title: Uğur Şahin

text: In January 2020, Sahin and his teams pivoted from cancer to COVID-19 vaccine development. The rapid publication of the sequence of SARS-COV-2 enabled them to initiate an RNA vaccine discovery program. The versatile nature of their mRNA technology and the groundwork Sahin's team had done in the area of cancer vaccines allowed them to develop, produce and test multiple mRNA vaccine candidates in parallel. BNT162b2 was discovered as the best candidate for the particular purpose of vaccinating for COVID19 prevention. BNT162b2 is a lipid nanoparticle encapsulated, nucleoside-modified RNA vaccine encoding SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and combines multiple features for optimized vaccine activity derived from Sahin, Türeci and their teams prior work. Clinical trials and subsequent real-world studies established that BNT162b2 vaccine is very effective in inducing immune responses and proved the safety and potent efficacy in humans. BNT162b2 became the first mRNA drug approved for human use and the fastest vaccine developed against a new pathogen in the history of medicine.


title: Uğur Şahin

text: Şahin has been a member of the since 2004 and a member of the Program Committee of the Association for Cancer Immunotherapy (CIMT), Regulatory Research Group, Mainz, since 2008. In 2012, he was among the founders of the Cluster of Individualized Immunointervention (CI3) in Mainz. He has been a member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) since 2014 and of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) since 2015. In 2021 Sahin was elected as a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).


title: Uğur Şahin

text: The U.S. National Library of Medicine lists 345 clinical studies and other publications in which Şahin was involved; he is first author of 49. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office lists several patents related to him.


title: Uğur Şahin

text: Based on the top-cited patent over the past five years, and H-index, a calculation of the impact of a researcher's publications over time, Sahin was ranked in Nature Biotechnology's Top 20 translational researchers in the years of 2015, 2018 and 2019.


title: Ken Kercheval

text: Kenneth Marine Kercheval (July 15, 1935 – April 21, 2019) was an American actor, best known for his role as Cliff Barnes on the television series "Dallas" and its 2012 revival.


title: Ken Kercheval

text: Kercheval was born on July 15, 1935, in Wolcottville, Indiana, to Marine "Doc" Kercheval (1899-1967), a local physician, and the former Christine Reiber (1903-1996), a registered nurse. He was raised in Clinton, Indiana. As a teenager, Kercheval often was with his dad in the operating room and once put two stitches in his sister Kate when she had an appendectomy. Kercheval attended Indiana University, not to become a doctor, but to major in music and drama. He later studied at the University of the Pacific, and starting in 1956, at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City under Sanford Meisner.


title: Ken Kercheval

text: Kercheval made his Broadway debut in the 1962 play "Something About a Soldier". He appeared off-Broadway in the 1972 Kurt Weill revue "Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill", and can be heard on the cast recording. His other theatre credits included "The Apple Tree", "Cabaret" (replacing Bert Convy as Cliff), and "Here's Where I Belong". In 1966, he appeared as the title character in the original Broadway production of "Fiddler on the Roof", co-starring with Herschel Bernardi, Maria Karnilova, Julia Migenes, Leonard Frey, and Pia Zadora.


title: Ken Kercheval

text: Kercheval gained his first television role, playing the part of Dr. Nick Hunter number one on "Search for Tomorrow" in 1966. His later soap-opera roles were in "The Secret Storm" and "How to Survive a Marriage". His film credits include "The Seven-Ups" with Roy Scheider and Tony LoBianco plus "F.I.S.T." with Sylvester Stallone. In 1976, he co-starred in two episodes of "The Adams Chronicles" as James Madison.


title: Ken Kercheval

text: Kercheval is best known for having played J.R.'s nemesis Cliff Barnes on the CBS television series "Dallas". He starred in the show from 1978 to 1991, from its pilot episode to the series finale. He initially was cast as Ray Krebbs before being given the role of Cliff Barnes. Kercheval and Larry Hagman were the only "Dallas" cast members to stay with the series throughout its entire run, although Kercheval's character was only a recurring character during the first two seasons. He became a regular cast member in the 1979–1980 season. Kercheval reprised the role of Cliff Barnes in the 1996 "Dallas" reunion, "J. R. Returns", and he appeared in the 2004 CBS reunion special. He again reprised the role in the "Dallas" (2012) series.


title: Ken Kercheval

text: In the 1980s, he made numerous appearances on "Super Password" and "The $25,000 Pyramid". In 1991, he appeared in the reunion movie, "I Still Dream of Jeannie", playing Mr. Simpson, a guidance counselor at Anthony Nelson Jr.'s high school and was the temporary master for Anthony Jr.'s mother, Jeannie (Barbara Eden); this was because Larry Hagman, who played Tony Nelson, was not available to reprise his role, as he had not yet finished his run on "Dallas" – the irony being that "I Dream of Jeannie" was Hagman's first major series, and the actors' respective "Dallas" characters despised each other. He also appeared as a ballroom dance teacher in the independent film "California Casanova".


title: Ken Kercheval

text: In 2006, Kercheval appeared in the musical "White Christmas" at Southampton's Mayflower Theatre and Plymouth's Theatre Royal as the General. In 2007, he reprised his role at the Edinburgh Playhouse and the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff. He reprised his role in Sunderland in 2010 and at The Lowry in Salford Quay with "Coronation Street" actor Wendi Peters and "Brookside" regular Claire Sweeney from November 2012 until January 2013.


title: Ken Kercheval

text: In 1985, Kercheval became a partner in the Old Capital Popcorn Company. The business thrived at first, but the partnership soured in 1988. The financial issues and other conflicts led to a 1989 armed rampage and suicide on the "Dallas" set by one of the partners.


title: Ken Kercheval

text: A lifelong smoker, Kercheval was a lung cancer survivor after having had part of his lung removed in 1994. Kercheval was married and divorced three times and had five children. , he had six grandchildren.


title: The Pearl-Qatar

text: The Pearl Island () in Doha, Qatar, is an artificial island spanning nearly four square kilometers. It is the first land in Qatar to be available for freehold ownership by foreign nationals. As of 2018, there are 27,000 residents.


title: The Pearl-Qatar

text: Once fully completed, The Pearl will create over 32 kilometers of new coastline, for use as a residential estate with an expected 18,831 dwellings and 45,000 residents by 2018.


title: The Pearl-Qatar

text: In 2004, when the project was first revealed, the initial cost of constructing the island stood at $2.5 billion. It is now believed the project will cost $15 billion upon completion.


title: The Pearl-Qatar

text: The Pearl is divided into 12 districts (also referred to as precincts), each of which has a distinct architectural style. The districts are:


title: The Pearl-Qatar

text: Residential development on the island is intended to incorporate various national and international themes, including aspects of Arabic, Mediterranean, and European culture. There are twelve precincts that make up The Pearl Island.


title: The Pearl-Qatar

text: Total number of towers will be 31 with a total of 4,700 apartments. The address format is Unit 1234, 1 Porto Arabia. Some references use "PA-1" for convenience.


title: The Pearl-Qatar

text: There will be 29 towers total. The address format is "Unit 1234, 1 Viva Bahriya", with "VB‑1" being the shorter, convenient version.


title: The Pearl-Qatar

text: The Pearl Island's "Venice-like community" has an extensive canal system, pedestrian-friendly squares and plazas and beachfront townhouses. The first residents started to live in Qanat Quartier in 2012. When complete there will be:


title: The Pearl-Qatar

text: This precinct is located by the entrance of The Pearl Qatar, and will have 7 towers including the tallest buildings planned for the development, at 40 storeys high.


title: The Pearl-Qatar

text: The Central Authority Directorate (TCAD), which provides services like property registration and residency permits, opened on 3 December 2011.


title: The Pearl-Qatar

text: The Pearl Island is home to a wide selection of dining outlets covering the full range of cuisines from South American to French/Lebanese through to casual options such as Alison Nelson's Coffee Bar. "Time Out Doha" Awards 2012: Midori, the Japanese restaurant in Porto Arabia, took out Best Newcomer in the awards. Pampano, also operated by Hospitality Development Company (HDC), a fully owned subsidiary of United Development Company (UDC), the master developer of The Pearl Island, received the "Highly Commended" certificate in the Best South American category.


title: The Pearl-Qatar

text: Marsa Malaz Kempinski is the largest hotel in The Pearl, and is located on its own islet. The hotel features 281 rooms, a 1,100 m ballroom and conference halls. It has a beach with provisions for water sports and swimming, a 3,000 m spa and tennis facilities. Boat tours are offered by the hotel. Seven restaurants are located in the hotel.


title: The Pearl-Qatar

text: Modes of transport varies from precinct to precinct. Golf carts are heavily used in Porto Arabia and Medina Centrale, while boat taxis are available in Porto Arabia and Qanat Quartier. Limousines are available in Porto Arabia, Medina Centrale, Qanat Quartier and Viva Bahriya.


title: John Maus

text: John Maus (born February 23, 1980) is an American musician, composer, singer, and songwriter known for his baritone singing style and his use of vintage synthesizer sounds and Medieval church modes, a combination that often draws comparisons to 1980s goth-pop. His early lo-fi recordings anticipated and inspired the late 2000s hypnagogic pop movement. On stage, he is characterized for his intense displays of emotion while performing. He is also a former teacher of philosophy at the University of Hawaii, where he later earned his PhD in political science.


title: John Maus

text: Maus' early influences included Nirvana, Syd Barrett, Jim Morrison, and composers of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque eras. In 1998, he left his hometown of Austin, Minnesota to study experimental music at the California Institute of the Arts. When he befriended and first worked alongside classmate Ariel Pink, he took a greater interest in pop music. He produced most of the music from his first two albums "Songs" (2006) and "Love Is Real" (2007) on cassette tape with an early 1990s sound bank. The albums generally drew negative reviews upon release, and it was not until the success of his third, "We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves" (2011), that he became more widely accepted as an outsider artist. Following a half-decade absence from public appearances and releasing new music, he returned in 2017 with the album "Screen Memories".


