title: African art

text: As a result of natural erosion and deposition, Nok terracottas were scattered at various depths throughout the Sahel grasslands, causing difficulty in the dating and classification of the mysterious artifacts. Two archaeological sites, Samun Dukiya and Taruga, were found containing Nok art that had remained unmoved. Radiocarbon and thermo-luminescence tests narrowed the sculptures’ age down to between 2,000 and 2,500 years ago, making them some of the oldest in Western Africa. Many further dates were retrieved in the course of new archaeological excavations, extending the beginnings of the Nok tradition even further back in time.


title: African art

text: Because of the similarities between the two sites, archaeologist Graham Connah believes that "Nok artwork represents a style that was adopted by a range of iron-using farming societies of varying cultures, rather than being the diagnostic feature of a particular human group as has often been claimed."


title: African art

text: Benin art is the art from the Kingdom of Benin or Edo Empire (1440–1897), a pre-colonial African state located in what is now known as the South-South region of Nigeria. The Benin Bronzes are a group of more than a thousand metal plaques and sculptures that decorated the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin in what is now modern-day Nigeria. Collectively, the objects form the best-known examples of Benin art, created from the thirteenth century onwards, by the Edo people, which also included other sculptures in brass or bronze, including some famous portrait heads and smaller pieces.


title: African art

text: In 1897 most of the plaques and other objects in the collection were taken by a British force during the Benin Expedition of 1897, which took place as British control in Southern Nigeria was being consolidated. Two hundred of the pieces were taken to the British Museum, while the rest were purchased by other museums in Europe. Today, a large number are held by the British Museum, as well as by other notable collections in German and American museums.


title: African art

text: The Igbo produce a wide variety of art including traditional figures, masks, artifacts and textiles, plus works in metals such as bronze. Artworks form the Igbo have been found from as early as the 9th century with the bronze artifacts found at Igbo Ukwu. Their masks are similar with the Fang ones, being white and black in about same parts.


title: African art

text: Yoruba art is best known for the heads from Ife, made of ceramic, brass and other materials. Much of their art is associated with the royal courts. They also produced elaborate masks and doors, full of details and painted in bright colors, such as blue, yellow, red and white.


title: African art

text: The primary ethnic groups in Mali are the Bambara (also known as Bamana) and the Dogon. Smaller ethnic groups consist of the Marka, and the Bozo fisherman of the Niger River. Ancient civilizations flourished in areas like Djene and Timbuktu, where a great variety of ancient bronze and terra-cotta figures have been unearthed.


title: African art

text: Djenné-Djenno is famous for its figurines which depict humans and animals including snakes and horses. They are made of terracotta, a material that has been used in West Africa for some ten thousand years.


title: African art

text: The Bambara people () adapted many artistic traditions and began to create display pieces. Before money was the main drive of creation of their artworks they used their abilities solely as a sacred craft for display of spiritual pride, religious beliefs and display of customs. Example artworks include the Bamana n'tomo mask. Other statues were created for people such as hunters and farmers so others could leave offerings after long farming seasons or group hunts. The stylistic variations in Bambara art are extreme sculptures, masks and headdresses display either stylized or realistic features, and either weathered or encrusted patinas. Until quite recently, the function of Bambara pieces was shrouded in mystery, but in the last twenty years, field studies have revealed that certain types of figures and headdresses were associated with a number of the societies that structure Bambara life. During the 1970s a group of approximately twenty figures, masks and TjiWara headdresses belonging to the so-called 'Segou style' were identified. The style is distinct and recognizable by its typical flat faces, arrow-shaped noses, all-over body triangular scarifications and, on the figures, splayed hands.


title: African art

text: There are three major and one minor type of Bambara mask. The first type, used by the N'tomo society, has a typical comb-like structure above the face, is worn during dances and may be covered with cowrie shells. The second type of mask, associated with the Komo society, has a spherical head with two antelope horns on the top and an enlarged, flattened mouth. They are used during dances, but some have a thickly encrusted patina acquired during other ceremonies in which libations are poured over them.


title: African art

text: The third type has connections with the Nama society and is carved in the form of an articulated bird's head, while the fourth, minor type, represents a stylized animal head and is used by the Kore society. Other Bambara masks are known to exist, but unlike those described above, they cannot be linked to specific societies or ceremonies. Bambara carvers have established a reputation for the zoomorphic headdresses worn by Tji-Wara society members. Although they are all different, they all display a highly abstract body, often incorporating a zig-zag motif, which represents the sun's course from east to west, and a head with two large horns. Bambara members of the Tji-Wara society wear the headdress while dancing in their fields at sowing time, hoping to increase the crop yield.


title: African art

text: Bambara statuettes are primarily used during the annual ceremonies of the Guan society. During these ceremonies, a group of up to seven figures, measuring from 80 to 130 cm in height, are removed from their sanctuaries by the elder members of the society. The sculptures are washed, re-oiled and sacrifices are offered to them at their shrines. These figures – some of which date from between the 14th and 16th centuries – usually display a typical crested coiffure, often adorned with a talisman.


title: African art

text: Two of these figures were ascribed great significance: a seated or standing maternity figure called Guandousou – known in the West as 'Bambara Queen' – and a male figure called Guantigui, who usually appears holding a knife. The two figures were surrounded by Guannyeni attendant figures standing or seated in various positions, holding a vessel, or a musical instrument, or their breasts. During the 1970s, numerous fakes from Bamako which were based on these sculptures entered the market. They were produced in Bamako.


title: African art

text: Other Bambara figures, called Dyonyeni, are thought to be associated with either the southern Dyo society or the Kwore society. These female or hermaphrodite figures usually appear with geometric features such as large conical breasts and measure between 40 and 85 cm in height. The blacksmith members of the Dyo society used them during dances to celebrate the end of their initiation ceremonies. They were handled, held by dancers and placed in the middle of the ceremonial circle.


title: African art

text: Among the corpus of Bambara figures, Boh sculptures are perhaps the best known. These statues represent a highly stylized animal or human figure, and are made of wood which is repeatedly covered in thick layers of earth impregnated with sacrificial materials such as millet, chicken or goat blood, kola nuts and alcoholic drinks. They were employed by the Kono and the Komo societies and served as receptacles for spiritual forces, and could, in turn, be used for apotropaic purposes.


title: African art

text: Dogon art consists primarily of sculptures. Their art revolves around Dogon religious values, ideals, and freedoms (Laude, 19). Dogon sculptures are not made to be seen publicly, and are commonly hidden from the public eye within the houses of families, sanctuaries, or kept with the Hogon (Laude, 20). The importance of secrecy is due to the symbolic meaning behind the pieces and the process by which they are made.


title: African art

text: Themes found throughout Dogon sculpture consist of figures with raised arms, superimposed bearded figures, horsemen, stools with caryatids, women with children, figures covering their faces, women grinding pearl millet, women bearing vessels on their heads, donkeys bearing cups, musicians, dogs, quadruped-shaped troughs or benches, figures bending from the waist, mirror-images, aproned figures, and standing figures (Laude, 46–52). Signs of other contacts and origins are evident in Dogon art. The Dogon people were not the first inhabitants of the cliffs of Bandiagara. Influence from Tellem art is evident in Dogon art because of its rectilinear designs (Laude, 24).


title: African art

text: Dogon art is extremely versatile, although common stylistic characteristics – such as a tendency towards stylization – are apparent on the statues. Their art deals with the myths whose complex ensemble regulates the life of the individual. The sculptures are preserved in innumerable sites of worship, personal or family altars, altars for rain, altars to protect hunters, in market. As a general characterization of Dogon statues, one could say that they render the human body in a simplified way, reducing it to its essentials. Some are extremely elongated with emphasis on geometric forms. The subjective impression is one of immobility with a mysterious sense of a solemn gravity and serene majesty, although conveying at the same time a latent movement. Dogon sculpture recreates the hermaphroditic silhouettes of the Tellem, featuring raised arms and a thick patina made of blood and millet beer. The four Nommo couples, the mythical ancestors born of the god Amma, ornament stools, pillars or men's meeting houses, door locks, and granary doors. The primordial couple is represented sitting on a stool, the base of which depicts the earth while the upper surface represents the sky; the two are interconnected by the Nommo. The seated female figures, their hands on their abdomen, are linked to the fertility cult, incarnating the first ancestor who died in childbirth, and are the object of offerings of food and sacrifices by women who are expecting a child.


title: African art

text: Kneeling statues of protective spirits are placed at the head of the dead to absorb their spiritual strength and to be their intermediaries with the world of the dead, into which they accompany the deceased before once again being placed on the shrines of the ancestors. Horsemen are reminders of the fact that, according to myth, the horse was the first animal present on earth. The Dogon style has evolved into a kind of cubism: ovoid head, squared shoulders, tapered extremities, pointed breasts, forearms, and thighs on a parallel plane, hairdos stylized by three or four incised lines. Dogon sculptures serve as a physical medium in initiations and as an explanation of the world. They serve to transmit an understanding to the initiated, who will decipher the statue according to the level of their knowledge. Carved animal figures, such as dogs and ostriches, are placed on village foundation altars to commemorate sacrificed animals, while granary doors, stools and house posts are also adorned with figures and symbols.


title: African art

text: There are nearly eighty styles of masks, but their basic characteristic is great boldness in the use of geometric shapes, independent of the various animals they are supposed to represent. The structure of a large number of masks is based on the interplay of vertical and horizontal lines and shapes. Another large group has triangular, conic shapes. All masks have large geometric eyes and stylized features. The masks are often polychrome, but on many the color is lost; after the ceremonies they were left on the ground and quickly deteriorated because of termites and other conditions. The Dogon continue an ancient masquerading tradition, which commemorates the origin of death. According to their myths, death came into the world as a result of primeval man's transgressions against the divine order. Dama memorial ceremonies are held to accompany the dead into the ancestral realm and restore order to the universe. The performance of masqueraders – sometimes as many as 400 – at these ceremonies is considered absolutely necessary. In the case of the dama, the timing, types of masks involved, and other ritual elements are often specific to one or two villages and may not resemble those seen in locations only several kilometres distant. The masks also appear during baga-bundo rites performed by small numbers of masqueraders before the burial of a male Dogon. Dogon masks evoke the form of animals associated with their mythology, yet their significance is only understood by the highest ranking cult members whose role is to explain the meaning of each mask to a captivated audience.


