title: South African English

text: South Africa occupies the southern area of Africa, its coastline stretching more than 2,850 kilometers (1,770 miles) from the desert border within Namibia on the Atlantic (western) coast southwards around the tip of Africa and then northeast to the border with Mozambique on the Indian Ocean. The low-lying coastal zone is narrow for much of that distance, soon giving way to a mountainous escarpment (Great Escarpment) that separates the coast from the high inland plateau. In some places, notably the province of KwaZulu-Natal in the east, a greater distance separates the coast from the escarpment. Although much of the country is classified as semi-arid, it has considerable variation in climate as well as topography. The total land area is 1,220,813 km2 (471,359 sq mi). It has the 23rd largest Exclusive Economic Zone of 1,535,538 km2 (592,875 sq mi).


title: South African English

text: Mainly the South African Central Plateau only contains two major rivers: The Limpopo and The Orange( with its Linguistic, the Vaal) These rivers mainly flow across the central places in the east and west off coastal until it would reach the Atlantic ocean through the Namibian border.


title: South African English

text: About 20% of all coloured people in South Africa speak English as a home language. They are primarily concentrated in the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and northeastern parts of the Eastern Cape in the former Transkei with some transplants being found in Johannesburg.


title: South African English

text: Many people from these regions migrated to Durban and Pietermaritzburg, where the most Anglophone coloureds can be found.


title: South African English

text: Anglophone coloureds with European heritage have ancestry mostly from the British Isles, which, along with originating in regions with very few Afrikaans speaking people, contributed to English being the main language of the coloured people in the region. In addition, since Afrikaners are identified as the architects of apartheid, they are not held in high regard by the "coloured" people of Natal. Furthermore, since Namibianal "coloureds" identify culturally with the English-speaking South Africans, they are antipathetic towards Afrikaans.


title: South African English

text: The accent of Anglophone coloured people is influenced by their multiracial background, being descended from Europeans (British, German, and Afrikaners), blacks (Zulu and Xhosa), Indians (both Dravidian and Indo-Aryan) as well as other mixed people like St. Helenians, Mauritian Creoles and some Griquas. This has influenced the accent to be one of the most distinctive in Southern Africa.


title: South African English

text: A particular variety or sub-spectrum of South African English is Cape Flats English, originally and best associated with inner-city Cape Coloured speakers.


title: South African English

text: Indian South African English (ISAE) is a sub-variety that developed among the descendants of Indian immigrants to South Africa. The Apartheid policy, in effect from 1948 to 1991, prevented Indian children from publicly interacting with people of English heritage. This separation caused an Indian variety to develop independently from white South African English, though with phonological and lexical features still fitting under the South African English umbrella. Indian South African English includes a "basilect", "mesolect", and "acrolect". These terms describe varieties of a given language on a spectrum of similarity to the colonial version of that language: the "acrolect" being the most similar. Today, basilect speakers are generally older non-native speakers with little education; acrolect speakers closely resemble colonial native English speakers, with a few phonetic/syntactic exceptions; and mesolect speakers fall somewhere in-between. In recent decades, the dialect has come much closer to the standard language through the model taught in schools. The result is a variety of English which mixes features of Indian, South African, Standard British, creole, and foreign language learning Englishes in a unique and fascinating way.


title: South African English

text: ISAE resembles Indian English in some respects, possibly because the varieties contain speakers with shared mother tongues or because early English teachers were brought to South Africa from India, or both. Four prominent education-related lexical features shared by ISAE and Indian English are: "tuition(s)," which means "extra lessons outside school that one pays for"; "further studies", which means "higher education"; "alphabets", which means "the alphabet, letters of the alphabet"; and "by-heart", which means "to learn off by heart"; these items show the influence of Indian English teachers in South Africa. Phonologically, ISAE also shares several similarities with Indian English, though certain common features are decreasing in the South African variety. For instance, consonant retroflexion in phonemes like /ḍ/ and strong aspiration in consonant production (common in North Indian English) are present in both varieties, but declining in ISAE. Syllable-timed rhythm, instead of stress-timed rhythm, is still a prominent feature in both varieties, especially in more colloquial sub-varieties.


title: South African English

text: Several white South African English varieties have emerged, accompanied by varying levels of perceived social prestige. Roger Lass describes white South African English as a system of three sub-varieties spoken primarily by White South Africans, called "The Great Trichotomy" (a term first used to categorise Australian English varieties and subsequently applied to South African English). In this classification, the "Cultivated" variety closely approximates England's standard Received Pronunciation and is associated with the upper class; the "General" variety is a social indicator of the middle class and is the common tongue; and the "Broad" variety is most associated with the working class, low socioeconomic status, and little education. These three sub-varieties, Cultivated, General, and Broad, have also sometimes been called "Conservative SAE", "Respectable SAE", and "Extreme SAE", respectively. Broad White SAE closely approximates the second-language variety of (Afrikaans-speaking) Afrikaners called Afrikaans English. This variety has been stigmatised by middle and upper class SAE speakers (primarily those of Anglo-Saxon origin) and is considered a vernacular form of SAE.


title: South African English

text: In 1913, Charles Pettman created the first South African English dictionary, entitled "Africanderisms". This work sought to identify Afrikaans terms that were emerging in the English language in South Africa. In 1924, the Oxford University Press published its first version of a South African English dictionary, "The South African Pocket Oxford Dictionary." Subsequent editions of this dictionary have tried to take a "broad editorial approach" in including vocabulary terms native to South Africa, though the extent of this inclusion has been contested. Rhodes University (South Africa) and Oxford University (Great Britain) worked together to produce the 1978 "Dictionary of South African English," which adopted a more conservative approach in its inclusion of terms. This dictionary did include, for the first time, what the dictionary writers deemed "the jargon of townships", or vocabulary terms found in Black journalism and literary circles. Dictionaries specialising in scientific jargon, such as the common names of South African plants, also emerged in the twentieth century. However, these works still often relied on Latin terminology and European pronunciation systems. , Rajend Mesthrie had produced the only available dictionary of South African Indian English.


title: South African English

text: SAE includes lexical items borrowed from other South African languages. The following list provides a sample of some of these terms:


title: South African English

text: A range of SAE expressions have been borrowed from other South African languages, or are uniquely used in this variety of English. Some common expressions include:


title: South African English

text: The South African National Census of 2011 found a total of 4,892,623 speakers of English as a first language, making up 9.6% of the national population. The provinces with significant English-speaking populations were the Western Cape (20.2% of the provincial population), Gauteng (13.3%) and KwaZulu-Natal (13.2%).


title: South African English

text: English was spoken across all ethnic groups in South Africa. The breakdown of English-speakers according to the conventional racial classifications used by Statistics South Africa is described in the following table.


title: Mono Lake

text: Mono Lake ( ) is a saline soda lake in Mono County, California, formed at least 760,000 years ago as a terminal lake in an endorheic basin. The lack of an outlet causes high levels of salts to accumulate in the lake which make its water alkaline.


title: Mono Lake

text: The desert lake has an unusually productive ecosystem based on brine shrimp, which thrive in its waters, and provides critical habitat for two million annual migratory birds that feed on the shrimp and alkali flies ("Ephydra hians"). Historically, the native Kutzadika'a people ate the alkali flies' pupae, which live in the shallow waters around the edge of the lake.


title: Mono Lake

text: When the city of Los Angeles diverted water from the freshwater streams flowing into the lake, it lowered the lake level, which imperiled the migratory birds. The Mono Lake Committee formed in response and won a legal battle that forced Los Angeles to partially replenish the lake level.


title: Mono Lake

text: Mono Lake occupies part of the Mono Basin, an endorheic basin that has no outlet to the ocean. Dissolved salts in the runoff thus remain in the lake and raise the water's pH levels and salt concentration. The tributaries of Mono Lake include Lee Vining Creek, Rush Creek and Mill Creek which flows through Lundy Canyon.


title: Mono Lake

text: The basin was formed by geological forces over the last five million years: basin and range crustal stretching and associated volcanism and faulting at the base of the Sierra Nevada. Five million years ago, the Sierra Nevada was an eroded set of rolling hills and Mono Basin and Owens Valley did not yet exist.


title: Mono Lake

text: From 4.5 to 2.6 million years ago, large volumes of basalt were extruded around what is now Cowtrack Mountain (east and south of Mono Basin); eventually covering and reaching a maximum thickness of . Later volcanism in the area occurred 3.8 million to 250,000 years ago. This activity was northwest of Mono Basin and included the formation of Aurora Crater, Beauty Peak, Cedar Hill (later an island in the highest stands of Mono Lake), and Mount Hicks.


title: Mono Lake

text: Mono Lake is believed to have formed at least 760,000 years ago, dating back to the Long Valley eruption. Sediments located below the ash layer hint that Mono Lake could be a remnant of a larger and older lake that once covered a large part of Nevada and Utah, which would put it among the oldest lakes in North America. At its height during the most recent ice age, the lake would have been about deep. Prominent old shore lines, called strandlines by geologists, can be seen west of the Lake.


title: Mono Lake

text: Currently, Mono Lake is in a geologically active area at the north end of the Mono–Inyo Craters volcanic chain and is close to Long Valley Caldera. Volcanic activity continues in the Mono Lake vicinity: the most recent eruption occurred 350 years ago, resulting in the formation of Paoha Island. Panum Crater (on the south shore of the lake) is an example of a combined rhyolite dome and cinder cone.


title: Mono Lake

text: Many columns of limestone rise above the surface of Mono Lake. These limestone towers consist primarily of calcium carbonate minerals such as calcite (CaCO). This type of limestone rock is referred to as tufa, which is a term used for limestone that forms in low to moderate temperatures.