title: John Maus

text: Writings about Maus frequently link his music to his academic vocations, although Maus himself denies composing with an aesthetic or political theory in mind. He says that on some of his songs, his intention is to investigate "forgotten" electronic palettes, harmonies that were historically associated with "the divine", and lyrics which follow certain social idioms to their "absurd conclusions". His dissertation, "Communication and Control" (2014), discusses the influence of technology on social control.


title: John Maus

text: Maus was born and raised in Austin, Minnesota and had a middle-class upbringing. The earliest songs he could recall hearing was "Chariots of Fire" by Vangelis, and after that, early MTV hits such as Jefferson Starship's "We Built This City" (1985). As a teenager, he listened mainly to Nirvana and Syd Barrett, performed in punk bands, and created music with his computer. He said that he began playing an instrument "around 12 or 13" and remembered that "the [only] culture I was exposed to was what was coming through MTV, Top 40 radio and maybe a classic rock station or something like that. ... I lived out in a very small town, with no boutique record stores and no college kids." Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" created "a fascination for musical details" for him, and when he got his first bass guitar, "I didn’t take any lessons or learn how to play it. I’d just kind of pluck on the bass and scream my heart out." Afterward, he became fascinated with the life and music of Syd Barrett, and recorded his own version of Barrett's 1970 song "Feel" from "The Madcap Laughs".


title: John Maus

text: In 1998, Maus began his undergraduate in music composition at the California Institute of the Arts, by which time he had formed an appreciation for experimental music, such as the work of Michael Pisaro, as well as Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music. When he befriended and began to work alongside classmate Ariel Pink (Ariel Rosenberg), he took a greater interest in pop music. The first time he heard Rosenberg play was at a concert put up by students from the visual arts department. He recalled thinking: "You know, Okay, maybe I’m not going to do experimental music anymore, because I was ... doing all of these performances like [Morton] Feldman and [John] Cage. ... I left that aside and took up pop as the best bet, largely because of my encounter there with Ariel, and the early work he was doing." Rosenberg called Maus "arguably my best friend" and "my very first fan", and in turn, Maus called him "the zeitgeist embodied. He is the figure of this situation and of this time, of the cloud, of the spectacle gone online."


title: John Maus

text: After Maus and Rosenberg became roommates, Maus recorded the material from his first album using a cassette multi-track recorder and an early 1990s synthesizer soundbank. For a time, Maus was a member of the Haunted Graffiti stage band. They collaborated on the title track of Rosenberg's "Lover Boy" (2002). Maus said that Rosenberg made contributions to some of his own songs, but was not credited "because neither of us care enough about any 'official' credit." He later completed his degree in experimental music composition in 2003. By 2005, Maus had also taken about a year in "art criticism or something". For two of his college years, he "couldn’t write a thing ... and it horrified me. ... Nothing did what I felt music ought to do. I had to feel like I’d started to get there, at least in my mind, before I could share it with people." At his most "prolific", he could write only one song a month.


title: John Maus

text: In 2003, Rosenberg signed to Animal Collective's Paw Tracks, and over the next few years, some of his early, self-released CD-Rs were widely distributed for the first time. Maus had also self-released CD-Rs of his work, which he submitted to several labels, including Paw Tracks and Kill Rock Stars, but was rejected. Both Maus and Rosenberg backed Animal Collective's Panda Bear for his solo tour of Europe, where Maus served as keyboardist. Sometimes Maus was also the opening act for these shows. Eventually, after a performance in London, he encountered agents from Upset the Rhythm, who agreed to distribute his music. Although Maus' first two official albums "Songs" (2006) and "Love Is Real" (2007) generally drew negative reviews upon release, he gradually built a cult following.


title: John Maus

text: After "Love Is Real", Maus was awarded a scholarship to study political philosophy at the University of Hawaii, where he had a day job as a lecturer. In the evenings, he continued working on music from his office. In 2009, Maus relocated from Hawaii to a secluded cabin in Minnesota, where he struggled to write material for a third album. He said that he eventually gave up, and instead began "doing lots of chemistry projects and chromatography experiments. I set myself on fire a few times heating inflammable solvents." Meanwhile, he continued his studies at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee, Switzerland and earned his master's degree. He did not live in Switzerland, "but would go out there in the summers. It's like that Black Mountain thing that they did over here years ago, where they bring out all of the heavy hitters and you can study with them yourself."


title: John Maus

text: One of his professors from the university was the French philosopher Alain Badiou, who would originate the title of his third album "We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves" (2011). Maus wrote the album in "search for the perfect pop song." After the album's positive response, he grew more widely accepted as an outsider artist, and there was a critical reevaluation of his earlier work. In 2012, the album was followed with the compilation "A Collection of Rarities and Previously Unreleased Material". Spanning recordings from 1999 to 2010, the collection selects outtakes from his previous three albums in addition to tracks which had appeared on other compilations. The album was conceived by Ribbon Music; Maus did not consider it an "official record" but was "grateful that they [the label] thought anybody would be interested in having it."


title: John Maus

text: In a 2011 "Pitchfork" interview, Maus suggested that he was happy that music was increasingly becoming free to the public and that record stores were "coming to an end". The remarks embroiled him in an online controversy, after which he tweeted a lengthy apology which clarified that he was referring to "the Megastores of the world", not "the small DIY record shops".


title: John Maus

text: Maus envisioned that after he completed his PhD dissertation, he would return to teaching, stating in 2011 that he could not foresee a career in music. At the same time, he started experimenting with recreational drugs for the first time in his life, "going into sensory deprivation tanks and just trying any trick I could think of. I became solely obsessed with this at the expense of anything else." From 2012 to 2016, he did not release any new music, and spent the majority of the time in isolation. Two years were devoted to finishing his dissertation, while another two were spent learning how to build modular synthesizers. Completed and submitted in 2014, the 338-page thesis "Communication and Control" discussed the influence of technology on social control, and he was thereby awarded his PhD in political science from the University of Hawaii, where his thesis advisor was Michael J. Shapiro. He immediately started building the instruments that were ultimately used for the recording of his next album. At least two albums' worth of tracks were finished shortly before the end of 2016.


title: John Maus

text: His fourth official album, "Screen Memories", was released on October 27, 2017. It was followed by "Addendum" on April 20, 2018. In an October 2017 interview, Maus indicated a desire to record an album with Rosenberg: "We’re both swamped right now ... but "I've" been talking about it for a long time, and he's been talking about it. It’s just a question of finding the right moment, which I think will be after this." To support "Screen Memories" and "Addendum", he embarked on his first solo tour with a live band, featuring his brother Joe Maus on bass, Minneapolis musician Luke Darger on keyboards, and Jonathan Thompson on drums. The tour began on August 15, 2017 and lasted until the next year. On July 28, 2018, Joe Maus died hours before a planned show at the annual Cēsis Art Festival in Latvia. His obituary stated that the cause was a "previously undiagnosed heart condition". The remaining dates were immediately cancelled. Later in the year, Maus resumed touring without his backing band.


title: John Maus

text: Since then, Maus has played occasional gigs, including a November 2021 performance at the music festival Substance in Los Angeles. Maus had invited Ariel Pink to be his sound engineer for this performance, however, one of the festival promoters recommended against this out of fear of controversy. According to Pink, Maus, who would have protested out of principle, went ahead with the performance due to financial troubles. Pink recalled, "I said, I’ll pay you the money. I know they’re not paying you that much." He and Maus have not spoken since.


title: John Maus

text: On stage, Maus is known for his intense displays of emotion while performing. "The Guardian" noted him as a "ferocious theoretician" who "pogos, head-bangs and gives vent to a succession of feral howls as he jack-knifes at the waist." Until 2017, he only performed one-man "karaoke shows" in which he sang over prerecorded music. He is also characterized "as much a professional existentialist as he is a synth-pop musician" and that "reading his interviews can make your cerebral cortex pulse with befuddlement." The BBC's Charles Ubaghs distinguished Maus as "a serious believer in pop music. ... Behind these retro overtones is a desire to explore our modern relationships with pop, and its impact on our wider philosophical and cultural lives." The review also remarked that on Maus' self-referential tendencies: "Couple this with lyrics like The Fear’s surprisingly frank 'What’s wrong with me, ‘cause I’ve tried everything,' and you’ve an accessibly rich portrait of Maus' ever-questioning mind."


title: John Maus

text: Maus relates his erratic stage demeanor to "the hysterical body". Accordingly, the purpose of the display is to combat the "play-acting" involved with live music and affect more sincerity in the performance. This ties in with the idea meant by "we must become the pitiless censors of ourselves". As he explains, "What I'm trying to do is appear as something else than the world as it stands ... Because I believe that’s what we all really want, to see one another and to be seen, and my particular wager is that the hysterical body is perhaps exemplary in its affirmation of that ... the sweat of blood is undeniable."


title: John Maus

text: In various interviews, Maus advocates for "truth" in music. He refers to a tendency of popular music criticism, specifically its reductive engagement with "at-hand genre and at-hand comparison, then it moves on to the next thing. If something remarkable is happening in the work, that’s what people should write about, not the application of some at-hand label maker." Another example he gives to describe the reduction is "it sounds like x and y". He adds that the "truth content of any work, I suppose, is the extent to which it accomplishes something else than what it is."


title: John Maus

text: "Slant Magazine"s Matthew Cole dismissed Maus' philosophical writings as "a parody of post-structuralist social theory" and his music as "obviously some kind of art-school mindfuckery". According to Maus, he does not think about aesthetic theory when "working over the keyboard, or musing over musical ideas in my head. But when discussing it, we want to have some new thought about this new music. I wouldn't claim that my music is new, but generally speaking pop music begs for some kind of radical new way of talking about it." He also denies any intention for his work to come off as "a sneering take on pop."


