title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: Captain Ashwood is an even bigger fan of the concert party than Colonel Reynolds, especially when they dress up as girls. He is not very bright, and often unknowingly ruins other people's plans, especially the Sergeant Major's. His catchphrase is "It's a tricky one, sir", which he says in reply to Colonel Reynolds asking for his opinion when the concert party runs into a particular problem. He occasionally writes skits for the concert party, which they reluctantly accept, although they are, on the whole, of very low quality. He has absolutely no military bearing, which makes it very easy for the Sergeant Major and the others to manipulate him into using his authority to achieve their own ends. He is known for his stupidity, high-pitched voice, and love of gardening. He is exceptionally devoted to his wife, Fiona, though he does at one point have a fling with a local girl.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: The Sergeant Major is the only professional soldier among the concert party and its officers. He is extremely bigoted in his views, making every effort to bully the Indian camp staff and remind everyone of British supremacy in Asia. He has only one goal in life: to get his soldiers posted up the jungle and into action as fast as he can. Williams has a cunning and fierce pirate-like look. He is disgusted that his soldiers "prance about" on the stage wearing dresses and make-up all the time, and frequently calls them a "bunch of poofs". He is sometimes portrayed as a stereotypical "devious" Welshman, using cunning schemes to turn events in his favour. He dislikes all members of the concert party, apart from Parkin, whom he believes to be his son. He has a particular loathing for "Lah-Di-Dah" Gunner Graham, owing to Graham's university education, although Williams will praise him for it if it serves his purposes. Williams often mispronounces long words, turning "hysterical" into "historical" or "hysterectical", "misapprehension" into "mishappropriation", "education" into "heducation" and "ignorant" into "higorant". Williams also has a tendency to roar "Shut up!" when he hears something that meets his disapproval, hence his nickname, and is also remembered for his sarcastic remark, "Oh dear, how sad, never mind!" invariably delivered in a flat monotone. He plans, when at some future time he should leave the army, to marry a widow who owns a pub.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: "Solly" is a showbiz man who always plays the male leads in the concert party's shows and is also the party's producer. He is very intelligent, and often has some sort of devious plot to avoid being posted or to get one over on the Sergeant Major. His father was a pawnbroker in Bond Street, and he is Jewish. He leaves at the end of Series 2 when he is demobbed and returns to England.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: "Gloria" Beaumont is a very effeminate person who cannot handle the violence, heat and mosquitoes of army life in India very well. He considers himself an "artiste", and does not believe he should be in the Army, often trying to emphasise his show business angle and ignore the "soldier" parts of his job. He has a passion for show business and always dresses up as famous film stars during the concert party shows, especially Ginger Rogers. He was later promoted to Bombardier when Bombardier Solomons was demobbed. Despite Beaumont's effeminacy, he meets a nurse in the episode "Ticket to Blighty" and they announce they are to be wed. However, no more is heard of this plot line.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: "Lofty" is a soldier whose appearance can be summarised by quoting the Sergeant Major: "Is it a mushroom? No. Is it a soldier? No. It's Gunner Sugden." Lofty is the diminutive, rotund lead singer of the concert party usually seen in an old-fashioned pith helmet. He has an amazing tenor voice, which even the Sergeant Major cannot resist when he sings. Unfortunately, he is always picked out by the Sergeant Major as a "volunteer" when there is a particularly unpleasant or dangerous task to be carried out. He has been married three times; his two previous wives were called Agatha and Betty. Sugden's third and present wife is mentioned as sharing a house with Betty.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: "Parky" is the youngest member of the concert party and has tried everything to become part of them, including being a ventriloquist, comedian, and singer, although he is very clumsy and never does anything right. The Sergeant Major falsely believes that Parkin is his son (Williams had a relationship with Parkin's mother Edith in Colchester, which is why he treats him much better than he treats the others, and keeps telling him he has "a fine pair of shoulders"). He is not Williams' son, but when the rest of the concert party discover what the Sgt Major believes, Parkin is welcomed into the party, for the Sgt Major would want to stop it being sent into battle as long as Parkin is a member. In an early episode, the party get hold of Williams' and Parkin's medical records; they discover that Parkin's blood group O and Williams' is AB, so Parkin cannot be his son, but they alter the record of Parkin's blood group so that Williams will still believe he is his son. Consequently, Williams becomes very selective about Parkin's achievement – praising him when he does something right and ignoring the failure when he makes huge blunders. Lacking any talent as a putative entertainer in the concert party Parkin is appointed as the Battery Clerk, but misunderstands orders. Sergeant-Major Williams instructs him to "remove the mess by the Officers' lines", referring to a pile of old beds that were to be discarded. Instead, Parkin proceeds to have the Officer's Mess demolished. Later, Colonel Reynolds tells him to order 200 tent pegs, and he instead orders 200 tents.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: Gunner Graham is the concert party's pianist. His appearance – bald and bespectacled – marks him out as a stereotypical "boffin". He has a university degree in English literature (in early episodes, he claims to have attended Oxford, but later this is changed to Cambridge). He is very clever, speaking in an educated manner. This is why the Sergeant Major frequently repeats what he says in an exaggeratedly effete tone, as well as mockingly addressing him as "Mister La-De-Dah Gunner Graham". Graham often produces difficult and ingenious plans to solve the concert party's problems, but these plans never seem to work and often result in him saying "Oh well, bang goes that theory." The others (even the Sergeant Major and the officers) often rely on his intelligence to get them out of awkward situations.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: "Atlas" Mackintosh performs the strong man act in the show, which involves tearing telephone directories in half. He is rather short-tempered, especially when Beaumont calls him a "great, big, butch, hairy haggis". He is very masculine, and is a bit of a contradiction to what Beaumont thinks is right for the concert party. Nevertheless, Mackintosh always tries his best and copes with what is given to him.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: "Nobby" Clark performs a whistling act in the show, and can do excellent bird impersonations. He is not particularly clever and often makes nonsense comments or observations about situations in which they find themselves.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: "Nosher" Evans does a paper-tearing act. He is always eating something (and once stayed on punishment in the canteen for four hours after he was relieved, as he was enjoying himself); this results in him spraying the contents of his mouth all around him when he speaks.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: Rangi Ram is the concert party's Indian bearer and very proud to be of service to the army. The Sergeant Major shouts at him more than at anyone else, but Rangi is also the one he confides in when he wants to talk about problems. Rangi often breaks the fourth wall, providing the audience with an "old Hindu proverb" at the end of each episode, such as "There is an old Hindu proverb which say that if you see two eyes looking at you in the dark, it is not always a tiger. It might be two one-eyed tigers!" He is devious, and can often manipulate the situation for his own ends, usually financial. A frequently recurring gag connected with Rangi Ram is his continual references to "we British" and "us British" while at the same time referring to the other Indian characters as "ignorant coolies" or "damned natives". However, when asked to burn the Indian flag by the Sergeant Major, he refuses. He frequently clears his throat with a hacking sound. Following the death of Michael Bates, Rangi is written out of the series without explanation at the end of Series 5.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: Muhammed the char wallah walks around the camp all day, selling tea from his urn. He also sings the musical interruptions between the scenes, which are mostly American hit songs, accompanied by a sitar. At the end of the credits, he starts to sing "Land of Hope and Glory" only to be interrupted by the Sergeant Major shouting "SHUT UP!!!". After Rangi leaves, he takes on the role of Bearer to the concert party, as well as still being the Char Wallah.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: Rumzan the punkah wallah always sits outside the officers' quarters, pulling a string that is attached to a large fan indoors. He comments on everything in Urdu, and always adds a few words in English at the end. Rangi often tells him to "sit up straight while you are punkah-ing" (with the word "sit" pronounced with an initial "sh" sound for comedic effect) and not to "be such Clever Dickie". He is far more intelligent than the others give him credit for, and much of what he observes early on is often borne out in the end, but no one notices. He disappears without explanation at the end of Series 6.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: Mrs Waddilove-Evans is the wife of a local colonel, who lives in a large house near the camp in Deolali. In the earlier episodes, she is the lover of Colonel Reynolds; the two have a strong relationship, to the point when she accompanies the patrol on a journey to a nearby town. However, the group's vehicle breaks down and Rangi recommends that they spend the night in a nearby fort. The Colonel and Mrs Waddilove-Evans agree to meet at midnight and they do so. As Colonel Reynolds is distracted, Mrs Waddilove-Evans is kidnapped by a group of Pathan tribesmen and the concert party, Rangi, Muhammed and Rumzan attempt to save her. They are surprised when they meet her on a horse further on, having gained her freedom. It is implied that she escaped by granting sexual favours to the smugglers.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: Ling Soo is a local girl who works as a maid for Colonel and Mrs Waddilove-Evans. She and Sergeant Major Williams have a continuing relationship. Her father, the owner of the Deolali Chinese restaurant, arranges for Williams and Ling Soo to elope to the mountains and marry secretly. This horrifies Williams, for he would be classed as a deserter, and creates a dilemma for him; should he stay on at the camp, or should he marry Ling Soo? Eventually he reluctantly chooses his profession, and his relationship is not mentioned again.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: The Inspector is the head of police in Deolali, who warns Colonel Reynolds and Captain Ashwood on a few occasions when the locals are rioting, demanding that the British go home.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: Me Thant is a Burmese smuggler, who is bribed by GHQ with twenty pieces of gold a week to keep away from, and avoid assaulting, the local British troops. Later on, he challenges Sergeant Major Williams to a test to see which of the two is more "manly". Me Thant cheats to make sure he wins the test, but his gang is infiltrated by members of GHQ, resulting in him and his gang being tied against a small plank, "Burmese style".


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: Ah Syn is the cook for the camp later in the series, a man of Chinese ethnicity who served food that Captain Ashwood describes as "furniture stuffing". Gunner Graham in particular moans that the food is inedible and disgusting. When Captain Ashwood asks if he knows about spotted dick and toad in the hole, he misunderstands entirely and thinks that spotted dick is an illness.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: American actor John Wayne was filming in London in 1974, and caught an episode on television. Unimpressed with what he was seeing, he is reported to have said: "Well, at least the guy playing the sergeant-major has a great voice".


