title: Hickok45

text: Hickok45 is a YouTube and Full30 channel featuring videos about firearms. The videos are hosted by Greg Kinman (born July 11, 1950), a retired middle-school English teacher and former sheriff's auxiliary officer. Hickok45 videos also appear on Full30, a video streaming platform dedicated specifically to firearms. HICKOK45 is a registered trademark of Hickok 45, LLC.


title: Hickok45

text: Hickok45's videos demonstrate a wide variety of firearms, both historic and modern, and typically present an in-depth discussion of the history and functionality of each firearm. His early videos often showed him shooting Old West weaponry and wearing cowboy outfits. Over time, he expanded his presentations to include a greater variety of weapons, while emphasizing safety. He tends to prefer Glock pistols over those of other manufacturers. While most videos feature Greg, with his son John filming, John has occasionally appeared in videos as well.


title: Hickok45

text: Hickok45 has become famous for videos in which he shoots pumpkins with firearms, destroys watermelons and two-liter soda bottles, or cuts down saplings and Christmas trees using various guns. These videos have appeared in media in Vietnam, France, India, and Germany.


title: Hickok45

text: Greg Kinman attended Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, where he played center position on the college basketball team for two seasons, 1970–71 and 1971–72. He decided to forgo his senior season as he felt that basketball would not become his profession; he also noted that he was unable to gain weight. College sports records indicate his height as . He has declared himself to be 6'8".


title: Hickok45

text: Originally from Kentucky, Kinman lives in Cheatham County, Tennessee. He is a retired English teacher. In 2015, he was featured in a webinar by distance learning organization the Sonoran Desert Institute.


title: Lysozyme

text: Lysozyme (EC 3.2.1.17, muramidase, "N"-acetylmuramide glycanhydrolase; systematic name peptidoglycan "N"-acetylmuramoylhydrolase) is an antimicrobial enzyme produced by animals that forms part of the innate immune system. It is a glycoside hydrolase that catalyzes the following process:


title: Lysozyme

text: Peptidoglycan is the major component of gram-positive bacterial cell wall. This hydrolysis in turn compromises the integrity of bacterial cell walls causing lysis of the bacteria.


title: Lysozyme

text: Lysozyme is abundant in secretions including tears, saliva, human milk, and mucus. It is also present in cytoplasmic granules of the macrophages and the polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMNs). Large amounts of lysozyme can be found in egg white. C-type lysozymes are closely related to α-lactalbumin in sequence and structure, making them part of the same glycoside hydrolase family 22. In humans, the C-type lysozyme enzyme is encoded by the "LYZ" gene.


title: Lysozyme

text: Hen egg white lysozyme is thermally stable, with a melting point reaching up to 72 °C at pH 5.0. However, lysozyme in human milk loses activity very quickly at that temperature. Hen egg white lysozyme maintains its activity in a large range of pH (6–9). Its isoelectric point is 11.35. The isoelectric point of human milk lysozyme is 10.5–11.


title: Lysozyme

text: The enzyme functions by hydrolyzing glycosidic bonds in peptidoglycans. The enzyme can also break glycosidic bonds in chitin, although not as effectively as true chitinases.


title: Lysozyme

text: Lysozyme's active site binds the peptidoglycan molecule in the prominent cleft between its two domains. It attacks peptidoglycans (found in the cell walls of bacteria, especially Gram-positive bacteria), its natural substrate, between "N"-acetylmuramic acid (NAM) and the fourth carbon atom of N-acetylglucosamine (NAG).


title: Lysozyme

text: Shorter saccharides like tetrasaccharide have also shown to be viable substrates but via an intermediate with a longer chain. Chitin has also been shown to be a viable lysozyme substrate. Artificial substrates have also been developed and used in lysozyme.


title: Lysozyme

text: The Phillips mechanism proposed that the enzyme's catalytic power came from both steric strain on the bound substrate and electrostatic stabilization of an oxo-carbenium intermediate. From X-ray crystallographic data, Phillips proposed the active site of the enzyme, where a hexasaccharide binds. The lysozyme distorts the fourth sugar (in the D or -1 subsite) in the hexasaccharide into a half-chair conformation. In this stressed state, the glycosidic bond is more easily broken. An ionic intermediate containing an oxo-carbenium is created as a result of the glycosidic bond breaking. Thus distortion causing the substrate molecule to adopt a strained conformation similar to that of the transition state will lower the energy barrier of the reaction.


title: Lysozyme

text: The proposed oxo-carbonium intermediate was speculated to be electrostatically stabilized by aspartate and glutamate residues in the active site by Arieh Warshel in 1978. The electrostatic stabilization argument was based on comparison to bulk water, the reorientation of water dipoles can cancel out the stabilizing energy of charge interaction. In Warshel's model, the enzyme acts as a super-solvent, which fixes the orientation of ion pairs and provides super-solvation (very good stabilization of ion pairs), and especially lower the energy when two ions are close to each other.


title: Lysozyme

text: The rate-determining step (RDS) in this mechanism is related to formation of the oxo-carbenium intermediate. There were some contradictory results to indicate the exact RDS. By tracing the formation of product (p-nitrophenol), it was discovered that the RDS can change over different temperatures, which was a reason for those contradictory results. At a higher temperature the RDS is formation of glycosyl enzyme intermediate and at a lower temperature the break down of that intermediate.


title: Lysozyme

text: In an early debate in 1969, Dahlquist proposed a covalent mechanism for lysozyme based on kinetic isotope effect, but for a long time the ionic mechanism was more accepted. In 2001, a revised mechanism was proposed by Vocadlo via a covalent but not ionic intermediate. Evidence from ESI-MS analysis indicated a covalent intermediate. A 2-fluoro substituted substrate was used to lower the reaction rate and accumulate an intermediate for characterization. The amino acid side-chains glutamic acid 35 (Glu35) and aspartate 52 (Asp52) have been found to be critical to the activity of this enzyme. Glu35 acts as a proton donor to the glycosidic bond, cleaving the C-O bond in the substrate, whereas Asp52 acts as a nucleophile to generate a glycosyl enzyme intermediate. The Glu35 reacts with water to form hydroxyl ion, a stronger nucleophile than water, which then attacks the glycosyl enzyme intermediate, to give the product of hydrolysis and leaving the enzyme unchanged. This type of covalent mechanism for enzyme catalysis was first proposed by Koshland.


title: Lysozyme

text: More recently, quantum mechanics/ molecular mechanics (QM/MM) molecular dynamics simulations have been using the crystal of HEWL and predict the existence of a covalent intermediate. Evidence for the ESI-MS and X-ray structures indicate the existence of covalent intermediate, but primarily rely on using a less active mutant or non-native substrate. Thus, QM/MM molecular dynamics provides the unique ability to directly investigate the mechanism of wild-type HEWL and native substrate. The calculations revealed that the covalent intermediate from the covalent mechanism is ~30 kcal/mol more stable than the ionic intermediate from the Phillips mechanism. These calculation demonstrate that the ionic intermediate is extremely energetically unfavorable and the covalent intermediates observed from experiments using less active mutant or non-native substrates provide useful insight into the mechanism of wild-type HEWL.


title: Lysozyme

text: Imidazole derivatives can form a charge-transfer complex with some residues (in or outside active center) to achieve a competitive inhibition of lysozyme. In Gram-negative bacteria, the lipopolysaccharide acts as a non-competitive inhibitior by highly favored binding with lysozyme.


title: Lysozyme

text: Despite that the muramidase activity of lysozyme has been supposed to play the key role for its antibacterial properties, evidence of its non-enzymatic action was also reported. For example, blocking the catalytic activity of lysozyme by mutation of critical amino acid in the active site (52-Asp -> 52-Ser) does not eliminate its antimicrobial activity. The lectin-like ability of lysozyme to recognize bacterial carbohydrate antigen without lytic activity was reported for tetrasaccharide related to lipopolysaccharide of "Klebsiella pneumoniae". Also, lysozyme interacts with antibodies and T-cell receptors.


title: Lysozyme

text: Lysozyme exhibits two conformations: an open active state and a closed inactive state. The catalytic relevance was examined with single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCN) field effect transistors (FETs), where a singular lysozyme was bound to the SWCN FET. Electronically monitoring the lysozyme showed two conformations, an open active site and a closed inactive site. In its active state lysozyme is able to processively hydrolyze its substrate, breaking on average 100 bonds at a rate of 15 per second. In order to bind a new substrate and move from the closed inactive state to the open active state requires two conformation step changes, while inactivation requires one step.


title: Lysozyme

text: Lysozyme is part of the innate immune system. Reduced lysozyme levels have been associated with bronchopulmonary dysplasia in newborns. Piglets fed with human lysozyme milk can recover from diarrheal disease caused by "E. coli" faster. The concentration of lysozyme in human milk is 1,600 to 3,000 times greater than the concentration in livestock milk. Human lysozyme is more active than hen egg white lysozyme. A transgenic line of goats (with a founder named "Artemis") were developed to produce milk with human lysozyme to protect children from diarrhea if they can't get the benefits of human breastfeeding.


title: Lysozyme

text: Since lysozyme is a natural form of protection from Gram-positive pathogens like "Bacillus" and "Streptococcus", it plays an important role in immunology of infants in human milk feeding. Whereas the skin is a protective barrier due to its dryness and acidity, the conjunctiva (membrane covering the eye) is, instead, protected by secreted enzymes, mainly lysozyme and defensin. However, when these protective barriers fail, conjunctivitis results.


title: Lysozyme

text: In certain cancers (especially myelomonocytic leukemia) excessive production of lysozyme by cancer cells can lead to toxic levels of lysozyme in the blood. High lysozyme blood levels can lead to kidney failure and low blood potassium, conditions that may improve or resolve with treatment of the primary malignancy.


title: Lysozyme

text: Serum lysozyme is much less specific for diagnosis of sarcoidosis than serum angiotensin converting enzyme; however, since it is more sensitive, it is used as a marker of sarcoidosis disease activity and is suitable for disease monitoring in proven cases.


title: Lysozyme

text: The first chemical synthesis of a lysozyme protein was attempted by Prof. George W. Kenner and his group at the University of Liverpool in England. This was finally achieved in 2007 by Thomas Durek in Steve Kent's lab at the University of Chicago who made a synthetic functional lysozyme molecule.


