title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: "Illustrious"s aircraft were tasked to attack French naval units and shipping and to defend the invasion fleet, while her half-sister provided air support for the ground forces. For the operation the carrier's air group numbered 25 Martlets, 1 night-fighting Fulmar and 21 Swordfish, and was consequently was forced to have a permanent deck park of 5 Martlets and one Swordfish. Before dawn on 5 May, she launched 18 Swordfish together with 8 Martlets. The first flight of 6 Swordfish, carrying torpedoes, unsuccessfully attacked the aviso , but sank the armed merchant cruiser . The second flight, carrying depth charges, sank the submarine while the third flight dropped leaflets over the defenders before attacking an artillery battery and "D'Entrecasteaux". One aircraft of the third flight was forced to make an emergency landing and its crew was captured by the French. Later in the day, "D'Entrecasteaux" attempted to put to sea, but she was successfully bombed by an 829 Squadron Swordfish and deliberately run aground to avoid sinking. Three other Swordfish completed her destruction. The next morning, Martlets from 881 Squadron intercepted three Potez 63.11 reconnaissance bombers, shooting down two and forcing the other to retreat, while Swordfish dropped dummy parachutists as a diversion. One patrolling Swordfish sank the submarine and another spotted for ships bombarding French defences. On the morning of 7 May, Martlets from 881 Squadron intercepted three Morane-Saulnier M.S.406 fighters on a reconnaissance mission. All three were shot down for the loss of one Martlet. In addition to the other losses enumerated, 882 Squadron's Fulmar was shot down while providing ground support. "Illustrious"' aircraft flew 209 sorties and suffered six deck landing crashes, including four by Martlets.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: She was then formally assigned to the Eastern Fleet and, after a short refit in Durban, sailed to Colombo, Ceylon, and became the flagship of the Rear Admiral Aircraft Carriers, Eastern Fleet, Denis Boyd, her former captain. At the beginning of August, the ship participated in Operation Stab, a decoy invasion of the Andaman Islands to distract the Japanese when the Americans were invading the island of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific. Captain Robert Cunliffe relieved Talbott on 22 August. On 10 September the carrier covered the amphibious landing that opened Operation Streamline Jane, the occupation of the remainder of Madagascar, and the landing at Tamatave eight days later, but no significant resistance was encountered and her aircraft were not needed. For this operation she had aboard six Fulmars of 806 Squadron, 23 Martlets of 881 Squadron and 18 Swordfish of 810 and 829 Squadrons.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: After a farewell visit from the Eastern Fleet commander, Admiral Sir James Somerville on 12 January 1943, "Illustrious" sailed for home the next day. She flew off her aircraft to Gibraltar on 31 January and continued on to the Clyde where she arrived five days later. She conducted deck-landing trials for prototypes of the Blackburn Firebrand and Fairey Firefly fighters, as well as the Fairey Barracuda dive/torpedo bomber from 8 to 10 February. On 26 February she began a refit at Birkenhead that lasted until 7 June during which her flight deck was extended, new radars were installed, her light anti-aircraft armament was augmented, and two new arrestor wires were fitted aft of the rear lift which increased her effective landing area. While conducting her post-refit trials, she also conducted flying trials for Martlet Vs and Barracudas. Both sets of trials were completed by 18 July, by which time the "Illustrious" had joined the Home Fleet.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: On 26 July, she sortied for the Norwegian Sea as part of Operation Governor, together with the battleship , the American battleship , and the light carrier , an attempt to fool the Germans into thinking that Sicily was not the only objective for an Allied invasion. 810 Squadron was the only unit retained from her previous air group and it had been re-equipped with Barracudas during her refit. Her fighter complement was augmented by 878 and 890 Squadrons, each with 10 Martlet Vs, and 894 Squadron with 10 Seafire IICs. These latter aircraft lacked folding wings and could not fit on the lifts. The British ships were spotted by Blohm & Voss BV 138 flying boats and 890 Squadron shot down two of them before the fleet returned to Scapa Flow on 29 July. She transferred to Greenock at the end of the month and sailed on 5 August to provide air cover for the ocean liner as she conveyed Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the Quebec Conference. Once the convoy was out of range of German aircraft, the "Illustrious" left the convoy and arrived back at Greenock on 8 August.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: Together with the "Unicorn", she sailed for the Mediterranean on 13 August to prepare for the landings at Salerno (Operation Avalanche), reaching Malta a week later. Her air group was reinforced at this time by four more Martlets each for 878 and 890 Squadrons. She was assigned to Force H for the operation which was tasked to protect the amphibious force from attack by the Italian Fleet and provide air cover for the carriers supporting the assault force. The Italians made no effort to attack the Allied forces, and the most noteworthy thing that any of her aircraft did was when one of 890 Squadron's Martlets escorted a surrendering Italian aircraft to Sicily. Before the "Illustrious" steamed for Malta she transferred six Seafires to the "Unicorn" to replace some of the latter's aircraft wrecked in deck-landing accidents. Four of these then flew ashore to conduct operations until they rejoined "Illustrious" on 14 September at Malta.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: She then returned to Britain on 18 October for a quick refit at Birkenhead that included further improvements to the flight deck and the reinforcement of her light anti-aircraft armament. She embarked the Barracudas of 810 and 847 Squadrons of No. 21 Naval Torpedo-Bomber Reconnaissance Wing on 27 November before beginning her work up three days later. No. 15 Naval Fighter Wing with the Vought Corsairs of 1830 and 1833 Squadrons were still training ashore and flew aboard before the work up was finished on 27 December.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: "Illustrious" departed Britain on 30 December and arrived in Trincomalee, Ceylon, on 28 January 1944. She spent most of the next several months training although she participated in several sorties with the Eastern Fleet searching for Japanese warships in the Bay of Bengal and near the coast of Sumatra. The fleet departed Trincomalee on 21 March to rendezvous with the American carrier in preparation for combined operations against the Japanese facilities in the Dutch East Indies and the Andaman Islands. The first operation carried out by both carriers was an airstrike on the small naval base at Sabang at the northern tip of Sumatra (Operation Cockpit). The carrier's air group consisted of 21 Barracudas and 28 Corsairs for the operation; "Illustrious" launched 17 of the former escorted by 13 of the latter on the morning of 19 April. The American bombers attacked the shipping in the harbour while the British aircraft attacked the shore installations. The oil storage tanks were destroyed and the port facilities badly damaged by the Barracudas. There was no aerial opposition and the fighters claimed to have destroyed 24 aircraft on the ground. All British aircraft returned safely although one American fighter was forced to ditch during the return home.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: The "Saratoga" was ordered to depart for home for a refit by 19 May and Somerville wanted to mount one more attack as she was leaving the Indian Ocean. He chose the naval base and oil refinery at Surabaya, Java (Operation Transom), and the distance from the newly renamed East Indies Fleet's base at Ceylon required refuelling at Exmouth Gulf on the western coast of Australia before the attack. The necessity to attack from the south, across the full width of Java, meant that the target was outside the Barracuda's range and 810 and 847 Squadrons were replaced by the 18 Grumman Avengers of 832 and 845 Squadrons for the mission. Early on the morning of 17 May, the ship launched all 18 Avengers, escorted by 16 Corsairs. One Avenger crashed on take-off and an American Avenger was shot down over the target; only one small ship was sunk, and little damage was done to the refinery. The "Saratoga" and her escorts separated after refuelling again in Exmouth Gulf and the East Indies Fleet was back in Trincomalee on 27 May where No. 21 Wing reembarked.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: On 10 June, the "Illustrious" and the escort carrier put to sea to simulate another airstrike on Sabang as a means of distracting the Japanese while the Americans were attacking airfields in the Mariana Islands and preparing to invade the island of Saipan. For the planned attack on Port Blair in the Andaman Islands in mid-June her air group was reinforced by the 14 Corsairs of 1837 Squadron; six Barracudas from No. 21 TBR Wing were landed to make room for the additional fighters. On 21 June, the ship launched 15 Barracudas and 23 Corsairs against the airfield and harbour of Port Blair. Two of the Barracudas were forced to return with engine trouble before the attack began and another was shot down over the target. In addition, one Corsair was forced to ditch; the pilot was rescued by a destroyer. Bad weather degraded the accuracy of the Barracudas and little damage was inflicted aside from a few aircraft destroyed on the ground and a few small craft sunk in the harbour. With over 50 aircraft airborne at one point, the British realised that a single deck accident might result in the loss of every aircraft in the air because there was no other carrier available to land aboard. The carrier and her escorts arrived back at Trincomalee on 23 June where 847 Squadron was merged into 810 Squadron a week later.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: Her sister ships, the "Indomitable" and the arrived at the end of June although only the latter's pilots were combat-ready. Captain Charles Lambe was appointed as the new captain of the "Illustrious" on 21 May, but he could not join his new ship until 9 July. Somerville decided to attack Sabang again (Operation Crimson), although the ships of the East Indies Fleet would bombard the port while the fighters from the "Illustrious" and the "Victorious" spotted for them and protected the fleet. As the Barracudas were needed only for anti-submarine patrols, the former embarked only nine while the latter ship flew off all her Barracudas. On the early morning of 25 July, "Illustrious" launched 22 Corsairs for CAP and to observe the naval gunfire and take photos for post-attack damage assessments. The bombardment was very effective, sinking two small freighters, and severely damaging the oil storage and port facilities. One Corsair was shot down by Japanese flak although the pilot was rescued after ditching. As the fleet was withdrawing, "Illustrious"s CAP intercepted and shot down a Nakajima Ki-43 (codenamed "Oscar") fighter and a Mitsubishi Ki-21 "Sally" medium bomber on reconnaissance missions. Later in the day her Corsairs intercepted 10 Ki-43s and shot down two of them while driving off the remainder. After arriving in Trincomalee, 1837 Squadron was transferred to the "Victorious".


