title: Kiesza

text: Meanwhile, she also entered the Miss Universe Canada pageant. She stated that her time in the Navy motivated her to give away 4,500 CDs to Canadian troops serving in Afghanistan in 2008. Kiesza took part in the Young Canadians, where she trained in jazz and tap dancing, as well as theatre. She also trained as a ballerina, but a knee injury at age 15 ended her ballet career. When Kiesza was 18, she said that her parents' divorce inspired her to write her first song as a way of expressing her feelings. The same year, she heard a song of hers played on the radio.


title: Kiesza

text: In 2005, CKUA "Folk Routes" host Tom Coxworth selected Kiesza to perform for a live audience and to be broadcast live on his radio show. Shortly after, she was accepted to Selkirk College in Nelson, BC, where she studied keyboard, voice, and guitar. Next, Kiesza won a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Afterward, she went to New York City in 2010 to advance her music career. Although she started as mainly a folk singer, after attending Berklee and then living in New York, she moved to a more "uptempo sound", for which she worked with producer Rami Samir Afuni. In 2010, she was selected to play at the Canada Day celebrations at Trafalgar Square in London to 30,000 people.


title: Kiesza

text: In 2012, Kiesza released her first single after starting work with Afuni in New York, a "disco-infused pop" song titled "Oops", about a couple that had unprotected sex. She labelled her style of music at the time as "SteamPop", described by AjanWrites as "a flaming brew of bold, boisterous pop filled with tongue-in-cheek lyrics". In a later 2014 interview, Kiesza said "Oops" was made as a joke.


title: Kiesza

text: In 2013, the singer was featured in the single "Triggerfinger" by Norwegian band Donkeyboy. She has also written for other artists, such as Rihanna, Kylie Minogue, and Icona Pop.


title: Kiesza

text: In February 2014, Kiesza released the video for her new single "Hideaway" through the label Lokal Legend. "Idolator" considered it unique for having a long take throughout the entire video, as Kiesza walked and danced through N 12th Street in Brooklyn, New York City. John Gentile of "Rolling Stone" called the style "impressive". Kiesza reported to "Rolling Stone" that she had trouble making the video, partly because she broke a rib just before filming, and "couldn't move for an entire month afterward." It was premiered by Annie Mac on her Mac's Special Delivery segment on BBC Radio 1. "Hideaway" debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart.


title: Kiesza

text: Shortly after "Hideaway" charted, Kiesza released a new video for her cover of Haddaway's song "What Is Love". Mike Bell of the "Calgary Herald" referred to her version of the song as a "jaw-droppingly gorgeous cover of Haddaway's 1993 dance smash What Is Love?" She performed a slowed-down version, with a video showing her and others slowly revealed to be without clothes, to express "raw emotions".


title: Kiesza

text: Kiesza's second single, "Giant in My Heart", premiered on Annie Mac's BBC Radio 1 show on June 13, 2014. It entered the UK Singles Chart at number four.


title: Kiesza

text: Kiesza collaborated with Skrillex and Diplo on the song "Take Ü There", which was released as the first single from a collaborative mixtape between the two producers. She co-wrote Gorgon City's "Go All Night", featuring Jennifer Hudson singing her lyrics, which was on the British duo's debut album, "Sirens".


title: Kiesza

text: She wrote several songs for Rihanna, which were considered for the Barbadian artist's eighth album. She also worked with Loreen on the 2015 single "I'm in It with You".


title: Kiesza

text: Kiesza released the single "Dearly Beloved" on January 6, 2017. An accompanying music video, which showcases her with a white guitar, was posted on YouTube the same day through the KieszaVevo channel. According to the artist, the song and her future material were inspired by her "best friend Alice [who] passed away nearly a year and a half ago [as of 1/6/17]". The friend in question was Alicia Lemke, who had died in November 2015 from leukemia. On March 17, 2017, Pitbull released "Climate Change", featuring a collaboration with Kiesza titled "We Are Strong". At the same time, Cerrone released the album "RedLips", featuring a collaboration with Kiesza titled "Ain't No Party".


title: Kiesza

text: Nick Krewen, writing in the "Toronto Star", reported that Kiesza was involved in a car accident in 2017 in Toronto, when an Uber vehicle she was in was struck by a taxi in a side collision. He reported that part of her recovery, from what she described as a traumatic brain injury, required her staying in a darkened room for six months.


title: Kiesza

text: After a two-year hiatus following the car crash, Kiesza released a new single, "Sweet Love," and returned to touring in June 2019. "Paper" magazine referred to the new song as being a "blend of genres".


title: Kiesza

text: In 2014, Kiesza was selected to be the face of a new line of fashion eyewear called "Color Block" by retailer Fendi, appearing in a promotional video shot by Ruth Hogben. The video "features Kiesza strolling on a treadmill against a painted skyline, while singing and donning the double-framed, colourful sunglasses." She announced plans to release her own line of fashion under the name "SteamPop" sometime in 2014.


title: IDP Education

text: IDP Education Limited is an international education organisation offering student placement in Australia, New Zealand, USA, UK, Republic of Ireland and Canada.


title: IDP Education

text: IDP has more than 100 offices in 31 countries and 550 counsellors. IDP Australia partners with University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations and the British Council for IELTS tests.


title: IDP Education

text: More than 3 million IELTS tests were undertaken around the world in 2018 and over 10,000 organisations rely on IELTS including governments for migration assessment, universities for admissions and employers and professional registration bodies.


title: IDP Education

text: IELTS Australia Pvt Ltd manages a network of more than 200 IELTS test centres in over 35 countries. There are over 1000 IELTS test centres globally. Anyone interested in passing the IELTS as part of a visa application to study or work abroad should make sure s/he refers to the Government website (Immigration pages) of their proposed destination country. Each destination country specifies approved test centres for Visa IELTS and often state the grade required by the visa authority.


title: IDP Education

text: IDP was established in 1969 as Australian Asian Universities' Cooperation Scheme (AAUCS) universities in South-East Asia. AAUCS changed its name to the International Development Program (IDP) of Australian Universities and Colleges and schools.


title: IDP Education

text: In 2006, SEEK acquired 50% shares of IDP from the Australian universities consortium Education Australia . Education Australia was formerly known as IDP Education Australia Limited.


title: IDP Education

text: In January 2017 IDP acquired UK Educational listings company Hotcourses for £30 million. Hotcourses was co-founded by British politician and former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.


title: IDP Education

text: In April 2020, IDP issued new shares that raised AU$175 million. In June, Education Australia, the holding company for the 38 universities of Australia (note: there are more than 38 universities in Australia, some of them are not the shareholders of Education Australia), sold 5% shares to the public. In March 2021, Education Australia announced to sell a further 15% shares to the public and announced that the remaining 25% shares of IDP would be distributed to the 38 universities.


title: Curium

text: Curium is a transuranic, radioactive chemical element with the symbol Cm and atomic number 96. This actinide element was named after eminent scientists Marie and Pierre Curie, both known for their research on radioactivity. Curium was first intentionally made by the team of Glenn T. Seaborg, Ralph A. James, and Albert Ghiorso in 1944, using the cyclotron at Berkeley. They bombarded the newly discovered element plutonium (the isotope Pu) with alpha particles. This was then sent to the Metallurgical Laboratory at University of Chicago where a tiny sample of curium was eventually separated and identified. The discovery was kept secret until after the end of World War II. The news was released to the public in November 1947. Most curium is produced by bombarding uranium or plutonium with neutrons in nuclear reactors – one tonne of spent nuclear fuel contains ~20 grams of curium.


title: Curium

text: Curium is a hard, dense, silvery metal with a high melting and boiling point for an actinide. It is paramagnetic at ambient conditions, but becomes antiferromagnetic upon cooling, and other magnetic transitions are also seen in many curium compounds. In compounds, curium usually has valence +3 and sometimes +4; the +3 valence is predominant in solutions. Curium readily oxidizes, and its oxides are a dominant form of this element. It forms strongly fluorescent complexes with various organic compounds, but there is no evidence of its incorporation into bacteria and archaea. If it gets into the human body, curium accumulates in bones, lungs, and liver, where it promotes cancer.


title: Curium

text: All known isotopes of curium are radioactive and have small critical mass for a nuclear chain reaction. They mostly emit α-particles; radioisotope thermoelectric generators can use the heat from this process, but this is hindered by the rarity and high cost of curium. Curium is used in making heavier actinides and the Pu radionuclide for power sources in artificial cardiac pacemakers and RTGs for spacecraft. It served as the α-source in the alpha particle X-ray spectrometers of several space probes, including the "Sojourner", "Spirit", "Opportunity", and "Curiosity" Mars rovers and the Philae lander on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, to analyze the composition and structure of the surface.


title: Curium

text: Though curium had likely been produced in previous nuclear experiments as well as the natural nuclear fission reactor at Oklo, Gabon, it was first intentionally synthesized, isolated and identified in 1944, at University of California, Berkeley, by Glenn T. Seaborg, Ralph A. James, and Albert Ghiorso. In their experiments, they used a cyclotron.


title: Curium

text: Curium was chemically identified at the Metallurgical Laboratory (now Argonne National Laboratory), University of Chicago. It was the third transuranium element to be discovered even though it is the fourth in the series – the lighter element americium was still unknown.


title: Curium

text: The sample was prepared as follows: first plutonium nitrate solution was coated on a platinum foil of ~0.5 cm area, the solution was evaporated and the residue was converted into plutonium(IV) oxide (PuO) by annealing. Following cyclotron irradiation of the oxide, the coating was dissolved with nitric acid and then precipitated as the hydroxide using concentrated aqueous ammonia solution. The residue was dissolved in perchloric acid, and further separation was done by ion exchange to yield a certain isotope of curium. The separation of curium and americium was so painstaking that the Berkeley group initially called those elements "pandemonium" (from Greek for "all demons" or "hell") and "delirium" (from Latin for "madness").


title: Curium

text: Curium-242 was made in July–August 1944 by bombarding Pu with α-particles to produce curium with the release of a neutron:


title: Curium

text: Curium-242 was unambiguously identified by the characteristic energy of the α-particles emitted during the decay:


title: Curium

text: The discovery of curium and americium in 1944 was closely related to the Manhattan Project, so the results were confidential and declassified only in 1945. Seaborg leaked the synthesis of the elements 95 and 96 on the U.S. radio show for children, the Quiz Kids, five days before the official presentation at an American Chemical Society meeting on November 11, 1945, when one listener asked if any new transuranic element beside plutonium and neptunium had been discovered during the war. The discovery of curium (Cm and Cm), its production, and its compounds was later patented listing only Seaborg as the inventor.


