title: Native American disease and epidemics

text: Gershom Hicks, held captive by the Ohio Country Shawnee and Delaware between May 1763 and April 1764, reported to Captain William Grant of the 42nd Regiment "that the Small pox has been very general & raging amongst the Indians since last spring and that 30 or 40 Mingoes, as many Delawares and some Shawneese Died all of the Small pox since that time, that it still continues amongst them".


title: Native American disease and epidemics

text: In the mid to late nineteenth century, at a time of increasing European-American travel and settlement in the West, at least four different epidemics broke out among the Plains tribes between 1837 and 1870. When the Plains tribes began to learn of the "white man's diseases", many intentionally avoided contact with them and their trade goods. But the lure of trade goods such as metal pots, skillets, and knives sometimes proved too strong. The Indians traded with the white newcomers anyway and inadvertently spread disease to their villages. In the late 19th century, the Lakota Indians of the Plains called the disease the "rotting face sickness".


title: Native American disease and epidemics

text: The 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic, which was brought from San Francisco to Victoria, devastated the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, with a death rate of over 50% for the entire coast from Puget Sound to Southeast Alaska. In some areas the native population fell by as much as 90%. Some historians have described the epidemic as a deliberate genocide because the Colony of Vancouver Island and the Colony of British Columbia could have prevented the epidemic but chose not to, and in some ways facilitated it.


title: Native American disease and epidemics

text: Many Native American tribes suffered high mortality and depopulation, averaging 25–50% of the tribes' members dead from disease. Additionally, some smaller tribes neared extinction after facing a severely destructive spread of disease.


title: Native American disease and epidemics

text: A specific example was what followed Cortés' invasion of Mexico. Before his arrival, the Mexican population is estimated to have been around 25 to 30 million. Fifty years later, the Mexican population was reduced to 3 million, mainly by infectious disease. A 2018 study by Koch, Brierley, Maslin and Lewis concluded that an estimated "55 million indigenous people died following the European conquest of the Americas beginning in 1492." By 1700, fewer than 5,000 Native Americans remained in the southeastern coastal region of the United States. In Florida alone, an estimated 700,000 Native Americans lived there in 1520, but by 1700 the number was around 2,000.


title: Native American disease and epidemics

text: Some 21st-century climate scientists have suggested that a severe reduction of the indigenous population in the Americas and the accompanying reduction in cultivated lands during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries may have contributed to a global cooling event known as the Little Ice Age.


title: Native American disease and epidemics

text: The loss of the population was so high that it was partially responsible for the myth of the Americas as "virgin wilderness". By the time significant European colonization was underway, native populations had already been reduced by 90%. This resulted in settlements vanishing and cultivated fields being abandoned. Since forests were recovering, the colonists had an impression of a land that was an untamed wilderness.


title: Native American disease and epidemics

text: Disease had both direct and indirect effects on deaths. High mortality meant that there were fewer people to plant crops, hunt game, and otherwise support the group. Loss of cultural knowledge transfer also affected the community as vital agricultural and food-gathering skills were not passed on to survivors. Missing the right time to hunt or plant crops affected the food supply, thus further weakening the community and making it more vulnerable to the next epidemic. Communities under such crisis were often unable to care for people who were disabled, elderly, or young.


title: Native American disease and epidemics

text: In summer 1639, a smallpox epidemic struck the Huron natives in the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes regions. The disease had reached the Huron tribes through French colonial traders from Québec who remained in the region throughout the winter. When the epidemic was over, the Huron population had been reduced to roughly 9000 people, about half of what it had been before 1634. The Iroquois people, generally south of the Great Lakes, faced similar losses after encounters with French, Dutch and English colonists.


title: Native American disease and epidemics

text: During the 1770s, smallpox killed at least 30% (tens of thousands) of the Northwestern Native Americans. The smallpox epidemic of 1780–1782 brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plains Indians.


title: Native American disease and epidemics

text: By 1832, the federal government of the United States established a smallpox vaccination program for Native Americans.


title: Native American disease and epidemics

text: The Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1839 reported on the casualties of the 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic: "No attempt has been made to count the victims, nor is it possible to reckon them in any of these tribes with accuracy; it is believed that if [the number 17,200 for the upper Missouri River Indians] was doubled, the aggregate would not be too large for those who have fallen east of the Rocky Mountains."


title: Native American disease and epidemics

text: Historian David Stannard asserts that by "focusing almost entirely on disease ... contemporary authors increasingly have created the impression that the eradication of those tens of millions of people was inadvertent—a sad, but both inevitable and 'unintended consequence' of human migration and progress." He says that their destruction "was neither inadvertent nor inevitable", but the result of microbial pestilence and purposeful genocide working in tandem. Historian Andrés Reséndez says that evidence suggests "among these human factors, slavery has emerged as a major killer" of the indigenous populations of the Caribbean between 1492 and 1550, rather than diseases such as smallpox, influenza and malaria.


title: Native American disease and epidemics

text: Epidemics killed a high portion of people with disabilities and also resulted in numerous people with disabilities. The material and societal realities of disability for Native American communities were tangible. Scarlet fever could result in blindness or deafness, and sometimes both. Smallpox epidemics led to blindness and depigmented scars. Many Native American tribes prided themselves in their appearance, and the resulting skin disfigurement of smallpox deeply affected them psychologically. Unable to cope with this condition, tribe members were said to have committed suicide.


title: Native American disease and epidemics

text: Paleo-scientists can see the expression of disease by looking at its effect on bones, yet this offers a limited view. Most common infectious diseases, such as those caused by microorganisms like staphylococcus and streptococcus cannot be seen in the bones. Tuberculosis and the two forms of syphilis are considered rare and their diagnosis via osteological analysis is controversial. To understand health at the community level, scientists and health experts look at diet, the incidence and prevalence of infections, hygiene and waste disposal. Most diseases came to the Americas from Europe and Asia. One exception is syphilis, which originated in the Americas before 1492. A form of tuberculosis has also been identified in pre-Columbian populations, by bacterial genome sequences collected from human remains in Peru, and was probably transmitted to humans through seal hunting.


title: Moraceae

text: The Moraceae — often called the mulberry family or fig family — are a family of flowering plants comprising about 38 genera and over 1100 species. Most are widespread in tropical and subtropical regions, less so in temperate climates; however, their distribution is cosmopolitan overall. The only synapomorphy within the Moraceae is presence of laticifers and milky sap in all parenchymatous tissues, but generally useful field characters include two carpels sometimes with one reduced, compound inconspicuous flowers, and compound fruits. The family includes well-known plants such as the fig, banyan, breadfruit, jackfruit, mulberry, and Osage orange. The 'flowers' of Moraceae are often pseudanthia (reduced inflorescences).


title: Moraceae

text: Formerly included within the now defunct order Urticales, recent molecular studies have resulted in the family's placement within the Rosales in a clade called the urticalean rosids that also includes Ulmaceae, Celtidaceae, Cannabaceae, and Urticaceae. "Cecropia", which has variously been placed in the Moraceae, Urticaceae, or their own family, Cecropiaceae, is now included in the Urticaceae.


title: Moraceae

text: Dioecy (having individuals with separate sexes) appears to be the primitive state in Moraceae. Monoecy has evolved independently at least four times within the family.


title: Moraceae

text: The individual flowers are often small, with single whorled or absent perianth. Most flowers have either petals or sepals, but not both, known as monochlamydeae, and have pistils and stamens in different flowers, known as diclinous. Except for "Brosimum gaudichaudii" and "Castilla elastica", the perianth in all species of the Moraceae contain sepals. If the flower has an inflexed stamen, then pollen is released and distributed by wind dispersal; however, if the stamen is straight, then insect pollination is most likely to occur. Insect pollination occurs in "Antiaropsis", "Artocarpus", "Castilla", "Dorstenia", "Ficus", and "Mesogyne".


title: Moraceae

text: The leaves are much like the flowers when analyzing diversity. The leaves can be singly attached to the stem or alternating, they may be lobed or unlobed, and can be evergreen or deciduous depending on the species in question. The red mulberry can host numerous leaf types on the same tree. Leaves can be both lobed and unlobed and appear very different, but coexist on the same plant.


title: Moraceae

text: Plant species in the Moraceae are best known for their fruits. Overall, most species produced a fleshy fruit containing seeds. Examples include the breadfruit from "Artocarpus altillis", the mulberry from "Morus rubra", the fig from "Ficus carica", and the jackfruit from "Artocarpus heterophyllus".


title: Moraceae

text: Moraceae can be found throughout the world with a cosmopolitan distribution, thought to be due to the breakup of Gondwana during the Jurassic period. The majority of species originate in the Old World tropics, particularly in Asia and the Pacific islands.


title: Camilla Arfwedson

text: Camilla Katrina Arfwedson (pronounced "Arvedson"; born 16 October 1981) is an English actress. She is known for her roles as Zosia March, a Core Training (year 2) Doctor in "Holby City" and being the poster woman for Secret Escapes from 2012-2013.


title: Camilla Arfwedson

text: Born in Westminster, London, to a Swedish father and English mother, Arfwedson was brought up in Chelsea and attended the Francis Holland School as a day girl. She then studied Classics at the University of Edinburgh. There, she joined the theatre society, and gained parts in the stage plays: "Sore Throats" and "A Slight Ache" both directed by Thom Tuck; "Skylight" directed by Michael Sophocles; "Private Lives" directed by Frederic Wake-Walker; "Bedroom Farce" directed by Simon Yadoo; the speaker in the "Vagina Monologues" directed by Alice Russell.


title: Camilla Arfwedson

text: Becoming a professional actress upon graduation, Arfwedson has since worked mainly in the theatre, including Portia in the "Merchant of Venice", the first touring production of "Festen", and the role of Evelyn in the Barons Court Theatre production of Neil LaBute's "The Shape of Things" directed by Ed Behrens.


title: Camilla Arfwedson

text: Arfwedson's television roles have included parts in "" and "Agatha Christie's Marple: Murder Is Easy". Her film roles have included playing Lady Charlotte in "The Duchess", and playing Burt Reynolds' daughter in the British comedy film "A Bunch of Amateurs".


title: Camilla Arfwedson

text: In 2012, Arfwedson starred in a television commercial for travel website Secret Escapes. Follow-up adverts were also released in 2013. She played Sheriff Angela Carter in "", and in 2013, appeared in the second episode of BBC Three sitcom "Way to Go", before joining the cast of BBC One medical drama" Holby City".


title: Camilla Arfwedson

text: In 2018, Arfwedson played the young Mrs Ayres in Lenny Abrahamson's film version of the novel "The Little Stranger"; the later life Mrs Ayres was played in the film by Charlotte Rampling.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Levi Eshkol ( ; 25 October 1895 – 26 February 1969), born Levi Yitzhak Shkolnik (), was an Israeli statesman who served as the third Prime Minister of Israel from 1963 until his death from a heart attack in 1969. A founder of the Israeli Labor Party, he served in numerous senior roles, including Minister of Defense (1963–1967) and Minister of Finance (1952–1963).


