title: Ted Lieu

text: Lieu is a strong supporter of expansion of public transit in West Los Angeles, LAX, and the South Bay.


title: Ted Lieu

text: Lieu coauthored a successful bill to bypass environmental quality regulations to build a football stadium in Los Angeles. The bill was intended to help the efforts of developer Edward P. Roski persuade the National Football League to return to the city, and was controversial among many environmentalists and legislators. Further controversy ensued when it was announced that Roski had given over $500,000 to political campaigns, including $13,000 to Lieu's.


title: Ted Lieu

text: As an Assemblyman Lieu authored laws in the areas of public safety, child sex offenders, domestic violence, the environment, education, health care, veterans' issues and transportation.


title: Ted Lieu

text: Lieu sought the Democratic nomination in the 2010 California Attorney General election. He finished fourth in the June primary, which was won by future Vice President Kamala Harris.


title: Ted Lieu

text: Lieu won a February 15, 2011, special election to fill the 28th Senate district following the death of incumbent Jenny Oropeza. He defeated four Republicans, one Democrat, and two independents.


title: Ted Lieu

text: On January 30, 2014, Senator Lieu voted in favor of California Senate Constitutional Amendment 5. The proposed bill asked California voters to repeal provisions of Proposition 209 and permit state universities to consider an applicant's race, ethnicity or national origin in making admissions decisions. After hearing strong opposition to the bill from Asian-American community, Lieu, along with Senators Leland Yee and Carol Liu, who had also voted for the bill, jointly issued a statement on February 27 calling for the bill to be withheld pending further consultations with the "affected communities."


title: Ted Lieu

text: Lieu was the Democratic candidate for the 33rd congressional district, formerly represented by Henry Waxman, who retired in 2014 after 40 years in Congress. The 2010 redistricting placed a portion of Torrance, including Lieu's home, in the 33rd.


title: Ted Lieu

text: Lieu placed second in the June primary, but defeated Republican Elan Carr in the general election. He and Waxman are the only persons to represent this district since its creation in 1974 (it was the 24th from 1975 to 1993, the 29th from 1993 to 2003, the 30th from 2003 to 2013, and has been the 33rd since 2013).


title: Ted Lieu

text: Lieu successfully passed three laws in the 114th Congress, securing $35 million in funding to the West Los Angeles VA for seismic retrofits; reauthorizing the Advisory Committee on Homeless Veterans; and restoring the Quarterly Financial Report. Lieu also introduced the Climate Solutions Act in the 114th Congress, which aimed to model national energy goals and climate emissions reduction targets after the state of California.


title: Ted Lieu

text: In the 115th Congress Lieu introduced H.R. 669 – Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017, which would prohibit the president from using the Armed Forces to conduct a first-use nuclear strike unless such strike is conducted pursuant to a congressional declaration of war expressly authorizing such strike.


title: Ted Lieu

text: On March 8, 2017, Lieu introduced H.R. 1437 – No Money Bail Act of 2017. The bill proposes eliminating the money bail system for holding suspects in pretrial proceedings.


title: Ted Lieu

text: Lieu is one of two Taiwanese American members of the 114th United States Congress, along with New York's Grace Meng.


title: Ted Lieu

text: He was voted Democratic Freshman Class President of the House by his colleagues, succeeding Joaquín Castro. Lieu serves on two influential committees in Congress: the House Judiciary Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.


title: Ted Lieu

text: Lieu received praise from the online privacy community when he introduced bipartisan legislation to prevent states from forcing companies to weaken encryption for law enforcement purposes.


title: Ted Lieu

text: On September 16, 2015, Lieu and Justin Amash introduced a bill to reduce funding for the Drug Enforcement Administration's Cannabis Eradication Program, under which real estate and chattels can be seized if they have been used for marijuana trafficking and abuse.


title: Ted Lieu

text: On July 22 it was announced that Lieu would speak at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, along with three other California House Democrats.


title: Ted Lieu

text: On November 6, 2017, while the House of Representatives chambers was holding a moment of silence was held for the 26 victims of a church shooting in Texas, Lieu filmed and posted a video message calling for gun law reform. Lieu said, "I’ve been to too many moments of silences. In just my short career in Congress, three of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history have occurred. I will not be silent. What we need is we need action. We need to pass gun safety legislation now."


title: Ted Lieu

text: On April 25, 2018, 57 members of the House of Representatives, including Lieu, released a condemnation of Holocaust distortion in Ukraine and Poland. They criticized Poland's new Holocaust law, which would criminalize accusing Poland of complicity in the Holocaust, and Ukraine's 2015 memory laws glorifying Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and its leaders, such as Roman Shukhevych.


title: Ted Lieu

text: In 2019, Lieu signed a letter led by Representative Ro Khanna and Senator Rand Paul to President Trump asserting that it is "long past time to rein in the use of force that goes beyond congressional authorization" and that they hoped this would "serve as a model for ending hostilities in the future—in particular, as you and your administration seek a political solution to our involvement in Afghanistan."


title: Ted Lieu

text: In December 2019, an attorney for congressman Devin Nunes sent a letter to Lieu threatening to sue over Lieu's comments about Nunes's relationship with Ukrainian-born American businessman Lev Parnas. In response, Lieu wrote, "I welcome any lawsuit from your client and look forward to taking discovery of Congressman Nunes. Or, you can take your letter and shove it."


title: Ted Lieu

text: In October 2020, Lieu co-signed a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that condemned Azerbaijan’s offensive operations against the Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, denounced Turkey’s role in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and called for an immediate ceasefire.


title: Ted Lieu

text: On January 12, 2021, Lieu was named an impeachment manager for the second impeachment of President Trump.


title: Ted Lieu

text: From 2016 to 2018, Lieu made four donations totaling $51,046 from his campaign account to his alma mater, Stanford University. In 2020 Stanford admitted Lieu's eldest son, Brennan. "National Review" and "The Washington Examiner" raised questions about the propriety of the donations. An opinion writer for "The Examiner" noted that other members of Congress have donated to universities and asserted, "Lieu's $50,000 to Stanford is the second-largest contribution on record from an active congressional candidate to a college or university." Former FEC chairman Bradley Smith told the "Review" that donations to universities from campaign funds were not improper and "It's actually relatively common for congressmen, especially senators who might have big campaign funds built up, to give a bunch of money to their alma mater." In 2012–13, parental donations needed to be at least $500,000 (nearly ten times the amount of Lieu's donations) before a student would appear on the list the Office of Development provided to the Stanford admission office.


title: Ted Lieu

text: Lieu describes himself as "100% pro-choice." As of 2022, he has a 100% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America and an F rating from the Susan B. Anthony List for his abortion-related voting record. Lieu opposed the Supreme Court decision overturning of "Roe v. Wade".


title: Ted Lieu

text: In 2012, Lieu authored a bill that bans the provision of sexual orientation change efforts (including conversion therapy) to minors. This bill passed both the State Assembly and Senate with substantial support, and was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown in 2012. This made California the first U.S. state to have such a ban. Several other states and the District of Columbia have followed in enacting bans on sexual orientation change efforts with minors. As U.S. Representative, Lieu has introduced the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act, a bill for a federal ban on conversion therapy, following statements by President Obama opposing the practice.


title: Ted Lieu

text: Lieu has been publicly raising concerns over U.S. support for Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. In March 2016 he sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. Lieu wrote in the letter that the "apparent indiscriminate airstrikes on civilian targets in Yemen seem to suggest that either the coalition is grossly negligent in its targeting or is intentionally targeting innocent civilians. ... Some of these strikes look like war crimes to me, and I want to get answers as to why the U.S. appears to be assisting in the execution of war crimes in Yemen."


title: Ted Lieu

text: In April 2017 Lieu again criticized U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabian military campaign in Yemen, highlighting that Al Qaeda in Yemen "has emerged as a de facto ally of the Saudi-led militaries with whom [Trump] administration aims to partner more closely."


title: Ted Lieu

text: In 2015, Lieu called for a Justice Department investigation into the arrests of several Chinese-American scientists for espionage. On February 13, 2018, in a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing focused on Chinese espionage in the United States, Senator Marco Rubio asked FBI Director Christopher A. Wray about the risk posed by China's students in advanced science and mathematics programs. Lieu criticized Wray's response as "irresponsible generalizations" implying that all Chinese students and scholars were spies.


title: Ted Lieu

text: On June 22, 2018, Lieu played an audio clip of children taken from their parents under the Trump administration family separation policy crying and calling for their parents. Karen Handel, Republican representative from Georgia, who was presiding over the session, called on Lieu to stop playing the clip, citing a rule (House Rule 17) that prohibits persons on the floor of the House from using "a mobile electronic device that impairs decorum." Lieu responded, "Why are we hiding this from the American people? I think the American people need to hear this."


title: Ted Lieu

text: Lieu and his wife Betty Lieu (a former California Deputy Attorney General) reside in Torrance, California, with their two sons, Brennan and Austin. Lieu is a practicing Catholic.


title: Ted Lieu

text: Before Donald Trump's Twitter account was permanently suspended, Lieu was known for rebutting Trump's tweets on his personal account, @tedlieu. "I just decided that if Donald Trump was going to say 27 crazy, misleading things a week, I am going to point out that he said 27 crazy, misleading things, and to not allow him to get away with it", Lieu said. He continues to use his Twitter account to express his political views.


title: Sequence alignment

text: In bioinformatics, a sequence alignment is a way of arranging the sequences of DNA, RNA, or protein to identify regions of similarity that may be a consequence of functional, structural, or evolutionary relationships between the sequences. Aligned sequences of nucleotide or amino acid residues are typically represented as rows within a matrix. Gaps are inserted between the residues so that identical or similar characters are aligned in successive columns.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Sequence alignments are also used for non-biological sequences, such as calculating the distance cost between strings in a natural language or in financial data.