title: Curium

text: The element was named after Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie, who are known for discovering radium and for their work in radioactivity. It followed the example of gadolinium, a lanthanide element above curium in the periodic table, which was named after the explorer of rare-earth elements Johan Gadolin:


title: Curium

text: The first curium samples were barely visible, and were identified by their radioactivity. Louis Werner and Isadore Perlman made the first substantial sample of 30 µg curium-242 hydroxide at University of California, Berkeley in 1947 by bombarding americium-241 with neutrons. Macroscopic amounts of curium(III) fluoride were obtained in 1950 by W. W. T. Crane, J. C. Wallmann and B. B. Cunningham. Its magnetic susceptibility was very close to that of GdF providing the first experimental evidence for the +3 valence of curium in its compounds. Curium metal was produced only in 1951 by reduction of CmF with barium.


title: Curium

text: A synthetic, radioactive element, curium is a hard, dense metal with a silvery-white appearance and physical and chemical properties resembling gadolinium. Its melting point of 1344 °C is significantly higher than that of the previous elements neptunium (637 °C), plutonium (639 °C) and americium (1176 °C). In comparison, gadolinium melts at 1312 °C. Curium boils at 3556 °C. With a density of 13.52 g/cm, curium is lighter than neptunium (20.45 g/cm) and plutonium (19.8 g/cm), but heavier than most other metals. Of two crystalline forms of curium, α-Cm is more stable at ambient conditions. It has a hexagonal symmetry, space group P6/mmc, lattice parameters "a" = 365 pm and "c" = 1182 pm, and four formula units per unit cell. The crystal consists of double-hexagonal close packing with the layer sequence ABAC and so is isotypic with α-lanthanum. At pressure >23 GPa, at room temperature, α-Cm becomes β-Cm, which has face-centered cubic symmetry, space group Fmm and lattice constant "a" = 493 pm. On further compression to 43 GPa, curium becomes an orthorhombic γ-Cm structure similar to α-uranium, with no further transitions observed up to 52 GPa. These three curium phases are also called Cm I, II and III.


title: Curium

text: Curium has peculiar magnetic properties. Its neighbor element americium shows no deviation from Curie-Weiss paramagnetism in the entire temperature range, but α-Cm transforms to an antiferromagnetic state upon cooling to 65–52 K, and β-Cm exhibits a ferrimagnetic transition at ~205 K. Curium pnictides show ferromagnetic transitions upon cooling: CmN and CmAs at 109 K, CmP at 73 K and CmSb at 162 K. The lanthanide analog of curium, gadolinium, and its pnictides, also show magnetic transitions upon cooling, but the transition character is somewhat different: Gd and GdN become ferromagnetic, and GdP, GdAs and GdSb show antiferromagnetic ordering.


title: Curium

text: In accordance with magnetic data, electrical resistivity of curium increases with temperature – about twice between 4 and 60 K – and then is nearly constant up to room temperature. There is a significant increase in resistivity over time (~) due to self-damage of the crystal lattice by alpha decay. This makes uncertain the true resistivity of curium (~). Curium's resistivity is similar to that of gadolinium, and the actinides plutonium and neptunium, but significantly higher than that of americium, uranium, polonium and thorium.


title: Curium

text: Under ultraviolet illumination, curium(III) ions show strong and stable yellow-orange fluorescence with a maximum in the range of 590–640 nm depending on their environment. The fluorescence originates from the transitions from the first excited state D and the ground state S. Analysis of this fluorescence allows monitoring interactions between Cm(III) ions in organic and inorganic complexes.


title: Curium

text: Curium ion in solution almost always has a +3 oxidation state, the most stable oxidation state for curium. A +4 oxidation state is seen mainly in a few solid phases, such as CmO and CmF. Aqueous curium(IV) is only known in the presence of strong oxidizers such as potassium persulfate, and is easily reduced to curium(III) by radiolysis and even by water itself. Chemical behavior of curium is different from the actinides thorium and uranium, and is similar to americium and many lanthanides. In aqueous solution, the Cm ion is colorless to pale green; Cm ion is pale yellow. The optical absorption of Cm ion contains three sharp peaks at 375.4, 381.2 and 396.5 nm and their strength can be directly converted into the concentration of the ions. +6 oxidation state has only been reported once in solution in 1978, as the curyl ion (): this was prepared from beta decay of americium-242 in the americium(V) ion . Failure to get Cm(VI) from oxidation of Cm(III) and Cm(IV) may be due to the high Cm/Cm ionization potential and the instability of Cm(V).


title: Curium

text: Curium ions are hard Lewis acids and thus form most stable complexes with hard bases. The bonding is mostly ionic, with a small covalent component. Curium in its complexes commonly exhibits a 9-fold coordination environment, within a tricapped trigonal prismatic geometry.


title: Curium

text: About 19 radioisotopes and 7 nuclear isomers, Cm to Cm, are known; none are stable. The longest half-lives are 15.6 million years (Cm) and 348,000 years (Cm). Other long-lived ones are Cm (8500 years), Cm (8300 years) and Cm (4760 years). Curium-250 is unusual: it mostly (~86%) decays by spontaneous fission. The most commonly used isotopes are Cm and Cm with the half-lives 162.8 days and 18.1 years, respectively.


title: Curium

text: All isotopes Cm-Cm, and Cm, undergo a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction and thus in principle can be a nuclear fuel in a reactor. As in most transuranic elements, nuclear fission cross section is especially high for the odd-mass curium isotopes Cm, Cm and Cm. These can be used in thermal-neutron reactors, whereas a mixture of curium isotopes is only suitable for fast breeder reactors since the even-mass isotopes are not fissile in a thermal reactor and accumulate as burn-up increases. The mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel, which is to be used in power reactors, should contain little or no curium because neutron activation of Cm will create californium. Californium is a strong neutron emitter, and would pollute the back end of the fuel cycle and increase the dose to reactor personnel. Hence, if minor actinides are to be used as fuel in a thermal neutron reactor, the curium should be excluded from the fuel or placed in special fuel rods where it is the only actinide present.


title: Curium

text: The adjacent table lists the critical masses for curium isotopes for a sphere, without moderator or reflector. With a metal reflector (30 cm of steel), the critical masses of the odd isotopes are about 3–4 kg. When using water (thickness ~20–30 cm) as the reflector, the critical mass can be as small as 59 gram for Cm, 155 gram for Cm and 1550 gram for Cm. There is significant uncertainty in these critical mass values. While it is usually on the order of 20%, the values for Cm and Cm were listed as large as 371 kg and 70.1 kg, respectively, by some research groups.


title: Curium

text: Curium is not currently used as nuclear fuel due to its low availability and high price. Cm and Cm have very small critical mass and so could be used in tactical nuclear weapons, but none are known to have been made. Curium-243 is not suitable for such, due to its short half-life and strong α emission, which would cause excessive heat. Curium-247 would be highly suitable due to its long half-life, which is 647 times longer than plutonium-239 (used in many existing nuclear weapons).


title: Curium

text: The longest-lived isotope, Cm, has half-life 15.6 million years; so any primordial curium, that is, present on Earth when it formed, should have decayed by now. Its past presence as an extinct radionuclide is detectable as an excess of its primordial, long-lived daughter U. Traces of curium may occur naturally in uranium minerals due to neutron capture and beta decay, though this has not been confirmed. Traces of Cm are also probably brought to Earth in cosmic rays, but again this has not been confirmed.


title: Curium

text: Curium is made artificially in small amounts for research purposes. It also occurs as one of the waste products in spent nuclear fuel. Curium is present in nature in some areas used for nuclear weapons testing. Analysis of the debris at the test site of the United States' first thermonuclear weapon, Ivy Mike, (1 November 1952, Enewetak Atoll), besides einsteinium, fermium, plutonium and americium also revealed isotopes of berkelium, californium and curium, in particular Cm, Cm and smaller quantities of Cm, Cm and Cm.


title: Curium

text: Atmospheric curium compounds are poorly soluble in common solvents and mostly adhere to soil particles. Soil analysis revealed about 4,000 times higher concentration of curium at the sandy soil particles than in water present in the soil pores. An even higher ratio of about 18,000 was measured in loam soils.


title: Curium

text: The transuranium elements from americium to fermium, including curium, occurred naturally in the natural nuclear fission reactor at Oklo, but no longer do so.


title: Curium

text: Curium, and other non-primordial actinides, have also been detected in the spectrum of Przybylski's Star.


title: Curium

text: Curium is made in small amounts in nuclear reactors, and by now only kilograms of Cm and Cm have been accumulated, and grams or even milligrams for heavier isotopes. Hence the high price of curium, which has been quoted at 160–185 USD per milligram, with a more recent estimate at US$2,000/g for Cm and US$170/g for Cm. In nuclear reactors, curium is formed from U in a series of nuclear reactions. In the first chain, U captures a neutron and converts into U, which via β decay transforms into Np and Pu.


title: Curium

text: For research purposes, curium is obtained by irradiating not uranium but plutonium, which is available in large amounts from spent nuclear fuel. A much higher neutron flux is used for the irradiation that results in a different reaction chain and formation of Cm:


title: Curium

text: Curium-244 alpha decays to Pu, but it also absorbs neutrons, hence a small amount of heavier curium isotopes. Of those, Cm and Cm are popular in scientific research due to their long half-lives. But the production rate of Cm in thermal neutron reactors is low because it is prone to fission due to thermal neutrons. Synthesis of Cm by neutron capture is unlikely due to the short half-life of the intermediate Cm (64 min), which β decays to the berkelium isotope Bk.


title: Curium

text: The above cascade of (n,γ) reactions gives a mix of different curium isotopes. Their post-synthesis separation is cumbersome, so a selective synthesis is desired. Curium-248 is favored for research purposes due to its long half-life. The most efficient way to prepare this isotope is by α-decay of the californium isotope Cf, which is available in relatively large amounts due to its long half-life (2.65 years). About 35–50 mg of Cm is produced thus, per year. The associated reaction produces Cm with isotopic purity of 97%.


title: Curium

text: Another isotope, Cm, can be obtained for research, from α-decay of Cf; the latter isotope is produced in small amounts from β-decay of Bk.