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Eshkol was first appointed as Prime Minister following the resignation of David Ben-Gurion. He then led the party in the elections to the Sixth Knesset (1965) and won, remaining in office for six consecutive years. Shortly after taking office, Eshkol made several significant changes, among them the annulment of military rule over Israeli Arabs and a successful journey to the United States, being the first Israeli leader to be formally invited to the White House. His relations with American President Lyndon B. Johnson greatly affected Israel–United States relations and later on the Six-Day War.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Eshkol was active in the Zionist movement from a young age, immigrating to Ottoman Palestine in 1914 and working in agriculture. He was among the founders of the major institutions of the Yishuv, most importantly the Histadrut and Haganah. Eshkol was treasurer of Hapoel Hatzair political party and treasurer of the Agricultural Center. In 1929, he was elected as chairman of the settlement committee within the Zionist Congress, taking a leading role in enabling conditions for new construction. In 1937, Eshkol founded Mekorot water company and was its director until 1951. Simultaneously, he held positions at the Haganah, at Mapai and as chairman of Tel Aviv Workers' Council. In 1948–1949, Eshkol was Director General of the Ministry of Defense and from 1948 to 1963, he was chairman of the Settlement Department of the Jewish Agency. Elected to the Second Knesset in 1951, he was soon thereafter appointed to key government roles.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Eshkol led the Israeli government during and after the Six-Day War and was the first Israeli Prime Minister to die in office.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Levi Eshkol (Shkolnik) was born in the shtetl of Oratov, Lipovetsky Uyezd, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (now "Orativ", Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine). Both his parents were Jewish, although his mother Dvora (born as Dvora Krasnyanskaya) came from a Hasidic background, whereas his father Joseph Shkolnik came from a family of Mitnagdim. Both families were business-oriented and were owners of agricultural businesses including flour mills, industrial plants and forestry associated businesses.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Eshkol received a traditional Jewish education from the age of four and began Talmud studies at the age of seven. In addition to his Heder studies, Eshkol was taught by private tutors in general education. In 1911 he was accepted for studies at the Jewish gymnasium in Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania) and left his hometown and his family.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: In Vilna, Eshkol joined the students' association Zeiri Zion (Youth of Zion) and began his connections with the Zionist movement. He was elected to the local executive committee and, in 1913, joined Hapoel Hatzair following his meeting with party leader Joseph Shprinzak.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: In 1914, he left for Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire. He first settled in Petach Tikva and worked in the setting of irrigation tunnels at the local orchards. In later years he would be recalled as an excelling worker during this period of time. Eshkol also quickly became publicly active and was elected as a member of the local workers' union. However he soon thereafter left Petach Tikva, joining a small group that was set to settle the area of Atarot (Kalandia).


title: Levi Eshkol

text: At the outbreak of World War I, fearing local hostility, his group settled briefly in Kfar Uria, Rishon LeZion and returning to Petach Tikva. In 1915–17 he was a leading member of the Judea Workers' Union. In 1918, he volunteered with the Jewish Legion and served in it until the summer of 1920.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: In September 1920 Eshkol was among the 25 founders of Kibbutz Degania Bet, making it his permanent residence. However, his public activity had grown and he was often sent on various missions. In 1920, he was among the founders of Histadrut. He was also one of the founders of the Haganah. He was a member of the Haganah's first national high command (1920–21). As a delegate of Histadrut, he was an international representative in various gatherings and was tasked with organization of the "Agriculture Workers' Union". In 1929 he was a delegate for the first time to the Zionist Congress and was elected to the Zionist Executive, which made him an acting member of the executive in the newly formed Jewish Agency.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Between 1933 and 1934, Eshkol was working in Berlin on behalf of the Zionist Organization and HeHalutz youth movement. During this time he negotiated with the German authorities over what became known as the Haavara Agreement. Upon his return to Palestine in 1934, he was appointed director of Nir company, which provided funds to new agricultural settlements.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Eshkol lobbied for a national water company from "circa" 1930, presenting budget plans before the World Zionist Organization in 1933 and 1935. The formation of Mekorot water company was made possible in February 1937 under joint management of the Jewish Agency, Histadrut and the Jewish National Fund. Eshkol served as its director until 1951, overseeing its expansion in 1938 from agricultural territories to residential areas and the construction of the first water lines to the southern Negev area as early as 1941. By 1947, more than 200 kilometers of water lines were active.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Eshkol returned to serve in the Haganah high command from 1940 to 1948 and was in charge of the organization's treasury. He engaged in arms acquisition for the Haganah prior to and during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: During the Second World War Eshkol advocated for Jewish enrollment to the British military. However, he confirmed with the Yishuv's leadership and later joined the ideology asserting differentiation between the global front and the local front, fighting against the British Mandate. In 1945–46 Eshkol was representative of Haganah in the leadership of the Jewish Resistance Movement.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: In 1944 he was appointed as the Secretary General of Tel Aviv Workers' Council, remaining in this position until 1948.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: In 1947 Eshkol was appointed as a member of the two major defense forums: The Negev Committee that oversaw the administration of the Negev prior to the declaration of independence of Israel, as well as the general Defense Committee of the Yishuv's leadership. Later that year, he was appointed by David Ben-Gurion to head the national recruitment center, which laid foundations to the formation of Israel Defense Forces upon independence of the State of Israel, in May 1948, at which point Eshkol was appointed Director-General of the Ministry of Defense, serving from May 1948 to January 1949.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: During the time of mass immigration to the State of Israel (1949–1950), Eshkol headed the Settlement Department in the Jewish Agency, where he first proposed the idea of settling a good number of these immigrants upon newly founded agricultural farms, in order to solve their housing dilemma. He is noted as saying, "We didn't know exactly what to do with these Jews. Then we interjected from the counsels of our heart, and from the experience that we had amassed thus far, and said: A desolate country, a desolate people; these two things must cause one another to blossom. From this, the idea was born to launch an extensive agricultural settlement operation and absorb a large part of the immigrants." Eshkol was elected to the Knesset in 1951 as a member of Mapai party. He served as Minister of Agriculture until 1952.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: In the 1959 legislative election, Eshkol coordinated Mapai's national campaign with the local party branches. He was also appointed as chairman of the party's committee on social affairs. As internal party tension was growing due to the Lavon Affair, Eshkol was asked to serve as an arbitrator.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: In 1961, Ben-Gurion asked to retire as prime minister and recommended Eshkol as his successor. However, Mapai made Ben-Gurion stay. Ben-Gurion continued to lead Mapai in the 1961 legislative election but struggled to form a coalition and relied on Eshkol's negotiations with rival parties.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Following the death of Eliezer Kaplan he was appointed Finance Minister and held that position for the following 12 years. During these years, he helped form the ministry of finance, establishing the Budgets Directorate and other bodies. In 1954 he completed legislation for the establishment of the Bank of Israel.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Eshkol oversaw the implementation of Kaplan's 1952 economic plan, as well as realizing the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany, which was towards its final stages of negotiation and signed in September 1952.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: In 1957 he began talks with the European Economic Community towards integration of Israel in its market, ultimately achieved in 1964 with the signing of the first commercial agreement between the two entities.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: During his term as Finance Minister, Eshkol established himself as a prominent figure in Mapai's leadership, and was designated by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion as his successor.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: When Ben-Gurion resigned in June 1963, Eshkol was elected party chairman with a broad consensus and was subsequently appointed Prime Minister. However, his relationship with Ben-Gurion soon turned acrimonious over the latter's insistence on investigating the Lavon Affair, an Israeli covert operation in Egypt, which had gone wrong a decade earlier. Ben-Gurion was unsuccessful in challenging Eshkol's leadership in the 1965 Mapai leadership election and split from Mapai with a few of his young protégés to form Rafi in June 1965. In the meantime, Mapai merged with Ahdut HaAvoda to form the Alignment with Eshkol as its head. Rafi was defeated by the Alignment in the elections held in November 1965, establishing Eshkol as the country's indisputable leader. Yet Ben-Gurion, drawing on his influence as Israel's founding father, continued to undermine Eshkol's authority throughout his term as Prime Minister, portraying him as a spineless politician incapable of addressing Israel's security predicament.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: As party chairman, Eshkol formed the basis for the Alignment in 1964, the formation of the unified Israel Labor Party in 1968 and the joining of forces with Mapam to create the second alignment in 1969.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Eshkol formed Israel's twelfth government in 1963. His first term in office saw continuous economic growth, epitomized by the opening of the National Water Carrier system in 1964. He and Finance Minister Pinchas Sapir's subsequent "soft landing" of the overheated economy by means of recessive policies precipitated a drastic slump in economic activity. Israel's centralized planned economy lacked the mechanisms to self-regulate the slowdown, which reached levels higher than expected. Eshkol faced growing domestic unrest as unemployment reached 12% in 1966, yet the recession eventually served in healing fundamental economic deficiencies and helped fuel the ensuing recovery of 1967–1973.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Upon being elected into office, Levi Eshkol fulfilled Ze'ev Jabotinsky's wish and brought his body and that of his wife to Israel where they were buried in Mount Herzl Cemetery.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: During his first months as premier, Eshkol was engaged in a now-declassified diplomatic standoff with the United States that had begun in 1960 under Ben-Gurion.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Eshkol worked to improve Israel's foreign relations by establishing diplomatic relations with West Germany in 1965, as well as cultural ties with the Soviet Union, which also allowed some Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel. He was the first Israeli Prime Minister invited on an official state visit to the United States in May 1964.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: With Johnson's administration also represented in this case by national security aide Robert W. Komer and others, Eshkol signed what became known as the Eshkol-Comer ("sic") memorandum of understanding (MOU) about Israeli nuclear capabilities. The 10 March 1965 MOU, which has been variously interpreted since, stated, 'Israel would not be the first country to "introduce" nuclear weapons to the Middle East'.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: The special relationship he developed with Johnson would prove pivotal in securing US political and military support for Israel during the "Waiting period" before the Six-Day War of June 1967.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: According to Michael Oren, Eshkol's intransigence in the face of military pressure to launch an Israeli attack is considered to have been instrumental in increasing Israel's strategic advantage and obtaining international legitimacy, but at the time, he was perceived as hesitant, an image cemented after a stuttered radio speech on 28 May. Egyptian President Nasser's ever-increasing provocations created diplomatic support for Israel. Eshkol eventually established a National Unity Government, together with Menachem Begin's Herut party, and conceded the Defense portfolio to Moshe Dayan.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: In the year following the war, Eshkol's health gradually declined, although he remained in power. He suffered a heart attack on 3 February 1969 from which he recovered and gradually returned to his work, maintaining meetings from the Prime Minister's official residence. In the early morning of 26 February he suffered a fatal attack. At his side were his wife and three physicians, including Moshe Rachmilewitz. He died in office, at the age of 73.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Eshkol was laid to rest on 28 February at Mount Herzl and was the first prime minister interred at the Great Leaders of the Nation Plot. He was the first of either presidents and prime ministers of Israel to be buried at the plot, preceded only by Eliezer Kaplan and Yosef Sprinzak.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Eshkol expressed his wishes to be buried at his Kibbutz, Deganya Bet. However, upon his passing a government meeting was convened in which the ministers expressed their support in his burial in Jerusalem. This decision was not only symbolic in its nature (following the Six-Day War), but also supported by the winter season and difficulty of performing a state funeral at the Jordan Valley as well as the War of Attrition and possible security risk at shelling aimed towards the Deganya Bet region. The government's offer was approved later that day by the Eshkol family. A second government meeting that day declared two days of national mourning, until after the state funeral. Flags across the country were brought to half mast.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Eshkol's body remained at the Prime Minister's residence in a symbolic lie in state, with an honor guard of the Israeli Police. On 27 February at 6:00, he was moved to the Knesset plaza, open to the public passing before the casket. An official state ceremony attended by dignitaries and international delegates was held in the Knesset plaza on 28 February, prior to the funeral procession to Mount Herzl.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: His eldest daughter Noa did not wed. From his second marriage Eshkol had eight grandchildren. His daughter Dvora married Eliezer Rafaeli and was the mother of three sons, including Prof. Sheizaf Rafaeli. His daughter Tama married Avraham Shochat, who succeeded him as minister of finance (1992–1996, 1999–2001), and had three children. His youngest daughter Ofra married Prof. Baruch Nevo and had two sons, including author Eshkol Nevo who was named after him.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Eshkol had three siblings. His brother Ben-Zion Shkolnik was a refusenik who made aliyah in 1964. Two other brothers, Lippa and Emanuel, remained in the Soviet Union. Emanuel Shkolnik was killed during combat in the Second World War while serving in the Red Army.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Eshkol was given honorary citizenships of towns and cities in Israel and abroad: Philadelphia (1964), Chicago (1964), El Paso (1964), Tirat Carmel (1965), Kiryat Gat (1965), Nazareth Ilit (1965), Beer Sheva (1965), Beit Shean (1965), Afula (1965), Dimona (1967), Ashdod (1968), Jerusalem (1968), Petach Tikva (1968)