title: John Maus

text: Although he rejects the label, Maus is recognized as a progenitor of the hypnagogic pop scene, a genre noted for its reliance on memory and nostalgia. His compositions tend to employ the use of particular modal scales previously associated with Renaissance and Medieval music, which he believes is often mistaken as an attempt to evoke the 1980s. The intention, he said, was not "to evoke that time, I just hear that sound and it seems to suit this time right now. ... People associate the kind of harmonies that associate from the modes with the 80s sound, and for me it's not about the 80s, it's about what I think the kind of harmony is that arises from these modes - what I'm interested in." He adds: "For whatever reason, the pioneers of electronic music that came out of Sheffield and Manchester in the 1980s became interested in these ecclesiastical modes that, historically, were associated with the divine. ... The palette was there in the 80s so why was it set aside and forgotten? That thread can be taken up again." He goes on to opine that synthesizers and waveforms offer more "color and possibility" than the guitar, which he feels is an "exhausted" instrument.


title: John Maus

text: His baritone singing style is often compared to Ian Curtis of Joy Division. Maus responded that he was not aware of Joy Division until much later in his life and that any similarities are likely due to Curtis sharing "the same heroes as me, like Jim Morrison."


title: John Maus

text: During Maus' hiatus in the 2010s, various contingents of popular music began indulging in throwbacks to 1980s culture. Maus acknowledged that his early albums may have anticipated this development. Commenting on vaporwave: "even if I said it wasn’t always about retro, I had maybe tried to do that very thing and dropped a thread there for people to pick up on."


title: John Maus

text: In a 2017 interview, Maus placed himself "left of left of left of left" on a political spectrum. He stated that "it comes down to, if you don't have a sort of indignance when you see atrocities committed, you're not communing with the same humanity that I am." Furthermore, in response to accusations concerning his association with alt-right figures, he condemned white supremacy as a "cult of a race and blood—that's an absolute obscenity. That's nothing other than disaster. That's just inarguably obscene, that sort of ideology."


title: John Maus

text: While some of his lyrics are reminiscent of political slogans, such as "Rights for Gays", he commented that his intention was to follow some social idioms "through to [their] absurd conclusions where interesting things are more likely to happen. That's when the politics of aesthetics [comes in]; it's not in the protest lyrics." On the song "Cop Killer", he explained, "I'm not talking about shooting or killing a human being, I'm talking about ... the cops in our heads, the cops that are everything other than us, everything inhuman, that would put us to work towards an end other than each other."


title: John Maus

text: Asked about current events in a 2018 interview, Maus criticized the American left-wing as inferior to its European counterpart, saying that the former advances "ideas that are so quaint and old fashioned and inadequate to our situation. You know, asking for more rights, and individual liberty, I mean what is this? 1776?" He added that the Occupy Wall Street movement was "the closest" he had ever aligned with contemporary American politics and that there had been a growing hysteria to "call somebody alt right or something but there has been a far left critique of identity politics in as much as it plays the game of identity and identity is always something that can be put to work by the mechanisms that serve only toward anyone other than us y'know?"


title: John Maus

text: In 2021, Maus, alongside Ariel Pink, attended the pro-Donald Trump protests that led to the storming of the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. Responding to controversy regarding his presence at the event, Maus tweeted a quote from "Mit brennender Sorge", a 1937 encyclical from Pope Pius XI, that condemned Nazism. After a fan requested further explanation, he replied with an image of Edith Stein, a German-Jewish philosopher and Catholic nun who was executed by Nazis.


title: John Maus

text: According to Maus in 2010, he had been diagnosed "with everything at one point or another. They say you’re bipolar or whatever, but I've never had one of those ... euphoric, manic episodes where I had an exaggerated perception of my own ability, that would be wonderful. But no, I guess depression, or stuff like that." When asked if he had autism, he responded: "No, no, no, no, I only… I don't put much stock in those clinical categorizations in general, I suppose."


title: John Maus

text: In 2017, Maus married Hungarian visual artist Kika Karadi. In May 2018, during a Q&A conducted on Reddit, he commented that she had split from him "about a week and a half ago".


title: Peter (given name)

text: Peter is a common masculine given name. It is derived directly from Greek , "Petros" (an invented, masculine form of Greek "petra," the word for "rock" or "stone"), which itself was a translation of Aramaic "Kefa" ("stone, rock"), the new name Jesus gave to apostle Simon Bar-Jona. An Old English variant is Piers.


title: Egyptian cobra

text: The Egyptian cobra (Naja haje), also known as Ouraeus "(derived from the Ancient Greek word: "οὐραῖος" - )", is one of the most venomous snakes in North Africa, which has caused many snakebite incidents to humans. It averages roughly , with the longest recorded specimen measuring .


title: Egyptian cobra

text: "Naja haje" was first described by Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus in 1758. The generic name "naja" is a Latinisation of the Sanskrit word () meaning "cobra". The specific epithet "haje" is derived from the Arabic word "ḥayya" (حية) which literally means "snake". The snouted cobra ("Naja annulifera") and Anchieta's cobra ("Naja anchietae") were formerly regarded as subspecies of "Naja haje", but have since been shown to be distinct species. The Arabian populations were long recognised as a separate subspecies, "Naja haje arabica", and the black populations from Morocco sometimes as "Naja haje legionis". A recent study found that the Arabian cobra constitutes a separate species, "Naja arabica", whereas the subspecies "legionis" was synonymised with "N. haje". The same study also identified the West African savanna populations as a separate species and described it as "Naja senegalensis".


title: Egyptian cobra

text: The cladogram below illustrates the taxonomy and relationships among species of "Naja" following Van Wallach et al. (2009), with subgenus "Uraeus" resolved following Trape et al. (2009):<br>


title: Egyptian cobra

text: The Egyptian cobra is a large species. The head is large and depressed and slightly distinct from the neck. The neck of this species has long cervical ribs capable of expanding to form a hood, like all other cobras. The snout of the Egyptian cobra is moderately broad and rounded. The eye is quite big with a round pupil. The body of the Egyptian cobra is cylindrical and stout, with a long tail. The length of the Egyptian cobra is largely dependent on subspecies, geographical locale, and population. The most recognizable characteristics of this species are its head and hood.


title: Egyptian cobra

text: The colour is highly variable, but most specimens are some shade of brown, and often a "tear-drop" mark below the eye. Some are more copper-red or grey-brown in colour. Specimens from northwestern Africa (Morocco, Western Sahara) are almost entirely black. The ventral side is mostly a creamy white, yellow brown, grayish, blue grey, dark brown or black in colouration, often with dark spots.


title: Egyptian cobra

text: "Naja haje" has the following scalation. The dorsal scales at midbody number 19-20. The ventral scales number 191-220. The anal plate is single. The subcaudal scales are paired and number 53-65. There is 1 preocular, 3 (or 2) postoculars, and 2 or 3 suboculars. The upper labials number 7 (rarely 6 or 8), and are separated from the eye by the suboculars. The lower labials number 8. The temporal scales are arranged 1+2 or 1+3, varying.


title: Egyptian cobra

text: The Egyptian cobra ranges across most of North Africa north of the Sahara, across the savannas of West Africa to the south of the Sahara, south to the Congo Basin and east to Kenya and Tanzania. Older literature records from Southern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula refer to other species (see taxonomy section).


title: Egyptian cobra

text: The Egyptian cobra can also be found in captivity at zoos, both in and outside the snake’s natural range. The Giza Zoo, San Diego Zoo, and the Virginia Aquarium include the Egyptian cobra in their reptile collections.


title: Egyptian cobra

text: On March 26, 2011, the Bronx Zoo informed the public that their reptile house was closed after a venomous adolescent female banded Egyptian cobra was discovered missing from its off-exhibit enclosure on March 25.


title: Egyptian cobra

text: Zoo officials were confident the missing cobra would be found in the building and not outside, since the Egyptian cobra is known to be uncomfortable in open areas. The snake's metabolism would also have been impacted by the cold weather outdoors at that time in the Bronx. The cobra was found in a dark corner of the zoo's reptile house on March 31, 2011, in good health. After a contest, she was named "Mia" for "missing in action."


title: Egyptian cobra

text: "Naja haje" occurs in a wide variety of habitats like, steppes, dry to moist savannas, arid semi-desert regions with some water and vegetation. This species is frequently found near water. The Egyptian cobra is also found in agricultural fields and scrub vegetation. It also occurs in the presence of humans, where it often enters houses. It is attracted to villages by rodent pests (rats) and domestic chickens. There are also notes of the Egyptian cobra swimming in the Mediterranean Sea, and is often found in water.


title: Egyptian cobra

text: The Egyptian cobra is a terrestrial and crepuscular or nocturnal species. It can, however, be seen basking in the sun at times in the early morning. This species shows a preference for a permanent home base in abandoned animal burrows, termite mounds or rock outcrops. It is an active forager, sometimes entering human habitations, especially when hunting domestic fowl. Like other cobra species, it generally attempts to escape when approached, at least for a few metres, but if threatened it assumes the typical upright posture with the hood expanded, and strikes. This species prefers to eat toads, but it will prey on small mammals, birds, eggs, lizards and other snakes.


title: Egyptian cobra

text: The venom of the Egyptian cobra consists mainly of neurotoxins and cytotoxins. The average venom yield is 175 to 300 mg in a single bite, and the murine subcutaneous value is 1.15 mg/kg. However, Mohamed et al. (1973) recorded (mice) values of 0.12 mg/kg and 0.25 mg/kg via intraperitoneal injections of specimens from Egypt. Irwin et al. (1970) studied the venom toxicity of a number of elapids, including "Naja haje" from different geographical locations. Venom potency ranged from 0.08 mg/kg to 1.7 mg/kg via intravenous injections on mice.


title: Egyptian cobra

text: The study also found that Egyptian cobra specimens from northern Africa, particularly those from Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya, to have significantly more potent venom than "N. haje" specimens found in the species' more southern and western geographical range, including Sudan and those from West Africa (Senegal, Nigeria, and Mali).


