Louis XIV and, in 1713, the southeastern part, including the ducal capital of Geldern, fell to Prussia. Part of the Batavian Republic (1795–1806), of Louis Bonaparte’s Kingdom of Holland (1806–10), and of the French Empire (1810–13), Gelderland became a province of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815.


title: Gelderland

text: During the Second World War, it saw heavy fighting between Allied Paratroopers, British XXX Corps and the German II SS Panzer Corps, at the Battle of Arnhem.


title: Gelderland

text: In Gelderland there are many museums, like the Netherlands Open Air Museum and Museum Arnhem in Arnhem, Valkhof Museum in Nijmegen, the Het Loo Palace in Apeldoorn and in Otterlo the Kröller-Müller Museum. There are several large theatres in Gelderland such as the Stadsschouwburg in Nijmegen, Stadstheater in Arnhem and Orpheus (theater) in Apeldoorn. Some cities are also equipped with large concert halls like MUSIS (formerly: Musis sacrum) in Arnhem and Concertgebouw de Vereeniging in Nijmegen. The known by a larger public pop-music venues are Luxor Live in Arnhem, Doornroosje in Nijmegen, Gigant in Apeldoorn and the GelreDome stadium in Arnhem. Every year the municipality Renkum and Overbetuwe receive a large amount of tourist visiting because of the Battle of Arnhem. Often historical locations are visited, like the John Frost Bridge and the Arnhem Oosterbeek War Cemetery in Oosterbeek.


title: Gelderland

text: Gelderland can roughly be divided into four geographical regions: the Veluwe in the north, the Rivierenland including the Betuwe in the southwest, the Achterhoek (literally meaning the "back corner") or Graafschap (which originally means earldom or county) in the east and the city-region of Arnhem and Nijmegen in the centre-south.


title: Gelderland

text: The gross domestic product (GDP) of the region was €78.3 billion in 2018, accounting for 10.1% of the Netherlands' economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was €33,000 or 110% of the EU27 average in the same year.


title: Gelderland

text: In the 2001 movie "A Knight's Tale", the protagonist, William Thatcher (played by Heath Ledger) pretends to be a knight known as "Ulrich von Lichtenstein from Gelderland".


title: Lanthanum

text: Lanthanum is a chemical element with the symbol La and atomic number 57. It is a soft, ductile, silvery-white metal that tarnishes slowly when exposed to air. It is the eponym of the lanthanide series, a group of 15 similar elements between lanthanum and lutetium in the periodic table, of which lanthanum is the first and the prototype. Lanthanum is traditionally counted among the rare earth elements. Like most other rare earth elements, the usual oxidation state is +3. Lanthanum has no biological role in humans but is essential to some bacteria. It is not particularly toxic to humans but does show some antimicrobial activity.


title: Lanthanum

text: Lanthanum usually occurs together with cerium and the other rare earth elements. Lanthanum was first found by the Swedish chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander in 1839 as an impurity in cerium nitrate – hence the name "lanthanum", from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'to lie hidden'. Although it is classified as a rare earth element, lanthanum is the 28th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, almost three times as abundant as lead. In minerals such as monazite and bastnäsite, lanthanum composes about a quarter of the lanthanide content. It is extracted from those minerals by a process of such complexity that pure lanthanum metal was not isolated until 1923.


title: Lanthanum

text: Lanthanum compounds have numerous applications as catalysts, additives in glass, carbon arc lamps for studio lights and projectors, ignition elements in lighters and torches, electron cathodes, scintillators, gas tungsten arc welding electrodes, and other things. Lanthanum carbonate is used as a phosphate binder in cases of high levels of phosphate in the blood seen with kidney failure.