title: African art

text: Burkina Faso is a small, landlocked country north of Ghana and south of Mali and Niger. Economically, it is one of the four or five poorest countries in the world. Culturally, it is extremely rich. In part, this is because so few people from Burkina have become Muslim or Christian. Many of the ancient artistic traditions for which Africa is so well known have been preserved in Burkina Faso because so many people continue to honor the ancestral spirits, and the spirits of nature. In great part, they honor the spirits through the use of masks and carved figures. Many of the countries to the north of Burkina Faso had become predominantly Muslim, while many of the countries to the south of Burkina Faso are heavily Christian. In contrast, many of the people of Burkina Faso continue to offer prayers and sacrifices to the spirits of nature and to the spirits of their ancestors. The result is that they continue to use the sorts of art that we see in museums in Europe and America.


title: African art

text: One of the principal obstacles to understanding the art of Burkina Faso, including that of the Bwa,  has been a confusion between the styles of the Bwa, "gurunsi", and Mossi,  and a confusion of the Bwa people  with their neighbors to the west the Bobo people.  This confusion was the result of the use by French colonial officers of Jula  interpreters at the turn of the century.  these interpreters considered the two peoples to be the same and so referred to the Bobo as "Bobo-Fing" and to the Bwa as "Bobo-Oule."   In fact these two peoples are not related at all. Their languages are quite different, their social systems are quite different,  and certainly their art is quite different. In terms of artistic styles the confusion stems from the fact that the Bwa, "gurunsi'" and Mossi  make masks that are covered with red white and black geometric graphic patterns.  This is simply the style of the Voltaic or Gur peoples,  and also includes the Dogon and other peoples who speak Voltaic languages.


title: African art

text: The Baoulé, the Senoufo and the Dan peoples are skilled at carving wood and each culture produces wooden masks in wide variety. The Ivorian people use masks to represent animals in caricature to depict deities, or to represent the souls of the departed.


title: African art

text: As the masks are held to be of great spiritual power, it is considered a taboo for anyone other than specially trained persons or chosen ones to wear or possess certain masks. These ceremonial masks are each thought to have a soul, or life force, and wearing these masks is thought to transform the wearer into the entity the mask represents.


title: African art

text: Ivory Coast(Côte d'Ivoire) also has modern painters and illustrators. Gilbert G. Groud criticizes the ancient beliefs in black magic, as held with the spiritual masks mentioned above, in his illustrated book "Magie Noire".


title: African art

text: Around Lake Turkana exist ancient petroglyphs depicting human figures and animals. Bantu tribes build funeral posts, carvings of human heads atop geometric designs are still created. Though the original posts no longer exist, these more recent creations are thought to be a continuation of the practice. The Kikuyu people also continue the designs of ancient tradition in the designs painted on their shields.


title: African art

text: Bantu contemporary Kenyan artists include Elimo Njau, founder of the Paa Ya Paa Art Centre, a Nairobi-based artists workshop. From the University of Nairobi School of Fine Art and Design came Bulinya Martins and Sarah Shiundu. The two by virtue of having learned many basic techniques in design are highly innovative both in style, use of color and execution. Unlike most contemporary Kenyan artist they paint using oils, acrylics and watercolors and/or combination.


title: African art

text: The Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University has a large collection of traditional art objects from Kenya including jewelry, containers, weapons, walking sticks, headrests, stools, utensils, and other objects available online.


title: African art

text: Ethiopian art from the 4th century until the 20th can be divided into two broad groupings. First comes a distinctive tradition of Christian art, mostly for churches, in forms including painting, crosses, icons, illuminated manuscripts, and other metalwork such as crowns. Secondly there are popular arts and crafts such as textiles, basketry and jewellery, in which Ethiopian traditions are closer to those of other peoples in the region. Its history goes back almost three thousand years to the kingdom of D'mt. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has been the predominant religion in Ethiopia for over 1500 years, for most of this period in a very close relation, or union, with the Coptic Christianity of Egypt, so that Coptic art has been the main formative influence on Ethiopian church art.


title: African art

text: Prehistoric rock art comparable to that of other African sites survives in a number of places and, until the arrival of Christianity, stone stelae, often carved with simple reliefs, were erected as grave-markers and for other purposes in many regions; Tiya is one important site. The "pre-Axumite" Iron Age culture of about the 5th century BCE to the 1st century CE was influenced by the Kingdom of Kush to the north, and settlers from Arabia, and produced cities with simple temples in stone, such as the ruined one at Yeha, which is impressive for its date in the 4th or 5th century BCE.


title: African art

text: The powerful Kingdom of Aksum emerged in the 1st century BCE and dominated Ethiopia until the 10th century, having become very largely Christian from the 4th century. Although some buildings and large, pre-Christian stelae exist, there appears to be no surviving Ethiopian Christian art from the Axumite period. However, the earliest works remaining show a clear continuity with Coptic art of earlier periods. There was considerable destruction of churches and their contents in the 16th century when the country was invaded by Muslim neighbours. The revival of art after this was influenced by Catholic European art in both iconography and elements of style, but retained its Ethiopian character. In the 20th century, Western artists and architects began to be commissioned by the government, and to train local students, and more fully Westernized art was produced alongside continuations of traditional church art.


title: African art

text: Church paintings in Ethiopia were likely produced as far back as the introduction of Christianity in the 4th century AD, although the earliest surviving examples come from the church of Debre Selam Mikael in the Tigray Region, dated to the 11th century AD. However, the 7th-century AD followers of the Islamic prophet Muhammad who fled to Axum in temporary exile mentioned that the original Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion was decorated with paintings. Other early paintings include those from the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, dated to the 12th century AD, and in nearby Geneta Maryam, dated to the 13th century AD. However, paintings in illuminated manuscripts predate the earliest surviving church paintings; for instance, the Ethiopian Garima Gospels of the 4th–6th centuries AD contain illuminated scenes imitating the contemporary Byzantine style.


title: African art

text: Ethiopian painting, on walls, in books, and in icons, is highly distinctive, though the style and iconography are closely related to the simplified Coptic version of Late Antique and Byzantine Christian art. From the 16th century, Roman Catholic church art and European art in general began to exert some influence. However, Ethiopian art is highly conservative and retained much of its distinct character until modern times. The production of illuminated manuscripts for use continued up to the present day.


title: African art

text: Another important form of Ethiopian art, also related to Coptic styles, are crosses made from wood and metal. They are usually copper alloy or brass, plated (at least originally) with gold or silver. The heads are typically flat cast plates with elaborate and complex openwork decoration. The cross motif emerges from the decoration, with the whole design often forming a rotated square or circular shape, though the designs are highly varied and inventive. Many incorporate curved motifs rising from the base, which are called the "arms of Adam". Except in recent Western-influenced examples, they usually have no "corpus", or figure of Christ, and the design often incorporates numerous smaller crosses. Engraved figurative imagery has sometimes been added. Crosses are mostly either processional crosses, with the metal head mounted on a long wooden staff, carried in religious processions and during the liturgy, or hand crosses, with a shorter metal handle in the same casting as the head. Smaller crosses worn as jewellery are also common.


title: African art

text: Ethiopia has great ethnic and linguistic diversity, and styles in secular traditional crafts vary greatly in different parts of the country. There are a range of traditions in textiles, many with woven geometric decoration, although many types are also usually plain. Ethiopian church practices make a great deal of use of colourful textiles, and the more elaborate types are widely used as church vestments and as hangings, curtains and wrappings in churches, although they have now largely been supplanted by Western fabrics. Examples of both types can be seen in the picture at the top of the article. Icons may normally be veiled with a semi-transparent or opaque cloth; very thin chiffon-type cotton cloth is a speciality of Ethiopia, though usually with no pattern.


title: African art

text: Colourful basketry with a coiled construction is common in rural Ethiopia. The products have many uses, such as storing grains, seeds and food and being used as tables and bowls. The Muslim city of Harar is well known for its high-quality basketry, and many craft products of the Muslim minority relate to wider Islamic decorative traditions.


title: African art

text: Art from Tanzania is known for paintings by modern artists like Tinga Tinga or George Lilanga, and for traditional as well as modern Makonde sculptures. Like in other regions, there is also a diversified tradition of producing textile art.


title: African art

text: Tinga Tinga art has roots in decorating hut walls in central and south Tanzania. It was first in 1968 when Edward Said Tingatinga started to paint on wooden sheets with enamel colours when Tinga Tinga art became known. The art of the Makonde must be subdivided into different areas. The Makonde are known as master carvers throughout East Africa, and their statuary that can be found being sold in tourist markets and in museums alike. They traditionally carve household objects, figures and masks. Since the 1950s the so-called Modern Makonde Art has been developed. An essential step was the turning to abstract figures, mostly spirits (Shetani) that play a special role. Makonde are also part of the important contemporary artists of Africa today. An outstanding position is taken by George Lilanga.


title: African art

text: The Kuba Kingdom (also rendered as the Kingdom of the Bakuba, Songora or Bushongo) was a pre-colonial kingdom in Central Africa. The Kuba Kingdom flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries in the region bordered by the Sankuru, Lulua, and Kasai rivers in the south-east of the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. A great deal of the art was created for the courts of chiefs and kings and was profusely decorated, incorporating cowrie shells and animal skins (especially leopard) as symbols of wealth, prestige and power. Masks are also important to the Kuba. They are used both in the rituals of the court and in the initiation of boys into adulthood, as well as at funerals.