title: Sequence alignment

text: If two sequences in an alignment share a common ancestor, mismatches can be interpreted as point mutations and gaps as indels (that is, insertion or deletion mutations) introduced in one or both lineages in the time since they diverged from one another. In sequence alignments of proteins, the degree of similarity between amino acids occupying a particular position in the sequence can be interpreted as a rough measure of how conserved a particular region or sequence motif is among lineages. The absence of substitutions, or the presence of only very conservative substitutions (that is, the substitution of amino acids whose side chains have similar biochemical properties) in a particular region of the sequence, suggest that this region has structural or functional importance. Although DNA and RNA nucleotide bases are more similar to each other than are amino acids, the conservation of base pairs can indicate a similar functional or structural role.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Very short or very similar sequences can be aligned by hand. However, most interesting problems require the alignment of lengthy, highly variable or extremely numerous sequences that cannot be aligned solely by human effort. Instead, human knowledge is applied in constructing algorithms to produce high-quality sequence alignments, and occasionally in adjusting the final results to reflect patterns that are difficult to represent algorithmically (especially in the case of nucleotide sequences). Computational approaches to sequence alignment generally fall into two categories: "global alignments" and "local alignments". Calculating a global alignment is a form of global optimization that "forces" the alignment to span the entire length of all query sequences. By contrast, local alignments identify regions of similarity within long sequences that are often widely divergent overall. Local alignments are often preferable, but can be more difficult to calculate because of the additional challenge of identifying the regions of similarity. A variety of computational algorithms have been applied to the sequence alignment problem. These include slow but formally correct methods like dynamic programming. These also include efficient, heuristic algorithms or probabilistic methods designed for large-scale database search, that do not guarantee to find best matches.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Alignments are commonly represented both graphically and in text format. In almost all sequence alignment representations, sequences are written in rows arranged so that aligned residues appear in successive columns. In text formats, aligned columns containing identical or similar characters are indicated with a system of conservation symbols. As in the image above, an asterisk or pipe symbol is used to show identity between two columns; other less common symbols include a colon for conservative substitutions and a period for semiconservative substitutions. Many sequence visualization programs also use color to display information about the properties of the individual sequence elements; in DNA and RNA sequences, this equates to assigning each nucleotide its own color. In protein alignments, such as the one in the image above, color is often used to indicate amino acid properties to aid in judging the conservation of a given amino acid substitution. For multiple sequences the last row in each column is often the consensus sequence determined by the alignment; the consensus sequence is also often represented in graphical format with a sequence logo in which the size of each nucleotide or amino acid letter corresponds to its degree of conservation.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Sequence alignments can be stored in a wide variety of text-based file formats, many of which were originally developed in conjunction with a specific alignment program or implementation. Most web-based tools allow a limited number of input and output formats, such as FASTA format and GenBank format and the output is not easily editable. Several conversion programs that provide graphical and/or command line interfaces are available , such as READSEQ and EMBOSS. There are also several programming packages which provide this conversion functionality, such as BioPython, BioRuby and BioPerl. The SAM/BAM files use the CIGAR (Compact Idiosyncratic Gapped Alignment Report) string format to represent an alignment of a sequence to a reference by encoding a sequence of events (e.g. match/mismatch, insertions, deletions).


title: Sequence alignment

text: The original CIGAR format from the exonerate alignment program did not distinguish between mismatches or matches with the M character.


title: Sequence alignment

text: The SAMv1 spec document defines newer CIGAR codes. In most cases it is preferred to use the '=' and 'X' characters to denote matches or mismatches rather than the older 'M' character, which is ambiguous.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Global alignments, which attempt to align every residue in every sequence, are most useful when the sequences in the query set are similar and of roughly equal size. (This does not mean global alignments cannot start and/or end in gaps.) A general global alignment technique is the Needleman–Wunsch algorithm, which is based on dynamic programming. Local alignments are more useful for dissimilar sequences that are suspected to contain regions of similarity or similar sequence motifs within their larger sequence context. The Smith–Waterman algorithm is a general local alignment method based on the same dynamic programming scheme but with additional choices to start and end at any place.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Hybrid methods, known as semi-global or "glocal" (short for global-local) methods, search for the best possible partial alignment of the two sequences (in other words, a combination of one or both starts and one or both ends is stated to be aligned). This can be especially useful when the downstream part of one sequence overlaps with the upstream part of the other sequence. In this case, neither global nor local alignment is entirely appropriate: a global alignment would attempt to force the alignment to extend beyond the region of overlap, while a local alignment might not fully cover the region of overlap. Another case where semi-global alignment is useful is when one sequence is short (for example a gene sequence) and the other is very long (for example a chromosome sequence). In that case, the short sequence should be globally (fully) aligned but only a local (partial) alignment is desired for the long sequence.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Fast expansion of genetic data challenges speed of current DNA sequence alignment algorithms. Essential needs for an efficient and accurate method for DNA variant discovery demand innovative approaches for parallel processing in real time. Optical computing approaches have been suggested as promising alternatives to the current electrical implementations, yet their applicability remains to be tested .


title: Sequence alignment

text: Pairwise sequence alignment methods are used to find the best-matching piecewise (local or global) alignments of two query sequences. Pairwise alignments can only be used between two sequences at a time, but they are efficient to calculate and are often used for methods that do not require extreme precision (such as searching a database for sequences with high similarity to a query). The three primary methods of producing pairwise alignments are dot-matrix methods, dynamic programming, and word methods; however, multiple sequence alignment techniques can also align pairs of sequences. Although each method has its individual strengths and weaknesses, all three pairwise methods have difficulty with highly repetitive sequences of low information content - especially where the number of repetitions differ in the two sequences to be aligned.


title: Sequence alignment

text: One way of quantifying the utility of a given pairwise alignment is the 'maximal unique match' (MUM), or the longest subsequence that occurs in both query sequences. Longer MUM sequences typically reflect closer relatedness. in the multiple sequence alignment of genomes in computational biology. Identification of MUMs and other potential anchors, is the first step in larger alignment systems such as MUMmer. Anchors are the areas between two genomes where they are highly similar. To understand what a MUM is we can break down each word in the acronym. Match implies that the substring occurs in both sequences to be aligned. Unique means that the substring occurs only once in each sequence. Finally, maximal states that the substring is not part of another larger string that fulfills both prior requirements. The idea behind this, is that long sequences that match exactly and occur only once in each genome are almost certainly part of the global alignment.


title: Sequence alignment

text: "Given two genomes A and B, Maximal Unique Match (MUM) substring is a common substring of A and B of length longer than a specified minimum length d (by default d= 20) such that


title: Sequence alignment

text: The dot-matrix approach, which implicitly produces a family of alignments for individual sequence regions, is qualitative and conceptually simple, though time-consuming to analyze on a large scale. In the absence of noise, it can be easy to visually identify certain sequence features—such as insertions, deletions, repeats, or inverted repeats—from a dot-matrix plot. To construct a dot-matrix plot, the two sequences are written along the top row and leftmost column of a two-dimensional matrix and a dot is placed at any point where the characters in the appropriate columns match—this is a typical recurrence plot. Some implementations vary the size or intensity of the dot depending on the degree of similarity of the two characters, to accommodate conservative substitutions. The dot plots of very closely related sequences will appear as a single line along the matrix's main diagonal.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Problems with dot plots as an information display technique include: noise, lack of clarity, non-intuitiveness, difficulty extracting match summary statistics and match positions on the two sequences. There is also much wasted space where the match data is inherently duplicated across the diagonal and most of the actual area of the plot is taken up by either empty space or noise, and, finally, dot-plots are limited to two sequences. None of these limitations apply to Miropeats alignment diagrams but they have their own particular flaws.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Dot plots can also be used to assess repetitiveness in a single sequence. A sequence can be plotted against itself and regions that share significant similarities will appear as lines off the main diagonal. This effect occurs when a protein consists of multiple similar structural domains.


title: Sequence alignment

text: The technique of dynamic programming can be applied to produce global alignments via the Needleman-Wunsch algorithm, and local alignments via the Smith-Waterman algorithm. In typical usage, protein alignments use a substitution matrix to assign scores to amino-acid matches or mismatches, and a gap penalty for matching an amino acid in one sequence to a gap in the other. DNA and RNA alignments may use a scoring matrix, but in practice often simply assign a positive match score, a negative mismatch score, and a negative gap penalty. (In standard dynamic programming, the score of each amino acid position is independent of the identity of its neighbors, and therefore base stacking effects are not taken into account. However, it is possible to account for such effects by modifying the algorithm.)


title: Sequence alignment

text: A common extension to standard linear gap costs, is the usage of two different gap penalties for opening a gap and for extending a gap. Typically the former is much larger than the latter, e.g. -10 for gap open and -2 for gap extension.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Thus, the number of gaps in an alignment is usually reduced and residues and gaps are kept together, which typically makes more biological sense. The Gotoh algorithm implements affine gap costs by using three matrices.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Dynamic programming can be useful in aligning nucleotide to protein sequences, a task complicated by the need to take into account frameshift mutations (usually insertions or deletions). The framesearch method produces a series of global or local pairwise alignments between a query nucleotide sequence and a search set of protein sequences, or vice versa. Its ability to evaluate frameshifts offset by an arbitrary number of nucleotides makes the method useful for sequences containing large numbers of indels, which can be very difficult to align with more efficient heuristic methods. In practice, the method requires large amounts of computing power or a system whose architecture is specialized for dynamic programming. The BLAST and EMBOSS suites provide basic tools for creating translated alignments (though some of these approaches take advantage of side-effects of sequence searching capabilities of the tools). More general methods are available from open-source software such as GeneWise.


