title: Philips Stadion

text: In April 1987, cracks in the south stand were discovered. The damage was caused by an alkali–silica reaction. PSV chairman Jacques Ruts decided to rebuild the stand, and simultaneously provide more space for business relations and sponsors. Up until then, the stadium only offered regular spectator seats. Ruts got inspired by the way American stadiums had built luxury boxes and used them for business opportunities. After the renovation (which costed 40 million guilders), the new south stand was two-tiered, with 830 VIP-seats behind glass in the middle. Also, new offices, a press room, a youth hall and a restaurant were created. The opening of the stand was celebrated with an exhibition match against Milan on 17 August 1988. Two years later, the ground changed its name from Philips Sportpark to Philips Stadion.


title: Philips Stadion

text: In the nineties, the other stands were also raised to the level of the south stand. The west and east stand were expanded in 1993, and the north stand in 1996. After completion, the seating capacity reached 30,000. Until then, the fanatic part of the PSV support would be located on the so-called L-side on standing terraces. After the renovations in the nineties, the standing terraces disappeared and the fanatic fans moved to the east stand. The renovations in the 1990s were in time for UEFA Euro 2000, held in the Netherlands and Belgium. The Philips Stadion hosted three group matches: Portugal beat England, 3–2; Sweden and Turkey ended in a goalless draw; and Italy beat Sweden, 2–1. The last major renovation was the closing of the four open corners of the stadium. The two corners on the north side were built in 2000; the corners on the south side were finalized in 2001. Along with creating more seats, the new corners had window blind-type constructions, which allowed air to flow through in order to let the grass breath. These frames can be closed during events, to protect spectators from weather conditions. The four corners were designed by Toon van Aken.


title: Philips Stadion

text: In March 2001, PSV faced 1. FC Kaiserslautern in an UEFA Cup fixture. During the match, fans were provoked by Kaiserslautern players, resulting in spectators attempting to break through a fence separating the stands and the field. After the gate was cracked, PSV coach Eric Gerets and several players had to personally stop the fans from entering the field. After this incident, problems with fan violence faded and in the summer of 2005, the PSV board decided to remove the tall fences around the pitch. They were replaced with 35 inches (90 cm) high railings keeping the spectators off the grass. Unauthorized persons who do invade the pitch will receive a €15,000 penalty and a ten-year ban from visiting the Philips Stadion. The 2006 UEFA Cup Final was held in the Philips Stadion; Sevilla defeated Middlesbrough 4–0. For the final, the stadium was temporarily named ‘PSV Stadion’, because UEFA did not allow the Philips name to be used.


title: Philips Stadion

text: Plans to further expand the ground to 45,000 seats have been examined, but turned down after the Netherlands lost the 2018 FIFA World Cup bid. In 2011, the ground under the stadium (and the training facilities) were sold for €48.4 million to the Eindhoven municipality in a leasehold estate construction. In recent years, the stadium has gone through several minor modernization programs: the fourth floor was renovated in 2008, LED-powered advertisement boarding was installed by Philips in 2009. In 2012, a modernization plan for the ground was presented. The plan included new entrances, sponsor lodges and parts of the stands. The second floor of the stadium was renovated in 2013. After PSV's reserve team Jong PSV was admitted to the Eerste Divisie, they relocated their home matches to the Philips Stadion.


title: Philips Stadion

text: The Philips Stadion is incidentally used for music concerts. During these events, the stadium offers space for around 30,000 visitors. In 1992, a version of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" was played at the stadium. Two years later, Eros Ramazzotti gave a concert at the Philips Stadion. In the aftermath, the grass suffered heavily after being trampled by concert goers. It prompted the PSV board's reluctance to hold more events at the ground. It was not until 2006 that the stadium would host a concert: Dutch artist Guus Meeuwis played three concerts in front of a sold-out crowd. Since 2006, Meeuwis has played at the stadium every year. His shows were sometimes combined with live coverage of a Netherlands football team match in case of a planned fixture. In 2007, Dutch band BLØF also played at the ground.


title: Philips Stadion

text: The stadium can be reached by a 10-minute walk from the Eindhoven main railway station, and a 15-minute walk from the Eindhoven Strijp-S railway station. Bus lines 401, 402 and 403 call at the 'Philips-stadion' bus stop, just outside the stadium. Bus 401 is a service between the railway station and Eindhoven Airport, making the Philips Stadion directly connected with the airport. In the event of major football matches or other events, the stadium has its own railway platform, the Eindhoven Stadion railway station. The platform is only reachable through a pedestrian bridge that connects directly to the stadium. The station is mainly meant for travelling away fans: the bridge leads to the away-section in the stands. The station is only serviceable by trains travelling from the direction of the Eindhoven Strijp-S railway station to the Eindhoven railway station.


title: Grisha-class corvette

text: The Grisha class, Soviet designation Project 1124 "Al'batros", are a series of anti-submarine corvettes built by the Soviet Union between 1970 and 1990 and later by Russia and Ukraine. These ships have a limited range and are largely used only in coastal waters. They have been equipped with a variety of ASW weapons and an SA-N-4 'Gecko' surface-to-air missile launcher. All were fitted with retractable fin stabilizers.


title: Grisha-class corvette

text: The designation "corvette" for these ships was a conditional adaptation as the Soviet classification was a small anti-submarine ship () (MPK). In the Russian Navy, the Grishas are expected to be partially replaced by the "Steregushchiy"-class corvette.


title: Thunderpants

text: Thunderpants is a 2002 family comedy film about a boy whose incredible capacity for flatulence gets him a job as an astronaut. The film was directed by Pete Hewitt, whose previous work included "Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey" (1991) and "The Borrowers" (1997). The script was written by Phil Hughes, based on a story by Pete Hewitt about a boy who dreams of being a spaceman, but has a problem with flatulence.


title: Thunderpants

text: Born with two stomachs, Patrick Smash (Bruce Cook) is uncontrollably and devastatingly flatulent. No more than thirty seconds after his birth, he first breaks wind, horrifying his parents (Bronagh Gallagher, and Victor McGuire) and doctor (Robert Hardy). As he grows up, Patrick's farts become so uncontrollable and destructive that his father has to flee their home, as he is often injured by his son's gaseous emissions, whose force is so strong that it can blow people over. Patrick is bullied at school as a result of his condition, but eventually finds strength in his disorder, ultimately gaining revenge on the school bully Damon (Joshua Herdman) by passing gas in his face, leaving him scarred for life. Patrick's only friend is child prodigy Alan A. Allen (Rupert Grint), who has anosmia, and, therefore, lacks the ability to smell. Alan and Patrick team up to make Thunderpants, reinforced short trousers strong enough to contain Patrick's emissions. Eventually, Patrick learns that Alan went to the US to assist astronauts who are trapped in outer space, and Patrick finds that his condition may be of use to the spacemen in peril.


title: Thunderpants

text: The film has received a rating of 67% at the film review website Rotten Tomatoes, based upon 6 reviews.


title: Thunderpants

text: "Empire" magazine wrote in their review that "Thunderpants" is "a well-made, quirky oddity for adults, but a laugh riot for kids and Beano nostalgists... underneath all the expelled air it's really just a simple tale of a boy finding his talent and making the most of it". The hosts of the "RedLetterMedia" web series "Best of the Worst" shared similar sentiments when reviewing the film with the consensus being that the movie was too charming and well-made to be considered a "bad" film.


title: Thunderpants

text: During an appearance on "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien", Paul Giamatti referred to this film as one of the high points in his career.


title: AEON (company)

text: , commonly written AEON Co., Ltd., is a Japanese multinational holding company of ÆON Group. It has its headquarters in Mihama-ku, Chiba, Chiba Prefecture.


title: AEON (company)

text: It operates all the AEON Retail Stores (formerly known as JUSCO supermarkets) directly in Japan. Meanwhile, AEON CO. (M) BHD operates all the AEON Retail Stores directly in Malaysia.


title: AEON (company)

text: ÆON is the largest retailer in Asia. ÆON is a retail network comprising around 300 consolidated subsidiaries and 26 equity-method affiliated companies. These range from convenience stores "Ministop" and supermarkets to shopping malls and specialty stores, including having owned the American chain Talbots. ÆON is Japan's single-largest shopping mall developer and operator.


title: AEON (company)

text: The name ÆON is a transliteration from the koine Greek word ("ho aion"), from the archaic ("aiwon"). The name and symbolism used in the branding implies the eternal nature of the company.


title: AEON (company)

text: The company was legally incorporated in September 1926 as Okadaya (founded in 1758). In 1970, Okadaya merged with Futagi and Shiro to form JUSCO Co., Ltd. The employees voted to name the company "Japan United Stores Company".


title: AEON (company)

text: On August 21, 2008, the corporate structure changed. AEON Co., Ltd. became a holding company while AEON Retail Co., Ltd. took over the retail operations formerly held by AEON Co., Ltd.


title: AEON (company)

text: As of March 1, 2011, all JUSCO and Saty stores under the AEON umbrella in Japan officially changed their names to AEON while all the JUSCO stores and shopping centres in Malaysia were fully re-branded into AEON since March 2012. However, JUSCO stores still operate in the Greater China region and some others.