title: African art

text: The Kingdom of Luba or Luba Empire (1585–1889) was a pre-colonial Central African state that arose in the marshy grasslands of the Upemba Depression in what is now southern Democratic Republic of Congo. Today, the Luba people or baLuba are an ethno-linguistic group indigenous to the south-central region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The majority of them live in this country, residing mainly in its Katanga, Kasai, and Maniema provinces.


title: African art

text: As in the Kuba Kingdom, the Luba Kingdom held the arts in high esteem. A carver held relatively high status, which was displayed by an adze (axe) that he carried over his shoulder. Luba art was not very uniform because of the vast territory which the kingdom controlled. However, some characteristics are common. The important role of woman in the creation myths and political society resulted in many objects of prestige being decorated with female figures.


title: African art

text: The Sao civilisation in Middle Africa from circa the sixth century BC to as late as the sixteenth century AD, and lived by the Chari River around Lake Chad in territory that later became part of Cameroon and Chad. Their most important artworks are the terracotta figurines. These figurines represent humans and animals. Other kinds of artifacts show that the Saos were skilled workers in bronze, copper, and iron.


title: African art

text: The Fang people make masks and basketry, carvings, and sculptures. Fang art is characterized by organized clarity and distinct lines and shapes. Bieri, boxes to hold the remains of ancestors, are carved with protective figures. Masks are worn in ceremonies and for hunting. The faces are painted white with black features. Myene art centers around Myene rituals for death. Female ancestors are represented by white painted masks worn by male relatives. The Bekota use brass and copper to cover their carvings. They use baskets to hold ancestral remains. Tourism is rare in Gabon, and unlike in other African countries, art is not spurred on by commerce.


title: African art

text: In the northern part of Botswana, women in the villages of Etsha and Gumare are noted for their skill at crafting baskets from Mokola Palm and local dyes. The baskets are generally woven into three types: large, lidded baskets used for storage large, open baskets for carrying objects on the head or for winnowing threshed grain, and smaller plates for winnowing pounded grain. The artistry of these baskets is being steadily enhanced through color use and improved designs as they are increasingly produced for commercial use.


title: African art

text: The oldest evidence ancient paintings from both Botswana and South Africa. Depictions of hunting, both animal and human figures were made by the San people dating before civilization over 20,000 years old within the Kalahari desert.


title: African art

text: The culture from Great Zimbabwe left more impressive buildings than sculpture, but the eight soapstone Zimbabwe Birds appear to have had a special significance and were presumably mounted on monoliths. Modern Zimbabwean sculptors in soapstone have achieved considerable international success. Southern Africa's oldest known clay figures date from 400 to 600 AD and have cylindrical heads with a mixture of human and animal features.


title: African art

text: Kingdom of Mapungubwe (1075–1220) was a pre-colonial state in Southern Africa located at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers, south of Great Zimbabwe. The most famous Mapungubwe artwork is a tiny golden rhino, known as the golden rhinoceros of Mapungubwe. In other graves from Mapengubwe were found objects made of iron, gold, copper, ceramic and glass beads.


title: African art

text: The Southern Ndebele people are famous for the way they paint their houses. Distinct geometric forms against stark, contrasting colours form the basis of the Ndebele style, which encompassed everything from the architecture, clothing and tools of the people. While color has almost always had a role in drawing emotions in art, the Ndebele were one of the first Southern African tribes to utilise a wide array of colours to convey specific meaning as part of their very lives.


title: African art

text: Persisting for 3,000 years and thirty dynasties, the "official" art of Ancient Egypt was centred on the state religion of the time. The art ranged from stone carvings of both massive statues and small statuettes, to wall art that depicted both history and mythology. In 2600 BC the maturity of Egyptian carving reached a peak it did not reach again for another 1,500 years during the reign of Rameses II.


title: African art

text: A lot of the art possesses a certain stiffness, with figures poised upright and rigid in a regal fashion. Bodily proportions also appear to be mathematically derived, giving rise to a sense of fantastic perfection in the figures depicted. This most likely was used to reinforce the godliness of the ruling caste.


title: African art

text: The people of Nubia, living in southern Egypt and the northern region of Sudan, developed historical art styles similar to that of their Egyptian neighbors to the north. However, Nubian art was not merely a product of colonization by ancient Egypt, but rather due to a mutual exchange of ideas and ideologies along the Nile Valley. The earliest art of the region comes from the Kerma culture, which was contemporary to Old and Middle Kingdom Egypt. Art from this period exhibits Egyptian faience along with distinct black-topped pottery of Nubian origin. In the latter Napatan period of the Kingdom of Kush, art showed more influence from Egypt as the people in the region were worshiping Egyptian gods.


title: African art

text: Many art and ethnographic museums have a section dedicated to the art from Sub-Saharan Africa, for example the British Museum, Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. Not many western museums are dedicated only to African art, like the Africa Museum in Brussels, National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., and African Art Museum of Maryland in Columbia, Maryland. Some colleges and universities hold collections of African art, for example Howard University in Washington, DC and Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.


title: African art

text: Nearly all countries in Africa have at least a national museum housing African art, often very largely from that country, for example the Sierra Leone National Museum and Nigerian National Museum in Lagos. There are also many smaller museums in the provinces.


title: African art

text: The display of African art and artifacts in European museums has long been controversial in various ways, and the French-commissioned "Report on the restitution of African cultural heritage" (2018) has marked a key moment, leading to an increase in the return of artefacts. However, there are other examples, such as the Museum of African Art in Belgrade which was opened in 1977 because of Yugoslavia's relations with many African countries thanks to the Non-Aligned Movement. The museum was opened out of the desire to acquaint the people of Yugoslavia with the art and culture of Africa since there was a deeply rooted notion about Yugoslavia sharing a friendship with African countries thanks to their similar struggles; all of the original items in the museums were legally bought by the Yugoslav ambassador and journalist Zdravko Pečar and his wife Veda Zagorac, while more recent acquisition were either bought by the museum, received as gifts from Yugoslavs who lived in Africa or were diplomatic gifts to the museum by the ambassadors of African countries.


title: African art

text: The Congolese activist Mwazulu Diyabanza has taken direct action against European museums to take back items he says belong to Africa.


title: Hamilton's Pharmacopeia

text: Hamilton's Pharmacopeia is an American docuseries, which premiered on Viceland on October 26, 2016. The show follows Hamilton Morris as he explores the history, chemistry and social impact of psychoactive substances. It chronicles Morris' travels and first-hand experiences, as well as interviews with scientists, shamans and fringe culture figures.


title: Hamilton's Pharmacopeia

text: "Hamilton's Pharmacopeia" is a documentary series created, written, and directed by Hamilton Morris. It has been produced in various forms since 2009. "Hamilton's Pharmacopeia" began as a monthly column about psychoactive drugs written by Morris for "Vice" magazine. When given the opportunity to film short documentaries to accompany his written pieces, Morris began to produce "Hamilton's Pharmacopeia" as an online documentary series starting with the release of "The Sapo Diaries" that same year. Initially the series was only available on VBS.TV, but after its release on YouTube the series began to gain a wider international following. From 2009 to 2017, Morris produced ten "Pharmacopeia" documentaries before the show began its first season on the cable television channel Viceland (now Vice TV). From 2016 to 2020, Morris directed twenty episodes of "Hamilton's Pharmacopeia" for Viceland. After delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the third season was released on January 4, 2021.


title: Hamilton's Pharmacopeia

text: The show has received widespread critical acclaim for its alternative and unusually honest approach to the portrayal of recreational drug use. Writing for "The Guardian", Tim Jonze drew comparisons between Morris' obsessive dedication to his subject and similar qualities in his father. Praising his demeanor on the show, Jonze writes: "Morris is a good presence on screen – dressed all in white, he has a sort of charming awkwardness not dissimilar to Louis Theroux (they share the same disarming smile) and he allows his subjects plenty of space to tell their stories." In another review for "The New York Times", Ross Simonini praised the show's unique tone: "Mr. Morris has a grinning, laid-back persona, with an approach not dissimilar to Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo journalism. In person Mr. Morris, son of the filmmaker Errol Morris, is bookish and intense, speaking with a fastidious attention to word choice." Hermione Hoby made similar remarks, writing that Hamilton Morris proceeds with "a mix of gonzo abandon and scholarly rigour".


title: The Iron Druid Chronicles

text: The Iron Druid Chronicles is a series of urban fantasy novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories, written by Kevin Hearne and published by Del Rey Books. All the books, including short stories, have recorded as audiobooks narrated by Luke Daniels (for the US) and Christopher Ragland (for the UK market.)


title: The Iron Druid Chronicles

text: The series is set in our world—the first two books are set in Tempe, Arizona—where supernatural creatures exist. These include witches, vampires, werewolves, demons, elementals, as well as various deities from many mythologies. The entire series is told in the first-person point of view. In the beginning, the narrative is described exclusively by ancient druid Atticus O'Sullivan (aka. Siodhachan O Suileabhain), owner of the occult bookshop "Third Eye Books and Herbs", as he becomes embroiled in the day-to-day struggle of gods, goddesses, and other supernatural creatures.


title: The Iron Druid Chronicles

text: Granuaile and Owen Kennedy (arch druid to Atticus) narrate later chapters after they become a larger part of the story.


