title: I Saw the Light (film)

text: At the 2014 Wheatland Music Festival, Hiddleston sang "Move It on Over" and "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)", promoting the film.


title: I Saw the Light (film)

text: Casting for the film for extras and additional actors begin in September 2014. Casting was done by Legacy Casting and Tracy Kilpatrick of The Casting Office. On September 12, "Rolling Stone" announced that Elizabeth Olsen would be playing Audrey Williams, Hank's wife, manager and duet partner.


title: I Saw the Light (film)

text: Principal photography took place in Shreveport, Louisiana, starting in October 2014 and ending in December 2014.


title: I Saw the Light (film)

text: Williams' grandson, singer Hank Williams III, has publicly expressed his displeasure for Hiddleston's singing skills. Soon after Hiddleston's performance of "Move It on Over" at the Wheatland Music Festival, Williams posted negative criticism of aspects of Hiddleston's voice on Facebook, along with a video of himself singing his grandfather's hit.


title: I Saw the Light (film)

text: Williams went on to critique Hiddleston's role, saying "To do a Hank Williams movie the way it should be done you need certain aspects in the mix to make right. It goes way beyond having an American to play the role of Hiram Hank Williams Sr. for it to be somewhat natural, it needs to be an American from the South who has eaten, lived and breathed these kind of roles before." On September 11, 2015, soon after Hiddleston posted a film clip on social media, Williams made another statement on Facebook, saying that the film seemed to lack "justice and real foundation."


title: I Saw the Light (film)

text: Conversely, Holly Williams, granddaughter of Hank Williams Sr. and half-sister of Hank Williams III, praised Hiddleston's performance, stating in an interview with "Rolling Stone", "Tom really put his whole heart and soul into it. He worked so hard to embody everything about Hank, all of the nuances and who Hank really was. Tom put all his passion into his performance."


title: I Saw the Light (film)

text: The soundtrack for "I Saw the Light" was released on March 25, 2016, by Legacy Recordings. Seven of the songs are performed by Tom Hiddleston and the Saddle Spring Boys.


title: I Saw the Light (film)

text: The film was originally scheduled to be released on November 27, 2015, by Sony Pictures Classics. However, on October 16, the release date was pushed back to March 25, 2016, for the limited release, with wide expansion is getting started on April 1.


title: I Saw the Light (film)

text: "I Saw the Light" received mixed to negative reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 18% score based on 154 reviews, with an average rating of 4.59/10. The site's consensus states: ""I Saw the Light" boasts a terrifically talented cast, but their performances aren't enough to enliven an unfocused biopic that never comes close to capturing its subject's timeless appeal." Metacritic reports a 47 out of 100 rating based on 35 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: I Saw the Light (film)

text: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of "The A.V. Club" criticized "I Saw the Light" for not having "a spark of insight or psychology to it," and stated "no character in the film ever comes across as more than an accent." Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" gave the film one of four stars, stating "Not even a singin', boozin' Tom Hiddleston can save this tepid Hank Williams biopic from itself."


title: As We See It

text: As We See It is an American comedy-drama streaming television series created by Jason Katims, based on the Israeli series "On the Spectrum" by Dana Idisis and Yuval Shafferman. The 8-episode series premiered on Amazon Prime Video on January 21, 2022. It was canceled after one season.


title: As We See It

text: The series follows 20-something roommates Jack, Harrison and Violet, all of whom are on the autism spectrum, as they look for work, make friends, and fall in love.


title: As We See It

text: On March 14, 2019, it was revealed that Amazon Prime Video was set to distribute the American TV series adaptation of "On the Spectrum", with Jason Katims writing and executive producing. True Jack Productions' Jeni Mulein and Yes Studios’ Dana Stern also executive produced. On October 11, 2021, the title was revealed to be "As We See It". Jesse Peretz directed and executive produced the pilot episode. On October 20, 2022, Amazon Prime Video canceled the series after one season.


title: As We See It

text: On June 12, 2019, Rick Glassman, Sue Ann Pien, Albert Rutecki, Sosie Bacon and Chris Pang were cast in the series. Glassman, Pien, and Rutecki, like their characters, are all autistic. On October 11, 2021, Joe Mantegna was announced as a cast member.


title: As We See It

text: On October 11, 2021, the first look photos for the series were released. On November 22, 2021, the official trailer was released. All eight episodes of the series premiered on Prime Video on January 21, 2022.


title: As We See It

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 92% approval rating with an average rating of 8/10, based on 25 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, ""As We See It" deftly sidesteps schmaltz by depicting people on the spectrum as well-rounded individuals with their own foibles, enriching both the comedy and pathos." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 82 out of 100 based on 17 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: As We See It

text: Daniel Feinberg wrote for "The Hollywood Reporter" that it is "a heartfelt mixture of mostly earned tears and laughter."


title: Spinal cord injury

text: A spinal cord injury (SCI) is damage to the spinal cord that causes temporary or permanent changes in its function. Symptoms may include loss of muscle function, sensation, or autonomic function in the parts of the body served by the spinal cord below the level of the injury. Injury can occur at any level of the spinal cord and can be "complete", with a total loss of sensation and muscle function at lower sacral segments, or "incomplete", meaning some nervous signals are able to travel past the injured area of the cord up to the Sacral S4-5 spinal cord segments. Depending on the location and severity of damage, the symptoms vary, from numbness to paralysis, including bowel or bladder incontinence. Long term outcomes also range widely, from full recovery to permanent tetraplegia (also called quadriplegia) or paraplegia. Complications can include muscle atrophy, loss of voluntary motor control, spasticity, pressure sores, infections, and breathing problems.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: In the majority of cases the damage results from physical trauma such as car accidents, gunshot wounds, falls, or sports injuries, but it can also result from nontraumatic causes such as infection, insufficient blood flow, and tumors. Just over half of injuries affect the cervical spine, while 15% occur in each of the thoracic spine, border between the thoracic and lumbar spine, and lumbar spine alone. Diagnosis is typically based on symptoms and medical imaging.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Efforts to prevent SCI include individual measures such as using safety equipment, societal measures such as safety regulations in sports and traffic, and improvements to equipment. Treatment starts with restricting further motion of the spine and maintaining adequate blood pressure. Corticosteroids have not been found to be useful. Other interventions vary depending on the location and extent of the injury, from bed rest to surgery. In many cases, spinal cord injuries require long-term physical and occupational therapy, especially if it interferes with activities of daily living.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: In the United States, about 12,000 people a year survive a spinal cord injury. The most commonly affected group are young adult males. SCI has seen great improvements in its care since the middle of the 20th century. Research into potential treatments includes stem cell implantation, hypothermia, engineered materials for tissue support, epidural spinal stimulation, and wearable robotic exoskeletons.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Spinal cord injury can be traumatic or nontraumatic, and can be classified into three types based on cause: mechanical forces, toxic, and ischemic (from lack of blood flow). The damage can also be divided into primary and secondary injury: the cell death that occurs immediately in the original injury, and biochemical cascades that are initiated by the original insult and cause further tissue damage. These secondary injury pathways include the ischemic cascade, inflammation, swelling, cell suicide, and neurotransmitter imbalances. They can take place for minutes or weeks following the injury.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: At each level of the spinal column, spinal nerves branch off from either side of the spinal cord and exit between a pair of vertebrae, to innervate a specific part of the body. The area of skin innervated by a specific spinal nerve is called a dermatome, and the group of muscles innervated by a single spinal nerve is called a myotome. The part of the spinal cord that was damaged corresponds to the spinal nerves at that level and below. Injuries can be cervical 1–8 (C1–C8), thoracic 1–12 (T1–T12), lumbar 1–5 (L1–L5), or sacral (S1–S5). A person's level of injury is defined as the lowest level of full sensation and function. Paraplegia occurs when the legs are affected by the spinal cord damage (in thoracic, lumbar, or sacral injuries), and tetraplegia occurs when all four limbs are affected (cervical damage).