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: Spike Milligan is reported to have considered Windsor Davies' performance the most comedic he had seen.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: The series is no longer repeated on British television, as it is said to fall short of modern broadcasting standards concerning racism. In 2014, Ed Richards, then head of Ofcom, said 1970s and 1980s sitcoms with racist and offensive content "are unimaginable today" with all viewers objecting to such broadcasts. "The Telegraph" specified "It Ain't Half Hot Mum" as one of the shows to which he was referring.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: "It is without doubt the funniest series that David Croft and I wrote. Of course, it is also the show that we're not allowed to talk about any more," said Jimmy Perry to "Guardian" journalist Stuart Jeffries in 2003, who reported "it's regarded as a racist show, and banished to the televisual margin that is UK Gold". In the opinion of journalist Neil Clark in a profile of Perry written for "The Daily Telegraph" a decade later it "appears to have fallen victim to political correctness". Clark maintains the show is a classic of the sitcom genre.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: The casting of the white actor Michael Bates as the Indian bearer Rangi Ram has been described as an example of blackface. Jimmy Perry rejected the claim that Bates "blacked-up", saying "all he wore was a light tan", in the 2013 "Daily Telegraph" interview. David West Brown wrote, in "English and Empire", that the case for Bates' character rests on an assumption that his "dramatic and social functions are not derogatorily comic in the way that depictions of African diaspora identities are" in a series like "The Black and White Minstrel Show". The BBC website article about the series describes Bates as having "blacked up". The show's creators had been aware of the issues around the casting of a white actor wearing darkening makeup to play one of the Indian characters, but went ahead owing to the creators' belief that there was a lack of suitable Indian actors at the time. Jimmy Perry in his 2013 "Daily Telegraph" interview defended the casting, commenting that Bates, who was born in India to English parents, "spoke fluent Urdu, and was a captain in the Gurkhas". Comedian and actor Sanjeev Bhaskar, who is of Indian ethnicity, stated in a 2010 interview: "I've always felt that the criticism of him was too simplistic. Michael Bates was a very funny actor ... and had great comic timing. Rather than race it was really about the class differences between the officer toffs and the sergeant major. [Bates's character] Randhi was like Bilko, he had the quick lines and I never felt that he was taking the mickey out of Indians."


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: Perry told an interviewer from "Radio Times" in 2014 about this rejection: "You might as well be in Stalin's Russia. You don't want to upset anyone". Jeffries asked Perry about the exchanges between the Battery Sergeant Major and the troupe which went "You're a load of poofs! What are you?", followed by the standard response "We're a load of poofs!". Perry commented: "People complain that the language was homophobic, and it was, but it was exactly how people spoke." He referred to the behaviour of his own Sergeant Major in the concert party in India, who told them: "'No man who puts on make-up and ponces about on a stage is normal - what are you?' 'We're a bunch of poofs!' we'd reply". Of the depiction of the Melvyn Hayes character 'Gloria' Beaumont, Croft told interviewer Simon Morgan-Russell that the character "never expressed any interest in other males" and, in fact, "was a transvestite, not a homosexual".


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: The series' overall tone of sympathy towards imperialism is believed to be at least partly responsible for its not being repeated on British television in later years, along with, according to Darren Lee writing for the British Film Institute's Screenonline website, a belief that it contains "national stereotyping and occasionally patronising humour", or in the words of Stuart Jeffries in 2015, it contained "obliging underlings sporting cheerful grins that, even when I was a boy, made me cringe." "Rather than being satirical, or dramatic, or even a parable, it relied solely on English prejudice and nostalgia", A. A. Gill wrote in "The Sunday Times" in 2013. According to Mark Duguid, again for Screenonline, it suffers "from its narrow stereotypes of its handful of Indian supporting characters as alternately servile, foolish, lazy or devious". Neil Clark, in a 2005 article for "The Times", said the series "delightfully lampooned the attitudes of the British in India". Its perceived flaws have not stopped it appearing in several retrospectives.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: Concerning the issues with "It Ain't Half Hot Mum", Alex Massie wrote in January 2019, shortly after the death of Windsor Davies, that "even when judged by modern standards" the series is a "relatively minor offender when compared with programmes" such as "Mind Your Language", "Love Thy Neighbour" and "Curry and Chips".


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: All eight series have been released on DVD region code 2 and 4. A Complete Series Collection Box Set containing all eight series of the show was released on 4 October 2010 in Region 2 and re-released in 2018. No complete series boxset has been released in Australia, Region 4.


title: It Ain't Half Hot Mum

text: Master copies of the fourth and sixth episodes of series one ('A Star is Born' and 'It's a Wise Child') were lost after first broadcast. Domestic VHS copies recorded by an Australian viewer were located in 1988. They are of inferior quality, but are included as extras on the series 1 DVD.


title: SMPTE color bars

text: SMPTE color bars are a television test pattern used where the NTSC video standard is utilized, including countries in North America. The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) refers to the pattern as Engineering Guideline (EG) 1-1990. Its components are a known standard, and created by test pattern generators. Comparing it as received to the known standard gives video engineers an indication of how an NTSC video signal has been altered by recording or transmission and what adjustments must be made to bring it back to specification. It is also used for setting a television monitor or receiver to reproduce NTSC chrominance and luminance information correctly.


title: SMPTE color bars

text: A precursor to the SMPTE test pattern was conceived by Norbert D. Larky (1927–2018) and David D. Holmes (1926–2006) of RCA Laboratories and first published in RCA Licensee Bulletin LB-819 on February 7, 1951. U.S. patent 2,742,525 Color Test Pattern Generator (now expired) was awarded on April 17, 1956, to Larky and Holmes. Later, the EIA published a standard, RS-189A, which in 1976 became EIA-189A, which described a Standard Color Bar Signal, intended for use as a test signal for adjustment of color monitors, adjustment of encoders, and rapid checks of color television transmission systems. In 1977, A. A. Goldberg, of the CBS Technology Center, described an improved color bar test signal developed at the center by Hank Mahler (1936–2021) that was then submitted to the SMPTE TV Video Technology Committee for consideration as a SMPTE recommended practice. This improved test signal was published as the standard SMPTE ECR 1-1978. Its development by CBS was awarded a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award in 2002. CBS did not file a patent application on the test signal, thereby putting it into the public domain for general use by the industry.


title: SMPTE color bars

text: An extended version of the SMPTE color bars, SMPTE RP 219:2002 was introduced to test HDTV signals (see subsection).


title: SMPTE color bars

text: Although color bars were originally designed to calibrate analog NTSC equipment, they remain widely used in transmission and within modern digital television facilities. In the current context color bars are used to maintain accurate chroma and luminance levels in CRT, LCD, LED, plasma, and other video displays, as well as duplication, satellite, fiber-optic and microwave transmission, and television and webcast equipment.


title: SMPTE color bars

text: In a survey of the top standards of the organizations' first 100 years, SMPTE EG-1 was voted as the 5th-most important SMPTE standard.


title: SMPTE color bars

text: In a SMPTE color bar image, the top two-thirds of the television picture contain seven vertical bars of 75% intensity. In order from left to right, the colors are white or gray, yellow, cyan, green, magenta, red, and blue. The choice of white or gray depends on whether that bar's luminance is 100% or not. This sequence runs through all seven possible combinations that use at least one of the three basic color components of green, red, and blue, with blue cycling on and off between every bar, red cycling on and off every two bars, and green on for the leftmost four bars and off for the rightmost three. Because green contributes the largest share of luminance, followed by red, then blue, this sequence of bars thus appears on a waveform monitor in luminance mode as a downward staircase from left to right. The graticule of a vectorscope is etched with boxes showing the permissible regions where the traces from these seven bars are supposed to fall if the signal is properly adjusted.


title: SMPTE color bars

text: Below the main set of seven bars is a strip of blue, magenta, cyan, and white or gray castellations. When a television receiver is set to filter out all colors except for blue, these castellations, combined with the main set of color bars, are used to adjust the color controls; they appear as four solid blue bars, with no visible distinction between the bars and the castellations if the color controls are properly adjusted.


title: SMPTE color bars

text: The bottom section contains a square of 100% intensity white and a rectangle of 7.5% intensity black, for use in setting the luminance range. More modern versions of the pattern feature a "PLUGE pulse". The white square lines up so that it is below the yellow and cyan bars, on a waveform monitor this will show up with the white bar overlapping the peak of the yellow and cyan chroma at 100 IRE units. The "pluge" (short for picture line-up generation equipment) pulse is positioned within the black rectangle, below the red bar (it is present in the illustration but may be hard to see). It comprises three small vertical bars, a rightmost one with intensity 4% above black level (11.5 IRE), a middle one with intensity exactly equal to black (7.5 IRE), and a leftmost one with intensity 4% below black (super-black or "blacker than black", 3.5 IRE). The pluge pulse aids in adjusting the bottom of the luminance range to avoid either washing out the black tones into grays or collapsing picture information into the signal clipping that occurs a small distance below the black level (known as "crushing the blacks"). When a monitor is properly adjusted, the rightmost pluge bar should be just barely visible, while the left two should appear indistinguishable from each other and completely black. Also in the bottom section are two sections that contain -In-phase and +Quadrature signals (see YIQ), centered on black level and having the same gain as the color burst signal; these show up on the pattern as a square of very dark blue, and a square of very dark purple. On a vectorscope, they appear as two short lines ninety degrees apart. These are used to ensure that the television receiver is properly demodulating the 3.58 MHz color subcarrier portion of the signal. The vectors for the -I and +Q blocks should fall exactly on the I and Q axes on the vectorscope if the chrominance signal is demodulated properly.


title: SMPTE color bars

text: These bars give rise to the former portion of the casual term "bars and tone". Typically, a television network, TV station, or other originator of video programming transmits SMPTE color bars together with a continuous 1,000 Hz sine wave before sending program material, in order to assert ownership of the transmission line or medium, and so that receiving stations and intermediary telecommunications providers may adjust their equipment. Likewise, producers of television programs typically record "bars and tone" at the beginning of a videotape or other recording medium so that the playback equipment can be calibrated. Often, the name or callsign of the TV station, other information such as a real-time clock, or another signal source is graphically superimposed over the bars.


title: SMPTE color bars

text: For digital video sources, the 10-bit YCbCr values for SD color bars are based on the SMPTE formula for Y from the NTSC system ( Y = 0.299R + 0.587G + 0.114B). The following table show the expected digital values, for example when measured using a signal analyzer.