title: Lysozyme

text: Lysozyme crystals have been used to grow other functional materials for catalysis and biomedical applications. Lysozyme is a commonly used enzyme for lysing gram positive bacteria. Due to the unique function of lysozyme in which it can digest the cell wall and causes osmotic shock (burst the cell by suddenly changing solute concentration around the cell and thus the osmotic pressure), lysozyme is commonly used in lab setting to release proteins from bacterium periplasm while the inner membrane remains sealed as vesicles called the spheroplast.


title: Lysozyme

text: For example, "E. coli" can be lysed using lysozyme to free the contents of the periplasmic space. It is especially useful in lab setting for trying to collect the contents of the periplasm. Lysozyme treatment is optimal at particular temperatures, pH ranges, and salt concentrations. Lysozyme activity increases with increasing temperatures, up to 60 degrees Celsius, with a pH range of 6.0-7.0. The salts present also affect lysozyme treatment, where some assert inhibitory effects, and others promote lysis via lysozyme treatment. Sodium chloride induces lysis, but at high concentrations, it is an active inhibitor of lysis. Similar observations have been seen with the use of potassium salts. Slight variations are present due to differences in bacterial strains. A consequence of the use of lysozyme in extracting recombinant proteins for protein crystallization is that the crystal may be contaminated with units of lysozyme, producing a physiologically irrelevant combination. In fact, some proteins simply cannot crystalize without such contamination.


title: Lysozyme

text: Furthermore, lysozyme can serve as a tool in the expression of toxic recombinant proteins. Expressing recombinant proteins in BL21(DE3) strains is typically accomplished by the T7-RNA-polymerase. Via IPTG induction, the UV-5 repressor is inhibited, leading to the transcription of the T7-RNA-polymerase and thereby of the protein of interest. Nonetheless, a basal level of the T7-RNA-polymerase is observable even without induction. T7 lysozyme acts as an inhibitor of the T7-RNA-polymerase. Newly invented strains, containing a helper plasmid (pLysS), constitutively co-express low levels of T7 lysozyme, providing high stringency and consistent expression of the toxic recombinant protein.


title: Lysozyme

text: The antibacterial property of hen egg white, due to the lysozyme it contains, was first observed by Laschtschenko in 1909. The bacteria-killing activity of nasal mucus was demonstrated in 1922 by Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, who coined the term lysozyme. Fleming reported, saying. "As this substance has properties akin to those of ferments I have called it a 'Lysozyme'." Fleming went on to show that an enzymic substance was present in a wide variety of secretions and was capable of rapidly lysing (i.e. dissolving) different bacteria, particularly a yellow "coccus" that he studied".


title: Lysozyme

text: Lysozyme was first crystallised by Edward Abraham in 1937, enabling the three-dimensional structure of hen egg white lysozyme to be described by David Chilton Phillips in 1965, when he obtained the first 2-ångström (200 pm) resolution model via X-ray crystallography. The structure was publicly presented at a Royal Institution lecture in 1965.


title: Lysozyme

text: Lysozyme was the second protein structure and the first enzyme structure to be solved via X-ray diffraction methods, and the first enzyme to be fully sequenced that contains all twenty common amino acids.


title: Lysozyme

text: As a result of Phillips' elucidation of the structure of lysozyme, it was also the first enzyme to have a detailed, specific mechanism suggested for its method of catalytic action. This work led Phillips to provide an explanation for how enzymes speed up a chemical reaction in terms of its physical structures. The original mechanism proposed by Phillips was more recently revised.


title: Konyaspor

text: Konyaspor Kulübü (, Konya Sports Club) is a Turkish professional football club based in Konya. They are better known as Konyaspor. In 1922 Konyaspor were founded with the name Konya Gençlerbirliği and have played at their current home stadium, Konya Metropolitan Municipality Stadium, since 2014. Konyaspor currently play in the Süper Lig, the top tier of Turkish football. The club colours are green and white.


title: Konyaspor

text: Konyaspor were founded officially with the name Konya Gençlerbirliği on 22 June 1922. As champions of the regional Konya Football League they participated in the 1924 Turkish Football Championship, the first ever national championship in Turkish football. In 1965 the club combined with Meramspor, Selçukspor, and Çimentospor and took the name Konyaspor with black and white as the team colors, and started their first season in the Second League in 1981. Konyaspor then changed to green and white as the team colours after their merger with the cross-town rivals Konya İdman Yurdu. The new team adopted the name of Konyaspor and the colors of Konya İdman Yurdu. In 1987–88 Konyaspor became champions of the second league and were promoted to the first league for the first time in their history.


title: Konyaspor

text: Konyaspor lasted five seasons in the first league. They played 160 official matches, ending up with 47 wins, 33 draws, and 80 losses. During the 1988–89 season Konyaspor made it to the semi-finals of the Turkish Cup, losing to eventual champions Beşiktaş. In the 1992–93 season, the club were relegated back to the second league. After spending 10 seasons in the second league, Konyaspor returned to Süper Lig as the title holders of the 2002–03 First League with 68 points. During the 2003–04 season Konyaspor made it to the quarter-finals of the Turkish Cup, but then lost to eventual champions Trabzonspor 2–1 during extra time. In 2004–05 Konyaspor advanced to the quarter-finals beating Beşiktaş 3–1, but then lost to Denizlispor 5–4 on penalty shoot-outs. In 2008–09 despite the 3–0 home win against Ankaraspor, Konyaspor couldn't avoid relegation as they remained 16th in the table with 38 points which meant their relegation from the Süper Lig. Konyaspor were in the Süper Lig since 2003. However, Konyaspor completed the TFF First League 6th and secured a position in the Promotion Play-offs in 2010. Konyaspor then won the Promotion Play-offs and made an immediate return to the Süper Lig after 1 year. They finished the Play-offs 1st with 7 points beating Adanaspor 3–1 in the first game, Karşıyaka 1–0 in the second and drawing with Altay 2–2 in the final match. But Konyaspor relegated again in the 2010–11 season.


title: Konyaspor

text: They returned to the top level two years later. In 2015–16 Konyaspor eventually finished Süper Lig as 3rd, also the best result for them, and qualified for the UEFA Europa League. In 2016–17 they play for the first time in their history in European competitions and draw in Group H with Shakhtar Donetsk, Braga and Gent. They finished the group in fourth place with five losses, one draw and without winning any match. Also in the same season they reached the Turkish Cup final for the first time in their history. On 31 May 2017 Konyaspor defeated İstanbul Başakşehir to win their first ever Turkish Cup in the club's 95-year history. In the first Turkish Cup final since the 2007–08 season in which none of Istanbul's "big three" clubs Beşiktaş, Fenerbahçe, and Galatasaray were competing, Konyaspor against İstanbul Başakşehir finished regular and extra time tied 0–0 and won on penalty shoot-outs with a result of 4–1.


title: Konyaspor

text: Konya Metropolitan Municipality Stadium is a multi-use stadium in Konya, Turkey. It replaced the ageing Konya Atatürk Stadium at the end of 2013, which has been in use since the early 1950s. The stadium has a capacity of 42,000 people and is fully covered. Record attendance is 41,007 people in Turkey against Netherlands, 6 September 2015 UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying Group A match. The "Konya Buyuksheir Stadium" is one of Turkey's biggest stadiums with many sporting events happening there. The national team also plays some of its games there.


title: Carowinds

text: Carowinds is a amusement park located adjacent to Interstate 77 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The park straddles the North Carolina-South Carolina state line, with a portion of the park located in Fort Mill, South Carolina. However, it has an official Charlotte address, and its business offices are located on the Charlotte side of the park. The park opened on March 31, 1973, at a cost of $70 million. It is the result of a four-year planning period spearheaded by Charlotte businessman Earl Patterson Hall. Owned and operated by Cedar Fair, Carowinds also features a water park, Carolina Harbor, which is included with park admission. The park has a Halloween event called SCarowinds and a winter event called WinterFest.


title: Carowinds

text: Carowinds was announced on October 10, 1969, and originally planned on being a large resort which would include a theme park, hotels, a shopping center, a golf course, and an NFL stadium. The name "Carowinds" was conceived from the park's original theme of the history and culture of the Carolinas, and is a portmanteau of "Carolina" and "winds", in reference to the winds that blow across the two states. Ground was broken on May 1, 1970, with a planned opening date in April 1972. After numerous construction delays due to weather, the park eventually opened on March 31, 1973 under the ownership of the Carowinds Corporation, a consortium of local investors headed by Hall. The first season brought in over 1.2 million visitors, but attendance at Carowinds was curtailed by the 1973 oil crisis, and plans for the proposed resort were put on hold. Sagging attendance and mounting debt forced Carowinds Corporation to merge with Taft Broadcasting in early 1975.


title: Carowinds

text: Taft originally ran the park through Family Leisure Centers, a joint venture between Taft and Top Value Enterprises. It was later transferred to a wholly-owned Taft subsidiary, Kings Entertainment Company. Taft Broadcasting brought new life to the park with its Hanna-Barbera characters and several rides aimed to appeal to younger guests. Carowinds added its second roller coaster, and first wooden coaster, with the addition of Scooby-Doo in 1975. The Wagon Wheel and The Waltzer flat rides were also added to the park. A small carousel was added to the Carolina Crossroads area. In 1976, Carowinds opened Thunder Road, a Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters racing wooden coaster designed by Curtis D. Summers. It was the largest and most expensive ride built in Carowinds' short three years of existence, at a cost of $1.6 million. The trains were relocated from the defunct Jetstream roller coaster at Chicago's Riverview Park. White Lightnin', a Schwarzkopf launched shuttle roller coaster, opened in 1977. The Witchdoctor was relocated to Pirate Island and renamed Black Widow. The Waltzer is removed after a year of operation and Wagon Wheel is moved into its place. Trams are added to the parking lot. In 1979, a $3 million expansion adds the County Fair area, which contains four new rides. Additionally, a 1923 antique carousel built by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company is added to The Land of Hanna-Barbera.


title: Carowinds

text: The Carolina Cyclone was added in 1980 as the first roller coaster in the world to feature four inversions. Thunder Road received new Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters trains. The original themed trains were destroyed after causing damage to the tracks. Rip Roarin' Rapids, a water rapids ride, opens in 1981. In 1982, Ocean Island opens as a separately ticketed attraction between Thunder Road and the White Lightnin' roller coasters. The water park was not owned by Carowinds, and included a 700,000-gallon, 25,500 square foot wave pool that featured waves reaching heights of five feet. The complex also featured other standard water park amenities including picnic and sunbathing areas, shower and changing facilities, a snack bar, game room, raft rentals and a gift shop. Oaken Bucket was removed. The Heritage Theater was converted into an arcade. In 1984, Smurf Island opens on a 1.3 acre island surrounded by the Carolina Sternwheeler river boat. The Flying Dutchman is removed and the Paladium is expanded. Blackbeard's Revenge, a motion simulator, is added in 1985.