title: Spinal cord injury

text: SCI is also classified by the degree of impairment. The "International Standards for Neurological Classification of Spinal Cord Injury" (ISNCSCI), published by the American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA), is widely used to document sensory and motor impairments following SCI. It is based on neurological responses, touch and pinprick sensations tested in each dermatome, and strength of the muscles that control key motions on both sides of the body. Muscle strength is scored on a scale of 0–5 according to the table on the right, and sensation is graded on a scale of 0–2: 0 is no sensation, 1 is altered or decreased sensation, and 2 is full sensation. Each side of the body is graded independently.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: In a "complete" spinal injury, all functions below the injured area are lost, whether or not the spinal cord is severed. An "incomplete" spinal cord injury involves preservation of motor or sensory function below the level of injury in the spinal cord. To be classed as incomplete, there must be some preservation of sensation or motion in the areas innervated by S4 to S5, e.g. voluntary external anal sphincter contraction. The nerves in this area are connected to the very lowest region of the spinal cord, and retaining sensation and function in these parts of the body indicates that the spinal cord is only partially damaged. Incomplete injury by definition includes a phenomenon known as sacral sparing: some degree of sensation is preserved in the sacral dermatomes, even though sensation may be more impaired in other, higher dermatomes below the level of the lesion. Sacral sparing has been attributed to the fact that the sacral spinal pathways are not as likely as the other spinal pathways to become compressed after injury due to the lamination of fibers within the spinal cord.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Spinal cord injury without radiographic abnormality exists when SCI is present but there is no evidence of spinal column injury on radiographs. Spinal column injury is trauma that causes fracture of the bone or instability of the ligaments in the spine; this can coexist with or cause injury to the spinal cord, but each injury can occur without the other. Abnormalities might show up on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), but the term was coined before MRI was in common use.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Central cord syndrome, almost always resulting from damage to the cervical spinal cord, is characterized by weakness in the arms with relative sparing of the legs, and spared sensation in regions served by the sacral segments. There is loss of sensation of pain, temperature, light touch, and pressure below the level of injury. The spinal tracts that serve the arms are more affected due to their central location in the spinal cord, while the corticospinal fibers destined for the legs are spared due to their more external location. The most common of the incomplete SCI syndromes, central cord syndrome usually results from neck hyperextension in older people with spinal stenosis. In younger people, it most commonly results from neck flexion. The most common causes are falls and vehicle accidents; however other possible causes include spinal stenosis and impingement on the spinal cord by a tumor or intervertebral disc.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Anterior spinal artery syndrome also known as "anterior spinal cord syndrome", due to damage to the front portion of the spinal cord or reduction in the blood supply from the anterior spinal artery, can be caused by fractures or dislocations of vertebrae or herniated disks. Below the level of injury, motor function, pain sensation, and temperature sensation are lost, while sense of touch and proprioception (sense of position in space) remain intact. These differences are due to the relative locations of the spinal tracts responsible for each type of function.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Brown-Séquard syndrome occurs when the spinal cord is injured on one side much more than the other. It is rare for the spinal cord to be truly hemisected (severed on one side), but partial lesions due to penetrating wounds (such as gunshot or knife wounds) or fractured vertebrae or tumors are common. On the ipsilateral side of the injury (same side), the body loses motor function, proprioception, and senses of vibration and touch. On the contralateral (opposite side) of the injury, there is a loss of pain and temperature sensations.Spinothalamic tracts are in charge for pain and temperature sensation and because these tracts cross to the opposite side and above the spinal cord there is loss on the contralateral side.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Posterior spinal artery syndrome (PSAS), in which just the dorsal columns of the spinal cord are affected, is usually seen in cases of chronic myelopathy but can also occur with infarction of the posterior spinal artery. This rare syndrome causes the loss of proprioception and sense of vibration below the level of injury while motor function and sensation of pain, temperature, and touch remain intact. Usually posterior cord injuries result from insults like disease or vitamin deficiency rather than trauma. Tabes dorsalis, due to injury to the posterior part of the spinal cord caused by syphilis, results in loss of touch and proprioceptive sensation.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Conus medullaris syndrome is an injury to the end of the spinal cord the conus medullaris, located at about the T12–L2 vertebrae in adults. This region contains the S4–S5 spinal segments, responsible for bowel, bladder, and some sexual functions, so these can be disrupted in this type of injury. In addition, sensation and the Achilles reflex can be disrupted. Causes include tumors, physical trauma, and ischemia. Cauda equina syndrome may also be caused by central disc prolapse or slipped disc, infections such as epidural abscess, spinal haemorrhages, secondary to medical procedures and birth abnormalities.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Cauda equina syndrome (CES) results from a lesion below the level at which the spinal cord ends. Descending nerve roots continue as the cauda equina at levels L2–S5 below the conus medullaris before exiting through intervertebral foraminae. Thus it is not a true spinal cord syndrome since it is nerve roots that are damaged and not the cord itself; however, it is common for several of these nerves to be damaged at the same time due to their proximity. CES can occur by itself or alongside conus medullaris syndrome. It can cause low back pain, weakness or paralysis in the lower limbs, loss of sensation, bowel and bladder dysfunction, and loss of reflexes. There may be bilateral sciatica with central disc prolapse and altered gait. Unlike conus medullaris syndrome, symptoms often occur only on one side of the body. The cause is often compression, e.g. by a ruptured intervertebral disk or tumor. Since the nerves damaged in CES are actually peripheral nerves because they have already branched off from the spinal cord, the injury has better prognosis for recovery of function: the peripheral nervous system has a greater capacity for healing than the central nervous system.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Signs (observed by a clinician) and symptoms (experienced by a patient) vary depending on where the spine is injured and the extent of the injury.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: A section of skin innervated through a specific part of the spine is called a dermatome, and injury to that part of the spine can cause pain, numbness, or a loss of sensation in the related areas. Paraesthesia, a tingling or burning sensation in affected areas of the skin, is another symptom. A person with a lowered level of consciousness may show a response to a painful stimulus above a certain point but not below it.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: A group of muscles innervated through a specific part of the spine is called a myotome, and injury to that part of the spinal cord can cause problems with movements that involve those muscles. The muscles may contract uncontrollably (spasticity), become weak, or be completely paralysed. Spinal shock, loss of neural activity including reflexes below the level of injury, occurs shortly after the injury and usually goes away within a day. Priapism, an erection of the penis may be a sign of acute spinal cord injury.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: The specific parts of the body affected by loss of function are determined by the level of injury. Some signs, such as bowel and bladder dysfunction can occur at any level. Neurogenic bladder involves a compromised ability to empty the bladder and is a common symptom of spinal cord injury. This can lead to high pressures in the bladder that can damage the kidneys.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: The effects of injuries at or above the lumbar or sacral regions of the spinal cord (lower back and pelvis) include decreased control of the legs and hips, genitourinary system, and anus. People injured below level L2 may still have use of their hip flexor and knee extensor muscles. Bowel and bladder function are regulated by the sacral region. It is common to experience sexual dysfunction after injury, as well as dysfunction of the bowel and bladder, including fecal and urinary incontinence.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: In addition to the problems found in lower-level injuries, thoracic (chest height) spinal lesions can affect the muscles in the trunk. Injuries at the level of T1 to T8 result in inability to control the abdominal muscles. Trunk stability may be affected; even more so in higher level injuries. The lower the level of injury, the less extensive its effects. Injuries from T9 to T12 result in partial loss of trunk and abdominal muscle control. Thoracic spinal injuries result in paraplegia, but function of the hands, arms, and neck are not affected.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: One condition that occurs typically in lesions above the T6 level is autonomic dysreflexia (AD), in which the blood pressure increases to dangerous levels, high enough to cause potentially deadly stroke. It results from an overreaction of the system to a stimulus such as pain below the level of injury, because inhibitory signals from the brain cannot pass the lesion to dampen the excitatory sympathetic nervous system response. Signs and symptoms of AD include anxiety, headache, nausea, ringing in the ears, blurred vision, flushed skin, and nasal congestion. It can occur shortly after the injury or not until years later.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Other autonomic functions may also be disrupted. For example, problems with body temperature regulation mostly occur in injuries at T8 and above.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Another serious complication that can result from lesions above T6 is neurogenic shock, which results from an interruption in output from the sympathetic nervous system responsible for maintaining muscle tone in the blood vessels. Without the sympathetic input, the vessels relax and dilate. Neurogenic shock presents with dangerously low blood pressure, low heart rate, and blood pooling in the limbs—which results in insufficient blood flow to the spinal cord and potentially further damage to it.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Spinal cord injuries at the cervical (neck) level result in full or partial tetraplegia (also called quadriplegia). Depending on the specific location and severity of trauma, limited function may be retained. Additional symptoms of cervical injuries include low heart rate, low blood pressure, problems regulating body temperature, and breathing dysfunction. If the injury is high enough in the neck to impair the muscles involved in breathing, the person may not be able to breathe without the help of an endotracheal tube and mechanical ventilator.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Complications of spinal cord injuries include pulmonary edema, respiratory failure, neurogenic shock, and paralysis below the injury site.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: In the long term, the loss of muscle function can have additional effects from disuse, including atrophy of the muscle. Immobility can lead to pressure sores, particularly in bony areas, requiring precautions such as extra cushioning and turning in bed every two hours (in the acute setting) to relieve pressure. In the long term, people in wheelchairs must shift periodically to relieve pressure. Another complication is pain, including nociceptive pain (indication of potential or actual tissue damage) and neuropathic pain, when nerves affected by damage convey erroneous pain signals in the absence of noxious stimuli. Spasticity, the uncontrollable tensing of muscles below the level of injury, occurs in 65–78% of chronic SCI. It results from lack of input from the brain that quells muscle responses to stretch reflexes. It can be treated with drugs and physical therapy. Spasticity increases the risk of contractures (shortening of muscles, tendons, or ligaments that result from lack of use of a limb); this problem can be prevented by moving the limb through its full range of motion multiple times a day. Another problem lack of mobility can cause is loss of bone density and changes in bone structure. Loss of bone density (bone demineralization), thought to be due to lack of input from weakened or paralysed muscles, can increase the risk of fractures. Conversely, a poorly understood phenomenon is the overgrowth of bone tissue in soft tissue areas, called heterotopic ossification. It occurs below the level of injury, possibly as a result of inflammation, and happens to a clinically significant extent in 27% of people.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: People with SCI are at especially high risk for respiratory and cardiovascular problems, so hospital staff must be watchful to avoid them. Respiratory problems (especially pneumonia) are the leading cause of death in people with SCI, followed by infections, usually of pressure sores, urinary tract infections and respiratory infections. Pneumonia can be accompanied by shortness of breath, fever, and anxiety.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Another potentially deadly threat to respiration is deep venous thrombosis (DVT), in which blood forms a clot in immobile limbs; the clot can break off and form a pulmonary embolism, lodging in the lung and cutting off blood supply to it. DVT is an especially high risk in SCI, particularly within 10 days of injury, occurring in over 13% in the acute care setting. Preventative measures include anticoagulants, pressure hose, and moving the patient's limbs. The usual signs and symptoms of DVT and pulmonary embolism may be masked in SCI cases due to effects such as alterations in pain perception and nervous system functioning.