title: AEON (company)

text: In November 2012, AEON acquired the operation of Carrefour Malaysia with an enterprise value of €250 million. All of the current Carrefour hypermarkets and supermarkets in Malaysia were then fully re-branded into AEON BiG. The acquisition of Carrefour Malaysia made AEON as the second largest retailer in Malaysia, which combined the sales from AEON Retail stores (formerly known as JUSCO) and the former Carrefour outlets. Post-acquisition, AEON's ASEAN business vice president said the retail giant targeted to open 100 outlets in various formats in the country by year 2020.


title: AEON (company)

text: AEON Stores (Hong Kong) Co., Limited was established in Hong Kong in November 1987 and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in February 1994. AEON aims to develop a chain operation in Hong Kong and offer value-for-money merchandise to Hong Kong customers.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is a public school district in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is the largest (in terms of number of students) public school system in California and the 2nd largest public school district in the United States. Only the New York City Department of Education has a larger student population. During the 2022–2023 school year, LAUSD served 565,479 students, including 11,795 early childhood education students and 27,740 adult students. During the same school year, it had 24,769 teachers and 49,231 other employees. It is the second largest employer in Los Angeles County, after the county government. The school district's budget for the 2021-2022 school year was $10.7 billion, increasing to $12.6 billion for the 2022–2023 school year.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: The school district consists of Los Angeles and all or portions of several adjoining Southern California cities. LAUSD has its own police force, the Los Angeles School Police Department, which was established in 1948 to provide police services for LAUSD schools. The LAUSD enrolls a third of the preschoolers in Los Angeles County, and operates almost as many buses as the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The LAUSD school construction program rivals the Big Dig in terms of expenditures, and LAUSD cafeterias serve about 500,000 meals a day, rivaling the output of local McDonald's restaurants.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: LAUSD has been criticized in the past for extremely crowded schools with large class sizes, high drop-out and expulsion rates, low academic performance in many schools, poor maintenance and incompetent administration. In 2007, LAUSD's dropout rate was 26 percent for grades 9 through 12. More recently, there are signs that the district is showing improvement, both in terms of dropout and graduation rates. An ambitious renovation program intended to help ease the overcrowded conditions has been completed. As part of its school-construction project, LAUSD opened two high schools (Santee Education Complex and South East) in 2005 and four high schools (Arleta, Contreras Learning Complex, Panorama, and East Valley) in 2006.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Los Angeles Unified School District is governed by a seven-member Board of Education, which appoints a superintendent, who runs the daily operations of the district. Members of the board are elected directly by voters from separate districts that encompass communities that the LAUSD serves. On December 9, 2021 Alberto M. Carvalho has accepted to be the next permanent superintendent. He is preceded by interim superintendent Megan K. Reilly after Austin Beutner's resignation.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: The seven current members of the Board of Education include Dr. George J. McKenna III (District 1), Moníca García (District 2), Scott M. Schmerelson (District 3), Nick Melvoin (District 4), Jackie Goldberg (District 5), Board President Kelly Gonez (District 6), Tanya Ortiz Franklin (District 7), and Student Board Member Parishi Kanuga.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: In the March 2015 Los Angeles City Council and School Board elections, voters approved Charter Amendment 2, which allowed the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education to change their election dates to even-numbered years. It took effect with the March 2020 primary election and the runoff in November 2020.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Every LAUSD household or residential area is zoned to an elementary school, a middle school and a high school, in one of the six local school districts. Each local school district is run by an area superintendent and is headquartered within the district.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: The Los Angeles Unified School District was once composed of two separate districts: the Los Angeles City School District, formed on September 19, 1853, and the Los Angeles City High School District, formed in 1890. The latter provided 9–12 educational services, while the former did so for K-8. On July 1, 1961, the Los Angeles City School District and the Los Angeles City High School District merged, forming the Los Angeles Unified School District.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: The merger left the Topanga School District and the Las Virgenes Union School District as separate remnants of the Los Angeles City High School District. The Las Virgenes district changed its name to the West County Union High School District. LAUSD annexed the Topanga district on July 1, 1962. Since the Las Virgenes Union School District had the same boundary as the remaining West County Union High School District, West County ceased to exist.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: In 1961, Jackson vs. Pasadena School District was a local predecessor of Crawford v. Board of Ed. Of Los Angeles. Jar R. Jackson and Lucia Jackson, noticed that the local Washington Junior High School zone in the district was separated between white and black students. They filed a lawsuit against the district spearheaded by attorney Samuel Sheats, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Pasadena. In 1963, at the Supreme Court of California, the Jacksons won through an appeal after the Pasadena Superior Court dismissed their complaint. The court ruled typically for the times, that school boards needed to refrain from intentional actions towards segregating students despite the reasons for it. However, what was different about this ruling is that it demanded an active integration of school that had a substantial racial difference. A setback to this ruling, as well as other rulings in Los Angeles City School District and surrounding areas, was the language used to ask for integration. The language implied that integration was required if it was “reasonably feasible.” This caveat was used by local school districts to claim integration was not feasible due to financial or other limitations


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: In 1963, a lawsuit, Crawford v. Board of Ed. of Los Angeles was filed to end segregation in the district. The California Supreme Court required the district to come up with a plan in 1977. The board returned to court with what the court of appeal years later would describe as "one of if not the most drastic plan of mandatory student reassignment in the nation." A desegregation busing plan was developed to be implemented in the 1978 school year. Two lawsuits to stop the enforced busing plan, both titled Bustop, Inc. v. Los Angeles Bd. of Ed., were filed by the group Bustop Inc. and were petitioned to the United States Supreme Court. The petitions to stop the busing plan were subsequently denied by Justice Rehnquist and Justice Powell. California Constitutional Proposition 1, which mandated that busing follow the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution passed in 1979 with 70% of the vote. The Crawford v. Board of Ed. of Los Angeles lawsuit was heard in the Supreme Court in 1982. The Supreme Court upheld the decision that Proposition 1 was constitutional.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: After the Crawford v. Board of Ed. Of Los Angeles was processed in Los Angeles, and just as the outcome was upheld by the Supreme Court, Judge Paul Egly, created the Los Angeles Monitoring Committee (May 1978). Helen V. Smookler was the executive director of the committee and she managed 12 members from the community, ranging from all diverse backgrounds representative of the Los Angeles demographics. Each member spearheaded a sub-committee that was charged with overseeing and working on sustaining the desegregation of "all senior high schools, majority of junior highs, and most elementary schools." The committee’s Integration project master plan (1979-1980) expanded beyond the Brown ruling because Los Angeles was a hub of multiculturalism. Hence, the “(1) logical and sensible, and (2) economical and inexpensive in time and effort and dollars” approach is to desegregate minority school pupils and integrate them into other schools. A goal of the integration process was to have small class sizes so that the diverse student population would have more individualized support when dealing with possible racial differences. By the mid-1980s the desegregation process was in compliance with the Supreme Court ruling and California propositions. However, some would say that Los Angeles is struggling with segregation again due to socioeconomic impact on minority communities, the housing crisis, and an increasingly tense political climate.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Historically, unions have long played an important role in the operation and governance of L.A. Schools. These include the United Teachers of Los Angeles, (UTLA) which currently represents over 35,000 teachers and the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA).