title: Levi Eshkol

text: He was awarded with honorary doctorates by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1964), Roosevelt University (1964), Yeshiva University (1964), University of Liberia (1966) and Hebrew Union College (1968).


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Since 1970, Yad Levi Eshkol is the official organization commemorating prime minister Eshkol. It holds educational activities in his memory, maintains his papers and personal archive, supports academic research relating to Eshkol and, since 2016, operates the historical building in Jerusalem that served as the former prime minister's residence and now houses a visitors' center in memory of Eshkol.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Streets and neighborhoods have been named in his honor, among them the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood in Jerusalem. Several schools are also named after him, including HaKfar HaYarok. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem named the Agriculture Faculty in Levi Eshkol's name, as well as established a research institute in his name in the Faculty of Social Sciences.


title: Levi Eshkol

text: Israel issued in 1970 a postage stamp with a portrait of Eshkol. In 1984 his image was chosen for the five-thousand old Israeli shekel bill, replaced in 1985 by the five new Israeli shekel bill. Since 1990, his image is found on a limited, yet circulated, minting of the five new Israeli shekel coin that replaced the bill.


title: Susan Kohner

text: Susanna "Susan" Kohner (born November 11, 1936) is an American retired actress who worked in film and television. She played Sarah Jane in "Imitation of Life" (1959), for which she was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe award.


title: Susan Kohner

text: After Kohner married menswear designer and writer John Weitz in 1964, she retired from acting to devote time to her family. Her two sons, Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz, have both become film directors and producers, screenwriters, and occasional actors.


title: Susan Kohner

text: Kohner was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Lupita Tovar, a Mexican-born actress who had a career in Hollywood, and Paul Kohner, a film producer who was born in Bohemia, Austria-Hungary. Her mother was Roman Catholic, and of both Mexican and Irish descent, and her father was Jewish.


title: Susan Kohner

text: Most of Kohner's film roles came during the late 1950's and early 1960's, including co-starring with Sal Mineo in both "Dino" (1957) and "The Gene Krupa Story" (1959).


title: Susan Kohner

text: In her best known role, Kohner played Sarah Jane in "Imitation of Life", portraying a light-skinned black woman who "passes" as white. The 1959 film was a remake of a 1934 version of a book of the same name. The expensive, glossy Ross Hunter production, directed by Douglas Sirk and starring Lana Turner, was a box-office hit. In addition, Kohner was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role in the film, and won a Golden Globe as Best Supporting Actress and one as Best New Actress.


title: Susan Kohner

text: Following her role in "Imitation of Life", Kohner appeared in "All the Fine Young Cannibals" opposite Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner. She later had guest roles on various television series, including "Hong Kong", "Going My Way", and "Temple Houston". She made her last film appearance in 1962, costarring with Montgomery Clift in "". She retired from acting in 1964.


title: Susan Kohner

text: In 1964, Kohner married John Weitz, a German-born novelist and fashion designer. She retired from acting to devote time to her family. The couple had two sons together, Chris and Paul Weitz, who both became film directors and producers in Hollywood, together producing films such as "American Pie" (1999) and "About a Boy" (2002). Chris Weitz is also known for directing "" (2009), part of "The Twilight Saga".


title: Susan Kohner

text: On April 23, 2010, a new print of "Imitation of Life" (1959) was screened at the TCM Film Festival in Los Angeles, California, to which Kohner and co-star Juanita Moore were invited. After the screening, the two women appeared on stage for a question-and-answer session hosted by TCM's Robert Osborne. Kohner and Moore received standing ovations.


title: Erin go bragh

text: Erin go Bragh ( ), sometimes Erin go Braugh, is the anglicisation of an Irish language phrase, , and is used to express allegiance to Ireland. It is most often translated as "Ireland Forever."


title: Erin go bragh

text: The standard version in Irish is , which is pronounced . However, (which survives as the dative form in the modern standard) is a historic form used instead of in two dialects; this is the source of the anglicised "Erin". In all other dialects the distinction between the nominative and the dative is retained. This linguistic shift (dative forms replacing nominative) is common among Irish nouns of the second and fifth declensions.


title: Erin go bragh

text: The term is equivalent to 'eternity' or 'end of time', meaning the phrase may be translated literally as 'Ireland until eternity' or 'Ireland to the end (of time)'. (or ) is also used in Irish and means the same thing. is a preposition, translatable as 'to', 'till/until', 'up to'.


title: Erin go bragh

text: In 1847 a group of Irish volunteers, including U.S. Army deserters, joined the Mexican side in the Mexican–American War. These soldiers, known as or Saint Patrick's Battalion, flew as their standard a green flag with a harp and the motto "Erin Go Bragh". Similar flag designs have been used at different times to express Irish nationalism.


title: Erin go bragh

text: In 1862, when a large number of families on the estate of Lord Digby, near Tullamore, County Offaly, were given notice to quit, a local priest, Father Paddy Dunne, arranged passage for 400 people to Australia. A ship was chartered from the Black Ball Line and named the "Erin-go-Bragh". The voyage of the "Erin-go-Bragh", a "crazy, leaky tub", took 196 days, the longest recorded passage to Australia. A passenger nicknamed the ship the "Erin-go-Slow", but eventually it landed in Moreton Bay near Brisbane.


title: Erin go bragh

text: A pub in Sydney, Australia, in the 19th century that catered to Irish immigrants was called "The Erin-Go-Bragh".