title: Sequence alignment

text: The dynamic programming method is guaranteed to find an optimal alignment given a particular scoring function; however, identifying a good scoring function is often an empirical rather than a theoretical matter. Although dynamic programming is extensible to more than two sequences, it is prohibitively slow for large numbers of sequences or extremely long sequences.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Word methods, also known as "k"-tuple methods, are heuristic methods that are not guaranteed to find an optimal alignment solution, but are significantly more efficient than dynamic programming. These methods are especially useful in large-scale database searches where it is understood that a large proportion of the candidate sequences will have essentially no significant match with the query sequence. Word methods are best known for their implementation in the database search tools FASTA and the BLAST family. Word methods identify a series of short, nonoverlapping subsequences ("words") in the query sequence that are then matched to candidate database sequences. The relative positions of the word in the two sequences being compared are subtracted to obtain an offset; this will indicate a region of alignment if multiple distinct words produce the same offset. Only if this region is detected do these methods apply more sensitive alignment criteria; thus, many unnecessary comparisons with sequences of no appreciable similarity are eliminated.


title: Sequence alignment

text: In the FASTA method, the user defines a value "k" to use as the word length with which to search the database. The method is slower but more sensitive at lower values of "k", which are also preferred for searches involving a very short query sequence. The BLAST family of search methods provides a number of algorithms optimized for particular types of queries, such as searching for distantly related sequence matches. BLAST was developed to provide a faster alternative to FASTA without sacrificing much accuracy; like FASTA, BLAST uses a word search of length "k", but evaluates only the most significant word matches, rather than every word match as does FASTA. Most BLAST implementations use a fixed default word length that is optimized for the query and database type, and that is changed only under special circumstances, such as when searching with repetitive or very short query sequences. Implementations can be found via a number of web portals, such as EMBL FASTA and NCBI BLAST.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Multiple sequence alignment is an extension of pairwise alignment to incorporate more than two sequences at a time. Multiple alignment methods try to align all of the sequences in a given query set. Multiple alignments are often used in identifying conserved sequence regions across a group of sequences hypothesized to be evolutionarily related. Such conserved sequence motifs can be used in conjunction with structural and mechanistic information to locate the catalytic active sites of enzymes. Alignments are also used to aid in establishing evolutionary relationships by constructing phylogenetic trees. Multiple sequence alignments are computationally difficult to produce and most formulations of the problem lead to NP-complete combinatorial optimization problems. Nevertheless, the utility of these alignments in bioinformatics has led to the development of a variety of methods suitable for aligning three or more sequences.


title: Sequence alignment

text: The technique of dynamic programming is theoretically applicable to any number of sequences; however, because it is computationally expensive in both time and memory, it is rarely used for more than three or four sequences in its most basic form. This method requires constructing the "n"-dimensional equivalent of the sequence matrix formed from two sequences, where "n" is the number of sequences in the query. Standard dynamic programming is first used on all pairs of query sequences and then the "alignment space" is filled in by considering possible matches or gaps at intermediate positions, eventually constructing an alignment essentially between each two-sequence alignment. Although this technique is computationally expensive, its guarantee of a global optimum solution is useful in cases where only a few sequences need to be aligned accurately. One method for reducing the computational demands of dynamic programming, which relies on the "sum of pairs" objective function, has been implemented in the MSA software package.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Progressive, hierarchical, or tree methods generate a multiple sequence alignment by first aligning the most similar sequences and then adding successively less related sequences or groups to the alignment until the entire query set has been incorporated into the solution. The initial tree describing the sequence relatedness is based on pairwise comparisons that may include heuristic pairwise alignment methods similar to FASTA. Progressive alignment results are dependent on the choice of "most related" sequences and thus can be sensitive to inaccuracies in the initial pairwise alignments. Most progressive multiple sequence alignment methods additionally weight the sequences in the query set according to their relatedness, which reduces the likelihood of making a poor choice of initial sequences and thus improves alignment accuracy.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Many variations of the Clustal progressive implementation are used for multiple sequence alignment, phylogenetic tree construction, and as input for protein structure prediction. A slower but more accurate variant of the progressive method is known as T-Coffee.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Iterative methods attempt to improve on the heavy dependence on the accuracy of the initial pairwise alignments, which is the weak point of the progressive methods. Iterative methods optimize an objective function based on a selected alignment scoring method by assigning an initial global alignment and then realigning sequence subsets. The realigned subsets are then themselves aligned to produce the next iteration's multiple sequence alignment. Various ways of selecting the sequence subgroups and objective function are reviewed in.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Motif finding, also known as profile analysis, constructs global multiple sequence alignments that attempt to align short conserved sequence motifs among the sequences in the query set. This is usually done by first constructing a general global multiple sequence alignment, after which the highly conserved regions are isolated and used to construct a set of profile matrices. The profile matrix for each conserved region is arranged like a scoring matrix but its frequency counts for each amino acid or nucleotide at each position are derived from the conserved region's character distribution rather than from a more general empirical distribution. The profile matrices are then used to search other sequences for occurrences of the motif they characterize. In cases where the original data set contained a small number of sequences, or only highly related sequences, pseudocounts are added to normalize the character distributions represented in the motif.


title: Sequence alignment

text: A variety of general optimization algorithms commonly used in computer science have also been applied to the multiple sequence alignment problem. Hidden Markov models have been used to produce probability scores for a family of possible multiple sequence alignments for a given query set; although early HMM-based methods produced underwhelming performance, later applications have found them especially effective in detecting remotely related sequences because they are less susceptible to noise created by conservative or semiconservative substitutions. Genetic algorithms and simulated annealing have also been used in optimizing multiple sequence alignment scores as judged by a scoring function like the sum-of-pairs method. More complete details and software packages can be found in the main article multiple sequence alignment.


title: Sequence alignment

text: The Burrows–Wheeler transform has been successfully applied to fast short read alignment in popular tools such as Bowtie and BWA. See FM-index.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Structural alignments, which are usually specific to protein and sometimes RNA sequences, use information about the secondary and tertiary structure of the protein or RNA molecule to aid in aligning the sequences. These methods can be used for two or more sequences and typically produce local alignments; however, because they depend on the availability of structural information, they can only be used for sequences whose corresponding structures are known (usually through X-ray crystallography or NMR spectroscopy). Because both protein and RNA structure is more evolutionarily conserved than sequence, structural alignments can be more reliable between sequences that are very distantly related and that have diverged so extensively that sequence comparison cannot reliably detect their similarity.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Structural alignments are used as the "gold standard" in evaluating alignments for homology-based protein structure prediction because they explicitly align regions of the protein sequence that are structurally similar rather than relying exclusively on sequence information. However, clearly structural alignments cannot be used in structure prediction because at least one sequence in the query set is the target to be modeled, for which the structure is not known. It has been shown that, given the structural alignment between a target and a template sequence, highly accurate models of the target protein sequence can be produced; a major stumbling block in homology-based structure prediction is the production of structurally accurate alignments given only sequence information.


title: Sequence alignment

text: The DALI method, or distance matrix alignment, is a fragment-based method for constructing structural alignments based on contact similarity patterns between successive hexapeptides in the query sequences. It can generate pairwise or multiple alignments and identify a query sequence's structural neighbors in the Protein Data Bank (PDB). It has been used to construct the FSSP structural alignment database (Fold classification based on Structure-Structure alignment of Proteins, or Families of Structurally Similar Proteins). A DALI webserver can be accessed at DALI and the FSSP is located at The Dali Database.


title: Sequence alignment

text: SSAP (sequential structure alignment program) is a dynamic programming-based method of structural alignment that uses atom-to-atom vectors in structure space as comparison points. It has been extended since its original description to include multiple as well as pairwise alignments, and has been used in the construction of the CATH (Class, Architecture, Topology, Homology) hierarchical database classification of protein folds. The CATH database can be accessed at CATH Protein Structure Classification.


title: Sequence alignment

text: The combinatorial extension method of structural alignment generates a pairwise structural alignment by using local geometry to align short fragments of the two proteins being analyzed and then assembles these fragments into a larger alignment. Based on measures such as rigid-body root mean square distance, residue distances, local secondary structure, and surrounding environmental features such as residue neighbor hydrophobicity, local alignments called "aligned fragment pairs" are generated and used to build a similarity matrix representing all possible structural alignments within predefined cutoff criteria. A path from one protein structure state to the other is then traced through the matrix by extending the growing alignment one fragment at a time. The optimal such path defines the combinatorial-extension alignment. A web-based server implementing the method and providing a database of pairwise alignments of structures in the Protein Data Bank is located at the Combinatorial Extension website.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Phylogenetics and sequence alignment are closely related fields due to the shared necessity of evaluating sequence relatedness. The field of phylogenetics makes extensive use of sequence alignments in the construction and interpretation of phylogenetic trees, which are used to classify the evolutionary relationships between homologous genes represented in the genomes of divergent species. The degree to which sequences in a query set differ is qualitatively related to the sequences' evolutionary distance from one another. Roughly speaking, high sequence identity suggests that the sequences in question have a comparatively young most recent common ancestor, while low identity suggests that the divergence is more ancient. This approximation, which reflects the "molecular clock" hypothesis that a roughly constant rate of evolutionary change can be used to extrapolate the elapsed time since two genes first diverged (that is, the coalescence time), assumes that the effects of mutation and selection are constant across sequence lineages. Therefore, it does not account for possible difference among organisms or species in the rates of DNA repair or the possible functional conservation of specific regions in a sequence. (In the case of nucleotide sequences, the molecular clock hypothesis in its most basic form also discounts the difference in acceptance rates between silent mutations that do not alter the meaning of a given codon and other mutations that result in a different amino acid being incorporated into the protein). More statistically accurate methods allow the evolutionary rate on each branch of the phylogenetic tree to vary, thus producing better estimates of coalescence times for genes.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Progressive multiple alignment techniques produce a phylogenetic tree by necessity because they incorporate sequences into the growing alignment in order of relatedness. Other techniques that assemble multiple sequence alignments and phylogenetic trees score and sort trees first and calculate a multiple sequence alignment from the highest-scoring tree. Commonly used methods of phylogenetic tree construction are mainly heuristic because the problem of selecting the optimal tree, like the problem of selecting the optimal multiple sequence alignment, is NP-hard.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Sequence alignments are useful in bioinformatics for identifying sequence similarity, producing phylogenetic trees, and developing homology models of protein structures. However, the biological relevance of sequence alignments is not always clear. Alignments are often assumed to reflect a degree of evolutionary change between sequences descended from a common ancestor; however, it is formally possible that convergent evolution can occur to produce apparent similarity between proteins that are evolutionarily unrelated but perform similar functions and have similar structures.