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Urinary tract infection (UTI) is another risk that may not display the usual symptoms (pain, urgency, and frequency); it may instead be associated with worsened spasticity. The risk of UTI, likely the most common complication in the long term, is heightened by use of indwelling urinary catheters. Catheterization may be necessary because SCI interferes with the bladder's ability to empty when it gets too full, which could trigger autonomic dysreflexia or damage the bladder permanently. The use of intermittent catheterization to empty the bladder at regular intervals throughout the day has decreased the mortality due to kidney failure from UTI in the first world, but it is still a serious problem in developing countries.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: An estimated 24–45% of people with SCI have disorders of depression, and the suicide rate is as much as six times that of the rest of the population. The risk of suicide is worst in the first five years after injury. In young people with SCI, suicide is the leading cause of death. Depression is associated with an increased risk of other complications such as UTI and pressure ulcers that occur more when self-care is neglected.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Spinal cord injuries are most often caused by physical trauma. Forces involved can be hyperflexion (forward movement of the head); hyperextension (backward movement); lateral stress (sideways movement); rotation (twisting of the head); compression (force along the axis of the spine downward from the head or upward from the pelvis); or distraction (pulling apart of the vertebrae). Traumatic SCI can result in contusion, compression, or stretch injury. It is a major risk of many types of vertebral fracture. Pre-existing asymptomatic congenital anomalies can cause major neurological deficits, such as hemiparesis, to result from otherwise minor trauma.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: In the US, Motor vehicle accidents are the most common cause of SCIs; second are falls, then violence such as gunshot wounds, then sports injuries. Another study from Asia, found that the most common cause of the SCI is fall (31.70%) from various sites such as fall from roof-tops (9.75%), electric pole (7.31%), fall from tree (7.31%) etc. Whereas road traffic accidents count for 19.51%, firearm injuries (12.19%), slipped foot (7.31%) and sports injuries (4.87%). As a result of injury, 26.82% In some countries falls are more common, even surpassing vehicle crashes as the leading cause of SCI. The rates of violence-related SCI depend heavily on place and time. Of all sports-related SCIs, shallow water dives are the most common cause; winter sports and water sports have been increasing as causes while association football and trampoline injuries have been declining. Hanging can cause injury to the cervical spine, as may occur in attempted suicide. Military conflicts are another cause, and when they occur they are associated with increased rates of SCI. Another potential cause of SCI is iatrogenic injury, caused by an improperly done medical procedure such as an injection into the spinal column.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: SCI can also be of a nontraumatic origin. Nontraumatic lesions cause anywhere from 30 to 80% of all SCI; the percentage varies by locale, influenced by efforts to prevent trauma. Developed countries have higher percentages of SCI due to degenerative conditions and tumors than developing countries. In developed countries, the most common cause of nontraumatic SCI is degenerative diseases, followed by tumors; in many developing countries the leading cause is infection such as HIV and tuberculosis. SCI may occur in intervertebral disc disease, and spinal cord vascular disease. Spontaneous bleeding can occur within or outside of the protective membranes that line the cord, and intervertebral disks can herniate. Damage can result from dysfunction of the blood vessels, as in arteriovenous malformation, or when a blood clot becomes lodged in a blood vessel and cuts off blood supply to the cord. When systemic blood pressure drops, blood flow to the spinal cord may be reduced, potentially causing a loss of sensation and voluntary movement in the areas supplied by the affected level of the spinal cord. Congenital conditions and tumors that compress the cord can also cause SCI, as can vertebral spondylosis and ischemia. Multiple sclerosis is a disease that can damage the spinal cord, as can infectious or inflammatory conditions such as tuberculosis, herpes zoster or herpes simplex, meningitis, myelitis, and syphilis.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Vehicle-related SCI is prevented with measures including societal and individual efforts to reduce driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, distracted driving, and drowsy driving. Other efforts include increasing road safety (such as marking hazards and adding lighting) and vehicle safety, both to prevent accidents (such as routine maintenance and antilock brakes) and to mitigate the damage of crashes (such as head restraints, air bags, seat belts, and child safety seats). Falls can be prevented by making changes to the environment, such as nonslip materials and grab bars in bathtubs and showers, railings for stairs, child and safety gates for windows. Gun-related injuries can be prevented with conflict resolution training, gun safety education campaigns, and changes to the technology of guns (such as trigger locks) to improve their safety. Sports injuries can be prevented with changes to sports rules and equipment to increase safety, and education campaigns to reduce risky practices such as diving into water of unknown depth or head-first tackling in association football.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: A person's presentation in context of trauma or non-traumatic background determines suspicion for a spinal cord injury. The features are namely paralysis, sensory loss, or both at any level. Other symptoms may include incontinence.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: A radiographic evaluation using an X-ray, CT scan, or MRI can determine if there is damage to the spinal column and where it is located. X-rays are commonly available and can detect instability or misalignment of the spinal column, but do not give very detailed images and can miss injuries to the spinal cord or displacement of ligaments or disks that do not have accompanying spinal column damage. Thus when X-ray findings are normal but SCI is still suspected due to pain or SCI symptoms, CT or MRI scans are used. CT gives greater detail than X-rays, but exposes the patient to more radiation, and it still does not give images of the spinal cord or ligaments; MRI shows body structures in the greatest detail. Thus it is the standard for anyone who has neurological deficits found in SCI or is thought to have an unstable spinal column injury.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Neurological evaluations to help determine the degree of impairment are performed initially and repeatedly in the early stages of treatment; this determines the rate of improvement or deterioration and informs treatment and prognosis. The ASIA Impairment Scale outlined above is used to determine the level and severity of injury.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: The first stage in the management of a suspected spinal cord injury is geared toward basic life support and preventing further injury: maintaining airway, breathing, and circulation and restricting further motion of the spine.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: In the emergency setting, most people who has been subjected to forces strong enough to cause SCI are treated as though they have instability in the spinal column and have spinal motion restricted to prevent damage to the spinal cord. Injuries or fractures in the head, neck, or pelvis as well as penetrating trauma near the spine and falls from heights are assumed to be associated with an unstable spinal column until it is ruled out in the hospital. High-speed vehicle crashes, sports injuries involving the head or neck, and diving injuries are other mechanisms that indicate a high SCI risk. Since head and spinal trauma frequently coexist, anyone who is unconscious or has a lowered level of consciousness as a result of a head injury is spinal motion restricted.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: A rigid cervical collar is applied to the neck, and the head is held with blocks on either side and the person is strapped to a backboard. Extrication devices are used to move people without excessively moving the spine if they are still inside a vehicle or other confined space. The use of a cervical collar has been shown to increase mortality in people with penetrating trauma and is thus not routinely recommended in this group.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Modern trauma care includes a step called clearing the cervical spine, ruling out spinal cord injury if the patient is fully conscious and not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, displays no neurological deficits, has no pain in the middle of the neck and no other painful injuries that could distract from neck pain. If these are all absent, no spinal motion restriction is necessary.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: If an unstable spinal column injury is moved, damage may occur to the spinal cord. Between 3 and 25% of SCIs occur not at the time of the initial trauma but later during treatment or transport. While some of this is due to the nature of the injury itself, particularly in the case of multiple or massive trauma, some of it reflects the failure to adequately restrict motion of the spine. SCI can impair the body's ability to keep warm, so warming blankets may be needed.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Initial care in the hospital, as in the prehospital setting, aims to ensure adequate airway, breathing, cardiovascular function, and spinal motion restriction. Imaging of the spine to determine the presence of a SCI may need to wait if emergency surgery is needed to stabilize other life-threatening injuries. Acute SCI merits treatment in an intensive care unit, especially injuries to the cervical spinal cord. People with SCI need repeated neurological assessments and treatment by neurosurgeons. People should be removed from the spine board as rapidly as possible to prevent complications from its use.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: If the systolic blood pressure falls below 90 mmHg within days of the injury, blood supply to the spinal cord may be reduced, resulting in further damage. Thus it is important to maintain the blood pressure which may be done using intravenous fluids and vasopressors. Vasopressors used include phenylephrine, dopamine, or norepinephrine. Mean arterial blood pressure is measured and kept at 85 to 90 mmHg for seven days after injury.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: The CAMPER Trial led by Dr Kwon and subsequent studies by the UCSF TRACK-SCI group (Dhall) have shown that spinal cord perfusion pressure (SCPP) goals are more closely associated with better neurologic recovery than MAP goals. Some institutions have adopted these SCPP goals and lumbar CSF drain placement as a standard of care. The treatment for shock from blood loss is different from that for neurogenic shock, and could harm people with the latter type, so it is necessary to determine why someone is in shock. However it is also possible for both causes to exist at the same time. Another important aspect of care is prevention of insufficient oxygen in the bloodstream, which could deprive the spinal cord of oxygen. People with cervical or high thoracic injuries may experience a dangerously slowed heart rate; treatment to speed it may include atropine.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: The corticosteroid medication methylprednisolone has been studied for use in SCI with the hope of limiting swelling and secondary injury. As there does not appear to be long term benefits and the medication is associated with risks such as gastrointestinal bleeding and infection its use is not recommended as of 2018. Its use in traumatic brain injury is also not recommended.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Surgery may be necessary, e.g. to relieve excess pressure on the cord, to stabilize the spine, or to put vertebrae back in their proper place. In cases involving instability or compression, failing to operate can lead to worsening of the condition. Surgery is also necessary when something is pressing on the cord, such as bone fragments, blood, material from ligaments or intervertebral discs, or a lodged object from a penetrating injury. Although the ideal timing of surgery is still debated, studies have found that earlier surgical intervention (within 12 hours of injury) is associated with better outcomes. This type of surgery is often referred to as "Ultra-Early", coined by Burke et al. at UCSF. Sometimes a patient has too many other injuries to be a surgical candidate this early. Surgery is controversial because it has potential complications (such as infection), so in cases where it is not clearly needed (e.g. the cord is being compressed), doctors must decide whether to perform surgery based on aspects of the patient's condition and their own beliefs about its risks and benefits. Recent large-scale studies have shown that patients who do undergo earlier surgery (within 12–24 hours) experience significantly lower rates of life-threatening complications and spend less time in hospital and critical care.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: However, in cases where a more conservative approach is chosen, bed rest, cervical collars, motion restriction devices, and optionally traction are used. Surgeons may opt to put traction on the spine to remove pressure from the spinal cord by putting dislocated vertebrae back into alignment, but herniation of intervertebral disks may prevent this technique from relieving pressure. "Gardner-Wells tongs" are one tool used to exert spinal traction to reduce a fracture or dislocation and to reduce motion to the affected areas.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: SCI patients often require extended treatment in specialized spinal unit or an intensive care unit. The rehabilitation process typically begins in the acute care setting. Usually, the inpatient phase lasts 8–12 weeks and then the outpatient rehabilitation phase lasts 3–12 months after that, followed by yearly medical and functional evaluation. Physical therapists, occupational therapists, recreational therapists, nurses, social workers, psychologists, and other health care professionals work as a team under the coordination of a physiatrist to decide on goals with the patient and develop a plan of discharge that is appropriate for the person's condition.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: In the acute phase physical therapists focus on the patient's respiratory status, prevention of indirect complications (such as pressure ulcers), maintaining range of motion, and keeping available musculature active.