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: On April 13, 1970, UTLA members walked out for the first time on what was predicted to be a five-week strike. Teachers demanded raises in top level salaries from $13,650 to approximately 20,000, reductions in class size and increased spending on reading and other programs. After 23 days, the strike ended on May 13, 1970. Teachers obtained a 5% pay raise, creation of advisory panels and new reading programs.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: On May 30, 1989, approximately 20,000 UTLA members went out on strike for higher pay and more administrative control.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: In September 2018, 98% of UTLA members authorized a strike over numerous disputes and a failure of months of contract negotiations. These included familiar issues such as salary increases, more librarians and nurses, and classroom size reduction. However, a new issue also predominated the discussions—i.e., authority and control over the proliferation of charter schools. Fact-finding efforts took several months, but resulted in a ruling stating that the union had not bargained in good faith on several of the non-pay related matters. The fact-finding report failed to resolve matters and UTLA stated that a strike would proceed on January 10, 2019. On January 14, 2019, 30,000 teachers walked out in what was the first teacher's strike in Los Angeles since 1989.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Since 1995, uniforms or standardized dress codes are used in most elementary and middle schools as well as a few high schools.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Various attempts at program reform have been attempted. In one reform, individual schools were given more authority over day-to-day decisions and public school choice, authored by school board member Yolie Flores was implemented. In the 1990s, the Los Angeles Education Alliance for Restructuring Now (LEARN) and the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project (LAAMP) were created, giving principals even more authority to make changes in curriculum hopefully benefiting students. Regardless, student achievement failed to increase.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Later attempted reform led to the creation of eleven "minidistricts" with decentralized management and their own individual superintendents. Due to the cost of this additional bureaucracy, then Superintendent Romer called for reversing the measure and re-merging the minidistricts. United Teachers Los Angeles, the union representing LAUSD teachers, supported this plan. Eight numbered Local Districts arose from the merger replacing the eleven districts.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Circa 1993 about 200 LAUSD schools were required to continue year round schedules while 540 LAUSD schools had year-round schedules but were allowed to change them to traditional schedules. Due to community outcry, 539 of them reverted, especially those in the San Fernando Valley and Westside areas and several in the Harbor area.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Although grappling with economic shortfalls, the Los Angeles Unified School District continues to employ consultants. In 2008, the district employed more than 800 consultants – paid, on average, more than twice as much as regular employees – to oversee school construction. The Facilities Services Division spends about $182 million on its 849 consultants, almost $215,000 each. The division's regular employees are paid about $99,000 each. At the time, Senior Deputy Superintendent Ramon Cortines said that consultants may get the work done quickly and correctly, but said he is also concerned about the district's reliance on outside workers. "We need to look at it, to reduce the number of consultants," he said. In the seven main branches of the Facilities Services Division, there are 3,479 district employees who earn a total of about $347 million, according to district records. The division employs 849 consultants who earn a total of about $182.6 million.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: The practice has prompted concerns and a growing number of inquiries from the district's board members and LAUSD's bond oversight committee. Some district officials defend the practice, saying use of consultants ebbs and flows with the various stages of construction.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Efforts to reform the Facilities Services Division by Superintendent Ramon Cortines, from 2009–2010, has continued to result in union complaints and audit issues regarding consultants. Former Chief of Facilities James Sohn, hired on 2009, led the effort to reduce consultant payments by 20% and increase consultant company competition. However, this effort has been ridiculed by audits from Los Angeles County Controller Wendy Greuel and confidential internal audits by the Office of Inspector General in LAUSD that consistently found lax oversight and conflicts of interest. The confidential report by the OIG office, prompted by whistleblowers, found “irregularities in $65 million worth of contracts.” This includes costs that exceed pre-approved amounts by 50% and contracts worth $31 million without school board approval. James Sohn’s declaration to decrease 20% consultants costs were also shown to be disingenuous by the OIG audit report, which found many consultants switched companies with a higher billing rate, offsetting the 20% reduction and companies increased hourly billing rate prior to the 20% reduction, therefore negating any difference. James Sohn disputes these charges.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: James Sohn has also introduced a new contract type, called Agency Construction Manager (Agency CM) which claim to offer many benefits, including maximizing consultant services, lower costs, increase productivity and increase small business competition (see Construction Management). Agency CM is an attempt to replace the old consultant model of billing for an hourly rate in favor of a “lump sum task order”. Task orders are designed to provide payment for completion of a particular task, regardless of the number of hours worked. Criticisms with this include the lack of adequate tracking of consultant employees. Comparing district to consultant staffing would not be accurate. These contracts were also cited in the confidential OIG report as “vague” in detail.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Teamster union officials have also complained about layoffs within Facilities that have resulted in massive district demotions and layoffs. Teamster representative, Connie Oser, has alleged that district staff have been removed while consultant contracts have been continuously and repeatedly approved by the board, consultant employees shuffled between companies, and the use of Agency CM, which enables tracking of consultants, difficult. Superintendent Ramon Cortines and former Chief Facilities Sohn have both claimed consultants have been reduced in far greater numbers than district staff. This claim cannot be verified since the use of Agency CM contracts.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Allegations have also surfaced against James Sohn’s management staff. Many of his Executive level staff have been prior consultants. James Sohn has also been criticized for his attempt to purge all non-legally required documents in each employee computer system. After Teamsters union complaints, LAUSD halted this practice. James Sohn claimed this is a customary process done by construction programs. He did not provide any evidence to support this claim.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: On January 5, 2008, Sandy Banks of the "Los Angeles Times" reported that vandals and thieves targeted LAUSD schools in various neighborhoods during holidays. Banks said that the lack of police presence allows thieves to target schools.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Thirty-three-year-old Alberto Gutierrez sued the Los Angeles Unified School District, saying that the principal of the San Fernando High School, where he was assigned, retaliated against him when Gutierrez asked students to "think critically" about the role of the United States in the Iraq War. Jose Luis Rodriguez, the principal, says that he spoke to Gutierrez because some parents did not appreciate Gutierrez requiring students to attend off-campus screenings of "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Crash".


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: On January 31, 2012, police arrested Mark Berndt, a veteran teacher at Miramonte Elementary School, and charged him with 23 counts of lewd conduct, which included taking pictures of students who were being spoon-fed his semen. Another teacher, Martin Springer, was charged with fondling a 7-year-old girl in his class. A third teacher, a female, was accused of "aiding and abetting" Mark Berndt by sending him victims.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: That same year, on December 18, 2012, a jury awarded a $23 million settlement to a 14-year-old boy who had been molested repeatedly by his fifth grade teacher at Queen Anne Place Elementary School in the Mid-Wilshire area, one of the largest awards in the history of the school system. Forest Stobbe, a long time veteran teacher of Queen Place Elementary pleaded no contest to two counts of lewd acts on a child and repeated sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14 and was sentenced to 16 years in prison. The boy in question was 10 at the time of the abuse. At the time of trial, the boy's attorney, Stephen Estey, asked for a $25 million verdict citing the school district's history of negligence, ignoring, "a number of red flags and complaints by other victims and as a result Stobbe grew bolder and inflicted a lifetime of harm on our defenseless client." Although Stobbe had no official criminal record, the Jury ruled that the school district, "should have heeded complaints that preceded the molestation." A previous female student complained Stobbe fondled her buttocks, and two years prior to his arrest Stobbe had been seen with a female student alone in his car. Among the insurmountable evidence against Stobbe was a jar of petroleum jelly on his desk that tested positive for the boy's DNA. The Los Angeles Unified School District was found 30% liable for the damages, and was responsible for $6.9 million of the final settlement.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: In 2004, a new payroll system project began, with Deloitte Consulting engaged to customize software purchased from SAP AG. The Deloitte contract was $55,000,000 with the total cost estimated to be $95,000,000. The system went live in January 2007. As of 2008, a number of problems have been experienced with some staff getting overpaid and some underpaid, and some not getting paid at all. Deloitte representatives and District officials have pointed fingers at each other. Some of the problems have been software and hardware, some have been due to the complexity of labor agreements, salary scales, work rules and job assignments within the district.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: After his election to Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa advocated bringing control of the public school system under his office, removing power from the Board of Education. This sparked some protest from teachers, LAUSD board members and many residents of communities not within the City of Los Angeles but served by LAUSD.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: In August 2006, after a compromise was brokered which allowed the mayor large control while retaining an elected school board and allowing input to be provided from surrounding cities, California State Assembly Bill 1381 passed, giving the mayor a measure of control over district administration. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the law on September 18, 2006. The Board of Education immediately filed suit to block the law, claiming that it violates the state constitution by allowing a local government to take over an educational agency.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: AB 1381 was required to sunset on January 1, 2013, unless extended by the Legislature. On December 21, 2006, AB 1381 was ruled unconstitutional. The mayor appealed, but later dropped his appeal as two of the candidates he supported for school board were elected, essentially giving him indirect control over the school district.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: In 2013, the District approved a $1.3 billion plan with Apple and Pearson PLC to provide every student, teacher, and administrator in the district with an iPad. Under the plan, Apple would provide the iPad hardware, and Pearson would provide the software curriculum. The District abandoned the project a little over a year later after an investment of over $30 million, as many teachers were not trained on the devices and Pearson delivered only part of the desired curriculum. The failure of the project contributed to the resignation of the superintendent, John Deasy, after it was discovered he was involved very closely with Apple and Pearson during the bidding process. In 2015, the parties agreed to a $6.4 million settlement, providing cash and hardware to the District.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: On December 15, 2015, the district received an emailed threat, thought by some officials to be credible, causing the closure of all Los Angeles Unified Schools. It was later judged by Los Angeles police to have been a hoax. The email was traced to an IP address in Frankfurt, Germany. The Los Angeles Times reported that the threat did not necessarily originate from an IP address in Frankfurt, Germany. After the threat had been received at 10 p.m. the previous day, the decision to close the schools was made at 6 a.m. by Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines. Cortines had quietly submitted his resignation just four days earlier, but stepped back into authority when the crisis emerged.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti stated that because he does not control the schools, that Superintendent Ramon Cortines, not he, made the decision. People in charge concurred that their response could have been better organized. Cortines stated that he should have been contacted much less than 7 hours after receiving the threat. Though the school board president contacted police, Cortines was not contacted until they were unable to rule out a real attack, giving him minutes before school bus drivers left to make the important decision.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Former Los Angeles Police Chief and current New York Police Commissioner William Bratton referred to the closure as a significant overreaction. "We can not allow ourselves to raise levels of fear." He also suggested the incident could have been inspired by the TV series "Homeland".