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: On 30 July, she sailed for Durban to begin a refit that lasted from 15 August to 10 October and arrived back at Trincomalee on 1 November. 810 Squadron and its Barracudas were transferred off the ship the next day and were later replaced by the Avengers of 854 Squadron. For the next six weeks she carried out an intensive flying regime in preparation for the next operations against the Japanese together with the other carriers of the fleet. On 22 November she was assigned to the newly formed British Pacific Fleet (BPF), commanded by Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser. She was assigned to the 1st Aircraft Carrier Squadron (1st ACS), commanded by Rear Admiral Sir Philip Vian when he arrived at Colombo aboard the carrier . A week later, "Illustrious" and "Indomitable" sortied to attack an oil refinery at Pangkalan Brandan, Sumatra (Operation Outflank); the former's airgroup now consisted of 36 Corsairs of 1830 and 1833 Squadrons and 21 Avengers of 857 Squadron. When the aircraft approached the target on the morning of 20 December, it was obscured by clouds so they diverted to the secondary target of the port at Belawan Deli. It was partially obscured by clouds and heavy squalls so the attacking aircraft had only moderate success, setting some structures on fire and destroying several aircraft on the ground.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: On 16 January 1945 the BPF sailed for its primary base in the Pacific Ocean, Sydney, Australia. En route, the carriers of the 1st ACS attacked Palembang on 24 January and 29 January (Operation Meridian). "Illustrious"s air group consisted of 32 Corsairs and 21 Avengers by now and she contributed 12 of her Avengers and 16 Corsairs to the first attack, which destroyed most of the oil storage tanks and cut the refinery's output by half for three months. Five days later, the BPF attacked a different refinery and the ship launched 12 Avengers and 12 Corsairs. The attack was very successful at heavy cost; between the two air operations, her squadrons lost five Corsairs to enemy flak or fighters and one due to a mechanical problem on take-off as well as three Avengers to enemy action. Her Corsairs claimed four enemy aircraft shot down as did one Avenger pilot who claimed victory over a Nakajima Ki-44 "Tojo" fighter. The fleet's fire discipline was poor when it was attacked by seven Japanese bombers shortly after the strike aircraft began landing. The attackers were all shot down, but two shells fired by either "Indomitable" or the battleship struck "Illustrious", killing 12 and wounding 21 men.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: She arrived on 10 February and repairs began when she entered the Captain Cook Dock in the Garden Island Dockyard the next day, well before it was officially opened by the Duke of Gloucester, the Governor-General of Australia on 24 March. By this time the vibration problems with her centre propeller shaft, which had never been properly repaired after she was bombed at Malta, were so bad that the propeller was removed and the shaft locked in place, reducing her maximum speed to 24 knots. On 6 March she sailed to the BPF's advance base at Manus Island and, after her arrival a week later, "Illustrious" and her sisters "Indomitable" and "Victorious", as well as the carrier "Indefatigable", exercised together before sailing for Ulithi on 18 March. The BPF joined the American Fifth Fleet there two days later, under the designation Task Force 57 (TF 57), to participate in the preliminary operations for the invasion of Okinawa (Operation Iceberg). The British role during the operation was to neutralise airfields on the Sakishima Islands, between Okinawa and Formosa, beginning on 26 March. Her air group now consisted of 36 Corsairs, 16 Avengers and two Supermarine Walrus flying boats for rescue work.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: From 26 March to 9 April, the BPF attacked the airfields with each two-day period of flying operations followed by two or three days required to replenish fuel, ammunition and other supplies. While the precise details on activities of the carrier's squadrons are not readily available, it is known that the commanding officer of 854 Squadron was forced to ditch his Avenger on the morning of 27 March with the loss of both his crewmen; he was ultimately rescued that evening by an American submarine. On the afternoon of 6 April, four kamikaze aircraft evaded detection and interception by the CAP, and one, a Yokosuka D4Y3 "Judy" dive bomber, attacked "Illustrious" in a steep dive. The light AA guns managed to sever its port wing so that it missed the ship, although its starboard wingtip shattered the Type 272's radome mounted on the front of the bridge. When the bomb that it was carrying detonated in the water only from the side of the ship, the resulting shock wave badly damaged two Corsairs parked on the deck and severely shook the ship. The initial damage assessment was that little harm had been done, although vibrations had worsened, but this was incorrect as the damage to the hull structure and plating proved to be extensive. Vice Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings, commander of Task Force 57, ordered the recently arrived "Formidable" to join the task force to replace "Illustrious" on 8 April. In the meantime, she continued to conduct operations with the rest of the fleet. On 12 and 13 April, the BPF switched targets to airfields in northern Formosa and her sister joined the task force on 14 April. Since the beginning of the operation, her aircraft had flown 234 offensive and 209 defensive sorties, claiming at least two aircraft shot down. Her own losses were two Avengers and three Corsairs lost in action and one Avenger and six Corsairs due to non-combat causes.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: "Formidable"s arrival allowed Rawlings to order "Illustrious" to the advance base in San Pedro Bay, in the Philippines, for a more thorough inspection. She arrived on 16 April and the examination by divers revealed that some of her outer plating was split and that some transverse frames were cracked. The facilities there could provide only emergency repairs, enough to allow her to reach the bigger dockyard in Sydney. Task Force 57 arrived in San Pedro Bay on 23 April for a more thorough replenishment period and "Illustrious" transferred aircraft, spares, stores, and newly arrived pilots to the other carriers before sailing for Sydney on 3 May. She arrived on 14 May and departed 10 days later, bound for Rosyth for permanent repairs. 854 Squadron was disembarked while at Sydney, but the carrier kept her two Corsair squadrons until after arriving in the UK on 27 June.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: On 31 July Captain W. D. Stephens relieved Lambe. The end of the war several weeks later meant that there was no longer any urgency in refitting the "Illustrious" in time to participate in the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands and the Admiralty decided that she would become the Home Fleet training and trials carrier. Her catapult was upgraded to handle heavier aircraft, her flight deck was further improved, and her radar suite was modernized. She began her postrefit trials on 24 June 1946 and flying trials the following month. She relieved as the trials carrier in August and conducted trials on Firefly FR.4s, Firebrand TF.4s, de Havilland Sea Mosquitoes and de Havilland Sea Vampires over the next several months. Captain Ralph Edwards relieved Stephens on 7 January 1947.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: On 1 February, she joined the other ships of the Home Fleet as they rendezvoused with the battleship , which was serving as the royal yacht to escort King George VI as he set out for the first royal tour of South Africa. Over the next several months she conducted deck-landing practice for Avenger and Seafire pilots before starting a short refit on 2 April. After the tour's conclusion on 12 May, she sailed for Scottish waters for more deck-landing practice with the destroyer as her planeguard. On 18 July she rendezvoused with the Home Fleet to participate in manoeuvres before George VI reviewed the fleet on 22–23 July. The King and Queen inspected "Illustrious" and her crew, as did Prime Minister Clement Attlee and his wife. Afterwards, she was opened for visits by the public before returning to Portsmouth. En route she served as the centrepiece of a convoy-defence exercise as the RAF successfully "attacked" the convoy. After summer leave for her crew, she resumed deck-landing trials in September and October, including the initial trials of the prototype Supermarine Attacker jet-powered fighter in the latter month. In November the government accelerated the demobilisation of some National Servicemen and almost 2,000 men serving in the Mediterranean became eligible for release. They had to be replaced by men from the UK so "Illustrious" ferried the replacements to Malta, sailing on 21 November and returning on 11 December to Portsmouth.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: She was refitted and modernised from January to August 1948. Captain John Hughes-Hallett relieved Edwards on 14 June. The ship was recommissioned in early September. While at anchor in Portland Harbour on 17 October, one of her boats foundered short of the ship in heavy weather; 29 men lost their lives. "Illustrious" resumed her duties in early 1949 and conducted trials and training for Avengers, Fireflies, Gloster Meteors, de Havilland Sea Hornets, Vampires and Seafires. On 10 June Hughes-Hallet was relieved by Captain Eric Clifford. During a severe gale in late October, the ship aided the small coastal steamer that had lost power. The weather was too bad for "Illustrious" to rescue the steamer's crew, but she pumped fuel oil overboard to flatten the seas until a tug arrived to rescue the ship on 27 October. On 2 May 1950, she arrived at Birkenhead to commemorate the launch of the new carrier the following day with the First Lord of the Admiralty, George Hall, 1st Viscount Hall, aboard. A Hawker Sea Fury crashed while landing on 15 May, killing the pilot and two members of the deck crew. The prototype of the turboprop-powered Fairey Gannet anti-submarine aircraft made its first carrier landing aboard on 16 June. This event was also the first landing of any turboprop aircraft aboard an aircraft carrier.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: Captain S. H. Carlill assumed command on 24 June and the "Illustrious" resumed deck-landing training. On 8 and 9 November the Supermarine 510 research aircraft made the first ever landings by a swept-wing aircraft aboard a carrier. This aircraft was one of the ancestors of the Supermarine Swift fighter. A month later the ship began a four-month refit and hosted the first carrier landing of the de Havilland Sea Venom on 9 July 1951. Later in the month she hosted the Sea Furies of 802 and the Fireflies of 814 Squadrons for Exercise Winged Fleet. Captain C. T. Jellicoe relieved Carlill on 27 August and the ship ferried 10 Fireflies of 814 Squadron to Malta beginning on 1 October. She exchanged them for Firebrands for the return voyage. On 3 November she began loading the 39th Infantry Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division in response to the riots in Cyprus that broke out when Egypt abrogated the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936. She set sail two days later and arrived at Famagusta on 11 November. She returned to Portsmouth on 19 November and began loading the 45th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, the 1st Battalion, Coldstream Guards, and the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment two days later. "Illustrious" set sail on 23 November and reached Famagusta on 29 November. She returned to Portsmouth on 7 December and she did not leave harbour until 30 January 1952 when she resumed her customary role as a training ship.