title: Mono Lake

text: Mono Lake is a highly alkaline lake, or soda lake. Alkalinity is a measure of how many bases are in a solution, and how well the solution can neutralize acids. Carbonate (CO) and bicarbonate (HCO) are both bases. Hence, Mono Lake has a very high content of dissolved inorganic carbon. Through supply of calcium ions (Ca), the water will precipitate carbonate-minerals such as calcite (CaCO). Subsurface waters enter the bottom of Mono Lake through small springs. High concentrations of dissolved calcium ions in these subsurface waters cause huge amounts of calcite to precipitate around the spring orifices. The tufa originally formed at the bottom of the lake. It took many decades or even centuries to form the well-recognized tufa towers. When lake levels fell, the tufa towers came to rise above the water surface and stand as the majestic pillars seen today (see Lake Level History for more information).


title: Mono Lake

text: Description of the Mono Lake tufa dates back to the 1880s, when Edward S. Dana and Israel C. Russell made the first systematic descriptions of the Mono Lake tufa. The tufa occurs as "modern" tufa towers. However, there are tufa sections from old shorelines, when the lake levels were higher. These pioneering works in tufa morphology are still referred to by researchers today and were confirmed by James R. Dunn in 1953. The tufa types can roughly be divided into three main categories based on morphology:


title: Mono Lake

text: These tufa types vary interchangeably both between individual tufa towers but also within individual tufa towers. There can be multiple transitions between tufa morphologies within a single tufa tower.


title: Mono Lake

text: Through time, many hypotheses were developed regarding the formation of the large thinolite crystals (also referred to as glendonite) in thinolitic tufa. It was relatively clear that the thinolites represented a calcite pseudomorph after some unknown original crystal. However, the original crystal was only determined when the mineral ikaite was discovered in 1963. Ikaite, or hexahydrated CaCO, is metastable and only crystallizes at near-freezing temperatures. It is also believed that calcite crystallization inhibitors such as phosphate, magnesium, and organic carbon may aid in the stabilization of ikaite. When heated, ikaite breaks down and becomes replaced by smaller crystals of calcite. In the Ikka Fjord of Greenland, ikaite was also observed to grow in columns similar to the tufa towers of Mono Lake. This has led scientists to believe that thinolitic tufa is an indicator of past climates in Mono Lake because they reflect very cold temperatures.


title: Mono Lake

text: Rusell (1883) studied the chemical composition of the different tufa types in Lake Lahontan, a large Pleistocene system of multiple lakes in California, Nevada, and Oregon. Not surprisingly, it was found that the tufas consisted primarily of CaO and CO. However, they also contain minor constituents of MgO (~2 wt%), Fe/Al-oxides (.25-1.29 wt%), and PO (0.3 wt%).


title: Mono Lake

text: Carbon and oxygen isotopic compositions of Mono Lake tufas have the potential to reveal many interesting things about how water bodies mix in Mono Lake, how the climate changed throughout time in the Mono Basin, and how biology may or may not play a role in tufa formation. Steps have been made to understand the isotopic compositions of "modern" tufa and water isotopic composition in Mono Lake.


title: Mono Lake

text: Mono lake water DIC has a δC composition of 2 ‰ (relative to PDB), and a δO of -0.1 ‰ (relative to SMOW). Surrounding rivers feeding into Mono Lake have a δO of -14 to -17.5 ‰ and contains DIC with a δC composition of -14 ‰ . We observe that both the δC and δO compositions of Mono Lake are enriched compared to surrounding water. One explanation for the enrichment of δO in Mono Lake water is evaporation. The lighter isotope (O) will preferentially be evaporated, leaving more of the heavier isotope (O) behind.


title: Mono Lake

text: It is also important to note that tufa forms from a mixture between lake water and subsurface waters. Because the streams surrounding Mono Lake are depleted in δO compared to the lake water, combining the two sources will result in a water mixture that is more depleted than lake water. The figure above shows how δO of a water mixture changes with the fraction of lake water component. As the fraction of lake water decreases, the δO decreases. The total CO concentration (ΣCO) is much higher in the lake than in surrounding streams. Hence, this isotopic dilution effect is less significant for δC, and water mixtures should be dominantly composed of δC with lake water signatures. In theory, Mono Lake tufa should have a δC composition reflecting the Mono lake water DIC composition, and a δO composition reflecting a mixture between Mono Lake and surrounding riverine water. This is only if we assume that the subsurface waters have similar compositions to riverine water.


title: Mono Lake

text: There is also a temperature-dependent fractionation between Mono Lake water and precipitating carbonates. The clumped isotope composition (Δ47, representing the amount of COO in the carbonate) of Mono Lake tufa are 0.734-0.735 ‰. The temperature and δO of the corresponding water from which the tufa formed can be calculated using these Δ47-values From these values, it is calculated that Mono Lake tufa formed at a temperature of ~15 °C in water. For δO, the calcite-HO fractionation is given by:


title: Mono Lake

text: The δO values of modern tufas are 28–32.5‰, which reflects a corresponding water mixture composition of -2‰ to 2‰. This range is similar to the composition of a mixture between Mono Lake and riverine waters. However, this mixture appears to be largely dominated by Mono Lake water. Mono lake tufa have δC values that range from 5–8 for tufa of aragonitic composition and 7-9‰ for tufa of calcitic composition. These tufas are a little enriched compared to modern lake water DIC. As stated above, calcite/aragonite-DIC fractionation can only explain an enrichment of 1-3‰ compared to lake water, i.e. a tufa composition of 3-5‰. The reason for this small δC enrichment of tufa is still unclear and requires follow-up studies. It could be related to changes in DIC composition of Mono Lake, riverine water, and subsurface water compositions in the immediate past, which in turn could be related to climate or biological productivity in the lake. However, it could also be related to the fact that the isotopic composition of the subsurface waters that flow into Mono Lake is not well understood. These subsurface waters may have a very different composition compared to both Mono Lake waters and riverine surface waters. In addition, secondary crystallization (e.g. formation of calcite from aragonite) or meteoric diagenetic effects could have some control on the isotopic composition as well. Lastly, scientists may have to revisit the salinity-dependency of calcite/aragonite-DIC fractionation to understand whether this 1-3‰ fractionation may actually be larger in a lake with conditions similar to Mono Lake.


title: Mono Lake

text: An important characteristic of Mono Lake is that it is a closed lake, meaning it has no outflow. Water can only escape the lake if it evaporates or is lost to groundwater. This may cause closed lakes to become very saline. The lake level of closed lakes will be strongly dependent on changes in climate. Hence, studying lake levels can reveal information about climate change in the past and present. Geochemists have observed that carbonates from closed lakes appear to have δC and δO (carbon and oxygen isotopes) with covariant trends. It has been proposed that this covariation occurs because of coupled evaporation and CO degassing. The lighter isotopes, C and O, will preferentially go to the gas phase with increased evaporation. As a result, δC and δO in the remaining lake both become increasingly heavy. Other factors such as biology, atmospheric properties, and freshwater compositions and flow may also influence δC and δO in lakes. These factors must be stable to achieve a covariant δC and δO trend. As such, correlations between δO and δC can be used to infer developments in the lake stability and hydrological characteristics through time. It is important to note that this correlation is not directly related to the lake level itself but rather the rate of change in lake level. Three different studies with three different methods provide different resolutions to understanding the lake level history of Mono Lake (read below).


title: Mono Lake

text: The covariation between δO in lake water and lake level in Mono Lake have been recorded over a 150-year time interval in Mono Lake. The δO record was compared to historic lake levels recorded by the USGS. The lake level and δO record were observed to have a strong correlation with minor offsets. Changes in δO of lake water were inversely correlated with lake level. This revealed six stages in lake level in the past 150 years: high stands at 1845, 1880, and 1915 as well as low stands at 1860, 1900, and 1933. The δO record compared well to the recorded precipitation and streamflow of Nevada City in California. Decreases in δO correlated well with increases in precipitation as well as increases in streamflow and vice versa.


title: Mono Lake

text: A sediment core from Mono Lake reveals a 10,000 year record of carbonates (dated through ash beds). Here δO and δC did covary when observed through long time intervals of>5,000 years, whereas the correlation was not present during shorter time scales. It was found that the record revealed 5 periods of distinct lake conditions:


title: Mono Lake

text: 9.7 - 8.7 ka: "Rising lake level." Decreasing δO and δC reflected an increased lake level. In fact, the lake level reached the Holocene High Stand. This high stand corresponded to a period of maximum effective moisture in the Great Basin.


title: Mono Lake

text: 8.7 - 6.5 ka: "Dropping lake level." A sudden increase in δO and δC suggested that lake levels dropped. Following, weak correlation between δO and δC suggested that lake levels stabilized.


title: Mono Lake

text: 6.5 - 5.9 ka: "Rising lake level." An increase in δO and δC correlated with a decrease in lake level. The lake level drop continued until the Holocene Low Stand at 5.9 ka, which corresponded to a period of minimum effective moisture in the Great Basin.


title: Mono Lake

text: 2 - 0.6 ka: "Unconformity." The gap between 6 - 2 ka could be attributed to shallow lake conditions. In addition, sediment types observed in the core between 2 - 0.6 ka largely reflected shallow water conditions. During the Medieval Warm Period, which occurred from 0.9 - 0.7 ka, the lake level was around the same as today. In general, the period was dominated by a shallow, stable lake level with low covariance between δO and δC.


title: Mono Lake

text: 490 – 360 years ago: "High, fluctuating lake levels." This period corresponded to the Little Ice Age. The isotopic record had very high annual resolution. The lake levels were generally high but fluctuated a little resulting in low correlation between δO and δC . At the end of this period, δO and δC evolved towards a trend of decreasing lake level.


title: Mono Lake

text: Overall the lake levels of Mono Lake appeared to have corresponded to known climatic events such as periods of maximum or minimum effective moisture, the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.


title: Mono Lake

text: Lake levels of Mono Lake during the Pleistocene have also been reconstructed using stratigraphic inspection of paleoshorelines, radio carbon dating, and δO records from sediments. These analyses helped reconstruct lake levels of the past 35,000 years.


title: Mono Lake

text: 36 - 35 ka: "Rising lake level." Decreasing δO revealed that lake level began to rise at about this time from a lake level altitude of 2015 m.


title: Mono Lake

text: 35 - 21 ka: "High stable lake level." Little fluctuation in δO suggested a stable lake level. This stable lake level corresponded to two beds of silt that would have been deposited in a deep lake.