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: In 2017, the non-profit The Israel Group submitted a complaint to the LAUSD regarding a workshop, “Learning About Islam and the Arab World,” that the United States branch of the Fellowship for Reconciliation (FORUSA) presented for teachers. FORUSA actively promotes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a perspective shaping its efforts to influence educators about the Middle East. One attendee of the workshop told the "Jewish Journal", "We are being told that the Palestinians are the victims and the Jews are the oppressors, categorically and totally... And we are being told that Hamas is not a terrorist group; Hamas is a noble entity defending the rights of Palestinians.” In a news release from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the human rights organization further noted that "FORUS is closely aligned with CAIR, a US-based organization that has been linked to Hamas terrorist group."


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Following greater public awareness of the workshop — the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) also spoke out, saying the workshop materials featured "substantial misrepresentations and distortions of established historical facts, omissions of relevant facts, and inflammatory language" – Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman contacted LAUSD. After reviewing the workshop's handouts, Sherman wrote, “[The Workshop] material is not just false, but is anti-Semitic and should have raised immediate red flags with LAUSD… I am concerned that LAUSD would promote an education program on the Middle East established by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FORUSA), an organization who openly supports Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), a highly polarizing movement that singles out Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, and has led to anti-Semitic hostility. The BDS movement is adverse to the foreign policy of the United States.”


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: On September 5, 2022, the LAUSD was hit by a ransomware attack. The attack, which occurred over the Labor Day weekend, disrupted "access to email, computer systems, and applications". An Instagram post from Northridge Academy High School confirmed that the attack prevented students and staff from accessing Google Drive and Schoology. Russian-speaking ransomware group Vice Society, known for its targeting of the educational sector, took responsibility for the attack.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Although the LAUSD slowly recovered from the attack, the district reportedly encountered difficulties regaining access to certain systems, and password resets initiated by the district proved to be cumbersome. Reports also emerged that the district was hit by a similar attack in February 2021, although to little success. The district also expedited its rollout of multi-factor authentication for staff members.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: That month, the login credentials of at least 23 LAUSD staff members appeared on the dark web, with at least one set of credentials connected to the district's VPN service. However, an investigation into the credentials found that they were unrelated to the attack.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: On October 2, stolen data related to the attack was released by Vice Society. The district had previously made statements that they were unwilling to pay the ransom, with superintendent Alberto Carvalho claiming that paying ransom "never guarantees the full recovery of data". Although the type of data was not disclosed by the LAUSD, credit monitoring services were provided to individuals whose personal information was put at risk as a result of the breach. An investigation into the attack, conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the White House, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is currently ongoing.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: LAUSD has 219 year-round schools and 439 schools on the traditional calendar. In 2005, 47% of all LAUSD students were enrolled in year-round schools, but that has declined with construction of new schools and reduced enrollment as a result of the economic recession, such that in the 2012–13 school year, only three schools were on a year-round schedule.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: The Edward R. Roybal Learning Center (previously known as Belmont Learning Center or Vista Hermosa Learning Center), in the densely populated Westlake district just west of downtown, was originally envisioned as a mixed-use education and retail complex to include several schools, shops and a public park. After more than a decade of delays stemming from the environmental review process, ground was broken for construction in 1995. Midway through construction, it was discovered that explosive methane and toxic hydrogen sulfide were seeping from an old underground oil field. Later, an active surface fault was found under one of the completed buildings, necessitating its removal. LAUSD had spent an estimated $175 million on the project by 2004, with an additional $110 million budgeted for cleanup efforts. The total cost is estimated by LAUSD at $300 million. Critics have speculated that it may end up costing closer to $500 million. Designed by architectural firm DLR Group WWCOT, the school opened in 2008 as the "Edward R. Roybal Learning Center".


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Another controversial project has been the development of the Ambassador Hotel property on Wilshire Boulevard in densely populated Koreatown. The LAUSD fought over the landmark with, among others, Donald Trump (with the legal battle dating back to 1989). In 2001, the LAUSD finally obtained legal ownership of the property. Plans to demolish the building, the site where Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot, were met with strong opposition from preservationists. In August 2005, LAUSD settled a lawsuit over the matter that had been filed by numerous preservationist groups: most of the Ambassador complex would be destroyed, but the Paul Williams-designed coffee shop and the Cocoanut Grove nightclub would be preserved, with the Grove serving as the auditorium for a new school to be built on the site. Demolition began in late 2005 and the last section of the hotel fell on January 16, 2006.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: The project construction became the most expensive school in the United States. It has three elementary schools, three middle schools, and four high schools including LAHSA. The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools opened in September 2010 at the cost of $578 million to serve 4,200 K-12 students. Costs in 2010 were $350 per . Amidst great controversy the district attributed the high costs to material, land prices, seismic code, and unionized labor.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: In 2005, soil samples taken at the LAUSD-owned site of a former Santee Dairy facility in South Los Angeles found high levels of carcinogens in soil used as foundation fill for a high school then under construction. A small controversy brewed on the matter, with some neighborhood activists and LAUSD critics claiming a repeat of the Belmont Learning Center fiasco. State scientists determined that the contaminated soil was sufficiently deep to pose no threat to students on the site, and the now-called Santee Education Complex opened its doors in July 2005.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: On February 9, 2000, the "Los Angeles Weekly" published an article about the environmental troubles of Park Avenue Elementary School.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Metro Charter Elementary School (also known as MCES) was a public charter elementary school that was embroiled in controversy due to its constant movement and lack of a permanent campus in Downtown Los Angeles. It was started by a group of parents who wanted to created a school that was in the Downtown area and had the effort led by Simon Ha and Mike McGalliard. On September 3, 2013, the school was established in the California Hospital Medical Center in South Park.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: The site was only meant to be temporary, and the school suffered from overcrowding at the Medical Center due to the growing student population, so the school searched for a new site. In 2016, Metro Charter expressed interest to co-locate the school with Castelar Elementary in Chinatown for the 2016-17 school year, but faced opposition from the parents, community stakeholders, and teachers of the school. Many parents of Metro Charter also opposed the plan, as the plan only assigned five classrooms with Castelar out of the twelve classrooms requested, and proposed to split Metro Charter into three separate campuses for the seven other classrooms. Because of the opposition to the plan on both sides, Metro Charter announced that they would not co-locate to Castelar, stating that the move would be "neither logistically nor financially viable."


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: For the 2017-18 year, Metro Charter chose to split the campus so that half would go to 700 Wilshire and the other half would go to the Ketchum-Downtown YMCA building, both in the Financial District. The school secured a deal with 700 Wilshire, but failed to acquire a deal with the Ketchum-Downtown YMCA building, as the YMCA lacked permits for the school. The school then signed a lease with Pleasant Hills Baptist Church in Leimert Park to house the lower grades.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: In 2018, Metro Charter announced that the school would be relocating to 2635 Pasadena Avenue in Lincoln Heights after signing a lease for two years. The Metro Charter board approved signing the two-year lease with the Los Angeles Boys & Girls Club for the new location on May 22, while also voting to terminate the leases at 700 Wilshire and at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church. On July 8, 2019, Metro Charter officially closed, with the faculty citing declining enrollment as the reason for its closure. Many of its founders and helpers expressed sadness about the school's closure, including Councilman José Huizar, who advocated for the charter's approval. He has called for LAUSD to "help find sites and address education options within Downtown to meet the growth of the Central City." Simon Ha, one of the original founders, has stated that "the irony is that the growth and popularity of Downtown — everyone wants to be here! — made it impossible for Metro Charter to remain in Downtown — we can’t "afford" to be here."


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Between 2009 and 2019, the district built three employee housing units in Los Angeles with federal tax credits:Norwood Learning Village, Selma Community Housing complex in Hollywood, and Sage Park Apartments on the northern end of the Gardena High School property in Harbor Gateway: the three together have 185 units. While the units were intended for teaching staff, the requirements of the tax credit-built complexes needing to house people making below certain salary targets made teachers ineligible for living in these complexes. Therefore Norwood and Sage Park housed other district employees including assistants to teachers, bus drivers, and staff in student dining halls; these workers make up about 50% of the residents of Selma.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: As of January 2014, LAUSD has 191 magnet schools with about 53,500 students. In 2012, the school district admitted 16,000 new students into these magnet schools out of a pool of 66,000 applications. Cara Mia DiMassa of the "Los Angeles Times" said that the schools, "designed to be among the best campuses in the district, mostly are as competitive for applicants as any popular private school."