title: HMS Illustrious (87)

text: After a brief refit in early 1952, she participated in Exercise Castanets off the Scottish coast in June and hosted 22,000 visitors during Navy Days at Devonport Royal Dockyard in August. On 1 September she hosted No. 4 Squadron and No. 860 Squadrons, Royal Netherlands Naval Aviation Service (RNNAS) for training, as well as 824 Squadron. Between the three squadrons they had 20 Fireflies and 8 Sea Furies when they participated in the major NATO exercise Main Brace later in the month. Jellicoe was relieved by Captain R. D. Watson on 26 September and "Illustrious" resumed training until 9 December when her crew was granted leave and the ship began a refit. She next put to sea on 24 April 1953 for trials and did not resume training pilots until the following month. She was reunited with the four other carriers that served with the BPF for the first time since the war for the Coronation Fleet Review of Queen Elizabeth II on 15 June at Spithead. The following day, the Fireflies of No. 4 Squadron, RNNAS and 824 Squadron landed aboard for more deck-landing training. During September she participated in Exercise Mariner with three British squadrons of Fireflies and Sea Furies and a Dutch Squadron of Avengers. The ship resumed flying training off the north coast of Scotland in October for two weeks, but she spent most of the rest of the year on trials of the new mirror-landing system that automated the process of landing aircraft aboard. "Illustrious" began her final maintenance period at Devonport Royal Dockyard on 10 December. Captain K. A. Short relieved Watson on 28 December. The refit was completed by the end of January 1954 and she resumed her normal role. The ship completed 1,051 deck landings and steamed by April. She made her first foreign port visit in many years at Le Havre, France, on 20–22 March, where 13,000 people came aboard. After another round of flying operations, she visited Trondheim, Norway, on 19 June. During 12 days of training in September, she completed 950 daytime and nighttime arrested landings and 210 helicopter landings. She conducted her last landings on 3 December and arrived at Devonport four days later to begin decommissioning. "Illustrious" was paid off at the end of February 1955 and she was towed to Gareloch and placed in reserve. She was sold on 3 November 1956 and broken up in early 1957. A model of HMS Illustrious in 1940is on display at the Monaco Naval Museum. Another model of Illustrious in her late-war appearance is at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in RNAS Yeovilton.


title: Suede (album)

text: Suede is the debut album by English alternative rock band Suede, released in March 1993 on Nude Records. It was recorded in London at Master Rock studios late 1992 and early 1993 and was produced by Ed Buller. At the time the fastest-selling debut album in British history in almost a decade, "Suede" debuted at the top of the UK Albums Chart, won the 1993 Mercury Music Prize, and is often cited as one of the first Britpop records. Displaying a sound of Britishness and glam rock, its music and lyrical content has been compared to The Smiths and early David Bowie.


title: Suede (album)

text: The album was preceded by what "Rolling Stone" called "its triptych of instantly classic singles." The three singles, "The Drowners", "Metal Mickey" and "Animal Nitrate" helped to create a media buzz leading to significant hype for a year leading up to the album's release. It was met with generally favourable reviews both in the UK and in the US. Although it remains the group's biggest-selling album in the US, it struggled to make headway commercially compared to the success in the UK. In 2013, "NME" placed the album at number 78 in its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.


title: Suede (album)

text: Suede quickly attracted the attention of the British music press; in 1992 before they had even released their debut single, "Melody Maker" featured the band on its cover, dubbing them "The Best New Band in Britain." The year leading up to the release of "Suede" saw the group dominate the music press, appearing on 19 magazine covers; and unprecedented for a band who had yet to release an album, an appearance on the cover of "Q" magazine in February 1993, declaring them "The Band of 1993". According to a March 1993 article in "The Independent", at the time Suede "had more hype than anybody since the Smiths, or possibly even the Sex Pistols."


title: Suede (album)

text: The record was produced by Ed Buller who the band had met through Nude Records' owner Saul Galpern. Both had worked together at Island Records. The band chose to work with Buller not based on his CV but more on a collective liking of him based on a shared interest of music they liked growing up. The band felt that this mutual interest would help shape their musical direction. Lead singer Brett Anderson said: "It wasn't so much us attaching ourselves to his CV, it was more kind of like where we were going to go with [the band]." In terms of writing for the album, Anderson said they had a structural way of doing it. Guitarist Bernard Butler would write guitar parts and melodies mostly on his own. He would then play these in the rehearsal room with bassist Mat Osman and drummer Simon Gilbert playing along. Anderson would then create vocal lines, which he would work on at home changing them to lyrics. These early recordings were done on a cassette recorder rather than a 4-track recorder. 4-track recorders would later be used during recording sessions for the album. During the early recordings, Butler said he was never fully aware of what lyrics Anderson was actually singing in rehearsals or at gigs until much later on. He was more focused on the melodies he was writing himself, saying: "I just always had the feeling that, if he's happy, I'm happy... if it's working, it's working and just go with it."


title: Suede (album)

text: Once the band had signed long-term to Nude/Sony in November 1992, the band began official recording of the album. The album was recorded late 1992 and early 1993 and cost £105,000 to make. Some tracks were recorded at Protocol and Angel Recording Studios, though the bulk of the album was recorded and mixed at Master Rock Studios as Buller got on well with the house engineer Gary Stout. In the studio, Buller's method of working was that he would form a close relationship with the band member whom he thought to be most important for the sound and creative input. In Suede's case it was guitarist Butler, which did not go down well with Anderson. Buller would be the band's closest musical collaborator for the years ahead. Anderson liked Buller as a person and for his enthusiasm for Suede. He endorsed his production on the first single "The Drowners"; however, he had different views on "Metal Mickey", feeling that Buller took the "metal brutality" out of the song. Instead of the song ending abruptly after the chorus, which the band demonstrated when performing live, Buller suggested an extended fade-out, which incorporated a key change.


title: Suede (album)

text: Anderson also had an issue with the song "Moving", saying "It never sounds as good on that album as it did live. There's hardly anything of the energy, it's over-produced, it's all a bit FX, it's a bit grim." Butler would eventually clash with Buller for similar reasons during the recording of the next album, which was an event Anderson could perceive early on. "I think as Bernard got more technically aware, because he always had a fine ear, he very soon saw flaws in what Ed was doing. Following on the tradition of the Smiths, Suede wanted to make sure the b-sides were of a high standard. This of course meant some early songs were set aside and left off the album. Anderson has expressed regret of not including on the album the b-sides "To The Birds", "My Insatiable One" and "Painted People". Needing songs to fill the album, the band's later recordings included "She's Not Dead", "The Next Life", "So Young" and "Breakdown". The latter track being the last song to be written for the album.


title: Suede (album)

text: Nick Wise views the whole album in terms of Butler and Anderson constantly trying to outperform each other, thereby producing "a pot-pourri of swirling guitars, falsetto wails and surging amplification that somehow succeeds in producing a giddy, weird, beautiful soundclash". In Suede's early days when Justine Frischmann was still a member and was dating Blur's Damon Albarn, the lyrics of her ex-partner Anderson were conveying a more depressing meaning. He has noted that the songs "Pantomime Horse" and B-side "He's Dead" were the product of an unhappy mind and that he could not have written such songs if he had been happy. Anderson states, "when it comes to writing, there's something to be said about being unhappy. I know I've been at my most creative when I've been sexually unsatisfied."


title: Suede (album)

text: Suede's breakthrough single in the UK was "Metal Mickey". According to Anderson, the song was inspired by Daisy Chainsaw vocalist KatieJane Garside. Butler has noted that its musical inspiration was "The Shoop Shoop Song", famously remade by Cher. Anderson wrote "Sleeping Pills" whilst doing voluntary work at a local community centre in Highgate. It was inspired by the daily drama of the British housewives and their dependence on valium as a means of escapism. At the time he felt that the song's lyrics were more sophisticated than "Animal Nitrate", which he thought were "a bit throw-away." The band were determined to release "Sleeping Pills" as the third single, but were soon over-ruled by Nude Records' owner Saul Galpern, who suggested the former instead.


title: Suede (album)

text: "Animal Nitrate", a play on amyl nitrite, contained Anderson's most risqué lyrics to date: as their author concurred, "You know it's about violence and abuse and sex and drugs. It's actually quite a hardcore song." Anderson has since said that the first album was about "sex and depression in equal measure". All the latter-day lyrics for the first album were directly influenced by extremely personal and emotional experiences in Anderson's life. "So Young", featuring a piano bridge courtesy of Ed Buller, was about his girlfriend's overdose. Anderson says: "it deals with the knife-edge of being young." "The Next Life", which was Butler's first serious piano part, was a lament to Anderson's deceased mother, while "Breakdown" dealt with his schoolfriend's descent into extreme depression. "She's Not Dead", was a true story written about the joint suicide of Anderson's aunt and her black clandestine lover. On the song, Anderson states: "the ankle chain and stuff like that, is the kind of detail that can only come from truth, that can't be conjured up."


title: Suede (album)

text: On the other hand, Anderson has elsewhere stressed that the songs are not autobiographical, but "often imaginary situations based on real sentiments, or real situations taken to their logical extreme". When asked about the pervasive use of the word "he" in his songs, Anderson stated that "too much music is about a very straightforward sense of sexuality ... Twisted sexuality is the only kind that interests me. The people that matter in music ... don't declare their sexuality. Morrissey never has and he's all the more interesting for that".


title: Suede (album)

text: Before the album was released, the band half seriously considered titles of "Half Dog", "Animal Lover" and "I Think You Stink", all were rejected in favour of "Suede". The gender-ambiguous cover art provoked some controversy in the press, prompting Anderson to comment: "I chose it because of the ambiguity of it, but mostly because of the beauty of it." The cover image of the androgynous kissing couple was taken from the 1991 book "Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs" edited by Tessa Boffin and Jean Fraser. The photograph was taken by Tee Corinne and in its entirety shows a woman kissing an acquaintance in a wheelchair. Corinne had in fact turned down the band's request to use the full shot of the two naked women and insisted they could only use a head and shoulders close-up of the women to protect their identity.


title: Suede (album)

text: "Suede" was released in the UK 29 March 1993 on vinyl, MC and CD. It opened at the top of the UK Albums Chart, becoming the fastest-selling debut album since Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" almost ten years earlier. The album qualified for a gold disc on advanced orders alone, going gold at 10am on the second day of release. It was outselling its nearest rival, Depeche Mode's "Songs of Faith and Devotion", by a margin of nearly four to one. It was released worldwide 6 April. "Metal Mickey" was the first single chosen for the American market, going to radio 22 March. The album was released by Columbia Records in the U.S., where it entered the Heatseekers Album Chart in June for a five-week run. In Europe, Sony issued a special introduction EP containing the first two UK singles, "The Drowners" and "Metal Mickey". Three singles had already been released in the UK. "The Drowners" charting at no. 49, "Metal Mickey" at no. 17, and 5 weeks before the release of the album, Suede's first top-ten hit "Animal Nitrate" peaked at no. 7 on the UK Singles Chart. Ten weeks after its release the album had reported sales of over 160,000 in the UK; 60,000 in the U.S., and 45,000 in Japan.