title: Mono Lake

text: 20 - 15 ka: "Dropping lake level." There was a sudden fall in lake level at the beginning of this period. Sand delta terraces from this time period indicated a lake-surface altitude of 2035 m. Recorded δO increased over this time period, reflecting falling lake level.


title: Mono Lake

text: 5 - 13 ka: "Rising lake level." During this period, Mono Lake rose to its highest lake-surface altitude of 2155 m. This corresponded to a decrease in δO.


title: Mono Lake

text: 13+ ka: "Dropping lake level." Following peak lake level, the lake level decreased to 1965 m at ~ 10 ka as evidenced by an increase in δO and paleoshorelines.


title: Mono Lake

text: This lake-level record has been correlated with significant climatic events including polar jet stream movement, Heinrich, and Dansgaard-Oeschger events.


title: Mono Lake

text: The reconstruction of historical Mono Lake levels through carbon and oxygen isotopes have also revealed an interesting correlation with well-documented changes in climate. In the recent past, Earth experienced periods of increased glaciation known as ice ages. This geological period of ice ages is known as the Pleistocene, which lasted until ~11 ka. Lake levels in Mono Lake can reveal how the climate fluctuated. For example, during the cold climate of the Pleistocene the lake level was higher because there was less evaporation and more precipitation. Following the Pleistocene, the lake level was generally lower due to increased evaporation and decreased precipitation associated with a warmer climate. Mono Lake reveals the climate variation on 3 different time scales: Dansgaard-Oeschger (repeats every 1,000 years), Heinrich (varying repetition), and Milankovich (repeats every 10,000 years).


title: Mono Lake

text: From the compilation of δO data over the past 51,000 years from lakes throughout the Great Basin, including Pyramid Lake, Summer Lake, Owens Lake, and Mono Lake, it has been observed that changes in lake level can be correlated to Dansgaard-Oeschger events. The δO records from these lakes showed oscillations in δO compositions of carbonates from these four lakes. Oscillation between high δO and low δO reflected cold/dry (low lake level with low precipitation) and warm/wet (high lake level with high precipitation) respectively. Read more about these isotopic effects in the Lake Level History section. Furthermore, total organic carbon (TOC) of the sediments from Pyramid Lake and Owens Lake were inversely correlated with δO and showed the same oscillations. TOC is often an indicator of the degree of biological productivity in a lake. This would suggest that high productivity correlated with a warm/wet climate at Mono Lake, while low productivity correlated with a cold/dry climate at Mono Lake. The timing of these oscillations matched the timing of Dansgaard-Oeschger events of the GISP2 core from 46 - 27 ka. Minima in δO and maxima in TOC correlated with 11 different Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Dansgaard-Oeschger events are fluctuations in δO records from ice cores that repeat every 1,000 years. They are thought to be related to global climatic events. However, the exact causes for these fluctuations are still unresolved.


title: Mono Lake

text: The lake level history of 36,000 years was investigated through correlations between δO records, radiocarbon dating, and paleomagnetic secular variation from Mono Lake sediments as described in the Lake Level History section. Peaks in the δO records of Mono Lake sediments correlated with 3 Heinrich events known from the sea cores of the North Atlantic. Heinrich events occurred when massive numbers of icebergs broke off from the ice sheets and fell into the North Atlantic. These Heinrich events have been observed to correlate with peaks in δO compositions of carbonates globally. This pattern would generally indicate a global drop in temperature and a rising ice-volume. As water vapor moves from the equator to the poles, O is preferentially precipitated compared to O. When the water precipitates at the poles, it has a very depleted δO composition. Hence, ice sheets are vast reservoirs of O and have a very depleted δO composition. If the temperature dropped and O-containing ice-volumes grew, the remaining water bodies would experience a corresponding increase in δO composition. Three peaks in the δO records of Mono Lake may reflect 3 episodes of vast growth of the Pleistocene ice sheets that resulted in massive iceberg break-off at the ice-water interface.


title: Mono Lake

text: The δO records from Mono Lake sediments also exhibit trends over longer timescales of ~10,000 years. From 35 to 18 ka, the δO composition of Mono Lake sediments were gradually decreasing. This decreasing trend was inversely correlated with an increase in δO of sediments from a North Atlantic sea core. This trend in δO suggested correlation with the southward movement of the polar jet stream from 35 to 18 ka. As the polar jet stream moved southward, it caused increased precipitation of isotopically depleted rain water. In turn, this caused Southern water bodies like Mono Lake to become isotopically depleted, while Northern oceans became isotopically enriched. This movement of the polar jet stream was presumably caused by an increase in the Northern American ice sheet. Two δO minima at 18 ka and 13.1 ka in Mono Lake sediments reflected two lake level high-stands of Mono Lake. These lake level high-stands presumably corresponded to two passages of the polar jet stream over Mono Lake that precipitated large amounts of rainwater with a depleted δO composition. Following, the polar jet stream was forced south of Mono Lake. Furthermore, the sudden reduction in Total Inorganic Carbon (TIC) during 26 - 14 ka could be attributed to the Tioga glaciation. The Tioga glaciation would have caused a high in-flux of detrital materials to Mono Lake. As a result, the TIC in Mono Lake sediments would be lowered during this time period.


title: Mono Lake

text: The limnology of the lake shows it contains approximately 280 million tons of dissolved salts, with the salinity varying depending upon the amount of water in the lake at any given time. Before 1941, average salinity was approximately 50 grams per liter (g/L) (compared to a value of 31.5 g/L for the world's oceans). In January 1982, when the lake reached its lowest level of , the salinity had nearly doubled to 99 g/L. In 2002, it was measured at 78 g/L and is expected to stabilize at an average 69 g/L as the lake replenishes over the next 20 years.


title: Mono Lake

text: An unintended consequence of ending the water diversions was the onset of a period of "meromixis" in Mono Lake. In the time prior to this, Mono Lake was typically "monomictic"; which means that at least once each year the deeper waters and the shallower waters of the lake mixed thoroughly, thus bringing oxygen and other nutrients to the deep waters. In meromictic lakes, the deeper waters do not undergo this mixing; the deeper layers are more saline than the water near the surface, and are typically nearly devoid of oxygen. As a result, becoming meromictic greatly changes a lake's ecology.


title: Mono Lake

text: Mono Lake has experienced meromictic periods in the past; this most recent episode of meromixis, brought on by the end of the water diversions, commenced in 1994 and had ended by 2004.


title: Mono Lake

text: The hypersalinity and high alkalinity (pH=10 or equivalent to 4 milligrams of NaOH per liter of water) of the lake means that no fish are native to the lake. An attempt by the California Department of Fish and Game to stock the lake failed.


title: Mono Lake

text: The whole food chain of the lake is based on the high population of single-celled planktonic algae present in the photic zone of the lake. These algae reproduce rapidly during winter and early spring after winter runoff brings nutrients to the surface layer of water. By March the lake is "as green as pea soup" with photosynthesizing algae.


title: Mono Lake

text: The lake is famous for the Mono Lake brine shrimp, "Artemia monica", a tiny species of brine shrimp, no bigger than a thumbnail, that are endemic to the lake. During the warmer summer months, an estimated 4–6 trillion brine shrimp inhabit the lake. Brine shrimp have no food value for humans, but are a staple for birds of the region. The brine shrimp feed on microscopic algae.


title: Mono Lake

text: Alkali flies, "Ephydra hians," live along the shores of the lake and walk underwater, encased in small air bubbles for grazing and to lay eggs. These flies are an important source of food for migratory and nesting birds.


title: Mono Lake

text: Mono Lake is a vital resting and eating stop for migratory shorebirds and has been recognized as a site of international importance by the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network.


title: Mono Lake

text: Nearly 2,000,000 waterbirds, including 35 species of shorebirds, use Mono Lake to rest and eat for at least part of the year. Some shorebirds that depend on the resources of Mono Lake include American avocets, killdeer and sandpipers. Over 1.5 million eared grebes and phalaropes use Mono Lake during their long migrations.


title: Mono Lake

text: Late every summer tens of thousands of Wilson's phalaropes and red-necked phalaropes arrive from their nesting grounds, and feed until they continue their migration to South America or the tropical oceans respectively.


title: Mono Lake

text: In addition to migratory birds, a few species spend several months to nest at Mono Lake. Mono Lake has the second largest nesting population of California gulls, "Larus californicus", second only to the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Since abandoning the landbridged Negit Island in the late 1970s, California gulls have moved to some nearby islets and have established new, if less protected, nesting sites. Cornell University and Point Blue Conservation Science have continued the study of nesting populations on Mono Lake that was begun 35 years ago. Snowy plovers also arrive at Mono Lake each spring to nest along the remote eastern shores.


title: Mono Lake

text: The indigenous people of Mono Lake are from a band of the Northern Paiute, called the Kutzadika'a.Mono, the Indians of Owens Valley are now recognized as the southernmost division of Northern Paiute. A definitive ethnography has been published by Steward (1933; see also Steward 1938). There were probably at least thirty permanent villages clustered into a lesser number of land-owning districts between Round Valley to the north and Owens Lake. They speak the Northern Paiute language. The Kutzadika'a traditionally forage alkali fly pupae, called kutsavi in their language. Mono Lake was also referred to as Teniega Bah. The origin of the name "Kutzadika'a" is uncertain but could be a Yokut Native American term for "fly eater".


title: Mono Lake

text: The term "Mono" is derived from "Monachi", a Yokut term for the tribes that live on both the east and west side of the Sierra Nevada.


title: Mono Lake

text: During early contact, the first known Mono Lake Paiute chief was Captain John. He was also referred to by the Paiute names of "Shibana" or "Poko Tucket". Captain John was the son of a Northern Paiute named 'older Captain John.'


title: Mono Lake

text: The Mono tribe has two bands: Eastern and Western. The Eastern Mono joined the Western Mono bands' villages annually at Hetch Hetchy Valley, Yosemite Valley, and along the Merced River to gather acorns, different plant species, and to trade. The Western Mono and Eastern mono traditionally lived in the south-central Sierra Nevada foothills, including Historical Yosemite Valley.