title: SMPTE color bars

text: The colors below are presented using sRGB transfer of CSS. Since sRGB is the standard colorspace for webpages and computer screens, this gives only an idea of the intended colors. They are not completely representative of how they look on TV displays, since these follow the ITU-R BT.1886 standard, specifying a different gamma correction value, and thus colors below will look darker on such a display, and those darker colors will be the reference ones. The off-by-one errors (for example 254 instead of 255 and 1 instead of 0) happen because the 8 bit Y'PbPr values were used when decoding to R'G'B', if you use 10-bit Y'PbPr that does not happen.


title: SMPTE color bars

text: Y'PbPr (and Y'CbCr) values of 75% (100/0/75/0) SMPTE ECR 1-1978 color bars (0.75 * 219 + 16 = 180) using BT.709-2 matrix coefficients as written in RP 219:2002:


title: SMPTE color bars

text: The source data for 10-bit and 12-bit Y'PbPr is 8-bit Studio R'G'B', so 10-bit data is not just a bitshift operation (that means multiply by 4) from 8-bit Y'PbPr, as usually the case. For example, for 75% Blue 28-212-120 would be just 112-848-480, but it is actually 111-848-481.


title: SMPTE color bars

text: An extended version of SMPTE Color Bars signal, developed by the Japanese Association of Radio Industry and Businesses as ARIB STD-B28 and standardized as SMPTE RP 219:2002 (High-Definition, Standard-Definition Compatible Color Bar Signal) was introduced to test HDTV signal with an aspect ratio of 16:9 that can be down converted to a SDTV color bar signal with an aspect ratio of either 4:3 or 16:9. The Color Bar signal is generated with unconventionally slow rise and fall time value to facilitate video level control and monitor color adjustments of HDTV and SDTV equipment. Digital test images generated following the SMPTE RP 219:2002 specifications and adapted to perfectly fit 114 standard and non-standard resolutions for both 16bpp and 8bpp, are freely available in the COLOR dataset of the TESTIMAGES archive. Later RP 219:2002 became RP 219-1:2014 and then RP 219-2:2016 was added for UHD (and ARIB STD-B66). Then ITU-R Rec. BT.2111 was done with PQ and HLG HDR transfer functions (like ARIB STD-B72).


title: SMPTE color bars

text: The values of 100% (100/0/100/0) SMPTE RP 219:2002 color bars (1.00 * 219 + 16 = 235) using BT.709 matrix coefficients (only white and black are the same using BT.601 matrix), taken from the standard:


title: SMPTE color bars

text: ITU-R Rec. BT.1729 specified the last two 100% colors, green and magenta. It also specified all 100% colors for BT.601 matrix, not only BT.709.


title: Tübingen

text: Tübingen (, , Swabian: "Dibenga") is a traditional university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers. about one in three of the 90,000 people living in Tübingen is a student. As of the 2018/2019 winter semester, 27,665 students attend the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. The city has the lowest median age in Germany, in part due to its status as a university city. As of December 31, 2015, the average age of a citizen of Tübingen is 39.1 years. The city is known for its veganism and environmentalism.


title: Tübingen

text: Immediately north of the city lies the Schönbuch, a densely wooded nature park. The Swabian Alb mountains rise about (beeline Tübingen City to Roßberg - 869 m) to the southeast of Tübingen.


title: Tübingen

text: The Ammer and Steinlach rivers are tributaries of the Neckar river, which flows in an easterly direction through the city, just south of the medieval old town. Large parts of the city are hilly, with the Schlossberg and the Österberg in the city centre and the Schnarrenberg and Herrlesberg, among others, rising immediately adjacent to the inner city.


title: Tübingen

text: The highest point is at about above sea level near Bebenhausen in the Schönbuch forest, while the lowest point is in the city's eastern Neckar valley. The geographical centre of the state of Baden-Württemberg is in a small forest called Elysium, near the Botanical Gardens of the city's university.


title: Tübingen

text: Tübingen is the capital of an eponymous district and an eponymous administrative region ("Regierungsbezirk"), before 1973 called "Südwürttemberg-Hohenzollern".


title: Tübingen

text: Tübingen is, with nearby Reutlingen (about east), one of the two centre cities of the Neckar-Alb region.


title: Tübingen

text: Administratively, it is not part of the Stuttgart Region, bordering it to the north and west (Böblingen district). However, the city and northern parts of its district can be regarded as belonging to that region in a wider regional and cultural context.


title: Tübingen

text: The area was probably first settled by ancient humans in the 12th millennium BC. The Romans left some traces here in AD 85, when they built a limes frontier wall at the Neckar River. Tübingen dates from the 6th or 7th century, when the region was populated by the Alamanni people. Some historians argue that the Battle of Solicinium was fought at Spitzberg, a mountain in Tübingen, in AD 367, although there is no evidence for this.


title: Tübingen

text: Tübingen first appears in official records in 1191. The local castle, "Hohentübingen", has records going back to 1078, when it was besieged by Henry IV, king of Germany. Its name was transcribed in Medieval Latin as and .


title: Tübingen

text: From 1146, Count Hugo V (1125–52) was promoted to count palatine as Hugo I. Tübingen was established as the capital of a County Palatine of Tübingen. By 1231, Tübingen was a "civitas", indicating recognition by the Crown of civil liberties and a court system.


title: Tübingen

text: In 1262, an Augustinian monastery was established by Pope Alexander IV in Tübingen; in 1272, a Franciscan monastery was founded. In 1300, a Latin school (today's Uhland-Gymnasium) was founded. During the Protestant Reformation, which Duke Ulrich of Württemberg converted to, he disestablished the Franciscan monastery in 1535.


title: Tübingen

text: In 1342, the county palatine was sold to Ulrich III, Count of Württemberg and incorporated into the County of Württemberg.


title: Tübingen

text: Between 1470 and 1483, St. George's Collegiate Church was built. The collegiate church offices provided the opportunity for what soon afterwards became the most significant event in Tübingen's history: the founding of the Eberhard Karls University by Duke Eberhard im Bart of Württemberg in 1477, thus making it one of the oldest universities in Central Europe. It became soon renowned as one of the most influential places of learning in the Holy Roman Empire, especially for theology (a Protestant faculty, Tübinger Stift, was established in 1535 in the former Augustinian monastery). Today, the university is still the biggest source of income for the residents of the city and one of the biggest universities in Germany with more than 26,000 students.


title: Tübingen

text: Between 1622 and 1625, the Catholic League occupied Lutheran Württemberg in the course of the Thirty Years' War. In the summer of 1631, the city was raided. In 1635/36 the city was hit by the Plague. In 1638, Swedish troops conquered Tübingen. Towards the end of the war, French troops occupied the city from 1647 until 1649.


title: Tübingen

text: In 1789, parts of the old town burned down, but were later rebuilt in the original style. In 1798 the "Allgemeine Zeitung", a leading newspaper in early 19th-century Germany, was founded in Tübingen by Johann Friedrich Cotta. From 1807 until 1843, the poet Friedrich Hölderlin lived in Tübingen in a tower overlooking the Neckar.


title: Tübingen

text: In the Nazi era, the Tübingen Synagogue was burned in the Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938. The Second World War left the city largely unscathed, mainly because of the peace initiative of a local doctor, Theodor Dobler. It was occupied by the French army and became part of the French zone of occupation. From 1946 to 1952, Tübingen was the capital of the newly formed state of Württemberg-Hohenzollern (as ), before the state of Baden-Württemberg was created by merging Baden, Württemberg-Baden and Württemberg-Hohenzollern. The French troops had a garrison stationed in the south of the city until the end of the Cold War in the 1990s.


title: Tübingen

text: In the 1960s, Tübingen was one of the centres of the German student movement and the Protests of 1968 and has ever since shaped left and green political views. Some radicalized Tübingen students supported the leftist Rote Armee Fraktion terrorist group, with active member Gudrun Ensslin, a local and a Tübingen student from 1960 to 1963, joining the group in 1968.


title: Tübingen

text: Although noticing such things today is largely impossible, as recently as the 1950s, Tübingen was a very socioeconomically divided city, with poor local farmers and tradesmen living along the "Stadtgraben" (City Canal) and students and academics residing around the "Alte Aula" and the "Burse", the old university buildings. There, hanging on the "Cottahaus", a sign commemorates Goethe's stay of a few weeks while visiting his publisher. The German tendency to memorialize every minor presence of its historical greats (comparable to the statement "Washington slept here" in the United States) is parodied on the building next door. This simple building, once a dormitory, features a plain sign with the words ""Hier kotzte Goethe"" (lit.: "Goethe puked here").


title: Tübingen

text: In the second half of the 20th century, Tübingen's administrative area was extended beyond what is now called the "core city" to include several outlying small towns and villages. Most notable among these is Bebenhausen, a village clustered around a castle and Bebenhausen Abbey, a Cistercian cloister about north of Tübingen.


title: Tübingen

text: , the city had 90.000 inhabitants. Life in the city is dominated by its roughly 28.000 students. Tübingen is best described as a mixture of old and distinguished academic flair, including liberal and green politics on one hand and traditional German-style student fraternities on the other, with rural-agricultural environs and shaped by typical Lutheran-Pietist characteristics, such as austerity and a Protestant work ethic, and traditional Swabian elements, such as frugality, order, and tidiness. The city is home to many picturesque buildings from previous centuries and lies on the River Neckar.


title: Tübingen

text: , the German weekly magazine "Focus" published a national survey according to which Tübingen had the highest quality of life of all cities in Germany. Factors taken into consideration included the infrastructure, the integration of bicycle lanes into the road system, a bus system connecting surrounding hills and valleys, late-night services, areas of the city that can be reached on foot, the pedestrianised old town, and other amenities and cultural events offered by the university. Tübingen is the city with the youngest average population in Germany.


title: Tübingen

text: In central Tübingen, the Neckar divides briefly into two streams, forming the elongated "Neckarinsel" (Neckar Island), famous for its "Platanenallee" with high plane trees, which are around 200 years old. Pedestrians can reach the island via stairs on the narrow ends leading down from a bridge spanning the Neckar. During the summer, the "Neckarinsel" is occasionally the venue for concerts, plays, and literary readings. The row of historical houses across one side of the elongated "Neckarinsel" is called the "Neckarfront" and includes the house with adjoining tower where poet Friedrich Hölderlin stayed for the last 36 years of his life, as he struggled with mental instability.


title: Tübingen

text: Tübingen's "Altstadt" (old town) survived the World War II due to the city's lack of heavy industry. The result is a growing domestic tourism business as visitors come to wander through one of the few completely intact historic "Altstädte" in Germany. The highlights of Tübingen include its crooked cobblestone lanes, narrow-stair alleyways picking their way through the hilly terrain, streets lined with canals, and well-maintained traditional half-timbered houses.