title: Suede (album)

text: In June 2011, Suede released remastered and expanded editions of their previous five studio albums. Released in chronological order each week. The expanded version includes the original 11 tracks remastered. Additional bonus material includes demos, all b-sides from the singles released from the album and two unreleased songs. The DVD features the promotional videos for the singles including the US version of "The Drowners" and the band's "Animal Nitrate" performance at the 1993 Brit Awards. The DVD includes two full live sets the band played in 1993; The February appearance at the Sheffield Leadmill and the May show at Brixton Academy. The latter known as "Love and Poison", previously released on VHS in 1993. Bonus features include a 2011 interview with Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler discussing the writing of the album. In the interview and on the album liner notes Anderson talked about an alternate "Suede", with "Moving" and "Animal Lover" replaced with the b-sides "My Insatiable One" and "To The Birds" respectively. The reissue charted at no. 74 in the UK Albums Chart.


title: Suede (album)

text: The album itself received generally positive reviews by the UK critics, Keith Cameron of the "NME" compared Suede to "The Smiths"; he wrote, "'Suede' faces the same problems [as The Smiths did] and similarly fails to deliver on a few, admittedly trifling, levels". However, he concluded, "This is the solid, quality, ring-of-confidence debut [Nude Records] dreamed the band would produce". Stuart Maconie of "Q" drew comparisons to Bowie, Morrissey and Marr. In conclusion he said "Bowie and the Smiths are obvious points of reference. From each, Suede have taken an alien sexual charisma, a peculiarly claustrophobic Englishness and brazenly good tunes. Moreover, rarely has a record from the indie sector come with such a burning sense of its own significance." In "Select", Steve Lamacq noted "a feeling in the air that they haven't fully let themselves go yet", concluding: "As debuts go this isn't exactly Suede in flames: but what a smouldering attempt." Ben Thompson of "The Independent" wrote that "it would be a shame if the eagerness to get the backlash underway stopped their excellent album getting the respect it deserves."


title: Suede (album)

text: The album was warmly received by most American critics. Robert Christgau called it a "surprisingly well-crafted coming out. More popwise and also more literary than the Smiths at a comparable stage, Suede's collective genderfuck projects a joyful defiance so rock and roll it obliterates all niggles about literal truth." In his review for "The Baltimore Sun", J. D. Considine felt that Suede had lived up to the hype they had received in the UK. He added: "the group's greatest strengths are strictly melodic, thanks to the consistently tuneful interplay between Brett Anderson's voice and Bernard Butler's guitar. As such, it's impossible to come away from the album without humming snatches of the slow-and-dreamy 'Sleeping Pills,' the dark, punchy 'The Drowners,' or the intoxicatingly catchy 'Animal Nitrate'." David Fricke of "Rolling Stone" gave a very positive review, saying: "Suede the band and Suede the record are more than the sum of their brilliantly packaged designer hauteur. There is an undercurrent of doomsday urgency in Anderson's feigned languor, tartly echoed in Bernard Butler's corrosive guitar work." He wrote a very positive assessment of most tracks on the album, with one exception: "there are two 'Animal' songs on the album, of which 'Animal Lover' is one too many." In conclusion, he said: "No matter; they've made the best of this one." In a more mixed review, Lorraine Ali of the "Los Angeles Times" felt the band "do their best to alienate the common listener." She wrote: "When not pretending to be superhuman, Suede churns out strong songs--a couple of fun, post-punk, power-pop tunes among them. But mostly the band oozes alluring, tousled and sexy songs over sometimes steamy lyrics or weaves sad and opiated melodies around Anderson’s shooting highs and desperate lows."


title: Suede (album)

text: The album featured in the top ten end-of-year best-of lists of "NME", "Select", "Melody Maker","The Face", "OOR" and "Eye Weekly".


title: Suede (album)

text: The album charted at no. 1 in the UK Albums Chart, selling more than 100,000 copies in the first week. It spent 11 weeks in the top 40. In March 1993 the British Phonographic Industry has certified the album as gold. By September 1994, UK sales were 220,000 and sales outside the UK were around 400,000, with the largest markets being Japan (69,000), Germany (42,000), Sweden (39,000) and France (37,000). Three weeks after entering the chart, it peaked at no. 14 on the US Heatseekers Albums Chart on 26 June 1993. It also charted at no. 8 on the European Top 100 Albums chart, staying there for 16 weeks. As of September 2020, the album has sold 301,000 copies in the UK, according to the Official Charts Company. "Suede" is the group's best-selling album in the United States, having sold about 105,000 copies as of September 2008, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Much of the total album sales in the UK consisted of the initial rush during the first few weeks. As of September 2019, of all the Mercury Prize winning albums, Suede is the 16th best-selling out of 27; despite being one of only three chart-topping albums on the list. The other two number ones, Arctic Monkeys' debut and Pulp's "Different Class" are the top-two best-selling Mercury Prize winners.


title: Suede (album)

text: Suede's debut album is regarded by critics as a defining album of the Britpop era, and is often credited for starting Britpop. While most critics consider follow-up album "Dog Man Star" as the band's best work, there are a few who have recognised the first album as their finest moment. Reviewing the 2011 reissue, Kevin Courtney of "The Irish Times" spoke of the strength of Suede's early singles. Rating it above "Dog Man Star", which he felt was "too fragmented and flawed to be their masterpiece." Likewise, with similar views, David Edwards of "Drowned in Sound" rated the reissue ten out of ten, and opined that "although "Dog Man Star" arguably contains more individually brilliant moments, there is a serious case for referring to their 1993 debut as overall, being their most complete realisation."


title: Suede (album)

text: Many of the artists who have cited the band as an influence have spoken directly of how the band's first album was an influence. Notable artists are Kate Jackson of English indie rock band The Long Blondes, and American indie rock band Drowners, who took their name from Suede's single of the same name.


title: The Birds (story)

text: "The Birds" is a horror story by the British writer Daphne du Maurier, first published in her 1952 collection "The Apple Tree". It is the story of a farmhand, his family, his community, and all of England, under attack by flocks of birds in "kamikaze" fashion. The story is set in du Maurier's home county of Cornwall shortly after the end of the Second World War. By the end of the story, it becomes clear that all of Britain is under aerial assault.


title: The Birds (story)

text: The story was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's film "The Birds", released in 1963, the same year that "The Apple Tree" was reprinted as "The Birds and Other Stories". In 2009, the Irish playwright Conor McPherson adapted the story for the stage at Dublin's Gate Theatre.


title: The Birds (story)

text: In a small Cornish seaside town, wounded war veteran Nat Hocken works part-time for a farmer, Mr Trigg. One day in early December he notices a large number of birds behaving strangely along the coast, behaviour he attributes to a recent cold snap. That night, Nat hears a tapping on his bedroom window and a bird pecks his hand, causing it to bleed. As the night progresses more birds congregate, including some that flock into his children's bedroom, but they leave at dawn.


title: The Birds (story)

text: The next day, Nat tells his fellow workers about the night's events but is not believed. As he walks to the beach to dispose of some dead birds, he notices that what appear to be whitecaps on the sea are actually a large mass of seagulls apparently waiting for the tide to rise. On the radio, the BBC reports that birds have been massing all over Britain and that people have been attacked. Nat boards up the windows and chimneys of his cottage as a precaution.


title: The Birds (story)

text: Rushing on foot to pick up his daughter from the school bus stop, Nat spots Mr Trigg and persuades him to give him a lift home in his car. Mr Trigg professes to be unfazed by the announcements and says that he plans to shoot the birds for fun. Nat declines an offer to join him and walks home. Just as he arrives, the gulls descend and attack. Nat manages to reach his door with only minor injuries.


title: The Birds (story)

text: Massive flocks of birds gather, attacking anyone out in the open. A national emergency is declared, and people are told not to leave their homes. The radio news announcer states that due to the "unprecedented nature of the emergency", the BBC will be going silent for the night and will resume broadcasting the next morning. Nat brings the family into the kitchen for safety. During dinner, they hear what sounds like aeroplanes overhead, followed by the sound of planes crashing. The attacks from the birds eventually die down, and Nat guesses that the birds will only attack at high tide.


title: The Birds (story)

text: The next morning, radio broadcasts do not resume. As the tide recedes, Nat and his family walk to Mr Trigg's farm to seek supplies. They pass piles of dead birds, with those still alive peering at them from afar. At the farm, they find that Mr Trigg, his wife, and their workman have been killed, and the postman's body lies by the road. The family gather supplies and return home, but soon the birds attack once again. Nat smokes his last cigarette, then throws the empty pack into the fire and watches it burn.


title: The Birds (story)

text: One interpretation of the story suggests that it reflects the British experience during the Second World War, evoking anxieties about the government's failure to protect their citizens and intrusions into domestic spaces by aggressive interlopers.