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: LAUSD's magnet schools include gifted and highly gifted schools, as well as a large number of magnet programs focusing on students with specific interests, including multiple arts-related magnet programs, multiple science-related magnet programs, multiple pre-law magnet programs, and multiple pre-medical magnet programs. There are also dozens of specialty magnet programs for students with other specific interests.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: The district assigns points to prospective applicants based on certain conditions: students who have applied for magnet schools before receive additional points, students who live in overcrowded zoned schools receive points, and students who live in mostly minority communities receive points. In addition, the magnet schools have racial quotas. Each school is to have 30–40% non-Hispanic White students and 60–70% minority students. As of 2011, within LAUSD, 90% of the overall student body consists of racial and ethnic minorities.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: The magnet schools were established in 1977 as an alternative to forced desegregation busing. The racial quota system was devised at a time when the integration focus was on making Black and White students attend school together. Since then, the district demographics changed.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: As of January 2005, of the Hispanic students in LAUSD, 1.2% attended magnet schools. Of the White students in LAUSD, 16% attended magnet schools. Of all magnet school students, 46.5% are Hispanic, 20% are White, 19.2% are Black, 10.2% are Asian, 3.6% are Filipino, and .6% are other. The overall LAUSD student body was 72.8% Hispanic, 11.6% Black, 9% White, 3.8% Asian, 2.2% Filipino, and .6% other.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: The district has the country's largest school-based air quality monitoring network. The sensors give parents and students up-to-date access to air quality information. The district can also identify trends in specific areas and use that information to provide air filtration systems to schools affected by consistently bad air quality.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: The All District High School Honor Band members are invited in September each year to audition for the band, which includes only brass and percussion instruments. The group has marched in every Tournament of Roses Parade since 1973. The All District High School Band allows members the opportunity to perform in Bandfest, at Disneyland, and on other events. The 300 members are required "to maintain a 2.5 or greater grade point average, and stay in good standing with home school program."


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: Originally organized to meet the minimum requirement of having 100 members on the band to perform in the Rose Parade, the Honor Band has performed at Anaheim Stadium, Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood Christmas Lane Parade (now Hollywood Christmas Parade), Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Rams and Raiders football games, and Super Bowls XI, XIV, and XVII. They were present at the Governor's Inauguration in Sacramento, XXIV Olympiad Salute, and the World Series during the past 25 years. In May 1986 the band traveled to Atlanta to participate in Coca-Cola's Centennial Celebration, and at the end of the month, participated in Hands Across America where the band was the "anchor" at the event's Western terminus at the RMS "Queen Mary" pier in Long Beach, California. The band's current director Anthony "Tony" White has been directing the band for 30 years.


title: Los Angeles Unified School District

text: As of the 2011-2012 school year, in its enrollment breakdown by ethnic group, 72.3% of its students were of Hispanic origin, of any race; 10.1% of the student population was of Non-Hispanic white ancestry; 9.6% of its students were African American, while Asian American students comprised 6%, including a 2% of students of Filipino origin that formed 2.1% of the student population and Native Americans and Pacific Islanders together comprised less than 1%. Black students were six times more likely to be arrested or given a ticket than white students, which contributed to the decision in 2014 to decriminalise school discipline so that minor offences would be referred to school staff rather than prosecuted.


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: Victoria Antoinette Derbyshire is a British journalist, newsreader and broadcaster. Her eponymous current affairs and debate programme was broadcast on BBC Two and the BBC News Channel from 2015 until March 2020. She has also presented "Newsnight" and BBC "Panorama". She was one of eight women to appear in ITV's "The Real Full Monty: Ladies Night" – an entertainment documentary to raise awareness of breast cancer. She previously presented the morning news, current affairs and interview programme on BBC Radio 5 Live between 10 am and 12 noon each weekday. She left at the same time as fellow 5 Live broadcasters Richard Bacon and Shelagh Fogarty.


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: Derbyshire was born in Ramsbottom, Lancashire, to Pauline and Anthony Derbyshire. She attended Bury Grammar School for Girls, an independent school, before studying English language and literature at the University of Liverpool. Afterwards, she attended a postgraduate diploma course in radio and TV journalism at Preston Polytechnic (now the University of Central Lancashire). She has said that her father Anthony physically abused her, her mother, and her younger brother and sister. Derbyshire's mother eventually walked out, leaving with the three children; Victoria was 16 and never saw her father again. She talked about these events during an edition of the BBC's "Panorama" Derbyshire presented on domestic abuse in lockdown in August 2020. When she was 17, she had a summer job at a furniture factory which she described as the worst job in her life.


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: Derbyshire worked as a reporter for BBC Coventry & Warwickshire and later worked for BBC GMR Radio. From the latter, she joined BBC Radio 5 Live in 1998, at first deputizing for Jane Garvey on the breakfast show, and later as the regular co-presenter with Julian Worricker when Garvey moved on. The programme won Gold Sony Awards in 1998 and 2002. In January 2003, Worricker left the breakfast show, and Derbyshire was partnered by Nicky Campbell. After being on maternity leave, she took over the morning news programme in August 2004.


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: She covered some of the biggest global stories since joining 5 Live: 9/11, the Paris Concorde crash, general elections and the Olympic Games. On TV she has covered the Grenfell Tower fire and the Manchester Arena bombing.


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: In September 2010, she interviewed her own BBC Radio 5 Live superior about why he was not moving to MediaCityUK in Salford when the station moved in autumn 2011. Describing the interview, "The Guardian" said: "Derbyshire's grilling of the station's controller Adrian Van Klaveren made Jeremy Paxman's infamous interview with Mark Thompson look like a vicar's tea party." Derbyshire did not move to Salford and often presented from London. In the first three months in MediaCity she had spent only two weeks broadcasting from Salford.


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: Derbyshire has worked on television news and political programmes including "This Week", an interview series, "Victoria Derbyshire Interviews..", on the BBC News Channel, and "Watchdog", as well as "Panorama". She hosted a sports chat show on Channel 4 on Saturday mornings called "SportsTalk". She also co-presented the last episode of Central Weekend Live in 2001


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: In October 2011, Derbyshire made her debut on "Have I Got News for You". In autumn 2013, under the new editorship of Ian Katz, Derbyshire began presenting "Newsnight" while continuing to present her daily 5 Live programme. Her final Radio 5 Live show was broadcast on 5 September 2014.


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: The "Victoria Derbyshire" current affairs TV programme was her idea; she suggested it to James Harding, then head of BBC News, who commissioned it three days later. It was first broadcast on 7 April 2015 on BBC Two and the BBC News Channel. The programme was cancelled in January 2020; the BBC said that the cost was too high. and it did not attract young and diverse audiences. She was not informed of the decision before the story appeared in "The Times". The last programme was broadcast in March 2020. Since then, Derbyshire has presented "BBC News at 9" 9am-11am on BBC Two, BBC News Channel and BBC World News. She appeared on screen during a Coronavirus lockdown with the telephone number of the National Domestic Abuse hotline written on her hand, to raise awareness of the plight of people that were suffering during the first lockdown due to having to isolate with abusive partners.


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: In November 2020, it was announced that Derbyshire would be taking part in the twentieth series of "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here". She was the fourth celebrity to be eliminated alongside Beverley Callard on 30 November. In 2019, she was one of six candidates shortlisted and then auditioned to replace David Dimbleby as the regular host of "Question Time".


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: From September 2022, Derbyshire will become joint lead presenter with Kirsty Wark of BBC's "Newsnight".


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: In 2009, she won the Nick Clarke Award for her interview with a man accused and then cleared of date rape.


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: She was named "PinkNews" Broadcaster of the Year in October 2015 and 2016. In January 2016 and January 2017, she was nominated for RTS Network Presenter of the Year.


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: Derbyshire met Mark Sandell at Radio 5 Live and had an affair with him while he was married to fellow 5 Live presenter Fi Glover. After being together for 17 years, Derbyshire and Sandell married in 2018, after Derbyshire was treated for breast cancer; the couple have two children. Her younger brother, Nick Derbyshire, was a county cricketer for Essex and Lancashire between 1994 and 1996.


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Derbyshire told the "Radio Times" she would break the rule of six for Christmas to be with her family of seven. She justified her public comment by stating that, "everyone else would be doing it". However she later apologised for her comments.


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: In August 2015, Derbyshire announced on Twitter that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and would be having a mastectomy, but would continue to present her programme as often as possible during treatment. She recorded video diaries about her cancer treatment, from her mastectomy through chemotherapy and radiotherapy which went viral and were viewed millions of times.


title: Victoria Derbyshire

text: In 2018 she took part in an ITV programme, "The Real Full Monty: Ladies' Night", in which she and seven other women affected by breast cancer encouraged women to check their bodies for signs of the disease.


title: Purple prose

text: In literary criticism, purple prose is overly ornate prose text that may disrupt a narrative flow by drawing undesirable attention to its own extravagant style of writing, thereby diminishing the appreciation of the prose overall. Purple prose is characterized by the excessive use of adjectives, adverbs, and metaphors. When it is limited to certain passages, they may be termed purple patches or purple passages, standing out from the rest of the work.


title: Purple prose

text: Purple prose is criticized for desaturating the meaning in an author's text by overusing melodramatic and fanciful descriptions. As there is no precise rule or absolute definition of what constitutes purple prose, deciding if a text, passage, or complete work has fallen victim is a somewhat subjective decision. According to Paul West, "It takes a certain amount of sass to speak up for prose that's rich, succulent and full of novelty. Purple is immoral, undemocratic and insincere; at best artsy, at worst the exterminating angel of depravity."


title: Purple prose

text: The term "purple prose" is derived from a reference by the Roman poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65–8 BC) who wrote in his "Ars Poetica" (lines 14–21):