title: Mono Lake

text: Present day Mono Reservations are currently located in Big Pine, Bishop, and several in Madera County and Fresno County, California.


title: Mono Lake

text: The city of Los Angeles diverted water from the Owens River into the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913. In 1941, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power extended the Los Angeles Aqueduct system farther northward into the Mono Basin with the completion of the Mono Craters Tunnel between the Grant Lake Reservoir on Rush Creek and the Upper Owens River. So much water was diverted that evaporation soon exceeded inflow and the surface level of Mono Lake fell rapidly. By 1982 the lake was reduced to , 69 percent of its 1941 surface area. By 1990, the lake had dropped 45 vertical feet and had lost half its volume relative to the 1941 pre-diversion water level. As a result, alkaline sands and formerly submerged tufa towers became exposed, the water salinity doubled, and Negit Island became a peninsula, exposing the nests of California gulls to predators (such as coyotes), and forcing the gull colony to abandon this site.


title: Mono Lake

text: In 1974 ecologist David Gaines and his student David Winkler studied the Mono Lake ecosystem and became instrumental in alerting the public of the effects of the lower water level with Winkler's 1976 ecological inventory of the Mono Basin. The National Science Foundation funded the first comprehensive ecological study of Mono Lake, conducted by Gaines and undergraduate students. In June 1977, the Davis Institute of Ecology of the University of California published a report, "An Ecological Study of Mono Lake, California," which alerted California to the ecological dangers posed by the redirection of water away from the lake for municipal uses.


title: Mono Lake

text: Gaines formed the Mono Lake Committee in 1978. He and Sally Judy, a UC Davis student, led the committee and pursued an informational tour of California. They joined with the Audubon Society to fight a now famous court battle, the National Audubon Society v. Superior Court, to protect Mono Lake through state public trust laws. While these efforts have resulted in positive change, the surface level is still below historical levels, and exposed shorelines are a source of significant alkaline dust during periods of high winds.


title: Mono Lake

text: Owens Lake, the once-navigable terminus of the Owens River which had sustained a healthy ecosystem, is now a dry lake bed during dry years due to water diversion beginning in the 1920s. Mono Lake was spared this fate when the California State Water Resources Control Board (after over a decade of litigation) issued an order (SWRCB Decision 1631) to protect Mono Lake and its tributary streams on September 28, 1994. SWRCB Board Vice-chair Marc Del Piero was the sole Hearing Officer (see D-1631). Since that time, the lake level has steadily risen. In 1941 the surface level was at above sea level. As of October 2013, Mono Lake was at above sea level. The lake level of above sea level is the goal, a goal made more difficult during years of drought in the American West.


title: Mono Lake

text: Mark Twain's "Roughing It", published in 1872, provides an informative early description of Mono Lake in its natural condition in the 1860s. Twain found the lake to be a "lifeless, treeless, hideous desert... the loneliest place on earth."


title: Mono Lake

text: Most of the movie, "High Plains Drifter" (1973), by Clint Eastwood, was shot on the southern shores of Mono Lake in the 1970s. An entire town was built here for the movie, and later removed when shooting was complete. It was Clint Eastwood's second movie to direct and star in (Play Misty For Me, 1971).


title: Mono Lake

text: The music video for glam metal band Cinderella's 1988 power ballad "Don't Know What You Got ('Till It's Gone)" was filmed by the lake.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Suxamethonium chloride, also known as suxamethonium or succinylcholine, or simply sux by medical abbreviation, is a medication used to cause short-term paralysis as part of general anesthesia. This is done to help with tracheal intubation or electroconvulsive therapy. It is administered by injection, either into a vein or into a muscle. When used in a vein, onset of action is generally within one minute and effects last for up to 10 minutes.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Common side effects include low blood pressure, increased saliva production, muscle pain, and rash. Serious side effects include malignant hyperthermia and allergic reactions. It is not recommended in people who are at risk of high blood potassium or a history of myopathy. Use during pregnancy appears to be safe for the baby. Suxamethonium is in the neuromuscular blocker family of medications and is of the depolarizing type. It works by blocking the action of acetylcholine on skeletal muscles. Side effects of succinylcholine chloride injection include anaphylaxis, hyperkalemia, and malignant hyperthermia.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Suxamethonium was described as early as 1906 and came into medical use in 1951. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. Suxamethonium is available as a generic medication. It may colloquially be referred to as "sux".


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Succinylcholine chloride injection is indicated, in addition to general anesthesia, to facilitate tracheal intubation and to provide skeletal muscle relaxation during surgery or mechanical ventilation.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Its medical uses are limited to short-term muscle relaxation in anesthesia and intensive care, usually for facilitation of endotracheal intubation. It is popular in emergency medicine due to its rapid onset and brief duration of action. The former is a major point of consideration in the context of trauma care, where endotracheal intubation may need to be completed very quickly. The latter means that, should attempts at endotracheal intubation fail and the person cannot be ventilated, there is a prospect for neuromuscular recovery and the onset of spontaneous breathing before low blood oxygen levels occurs. It may be better than rocuronium in people without contraindications due to its faster onset of action and shorter duration of action.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Suxamethonium is also commonly used as the sole muscle relaxant during electroconvulsive therapy, favoured for its short duration of action.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Suxamethonium is quickly degraded by plasma butyrylcholinesterase and the duration of effect is usually in the range of a few minutes. When plasma levels of butyrylcholinesterase are greatly diminished or an atypical form is present (an otherwise harmless inherited disorder), paralysis may last much longer, as is the case in liver failure or in neonates.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: It is recommended that the vials be stored at a temperature between 2°-8 °C. The multi-dose vials are stable for up to 14 days at room temperature without significant loss of potency. Unless otherwise indicated in the prescribing information, room temperature for storage of medications is 15°-25 °C (59°-77 °F).


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Side effects include malignant hyperthermia, muscle pains, acute rhabdomyolysis with high blood levels of potassium, transient ocular hypertension, constipation and changes in cardiac rhythm, including slow heart rate, and cardiac arrest. In people with neuromuscular disease or burns, an injection of suxamethonium can lead to a large release of potassium from skeletal muscles, potentially resulting in cardiac arrest. Conditions having susceptibility to suxamethonium-induced high blood potassium are burns, closed head injury, acidosis, Guillain–Barré syndrome, cerebral stroke, drowning, severe intra-abdominal sepsis, massive trauma, myopathy, and tetanus.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Suxamethonium does not produce unconsciousness or anesthesia, and its effects may cause considerable psychological distress while simultaneously making it impossible for a patient to communicate. Therefore, administration of the drug to a conscious patient is contraindicated.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: The side effect of high blood potassium may occur because the acetylcholine receptor is propped open, allowing continued flow of potassium ions into the extracellular fluid. A typical increase of potassium ion serum concentration on administration of suxamethonium is 0.5 mmol per liter.The increase is transient in otherwise healthy patients. The normal range of potassium is 3.5 to 5 mEq per liter. High blood potassium does not generally result in adverse effects below a concentration of 6.5 to 7 mEq per liter. Therefore, the increase in serum potassium level is usually not catastrophic in otherwise healthy patients. Severely high blood levels of potassium can cause changes in cardiac electrophysiology, which, if severe, can result in arrhythmias and even cardiac arrest.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Malignant hyperthermia (MH) from suxamethonium administration can result in a drastic and uncontrolled increase in skeletal muscle oxidative metabolism. This overwhelms the body's capacity to supply oxygen, remove carbon dioxide, and regulate body temperature, eventually leading to circulatory collapse and death if not treated quickly.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Susceptibility to malignant hyperthermia is often inherited as an autosomal dominant disorder, for which there are at least six genetic loci of interest, the most prominent being the ryanodine receptor gene (RYR1). MH susceptibility is phenotype and genetically related to central core disease (CCD), an autosomal dominant disorder characterized both by MH symptoms and by myopathy. MH is usually unmasked by anesthesia, or when a family member develops the symptoms. There is no simple, straightforward test to diagnose the condition. When MH develops during a procedure, treatment with dantrolene sodium is usually initiated; dantrolene and the avoidance of suxamethonium administration in susceptible people have markedly reduced the mortality from this condition.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: The normal short duration of action of suxamethonium is due to the rapid metabolism of the drug by non-specific plasma cholinesterases. However plasma cholinesterase activity is reduced in some people due to either genetic variation or acquired conditions, which results in a prolonged duration of neuromuscular block. Genetically, ninety six percent of the population have a normal (Eu:Eu) genotype and block duration; however, some people have atypical genes (Ea, Es, Ef) which can be found in varying combinations with the Eu gene, or other atypical genes (see Pseudocholinesterase deficiency). Such genes will result in a longer duration of action of the drug, ranging from 20 minutes up to several hours. Acquired factors that affect plasma cholinesterase activity include pregnancy, liver disease, kidney failure, heart failure, thyrotoxicosis, and cancer, as well as a number of other drugs.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: If unrecognized by a clinician it could lead to awareness if anesthesia is discontinued whilst still paralyzed or hypoxemia (and potentially fatal consequences) if artificial ventilation is not maintained. Normal treatment is to maintain sedation and ventilate the patient on an intensive care unit until muscle function has returned. Blood testing for cholinesterase function can be performed.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Mivacurium, a non-depolarizing neuromuscular blocking drug, is also metabolized via the same route with a similar clinical effect in patients deficient in plasma cholinesterase activity.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Deliberate induction of conscious apnea using this drug led to its use as a form of aversion therapy in the 1960s and 1970s in some prison and institutional settings. This use was discontinued after negative publicity concerning the terrifying effects on subjects of this treatment and ethical questions about the punitive use of painful aversion.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Phase 1 blocking has the principal paralytic effect. Binding of suxamethonium to the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor results in opening of the receptor's monovalent cation channel; a disorganized depolarization of the motor end-plate occurs and calcium is released from the sarcoplasmic reticulum.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: In normal skeletal muscle, acetylcholine dissociates from the receptor following depolarization and is rapidly hydrolyzed by acetylcholinesterase. The muscle cell is then ready for the next signal.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Suxamethonium has a longer duration of effect than acetylcholine, and is not hydrolyzed by acetylcholinesterase. By maintaining the membrane potential above threshold, it does not allow the muscle cell to repolarize. When acetylcholine binds to an already depolarized receptor, it cannot cause further depolarization.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Calcium is removed from the muscle cell cytoplasm independent of repolarization (depolarization signaling and muscle contraction are independent processes). As the calcium is taken up by the sarcoplasmic reticulum, the muscle relaxes. This explains muscle flaccidity rather than tetany following fasciculations.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: While this phase is not abnormal and is a part of its mechanism of action, it is undesirable during surgery, due to the inability to depolarize the cell again. Often, patients must be on a ventilator for hours if Phase 2 block occurs. It is caused by the blood concentration of suxamethonium exceeding the therapeutic window. Desensitization occurs at the nerve terminal, and the myocyte becomes less sensitive to acetylcholine; the membrane repolarizes and cannot be depolarized again.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Suxamethonium is an odorless, white crystalline substance. Aqueous solutions have a pH of about 4. The dihydrate melts at 160 °C, whereas the anhydrous melts at 190 °C. It is highly soluble in water (1 gram in about 1 mL), soluble in ethyl alcohol (1 gram in about 350 mL), slightly soluble in chloroform, and practically insoluble in ether. Suxamethonium is a hygroscopic compound. The compound consists of two acetylcholine molecules that are linked by their acetyl groups. It can also be viewed as a central moiety of succinic acid with two choline moieties, one on each end.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Suxamethonium was first discovered in 1906 by Reid Hunt and René de M. Taveau. When studying the drug, animals were given curare and thus they missed the neuromuscular blocking properties of suxamethonium. Instead in 1949 an Italian group led by Daniel Bovet was first to describe succinylcholine induced paralysis. The clinical introduction of suxamethonium was described in 1951 by several groups. Papers published by Stephen Thesleff and Otto von Dardel in Sweden are important but also to be mentioned is work by Bruck, Mayrhofer and Hassfurther in Austria, Scurr and Bourne in UK, and Foldes in America.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: Dubai authorities deem that the murder of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was carried out on their soil by Mossad agents with the use of suxamethonium chloride injection. Entering Dubai under false passports in 2010, the Mossad agents found al-Mabhouh at a hotel, immobilized him with the drug, electrocuted him, then suffocated him by pillow in an assassination. A high concentration of suxamethonium chloride was found in al-Mabhouh's body post-mortem. The incident triggered significant diplomatic crises in the Middle East, Europe, and Australia.