title: Curium

text: Most synthesis routines yield a mix of actinide isotopes as oxides, from which a given isotope of curium needs to be separated. An example procedure could be to dissolve spent reactor fuel (e.g. MOX fuel) in nitric acid, and remove the bulk of the uranium and plutonium using a PUREX (Plutonium – URanium EXtraction) type extraction with tributyl phosphate in a hydrocarbon. The lanthanides and the remaining actinides are then separated from the aqueous residue (raffinate) by a diamide-based extraction to give, after stripping, a mixture of trivalent actinides and lanthanides. A curium compound is then selectively extracted using multi-step chromatographic and centrifugation techniques with an appropriate reagent. "Bis"-triazinyl bipyridine complex has been recently proposed as such reagent which is highly selective to curium. Separation of curium from the very chemically similar americium can also be done by treating a slurry of their hydroxides in aqueous sodium bicarbonate with ozone at elevated temperature. Both americium and curium are present in solutions mostly in the +3 valence state; americium oxidizes to soluble Am(IV) complexes, but curium stays unchanged and so can be isolated by repeated centrifugation.


title: Curium

text: Metallic curium is obtained by reduction of its compounds. Initially, curium(III) fluoride was used for this purpose. The reaction was done in an environment free of water and oxygen, in an apparatus made of tantalum and tungsten, using elemental barium or lithium as reducing agents.


title: Curium

text: Another possibility is reduction of curium(IV) oxide using a magnesium-zinc alloy in a melt of magnesium chloride and magnesium fluoride.


title: Curium

text: Curium readily reacts with oxygen forming mostly CmO and CmO oxides, but the divalent oxide CmO is also known. Black CmO can be obtained by burning curium oxalate (), nitrate (), or hydroxide in pure oxygen. Upon heating to 600–650 °C in vacuum (about 0.01 Pa), it transforms into the whitish CmO:


title: Curium

text: Also, a number of ternary oxides of the type M(II)CmO are known, where M stands for a divalent metal, such as barium.


title: Curium

text: Thermal oxidation of trace quantities of curium hydride (CmH) has been reported to give a volatile form of CmO and the volatile trioxide CmO, one of two known examples of the very rare +6 state for curium. Another observed species was reported to behave similar to a supposed plutonium tetroxide and was tentatively characterized as CmO, with curium in the extremely rare +8 state; but new experiments seem to indicate that CmO does not exist, and have cast doubt on the existence of PuO as well.


title: Curium

text: The colorless curium(III) fluoride (CmF) can be made by adding fluoride ions into curium(III)-containing solutions. The brown tetravalent curium(IV) fluoride (CmF) on the other hand is only obtained by reacting curium(III) fluoride with molecular fluorine:


title: Curium

text: The colorless curium(III) chloride (CmCl) is made by reacting curium hydroxide (Cm(OH)) with anhydrous hydrogen chloride gas. It can be further turned into other halides such as curium(III) bromide (colorless to light green) and curium(III) iodide (colorless), by reacting it with the ammonia salt of the corresponding halide at temperatures of ~400–450°C:


title: Curium

text: Or, one can heat curium oxide to ~600°C with the corresponding acid (such as hydrobromic for curium bromide). Vapor phase hydrolysis of curium(III) chloride gives curium oxychloride:


title: Curium

text: Sulfides, selenides and tellurides of curium have been obtained by treating curium with gaseous sulfur, selenium or tellurium in vacuum at elevated temperature. Curium pnictides of the type CmX are known for nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic and antimony. They can be prepared by reacting either curium(III) hydride (CmH) or metallic curium with these elements at elevated temperature.


title: Curium

text: Organometallic complexes analogous to uranocene are known also for other actinides, such as thorium, protactinium, neptunium, plutonium and americium. Molecular orbital theory predicts a stable "curocene" complex (η-CH)Cm, but it has not been reported experimentally yet.


title: Curium

text: Formation of the complexes of the type (BTP = 2,6-di(1,2,4-triazin-3-yl)pyridine), in solutions containing n-CH-BTP and Cm ions has been confirmed by EXAFS. Some of these BTP-type complexes selectively interact with curium and thus are useful for separating it from lanthanides and another actinides. Dissolved Cm ions bind with many organic compounds, such as hydroxamic acid, urea, fluorescein and adenosine triphosphate. Many of these compounds are related to biological activity of various microorganisms. The resulting complexes show strong yellow-orange emission under UV light excitation, which is convenient not only for their detection, but also for studying interactions between the Cm ion and the ligands via changes in the half-life (of the order ~0.1 ms) and spectrum of the fluorescence.


title: Curium

text: Curium has no biological significance. There are a few reports on biosorption of Cm by bacteria and archaea, but no evidence for incorporation of curium into them.


title: Curium

text: Curium is one of the most radioactive isolable elements. Its two most common isotopes Cm and Cm are strong alpha emitters (energy 6 MeV); they have fairly short half-lives, 162.8 days and 18.1 years, and give as much as 120 W/g and 3 W/g of heat, respectively. Therefore, curium can be used in its common oxide form in radioisotope thermoelectric generators like those in spacecraft. This application has been studied for the Cm isotope, while Cm was abandoned due to its prohibitive price, around 2000 USD/g. Cm with a ~30-year half-life and good energy yield of ~1.6 W/g could be a suitable fuel, but it gives significant amounts of harmful gamma and beta rays from radioactive decay products. As an α-emitter, Cm needs much less radiation shielding, but it has a high spontaneous fission rate, and thus a lot of neutron and gamma radiation. Compared to a competing thermoelectric generator isotope such as Pu, Cm emits 500 times more neutrons, and its higher gamma emission requires a shield that is 20 times thicker— of lead for a 1 kW source, compared to for Pu. Therefore, this use of curium is currently considered impractical.


title: Curium

text: A more promising use of Cm is for making Pu, a better radioisotope for thermoelectric generators such as in heart pacemakers. The alternate routes to Pu use the (n,γ) reaction of Np, or deuteron bombardment of uranium, though both reactions always produce Pu as an undesired by-product since the latter decays to U with strong gamma emission. Curium is a common starting material for making higher transuranic and superheavy elements. Thus, bombarding Cm with neon (Ne), magnesium (Mg), or calcium (Ca) yields isotopes of seaborgium (Sg), hassium (Hs and Hs), and livermorium (Lv, Lv, and possibly Lv). Californium was discovered when a microgram-sized target of curium-242 was irradiated with 35 MeV alpha particles using the cyclotron at Berkeley:


title: Curium

text: The odd-mass curium isotopes Cm, Cm, and Cm are all highly fissile and can release additional energy in a thermal spectrum nuclear reactor. All curium isotopes are fissionable in fast-neutron reactors. This is one of the motives for minor actinide separation and transmutation in the nuclear fuel cycle, helping to reduce the long-term radiotoxicity of used, or spent nuclear fuel.


title: Curium

text: The most practical application of Cm—though rather limited in total volume—is as α-particle source in alpha particle X-ray spectrometers (APXS). These instruments were installed on the Sojourner, Mars, Mars 96, Mars Exploration Rovers and Philae comet lander, as well as the Mars Science Laboratory to analyze the composition and structure of the rocks on the surface of planet Mars. APXS was also used in the Surveyor 5–7 moon probes but with a Cm source.


title: Curium

text: An elaborate APXS setup has a sensor head containing six curium sources with a total decay rate of several tens of millicuries (roughly one gigabecquerel). The sources are collimated on a sample, and the energy spectra of the alpha particles and protons scattered from the sample are analyzed (proton analysis is done only in some spectrometers). These spectra contain quantitative information on all major elements in the sample except for hydrogen, helium and lithium.


title: Curium

text: Due to its radioactivity, curium and its compounds must be handled in appropriate labs under special arrangements. While curium itself mostly emits α-particles which are absorbed by thin layers of common materials, some of its decay products emit significant fractions of beta and gamma rays, which require a more elaborate protection. If consumed, curium is excreted within a few days and only 0.05% is absorbed in the blood. From there, ~45% goes to the liver, 45% to the bones, and the remaining 10% is excreted. In bone, curium accumulates on the inside of the interfaces to the bone marrow and does not significantly redistribute with time; its radiation destroys bone marrow and thus stops red blood cell creation. The biological half-life of curium is about 20 years in the liver and 50 years in the bones. Curium is absorbed in the body much more strongly via inhalation, and the allowed total dose of Cm in soluble form is 0.3 μCi. Intravenous injection of Cm- and Cm-containing solutions to rats increased the incidence of bone tumor, and inhalation promoted lung and liver cancer.


title: Curium

text: Curium isotopes are inevitably present in spent nuclear fuel (about 20 g/tonne). The isotopes Cm–Cm have decay times of thousands of years and must be removed to neutralize the fuel for disposal. Such a procedure involves several steps, where curium is first separated and then converted by neutron bombardment in special reactors to short-lived nuclides. This procedure, nuclear transmutation, while well documented for other elements, is still being developed for curium.


title: Solar time

text: Solar time is a calculation of the passage of time based on the position of the Sun in the sky. The fundamental unit of solar time is the day, based on the synodic rotation period. Two types of solar time are apparent solar time (sundial time) and mean solar time (clock time).


title: Solar time

text: A tall pole vertically fixed in the ground casts a shadow on any sunny day. At one moment during the day, the shadow will point exactly north or south (or disappear when and if the Sun moves directly overhead). That instant is local apparent noon, or 12:00 local apparent time. About 24 hours later the shadow will again point north–south, the Sun seeming to have covered a 360-degree arc around Earth's axis. When the Sun has covered exactly 15 degrees (1/24 of a circle, both angles being measured in a plane perpendicular to Earth's axis), local apparent time is 13:00 exactly; after 15 more degrees it will be 14:00 exactly.


title: Solar time

text: The problem is that in September the Sun takes less time (as measured by an accurate clock) to make an apparent revolution than it does in December; 24 "hours" of solar time can be 21 seconds less or 29 seconds more than 24 hours of clock time. This change is quantified by the equation of time, and is due to the eccentricity of Earth's orbit (as in, Earth's orbit is not perfectly circular, meaning that the EarthSun distance varies throughout the year), and the fact that Earth's axis is not perpendicular to the plane of its orbit (the so-called obliquity of the ecliptic).


title: Solar time

text: The effect of this is that a clock running at a constant ratee.g. completing the same number of pendulum swings in each hourcannot follow the actual Sun; instead it follows an imaginary "mean Sun" that moves along the celestial equator at a constant rate that matches the real Sun's average rate over the year. This is "mean solar time", which is still not perfectly constant from one century to the next but is close enough for most purposes. , a mean solar day is about 86,400.002 SI seconds.


title: Solar time

text: The two kinds of solar time (apparent solar time and mean solar time) are among the three kinds of time reckoning that were employed by astronomers until the 1950s. (The third kind of traditional time reckoning is sidereal time, which is based on the apparent motions of stars other than the Sun.) By the 1950s it had become clear that Earth's rotation rate was not constant, so astronomers developed ephemeris time, a time-scale based on the positions of solar system bodies in their orbits.