title: The Birds (story)

text: Du Maurier's inspiration for the story was the sight of a farmer being attacked by a flock of gulls as he ploughed a field.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: For centuries, there have been movements to reform the spelling of the English language. It seeks to change English orthography so that it is more consistent, matches pronunciation better, and follows the alphabetic principle. Common motives for spelling reform include quicker learning, cheaper learning, and making English more useful as an international auxiliary language.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: Reform proposals vary in terms of the depth of the linguistic changes and by their implementations. In terms of writing systems, most spelling reform proposals are moderate; they use the traditional English alphabet, try to maintain the familiar shapes of words, and try to maintain common conventions (such as silent e). More radical proposals involve adding or removing letters or symbols, or even creating new alphabets. Some reformers prefer a gradual change implemented in stages, while others favor an immediate and total reform for all.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: Some spelling reform proposals have been adopted partially or temporarily. Many of the spellings preferred by Noah Webster have become standard in the United States, but have not been adopted elsewhere (see American and British English spelling differences). Harry Lindgren's proposal, SR1, was once popular in Australia.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: Modern English spelling developed from about 1350 onwards, when—after three centuries of Norman French rule—English gradually became the official language of England again, although very different from before 1066, having incorporated many words of French origin (battle, beef, button, etc.). Early writers of this new English, such as Geoffrey Chaucer, gave it a fairly consistent spelling system, but this was soon diluted by Chancery clerks who re-spelled words based on French orthography. English spelling consistency was dealt a further blow when William Caxton brought the printing press to London in 1476. Having lived in mainland Europe for the preceding 30 years, his grasp of the English spelling system had become uncertain. The Belgian assistants whom he brought to help him set up his business had an even poorer command of it.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: As printing developed, printers began to develop individual preferences or "house styles". Furthermore, typesetters were paid by the line and were fond of making words longer. However, the biggest change in English spelling consistency occurred between 1525, when William Tyndale first translated the New Testament, and 1539, when King Henry VIII legalized the printing of English Bibles in England. The many editions of these Bibles were all printed outside England by people who spoke little or no English. They often changed spellings to match their Dutch orthography. Examples include the silent "h" in "ghost" (to match Dutch , which later became ), "aghast", "ghastly" and "gherkin". The silent "h" in other words—such as , and —was later removed.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: There have been two periods when spelling reform of the English language has attracted particular interest.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: The first of these periods was from the middle of the 16th to the middle of the 17th centuries AD, when a number of publications outlining proposals for reform were published. Some of these proposals were:


title: English-language spelling reform

text: These proposals generally did not attract serious consideration because they were too radical or were based on an insufficient understanding of the phonology of English. However, more conservative proposals were more successful. James Howell in his "Grammar" of 1662 recommended minor changes to spelling, such as changing ' to "logic", ' to "war", ' to "sin", ' to "town" and "" to "true". Many of these spellings are now in general use.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: From the 16th century AD onward, English writers who were scholars of Greek and Latin literature tried to link English words to their Graeco-Latin counterparts. They did this by adding silent letters to make the real or imagined links more obvious. Thus ' became "debt" (to link it to Latin ), ' became "doubt" (to link it to Latin ), ' became "scissors" and ' became "scythe" (as they were wrongly thought to come from Latin ), "" became "island" (as it was wrongly thought to come from Latin ), and so forth.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: William Shakespeare satirized the disparity between English spelling and pronunciation. In his play "Love's Labour's Lost", the character Holofernes is "a pedant" who insists that pronunciation should change to match spelling, rather than simply changing spelling to match pronunciation. For example, Holofernes insists that everyone should pronounce the unhistorical "B" in words like "doubt" and "debt".


title: English-language spelling reform

text: The second period started in the 19th century and appears to coincide with the development of phonetics as a science. In 1806, Noah Webster published his first dictionary, . It included an essay on the oddities of modern orthography and his proposals for reform. Many of the spellings he used, such as "color" and "center", would become hallmarks of American English. In 1807, Webster began compiling an expanded dictionary. It was published in 1828 as "An American Dictionary of the English Language". Although it drew some protest, the reformed spellings were gradually adopted throughout the United States.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: In 1837, Isaac Pitman published his system of phonetic shorthand, while in 1848 Alexander John Ellis published "A Plea for Phonetic Spelling". These were proposals for a new phonetic alphabet. Although unsuccessful, they drew widespread interest.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: By the 1870s, the philological societies of Great Britain and America chose to consider the matter. After the "International Convention for the Amendment of English Orthography" that was held in Philadelphia in August 1876, societies were founded such as the English Spelling Reform Association and American Spelling Reform Association. That year, the American Philological Society adopted a list of eleven reformed spellings for immediate use. These were "are→ar, give→giv, have→hav, live→liv, though→tho, through→thru, guard→gard, catalogue→catalog, (in)definite→(in)definit, wished→wisht". One major American newspaper that began using reformed spellings was the "Chicago Tribune", whose editor and owner, Joseph Medill, sat on the Council of the Spelling Reform Association. In 1883, the American Philological Society and American Philological Association worked together to produce 24 spelling reform rules, which were published that year. In 1898, the American National Education Association adopted its own list of 12 words to be used in all writings: "tho, altho, thoro, thorofare, thru, thruout, catalog, decalog, demagog, pedagog, prolog, program".


title: English-language spelling reform

text: The Simplified Spelling Board was founded in the United States in 1906. The SSB's original 30 members consisted of authors, professors and dictionary editors. Andrew Carnegie, a founding member, supported the SSB with yearly bequests of more than US$300,000. In April 1906, it published a list of 300 words, which included 157 spellings that were already in common use in American English. In August 1906, the SSB word list was adopted by Theodore Roosevelt, who ordered the Government Printing Office to start using them immediately. However, in December 1906, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution and the old spellings were reintroduced. Nevertheless, some of the spellings survived and are commonly used in American English today, such as "anaemia/anæmia"→"anemia" and "mould"→"mold". Others such as "mixed"→"mixt" and "scythe"→"sithe" did not survive. In 1920, the SSB published its "Handbook of Simplified Spelling", which set forth over 25 spelling reform rules. The handbook noted that every reformed spelling now in general use was originally the overt act of a lone writer, who was followed at first by a small minority. Thus, it encouraged people to "point the way" and "set the example" by using the reformed spellings whenever they could. However, with its main source of funds cut off, the SSB disbanded later that year.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: In Britain, spelling reform was promoted from 1908 by the Simplified Spelling Society and attracted a number of prominent supporters. One of these was George Bernard Shaw (author of "Pygmalion") and much of his considerable will was left to the cause. Among members of the society, the conditions of his will gave rise to major disagreements, which hindered the development of a single new system.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: Between 1934 and 1975, the "Chicago Tribune", then Chicago's biggest newspaper, used a number of reformed spellings. Over a two-month spell in 1934, it introduced 80 respelled words, including "tho, thru, thoro, agast, burocrat, frate, harth, herse, iland, rime, staf" and "telegraf". A March 1934 editorial reported that two-thirds of readers preferred the reformed spellings. Another claimed that "prejudice and competition" was preventing dictionary makers from listing such spellings. Over the next 40 years, however, the newspaper gradually phased out the respelled words. Until the 1950s, Funk & Wagnalls dictionaries listed many reformed spellings, including the SSB's 300, alongside the conventional spellings.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: In 1949, a Labour MP, Dr Mont Follick, introduced a private member's bill in the House of Commons, which failed at the second reading. In 1953, he again had the opportunity, and this time it passed the second reading by 65 votes to 53. Because of anticipated opposition from the House of Lords, the bill was withdrawn after assurances from the Minister of Education that research would be undertaken into improving spelling education. In 1961, this led to James Pitman's Initial Teaching Alphabet, introduced into many British schools in an attempt to improve child literacy. Although it succeeded in its own terms, the advantages were lost when children transferred to conventional spelling. After several decades, the experiment was discontinued.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: In his 1969 book "Spelling Reform: A New Approach", the Australian linguist Harry Lindgren proposed a step-by-step reform. The first, "Spelling Reform step 1" (SR1), called for the short sound (as in "bet") to always be spelled with <e> (for example "friend→frend, head→hed"). This reform had some popularity in Australia.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: In 2013, University of Oxford Professor of English Simon Horobin proposed that variety in spelling be acceptable. For example, he believes that it does not matter whether words such as "accommodate" and "tomorrow" are spelled with double letters. This proposal does not fit within the definition of spelling reform used by, for example, "Random House Dictionary".