title: Carowinds

text: In 1986, County Fair is renovated and Frenzoid, a 360-degree looping Viking ship, is added to the area. In 1987, Carowinds purchases Ocean Island. Vintage Jalopies is removed and the Panorama Vision theater is converted to an arcade. The following year, White Lightnin' is removed due to continuous maintenance downtime. The Balloon Race flat ride and WhiteWater Falls, a 45 foot tall water attraction is added. In 1989, Ocean Island is renamed to RipTide Reef and expanded to over 6 acres on the land previously occupied by White Lightnin'. Carowinds became the first amusement park in the United States to include a full water park with admission. Black Widow is removed the same year.


title: Carowinds

text: In 1990, Gauntlet, a prototype thrill ride, was added to the park. The following year, the Paladium becomes a stand-alone concert facility- separate from the theme park with an expanded seating capacity of 13,000 after a $4 million renovation. In 1992, Kings Entertainment Company was acquired by Paramount Communications and Paramount Parks was formed, with the corporate headquarters a few miles away from the park in Charlotte. The same year, Carowinds introduces the Vortex stand-up roller coaster.


title: Carowinds

text: The park's name was changed to Paramount's Carowinds in 1993. Movies and television shows from various Paramount Pictures were introduced into the park, including Days of Thunder. The Paramount Walk of Fame was constructed on the path from the park's main entrance to the park's central hub. In 1994, Wayne's World, a new three acre themed area that re-creates the Hollywood set popularized in the Paramount motion picture of the same name, is added to the northwestern corner of the park with the Hurler roller coaster as its centerpiece.


title: Carowinds

text: In 1995, Animation Station introduces an interactive experience for kids featuring The Power Station, a three-story climbing structure, and Kids' Studio, an outdoor amphitheater for children's shows. On June 30 of the same year, a skycoaster ride called Skycoaster opened in the Wayne's World section. Drop Zone: Stunt Tower was also added in 1996 in the same area. The park hosted 1.8 million visitors, making it one of the largest tourist attractions in the Carolinas. In 1997, to celebrate the park's 25th anniversary, RipTide Reef is expanded into WaterWorks, doubling its size to include 12 acres at a cost of $7.5 million. In 1998, ZOOM ZONE opens in Animation Station. The expansion adds three new attractions: Taxi Jam, Chopper Chase and Road Rally and increases the size of the area by 3.5 acres. The addition of Top Gun: The Jet Coaster in 1999 became the single-largest investment in the park's history at a cost of $10.5 million.


title: Carowinds

text: In 2000, The Nickelodeon Flying Super Saturator takes riders along a 1,087-foot suspended track while dodging a gauntlet of gushing geysers and rain curtains and was the first of its kind roller coaster in the world. SCarowinds, the park's annual Halloween event, is introduced for the first time in October. In 2001, the park introduced three new attractions including Scooby-Doo's Haunted Mansion, an interactive ghost-busting experience through the former Harmony Hall, Pipeline Peak, the world's tallest enclosed body slide and increases the size of WaterWorks to 13 acres, and the park's first 3-D attraction, 7th Portal. Plantation Square, the park's entrance area, is remodeled into Paramount Plaza. The Wayne's World theming is removed and the area is converted to Action Zone. The following year saw the addition of Carolina Boardwalk, a newly-themed area that takes guests on a walk through of the famous beaches of the Carolinas. Included in this area is the parks 11th roller coaster, Ricochet. After the success of Flying Ace Aerial Chase at sister park Kings Island, Paramount decided to build a clone at Carowinds in 2003 as part of the Happy Land of Hanna Barbera's transition into Nickelodeon Central. In 2004, Nighthawk (then known as Stealth) was relocated from California's Great America and opened as BORG Assimilator in the location previously home to Smurf Island. Nickelodeon Central was expanded in 2005. On January 27, 2006, the "Dayton Daily News" reported that CBS, owner of Paramount Parks, was interested in selling all of its theme parks, including Carowinds. On June 30, 2006, Cedar Fair acquired all of the Paramount Parks, including Carowinds.


title: Carowinds

text: Although Cedar Fair continued to use the Paramount's Carowinds name through the remainder of the 2006 season, it began to phase out the Paramount name in press releases, the park website, and signage within the park. All references to Paramount-owned movies were removed immediately, with the exception of Nickelodeon Central, as Cedar Fair does not own the rights to use Paramount property. Several rides were renamed and rethemed, including BORG Assimilator (now known as Nighthawk), Drop Zone: Stunt Tower (now known as Drop Tower), and Top Gun: The Jet Coaster (now known as Afterburn). WaterWorks was expanded by four additional acres and the name was changed to Boomerang Bay in 2006. The addition of a heated lagoon and a children's water slide were among the changes made to the existing water park.


title: Carowinds

text: In January 2007, a new logo was unveiled featuring the trademark Cedar Fair flag on the letter "I" in the Carowinds name, removing Paramount altogether. The Carolina Skytower was repainted to feature the colors of the American flag. In 2008, a second, larger wave pool was added to Boomerang Bay due to increased popularity. Yo-Yo, a flat ride from Carowinds' former sister park Geauga Lake, was also added to the park. The Nickelodeon Flying Super Saturator is closed and removed. The following year, Carolina Cobra was also relocated from Geauga Lake in the spot formerly home to the Flying Super Saturator and includes new trains. Multiple pathways were repaved and the landscaping around the park was also improved. Nighthawk is repainted from black and green to yellow and blue. It is announced that the Powder Keg Log Flume located near the front of the park would be removed for future development.


title: Carowinds

text: In 2010, Intimidator, a 232-foot tall roller coaster, opened in the space formerly occupied by the Powder Keg Log Flume. A portion of the parking lot is re-configured to accommodate the ride's layout. Nickelodeon Central was also replaced by Planet Snoopy, introducing the "Peanuts" characters to the park. For 2011, the park saw general cosmetic improvements. Vortex received a new red and white color scheme, new picnic shelters were constructed in the Plaza Pavilion area, Thunder Road and Hurler had portions of their tracks reconstructed, and new seat walls, newly planted shade trees, and additional greenery was planted all around the park. In 2012, WindSeeker, a 301-foot tall swinging flat ride, opened in a filled portion of the main lagoon near Nighthawk. The park also continued to add more shade structures and replaced asphalt pathways with brick pavers throughout the park. On August 26, 2013, Cedar Fair announced a $50 million investment plan to expand Carowinds over three years starting in 2014. The expansion included a $30 million roller coaster, a $2.5 million water slide, a $7 million food complex, and $4 million to improve the park's ticket booths and front areas. The same year, the park introduced Dinosaurs Alive!, a 5-acre walkthrough attraction.


title: Carowinds

text: In 2015, Fury 325, the fifth-tallest roller coaster in the world, opened as another component of the park's previously announced "top-to-bottom" expansion program. A new front entrance replaced the original North Gate entrance of the park, the parking toll booths were replaced and expanded, and the parking lot was re-configured to accommodate the new entry plaza. Thunder Road is closed and demolished to make way for future development. In 2016, Boomerang Bay was re-themed and expanded into Carolina Harbor, removing the Australian theme. The expansion included a new six-slide complex, a new wave pool located on land formerly home to Thunder Road, and several new splash areas for kids. The original wave pool is demolished. For the 2017 season, the expansion of the County Fair area saw the addition of four new rides: Electro-Spin (a Mondial top scan), Zephyr (Zierer Wave Swinger), Rock N Roller (Mack Rides Music Express), and Do-Si-Do (HUSS Troika). Carolina Cobra was re-themed and renamed "The Flying Cobras", with a new blue and white color scheme. The park also announced that the Wings restaurant would be expanded. WinterFest, a Christmas event in November and December that previously operated in 2005, was also reintroduced.


title: Carowinds

text: In 2018, Planet Snoopy was expanded and converted into Camp Snoopy with the addition of six new children's attractions. The following year, Copperhead Strike, a double-launched roller coaster manufactured by Mack Rides, was opened in the all-new seven-acre Blue Ridge Junction area of the park and became the park's 14th roller coaster. Blue Ridge Junction was constructed in the area formerly occupied by WhiteWater Falls, Sand Dune Lagoon and Thunder Road's former station. A 130-room SpringHill Suites by Marriott, Carowinds' first on-site hotel, opened near the park's toll booths. Blue Ridge Country Kitchen opens in Blue Ridge Junction.


title: Carowinds

text: Carowinds did not open for normal operation during the 2020 season as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The park hosted a new holiday event, however, called "Taste of the Season" from November 21 – December 20, 2020. The event featured food, live shows, and other holiday activities throughout the park, as well as a select number of amusement rides. The park returned to normal operation in May 2021. In 2021, Boogie Board Racer, the longest mat racing slide in the Southeast, opened in Carolina Harbor. Retirement of the Rip Roarin' Rapids ride was also announced, along with the closure of the Dinosaurs Alive! attraction, to prepare for future development.


title: Carowinds

text: In May 2022, blueprints were leaked revealing an overhaul to the Crossroads area of the park, including the removal of the Action Theater and Yo-Yo attractions as well as the addition of four new flat rides. In July 2022, Carowinds confirmed the closures of Plants vs. Zombies 3Z Arena, Yo-Yo, and Southern Star attractions. Air Racers, Air Walker, Gear Spin, Gyro Force, as well as Hover and Dodge were announced as their replacements for the 2023 season. Beginning on January 1, 2023, Carowinds will be opened year round.


title: Carowinds

text: Included in the price of admission to Carowinds is access to the 27-acre Carolina Harbor water park. Based on a Coastal Carolinian theme, it features 15 rides and attractions. It originally opened as Ocean Island in 1982, the water park has also been known as Riptide Reef (1989–1997) WaterWorks (1997–2006), and Boomerang Bay (2007–2015). On August 27, 2015, Carowinds announced an expansion for the area that added five additional attractions and resulted in the name changing to Carolina Harbor.