title: Sequence alignment

text: In database searches such as BLAST, statistical methods can determine the likelihood of a particular alignment between sequences or sequence regions arising by chance given the size and composition of the database being searched. These values can vary significantly depending on the search space. In particular, the likelihood of finding a given alignment by chance increases if the database consists only of sequences from the same organism as the query sequence. Repetitive sequences in the database or query can also distort both the search results and the assessment of statistical significance; BLAST automatically filters such repetitive sequences in the query to avoid apparent hits that are statistical artifacts.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Methods of statistical significance estimation for gapped sequence alignments are available in the literature.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Statistical significance indicates the probability that an alignment of a given quality could arise by chance, but does not indicate how much superior a given alignment is to alternative alignments of the same sequences. Measures of alignment credibility indicate the extent to which the best scoring alignments for a given pair of sequences are substantially similar. Methods of alignment credibility estimation for gapped sequence alignments are available in the literature.


title: Sequence alignment

text: The choice of a scoring function that reflects biological or statistical observations about known sequences is important to producing good alignments. Protein sequences are frequently aligned using substitution matrices that reflect the probabilities of given character-to-character substitutions. A series of matrices called PAM matrices (Point Accepted Mutation matrices, originally defined by Margaret Dayhoff and sometimes referred to as "Dayhoff matrices") explicitly encode evolutionary approximations regarding the rates and probabilities of particular amino acid mutations. Another common series of scoring matrices, known as BLOSUM (Blocks Substitution Matrix), encodes empirically derived substitution probabilities. Variants of both types of matrices are used to detect sequences with differing levels of divergence, thus allowing users of BLAST or FASTA to restrict searches to more closely related matches or expand to detect more divergent sequences. Gap penalties account for the introduction of a gap - on the evolutionary model, an insertion or deletion mutation - in both nucleotide and protein sequences, and therefore the penalty values should be proportional to the expected rate of such mutations. The quality of the alignments produced therefore depends on the quality of the scoring function.


title: Sequence alignment

text: It can be very useful and instructive to try the same alignment several times with different choices for scoring matrix and/or gap penalty values and compare the results. Regions where the solution is weak or non-unique can often be identified by observing which regions of the alignment are robust to variations in alignment parameters.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Sequenced RNA, such as expressed sequence tags and full-length mRNAs, can be aligned to a sequenced genome to find where there are genes and get information about alternative splicing and RNA editing. Sequence alignment is also a part of genome assembly, where sequences are aligned to find overlap so that "contigs" (long stretches of sequence) can be formed. Another use is SNP analysis, where sequences from different individuals are aligned to find single basepairs that are often different in a population.


title: Sequence alignment

text: The methods used for biological sequence alignment have also found applications in other fields, most notably in natural language processing and in social sciences, where the Needleman-Wunsch algorithm is usually referred to as Optimal matching. Techniques that generate the set of elements from which words will be selected in natural-language generation algorithms have borrowed multiple sequence alignment techniques from bioinformatics to produce linguistic versions of computer-generated mathematical proofs. In the field of historical and comparative linguistics, sequence alignment has been used to partially automate the comparative method by which linguists traditionally reconstruct languages. Business and marketing research has also applied multiple sequence alignment techniques in analyzing series of purchases over time.


title: Sequence alignment

text: A more complete list of available software categorized by algorithm and alignment type is available at sequence alignment software, but common software tools used for general sequence alignment tasks include ClustalW2 and T-coffee for alignment, and BLAST and FASTA3x for database searching. Commercial tools such as DNASTAR Lasergene, Geneious, and PatternHunter are also available. Tools annotated as performing sequence alignment are listed in the bio.tools registry.


title: Sequence alignment

text: Alignment algorithms and software can be directly compared to one another using a standardized set of benchmark reference multiple sequence alignments known as BAliBASE. The data set consists of structural alignments, which can be considered a standard against which purely sequence-based methods are compared. The relative performance of many common alignment methods on frequently encountered alignment problems has been tabulated and selected results published online at BAliBASE. A comprehensive list of BAliBASE scores for many (currently 12) different alignment tools can be computed within the protein workbench STRAP.


title: Trophée des Champions

text: The Trophée des Champions (, ) is a French association football trophy contested in an annual match between the champions of Ligue 1 and the winners of the Coupe de France. It is equivalent to the super cups found in many other countries.


title: Trophée des Champions

text: The match, with its current name, was first played in 1995, but the format in French football has existed since 1949 when the 1948–49 first division champions, Stade de Reims, defeated the winners of the 1948–49 edition of the Coupe de France, RCF Paris, 4–3 at the Stade Olympique Yves-du-Manoir in Colombes. The match is co-organized by the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) and the Union Syndicale des Journalistes Sportifs de France (UJSF).


title: Trophée des Champions

text: From 1955 to 1973, the French Football Federation (FFF) hosted a similar match known as the "Challenge des champions". The match returned in 1985, but was eliminated after only two seasons due to its unpopularity. In 1995, the FFF officially re-instated the competition under its current name and the inaugural match was contested between Paris Saint-Germain and Nantes in January 1996 at the Stade Francis-Le Blé in Brest. The following season, the match was not played due to Auxerre winning the double. A similar situation occurred in 2008 when Lyon won the double. The match was initially on the brink of cancellation, however, the LFP decided to allow the league runner-up, Bordeaux, to be Lyon's opponents. Bordeaux won the match 5–4 on penalties .


title: Trophée des Champions

text: The Trophée des Champions match is contested at the beginning or middle of the following season and has been played at a variety of venues. During the "Challenge des Champions" era, the match was in such cities as Marseille, Montpellier, Paris, Toulouse, and Saint-Étienne. From 1995 to 2008, the match was hosted three times at the Stade Gerland in Lyon. Other venues include the Stade Pierre de Coubertin twice in Cannes, the Stade de la Meinau in Strasbourg, and the Stade de l'Abbé Deschamps in Auxerre.


title: Trophée des Champions

text: On 12 May 2009, the FFF announced that the 2009 Trophée des Champions would be played outside France for the first time, at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It has since been held in Tunisia, Morocco, the United States, Gabon, China, Austria and, most recently, Israel.


title: Wool (TV series)

text: Wool is an upcoming American science fiction streaming television series created and written by Graham Yost and directed by Morten Tyldum and based on the first book in the Silo series by author Hugh Howey. The series stars Rebecca Ferguson, who also executive produces the series, and is set to premiere on Apple TV+.


title: Wool (TV series)

text: In a toxic dystopian future where a community exists in a giant silo hundreds of stories deep underground, men and women live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them.


title: Wool (TV series)

text: The project was first announced as being in development as a feature film at 20th Century Studios, who entered negotiations to acquire the self-published e-book "Wool" by Hugh Howey on May 11, 2012. Five days later, it was confirmed that 20th Century Studios had acquired the rights to the novel, with Ridley Scott and Steven Zaillian among those attached to produce the film. On November 28, 2012, it was announced that J Blakeson was in negotiations to write and direct the film. It was later announced on June 5, 2015, that Nicole Perlman was hired to rewrite the screenplay, with Blakeson no longer involved in the project. The film was ultimately shelved as a result of the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney.


title: Wool (TV series)

text: On July 30, 2018, it was announced that a new iteration of the project was in development for television at AMC, with LaToya Morgan attached to write the adaptation under her overall deal at AMC Studios. The series eventually moved to Apple TV+ on May 20, 2021, with the project receiving a series order consisting of 10 episodes. Graham Yost was attached to replace Morgan as creator and writer, marking his third series at Apple TV+ under his overall deal with the network. Morten Tyldum was also attached to direct and executive produce the series, with Yost serving as showrunner.


title: Wool (TV series)

text: Alongside the series order announcement, it was also announced that Rebecca Ferguson was cast in a lead role. In August 2021, Tim Robbins was added to the cast. Rashida Jones, David Oyelowo, Common, Harriet Walter, Avi Nash and Chinaza Uche joined the cast in the following months.


title: Wool (TV series)

text: Principal photography began in late August 2021 in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire and is scheduled to last until spring 2022. On August 18th, 2022, Hugh Howey stated on his Facebook page that the series is set to release in March 2023.


title: Great hammerhead

text: The great hammerhead (Sphyrna mokarran) or great hammerhead shark is the largest species of hammerhead shark, belonging to the family Sphyrnidae, attaining an average length of and reaching a maximum length of . It is found in tropical and warm temperate waters worldwide, inhabiting coastal areas and the continental shelf. The great hammerhead can be distinguished from other hammerheads by the shape of its "hammer" (called the "cephalofoil"), which is wide with an almost straight front margin, and by its tall, sickle-shaped first dorsal fin. A solitary, strong-swimming apex predator, the great hammerhead feeds on a wide variety of prey ranging from crustaceans and cephalopods, to bony fish, to smaller sharks. Observations of this species in the wild suggest that the cephalofoil functions to immobilize stingrays, a favored prey. This species has a viviparous mode of reproduction, bearing litters of up to 50 pups every two years.