title: English-language spelling reform

text: It is argued that spelling reform would make it easier to learn to read (decode), to spell, and to pronounce, making it more useful for international communication, reducing educational budgets (reducing literacy teachers, remediation costs, and literacy programs) and/or enabling teachers and learners to spend more time on more important subjects or expanding subjects.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: Another argument is the sheer amount of resources that are wasted using the current spelling. For example, Cut Spelling can reduce spelling up to 15%. According to that figure, for every 100 letters being used on a daily basis there are 15 letters being used unnecessarily. That amounts to 15 pages for every 100 pages of a book, or about 1 in 7 trees. This applies to all aspects of daily living including shopping receipts, office documents, newspapers and magazines, and internet traffic. This is taxing on time, energy, money, and other resources.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: Advocates note that spelling reforms have taken place already, just slowly and often not in an organized way. There are many words that were once spelled un-phonetically but have since been reformed. For example, "music" was spelled "musick" until the 1880s, and "fantasy" was spelled "phantasy" until the 1920s. For a time, almost all words with the "-or" ending (such as "error") were once spelled "-our" ("errour"), and almost all words with the "-er" ending (such as "member") were once spelled "-re" ("membre"). In American spelling, most of them now use "-or" and "-er", but in British spelling, only some have been reformed.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: In the last 250 years, since Samuel Johnson prescribed how words ought to be spelled, pronunciations of hundreds of thousands of words (as extrapolated from Masha Bell's research on 7000 common words) have gradually changed, and the alphabetic principle in English has gradually been corrupted. Advocates argue that if we wish to keep English spelling regular, then spelling needs to be amended to account for the changes.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: Reduced spelling is currently practiced on informal internet platforms and is common in text messaging.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: The way vowel letters are used in English spelling vastly contradicts their usual meanings. For example, ⟨o⟩, expected to represent [o], may stand for [u], while ⟨u⟩, expected to represent [u], may represent [ɐ]. This makes English spelling even less intuitive for foreign learners than it is for native speakers, which is of importance for an international auxiliary language.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: Unlike many other languages, English spelling has never been systematically updated and thus today only partly holds to the alphabetic principle. As an outcome, English spelling is a system of weak rules with many exceptions and ambiguities.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: Most phonemes in English can be spelled in more than one way. E.g. the words fr and pr contain the same sound in different spellings. Likewise, many graphemes in English have multiple pronunciations and decodings, such as "ough" in words like "thr", "th", "tht", "thor", "t", "tr", and "pl". There are 13 ways of spelling the schwa (the most common of all phonemes in English), 12 ways to spell and 11 ways to spell . These kinds of incoherences can be found throughout the English lexicon and they even vary between dialects. Masha Bell has analyzed 7000 common words and found that about 1/2 cause spelling and pronunciation difficulties and about 1/3 cause decoding difficulties.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: Such ambiguity is particularly problematic in the case of heteronyms (homographs with different pronunciations that vary with meaning), such as "bow", "desert", "live", "read", "tear", "wind", and "wound". In reading such words one must consider the context in which they are used, and this increases the difficulty of learning to read and pronounce English.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: A closer relationship between phonemes and spellings would eliminate many exceptions and ambiguities, making the language easier and faster to master.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: Some proposed simplified spellings already exist as standard or variant spellings in old literature. As noted earlier, in the 16th century, some scholars of Greek and Latin literature tried to make English words look more like their Graeco-Latin counterparts, at times even erroneously. They did this by adding silent letters, so "det" became "debt", "dout" became "doubt", "sithe" became "scythe", "iland" became "island", "ake" became "ache", and so on. Some spelling reformers propose undoing these changes. Other examples of older spellings that are more phonetic include "frend" for "friend" (as on Shakespeare's grave), "agenst" for "against", "yeeld" for "yield", "bild" for "build", "cort" for "court", "sted" for "stead", "delite" for "delight", "entise" for "entice", "gost" for "ghost", "harth" for "hearth", "rime" for "rhyme", "sum" for "some", "tung" for "tongue", and many others. It was also once common to use "-t" for the ending "-ed" where it is pronounced as such (for example "dropt" for "dropped"). Some of the English language's most celebrated writers and poets have used these spellings and others proposed by today's spelling reformers. Edmund Spenser, for example, used spellings such as "rize, wize" and "advize" in his famous poem "The Faerie Queene", published in the 1590s.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: The English alphabet has several letters whose characteristic sounds are already represented elsewhere in the alphabet. These include X, which can be realised as "ks", "gz", or z; soft G (), which can be realised as J; hard C (), which can be realised as K; soft C (), which can be realised as S; and Q ("qu", or ), which can be realised as "kw" (or simply K in some cases). However, these spellings are usually retained to reflect their often-Latin roots.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: Spelling reform faces many arguments against the development and implementation of a reformed orthography for English. Public acceptance to spelling reform has been consistently low, at least since the early 19th century, when spelling was codified by the influential English dictionaries of Samuel Johnson (1755) and Noah Webster (1806). The irregular spelling of very common words, such as "are, have, done, of, would" makes it difficult to fix them without introducing a noticeable change to the appearance of English text.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: English is the only one of the top ten major languages with no associated worldwide regulatory body with the power to promulgate spelling changes.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: English is a West Germanic language that has borrowed many words from non-Germanic languages, and the spelling of a word often reflects its origin. This sometimes gives a clue as to the meaning of the word. Even if their pronunciation has strayed from the original pronunciation, the spelling is a record of the phoneme. The same is true for words of Germanic origin whose current spelling still resembles their cognates in other Germanic languages. Examples include "light", German ; "knight", German ; "ocean", French ; "occasion", French . Critics argue that re-spelling such words could hide those links, although not all spelling reforms necessarily require significantly re-spelling them.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: Another criticism is that a reform may favor one dialect or pronunciation over others, creating a standard language. Some words have more than one acceptable pronunciation, regardless of dialect (e.g. "economic", "either"). Some distinctions in regional accents are still marked in spelling. Examples include the distinguishing of "fern", "fir" and "fur" that is maintained in Irish and Scottish English or the distinction between "toe" and "tow" that is maintained in a few regional dialects in England and Wales. However, dialectal accents exist even in languages whose spelling is called phonemic, such as Spanish. Some letters have allophonic variation, such as how the letter "a" in "bath" currently stands for both and and speakers pronounce it as per their dialect.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: Most spelling reforms attempt to improve phonemic representation, but some attempt genuine phonetic spelling, usually by changing the basic English alphabet or making a new one. All spelling reforms aim for greater regularity in spelling.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: These proposals seek to eliminate the extensive use of digraphs (such as "ch", "gh", "kn-", "-ng", "ph", "qu", "sh", voiced and voiceless "th", and "wh-") by introducing new letters and/or diacritics. Each letter would then represent a single sound. In a digraph, the two letters represent not their individual sounds but instead an entirely different and discrete sound, which can lengthen words and lead to mishaps in pronunciation.


title: English-language spelling reform

text: Some speakers of non-Latin script languages occasionally write English phonetically in their respective writing systems, which may be perceived as an ad hoc spelling reform by some.


title: McLaren Artura

text: The McLaren Artura is a hybrid sports car designed and manufactured by the British car manufacturer McLaren Automotive, scheduled to enter production from 2021.


title: McLaren Artura

text: The name of the second hybrid McLaren and the first McLaren with a V6 engine was announced on 23 November 2020.


title: McLaren Artura

text: The Artura uses an all-new twin-turbocharged V6 engine paired with an electric motor to produce a combined output of at 7,500 rpm and of torque at 2,250 rpm. On its own, the engine produces and of torque. The all-aluminum engine has a bank angle of 120 degrees, a world first for a production V6 engine. This is to accommodate a hot-vee layout, where the two turbochargers are placed in the vee of the engine. Power is sent to the rear wheels through an all-new 8 speed dual-clutch transmission. Redline is at 8,500 rpm.


title: McLaren Artura

text: The electric motor used in the Artura produces and of torque. The combined torque peak is less than the sum of both sides as the output is limited to "optimize powertrain drivability characteristics." The 7.4-kWh lithium-ion battery pack weighs and is positioned under the rear of the passenger compartment. McLaren claims a 2.5-hour time for an 80 percent charge using an EVSE cable and a 19-mile electric range under European testing methodology. This motor replaces the reverse gear, similar to the Ferrari SF90 Stradale. The total mass of all electrical components is , which means that the Artura has a kerb weight only more than that of its predecessor, the McLaren 570S.


title: McLaren Artura

text: According to McLaren, the Artura can accelerate to in 2.9 seconds, to in 8.3 seconds, can achieve a maximum speed of , and has a time of 10.7 seconds.


title: Knödel

text: Knödel (; and ) or Klöße (; ) are boiled dumplings commonly found in Central European and East European cuisine. Central European countries in which their variant of "Knödel" is popular include Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Czechia. They are also found in Scandinavian, Romanian, northeastern Italian cuisine, Ukrainian and Belarusian cuisines. Usually made from flour, bread or potatoes, they are often served as a side dish, but can also be a dessert such as plum dumplings, or even meat balls in soup. Many varieties and variations exist.


title: Knödel

text: The word is German and is cognate with the English word "knot" and the Latin word 'knot'. Through the Old High German and the Middle High German it finally changed to the modern expression. Knödel in Hungary are called or ; in Slovenia, or (less specifically) ; in the Czech Republic, (singular ); in Slovakia, (singular ); in Luxembourg, ; in Bosnia, Croatia, Poland and Serbia, ; in Bukovina, or ; and, in Italy, . In some regions of the United States, "klub" is used to refer specifically to potato dumplings. A similar dish is known in Sweden ( or ) and in Norway ( or ), filled with salty meat; and in Canada ().


title: Knödel

text: Knödel are used in various dishes in Austrian, German, Slovak and Czech cuisine. From these regions, Knödel spread throughout Europe.


title: Famitsu

text: The name Famitsu is a portmanteau abbreviation of the word "Famicom" itself comes from a portmanteau abbreviation of "Family Computer" (the Japanese name for the Nintendo Entertainment System)—the dominant video game console in Japan during the 1980s.


title: Famitsu

text: , a computer game magazine, started in 1982 as an extra issue of "ASCII", and later it became a periodic magazine. was a column in "Login", focused on the Famicom platform, and ran from March 1985 to December 1986 issue. It received a good reception, so the publisher decided to found the magazine specialized for it.


title: Famitsu

text: The first issue of "Famitsu" was published on June 6, 1986, as "Famicom Tsūshin". It sold less than 200,000 copies, despite 700,000 copies printed. The major competitor was "Family Computer Magazine" launched in July 1985 by Tokuma Shoten. "Famitsu"s editor found many readers had multiple game consoles, and they thought it would be better if the magazine covered various platforms. Increasing contents and the page count gradually, the magazine was published three times per month instead of semimonthly publication. On July 19, 1991 (issue #136) the magazine was renamed to and issues were published weekly thereafter. Alongside the weekly magazine, a monthly version called was also published.


title: Famitsu

text: Hirokazu Hamamura, an editor-in-chief (1992-2002), felt the beginning of a new era when he saw a private demonstration of "Final Fantasy VII" in 1993. He thought the name "Famicom Tsūshin" should be refurbished. At the start of 1996 (with issue #369) the magazines underwent another name change, truncating their titles to and The name "Famitsu" had already been in common use.


title: Famitsu

text: The magazine was published by ASCII from its founding through March 2000 when it was sold to Enterbrain, which published it for 13 years until their parent company Kadokawa published it from 2013 to 2017. Since 2017, Kadokawa's subsidiary Gzbrain has been publishing the magazine, while in 2019 the company changed its name to Kadokawa Game Linkage.


title: Famitsu

text: "Famicom Tsūshin" initially focused on the Famicom platform, but later it featured multi-platform coverage. "Famicom Tsūshin" was renamed to "Famitsu" in 1995. "Shūkan Famitsū" is a weekly publication concentrating on video game news and reviews, and is published every Thursday with a circulation of 500,000 per issue. "Gekkan Famitsū" is published monthly.


title: Famitsu

text: "Famitsu" magazine covers alternately feature pop idols or actresses on even-numbered issues and the "Famitsu" mascot, the Fox in odd-numbered issues. Year-end and special editions all feature Necky dressed as popular contemporary video game characters. Necky is the cartoon creation of artist Susumu Matsushita, and he takes the form of a costumed fox. The costumes worn by Necky reflect current popular video games. Necky's name was chosen according to a reader poll, and it derives from a complex Japanese pun: "Necky" is actually the reverse of the Japanese word for fox, and his original connection to "Famicom Tsūshin" is intended to evoke the bark of the fox, the Japanese onomatopoeia of which is . Necky makes a cameo appearance in "Super Mario Maker".