title: Carowinds

text: Carowinds re-introduced WinterFest for the 2017 season. This seasonal holiday event features seasonal holiday decorations, tree lighting, Christmas carolers, homemade crafts, a themed parade, and select rides. The park previously had Winterfest in 1983 when owned by Taft Attractions and again in 2005 when owned by Paramount.


title: Carowinds

text: In September 2000 the park introduced SCarowinds. It is an annual Halloween attraction and is presented on select nights in September and October, as well as the first weekend in November. The experience includes numerous haunted attractions and incorporates most of the existing park rides into a nightmarish experience.


title: Carowinds

text: The Paladium is an outdoor amphitheater located at Carowinds. It opened in 1975 and was the Charlotte area's premier outdoor concert venue until the opening of Blockbuster Pavilion, now PNC Music Pavilion, in 1991. It lost most of its major acts to the Uptown Amphitheatre at the NC Music Factory (now the Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre at AvidxChange Music Factory) when it opened in 2009, and now hosts mostly Christian bands. Admission to the Paladium is separate from admission to Carowinds.


title: Carowinds

text: Jimmy Buffett performed at the Pladium in July 1976 in the early days of his career. In 1980, the Paladium hosted Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. In 1992, Chapel Hill native James Taylor was there. Bon Jovi played to a sold-out crowd at the Paladium in 1993 during a stop on their I'll Sleep When I'm Dead Tour. It had Virginia's Dave Matthews Band in '93, UK's Depeche Mode in '94, Athens GA's B-52's in '94, Johnny Cash in '95, Billy Ray Cyrus in '95, Blues Traveler in '96, UK's Duran Duran in 2000, Weird Al Yankovic in '00, Atlanta Christian rapper Lecrae in 2014 (for Rock the Park), and Skillet in 2015.


title: Carowinds

text: Fast Lane is a limited-access line queue system offered for an additional charge at Cedar Fair amusement parks. Visitors can purchase a wristband that allows them to bypass standard lines in favor of shorter ones at many of the parks' most popular attractions.


title: Carowinds

text: The annual Carowinds Festival of Music allows music students to perform in public, receiving comments and ratings from nationally recognized adjudicators. Bands, choirs, show choirs, and orchestras can all play for ratings. Plaques and ribbons are awarded for performances that receive ratings of superior and excellent.


title: Mark V tank

text: The tank was improved in several aspects over the Mark IV, chiefly the new steering system, transmission and 150 bhp engine, but it fell short in other areas, particularly its insufficient ventilation leading to carbon monoxide poisoning for the crew. Various versions were fitted with a variety of armament including 6-pounder guns and machine guns.


title: Mark V tank

text: It was first deployed in July 1918 on the Western Front at the Battle of Hamel; then at the Battle of Amiens, and on the Hindenburg Line during the closing months of World War I.


title: Mark V tank

text: During the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War on the White Russian side, four Mark Vs were delivered to Archangelsk, four to Tallinn, Estonia, and around 70 were delivered to Novorossiysk in southern Russia. The survivors were captured and used by the Red Army.


title: Mark V tank

text: There were two main further variants, the lengthened Mark V* and a few Mark V**s with a more powerful engine and wider tracks. A planned Mark V*** was never built. There are eleven surviving Mark V tanks. The Mark VIII tank was an enlarged Mark V with greater power: only those with the Liberty engine saw post-war service in the US. A further unarmed development was the Mark IX tank, one of the first armoured personnel carriers, which saw limited use in Britain after the war.


title: Mark V tank

text: In general the Mark V was successful, especially given its limited service history, and somewhat primitive design dating back to 1915.


title: Mark V tank

text: The Mark V was, at first, intended to be a completely new design of tank, of which a wooden mock-up had been completed; however, when the new engine and transmission originally planned for the Mark IV became available in December 1917, the first, more advanced Mark V design was abandoned to avoid disrupting production. The designation "Mark V" was switched to an improved version of the Mark IV, equipped with the new systems. The original design of the Mark IV was to have been a large improvement on the Mark III, but had been scaled back due to technical delays. The Mark V thus turned out very similar to the original design of the Mark IV – i.e. a greatly modified Mark III.


title: Mark V tank

text: Production of the Mark V started at Metropolitan Carriage & Wagon at the end of 1917; the first tanks arrived in France in May 1918. Four hundred were built, 200 Males and Females; the "Males" armed with 6-pounder (57 mm) guns and machine guns, the "Females" with machine guns only. Several were converted to "Hermaphrodites" (sometimes known as "Mark V Composite") by fitting one male and one female sponson. This measure was intended to ensure that female tanks would not be outgunned when faced with captured British male tanks in German use, or the Germans' own A7V.


title: Mark V tank

text: The Mark V was to be followed by the more advanced Tank Mark VI, but this was abandoned in December 1917, to ensure sufficient production by British, American, and French factories of the Tank Mark VIII for a planned 1919 offensive. However, the war ended in November 1918, and few Mark VIIIs would be built (most of those completed in Britain were immediately scrapped). After the war, most of the British Army's tank units were disbanded, leaving five tank battalions equipped with either the Mark V or the Medium Mark C. The British Army's interest shifted more to lighter, faster tanks, and the Mark V was partially replaced by the Vickers Medium Mark I during the mid-1920s. The Vickers A1E1 Independent reached prototype stage in 1926, but it was abandoned for lack of funds. The remaining Mark Vs appear to have been replaced by medium tanks by the end of the decade.


title: Mark V tank

text: In early 1917, some British tanks were tested with various experimental powerplant and transmissions ordered by Albert Stern. These included petrol-electric schemes, hydraulic systems, a multiple clutch system, and an epicyclic gearbox designed by Major W. G. Wilson. Though the petrol-electrics had advantages, Wilson's design was capable of production and was selected for use in future tanks.


title: Mark V tank

text: The use of Wilson's epicyclic steering gear in the Mark V meant that the driver could control all aspects of the transmission: three extra crew members had been required in previous versions of the tank, two gearsmen to change low and high gears on either side of the tank, and the commander who operated the brakes and skid steering. There was much more space at the rear after the removal of the massive differential gear (originally designed for the Daimler-Foster agricultural tractor) fitted to all the earlier tanks. On the roof towards the rear of the tank, behind the engine, was a second raised cabin, with hinged sides that allowed the crew to attach the unditching beam without exiting the vehicle. An additional machine-gun mount was fitted at the rear of the hull.


title: Mark V tank

text: The Mark V had a new, more powerful six cylinder engine (also ordered by Stern) designed by Harry Ricardo, displacing 19 litres and developing . According to J. F. C. Fuller, the Ricardo engine was of a "somewhat unorthodox design", but it was highly efficient and, with proper care and attention, gave very little trouble. This 'unorthodox' description related to Ricardo's use of crosshead pistons which separated the lubricating oil from the heat of combustion, with the crosshead and gudgeon pin running in its own separate guide. The engine used conventional poppet valves, unlike the Daimler sleeve valve engines used in the previous tanks; because very few men or officers had any experience of adjusting valve mechanisms, extra instruction was needed for tank personnel. The Ricardo engine could have been considerably more powerful, but its design was restricted by two considerations. Firstly, it needed to fit in the exact same footprint as the original Daimler 105 hp engine in the older tanks Marks I–IV, resulting in a taller engine; secondly, Wilson had advised Ricardo that the proposed would place too much strain on the transmission, and it was limited to 150 bhp.


title: Mark V tank

text: The Ricardo engine was still in the centre of the crew compartment which led to miserable crew conditions from its heat output. The noise also interfered with crew communication.


title: Mark V tank

text: The ventilation was the area in which the Mark V suffered its largest weakness. The previous Marks I–IV drew cooling air from inside the tank, through the radiator, and then expelled the air through a vent, which provided a constant supply of moving air for the crew. In contrast, the Mark V, drew air from outside the tank, across the radiator, and then expelled the air though a vent, which left the air inside the crew compartment stagnant. The only ventilation for the crew compartment, other than the driver and gunner view-ports, located on all sides of the tank, was a roof-mounted Keith fan. This fan was inadequate for maintaining a stable supply of clean air for the crew of a Mark V; exhaust and gun-smoke were trapped with the crew, which caused many crewmen to grow ill and, in the most extreme cases, was enough to render them unconscious; either way the crew was practically unfit for combat within a few hours.


title: Mark V tank

text: An extra sliding shutter was later fitted which drew foul air out of the fighting compartment, which is thought to have made some improvement.


title: Mark V tank

text: In an attempt to stop the tank threat, the German Army began digging wider trenches that made it difficult for tanks to cross. For example, trenches in the Hindenburg Line were widened to , which was more than the British tanks' trench-crossing ability. To counter this, Sir William Tritton developed the 'tadpole tail', an extension of the track horns to be fitted to the back of a Mark IV tank, which lengthened the tank by about . Although 300 sets of tails were sent to France in the spring of 1918, they were never fitted, and the design was never used in combat.


title: Mark V tank

text: This in turn caused Major Philip Johnson of the Central Tank Corps Workshops to devise a plan of his own in early 1918. He cut a Mark IV in half and inserted three extra panels, lengthening the entire hull by six feet. Three vehicles were modified in this way. (It was believed for a long time that most Mark V* had been field conversions made by Johnson. They were in fact all new, factory-built to a new design). The Mark V* had a reshaped rear cupola incorporating 2 extra machine-gun mounts, a door in each side of the hull, with an extra machine-gun mount on each. This tank weighed 33 tons.


title: Mark V tank

text: The extra space also allowed up to fourteen men to be carried in addition to the standard crew: the 1st Battalion Royal Tank Regiment claimed that it was possible to squeeze in 2 Lewis guns with crews of two; 2 Vickers guns each with a four-man crew; plus an infantry scout and an officer. However, they tended to succumb to the fume-filled atmosphere as described above.


title: Mark V tank

text: The total orders for the Mark V* were 500 Males and 200 Females, 579 had been built by the Armistice – the order was completed by Metropolitan Carriage in March 1919. Shortly before the end of the War, Britain supplied France with 100 Mk V* (80 males and 20 females). They were not used in action, but remained in French service throughout the 1920s. Retired from active service in 1930, they were kept in storage to have heavy tanks to discard in case the Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments requested it.