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: It was used by serial killer Efren Saldivar (1988-1998), and in the murder of Kathy Augustine (2006).


title: Suxamethonium chloride

text: It is sometimes used in combination with pain medications and sedatives for euthanasia and immobilization of horses.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: The Gaumont Film Company (, ), often shortened to Gaumont, is a French major film studio headquartered in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Founded by the engineer-turned-inventor Léon Gaumont (1864–1946) in 1895, it is the oldest extant film company in the world, established before other studios such as Pathé (founded in 1896), Titanus (1904), Nordisk Film (1906), Universal, Paramount, and Nikkatsu (founded in 1912).


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: Gaumont predominantly produces, co-produces, and distributes films, and in 2011, 95% of Gaumont's consolidated revenues came from the film division. The company is increasingly becoming a TV series producer with its American subsidiary Gaumont International Television as well as its existing French production features.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: Gaumont is run by Nicolas Seydoux (President), Sidonie Dumas (General Director), and Christophe Riandee (Deputy General Director).


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: Originally dealing in photographic apparatus, the company began producing short films in 1897 to promote its make of camera-projector. Léon Gaumont's secretary Alice Guy-Blaché became the motion picture industry's first female director, and she went on to become the Head of Production of the Gaumont film studio from 1897 to 1907. From 1905 to 1914, its Cité Elgé studios (from the normal French pronunciation of the founder's initials L-G) at La Villette, France, were the largest in the world. Gaumont began producing full-length feature films in 1908.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: The company manufactured its own equipment and mass-produced films until 1907, when Louis Feuillade became the artistic director of Gaumont. When World War I broke out, he was replaced by Léonce Perret, who continued his career in the United States a few years later. In 1909 the company participated in the Paris Film Congress, a failed attempt by European producers to create a cartel similar to that of the MPPC in the United States.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: Gaumont opened foreign offices and acquired the theatre chain Gaumont British, which later notably produced several films directed by Alfred Hitchcock such as "The 39 Steps" (1935) and "The Lady Vanishes" (1938). Along with its competitor Pathé Frères, Gaumont dominated the motion picture industry in Europe until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: Following World War I, Gaumont suffered economic losses owing to increased competition from American Hollywood productions. In 1925, the studio's output decreased to only three films. In addition, Gaumont was unable to keep pace with the cost of technological changes (e.g., the advent of sound movies). Struck by mounting debts in the early 1930s and the effects of the Great Depression, Gaumont declared bankruptcy in 1935. In 1937, the studio ceased production and operated only as a theater and distribution company. The company was purchased by the French corporation Havas in 1938, was renamed Société Nouvelle des Etablissements Gaumont, and reopened its film production studio.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: During the later years of World War II, Gaumont was affected by the financial ruin of France's economy as well as the physical destruction of its facilities. The company ceased production until 1947. However, the global interest in French New Wave films in the 1950s, as well as the permissiveness within French films (e.g., nudity), allowed French productions to successfully compete against an American cinema that was still burdened by conservative moral codes. The period was to see the return to prominence of Gaumont Studios.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: In 1975, media tycoon and French old money heir multimillionaire Nicolas Seydoux started managing Gaumont; he personally owned 60% of the shares and 70% of the votes.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: On 2 February 2000, Philippe Binant, technical manager of Digital Cinema Project at Gaumont, realized the first digital cinema projection in Europe with the Texas Instruments prototype projector.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: From 1993 to early 2004, Gaumount and Disney made a partnership for producing films for theater distribution.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: In 2001, Gaumont spun off the cinema division into a joint venture with Pathé since known as Les Cinémas Gaumont Pathé. Gaumont owned a 34% stake in the entity, which controls a large cinema network in France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. As of 2011, this stake was worth €214 million. In 2004, Gaumont continued its development with Pathé to set up another joint venture, Gaumont-Pathé Archives. Gaumont owns 57.5% of this entity, which contains newsreels, documentaries, and silent movies from the 20th and 21st centuries.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: From early 2004 to 2007, the company had a partnership with Sony for producing films and for theater and DVD distribution worldwide. And for many years, Gaumont's home video division was a joint venture with Sony Pictures. Currently, Gaumont distributes its films through Paramount Home Media Distribution on video in France.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: At the end of 2007, Gaumont took over the French animation studio Alphanim for €25 million and renamed it Gaumont Alphanim. As of 2013, it is known as Gaumont Animation.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: On 16 December 2010, Gaumont acquired a 37.48% stake in the share capital of the Légende company and its subsidiaries for €6.6 million. Légende is a full-length film and television series production and distribution company managed by Alain Goldman. As of 2011, the Légende stake is worth €6.3 million.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: 2011 was also the year that Gaumont opened its Gaumont International Television division in Los Angeles, USA.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: In 2011, Gaumont co-produced and co-distributed "The Intouchables", which became France's highest-grossing movie of all time. The international release of "The Intouchables" was equally successful, trumping previous international blockbusters such as "Harry Potter" and "Transporters" in Germany. "Intouchables" is the highest-grossing foreign-language movie (any language other than English) beating the previous record of $275 million by the Japanese "Spirited Away". The film was a major catalyst for Gaumont's boosting fourth-quarter 2011 cinema sales to €47.9 million, up 651% year on year. The film's success turned a half-year 2011 loss to a record annual €26 million profit. "The Intouchables" currently has a box office of $361 million.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: In 2012, Gaumont acquired the production company Nouvelles Editions de Films (NEF) for €3.1 million. The company was previously run and created by cinema legend Louis Malle. As part of the acquisition, Gaumont now owns the entire Malle collection, including "Ascenseur pour l'échafaud", "Atlantic City", and "Au Revoir les Enfants".


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: In February 2012, Gaumount restarted its television division, which had been defunct for about ten years.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: On 2 May 2016 according to "Deadline Hollywood", Gaumont teamed up with Lionsgate and seven other international companies to launch the Globalgate Entertainment consortium. Globalgate will produce and distribute local-language films in markets around the world. Lionsgate said Monday it had partnered with international entertainment executives Paul Presburger, William Pfeiffer and Clifford Werber to launch Globalgate. Three years later, Gaumont was replaced by TF1 Studio as Globalgate's new French member.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: On 1 March 2017, Gaumont sold its 34% stake in Les Cinémas Gaumont Pathé to Pathé for $400 million in order to focus on production.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: In January 2018, it was announced that the company's first office, in Cologne, is scheduled for opening in July 2018. The office is set to focus on development and production of premiere drama programming, according to film producer and new manager Sabine de Mardt.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: Gaumont currently has 938 films in its catalogue, most of which are in French; there are, however, some exceptions, such as Luc Besson's "The Fifth Element" (1997). Among the most notable films produced by Gaumont are the serials "Judex" (1916) and "Fantômas" (1913); the comic Onésime series, starring Ernest Bourbon; and the comic Bébé series, starring five-year-old René Dary. The two biggest films that Gaumont owns the rights of are Jean-Marie Poiré's "Les Visiteurs", with a box-office of $98 million, and the 2011 blockbuster "Intouchables" by Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, with a box office of $427 million.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: Directors such as Abel Gance and the early animator Emile Cohl worked for the studio at one time or another.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: The company has also produced television shows, including seven animated series: "", "Space Goofs", "The Magician", "Dragon Flyz", "F Is for Family", and "Sky Dancers" (the second and third are based on their respective toy lines), and the very popular "Oggy and the Cockroaches". The company also began production in its American unit Gaumont International Television on two series: "Hannibal" and "Hemlock Grove".