title: Egyptian cobra

text: The venom affects the nervous system, stopping the nerve signals from being transmitted to the muscles and at later stages stopping those transmitted to the heart and lungs as well, causing death due to complete respiratory failure. Envenomation causes local pain, severe swelling, bruising, blistering, necrosis and variable non-specific effects which may include headache, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, dizziness, collapse or convulsions along with possible moderate to severe flaccid paralysis.


title: Egyptian cobra

text: Unlike some other African cobras (for example, the red spitting cobra), this species does not spit venom.


title: Egyptian cobra

text: The Egyptian cobra was represented in Egyptian mythology by the cobra-headed goddess Meretseger. A stylised Egyptian cobrain the form of the uraeus representing the goddess Wadjetwas the symbol of sovereignty for the Pharaohs who incorporated it into their diadem. This iconography was continued through the end of the ancient Egyptian civilization (30 BC).


title: Egyptian cobra

text: Most ancient sources say that Cleopatra and her two attendants committed suicide by being bitten by an Egyptian cobra. The snake was reportedly smuggled into her room in a basket of figs. Plutarch wrote that she performed experiments on condemned prisoners and found aspis venom to be the most painless of all fatal poisons. This "aspis" was likely to be "Naja haje" (the Egyptian cobra). However, the accounts of her apparent suicide have been questioned, since death from this snake's venom is relatively slow and it can cause damage to the tissue sometimes, and the snake is large, so it would be hard to conceal.


title: Egyptian cobra

text: The Egyptian cobra garnered increased attention in Canada in the fall of 2006 when a pet cobra became loose and forced the evacuation of a house in Toronto for more than three hours when it was believed to have sought refuge in the home's walls. The owner was fined $17,000 and jailed for a year.


title: Egyptian cobra

text: In July 2018, Aref Ghafouri was bitten by an Egyptian cobra while preparing for a show in Turkey. He was evacuated to Egypt for treatment with the antivenom and made a full recovery.


title: The Rockettes

text: The Rockettes are an American precision dance company. Founded 1925 in St. Louis, they have, since , performed at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Until 2015, they also had a touring company. They are best known for starring in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, an annual Christmas show, and for performing annually since 1957 at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York.


title: The Rockettes

text: There have been over 3,000 women who have performed as Rockettes since the New York Christmas Spectacular opening night in 1933. The Rockettes also conduct the Rockette Summer Intensive for dancers aspiring to be Rockettes.


title: The Rockettes

text: The Rockettes were originally inspired by the Tiller Girls, a precision dance company of the United Kingdom established by John Tiller in the 1890s. Tiller sent the first troupe of Tiller Girls to perform in the United States in 1900, and eventually there were three lines of them working on Broadway. In 1922, choreographer Russell Markert saw one of these troupes, known as the Tiller Rockets, perform in the Ziegfeld Follies and was inspired to create his own version with American dancers.


title: The Rockettes

text: As Markert would later recall, "If I ever got a chance to get a group of American girls who would be taller and have longer legs and could do really complicated tap routines and eye-high kicks, they'd really knock your socks off." They were originally called the Missouri Rockets. After the impresario Roxy brought them to New York for his Roxy Theatre, they were called the Roxyettes. Only later would they become the Rockettes, after Roxy and Radio City Music Hall parted ways.


title: The Rockettes

text: The Rockettes have long been represented by the American Guild of Variety Artists (AVGA). In 1967, they won a month-long strike for better working conditions, which was led by AGVA salaried officer Penny Singleton. In August 2002, contract negotiations for the troupe's veteran members resulted in a buyout by the owners of Radio City Music Hall. Roughly a fourth of the veteran Rockettes were offered retirement options, while the remaining dancers were offered the opportunity to re-audition.


title: The Rockettes

text: From 2002-2019 the Rockettes presented a dance training program called the Rockettes Summer Intensive. This weeklong dance education program offered aspiring dancers the opportunity to train with current Radio City Rockettes and choreographers and learn choreography from the Rockettes repertoire. Since its inception nearly 100 dancers from this program have become Rockettes.


title: The Rockettes

text: The Rockettes were created in 1925, but the first non-white Rockette, a Japanese-born woman named Setsuko Maruhashi, was not hired until 1985. The Rockettes did not allow dark-skinned dancers into the dance line until 1987. The justification for this policy was that such women would supposedly distract from the consistent look of the dance group. The first African American Rockette was Jennifer Jones; selected in 1987, she made her debut in 1988 at the Super Bowl XXIII halftime show. The first person with a visible disability hired by the Rockettes (Sydney Mesher, missing a left hand due to symbrachydactyly) was hired in 2019.


title: The Rockettes

text: In late 2016, the Madison Square Garden Company, which manages the troupe, agreed to have the Rockettes perform at the inauguration of Donald Trump. According to a report in the "New York Daily News", there was an initial "edict" to perform at the inaugural. Immediately several Rockettes dissented, including Rockette Phoebe Pearl who complained that she was being forced to perform at the inaugural against her wishes. One Rockette felt reluctant to "perform for this monster", referring to president-elect Donald Trump, and another said she "wouldn't feel comfortable standing near a man like that in our costumes."


title: The Rockettes

text: Madison Square Garden issued a statement saying that "For a Rockette to be considered for an event, they must voluntarily sign up and are never told they have to perform at a particular event, including the inaugural. It is always their choice. In fact, for the coming inauguration, we had more Rockettes request to participate than we have slots available." Another report suggested that dancers were allowed to "opt-out" if they thought that they would feel uncomfortable performing.


title: The Rockettes

text: Many on social media believed attendance was mandatory, including Julissa Sabino, a performer who is part of the union, who tweeted that the issue "breaks my heart" and urged supporters to "help these ladies." Autumn Withers, a former Rockette, supported a boycott, saying "take a knee, ladies!" In December 2016, according to "The Atlantic", three of the thirteen full-time dancers had chosen to sit out the event. The company danced to a medley of Irving Berlin songs at the Inaugural Ball on the evening of January 20.


title: Gujarat University

text: The Gujarat University is a public state university located at Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. The university is an affiliating university at the under-graduate level and a teaching university at the postgraduate level. It is accredited B++ by NAAC. It was established in 23rd November 1949.


title: Gujarat University

text: Many leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Anandshankar Dhruv, Ganesh Vasudev Mavalankar and Kasturbhai Lalbhai recommended formation of the university in the 1920s, and the university was established soon after the independence of India. Gujarat University was evolved out of Ahmedabad Education Society, a major educational organisation of Gujarat then.


title: Gujarat University

text: Gujarat University was formed under the Gujarat University Act of the Government of Gujarat in 1949 as a teaching and affiliating university. It was established under the recommendation of a committee headed by Ganesh Vasudev Mavalankar for rearrangement of university education in Bombay State. Many universities were established later which resulted in decrease in jurisdiction of Gujarat University.


title: Gujarat University

text: It is an affiliating university at the under-graduate level and a teaching one at the post-graduate level. Close to 300,000 students study at university in the courses, faculties and affiliated institutes. The university caters for external as well as enrolled students. Affiliates include 285 colleges, 35 approved institutions and 20 recognised institutions, as of 2014. Gujarat University Ranks 1st in Gujarat and 26th in India for the Category: "Public State Universities" under the prestigious Outlook-ICare India University Ranking 2019.


title: Gujarat University

text: The campus of the university, located in the Navarangpura area of Ahmedabad, is spread over . Affiliated colleges and institutes are spread across the Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Kheda district (excluding the limits of Vallabh Vidyanagar in Anand Taluka and the area with a radius of from the office of Sardar Patel University).


title: Gujarat University

text: Gujarat University has received the University Level National Service Scheme Award (2016–17) by President of India Ram Nath Kovind.


title: Gujarat University

text: In March 2012, the university started a campus radio service named GURU on 90.8 MHz, which was first kind of it in the state of Gujarat and fifth in India.


title: Characteristic impedance

text: The characteristic impedance or surge impedance (usually written Z) of a uniform transmission line is the ratio of the amplitudes of voltage and current of a single wave propagating along the line; that is, a wave travelling in one direction in the absence of reflections in the other direction. Alternatively, and equivalently, it can be defined as the input impedance of a transmission line when its length is infinite. Characteristic impedance is determined by the geometry and materials of the transmission line and, for a uniform line, is not dependent on its length. The SI unit of characteristic impedance is the ohm.


title: Characteristic impedance

text: The characteristic impedance of a lossless transmission line is purely real, with no reactive component. Energy supplied by a source at one end of such a line is transmitted through the line without being dissipated in the line itself. A transmission line of finite length (lossless or lossy) that is terminated at one end with an impedance equal to the characteristic impedance appears to the source like an infinitely long transmission line and produces no reflections.


title: Characteristic impedance

text: The characteristic impedance formula_1 of an infinite transmission line at a given angular frequency formula_2 is the ratio of the voltage and current of a pure sinusoidal wave of the same frequency travelling along the line. This relation is also the case for finite transmission lines until the wave reaches the end of the line. Generally, a wave is reflected back along the line in the opposite direction. When the reflected wave reaches the source, it is reflected yet again, adding to the transmitted wave and changing the ratio of the voltage and current at the input, causing the voltage-current ratio to no longer equal the characteristic impedance. This new ratio including the reflected energy is called the input impedance.


title: Characteristic impedance

text: The input impedance of an infinite line is equal to the characteristic impedance since the transmitted wave is never reflected back from the end. Equivalently: "The characteristic impedance of a line is that impedance which, when terminating an arbitrary length of line at its output, produces an input impedance of equal value". This is so because there is no reflection on a line terminated in its own characteristic impedance.


title: Characteristic impedance

text: Applying the transmission line model based on the telegrapher's equations as derived below, the general expression for the characteristic impedance of a transmission line is:


title: Characteristic impedance

text: A surge of energy on a finite transmission line will see an impedance of formula_11 prior to any reflections returning; hence "surge impedance" is an alternative name for "characteristic impedance".