title: Tübingen

text: Old city landmarks include the city hall on Markt Square and the Hohentübingen Castle, now part of the University of Tübingen. The central landmark is the "Stiftskirche" (Collegiate Church). Along with the rest of the city, the Stiftskirche was one of the first to convert to Martin Luther's protestant church. As such, it maintains (and carefully defends) several "Roman Catholic" features, such as patron saints. Below the "Rathaus" is a quiet, residential street called the "Judengasse", the former Jewish neighborhood of Tübingen until the city's Jews were expelled in 1477. On the street corner is a plaque commemorating the fate of Tübingen's Jews.


title: Tübingen

text: The centre of Tübingen is the site of weekly and seasonal events, including regular market days on the "Holzmarkt" by the Stiftskirche and the "Marktplatz" by the Rathaus, an outdoor cinema in winter and summer, festive autumn and Christmas markets and (formerly) Europe's largest Afro-Brazilian festival.


title: Tübingen

text: Students and tourists also come to the Neckar River in the summer to visit beer gardens or go boating in "Stocherkähne", the Tübingen equivalent of Oxford and Cambridge punts, only slimmer. A "Stocherkahn" carries up to 20 people. On the second Thursday of June, all "Stocherkahn" punts take part in a major race, the "Stocherkahnrennen".


title: Tübingen

text: Bebenhausen Abbey lies in the village of Bebenhausen, a district of Tübingen. A subdivision of the pilgrimage route known as the Way of St. James starts here and runs through Tübingen.


title: Tübingen

text: Tübingen has a notable arts culture as well as nightlife. In addition to the full roster of official and unofficial university events that range from presentations by the university's official poet in residence to parties hosted by the student associations of each faculty, the city can boast of several choirs, theatre companies and nightclubs. Also, Tübingen's "Kunsthalle" (art exhibition hall), on the "Wanne", houses two or three exhibits of international note each year.


title: Tübingen

text: Tübingen is divided into 22 districts, the city core of twelve districts (population of about 51,000) and ten outer districts (suburbs) (population of about 31,000):


title: Tübingen

text: Since World War II, Tübingen's population has almost doubled from about 45,000 to the current 88,000, also due to the incorporation of formerly independent villages into the city in the 1970s.


title: Tübingen

text: Currently, Lord Mayor Boris Palmer (Green Party) has set the ambitious goal of increasing the population of Tübingen to 100,000 within the next several years. To achieve this, the city is closing gaps between buildings within the city proper by allowing new houses to be built there; this is also to counter the tendency of urban sprawl and land consumption that has been endangering the preservation of rural landscapes of Southern Germany.


title: Tübingen

text: For their commitment to their international partnership, the Council of Europe awarded the Europe Prize to Tübingen and Aix-en-Provence in 1965. The city's dedication to a European understanding is also reflected in the naming of several streets and squares, including the large "Europaplatz" (Europe Square) outside the railway station.


title: Tübingen

text: By plane: Tübingen is about from the Baden-Württemberg state airport ("Landesflughafen Stuttgart", also called Stuttgart Airport).


title: Tübingen

text: By automobile: Tübingen is on the "Bundesstraße 27" (a "federal road") that crosses through Baden-Württemberg, connecting the city with Würzburg, Heilbronn, Stuttgart and the "Landesflughafen" (Stuttgart Airport) to the north and Rottweil and Donaueschingen to the south.


title: Tübingen

text: By rail: Tübingen Hauptbahnhof is on the regional train line Neckar-Alb Railway-Bahn ("Neckar-Alb-Bahn") from Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof via Esslingen and Reutlingen to Tübingen. The average time of travel to Stuttgart is 1:01 hrs., with some trains taking only 45 mins. Other regional lines are the "Hohenzollerische Landesbahn", connecting the city with Hechingen and Sigmaringen (so-called Zollernalb Railway), "Zollernalbbahn" and connections to Herrenberg (Ammer Valley Railway, "Ammertalbahn") and Horb (Upper Neckar Railway, "Obere Neckarbahn"). Since 2009, there is also a daily direct Intercity link to Mannheim, Cologne and Düsseldorf as well as to Berlin.


title: Tübingen

text: Local public transport: The city, due to its high student population, features an extensive public bus network with more than 20 lines connecting the city districts and places outside of Tübingen such as Ammerbuch, Gomaringen and Nagold. There are also several night bus lines in the early hours every day. A direct bus is available to Stuttgart Airport (via Leinfelden-Echterdingen) as well as to Böblingen and Reutlingen.


title: Tübingen

text: The Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen dates from 1477, making it one of the oldest in Germany. Including the university hospitals, it is also the city's largest employer. The town is also host to several research institutes including the Max Planck Institutes for Biological Cybernetics, Developmental Biology, Intelligent Systems, The Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the MPG (and formerly the Max Planck Institute for Biology), the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, the Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and many others. A modern technology park is growing in the northern part of the city, where science, industrial companies and start-ups are conducting joint research, primarily on biotechnology and artificial intelligence. The university also maintains an excellent botanical garden, the Botanischer Garten der Universität Tübingen. Furthermore, there is a Protestant College of Church Music.


title: Tübingen

text: More than 10,000 children and young adults in Tübingen regularly attend school. There are 30 schools in the city, some of which consist of more than one type of school. Of these, 17 are primary schools while the others are for secondary education: four schools are of the lowest rank, "Hauptschule", three of the middle rank, "Realschule", and six are "Gymnasien" (grammar schools). There also are four vocational schools ("Berufsschule") and three special needs schools.


title: Nepenthes

text: Nepenthes () is a genus of carnivorous plants, also known as tropical pitcher plants, or monkey cups, in the monotypic family Nepenthaceae. The genus includes about 170 species, and numerous natural and many cultivated hybrids. They are mostly liana-forming plants of the Old World tropics, ranging from South China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines; westward to Madagascar (two species) and the Seychelles (one); southward to Australia (four) and New Caledonia (one); and northward to India (one) and Sri Lanka (one). The greatest diversity occurs on Borneo, Sumatra, and the Philippines, with many endemic species. Many are plants of hot, humid, lowland areas, but the majority are tropical montane plants, receiving warm days but cool to cold, humid nights year round. A few are considered tropical alpine, with cool days and nights near freezing. The name "monkey cups" refers to the fact that monkeys were once thought to drink rainwater from the pitchers.


title: Nepenthes

text: "Nepenthes" species usually consist of a shallow root system and a prostrate or climbing stem, often several metres long and up to or more, and usually or less in diameter, although this may be thicker in a few species (e.g. "N. bicalcarata"). From the stems arise alternate, sword-shaped leaves with entire leaf margins. An extension of the midrib (the tendril), which in some species aids in climbing, protrudes from the tip of the leaf; at the end of the tendril the pitcher forms. The pitcher starts as a small bud and gradually expands to form a globe- or tube-shaped trap. The shapes can evoke a champagne flute or a misused condom.


title: Nepenthes

text: The trap contains a fluid of the plant's own production, which may be watery or more viscous, and is used to drown the prey. This fluid contains viscoelastic biopolymers that may be crucial to the retention of insects within the traps of many species. The viscoelastic fluid in pitchers is especially effective in the retention of winged insects. The trapping efficiency of this fluid remains high, even when significantly diluted by water, as inevitably happens in wet conditions.


title: Nepenthes

text: The lower part of the trap contains glands which absorb nutrients from captured prey. Along the upper inside part of the trap is a slick, waxy coating which makes the escape of its prey nearly impossible. Surrounding the entrance to the trap is a structure called the peristome (the "lip"), which is slippery and often quite colorful, attracting prey, but offering an unsure footing. The prey-capture effectiveness of the peristome is further enhanced in moist environments, where condensation may cause a thin water film to form on the surface of the peristome. When wet, the slippery surface of the peristome causes insects to ‘aquaplane’, or slip and fall, into the pitcher. Above the peristome is a lid (the operculum); in many species, this keeps rain from diluting the fluid within the pitcher, the underside of which may contain nectar glands which attract prey.


title: Nepenthes

text: "Nepenthes" species usually produce two types of pitchers, known as leaf dimorphism. Appearing near the base of the plant are the large, lower traps, which typically sit on the ground. The upper or aerial pitchers are usually smaller, coloured differently, and possess different features from the lower pitchers. These upper pitchers usually form as the plant reaches maturity and the plant grows taller. To keep the plant steady, the upper pitchers often form a loop in the tendril, allowing it to wrap around nearby support. In some species (e.g. "N. rafflesiana"), different prey may be attracted by the two types of pitchers. This varied morphology also often makes identification of species difficult.


title: Nepenthes

text: Prey usually consists of insects, but the largest species (e.g. "N. rajah" and "N. rafflesiana") may occasionally catch small vertebrates, such as rats and lizards. Records of cultivated plants trapping small birds have been made. Flowers occur in racemes or more rarely in panicles with male and female flowers on separate plants. Three species have symbiotic relationships with treeshrews, which eat the nectar produced by the plant and defecate into the pitchers, providing valuable nutrients.


title: Nepenthes

text: "Nepenthes" are insect-pollinated, the primary agents being flies (including blow flies, midges, and mosquitoes), moths, wasps, and butterflies. Their smells can range from sweet to musty or fungus-like. Seed is typically produced in a four-sided capsule which may contain 50–500 wind-distributed seeds, consisting of a central embryo and two wings, one on either side (though "N. pervillei" differs).


title: Nepenthes

text: The genus is cytologically diploid, with all studied species having a chromosome number of "2n"=80. This high number is thought to reflect paleopolyploidy (likely 8x or 16x).


title: Nepenthes

text: About 170 species of "Nepenthes" are currently recognised as valid. This number is increasing, with several new species being described each year.


title: Nepenthes

text: The genus name "Nepenthes" was first published in 1737 in Carl Linnaeus's "Hortus Cliffortianus". It references a passage in Homer's "Odyssey", in which the potion "Nepenthes pharmakon" is given to Helen by an Egyptian queen. "Nepenthe" literally means "without grief" ("ne" = not, "penthos" = grief) and, in Greek mythology, is a drug that quells all sorrows with forgetfulness. Linnaeus explained:


title: Nepenthes

text: If this is not Helen's "Nepenthes", it certainly will be for all botanists. What botanist would not be filled with admiration if, after a long journey, he should find this wonderful plant. In his astonishment past ills would be forgotten when beholding this admirable work of the Creator! [translated from Latin by Harry Veitch]


title: Nepenthes

text: The plant Linnaeus described was "N. distillatoria", called" bāndurā" (බාඳුරා), a species from Sri Lanka.