title: Lanthanum

text: Lanthanum is the first element and prototype of the lanthanide series. In the periodic table, it appears to the right of the alkaline earth metal barium and to the left of the lanthanide cerium. Its placement has been disputed, but most who study the matter along with a 2021 IUPAC provisional report consider lanthanum to be best placed as the first of the f-block elements. The 57 electrons of a lanthanum atom are arranged in the configuration [Xe]5d6s, with three valence electrons outside the noble gas core. In chemical reactions, lanthanum almost always gives up these three valence electrons from the 5d and 6s subshells to form the +3 oxidation state, achieving the stable configuration of the preceding noble gas xenon. Some lanthanum(II) compounds are also known, but they are much less stable.


title: Lanthanum

text: Among the lanthanides, lanthanum is exceptional as it has no 4f electrons as a single gas-phase atom. Thus it is only very weakly paramagnetic, unlike the strongly paramagnetic later lanthanides (with the exceptions of the last two, ytterbium and lutetium, where the 4f shell is completely full). However, the 4f shell of lanthanum can become partially occupied in chemical environments and participate in chemical bonding. For example, the melting points of the trivalent lanthanides (all but europium and ytterbium) are related to the extent of hybridisation of the 6s, 5d, and 4f electrons (lowering with increasing 4f involvement), and lanthanum has the second-lowest melting point among them: 920 °C. (Europium and ytterbium have lower melting points because they delocalise about two electrons per atom rather than three.) This chemical availability of f orbitals justifies lanthanum's placement in the f-block despite its anomalous ground-state configuration (which is merely the result of strong interelectronic repulsion making it less profitable to occupy the 4f shell, as it is small and close to the core electrons).


title: Lanthanum

text: The lanthanides become harder as the series is traversed: as expected, lanthanum is a soft metal. Lanthanum has a relatively high resistivity of 615 nΩm at room temperature; in comparison, the value for the good conductor aluminium is only 26.50 nΩm. Lanthanum is the least volatile of the lanthanides. Like most of the lanthanides, lanthanum has a hexagonal crystal structure at room temperature. At 310 °C, lanthanum changes to a face-centered cubic structure, and at 865 °C, it changes to a body-centered cubic structure.


title: Lanthanum

text: As expected from periodic trends, lanthanum has the largest atomic radius of the lanthanides. Hence, it is the most reactive among them, tarnishing quite rapidly in air, turning completely dark after several hours and can readily burn to form lanthanum(III) oxide, LaO, which is almost as basic as calcium oxide. A centimeter-sized sample of lanthanum will corrode completely in a year as its oxide spalls off like iron rust, instead of forming a protective oxide coating like aluminium, scandium, yttrium, and lutetium. Lanthanum reacts with the halogens at room temperature to form the trihalides, and upon warming will form binary compounds with the nonmetals nitrogen, carbon, sulfur, phosphorus, boron, selenium, silicon and arsenic. Lanthanum reacts slowly with water to form lanthanum(III) hydroxide, La(OH). In dilute sulfuric acid, lanthanum readily forms the aquated tripositive ion : this is colorless in aqueous solution since La has no d or f electrons. Lanthanum is the strongest and hardest base among the rare earth elements, which is again expected from its being the largest of them.


title: Lanthanum

text: Some lanthanum(II) compounds are also known, but they are much less stable. Therefore, in officially naming compounds of lanthanum its oxidation number always is to be mentioned.


title: Lanthanum

text: Naturally occurring lanthanum is made up of two isotopes, the stable La and the primordial long-lived radioisotope La. La is by far the most abundant, making up 99.910% of natural lanthanum: it is produced in the s-process (slow neutron capture, which occurs in low- to medium-mass stars) and the r-process (rapid neutron capture, which occurs in core-collapse supernovae). It is the only stable isotope of lanthanum. The very rare isotope La is one of the few primordial odd–odd nuclei, with a long half-life of 1.05×10 years. It is one of the proton-rich p-nuclei which cannot be produced in the s- or r-processes. La, along with the even rarer Ta, is produced in the ν-process, where neutrinos interact with stable nuclei. All other lanthanum isotopes are synthetic: with the exception of La with a half-life of about 60,000 years, all of them have half-lives less than a day, and most have half-lives less than a minute. The isotopes La and La occur as fission products of uranium.