title: Great hammerhead

text: Although potentially dangerous, the great hammerhead rarely attacks humans and can sometimes behave inquisitively toward divers. This shark is heavily fished for its large fins, which are valuable on the Chinese market as the main ingredient of shark fin soup. As a result, great hammerhead populations are declining substantially worldwide, and it has been assessed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as of 2019.


title: Great hammerhead

text: The great hammerhead was first described as "Zygaena mokarran" in 1837 by German naturalist Eduard Rüppell. The name was later changed to the current "Sphyrna mokarran". For many years, though, the valid scientific name for the great hammerhead was thought to be "Sphyrna tudes", which was coined in 1822 by Achille Valenciennes. In 1950, Enrico Tortonese determined that the specimens illustrated by Valenciennes were in fact smalleye hammerheads, to which the name "S. tudes" then applied. As the next-most senior synonym, "Sphyrna mokarran" became the great hammerhead's valid name. The lectotype for this species is a 2.5-m-long (8.2 ft) male from the Red Sea.


title: Great hammerhead

text: Older studies based on morphology have generally placed the great hammerhead as one of the more derived members of its family, reflecting the traditional view that cephalofoil size gradually increased over the course of hammerhead shark evolution, but this view has been refuted by phylogenetic analyses using nuclear and mitochondrial DNA, which found that the great hammerhead and the smooth hammerhead ("S. zygaena") form a clade that is basal to all other "Sphyrna" species. These results also show that the first hammerheads to evolve had large rather than small cephalofoils.


title: Great hammerhead

text: The great hammerhead inhabits tropical waters around the world, between the latitudes of 40°N and 37°S. In the Atlantic Ocean, it is found from North Carolina to Uruguay, including the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, and from Morocco to Senegal, and the Mediterranean Sea. It is found all along the rim of the Indian Ocean, and in the Pacific Ocean from the Ryukyu Islands to Australia, New Caledonia, and French Polynesia, and from southern Baja California to Peru. It may occur off Gambia, Guinea, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, and Western Sahara, but this has not been confirmed. Great hammerheads may be found from inshore waters less than deep, to a depth of offshore. They favor coral reefs, but also inhabit continental shelves, island terraces, lagoons, and deep water near land. They are migratory; populations off Florida and in the South China Sea have been documented moving closer to the poles in the summer.


title: Great hammerhead

text: The streamlined body of the great hammerhead with the expanded cephalofoil is typical of the hammerhead sharks. Adults can be distinguished from the scalloped hammerhead and the smooth hammerhead by the shape of the cephalofoil, which has a nearly straight front margin (as opposed to arched), with prominent medial and lateral indentations. The width of the cephalofoil is 23–27% of the body length. The teeth are triangular and strongly serrated, becoming more oblique toward the corners of the mouth. Seventeen tooth rows are on either side of the upper jaw, with two or three teeth at the symphysis (the midline of the jaw), and 16–17 teeth on either side of the lower jaw and one to three at the symphysis.


title: Great hammerhead

text: The first dorsal fin is distinctive, being very tall and strongly sickle-shaped, and originates over the insertions of the pectoral fins. The second dorsal fin and anal fin are both relatively large, with deep notches in the rear margins. The pelvic fins are sickle-shaped with concave rear margins, in contrast to the straight-margined pelvic fins of the scalloped hammerhead. The skin is covered with closely placed dermal denticles. Each denticle is diamond-shaped, with three to five horizontal ridges leading to marginal teeth in smaller individuals, and five or six in larger ones. The great hammerhead is dark brown to light gray to olive above, fading to white on the underside. The fins are unmarked in adults, while the tip of the second dorsal fin may be dark in juveniles.


title: Great hammerhead

text: The typical minimum great hammerhead measures long and weighs over , while the maximum measures long. A small percentage of the population, mostly or all females, are much larger. The longest great hammerhead on record was . The heaviest known great hammerhead is a female, long and in weight caught off Boca Grande, Florida, in 2006. The weight of the female was due to her being pregnant with 55 neonatal pups.


title: Great hammerhead

text: The great hammerhead is a solitary, nomadic predator that tends to be given a wide berth by other reef sharks. If confronted, it may respond with an agonistic display, dropping its pectoral fins and swimming in a stiff or jerky fashion. Juveniles are preyed upon by larger sharks such as bull sharks ("Carcharhinus leucas"), while adults have no major predators except for killer whales, which hunt hammerheads of any age. Yellow jacks ("Carangoides bartholomaei") have been seen rubbing themselves against the hammerhead's flanks, possibly to rid themselves of parasites. Schools of pilot fish ("Naucrates ductor") sometimes accompany the great hammerhead. The great hammerhead is parasitized by several species of copepods, including "Alebion carchariae", "A. elegans", "Nesippus orientalis", "N. crypturus", "Eudactylina pollex", "Kroyeria gemursa", and "Nemesis atlantica".


title: Great hammerhead

text: The great hammerhead shark is an active predator with a varied diet, known prey of the great hammerhead include invertebrates such as crabs, lobsters, squid, and octopus; bony fishes such as tarpon, sardines, sea catfishes, toadfish, porgies, grunts, jacks, croakers, groupers, flatfishes, boxfishes, and porcupine fishes; and smaller sharks such as smoothhounds. At Rangiroa Atoll, great hammerheads prey opportunistically on grey reef sharks ("Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos") that have exhausted themselves pursuing mates. The species is known to be cannibalistic. In the Gatun Formation of Panama, fossil teeth belonging to great hammerheads suggest the shark once preyed on juvenile "Otodus megalodon", alongside the extinct snaggletooth shark "Hemipristis serra", with which it was once contemporary.


title: Great hammerhead

text: Great hammerheads are apex predators among sharks, and are specialists at feeding on other sharks, rays, and skates, especially stingrays. The venomous spines of stingrays are frequently found lodged inside its mouth and do not seem to bother the shark, as one specimen caught off Florida had 96 spines in and around its mouth. Great hammerheads primarily hunt at dawn or dusk, swinging their heads in broad angles over the sea floor so as to pick up the electrical signatures of stingrays buried in the sand, via numerous electroreceptory organs located on the underside of the cephalofoil. The cephalofoil also serves as a hydrofoil that allows the shark to quickly turn around and strike at a ray once detected. Off Florida, large hammerheads are often the first to reach newly baited sharklines, suggesting a particularly keen sense of smell.


title: Great hammerhead

text: Another function of the cephalofoil is suggested by an observation of a great hammerhead attacking a southern stingray ("Dasyatis americana") in the Bahamas; the shark first knocked the ray to the sea bottom with a powerful blow from above, and then pinned it with its head while pivoting to take a large bite from each side of the ray's pectoral fin disc. This effectively crippled the stingray, which was then picked up in the jaws and sawed apart with rapid shakes of the head. A great hammerhead has also been seen attacking a spotted eagle ray ("Aetobatus narinari") in open water by taking a massive bite out of one of its pectoral fins. The ray thus incapacitated, the shark once again used its head to pin it to the bottom and pivoted to take the ray in its jaws head-first. These observations suggest that the great hammerhead seeks to disable rays with the first bite, a strategy similar to that of the great white shark ("Carcharodon carcharias"), and that its cephalofoil is an adaptation for prey handling.


title: Great hammerhead

text: A 2016 study of specimens logged with accelerometers showed that great hammerhead sharks reduce drag and lessen energy expenditure by swimming on their side in a posture termed "rolled swimming". The shark uses its very large dorsal fin to help achieve lift, a habit that had previously been noted in captive specimens, and may spend up to 90% of its time in this swimming orientation. The technique is thought to save about 10% in drag and consequently movement costs.


title: Great hammerhead

text: As with other hammerhead sharks, great hammerheads are viviparous; once the developing young use up their supply of yolk, the yolk sac is transformed into a structure analogous to a mammalian placenta. Unlike most other sharks, which mate on or near the sea bottom, great hammerheads have been observed mating near the surface. In one account from the Bahamas, a mating pair ascended while swimming around each other, mating when they reached the surface. Females breed once every two years, giving birth from late spring to summer in the Northern Hemisphere and from December to January in Australian waters. The gestation period is 11 months. The litter size ranges from six to 55 pups, with 20–40 being typical. The young measure at birth; males reach maturity at long and and the females at and . The young differ from the adults in having a rounded frontal margin on the head. The typical lifespan of this species is 20–30 years; the record Boca Grande female was estimated to be 40–50 years old.


title: Great hammerhead

text: With its large size and cutting teeth, the great hammerhead could seriously injure a human, so caution should be exercised around them. This species has a (possibly undeserved) reputation for aggression and being the most dangerous of the hammerhead sharks. Divers underwater have reported that great hammerheads tend to be shy or nonreactive toward humans. Reports have been made of great hammerheads approaching divers closely and even charging them when they first enter the water. As of 2011, the International Shark Attack File lists 34 bites, with 17 of them unprovoked and none fatal, attributable to hammerhead sharks of the genus "Sphyrna". Due to the difficulty in identifying the species involved, how many were caused by great hammerheads is uncertain. This shark has been confirmed to be responsible for only one (provoked) bite.


title: Great hammerhead

text: The great hammerhead is regularly caught both commercially and recreationally in the tropics, using longlines, fixed bottom nets, hook-and-line, and trawls. Though the meat is rarely consumed, their fins are becoming increasing valuable due to the Asian demand for shark fin soup. In addition, their skin used for leather, their liver oil for vitamins, and their carcasses for fishmeal. The great hammerhead is also taken unintentionally as bycatch and suffers very high mortality, over 90% for fisheries in the northwest Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. Entanglement in shark nets around Australian and South African beaches is another source of mortality.