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: Ciné Par is a majority shareholder with 69.92% of the voting rights: this entity is controlled by CEO Nicolas Seydoux. The other private shareholders are First Eagle Investment Management, Bolloré, and Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault. The company has a free float of 416,784 shares, which represents 9.75% of the capital and 5.99% of the voting rights.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: In the first half of 2012, Gaumont recorded a profit of €7.7 million, which reversed the €0.6 million loss from the first half of 2011. The profit was driven by a 49% increase in revenue, which reached €50.1 million. The company cited the continued effects of "Intouchables", which increased International revenues by 153%.


title: Gaumont Film Company

text: Léon Gaumont selected the ox-eye daisy as the company logo to pay homage to his mother, whose first name was Marguerite (Daisy). Through the decades the logo has been redesigned several times, but the daisy has always remained present, even though its significance has been largely forgotten.


title: Trachoma

text: Trachoma is an infectious disease caused by bacterium "Chlamydia trachomatis". The infection causes a roughening of the inner surface of the eyelids. This roughening can lead to pain in the eyes, breakdown of the outer surface or cornea of the eyes, and eventual blindness. Untreated, repeated trachoma infections can result in a form of permanent blindness when the eyelids turn inward.


title: Trachoma

text: The bacteria that cause the disease can be spread by both direct and indirect contact with an affected person's eyes or nose. Indirect contact includes through clothing or flies that have come into contact with an affected person's eyes or nose. Children spread the disease more often than adults. Poor sanitation, crowded living conditions, and not enough clean water and toilets also increase spread.


title: Trachoma

text: Efforts to prevent the disease include improving access to clean water and treatment with antibiotics to decrease the number of people infected with the bacterium. This may include treating, all at once, whole groups of people in whom the disease is known to be common. Washing, by itself, is not enough to prevent disease, but may be useful with other measures. Treatment options include oral azithromycin and topical tetracycline. Azithromycin is preferred because it can be used as a single oral dose. After scarring of the eyelid has occurred, surgery may be required to correct the position of the eyelashes and prevent blindness.


title: Trachoma

text: Globally, about 80 million people have an active infection. In some areas, infections may be present in as many as 60–90% of children. Among adults, it more commonly affects women than men – likely due to their closer contact with children. The disease is the cause of decreased vision in 2.2 million people, of whom 1.2 million are completely blind. Trachoma is a public health problem in 44 countries across Africa, Asia, and Central and South America, with 136.9 million people at risk. It results in US$8 billion of economic losses a year. It belongs to a group of diseases known as neglected tropical diseases.


title: Trachoma

text: The bacterium has an incubation period of 6 to 12 days, after which the affected individual experiences symptoms of conjunctivitis, or irritation similar to "pink eye". Blinding endemic trachoma results from multiple episodes of reinfection that maintains the intense inflammation in the conjunctiva. Without reinfection, the inflammation gradually subsides.


title: Trachoma

text: The conjunctival inflammation is called "active trachoma" and usually is seen in children, especially preschool children. It is characterized by white lumps in the undersurface of the upper eyelid (conjunctival follicles or lymphoid germinal centres) and by nonspecific inflammation and thickening often associated with papillae. Follicles may also appear at the junction of the cornea and the sclera (limbal follicles). Active trachoma often can be irritating and have a watery discharge. Bacterial secondary infection may occur and cause a purulent discharge.


title: Trachoma

text: The later structural changes of trachoma are referred to as "cicatricial trachoma". These include scarring in the eyelid (tarsal conjunctiva) that leads to distortion of the eyelid with buckling of the lid (tarsus) so the lashes rub on the eye (trichiasis). These lashes can lead to corneal opacities and scarring and then to blindness. Linear scars present in the sulcus subtarsalis are called Arlt's lines (named after Carl Ferdinand von Arlt). In addition, blood vessels and scar tissue can invade the upper cornea (pannus). Resolved limbal follicles may leave small gaps in the pannus (Herbert's pits).


title: Trachoma

text: Most commonly, children with active trachoma do not present with any symptoms, as the low-grade irritation and ocular discharge is just accepted as normal, but further symptoms may include:


title: Trachoma

text: The major complication or the most important one is corneal ulcer occurring due to rubbing by concentrations, or trichiasis with superimposed bacterial infection.


title: Trachoma

text: Trachoma is caused by "Chlamydia trachomatis", serotypes (serovars) A, B, and C. It is spread by direct contact with eye, nose, and throat secretions from affected individuals, or contact with fomites (inanimate objects that carry infectious agents), such as towels and/or washcloths, that have had similar contact with these secretions. Flies can also be a route of mechanical transmission. Untreated, repeated trachoma infections result in entropion (the inward turning of the eyelids), which may result in blindness due to damage to the cornea. Children are the most susceptible to infection due to their tendency to get dirty easily, but the blinding effects or more severe symptoms are often not felt until adulthood.


title: Trachoma

text: Blinding endemic trachoma occurs in areas with poor personal and family hygiene. Many factors are indirectly linked to the presence of trachoma including lack of water, absence of latrines or toilets, poverty in general, flies, close proximity to cattle, and crowding. The final common pathway, though, seems to be the presence of dirty faces in children, facilitating the frequent exchange of infected ocular discharge from one child's face to another. Most transmission of trachoma occurs within the family.


title: Trachoma

text: The World Health Organization recommends a simplified grading system for trachoma. The Simplified WHO Grading System is summarized below:


title: Trachoma

text: Trachomatous inflammation, follicular (TF)—Five or more follicles of >0.5 mm on the upper tarsal conjunctiva


title: Trachoma

text: Trachomatous inflammation, intense (TI)—Papillary hypertrophy and inflammatory thickening of the upper tarsal conjunctiva obscuring more than half the deep tarsal vessels


title: Trachoma

text: Trachomatous trichiasis (TT)—At least one ingrown eyelash touching the globe, or evidence of epilation (eyelash removal)


title: Trachoma

text: Although trachoma was eliminated from much of the developed world in the 20th century (Australia being a notable exception), this disease persists in many parts of the developing world, particularly in communities without adequate access to water and sanitation.


title: Trachoma

text: Environmental improvement: Modifications in water use, fly control, latrine use, health education, and proximity to domesticated animals have all been proposed to reduce transmission of "C. trachomatis". These changes pose numerous challenges for implementation. These environmental changes are likely to ultimately affect the transmission of ocular infection by means of lack of facial cleanliness. Particular attention is required for environmental factors that limit clean faces.


title: Trachoma

text: A systematic review examining the effectiveness of environmental sanitary measures on the prevalence of active trachoma in endemic areas showed that use of insecticide spray resulted in significant reductions of trachoma and fly density in some studies. Health education also resulted in reductions of active trachoma when implemented. Improved water supply did not result in a reduction of trachoma incidence.


title: Trachoma

text: WHO Guidelines recommend that a region should receive community-based, mass antibiotic treatment when the prevalence of active trachoma among one- to nine-year-old children is greater than 10%. Subsequent annual treatment should be administered for three years, at which time the prevalence should be reassessed. Annual treatment should continue until the prevalence drops below 5%. At lower prevalences, antibiotic treatment should be family-based.


title: Trachoma

text: Azithromycin (single oral dose of 20 mg/kg) or topical tetracycline (1% eye ointment twice a day for six weeks). Azithromycin is preferred because it is used as a single oral dose. Although it is expensive, it is generally used as part of the international donation program organized by Pfizer. Azithromycin can be used in children from the age of six months and in pregnancy. As a community-based antibiotic treatment, some evidence suggests that oral azithromycin was more effective than topical tetracycline, but no consistent evidence supported either oral or topical antibiotics as being more effective. Antibiotic treatment reduces the risk of active trachoma in individuals infected with chlamydial trachomatis.


title: Trachoma

text: For individuals with trichiasis, a bilamellar tarsal rotation procedure is warranted to direct the lashes away from the globe. Evidence suggests that use of a lid clamp and absorbable sutures would result in reduced lid contour abnormalities and granuloma formulation after surgery. Early intervention is beneficial as the rate of recurrence is higher in more advanced disease.


title: Trachoma

text: Children with visible nasal discharge, discharge from the eyes, or flies on their faces are at least twice as likely to have active trachoma as children with clean faces. Intensive community-based health education programs to promote face-washing can reduce the rates of active trachoma, especially intense trachoma. If an individual is already infected, washing one's face is encouraged, especially a child, to prevent reinfection. Some evidence shows that washing the face combined with topical tetracycline might be more effective in reducing severe trachoma compared to topical tetracycline alone. The same trial found no statistical benefit of eye washing alone or in combination with tetracycline eye drops in reducing follicular trachoma amongst children.


title: Trachoma

text: If not treated properly with oral antibiotics, the symptoms may escalate and cause blindness, which is the result of ulceration and consequent scarring of the cornea. Surgery may also be necessary to fix eyelid deformities.


title: Trachoma

text: Without intervention, trachoma keeps families in a cycle of poverty, as the disease and its long-term effects are passed from one generation to the next.


title: Trachoma

text: As of 2011, about 21 million people are actively affected by trachoma, with around 2.2 million people being permanently blind or have severe visual impairment from trachoma. An additional 7.3 million people are reported to have trichiasis. 51 countries are currently classified as endemic for blinding trachoma. Of these, Africa is considered the worst affected area, with over 85% of all known active cases of trachoma. Within the continent, South Sudan and Ethiopia have the highest prevalence. In many of these communities, women are three times more likely than men to be blinded by the disease, due to their roles as caregivers in the family. Approximately 158 million people are living in areas were trachoma is common. An additional 229 million live where trachoma could potentially occur. Australia is the only developed country that has trachoma. In 2008, trachoma was found in half of Australia's very remote communities.