title: Lanthanum

text: Lanthanum oxide is a white solid that can be prepared by direct reaction of its constituent elements. Due to the large size of the La ion, LaO adopts a hexagonal 7-coordinate structure that changes to the 6-coordinate structure of scandium oxide (ScO) and yttrium oxide (YO) at high temperature. When it reacts with water, lanthanum hydroxide is formed: a lot of heat is evolved in the reaction and a hissing sound is heard. Lanthanum hydroxide will react with atmospheric carbon dioxide to form the basic carbonate.


title: Lanthanum

text: Lanthanum fluoride is insoluble in water and can be used as a qualitative test for the presence of La. The heavier halides are all very soluble deliquescent compounds. The anhydrous halides are produced by direct reaction of their elements, as heating the hydrates causes hydrolysis: for example, heating hydrated LaCl produces LaOCl.


title: Lanthanum

text: Lanthanum reacts exothermically with hydrogen to produce the dihydride LaH, a black, pyrophoric, brittle, conducting compound with the calcium fluoride structure. This is a non-stoichiometric compound, and further absorption of hydrogen is possible, with a concomitant loss of electrical conductivity, until the more salt-like LaH is reached. Like LaI and LaI, LaH is probably an electride compound.


title: Lanthanum

text: Due to the large ionic radius and great electropositivity of La, there is not much covalent contribution to its bonding and hence it has a limited coordination chemistry, like yttrium and the other lanthanides. Lanthanum oxalate does not dissolve very much in alkali-metal oxalate solutions, and [La(acac)(HO)] decomposes around 500 °C. Oxygen is the most common donor atom in lanthanum complexes, which are mostly ionic and often have high coordination numbers over 6: 8 is the most characteristic, forming square antiprismatic and dodecadeltahedral structures. These high-coordinate species, reaching up to coordination number 12 with the use of chelating ligands such as in La(SO)·9HO, often have a low degree of symmetry because of stereo-chemical factors.


title: Lanthanum

text: Lanthanum chemistry tends not to involve π bonding due to the electron configuration of the element: thus its organometallic chemistry is quite limited. The best characterized organolanthanum compounds are the cyclopentadienyl complex La(CH), which is produced by reacting anhydrous LaCl with NaCH in tetrahydrofuran, and its methyl-substituted derivatives.


title: Lanthanum

text: In 1751, the Swedish mineralogist Axel Fredrik Cronstedt discovered a heavy mineral from the mine at Bastnäs, later named cerite. Thirty years later, the fifteen-year-old Wilhelm Hisinger, from the family owning the mine, sent a sample of it to Carl Scheele, who did not find any new elements within. In 1803, after Hisinger had become an ironmaster, he returned to the mineral with Jöns Jacob Berzelius and isolated a new oxide which they named "ceria" after the dwarf planet Ceres, which had been discovered two years earlier. Ceria was simultaneously independently isolated in Germany by Martin Heinrich Klaproth. Between 1839 and 1843, ceria was shown to be a mixture of oxides by the Swedish surgeon and chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander, who lived in the same house as Berzelius and studied under him: he separated out two other oxides which he named "lanthana" and "didymia". He partially decomposed a sample of cerium nitrate by roasting it in air and then treating the resulting oxide with dilute nitric acid. That same year, Axel Erdmann, a student also at the Karolinska Institute, discovered lanthanum in a new mineral from Låven island located in a Norwegian fjord.


title: Lanthanum

text: Finally, Mosander explained his delay, saying that he had extracted a second element from cerium, and this he called didymium. Although he didn't realise it, didymium too was a mixture, and in 1885 it was separated into praseodymium and neodymium.


title: Lanthanum

text: Since lanthanum's properties differed only slightly from those of cerium, and occurred along with it in its salts, he named it from the Ancient Greek "λανθάνειν" [lanthanein] (lit. "to lie hidden"). Relatively pure lanthanum metal was first isolated in 1923.