title: Great hammerhead

text: In Queensland, Australia recreational fishers are prohibited from taking any hammerhead species. In Australia's other northern jurisdictions (the Northern Territory and Western Australia) recreational targeting and catching of great hammerheads is allowed.


title: Great hammerhead

text: The great hammerhead is extremely vulnerable to overfishing due to its low overall abundance and long generation time. Assessment of its conservation status is difficult, as few fisheries separate the great hammerhead from other hammerheads in their reported catches. This species is listed as globally endangered on the IUCN Red List. It is endangered in the north-western Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, where though it is not a targeted species, populations have dropped 50% since the 1990s due to bycatch. It is also endangered in the southwestern Indian Ocean, where large numbers of longline vessels operate illegally along the coasts for hammerheads and the giant guitarfish ("Rhynchobatus djiddensis"). The great hammerhead catch rate in Indian Ocean has declined 73% from 1978 to 2003, though whether these represent localized or widespread depletions is uncertain. The great hammerhead is critically endangered along the western coast of Africa, where stocks have collapsed, with an estimated 80% decline in the past 25 years. The West African Sub-Regional Fishing Commission (SRFC) has recognized the great hammerhead as one of the four most threatened species in the region, though fishing continues unmonitored and unregulated. Off northern Australia, this species was assessed as data deficient, but at "high risk". Concern has arisen there over a substantial increase in illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, reflecting the rising value of this shark's fins.


title: Great hammerhead

text: No conservation measures specifically protecting the great hammerhead have been enacted. It is listed on Annex I, Highly Migratory Species, of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, though no management schemes have yet been implemented under this agreement. The banning of shark finning by countries and supranational entities such as United States, Australia, and the European Union, and international regulatory bodies such as the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, should reduce fishing pressure on the great hammerhead.


title: Great hammerhead

text: According to a January 2021 study in "Nature", which studied 31 species of sharks and rays, the number of these species found in open oceans had dropped by 71% in around 50 years. The great hammerhead was included in the study.


title: British Empire Medal

text: The British Empire Medal (BEM; formerly British Empire Medal for Meritorious Service) is a British and Commonwealth award for meritorious civil or military service worthy of recognition by the Crown. The current honour was created in 1922 to replace the original medal, which had been established in 1917 as part of the Order of the British Empire.


title: British Empire Medal

text: The British Empire Medal is granted in recognition of meritorious civil or military service. Recipients are entitled to use the post-nominal letters "BEM".


title: British Empire Medal

text: Since December 1918, the honour has been divided into civil and military divisions in a similar way to the Order of the British Empire itself. While recipients are not members of the Order, the medal is affiliated to it.


title: British Empire Medal

text: Between 1993 and 2012, the British Empire Medal was not awarded to subjects of the United Kingdom, although it continued to be awarded in some Commonwealth realms during that time. The practice of awarding the Medal to British subjects was resumed in June 2012, to coincide with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, but only in the civil division.


title: British Empire Medal

text: A holder of the BEM subsequently appointed to membership of the Order of the British Empire is permitted to wear the insignia for both.


title: British Empire Medal

text: The Medal of the Order of the British Empire was established in June 1917, along with the Order of the British Empire of which it was a part, and could be awarded for either meritorious service or for gallantry. It was awarded to 2,014 people, 800 of whom were from foreign countries.


title: British Empire Medal

text: In 1922, the original medal was discontinued, and was replaced by two separate honours, both of which still formed part of the Order of the British Empire. These two honours were known as the "Medal of the Order of the British Empire for Meritorious Service" (usually referred to as British Empire Medal, BEM) and the "Medal of the Order of the British Empire for Gallantry" (usually referred to as Empire Gallantry Medal, EGM). Of these medals, the EGM was awarded for acts of bravery, until it was replaced by the George Cross in 1940. The BEM was awarded in similar circumstances as the lower classes of the Order of the British Empire, but usually to people below management or professional level. In the uniformed services, it was awarded to non-commissioned officers of the armed forces, officers below superintendent rank in the police, and personnel below divisional officer level in the fire services.


title: British Empire Medal

text: On 24 September 1940, the George Cross was established, and the EGM was revoked by Royal Warrant the same day. All living recipients, other than honorary recipients, and the next-of-kin of those posthumously awarded the EGM after 3 September 1939, the start of the Second World War, were to exchange their insignia for the George Cross. Recipients of the BEM were not affected by these changes.


title: British Empire Medal

text: From 1940, the war led to an increasing number of BEMs awarded to service personnel and civilians, including the merchant marine, police and civil defence, for acts of gallantry that did not reach the standard of the George Medal (GM). Such awards often had citations, while awards for meritorious service usually did not.


title: British Empire Medal

text: From 14 January 1958, awards of the BEM for acts of gallantry were formally designated the British Empire Medal for Gallantry and consisted of the BEM with a silver oak leaf emblem worn on the ribbon. The first recipients of this newly designated award were two Board of Customs officers, George Elrick Thomson and John Rees Thomas, who ventured into a burning steamship hold in an attempt to rescue a colleague. Like the GM, the BEM for Gallantry could not be awarded posthumously and was eventually replaced in 1974 with the Queen's Gallantry Medal (QGM). Again, recipients of the BEM for services other than acts of bravery were not affected by these changes.


title: British Empire Medal

text: The BEM continued to be awarded to subjects of the United Kingdom until 1992. After a 1993 review of the British honours system, the government decided that the distinction between the BEM and MBE had "become increasingly tenuous" and the Prime Minister, John Major, ended the award of the BEM to British subjects, although the medal continued to be awarded in some Commonwealth countries, such as the Bahamas and the Cook Islands.


title: British Empire Medal

text: Following the 2011 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that the BEM would once again be awarded in the United Kingdom, although only in the civil division; this would start beginning in 2012, to coincide with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. In the 2012 Birthday Honours, released on 16 June 2012, the BEM was awarded to 293 people.


title: British Empire Medal

text: Although those awarded the honour do not receive it from the monarch in person, but from the Lord Lieutenant of their county, recipients are invited to a Buckingham Palace garden party to celebrate their achievement.


title: British Empire Medal

text: The Medal of the Order of the British Empire awarded from 1917 to 1922 was a circular silver medal, in diameter, showing a seated Britannia and the inscription on the obverse and the Royal cypher on the reverse. The medal had a ring suspender for the wide ribbon of plain purple, the military division having a red central stripe. The medal was awarded unnamed.


title: British Empire Medal

text: The medals introduced in 1922 broadly follow the same design but, with a diameter of , are larger than the previous medal, and have either or in the obverse exergue. The medal has a straight bar suspender for the wide ribbon. This was plain purple, with a red central stripe for the military division, until 1937 when, like the Order, the ribbon changed to the current design of rose-pink with pearl-grey edges, with an additional pearl-grey central stripe for the military division. The medal was presented with the recipient's name on the rim.


title: Panipat

text: Panipat () is a historic city in Haryana, India. It is 95 km north of Delhi and 169 km south of Chandigarh on NH-1. The three major battles fought in 1526, 1556 and 1761 took place near the city. The city is famous in India as the "City of Weavers" and "Textile City". It is also known as the "cast-off capital" due to being "the global centre for recycling textiles". Panipat is included in the list of Critically Polluted Industrial area in India. The Comprehensive Environment Pollution Index (CEPI) of the city is 71.91 as against 88.50 of Ankaleshwar (Gujarat). The fatal field of Panipat is the site of three battles that changed the course of India's history, resulting in the creation and confirmation of the Mughal Empire, as well as the decisive defeat of the Maratha Confederacy in North India.


title: Panipat

text: Panipat district was carved out from the erstwhile Karnal district on 1 November 1989. On 24 July 1991 it was again merged with Karnal district. On 1 January 1992, it again became a separate district.


title: Panipat

text: Panipat was the scene of three pivotal battles in Indian history. The First Battle of Panipat was fought on 21 April 1526 between Ibrahim Lodhi, the Afghan Sultan of Delhi, and the Turko-Mongol warlord Babur, who later established Mughal rule in Northern Indian subcontinent. Babur's force defeated Ibrahim's much larger force of over one lakh (one hundred thousand) soldiers. This first battle of Panipat thus ended the 'Lodi Rule' established by Bahlul Lodhi in Delhi. This battle marked the beginning of Mughal rule in India.


title: Panipat

text: The Second Battle of Panipat was fought on 5 November 1556 between the forces of Akbar and Hem Chandra Vikramaditya, the last Hindu emperor of Delhi. Hem Chandra, who had captured states like Agra and Delhi defeating Akbar's army and declared himself as independent king after a coronation on 7 October 1556 at Purana Qila in Delhi, had a large army, and initially his forces were winning, but suddenly he was struck by an arrow in the eye and fell unconscious. On not seeing him in his howdah on the back of an elephant, his army fled. The unconscious Hemu was carried to Akbar's camp where Bairam Khan beheaded him. His head was sent to Kabul to be hanged outside Delhi Darwaza, and his torso was hanged outside Purana Quila in Delhi. The place of martyrdom of Raja Hemu is now a famous shrine in Panipat.


title: Panipat

text: Panipat is listed in the Ain-i-Akbari as a pargana under Delhi sarkar, producing a revenue of 10,756,647 dams for the imperial treasury and supplying a force of 1000 infantry and 100 cavalry. It had a brick fort at the time which was also mentioned.