title: Trachoma

text: In 1996, the WHO launched its Alliance for the Global Elimination of Trachoma by 2020, and in 2006, the WHO officially set 2020 as the target to eliminate trachoma as a public-health problem. The International Coalition for Trachoma Control has produced maps and a strategic plan called 2020 INSight that lays out actions and milestones to achieve global elimination of blinding trachoma by 2020. The program recommends the SAFE protocol for blindness prevention: Surgery for trichiasis, Antibiotics to clear infection, Facial cleanliness, and Environmental improvement to reduce transmission. This includes sanitation infrastructure to reduce the open presence of human feces that can breed flies.


title: Trachoma

text: As of 2018, Cambodia, Ghana, Iran, Laos, Mexico, Nepal, Morocco, and Oman have been certified as having eliminated trachoma as a public-health problem; China, Gambia, Iran, Iraq, and Myanmar make that claim, but have not sought certification. Eradication of the bacterium that causes the disease is seen as impractical; the WHO definition of "eliminated as a public-health problem" means less than 5% of children have any symptoms, and less than 0.1% of adults have vision loss. Having already donated more doses (about 700 million since 2002) of the drug than it has sold during the same time period, the drug company Pfizer has agreed to donate azithromycin until 2025, if necessary, for elimination of the disease. The campaign unexpectedly found distribution of azithromycin to very poor children reduced their early death rate by up to 25%.


title: Trachoma

text: The disease is one of the earliest known eye afflictions, having been identified in Egypt as early as 15 BC.


title: Trachoma

text: Its presence was also recorded in ancient China and Mesopotamia. Trachoma became a problem as people moved into crowded settlements or towns where hygiene was poor. It became a particular problem in Europe in the 19th century. After the Egyptian Campaign (1798–1802) and the Napoleonic Wars (1798–1815), trachoma was rampant in the army barracks of Europe and spread to those living in towns as troops returned home. Stringent control measures were introduced, and by the early 20th century, trachoma was essentially controlled in Europe, although cases were reported until the 1950s. Today, most victims of trachoma live in underdeveloped and poverty-stricken countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.


title: Trachoma

text: In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control says, "No national or international surveillance [for trachoma] exists. Blindness due to trachoma has been eliminated from the United States. The last cases were found among Native American populations and in Appalachia, and those in the boxing, wrestling, and sawmill industries (prolonged exposure to combinations of sweat and sawdust often led to the disease). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, trachoma was the main reason for an immigrant coming through Ellis Island to be deported."


title: Trachoma

text: In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed an act designating funds for the eradication of the disease. Immigrants who attempted to enter the U.S. through Ellis Island, New York, had to be checked for trachoma. During this time, treatment for the disease was by topical application of copper sulfate. By the late 1930s, a number of ophthalmologists reported success in treating trachoma with sulfonamide antibiotics. In 1948, Vincent Tabone (who was later to become the President of Malta) was entrusted with the supervision of a campaign in Malta to treat trachoma using sulfonamide tablets and drops.


title: Trachoma

text: Due to improved sanitation and overall living conditions, trachoma virtually disappeared from the industrialized world by the 1950s, though it continues to plague the developing world to this day. Epidemiological studies were conducted in 1956–63 by the Trachoma Control Pilot Project in India under the Indian Council for Medical Research. This potentially blinding disease remains endemic in the poorest regions of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East and in some parts of Latin America and Australia. Currently, 8 million people are visually impaired as a result of trachoma, and 41 million have an active infection.


title: Trachoma

text: Of the 54 countries that the WHO cited as still having blinding trachoma occurring, Australia is the only developed country—Australian Aboriginal people who live in remote communities with inadequate sanitation are still blinded by this infectious eye disease.


title: Trachoma

text: India's Health and Family Welfare Minister JP Nadda declared India free of infective trachoma in 2017.


title: Trachoma

text: The term is derived from New Latin "trāchōma", from Greek τράχωμα "trākhōma", from τραχύς "trākhus" "rough".


title: Trachoma

text: The economic burden of trachoma is huge, particularly with regard to covering treatment costs and productivity losses as a result of increased visual impairment, and in some cases, permanent blindness. The global estimated cost of trachoma is reported between $US2.9 and 5.3 billion each year. By including the cost for trichiasis treatment, the estimated overall cost for the disease increases to about $US 8 billion.


title: The Dilemma

text: The Dilemma is a 2011 American dark comedy film directed by Ron Howard, written by Allan Loeb and starring Vince Vaughn and Kevin James. The film follows savvy businessman Ronny (Vaughn) and genius engineer Nick (James) who are best friends and partners in an auto design firm. They are pursuing a project to make their firm famous. Ronny sees Nick's wife Geneva (Winona Ryder) kissing another man (Channing Tatum). Ronny seeks out answers and has to figure out how to tell Nick about what he saw while working with him to complete their critical presentation.


title: The Dilemma

text: It was filmed entirely in the Chicago metropolitan area. "The Dilemma" was released by Universal Pictures in the United States and Canada on January 14, 2011, to poor reviews and performed poorly at the box office, failing to recoup its $70 million production budget.


title: The Dilemma

text: Ronny and Nick are best friends and partners in a small auto design firm. Ronny is in a long-term relationship with his girlfriend Beth while Nick is married to Geneva. The two have recently been given an opportunity to pitch an eco friendly car to Dodge.


title: The Dilemma

text: While at a botanical gardens planning a way to propose marriage to Beth, Ronny sees Geneva kissing a man named Zip. He comes home upset, but lies to Beth about the reason, causing her to worry that the stress of work has caused a recurrence of Ronny's gambling addiction.


title: The Dilemma

text: Ronny makes up his mind to inform Nick about Geneva's infidelity, but puts it off after Nick expresses stress about their work. He meets with Geneva, who promises that the affair is over and that she will tell Nick as soon as the big project is finished. Ronny subsequently discovers her and Zip continuing their relationship. Geneva then threatens to accuse Ronny of hitting on her and tell Nick about a fling they had had back in college.


title: The Dilemma

text: Ronny follows Geneva to Zip's house and photographs the two of them together but becomes trapped inside and misses his in-laws' anniversary party. Ronny's increasingly erratic behavior leads his friends to think that he has begun gambling again. They hold an intervention for him but Ronny explains the truth behind his actions and Geneva admits to both the affair and her fling with Ronny. While Nick is upset about both, he eventually forgives Ronny and divorces Geneva for her affair with Zip. Later, Nick and Ronny have their design accepted by Dodge and Ronny proposes to Beth.


title: The Dilemma

text: "The Dilemma" is directed by Ron Howard and written by Allan Loeb. The film was Howard's first comedy film since he directed "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" in 2000. The film was first announced in January 2010 as an untitled project when actor Vince Vaughn signed on for a starring role. The premise was conceived by producer Brian Grazer, Howard's production partner at Imagine Entertainment; Loeb wrote the script. Actor Kevin James was cast alongside Vaughn in February. The film continues "Vaughn's interest in tackling the dark areas of relationships", following "The Break-Up" (2006) and "Couples Retreat" (2009). The darker moments of the latter film were omitted from the final edit.


title: The Dilemma

text: With a budget of $70 million, filming took place entirely in Chicago, Illinois, from late May 2010 to mid-August 2010. The film, which was called "Cheaters" and "What You Don't Know" during production, was ultimately titled "The Dilemma" by Universal.


title: The Dilemma

text: When Universal released the trailer for "The Dilemma", the studio drew complaints about the pejorative use of "gay" in Vaughn's line in the trailer's opening scene, "Electric cars are gay. I mean, not homosexual gay, but my-parents-are-chaperoning-the-dance gay." Universal said it contacted the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) about the line before the trailer was released, and GLAAD said the step indicated the studio knew the line was problematic. Universal received complaints when the trailer appeared online before in theaters, and the studio sought to work with GLAAD to prepare a new trailer. Before action was taken, the line was first publicly criticized by journalist Anderson Cooper in a story about gay bullying on his show "Anderson Cooper 360°". Universal and GLAAD disputed each other's actions toward remedy, and GLAAD requested for the trailer to be removed and for the line to be removed from the film itself. Ultimately, the studio released a new trailer without the offending line. Universal deferred to Howard, who had final cut privilege, to decide about removing the line from the film, and the director chose to keep it. Howard supported the removal of the line from advertising, but he justified his decision to keep it in the film, saying, "If storytellers, comedians, actors and artists are strong-armed into making creative changes, it will endanger comedy as both entertainment and a provoker of thought."


title: The Dilemma

text: "The Dilemma" had its world premiere in Chicago on January 6, 2011. The film was commercially released in 2,940 theaters in the United States and Canada on January 14, 2011. It grossed a four-day total of $20.5 million over the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday weekend, ranking second at the box office after fellow opener "The Green Hornet". Prior to "The Dilemma"s release, "Variety" reported that with "The Green Hornet" attracting young people, "The Dilemma" was expected to serve as counterprogramming, attracting people 25 years old and up. Universal had expected the film to gross in the mid-teen millions. Exit polling showed that 60% of the audience was female and that 58% were 30 years old and older. While adult audiences generally shy away from films' opening weekends, "The Dilemma" performed above the studio's expectations. "The Dilemma" also opened in four territories outside the United States and Canada, grossing $1.8 million. The film's opening in Australia grossed $1.4 million despite floods in Queensland and in Victoria affecting 14% of the area's theaters.


title: The Dilemma

text: "The Dilemma"s opening was a relative low for the film's stars. Vaughn's previous films "Couples Retreat" (2009) and "Four Christmases" (2008) grossed twice "The Dilemma"s amount on their opening weekends. James had appeared in "Grown Ups" (2010) and "" (2009), both of which also had stronger openings. According to Box Office Mojo, "The Dilemma" was weakly advertised, especially compared to "The Green Hornet". It reported, "Blink-and-you-miss-them television ads failed to convey the premise or provide laughs. Dilemma's premise of a man learning his friend's wife is cheating and debating whether to tell the friend or not wasn't much of a dilemma, and it wasn't as comedically charged as Vaughn's other relationship comedies."


title: The Dilemma

text: Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 24% based on 163 reviews, with a rating average rating of 4.4/10. The site's consensus states: "It boasts a likable cast and an interesting premise, but "The Dilemma" can't decide what to do with them; the result is an uneven blend of cheesy slapstick and surprisingly dark comedy." Metacritic gives the film a score of 46 out of 100, based on 32 critics, "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B on a scale from A+ to F.