title: Characteristic impedance

text: Although an infinite line is assumed, since all quantities are per unit length, the “per length” parts of all the units cancel, and the characteristic impedance is independent of the length of the transmission line.


title: Characteristic impedance

text: where the subscripts (+) and (−) mark the separate constants for the waves traveling forward (+) and backward (−).


title: Characteristic impedance

text: The differential equations describing the dependence of the voltage and current on time and space are linear, so that a linear combination of solutions is again a solution. This means that we can consider solutions with a time dependence formula_13 – doing so is functionally equivalent of solving for the Fourier coefficients for voltage and current amplitudes at some fixed angular frequency formula_14 Doing so causes the time dependence to factor out, leaving an ordinary differential equation for the coefficients, which will be phasors, dependent on position (space) only. Moreover, the parameters can be generalized to be frequency-dependent.


title: Characteristic impedance

text: Since formula_29 is independent of formula_30 and formula_31, it can be represented by a single constant (The minus sign is included for later convenience.) That is:


title: Characteristic impedance

text: which is correct for any transmission line in general. And for typical transmission lines, that are carefully built from wire with low loss resistance formula_35 and small insulation leakage conductance formula_36; further, used for high frequencies, the inductive reactance formula_37 and the capacitive admittance formula_38 will both be large, so the constant formula_39 is very close to being a real number:


title: Characteristic impedance

text: With this definition of formula_41 the position- or formula_42-dependent part will appear as in the exponential solutions of the equation, similar to the time-dependent part so the solution reads


title: Characteristic impedance

text: where formula_44 and formula_45 are the constants of integration for the forward moving (+) and backward moving (−) waves, as in the prior section. When we recombine the time-dependent part we obtain the full solution:


title: Characteristic impedance

text: The above equations are the wave solution for formula_17 and formula_18. In order to be compatible, they must still satisfy the original differential equations, one of which is


title: Characteristic impedance

text: Isolating distinct powers of formula_58 and combining identical powers, we see that in order for the above equation to hold for all possible values of formula_42 we must have:


title: Characteristic impedance

text: It can be seen that the constant formula_11, defined in the above equations has the dimensions of impedance (ratio of voltage to current) and is a function of primary constants of the line and operating frequency. It is called the “characteristic impedance” of the transmission line, and conventionally denoted by formula_11.


title: Characteristic impedance

text: which holds generally, for any transmission line. For well-functioning transmission lines, with either formula_35 and formula_36 both very small, or with formula_71 very high, or all of the above, we get


title: Characteristic impedance

text: hence the characteristic impedance is typically very close to being a real number. Manufacturers make commercial cables to approximate this condition very closely over a wide range of frequencies.


title: Characteristic impedance

text: We follow an approach posted by Tim Healy. The line is modeled by a series of differential segments with differential series formula_73 and shunt formula_74 elements (as shown in the figure above). The characteristic impedance is defined as the ratio of the input voltage to the input current of a semi-infinite length of line. We call this impedance formula_75 That is, the impedance looking into the line on the left is formula_75 But, of course, if we go down the line one differential length formula_77 the impedance into the line is still formula_75 Hence we can say that the impedance looking into the line on the far left is equal to formula_79 in parallel with formula_80 and formula_81 all of which is in series with formula_82 and formula_83 Hence:


title: Characteristic impedance

text: In comparison to the factors whose formula_89 divided out, the last term, which still carries a remaining factor formula_90 is infinitesimal relative to the other, now finite terms, so we can drop it. That leads to


title: Characteristic impedance

text: Reversing the sign applied to the square root has the effect of reversing the direction of the flow of current.


title: Characteristic impedance

text: The analysis of lossless lines provides an accurate approximation for real transmission lines that simplifies the mathematics considered in modeling transmission lines. A lossless line is defined as a transmission line that has no line resistance and no dielectric loss. This would imply that the conductors act like perfect conductors and the dielectric acts like a perfect dielectric. For a lossless line, "R" and "G" are both zero, so the equation for characteristic impedance derived above reduces to:


title: Characteristic impedance

text: The above expression is wholly real, since the imaginary term has canceled out, implying that formula_11 is purely resistive. For a lossless line terminated in formula_11, there is no loss of current across the line, and so the voltage remains the same along the line. The lossless line model is a useful approximation for many practical cases, such as low-loss transmission lines and transmission lines with high frequency. For both of these cases, and are much smaller than and , respectively, and can thus be ignored.


title: Characteristic impedance

text: The solutions to the long line transmission equations include incident and reflected portions of the voltage and current:


title: Characteristic impedance

text: When the line is terminated with its characteristic impedance, the reflected portions of these equations are reduced to 0 and the solutions to the voltage and current along the transmission line are wholly incident. Without a reflection of the wave, the load that is being supplied by the line effectively blends into the line making it appear to be an infinite line. In a lossless line this implies that the voltage and current remain the same everywhere along the transmission line. Their magnitudes remain constant along the length of the line and are only rotated by a phase angle.


title: Characteristic impedance

text: In electric power transmission, the characteristic impedance of a transmission line is expressed in terms of the surge impedance loading (SIL), or natural loading, being the power loading at which reactive power is neither produced nor absorbed:


title: Characteristic impedance

text: Loaded below its SIL, the voltage at the load will be greater than the system voltage. Above it, the load voltage is depressed. The Ferranti effect describes the voltage gain towards the remote end of a very lightly loaded (or open ended) transmission line. Underground cables normally have a very low characteristic impedance, resulting in an SIL that is typically in excess of the thermal limit of the cable.