title: Panipat

text: The Third Battle of Panipat was fought on 14 January 1761 between the Maratha Empire and the Afghan and Baloch invaders. The Maratha Empire forces were led by Sadashivrao Bhau and the Afghans were led by Ahmad Shah Abdali. The Afghans had a total strength of 110,000 soldiers, and the Marathas had 75,000 soldiers and 100,000 pilgrims. The Maratha soldiers were unable to get food because of non-cooperation of other empires of India. The Afghans were supported by Najib-ud-Daula and Shuja-ud-Daula for the supply of food, and the Maratha had pilgrims along with them, who were unable to fight, including female pilgrims. On 14 January, over 100,000 soldiers died resulting in the victory for the Afghans. However, after the victory, the Afghans facing a hostile North India, retreated to Afghanistan to avoid casualties. This battle served as a precursor for the East India Company to establish Company rule in India as most of North and Northwest Indian princely states were weakened.


title: Panipat

text: As per 2011 census, the city had a population of 294,292. Panipat's urban agglomeration had a population of 295,970. The literacy rate was about 83%.


title: Panipat

text: The wounded Hemu was captured by Shah Quli Khan in the Second Battle of Panipat and carried to the Mughal camp at Shodapur on Jind Road at Panipat. According to Badayuni, Bairam Khan asked Akbar to behead Hemu so that he could earn the title of "Ghazi". Akbar replied, "He is already dead, if he had any strength for a duel, I would have killed him." After Akbar's refusal Hemu's body was denied honour by the Mughal battle tradition and was unceremoniously beheaded by Bairam Khan. Hemu's head was sent to Kabul where it was hung outside the Delhi Darwaza while his body was placed in a gibbet outside Purana Quila in Delhi to terrorise his supporters, who were mainly his subjects, both the Muslims and Hindus.


title: Panipat

text: It was one of Sher Shah Suri's dying regrets that he could never fulfill his intention of erecting a tomb to the fallen monarch Ibrahim Lodhi. Much later, in 1866, the British relocated the tomb which was just a simple grave during construction of the Grand Trunk Road and added a platform to it with an inscription highlighting Ibrahim Lodhi's death in the Battle of Panipat.


title: Panipat

text: The garden of Kabuli Bagh along with the Kabuli Bagh Mosque and a tank were built by Babur after the First Battle of Panipat to commemorate his victory over Ibrahim Lodhi. Some years later when Humayun defeated Sher Shah Suri near Panipat, he added a masonry Platform to it and called it 'Chabutra" Fateh Mubarak, bearing the inscription 934 Hijri (1557 CE). These buildings and the garden still exist under the name of Kabuli Bagh called so after Babur's wife – Mussammat Kabuli begum.


title: Panipat

text: According to tradition, the site 8 km from Panipat and 42 km from Karnal, where Sadashiv Rao Bhau commanded his Maratha forces during the third battle of Panipat was marked by a black Mango Tree (Kala Amb) which has since disappeared. The dark colour of its foliage was probably the origin of the name. The site has a brick Pillar with an iron rod and the structure is surrounded by an iron fence. The site is being developed and beautified by a society presided over by the Governor of Haryana.


title: Panipat

text: The term "Panipat Syndrome" has entered the lexicon as the lack of strategic thinking, preparedness and decisive action by Indian leaders thus allowing an invading army to enter well inside their territory. This is based on the fact that in the three battles fought here, the defending armies were decisively defeated each time. It was coined by Air Commodore Jasjit Singh.


title: Panipat

text: another way to connect is via Chandigarh International Airport distance from it is 160.5 km. later you can reach Panipat easily via cab,bus or train.


title: Panipat

text: Panipat junction is connected by a good railway network. Unchahar Express, Mussoorie Express, Jhelum Express, Shatabadi are some of the trains that stop at this junction.


title: Panipat

text: Panipat is on the National Highway No. 1 and has excellent bus connections to all the cities and towns of the neighbouring states. Haryana Roadways Volvo buses pass through Panipat.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The Mumbai Suburban Railway (Marathi: मुंबई उपनगरीय रेल्वे) (colloquially called local trains or simply locals) consists of exclusive inner suburban railway lines augmented by commuter rail on main lines serving outlying suburbs to serve the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Spread over , the suburban railway operates 2,342 train services and carries more than 7.5 million commuters daily.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The daily commuters constitute around 40% of the daily commuters of Indian Railways. By annual ridership (2.64 billion), the Mumbai Suburban Railway is one of the busiest commuter rail systems in the world and arguably the worst rated by riders anywhere in the world. It has killed estimated 50,000+ passengers in the last two decades without any significant upgrade in safety rules, infrastructure or future lookout. Trains run from 04:00 until 01:00, and some trains also run up to 02:30 or 03:00. It is the first suburban rail network in India.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The Mumbai Suburban Railway is an offshoot of the first passenger railway to be built by the British East India Company, and is also the oldest railway system in Asia. The first train was run by the Great Indian Peninsula Railway (now Central Railway) between Bori Bunder (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus) and Thane, a distance of 34 km, on 16 April 1853 at 15:35. The 14-coach train took 1.25 h to complete the 34 km journey, with a halt at Bhandup to refill the train's water tanks.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The next major train was run between Virar and Churchgate by the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway (now Western Railway), in April 1867. was also added as a station on this route, but later shut down.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: On 3 February 1925, the first EMU Service was started from Victoria Terminus (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus) to Coorla Harbour (now Kurla) on the Central line which was run on 1.5 kV DC traction and also started on the Western line from Churchgate to Borivali on 5 January 1928. By 2016, the entire network had been converted to 25 kV 50 Hz AC traction.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The suburban services are run by electric multiple units (EMUs) in 191 rakes (train sets) of 12-car and 15-car composition. To alleviate the problems of overcrowding, the nine-car trains have been phased out and replaced with 12-car ones. 15-coach trains were introduced on 21 November 2009. However, these are few in number. Equipment makers include DMU(Direct Multiple Unit), Jessop, Siemens, Bombardier, and Medha. The trains are manufactured at the Integral Coach Factory in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. All routes are electrified at power supply from overhead lines. The Indian Railways plans to build a 700 MW gas-based plant in Thakurli to generate electricity to run the Mumbai trains.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The current fleet of both the Western and Central railways features increasingly fewer old rakes built by BEML, BHEL, ICF (Perambur, Chennai) which are capable of a maximum speed of 85 km/h, MRVC Siemens Rakes which are capable of and 100 km/h and ICF built Bombardier rakes capable of running at speeds of 120 km/h under light traffic conditions. The actual average speed of the rakes on the slow lines is about 35 km/h, while rakes on fast lines average about 45–50 km/h on a typical run.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: On 12 November 2007, the first of 129 new 12-coach rakes with upgraded facilities was inducted into the fleet of the Western Railways under the MUTP project. The coaches are built of stainless steel, and have non-cushioned seats, emergency fluorescent lights, bigger windows with polycarbonate panes, better suspension systems, roof-mounted forced ventilation to reduce carbon dioxide levels in packed trains, and GPS based passenger information systems in all coaches. The new rakes are much cooler and airy than the old EMUs. The motors of the new rakes also make less noise than the older ones. Since 2010, the front of the EMUs is painted yellow so that the maintenance workers on the tracks can see the train easily. These rakes have been procured under the project at a total cost of 19 billion (US$431.0 million). Siemens 5 rakes that had to be delivered as part of the first phase were sent to the city in early January 2014.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: New EMUs with Bombardier Electrical procured under the World Bank-funded Mumbai Urban Transport Project-2 built at the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai started arriving into Mumbai by April 2014. The first of these trains, to be run on Western Railway, was flagged off by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu at Lokmanya Tilak Terminus, Kurla on Central Railway on Sunday, 27 October 2013. However, a delay of two years was anticipated due to the demands of automatic sliding doors on the trains. Under the Make in India initiative, the first Indian made rake was made by Medha. 9 car trains have a capacity of 2,628 (876 seated and 1,752 standing). 12 car trains have a capacity of 3,504 (1,168 seated and 2,336 standing). In fall 2013, brand new 12 car rakes were introduced on the railway. Whereas, on 6 November 2019, the rakes of Mumbai Suburban Railway were upgraded to Uttam rake which also manufactured by the ICF was introduced and ran on Western Line.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: Discussion on AC coaches first began in 2002 and was planned to be introduced in 2013. However, major delays in finalizing the rakes' design and procurement of material deferred the project.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The first air-conditioned rake for use on the suburban system was built by the Integral Coach Factory in Chennai–BHEL EMU at a cost of over , and arrived in Mumbai on 5 April 2016. The rake has a seating capacity of 1,028 passengers, and standing room for up to 6,000 passengers. The 12 coach rake is configured as two sets of 6 interconnected bogies, meaning passengers can walk between coaches but only up to a maximum of 6 coaches. The train is also equipped with a new electrical system and software, automatic doors with emergency opening features, and GPS-based destination display on LED indicators. The old system of pulling a chain to halt the train was replaced by four intercoms per coach that enable commuters to communicate with the driver.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: Both CR and WR competed to acquire the rake, with WR even announcing a time table for operating the air-conditioned rake. Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu announced that the rake would be transferred to CR on 16 March 2016. However, at a height of 4.335 meters the rake exceeds the maximum clearance height of 4.270 meters for EMU coaches on the Central Line. In particular, the rake cannot clear some of the low-height British-era bridges between CSMT and Kurla. Then Central Railway general manager Sunil Kumar Sood insisted that CR was conduct trials and operate the rake on the Harbour Line. After acquiring the rake, CR conducted tests, safety, and mobility checks, and trial runs under the supervision of the RDSO. However, following Sood's retirement, CR abandoned plans to operate the rake in December 2016. CR informed the Railway Board that it could not operate the rake due to the clearance issue, and the Railway Board directed them to transfer the rake to WR. The rake was transferred to WR on 12 May 2017. WR General Manager Anil Kumar Gupta stated that rake would begin commercial operations on the Western Line after WR conducted its own tests and trial runs and receiving regulatory approvals. Although there are some clearance issues on the Western Line as well, Gupta stated that these could be rectified.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The First AC EMU was Flagged off on 25 December 2017 in WR. The first AC local train in Mumbai began operation in December 2017 and crossed the 10 lakh passenger mark within the first five months. The summer months of March and April saw over 3 lakh passengers take the AC local each month. The train, operated by Western Railway (WR), currently plies between Churchgate and Virar. It has a seating capacity of 1,028 seats and can carry 5,964 passengers. The monthly pass on the AC local train will cost (from Churchgate) between (till Mumbai Central) to (till Bandra) to (till Andheri) to (till Borivali) to (till Bhayander) to (till Vasai Road) to (till Virar). New halts were introduced after commuters demand at Marine Lines, Charni Road, Grant Road, Dahisar, Mira Road, Naigaon, Nallasopara. Data shows that among all stations between Churchgate and Virar. Borivali was the highest earner for the AC train. The monthly earning of AC train is approximately per month after adding seven new halts. Two more AC local rakes were introduced and now, the services run all days of the week.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The fourth air-conditioned rake on Mumbai Suburban Rail Network & first for Central Railway has been commissioned on Trans-harbour line from Thane to Panvel / Vashi from 30 January 2020. The fifth air-conditioned rake on Mumbai Suburban Rail Network & first for Central Railway Main Line was commissioned between Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus and Kalyan on 17 December 2020