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: A fundamental problem in distributed computing and multi-agent systems is to achieve overall system reliability in the presence of a number of faulty processes. This often requires coordinating processes to reach consensus, or agree on some data value that is needed during computation. Example applications of consensus include agreeing on what transactions to commit to a database in which order, state machine replication, and atomic broadcasts. Real-world applications often requiring consensus include cloud computing, clock synchronization, PageRank, opinion formation, smart power grids, state estimation, control of UAVs (and multiple robots/agents in general), load balancing, blockchain, and others.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: The consensus problem requires agreement among a number of processes (or agents) for a single data value. Some of the processes (agents) may fail or be unreliable in other ways, so consensus protocols must be fault tolerant or resilient. The processes must somehow put forth their candidate values, communicate with one another, and agree on a single consensus value.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: The consensus problem is a fundamental problem in control of multi-agent systems. One approach to generating consensus is for all processes (agents) to agree on a majority value. In this context, a majority requires at least one more than half of available votes (where each process is given a vote). However, one or more faulty processes may skew the resultant outcome such that consensus may not be reached or reached incorrectly.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Protocols that solve consensus problems are designed to deal with limited numbers of faulty processes. These protocols must satisfy a number of requirements to be useful. For instance, a trivial protocol could have all processes output binary value 1. This is not useful and thus the requirement is modified such that the output must somehow depend on the input. That is, the output value of a consensus protocol must


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: be the input value of some process. Another requirement is that a process may decide upon an output value only once and this decision is irrevocable. A process is called correct in an execution if it does not experience a failure. A consensus protocol tolerating halting failures must satisfy the following properties.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Variations on the definition of "integrity" may be appropriate, according to the application. For example, a weaker type of integrity would be for the decision value to equal a value that some correct process proposed – not necessarily all of them. There is also a condition known as validity in the literature which refers to the property that a message sent by a process must be delivered.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: A protocol that can correctly guarantee consensus amongst n processes of which at most t fail is said to be "t-resilient".


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: In evaluating the performance of consensus protocols two factors of interest are "running time" and "message complexity". Running time is given in Big O notation in the number of rounds of message exchange as a function of some input parameters (typically the number of processes and/or the size of the input domain). Message complexity refers to the amount of message traffic that is generated by the protocol. Other factors may include memory usage and the size of messages.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Varying models of computation may define a "consensus problem". Some models may deal with fully connected graphs, while others may deal with rings and trees. In some models message authentication is allowed, whereas in others processes are completely anonymous. Shared memory models in which processes communicate by accessing objects in shared memory are also an important area of research.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: In most models of communication protocol participants communicate through "authenticated channels." This means that messages are not anonymous, and receivers know the source of every message they receive.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Some models assume a stronger, "transferable" form of authentication, where each "message" is signed by the sender, so that a receiver knows not just the immediate source of every message, but the participant that initially created the message.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: This stronger type of authentication is achieved by digital signatures, and when this stronger form of authentication is available, protocols can tolerate a larger number of faults.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: The two different authentication models are often called "oral communication" and "written communication" models. In an oral communication model, the immediate source of information is known, whereas in stronger, written communication models, every step along the receiver learns not just the immediate source of the message, but the communication history of the message.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: In the most traditional single-value consensus protocols such as Paxos, cooperating nodes agree on a single value such as an integer, which may be of variable size so as to encode useful metadata such as a transaction committed to a database.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: A special case of the single-value consensus problem, called binary consensus, restricts the input, and hence the output domain, to a single binary digit {0,1}. While not highly useful by themselves, binary consensus protocols are often useful as building blocks in more general consensus protocols, especially for asynchronous consensus.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: In multi-valued consensus protocols such as Multi-Paxos and Raft, the goal is to agree on not just a single value but a series of values over time, forming a progressively-growing history. While multi-valued consensus may be achieved naively by running multiple iterations of a single-valued consensus protocol in succession, many optimizations and other considerations such as reconfiguration support can make multi-valued consensus protocols more efficient in practice.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: There are two types of failures a process may undergo, a crash failure or a Byzantine failure. A "crash failure" occurs when a process abruptly stops and does not resume. "Byzantine failure"s are failures in which absolutely no conditions are imposed. For example, they may occur as a result of the malicious actions of an adversary. A process that experiences a Byzantine failure may send contradictory or conflicting data to other processes, or it may sleep and then resume activity after a lengthy delay. Of the two types of failures, Byzantine failures are far more disruptive.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Thus, a consensus protocol tolerating Byzantine failures must be resilient to every possible error that can occur.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: A stronger version of consensus tolerating Byzantine failures is given by strengthening the Integrity constraint:


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: The consensus problem may be considered in the case of asynchronous or synchronous systems. While real world communications are often inherently asynchronous, it is more practical and often easier to model synchronous systems, given that asynchronous systems naturally involve more issues than synchronous ones.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: In synchronous systems, it is assumed that all communications proceed in "rounds". In one round, a process may send all the messages it requires, while receiving all messages from other processes. In this manner, no message from one round may influence any messages sent within the same round.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: In a fully asynchronous message-passing distributed system, in which at least one process may have a "crash failure", it has been proven in the famous FLP impossibility result that a deterministic algorithm for achieving consensus is impossible. This impossibility result derives from worst-case scheduling scenarios, which are unlikely to occur in practice except in adversarial situations such as an intelligent denial-of-service attacker in the network. In most normal situations, process scheduling has a degree of natural randomness.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: In an asynchronous model, some forms of failures can be handled by a synchronous consensus protocol. For instance, the loss of a communication link may be modeled as a process which has suffered a Byzantine failure.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Randomized consensus algorithms can circumvent the FLP impossibility result by achieving both safety and liveness with overwhelming probability, even under worst-case scheduling scenarios such as an intelligent denial-of-service attacker in the network.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Consensus algorithms traditionally assume that the set of participating nodes is fixed and given at the outset: that is, that some prior (manual or automatic) configuration process has permissioned a particular known group of participants who can authenticate each other as members of the group. In the absence of such a well-defined, closed group with authenticated members, a Sybil attack against an open consensus group can defeat even a Byzantine consensus algorithm, simply by creating enough virtual participants to overwhelm the fault tolerance threshold.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: A permissionless consensus protocol, in contrast, allows anyone in the network to join dynamically and participate without prior permission, but instead imposes a different form of artificial cost or barrier to entry to mitigate the Sybil attack threat. Bitcoin introduced the first permissionless consensus protocol using proof of work and a difficulty adjustment function, in which participants compete to solve cryptographic hash puzzles, and probabilistically earn the right to commit blocks and earn associated rewards in proportion to their invested computational effort. Motivated in part by the high energy cost of this approach, subsequent permissionless consensus protocols have proposed or adopted other alternative participation rules for Sybil attack protection, such as proof of stake, proof of space, and proof of authority.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: A collection of formula_5 processes, numbered from formula_6 to formula_7 communicate by sending messages to one another. Process formula_6 must transmit a value formula_1 to all processes such that:


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: For "n" processes in a partially synchronous system (the system alternates between good and bad periods of synchrony), each process chooses a private value. The processes communicate with each other by rounds to determine a public value and generate a


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: It can be shown that variations of these problems are equivalent in that the solution for a problem in one type of model may be the solution for another problem in another type of model. For example, a solution to the Weak Byzantine General problem in a synchronous authenticated message passing model leads to a solution for Weak Interactive Consistency. An interactive consistency algorithm can solve the consensus problem by having each process choose the majority value in its consensus vector as its consensus value.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: There is a t-resilient anonymous synchronous protocol which solves the Byzantine Generals problem, if formula_14 and the Weak Byzantine Generals case where formula_15 is the number of failures and formula_5 is the number of processes.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: For systems with formula_5 processors, of which formula_18 are Byzantine, it has been shown that there exists no algorithm that solves the consensus problem for formula_19 in the "oral-messages model". The proof is constructed by first showing the impossibility for the three-node case formula_20 and using this result to argue about partitions of processors. In the "written-messages model" there are protocols that can tolerate formula_21.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: In a fully asynchronous system there is no consensus solution that can tolerate one or more crash failures even when only requiring the non triviality property. This result is sometimes called the FLP impossibility proof named after the authors Michael J. Fischer, Nancy Lynch, and Mike Paterson who were awarded a Dijkstra Prize for this significant work. The FLP result has been mechanically verified to hold even under fairness assumptions. However, FLP does not state that consensus can never be reached: merely that under the model's assumptions, no algorithm can always reach consensus in bounded time. In practice it is highly unlikely to occur.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: The Paxos consensus algorithm by Leslie Lamport, and variants of it such as Raft, are used pervasively in widely deployed distributed and cloud computing systems. These algorithms are typically synchronous, dependent on an elected leader to make progress, and tolerate only crashes and not Byzantine failures.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: An example of a polynomial time binary consensus protocol that tolerates Byzantine failures is the Phase King algorithm by Garay and Berman. The algorithm solves consensus in a synchronous message passing model with "n" processes and up to "f" failures, provided "n" > 4"f".