title: Solar time

text: The apparent sun is the true sun as seen by an observer on Earth. Apparent solar time or true solar time is based on the apparent motion of the actual Sun. It is based on the apparent solar day, the interval between two successive returns of the Sun to the local meridian. Apparent solar time can be crudely measured by a sundial. The equivalent on Mars is termed Mars local true solar time (LTST).


title: Solar time

text: The length of a solar day varies through the year, and the accumulated effect produces seasonal deviations of up to 16 minutes from the mean. The effect has two main causes. First, due to the eccentricity of Earth's orbit, Earth moves faster when it is nearest the Sun (perihelion) and slower when it is farthest from the Sun (aphelion) (see Kepler's laws of planetary motion). Second, due to Earth's axial tilt (known as the "obliquity of the ecliptic"), the Sun's annual motion is along a great circle (the ecliptic) that is tilted to Earth's celestial equator. When the Sun crosses the equator at both equinoxes, the Sun's daily shift (relative to the background stars) is at an angle to the equator, so the projection of this shift onto the equator is less than its average for the year; when the Sun is farthest from the equator at both solstices, the Sun's shift in position from one day to the next is parallel to the equator, so the projection onto the equator of this shift is larger than the average for the year (see tropical year). In June and December when the sun is farthest from the celestial equator, a given shift along the ecliptic corresponds to a large shift at the equator. Therefore, apparent solar days are shorter in March and September than in June or December.


title: Solar time

text: Mean solar time is the hour angle of the mean Sun plus 12 hours. This 12 hour offset comes from the decision to make each day start at midnight for civil purposes, whereas the hour angle or the mean sun is measured from the local meridian. , this is realized with the UT1 time scale, constructed mathematically from very-long-baseline interferometry observations of the diurnal motions of radio sources located in other galaxies, and other observations. The duration of daylight varies during the year but the length of a mean solar day is nearly constant, unlike that of an apparent solar day. An apparent solar day can be 20 seconds shorter or 30 seconds longer than a mean solar day. Long or short days occur in succession, so the difference builds up until mean time is ahead of apparent time by about 14 minutes near February 6, and behind apparent time by about 16 minutes near November 3. The equation of time is this difference, which is cyclical and does not accumulate from year to year.


title: Solar time

text: The length of the mean solar day is slowly increasing due to the tidal acceleration of the Moon by Earth and the corresponding slowing of Earth's rotation by the Moon.


title: Solar time

text: The sun has always been visible in the sky, and its position forms the basis of apparent solar time, the timekeeping method used in antiquity. An Egyptian obelisk constructed c. 3500 BC, a gnomon in China dated 2300 BC, and an Egyptian sundial dated 1500 BC are some of the earliest methods for measuring the sun's position.


title: Solar time

text: Babylonian astronomers knew that the hours of daylight varied throughout the year. A tablet from 649 BC shows that they used a 2:1 ratio for the longest day to the shortest day, and estimated the variation using a linear zigzag function. It is not clear if they knew of the variation in the length of the solar day and the corresponding equation of time. Ptolemy clearly distinguishes the mean solar day and apparent solar day in his "Almagest" (2nd century), and he tabulated the equation of time in his "Handy Tables".


title: Solar time

text: Apparent solar time grew less useful as commerce increased and mechanical clocks improved. Mean solar time was introduced in almanacs in England in 1834 and in France in 1835. Because the sun was difficult to observe directly due to its large size in the sky, mean solar time was determined as a fixed ratio of time as observed by the stars, which used point-like observations. A specific standard for measuring "mean solar time" from midnight came to be called Universal Time.


title: Solar time

text: Conceptually Universal Time is the rotation of the Earth with respect to the sun and hence is mean solar time. However, UT1, the version in common use since 1955, uses a slightly different definition of rotation that corrects for the motion of Earth's poles as it rotates. The difference between this corrected mean solar time and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) determines whether a leap second is needed. (Since 1972 the UTC time scale has run on SI seconds, and the SI second, when adopted, was already a little shorter than the current value of the second of mean solar time.)


title: Instant noodles

text: Instant noodles, or instant ramen, is a type of food consisting of noodles sold in a precooked and dried block with flavoring powder and/or seasoning oil. The dried noodle block was originally created by flash frying cooked noodles, and this is still the main method used in Asian countries; air-dried noodle blocks are favored in Western countries. Dried noodle blocks are designed to be cooked or soaked in boiling water before eating. Ramen, a Japanese adaptation of Chinese noodle soup, is sometimes used as a descriptor for instant noodle flavors by some Japanese manufacturers. It has become synonymous in the United States for all instant noodle products.


title: Instant noodles

text: Instant noodles were invented by Momofuku Ando of Nissin Foods in Japan. They were launched in 1958 under the brand name Chikin Ramen. In 1971, Nissin introduced Cup Noodles, the first cup noodle product. Instant noodles are marketed worldwide under many brand names.


title: Instant noodles

text: The main ingredients in instant noodles are flour, starch, water, salt and/or kansui (a type of alkaline mineral water containing sodium carbonate and usually potassium carbonate), and sometimes a small amount of phosphoric acid. Common ingredients in the flavoring powder are salt, monosodium glutamate, seasoning, and sugar. The flavoring is usually in a separate packet, although in the case of cup noodles, it is often loose in the cup. Some instant noodle products are seal-packed; these can be reheated or eaten straight from the packet or container.


title: Instant noodles

text: The history of noodles in China dates back many centuries, and there is evidence that a noodle that is boiled and then fried and served in a soup, similar to Yi noodle, dates to ancient China. According to legend, during the Qing dynasty, a chef put already-cooked egg noodles in to boil. To rescue them, he scooped them out and fried them in hot oil, serving them as a soup. According to the "Journal of Ethnic Foods", early instant noodle packaging was labelled "Yi noodles."


title: Instant noodles

text: Modern instant noodles were created by Momofuku Ando in Japan. They were first marketed on 25 August 1958 by Ando's company, Nissin, under the brand name Chikin Ramen. Ando developed the entire production method of flash frying noodles from processes of noodle-making, steaming, seasoning, to dehydrating in oil heat, creating the "instant" noodle. This dried the noodles and gave them a longer shelf life, even exceeding that of frozen noodles. Each noodle block was pre-seasoned and sold for 35 yen. The instant noodles became ready to eat in just two minutes by adding boiling water. Due to their price and novelty, Chikin Ramen were considered a luxury item initially, as Japanese grocery stores typically sold fresh noodles for one-sixth of their price. Despite this, instant noodles eventually gained immense popularity, especially after being promoted by Mitsubishi Corporation. Initially gaining popularity across East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, where they are now firmly embedded within the local cultures of those regions, instant noodles eventually spread to and gained popularity across most other parts of the world.


title: Instant noodles

text: A separate claim of origin for instant noodles comes from Pingtung County in Taiwan. Zhang Guowen, a Pingtung local, filed a patent for instant noodles in 1956. On 16 August 1961, Zhang supposedly transferred the patent to Momofuku Ando for 23 million yen.


title: Instant noodles

text: With better quality control, manufacturers further improved the taste of instant noodles by adding flavoring powder in a separate packet. In 1971, Nissin introduced Nissin Cup Noodles, a cup noodle to which boiling water is added to cook the noodles. A further innovation added dried vegetables to the cup, creating a complete instant soup dish. The innovation combined the functions of packaging material, a container for boiling water, and a bowl to eat the noodles from. Heading off the recent rise in health consciousness, many manufacturers launched instant noodles with various healthy recipes: noodles with dietary fiber and collagen, low-calorie noodles, and low-sodium noodles.


title: Instant noodles

text: According to a Japanese poll in the year 2000, "The Japanese believe that their best invention of the twentieth century was instant noodles". , approximately 103 billion servings of instant noodles are eaten worldwide every year. China consumes 40 billion packages of instant noodles per year (39% of world consumption), Indonesia 12 billion, India 6 billion, Japan 5.7 billion, Vietnam 5.2 billion. The top three per-capita consuming nations are South Korea (74.6 servings), Vietnam (53.9 servings), and Nepal (53 servings).


title: Instant noodles

text: There are three key ingredients in wheat-based noodles: wheat flour, water, and salt. Other than the three main ingredients, USDA regulations allow instant noodles to contain palm oil, seasoning, sodium phosphates, potato starches, gums, and other ingredients.


title: Instant noodles

text: Noodle production starts with dissolving the salt, starch, and flavoring in water to form a mixture that is then added to the flour. The dough is then left for a period of time to mature, then for even distribution of the ingredients and hydration of the particles in the dough, it is kneaded. After it is kneaded, the dough is made into two sheets compounded into one single noodle belt by being put through two rotating rollers. This process is repeated to develop gluten more easily as the sheet is folded and passed through the rollers several times. This will create the stringy and chewy texture found in instant noodles. When the noodle belt is made to the desired thickness by adjusting the gap in the rolls, it is then cut right away. Wavy noodles are made in a slow-paced conveyor belt and are hindered by metal weights when coming out of the slitter, which gives the noodle its wavy appearance. If the strands are to be molded into other shapes, liquid seasoning can be added as well. Once the noodles are shaped, they are ready to be steamed for 1–5 minutes at to improve texture by gelatinizing the starch of the noodles. When steaming, the addition of water and heat breaks up the helix structure and crystallinity of amylose. Amylose begins to diffuse out of the starch granule and forms a gel matrix around the granule.


title: Instant noodles

text: Noodles can be dried in one of two ways: by frying or by hot-air drying. Fried instant noodles are dried by oil frying for 1–2 minutes at a temperature of . The frying process decreases the moisture content from 30–50% to 2–5%. Common oils used for frying in North America include canola, cottonseed, and palm oil mixtures, while only palm oil or palm olein are used in Asia. Air-dried noodles are dried for 30–40 minutes in hot air at a temperature of , resulting in a moisture content of 8–12%. During the drying process, the rapid evaporation of water creates pores throughout the food matrix, which allows for short cooking times in the finished product. In the case of fried noodles, the creation of pores is directly related to the uptake of fat into the noodles. More than 80% of instant noodles are fried as this creates more evenly dried noodles than hot-air drying, which can cause an undesired texture in finished noodles and also takes longer to cook. However, with fried noodles, the oil content is about 15–20% and decreases the shelf life of the noodles due to oxidation, whereas in hot-air dried noodles, oil content does not go above 3%.