title: The Iron Druid Chronicles

text: Literary reception for the series has been mostly positive with Publishers Weekly covering the first three books in the series.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: Asianet is an Indian Malayalam language general entertainment pay television channel owned by Disney Star (formerly "Star India"), a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company India. Asianet and its channels are operated by Asianet Star Communications, Wholly owned by Disney Star, the channel is headquartered in Kochi. Asianet HD is the first HD television channel in Malayalam.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: The channel was originally promoted by Dr Raji Menon in the mid 1990s. In late 2006, he partially pulled out of Asianet Communications, turning over control to Rajeev Chandrasekhar (Jupiter Entertainment Ventures). Star India bought a 51% stake in Asianet Communications and formed a joint venture with JEV in November 2008. In 2014, Star India took full ownership of Asianet Communications.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: Asianet’s story starts much earlier than in 1993, it starts in Moscow . Dr Raji Menon was a student there and Mr P.Unnikrishnan was the correspondent of PTI in Moscow. Dr Raji Menon became a successful businessman based in Moscow and Mr P Unnikrishnan became the General Manager of PTI in India. When Mr Unnikrishnan initiated the idea of PTI TV, Dr Raji Menon’s nephew Mr Sasikumar was appointed. When the Central government scraped Doordarsan’s monopoly, Mr Unnikrishnan was among the first to react and with Dr Raji Menon they planned to start a National channel. Four of the leading news papers and PTI itself, were to join in with Dr Menon as the Chief promotor and Mr Unnikrishnan at the helm of the Channel ( after his retirement from PTI ). Dr Menon negotiated for a transponder on the Russian satellite EKRAN, with a powerful beam over India , which meant that using a cheep spiral antenna the signal could be received all over India. In the absence of any cable connectivity in India , without the sanction to do terrestrial transmission, this was a good solution. The transponder was very costly, the satellite had the life span of two years and there were only two transponders on the satellite.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: In India ill fate hit the idea. Mr Unnikrishnan was terminally ill with lung cancer and now the whole idea was in a limbo. Mr Sashikumar and Mr Madhavankutty of Mathrubhoomi ( Delhi ) suggested tuning down the idea to a Malayalam Channel and Dr Raji Menon agreed and the first Malayalam Channel was born . Asianet’s logo is a derivative of Dr Menon’s company logo. Dr Menon’s office in Chennai became Asianet’s head office. To address the issue of cable networking a separate company called Asianet Satelite Communications was formed. Mr P Bhaskaran the renowned poet was the figurehead chairman. Dr Menon being not full time in India , on his behalf Mr Sashikumar the favourite nephew was in charge. Asianet Communications was registered with Dr C P Chandrasekhar and Mr Sashikumar as the first directors as Dr Menon as a NRI needed RBI clearance to own a media company . Dr Menon bought Uma Studio from the famous Malayalam actor Mr Madhu and this became Asianet’s Puliarkonam Studio. Mr Karunakaran the CM granted sanction to use the Electricity poles for cable networking. This was a mammoth effort.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: In the absence of bank financing 50% shares of the cable networking company was sold to Raheja Group. Dr Menon increased Mr Sashikumar's share from the initial 5% to 45% in stages. 5% of the equity was with Mr Raghu Nandan (Dr Menon’ elder brother). Dr Menon bought back the shares earlier given to Mr Sashikumar in 1999 at an agreed price, and took over full control of Asianet.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: The remaining 50% shares in Asianet Satellite communications, the cable networking company was also sold to The Raheja Group who now had complete ownership of the Cable Networking Company called Asianet Satellite Communications.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: Asianet started one more channel as Asianet Global on 6 July 2001 to cater to the Malayalees outside India, and this was later restructured into a News Channel.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: Asianet aired its first news bulletin starting 30 September 1995. Under an arrangement with the Russian embassy with the help of Dr Ratheesh Nair (current), the Gorky Bhavan was repaired and taken over by Asianet. Asianet news operated from Gorky Bhavan from 2000. The central Government sanction for a full-fledged news channel took time and hence it was launched much later than planned on 1 May 2003.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: Asianet was restructured into four companies in June 2008 (general entertainment, news, radio and media infrastructure). This move was to allow separate investments in each company. Star India started talks with the owners of the Asianet channels in August, 2008.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: Star India eventually bought a 51% stake in Asianet Communications and formed a joint venture with JEV in November 2008. The joint venture, called "Star Jupiter", comprised all general entertainment channels of Asianet 8 October 2013 Bombay 12 March Communications (Asianet, Asianet Plus, Asianet Suvarna and Asianet Sitara) and Star Vijay. Star India had reportedly paid $235 million in cash for the 51% stake and assumed net debt of approximately $20 million. It's not clear how much stake Dr.Menon held in the new Star Jupiter venture. Prior to forming the JV, it was known that the original founder had held about 26% stake.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: Star India increased its stake in Asianet Communications to 75% in July 2010 (for which Star India paid around $90 million in cash), and to 87%, by acquiring 12% stake for $160 million in June, 2013. The later move was by virtue of acquiring a 19% equity stake in Vijay TV from Chandrasekhar and Asianet Communications MD Madhavan. Following the June, 2013 investment, Asianet Communications was valued at $1.33 billion. Star India acquired 100% stake in Asianet Communications (buying the remaining 13% stake) in March 2014.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: Star India was a subsidiary of 21st Century Fox. Upon The Walt Disney Company acquiring most of 21st Century Fox on March 20, 2019, Asianet Star Communications, along with all of Star India's subsidiaries, became subsidiaries of The Walt Disney Company, and restructuring put them under Disney India.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: Asianet has a presence in over 60 countries worldwide including the Indian sub-continent, China, South East Asia, Middle East, Europe, United States and the lower half of the former Soviet Union.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: "Asianet Plus" is second Malayalam General Entertainment pay television channel owned by Disney Star. It telecasts serials, retelecast of Asianet's old serials, and movies.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: "Asianet Movies" is an Indian Malayalam language pay television movie channel that was launched on 15 July 2012. The channel is wholly owned by Asianet Star Communications, a subsidiary of Disney Star. It's HD Feed, "Asianet Movies HD", is launching soon. The channel usually telecast movies that aired on Asianet. Some movies like Chunkzz, Meri Awas Suno, 19(1)(a),Innale Vare,Heaven are premiered through the channel.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: Due to COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in India, Malayalam movie Kilometers and Kilometers released directly through Asianet on 30 August 2020 on the occasion of Onam.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: Asianet has an award ceremony for films presented annually by Asianet. Asianet says that awards ceremony has been instituted to honour both artistic and technical excellence in the Malayalam language film industry.


title: Asianet (TV channel)

text: Awards for the Television Serials were started with this name, every year best serials were nominated and presented awards to them.


title: Bible code

text: The Bible code (, ), also known as the Torah code, is a purported set of encoded words within a Hebrew text of the Torah that, according to proponents, has predicted significant historical events. The statistical likelihood of the Bible code arising by chance has been thoroughly researched, and it is now widely considered to be statistically insignificant, as similar phenomena can be observed in any sufficiently lengthy text. Although Bible codes have been postulated and studied for centuries, the subject has been popularized in modern times by Michael Drosnin's book "The Bible Code" and the movie "The Omega Code".


title: Bible code

text: Some tests purportedly showing statistically significant codes in the Bible were published as a "challenging puzzle" in a peer-reviewed academic journal in 1994, which was pronounced "solved" in a subsequent 1999 paper published in the same journal.


title: Bible code

text: Contemporary discussion and controversy around one specific steganographic method became widespread in 1994 when Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips and Yoav Rosenberg published a paper, "Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis", in the scientific journal "Statistical Science". The paper, which was presented by the journal as a "challenging puzzle", presented what appeared to be strong statistical evidence that biographical information about famous rabbis was encoded in the text of the Book of Genesis, centuries before those rabbis lived.


title: Bible code

text: Since then the term "Bible codes" has been popularly used to refer specifically to information encrypted via this ELS method.


title: Bible code

text: The primary method by which purportedly meaningful messages have been extracted is the "Equidistant Letter Sequence" (ELS), also referred to as "dilug" (דילג, "skipping [of letters]"). Letters are selected based on a starting point and counting every nth letter based on a given 'skip number' in a given direction. For example, taking every fourth letter in the phrase "this sentence fits an ELS", read backwards and ignoring spaces derives the word 'Safest'.


title: Bible code

text: In some cases, multiple terms may be derived from an 'ELS letter array' (text in a grid, with the same number of letters in each line). In the example provided, part of the King James Version's rendering of Genesis (26:5–10) is shown with 21 letters per line, showing ELSs for "Bible" and "code".


title: Bible code

text: Although the example shown uses English texts, Bible codes proponents usually use a Hebrew Bible text. Most Jewish proponents use only the Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy), as it is believed to have been revealed directly to Moses.


title: Bible code

text: Once a specific word has been found using the ELS method, other words are sought based on the same letter spacing. Code proponents Haralick and Rips have published an example of a longer, extended ELS, which reads, "Destruction I will call you; cursed is Bin Laden and revenge is to the Messiah".


title: Bible code

text: Proponents claim that such ELS extensions that form phrases or sentences have statistical significance, maintaining that the longer the extended ELS, the less likely it is to be the result of chance. Critics reply, as in the "Skeptical Inquirer" deconstruction of 1997, that the longer ELS is in fact effectively nothing more than further increased number of permutations, employing a massive application of the Look-elsewhere effect.


title: Bible code

text: Jewish culture has a long tradition of interpretation, annotation, and commentary regarding the Bible, leading to both exegesis and eisegesis (drawing meaning from and imposing meaning on the texts). The Bible code can be viewed as a part of this tradition, albeit one of the more controversial parts. Throughout history, many Jewish, and later Christian, scholars have attempted to find hidden or coded messages within the Bible's text, notably including Isaac Newton.


title: Bible code

text: The 13th-century Spanish rabbi Bachya ben Asher may have been the first to describe an ELS in the Bible. His four-letter example related to the traditional zero-point of the Hebrew calendar. Over the following centuries there are hints that the ELS technique was known, e.g. in Pardes Rimonim of the 16th century mystic Moshe Cordovero, but few definite examples have been found from before the middle of the 20th century. At this point many examples were found by Michael Ber Weissmandl and published by his students after his death in 1957. Nevertheless, the practice remained known to only a few until the early 1980s, when some discoveries of Israeli school teacher Avraham Oren came to the attention of the mathematician Eliyahu Rips at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Rips then took up the study together with his religious studies partners Doron Witztum and Alexander Rotenberg, among several others.