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: For people whose injuries are high enough to interfere with breathing, there is great emphasis on airway clearance during this stage of recovery. Weakness of respiratory muscles impairs the ability to cough effectively, allowing secretions to accumulate within the lungs. As SCI patients have reduced total lung capacity and tidal volume, physical therapists teach them accessory breathing techniques (e.g. apical breathing, glossopharyngeal breathing) that typically are not taught to healthy individuals. Physical therapy treatment for airway clearance may include manual percussions and vibrations, postural drainage, respiratory muscle training, and assisted cough techniques. Patients are taught to increase their intra-abdominal pressure by leaning forward to induce cough and clear mild secretions. The quad cough technique is done lying on the back with the therapist applying pressure on the abdomen in the rhythm of the cough to maximize expiratory flow and mobilize secretions. Manual abdominal compression is another technique used to increase expiratory flow which later improves coughing. Other techniques used to manage respiratory dysfunction include respiratory muscle pacing, use of a constricting abdominal binder, ventilator-assisted speech, and mechanical ventilation.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: The amount of functional recovery and independence achieved in terms of activities of daily living, recreational activities, and employment is affected by the level and severity of injury. The Functional Independence Measure (FIM) is an assessment tool that aims to evaluate the function of patients throughout the rehabilitation process following a spinal cord injury or other serious illness or injury. It can track a patient's progress and degree of independence during rehabilitation. People with SCI may need to use specialized devices and to make modifications to their environment in order to handle activities of daily living and to function independently. Weak joints can be stabilized with devices such as ankle-foot orthoses (AFOs) or knee-ankle-foot orthoses (KAFOs), but walking may still require a lot of effort. Increasing activity will increase chances of recovery.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: For treatment of paralysis levels in the lower thoracic spine or lower, starting therapy with an orthosis is promising from the intermediate phase (2–26 weeks after the incident). In patients with complete paraplegia (ASIA A), this applies to lesion heights between T12 and S5. In patients with incomplete paraplegia (ASIA B-D), orthoses are even suitable for lesion heights above T12. In both cases, however, a detailed muscle function test must be carried out to precisely plan the construction with an orthosis.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Spinal cord injuries generally result in at least some incurable impairment even with the best possible treatment. The best predictor of prognosis is the level and completeness of injury, as measured by the ASIA impairment scale. The neurological score at the initial evaluation done 72 hours after injury is the best predictor of how much function will return. Most people with ASIA scores of A (complete injuries) do not have functional motor recovery, but improvement can occur. Most patients with incomplete injuries recover at least some function. Chances of recovering the ability to walk improve with each AIS grade found at the initial examination; e.g. an ASIA D score confers a better chance of walking than a score of C. The symptoms of incomplete injuries can vary and it is difficult to make an accurate prediction of the outcome. A person with a mild, incomplete injury at the T5 vertebra will have a much better chance of using his or her legs than a person with a severe, complete injury at exactly the same place. Of the incomplete SCI syndromes, Brown-Séquard and central cord syndromes have the best prognosis for recovery and anterior cord syndrome has the worst.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: People with nontraumatic causes of SCI have been found to be less likely to develop complete injuries and some complications such as pressure sores and deep vein thrombosis, and to have shorter hospital stays. Their scores on functional tests were better than those of people with traumatic SCI upon hospital admission, but when they were tested upon discharge, those with traumatic SCI had improved such that both groups' results were the same. In addition to the completeness and level of the injury, age and concurrent health problems affect the extent to which a person with SCI will be able to live independently and to walk. However, in general people with injuries to L3 or below will likely be able to walk functionally, T10 and below to walk around the house with bracing, and C7 and below to live independently. New therapies are beginning to provide hope for better outcomes in patients with SCI, but most are in the experimental/translational stage.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: One important predictor of motor recovery in an area is presence of sensation there, particularly pain perception. Most motor recovery occurs in the first year post-injury, but modest improvements can continue for years; sensory recovery is more limited. Recovery is typically quickest during the first six months. Spinal shock, in which reflexes are suppressed, occurs immediately after the injury and resolves largely within three months but continues resolving gradually for another 15.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Sexual dysfunction after spinal injury is common. Problems that can occur include erectile dysfunction, loss of ability to ejaculate, insufficient lubrication of the vagina, and reduced sensation and impaired ability to orgasm. Despite this, many people learn ways to adapt their sexual practices so they can lead satisfying sex lives.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Although life expectancy has improved with better care options, it is still not as good as the uninjured population. The higher the level of injury, and the more complete the injury, the greater the reduction in life expectancy. Mortality is very elevated within a year of injury.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Worldwide, the number of new cases since 1995 of SCI ranges from 10.4 to 83 people per million per year. This wide range of numbers is probably partly due to differences among regions in whether and how injuries are reported. In North America, about 39 people per every million incur SCI traumatically each year, and in Western Europe, the incidence is 16 per million. In the United States, the incidence of spinal cord injury has been estimated to be about 40 cases per 1 million people per year or around 12,000 cases per year. In China, the incidence is approximately 60,000 per year.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: The estimated number of people living with SCI in the world ranges from 236 to 4187 per million. Estimates vary widely due to differences in how data are collected and what techniques are used to extrapolate the figures. Little information is available from Asia, and even less from Africa and South America. In Western Europe the estimated prevalence is 300 per million people and in North America it is 853 per million. It is estimated at 440 per million in Iran, 526 per million in Iceland, and 681 per million in Australia. In the United States there are between 225,000 and 296,000 individuals living with spinal cord injuries, and different studies have estimated prevalences from 525 to 906 per million.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: SCI is present in about 2% of all cases of blunt force trauma. Anyone who has undergone force sufficient to cause a thoracic spinal injury is at high risk for other injuries also. In 44% of SCI cases, other serious injuries are sustained at the same time; 14% of SCI patients also have head trauma or facial trauma. Other commonly associated injuries include chest trauma, abdominal trauma, pelvic fractures, and long bone fractures.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Males account for four out of five traumatic spinal cord injuries. Most of these injuries occur in men under 30 years of age. The average age at the time of injury has slowly increased from about 29 years in the 1970s to 41. In Pakistan, spinal cord injury is more common in males (92.68%) as compared to females in the 20-30 years of age group with a median age of 40 years, although people from 12-70 years of age suffered from spinal cord injury Rates of injury are at their lowest in children, at their highest in the late teens to early twenties, then get progressively lower in older age groups; however rates may rise in the elderly. In Sweden between 50 and 70% of all cases of SCI occur in people under 30, and 25% occur in those over 50. While SCI rates are highest among people age 15–20, fewer than 3% of SCIs occur in people under 15. Neonatal SCI occurs in one in 60,000 births, e.g. from breech births or injuries by forceps. The difference in rates between the sexes diminishes in injuries at age 3 and younger; the same number of girls are injured as boys, or possibly more. Another cause of pediatric injury is child abuse such as shaken baby syndrome. For children, the most common cause of SCI (56%) is vehicle crashes. High numbers of adolescent injuries are attributable in a large part to traffic accidents and sports injuries. For people over 65, falls are the most common cause of traumatic SCI. The elderly and people with severe arthritis are at high risk for SCI because of defects in the spinal column. In nontraumatic SCI, the gender difference is smaller, the average age of occurrence is greater, and incomplete lesions are more common.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: SCI has been known to be devastating for millennia; the ancient Egyptian Edwin Smith Papyrus from 2500 BC, the first known description of the injury, says it is "not to be treated". Hindu texts dating back to 1800 BC also mention SCI and describe traction techniques to straighten the spine. The Greek physician Hippocrates, born in the fifth century BC, described SCI in his Hippocratic Corpus and invented traction devices to straighten dislocated vertebrae. But it was not until Aulus Cornelius Celsus, born 30 BC, noted that a cervical injury resulted in rapid death that the spinal cord itself was implicated in the condition. In the second century AD the Greek physician Galen experimented on monkeys and reported that a horizontal cut through the spinal cord caused them to lose all sensation and motion below the level of the cut. The seventh-century Greek physician Paul of Aegina described surgical techniques for treatment of broken vertebrae by removing bone fragments, as well as surgery to relieve pressure on the spine. Little medical progress was made during the Middle Ages in Europe; it was not until the Renaissance that the spine and nerves were accurately depicted in human anatomy drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and Andreas Vesalius.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: In 1762 a surgeon named Andre Louis removed a bullet from the lumbar spine of a patient, who regained motion in the legs. In 1829 the surgeon Gilpin Smith performed a successful laminectomy that improved the patient's sensation. However, the idea that SCI was untreatable remained predominant until the early 20th century. In 1934, the mortality rate in the first two years after injury was over 80%, mostly due to infections of the urinary tract and pressure sores, the latter of which were believed to be intrinsic to SCI rather than a result of continuous bedrest. It was not until the second half of the century that breakthroughs in imaging, surgery, medical care, and rehabilitation medicine contributed to a substantial improvement in SCI care. The relative incidence of incomplete compared to complete injuries has improved since the mid-20th century, due mainly to the emphasis on faster and better initial care and stabilization of spinal cord injury patients. The creation of emergency medical services to professionally transport people to the hospital is given partial credit for an improvement in outcomes since the 1970s. Improvements in care have been accompanied by increased life expectancy of people with SCI; survival times have improved by about 2000% since 1940. In 2015/2016 23% of people in nine spinal injury centres in England had their discharge delayed because of disputes about who should pay for the equipment they needed.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Scientists are investigating various avenues for treatment of spinal cord injury. Therapeutic research is focused on two main areas: neuroprotection and neuroregeneration. The former seeks to prevent the harm that occurs from secondary injury in the minutes to weeks following the insult, and the latter aims to reconnect the broken circuits in the spinal cord to allow function to return. Neuroprotective drugs target secondary injury effects including inflammation, damage by free radicals, excitotoxicity (neuronal damage by excessive glutamate signaling), and apoptosis (cell suicide). Several potentially neuroprotective agents that target pathways like these are under investigation in human clinical trials.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Stem cell transplantation is an important avenue for SCI research: the goal is to replace lost spinal cord cells, allow reconnection in broken neural circuits by regrowing axons, and to create an environment in the tissues that is favorable to growth. A key avenue of SCI research is research on stem cells, which can differentiate into other types of cells—including those lost after SCI. Types of cells being researched for use in SCI include embryonic stem cells, neural stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells, olfactory ensheathing cells, Schwann cells, activated macrophages, and induced pluripotent stem cells. Hundreds of stem cell studies have been done in humans, with promising but inconclusive results. An ongoing Phase 2 trial in 2016 presented data showing that after 90 days, 2 out of 4 subjects had already improved two motor levels and had thus already achieved its endpoint of 2/5 patients improving two levels within 6–12 months. Six-month data is expected in January 2017.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Another type of approach is tissue engineering, using biomaterials to help scaffold and rebuild damaged tissues. Biomaterials being investigated include natural substances such as collagen or agarose and synthetic ones like polymers and nitrocellulose. They fall into two categories: hydrogels and nanofibers. These materials can also be used as a vehicle for delivering gene therapy to tissues.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: One avenue being explored to allow paralyzed people to walk and to aid in rehabilitation of those with some walking ability is the use of wearable powered robotic exoskeletons. The devices, which have motorized joints, are put on over the legs and supply a source of power to move and walk. Several such devices are already available for sale, but investigation is still underway as to how they can be made more useful.