title: Mark V tank

text: Because the Mark V* had been lengthened, its original length-width ratio had been spoiled. Lateral forces in a turn now became unacceptably high causing thrown tracks and an enormous turning circle. Therefore, Major Wilson redesigned the track in May 1918, with a stronger curve to the lower run reducing ground contact (but increasing ground pressure as a trade-off) and the tracks were widened to . The Mark V engine was bored out to give and sat further back in the hull. The cabin for the driver was combined with the commander's cabin; there now was a separate machine gun position in the back. Of a revised order for 700 tanks (150 Females and 550 Males) only 25 were built and only one of those by the end of 1918.


title: Mark V tank

text: The Mk V made its combat debut during the Battle of Hamel on 4 July 1918. Sixty Mark Vs successfully supported Australian troops in an action that repaired the Australians' confidence in tanks, which had been badly damaged at Bullecourt. Thereafter Mk Vs were used in eight major actions before the end of the war.


title: Mark V tank

text: During the Battle of Amiens in August 1918, 288 Mark V tanks, along with the new Whippet and Mk V*, penetrated the German lines in a foretaste of modern armoured warfare, and signalled the end of trench warfare.


title: Mark V tank

text: The American 301st Heavy Tank Battalion was equipped with 19 Mark V and 21 Mark V* tanks in their first heavy tank action against the Hindenburg Line on 27 September 1918. Of the 21 Mark V* tanks, 9 were hit by artillery rounds (one totally destroyed), 2 hit British mines, 5 had mechanical problems, and 2 ditched in trenches. The battalion, however, did reach its objective.


title: Mark V tank

text: Approximately 70 Mark V tanks supplied by Great Britain to the White Russian Army and subsequently captured by the Red Army in the course of the Russian Civil War were used in 1921 during the Red Army invasion of Georgia and contributed to the Soviet victory in the battle for Tbilisi. In the north, four Mark Vs had been delivered to White Russian forces in Archangelsk in 1919, and four to Tallinn, Estonia along with two Renault FTs.


title: Mark V tank

text: In the defence of Tallinn by the Red Army against German forces in August 1941, the four Mk Vs previously operated by Estonia were planned to be used as dug-in fortifications. It is not known whether this plan was carried out in battle. It is believed that they were subsequently scrapped.


title: Mark V tank

text: In 1945, Allied troops came across two badly damaged Mk V tanks in Berlin. Photographic evidence indicates that these were survivors of the Russian Civil War and had previously been displayed as a monument in Smolensk, Russia, before being brought to Berlin after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Accounts of their active involvement in the Battle of Berlin have not been verified.


title: Mark V tank

text: Eleven Mark V tanks survived. The majority are in Russia or Ukraine and are survivors of the tanks sent there to aid the White forces during the Russian Civil War.


title: Forecasting

text: Forecasting is the process of making predictions based on past and present data. Later these can be compared (resolved) against what happens. For example, a company might estimate their revenue in the next year, then compare it against the actual results. Prediction is a similar but more general term. Forecasting might refer to specific formal statistical methods employing time series, cross-sectional or longitudinal data, or alternatively to less formal judgmental methods or the process of prediction and resolution itself. Usage can vary between areas of application: for example, in hydrology the terms "forecast" and "forecasting" are sometimes reserved for estimates of values at certain specific future times, while the term "prediction" is used for more general estimates, such as the number of times floods will occur over a long period.


title: Forecasting

text: Risk and uncertainty are central to forecasting and prediction; it is generally considered a good practice to indicate the degree of uncertainty attaching to forecasts. In any case, the data must be up to date in order for the forecast to be as accurate as possible. In some cases the data used to predict the variable of interest is itself forecast.


title: Forecasting

text: Forecasting has applications in a wide range of fields where estimates of future conditions are useful. Depending on the field, accuracy varies significantly. If the factors that relate to what is being forecast are known and well understood and there is a significant amount of data that can be used, it is likely the final value will be close to the forecast. If this is not the case or if the actual outcome is affected by the forecasts, the reliability of the forecasts can be significantly lower.<ref name="https://www.otexts.org/fpp/1/1"></ref>


title: Forecasting

text: Climate change and increasing energy prices have led to the use of Egain Forecasting for buildings. This attempts to reduce the energy needed to heat the building, thus reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. Forecasting is used in customer demand planning in everyday business for manufacturing and distribution companies.


title: Forecasting

text: While the veracity of predictions for actual stock returns are disputed through reference to the efficient-market hypothesis, forecasting of broad economic trends is common. Such analysis is provided by both non-profit groups as well as by for-profit private institutions.


title: Forecasting

text: Forecasting foreign exchange movements is typically achieved through a combination of chart and fundamental analysis. An essential difference between chart analysis and fundamental economic analysis is that chartists study only the price action of a market, whereas fundamentalists attempt to look to the reasons behind the action. Financial institutions assimilate the evidence provided by their fundamental and chartist researchers into one note to provide a final projection on the currency in question.


title: Forecasting

text: Forecasting has also been used to predict the development of conflict situations. Forecasters perform research that uses empirical results to gauge the effectiveness of certain forecasting models. However research has shown that there is little difference between the accuracy of the forecasts of experts knowledgeable in the conflict situation and those by individuals who knew much less. Similarly, experts in some studies argue that role thinking - standing in other people's shoes to forecast their decisions - does not contribute to the accuracy of the forecast.


title: Forecasting

text: An important, albeit often ignored aspect of forecasting, is the relationship it holds with planning. Forecasting can be described as predicting what the future "will" look like, whereas planning predicts what the future "should" look like. There is no single right forecasting method to use. Selection of a method should be based on your objectives and your conditions (data etc.). A good place to find a method, is by visiting a selection tree. An example of a selection tree can be found here.


title: Forecasting

text: In Philip E. Tetlock's "", he discusses forecasting as a method of improving the ability to make decisions. A person can become better calibrated - ie having things they give 10% credence to happening 10% of the time. Or they can forecast things more confidently - coming to the same conclusion but earlier. Some have claimed that that forecasting is a transferrable skill with benefits to other areas of discussion and decision making.


title: Forecasting

text: Betting on sports or politics is another form of forecasting. Rather than being used as advice, bettors are paid based on if they predicted correctly. While decisions might be made based on these bets (forecasts), the main motivation is generally financial.


title: Forecasting

text: Finally, futarchy is a form of government where forecasts of the impact of government action are used to decide which actions are taken. Rather than advice, in futarchy's strongest form, the action with the best forecasted result is automatically taken.


title: Forecasting

text: Forecast improvement projects have been operated in a number of sectors: the National Hurricane Center's Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP) and the Wind Forecast Improvement Project sponsored by the US Department of Energy are examples. In relation to supply chain management, the Du Pont model has been used to show that an increase in forecast accuracy can generate increases in sales anbd reductions in inventory, operating expenses and commitment of working capital.


title: Forecasting

text: Qualitative forecasting techniques are subjective, based on the opinion and judgment of consumers and experts; they are appropriate when past data are not available.


title: Forecasting

text: They are usually applied to intermediate- or long-range decisions. Examples of qualitative forecasting methods are informed opinion and judgment, the Delphi method, market research, and historical life-cycle analogy.


title: Forecasting

text: Quantitative forecasting models are used to forecast future data as a function of past data. They are appropriate to use when past numerical data is available and when it is reasonable to assume that some of the patterns in the data are expected to continue into the future.


title: Forecasting

text: These methods are usually applied to short- or intermediate-range decisions. Examples of quantitative forecasting methods are last period demand, simple and weighted N-Period moving averages, simple exponential smoothing, poisson process model based forecasting and multiplicative seasonal indexes. Previous research shows that different methods may lead to different level of forecasting accuracy. For example, GMDH neural network was found to have better forecasting performance than the classical forecasting algorithms such as Single Exponential Smooth, Double Exponential Smooth, ARIMA and back-propagation neural network.


title: Forecasting

text: In this approach, the predictions of all future values are equal to the mean of the past data. This approach can be used with any sort of data where past data is available. In time series notation:


title: Forecasting

text: Although the time series notation has been used here, the average approach can also be used for cross-sectional data (when we are predicting unobserved values; values that are not included in the data set). Then, the prediction for unobserved values is the average of the observed values.


title: Forecasting

text: Naïve forecasts are the most cost-effective forecasting model, and provide a benchmark against which more sophisticated models can be compared. This forecasting method is only suitable for time series data. Using the naïve approach, forecasts are produced that are equal to the last observed value. This method works quite well for economic and financial time series, which often have patterns that are difficult to reliably and accurately predict. If the time series is believed to have seasonality, the seasonal naïve approach may be more appropriate where the forecasts are equal to the value from last season. In time series notation:


title: Forecasting

text: A variation on the naïve method is to allow the forecasts to increase or decrease over time, where the amount of change over time (called the drift) is set to be the average change seen in the historical data. So the forecast for time formula_4 is given by


title: Forecasting

text: This is equivalent to drawing a line between the first and last observation, and extrapolating it into the future.


title: Forecasting

text: The seasonal naïve method accounts for seasonality by setting each prediction to be equal to the last observed value of the same season. For example, the prediction value for all subsequent months of April will be equal to the previous value observed for April. The forecast for time formula_6 is


title: Forecasting

text: Some forecasting methods try to identify the underlying factors that might influence the variable that is being forecast. For example, including information about climate patterns might improve the ability of a model to predict umbrella sales. Forecasting models often take account of regular seasonal variations. In addition to climate, such variations can also be due to holidays and customs: for example, one might predict that sales of college football apparel will be higher during the football season than during the off season.


title: Forecasting

text: Several informal methods used in causal forecasting do not rely solely on the output of mathematical algorithms, but instead use the judgment of the forecaster. Some forecasts take account of past relationships between variables: if one variable has, for example, been approximately linearly related to another for a long period of time, it may be appropriate to extrapolate such a relationship into the future, without necessarily understanding the reasons for the relationship.


title: Forecasting

text: Quantitative forecasting models are often judged against each other by comparing their in-sample or out-of-sample mean square error, although some researchers have advised against this. Different forecasting approaches have different levels of accuracy. For example, it was found in one context that GMDH has higher forecasting accuracy than traditional ARIMA.


title: Forecasting

text: Judgmental forecasting methods incorporate intuitive judgement, opinions and subjective probability estimates. Judgmental forecasting is used in cases where there is a lack of historical data or during completely new and unique market conditions.


title: Forecasting

text: Can be created with 3 points of a sequence and the "moment" or "index". This type of extrapolation has 100% accuracy in predictions in a big percentage of known series database (OEIS).