title: Erin go bragh

text: At the height of decades of negotiation regarding home rule in Ireland, in the late 19th century the Irish Unionist Party used the slogan on a banner at one of their conventions, expressing their pride in Irish identity.


title: Erin go bragh

text: In the late 19th century, the Edinburgh football club Hibernian F.C. adopted "Erin Go Bragh" as their motto and it adorned their shirts accordingly. Founded in 1875 by Edinburgh Irishmen and the local Catholic Church, St Patrick's, the club's shirts included a gold harp set on a green background. The flag can still be seen at a lot of Hibernian matches to this day.


title: Erin go bragh

text: In 1887 a gaelic games club was set up in Clonsilla, Dublin under the name Erin go Bragh GAA. There is also an "Erin go Bragh GAA" club in Warwickshire, England.


title: Erin go bragh

text: In 1906, three Irishmen went to Athens, Greece to compete in the 1906 Intercalated Olympics as an Irish team independent of Britain. They had distinct uniforms and intended to compete for the first time as representatives of their own country. Once in Athens, the Irishmen became aware that the British committee had decided that they would instead compete under the British flag. Peter O'Connor won the silver medal for the long jump. As he was about to receive his medal he rushed towards the flag pole, climbed the pole, and flew the Erin Go Bragh flag, as the Tricolour had not yet received widespread acceptance. The other Irish athletes and a number of Irish-American athletes fended off security for a few minutes while the flag was flown. It was the first time an Irish flag had been flown at a sporting event.


title: Akash Thosar

text: Akash Thosar (born 24 February 1994) is an Indian actor who appears in Marathi cinema and Bollywood. He is best known for his role as Parshya in the 2016 Marathi film "Sairat". He was ranked eighth in "The Times of India"'s Top 20 Most Desirable Men of Maharashtra in 2019.


title: Akash Thosar

text: Akash Thosar was born and raised in Pune, Maharashtra. A former wrestler, he made a debut in the film industry with "Sairat" in 2016 and received immense success with this film. Thosar later starred in the lead role in Mahesh Manjrekar’s Marathi movie in 2017.


title: Akash Thosar

text: In 2018, he starred in Netflix original "Lust Stories", an anthology film, paired opposite Radhika Apte in the segment directed by Anurag Kashyap. In 2022,he was seen in "Jhund" directed by Nagraj Manjule. He was also cast in as an army officer.


title: Audrey Mestre

text: Mestre was born in Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis, to a family of snorkeling and scuba diving enthusiasts. She began swimming when she was a baby and won a gold medal in a 54-meter swimming competition at age 1 month. She became a seasoned scuba diver by age thirteen but did not get full certification until her sixteenth birthday due to French law. She was still in her teens when her family moved to Mexico City and, fluent in the Spanish language, she eventually studied marine biology at a university in La Paz, Mexico.


title: Audrey Mestre

text: In 1996 her interest in underwater sports led to her meeting free-diver Francisco "Pipín" Ferreras. They developed a relationship and Mestre soon moved to Miami, Florida to live with Ferreras. There, she took up serious free-diving and with Ferreras as her instructor was soon reaching record depths. In 1999 the two diving aficionados married and the following year, off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Audrey Mestre broke the female world record by free diving to a depth of 125 meters (410 ft) on a single breath of air. A year later she broke her own record, by descending to 130 meters (427 ft).


title: Audrey Mestre

text: In October 2002, Mestre died in an early attempt to break the 160 meters no-limits free-diving world record that Tanya Streeter had established a few weeks before on August 17, 2002 (at that time this was both men and women's official AIDA record).


title: Audrey Mestre

text: On October 4, 2002, with a dive team under her husband's supervision, she made a practice dive off Bayahibe Beach in the Dominican Republic to a record depth of 166 meters (545 ft). After more deep dive practices, on October 12 she prepared to attempt a dive to 171 meters. On reaching 171 meters she opened the valve on the air tank to inflate the lift bag which would raise her rapidly to the surface but the cylinder had no air in it. A rescue diver arrived and inflated the lift bag with his air supply but the bag did not rise fast enough due to insufficient inflation, a strong current, and the riser rope being non-vertical. A dive that should have been no more than three minutes resulted in her remaining underwater for more than eight and a half minutes. By the time her husband put on scuba gear and dove down to bring her unconscious body to the surface it was too late and she was pronounced dead at a hospital on shore.


title: Audrey Mestre

text: The dive was controversial and heavily criticized as the setup did not match common freediving safety standards. Much of the diving community's critique targeted her husband Ferreras, who had hurried an underfunded organization for this record attempt. The attempt had been previously planned for a later date, with too few safety divers, not enough proper rescue equipment, and no doctors at sea or shore. Ferreras was in charge of Mestre's lift bag air tank and did not allow any members of the team to check that the tank had been filled. Mestre was not recovered to the surface until nine minutes into her dive. She had a pulse at the surface, but there were no medical doctors available to treat her and minutes were wasted with Ferreras attempting to resuscitate her in the water. An ESPN documentary film written and directed by Alison Ellwood in 2013 included video footage of the incident and interviews with crew members and staff.


title: Audrey Mestre

text: Audrey Mestre was cremated, her ashes scattered at sea. In 2002, she was inducted posthumously into the Women Divers Hall of Fame, and in August 2004 a book that tells her story was written by her husband and published under the title "The Dive: A Story of Love and Obsession" ().


title: Audrey Mestre

text: In 2013, Mestre's life and career were chronicled in ESPN's "No Limits" as part of their "Nine for IX" series.


title: Angular acceleration

text: In physics, angular acceleration refers to the time rate of change of angular velocity. As there are two types of angular velocity, namely spin angular velocity and orbital angular velocity, there are naturally also two types of angular acceleration, called spin angular acceleration and orbital angular acceleration respectively. Spin angular acceleration refers to the angular acceleration of a rigid body about its centre of rotation, and orbital angular acceleration refers to the angular acceleration of a point particle about a fixed origin.


title: Angular acceleration

text: Angular acceleration is measured in units of angle per unit time squared (which in SI units is radians per second squared), and is usually represented by the symbol alpha (α). In two dimensions, angular acceleration is a pseudoscalar whose sign is taken to be positive if the angular speed increases counterclockwise or decreases clockwise, and is taken to be negative if the angular speed increases clockwise or decreases counterclockwise. In three dimensions, angular acceleration is a pseudovector.


title: Angular acceleration

text: For rigid bodies, angular acceleration must be caused by a net external torque. However, this is not so for non-rigid bodies: For example, a figure skater can speed up her rotation (thereby obtaining an angular acceleration) simply by contracting her arms and legs inwards, which involves no "external" torque.


title: Angular acceleration

text: In two dimensions, the orbital angular acceleration is the rate at which the two-dimensional orbital angular velocity of the particle about the origin changes. The instantaneous angular velocity "ω" at any point in time is given by


title: Angular acceleration

text: where formula_2 is the distance from the origin and formula_3 is the cross-radial component of the instantaneous velocity (i.e. the component perpendicular to the position vector), which by convention is positive for counter-clockwise motion and negative for clockwise motion.


title: Angular acceleration

text: In the special case where the particle undergoes circular motion about the origin, formula_6 becomes just the tangential acceleration formula_7, and formula_8 vanishes (since the distance from the origin stays constant), so the above equation simplifies to


title: Angular acceleration

text: In two dimensions, angular acceleration is a number with plus or minus sign indicating orientation, but not pointing in a direction. The sign is conventionally taken to be positive if the angular speed increases in the counter-clockwise direction or decreases in the clockwise direction, and the sign is taken negative if the angular speed increases in the clockwise direction or decreases in the counter-clockwise direction. Angular acceleration then may be termed a pseudoscalar, a numerical quantity which changes sign under a parity inversion, such as inverting one axis or switching the two axes.


title: Angular acceleration

text: In three dimensions, the orbital angular acceleration is the rate at which three-dimensional orbital angular velocity vector changes with time. The instantaneous angular velocity vector formula_10 at any point in time is given by


title: Angular acceleration

text: where formula_12 is the particle's position vector, formula_2 its distance from the origin, and formula_14 its velocity vector.


title: Angular acceleration

text: Expanding this derivative using the product rule for cross-products and the ordinary quotient rule, one gets:


title: Angular acceleration

text: Since formula_18 is just formula_19, the second term may be rewritten as formula_20. In the case where the distance formula_2 of the particle from the origin does not change with time (which includes circular motion as a subcase), the second term vanishes and the above formula simplifies to


title: Angular acceleration

text: Unlike in two dimensions, the angular acceleration in three dimensions need not be associated with a change in the angular "speed formula_24": If the particle's position vector "twists" in space, changing its instantaneous plane of angular displacement, the change in the "direction" of the angular velocity formula_25 will still produce a nonzero angular acceleration. This cannot not happen if the position vector is restricted to a fixed plane, in which case formula_25 has a fixed direction perpendicular to the plane.


title: Angular acceleration

text: The angular acceleration vector is more properly called a pseudovector: It has three components which transform under rotations in the same way as the Cartesian coordinates of a point do, but which do not transform like Cartesian coordinates under reflections.


title: Angular acceleration

text: Torque is the rotational analogue of force: it induces change in the rotational state of a system, just as force induces change in the translational state of a system. As force on a particle is connected to acceleration by the equation formula_29, one may write a similar equation connecting torque on a particle to angular acceleration, though this relation is necessarily more complicated.