title: Lanthanum

text: Lanthanum is the third-most abundant of all the lanthanides, making up 39 mg/kg of the Earth's crust, behind neodymium at 41.5 mg/kg and cerium at 66.5 mg/kg. It is almost three times as abundant as lead in the Earth's crust. Despite being among the so-called "rare earth metals", lanthanum is thus not rare at all, but it is historically so named because it is rarer than "common earths" such as lime and magnesia, and historically only a few deposits were known. Lanthanum is considered a rare earth metal because the process to mine it is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Lanthanum is rarely the dominant lanthanide found in the rare earth minerals, and in their chemical formulae it is usually preceded by cerium. Rare examples of La-dominant minerals are monazite-(La) and lanthanite-(La).


title: Lanthanum

text: The La ion is similarly sized to the early lanthanides of the cerium group (those up to samarium and europium) that immediately follow in the periodic table, and hence it tends to occur along with them in phosphate, silicate and carbonate minerals, such as monazite (MPO) and bastnäsite (MCOF), where M refers to all the rare earth metals except scandium and the radioactive promethium (mostly Ce, La, and Y). Bastnäsite is usually lacking in thorium and the heavy lanthanides, and the purification of the light lanthanides from it is less involved. The ore, after being crushed and ground, is first treated with hot concentrated sulfuric acid, evolving carbon dioxide, hydrogen fluoride, and silicon tetrafluoride: the product is then dried and leached with water, leaving the early lanthanide ions, including lanthanum, in solution.


title: Lanthanum

text: The procedure for monazite, which usually contains all the rare earths as well as thorium, is more involved. Monazite, because of its magnetic properties, can be separated by repeated electromagnetic separation. After separation, it is treated with hot concentrated sulfuric acid to produce water-soluble sulfates of rare earths. The acidic filtrates are partially neutralized with sodium hydroxide to pH 3–4. Thorium precipitates out of solution as hydroxide and is removed. After that, the solution is treated with ammonium oxalate to convert rare earths to their insoluble oxalates. The oxalates are converted to oxides by annealing. The oxides are dissolved in nitric acid that excludes one of the main components, cerium, whose oxide is insoluble in HNO. Lanthanum is separated as a double salt with ammonium nitrate by crystallization. This salt is relatively less soluble than other rare earth double salts and therefore stays in the residue. Care must be taken when handling some of the residues as they contain Ra, the daughter of Th, which is a strong gamma emitter. Lanthanum is relatively easy to extract as it has only one neighbouring lanthanide, cerium, which can be removed by making use of its ability to be oxidised to the +4 state; thereafter, lanthanum may be separated out by the historical method of fractional crystallization of La(NO)·2NHNO·4HO, or by ion-exchange techniques when higher purity is desired.


title: Lanthanum

text: Lanthanum metal is obtained from its oxide by heating it with ammonium chloride or fluoride and hydrofluoric acid at 300-400 °C to produce the chloride or fluoride:


title: Lanthanum

text: Also, pure lanthanum can be produced by electrolysis of molten mixture of anhydrous LaCl and NaCl or KCl at elevated temperatures.


title: Lanthanum

text: The first historical application of lanthanum was in gas lantern mantles. Carl Auer von Welsbach used a mixture of lanthanum oxide and zirconium oxide, which he called "Actinophor" and patented in 1886. The original mantles gave a green-tinted light and were not very successful, and his first company, which established a factory in Atzgersdorf in 1887, failed in 1889.


title: Lanthanum

text: Lanthanum has no known biological role in humans. The element is very poorly absorbed after oral administration and when injected its elimination is very slow. Lanthanum carbonate (Fosrenol) was approved as a phosphate binder to absorb excess phosphate in cases of end stage renal disease.


title: Lanthanum

text: While lanthanum has pharmacological effects on several receptors and ion channels, its specificity for the GABA receptor is unique among trivalent cations. Lanthanum acts at the same modulatory site on the GABA receptor as zinc, a known negative allosteric modulator. The lanthanum cation La is a positive allosteric modulator at native and recombinant GABA receptors, increasing open channel time and decreasing desensitization in a subunit configuration dependent manner.