title: Forecasting

text: The forecast error (also known as a residual) is the difference between the actual value and the forecast value for the corresponding period:


title: Forecasting

text: where E is the forecast error at period t, Y is the actual value at period t, and F is the forecast for period t.


title: Forecasting

text: A good forecasting method will yield residuals that are uncorrelated. If there are correlations between residual values, then there is information left in the residuals which should be used in computing forecasts. This can be accomplished by computing the expected value of a residual as a function of the known past residuals, and adjusting the forecast by the amount by which this expected value differs from zero.


title: Forecasting

text: A good forecasting method will also have zero mean. If the residuals have a mean other than zero, then the forecasts are biased and can be improved by adjusting the forecasting technique by an additive constant that equals the mean of the unadjusted residuals.


title: Forecasting

text: The forecast error, E, is on the same scale as the data, as such, these accuracy measures are scale-dependent and cannot be used to make comparisons between series on different scales.


title: Forecasting

text: These are more frequently used to compare forecast performance between different data sets because they are scale-independent. However, they have the disadvantage of being extremely large or undefined if Y is close to or equal to zero.


title: Forecasting

text: Business forecasters and practitioners sometimes use different terminology. They refer to the PMAD as the MAPE, although they compute this as a volume weighted MAPE. For more information, see Calculating demand forecast accuracy.


title: Forecasting

text: When comparing the accuracy of different forecasting methods on a specific data set, the measures of aggregate error are compared with each other and the method that yields the lowest error is preferred.


title: Forecasting

text: When evaluating the quality of forecasts, it is invalid to look at how well a model fits the historical data; the accuracy of forecasts can only be determined by considering how well a model performs on new data that were not used when fitting the model. When choosing models, it is common to use a portion of the available data for fitting, and use the rest of the data for testing the model, as was done in the above examples.


title: Forecasting

text: For time series data, the training set can only include observations prior to the test set. Therefore, no future observations can be used in constructing the forecast. Suppose "k" observations are needed to produce a reliable forecast; then the process works as follows:


title: Forecasting

text: This procedure is sometimes known as a "rolling forecasting origin" because the "origin" ("k+i -1)" at which the forecast is based rolls forward in time. Further, two-step-ahead or in general "p"-step-ahead forecasts can be computed by first forecasting the value immediately after the training set, then using this value with the training set values to forecast two periods ahead, etc.


title: Forecasting

text: Seasonality is a characteristic of a time series in which the data experiences regular and predictable changes which recur every calendar year. Any predictable change or pattern in a time series that recurs or repeats over a one-year period can be said to be seasonal. It is common in many situations – such as grocery store or even in a Medical Examiner's office—that the demand depends on the day of the week. In such situations, the forecasting procedure calculates the seasonal index of the “season” – seven seasons, one for each day – which is the ratio of the average demand of that season (which is calculated by Moving Average or Exponential Smoothing using historical data corresponding only to that season) to the average demand across all seasons. An index higher than 1 indicates that demand is higher than average; an index less than 1 indicates that the demand is less than the average.


title: Forecasting

text: The cyclic behaviour of data takes place when there are regular fluctuations in the data which usually last for an interval of at least two years, and when the length of the current cycle cannot be predetermined. Cyclic behavior is not to be confused with seasonal behavior. Seasonal fluctuations follow a consistent pattern each year so the period is always known. As an example, during the Christmas period, inventories of stores tend to increase in order to prepare for Christmas shoppers. As an example of cyclic behaviour, the population of a particular natural ecosystem will exhibit cyclic behaviour when the population decreases as its natural food source decreases, and once the population is low, the food source will recover and the population will start to increase again. Cyclic data cannot be accounted for using ordinary seasonal adjustment since it is not of fixed period.


title: Forecasting

text: Limitations pose barriers beyond which forecasting methods cannot reliably predict. There are many events and values that cannot be forecast reliably. Events such as the roll of a die or the results of the lottery cannot be forecast because they are random events and there is no significant relationship in the data. When the factors that lead to what is being forecast are not known or well understood such as in stock and foreign exchange markets forecasts are often inaccurate or wrong as there is not enough data about everything that affects these markets for the forecasts to be reliable, in addition the outcomes of the forecasts of these markets change the behavior of those involved in the market further reducing forecast accuracy.


title: Forecasting

text: The concept of "self-destructing predictions" concerns the way in which some predictions can undermine themselves by influencing social behavior. This is because "predictors are part of the social context about which they are trying to make a prediction and may influence that context in the process". For example, a forecast that a large percentage of a population will become HIV infected based on existing trends may cause more people to avoid risky behavior and thus reduce the HIV infection rate, invalidating the forecast (which might have remained correct if it had not been publicly known). Or, a prediction that cybersecurity will become a major issue may cause organizations to implement more security cybersecurity measures, thus limiting the issue.


title: Forecasting

text: As proposed by Edward Lorenz in 1963, long range weather forecasts, those made at a range of two weeks or more, are impossible to definitively predict the state of the atmosphere, owing to the chaotic nature of the fluid dynamics equations involved. Extremely small errors in the initial input, such as temperatures and winds, within numerical models double every five days.


title: Grigory Orlov

text: Prince Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov (; 6 October 1734, Bezhetsky Uyezd – 13 April 1783, Moscow) was a favourite of the Empress Catherine the Great of Russia. He became a leader of the 1762 coup which overthrew Catherine's husband Peter III of Russia and installed Catherine as empress. For some years he was virtually co-ruler with her, but his repeated infidelities and the enmity of Catherine's other advisers led to his fall from power.


title: Grigory Orlov

text: Orlov was the son of Gregory Orlov, governor of Great Novgorod. He had a younger brother Alexei Grigoryevich Orlov who would equally gain military and political prominence in Russia. Grigory Orlov was educated in the corps of cadets at Saint Petersburg, began his military career in the Seven Years' War, and was wounded at Zorndorf. While serving in the capital as an artillery officer, he caught the fancy of the then Grand Duchess Catherine Alekseyevna, and was the leader of the conspiracy which resulted in the dethronement and death of her husband, Emperor Peter III (1762).


title: Grigory Orlov

text: After the event, Empress Catherine raised him to the rank of count and made him adjutant-general, director-general of engineers, and general-in-chief. They had an illegitimate son, Aleksey who was named after the village of Bobriki, and from whom descends the line of the Count Bobrinsky. Orlov's influence became paramount after the discovery of the Khitrovo plot to murder the whole Orlov family. At one time, the Empress thought of marrying her favorite, but the plan was frustrated by her influential advisor Nikita Panin.


title: Grigory Orlov

text: Orlov was no statesman, but he had a quick wit, a fairly accurate appreciation of current events, and was a useful and sympathetic counselor during the earlier portion of Catherine's reign. He entered with enthusiasm, from both patriotic and economic motives, into the question of the improvement of the condition of the serfs and their partial emancipation. As the president of the Free Economic Society, he was also their most prominent advocate in the great commission of 1767, though he aimed primarily at pleasing the empress, who affected great liberality in her earlier years.


title: Grigory Orlov

text: He was one of the earliest propagandists of the Slavophile idea of the emancipation of the Christians from Ottoman rule. In 1771, he was sent as first Russian plenipotentiary to the peace congress of Focşani, but he failed in his mission, owing partly to the obstinacy of the Ottomans, and partly (according to Panin) to his own outrageous insolence.


title: Grigory Orlov

text: Meanwhile, Orlov's enemies, led by Panin, were attempting to break up the relationship between Orlov and Catherine. They informed the empress that Orlov had seduced his 13-year-old relative. A handsome young officer, Alexander Vasilchikov, was installed as her new lover.


title: Grigory Orlov

text: To rekindle Catherine's affection, Grigory presented to her one of the greatest diamonds of the world, known ever since as the Orlov Diamond. By the time he returned – without permission – to his Marble Palace at Saint Petersburg, Orlov found himself superseded in the empress's favor by the younger Grigory Potemkin. When Potemkin, in 1774, superseded Vasilchikov as the queen's lover, Orlov became of no account at court and went abroad for some years. He returned to Russia a few months prior to his death in Moscow in 1783.


title: Grigory Orlov

text: In 1777, at the age of 43, he married his 18-year-old relative, Catherine Zinovyeva, variously described by sources as either a niece or a cousin, but left no children by that marriage. Catherine died of tuberculosis in 1781, at the age of 23, in Lausanne, Switzerland. Her tomb, from which her body was removed in 1910, still remains in Cathedrale Notre-Dame in Lausanne.


title: Grigory Orlov

text: For some time before his death, he suffered from a serious mental illness, probably a form of dementia, which progressed towards complete mental collapse. After his death, the Empress Catherine wrote, "Although I have long been prepared for this sad event, it has nevertheless shaken me to the depths of my being. People may console me, I may even repeat to myself all those things which it is customary to say on such occasions--my only answer is strangled tears. I suffer intolerably."


title: Matt Araiza

text: Matthew Ryan Araiza (born May 16, 2000) is an American football punter who is a free agent. He played college football for the San Diego State Aztecs, setting the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) season record for average punt yardage as a junior. Araiza entered the National Football League (NFL) as a sixth-round selection by the Buffalo Bills in the 2022 NFL Draft, but he was released prior to the 2022 season after being accused of gang rape.


title: Matt Araiza

text: Araiza grew up in San Diego, California, and attended Rancho Bernardo High School, where he played football and was a hurdler on the track and field team. He made 37 field goals and was a two-time All-America selection as a placekicker. Araiza committed to play college football at San Diego State University (SDSU) over offers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Montana.


title: Matt Araiza

text: At SDSU, Araiza redshirted his true freshman season for the Aztecs. He also served as the backup to All-Mountain West Conference kicker John Baron II. Araiza became the team's placekicker as a redshirt freshman and made a school-record 22 field goals on 26 attempts and was named honorable mention All-Mountain West. Araiza made 10 of 14 field goal attempts in SDSU's COVID-19-shortened 2020 season and was named honorable mention All-Mountain West for a second straight season. He also assumed punting duties during the team's opening game against UNLV and averaged 49.8 yards on five punts.