title: Angular acceleration

text: where formula_33 is orbital angular acceleration and formula_25 is orbital angular velocity. Therefore:


title: Angular acceleration

text: In the special case of constant distance formula_2 of the particle from the origin (formula_37), the second term in the above equation vanishes and the above equation simplifies to


title: Angular acceleration

text: which can be interpreted as a "rotational analogue" to formula_30, where the quantity formula_40 (known as the moment of inertia of the particle) plays the role of the mass formula_41. However, unlike formula_30, this equation does "not" apply to an arbitrary trajectory, only to a trajectory contained within a spherical shell about the origin.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: Seyyed Abolhassan Banisadr (; 22 March 1933 – 9 October 2021) was an Iranian politician, writer, and political dissident. He was the first president of Iran after the 1979 Iranian Revolution abolished the monarchy, serving from February 1980 until his impeachment by parliament in June 1981. Prior to his presidency, he was the minister of foreign affairs in the interim government. He had resided for many years in France where he co-founded the National Council of Resistance of Iran.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: Following his impeachment, Banisadr fled Iran and found political asylum in France. Banisadr later focused on political writings about his activities during the Iranian revolution and his critiques of the Iranian government. He became a critic of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the country's handling of its 2009 elections.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: Banisadr was born on 22 March 1933 in Hamadān. His father was an ayatollah and close to Ruhollah Khomeini. Banisadr studied law, theology, and sociology at University of Tehran. In the 1960s, he studied finance and economics at the Sorbonne. In 1972, Banisadr's father died and he attended the funeral in Iraq, where he first met Ayatollah Khomeini.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: His father, seyyed Nasrollah Banisadr migrated to the Hamadan area from Qazi Qushchi village in Bijar in Kurdistan province.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: Banisadr participated in the anti-Shah student movement during the early 1960s and was imprisoned twice, and was wounded during an uprising in 1963, which led to his fleeing to France. He later joined the Iranian resistance group led by Khomeini, becoming one of his hard-line advisors. Banisadr returned to Iran together with Khomeini as the revolution was beginning in February 1979. He wrote a book on Islamic finance, "Eghtesad Tohidi," which roughly translates as "The Economics of Monotheism."


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: Following the Iranian Revolution, Banisadr became deputy minister of finance on 4 February 1979 and was in office until 27 February 1979. He also became a member of the revolutionary council when Bazargan and others left the council to form the interim government. After the resignation of the interim finance minister Ali Ardalan on 27 February 1979, he was appointed finance minister by then prime minister Mehdi Bazargan. On 12 November 1979, Banisadr was appointed foreign minister to replace Ebrahim Yazdi in the government that was led by the Council of the Islamic Revolution when the interim government resigned.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: Banisadr was elected to a four-year term as president on 25 January 1980, receiving 78.9 percent of the vote in the election, and was inaugurated on 4 February. Khomeini remained the Supreme Leader of Iran with the constitutional authority to dismiss the president. The inaugural ceremonies were held at the hospital where Khomeini was recovering from a heart ailment.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: Banisadr was not an Islamic cleric; Khomeini had insisted that clerics should not run for positions in the government. In August and September 1980, Banisadr survived two helicopter crashes near the Iran–Iraq border. During the Iran–Iraq War, Banisadr was appointed acting commander-in-chief by Khomeini on 10 June 1981.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: The Majlis (Iran's Parliament) impeached Banisadr in his absence on 21 June 1981, allegedly because of his moves against the clerics in power, in particular Mohammad Beheshti, then head of the judicial system. Khomeini himself appears to have instigated the impeachment, which he signed the next day. According to Kenneth Katzman, Banisadr believed the clerics should not directly govern Iran and was perceived as supporting the People's Mujahedin of Iran. Only one deputy, Salaheddin Bayani, spoke in favor of Banisadr during his impeachment.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: Even before Khomeini had signed the impeachment papers, the Revolutionary Guard had seized the Presidential buildings and gardens, and imprisoned writers at a newspaper closely tied to Banisadr. Over the next few days, they executed several of his closest friends, including Hossein Navab, Rashid Sadrolhefazi, and Manouchehr Massoudi. Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri was among the few people in the government who remained in support of Banisadr, but he was soon stripped of his powers.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: At the same time, the Iranian government outlawed all political parties, except the Islamic Republican Party. Government forces arrested and imprisoned members of other parties, such as the People's Mujahedin, Fadaian Khalq, Tudeh, and Paikar.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: Banisadr went into hiding for a few days before his removal, and hid in Tehran, protected by the People's Mujahedin (PMOI). He attempted to organize an alliance of anti-Khomeini factions to retake power, including the PMOI, KDP, and the Fedaian Organisation (Minority), while eschewing any contact with monarchist exile groups. He met numerous times while in hiding with PMOI leader Massoud Rajavi to plan an alliance, but after the execution on 27 July of PMOI member Mohammadreza Saadati, Banisadr and Rajavi concluded that it was unsafe to remain in Iran.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: In Banisadr's view, this impeachment was a "coup d'état" against democracy in Iran. In order to settle the political differences in the country, President Banisadr had asked for a referendum.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: When Banisadr was impeached on 21 June 1981, he had fled and had been hiding in western Iran. On 29 July, Banisadr and Massoud Rajavi were smuggled aboard an Iranian Air Force Boeing 707 piloted by Colonel Behzad Moezzi. It followed a routine flight plan before deviating out of Iranian groundspace to Turkish airspace and eventually landing in Paris. As a disguise, Banisadr shaved his eyebrows and mustache and dressed in a skirt.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: Banisadr and Rajavi found political asylum in Paris, conditional on abstaining from anti-Khomeini activities in France. This restriction was effectively ignored after France evacuated its embassy in Tehran. Banisadr, Rajavi, and the Kurdish Democratic Party set up the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Paris in October 1981. Banisadr soon fell out with Rajavi, however, accusing him of ideologies favoring dictatorship and violence. Furthermore, Banisadr opposed the armed opposition as initiated and sustained by Rajavi, and sought support for Iran during the war with Iraq.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: In 1991, Banisadr released an English translation of his 1989 text "My Turn to Speak: Iran, the Revolution and Secret Deals with the U.S."<ref name="Foreign Affairs; Winter 1991/92"></ref> In the book, Banisadr alleged covert dealings between the Ronald Reagan presidential campaign and leaders in Tehran to prolong the Iran hostage crisis before the 1980 United States presidential election. He also claimed that Henry Kissinger plotted to set up a Palestinian state in the Iranian province of Khuzestan and that Zbigniew Brzezinski conspired with Saddam Hussein to plot .


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: Lloyd Grove of "The Washington Post" wrote: "The book is not what normally passes for a bestseller. Cobbled together from a series of interviews conducted by French journalist Jean-Charles Deniau, it is never merely direct when it can be enigmatic, never just simple when it can be labyrinthine." In a review for "Foreign Affairs", William B. Quandt described the book as "a rambling, self-serving series of reminiscences" and "long on sensational allegations and devoid of documentation that might lend credence to Bani-Sadr's claims." "Kirkus Reviews" called it "an interesting—though frequently incredible and consistently self-serving-memoir" and said "frequent sensational accusations render his tale an eccentric, implausible commentary on the tragic folly of the Iranian Revolution."


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: Banisadr, in a 2008 interview with the Voice of America on the 29th anniversary of the revolution, claimed that Khomeini was directly responsible for the violence originated from the Muslim world and that the promises Khomeini made in exile were broken after the revolution. In July 2009, Banisadr publicly denounced the Iranian government's conduct after the disputed presidential election: "Khamenei ordered the fraud in the presidential elections and the ensuing crackdown on protesters." He said the government was "holding on to power solely by means of violence and terror" and accused its leaders of amassing wealth for themselves, to the detriment of other Iranians.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: In published articles on the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests, he ascribed the unusually open political climate before the election to the government's great need to prove its legitimacy. He also said the government had lost all legitimacy. The spontaneous uprising had cost the government its political legitimacy, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's threats led to the violent crackdown, which cost the government its religious legitimacy.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: Beginning in 1981, Banisadr lived in Versailles, near Paris, in a villa closely guarded by French police. Banisadr's daughter, Firoozeh, married Massoud Rajavi in Paris following their exile. They later divorced and the alliance between him and Rajavi also ended.


title: Abolhassan Banisadr

text: After a long illness, Banisadr died at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris on 9 October 2021, at age 88. He is buried in Versailles, in the cemetery of Gonards.


title: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

text: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star is a 2011 American dark comedy film directed by Tom Brady, produced by Happy Madison Productions, distributed by Columbia Pictures, written by Adam Sandler, Allen Covert, and Nick Swardson, and starring Swardson, Christina Ricci, Stephen Dorff, and Don Johnson. It tells the story of a man-child whose reserved parents were famous porn stars and plans to follow in their footsteps.


title: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

text: It was released on September 9, 2011, and became a box office bomb, in addition to being universally panned by film critics, earning approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Many critics considered it . It received six Razzie nominations, including for Worst Picture, but lost to the film "Jack and Jill", another film from Happy Madison Productions (which swept that year's Razzies).


title: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

text: Bucky Larson, a small-town man-child with big buck teeth, works at a local grocery store, and still lives at home. One night while watching porn with his friends, he stumbles upon a family secret: his quiet and reserved parents were famous adult performers in the 1970s. This motivates him to leave northern Iowa for Hollywood, hoping to follow in their footsteps and fulfill his destiny as the biggest adult-film star in the world. Unfortunately, he has no idea how to become a porn star like his parents, and his penis is incredibly small.


title: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

text: Once he reaches Los Angeles, he meets and falls in love with Kathy, a kindhearted waitress, who introduces him to Gary, the former roommate of John Mayer. After moving with Gary, he pursues his job as a porn actor. Through a series of misadventures he ends up at an industry party, where he is humiliated by narcissistic porn star Dick Shadow. The next day, he meets fading porn director Miles Deep. They make a test film where Bucky pre-maturely ejaculates, and they consider the endeavor a failure. But after one of the crew uploads the video to YouTube, Bucky achieves popularity as his small penis makes women appreciate their partner's endowment and the men don't feel threatened.