title: Famitsu

text: Video games are graded in "Famitsu" via a "Cross Review" in which a panel of four video game reviewers each give a score from 0 to 10 (with ten indicating the best game). The scores of the four reviewers are then added up for a maximum possible score of 40. From the twenty-four games awarded with a perfect score , three are for the Nintendo DS and five are for the Wii. The PlayStation 3 also has five games with a perfect score and the Xbox 360 has four, with both consoles having four titles in common. The others are for different platforms with only one title each. Franchises with multiple perfect score winners include "The Legend of Zelda" with four titles, "Metal Gear" with three titles, and "Final Fantasy" with two titles. The most recent game to receive a perfect score is "Ghost of Tsushima".


title: Famitsu

text: , all but three games with perfect scores are from Japanese companies, nine being published/developed by Nintendo, four by Square Enix, three by Sega, three by Konami and one by Capcom. , the only three completely foreign games to achieve a perfect score are "" by Bethesda Softworks, "Grand Theft Auto V" by Rockstar Games, and "Ghost of Tsushima", from Sucker Punch Productions. Other foreign games that have achieved near-perfect scores are "L.A. Noire", "Red Dead Redemption", "Red Dead Redemption 2" and "Grand Theft Auto IV" – all four of which came from Rockstar Games; "", "", and "" – all from Activision, although published by Square Enix in Japan; "Gears of War 3" from Epic Games; and The Last of Us Part II and from Naughty Dog. ("Kingdom Hearts II" is a joint effort between Square Enix and Disney Interactive Studios.)


title: Famitsu

text: "Famitsu" administers the "Famitsu" awards. Video games receive a number of different awards in categories like Innovation, Biggest Hit, Rookie Award, Highest Quality, etc. One or two "Game of the Year" awards are granted as the top prize. Top prize winners are determined by a combination of critical and fan review scores as well as sales figures.


title: Famitsu

text: UK trade magazine MCV and "Famitsu" have an exclusive partnership which sees news and content from each magazine appear in the other.


title: Optogenetics

text: Optogenetics is a biological technique to control the activity of neurons or other cell types with light. This is achieved by expression of light-sensitive ion channels, pumps or enzymes specifically in the target cells. On the level of individual cells, light-activated enzymes and transcription factors allow precise control of biochemical signaling pathways. In systems neuroscience, the ability to control the activity of a genetically defined set of neurons has been used to understand their contribution to decision making, learning, fear memory, mating, addiction, feeding, and locomotion. In a first medical application of optogenetic technology, vision was partially restored in a blind patient.


title: Optogenetics

text: Optogenetic techniques have also been introduced to map the functional connectivity of the brain"." By altering the activity of genetically labelled neurons with light and using imaging and electrophysiology techniques to record the activity of other cells, researchers can identify the statistical dependencies between cells and brain regions.


title: Optogenetics

text: In a broader sense, optogenetics also includes methods to record cellular activity with genetically encoded indicators.


title: Optogenetics

text: In 2010, optogenetics was chosen as the "Method of the Year" across all fields of science and engineering by the interdisciplinary research journal "Nature Methods". At the same time, optogenetics was highlighted in the article on "Breakthroughs of the Decade" in the academic research journal "Science".


title: Optogenetics

text: In 1979, Francis Crick suggested that controlling all cells of one type in the brain, while leaving the others more or less unaltered, is a real challenge for neuroscience. Francis Crick speculated that a technology using light might be useful to control neuronal activity with temporal and spatial precision but at the time there was no technique to make neurons responsive to light.


title: Optogenetics

text: By early 1990s LC Katz and E Callaway had shown that light could uncage glutamate. Heberle and Büldt in 1994 had already shown functional heterologous expression of a bacteriorhodopsin for light-activated ion flow in yeast. Later in 1995, Georg Nagel et al. and Ernst Bamberg tried the heterologous expression of microbial rhodopsins (also bacteriorhodopsin and also in a non-neural system, Xenopus oocytes) (Nagel et al., 1995, FEBS Lett.) and showed light-induced current.


title: Optogenetics

text: The earliest genetically targeted method that used light to control rhodopsin-sensitized neurons was reported in January 2002, by Boris Zemelman and Gero Miesenböck, who employed "Drosophila" rhodopsin cultured mammalian neurons. In 2003, Zemelman and Miesenböck developed a second method for light-dependent activation of neurons in which single ionotropic channels TRPV1, TRPM8 and P2X2 were gated by photocaged ligands in response to light. Beginning in 2004, the Kramer and Isacoff groups developed organic photoswitches or "reversibly caged" compounds in collaboration with the Trauner group that could interact with genetically introduced ion channels. TRPV1 methodology, albeit without the illumination trigger, was subsequently used by several laboratories to alter feeding, locomotion and behavioral resilience in laboratory animals. However, light-based approaches for altering neuronal activity were not applied outside the original laboratories, likely because the easier to employ channelrhodopsin was cloned soon thereafter.


title: Optogenetics

text: Peter Hegemann, studying the light response of green algae at the University of Regensburg, had discovered photocurrents that were too fast to be explained by the classic g-protein-coupled animal rhodopsins. Teaming up with the electrophysiologist Georg Nagel at the Max Planck Institute in Frankfurt, they could demonstrate that a single gene from the alga "Chlamydomonas" produced large photocurrents when expressed in the oocyte of a frog. To identify expressing cells, they replaced the cytoplasmic tail of the algal protein with a fluorescent protein YFP, generating the first generally applicable optogenetic tool. They stated in the 2003 paper that "expression of ChR2 in oocytes or mammalian cells may be used as a powerful tool to increase cytoplasmic Ca concentration or to depolarize the cell membrane, simply by illumination".


title: Optogenetics

text: Karl Deisseroth in the Bioengineering Department at Stanford published the notebook pages from early July 2004 of his initial experiment showing light activation of neurons expressing a channelrhodopsin. In August 2005, his laboratory staff, including graduate students Ed Boyden and Feng Zhang, in collaboration with Georg Nagel, published the first demonstration of a single-component optogenetic system, in neurons using the channelrhodopsin-2(H134R)-eYFP construct from Nagel and Hegemann.


title: Optogenetics

text: Zhuo-Hua Pan of Wayne State University, researching on restore sight to blindness, tried channelrhodopsin out in ganglion cells—the neurons in our eyes that connect directly to the brain. Pan's first observation of optical activation of retinal neurons with channelrhodopsin was in August 2004 according to Pan, a month after Deisseroth's initial observation. Indeed, the transfected neurons became electrically active in response to light, and in 2005 Zhuo-Hua Pan reported successful in-vivo transfection of channelrhodopsin in retinal ganglion cells of mice, and electrical responses to photostimulation in retinal slice culture. This approach was eventually realized in a human patient by Botond Roska and coworkers in 2021.


title: Optogenetics

text: In April 2005, Susana Lima and Miesenböck reported the first use of genetically-targeted P2X2 photostimulation to control the behaviour of an animal. They showed that photostimulation of genetically circumscribed groups of neurons, such as those of the dopaminergic system, elicited characteristic behavioural changes in fruit flies.


title: Optogenetics

text: In October 2005, Lynn Landmesser and Stefan Herlitze also published the use of channelrohodpsin-2 to control neuronal activity in cultured hippocampal neurons and chicken spinal cord circuits in intact developing embryos. In addition, they introduced for the first time vertebrate rhodopsin, a light-activated G protein coupled receptor, as a tool to inhibit neuronal activity via the recruitment of intracellular signaling pathways also in hippocampal neurons and the intact developing chicken embryo.


title: Optogenetics

text: The groups of Alexander Gottschalk and Georg Nagel made the first ChR2 mutant (H134R) and were first to use channelrhodopsin-2 for controlling neuronal activity in an intact animal, showing that motor patterns in the roundworm "C. elegans" could be evoked by light stimulation of genetically selected neural circuits (published in December 2005). In mice, controlled expression of optogenetic tools is often achieved with cell-type-specific Cre/loxP methods developed for neuroscience by Joe Z. Tsien back in the 1990s to activate or inhibit specific brain regions and cell-types "in vivo".


title: Optogenetics

text: In 2007, the labs of Boyden and Deisseroth (together with the groups of Gottschalk and Nagel) simultaneously reported successful optogenetic inhibition of activity in neurons.


title: Optogenetics

text: In 2007, Nagel and Hegemann's groups started the optogenetic manipulation of cAMP. In 2014, Avelar et al. reported the first rhodopsin-guanylyl cyclase gene from fungus. In 2015, Scheib et al. and Gao et al. characterized the activity of the rhodopsin-guanylyl cyclase gene. And Shiqiang Gao et al. and Georg Nagel, Alexander Gottschalk identified it as the first 8 TM enzyme rhodopsin.


title: Optogenetics

text: The powerful impact of optogenetic technology on brain research has been recognized by numerous awards to key players in the field.


title: Optogenetics

text: In 2010, Georg Nagel, Peter Hegemann and Ernst Bamberg were awarded the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences and they were also among those awarded the Karl Heinz Beckurts Prize in 2010. In the same year, Karl Deisseroth was awarded the inaugural HFSP Nakasone Award for "his pioneering work on the development of optogenetic methods for studying the function of neuronal networks underlying behavior".


title: Optogenetics

text: In 2012, Bamberg, Deisseroth, Hegemann and Nagel were awarded the Zülch Prize by the Max Planck Society, and Miesenböck was awarded the Baillet Latour Health Prize for "having pioneered optogenetic approaches to manipulate neuronal activity and to control animal behaviour."


title: Optogenetics

text: In 2013, Nagel and Hegemann were among those awarded the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine. Also that year, year Bamberg, Boyden, Deisseroth, Hegemann, Miesenböck and Nagel were jointly awarded The Brain Prize for "their invention and refinement of optogenetics."


title: Optogenetics

text: In 2017, Deisseroth was awarded the Else Kröner Fresenius Research Prize for "his discoveries in optogenetics and hydrogel-tissue chemistry, as well as his research into the neural circuit basis of depression."


title: Optogenetics

text: In 2018, the Inamori Foundation presented Deisseroth with the Kyoto Prize for "spearheading optogenetics” and "revolutionizing systems neuroscience research."


title: Optogenetics

text: In 2019, Bamberg, Boyden, Deisseroth, Hegemann, Miesenböck and Nagel were awarded the Rumford Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in recognition of "their extraordinary contributions related to the invention and refinement of optogenetics."