title: Characteristic impedance

text: The characteristic impedance of coaxial cables (coax) is commonly chosen to be for RF and microwave applications. Coax for video applications is usually for its lower loss.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: On the evening of November 18, 1987, police went to the mobile home of Russell Keith Dardeen, 29, and his family outside Ina, Illinois, United States, after he had failed to show up for work that day. There, they found the bodies of his wife and son, both brutally beaten. Ruby Elaine Dardeen, 30, who had been pregnant with the couple's daughter, had been beaten so badly she had gone into labor, and the killer or killers had also beaten the newborn to death.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: The killings had apparently taken place the day before. Investigators at first believed that Keith was the prime suspect. The next day, however, his body was found in a nearby field. He had been shot and his genitals mutilated; his car was found parked near the police station in Benton. Forensic examination showed he had been killed within an hour of his family.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Residents of Jefferson and Franklin counties, who were already fearful after more than 10 murders had taken place locally in the preceding 2 years, became even more so. Many armed themselves; some suffered adverse psychological effects. Rumors held that the killings were the work of Satanists; police soon ruled that out as well as other motives, most from illicit behavior such as drug dealing, marital infidelity or gambling. But the crime scene also ruled out rape or robbery as associated incident crimes, and in the absence of any clear cause or leads the crime remained unsolved.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: No suspects were identified in the quadruple homicide until the 2000s, after serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells, following his conviction and death sentence for murdering a teenage girl in Texas, claimed to have committed the crime. However, he was never charged since prison authorities there would not let him leave the state to assist police in Southern Illinois with their investigation, and they as well as the Dardeen family have doubts about his account of the killings. The case is otherwise cold.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Both Dardeens went by their middle names. Keith, a native of Mount Carmel, bought the trailer in 1986 after completing the training required for his job as a treatment plant operator at the Rend Lake Water Conservancy District's nearby facility. Elaine, who was from Albion, a little closer to Ina, moved there later with their 2-year-old son, Peter. They rented the land it sat on from a nearby farming couple. Keith worked; his wife found a job at an office supply store in Mount Vernon, the Jefferson County seat. When not working, the couple were part of the musical ensemble at a small Baptist church in the village. Keith sang lead vocals while Elaine played the piano.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: In 1987 Elaine became pregnant with the couple's second child. They had decided to name the baby either Ian or Casey depending on whether it was a boy or a girl. The pending addition to the family had led Keith and Elaine to strongly consider moving; by late in the year they had put the mobile home up for sale.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: However, that was not the only reason for the move. According to Joeann Dardeen, Keith's mother, he had said he would move back to Mount Carmel even if he were unable to find a job there before doing so, as he regretted ever having moved to Ina, telling her that the area was becoming too violent. There had been 15 homicides in Jefferson County during the previous two years, starting with those committed by Thomas Odle, a Mount Vernon teenager who had killed his parents and three siblings as they individually returned to the house one night in 1985.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Though Odle, as well as some of those charged with murder in the other cases, had been convicted, residents of the rural area had become fearful and stressed. A friend of Keith said that, after a 10-year-old girl had been raped and murdered in the area in May 1987, Keith became so protective of the family that one night, when a young woman came by the mobile home asking if she could make a phone call, he refused to let her in.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: On November 18, Keith, who had been a reliable worker at the treatment plant, did not report for his shift. He had not called to inform his supervisor that he would be unable to come in, and calls to his house went unanswered all day. His supervisor called both of Keith's parents, who were divorced but still lived near each other in Mount Carmel. Neither of them knew what could have happened to their son.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Don Dardeen, Keith's father, called the Jefferson County sheriff's office and agreed to drive down to Ina with the house key and meet deputies at the home of his son and daughter-in-law, between Illinois Route 37 and the former Illinois Central Railroad tracks, now used by Union Pacific, just north of the Franklin County line. Inside they found the bodies of Elaine, Peter and a newborn girl, all tucked into the same bed. Elaine had been bound and gagged with duct tape; both had been beaten to death–apparently with a baseball bat found at the scene, a birthday gift to Peter from his father earlier that year. Elaine had been beaten so severely that she had gone into labor and delivered a girl, who soon met with the same fate as her mother and brother.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Keith was not present, nor was his car, a red 1981 Plymouth. Investigators assumed he had killed his wife and children and was at large. A team of armed police went to his mother's house in Mount Carmel looking for him. The search ended late the following day, however, when a group of hunters found his body in a wheatfield not far from the trailer, just south of the Franklin-Jefferson County line, near Rend Lake College. He had been shot three times; his penis was also severed. The Plymouth was found parked outside the police station in Benton, south of the Dardeen home, its interior spattered with blood.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: News of the killings made area residents even more fearful than they had already been. Many residents began going about their daily business with shotguns visible in their vehicles' gun racks. After high school basketball games, students would wait in the school building for their parents to come in and accompany them to the parking lot for their ride home instead of socializing outside as they normally did.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Early reports from police about the crime were limited, and sometimes contradictory, allowing rumors to spread. The two counties' respective coroners differed on whether Keith had died of a head injury or being shot; among those who reported the former, it was said that it had been inflicted when he was dragged from a car. The circumstances under which Elaine gave birth, perhaps posthumously, to her short-lived daughter, gave rise to stories that Casey (as the family called her) had been ripped from her mother's womb. Along with the mutilation of Keith's genitals, this supported speculation that Satanists were active in the area and had performed a ritual sacrifice of the family. The crime was also posited to be the work, along with three other local unsolved murders, of a regional serial killer.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Dr. Richard Garretson, a family physician who doubled as the Jefferson County coroner, told the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" in early December that many of his patients talked to him about the case and how it had disturbed them. One man who said he lived a half-mile (900 m) from the Dardeens' trailer told Garretson he was having difficulty sleeping and had lost as a result of the stress. Also unable to sleep was the Dardeens' landlords' daughter, who told her parents years later that she kept her bedroom light on and read all night out of fear.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Robert Lewis, the Franklin County coroner, felt much of the fear was unjustified. "I don't think there is a rational basis for the near hysteria," he told the newspaper, "The people are frightening each other." People were so afraid, he said, that if someone ran out of gas in the county he would not seek assistance in any nearby homes but would instead walk to the nearest highway and hitch a ride.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Local police agencies joined forces with the Illinois State Police to investigate the crime. A total of 30 detectives worked full-time following leads and interviewing 100 people. None of what they found proved fruitful. A man taken into custody early on was released after being questioned; likewise, a coworker of Keith's with whom he reportedly had been having a dispute was cleared.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: No one who knew the couple had anything bad to say about them. A small quantity of marijuana was found in the trailer, but not enough to suggest they were involved in dealing. Police even believed the marijuana might have been inadvertently left behind by the killer or killers. The autopsies found no drugs or alcohol in any of the victims.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: The coroners put the time of death for all the Dardeens at within an hour of each other. The bodies in the trailer had been killed 12 hours before they were found, and Keith Dardeen had been dead for 24 to 36 hours when he was found. Resolving this question, however, made it harder to determine how the crime had been committed, since Keith's body was found away from the trailer, and he may have been killed at that location rather than with his family. At the trailer, the killer or killers had apparently taken the time to not only tuck Elaine's body into bed along with her children's bodies but also to clean up the scene, suggesting they did not feel any urgency to leave. The amount of effort involved led police to theorize that the crime may have taken place at night: the trailer was on Route 37, a busy state highway, but could be seen at the time from Interstate 57 almost to the west. It was also an open question as to whether there was one killer or multiple.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Determining the motive of the assailant(s) was a particularly difficult part of the case. The back door had been left open; there was no evidence of forced entry. A VCR and portable camera were in plain sight in the living room. Elsewhere in the house equally accessible cash and jewelry remained. These facts argued against robbery as the motive. Elaine had not been raped or sexually assaulted.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Police also found no evidence of any extramarital affairs involving either Keith or Elaine that might have motivated the other party to a jealous rage. A stack of papers with sports scores found in the house led them to wonder whether Keith might have incurred gambling debts. However, Joeann Dardeen told police her son was so frugal that he raised money for his young son's college fund by reselling 50-cent cans of soda at work for a small profit.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Despite the widespread fear the case engendered, Lewis, the Franklin County coroner, did not believe the Dardeens were randomly chosen. "I believe it was a very personal, deliberate thing," he told the "Post-Dispatch". A police expert on cults told the newspaper that the rumor that Satanists were responsible was untrue, since such groups often would mutilate bodies more extensively, harvest organs, and leave symbols and lit candles at the scene of their crimes. None of these indications had been found at the Dardeen's trailer.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Police did allow, however, for the possibility that, while the Dardeens were chosen purposely, it may have been a case of mistaken identity by the killer or killers. Joeann Dardeen said later that she had considered other motives someone might have had for killing her son and his family. "I think someone wanted Keith to sell drugs and he refused," she said in 1997. "Or there's a possibility someone liked Elaine and she wouldn't accept his advances and he took out his rage on both of them ... We just don't know."


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Eventually, the police exhausted all leads and had to start working other cases. Two FBI profilers came to the area to review the evidence. They were able to make some suggestions, but generally found that the crime defied their typical analytic methods.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Joeann Dardeen worked to keep the public from completely losing interest. Throughout the 1990s, she regularly called the one detective still assigned to the case, offering possible leads she had learned of or asking for any new information he could share. She gathered 3,000 signatures from area residents on a petition to "The Oprah Winfrey Show", asking producers to do a segment on the killings of her son and his family. They turned her down, saying the crime was too brutal for daytime television. "America's Most Wanted" had a similar reaction at first, but then changed its mind and ran a segment in 1998. The show did not generate any new leads.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Police were briefly interested in serial killer Ángel Maturino Reséndiz, then known by his alias Rafael Resendes Ramirez, after he surrendered to authorities in Texas in 1999. He often traveled around the country by hopping freight trains, choosing his victims near the tracks they traveled and often beating them to death. While those elements suggested the Dardeen killings, authorities in Illinois were never able to connect him to the crime.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Another serial killer in Texas would soon bring himself to the attention of the investigators in Illinois. On the last day of 1999, Tommy Lynn Sells cut the throats of two girls near Del Rio, Texas. One survived and helped police identify him; he was eventually convicted and sentenced to death for that murder and another one earlier in 1999, where he had killed a girl in San Antonio. While he was awaiting trial on the first murder charge, he began confessing to other murders he had committed while drifting around the country, sometimes by hopping freights as well.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: One was the Dardeen family. Sells said he did not remember the details of all the crimes he admitted to, which he describes as a coping strategy from the sexual abuse he endured as a child in the Missouri Bootheel, but he did remember that one. In the mid-1980s, Sells was living primarily near St. Louis, roughly northwest of Jefferson County, and making money from working at traveling carnivals and fairs, as a day laborer, or through theft. For the latter pursuit, he often hitched rides with truckers or hopped freights without any particular destination in mind. "Anywhere a ride was going I was heading that way. Might be in Illinois today and Oklahoma tomorrow," Sells explained later.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: It was through those modes of transportation that he became familiar with the Ina area. On one trip through Jefferson County in November 1987, he claimed in 2010 to have met Keith at a truck stop near Mount Vernon or, in a different retelling, at a local pool hall. In both versions, he says, Keith invited Sells home for dinner. After the meal, Sells was simply planning to move on, but then Keith allegedly triggered his anger by sexually propositioning him, in one account to a threesome with Elaine.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: He forced Keith at gunpoint to drive to where his body was found, killed and mutilated him, then returned to the trailer to kill Elaine and Peter, who were witnesses, although he says it was at the time the result of uncontrollable rage that Keith's alleged sexual offer had set off in him. "I was just so pissed off that I took it to the maximum limit ... Rage don't have a stop button." He implied that it explained why he had killed the infant Elaine had delivered during the crime as well.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: In a third version, Sells dispensed with the encounter with Keith and the sexual proposition entirely. According to that account, he got off a freight he had hopped near Ina. When he saw the Dardeen trailer with its "For Sale" sign, he saw an opportunity for a killing. After drinking beers and waiting for the right time, he knocked on the door and told a wary Keith he was interested in buying the trailer. He then overpowered Keith, made him bind and gag his wife and son with duct tape, and forced him to drive his car to the nearby field at gunpoint, where he sliced Keith's penis off, telling him he was going to take it back to Elaine, then shot him and left it there. At the trailer he raped Elaine, then beat Peter, Elaine and the newborn to death. After cleaning up he drove Keith's car to Benton.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: To some investigators, Sells' 2014 execution by Texas was justice for the Dardeens as well. He was never charged with their murders, but, "he remains the No. 1 suspect," Jefferson County state's attorney Douglas Hoffman said, a week after the execution. Sheriff Roger Mulch agreed. The county deputy sheriff who interviewed Sells in his Texas cell says he knew details of the crime that had been kept confidential.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: But even they agree that Sells may have added details to his story, as he was known to do, something that has left considerable doubt about many of the killings he confessed to. Other investigators are less sure. While Sells' account is consistent with the general facts of the case, they say, most of what he told them had previously been reported publicly.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: When Sells was asked about some information that has been withheld from media accounts of the killing, he seemed less reliable. His claim as to which seat of Keith's Plymouth he was shot in is belied by the evidence. And when asked how Elaine's body was positioned, he at first answered incorrectly, then correctly, which may merely have been a lucky guess.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: "I know people got their doubts," Sells said in his 2010 interview with "The Southern Illinoisan". He responded to some of them: "They say there's no physical evidence tying me to Dardeens, but there wasn't for any of them because they wasn't looking for me. I moved. I was always a transient."


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Police in Texas confirmed Sells was responsible for 22 murders, but came to believe that, in conscious imitation of another Texas serial killer, Henry Lee Lucas, he was trying to avoid the death penalty by confessing to crimes he had not committed and taking advantage of the judicial system's gratitude. Their counterparts in Illinois thus wanted to take Sells to Ina so they could see how well he knew the area and the locations relevant to the crimes; he claimed he could lead them to missing evidence. However, Texas law does not allow prisoners on death row to be taken out of state, and authorities there were unwilling to find a way to make an exception. So Duncan declined to file murder charges for lack of sufficient evidence.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Doubts about Sells' confession are not limited to local law enforcement. Friends and family have issues with some of his claims. For one, they doubt that Keith would have invited home someone from out of town whom he had just met to even have dinner with the family, especially given the heightened fear in the area after all the killings over the preceding two years. "If he wouldn't let a young girl in to use the phone, he wouldn't let a 22-year-old man in," said a friend, referring to Sells' age at that time.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: They also find Sells' claim that Keith made a homosexual advance to him unlikely. They had never perceived him as even possibly having an interest in his own sex, and police did not find any evidence of that during their initial investigation. The detectives who interviewed Sells believe that if he did kill the Dardeens, he invented that detail to make the crime seem more justified; in confessing to other crimes, he often included similar stories to make it seem like the victims had provoked him.