title: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

text: After failing to secure an adult film contract for Bucky, Miles decides to produce films with him independently. They eventually achieve success with their videos, but Bucky chooses Kathy over fame. Before he can tell her how he feels, she rejects him without explanation, leaving him brokenhearted. During a film shoot, Miles confesses that he had told Kathy to leave Bucky so he could have his prize star all to himself.


title: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

text: Bucky forgives Miles and goes after Kathy, who is on a horrible date with Dick Shadow. Bucky declares his love for Kathy, and the two get married. After one year, Bucky opens his own steakhouse. One night, Gary comes into the restaurant and yells at him for owing him rent money, and tells Bucky he is "just like John Mayer".


title: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

text: The film was not pre-screened for critics, and was panned by critics on its opening weekend. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews from critics, with an average rating of . The site's critics consensus called it a "severely misguided and inept comedy incapable of even telling its single joke properly." On Metacritic, the film received a weighted average score of 9 out of 100, indicating "overwhelming dislike", based on reviews from 13 critics, making it the worst-reviewed wide release of 2011. It was also given the Moldy Tomato award for the worst-reviewed film of 2011 by Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B" on scale of A to F.


title: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

text: "Orlando Sentinel" critic Roger Moore stated "the concept, and the movie that comes from it aren't funny. And second, Swardson wasn't any more born to be a star than his character". "New York Times" critic A.O. Scott stated in his review that "Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star" was so bad that it "may have been made ... to console every actor who has ever been in a movie that is a little less bad than this one. Let me put the matter another way: this may be the worst movie Pauly Shore has ever been in. Think about that. If you dare, go on Netflix and test the hypothesis." Critic Nathan Rabin gave the film a D− in his initial review, then noted that ""Bucky Larson" was panned so viciously that my D− ranked on the generous side of critical appraisals" when revisiting the film a second time for his "My Year of Flops" column, where he cited it as an example of a "shitty miracle, [a film where] "everything" goes awry. It's not a matter of one sorry element dragging the rest down; it's every terrible component amplifying the awfulness of everything else", later calling it "one of the ugliest, most misguided comedies in recent memory."


title: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

text: The film earned six nominations at the 32nd Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Picture, Worst Actor (Nick Swardson), Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Screen Ensemble, and Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel (rip-off of "Boogie Nights" and "A Star Is Born"). It lost in all six categories to "Jack and Jill", another poorly received film in which Adam Sandler and Nick Swardson had involvement.


title: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

text: "Bucky Larson" was a box office flop, earning only $1.4 million to land at #15 for its opening weekend, thus making "Bucky Larson" the least successful Happy Madison film to date, both critically and commercially. After two weeks of release, the film had earned a total of $2.5 million, after which it was pulled from theatres.


title: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

text: Swardson defended "Bucky Larson" in an October 2011 interview, in which he blamed its poor financial showing on the difficulties of advertising the material: "To promote an R-rated movie, with commercials, with this character, it was just really, really hard. It was hard to get the movie across to people. The trailer in theaters was really tame because we couldn't show any of the insanity, and even if we did it, it wouldn't hit because it had no context. It was just really frustrating." He predicted the film would find more appreciation on DVD.


title: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

text: In the same interview, Swardson dismissed the negative reviews. "I knew the critics were going to bury us because of the acting, how it was written and directed ... None of those reviewers was psyched to see "Bucky Larson" and laugh. They go in with the mentality 'fuck these guys for making another movie.' They go in there to kind of headhunt. It makes me laugh because it's just so embarrassing. It makes them look like such morons."


title: Borromean rings

text: In mathematics, the Borromean rings are three simple closed curves in three-dimensional space that are topologically linked and cannot be separated from each other, but that break apart into two unknotted and unlinked loops when any one of the three is cut or removed. Most commonly, these rings are drawn as three circles in the plane, in the pattern of a Venn diagram, alternatingly crossing over and under each other at the points where they cross. Other triples of curves are said to form the Borromean rings as long as they are topologically equivalent to the curves depicted in this drawing.


title: Borromean rings

text: The Borromean rings are named after the Italian House of Borromeo, who used the circular form of these rings as a coat of arms, but designs based on the Borromean rings have been used in many cultures, including by the Norsemen and in Japan. They have been used in Christian symbolism as a sign of the Trinity, and in modern commerce as the logo of Ballantine beer, giving them the alternative name Ballantine rings. Physical instances of the Borromean rings have been made from linked DNA or other molecules, and they have analogues in the Efimov state and Borromean nuclei, both of which have three components bound to each other although no two of them are bound.


title: Borromean rings

text: Geometrically, the Borromean rings may be realized by linked ellipses, or (using the vertices of a regular icosahedron) by linked golden rectangles. It is impossible to realize them using circles in three-dimensional space, but it has been conjectured that they may be realized by copies of any non-circular simple closed curve in space. In knot theory, the Borromean rings can be proved to be linked by counting their Fox -colorings. As links, they are Brunnian, alternating, algebraic, and hyperbolic. In arithmetic topology, certain triples of prime numbers have analogous linking properties to the Borromean rings.


title: Borromean rings

text: It is common in mathematics publications that define the Borromean rings to do so as a link diagram, a drawing of curves in the plane with crossings marked to indicate which curve or part of a curve passes above or below at each crossing. Such a drawing can be transformed into a system of curves in three-dimensional space by embedding the plane into space and deforming the curves drawn on it above or below the embedded plane at each crossing, as indicated in the diagram. The commonly-used diagram for the Borromean rings consists of three equal circles centered at the points of an equilateral triangle, close enough together that their interiors have a common intersection (such as in a Venn diagram or the three circles used to define the Reuleaux triangle). Its crossings alternate between above and below when considered in consecutive order around each circle; another equivalent way to describe the over-under relation between the three circles is that each circle passes over a second circle at both of their crossings, and under the third circle at both of their crossings. Two links are said to be equivalent if there is a continuous deformation of space (an ambient isotopy) taking one to another, and the Borromean rings may refer to any link that is equivalent in this sense to the standard diagram for this link.


title: Borromean rings

text: In "The Knot Atlas", the Borromean rings are denoted with the code "L6a4"; the notation means that this is a link with six crossings and an alternating diagram, the fourth of five alternating 6-crossing links identified by Morwen Thistlethwaite in a list of all prime links with up to 13 crossings. In the tables of knots and links in Dale Rolfsen's 1976 book "Knots and Links", extending earlier listings in the 1920s by Alexander and Briggs, the Borromean rings were given the Alexander–Briggs notation "6", meaning that this is the second of three 6-crossing 3-component links to be listed. The Conway notation for the Borromean rings, ".1", is an abbreviated description of the standard link diagram for this link.


title: Borromean rings

text: The name "Borromean rings" comes from the use of these rings, in the form of three linked circles, in the coat of arms of the aristocratic Borromeo family in Northern Italy. The link itself is much older and has appeared in the form of the , three linked equilateral triangles with parallel sides, on Norse image stones dating back to the 7th century. The Ōmiwa Shrine in Japan is also decorated with a motif of the Borromean rings, in their conventional circular form. A stone pillar in the 6th-century Marundeeswarar Temple in India shows three equilateral triangles rotated from each other to form a regular enneagram; like the Borromean rings these three triangles are linked and not pairwise linked, but this crossing pattern describes a different link than the Borromean rings.


title: Borromean rings

text: The Borromean rings have been used in different contexts to indicate strength in unity. In particular, some have used the design to symbolize the Trinity. A 13th-century French manuscript depicting the Borromean rings labeled as unity in trinity was lost in a fire in the 1940s, but reproduced in an 1843 book by Adolphe Napoléon Didron. Didron and others have speculated that the description of the Trinity as three equal circles in canto 33 of Dante's "Paradiso" was inspired by similar images, although Dante does not detail the geometric arrangement of these circles. The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan found inspiration in the Borromean rings as a model for his topology of human subjectivity, with each ring representing a fundamental Lacanian component of reality (the "real", the "imaginary", and the "symbolic").


title: Borromean rings

text: The rings were used as the logo of Ballantine beer, and are still used by the Ballantine brand beer, now distributed by the current brand owner, the Pabst Brewing Company. For this reason they have sometimes been called the "Ballantine rings".


title: Borromean rings

text: The first work of knot theory to include the Borromean rings was a catalog of knots and links compiled in 1876 by Peter Tait. In recreational mathematics, the Borromean rings were popularized by Martin Gardner, who featured Seifert surfaces for the Borromean rings in his September 1961 "Mathematical Games" column in "Scientific American". In 2006, the International Mathematical Union decided at the 25th International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid, Spain to use a new logo based on the Borromean rings.


title: Borromean rings

text: In medieval and renaissance Europe, a number of visual signs consist of three elements interlaced together in the same way that the Borromean rings are shown interlaced (in their conventional two-dimensional depiction), but with individual elements that are not closed loops. Examples of such symbols are the Snoldelev stone horns and the Diana of Poitiers crescents.


title: Borromean rings

text: Some knot-theoretic links contain multiple Borromean rings configurations; one five-loop link of this type is used as a symbol in Discordianism, based on a depiction in the "Principia Discordia".


title: Borromean rings

text: In knot theory, the Borromean rings are a simple example of a Brunnian link, a link that cannot be separated but that falls apart into separate unknotted loops as soon as any one of its components is removed. There are infinitely many Brunnian links, and infinitely many three-curve Brunnian links, of which the Borromean rings are the simplest.


title: Borromean rings

text: There are a number of ways of seeing that the Borromean rings are linked. One is to use Fox -colorings, colorings of the arcs of a link diagram with the integers modulo so that at each crossing, the two colors at the undercrossing have the same average (modulo ) as the color of the overcrossing arc, and so that at least two colors are used. The number of colorings meeting these conditions is a knot invariant, independent of the diagram chosen for the link. A trivial link with three components has formula_1 colorings, obtained from its standard diagram by choosing a color independently for each component and discarding the formula_2 colorings that only use one color. For standard diagram of the Borromean rings, on the other hand, the same pairs of arcs meet at two undercrossings, forcing the arcs that cross over them to have the same color as each other, from which it follows that the only colorings that meet the crossing conditions violate the condition of using more than one color. Because the trivial link has many valid colorings and the Borromean rings have none, they cannot be equivalent.