title: Spinal cord injury

text: Preliminary studies of epidural spinal cord stimulators for motor complete injuries have demonstrated some improvement and in some cases to enable walking to some degree bypassing the injury


title: Spinal cord injury

text: In 2014 Darek Fidyka underwent pioneering spinal surgery that used nerve grafts, from his ankle, to 'bridge the gap' in his severed spinal cord and olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) to stimulate the spinal cord cells. The surgery was performed in Poland in collaboration with Prof. Geoff Raisman, chair of neural regeneration at University College London's Institute of Neurology, and his research team. The OECs were taken from the patient's olfactory bulbs in his brain and then grown in the lab, these cells were then injected above and below the impaired spinal tissue.


title: The Good Earth

text: The Good Earth is a historical fiction novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 that dramatizes family life in a Chinese village in the early 20th century. It is the first book in her "House of Earth" trilogy, continued in "Sons" (1932) and "A House Divided" (1935). It was the best-selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932, and was influential in Buck's winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. Buck, who grew up in China as the daughter of American missionaries, wrote the book while living in China and drew on her first-hand observation of Chinese village life. The realistic and sympathetic depiction of the farmer Wang Lung and his wife O-Lan helped prepare Americans of the 1930s to consider Chinese as allies in the coming war with Japan.


title: The Good Earth

text: The novel was included in "Life" Magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924–1944. In 2004, the book returned to the bestseller list when chosen by the television host Oprah Winfrey for Oprah's Book Club.


title: The Good Earth

text: A Broadway stage adaptation was produced by the Theatre Guild in 1932, written by the father and son playwriting team of Owen and Donald Davis, but critics gave a poor reception, and it ran only 56 performances. However, the 1937 film, "The Good Earth", which was based on the stage version, was more successful.


title: The Good Earth

text: The story begins on Wang Lung's wedding day and follows the rise and fall of his fortunes. The House of Hwang, a family of wealthy landowners, lives in the nearby town, where Wang Lung's future wife, O-Lan, lives as a slave. However, the House of Hwang slowly declines due to opium use, frequent spending, uncontrolled borrowing and a general unwillingness to work.


title: The Good Earth

text: Following the marriage of Wang Lung and O-Lan, both work hard on their farm and slowly save enough money to buy one plot of land at a time from the Hwang family. O-Lan delivers three sons and three daughters; the first daughter becomes mentally handicapped as a result of severe malnutrition brought on by famine. Her father greatly pities her and calls her "Poor Fool", a name by which she is addressed throughout her life. O-Lan kills her second daughter at birth to spare her the misery of growing up in such hard times, and to give the remaining family a better chance to survive.


title: The Good Earth

text: During the devastating famine and drought, the family must flee to a large city in the south to find work. Wang Lung's malevolent uncle offers to buy his possessions and land, but for significantly less than their value. The family sells everything except the land and the house. Wang Lung then faces the long journey south, contemplating how the family will survive walking, when he discovers that the "firewagon" (the Chinese word for the newly built train) takes people south for a fee.


title: The Good Earth

text: In the city, O-Lan and the children beg while Wang Lung pulls a rickshaw. Wang Lung's father begs but does not earn any money, and sits looking at the city instead. They find themselves aliens among their more metropolitan countrymen who look different and speak in a fast accent. They no longer starve, due to the one-cent charitable meals of congee, but still live in abject poverty. Wang Lung longs to return to his land. When armies approach the city he can only work at night hauling merchandise out of fear of being conscripted. One time, his son brings home stolen meat. Furious, Wang Lung throws the meat on the ground, not wanting his sons to grow up as thieves. O-Lan, however, calmly picks up the meat and cooks it. When a food riot erupts, Wang Lung is swept up in a mob that is looting a rich man's house and corners the man himself, who fears for his life and gives Wang Lung all his money in order to buy his safety. O-Lan finds a cache of jewels elsewhere in the house and takes them for herself.


title: The Good Earth

text: Wang Lung uses this money to bring the family home, buy a new ox and farm tools, and hire servants to work the land for him. In time, two more children are born, a twin son and daughter. When he discovers the jewels that O-Lan looted, Wang Lung buys the House of Hwang's remaining land. He later sends his first two sons to school, also apprenticing the second one to a merchant, and retains the third one on the land.


title: The Good Earth

text: As Wang Lung becomes more prosperous, he buys a concubine named Lotus. O-Lan endures the betrayal of her husband when he takes the only jewels she had asked to keep for herself, two pearls, so that he can make them into earrings to present to Lotus. O-Lan's health and morale deteriorate, and she eventually dies just after witnessing her first son's wedding. Wang Lung finally appreciates her place in his life as he mourns her passing.


title: The Good Earth

text: Wang Lung and his family move into town and rent the old House of Hwang. Now an old man, he desires peace within his family but is annoyed by constant disputes, especially between his first and second sons and their wives. Wang Lung's third son runs away to become a soldier. At the end of the novel, Wang Lung overhears his sons planning to sell the land and tries to dissuade them. They say they will do as he wishes, but smile knowingly at each other.


title: The Good Earth

text: The novel is set in a timeless China and provides no explicit dates. There are, however, references to events that provide an approximate time frame, such as introduction of railroads and the 1911 Revolution. Railroads were not constructed until the end of the 19th century, and the train used by Wang Lung and his family is implied to be relatively new, which would place their departure to the South sometime in the early 20th century. Their return after the southern city descends into civil chaos also matches the time of the 1911 Revolution.


title: The Good Earth

text: Some scholars have seen "The Good Earth" as creating sympathy for China in the oncoming war with Japan. "If China had not captured the American imagination," said one, "it might just have been possible to work out a more satisfactory Far Eastern policy," but such works as "The Good Earth", "infused with an understandable compassion for the suffering Chinese, did little to inform Americans about their limited options in Asia." The diplomatic historian Walter LaFeber, however, although he agrees that Americans grew enamored of heroic Chinese portrayed by writers such as Buck, concluded that "these views of China did not shape U.S. policy after 1937. If they had, Americans would have been fighting in Asia long before 1941."


title: The Good Earth

text: The Columbia University political scientist Andrew J. Nathan praised Hilary Spurling's book "Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth", saying that it should move readers to rediscover Buck's work as a source of insight into both revolutionary China and the United States' interactions with it. Spurling observes that Buck was the daughter of American missionaries and defends the book against charges that it is simply a collection of racist stereotypes. In her view, Buck delves deeply into the lives of the Chinese poor and opposed "religious fundamentalism, racial prejudice, gender oppression, sexual repression, and discrimination against the disabled."


title: The Good Earth

text: Buck wrote the novel in Nanjing, spending mornings in the attic of her university house to complete the manuscript in one year ("ca." 1929). In 1952, the typed manuscript and several other papers belonging to Buck were placed on display at the museum of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. It disappeared after the exhibit, and in a memoir (1966), Buck is said to have written, "The devil has it. I simply cannot remember what I did with that manuscript." After Buck died in 1973, her heirs reported it stolen. It finally turned up at Freeman's Auctioneers & Appraisers in Philadelphia around 2007 when it was brought in for consignment. The FBI were notified and it was handed over by the consignor.


title: Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs

text: In North America, Seven Seas Entertainment publishes the series for an English-language release under its Ghost Ship imprint with the first volume being released in May 2018. An anime television series adaptation by Xebec aired from July to September 2018.