title: Instant noodles

text: Before packaging with seasoning, the noodles are cooled after drying, and their moisture, color, and shape are checked. Packaging of the noodles includes films impermeable to air and water. There are two forms of packaged instant noodles: one with the provided seasoning in small sachets inside or in a cup with seasoning on top of the noodles. There are a variety of flavors to the noodles, depending on which ones are added to the seasoning. Such flavors include beef, chicken, pork, shrimp, etc. In instant noodle cups, soy protein and dehydrated vegetables and meats are often added for further flavor.


title: Instant noodles

text: The shelf life of instant noodles ranges from 4–12 months, depending on environmental factors. Their stability comes from the high sodium content with low moisture, and low water activity. Instant noodles can be served after 1–2 minutes in boiled water or soaked in hot water for 3–4 minutes.


title: Instant noodles

text: Although dry instant noodles may not appear elastic, cooked instant noodles generally have higher elasticity than other types of noodles when they are cooked, and the unique wavy form also differentiates instant noodles from other common noodles, such as udon or flat noodles. The wavy form of the noodles is created when noodle dough sheets are being cut by rotation slitters. Due to the difference in velocity between the conveyor belt and blade rotation, noodle dough sheets can be pressed by blades multiple times within a certain area, creating the unique wavy form of instant noodles. During pressing by the heavy blades, the continuous gluten structure is ruptured at certain points and does not return to its original shape, but the remaining gluten structures are strong enough to keep it hanging; therefore, wavy noodle strands are formed and maintained during processing. Other than the physical springiness, the selection of ingredients also ensures high elasticity of instant noodles. Instant noodles require wheat flour with high protein content to ensure noodle strands are broken during processing, resulting in more viscoelastic noodle dough and thus more elastic noodles. Furthermore, potato starch, a key ingredient in instant noodles, has the important characteristics of low gelatinization temperature, high viscosity, and rapid swelling. Therefore, the addition of starch could further increase the elasticity of noodles. High salt content in instant noodles also increases the elasticity of noodle strands as its dissolved ions strengthen the interaction between gluten structures.


title: Instant noodles

text: The initial purpose of inventing instant noodles was to shorten the cooking time of conventional noodles. Therefore, a short cooking time can be regarded as the most decisive characteristic of instant noodles. Instant noodles are cooked in boiled water; therefore, enhancing water retention is the main method of shortening cooking time. Starch gelatinization is the most important feature in instant noodles that can enhance water retention during cooking. The two key steps that serve the function to trigger starch gelatinization are steaming and oil-frying. Starch gelatinization occurs when starch granules swell in water with heat, amyloses leak out of starch granules, and these can bind to water and increase the viscosity of the gluten matrix. Steaming offers an optimal condition for the gelatinization of potato starches. After steaming, rapid oil-frying vaporizes the free water, and gelatinization continues until all the free water evaporates. During frying, water in noodle strands migrates from the central region outwards to replace the surface water that is evaporated during frying. Therefore, a porous sponge structure in the noodle is created due to vaporization. During its migration, the water carries thermal energy from oil to the surroundings, creating heat for completing the starch gelatinization. Furthermore, the heat transfer during evaporation protects instant noodles from burning or being overcooked during frying. Moreover, as a common additive, guar gum can not only increase the elasticity and viscosity of noodles to enhance mouthfeel, it can also increase the water binding ability of noodles during cooking.


title: Instant noodles

text: A single serving of instant noodles is high in carbohydrates, salt, and fat, but low in protein, fiber, vitamins, and essential minerals.


title: Instant noodles

text: Increased consumption of instant noodles has been associated with obesity and cardiometabolic syndrome in South Korea, which has the highest per capita instant noodle consumption (74.1 servings of instant noodles per person in 2014) worldwide. The study consisted of 3,397 college students (1,782 male; 1,615 female) aged 18–29 years who participated in a health checkup. Statistical analysis using a general linear model that adjusted for age, body mass index, gender, family income, health-related behaviors, and other dietary factors important for cardiometabolic risk, showed a positive association between the frequency of instant noodle consumption and plasma triglyceride levels, diastolic blood pressure, and fasting blood glucose levels in all subjects. Compared to the group with the lowest frequency of instant noodle intake (≤ 1/month), the odds ratio for hypertriglyceridemia in the group with an intake of ≥ 3/week was 2.639 [95% confidence interval (CI), 1.393–5.000] for all subjects, while it was 2.149 (95% CI, 1.045–4.419) and 5.992 (95% CI, 1.859–21.824) for male and female students, respectively. Additionally, a study by researchers at Harvard University of 10,711 adults (54.5% women) 19–64 years of age reported a 68% higher risk of metabolic syndrome among women who consume instant noodles more often than twice a week, but not in men.


title: Instant noodles

text: Lead contamination in Nestlé's Maggi brand instant noodles made headlines in India, with some seven times the allowed limit; several Indian states banned the product, as did Nepal. On 5 June 2015, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) banned all nine approved variants of Maggi instant noodles from India, terming them "unsafe and hazardous" for human consumption.


title: Instant noodles

text: Instant noodles are a popular food in many parts of the world, undergoing changes in flavor to fit local tastes. In 2018, the World Instant Noodles Association (WINA) reported that 103,620 million servings were consumed worldwide. China (and Hong Kong) consumed 40,250 million servings and Indonesia consumed 12,540 million, the three areas dominating world instant noodle consumption. South Korea tops the world in per capita consumption at 75 servings per year. It is followed by Vietnam at 54 servings, and Nepal at 53.


title: Ibiza (film)

text: Ibiza (later retitled Ibiza: Love Drunk) is a 2018 American romantic comedy film directed by Alex Richanbach and written by Lauryn Kahn. Its story follows Harper, a 30-year-old woman from New York who travels to Barcelona on a business trip, which leads to a flirty encounter with a famous DJ. It stars Gillian Jacobs, Vanessa Bayer, Phoebe Robinson, Michaela Watkins, Jordi Mollà, and Richard Madden.


title: Ibiza (film)

text: The film was produced by Gary Sanchez Productions and Good Universe and was released on Netflix on May 25, 2018. It received mixed to positive reviews from critics.


title: Ibiza (film)

text: Harper is weary of life in New York City and tired of her job working for a PR firm. It does not help that her disgruntled boss Sarah is constantly reciting nasty one-liners at her while failing to recognize her hard work. However, in a surprise move, Sarah informs Harper that she has to fly to Barcelona for the weekend in order to secure a new client, a major opportunity for her to finally show her worth.


title: Ibiza (film)

text: When Harper informs her friends Nikki and Leah, the two decided that they are coming along, whether she likes it or not. While at a nightclub in Barcelona, Harper meets an attractive DJ, who turns out to be the superstar Leo West, with whom she has instant chemistry. Before they get a chance to spend any time together, Leo has to travel to Ibiza for his latest gig. Harper receives a call from her boss that the time of her meeting with client has changed. Harper's despair over this prompts her decision to fly to Ibiza to meet Leo.


title: Ibiza (film)

text: Despite her work responsibilities, Harper decides to follow Leo, friends in tow, to secure the man of her dreams. Harper and her friends arrive in Ibiza, and after many shenanigans, she reunites with Leo. Her friends remind her of her meeting. Harper and Leo then spend a romantic night together before her return home. The next day, Harper is late for her meeting. She and Leo separate after a rushed trip to the airport. Meanwhile, Nikki and Leah plan to impersonate Harper to help her out. Despite securing the deal, Harper's boss eventually discovers that she failed to uphold her responsibilities. Harper is then fired and decides to start her own PR firm with advice and assistance from a client Harper liaised with.


title: Ibiza (film)

text: Later on, Harper is surprised to receive a call from Leo, who invites her to meet him at a gig in Tokyo. Harper declines and instead requests Leo to visit her in New York. Leo agrees and they both confess their feelings for each other. When Harper informs her friends of Leo's call, they tell her that she should have visited Leo, which she disagrees with. That night while on the subway, Harper smiles to herself deciding if she will visit Leo or wait for his visit.


title: Ibiza (film)

text: In April 2014, Sony Pictures acquired a romantic comedy spec script written by Lauryn Kahn, with Alex Richanbach directing, under the working title "I'm in Love with the DJ". Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, and Kevin Messick served as producers under their Gary Sanchez Productions banner. In June 2017, Gillian Jacobs, Vanessa Bayer and Phoebe Robinson joined the cast of the film, with Netflix producing and distributing instead of Sony. Nathan Kahane, Joe Drake, and Erin Westerman will serve as producers under their Good Universe banner. In August 2017, Richard Madden joined the cast of the film.


title: Ibiza (film)

text: Principal photography began on September 5, 2017. The film was shot mostly in Croatia. Split and Zrće in Croatia doubled as Barcelona, while most Ibiza scenes were filmed in Krk, Croatia.


title: Ibiza (film)

text: "Ibiza" received mixed to positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The critical consensus reads: ""Ibiza" settles into an amiable comedic groove enlivened by its talented stars, even if the end result is fittingly somewhat narratively hazy." On Metacritic, "Ibiza" scored 56 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Ibiza (film)

text: The filmmakers sought cooperation with the local government of Ibiza, but the film was opposed by the Consell d'Eivissa, and the film was ultimately filmed in Croatia. Ibiza island authorities are reportedly preparing a lawsuit against Netflix for abusing the Ibiza brand and for allegedly depicting a stereotypical and unfavorable image of the island.


title: Colour Photo

text: Colour Photo is a 2020 Indian Telugu-language period romantic drama film directed by debutante Sandeep Raj. Produced by Amrutha Productions and Loukya Entertainment, the film stars Suhas in his first lead role, along with Chandini Chowdary, and Sunil. The music was composed by Kaala Bhairava, marking his second film as composer after "Mathu Vadalara". The film is set in Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh in the mid-1990s and is said to be the story of a "below-average guy".


title: Colour Photo

text: The film was premiered on aha on 23 October 2020. The films stars many debutants who previously worked in few short films including the director of the film Sandeep Raj. The film was shot completely in Machilipatnam, Vijayawada and the surrounding areas in Andhra Pradesh. At the 68th National Film Awards, it won the Best Feature Film in Telugu.


title: Colour Photo

text: The film begins with Deepthi receiving the news of her father's death. She and her husband Chandu reach their village and meet their family. Ramaraju, Deepthi's brother and the local sub-inspector, tries to talk to her, but she shuts him down and goes to her ex Jayakrishna's house in his jeep. Her friend Padmaja accompanies her, and they spot a couple arguing. Deepthi finds their issues very similar to her past with Jayakrishna, and narrates her story.