title: Nepenthes

text: "Nepenthes" was formally published as a generic name in 1753 in Linnaeus's famous "Species Plantarum", which established botanical nomenclature as it exists today. "Nepenthes distillatoria" is the type species of the genus.


title: Nepenthes

text: The name "monkey cups" was discussed in the May 1964 issue of "National Geographic", in which Paul A. Zahl wrote:


title: Nepenthes

text: The carriers called them "monkey cups," a name I had heard elsewhere in reference to "Nepenthes", but the implication that monkeys drink the pitcher fluid seemed farfetched. I later proved it true. In Sarawak, I found an orangutan that had been raised as a pet and later freed. As I approached it gingerly in the forest, I offered it a half-full pitcher. To my surprise, the ape accepted it, and with the finesse of a lady at tea, executed a delicate bottoms-up.


title: Nepenthes

text: The plants are often called "kantong semar" (Semar's pocket) in Indonesia and "sako ni Hudas" (Judas' money bag) in the Philippines.


title: Nepenthes

text: An absence of evidence of intermediate species, fossil or living (i.e. a missing link), does not allow forming a phylogenetical timeline for the development of the distinctive traits of modern "Nepenthes", which include its relatively rare strict dioecy and carnivorous pitchers. Although "Nepenthes" is distantly related to several modern genera, among these, even the carnivorous relatives [the sundews ("Drosera"), Venus flytrap ("Dionea muscipula"), waterwheel plant ("Aldrovanda"), and dewy pine ("Drosophyllum")], all lack those traits. Among known "Nepenthes", no protomodern characteristics or large variations are found, which suggests that all extant species radiated from a single close ancestor bearing all the modern traits. Phylogenetic comparisons of the chloroplast "matK "gene sequences between "Nepenthes" species and with related species support this conclusion, long genetic distance between "Nepenthes" and others, and abruptly diverging "pom-pom" grouping of the "Nepenthes" species .


title: Nepenthes

text: Fossilized pollen of "Nepenthes"-like plants living on the northern Tethys Sea from 65 to 35 million years ago indicates that then-warmer Europe may have been where the proto-"Nepenthes" developed, and then escaped to Asia and India as Africa collided with Europe and the ensuing climate change wiped out the ancestral species in the original habitat. About 20 million years ago, Borneo, Sumatra, and Sulawesi and possibly even the Philippines were connected to mainland Asia, providing a bridge for the colonization of most sites of "Nepenthes" species radiation. The extensive landbridges in the area 20,000 years ago during the ice age would have provided access to the remaining sites of "Nepenthes" populations in Oceania. The main complication with this hypothesis is the presence of "Nepenthes" on the distant islands of Seychelles and Madagascar. The seeds were thought to have been transferred by seabirds and shorebirds, which rest during their migrations in swampy habitats and may have inadvertently picked up the seeds. This hypothesis is possibly reinforced by the success of the lowland swamp-dwelling "N. distillatoria" in colonizing so many locations.


title: Nepenthes

text: The genus "Nepenthes" is mostly found within the Malay Archipelago, with the greatest biodiversity found on Borneo, Sumatra, and the Philippines, especially in the Borneo montane rain forests. The full range of the genus includes Madagascar ("N. madagascariensis" and "N. masoalensis"), the Seychelles ("N. pervillei"), Sri Lanka ("N. distillatoria"), and India ("N. khasiana") in the west to Australia ("N. mirabilis", "N. rowanae", "N. parvula", and "N. tenax") and New Caledonia ("N. vieillardii") in the southeast. Most species are restricted to very small ranges, including some found only on individual mountains. These limited distributions and the inaccessibility of the regions often means some species go decades without being rediscovered in the wild (e.g. "N. deaniana", which was rediscovered 100 years after its initial discovery). About 10 species have population distributions larger than a single island or group of smaller islands. "Nepenthes mirabilis" has the distinction of being the most widely distributed species in the genus, ranging from Indochina and throughout the Malay Archipelago to Australia.


title: Nepenthes

text: Because of the nature of the habitats that "Nepenthes" species occupy, they are often graded as either lowland or highland species, depending on their altitude above sea level, with the rough delineation between lowland and highland. Species growing at lower altitudes require continuously warm climates with little difference between day and night temperatures, whereas highland species thrive when they receive warm days and much cooler nights. "Nepenthes lamii" grows at a higher altitude than any other in the genus, up to .


title: Nepenthes

text: Most "Nepenthes" species grow in environments that provide high humidity and precipitation and moderate to high light levels. A few species, including "N. ampullaria", prefer the dense, shaded forests, but most other species thrive on the margins of tree/shrub communities or clearings. Some species (e.g. "N. mirabilis") have been found growing in clear-cut forest areas, roadsides, and disturbed fields. Other species have adapted to growing in savanna-like grass communities. The soils in which "Nepenthes" species grow are usually acidic and low in nutrients, being composed of peat, white sand, sandstone, or volcanic soils. Exceptions to these generalities include species that thrive in soils with high heavy metal content (e.g. "N. rajah"), on sandy beaches in the sea spray zone (e.g. "N. albomarginata"). Other species grow on inselbergs and as lithophytes, while others, such as "N. inermis", can grow as epiphytes with no soil contact.


title: Nepenthes

text: The most obvious interaction between "Nepenthes" species and their environments, including other organisms, is that of predator and prey. "Nepenthes" species certainly attract and kill their prey, albeit passively, through active production of attractive colours, sugary nectar, and even sweet scents. From this relationship, the plants primarily gain nitrogen and phosphorus to supplement their nutrient requirements for growth, given these soil nutrients are typically lacking. The most frequent prey is an abundant and diverse group of arthropods, with ants and other insects topping the menu. Other arthropods found frequently include spiders, scorpions, and centipedes, while snails and frogs are more unusual, but not unheard of. The most uncommon prey for "Nepenthes" species includes rats found in "N. rajah". The composition of prey captured depends on many factors, including location, but can incorporate hundreds of individual insects and many different species. While many "Nepenthes" species are generalists in what they capture, at least one, "N. albomarginata", has specialised and almost exclusively traps termites and produces nearly no nectar. "Nepenthes albomarginata" gains its name from the ring of white trichomes directly beneath the peristome. These trichomes—or "hairs"—are palatable to termites and will attract them to the pitcher. In the course of collecting the edible trichomes, hundreds or thousands of termites will fall into the pitcher.


title: Nepenthes

text: "N. bicalcarata" provides space in the hollow tendrils of its upper pitchers for the carpenter ant "Camponotus schmitzi" to build nests. The ants take larger prey from the pitchers, which may benefit "N. bicalcarata" by reducing the amount of putrefaction of collected organic matter that could harm the natural community of infaunal species that aid the plant's digestion.


title: Nepenthes

text: "N. lowii" has also formed a dependent relationship, but with vertebrates instead of insects. The pitchers of "N. lowii" provide a sugary exudate reward on the reflexed pitcher lid (operculum) and a perch for tree shrew species, which have been found eating the exudate and defecating into the pitcher. A 2009 study, which coined the term "tree shrew lavatories", determined between 57 and 100% of the plant's foliar nitrogen uptake comes from the faeces of tree shrews. Another study showed the shape and size of the pitcher orifice of "N. lowii" exactly match the dimensions of a typical tree shrew ("Tupaia montana"). A similar adaptation was found in "N. macrophylla", "N. rajah", "N. ampullaria", and is also likely to be present in "N. ephippiata".


title: Nepenthes

text: Similarly, "N. hemsleyana", which is native to Borneo, has a symbiotic partnership with Hardwicke's woolly bat. During the day, a bat may roost above the digestive fluid inside the pitcher. While a bat is inside, it may defaecate, and the plant can get nitrogen from the droppings.


title: Nepenthes

text: Organisms that spend at least part of their lives within the pitchers of "Nepenthes" species are often called "Nepenthes" infauna. The most common infaunal species, often representing the top trophic level of the infaunal ecosystem, are many species of mosquito larvae. Other infaunal species include fly and midge larvae, spiders, mites, ants, and even a species of crab ("Geosesarma malayanum"). Many of these species specialise to one pitcher plant species and are found nowhere else. These specialists are called nepenthebionts. Others, often associated with but not dependent on "Nepenthes" species, are called nepenthophiles. Nepenthexenes, on the other hand, are rarely found in the pitchers, but will often appear when putrefaction approaches a certain threshold, attracting fly larvae that would normally not be found in the pitcher infaunal community. The complex ecological relationship between pitcher plants and infauna is not yet fully understood, but the relationship may be mutualistic: the infauna is given shelter, food, or protection, and the plant that harbours the infauna receives expedited breakdown of captured prey, increasing the rate of digestion and keeping harmful bacterial populations repressed.


title: Nepenthes

text: "Nepenthes" digestive fluids are sterile before pitchers open and contain secondary metabolites and proteins that act as bactericides and fungicides after the pitcher opens. While the digestive fluid is being produced, the pitcher is not yet open, so there is no chance of microbial contamination. During pitcher development, at least 29 digestive proteins including proteases, chitinases, pathogenesis-related proteins and thaumatin-like proteins are produced in the pitcher fluid. In addition to breaking down prey, these can act as antimicrobial agents. When the pitchers open, the fluid is exposed to bacteria, fungal spores, insects and rain. Often pitchers have a lid that covers the trap, excepting a few (e.g. "N. lowii", "N. attenboroughii" and "N. jamban"), preventing rain water from entering. The lid inhibits rainwater from diluting the digestive fluid. Once the bacteria and fungi enter the fluid, secondary metabolites are produced in addition to antimicrobial proteins. Naphthoquinones, a class of secondary metabolite, are commonly produced, and these either kill or inhibit the growth and reproduction of bacteria and fungi. This adaptation could have evolved since "Nepenthes" plants that could produce secondary metabolites and antimicrobial proteins to kill bacteria and fungi were most likely more fit. Plants that produced antimicrobial compounds could prevent loss of valuable nutrients gained from insects within the pitcher. Since "Nepenthes" cannot digest certain bacteria and fungi, the bactericides and fungicides allow plants to maximize nutrient uptake.