title: Matt Araiza

text: In 2021, Araiza was named first-string punter in addition to his kicking duties going into his redshirt junior season and was named a mid-season All-American by "ESPN" at the position. He finished the season averaging 51.19 yards per punt, breaking the NCAA record set by Texas A&M's Braden Mann in 2018 (50.98) and earning himself the nickname "Punt God" from fans. Araiza has stated that he does not "necessarily love the nickname", though he recognized it as a "huge compliment". Araiza won the Ray Guy Award as the top punter in the nation, and he became the second player in Aztecs history to be named a unanimous All-American. Following the end of the season, Araiza announced that he would be forgoing his final season of eligibility to enter the 2022 NFL Draft.


title: Matt Araiza

text: The Buffalo Bills selected Araiza in the sixth round with the 180th overall pick of the 2022 NFL Draft. He was the third punter selected in the draft. As a rookie, he was named the Bills starting punter following the release of veteran Matt Haack. Araiza did not dress for the Bills' final preseason game on August 26, 2022, one day after a lawsuit accusing him and two former SDSU teammates of rape became public. He was released the next day, on August 27.


title: Matt Araiza

text: In 2022, Araiza was named as a defendant in a civil case in which he and two SDSU teammates were accused of gang raping a then-17-year-old girl, who was under the age of consent in California, at an off-campus party in 2021. Araiza has denied the allegations, with his agent stating, "The facts of the incident are not what they are portrayed in the lawsuit or in the press." Araiza's lawyer described the allegations as "a money grab" from the accuser, while the accuser stated that she reported the incident the day after the alleged rape, before she was aware of Araiza's background. The San Diego County District Attorney's Office did not file criminal charges against Araiza or the other two teammates, stating that prosecutors decided that "there is no path to a potential criminal conviction".


title: Moon Bin

text: Moon Bin (; born January 26, 1998), known professionally as Moonbin, is a South Korean singer, actor, dancer and model under the label of Fantagio. He is a member of the South Korean boy group Astro and its sub-unit Moonbin & Sanha.


title: Moon Bin

text: Moon Bin was born on January 26, 1998, in Cheongju, Chungbuk Province. He attended and graduated from Hanlim Multi Art School, with focus in Practical Music.


title: Moon Bin

text: He has a younger sister, Moon Sua, who was a former YG Trainee and finalist of the second season of rap competition "Unpretty Rapstar". On November 10, 2021, she debuted in the girl group Billlie under Mystic Story, a subsidiary of SM Entertainment.


title: Moon Bin

text: Under the influence of his mother, Moon Bin debuted as a child model and ulzzang in 2004. His first known appearance was in 2006, where he appeared in TVXQ's music video for their song "Balloons" portraying a mini U-Know Yunho.


title: Moon Bin

text: In 2009, he had his first acting role in the Korean drama "Boys over Flowers" where he played the younger version of Kim Bum's character.


title: Moon Bin

text: Moon Bin was a trainee of Fantagio since he was in the fifth grade, becoming a full-fledged trainee in his middle school years. He participated in the company's boy group project iTeen, and was the second trainee to be introduced with the Fantagio iTeen Photo Test Cut.


title: Moon Bin

text: Prior to making his debut with Astro, Moon Bin along with the rest of the group starred in a web-drama, titled "To Be Continued".


title: Moon Bin

text: Moon Bin debuted as part of the six-member boy group Astro on February 23, 2016. Their debut extended play, "Spring Up", contained five songs; including the lead single "Hide & Seek".


title: Moon Bin

text: On September 7, 2018, Moon Bin was announced to be part of "The Ultimate Watchlist of Latest Trends" for the first two seasons.


title: Moon Bin

text: On January 17, 2019, Moon Bin had been confirmed to have been cast in "Moments of Eighteen", where he played the character of Jung Oh-je.


title: Moon Bin

text: On November 12, 2019, Fantagio reported that due to health reasons, Moon Bin would be absent from their upcoming promotions for their "Blue Flame" EP release.


title: Moon Bin

text: On February 14, 2020, Moon Bin appeared in a Vlive broadcast with the other Astro members, ending his hiatus.


title: Moon Bin

text: On March 4, 2020, Moon Bin along with his bandmate Yoon San-ha and Verivery's Kangmin were announced to be the new hosts of the Korean music show "Show Champion".


title: Moon Bin

text: On March 12, 2020, he was confirmed to play the lead role in the web-drama "The Mermaid Prince", a role which he reprised for a second season.


title: Moon Bin

text: On May 26, 2020, Moon Bin joined the eco-friendly cooking program "Food Avengers". In September 2020, Moon Bin was announced as one of Nerdy Cafe's model.


title: Moon Bin

text: On September 14, 2020, Moon Bin and band-mate Yoon San-ha debuted as Astro's first sub-unit "Moonbin & Sanha" with the release of their debut EP, "In-Out" along with its lead single, "Bad Idea". The unit received their first music show win from "The Show" eight days later, becoming the fastest sub-unit to receive a first music show win.


title: Moon Bin

text: On December 22, 2021, It was revealed that Moon Bin has been added as a cast member for the second season of Coupang Play's Saturday Night Live Korea.


title: Joshua Zirkzee

text: Joshua Orobosa Zirkzee (born 22 May 2001) is a Dutch professional footballer who plays as a forward for club Bologna.


title: Joshua Zirkzee

text: Born in Schiedam to a Nigerian mother and a Dutch father, Zirkzee began his footballing career as a 5-year-old with VV Hekelingen after the family had moved to Spijkenisse. After impressing early on, he moved to the youth department of Spartaan '20 in 2010, where he played alongside his nephew, Nelson Amadin. He then left for ADO Den Haag in 2013, before ending up in the Feyenoord youth academy in 2016. One year later, Zirkzee left the Feyenoord academy in his native Netherlands to join the youth setup of Bayern Munich.


title: Joshua Zirkzee

text: On 1 March 2019, Zirkzee scored a hat-trick in his debut for Bayern Munich II. Just a day later, he scored the winning goal for the under-19 side as they defeated 1. FC Nürnberg 2–1. Zirkzee made his professional debut in the 3. Liga for Bayern Munich II on 20 July 2019, coming on as a substitute in the 74th minute for Oliver Batista Meier in the away match against Würzburger Kickers.


title: Joshua Zirkzee

text: On 11 December 2019, Zirkzee made his debut for the senior team against Tottenham Hotspur in the final group stage match of the Champions League. He subsequently made his Bundesliga debut on 18 December, coming on as a substitute in the 90th minute in a match against Freiburg tied at 1–1; he scored the winner almost immediately after entering the game. Shortly after, Serge Gnabry added another stoppage-time goal to secure a 3–1 victory. Two days later, he again came off the bench in the final minutes of the game and scored the winning goal as Bayern defeated Wolfsburg. On 13 June 2020, Zirkzee scored the opening goal in Bayern Munich's 2–1 win against Borussia Mönchengladbach. He finished off his debut season with a continental treble.


title: Joshua Zirkzee

text: On 31 January 2021, Zirkzee moved to Italian side Parma on a loan deal. The deal included an option to buy. On 2 April 2021, he suffered an LCL injury and his loan was limited to 4 appearances, all as a substitute.


title: Joshua Zirkzee

text: On 3 August 2021, Anderlecht announced the signing of Zirkzee on a season-long loan from Bayern Munich.


title: Joshua Zirkzee

text: Born in the Netherlands to a Dutch father and a Nigerian mother, Zirkzee is a youth international for the Netherlands.


title: Time to live

text: Time to live (TTL) or hop limit is a mechanism which limits the lifespan or lifetime of data in a computer or network. TTL may be implemented as a counter or timestamp attached to or embedded in the data. Once the prescribed event count or timespan has elapsed, data is discarded or revalidated. In computer networking, TTL prevents a data packet from circulating indefinitely. In computing applications, TTL is commonly used to improve the performance and manage the caching of data.


title: Time to live

text: Under the Internet Protocol, TTL is an 8-bit field. In the IPv4 header, TTL is the 9th octet of 20. In the IPv6 header, it is the 8th octet of 40. The maximum TTL value is 255, the maximum value of a single octet. A recommended initial value is 64.


title: Time to live

text: The time-to-live value can be thought of as an upper bound on the time that an IP datagram can exist in an Internet system. The TTL field is set by the sender of the datagram, and reduced by every router on the route to its destination. If the TTL field reaches zero before the datagram arrives at its destination, then the datagram is discarded and an Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) error datagram (11 - Time Exceeded) is sent back to the sender. The purpose of the TTL field is to avoid a situation in which an undeliverable datagram keeps circulating on an Internet system, and such a system eventually becoming swamped by such "immortals".


title: Time to live

text: In theory, under IPv4, time to live is measured in seconds, although every host that passes the datagram must reduce the TTL by at least one unit. In practice, the TTL field is reduced by one on every hop. To reflect this practice, the field is renamed "hop limit" in IPv6.


title: Time to live

text: TTLs also occur in the Domain Name System (DNS), where they are set by an authoritative name server for a particular resource record. When a caching (recursive) nameserver queries the authoritative nameserver for a resource record, it will cache that record for the time (in seconds) specified by the TTL. If a stub resolver queries the caching nameserver for the same record before the TTL has expired, the caching server will simply reply with the already cached resource record rather than retrieve it from the authoritative nameserver again. TTL for NXDOMAIN (non-existent domain) responses is set from the minimum of the MINIMUM field of the SOA record and the TTL of the SOA itself, and indicates how long a resolver may cache the negative answer.


title: Time to live

text: Shorter TTLs can cause heavier loads on an authoritative name server, but can be useful when changing the address of critical services like web servers or MX records, and therefore are often lowered by the DNS administrator prior to a service being moved, in order to reduce possible disruptions.


title: Time to live

text: The units used are seconds. An older common TTL value for DNS was 86400 seconds, which is 24 hours. A TTL value of 86400 would mean that, if a DNS record was changed on the authoritative nameserver, DNS servers around the world could still be showing the old value from their cache for up to 24 hours after the last update by client.


title: Time to live

text: Newer DNS methods that are part of a disaster recovery (DR) system may have some records deliberately set extremely low on TTL. For example, a 300-second TTL would help key records expire in 5 minutes to help ensure these records are flushed quickly worldwide. This gives administrators the ability to edit and update records in a timely manner. TTL values are "per record" and setting this value on specific records is sometimes honored automatically by all standard DNS systems worldwide. However, a problem persists in that some caching DNS nameservers set their own TTLs regardless of the authoritative records, thus it cannot be guaranteed that all downstream DNS servers have the new records after the TTL has expired.