title: Colour Photo

text: Jayakrishna, the son of a milkman, studies in the same college as Deepthi's. He once saw her rehearsing for a performance as a goddess, and fell in love with her. However, unlike Deepthi, he is dark skinned and from a poor economic background. Hence, he never expresses his feelings towards her. A year later, a few seniors rag Jayakrishna by tricking him into going to Deepthi's rehearsal and then beat him up for "teasing girls". Deepthi and her friends go to the principal and explain what truly happened, and Jayakrishna gets out of trouble. However, he starts avoiding them, as he does not want anyone to think badly. Deepthi confronts and proposes to Jayakrishna. On Jayakrishna's request, she accepts to keep their relationship a secret. With her encouragement, he beats up the seniors who beat him up and earns confidence and courage.


title: Colour Photo

text: Unexpectedly, Padmaja and Jayakrishna's friend Bala Yesu "Balu" get to know about their relationship. They, too, accept to keep this a secret. Things go well for the couple until a fest, where the college principal denies Jayakrishna an opportunity to speak on the stage because of his skin tone. Jayakrishna feels insulted and gives a speech on the stage, criticising colour discrimination in front of the chief guest - a foreigner who does not understand Telugu and considers it a speech favouring engineering.


title: Colour Photo

text: The principal, along with the seniors that have a grudge against him, decides to take revenge. On Deepthi's birthday, when Jayakrishna meets her in an empty class, the seniors lock the room and allege that the couple were having an amorous relationship. Ramaraju is angered and sends her away from the village. Jayakrishna is beaten up subsequently. However, as Deepthi arrives to collect her hall ticket, Jayakrishna shows up and leaves with her as Ramaraju is stuck in the college with their friends' help.


title: Colour Photo

text: The couple feels encouraged and leaves happily. Then, Padmaja and Deepthi recollect the actual happenings. Jayakrishna was beaten up, humiliated, and his certificates were burnt by Ramaraju, thus ensuring that he gets no job in the future. He also kills Lakshmi, and a calf Jayakrishna has raised very dearly, naming it after his deceased mother. When Jayakrishna retorted, Ramaraju broke his leg, leaving him lame.


title: Colour Photo

text: Jayakrishna met Deepthi when she arrived to receive her hall ticket, and they decide to commit suicide by consuming poison. Jayakrishna dies on the spot, but Deepthi was rescued by Ramaraju. Balu was left devastated and lost his sanity. The film ends with Deepthi learning that no photo of Jayakrishna exists in the village, and she drawing his portrait, calling it the 'Colour Photo'.


title: Colour Photo

text: Director Sandeep Raj already directed and acted in few short films. He is known for his performance in short films. In 2019, he decided to direct a small-budgeted film with his short films team. Most of the actors in the film made their debut were previously YouTubers and those who did few short films. In an interview, Raj said that he wants to direct the films which have versatile story-telling.


title: Colour Photo

text: Sandeep Raj decided to feature the YouTubers he worked with. Chandini Chowdary already made her debut as a lead actress in Tollywood, also acted in few short films in early days. Suhas, the hero of the film is a good friend of Raj, also started his career from short films. Suhas also been as a comedian in many big Tollywood films. The director thus decided to cast these actors in leading roles. Actor Sunil was roped into the film as the main antagonist. Most of the other actors were also acted in few short films. In an interview Sandeep Raj revealed that Chandini Chowdary was not the first choice for the lead actress role, it is Niharika Konidela who was the first considered for the role. In an interview to "Film Companion South," Suhas told that, "My hundred short films prepared me for feature films".


title: Colour Photo

text: With the success of the music album of "Mathu Vadalara", Sandeep chose Kaala Bhairava for the film's soundtrack and background score. The story is written by Sai Rajesh from his own incidents he faced. Debutant Venkat Shakamuri handled the cinematography of the film. Kranthi Priyam was chosen as the art director who previously worked in "Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya" (2019).


title: Colour Photo

text: Principal photography of the film started on 8 January 2020 in Hyderabad. The film was completely shot in Machilipatnam, Vijayawada and the surrounding parts. The story of the film also revolves around these places.


title: Colour Photo

text: By the end of the March 2020, shooting of the film is almost done. While the post production was completed by mid-April.


title: Colour Photo

text: The film's central theme revolves around the colourism. It is based on the real-life incidents that happened the life of the film's story writer Sai Rajesh. A reviewer of "TeluguCinema" stated that the film is all about 'Colour'. He further added that "Colour Photo" deals with colourism, and boasts good dialogue writing. Despite tad slow-paced and dull initial portions, the latter half of the film has touching moments.


title: Colour Photo

text: Another reviewer of "GreatAndhra" noted that "The genre of love stories has dealt with issues including casteism, and honor killings. What other new topics would a writer come up with for a conflict point for a love story? Here, Sai Rajesh has touched upon this issue of colourism. While this issue has not been dealt with much in our films, the proceedings have little novelty."


title: Colour Photo

text: Sanat Kumar Malik of "FastNewsFeeds" wrote that "’It’s 1999 and people still discriminate based on skin colour and caste,’ rues Jayakrishna in "Colour Photo". Oh well, in 2020, we still need the hashtag ‘Black Lives Matter’ and skin lightening creams continue to have many takers."


title: Colour Photo

text: The soundtrack and background score were scored by Kaala Bhairava and lyrics by Kittu Vissapragada and Sai Kiran. The audio was released on Aditya Music.


title: Colour Photo

text: The first single <nowiki>"</nowiki>Tharagathi Gadhi<nowiki>'s"</nowiki> lyrical version was released on Aditya Music on 27 August 2020. This single received good appreciation and is the most successful song among the album. Second single "Arere Akasam" was released on 21 September 2020. The third single <nowiki>"Ekaantham's"</nowiki> lyrical version was out on 7 October 2020.


title: Colour Photo

text: "The Hans India" stated that <nowiki>"Kaala Bhairava's music is a major asset for the movie. The songs are pleasant and the background score is impressive too."</nowiki> "123Telugu" wrote in its review that <nowiki>"One of the biggest plus points of the film is undoubtedly Kaala Bhairava, the music director. His songs are superb and have a haunting effect on you. His background music is also impressive."</nowiki>


title: Colour Photo

text: A reviewer wrote that "Kaala Bhairava is here to stay. Very often, we see music directors taking small films lightly. He has done an excellent job both with the songs and the background score."


title: Colour Photo

text: Although the makers of the film initially wanted to the release the film in theaters, COVID-19 pandemic made them to opt for alternative sources. Finally, the producers of the film Sai Rajesh and Benny made a deal with OTT platform, Aha to release the film digitally. The producers and Allu Aravind announced the decision of releasing the film on Aha on 23 October 2020 on the eve of Vijayadasami festival.


title: Colour Photo

text: "The Times of India" critic Thadhagath Pathi gave 3.5/5 stars and wrote that ""Colour Photo" is a heart-wrenching love story that stays with you." Pathi praised the performances of the lead cast, in addition to music and other technical aspects. Sangeetha Devi Dundoo of "The Hindu" stated that "Colour Photo" deserves a pat on the pack for going against the norms in Telugu cinema. "Eenadu" wrote that the film is "an impressive love story in parts." While appreciating the director for picking up a storyline based on colourism, the reviewer opined that he couldn't translate it well into the screenplay. The review also stated that the lead actors have performed well in their given roles. A reviewer from "Sakshi" praised the storyline, performances and the music but criticized the slow-paced screenplay.


title: Colour Photo

text: Jahnavi Reddy of "The News Minute" wrote that the film <nowiki>"</nowiki>The intersections of biases around skin colour, caste and race are extremely complex, and the film doesn’t exactly do a perfect job addressing them". Baradwaj Rangan of "Film Companion South" stated that <nowiki>"</nowiki>"Colour Photo" is one of the better products of this [direct-to-streaming] era.<nowiki>"</nowiki>


title: Colour Photo

text: Murali Krishna CH of "Cinema Express" wrote that the dialogues and performance while pointing out there were some scenes.<nowiki>"</nowiki> "The Hans India" gave 2.5/5 stars and stated that <nowiki>"Sai Rajesh Neelam is the story writer of the movie. He penned an interesting love story with a routine conflict. The film goes well with a section of audiences because of too many predictable things that it offers."</nowiki> "NTV" wrote about the film that "Colour Photo [..] is a watchable love story with a touching climax", adding that the film didn't hanker go after low-hanging fruits, rather it showed courage of conviction and delivered some unconventional content. "


title: Nylon 6

text: Nylon 6 or polycaprolactam is a polymer, in particular semicrystalline polyamide. Unlike most other nylons, nylon 6 is not a condensation polymer, but instead is formed by ring-opening polymerization; this makes it a special case in the comparison between condensation and addition polymers. Its competition with nylon 6,6 and the example it set have also shaped the economics of the synthetic fibre industry. It is sold under numerous trade names including Perlon (Germany), Dederon (former East Germany), Nylatron, Capron, Ultramid, Akulon, Kapron (former Soviet Union and satellite states), Rugopa (Turkey) and Durethan.


title: Nylon 6

text: Polycaprolactam was developed by Paul Schlack at IG Farben in late 1930s (first synthesized in 1938) to reproduce the properties of Nylon 66 without violating the patent on its production. (Around the same time, Kohei Hoshino at Toray also succeeded in synthesizing nylon 6.) It was marketed as Perlon, and industrial production with a capacity of 3,500 tons per year was established in Nazi Germany in 1943, using phenol as a feedstock. At first, the polymer was used to produce coarse fiber for artificial bristle, then the fiber quality was improved, and Germans started making parachutes, cord for aircraft tires and towing cables for gliders.


title: Nylon 6

text: The Soviet Union began its development of an analog in the 1940s, and while basic scientific work was ongoing in 1942, the production only started in 1948 in Klin.


title: Nylon 6

text: Nylon 6 can be modified using comonomers or stabilizers during polymerization to introduce new chain end or functional groups, which changes the reactivity and chemical properties. It is often done to change its dyeability or flame retardance. Nylon 6 is synthesized by ring-opening polymerization of caprolactam. Caprolactam has 6 carbons, hence "Nylon 6". When caprolactam is heated at about 533K in an inert atmosphere of nitrogen for about 4–5 hours, the ring breaks and undergoes polymerization. Then the molten mass is passed through spinnerets to form fibres of nylon 6.


title: Nylon 6

text: During polymerization, the amide bond within each caprolactam molecule is broken, with the active groups on each side re-forming two new bonds as the monomer becomes part of the polymer backbone. Unlike nylon 6,6, in which the direction of the amide bond reverses at each bond, all nylon 6 amide bonds lie in the same direction (see figure: note the N to C orientation of each amide bond).