title: Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs

text: The series follows the life of the luckless and homeless high school student Kogarashi Fuyuzora. In his search for a home, he is introduced to the Yuragi Inn, a cheap boarding house and former hot springs inn. The reason the rent is so cheap is because it is haunted by the beautiful ghost spirit Yuuna whose corpse was discovered at the inn. Kogarashi then helps Yuuna with her unfinished business, all while discovering the supernatural secrets of the rest of the female tenants.


title: Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs

text: The manga series is written and illustrated by Tadahiro Miura. It began serialization in Shueisha's 10th issue of the "shōnen" manga anthology "Weekly Shōnen Jump" on February 8, 2016. In May 2020, in the 26th issue of "Weekly Shōnen Jump", it was announced that the series would reach its climax in the 27th issue, published on June 8, 2020. A special chapter was published in the summer issue of "Jump Giga" on July 27, 2020. Shueisha has compiled its chapters into twenty-four individual "tankōbon" volumes, released from June 3, 2016 to December 4, 2020. In North America, the series has been licensed in English by Seven Seas Entertainment, who released the first volume under its Ghost Ship imprint on May 8, 2018.


title: Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs

text: An anime adaptation of the manga was announced in the 50th issue of "Weekly Shōnen Jump" magazine in November 2017, later revealed to be a television series. The anime is directed by Tsuyoshi Nagasawa at Xebec, with Hideaki Koyasu handled series composition, Kyoko Taketani designed the characters, Jin Aketagawa handled sound direction and Tomoki Kikuya composed the music. The opening theme is performed by Luna Haruna, while the ending theme song is "Happen" performed by cast members Miyuri Shimabukuro, Eri Suzuki, and Rie Takahashi. It aired from July 14 to September 29, 2018 and broadcast on BS11 and Tokyo MX. The series is licensed in North America by Aniplex of America and simulcast on Crunchyroll. The series ran for 12 episodes. MVM Entertainment acquired the series for distribution in the UK and Ireland.


title: Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs

text: An OVA episode was bundled with the manga's 11th volume which was released on July 4, 2018. A second OVA episode was bundled with the manga's 12th volume which was released on October 4, 2018. A third OVA episode was bundled with the manga's 13th volume which was released on December 4, 2018. A two-episode OVA produced by Signal.MD was bundled with the manga's 24th volume, which was released on December 4, 2020.


title: Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs

text: A video game by FuRyu titled was released for PlayStation 4 on November 15, 2018. A mobile phone game titled began service in April 2019 and ended service on December 25, 2019.


title: Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs

text: The series attracted controversy in Japan when a "character poll" featuring "sexualized" images ran in a magazine whose readers include children. Lawyer Keiko Ōta urged parents to not let their sons read the magazine, saying that "depicting sexual harassment as pleasure is a problem." A gender studies professor at Osaku University also weighed in on the matter saying that young boys are learning to see females as sexual objects. Those in support of the magazine's images said that seeing erotic images is a necessary part of growth into adulthood. Others which include lawyer Yamato Satō expressed concerns about excessive censorship. Sculptor and manga artist Megumi Igarashi criticized the hype citing "The ego of parents who want their children to remain innocent forever." Manga artist Tatsuya Egawa also criticized the hype by comparing the images to the series Harenchi Gakuen while calling those who want to ban the content "sadly stupid".


title: Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs

text: Rebecca Silverman of Anime News Network gave the first manga volume an overall "B" rating citing the good relationship forming between Yuuna and Kogarashi, some funny moments, and the attractive artwork. She was critical about the side characters being "mostly just annoying", and "dated tropes" that "drag things down". Sean Gaffney from "A case suitable for Treatment" gave the first manga volume a favorable review calling the main male character a “confident Jump hero in the Luffy/Soma tradition". Gaffney noted a-lot of similarities to the series To Love Ru other than this "nice change" from a passive male character, and stated that he liked the way Yuuna was "translated and adapted". Stig Høgset from "THEM Anime Reviews" reviewed the anime adaptation and gave it a 4/5 star rating saying that it was "old-school" for "both good and bad". Høgset said in his review that he liked the anime for its "unassuming, but still clearly noticeable character progression as more quiet slice-of-lives". He was critical though, about the mixed bag of comedy, and the main character's harassment of "a whole lot of women" even if it was unintentional. Høgset in the end said that while the series rates a "weak 4" the anime adaptation of Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs's "heart more than makes up for its shortcomings".


title: Comedic genres

text: Comedy may be divided into multiple genres based on the source of humor, the method of delivery, and the context in which it is delivered.


title: Comedic genres

text: These classifications overlap, and most comedians can fit into multiple genres. For example, deadpan comics often fall into observational comedy, or into black comedy or blue comedy to contrast the morbidity, or offensiveness of the joke with a lack of emotion.


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: Toy is a studio album by English musician David Bowie, posthumously released in November 2021. It was recorded from July to October 2000 in New York City and featured re-recordings of songs Bowie recorded between 1964 and 1971, along with a couple of new tracks. The project was co-produced by Bowie and Mark Plati and featured musicians from Bowie's then-touring band—Plati, Earl Slick, Gail Ann Dorsey, Mike Garson and Sterling Campbell—with overdubs from Lisa Germano, Gerry Leonard and Cuong Vu.


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: Bowie's intention for the project was to rehearse the tracks, record them live and release them as quickly as possible, predating the idea of the surprise album. Intended for release in March 2001, the album was shelved by EMI/Virgin due to financial struggles, leading Bowie to depart the label and begin work on his next album "Heathen" (2002). Various "Toy" tracks saw release as B-sides and bonus tracks in the ensuing years; two were remade for "Heathen" and two appeared on the "Nothing Has Changed" compilation in 2014.


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: Different mixes of the "Toy" tracks leaked onto the Internet in 2011, which caught media attention. Ten years later, Warner Music Group announced on 29 September 2021 that "Toy" would get an official release as part of the box set "Brilliant Adventure (1992–2001)" on 26 November 2021, through Bowie's own ISO label and Parlophone. A separate deluxe edition, featuring previously unseen photographs, alternate mixes, proposed B-sides and 13 new remixes of the tracks, was released on 7 January 2022. The official release received positive reviews from music critics, with many highlighting Bowie's vocal performances. The album was a commercial success, debuting at number five on the UK Albums Chart, becoming Bowie's 35th UK top 10 album.


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: In 1999, during the Hours Tour, David Bowie began performing songs he originally recorded in the 1960s. After ending his Mini Tour with a performance at the Glastonbury Festival in June 2000, he stated, "I hate to waste the energy of a show-honed band so I've asked one and all if they would like to make an album immediately when we get back to New York." He then revealed his intention of re-recording these songs, explaining "Not so much "Pin Ups II" as an "Up Date I"." Work on the "Sixties album" began a month later in July under the working title "Toy", which came from a lyric in two songs recorded. The lineup consisted of the members of Bowie's touring band: guitarist Earl Slick, bassist Gail Ann Dorsey, pianist Mike Garson, musician Mark Plati and drummer Sterling Campbell.


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: According to biographer David Buckley, the band rehearsed the songs at Sear Sound Studios in New York City before recording them as live tracks. Plati recalled: "The idea was to keep it loose, fast, and not clean things up too much or dwell on perfection. As a result, we had 13 basic tracks cut in around nine days." Slick later told "Rolling Stone": "We had been doing a lot of gigs up to that point. We didn't have to do a whole lot of thinking about how to approach the songs. We had an operating system; an unspoken one. We hardly ever talked about anything. We'd just look at each other, or David would look at us, and it would just happen." He also stated that he refused to listen to Bowie's original recordings of the tracks, so to prevent the originals from influencing his playing on the new versions. Plati, whom Bowie chose to co-produce the project, was integral to the new album's sound. Pete Keppler engineered the sessions, while Bowie's former producer Tony Visconti provided string arrangements on two tracks. Recording took a two-month break in August due to the birth of Bowie and Iman's daughter Alexandria.


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: Following the two-month break, multi-instrumentalist Lisa Germano was hired by Bowie, at Plati's suggestion, to contribute overdubs. After seeing her perform in New York for the rock band Eels in August, Plati stated "I knew I needed to get her on the Bowie album." Germano was thrilled by the experience and both Bowie and Plati commended her contributions. Overdubs commenced at New York's Looking Glass Studios in October. Also hired were Gerry Leonard and Cuong Vu, who contributed guitar and trumpet, respectively. Also recorded during this time was a cover of the Who's "Pictures of Lily" for the tribute album "Substitute: The Songs of the Who". Mixing began at the end of October, with Bowie predicting a release date of March 2001.


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: "Toy" primarily consists of re-recordings of various songs Bowie originally recorded between 1964 and 1971, some of which with numerous bands. Author Marc Spitz describes it as "a sort of "Pin Ups" without the hits". These included: "Liza Jane", Bowie's 1964 debut single; "You've Got a Habit of Leaving", a 1965 A-side; "Baby Loves That Way", a 1965 B-side; "Can't Help Thinking About Me", a 1966 A-side; "I Dig Everything", a 1966 A-side; "The London Boys", a 1966 B-side; "Silly Boy Blue", first released on Bowie's 1967 eponymous debut album; "Let Me Sleep Beside You", "In the Heat of the Morning" and "Karma Man", rejected tracks recorded in 1967 that first appeared on "The World of David Bowie" compilation (1970); and "Conversation Piece", a 1970 B-side. Additionally, a new version of "Shadow Man", which dated back to the 1971 "Ziggy Stardust" sessions, was recorded. Many of these tracks had previously seen release on various compilation albums, such as "Early On (1964–1966)" (1991) and "The Deram Anthology 1966–1968" (1997).