title: Bible code

text: Rips and Witztum and Yoav Rosenberg designed computer software for the ELS technique and subsequently found many examples. About 1985, they decided to carry out a formal test, and the "Great rabbis experiment" was born. This experiment tested the hypothesis that ELS's of the names of famous rabbinic personalities and their respective birth and death dates form a more compact arrangement than could be explained by chance. Their definition of "compact" was complex but, roughly, two ELSs were compactly arranged if they can be displayed together in a small window. When Rips "et al." carried out the experiment, the data was measured and found to be statistically significant, supporting their hypothesis.


title: Bible code

text: The "great rabbis experiment" went through several iterations, and was eventually published in 1994, in the peer-reviewed journal "Statistical Science". The editorial board was highly skeptical due to the fact that computers can be used to "mine" data for patterns that intuitively seem surprising, but upon careful analysis are found not be statistically significant. While they did find a number of possible sources of error, they were unable to find anyone willing to put in the substantial time and energy required to properly reanalyze all data. However, they did find it intriguing, and therefore decided to offer it as a "challenging puzzle" for anyone interested in doing so. An unintended result of this was that outsiders mistook this as a confirmation of the paper's claims.


title: Bible code

text: Another experiment, in which the names of the famous rabbis were matched against the places of their births and deaths (rather than the dates), was conducted in 1997 by Harold Gans, former Senior Cryptologic Mathematician for the United States National Security Agency.


title: Bible code

text: Again, the results were interpreted as being meaningful and thus suggestive of a more than chance result. These Bible codes became known to the public primarily due to the American journalist Michael Drosnin, whose book "The Bible Code" (1997) was a best-seller in many countries. Rips issued a public statement that he did not support Drosnin's work or conclusions; even Gans has stated that, although the book says the codes in the Torah can be used to predict future events, "This is absolutely unfounded. There is no scientific or mathematical basis for such a statement, and the reasoning used to come to such a conclusion in the book is logically flawed." In 2002, Drosnin published a second book on the same subject, called "Bible Code II: the Countdown".


title: Bible code

text: The Jewish outreach group Aish HaTorah employs Bible codes in their Discovery Seminars to persuade secular Jews of the divinity of the Torah, and to encourage them to trust in traditional Orthodox Jewish teachings. Use of Bible code techniques also spread into certain Christian circles, especially in the United States. The main early proponents were Yakov Rambsel, who is a Messianic Jew, and Grant Jeffrey. Another Bible code technique was developed in 1997 by Dean Coombs (also Christian). Various pictograms are claimed to be formed by words and sentences using ELS.


title: Bible code

text: Since 2000, physicist Nathan Jacobi, an agnostic Jew, and engineer Moshe Aharon Shak, an orthodox Jew, claim to have discovered hundreds of examples of lengthy, extended ELSs. The number of extended ELSs at various lengths is compared with those expected from a non-encoded text, as determined by a formula from Markov chain theory.


title: Bible code

text: The precise order of consonantal letters represented in the Hebrew Masoretic Text is not consistent across manuscripts in any period. It is known from earlier versions, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, that the number of letters was not constant even in the first centuries CE. The Bible code theory thus does not seem to account for these variations.


title: Bible code

text: The primary objection advanced against Bible codes is that information theory does not prohibit "noise" from appearing to be sometimes meaningful. Thus, if data chosen for ELS experiments are intentionally "cooked" before the experiment is defined, similar patterns can be found in texts other than the Torah. Although the probability of an ELS in a random place being a meaningful word is small, there are so many possible starting points and skip patterns that many such words can be expected to appear, depending on the details chosen for the experiment, and it is possible to "tune" an ELS experiment to achieve a result which appears to exhibit patterns that overcome the level of noise.


title: Bible code

text: Others have criticized Drosnin by saying his example of "Clinton" in his first book violated the basic Bible code concept of "minimality"; Drosnin's "Clinton" was a completely invalid "code". In addition, McKay claimed that Drosnin had used the flexibility of Hebrew orthography to his advantage, freely mixing classic (no vowels, Y and W strictly consonant) and modern (Y and W used to indicate 'i' and 'u' vowels) modes, as well as variances in spelling of K and T, to reach the desired meaning.


title: Bible code

text: In 1999, Australian mathematician Brendan McKay, Israeli mathematicians Dror Bar-Natan and Gil Kalai, and Israeli psychologist Maya Bar-Hillel (collectively known as "MBBK") published a paper in "Statistical Science", in which they argued that the case of Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg (WRR) was "fatally defective, and that their result merely reflects on the choices made in designing their experiment and collecting the data for it." The MBBK paper was reviewed anonymously by four professional statisticians prior to publication. In the introduction to the paper, Robert Kass, the Editor of the Journal who previously had described the WRR paper as a "challenging puzzle" wrote that "considering the work of McKay, Bar-Natan, Kalai and Bar-Hillel as a whole it indeed appears, as they conclude, that the puzzle has been solved".


title: Bible code

text: From their observations, MBBK created an alternative hypothesis to explain the "puzzle" of how the codes were discovered. MBBK's argument was not strictly mathematical, rather it asserted that the WRR authors and contributors had intentionally:


title: Bible code

text: The MBBK paper argued that the ELS experiment is extraordinarily sensitive to very small changes in the spellings of appellations, and the WRR result "merely reflects on the choices made in designing their experiment and collecting the data for it."


title: Bible code

text: The MBBK paper demonstrated that this "tuning", when combined with what MBBK asserted was available "wiggle" room, was capable of generating a result similar to WRR's Genesis result in a Hebrew translation of "War and Peace". Bar-Hillel subsequently summarized the MBBK view that the WRR paper was a hoax, an intentionally and carefully designed "magic trick".


title: Bible code

text: The Bible codes (together with similar arguments concerning hidden prophecies in the writings of Shakespeare) have been quoted as examples of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.


title: Bible code

text: Harold Gans, a former Cryptanalyst at the National Security Agency, argued that MBBK's hypothesis implies a conspiracy between WRR and their co-contributors to fraudulently tune the appellations in advance. Gans argues that the conspiracy must include Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and S. Z. Havlin, because they all say Havlin compiled the appellations independently. Gans argues further that such a conspiracy must include the multiple rabbis who have written a letter confirming the accuracy of Havlin's list. Finally, argues Gans, such a conspiracy must also include the multiple participants of the cities experiment conducted by Gans (which includes Gans himself). Gans concludes that "the number of people necessarily involved in [the conspiracy] will stretch the credulity of any reasonable person." Gans further argued that while "the mathematical issues are difficult for non-mathematicians to comprehend, I can summarize as follows: Professor McKay and his colleagues never claimed to have discovered real codes in those non-Torah texts. Their only "successful" results were obtained by deliberately rigging the experiment in such a way that the layman wouldn't recognize the mathematical flaws."


title: Bible code

text: Brendan McKay has replied that he and his colleagues have never accused Havlin or Gans of participating in a conspiracy. Instead, says McKay, Havlin likely did what WRR's early preprints stated he did, in providing "valuable advices". Similarly, McKay accepts Gans's statements that Gans did not prepare the data for his cities experiment himself. McKay concludes that "there is only ONE person who needs to have been involved in knowing fakery, and a handful of his disciples who must be involved in the cover-up (perhaps with good intent)."


title: Bible code

text: The WRR authors issued a series of responses regarding the claims of MBBK, including the claim that no such tuning did or even could have taken place. An earlier WRR response to a request by MBBK authors presented results from additional experiments that used the specific "alternate" name and date formats which MBBK suggested had been intentionally avoided by WRR. Using MBBK's alternates, the results WRR returned showed equivalent or better support for the existence of the codes, and so challenged the "wiggle room" assertion of MBBK. In the wake of the WRR response, author Bar-Natan issued a formal statement of non-response. After a series of exchanges with McKay and Bar-Hillel, WRR author Witztum responded in a new paper claiming that McKay had used smoke screen tactics in creating several straw man arguments, and thereby avoided the points made by WRR authors refuting MBBK. Witztum also claimed that, upon interviewing a key independent expert contracted by McKay for the MBBK paper, some experiments performed for MBBK had validated, rather than refuted, the original WRR findings. Witzum questioned why MBBK had expunged these results. McKay replied to these claims.


title: Bible code

text: No publication in a peer reviewed scientific journal has appeared refuting MBBK's paper. In 2006, four new Torah Codes papers were published at the IEEE Computer Society's 18th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR'06).


title: Bible code

text: Robert Aumann, a game theorist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2005, has followed the Bible code research and controversy for many years. He wrote:


title: Bible code

text: Following an analysis of the experiment and the dynamics of the controversy, stating for example that "almost everybody included [in the controversy] made up their mind early in the game", Aumann concluded:


title: Bible code

text: Robert Haralick, a Professor of Computer Science at the City University of New York, has checked the Bible Code for many years and became convinced of its validity. He contributed a new experiment, checking whether, besides the minimal ELS – in which it was known that WRR's list was successful in Genesis and MBBK's list was successful in War and Peace – there were other, non-minimal ELSs where there is convergence between the rabbis' names and their respective dates. This had the effect of checking convergence found at 2nd minimal ELSs, 3rd minimal ELSs and so on. According to Haralick, the results were impressive; WRR's list was successful until the 20th minimal ELS, whereas MBBK's list failed after the 2nd minimal ELS. Haralick lectured on the subject in front of the participants of the international conference on pattern recognition in 2006.