title: Nylon 6

text: wrinkleproof and highly resistant to abrasion and chemicals such as acids and alkalis. The fibres can


title: Nylon 6

text: absorb up to 2.4% of water, although this lowers tensile strength. The glass transition temperature of


title: Nylon 6

text: As a synthetic fibre, Nylon 6 is generally white but can be dyed in a solution bath prior to production for different color results. Its tenacity is 6–8.5gf/D with a density of 1.14g/cm. Its melting point is at 215 °C and can protect heat up to 150 °C on average.


title: Nylon 6

text: "Flavobacterium" sp. [85] and "Pseudomonas" sp. (NK87) degrade oligomers of Nylon 6, but not polymers. Certain white rot fungal strains can also degrade Nylon 6 through oxidation. Compared to aliphatic polyesters, Nylon 6 has poor biodegradability. Strong interchain interactions from hydrogen bonds between molecular nylon chains is said to be the cause by some sources.


title: Nylon 6

text: At present, polyamide 6 is a significant construction material used in many industries, for instance in the automotive industry, aircraft industry, electronic and electrotechnical industry, clothing industry and medicine. Annual demand for polyamides in Europe amounts to a million tonnes. They are produced by all leading chemical companies.


title: The Players Championship

text: The Players Championship (commonly known as simply The Players, stylized by the PGA Tour as The PLAYERS Championship) is an annual golf tournament on the PGA Tour. Originally known as the Tournament Players Championship, it began in 1974. The Players Championship at one point offered the highest purse of any tournament in golf ($20 million). The field usually includes the top 50 players in the world rankings, but unlike the major championships and World Golf Championships events, it is owned by the PGA Tour and not an official event on other tours.


title: The Players Championship

text: Despite not being a major, it has been promoted as such by the tour, dubbed "the fifth major", and is often regarded as the next most prestigious tournament in golf. This is because of the characteristics it shares with the majors, such as the high class field and its large purse. It also has a renowned host course in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida (the TPC at Sawgrass Stadium Course at which the tournament has been played since 1982, home of the iconic par-3 No. 17 "Island Green").


title: The Players Championship

text: As of 2022, the victor receives $3.6 million, the winner's share (18%) of the largest purse in golf ($20 million), and receives 80 points towards his world ranking, the largest share aside from the majors, for which winners earn 100 points. For comparison, the winners of the four individual World Golf Championships generally receive between 70 and 78 points.


title: The Players Championship

text: The winner also receives a five-year exemption on the PGA Tour (formerly ten years), a three-year invitation to the Masters Tournament, three-year exemptions for the U.S. Open and The Open Championship, and an exemption to the next three PGA Championship tournaments starting in 2018. The winner earns 600 FedEx Cup points, if a PGA Tour member.


title: The Players Championship

text: The Players Championship was conceived by the PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman; the inaugural event in 1974 was played at Atlanta Country Club in Marietta, Georgia, concluding on Labor Day weekend in early September. It moved to Texas for 1975, at the Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth in August, and then to south Florida for 1976 at Inverrary Country Club in Lauderhill, at its East Course in late February. In these first three years the event replaced existing events, the Atlanta Classic in 1974, the Colonial National Invitational in 1975 and the Jackie Gleason-Inverrary Classic in 1976, which each returned to the schedule the following year.


title: The Players Championship

text: In 1976 the PGA Tour agreed a multi-year deal to play the event up the coast at Sawgrass Country Club in Ponte Vedra Beach in mid-March, beginning in 1977. Since 1982, it has been played across the road to the west, at the Stadium Course at TPC at Sawgrass. The word "Tournament" was dropped from the title following the 1987 event.


title: The Players Championship

text: Following the 2006 event, the course underwent a major renovation, which received very positive reviews from the players in 2007. Included in the renovation was a new Mediterranean Revival-style clubhouse.


title: The Players Championship

text: Five players have won The Players and a major championship in the same calendar year: Jack Nicklaus (1978, Open), Hal Sutton (1983, PGA), Tiger Woods (2001, Masters), Martin Kaymer (2014, U.S. Open), and Cameron Smith (2022, Open).


title: The Players Championship

text: For the first thirty years at Ponte Vedra Beach, the championship was played in mid- to late March, several weeks before The Masters. (Three weeks prior for the first six seasons then two weeks prior in 1983.) It was moved to May in 2007, to the weekend including the second Saturday, as part of a restructuring of the PGA Tour. This restructuring involved the introduction of the lucrative FedEx Cup, which concludes with The Tour Championship. The change gave the PGA Tour a marquee event in six consecutive months (The Masters in April, The Players in May, the U.S. Open in June, The Open Championship in July, the PGA Championship in August, and the Tour Championship in September).


title: The Players Championship

text: With the rearrangement of 2007, the final round of The Players Championship was usually on the second Sunday of May, Mother's Day in the United States. To mark this, most players wore pink shirts or accessories on Sunday, and many in the galleries also joined them in donning pink garb. (The two exceptions were in 2011 and 2016, when the final round was on Sunday, May 15.)


title: The Players Championship

text: In August 2017, it was announced that The Players would return to March beginning in 2019, due to a realignment of the golf season that moves the PGA Championship from August to May.


title: The Players Championship

text: The playoff format was sudden-death through 2013, lately starting at the par-3 17th hole. The format was changed to a three-hole aggregate in 2014, similar to the PGA Championship, played over the final three holes, in order. If still tied, the playoff goes to sudden-death on the same three holes, but starts at the 17th.


title: The Players Championship

text: Since moving to the Stadium Course in 1982, only four playoffs have been necessary (1987, 2008, 2011, 2015). The 1987 playoff started at the par-5 16th and went to a third extra hole at the par-4 18th, with three pars by the winner; the next two ended at the first extra hole (17), also with pars by the victors. (The only playoff prior to the Stadium Course was in 1981; it also ended on the first hole with a par by the winner.)


title: The Players Championship

text: The 2015 playoff was the first for the three-hole aggregate and included three participants; two birdied 17 and the other player was eliminated after three holes. It went to sudden-death at 17 and became the first playoff at the Players to end with a birdie.


title: The Players Championship

text: The Players has yet to produce a successful title defense; victories in consecutive years. Jack Nicklaus won three of the first five events, but in alternating years on different courses. Since moving to TPC Sawgrass in 1982, five players have won twice, but the shortest span between victories is six years (Steve Elkington: 1991, 1997).


title: The Players Championship

text: The best finish by a defending champion is a tie for fifth place (1977, 1990, 2001) and the closest margin is four strokes behind (1977, 1981, 1989, 2005). The defending champion has missed the cut ten times, most recently in 2021, and has not participated (for health reasons) on three occasions (1983, 1998, 2014). The most recent top-ten finish was in 2005, a tie for eighth place.


title: The Players Championship

text: Each of Nicklaus' three victories were at different courses but none were at the Stadium Course, where the other multiple winners won both their titles. The shortest span between wins at the Stadium Course is six years (Elkington) and the longest is seventeen years (Sutton).


title: Leukocyte esterase

text: Leukocyte esterase (LE) is an esterase (a type of enzyme) produced by leukocytes (white blood cells). A leukocyte esterase test (LE test) is a urine test for the presence of white blood cells and other abnormalities associated with infection.


title: Leukocyte esterase

text: White blood cells in the urine can indicate a urinary tract infection (UTI). Positive test results may be clinically significant in the right context. The LE test is also used to screen for gonorrhea and for amniotic fluid infections. The combination of the LE test with the urinary nitrite test provides an excellent screen for establishing the presence of a UTI. Urine test strips (dipsticks) can screen for both. A urine sample that tests positive for both nitrite and leukocyte esterase should be cultured for pathogenic bacteria.


title: Leukocyte esterase

text: "It has been proposed that the reagent strip for leukocyte esterase designed for the testing of urine (Combur test UX) could be a useful tool for diagnosing spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP)." Braga et al. concluded that the Combur test UX urine screening test is a very sensitive and specific method for diagnosing SBP in the ascitic fluid of cirrhotic patients who have undergone paracentesis."


title: King of the Universe

text: King of the Universe (Sumerian: "lugal ki-sár-ra" or "lugal kiš-ki", Akkadian: "šarru kiššat māti", "šar-kiššati" or "šar kiššatim"), also interpreted as King of Everything, King of the Totality, King of All or King of the World, was a title of great prestige claiming world domination used by powerful monarchs in ancient Mesopotamia. The title is sometimes applied to God in the Judeo-Christian and Abrahamic tradition.


title: King of the Universe

text: The etymology of the title derives from the ancient Sumerian city of Kish (Sumerian: "kiš", Akkadian: "kiššatu"), the original meaning being King of Kish. Although the equation of "šar kiššatim" as literally meaning "King of the Universe" was made during the Akkadian period, the title of "King of Kish" is older and was already seen as particularly prestigious, as the city of Kish was seen as having primacy over all other Mesopotamian cities. In Sumerian legend, Kish was the location where the kingship was lowered to from heaven after the legendary Flood.


title: King of the Universe

text: The first ruler to use the title of King of the Universe was the Akkadian Sargon of Akkad (reigned c. 2334–2284 BC) and it was used in a succession of later empires claiming symbolical descent from Sargon's Akkadian Empire. The title saw its final usage under the Seleucids, Antiochus I (reigned 281–261 BC) being the last known ruler to be referred to as "King of the Universe".


title: King of the Universe

text: It is possible, at least among Assyrian rulers, that the title of King of the Universe was not inherited through normal means. As the title is not attested for all Neo-Assyrian kings and for some only attested several years into their reign it might have had to be earned by each king individually, possibly through completing seven successful military campaigns. The similar title of "šar kibrāt erbetti" ("King of the Four Corners of the World") may have required successful military campaigns in all four points of the compass. Some scholars believe that the titles of King of the Universe and King of the Four Corners of the World, with near identical meanings, differed in that King of the Universe referred to rule over the cosmological realm whereas King of the Four Corners of the World referred to dominion over the terrestrial.


title: King of the Universe

text: During the Early Dynastic Period in Mesopotamia (c. 2900–2350 BC), the rulers of the various city-states (the most prominent being Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Umma and Kish) in the region would often launch invasions into regions and cities far from their own, at most times with negligible consequences for themselves, in order to establish temporary and small empires to either gain or keep a superior position relative to the other city-states. This early empire-building was encouraged as the most powerful monarchs were often rewarded with the most prestigious titles, such as the title of "lugal" (literally "big man" but often interpreted as "king", probably with military connotations""). Most of these early rulers had probably acquired these titles rather than inherited them.