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: Along with the re-recorded tracks, several new songs were written for the project, including "Afraid", "Uncle Floyd" and "Toy" (later retitled "Your Turn to Drive"). Bowie stated that these were written in the style he "may have written them in the sixties". More tracks written for "Toy" included "Hole in the Ground" and "Miss American High". Bowie explained on his website, BowieNet, that "some of the songs from the sixties were never recorded, let alone released, so will be as new to you as any of the new ones that I've written." Regarding the tracks themselves, Bowie stated: "The songs are so alive and full of colour, they jump out of the speakers. It's really hard to believe that they were written so long ago."


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: Bowie initially wanted to release "Toy" as quickly as possible. In the early 2000s, the idea of a surprise album was several years ahead of its time. Plati later commented, "Record labels just weren't set up to do that at the time—too many moving parts and all the rest of it." Originally scheduled for release in March 2001, "Toy" was initially delayed to May. In June, Bowie revealed: "EMI/Virgin seem to have a lot of scheduling conflicts this year, which has put an awful lot on the back burner. "Toy" is finished and ready to go, and I will make an announcement as soon as I get a very real date." After making Bowie's back catalogue available for digital download in 2000, the label, who were in the middle of various financial struggles, feared poor commercial performance for "Toy" and expressed a desire for an album of new material instead, indefinitely shelving the record. In October, Bowie responded "Fine by me. I'm extremely happy with the new stuff...[but] I won't let "Toy" slide away. I'm working on a way that you'll be able to get the songs next year as well as the newie." Buckley argues that had it been released, "Toy" would have "easily" reached the UK top 20, even if it was only bought by Bowie's hardcore fans.


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: As the label were negotiating, Bowie began work with Visconti on "Heathen". According to Visconti, Bowie was "hurt terribly" by "Toy"s rejection and as a result, left EMI/Virgin and signed an agreement with Columbia Records in early 2002 to issue "Heathen" via his own ISO label. Between 2002 and 2003, tracks from "Toy", including "Conversation Piece", "Shadow Man", "You've Got a Habit of Leaving" and "Baby Loves that Way", appeared as various B-sides and bonus tracks. "Afraid" and "Uncle Floyd" were remade for "Heathen", with the latter retitled "Slip Away". "Let Me Sleep Beside You" and "Your Turn to Drive" later saw official release on the three-disc edition of the 2014 compilation "Nothing Has Changed". Bowie remarked in 2003:


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: In March 2011, 14 tracks from the "Toy" sessions, excluding "Karma Man" and "Can't Help Thinking About Me", were leaked onto the Internet, attracting media attention. The leaked tracks are different mixes compared to the officially released B-sides and bonus tracks. According to biographer Nicholas Pegg, the edits suggest that they are not final master recordings, rather tracks at an earlier stage of mixing. When asked about the leak, Plati denied any involvement, stating, "I think someone got a rough mix on CD somehow." Regarding the leak overall, Pegg comments that it is "fascinating, thrilling and beautiful – and, as is so often the case with Bowie's work, an obvious creative stepping-stone between the previous album and the next."


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: Ten years later, on 29 September 2021, Warner Music Group announced that "Toy" would get an official release on 26 November as part of the box set "Brilliant Adventure (1992–2001)" through ISO and Parlophone. "You've Got a Habit of Leaving" was released as a digital single the same day. "Karma Man" and an "alternative ending mix" of "Silly Boy Blue" were released as the next single on 15 October, while "Can't Help Thinking About Me" followed on 19 November. Plati, who assisted in the mixing of the "Toy" material for the box set, said in a statement:


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: A separate deluxe edition, titled "Toy:Box", was released on 7 January 2022, the day before what would have been Bowie's 75th birthday. The release includes previously unseen photographs, alternate mixes, proposed B-sides and 13 new "Unplugged and Somewhat Slightly Electric" remixes of the "Toy" tracks. These remixes contain new guitar parts by Plati and Earl Slick, replicating a style done by the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards. The "Unplugged and Somewhat Slightly Electric" mix of "Shadow Man" was released as a single on streaming services on 6 January. The release ends with "Toy (Your Turn to Drive)", a new track compiled from an extended jam during a take of "I Dig Everything". Featuring updated mixing, Plati stated: "As it was culled from 'I Dig Everything', it makes sense to bookend the album with this track. It's also a fitting postscript to the "Toy" era." Visconti, who called it Bowie's "ghost album", was positive about its official release, telling "Uncut" magazine that he believed it contained some of Bowie's finest work. The album additionally saw standalone CD and LP releases on 5 August 2022, alongside the other studio albums from the "Brilliant Adventure" set.


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: The 2021 release of "Toy" received positive reviews from music critics. Writing for "The Guardian", Alexis Petridis highlighted "Shadow Man" as a standout, further praising the versions of "Conversation Piece" and "Let Me Sleep Beside You". He ultimately called it "an enjoyable curiosity rather than a major release." "The Independent"s Helen Brown praised Bowie's vocal performance and the band's performance throughout the record and, like Petridis, highlighted the new versions of "Shadow Man" and "Conversation Piece". Sean T. Collins likewise commended the band's performance in "Pitchfork", writing that when compared to the "BBC Radio Theatre, London, June 27, 2000 " live album included in the "Brilliant Adventure" box set, "the intimate setting [on "Toy"] works much better for the session-pro players than did the festival sprawl." The "Evening Standard"s David Smyth was also positive, highlighting the remade tracks as material long overdue for an official release.


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: Brenna Ehrlich was more modest in her review for "Rolling Stone", calling "Toy" "a completely serviceable album" that lacks surprises and is "far from transcendent". Although she similarly noted Bowie's vocal performance as the standout, Ehrlich concluded that "Toy" is "supplemental material, a sidenote, a wandering walk off the main path with a friend we've been missing." When reviewing "Brilliant Adventure", AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine found the "Hours"-style music "mildly appealing" and summarised: "it's a slight record but it's nice to have it as part of the official discography." Reviewing the deluxe edition, Erlewine called it a "record out of time", featuring songs clearly made during the 1960s with a "Y2K-era" production, which adds to its overall charm. However, he found the additional mixes in the deluxe edition insubstantially different from the main mixes, leading the deluxe package to be "monotonous".


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: Commercially, "Toy:Box" debuted at number five on the UK Albums Chart, becoming Bowie's 35th UK top 10 album. It was also the biggest-selling release on physical formats. It also debuted at number two in Scotland, behind Twin Atlantic's "Transparency" (2022), number three in Germany, number four in the Netherlands and number five in Belgian Wallonia. Furthermore, "Toy:Box" reached the top 10 in Switerland (7), Portugal (7), Belgian Flanders (8), and Finland (10). "Toy:Box" also achieved commercial success in other countries, reaching number 11 in Hungary, number 12 in France, number 13 in Spain, number 17 in Norway, number 18 in Ireland, number 21 in Italy, number 28 in Sweden, and number 32 in Japan.


title: Toy (David Bowie album)

text: The following is the track listing of the version of the album leaked in 2011, which is different from the officially released version.


title: Religious Zionist Party

text: The Religious Zionist Party (), known as Tkuma () until 2021 and still officially known as National Union–Tkuma (, ), is a far-right, ultra-nationalist, Jewish supremacist, and religious Zionist political party in Israel.


title: Religious Zionist Party

text: Tkuma was established by Hanan Porat and Zvi Hendel in 1998. The pair left the National Religious Party in reaction to the Wye Memorandum. Almost immediately after the creation of Tkuma, it joined together with Moledet and Herut – The National Movement, to form the National Union, a right-wing coalition which won four seats in the 1999 elections, with only one of those seats going to Tkuma. These elections were a failure for the right-wing bloc, and were won by Ehud Barak, leaving the National Union and Tkuma in the opposition.


title: Religious Zionist Party

text: In February 2000, Yisrael Beiteinu joined the National Union, alongside Tkuma, and the two parties joined Ariel Sharon's first government in 2001. One year later, Tkuma and the rest of the National Union left Sharon's government over disagreements over the handling of the Second Intifada. For the 2003 elections, the National Union kept its alliance with Yisrael Beiteinu, with its increased support helping to win seven seats for the entire list, and two for Tkuma. The party was included in Ariel Sharon's coalition, alongside Likud, Shinui, the National Religious Party, and Yisrael BaAliyah.


title: Religious Zionist Party

text: Because of tensions over the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip (Tkuma was ideologically opposed, and Hendel lived in the Gaza settlement of Ganei Tal), National Union ministers Binyamin Elon and Avigdor Lieberman were sacked, and the party left the coalition. However, the National Union was bolstered by the addition of Ahi, which had split off from the National Religious Party when they decided to remain in the coalition.


title: Religious Zionist Party

text: Before the 2006 elections, the alliance between the National Union and Yisrael Beiteinu was dissolved, and a new alliance between the National Union and the National Religious Party was formed, which won nine seats, two of which were allocated to Tkuma and taken by Hendel and Uri Ariel.


title: Religious Zionist Party

text: On 3 November 2008, ahead of the 2009 elections, Tkuma faced a crisis. The party itself announced that it would unite with Ahi, the National Religious Party, and Moledet, to form a new right-wing party, which was later named the Jewish Home. However, around half of the former Tkuma members later left the new party to re-establish Tkuma and rejoin the National Union alongside Moledet, Hatikva, and Eretz Yisrael Shelanu. In the elections themselves, the National Union got four seats, with Tkuma getting two seats.


title: Religious Zionist Party

text: Ahead of the 2013 elections, the National Union split, with all member parties except for Tkuma splitting off to form Otzma LeYisrael, leaving Tkuma as the only party left in the National Union. Tkuma proceeded to change its name to "National Union–Tkuma", appropriating the National Union name. The party opted to run as part of the Jewish Home list for the 2013 elections. The Jewish Home won 12 seats, four of which (Ariel, Ben-Dahan, Kalfa, and Strook) were members of Tkuma. The party decided to continue its alliance with the Jewish Home for the 2015 Knesset elections, taking the 2nd, 8th, 13th, and 17th spots on the joint list. The Jewish Home dropped to eight seats in that election.