title: Lanthanum

text: Lanthanum is an essential cofactor for the methanol dehydrogenase of the methanotrophic bacterium "Methylacidiphilum fumariolicum" SolV, although the great chemical similarity of the lanthanides means that it may be substituted with cerium, praseodymium, or neodymium without ill effects, and with the smaller samarium, europium, or gadolinium giving no side effects other than slower growth.


title: Lanthanum

text: Lanthanum has a low to moderate level of toxicity and should be handled with care. The injection of lanthanum solutions produces hyperglycemia, low blood pressure, degeneration of the spleen and hepatic alterations. The application in carbon arc light led to the exposure of people to rare earth element oxides and fluorides, which sometimes led to pneumoconiosis. As the La ion is similar in size to the Ca ion, it is sometimes used as an easily traced substitute for the latter in medical studies. Lanthanum, like the other lanthanides, is known to affect human metabolism, lowering cholesterol levels, blood pressure, appetite, and risk of blood coagulation. When injected into the brain, it acts as a painkiller, similarly to morphine and other opiates, though the mechanism behind this is still unknown.


title: Lanthanum

text: The price for a (metric) ton [1000 kg] of "Lanthanum oxide 99% (FOB China in USD/Mt)" is given by the Institute of Rare Earths Elements and Strategic Metals as below $2,000 for most of the period from early 2001 to September 2010 (at $10,000 in the short term in 2008); it rose steeply to $140,000 in mid-2011 and fell back just as rapidly to $38,000 by early 2012. The average price for the last six months (April to September 2022) is given by the Institute as follows: "Lanthanum Oxide - 99.9%min FOB China - 1308 EUR/mt" and for "Lanthanum Metal - 99%min FOB China - 3706 EUR/mt".


title: Twixt (film)

text: Twixt is a 2011 horror film written, produced, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Val Kilmer, Bruce Dern, Elle Fanning, Ben Chaplin, Alden Ehrenreich, David Paymer and Joanne Whalley. The film premiered on September 4, 2011 at the Toronto International Film Festival and was screened at various film festivals in North America, receiving a limited theatrical release in a handful of international markets. The film's title, "Twixt", refers to the two worlds explored in the film, the dream and the waking worlds.


title: Twixt (film)

text: "Twixt" was released on Blu-ray and DVD by Fox Home Entertainment on July 23, 2013, and the film marks the on-screen reunion of former spouses, Kilmer and Whalley.


title: Twixt (film)

text: The film follows Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer), a down-on-his-luck writer who specializes in novels based upon witch hunting. At a book signing, he is approached by Sheriff Bobby LaGrange (Bruce Dern), an eccentric fan with two requests: that Hall read his latest work and that he also accompany him to the morgue to view the body of a recent murder victim, as Bobby believes that it would make for a great story. Hall reluctantly agrees, and at the morgue he learns that the person was murdered by a serial killer. Despite offers from Bobby, Hall opts to not look at the victim's face. At the coffee shop he learns about a local hotel that once sheltered Edgar Allan Poe. This, along with the murders and various other odd features of the town, prompt Hall to announce to his wife, Denise (Joanne Whalley), that he wants to write a piece based upon the town.


title: Twixt (film)

text: After falling asleep, Hall is shown wandering a dream-like version of the town, where he meets V (Elle Fanning), a young girl by the name of Virginia, who is nicknamed "Vampira" due to her strange teeth and braces. V tells Hall that she's a fan of his work but was unable to attend the signing due to the town's clock tower always giving seven different conflicting times. Hall attempts to persuade V to join him at the hotel for a soda, but she refuses to enter the lodging. Despite this, Hall enters the hotel and discovers that it is run by a strange and eccentric couple that talks about daylight saving time and the town's history of murder. V appears in the window, only for the female hotel owner to shoo her away. V bites her, which prompts Hall to run outside after V and find her threatening a priest by saying that he "knew what [he] did". Hall continues to follow V and runs into Edgar Allan Poe (Ben Chaplin), who guides him back to town.