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Joeann Dardeen's position on Sells' guilt has evolved. In 2000, when the confession was first reported, she told the "Chicago Tribune" that she was as certain as the police that he was the suspect. She believed only talking to him could clear up any lingering doubts. "I have always wanted to know every detail," she said. "Some people may think that's gory. But when someone does something to (my family), I want to know why."


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: Seven years later, on the 20th anniversary of the killings, a year after Sells' initial execution date had been stayed so a federal appeals court could consider a question about his mental state, she said she was "99 percent sure," and expressed again her interest in possibly talking to Sells. "There's just a little bit of doubt there. Not that he didn't do it; I'm wondering if maybe somebody helped him."


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: In his 2010 interview, Sells was skeptical of what such a conversation might accomplish. "Joeann wants to talk to me. If she wants to come here and talk to me, scream at me, yell, kick me, hit me, she should have that right," he said. But he said that no apology he could make could possibly give her closure. "[S]orry ain't gonna cut it. So what is there to say? I could tell her sorry every day the rest of my life. It's not going to stop her pain, and one thing I do know about is pain, and it don't go away."


title: Dardeen family homicides

text: The two never did talk. By the time of Sells' 2014 execution, Joeann had come to believe he was not the man who killed her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. "I wanted him to stay alive until I know positively he didn't do it," she told the Associated Press shortly afterward. "[T]he things he said do not match up with what I know about Keith," she told Pat Gauen, the "Post-Dispatch" reporter who had originally covered the case in 1987. "A lot of people think it's done and over with, but to me it's not."


title: Desert rose (crystal)

text: A desert rose is an intricate rose-like formation of crystal clusters of gypsum or baryte, which include abundant sand grains. The "petals" are crystals flattened on the "c" axis, fanning open in radiating clusters.


title: Desert rose (crystal)

text: The rosette crystal habit tends to occur when the crystals form in arid sandy conditions, such as the evaporation of a shallow salt basin. The crystals form a circular array of flat plates, giving the rock a shape similar to a rose blossom. Gypsum roses usually have better defined, sharper edges than baryte roses. Celestine and other bladed evaporite minerals may also form rosette clusters. They can appear either as a single rose-like bloom or as clusters of blooms, typically ranging from pea-sized to in diameter.


title: Desert rose (crystal)

text: The ambient sand that is incorporated into the crystal structure, or otherwise encrusts the crystals, varies with the local environment. If iron oxides are present, the rosettes take on a rusty tone.


title: Desert rose (crystal)

text: The desert rose may also be known by the names: sand rose, Sahara rose, rose rock, selenite rose, gypsum rose and baryte (barite) rose.


title: Desert rose (crystal)

text: Sand roses are found in large numbers in surroundings of the salt lake of Chott el Djerid in South-West Tunisia, as well as the neighboring regions in Algeria and Ghadames, Libya. Local inhabitants extract them and sell them as souvenirs to tourists, creating a sustainable income to local population. Other sandroses are found elsewhere in the Sahara, but those extracted in the surroundings of the Salt Lake are particularly beautiful because of the high percentage of salt in their composition making them more crystalline and luminous. Others that contain more sand have a rusty tone, hence less brilliant in day or artificial light. Sand roses are also found in the vicinity of Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia.


title: Desert rose (crystal)

text: Rose rock in Oklahoma was formed during the Permian Period, 250 million years ago, when western and central Oklahoma was covered by a shallow sea. As the sea retreated, baryte precipitated out of the water and crystallized around grains of quartz sand. This left behind large formation of reddish sandstone, locally called Garber Sandstone, containing deposits of rose rock.


title: Desert rose (crystal)

text: Typically, desert roses measure from in diameter. The largest recorded by the Oklahoma Geological Survey was across and high, weighing . Clusters of rose rocks up to tall and weighing more than have been found.


title: Power Rangers Operation Overdrive

text: Power Rangers Operation Overdrive is the fifteenth season of the television franchise Power Rangers. The season uses footage and other material from the 30th "Super Sentai" series "GoGo Sentai Boukenger", which celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of that franchise. In addition, this season's team-up episode, "Once a Ranger", commemorates the fifteenth anniversary of the "Power Rangers" franchise. The season premiered on February 26, 2007, on Toon Disney's Jetix programming block. It was the first season to use high definition footage from the Super Sentai franchise, although this footage was scaled down to 4:3 aspect ratio.


title: Power Rangers Operation Overdrive

text: Unique among Power Ranger series, "Operation Overdrive" has the Rangers exploring, operating and fighting in many different countries around the world, rather than focusing only on their home city of San Angeles.


title: Power Rangers Operation Overdrive

text: The early working title for the series was "Power Rangers Drive Force", but was later changed to "Relic Hunters" and then "Operation Overdrive"


title: Power Rangers Operation Overdrive

text: In early pre-production, on July 26, 2006, the series' logo was posted on a fan message board called "Fuñaroboard." This same logo was later featured on the Disney website, RangerSecrets.com, as part of the preview for the series. The logo is very similar to that of the parent series "Boukenger" in the basic design and format.


title: Power Rangers Operation Overdrive

text: On November 14, 2006, Disney had set up its official website for "Power Rangers Operation Overdrive".


title: Power Rangers Operation Overdrive

text: Five brave, skilled, and adventurous young people are chosen to search for several magical jewels that were long ago taken from the Corona Aurora (also known as "Crown of the Gods"), so as to prevent them from coming into the possession of Moltor and Flurious, who are brothers connected to ice and fire banished long ago by the Corona's guardian for having attempted to steal it. When the billionaire explorer Andrew Hartford discovered the Corona Aurora, they escaped their exile and rallied their allies. In response, Andrew Hartford selected the talented youths and modified their DNA so as to grant them exceptional physical powers by which to combat the evil. Although Moltor and Flurious initially attempted to work together, they soon became rivals. The Corona Aurora fell into Moltor's hands; yet without its jewels, it could not grant the owner universal power. Later, the evil warriors Kamdor and Miratrix began hunting for the jewels, as did the extraterrestrial 'Fearcats'. Now the Rangers, joined by a Mercurian named Tyzonn who joined their ranks as the Mercury Ranger, are forced to fight multiple villains and travel worldwide in the effort to capture the jewels before their enemies can.


title: Power Rangers Operation Overdrive

text: In order to accomplish this purpose, the members of Operation Overdrive are equipped with futuristic technology similar to that featured in previous "Power Ranger" continuities, which improves in sophistication and power with successive episodes. Each time a new Ranger, new weapon, or (in one subplot, if not more) new reason for battle is introduced, that Ranger, weapon, or reason produces the decimation of one major enemy (such as Kamdor and Miratrix) or a host of foot soldiers. Thereafter the odds resume their former state. The physical powers granted by genetic modification are seldom used, seen, or mentioned, except when one or more Rangers is rescued by their use. Throughout the series, legends are included or invented to give a feeling of antiquity: these include Thor's Hammer, Atlantis and Poseidon, who is mentioned under the Roman name, Neptune.


title: Luigi Lucheni

text: Luigi Lucheni (April 22, 1873 – October 19, 1910) was an Italian anarchist and the assassin of Empress Elisabeth of Austria.


title: Luigi Lucheni

text: Luigi Lucheni was born Louis Luccheni in Paris on April 22, 1873. His father, unknown, and his mother, Luigia Lucchini, left the baby to a foundling hospital. The child was moved to Italy in August 1874 and transferred between orphanages and foster families. Lucheni worked odd jobs in Italy, Switzerland, and Austria-Hungary. He served in the military for three years and moved to Switzerland, where he befriended anarchists in Lausanne.


title: Luigi Lucheni

text: On September 10, 1898, Lucheni used a tapered file to fatally stab Empress Elisabeth of Austria during her visit to Geneva. Elisabeth and her lady-in-waiting Countess Sztáray had departed from their hotel on Lake Geneva to ride a paddle steamer to Montreux. They walked without their attendants, as Elisabeth disdained royal processions. On the docks in the early afternoon, Lucheni approached and stabbed Elisabeth below her left breast with a wooden-handled, four-inch file, the kind used to file the eyes of industrial needles. Badly wounded, she nevertheless continued walking, with the support of two other people, 100 yards to board the departing steamer. The steamer returned to shore after Countess Sztáray first noticed Elisabeth's bleeding, whereupon the Empress was carried back to the hotel on a makeshift stretcher. Two doctors pronounced her dead within an hour of the attack. Documentation of the autopsy was destroyed.


title: Luigi Lucheni

text: Lucheni was apprehended upon fleeing the scene and his file was found the next day. He told the authorities that he was an anarchist who came to Geneva with the intention of killing any sovereign as an example for others. Lucheni used the file because he did not have enough money for a stiletto.


title: Luigi Lucheni

text: His trial began the next month, in October. He was furious to find that capital punishment had been abolished in Geneva, and wrote a letter demanding that he be tried in another canton, such that he could be martyred. He received the sentence of life imprisonment instead.


title: Luigi Lucheni

text: Lucheni wrote his childhood memoirs while in Geneva's Évêché prison. He was harassed in prison and his notebooks were stolen. He was found hanged in his cell on October 19, 1910. His head was preserved in formaldehyde and transferred to Vienna in 1986. The head was on display in Vienna's Narrenturm until 2000 when the remains were interred at the Wiener Zentralfriedhof.