title: Bible code

text: Journalist Drosnin's books have been criticized by some who believe the Bible code is real but that it cannot predict the future. On Drosnin's claim of Rabin's death, Drosnin wrote in his book "The Bible Code" (1997) that "Yigal Amir could not be found in advance". Critics have noted a huge error in the "code" Drosnin claimed to have found: Drosnin misused the Biblical verse . Scholars note; "For example, citing again the passage intersecting with Rabin: that passage is from Deuteronomy 4:42, but Drosnin ignores the words immediately following "a murderer who will murder." What comes next is the phrase "unwittingly" (). This is because the verse deals with the cities of refuge where accidental killers can find asylum. In this case, then, the message would refer to an accidental killing of (or by) Rabin and it would therefore be wrong. Another message (p. 17) supposedly contains a "complete" description of the terrorist bombing of a bus in Jerusalem on February 25, 1996. It includes the phrase "fire, great noise," but overlooks the fact that the letters which make up those two words are actually part of a larger phrase from which says: "under the terebinth that was near Shechem." If the phrase does tell of a bus bombing, why not take it to indicate that it would be in Nablus, the site of ancient Shechem?"


title: Bible code

text: Drosnin also made a number of claims and alleged predictions that have since failed. Among the most important, Drosnin clearly states in his book "The Bible Code II", published on December 2, 2002, that there was to be a World War involving an "atomic holocaust" that would allegedly be the end of the world. Another claim Drosnin makes in "The Bible Code II" is that the nation of Libya would develop weapons of mass destruction which would then be given to terrorists who would then use them to attack the West (specifically the United States). In reality, Libya improved relations with the West in 2003 and gave up all their existing weapons of mass destruction programs. A final claim Drosnin made in "The Bible Code II" was that Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat would allegedly be assassinated by being shot to death by gunmen which Drosnin specifically stated would be from the Palestinian Hamas movement. This prediction by Drosnin also failed, as Yasser Arafat died on November 11, 2004 of what was later declared to be natural causes (specifically a stroke brought on by an unknown infection). The only conspiracy theories about Yasser Arafat's allegedly being murdered have been made by a few Palestinian figures, and have involved alleged poisoning that was supposed to have been on the orders of Israeli officials. The only alleged Palestinian collaboration in this conspiracy theory involve two leading Palestinian figures from the Palestinian Fatah movement; those are current Palestinian Authority and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and Mohammed Dahlan the former head of Fatah in Gaza. Writer Randy Ingermanson criticized Drosnin by stating that; "And that's all they are, even for Drosnin – possibilities. He believes that the future is not fixed, and that the Bible code predicts all possible outcomes. Which makes it not much of a predictive tool, but again, he seems not to mind this very much. If you are laying bets based on Drosnin, you had better be willing to bet on all possible outcomes."


title: Bible code

text: Some accuse him of factual errors, claiming that he has much support in the scientific community, mistranslating Hebrew words to make his point more convincing, and using the Bible without proving that other books do not have similar codes.


title: Bible code

text: Responding to an explicit challenge from Drosnin, who claimed that other texts such as "Moby-Dick" would not yield ELS results comparable to the Torah, McKay created a new experiment that was tuned to find many ELS letter arrays in "Moby-Dick" that relate to modern events, including the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and Indira Gandhi. He also found a code relating to the Rabin assassination, containing the assassin's first and last name and the university he attended, as well as the motive ("Oslo", relating to the Oslo accords). Drosnin and others have responded to these claims, saying the tuning tactics employed by McKay were simply "nonsense", and providing analyses to support their argument that the tables, data and methodologies McKay used to produce the Moby Dick results "simply do not qualify as code tables". Skeptic Dave Thomas claimed to find other examples in many texts. While Thomas' methodology was alleged to have been rebutted by Robert Haralick and others, his broader arguments about the law of large numbers stood essentially unchallenged. Also, Thomas's criticisms were aimed at Drosnin, whose methodology is considered even worse. (In fact, Drosnin's example of "Clinton" in his first book violated the basic Bible code concept of "Minimality"; Drosnin's "Clinton" was a completely invalid "code"). In addition, McKay claimed that Drosnin had used the flexibility of Hebrew orthography to his advantage, freely mixing Masoretic biblical (no vowels, Y and W overwhelmingly consonant) and modern (Y and W used to indicate "i" and "u" vowels) modes, as well as variances in spelling of K and T, to reach the desired meaning.


title: Bible code

text: In his television series "John Safran vs God", Australian television personality John Safran and McKay again demonstrated the "tuning" technique, demonstrating that these techniques could produce "evidence" of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York in the lyrics of Vanilla Ice's repertoire. And the influence and consequences of scribal errors (misspellings, additions, deletions, etc.) are hard to account for in claims for a Bible coded message left secretly in the text. McKay and others claim that in the absence of an objective measure of quality and an objective way to select test subjects (though that remains an objection as equally against Drosnin), it is not possible positively to determine whether any particular observation is significant or not. For that reason, outside of Davis' mathematical arguments, much or most of the serious effort of the skeptics has been focused on the scientific claims of Witztum, Rips, and Gans.


title: Bible code

text: All Bible/Torah code software support ELS search and matrix view of the found word(s) and its context. Some include statistical tools, Hebrew dictionary, gematria calculation and searching for additional words in the letter matrix.


title: Central Division (NBA)

text: The Central Division is one of the three divisions in the Eastern Conference of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The division consists of five teams, the Chicago Bulls, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Detroit Pistons, the Indiana Pacers and the Milwaukee Bucks. All teams, except the Cavaliers, are former Midwest Division teams, hence the Central Division now largely resembling the Midwest Division in the 1970s.


title: Central Division (NBA)

text: The division was created at the start of the 1970–71 season, when the league expanded from 14 to 17 teams with the addition of the Buffalo Braves, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Portland Trail Blazers. The league realigned itself into two conferences, the Western Conference and the Eastern Conference, with two divisions each in each conference. The Central Division began with four inaugural members, the Atlanta Hawks, the Baltimore Bullets, the Cincinnati Royals and the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Hawks joined from the Western Division, while the Bullets and the Royals joined from the Eastern Division.


title: Central Division (NBA)

text: The Bucks have won the most Central Division titles with eleven. The Pistons have won the second most titles with nine. Thirteen NBA champions came from the Central Division: the Bulls won six championships, the Pistons won three championships, the Bucks won two championships, and the Bullets and Cavaliers won one championship each. All of them, except the 1977–78 Bullets and the 2003–04 Pistons, were division champions. In the 2005–06 season, all five teams from the division qualified for the playoffs. The most recent division champions are the Milwaukee Bucks. The Central Division has the highest percentage of teams that have won a championship, with four out of five teams winning the championship, and the Pacers the only franchise never to have won.


title: Central Division (NBA)

text: The Central Division existed for one season in the 1949–50 season as one of the three divisions in the NBA, along with the Western and the Eastern Division. The current Central Division that was formed in the 1970, is one of the three divisions in the Eastern Conference.


title: Central Division (NBA)

text: Starting with the 2021–22 season, the Central Division champions would receive the Wayne Embry Trophy, named after Hall of Famer Wayne Embry.


title: Central Division (NBA)

text: Before the 1949–50 season, the BAA merged with the NBL and was renamed NBA. The number of teams competed increased from 12 teams to 17 teams and the league realigned itself to three divisions, creating the Central Division. The division consisted of five teams, the Chicago Stags, the Fort Wayne Pistons, the Minneapolis Lakers, the Rochester Royals and the St. Louis Bombers. All five teams joined from the Western Division. The Minneapolis Lakers won the Central Division title. The division was disbanded before the 1950–51 season, after six teams folded and the league realigned itself back into two divisions. The Stags and the Bombers folded, while the other three teams returned to the Western Division.


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is an on-rails light gun shooter video game developed by Capcom and Cavia as part of the "Resident Evil" series. The game was released for the Wii on November 13, 2007 in North America; November 15, 2007 in Japan; and on November 30, 2007 in Europe, excluding Germany, where the game is not available due to the refusal of a USK rating and its subsequent inclusion in the index. It was followed by "". Both "Chronicles" games are included on the "Resident Evil Chronicles HD Collection" for the PlayStation 3.


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: The game exposes the Umbrella Corporation's meddling throughout the "Resident Evil" series through narration from Albert Wesker, a former Umbrella scientist, and hidden documents pertaining to the organization's secret motives and actions. The game is composed of five scenarios that recapitulate the events of "Resident Evil Zero", the "Resident Evil" remake, and "", as well as new material pertaining to the Umbrella Corporation's downfall.


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: "The Umbrella Chronicles" is an on-rails shooter. Players can use their Wii remote to target and shoot like they would in a light gun shooter. The game is also compatible with the Wii Zapper. Players follow a pre-set path, shooting enemies and picking up optional weapons and health items, occasionally choosing between multiple paths. Using the analog stick or the nunchuk, players can look around in a limited manner. In some cases, the Wii Remote can be used to activate melee weapons against enemies where the camera shifts to a third-person view, or use timed button presses in certain cutscenes to evade traps and enemy attacks. Each stage is split into individual chapters and contains save checkpoints at the end of each chapter. Stars are obtained at the end of each stage, based on the player's performance, which can be used to upgrade weapons. To unlock some levels and sublevels, the player needs a certain ranking, "S" being the best. The amount of destroyed items, obtained objects, files, critical hits and clear time affects this.


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: Upon beating Hunk's "4th Survivor" mission, co-operative mode will be unlocked for the single-player missions. When selecting characters, an option will appear on the screen to select co-op mode. Both players will play as the same character, but each player will have their own aiming reticle.


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: "The Umbrella Chronicles" encompasses several scenarios, which are based on various plot elements from the "Resident Evil" series. The game's first three scenarios, "Train Derailment", "The Mansion Incident", and "Raccoon's Destruction", are set within Raccoon City, or its surrounding area, in 1998. The final scenario, which is based on new material, is set in Russia, taking place in 2003. The game features nine playable characters from previous "Resident Evil" games, including Rebecca Chambers, Billy Coen, Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Carlos Oliveira, Albert Wesker, Ada Wong, Richard Aiken, and Hunk.