title: King of the Universe

text: Eventually this quest to be more prestigious and powerful than the other city-states resulted in a general ambition for universal rule. Since Mesopotamia was equated to correspond to the entire world and Sumerian cities had been built far and wide (cities the like of Susa, Mari and Assur were located near the perceived corners of the world) it seemed possible to reach the edges of the world (at this time thought to be the lower sea, the Persian gulf, and the upper sea, the Mediterranean).


title: King of the Universe

text: Rulers attempting to reach a position of universal rule became more common during the Early Dynastic IIIb period (c. 2450–2350 BC) during which two prominent examples are attested. The first, Lugalannemundu, king of Adab, is claimed by the "Sumerian King List" (though this is a much later inscription, making the extensive rule of Lugalennemundu somewhat doubtful) to have created a great empire covering the entirety of Mesopotamia, reaching from modern Syria to Iran, saying that he "subjugated the Four Corners". The second, Lugalzaggesi, king of Uruk, conquered the entirety of Lower Mesopotamia and claimed (despite this not being the case) that his domain extended from the upper to the lower sea. Lugalzaggesi was originally titled as simply "King of Uruk" and adopted the title "King of the Land" (Sumerian: "lugal-kalam-ma") to lay claim to universal rule. This title had also been employed by some earlier Sumerian kings claiming control over all of Sumer, such as Enshakushanna of Uruk.


title: King of the Universe

text: The earliest days of Mesopotamian empire-building was most often a struggle between the kings of the most prominent cities. In these early days, the title of "King of Kish" was already recognized as one of particular prestige, with the city being seen as having a sort of primacy over the other cities. By the time of Sargon of Akkad, "King of Kish" meant a divinely authorized ruler with the right to rule over all of Sumer, and it might have already somewhat referred to a universal ruler in the Early Dynastic IIIb period. Use of the title, which was not limited to kings actually in possession of the city itself, implied that the ruler was a builder of cities, victorious in war and a righteous judge. According to the Sumerian King List, the city of Kish was where the kingship was lowered to from heaven after the Flood, its rulers being the embodiment of human kingship.


title: King of the Universe

text: Sargon began his political career as a cupbearer of Ur-Zababa, the ruler of the city of Kish. After somehow escaping assassination, Sargon became the ruler of Kish himself, adopting the title of "šar kiššatim" and eventually in 2334 BC founding the first great Mesopotamian empire, the Akkadian Empire (named after Sargon's second capital, Akkad). Sargon primarily used the title King of Akkad ("šar māt Akkadi").


title: King of the Universe

text: The title of "šar kiššatim" was prominently used by the successors of Sargon, including his grandson Naram-Sin (r. 2254–2218 BC), who also introduced the similar title of "King of the Four Corners of the World". The transition from "šar kiššatim" meaning just "King of Kish" to it meaning "King of the Universe" happened already during the Old Akkadian period. It is important to note that Sargon and his successors did not rule the city of Kish directly and did thus not claim kingship over it. Until the time of Naram-Sin, Kish was ruled by a semi-independent ruler with the title "ensik". "King of Kish" would have been rendered as "lugal kiš" in Sumerian, whilst the Akkadian kings rendered their new title as "lugal ki-sár-ra" or "lugal kiš-ki" in Sumerian.


title: King of the Universe

text: It is possible that "šar kiššatim" referred to the authority to govern the cosmological realm whilst "King of the Four Corners" referred to the authority to govern the terrestrial. Eitherway, the implication of these titles was that the Mesopotamian king was the king of the entire world.


title: King of the Universe

text: The title "šar kiššatim" was perhaps most prominently used by the kings of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, more than a thousand years after the fall of the Akkadian Empire. The Assyrians took it, as the Akkadians had intended, to mean "King of the Universe" and adopted it to lay claim to continuity from the old empire of Sargon of Akkad. The title had been used sporadically by previous Assyrian kings, such as Shamshi-Adad I (r. 1809–1776 BC) of the Old Assyrian Empire and Ashur-uballit I (r. 1353–1318 BC) of the Middle Assyrian Empire. Shamshi-Adad I was the first Assyrian king to adopt the title of "King of the Universe" and other Akkadian titles, possibly to challenge the claims of sovereignty made by neighboring kingdoms. In particular, the kings of Eshnunna, a city-state in central Mesopotamia, had used similar titles since the fall of the Neo-Sumerian Empire. From the reign of Ipiq-Adad I (1800s BC), the Eshnunnans had referred to their kings with the title of "Mighty King" ("šarum dannum"). The Eshnunnan kings Ipiq-Adad II and Dadusha even adopted the title "šar kiššatim" for themselves, signifying a struggle over the title with the Assyrians. The title was also claimed by some kings of Babylon and Mari.


title: King of the Universe

text: The Neo-Assyrian Sargon II (r. 722–705 BC), namesake of Sargon of Akkad over a thousand years prior, had the full titulature of "Great King", "Mighty King", "King of the Universe", "King of Assyria", "King of Babylon", "King of Sumer and Akkad". Since the title is not attested for all Neo-Assyrian kings and for some only attested several years into their reigns, it is possible that the title of "King of the Universe" had to be earned by each king individually, but the process by which a king could acquire the title is unknown. British historian Stephanie Dalley, specializing in the Ancient Near East proposed in 1998 that the title may have had to be earned through the king successfully completing seven (which would have been connected to totality in the eyes of the Assyrians) successful military campaigns. This is similar to the title of King of the Four Corners of the World, which might have required the king to successfully campaign in all four points of the compass. It thus would not have been possible for a king to claim to be "King of the Universe" before completing the required military campaigns. The title seems to have had similar requirements among Babylonian kings, the king Ayadaragalama (c. 1500 BC) was only able to claim the title late in his reign, his earliest campaigns that established control over cities such as Kish, Ur, Lagash and Akkad not being enough to justify its use. Both Ayadaragalama and the later Babylonian king Kurigalzu II only appear to have been able to claim to be King of the Universe after their realm extended as far as Bahrain.


title: King of the Universe

text: Even in the Neo-Assyrian period when Assyria was the dominant kingdom in Mesopotamia, the Assyrian use of King of the Universe was challenged as the kings of Urartu from Sarduri I (r. 834–828 BC) onwards began using the title as well, claiming to be equal to the Assyrian kings and asserting wide territorial rights.


title: King of the Universe

text: The Neo-Assyrian Empire's domination over Mesopotamia ended with the establishment of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 626 BC. With the sole exceptions of the first ruler of this empire, Nabopolassar, and the last, Nabonidus, the rulers of the Neo-Babylonian Empire abandoned most of the old Assyrian titles in their inscriptions. Nabopolassar used "mighty king" ("šarru dannu") and Nabonidus utilized several of the Neo-Assyrian titles including "mighty king", "great king" ("šarru rabu") and King of the Universe. Though not using them in royal inscriptions (e.g. not officially), both Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II used the title in economic documents.


title: King of the Universe

text: The title was also among the many Mesopotamian titles assumed by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire after his conquest of Babylon in 539 BC. In the text of the Cyrus Cylinder, Cyrus assumes several traditional Mesopotamian titles including those of "King of Babylon", "King of Sumer and Akkad" and "King of the Four Corners of the World". The title of King of the Universe was not used after the reign of Cyrus but his successors did adopt similar titles. The popular regnal title "King of Kings", used by monarchs of Iran until the modern age, was originally a title introduced by the Assyrian Tukulti-Ninurta I in the 13th century BC (rendered "šar šarrāni" in Akkadian). The title of "King of Lands", also used by Assyrian monarchs since at least Shalmaneser III, was also adopted by Cyrus the Great and his successors.


title: King of the Universe

text: The title was last used in the Hellenic Seleucid Empire, which controlled Babylon following the conquests of Alexander the Great and the resulting Wars of the Diadochi. The title appears on the Antiochus Cylinder of king Antiochus I (r. 281–261 BC), which describes how Antiochus rebuilt the Ezida Temple in the city of Borsippa. It is worth noting that the last known surviving example of an Akkadian-language royal inscription preceding the Antiochus cylinder is the Cyrus Cylinder created nearly 300 years prior, and as such it is possible that more Achaemenid and Seleucid rulers would have assumed the title when in Mesopotamia. The Antiochus Cylinder was likely inspired in its composition by earlier Mesopotamian royal inscriptions and bears many similarities with Assyrian and Babylonian royal inscriptions. Titles such as "King of Kings" and "Great-King" ("šarru rabu"), ancient titles with the connotation of holding supreme power in the lands surrounding Babylon (in a similar way as to how titles like "Imperator" were used in Western Europe following the fall of the Western Roman Empire to establish supremacy), would remain in use in Mesopotamia up until the Sassanid dynasty in Persia of the 3rd to 7th centuries.


title: King of the Universe

text: The title "King of the Universe" has sometimes been applied to deities since at least the Neo-Assyrian period, even though the title in those times was also used by contemporary monarchs. A 680 BC inscription by the Neo-Assyrian king Esarhaddon (who in the same inscription himself uses the title "King of the Universe," among other titles), in Babylon, refers to the goddess Sarpanit (Babylon's patron deity) as "Queen of the Universe."


title: King of the Universe

text: In Judaism, the title "King of the Universe" came to be applied to God. To this day, Jewish liturgical blessings generally begin with the phrase "Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha`olam..." (Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the Universe...). Throughout scripture, it is made clear that the Abrahamic deity is not supposed to be the God simply of a small tribe in Palestine, but the God of the entire world. In the Book of Psalms, God's universal kingship is repeatedly mentioned; for example, Psalms 47:2 refers to God as the "great King over all the earth."


title: King of the Universe

text: In Christianity, the title is sometimes applied to Jesus. For example, Nikephoros I, Patriarch of Constantinople (c. 758–828), referred to Jesus' abandoning his terrestrial domain for a cosmic domain of infinite light and glory.


title: King of the Universe

text: In Islam the equivalent term is "rabbil-'alamin" ("Lord of the Universe"), as found in the first chapter of the Quran.


title: Professor Griff

text: Richard Griffin (born August 1, 1960), better known by his stage name Professor Griff, is an American rapper, spoken word artist, and lecturer currently residing in Atlanta. He was a member of the hip hop group Public Enemy, serving as the group's Minister of Information.


title: Professor Griff

text: During his time with Public Enemy, he was an adherent of the ideas espoused by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, which informed both Griffin's and Public Enemy's ideological views. Having served in the U.S. Army and cultivating an interest in martial arts, he trained the S1W security team that toured with Public Enemy dressed in military uniforms, doing choreographed military step drills on stage.