title: Optogenetics

text: In 2020, Deisseroth was awarded the Heineken Prize for Medicine from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, for developing optogenetics and hydrogel-tissue chemistry. On the same year, Miesenböck, Hegemann and Nagel jointly received the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine.


title: Optogenetics

text: In 2021, Hegemann, Deisseroth and Dieter Oesterhelt received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research.


title: Optogenetics

text: Optogenetics provides millisecond-scale temporal precision which allows the experimenter to keep pace with fast biological information processing (for example, in probing the causal role of specific action potential patterns in defined neurons). Indeed, to probe the neural code, optogenetics by definition must operate on the millisecond timescale to allow addition or deletion of precise activity patterns within specific cells in the brains of intact animals, including mammals (see Figure 1). By comparison, the temporal precision of traditional genetic manipulations (employed to probe the causal role of specific genes within cells, via "loss-of-function" or "gain of function" changes in these genes) is rather slow, from hours or days to months. It is important to also have fast readouts in optogenetics that can keep pace with the optical control. This can be done with electrical recordings ("optrodes") or with reporter proteins that are biosensors, where scientists have fused fluorescent proteins to detector proteins. Additionally, beyond its scientific impact optogenetics represents an important case study in the value of both ecological conservation (as many of the key tools of optogenetics arise from microbial organisms occupying specialized environmental niches), and in the importance of pure basic science as these opsins were studied over decades for their own sake by biophysicists and microbiologists, without involving consideration of their potential value in delivering insights into neuroscience and neuropsychiatric disease.


title: Optogenetics

text: The hallmark of optogenetics therefore is introduction of fast light-activated channels, pumps, and enzymes that allow temporally precise manipulation of electrical and biochemical events while maintaining cell-type resolution through the use of specific targeting mechanisms. Among the microbial opsins which can be used to investigate the function of neural systems are the channelrhodopsins (ChR2, ChR1, VChR1, and SFOs) to excite neurons and anion-conducting channelrhodopsins for light-induced inhibition. Indirectly light-controlled potassium channels have recently been engineered to prevent action potential generation in neurons during blue light illumination. Light-driven ion pumps are also used to inhibit neuronal activity, e.g. halorhodopsin (NpHR), enhanced halorhodopsins (eNpHR2.0 and eNpHR3.0, see Figure 2), archaerhodopsin (Arch), fungal opsins (Mac) and enhanced bacteriorhodopsin (eBR).


title: Optogenetics

text: Optogenetic control of well-defined biochemical events within behaving mammals is now also possible. Building on prior work fusing vertebrate opsins to specific G-protein coupled receptors a family of chimeric single-component optogenetic tools was created that allowed researchers to manipulate within behaving mammals the concentration of defined intracellular messengers such as cAMP and IP3 in targeted cells. Other biochemical approaches to optogenetics (crucially, with tools that displayed low activity in the dark) followed soon thereafter, when optical control over small GTPases and adenylyl cyclase was achieved in cultured cells using novel strategies from several different laboratories. Photoactivated adenylyl cyclases have been discovered in fungi and successfully used to control cAMP levels in mammalian neurons. This emerging repertoire of optogenetic actuators now allows cell-type-specific and temporally precise control of multiple axes of cellular function within intact animals.


title: Optogenetics

text: Another necessary factor is hardware (e.g. integrated fiberoptic and solid-state light sources) to allow specific cell types, even deep within the brain, to be controlled in freely behaving animals. Most commonly, the latter is now achieved using the fiberoptic-coupled diode technology introduced in 2007, though to avoid use of implanted electrodes, researchers have engineered ways to inscribe a "window" made of zirconia that has been modified to be transparent and implanted in mice skulls, to allow optical waves to penetrate more deeply to stimulate or inhibit individual neurons. To stimulate superficial brain areas such as the cerebral cortex, optical fibers or LEDs can be directly mounted to the skull of the animal. More deeply implanted optical fibers have been used to deliver light to deeper brain areas. Complementary to fiber-tethered approaches, completely wireless techniques have been developed utilizing wirelessly delivered power to headborne LEDs for unhindered study of complex behaviors in freely behaving organisms.


title: Optogenetics

text: Optogenetics also necessarily includes the development of genetic targeting strategies such as cell-specific promoters or other customized conditionally-active viruses, to deliver the light-sensitive probes to specific populations of neurons in the brain of living animals (e.g. worms, fruit flies, mice, rats, and monkeys). In invertebrates such as worms and fruit flies some amount of all-trans-retinal (ATR) is supplemented with food. A key advantage of microbial opsins as noted above is that they are fully functional without the addition of exogenous co-factors in vertebrates.


title: Optogenetics

text: The technique of using optogenetics is flexible and adaptable to the experimenter's needs. Cation-selective channelrhodopsins (e.g. ChR2) are used to excite neurons, anion-conducting channelrhodopsins (e.g. GtACR2) inhibit neuronal activity. Combining these tools into a single construct (e.g. BiPOLES) allows for both inhibition and excitation, depending on the wavelength of illumination.


title: Optogenetics

text: Introducing the microbial opsin into a specific subset of cells is challenging. A popular approach is to introduce an engineered viral vector that contains the optogenetic actuator gene attached to a specific promoter such as CAMKIIα, which is active in excitatory neurons. This allows for some level of specificity, preventing e.g. expression in glia cells.


title: Optogenetics

text: A more specific approach is based on transgenic "driver" mice which express Cre recombinase, an enzyme that catalyzes recombination between two lox-P sites, in a specific subset of cells, e.g. parvalbumin-expressing interneurons. By introducing an engineered viral vector containing the optogenetic actuator gene in between two lox-P sites, only the cells producing Cre recombinase will express the microbial opsin. This technique has allowed for multiple modified optogenetic actuators to be used without the need to create a whole line of transgenic animals every time a new microbial opsin is needed.


title: Optogenetics

text: After the introduction and expression of the microbial opsin, a computer-controlled light source has to be optically coupled to the brain region in question. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or fiber-coupled diode-pumped solid-state lasers (DPSS) are frequently used. Recent advances include the advent of wireless head-mounted devices that apply LEDs to the targeted areas and as a result, give the animals more freedom to move.


title: Optogenetics

text: Fiber-based approaches can also be used to combine optical stimulation and calcium imaging. This enables researchers to visualize and manipulate the activity of single neurons in awake behaving animals. It is also possible to record from multiple deep brain regions at the same using GRIN lenses connected via optical fiber to an externally positioned photodetector and photostimulator.


title: Optogenetics

text: One of the main problems of optogenetics is that not all the cells in question may express the microbial opsin gene at the same level. Thus, even illumination with a defined light intensity will have variable effects on individual cells. Optogenetic stimulation of neurons in the brain is even less controlled as the light intensity drops exponentially from the light source (e.g. implanted optical fiber).


title: Optogenetics

text: It remains difficult to target opsin to defined subcellular compartments, e.g. the plasma membrane, synaptic vesicles, or mitochondria. Restricting the opsin to specific regions of the plasma membrane such as dendrites, somata or axon terminals provides a more robust understanding of neuronal circuitry.


title: Optogenetics

text: Mathematical modelling shows that selective expression of opsin in specific cell types can dramatically alter the dynamical behavior of the neural circuitry. In particular, optogenetic stimulation that preferentially targets inhibitory cells can transform the excitability of the neural tissue, affecting non-transfected neurons as well.


title: Optogenetics

text: The original channelrhodopsin-2 was slower closing than typical cation channels of cortical neurons, leading to prolonged depolarization and calcium influx. Many channelrhodopsin variants with more favorable kinetics have since been engineered.


title: Optogenetics

text: A difference between natural spike patterns and optogenetic activation is that pulsed light stimulation produces synchronous activation of expressing neurons, which removes the possibility of sequential activity in the stimulated population. Therefore, it is difficult to understand how the cells in the population affected communicate with one another or how their phasic properties of activation relate to circuit function.


title: Optogenetics

text: Optogenetic activation has been combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (ofMRI) to elucidate the connectome, a thorough map of the brain's neural connections. Precisely timed optogenetic activation is used to calibrate the delayed hemodynamic signal (BOLD) fMRI is based on.


title: Optogenetics

text: The opsin proteins currently in use have absorption peaks across the visual spectrum, but remain considerably sensitive to blue light. This spectral overlap makes it very difficult to combine opsin activation with genetically encoded indicators (GEVIs, GECIs, GluSnFR, synapto-pHluorin), most of which need blue light excitation. Opsins with infrared activation would, at a standard irradiance value, increase light penetration and augment resolution through reduction of light scattering.


title: Optogenetics

text: Due to scattering, a narrow light beam to stimulate neurons in a patch of neural tissue can evoke a response profile that is much broader than the stimulation beam.<ref name="10.1162/netn_a_00154"></ref> In this case, neurons may be activated (or inhibited) unintentionally. Computational simulation tools are used to estimate the volume of stimulated tissue for different wavelengths of light.


title: Optogenetics

text: The field of optogenetics has furthered the fundamental scientific understanding of how specific cell types contribute to the function of biological tissues such as neural circuits "in vivo". On the clinical side, optogenetics-driven research has led to insights into Parkinson's disease and other neurological and psychiatric disorders such as autism, Schizophrenia, drug abuse, anxiety, and depression. An experimental treatment for blindness involves a channel rhodopsin expressed in ganglion cells, stimulated with light patterns from engineered goggles.


title: Optogenetics

text: Optogenetic approaches have been used to map neural circuits in the amygdala that contribute to fear conditioning. One such example of a neural circuit is the connection made from the basolateral amygdala to the dorsal-medial prefrontal cortex where neuronal oscillations of 4 Hz have been observed in correlation to fear induced freezing behaviors in mice. Transgenic mice were introduced with channelrhodoposin-2 attached with a parvalbumin-Cre promoter that selectively infected interneurons located both in the basolateral amygdala and the dorsal-medial prefrontal cortex responsible for the 4 Hz oscillations. The interneurons were optically stimulated generating a freezing behavior and as a result provided evidence that these 4 Hz oscillations may be responsible for the basic fear response produced by the neuronal populations along the dorsal-medial prefrontal cortex and basolateral amygdala.