title: Luigi Lucheni

text: The assassination began an international conference at which delegates from 21 nations defined anarchism as terrorism and resolved to begin agencies to surveil suspected anarchists and permit capital punishment for assassination of sovereigns. Elisabeth's life and subsequent murder is depicted in many stage productions, films and novels. Lucheni's childhood memoirs were published in 1998.


title: Portugal at the FIFA World Cup

text: The FIFA World Cup is an international association football competition contested by the men's national teams of the members of "Fédération Internationale de Football Association" (FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the first tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946, due to World War II.


title: Portugal at the FIFA World Cup

text: The tournament consists of two parts, the qualification phase and the final phase (officially called the "World Cup Finals"). The qualification phase, which currently take place over the three years preceding the Finals, is used to determine which teams qualify for the Finals. The current format of the finals involves 32 teams competing for the title, at venues within the host nation nations) over a period of about a month. The World Cup Finals is the most widely viewed sporting event in the world, with an estimated 715.1 million people watching the 2006 tournament final.


title: Portugal at the FIFA World Cup

text: Portugal have qualified for the final phase of the FIFA World Cup on eight occasions: in 1966, 1986, 2002 and every final phase held since. Their best performance, as of 2022, is the third place in 1966; they also finished fourth in 2006.


title: Portugal at the FIFA World Cup

text: Eusebio's nine goals at the 1966 FIFA World Cup made him that tournament's top goalscorer, which also won him the Bronze Ball.


title: Andrographis paniculata

text: Andrographis paniculata, commonly known as creat or green chiretta, is an annual herbaceous plant in the family Acanthaceae, native to India and Sri Lanka.


title: Andrographis paniculata

text: It is widely cultivated in Southern and Southeastern Asia, where it has been believed to be a treatment for bacterial infections and some diseases. Mostly the leaves and roots have been used for such purposes; the whole plant is also used, in some cases.


title: Andrographis paniculata

text: The plant grows as an erect herb to a height of in moist, shady places. The slender stem is dark green, square in cross-section with longitudinal furrows and wings along the angles. The lance-shaped leaves have hairless blades measuring up to long by . The small flowers are pink, solitary, arranged in lax spreading racemes or panicles. The fruit is a capsule around long and a few millimeters wide. It contains many yellow-brown seeds. The seeds are subquadrate, rugose and glabrous. The flowering time is September to December.


title: Andrographis paniculata

text: The species is distributed in tropical Asian countries, often in isolated patches. It can be found in a variety of habitats, such as plains, hillsides, coastlines, and disturbed and cultivated areas such as roadsides and farms. Native populations of "A. paniculata" are spread throughout south India and Sri Lanka which perhaps represent the center of origin and diversity of the species. The herb is an introduced species in northern parts of India, Java, Malaysia, Indonesia, the West Indies, and elsewhere in the Americas. The species also occurs in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Thailand, Brunei, Singapore, and other parts of Asia where it may or may not be native. The plant is cultivated in many areas, as well.


title: Andrographis paniculata

text: Unlike other species of the genus, "A. paniculata" is of common occurrence in most places in India, including the plains and hilly areas up to , which accounts for its wide use.


title: Andrographis paniculata

text: In India the major source of plant is procured from its wild habitat. The plant is categorised as Low Risk or of Least Concern by the IUCN. Under the trade name "Kalmegh", on average of the plant is traded in India.


title: Andrographis paniculata

text: The plant does best in a sunny location. The seeds are sown during May and June (northern hemisphere). The seedlings are transplanted at a distance of .


title: Andrographis paniculata

text: "A. paniculata" has been used in Siddha and Ayurvedic medicine, and is promoted as a dietary supplement for cancer prevention and cure. There is no evidence that it helps prevent or cure cancer.


title: Andrographis paniculata

text: "A. paniculata" has also traditionally been used in India and China for the common cold and influenza. A 2017 (pre COVID-19) meta-analysis evaluating "Andrographis paniculata" for acute respiratory tract infections (ARTI) indicated possible support for its efficacy and safety, but cautioned that the trials reviewed were of poor quality and thus not conclusive.


title: Andrographis paniculata

text: Amid Thailand's COVID-19 outbreak in December 2020, the country's health ministry approved the usage of the plant extract for a pilot alternative treatment program. In July 2021, the Cabinet of Thailand approved the use of green chiretta to treat asymptomatic COVID patients after the Thai Corrections Department said the drug was beneficial in prison inmates. Claims as to its efficacy as a COVID therapeutic are contentious and in dispute.


title: Andrographis paniculata

text: A 2012 review found that "A. paniculata" extracts could inhibit expression of several cytochrome C enzymes and thus interfere with metabolism of other pharmaceuticals. A 2019 review finds that "A. paniculata" compounds have poor solubility and relatively low potency, and that a semi-synthetic injectable derivative can cause sometimes life-threatening allergic reactions.


title: Andrographis paniculata

text: In Cambodia the dried root macerated in alcohol is consumed as an aperitive, while the seeds make a black jelly called "chahuoy khmau".


title: Andrographis paniculata

text: Andrographolide is the major constituent extracted from the leaves of the plant and is a bicyclic diterpenoid lactone. This bitter principle was isolated in pure form by Gorter in 1911. Systematic studies on chemistry of "A. paniculata" have been carried out.


title: Vauxhall Cavalier

text: The Vauxhall Cavalier was a large family car that was sold primarily in the UK by Vauxhall from 1975 to 1995. It was based on a succession of Opel designs throughout its production life, during which it was built in three incarnations. The first generation of Cavalier, launched in 1975 and produced until 1981, was based on the existing Opel Ascona and Opel Manta with a few minor visual differences.


title: Vauxhall Cavalier

text: The second generation of Cavalier, launched in 1981 and produced until 1988, was launched simultaneously with the identical new generation of Opel Ascona, which was sold across the world in various guises on the General Motors "J-car". The third and final generation of Cavalier, launched in 1988 and produced until 1995, was based on the first generation of Opel Vectra with the same production span.


title: Vauxhall Cavalier

text: Launched with a 1,896 cc engine as a 1976 model in November 1975, the Cavalier was a restyled version of the second generation German Opel Ascona which had debuted three months earlier in West Germany. The Ascona/Cavalier was built on what GM called the U-car platform, and the Cavalier was originally intended to have its own bodywork. It ended up with the front of an Opel Manta B model, but without the air slots between the headlamps, and the rearend of an Opel Ascona B model. In the end to keep costs down a different nose, designed by Wayne Cherry, was the only obvious styling feature to set the Vauxhall apart. The new models bore a strong visual resemblance to the 1973 OSV (Opel Safety Vehicle) project which had been seen in West Germany two years before.


title: Vauxhall Cavalier

text: Van, pick-up and estate versions were also on the drawing board, but the MK1 Cavalier was ultimately never produced in these bodystyles, though prototypes were constructed to the extent that a road legal Cavalier Van can be seen in an early episode of UK TV show "Minder", the exact same car used in the production being pictured at. In the meantime, estate versions of the smaller Chevette and Astra, as well as the larger Carlton, would be launched to compensate for the lack of a Cavalier estate.


title: Vauxhall Cavalier

text: To begin with, the Mark I Cavalier was produced principally alongside the Ascona at the newly refurbished in Antwerp, Belgium.


title: Vauxhall Cavalier

text: Shortly after its launch, the Cavalier was tested by "What Car?" magazine and received a much higher rating than the Ford Cortina Mk III and Morris Marina against which it was tested. However, the Cortina was less than a year away from replacement, and January 1976 saw the arrival of the Chrysler Alpine (the British version of the Simca 1307, which had recently been voted European Car of the Year). In Britain, demand for the Cavalier initially outstripped supply, one of the factors in General Motors making a decision soon afterwards to add the Cavalier to its British as well as continental production lines in August 1977.


title: Vauxhall Cavalier

text: The first Vauxhall Cavalier to be assembled at Vauxhall's Luton plant was driven off the production line by Eric Fountain, Vauxhall's manufacturing director, on 26 August 1977, after which the 1256 cc version, assembled at Luton and using engine and transmission already familiar to Viva 1300 owners, broadened the range. At that stage the 1584 cc Cavalier and the 1979 cc which had joined it were still being imported from Belgium, but in due course these, too, started to emerge from the Luton production plant. The commencement of Cavalier production in the UK also helped ensure that supply for the car met demand, and consequently its sales figures increased so it was now a constant presence in the top 10 best selling cars in Britain.


title: Vauxhall Cavalier

text: In Vauxhall's line-up, the Cavalier initially complemented, and then replaced the Victor, which by this time was falling a long way behind the hugely successful Ford Cortina in the British car sales charts as well as its British Leyland rivals. However, the top-of-the-range versions of the Victor remained in production until 1978, as the VX1800/VX2300, when the remaining models were replaced by the Carlton.


title: Vauxhall Cavalier

text: The timing of the Cavalier's United Kingdom launch was well-judged. The United Kingdom tax system meant that sales to company car fleets comprised a larger proportion of the overall market – especially for middle-weight saloons – than elsewhere in Europe: the Ford Cortina Mk II had been replaced by the Ford Cortina Mk III in 1970, but in the eyes of the all-important company car fleet managers the newer Cortina never quite matched the earlier car for reliability, notably in respect of problems with its cable clutch and with camshaft wear in the 1.6 and 2.0 litre ohc units. The traditionally very conservative fleet market was therefore particularly receptive to Vauxhall's new Cortina challenger. At the time, British Leyland was facing criticism for the lacklustre design and doubts about build quality and reliability surrounding its cars, especially the Morris Marina and the smaller Austin Allegro. The Cavalier was launched around the same time as Chrysler's Alpine, which featured a more modern front-wheel drive hatchback layout and was voted European Car of the Year for 1976, but it would ultimately fail to meet sales expectations on the British market and was not reputedly a reliable or well-built car.