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The Mumbai Suburban Railway system is operated by Indian Railways two zonal divisions Western Railways (WR) and Central Railways (CR). The fast commuter rail corridors on Central Railway as well as Western Railway are shared with long-distance and freight trains, while inner suburban services operate on exclusive parallel tracks. WR operates the Western Line and CR operates the Central Line, Harbour Line, Trans-Harbour Line, Vasai–Roha Line and Neral–Matheran & Panvel–Karjat line.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The Central Line in Mumbai consists of 3 major corridors, which bifurcate as they run into suburban satellite towns.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: Two corridors (one local and the other through) of the Central Railway run from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) to Kalyan (53 km), where it bifurcates into two lines – one to Kasara (67 km) in the north-east and the other to Khopoli (61 km) in the south-east. These two corridors constitute the 'Main' Central Line. There is also a 36 km corridor between and Kalyan stations for exclusive use by outstation and cargo trains.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The Central Line has two interchange stations with the Western Line, at Parel and Dadar, and the Harbour line at and Kurla. Rolling stock consists of a fleet of AC and alternating current new Bombardier and Siemens EMUs. The major car sheds on this line are at Kurla and Kalwa. There are both fast and slow locals. Slow locals halt at every station, while fast locals' halts vary between Byculla, Dadar, Kurla, Ghatkopar, Vikhroli, Bhandup, Mulund, Thane, , Dombivali and Kalyan. All trains plying beyond Kalyan run as slow trains (halting at every station).


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The Western Line follows the Western Railway northwards from parallel to the west coast. Local services by electric multiple units (EMUs) ply between Churchgate and Dahanu (124 km) on exclusive parallel tracks up to (60 km) while MEMUs service the section beyond Virar to Dahanu Road (64 km). On 16 April 2013 EMU has extended up to Dahanu Road. MEMUs also operate between Dahanu Road and via a branch line from Bhiwandi Road–Vasai Road. There are EMU carsheds at Mumbai Central, and Virar. The largest EMU car shed in Asia is located at Virar. A repair shop for EMUs is situated at .


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: Western Railway's EMU fleet consists of EMUs completely powered by alternating current (25 kV) power. Rolling stock consists of a fleet of AC and alternating current new Bombardier EMUs. EMUs are 12 car or 15 car formations and are differentiated as slow and fast locals. Slow trains halt at all stations, while fast ones halt at Mumbai Central, Dadar, Bandra, Andheri, Borivali, Bhayander, Vasai Road, Virar stations and are preferable over longer distances.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The Harbour Line is part of the Central Railway, and runs from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) to Goregaon and Panvel. All Harbour Line services operate as slow services. The line operates from two separate platforms at CSMT and the tracks cross over the mainline at to head towards stations along Mumbai's Eastern dock area. A branch line from joins the Western Line at Mahim and continues towards Goregaon. Further construction is ongoing to extend the Western Line branch to Borivali.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The Harbour Line has an interchange station with the mainline at Kurla, where it turns east towards Navi Mumbai. The Harbour Line further bifurcates at Vashi into two lines – one rejoins the main lines at Thane, while the other continues to Panvel. The shed for these trains is in Sanpada. A partial section of the Harbour Line is elevated from Sandhurst Road to Cotton Green.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The Trans-Harbour Line which is another part of Central Railway connects Navi Mumbai and Thane. It operates from two separate platforms at Thane to Nerul, where it joins the Harbour line till Panvel and a small branch line from Turbhe goes to Vashi as it runs parallel with the Harbour line. All services on the trans-harbour line are all-stop services. Freight trains share the tracks through a bypass from Airoli to Koparkhairane, after which it goes to a siding in Turbhe for the APMC market godowns.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The Vasai Road–Roha line is an Intersection chord rail bypass line of the Mumbai Suburban Railway which connects the Western line, Central line and Harbor line of the Western Railway zone and Central Railway zone. It runs from to which also connects and the Konkan Railway. Currently this line is used for bypassing freight trains, Express and MEMU Passenger trains. And also construction of a separate Suburban Corridor on this route for more connectivity by the MRVC is going.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The Nerul–Uran line, also known as the Port line, is another part of the Central Railway connects Navi Mumbai to Uran, which is also in Navi Mumbai, but at its southwestern part. It also operates from the two separate platforms of Nerul and one separate platform of CBD Belapur to Uran, also making connectivity to JNPT in Navi Mumbai directly.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: There are two main classes of travel; the First and Second classes. The first class fare is approximately 8 times more expensive than second class and therefore tends to be less crowded during the non rush hours, though at times it is equally or more crowded than the general compartments during rush hour, due to most office employees having a first class transport pass provided by their employer. First class and Senior Citizen compartments also have cushioned seating, while the rest are typically plastic. There are following classes of travel:


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: There are also women-only cars (termed "ladies special"), and since 1992, "Ladies Special" trains with the entire train seats reserved for women passengers. A semi ladies special is a train with a few (e.g., 3) coaches reserved for women. These designations can be combined with "fast", "slow", etc. with terms such as "Slow Ladies Special".


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The Mumbai Suburban Railways are known for their open doors and windows. This is because there is no ventilation system on the trains, and the train relies on natural air ventilation. This was introduced as a cost-saving measure, as an air-conditioning system would be rendered useless during rush hour. Leaving the doors open also allows for a fast boarding process, as the trains stop for only 10 seconds, to combat overcrowding. In 2016, the Indian Railways manufactured the first local train for a journey (particularly for hot and humid summer season). This rake is manufactured at the Integral Coach Factory, Chennai. It has several new facilities, such as connected vestibules, cushioned seats, and sliding doors. It runs from Virar to and Thane to Vashi / Panvel. AC trains are fast locals and started their run from 25 December 2017 on WR and 30 January 2020 on Trans-Harbour Line.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The Mumbai Suburban Railway uses a proof-of-payment fare collection system. Tickets can be purchased at every train station. Travelling without a valid ticket is an offence and if caught can result in a penalty. The penalty is steeper for passengers travelling in first class without a valid ticket.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: Tickets can be bought for a single journey (one way) or a return journey. A return ticket is valid till the next day on weekdays and till Monday if purchased on a Friday. The ticket counters usually have long queues.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: Tourist tickets are valid for one, three, or five days that can be purchased up to three days in advance.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: Platform tickets are required to be purchased by those members of the public not boarding trains, but who wish to access the platforms at all stations, perhaps for the purpose of receiving or seeing off a passenger and also to use footbridges. These cost . A person can be penalised for non-possession of this ticket.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: To save time, a Coupon Booklet can be purchased and the coupons can be punched for the designated fare at Coupon Validating Machines (CVMs) at every station. The ticket fares matrix is pasted above the CVM. As of October 2012, there are approximately 575 CVMs on Mumbai Suburban Railway stations. The Central Railway network has 350 and the Western Line has 225.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: In early 2015, the authorities decided to discontinue CVMs w.e.f 1 April 2015. This decision was taken due to extensive duplication of the coupons, and the lack of transparency. The coupons were also lacking a way to trace them.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: There are also Smart Cards available that can be topped up (recharged with some amount) and one can use it to print tickets for themselves from an Automatic Ticket Vending Machine (ATVMs). A Season Ticket can be purchased if one is commuting regularly. One can choose the validity of these tickets from 1-month, 3 months to a year. Season Tickets are the most cost-effective and time-efficient option for regular commuters.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: The ticket counters usually have long queues. In order to bring a solution to this problem, the UTSOnMobile app was launched by railways minister Suresh Prabhu at Dadar railway station in December 2014. This app was launched initially for Android and Windows Phone, with the iOS version developed later.


title: Mumbai Suburban Railway

text: To use this app, the user has to sign up with his/her mobile number. After signing up, the user has the option to load the prepaid RWallet built in the app, using credit/debit cards, net banking, IMPS or private mobile-based apps. After the RWallet is loaded, the app can be used to book tickets on the entire network. Alternatively, the user may book tickets directly using credit/debit cards, net banking, IMPS, UPI, or various digital wallets such as PayTM, MobiKwik etc. for payments within the app without having to load the prepaid RWallet.