title: Nepenthes

text: The earliest known record of "Nepenthes" dates back to the 17th century. In 1658, French colonial governor Étienne de Flacourt published a description of a pitcher plant in his seminal work "Histoire de la Grande Isle de Madagascar". It reads:


title: Nepenthes

text: It is a plant growing about 3 feet high which carries at the end of its leaves, which are 7 inches long, a hollow flower or fruit resembling a small vase, with its own lid, a wonderful sight. There are red ones and yellow ones, the yellow being the biggest. The inhabitants of this country are reluctant to pick the flowers, saying that if somebody does pick them in passing, it will not fail to rain that day. As to that, I and all the other Frenchmen did pick them, but it did not rain. After rain these flowers are full of water, each one containing a good half-glass. [translated from French in "Pitcher-Plants of Borneo"]


title: Nepenthes

text: Flacourt called the plant "Amramatico", after a local name. More than a century later, this species was formally described as "N. madagascariensis".


title: Nepenthes

text: The second species to be described was "N. distillatoria", the Sri Lankan endemic. In 1677, Danish physician Thomas Bartholin made brief mention of it under the name "Miranda herba", Latin for "marvellous herb". Three years later, Dutch merchant Jacob Breyne referred to this species as "Bandura zingalensium", after a local name for the plant. "Bandura" subsequently became the most commonly used name for the tropical pitcher plants, until Linnaeus coined "Nepenthes" in 1737.


title: Nepenthes

text: "Nepenthes distillatoria" was again described in 1683, this time by Swedish physician and naturalist Herman Niklas Grim. Grim called it "Planta mirabilis destillatoria" or the "miraculous distilling plant", and was the first to clearly illustrate a tropical pitcher plant. Three years later, in 1686, English naturalist John Ray quoted Grim as saying:


title: Nepenthes

text: The root draws up moisture from the earth which with the help of the sun's rays rises up into the plant itself and then flows down through the stems and nerves of the leaves into the natural utensil to be stored there until used for human needs. [translated from Latin in "Pitcher-Plants of Borneo"]


title: Nepenthes

text: One of the earliest illustrations of "Nepenthes" appears in Leonard Plukenet's "Almagestum Botanicum" of 1696. The plant, called "Utricaria vegetabilis zeylanensium", is undoubtedly "N. distillatoria".


title: Nepenthes

text: Around the same time, German botanist Georg Eberhard Rumphius discovered two new "Nepenthes" species in the Malay Archipelago. Rumphius illustrated the first one, now considered synonymous with "N. mirabilis", and gave it the name "Cantharifera", meaning "tankard-bearer". The second, referred to as "Cantharifera alba", is thought to have been "N. maxima". Rumphius described the plants in his most famous work, the six-volume "Herbarium Amboinense", a catalogue of the flora of Ambon Island. However, it would not be published until many years after his death.


title: Nepenthes

text: After going blind in 1670, when the manuscript was only partially complete, Rumphius continued work on "Herbarium Amboinensis" with the help of clerks and artists. In 1687, with the project nearing completion, at least half of the illustrations were lost in a fire. Persevering, Rumphius and his helpers first completed the book in 1690. However, two years later, the ship carrying the manuscript to the Netherlands was attacked and sunk by the French, forcing them to start over from a copy that had fortunately been retained by Governor-General Johannes Camphuijs. The "Herbarium Amboinensis" finally arrived in the Netherlands in 1696. Even then, the first volume did not appear until 1741, 39 years after Rumphius's death. By this time, Linnaeus's name "Nepenthes" had become established.


title: Nepenthes

text: "Nepenthes distillatoria" was again illustrated in Johannes Burmann's "Thesaurus Zeylanicus" of 1737. The drawing depicts the end of a flowering stem with pitchers. Burmann refers to the plant as "Bandura zeylanica".


title: Nepenthes

text: The next mention of tropical pitcher plants was made in 1790, when Portuguese priest João de Loureiro described "Phyllamphora mirabilis", or the "marvellous urn-shaped leaf", from Vietnam. Despite living in the country for around 35 years, it seems unlikely that Loureiro observed living plants of this species, as he stated the lid is a moving part, actively opening and closing. In his most celebrated work, "Flora Cochinchinensis", he writes:


title: Nepenthes

text: [...] (the) leaf-tip ends in a long hanging tendril, twisted spirally in the middle, from which hangs a sort of vase, oblong, pot-bellied, with a smooth lip with a projecting margin and a lid affixed to one side, which of its own nature freely opens and closes in order to receive the dew and store it. A marvellous work of the Lord! [translated from French in "Pitcher-Plants of Borneo"]


title: Nepenthes

text: "Phyllamphora mirabilis" was eventually transferred to the genus "Nepenthes" by Rafarin in 1869. As such, "P. mirabilis" is the basionym of this most cosmopolitan of tropical pitcher plant species.


title: Nepenthes

text: Loureiro's description of a moving lid was repeated by Jean Louis Marie Poiret in 1797. Poiret described two of the four "Nepenthes" species known at the time: "N. madagascariensis" and "N. distillatoria". He gave the former its current name and called the latter "Nepente de l'Inde", or simply ""Nepenthes" of India", although this species is absent from the mainland. In Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's "Encyclopédie Méthodique Botanique", he included the following account:


title: Nepenthes

text: This urn is hollow, as I have just said, usually full of soft, clear water, and then closed. It opens during the day and more than half the liquid disappears, but this loss is repaired during the night, and the next day the urn is full again and closed by its lid. This is its sustenance, and enough for more than one day because it is always about half-full at the approach of night. [translated from French in "Pitcher-Plants of Borneo"]


title: Nepenthes

text: With the discovery of new species and Sir Joseph Banks' original introduction of specimens to Europe in 1789, interest in "Nepenthes" grew throughout the 19th century, culminating in what has been called the "Golden Age of "Nepenthes"" in the 1880s. However, the popularity of the plants dwindled in the early 20th century, before all but disappearing by World War II. This is evidenced by the fact that no new species were described between 1940 and 1966. The revival of global interest in the cultivation and study of "Nepenthes" is credited to Japanese botanist Shigeo Kurata, whose work in the 1960s and 1970s did much to bring attention to these plants.


title: Nepenthes

text: "Nepenthes" may be cultivated in greenhouses. Easier species include "N. alata", "N. ventricosa", "N. khasiana", and "N. sanguinea". These four species are highlanders ("N. alata" has both lowland and highland forms), some easy lowlander species are "N. rafflesiana", "N. bicalcarata", "N. mirabilis", and "N. hirsuta".


title: Nepenthes

text: Highland forms are those species that grow in habitats generally higher in elevation, and thus exposed to cooler evening temperatures. Lowland forms are those species growing nearer to sea level. Both forms respond best to rainwater (but some tap water works as long as it is flushed monthly with rainwater or water low in dissolved solid and chemicals), bright light (though some species can grow in full sun), a well-drained medium, good air circulation and relatively high humidity, although easier species such as "N. alata" can adapt to lower humidity environments. Highland species must have night-time cooling to thrive in the long term. Chemical fertilisers are best used at low strength. Occasional feeding with frozen (thawed before use) crickets may be beneficial. Terrarium culture of smaller plants, such as "N. bellii", "N." × "trichocarpa" and "N. ampullaria", is possible, but most plants will get too large over time.


title: Nepenthes

text: Plants can be propagated by seed, cuttings, and tissue culture. Seeds are usually sown on damp chopped "Sphagnum" moss, or on sterile plant tissue culture media once they have been properly disinfected. The seeds generally become nonviable soon after harvesting, so seed are not usually the preferred method of propagation. A 1:1 mixture of orchid medium with moss or perlite has been used for germination and culture. Seed may take two months to germinate, and two years or more to yield mature plants. Cuttings may be rooted in damp "Sphagnum" moss in a plastic bag or tank with high humidity and moderate light. They can begin to root in one to two months and start to form pitchers in about six months. Tissue culture is now used commercially and helps reduce collection of wild plants, as well as making many rare species available to hobbyists at reasonable prices. "Nepenthes" species are considered threatened or endangered plants and all of them are listed in CITES Appendix II, with the exception of "N. rajah" and "N. khasiana" which are listed in CITES Appendix I. The CITES listing means all international trade (including in parts and derivatives) is controlled by the CITES permitting system, with wild


title: Nepenthes

text: There are many hybrid "Nepenthes" and numerous named cultivars. Some of the more well-known, artificially produced hybrids and cultivars include:


title: Terrine (food)

text: A terrine (), in traditional French cuisine, is a loaf of forcemeat or aspic, similar to a pâté, that is cooked in a covered pottery mold (also called a "terrine") in a bain-marie. Modern terrines do not necessarily contain meat or animal fat, but still contain meat-like textures and fat substitutes, such as mushrooms and pureed fruits or vegetables high in pectin. They may also be cooked in a wide variety of non-pottery terrine moulds, such as stainless steel, aluminium, enameled cast iron, and ovenproof plastic.


title: Terrine (food)

text: Terrines are usually served cold or at room temperature. Most terrines contain a large amount of fat, although it is often not the main ingredient, and pork; many terrines are made with typical game meat, such as pheasant and hare. In the past, terrines were under the province of professional charcutiers, along with sausages, pâtés, galantines, and confit. Less commonly, a terrine may be another food cooked or served in the cooking dish called a 'terrine'.


title: Wildboyz

text: Wildboyz is an American television series. It is a spin-off and follow-up to "Jackass". "Wildboyz" debuted in 2003 on MTV, and moved to MTV2 in its third season. The show starred Steve-O and Chris Pontius, who perform stunts and acts with animals, often putting themselves in situations for which they are not trained.


title: Wildboyz

text: "Wildboyz" follows the antics of Chris Pontius and Steve-O, as they travel around the globe. Over the course of 4 seasons, Pontius and Steve-O have traveled to 19 different locations. At each location, the pair would both interact with the wild as well as learn the culture of the natives. Some of their antics include dressing up and running with the animals they encounter, subjecting themselves to the defense mechanisms of the animals, and eating the food of the native cultures.