title: Time to live

text: Time to live may also be expressed as the date and time on which a record expires. The codice_1 header in HTTP responses, the codice_2 header field in both requests and responses and the codice_3 field in HTTP cookies express time-to-live in this way.


title: Hellenic languages

text: Hellenic is the branch of the Indo-European language family whose principal member is Greek. In most classifications, Hellenic consists of Greek alone, but some linguists use the term Hellenic to refer to a group consisting of Greek proper and other varieties thought to be related but different enough to be separate languages, either among ancient neighboring languages or among modern varieties of Greek.


title: Hellenic languages

text: While the bulk of surviving public and private inscriptions found in ancient Macedonia were written in Attic Greek (and later in Koine Greek), fragmentary documentation of a vernacular local variety comes from onomastic evidence, ancient glossaries and recent epigraphic discoveries in the Greek region of Macedonia, such as the Pella curse tablet. This local variety is usually classified by scholars as a dialect of Northwest Doric Greek, and occasionally as an Aeolic Greek dialect or a distinct sister language of Greek; due to the latter classification, a family under the name "Hellenic" has been suggested to group together Greek proper and the ancient Macedonian language.


title: Hellenic languages

text: In addition, some linguists use the term "Hellenic" to refer to modern Greek in a narrow sense together with certain other, divergent modern varieties deemed separate languages on the basis of a lack of mutual intelligibility. Separate language status is most often posited for Tsakonian, which is thought to be uniquely a descendant of Doric rather than Attic Greek, followed by Pontic and Cappadocian Greek of Anatolia. The Griko or Italiot varieties of southern Italy are also not readily intelligible to speakers of standard Greek. Separate status is sometimes also argued for Cypriot, though this is not as easily justified. In contrast, Yevanic (Jewish Greek) is mutually intelligible with standard Greek but is sometimes considered a separate language for ethnic and cultural reasons. Greek linguistics traditionally treats all of these as dialects of a single language.


title: Hellenic languages

text: Hellenic constitutes a branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient languages that might have been most closely related to it, ancient Macedonian, (either an ancient Greek dialect or a separate Hellenic language) and Phrygian, are not documented well enough to permit detailed comparison. Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan).


title: Carolina parakeet

text: The Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), or Carolina conure, is an extinct species of small green neotropical parrot with a bright yellow head, reddish orange face and pale beak that was native to the eastern, Midwest and plains states of the United States. It was the only indigenous parrot within its range, as well as one of only three parrot species native to the United States (the others being the thick-billed parrot, now extirpated, and the green parakeet, still present in Texas; a fourth parrot species, the red-crowned amazon, is debated). The Carolina parakeet was found from southern New York and Wisconsin to Kentucky, Tennessee and the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic seaboard to as far west as eastern Colorado. It lived in old-growth forests along rivers and in swamps. It was called "puzzi la née" ("head of yellow") or "pot pot chee" by the Seminole and "kelinky" in Chickasaw. Though formerly prevalent within its range, the bird had become rare by the middle of the 19th century. The last confirmed sighting in the wild was of the "ludovicianus" subspecies in 1910. The last known specimen perished in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918 and the species was declared extinct in 1939.


title: Carolina parakeet

text: The earliest reference to these parrots was in 1583 in Florida reported by Sir George Peckham in "A True Report of the Late Discoveries of the Newfound Lands" of expeditions conducted by English explorer Sir Humphrey Gilbert who notes that explorers in North America "doe testifie that they have found in those countryes; ... parrots." They were first scientifically described in English naturalist Mark Catesby's two volume "Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands" published in London in 1731 and 1743.


title: Carolina parakeet

text: Carolina parakeets were probably poisonous—American naturalist and painter John J. Audubon noted that cats apparently died from eating them, and they are known to have eaten the toxic seeds of cockleburs.


title: Carolina parakeet

text: "Carolinensis" is a species of the genus "Conuropsis", one of numerous genera of New World Neotropical parrots in family Psittacidae of true parrots.


title: Carolina parakeet

text: The specific name "Psittacus carolinensis" was assigned by Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae published in 1758. The species was given its own genus "Conuropsis" by Italian zoologist and ornithologist Tommaso Salvadori in 1891 in his "Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum", volume 20. The name is derived from the Greek-ified "conure" ("parrot of the genus "Conurus"" an obsolete name of genus "Aratinga") + "-opsis" ("likeness of") and Latinized "Carolina" (from Carolana, an English colonial province) + "-ensis" (of or "from a place"), therefore a bird "like a conure from Carolina."


title: Carolina parakeet

text: There are two recognized subspecies. The Louisiana subspecies of the Carolina parakeet, "C. c. ludovicianus", was slightly different in color than the nominate subspecies, being more bluish-green and generally of a somewhat subdued coloration, and became extinct in much the same way, but at a somewhat earlier date (early 1910s). The Appalachian Mountains separated these birds from the eastern "C. c. carolinensis".


title: Carolina parakeet

text: According to a study of mitochondrial DNA recovered from museum specimens, their closest living relatives include some of the South American "Aratinga" parakeets: The Nanday parakeet, the sun parakeet, and the golden-capped parakeet. The authors note the bright yellow and orange plumage and blue wing feathers found in "Conuropsis carolinensis" are traits shared by another species, the jandaya parakeet ("A. jandaya"), that was not sampled in the study but is generally thought to be closely related. To help resolve the divergence time a whole genome of a preserved specimen has now been sequenced. Carolinensis is in a sister clade to that of Spix's macaw. The Carolina parakeet colonized North America about 5.5 million years ago. This was well before North America and South America were joined by the formation of the Panama land bridge about 3.5 mya. Since the Carolina parakeets' more distant relations are geographically closer to its own historic range while its closest relatives are more geographically distant to it, these data are consistent with the generally accepted hypothesis that Central and North America were colonized at different times by distinct lineages of parrots – parrots that originally invaded South America from Antarctica some time after the breakup of Gondwana, where Neotropical parrots originated approximately 50 mya.


title: Carolina parakeet

text: The following cladogram shows the placement of the Carolina parakeet among its closest relatives, after a DNA study by Kirchman "et al". (2012):


title: Carolina parakeet

text: A fossil parrot, designated "Conuropsis fratercula", was described based on a single humerus from the Miocene Sheep Creek Formation (possibly late Hemingfordian, c. 16 mya, possibly later) of Snake River, Nebraska. It was a smaller bird, three-quarters the size of the Carolina parakeet. "The present "species" is of peculiar interest as it represents the first known parrot-like bird to be described as a fossil from North America." (Wetmore 1926; italics added) However, it is not completely certain that the species is correctly assigned to "Conuropsis", but some authors consider it a paleosubspecies of the Carolina parakeet.


title: Carolina parakeet

text: The Carolina parakeet was a small green parrot very similar in size and coloration to the extant jenday parakeet and sun conure. The majority of the plumage was green with lighter green underparts, a bright yellow head and orange forehead and face extending to behind the eyes and upper cheeks (lores). The shoulders were yellow, continuing down the outer edge of the wings. The primary feathers were mostly green, but with yellow edges on the outer primaries. Thighs were green towards the top and yellow towards the feet. Male and female adults were identical in plumage, however males were slightly larger than females (sexually dimorphic). The legs and feet were light brown. They share the zygodactyl feet of the parrot family. The skin around the eyes was white and the beak was pale flesh colored. These birds weigh about 3.5 oz., are 13 in. long, and have wingspans of 2123 in.


title: Carolina parakeet

text: Young Carolina parakeets differed slightly in coloration from adults. The face and entire body was green, with paler underparts. They lacked yellow or orange plumage on the face, wings, and thighs. Hatchlings were covered in mouse-gray down, until about 39–40 days when green wings and tails appear. Fledglings had full adult plumage at around 1 year of age. ("Nature Serve, Conuropsis carolinensis", 2005; Fuller, 2001; Mauler, 2001; Rising, 2004; Snyder and Russell, 2002)


title: Carolina parakeet

text: These birds were fairly long lived, at least in captivity - a pair was kept at the Cincinnati Zoo for over 35 years.


title: Carolina parakeet

text: The Carolina parakeet had the northernmost range of any known parrot. It was found from southern New England and New York and Wisconsin to Kentucky, Tennessee and the Gulf of Mexico. It has also had a wide distribution west of the Mississippi River, as far west as eastern Colorado. Its range was described by early explorers thus: the 43rd parallel as the northern limit, the 26th as the most southern, the 73rd and 106th meridians as the eastern and western boundaries respectively, the range included all or portions of at least 28 states. Its habitats were old-growth wetland forests along rivers and in swamps especially in the Mississippi-Missouri drainage basin with large hollow trees including cypress and sycamore to use as roosting and nesting sites.


title: Carolina parakeet

text: Only very rough estimates of the birds' former prevalence can be made: with an estimated range of 20,000 to 2.5 million km, and population density of 0.5 to 2.0 parrots per km, population estimates range from tens of thousands to a few million birds (though the densest populations occurred in Florida covering 170,000 km, so there may have been hundreds of thousands of the birds in that state alone).


title: Carolina parakeet

text: The species may have appeared as a very rare vagrant in places as far north as Southern Ontario. A few bones, including a pygostyle found at the Calvert Site in Southern Ontario, came from the Carolina parakeet. The possibility remains open that this specimen was taken to Southern Ontario for ceremonial purposes.


title: Carolina parakeet

text: The bird lived in huge, noisy flocks of as many as 200–300 birds. It built its nest in a hollow tree, laying two to five (most accounts say two) round white eggs.


title: Carolina parakeet

text: It mostly ate the seeds of forest trees and shrubs including those of cypress, hackberry, beech, sycamore, elm, pine, maple, oak, and other plants such as thistles and sandspurs ("Cenchrus" species). It also ate fruits, including apples, grapes and figs (often from orchards by the time of its decline), as well as flower buds and, occasionally, insects. It was especially noted for its predilection for cockleburs ("Xanthium strumarium"), a plant which contains a toxic glucoside, and it was considered to be an agricultural pest of grain crops.


title: Carolina parakeet

text: The last captive Carolina parakeet, Incas, died at the Cincinnati Zoo on February 21, 1918, in the same cage as Martha, the last passenger pigeon, who died in 1914. There are no scientific studies or surveys of this bird by American naturalists; most information about it is from anecdotal accounts and museum specimens. Therefore, details of its prevalence and decline are unverified or speculative.