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Each process keeps track of its preferred output (initially equal to the process's own input value). In the first round of each phase each process broadcasts its own preferred value to all other processes. It then receives the values from all processes and determines which value is the majority value and its count. In the second round of the phase, the process whose id matches the current phase number is designated the king of the phase. The king broadcasts the majority value it observed in the first round and serves as a tie breaker. Each process then updates its preferred value as follows. If the count of the majority value the process observed in the first round is greater than "n"/2 + "f", the process changes its preference to that majority value; otherwise it uses the phase king's value. At the end of "f" + 1 phases the processes output their preferred values.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Google has implemented a distributed lock service library called Chubby. Chubby maintains lock information in small files which are stored in a replicated database to achieve high availability in the face of failures. The database is implemented on top of a fault-tolerant log layer which is based on the Paxos consensus algorithm. In this scheme, Chubby clients communicate with the Paxos "master" in order to access/update the replicated log; i.e., read/write to the files.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Many peer-to-peer online Real-time strategy games use a modified Lockstep protocol as a consensus protocol in order to manage game state between players in a game. Each game action results in a game state delta broadcast to all other players in the game along with a hash of the total game state. Each player validates the change by applying the delta to their own game state and comparing the game state hashes. If the hashes do not agree then a vote is cast, and those players whose game state is in the minority are disconnected and removed from the game (known as a desync.)


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Another well-known approach is called MSR-type algorithms which have been used widely from computer science to control theory.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Bitcoin uses proof of work, a difficulty adjustment function and a reorganization function to achieve permissionless consensus in its open peer-to-peer network. To extend Bitcoin's blockchain or distributed ledger, "miners" attempt to solve a cryptographic puzzle, where probability of finding a solution is proportional to the computational effort expended in hashes per second. The node that first solves such a puzzle has their proposed version of the next block of transactions added to the ledger and eventually accepted by all other nodes. As any node in the network can attempt to solve the proof-of-work problem, a Sybil attack is infeasible in principle unless the attacker has over 50% of the computational resources of the network.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Other cryptocurrencies (i.e. NEO, STRATIS, ...) use proof of stake, in which nodes compete to append blocks and earn associated rewards in proportion to "stake", or existing cryptocurrency allocated and locked or "staked" for some time period. One advantage of a 'proof of stake' over a 'proof of work' system, is the high energy consumption demanded by the latter. As an example, Bitcoin mining (2018) is estimated to consume non-renewable energy sources at an amount similar to the entire nations of Czech Republic or Jordan.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Step 2: each server amalgamates all candidates coming from its Unique Nodes List (UNL) and votes on their veracity;


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Other participation rules used in permissionless consensus protocols to impose barriers to entry and resist sybil attacks include proof of authority, proof of space, proof of burn, or proof of elapsed time. These alternatives are again largely motivated by the high amount of computational energy consumed by the proof of work. Proof of space is used by cryptocoins such as Burstcoin.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: Contrasting with the above permissionless participation rules, all of which reward participants in proportion to amount of investment in some action or resource, proof of personhood protocols aim to give each real human participant exactly one unit of voting power in permissionless consensus, regardless of economic investment. Proposed approaches to achieving one-per-person distribution of consensus power for proof of personhood include physical pseudonym parties, social networks, pseudonymized government-issued identities, and biometrics.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: To solve the consensus problem in a shared-memory system, concurrent objects must be introduced. A concurrent object, or shared object, is a data structure which helps concurrent processes communicate to reach an agreement. Traditional implementations using critical sections face the risk of crashing if some process dies inside the critical section or sleeps for an intolerably long time. Researchers defined wait-freedom as the guarantee that the algorithm completes in a finite number of steps.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: The consensus number of a concurrent object is defined to be the maximum number of processes in the system which can reach consensus by the given object in a wait-free implementation. Objects with a consensus number of formula_5 can implement any object with a consensus number of formula_5 or lower, but cannot implement any objects with a higher consensus number. The consensus numbers form what is called Herlihy's hierarchy of synchronization objects.


title: Consensus (computer science)

text: According to the hierarchy, read/write registers cannot solve consensus even in a 2-process system. Data structures like stacks and queues can only solve consensus between two processes. However, some concurrent objects are universal (notated in the table with formula_24), which means they can solve consensus among any number of processes and they can simulate any other objects through an operation sequence.


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles is an on-rails light gun shooter video game for the Wii developed by Capcom and Cavia as part of the "Resident Evil" series. The game was released for the Wii on November 17, 2009, in North America. It serves as a prequel to "Resident Evil 4", set 2 years before its events. It was released in Europe on November 27, 2009, bundled with the Wii Zapper accessory.


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: In the game, players follow the stories of two characters, Leon S. Kennedy and Jack Krauser, as they try to uncover the mysteries behind the T-virus, a deadly virus developed by the Umbrella Corporation. The game is played from a first-person perspective and involves shooting enemies and solving puzzles. It also includes a co-op mode in which two players can play together.


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: The game, along with "", is included in the "Resident Evil Chronicles HD Collection" for the PlayStation 3.


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: The game's plot revolves around the personal stories in the series. Its main focus is retelling the events of "Resident Evil 2" and "", and a new chapter is featured. For the "Resident Evil 2" segment, the player takes control of protagonists Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield, with Sherry Birkin acting as an escort character in one chapter. The "Code: Veronica" chapter features Claire, accompanied by fellow Rockfort Island prisoner Steve Burnside and later her brother Chris Redfield.


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: The first scenario in "Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles" focuses on Leon Kennedy four years after the events of "Resident Evil 2". Jack Krauser, an American Special Forces operative, accompanies Kennedy into a South American village to search for Javier Hidalgo, a former drug lord with ties to the Umbrella Corporation. They quickly discover the village has suffered a viral outbreak and is overrun with zombies and mutant bio-organic weapons (BOWs). The duo fights past the creatures and finds Javier's daughter, Manuela, who agrees to guide them through the jungle.


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: This scenario re-tells the events of "Resident Evil 2", leading up to when Leon and Claire destroy 'G' (a mutated William Birkin). Claire Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy have just arrived in Raccoon City when they learn that the city has been infested with zombies and other monsters. They decide to go to the police station, hoping to find answers and discover Umbrella's involvement in the ordeal. Birkin's own daughter, Sherry, becomes his target and Leon and Claire must protect her from becoming mutated by his G-virus. All the while stalked by the powerful Tyrant and dealing with the mysterious agenda of Ada Wong.


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: An abridged re-telling of "Resident Evil - Code: Veronica", where Claire Redfield and Steve Burnside remain together and attempt to escape Rockfort Island in a seaplane, while having to contend with the psychotic Alfred Ashford, and eventually, his sister Alexia. Claire and Steve are eventually separated and Chris arrives to help her find him, before taking on Alexia. In this iteration of the story, their father Alexander Ashford makes his first physical appearance, in a video, prior to becoming the monster known as Nosferatu.


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: "Darkness Falls" is a hidden scenario in the game that focuses on Jack Krauser during Operation Javier. Krauser narrates his thoughts as he helps Leon Kennedy battle their way through Javier's headquarters. After a fierce battle with a BOW, Krauser severely injures his arm and is forced to rely on Kennedy's assistance for survival. They ultimately defeat Javier, but Krauser is deemed physically incapable of continuing his military service. He becomes infatuated with the idea that Umbrella's mutagenic viruses can grant unlimited power and leaves the U.S. government to seek out Albert Wesker.


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: "The Darkside Chronicles" is a rail shooter. Players use the Wii-mote to target and eliminate enemies in the style of a Light gun shooter game. One can either play independently with an AI-controlled partner or cooperatively with another player. Each level features two players that share the same first-person perspective, but can freely move their own aiming reticle to independently shoot objects. Similar to "Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles", players wield a handgun with infinite ammunition and other firearms including a shotgun, sub-machine gun, and magnum. The game also features an 'evade move' technique, which allows players to dodge certain enemy attacks by successfully completing a quick time event. Players are graded at the end of each chapter based on how many enemies killed, objects destroyed, damage taken, completion time and critical hits landed.


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: There were also some gameplay changes from "The Umbrella Chronicles"; for example, headshots were made easier for players to perform and a status screen was implemented. The players health bars are now separate, players can pick up and use Green Herbs to replenish their health meter at the push of a button. However, there is only one First Aid spray per-chapter and it is automatically used when the player's health meter hits zero, completely replenishing both health meters at the same time. Players can now customize each of their weapons from Power, Rate of Fire, Capacity, Reload Speed & Stopping Power. The Handgun is now fully customizable as well. The game automatically adjusts its difficulty, depending on the players' skill level. Other new features include online leaderboards and a system to tell the players' reticle apart from each other in a co-op session.


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: The development of "The Darkside Chronicles" as a rails shooter was decided because Kawata considered it the best way to retell the scenarios that could not be included in the previous game. With this title, he wanted to put a much bigger emphasis on horror, employing a camera system that will try to convey a sense of actually being in the game. To research realistic camera shaking in hectic situations, one of the team members went out in town for a day to make motion tests with a camcorder. Another important aspect to create the game's atmosphere was achieving high-quality graphics, which Cavia used all their resources for. Kawata was very satisfied with the result and went on to say that the only thing really setting the visuals apart from next-generation consoles is the lack of HD display, also mentioning that there is a plethora of attractive content to use for more games in the "Chronicles" series and the decision of their development would largely depend on Cavia's future involvement.