title: Wildboyz

text: The dangerous nature of the stunts arguably outstrips that of either "Jackass" or another similar spin-off, "Viva La Bam". In the course of the show, Steve-O has purposely subjected himself to the relatively mild sting of the emperor scorpion on more than one occasion, and Pontius has nearly been attacked by a jaguar and has been bitten by a black bear. One of their most dangerous stunts showed the boys attracting a great white shark while disguised as seals, then later jumping into the open water just 10m away, as well as placing dangling meat attached to a hammock to attract lions. In another dangerous stunt, the pair dressed up as fake zebras to try to lure lions. The supposed sport of "hyena football" also made its debut, which in its earliest form was nothing more than a game of keep-away with a pack of spotted hyenas, using smoked ham as a ball. The "sport", according to its founders, "deserves Olympic status".


title: Wildboyz

text: Some of the scenes were intentionally mislabeled as many of the animals used were from a company called Hollywood Animals.


title: Wildboyz

text: Despite the crude humor, the show has educational value, as it features accurate narrations of various animals and indigenous cultures. What separates Steve-O and Chris Pontius from their animal show-host colleagues is their complete fearlessness despite their lack of training. This recklessness is also seen in their willingness to interact with the various cultures that they come in contact with. Steve-O and Chris seem open to any new experience, which has given them a chance to experience rituals and partake in events that a typical visitor or tourist may not be privy to.


title: Wildboyz

text: Several members of the "Jackass" cast and crew have contributed assistance to the show. The director of "Jackass", Jeff Tremaine, served as director and executive producer of "Wildboyz". Cameramen Dimitry Elyashkevich and Rick Kosick also continued to work alongside Tremaine on Wildboyz. Manny Puig, a wild animal expert who appeared on "Jackass" several times, occasionally joins the Wildboyz on their adventures. Fellow "Jackass" cast members Johnny Knoxville, Wee Man and Loomis Fall also make guest appearances on the show throughout all four seasons.


title: Wildboyz

text: The show ended in 2006, after four seasons. Steve-O later wrote in his memoir that ""Wildboyz" probably could've kept going after Season 4. It just didn't seem like there was a point. Over time it had essentially evolved back into "Jackass". During our final trip to Russia there were no stunts that wouldn't have fit in just as easily on "Jackass". Johnny Knoxville came along on that trip too, which contributed even more to that vibe." Though no proper series finale was created, the concept of "Wildboyz" was somewhat revisited during "Jackass Number Two", which was filmed after "Wildboyz" had ended. Director Jeff Tremaine says, "We shot some of the most amazing stuff [for "Wildboyz"] we've ever made. And so one of the ideas with "Number Two" was to recreate some of the best things we ever shot for "Wildboyz". Unfortunately, it didn't always work out."


title: Wildboyz

text: Additional footage captured during the filming of "Jackass Number Two" also followed a "Wildboyz"-style format. These sketches can be seen in "Jackass 2.5":


title: Seema Biswas

text: Seema Biswas (born 14 January 1965) is an Indian actress who works in Hindi films and the theatre. She gained prominence after playing the role of Phoolan Devi in Shekhar Kapur's film "Bandit Queen" (1994), for which she won the National Film Award for Best Actress. She won the 2000 Sangeet Natak Akademi Award and the 2006 Best Actress Genie Award for her role as Shakuntala in Deepa Mehta's "Water" (2005). Her other mainstream films include "" (1996), for which she won the Screen Award for Best Supporting Actress, "Bhoot" (2003), "Vivah" (2006) and "Half Girlfriend" (2017). In addition to films, Biswas has appeared in many television shows.


title: Seema Biswas

text: Biswas was born in Nalbari, Assam, to Jagdish Biswas and Meera Biswas. After completing her primary education, she graduated in political science with honours from Nalbari College, Assam. She studied dramatic arts at the National School of Drama in New Delhi.


title: Seema Biswas

text: Biswas played the lead in Krishnan Kartha's "Amshini" (Hindi), it entered the Indian Panorama Section of Filmotsav 1988. However, the general belief is that she debuted after Shekhar Kapur watched her perform in the NSD Repertory Company and offered her a role in "Bandit Queen". Although she had earlier acted in Assamese cinema, this was her first big break into Hindi cinema.


title: Seema Biswas

text: In 1996, she played the role of Flavy, a deaf and mute woman in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's "" opposite Nana Patekar and won the Screen Award for Best Supporting Actress.


title: Seema Biswas

text: Rooted firmly in theatre, she refuses to be typecast, and has worked in a variety of films and character roles. She has also worked in Marathi, Malayalam and Tamil films. Some of her Marathi films are "Bindhast", "Dhyaas Parwa" and "Lalbaug-Parel".


title: Seema Biswas

text: She has been honoured with the Life Membership of International Film And Television Club of Asian Academy Of Film & Television by the director Sandeep Marwah.


title: Seema Biswas

text: In 2014, Biswas was a jury member of the 45th International Film Festival of India, held from 20 to 30 November at Goa.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: The glomerulus (plural glomeruli) is a network of small blood vessels (capillaries) known as a "tuft", located at the beginning of a nephron in the kidney. Each of the two kidneys contains about one million nephrons. The tuft is structurally supported by the mesangium (the space between the blood vessels), composed of intraglomerular mesangial cells. The blood is filtered across the capillary walls of this tuft through the glomerular filtration barrier, which yields its filtrate of water and soluble substances to a cup-like sac known as Bowman's capsule. The filtrate then enters the renal tubule of the nephron.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: The glomerulus receives its blood supply from an afferent arteriole of the renal arterial circulation. Unlike most capillary beds, the glomerular capillaries exit into efferent arterioles rather than venules. The resistance of the efferent arterioles causes sufficient hydrostatic pressure within the glomerulus to provide the force for ultrafiltration.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: The glomerulus and its surrounding Bowman's capsule constitute a renal corpuscle, the basic filtration unit of the kidney. The rate at which blood is filtered through all of the glomeruli, and thus the measure of the overall kidney function, is the glomerular filtration rate.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: The glomerulus is a tuft of capillaries located within Bowman's capsule within the kidney. Glomerular mesangial cells structurally support the tufts. Blood enters the capillaries of the glomerulus by a single arteriole called an afferent arteriole and leaves by an efferent arteriole. The capillaries consist of a tube lined by endothelial cells with a central lumen. The gaps between these endothelial cells are called fenestrae. The walls have a unique structure: there are pores between the cells that allow water and soluble substances to exit and after passing through the glomerular basement membrane and between podocyte foot processes, enter the capsule as ultrafiltrate.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: Capillaries of the glomerulus are lined by endothelial cells. These contain numerous pores—also called fenestrae—, 50–100 nm in diameter. Unlike those of other capillaries with fenestrations, these fenestrations are not spanned by diaphragms. They allow for the filtration of fluid, blood plasma solutes and protein, at the same time preventing the filtration of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: The glomerulus has a glomerular basement membrane consisting mainly of laminins, type IV collagen, agrin, and nidogen, which are synthesized and secreted by both endothelial cells and podocytes: thus, the glomerular basement membrane is sandwiched between the glomerular capillaries and the podocytes. The glomerular basement membrane is 250–400 nm in thickness, which is thicker than basement membranes of other tissue. It is a barrier to blood proteins such as albumin and globulin.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: The part of the podocyte in contact with the glomerular basement membrane is called a "podocyte foot process" or "pedicle" (Fig. 3): there are gaps between the foot processes through which the filtrate flows into Bowman's capsule. The space between adjacent podocyte foot processes is spanned by slit diaphragms consisting of a mat of proteins, including podocin and nephrin. In addition, foot processes have a negatively charged coat (glycocalyx) that repels negatively charged molecules such as serum albumin.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: The mesangium is a space which is continuous with the smooth muscles of the arterioles. It is outside the capillary lumen but surrounded by capillaries. It is in the middle (meso) between the capillaries (angis). It is contained by the basement membrane, which surrounds both the capillaries and the mesangium.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: Blood exits the glomerular capillaries by an efferent arteriole instead of a venule, as is seen in the majority of capillary systems (Fig. 4). This provides tighter control over the blood flow through the glomerulus, since arterioles dilate and constrict more readily than venules, owing to their thick circular smooth muscle layer (tunica media). The blood exiting the efferent arteriole enters a renal venule, which in turn enters a renal interlobular vein and then into the renal vein.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: Cortical nephrons near the corticomedullary junction (15% of all nephrons) are called juxtamedullary nephrons. The blood exiting the efferent arterioles of these nephrons enter the vasa recta, which are straight capillary branches that deliver blood to the renal medulla. These vasa recta run adjacent to the descending and ascending loop of Henle and participate in the maintenance of the medullary countercurrent exchange system.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: The filtrate that has passed through the three-layered filtration unit enters Bowman's capsule. From there, it flows into the renal tubule—the nephron—which follows a U-shaped path to the collecting ducts, finally exiting into a renal calyx as urine.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: The main function of the glomerulus is to filter plasma to produce glomerular filtrate, which passes down the length of the nephron tubule to form urine. The rate at which the glomerulus produces filtrate from plasma (the glomerular filtration rate) is much higher than in systemic capillaries because of the particular anatomical characteristics of the glomerulus. Unlike systemic capillaries, which receive blood from high-resistance arterioles and drain to low-resistance venules, glomerular capillaries are connected in both ends to high-resistance arterioles: the afferent arteriole, and the efferent arteriole. This arrangement of two arterioles in series determines the high hydrostatic pressure on glomerular capillaries, which is one of the forces that favor filtration to Bowman's capsule.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: If a substance has passed through the glomerular capillary endothelial cells, glomerular basement membrane, and podocytes, then it enters the lumen of the tubule and is known as glomerular filtrate. Otherwise, it exits the glomerulus through the efferent arteriole and continues circulation as discussed below and as shown on the picture.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: The structures of the layers determine their permeability-selectivity ("permselectivity"). The factors that influence permselectivity are the negative charge of the basement membrane and the podocytic epithelium, as well as the effective pore size of the glomerular wall (8 nm). As a result, large and/or negatively charged molecules will pass through far less frequently than small and/or positively charged ones. For instance, small ions such as sodium and potassium pass freely, while larger proteins, such as hemoglobin and albumin have practically no permeability at all.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: The oncotic pressure on glomerular capillaries is one of the forces that resist filtration. Because large and negatively charged proteins have a low permeability, they cannot filtrate easily to Bowman's capsule. Therefore, the concentration of these proteins tends to increase as the glomerular capillaries filtrate plasma, increasing the oncotic pressure along Ofa glomerular capillary.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: The rate of filtration from the glomerulus to Bowman's capsule is determined (as in systemic capillaries) by the Starling equation:


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: The walls of the afferent arteriole contain specialized smooth muscle cells that synthesize renin. These juxtaglomerular cells play a major role in the renin–angiotensin system, which helps regulate blood volume and pressure.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: Damage to the glomerulus by disease can allow passage through the glomerular filtration barrier of red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and blood proteins such as albumin and globulin. Underlying causes for glomerular injury can be inflammatory, toxic or metabolic. These can be seen in the urine (urinalysis) on microscopic and chemical (dipstick) examination. Glomerular diseases include diabetic kidney disease, glomerulonephritis (inflammation), glomerulosclerosis (hardening of the glomeruli), and IgA nephropathy.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: Due to the connection between the glomerulus and the glomerular filtration rate, the glomerular filtration rate is of clinical significance when suspecting a kidney disease, or when following up a case with known kidney disease, or when risking a development of renal damage such as beginning medications with known nephrotoxicity.


title: Glomerulus (kidney)

text: In 1666, Italian biologist and anatomist Marcello Malpighi first described the glomeruli and demonstrated their continuity with the renal vasculature (281,282). About 175 years later, surgeon and anatomist William Bowman elucidated in detail the capillary architecture of the glomerulus and the continuity between its surrounding capsule and the proximal tubule.


title: EuroCup Basketball

text: EuroCup Basketball, commonly known as the EuroCup and currently called 7DAYS EuroCup for sponsorship reasons, is an annual professional basketball club competition that has been organized by Euroleague Basketball since 2002. Behind the EuroLeague, the league is regarded as Europe's second-tier professional basketball club tournament.


title: EuroCup Basketball

text: Founded in 2002 under the name ULEB Cup, the competition has been known as the Eurocup since the 2008–09 season, following a change in format. The ULEB Cup and EuroCup Basketball are considered the same competition, with the change of name being simply a re-branding.


title: EuroCup Basketball

text: The title has been won by 14 clubs, 3 of which have won the title more than once. The most successful club in the competition are Valencia Basket, with four titles. The current champions are Virtus Bologna, winning their first title after defeating Bursaspor Basketbol in the 2022 Finals.


title: EuroCup Basketball

text: On 7 July 2016, Chipita and Euroleague Basketball announced a strategic agreement to sponsor the European competition across the globe. According to the agreement, starting with the 2016–17 season, the competition would be named 7DAYS EuroCup. This title partnership was set to run for three seasons.


title: EuroCup Basketball

text: Clubs qualify for the competition based on their performance in their domestic leagues competitions. For this purpose, the clubs from countries participating in the ABA League qualify for the competition based on their performance in the ABA League, and not their domestic leagues.


title: EuroCup Basketball

text: Starting with the 2016–17 season, the EuroCup's first phase is the Regular Season, in which 24 teams participate. The participants include 24 clubs automatically entered into the Regular Season. Each team plays two games (home-and-away) against every other team in its group. At the end of the Regular Season, the field is cut from 24 to 16. The next phase, known as the Top 16, then begins, featuring the 16 survivors of the Regular Season in four-team groups. As in the Regular Season, each Top 16 group is contest in a double round-robin format. The group winners and runners-up advance to the third phase, the Playoffs. Each playoff series is best-of-three, and the winners of each series advance to the next round persistently until the Finals. Home advantage in the series goes to the best placed team in the Top 16. The Finals features the two remaining series winners in a best-of-three series with home advantage in the series to the best placed team in the Top 16.


title: EuroCup Basketball

text: Historically, the competition began with a group phase in which the starting field was reduced to 16 teams. The survivors then advanced to a knockout phase. In the inaugural 2002–03 season, the knockout phase consisted entirely of two-legged ties. In the following 2003–04 season, the final became a one-off game, but all other knockout ties remained two-legged.


title: EuroCup Basketball

text: In the 2007–08 season, the initial phase, now called the Regular Season, was only used to reduce the field to 32 teams. The survivors were paired into two-legged knockout ties, with the winners advancing to another set of two-legged ties. The survivors then entered the first-ever Final Eight phase in the competition's history, consisting of one-off knockout games.


title: EuroCup Basketball

text: The following 2008–09 season, was the first in which preliminary rounds were conducted. That year saw two preliminary rounds held, the first involving 16 teams, and the second involving the eight winners, plus eight teams that had received byes into that round. The survivors of the second preliminary round joined 24 direct qualifiers in the Regular Season. This season also saw the introduction of the Last 16 group phase, and proved to be the last for the Final Eight.


title: EuroCup Basketball

text: The last stage of the EuroCup, the EuroCup Finals, was reduced from eight teams to four, starting with the 2009–10 season. This stage was directly analogous to the EuroLeague Final Four, and like that stage of the EuroLeague, consisted of one-off knockout semifinals, followed by a single-game final. Unlike the EuroLeague Final Four, in which the third-place game and final are held two days after the semifinals, the corresponding games of the EuroCup were held the day after the semifinals.


title: EuroCup Basketball

text: In the 2012–13 season, the final was decided by a single game format, after double-legged semifinals and quarterfinals. For the 2013–14 season, the competition increased from 32 to 48 teams in the Regular Season phase. Another innovation that started in the 2013–14 season, was that the clubs were divided into two regional conferences, the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference, for the Regular Season phase. The size of the groups grew to six teams, where the first three qualified teams joined the Last 32 stage. In addition, the eight EuroLeague clubs that did not qualify for the EuroLeague Top 16 phase, joined the remaining 24 EuroCup teams and the Finals were decided by a double-legged series.


title: EuroCup Basketball

text: For the 2014–15 season, the competition contained 36 teams at the group stage. There were 6 groups, each containing 6 teams. The 36 teams consisted of the 7 teams that were eliminated in the 2014–15 Euroleague season qualification rounds, and 29 teams that qualified directly to the 2014–15 EuroCup, either through 2013–14 season results, or through wild cards. The top four teams from each of the Regular Season groups with the eight EuroLeague clubs that did not qualify for the EuroLeague Top 16 phase qualified to join the Last 32 stage. For the 2015–16 season, the competition contained 36 clubs automatically entered into the Regular Season and the eight EuroLeague clubs that did not qualify for the EuroLeague Top 16 phase qualified to join the Last 32 stage.


title: EuroCup Basketball

text: Effective as of the 2012–13 season, all EuroCup clubs must host their home games in arenas that have a regular seating capacity of at least 2,500 (all seated), and an additional minimum capacity of 200 VIP seats available. By comparison, EuroLeague licensed clubs host their home games in arenas that seat at least 10,000 people, while EuroLeague associated clubs must have arenas that seat 5,000.


title: EuroCup Basketball

text: After a given EuroCup season, before the finals, annual EuroCup awards are handed out to players and coaches. These awards include:


title: Black Bullet

text: The series began publication on July 10, 2011, and 7 volumes have been published as of January 2020. A manga series began serialization on August 27, 2012 in ASCII Media Works's "Dengeki Maoh". An anime television series adaptation animated by Kinema Citrus and Orange was announced at Dengeki Bunko's Autumn Festival 2013 on October 6, 2013. It aired from April 8, 2014 to July 1, 2014, and was simulcast outside Japan by Crunchyroll. The "Black Bullet" franchise was localized in three countries by several companies: the anime was licensed by Sentai Filmworks for North America, Animatsu Entertainment for the United Kingdom, and Hanabee for Australia. Both the manga and light novel series are published in North America by Yen Press.


title: Black Bullet

text: In the year 2021, mankind is ravaged by the epidemic of Gastrea, a parasitic virus, and is forced to live within the Monolith walls, which are created from Varanium: a metal that is able to subdue Gastrea. Soon, children who were born with the Gastrea virus and obtained superhuman abilities as a result, are discovered and dubbed "Cursed Children". Due to the Gastrea virus' intervention, the Cursed Children could only be female. Civil Securities are formed to specialize fighting against Gastrea, operating with the pair of an Initiator, who are cursed children, and a Promoter, serving to lead the cursed children. Ten years after the epidemic, Rentarō Satomi, a high school student who is also a Promoter in Tendō Civil Security Agency owned by his childhood friend Kisara Tendō, along with his Initiator, Enju Aihara, conducts missions to prevent the destruction of the Tokyo Area and the world.


title: Black Bullet

text: A manga adaptation illustrated by Morinohon was serialized in ASCII Media Works' "Dengeki Maoh" magazine from August 27, 2012 to June 27, 2014.


title: Black Bullet

text: An anime television series adaptation animated by Kinema Citrus and Orange was announced at Dengeki Bunko's Autumn Festival 2013 on October 6, 2013, and premiered in April 2014. The series was picked up by Crunchyroll for online simulcast streaming in North America and other select parts of the world. The anime has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks for a digital and home video release in North America. Muse Communication licensed the anime to Southeast Asia and South Asia region


title: Black Bullet

text: Anime News Network had five editors review the first episode of the anime: Hope Chapman, while finding it watchable with its action scenes despite being another lazy light novel adaptation, found the female supporting cast reprehensible, singling out the portrayal of Enju Aihara as otaku bait; Bamboo Dong and Carl Kimlinger similarly praised it for being decently written and leaving enough room for story and character developments, the former saying that it might get better with later episodes while the latter criticized it for being the same as every other anime of its ilk; Rebecca Silverman said that the premise had intrigue with visuals that catch the eyes' attention but it needs to work on its pacing and story developments to reach its potential. The fifth reviewer, Theron Martin, while finding the story schematics generic and filled with otaku trappings was hopeful because of the technical aspects that complement the action scenes and the sense of intrigue throughout, concluding that "it looks like it could be an entertaining (if not necessarily original) action romp, especially if the kinks get ironed out." Kotaku's Richard Eisenbeis was negative towards the series, saying it had a good concept but was bogged down by an amalgam of genres that don't go together, follows a formulaic blueprint set by other anime series and is filled with plot holes that require a suspension of disbelief, concluding that, "In the end, I simply would not recommend "Black Bullet" to anyone. It's a mess of an anime." Allen Moody, writing for THEM Anime Reviews, was critical of the series' cliché harem aspects but gave praise to both Seitenshi and Enju, crediting the former's trait of being "gentle while still being strong and decisive," and the latter for her relationship with Rentaro being "emotionally deeper and more complex than a lolicon crush." Moody also gave praise to the action scenes for their mixture of both CG and traditional animation, and the "imaginatively conceived" designs of the Gastrea that occupy them.