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: The game's first scenario, based on the events of "Resident Evil Zero", follows STARS operative Rebecca Chambers, and former Marine Billy Coen as they venture through a train that eventually takes them to a derelict training facility. Once within the facility, they discover they are being stalked by James Marcus, co-founder of the Umbrella Corporation and creator of the T-virus, who has managed to resurrect himself with the aid of leech test-subjects. After a confrontation, Marcus mutates into a monstrosity, but is subdued by the duo. Chambers and Coen escape as the facility self-destructs. Another sub-chapter within the scenario traces Wesker's actions, now posing as the leader of STARS' Alpha team, as he attempts to escape the training facility. This chapter also introduces Sergei Vladimir and one of his bodyguard Tyrants, codenamed "IVAN".


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: The game then proceeds to retell the events of the first "Resident Evil". The scenario follows Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, as opposed to the actual "Resident Evil" game, which features the two splitting up. Redfield and Valentine are forced to battle their way through a mansion full of undead residents before stumbling upon a secret Umbrella Corporation research facility in the mansion's basement. The two then discover the facility's most powerful creation, a Tyrant, and destroy it. The scenario features two different sub-chapters, which reveal Chambers' action between "Resident Evil Zero" and "Resident Evil", as well as Wesker's reanimation and escape after his apparent death.


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: The next scenario visits Raccoon City during the events of "". Valentine returns to the game, and is paired with mercenary Carlos Oliveira, as they attempt to survive an outbreak of the T-virus. After defeating several undead citizens, Valentine and Oliveira encounter Nemesis, an upgraded Tyrant, sent to kill Valentine. They defeat Nemesis and escape Raccoon City before it is destroyed by the United States government in a desperate contingency measure. The scenario also features two sub-chapters, detailing Ada Wong and Hunk's background roles during the main scenario's events.


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: The game's final scenario is composed of new material, which trails Redfield and Valentine as they and other armed anti-bioweapon activists investigate the Umbrella Corporation's final stronghold in Russia. Despite their force sustaining heavy casualties, Redfield and Valentine enter the facility's inner sanctum, only to encounter and destroy the Umbrella Corporation's latest creation, the T-ALOS project. The game's final sub-chapter features Wesker infiltrating the facility in an attempt to recover the Umbrella Corporation's most important files. He is confronted by his long-time nemesis, Sergei Vladimir, whom he defeats. The game's credits reveal that the Umbrella Corporation's secrets have finally been exposed. As a result, the U.S. government succeeds in its legal action against Umbrella's top officials.


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: The game was co-developed by Capcom and Cavia and produced by Masachika Kawata, who was behind the PlayStation 2 port of "Resident Evil 4". At E3 2006, Capcom officially announced that development was already underway for an exclusive "Resident Evil" game for the Wii and mentioned that it would take advantage of the console's unique Wii Remote controller, giving players a new experience. Members of Capcom's Clover Studio, who created such games as "Viewtiful Joe" and "Ōkami", were called upon to help develop the game.


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: A short clip of the game was shown on the Nintendo World event on November 3, 2006, where 2007 was revealed as the release date. On April 6, 2007, the official Japanese website went live containing an official teaser video. On April 13, 2007, the official Japanese website updated with a second trailer, character profiles and screenshots. A Japan-only release of the game came with a limited edition collector's "Biohazard" box featuring several items. Christian Svensson, Capcom's senior director of strategic planning and research, stated the game would support 480-progressive scan and widescreen resolution. A trailer was included in the "Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition", which shows the mansion from the original game and areas of Raccoon City. At its pre-E3 press conference on July 11, 2007, Nintendo announced that the Wii Zapper peripheral will be compatible with the game.


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: The game was initially going to play similarly to "Resident Evil 4". However, in an interview with Famitsu, the game's producer Masachika Kawata revealed the reason for the drastic change in gameplay: according to him, "Wii users like easiness" and that a "Resident Evil 4"-style game is "too complicated" for Wii users to enjoy. Masachika Kawata then elaborated that "complex operability can be an obstacle for Wii users", and that he purposefully had to "compromise to a lower difficulty level" and "reduce enthusiast-only elements".


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: "Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles" was released in late 2007. An extensive line of tie-in products was created to promote the release of Capcom's on-rails shooter and to expand its storyline. This includes a graphic novel, several spin-off novels, and an official soundtrack release.


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: The Resident Evil Shot Blaster is a replacement to the Wii Zapper. The gun comes with a detachable Nunchuk holster. The holster also rotates downward to allow easy reloading for in the game. When the Nunchuk holster is removed the gun becomes something like a pistol. The package also includes a decal that you can put on your Wii Remote which has a picture of characters from the game on it, and a Nunchuk joystick grip which has the logo of the Umbrella Corporation on it.


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: "" was composed by Masafumi Takada and Jun Fukuda from Grasshopper Manufacture featuring Ada Wong as the cover. A CD with 49 tracks called "Biohazard: The Umbrella Chronicles Original Sound Track" was released in Japan on December 19. It was published by Suleputer and was distributed by Sony Music Distribution for 3150 yen. The soundtrack includes a full-color booklet. Initially produced items are limited editions with special sleeve cases.


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: The Wii version of "The Umbrella Chronicles" has received positive scores from critics. "GamePro" praised its unlockable secrets and satisfying gameplay, adding that "the only downside to "The Umbrella Chronicles" is that longevity will be an issue." GameTrailers called it "fantastic overall" and a "superb entry in the genre," praising the game for its surprising length and unlockable content, but stated that while the graphics "look good", they were sometimes "a step behind" "Resident Evil 4" and added that having the game on rails actually makes it scarier, and that it's "basically a love letter" to fans of the series. IGN praised the game for having "amazingly cool" design but complained about the lack of representation from "Resident Evil 2" and "4" as well as the gameplay, which they felt was too slow; on the other hand, they called the presentation "pretty impressive" and stated that "there’s no denying the fun" they had with it. GameSpot praised the easy controls and the look and feel of the game, but criticized the music, stating that "it undermines the atmosphere," and that the "on-rails shooter gameplay can still feel restrictive. 1UP.com called it "a surprisingly meaty experience" and "an accessible, mostly satisfying shooter" and praised the depth and strategy offered by the gameplay, but complained about difficult headshots and stated that "it never really amounts to more than its concept".


title: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

text: On March 8, 2009, Capcom announced they would have new game announcements on March 12 at the "Resident Evil 5" launch party in San Francisco. A few days earlier, Capcom's Associate Product Marketing Manager, Matt Dahlgren, said in an interview that "Nintendo Wii fans will be very happy very soon" when asked about getting more "Resident Evil" on Wii. On March 11, "Famitsu" confirmed a sequel for "Umbrella Chronicles", titled "". The game, like its predecessor, has on-rails gameplay.


title: When the Game Stands Tall

text: When the Game Stands Tall is a 2014 American sports drama film directed by Thomas Carter. The plot concerns a record 151-game 1992–2003 high school football winning streak by De La Salle High School of Concord, California. It stars Jim Caviezel as coach Bob Ladouceur, Laura Dern as Bev Ladouceur, Michael Chiklis as assistant coach Terry Eidson and Alexander Ludwig as running back Chris Ryan. The film is an adaptation of the 2003 book of the same name by Neil Hayes, published by North Atlantic Books. De La Salle head coach Bob Ladouceur retired in January 2013 after winning his last Open Division state championship in December 2012. The film was released on August 22, 2014.


title: When the Game Stands Tall

text: Bob Ladouceur, the coach of the De La Salle Spartans, watches his team win the championship of their undefeated 2003 season. Following tradition, the seniors share their stories about what the team means to them. The juniors, including Ladouceur's son Danny, celebrate with team captain Chris Ryan who has a chance of breaking the California state record for the highest career number of touchdowns. During an argument about whether to accept a coaching offer at the college level, Ladouceur's wife Beverly tells him that he does not spend enough time with his family. In a division meeting between coaches, Ladouceur is accused of cheating through scholarships or some other means of getting all the best players in the area. Ladouceur says scholarships are against the rules and he does not offer them. He arranges to have De La Salle play against Long Beach Polytechnic High School, a team with a similar reputation.


title: When the Game Stands Tall

text: Ladouceur engages the team members in a passage from the Gospel of Luke that states that all good deeds will be rewarded. Rick Salinas, quarterback of the team, shares that he is blessed for doing the right thing because he gets to play on the streak team. Tayshon Lanear thinks otherwise because he doesn't think Salinas is in line to be starting quarterback because he's done the right thing, but because he is tall and has a cannon for an arm. This provokes a mixed reaction from players who come from disadvantaged households. Reminded of team alumnus Cameron Colvin, Ladouceur pays him a visit in Richmond, California, and discovers that his mother is dying. Upon returning home, Ladouceur suffers a heart attack, impacting his ability to coach in the 2004 season. Colvin is approached by his best friend Terrance Kelly, who urges him to enroll at the University of Oregon so that they can play together. Not wanting to involve friends in the downward spiral he has found himself in, Colvin protests but eventually agrees. Days later, Kelly is shot and killed while trying to pick up a cousin and the Spartan team attends his funeral.


title: When the Game Stands Tall

text: De La Salle's 151-game winning streak comes to an end when they lose a game against Bellevue, Washington. After the game, Mickey Ryan hits his son because of one play he messed up, even though he scored three touchdowns, and threatens further abuse if he does not break the touchdown record. Coach Ladouceur takes the team to a veteran's rehabilitation center, to deconstruct their respective ideas of brotherhood. To prepare for the game against Long Beach Poly, the teammates watch videos of previous games and see that all of the Poly players are faster and more physically imposing. The grueling game becomes a victory for De La Salle after Danny knocks down a pass by Poly into the end zone to help the Spartans hold Poly on all four downs from inside the 5-yard-line. The Spartans enter the final 2004 game with a renewed sense of confidence and hope that Ryan can make three touchdowns to break the record.