title: Borromean rings

text: The Borromean rings are an alternating link, as their conventional link diagram has crossings that alternate between passing over and under each curve, in order along the curve. They are also an algebraic link, a link that can be decomposed by Conway spheres into 2-tangles. They are the simplest alternating algebraic link which does not have a diagram that is simultaneously alternating and algebraic. It follows from the Tait conjectures that the crossing number of the Borromean rings (the fewest crossings in any of their link diagrams) is 6, the number of crossings in their alternating diagram.


title: Borromean rings

text: The Borromean rings are typically drawn with their rings projecting to circles in the plane of the drawing, but three-dimensional circular Borromean rings are an impossible object: it is not possible to form the Borromean rings from circles in three-dimensional space. More generally proved using four-dimensional hyperbolic geometry that no Brunnian link can be exactly circular. For three rings in their conventional Borromean arrangement, this can be seen from considering the link diagram. If one assumes that two of the circles touch at their two crossing points, then they lie in either a plane or a sphere. In either case, the third circle must pass through this plane or sphere four times, without lying in it, which is impossible. Another argument for the impossibility of circular realizations, by Helge Tverberg, uses inversive geometry to transform any three circles so that one of them becomes a line, making it easier to argue that the other two circles do not link with it to form the Borromean rings.


title: Borromean rings

text: However, the Borromean rings can be realized using ellipses. These may be taken to be of arbitrarily small eccentricity: no matter how close to being circular their shape may be, as long as they are not perfectly circular, they can form Borromean links if suitably positioned. A realization of the Borromean rings by three mutually perpendicular golden rectangles can be found within a regular icosahedron by connecting three opposite pairs of its edges. Every three unknotted polygons in Euclidean space may be combined, after a suitable scaling transformation, to form the Borromean rings. If all three polygons are planar, then scaling is not needed. In particular, because the Borromean rings can be realized by three triangles, the minimum number of sides possible for each of its loops, the stick number of the Borromean rings is nine.


title: Borromean rings

text: More generally, Matthew Cook has conjectured that any three unknotted simple closed curves in space, not all circles, can be combined without scaling to form the Borromean rings. After Jason Cantarella suggested a possible counterexample, Hugh Nelson Howards weakened the conjecture to apply to any three planar curves that are not all circles. On the other hand, although there are infinitely many Brunnian links with three links, the Borromean rings are the only one that can be formed from three convex curves.


title: Borromean rings

text: In knot theory, the ropelength of a knot or link is the shortest length of flexible rope (of radius one) that can realize it. Mathematically, such a realization can be described by a smooth curve whose radius-one tubular neighborhood avoids self-intersections. The minimum ropelength of the Borromean rings has not been proven, but the smallest value that has been attained is realized by three copies of a 2-lobed planar curve. Although it resembles an earlier candidate for minimum ropelength, constructed from four circular arcs of radius two, it is slightly modified from that shape, and is composed from 42 smooth pieces defined by elliptic integrals, making it shorter by a fraction of a percent than the piecewise-circular realization. It is this realization, conjectured to minimize ropelength, that was used for the International Mathematical Union logo. Its length is formula_3, while the best proven lower bound on the length is formula_4.


title: Borromean rings

text: For a discrete analogue of ropelength, the shortest representation using only edges of the integer lattice, the minimum length for the Borromean rings is exactly formula_5. This is the length of a representation using three formula_6 integer rectangles, inscribed in Jessen's icosahedron in the same way that the representation by golden rectangles is inscribed in the regular icosahedron.


title: Borromean rings

text: The Borromean rings are a hyperbolic link: the space surrounding the Borromean rings (their link complement) admits a complete hyperbolic metric of finite volume. Although hyperbolic links are now considered plentiful, the Borromean rings were one of the earliest examples to be proved hyperbolic, in the 1970s, and this link complement was a central example in the video "Not Knot", produced in 1991 by the Geometry Center.


title: Borromean rings

text: Hyperbolic manifolds can be decomposed in a canonical way into gluings of hyperbolic polyhedra (the Epstein–Penner decomposition) and for the Borromean complement this decomposition consists of two ideal regular octahedra. The space is a quotient space of a uniform honeycomb of ideal octahedra, the order-4 octahedral honeycomb, making the Borromean rings one of at most 21 links that correspond to uniform honeycombs in this way. The volume of the Borromean complement is formula_7 where formula_8 is the Lobachevsky function and formula_9 is Catalan's constant. The complement of the Borromean rings is universal, in the sense that every closed 3-manifold is a branched cover over this space.


title: Borromean rings

text: In arithmetic topology, there is an analogy between knots and prime numbers in which one considers links between primes. The triple of primes are linked modulo 2 (the Rédei symbol is −1) but are pairwise unlinked modulo 2 (the Legendre symbols are all 1). Therefore, these primes have been called a "proper Borromean triple modulo 2" or "mod 2 Borromean primes".


title: Borromean rings

text: A monkey's fist knot is essentially a 3-dimensional representation of the Borromean rings, albeit with three layers, in most cases. Sculptor John Robinson has made artworks with three equilateral triangles made out of sheet metal, linked to form Borromean rings and resembling a three-dimensional version of the valknut. A common design for a folding wooden tripod consists of three pieces carved from a single piece of wood, with each piece consisting of two lengths of wood, the legs and upper sides of the tripod, connected by two segments of wood that surround an elongated central hole in the piece. Another of the three pieces passes through each of these holes, linking the three pieces together in the Borromean rings pattern. Tripods of this form have been described as coming from Indian or African hand crafts.


title: Borromean rings

text: In chemistry, molecular Borromean rings are the molecular counterparts of Borromean rings, which are mechanically-interlocked molecular architectures. In 1997, biologist Chengde Mao and coworkers of New York University succeeded in constructing a set of rings from DNA. In 2003, chemist Fraser Stoddart and coworkers at UCLA utilised coordination chemistry to construct a set of rings in one step from 18 components. Borromean ring structures have been used to describe noble metal clusters shielded by a surface layer of thiolate ligands. A library of Borromean networks has been synthesized by design by Giuseppe Resnati and coworkers via halogen bond driven self-assembly. In order to access the molecular Borromean ring consisting of three unequal cycles a step-by-step synthesis was proposed by Jay S. Siegel and coworkers.


title: Borromean rings

text: In physics, a quantum-mechanical analog of Borromean rings is called a halo state or an Efimov state, and consists of three bound particles that are not pairwise bound. The existence of such states was predicted by physicist Vitaly Efimov, in 1970, and confirmed by multiple experiments beginning in 2006. This phenomenon is closely related to a Borromean nucleus, a stable atomic nucleus consisting of three groups of particles that would be unstable in pairs. Another analog of the Borromean rings in quantum information theory involves the entanglement of three qubits in the Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger state.


title: European mantis

text: The European mantis (Mantis religiosa) is a large hemimetabolic insect in the family of the Mantidae ('mantids'), which is the largest family of the order Mantodea (mantises). Their common name praying mantis is derived from the distinctive posture of the first pair of legs that can be observed in animals in repose. It resembles a praying attitude. Both males and females have elongated bodies with two pairs of wings. The most striking features that all Mantodea share are a very mobile, triangular head with large compound eyes and their first pair of legs (the 'raptorial legs'), which is highly modified for the efficient capture and restraint of fast-moving or flying prey.


title: European mantis

text: In Germany, "M. religiosa" is listed as "Gefährdet" [endangered] on the German Red List on the basis of an assessment from 1998. It is not supposed to be caught or held as a pet. At a global level, it is assessed by the IUCN as least concern.


title: European mantis

text: Though females of "M. religiosa" are usually larger and heavier than males (7–9 cm versus 6–7 cm), the antennae and the eyes of male animals outsize those of the females. Along with the forward-directed, compound eyes, simple eyes also are found on the head. These three dorsal ocelli are also more pronounced in males than in females.


title: European mantis

text: Males are often found to be more active and agile, whereas females are physically more powerful. Adult females are generally too large and heavy for their wings to enable a take-off.


title: European mantis

text: Mantids show strong deimatic display from very early life stages on. This behavior can be observed throughout different groups of animals and is used to scare or startle potential predators to give the attacked animals a chance to escape. The deimatic display in "M. religiosa" involves wing spreading and bending of the raptorial legs to reveal two matched black eyespots with a yellow or white center at the base of the coxae (legs). It makes the animal appear much larger and more of a threat to the attacker. The black eyespots are also a distinct feature for species discrimination of the European mantis.


title: European mantis

text: Another unique feature of "M. religiosa" is its midline metathoracic ear (see Ultrasound avoidance). This “tympanal auditory organ” is an unpaired structure found on the ventral side of the animal on the metathorax between the third pair of legs. Unlike other sound-processing organs found among different groups of insects, the metathoracic ear has a high sensitivity across high and low frequencies and even ultrasound. Therefore, the authors call it a ‘true ear’.


title: European mantis

text: The great variation in the coloration of "M. religiosa" from different shades of yellow, brown, green, and sometimes black has been the cause of numerous hypotheses and studies for over 100 years. However, no generally accepted answer about reason, benefit, or mechanism of the coloration or the change of coloration has been found.


title: European mantis

text: Di Cesnola observed in 1904 that green mantids were found on fresh green grass, whereas brown individuals seemed to prefer brown grass burned by the sun. When forced to change the location as to no longer match their coloration, almost all the ‘not matching’ animals were killed by predators such as birds. This indicates a camouflaging purpose of the coloration.