title: Religious Zionist Party

text: In 2019, Bezalel Smotrich took over party leadership, winning party elections in a landslide against Ariel. Ahead of the April 2019 elections, the party joined with the Jewish Home and Otzma Yehudit to create the Union of Right-Wing Parties, which won five seats in the elections, two of which went to National Union–Tkuma.


title: Religious Zionist Party

text: Ahead of the September 2019 elections, Tkuma and the Jewish Home agreed to form an alliance with the New Right, called Yamina, with Tkuma leader Smotrich receiving the third spot on the joint list.


title: Religious Zionist Party

text: Yamina officially split on 10 October 2019 into two Knesset factions – the New Right, and the Jewish Home–National Union. For the 2020 elections, Otzma Yehudit and The Jewish Home agreed on 20 December to run together, in an alliance later named the United Jewish Home. Smotrich was critical of the move, stating that it was unlikely that the alliance would pass the electoral threshold. Tkuma, The Jewish Home, and the New Right reformed Yamina on 15 January 2020. On 22 April 2020, it was reported that Yamina leader Naftali Bennett was now "considering all options" for Yamina's political future, including departing from Netanyahu's government, which had just agreed to a coalition government with the leader of the opposition Blue and White party, Benny Gantz, and joining the opposition. Bennett was said to be unhappy with the new coalition government's decision to hold back on the issue of judicial reform.


title: Religious Zionist Party

text: On 14 May 2020 The Jewish Home's only Knesset member, Rafi Peretz, ended his status as a member of Yamina, and agreed to join Netanyahu's new government as well. On 15 May, Tkuma, along with the New Right, split with Netanyahu and made the Yamina alliance a member of the opposition. On 17 May 2020, Bennett met with Gantz, who also succeeded him as defence minister, and declared that the Yamina party would be a member of the opposition, with its "head held high". Tkuma was renamed on 7 January, while it ended its membership in Yamina on 20 January 2021.


title: Religious Zionist Party

text: In February 2021 the party agreed to run a shared list for the 2021 Knesset elections with Noam and Otzma Yehudit. The list ran under the Religious Zionist Party name and won six seats, four of which were filled by Religious Zionist Party members. On 14 June, after the swearing-in of the 36th government, MK Ofir Sofer split from the Likud faction and merged into the Religious Zionist Party, increasing the number of seats held by the party to seven. He had run during the election as part of the Likud list for Knesset, as a member of Atid Ehad party, using it as a shelf party (a dormant, but still-registered, party brought back into use).


title: Religious Zionist Party

text: The Religious Zionist Party, Noam and Otzma Yehudit submitted a single list on 14 September 2022 ahead of the 2022 Israeli legislative election. The parties split into three parties in the Knesset on 20 November 2022.


title: Religious Zionist Party

text: The Religious Zionist Party is opposed to any territorial concessions to Palestinian or Syrian claims for land. Some members support the annexation of the entire West Bank, though the official policy of the Jewish Home parliamentary faction, of which the party was aligned between 2013 and 2019, only supports annexation of Area C of the West Bank, which makes up 63% of land in the West Bank. The party is opposed to recognition of same-sex marriage on a religious basis. The party advocates for increased funding for Torah study and religious education. Jewish-American columnist David E. Rosenberg has stated that the Religious Zionist Party's "platform includes things like annexation of West Bank settlements, expulsion of asylum-seekers, and political control of the judicial system". He further described the Religious Zionist Party as a political party "driven by Jewish supremacy and anti-Arab racism".


title: Jennifer Egan

text: Jennifer Egan is an American novelist and short-story writer. Egan's novel "A Visit from the Goon Squad" won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. As of February 28, 2018, she is the President of the PEN America.


title: Jennifer Egan

text: After graduating from Lowell High School, she majored in English literature at the University of Pennsylvania. While an undergraduate, Egan dated Steve Jobs, who installed a Macintosh computer in her bedroom. After graduating, Egan spent two years at St John's College, Cambridge, supported by a Thouron Award, where she earned an M.A. She came to New York in 1987 and worked an array of jobs, such as catering at the World Trade Center, while learning to write.


title: Jennifer Egan

text: She has published short fiction in the "New Yorker", "Harper's", "", and "Ploughshares", among other periodicals, and her journalism appears frequently in the "New York Times Magazine". Egan's first novel, "The Invisible Circus", was released in 1995 and adapted into a film of the same name released in 2001. She has published one short story collection and six novels, among which "Look at Me" was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001.


title: Jennifer Egan

text: Egan has been hesitant to classify "A Visit from the Goon Squad" as either a novel or a short story collection, saying, "I wanted to avoid centrality. I wanted polyphony. I wanted a lateral feeling, not a forward feeling. My ground rules were: every piece has to be very different, from a different point of view. I actually tried to break that rule later; if you make a rule then you also should break it!" The book features genre-bending content such as a chapter entirely formatted as a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. Of her inspiration and approach to the work, she said, "I don't experience time as linear. I experience it in layers that seem to coexist... One thing that facilitates that kind of time travel is music, which is why I think music ended up being such an important part of the book. Also, I was reading Proust. He tries, very successfully in some ways, to capture the sense of time passing, the quality of consciousness, and the ways to get around linearity, which is the weird scourge of writing prose."


title: Jennifer Egan

text: Egan received a Thouron Award in 1986, was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996. In 2002 she wrote a cover story on homeless children that received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award. She was a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library in 2004–2005. Her 2008 story on bipolar children won an Outstanding Media Award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness. In 2011 she was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. That same year she won the National Book Critics Circle Award (Fiction), the "Los Angeles Times" Book Prize, and Pulitzer Prize for "A Visit from the Goon Squad".


title: Jennifer Egan

text: Egan won the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for "Manhattan Beach". The novel was also longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award.


title: Jennifer Egan

text: Academic literary critics have examined Egan's work in a variety of contexts. David Cowart has read Egan's project in "A Visit from the Goon Squad" as indebted to modernist writing but as possessing a closer affinity to postmodernism, in which "she meets the parental postmoderns on their own ground; by the same token, she venerates the grandparental moderns even as she places their mythography under erasure and dismantles their supreme fictions," an aspect also touched upon by Adam Kelly. Baoyu Nie has focused, alternatively, on the ways in which "Egan draws the reader into the addressee role" through the use of second-person narrative technique in her Twitter fiction. Finally, Martin Paul Eve has argued that the university itself is given "quantifiably more space within Egan's work than would be merited under strict societal mimesis", leading him to classify Egan's novels within the history of metafiction.


title: Jennifer Egan

text: In 2013, the first academic conference event dedicated to Egan's work was held at Birkbeck, University of London, entitled "Invisible Circus: An International Conference on the work of Jennifer Egan".


title: Ballistics

text: Ballistics is the field of mechanics concerned with the launching, flight behaviour and impact effects of projectiles, especially ranged weapon munitions such as bullets, unguided bombs, rockets or the like; the science or art of designing and accelerating projectiles so as to achieve a desired performance.


title: Ballistics

text: A ballistic body is a free-moving body with momentum which can be subject to forces such as the forces exerted by pressurized gases from a gun barrel or a propelling nozzle, normal force by rifling, and gravity and air drag during flight.


title: Ballistics

text: A ballistic missile is a missile that is guided only during the relatively brief initial phase of powered flight and the trajectory is subsequently governed by the laws of classical mechanics; in contrast to (for example) a cruise missile which is aerodynamically guided in powered flight like a fixed-wing aircraft.


title: Ballistics

text: The oldest evidence of stone-tipped projectiles, which may or may not have been propelled by a bow (c.f. atlatl), dating to c. 64,000 years ago, were found in Sibudu Cave, present day-South Africa.


title: Ballistics

text: The oldest evidence of the use of bows to shoot arrows dates to about 10,000 years ago; it is based on pinewood arrows found in the Ahrensburg valley north of Hamburg. They had shallow grooves on the base, indicating that they were shot from a bow. The oldest bow so far recovered is about 8,000 years old, found in the Holmegård swamp in Denmark.


title: Ballistics

text: Archery seems to have arrived in the Americas with the Arctic small tool tradition, about 4,500 years ago.


title: Ballistics

text: The first devices identified as guns appeared in China around 1000 AD, and by the 12th century the technology was spreading through the rest of Asia, and into Europe by the 13th century.


title: Ballistics

text: After millennia of empirical development, the discipline of ballistics was initially studied and developed by Italian mathematician Niccolò Tartaglia in 1531, although he continued to use segments of straight-line motion, conventions established by the Greek philosopher Aristotle and Albert of Saxony, but with the innovation that he connected the straight lines by a circular arc. Galileo established the principle of compound motion in 1638, using the principle to derive the parabolic form of the ballistic trajectory. Ballistics was put on a solid scientific and mathematical basis by Isaac Newton, with the publication of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687. This gave mathematical laws of motion and gravity which for the first time made it possible to successfully predict trajectories.


title: Ballistics

text: A projectile is any object projected into space (empty or not) by the exertion of a force. Although any object in motion through space (for example a thrown baseball) is a projectile, the term most commonly refers to a ranged weapon. Mathematical equations of motion are used to analyze projectile trajectory.


title: Ballistics

text: Throwing is the launching of a projectile by hand. Although some other animals can throw, humans are unusually good throwers due to their high dexterity and good timing capabilities, and it is believed that this is an evolved trait. Evidence of human throwing dates back 2 million years. The 90 mph throwing speed found in many athletes far exceeds the speed at which chimpanzees can throw things, which is about 20 mph. This ability reflects the ability of the human shoulder muscles and tendons to store elasticity until it is needed to propel an object.


title: Ballistics

text: A sling is a projectile weapon typically used to throw a blunt projectile such as a stone, clay or lead "sling-bullet".