title: When the Game Stands Tall

text: A number of touchdowns during the game, including two by Chris, place De La Salle in a comfortable lead. Mickey cheers that there is enough time left for him to break the record. When setting up their final play, Ryan gathers his teammates and tells them that it would be wrong for him to end his time with the team by chasing a personal victory. He instead gives up the ball and raises his helmet to Ladouceur. As the audience members do the same, the game ends with a tribute to the coach that brought them there.


title: When the Game Stands Tall

text: Thomas Carter, who previously worked on "Coach Carter", served as director. The screen adaptation was by Scott Marshall Smith. The film was produced by Mandalay Pictures and distributed through TriStar Pictures, a division of Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions (SPWA). David Zelon produced for Mandalay and Peter Nelson and Rich Peluso worked on behalf of SPWA and its distribution arm AFFIRM. Allan Graf, who previously worked on "Friday Night Lights", "[coordinated] the football scenes". Hayes, a "Contra Costa Times" journalist at the time the book was released, was part of the creative team. Zelon said the intrigue of this film was that Ladouceur "placed little value on winning, instead focusing his players on giving a 'perfect effort' in life". SPWA president Steve Bersch noted that the themes in the film transcended sports and cinema: "At its core, this is a timeless and universal story about character, hard work and love".


title: When the Game Stands Tall

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, "When the Game Stands Tall" has a critics' rating of 20% based on 71 reviews, with an average score of 4.50/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "An uneasy blend of solid game sequences and threadbare inspirational sports drama clichés, "When the Game Stands Tall" is overshadowed by better players in a crowded field." On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 41 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: When the Game Stands Tall

text: In its opening weekend the film grossed $8,381,509 in 2,673 theaters, ranking at #5. By the end of its run, "When the Game Stands Tall" grossed $30,127,963 domestically.


title: Transdermal patch

text: A transdermal patch is a medicated adhesive patch that is placed on the skin to deliver a specific dose of medication through the skin and into the bloodstream. An advantage of a transdermal drug delivery route over other types of medication delivery (such as oral, topical, intravenous, or intramuscular) is that the patch provides a controlled release of the medication into the patient, usually through either a porous membrane covering a reservoir of medication or through body heat melting thin layers of medication embedded in the adhesive. The main disadvantage to transdermal delivery systems stems from the fact that the skin is a very effective barrier; as a result, only medications whose molecules are small enough to penetrate the skin can be delivered by this method. The first commercially available prescription patch was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 1979. These patches administered scopolamine for motion sickness.


title: Transdermal patch

text: In order to overcome restriction from the skin, researchers have developed microneedle transdermal patches (MNPs), which consist of an array of microneedles, which allows a more versatile range of compounds or molecules to be passed through the skin without having to micronize the medication beforehand. MNPs offer the advantage of controlled release of medication and simple application without medical professional assistance required. With advanced MNPs technology, drug delivery can be specified for local usage, for example skin whitener MNPs that are applied to the face. Many types of MNPs have been developed to penetrate tissues other than skin, such as internal tissues of the mouth and digestive tract. These promote faster and more direct delivery of the molecule to the targeted area.


title: Transdermal patch

text: The adhesive layer of this system also contains the drug. In this type of patch the adhesive layer not only serves to adhere the various layers together, along with the entire system to the skin, but is also responsible for the releasing of the drug. The adhesive layer is surrounded by a temporary liner and a backing. It is characterized by the inclusion of the drug directly within the skin-contacting adhesive placed onto the epidermis.


title: Transdermal patch

text: The multi-layer drug-in-adhesive patch is similar to the single-layer system; the multi-layer system is different, however, in that it adds another layer of drug-in-adhesive, usually separated by a membrane (but not in all cases). One of the layers is for immediate release of the drug, and the other layer is for controlled release of the drug from the reservoir. This patch also has a temporary liner-layer and a permanent backing. The drug release from this depends on membrane permeability and diffusion of drug molecules.


title: Transdermal patch

text: Unlike the single-layer and multi-layer drug-in-adhesive systems, the reservoir transdermal system has a separate drug layer. The drug layer is a liquid compartment containing a drug solution or suspension separated by the adhesive layer. The drug reservoir is totally encapsulated in a shallow compartment molded from a drug-impermeable metallic plastic laminate, with a rate-controlling membrane made of a polymer like vinyl acetate on one surface. This patch is also backed by the backing layer. In this type of system the rate of release is zero order.


title: Transdermal patch

text: The matrix system has a drug layer of a semisolid matrix containing a drug solution or suspension. The adhesive layer in this patch surrounds the drug layer, partially overlaying it. Also known as a monolithic device.


title: Transdermal patch

text: In a vapour patch, the adhesive layer not only serves to adhere the various layers together but also to release vapour. Vapour patches release essential oils for up to 6 hours and are mainly used for decongestion. Other vapour patches on the market improve quality of sleep or aid in smoking cessation.


title: Transdermal patch

text: The microneedle patch (MNPs) is a type of transdermal patch that retains the advantages, but reduces the disadvantages, of basic transdermal patches. Embedding as many as 102-104 needles per square centimeter of patch, encapsulated or coated with intended drug, MNPs can easily pass skin tissue known as the stratum corneum that is roughly 20 μm in thickness, allowing up to the size macromolecule to pass. The development of MNPs is mainly because selective transdermal patch can deliver smaller size or micronized molecules such as nicotine and birth control that easily diffuse and penetrate the skin, but lack in delivering macro or large size molecules. The 100-1000 μm needles spread across the patch, making sure patients will not feel any discomfort from the patch. There are two types of needles used in MNPs, the first one is non-water-soluble needles made out of metal, ceramic, or polymer, and the second one is water-soluble needles made out of saccharides or soluble polymers.


title: Transdermal patch

text: Other than skin patches, MNPs can also be engineered to deliver molecules in different tissues. Some that are under development include internal surfaces such as the mouth, vagina, gastrointestinal tract, and vascular wall; and external surfaces such as the skin, eyes, fingernails, anus, and scalp. This allows targeting a more specific area of wanted delivery, without having to solely rely on diffusion on blood flow like a normal transdermal patch.


title: Transdermal patch

text: As mentioned earlier, MNPs deliver more efficient delivery compared to topical or oral intake. In drug delivery study, researchers want to gain faster peak concentrations (C) in MNPs compared to other methods. Study shows that MNPs reach peak concentration as fast as 20 minutes (t), while oral intake reaches peak concentration in one hour. Furthermore, the C from MNPs is higher up to six times, compared to oral intake. Making the delivery fast and the body gets the most concentration of intended drugs. This value is only matched with direct injection, but with skin trauma and people with needle phobia, MNPs might be an alternative to reach roughly the same time and concentration.


title: Transdermal patch

text: In order to get more direct local delivery, MNPs can be used in different tissues other than the skin. In Table 1, there are at least five internal surfaces that MNPs have been studied for its delivery and four other external surfaces other than the skin.


title: Transdermal patch

text: There are many types of microneedle that are distinguished by the shape and other characteristics. The types include: Dissolvable MNPs, solid non-soluble MNPs, and hollow MNPs. Different MNPs may be chosen depending on the situation and the drug properties.


title: Transdermal patch

text: One of the types of MNPs are water-soluble needles made out of soluble polymers or saccharide. However, dissolvable needles cannot efficiently deliver drugs to the dermal layer. Drug maximum concentration cannot be carried out to the skin, as the needles will dissolve beforehand. Fortunately, researchers have developed a water-insoluble backing layer, making the needle last longer in the human body environment. This design enables efficient delivery of more than 90% of the drug within 5 minutes of application of MNPs to the skin.


title: Transdermal patch

text: Other than dissolvable MNPs, needles can also be made out of metal or ceramic that will not dissolve in the body environment. These coated drug needles can deliver consistent concentration of drugs without the needles dissolving in the body. This kind of MNPs has better performance, but compared to the soluble MNPs, metal or ceramic MNPs are the older version of MNPs. Even if the patches are small, the metal or ceramic MNPs may cause several waste issues. Recycling the metal and ceramic are very hard, as the quantity is very small to overcome the cost to recycle. That is why researchers try to develop the dissolvable MNPs with similar characteristic and performance of drug delivery in non-soluble MNPs.


title: Transdermal patch

text: Among all of the MNPs, hollow needles allow a bigger amount of delivery up to 200μL. The mechanism mimics the operation of a hypodermic, but the fabrication is hard and complex. The hollow needles introduce a potential failure if the insertion is improper. That is why, among the others, hollow MNPs are the least popular because of the complex manufacturing and applying process.


title: Transdermal patch

text: MNPs vaccination might be an alternative from direct injection. Able to deliver bigger molecules than transdermal patch, MNPs can also deliver bioactive molecules with different physical sizes. Meaning that inactive virus or pathogen can be introduced in the body without discomfort or skin irritation from conventional injection. Possibly it can also reduce the cost of storage that usually needs to be transported in a particular temperature and condition. Stated in cdc.gov website, Mark Prausnitz, co-developer of the microneedle, says "A major advantage of the microneedle patch would be the ease of delivery." The MNPs are small and thin compared to bottles of vial, making it possible to transport in massive quantities in a single trip. Medical waste such as syringes and dirty needles are also eliminated, reducing the possibility of pathogen transmission of blood-borne disease in rural areas.


title: Transdermal patch

text: In a study, measles coated MNPs might be resistant to higher temperature compared to vial transport. Higher temperature resistance is a safe bet in low income countries, where there is no such luxury for refrigeration. Furthermore, the delivery of the vaccine is controlled by the MNPs. Less requiring highly trained medical workers in developing countries to apply the vaccine. However, the study in MNPs measles vaccine is still under development, but opening possibilities in the future for other types of vaccines