title: European mantis

text: Przibram also observed in 1907 that a change in temperature can trigger a change in coloration: animals that hatched in a cold environment turned green after moulting when heat and sunlight were provided. Without the change in temperature and only a change in the color of the background, no change in coloration occurred. This finding contradicts with Di Cesnola, who claims to have observed the animals within the same time and location (and therefore the same temperature).


title: European mantis

text: "M. religiosa" can be found throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as North America, where it is considered introduced. Two confirmed stable populations are in Germany: one in Rhineland-Palatinate and one in Baden-Württemberg. In the last years, more reports have been made of the distribution of the animals in Northern Europe (Latvia, Estonia), as well.


title: European mantis

text: The sexual behavior of praying mantids in general is curious, so has received interest from scientists over the last century. The differences between the various species are well known.


title: European mantis

text: In "M. religiosa", courtship and mating are separated into two steps: Preliminary courtship begins with the first visual contact between the animals and ends with the first physical contact. Copulation begins with physical contact and ends when the spermatophore is deposited:


title: European mantis

text: Only a few days after the final moult into adults, the animals begin to show interest in the opposite sex; this point is marked as the achievement of sexual maturity. Males have been observed to be most attracted to females during the middle of the day when the temperature is hottest. Theories are that the female pheromones are most volatile in the heat and that also the male, as a thermophilic insect, is most active.


title: European mantis

text: Instead of just observing them, sexually mature males approach sexually mature females when they see them, but due to the physical superiority of the females, males of "M. religiosa" face certain challenges in doing so. When a female spots a male, she is very likely to attack and kill him (see also: Sexual cannibalism). Therefore, males can be observed to be very slow and cautious in their approach; after spotting a female, the male usually freezes and turns his head to look directly at her. Since the foveae in his eyes face directly forwards, he has the most accurate and detailed view of her and can watch every one of her moves. He then proceeds to approach her from behind. Males can be observed to stop as soon as the female turns her head or even moves. Mantids are very good at detecting moving structures, but are almost unable to see immobile objects. Using this ‘stop-and-go’ tactic, the male stalks closer to the female. This can often take several hours. Depending on the environment, males sometimes show a light ‘rocking’-behavior which is believed to imitate the leaves of surrounding plants to blend in with the background. Males doing this had no higher probability of being detected and attacked, which supports this hypothesis of concealment.


title: European mantis

text: No mention of male or female courtship has been made in either the field or captivity. The male, in fact, does not win by display; he wins by the absence of display.


title: European mantis

text: Once the male is close enough to the female, he opens his wings a little to facilitate his jump on the female's back. As soon as he lands, he proceeds to hold on to her with his raptorial legs. His tibiae fit into a pair of grooves on either side of the female's mesothorax in front of her wing bases.


title: European mantis

text: When the male is in a secure position, copulation is initiated. The genitals, which are found on the end of the abdomen in both sexes, look quite different; the males possess a pair of asymmetrical claspers, while the females have an ovipositor. The ovipositor is rather short in comparison to other insects. It is covered in part by the edges of the last sternum.


title: European mantis

text: The abdomen of the male curves and twists in a 90° angle around the female's to insert the claspers between the ovipositor and the sternum. The abdomen of the male then contracts in a peristaltic manner. The animals can stay in this position for four to five hours before a spermatophore is deposited inside the female and the claspers are withdrawn.


title: European mantis

text: The male then lets go of the female to drop to the ground to get out of her reach for his own safety. After getting away about 50 cm, he stops and freezes for about four minutes before he leaves eventually. This behavior could be interpreted as necessary rest after the efforts of copulating in a safe distance from the female.


title: European mantis

text: The intervals of oviposition after copulating depend on the food intake and the overall physical fitness of the female. On average, 11 days are needed for the female to form and deposit an ootheca, which contains around 100 to 200 eggs. Copulation usually takes place in September or October, but the eggs overwinter and the larva do not hatch until the following spring. Hatching is strongly influenced by environmental conditions such as temperature (at least 17 °C) and humidity. Females prefer to deposit their eggs on solid substrates at warm and sunny sites. Most eggs from one ootheca hatch at the same time along the entire convex site, as worm-like prelarvae (L1). The hatchings always occur in the morning.


title: European mantis

text: The L1 just exists for a very short time; the first moult happens on or very close to the ootheca. The now-emerging nymphs already look a lot like the adults, but are maybe a tenth of their size. Very few animals (about 10%) survive this first instar stage due to lack of appropriately sized food, low temperatures, or insufficient humidity.


title: European mantis

text: The L2–L6 stages generally last about 14 days each. During this time, a growth around 6 mm per stadium can be observed. Each stadium is completed with a moult. The L7 develops a more compact shape. Wing pads become visible. L7 and L8 show the same growth rate and duration as the previous stadia. After the next moult, the adult animal emerges. It now has wings and is fully developed. While more than eight moults have never been observed in "M. religiosa", females usually need one more moult than males under similar circumstances.


title: European mantis

text: Closely related mantids have been reported to be larger than "M. religiosa" and require more moults (9–11). The fact that females need a longer time to develop and more moults might be due to the difference in size.


title: European mantis

text: The phenomenon that conspecifics are attacked and eaten after, during, and sometimes even before copulation is called sexual cannibalism. Many examples are known in various groups of invertebrates, including the mantids. Some speculations exist about the benefits of this behaviour, but its causes are not fully understood yet.


title: European mantis

text: For quite some time, the belief that sexual cannibalism in "M. religiosa" only occurred in captivity was widespread. It was believed to be an artefact of improper animal keeping (too little food or space). In 1992, however, the cannibalising behaviour of female "M. religiosa" was observed in a field study. Lawrence compared the percentage of cannibalism in natural and manipulated (males and females were put close together in the field) pairings and found rates of 31% and 24%.


title: European mantis

text: This proves that sexual cannibalism in this praying mantid is not caused by laboratory conditions. They can, however, intensify the phenomenon; females that were starved for more than three days were more likely to attack males, even before copulation. While the cannibalisation before the copulation is still puzzling to scientists, some theories about the benefits of sexual cannibalism in general include:


title: European mantis

text: At first glance, however, this behaviour does not seem to be very beneficial for the male, since he dies and cannot create more offspring with his genetic material, yet males usually do not mate more than once, anyway. They have a shorter life expectancy than females (7–8 months versus 11–12 months) and since food can begin to become scarce in September and October, the male might starve before he has the chance to mate again. Copulation is also known to take longer when cannibalisation occurs. It seems advantageous to transfer more sperm in this elongated time and additionally provide the female with nutrients. Doing this, the male might just pass on his genes once, but he can ‘make sure’ that his offspring are successful, since they come from a well-nourished female.


title: European mantis

text: Some controversy exists, though, concerning this theory. The absence of elaborate display behaviour does not support this ‘selfless’ behaviour of the males. It could have also been observed that males are more likely to approach a female that is distracted by feeding or cleaning herself. The approach is also happening faster in these cases. The male seems to try to avoid his cannibalisation very actively.


title: European mantis

text: The fact that sexual cannibalisation happens so often is surely also supported because a male without a head can continue and even initiate copulation. The cerebral ganglion might have an inhibitory effect on copulatory reflexes. Once it is removed by removing the head, copulation might even be longer, since the male can never ‘decide’ to let go. A few mantids can also start copulating when the heads of both animals get removed artificially beforehand. The beheaded animals can live up to five hours and usually just die when they bleed out or starve to death.


title: European mantis

text: "M. religiosa" is a carnivorous ambush predator that actively scans its environment and feeds on most insects that are not too large to be captured by rapid extension of its raptorial legs. Only living and moving prey is captured and consumed immediately using their powerful mandibles. Grasshoppers seem to be rather popular, probably because of their type of movement (flying or leaping), but crickets and cockroaches are also frequently preyed upon. The attack or consumption of Mollusca, Aranea, Myriapoda, or Oligochaeta is also not unknown. Caught prey gets trapped between the spikes on the femora and tibiae and is now immobilized. The mantis then starts eating the still-living and preferably moving prey. Some years ago, the general opinion was that they killed their prey with a bite in the neck before consuming it, but current observations do not support this; the animals just start eating the body parts closest to their mouths.


title: European mantis

text: "M. religiosa" is also known to eat conspecifics outside a sexual context. Because of this, they usually need to be kept isolated from each other in captivity.


title: European mantis

text: The large compound eyes that account for a great portion of the head make clear that vision seems to be important for "M. religiosa". Their hunting behaviour and their sexual interactions rely almost exclusively on sight and the detection of movement. The capture of fast-flying prey out of the air would not be possible without a high level of temporal resolution. The localisation of the direction and distance of the prey are crucial here.


title: European mantis

text: The eyes of "M. religiosa" are apposition eyes with eight types of photoreceptor cells, so are best adapted for daylight vision. One compound eye of an adult mantid consists of 8,000 to 10,000 optically isolated ommatidia with an interommatidial angle of 2° in the periphery and 0.7° in the fovea. Interommatidial angles in insects vary from tens of degrees to 0.24° in dragonflies, which puts the mantids on the upper end of spatial resolution. The overlap of the visual field of the two eyes is 40° in nymphs and up to 70° in adults.


title: European mantis

text: The pseudopupil, a small, dark region in the eye, is rather conspicuous. It moves when the animal's head is moving and represents the area of parallel ommatidia, which absorb the incident light, so appear darker than the rest of the eye.


title: European mantis

text: The peering behaviour observed in "M. religiosa" is believed to be essential for the measurement of distances and depth perception; a side-to-side pendulum-like movement of the head or the whole body in a horizontal plane is used to scan the environment. Motion parallax is a depth cue that describes the fact that the closer the object is, the faster it seems to move when turning one's head while looking at it compared to slower-moving objects that are more distant. Animals that were blinded on one eye did not strike for prey, showing that binocular vision is essential, since the disparity between the information of each eye is used to estimate distances, as well.