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: As the game's development began before the production of "" and because of the different timeframe, Kawata ruled out connections to this CG film and "Resident Evil 5", though he hinted at the appearance of new characters and the exploration of the Birkins' and the Ashfords' family ties.


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: For the music of "The Darkside Chronicles", series veterans Shusaku Uchiyama and Takeshi Miura have been brought back to compose and arrange tracks for the retellings of the games they originally worked on, with Uchiyama being responsible for "Resident Evil 2" and Miura in charge of "Code: Veronica". Part of the soundtrack has been recorded with a group of over 40 musicians known as Tokyo Shitsunaigaku Kyokai Co., Ltd. and a chorus of 30 singers. The orchestral arrangements were done by game and anime composer Yoshihisa Hirano who is also highly experienced with classical music.


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: IGN gave "The Darkside Chronicles" 8.1 out of 10. Compliments were given to the graphics, music, playability, and longevity of the title, but the camera was said to be mildly distracting and the story can be confusing for those unfamiliar with the "Resident Evil" franchise. GameSpot gave the game a 6.0 out of 10. They stated, "The only thing scary about this light-gun game is the dreadful shaky camera."


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: In Japan, the game began as the third best-selling game in the region at 73,000 units sold. In France, the game sold 16,000 units during its debut. In North America, "The Darkside Chronicles" placed at number 151 on NPD Group's year-end 2009 sales ranking.


title: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

text: In November 2009, Capcom was forced to defend the game from the allegations from the Anglican Church of the United Kingdom, which said that it glamorizes violence and promotes the occult, with spokesperson Leo Tan stating: "This is scaremongering and typical religious hysteria. You cannot blame society's ills on video games. It's just absurd." However, the website totalvideogames.com states that, in an interview with the clergymen in question, that he never commented on the game, and the whole incident was a misunderstanding. TVG.com further goes on to say this was all likely a PR stunt.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: Hydrogen storage can be accomplished by several existing methods of holding hydrogen for later use. These include mechanical approaches such as using high pressures and low temperatures, or employing chemical compounds that release H upon demand. While large amounts of hydrogen are produced by various industries, it is mostly consumed at the site of production, notably for the synthesis of ammonia. For many years hydrogen has been stored as compressed gas or cryogenic liquid, and transported as such in cylinders, tubes, and cryogenic tanks for use in industry or as propellant in space programs. Interest in using hydrogen for on-board storage of energy in zero-emissions vehicles is motivating the development of new methods of storage, more adapted to this new application. The overarching challenge is the very low boiling point of H: it boils around 20.268 K (−252.882 °C or −423.188 °F). Achieving such low temperatures requires expending significant energy.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: Compressed hydrogen is a storage form whereby hydrogen gas is kept under pressures to increase the storage density. Compressed hydrogen in hydrogen tanks at 350 bar (5,000 psi) and 700 bar (10,000 psi) is used for hydrogen tank systems in vehicles, based on type IV carbon-composite technology. Car manufacturers have been developing this solution, such as Honda or Nissan.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: Liquid hydrogen tanks for cars, producing for example the BMW Hydrogen 7. Japan has a liquid hydrogen (LH2) storage site in Kobe port. Hydrogen is liquefied by reducing its temperature to −253 °C, similar to liquefied natural gas (LNG) which is stored at −162 °C. A potential efficiency loss of only 12.79% can be achieved, or 4.26 kW⋅h/kg out of 33.3 kW⋅h/kg.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: Chemical storage could offer high storage performance due to the high storage densities. For example, supercritical hydrogen at 30 °C and 500 bar only has a density of 15.0 mol/L while methanol has a density of 49.5 mol H/L methanol and saturated dimethyl ether at 30 °C and 7 bar has a density of 42.1 mol H/L dimethyl ether.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: Regeneration of storage material is problematic. A large number of chemical storage systems have been investigated. H release can be induced by hydrolysis reactions or catalyzed dehydrogenation reactions. Illustrative storage compounds are hydrocarbons, boron hydrides, ammonia, and alane etc. A most promising chemical approach is electrochemical hydrogen storage, as the release of hydrogen can be controlled by the applied electricity. Most of the materials listed below can be directly used for electrochemical hydrogen storage.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: As shown before, nanomaterials offer advantage for hydrogen storage systems. Nanomaterials offer an alternative that overcomes the two major barriers of bulk materials, rate of sorption and release temperature.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: Enhancement of sorption kinetics and storage capacity can be improved through nanomaterial-based catalyst doping, as shown in the work of the Clean Energy Research Center in the University of South Florida. This research group studied LiBH doped with nickel nanoparticles and analyzed the weight loss and release temperature of the different species. They observed that an increasing amount of nanocatalyst lowers the release temperature by approximately 20 °C and increases the weight loss of the material by 2-3%. The optimum amount of Ni particles was found to be 3 mol%, for which the temperature was within the limits established (around 100 °C) and the weight loss was notably greater than the undoped species.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: The rate of hydrogen sorption improves at the nanoscale due to the short diffusion distance in comparison to bulk materials. They also have favorable surface-area-to-volume ratio.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: The release temperature of a material is defined as the temperature at which the desorption process begins. The energy or temperature to induce release affects the cost of any chemical storage strategy. If the hydrogen is bound too weakly, the pressure needed for regeneration is high, thereby cancelling any energy savings. The target for onboard hydrogen fuel systems is roughly <100 °C for release and <700 bar for recharge (20–60 kJ/mol H). A modified van ’t Hoff equation, relates temperature and partial pressure of hydrogen during the desorption process. The modifications to the standard equation are related to size effects at the nanoscale.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: Where is the partial pressure of hydrogen, is the enthalpy of the sorption process (exothermic), is the change in entropy, is the ideal gas constant, T is the temperature in Kelvin, is the molar volume of the metal, is the radius of the nanoparticle and is the surface free energy of the particle.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: From the above relation we see that the enthalpy and entropy change of desorption processes depend on the radius of the nanoparticle. Moreover, a new term is included that takes into account the specific surface area of the particle and it can be mathematically proven that a decrease in particle radius leads to a decrease in the release temperature for a given partial pressure.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: Current approach to reduce CO includes capturing and storing from facilities across the world. However, storage poses technical and economic barriers preventing global scale application. To utilize CO at the point source, CO hydrogenation is a realistic and practical approach. Conventional hydrogenation reduces unsaturated organic compounds by addition of H. One method of CO hydrogenation is via the methanol pathway. Methanol can be used to produce long chain hydrocarbons. Some barriers of CO hydrogenation includes purification of captured CO, H source from splitting water and energy inputs for hydrogenation. To overcome these barriers, we can further develop green H technology and encourage catalyst research at industrial and academic level. For industrial applications, CO is often converted to methanol. Until now, much progress has been made for CO to C1 molecules. However, CO to high value molecules still face many roadblocks and the future of CO hydrogenation depends on the advancement of catalytic technologies.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: Metal hydrides, such as MgH, NaAlH, LiAlH, LiH, LaNiH, TiFeH, ammonia borane, and palladium hydride represent sources of stored hydrogen. Again the persistent problems are the % weight of Hthat they carry and the reversibility of the storage process. Some are easy-to-fuel liquids at ambient temperature and pressure, whereas others are solids which could be turned into pellets. These materials have good energy density, although their specific energy is often worse than the leading hydrocarbon fuels.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: An alternative method for lowering dissociation temperatures is doping with activators. This strategy has been used for aluminium hydride, but the complex synthesis makes the approach unattractive.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: Proposed hydrides for use in a hydrogen economy include simple hydrides of magnesium or transition metals and complex metal hydrides, typically containing sodium, lithium, or calcium and aluminium or boron. Hydrides chosen for storage applications provide low reactivity (high safety) and high hydrogen storage densities. Leading candidates are lithium hydride, sodium borohydride, lithium aluminium hydride and ammonia borane. A French company McPhy Energy is developing the first industrial product, based on magnesium hydride, already sold to some major clients such as Iwatani and ENEL.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: The phosphino-borane on the left accepts one equivalent of hydrogen at one atmosphere and 25 °C and expels it again by heating to 100 °C. The storage capacity is 0.25 wt%.


title: Hydrogen storage

text: Hydrogen can be produced using aluminium by reacting it with water. It was previously believed that, to react with water, aluminium must be stripped of its natural oxide layer using caustic substances, alloys, or mixing with gallium (which produces aluminium nanoparticles that allow 90% of the aluminium to react). It has since been demonstrated that efficient reaction is possible by increasing the temperature and pressure of the reaction. The byproduct of the reaction to create hydrogen is aluminium oxide, which can be recycled back into aluminium with the Hall–Héroult process, making the reaction theoretically renewable. Although this requires electrolysis, which consumes a large amount of energy, the energy is then stored in the aluminium (and released when the aluminium is reacted with water).