title: The Dilemma

text: Betsy Sharkey of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote: "What The Dilemma ultimately does best is create a platform for Vaughn to drag that iconic character of his into full-blown adulthood." Justin Chang of "Variety" wrote: "Not a particularly funny movie. Indeed, the true dilemma of this misguided seriocomedy lies in the filmmakers' confusion as to whether they're making a side-splitting bromance (nope) or an unsparing, warts-and-all look at screwed-up relationships (sort of)." David Edelstein of "New York" magazine wrote: "Perhaps the late Blake Edwards could have found a balance between slapstick and psychodrama, but Ron Howard can't get the pacing right, and Allan Loeb's script is even wordier than the one he wrote for "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.""


title: The Dilemma

text: In a 2021 reappraisal, "The Guardian"s Stephen Snart wrote in defense of "The Dilemma". He praised "Ron Howard's quietly impressive craftsmanship" which explores "the insidious undercurrents of the bromances without sacrificing the infectious joviality of male bonding".


title: The Dilemma

text: The DVD and Blu-ray was released on May 3, 2011, in the United States. It earned $8.9 million from DVD and Blu-Ray sales.


title: The Dilemma

text: On October 5, 2021, Mill Creek Entertainment released a Blu-ray double feature that contained the film and Vaughn's fellow Universal film "The Break-Up" (2006).


title: Panic of 1837

text: The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis in the United States that touched off a major depression, which lasted until the mid-1840s. Profits, prices, and wages went down, westward expansion was stalled, unemployment went up, and pessimism abounded.


title: Panic of 1837

text: The panic had both domestic and foreign origins. Speculative lending practices in the West, a sharp decline in cotton prices, a collapsing land bubble, international specie flows, and restrictive lending policies in Britain were all factors. The lack of a central bank to regulate fiscal matters, which President Andrew Jackson had ensured by not extending the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, was also key. This ailing economy of early 1837 led investors to panic – a bank run ensued – giving the crisis its name. The run came to a head on May 10, 1837, when banks in New York City ran out of gold and silver. They suspended specie payments and would no longer redeem commercial paper in specie at full face value. A significant economic collapse followed. Despite a brief recovery in 1838, the recession persisted for approximately seven years. Nearly half of all banks failed, businesses closed, prices declined, and there was mass unemployment. From 1837 to 1844 deflation in wages and prices was widespread. The lack of deposit insurance deepened the Panic. By 1850 the economy was booming again, a result of increased specie flows from the California Gold Rush.


title: Panic of 1837

text: The crisis followed a period of economic expansion from mid-1834 to mid-1836. The prices of land, cotton, and slaves rose sharply in those years. The boom's origin had many sources, both domestic and international. Because of the peculiar factors of international trade, abundant amounts of silver were coming into the United States from Mexico and China. Land sales and tariffs on imports were also generating substantial federal revenues. Through lucrative cotton exports and the marketing of state-backed bonds in British money markets, the United States acquired significant capital investment from Britain. The bonds financed transportation projects in the United States. British loans, made available through Anglo-American banking houses like Baring Brothers, fueled much of America's westward expansion, infrastructure improvements, industrial expansion, and economic development during the antebellum era.


title: Panic of 1837

text: From 1834 to 1835, Europe experienced extreme prosperity, which resulted in confidence and an increased propensity for risky foreign investments. In 1836, directors of the Bank of England noticed that its monetary reserves had declined precipitously in recent years due to an increase in capital speculation and investment in American transportation. Conversely, improved transportation systems increased the supply of cotton, which lowered the market price. Cotton prices were security for loans, and America's cotton kings defaulted. In 1836 and 1837 American wheat crops also suffered from Hessian fly and winter kill which caused the price of wheat in America to increase greatly, which caused American labor to starve.


title: Panic of 1837

text: The hunger in America was not felt by England, whose wheat crops improved every year from 1831 to 1836, and European imports of American wheat had dropped to "almost nothing" by 1836. The directors of the Bank of England, wanting to increase monetary reserves and to cushion American defaults, indicated that they would gradually raise interest rates from 3 to 5 percent. The conventional financial theory held that banks should raise interest rates and curb lending when they were faced with low monetary reserves. Raising interest rates, according to the laws of supply and demand, was supposed to attract specie since money generally flows where it will generate the greatest return if equal risk among possible investments is assumed. In the open economy of the 1830s, which was characterized by free trade and relatively weak trade barriers, the monetary policies of the hegemonic power (in this case Britain) were transmitted to the rest of the interconnected global economic system, including the United States. The result was that as the Bank of England raised interest rates, major banks in the United States were forced to do the same.


title: Panic of 1837

text: When New York banks raised interest rates and scaled back on lending, the effects were damaging. Since the price of a bond bears an inverse relationship to the yield (or interest rate), the increase in prevailing interest rates would have forced down the price of American securities. Importantly, demand for cotton plummeted. The price of cotton fell by 25% in February and March 1837. The American economy, especially in the southern states, was heavily dependent on stable cotton prices. Receipts from cotton sales provided funding for some schools, balanced the nation's trade deficit, fortified the US dollar, and procured foreign exchange earnings in British pounds, then the world's reserve currency. Since the United States was still a predominantly agricultural economy centered on the export of staple crops and an incipient manufacturing sector, a collapse in cotton prices had massive reverberations.


title: Panic of 1837

text: In the United States, there were several contributing factors. In July 1832, President Andrew Jackson vetoed the bill to recharter the Second Bank of the United States, the nation's central bank and fiscal agent. As the bank wound up its operations in the next four years, state-chartered banks in the West and the South relaxed their lending standards by maintaining unsafe reserve ratios. Two domestic policies exacerbated an already volatile situation. The Specie Circular of 1836 mandated that western lands could be purchased only with gold and silver coin. The circular was an executive order issued by Jackson and favored by Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri and other hard-money advocates. Its intent was to curb speculation in public lands, but the circular set off a real estate and commodity price crash since most buyers were unable to come up with sufficient hard money or "specie" (gold or silver coins) to pay for the land. Secondly, the Deposit and Distribution Act of 1836 placed federal revenues in various local banks, derisively termed "pet banks", across the country. Many of the banks were located in the West. The effect of both policies was to transfer specie away from the nation's main commercial centers on the East Coast. With lower monetary reserves in their vaults, major banks and financial institutions on the East Coast had to scale back their loans, which was a major cause of the panic, besides the real estate crash.


title: Panic of 1837

text: Americans attributed the cause of the panic principally to domestic political conflicts. Democrats typically blamed the bankers, and Whigs blamed Jackson for refusing to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States and on the withdrawal of government funds from the bank. Martin Van Buren, who became president in March 1837, was largely blamed for the panic even though his inauguration had preceded the panic by only five weeks. Van Buren's refusal to use government intervention to address the crisis, such as emergency relief and increasing spending on public infrastructure projects to reduce unemployment, was accused by his opponents of contributing further to the hardship and the duration of the depression that followed the panic. Jacksonian Democrats, on the other hand, blamed the Bank of the United States for both funding rampant speculation and introducing inflationary paper money. Some modern economists view Van Buren's deregulatory economic policy as successful in the long term, and argue that it played an important role in revitalizing banks after the panic.


title: Panic of 1837

text: Virtually the whole nation felt the effects of the panic. Connecticut, New Jersey, and Delaware reported the greatest stress in their mercantile districts. In 1837, Vermont's business and credit systems took a hard blow. Vermont had a period of alleviation in 1838 but was hit hard again in 1839–1840. New Hampshire did not feel the effects of the panic as much as its neighbors did. It had no permanent debt in 1838 and had little economic stress the following years. New Hampshire's greatest hardship was the circulation of fractional coins in the state.


title: Panic of 1837

text: Conditions in the South were much worse than in the East, and the Cotton Belt was dealt the worst blow. In Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina the panic caused an increase in the interest of diversifying crops. New Orleans felt a general depression in business, and its money market stayed in bad condition throughout 1843. Several planters in Mississippi had spent much of their money in advance, which led to the complete bankruptcy of many planters. By 1839, many plantations were thrown out of cultivation. Florida and Georgia did not feel the effects as early as Louisiana, Alabama, or Mississippi. In 1837, Georgia had sufficient coin to carry on everyday purchases. Until 1839, Floridians were able to boast about the punctuality of their payments. Georgia and Florida began to feel the negative effects of the panic in the 1840s.


title: Panic of 1837

text: At first, the West did not feel as much pressure as the East or the South. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were agricultural states, and the good crops of 1837 were a relief to the farmers. In 1839, agricultural prices fell, and the pressure reached the agriculturalists.


title: Panic of 1837

text: Within two months the losses from bank failures in New York alone aggregated nearly $100 million. Out of 850 banks in the United States, 343 closed entirely, 62 failed partially, and the system of state banks received a shock from which it never fully recovered. The publishing industry was particularly hurt by the ensuing depression.


title: Panic of 1837

text: Many individual states defaulted on their bonds, which angered British creditors. The United States briefly withdrew from international money markets. Only in the late 1840s did Americans re-enter those markets. The defaults, along with other consequences of the recession, carried major implications for the relationship between the state and economic development. In some ways, the panic undermined confidence in public support for internal improvements. Although state investment in internal improvements remained common in the South until the Civil War, northerners increasingly looked to private rather than public investment to finance growth. The panic unleashed a wave of riots and other forms of domestic unrest. The ultimate result was an increase in the state's police powers, including more professional police forces.


title: Panic of 1837

text: Most economists agree that there was a brief recovery from 1838 to 1839, which ended when the Bank of England and Dutch creditors raised interest rates. The economic historian Peter Temin has argued that when corrected for deflation, the economy grew after 1838. According to the Austrian economist Murray Rothbard, between 1839 and 1843, real consumption increased by 21 percent and real gross national product increased by 16 percent, but real investment fell by 23 percent and the money supply shrank by 34 percent.