title: Suite (music)

text: The Baroque suite consisted of allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue, in that order, and developed during the 17th century in France, the gigue appearing later than the others. Johann Jakob Froberger is usually credited with establishing the classical suite through his compositions in this form, which were widely published and copied, although this was largely due to his publishers standardizing the order; Froberger's original manuscripts have many different orderings of the movements, e.g. the gigue preceding the sarabande. The publisher's standardized order was, however, highly influential especially on the works of Bach.


title: Suite (music)

text: Many later suites included other movements placed between sarabande and gigue. These optional movements were known as "galanteries": common examples are the minuet, gavotte, passepied, and bourrée. Often there would be two contrasting "galanteries" with the same name, e.g. Minuet I and II, to be played "alternativement", meaning that the first dance is played again after the second (but without the internal repeats), thus I, II, I.


title: Suite (music)

text: The later addition of an overture to make up an "overture-suite" was extremely popular with German composers; Telemann claimed to have written over 200 overture-suites, Christoph Graupner wrote 86 orchestral overture-suites and 57 partitas for harpsichord, J.S. Bach had his four orchestral suites along with other suites, and Handel put his "Water Music" and "Music for the Royal Fireworks" in this form. Handel wrote 22 keyboard suites; Bach produced multiple suites for lute, cello, violin, flute, and other instruments, as well as English suites, French suites and Partitas for keyboard. François Couperin's later suites (which he called "Ordres") often dispensed entirely with the standard dances and consisted entirely of character pieces with fanciful names.


title: Suite (music)

text: By the 1750s, the suite had come to be seen as old-fashioned, superseded by the symphony and concerto, and few composers were still writing suites during that time. But since the 19th century, composers have frequently arranged ballets, operas, and other works into suites for concert performance. Arrangement into a suite can make the music more accessible and available to a wider audience, and has greatly helped popularize the music itself, such as in Tchaikovsky's suite from "The Nutcracker", or Aaron Copland's suite from "Appalachian Spring". Suites for orchestra or concert band usually consist of one or more movements. An example is Grieg's "Peer Gynt" Orchestral Suites I and II, each consisting of four movements. Such suites may consist of


title: Suite (music)

text: Carl Nielsen made a Suite for String Orchestra his Opus 1 in 1888 at the age of 23. In the late 19th century, Sibelius's "Karelia Suite" was written for the students of the Helsinki university.


title: Suite (music)

text: Brought on by Impressionism, the piano suite was reintroduced by early 20th-century French composers such as Ravel and Debussy. Debussy's "Pour le piano" is a suite in three movements, published in 1901, and his "Suite bergamasque", revised in 1905, is probably one of the most famous suites, especially the third movement, "Clair de Lune". Ravel is particularly well known for his "Miroirs" suite for piano and lesser known for "Le tombeau de Couperin", both requiring tremendous skill and dexterity from the pianist.


title: Suite (music)

text: Arnold Schoenberg's first use of the twelve-tone technique throughout an entire work was in his Suite for Piano, op. 25. Modeled on the Baroque keyboard suite, the piece consists of six movements entitled "Präludium" (Prelude), "Gavotte", "Musette", "Intermezzo", "Menuett" (Minuet, with Trio), and "Gigue".


title: Suite (music)

text: Other famous examples of early 20th-century suites are "The Planets" by Gustav Holst, a "Suite for Orchestra" in which each piece represents the astrological significance of one of the seven uninhabited planets then known, as well as his First Suite in E-flat and Second Suite in F for Military Band.


title: Suite (music)

text: There are as well several examples of suites being used in the jazz genre. Perhaps the most notable composer is Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn, who produced many suites, amongst them: "Black, Brown and Beige", "Such Sweet Thunder", "The Far East Suite", the "New Orleans Suite", the "Latin American Suite", and many more. Suites are also used in free jazz (Max Roach: "Freedom Now Suite", Don Cherry, John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme", etc.).


title: Suite (music)

text: The dance suite was a collection of dance music popular in the Baroque era. It consists of the following movements in this order:


title: Cabernet Franc

text: Cabernet Franc is one of the major black grape varieties worldwide. It is principally grown for blending with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in the Bordeaux style, but can also be vinified alone, as in the Loire's Chinon. In addition to being used in blends and produced as a varietal in Canada and the United States, it is sometimes made into ice wine in those regions.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: Cabernet Franc is lighter than Cabernet Sauvignon, making a bright pale red wine that contributes finesse and lends a peppery perfume to blends with more robust grapes. Depending on the growing region and style of wine, additional aromas can include tobacco, raspberry, bell pepper, cassis, and violets.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: Records of Cabernet Franc in Bordeaux go back to the end of the 18th century, although it was planted in Loire long before that time. DNA analysis indicates that Cabernet Franc is one of two parents of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Carménère.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: Cabernet Franc is believed to have been established in the Libournais region of southwest France sometime in the 17th century, when Cardinal Richelieu transported cuttings of the vine to the Loire Valley. They were planted at the Abbey of Bourgueil under the care of an abbot named Breton, whose name became associated with the grape. By the 18th century, plantings of Cabernet Franc (known as Bouchet) were found throughout Fronsac, Pomerol and St-Emilion, making quality wines. As Cabernet Sauvignon grew more popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, the close similarity of the two grapes was observed and theories emerged as to the extent of their relationship. In 1997, DNA evidence emerged to show that Cabernet Franc had crossed with Sauvignon Blanc to produce Cabernet Sauvignon.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: In general, Cabernet Franc is very similar to Cabernet Sauvignon, but buds and ripens at least a week earlier. This trait allows the vine to thrive in slightly cooler climates than Cabernet Sauvignon, such as the Loire Valley. In Bordeaux, plantings of Cabernet Franc are treated as an "insurance policy" against inclement weather close to harvest that may damage plantings of Cabernet Sauvignon. Its early budding does pose the viticultural hazard of coulure early in the growing season. The vine is vigorous and upright, with dark-green, 5-lobed leaves. The winged bunches are elongated and small-medium in size. The berries are quite small and blue-black in color, with fairly thin skins. The Cabernet Franc grapevine is more prone to mutation than Cabernet Sauvignon, less so than Pinot noir.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: Cabernet Franc can adapt to a wide variety of vineyard soil types but seems to thrive in sandy, chalk soils, producing heavier, more full bodied wines there. In the Loire Valley, "terroir" based differences can be perceived between wines made from grapes grown in gravel terraces versus tuffeau slopes. The grape is highly yield sensitive, with over-cropping producing wines with more green, vegetal notes.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: Across the world Cabernet Franc is one of the twenty most widely planted grape varieties. Plantings are found throughout Europe, in the New World, China and Kazakhstan. In many regions, it is planted as a component of a Bordeaux-style blend such as Meritage, playing secondary role to Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. In parts of northeast Italy, Anjou-Saumur, Touraine and the right bank region of Bordeaux, Cabernet Franc both plays a more prominent role in blends and is vinted as a varietal.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: In France, Cabernet Franc is found predominantly in the Loire Valley and in the Libournais region of Bordeaux. As of 2000, it was the sixth most widely planted red grape variety in the country. Other areas with significant plantings include the Bergerac and Madiran "Appellation d'origine contrôlée" (AOCs). By the early 20th century, there were nearly equal plantings of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc in Bordeaux with around by the late 1960s. Most of these plantings were along the right bank of the Gironde in the Fronsac, St-Emilion and Pomerol regions. Towards the end of the 20th century, even though plantings of Cabernet Sauvignon had rapidly increased in Bordeaux to a 2 to 1 ratio in proportion to Cabernet Franc, plantings there were over of the latter, nearly half of the country's total .


title: Cabernet Franc

text: In the Loire Valley, Cabernet is widely planted in the Anjou, Bourgueil, Chinon, and Saumur-Champigny regions.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: By 2000 there were over of Cabernet Franc in Italy. However, the grape variety is commonly confused with both Cabernet Sauvignon and the ancient Bordeaux grape Carmenere, so the true acreage may not be known until more vineyards have been surveyed by ampelographers. It is mostly planted in the far northeast of Italy, particularly in Friuli, but it is also found in the vineyards of the Veneto (where it is known as Bordo), and is found as part of some Chianti blends, even as far south as Apulia. Plantings of Cabernet Franc in Tuscany have been increasing in recent years, particularly in the Bolgheri and Maremma region where the grape is prized for the balance and elegance that it brings to blends. Italian wines often labelled simply as "Cabernet" tend to be primarily Cabernet Franc or a blend of Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: Cabernet Franc in Hungary had gained attention by the end of the 1990s when in some wine producing regions climate and growing conditions proved to be not optimal for Cabernet Sauvignon to reach its full ripeness. Successful varietal examples from Villány and Szekszárd show great potential, some international experts declared that Cabernet Franc "found its new home in Villány region". Hungarian varietal Cabernet Franc is a typically full-bodied, moderately or highly tannic wine with rich aromas of spices, blue flowers and red/black berry fruits with a reasonably good aging potential of about 10 years. These wines typically undergo 12 to 18 months of aging in new Hungarian oak barrels.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: In addition to being found in Villány and Szekszárd, Cabernet Franc is also present in Eger, and in South Balaton and Sopron vineyards, to a lesser extent. Cabernet Franc often complements Bordeaux-style blends from these regions and occasionally plays a role in rosé production.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: Outside France and Italy, sizable plantings of Cabernet Franc are found in Greece (where it is known as tsapournakos), Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia particularly in the Savudrija part of Istria, Croatia. This variety of grape is not very common in Spain, and is grown mainly in Catalonia, where it is an authorized variety in four DOPs: Catalunya (DO), Costers del Segre, Empordà, Pla de Bages, and Priorat. It is also grown Valencia and Castilla-La Mancha. In 2015, Spain grew of Cabernet Franc.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: Cabernet Franc is becoming more popular in Canada, being planted in Ontario's Niagara Peninsula, Prince Edward County, the north shore of Lake Erie, Pelee Island, and the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. While it is most often used in blends, it is gaining some popularity as a single varietal and as icewine. Ripening about two weeks earlier than Cabernet Sauvignon, it often fares better in Canada's cooler climate than other red wine grape varieties. Ontario Cabernet Francs often add a characteristic vegetal, raspberry like flavor to a wine with moderate acidity.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: Interest in the grape started with California wine makers, who wanted to replicate the Bordeaux blend (now marketed as Meritage). In the early to mid 20th century, some plantings of Cabernet Franc were mistaken for Merlot. In the 1980s, heightened interest in Cabernet Franc led to an increase in plantings that helped push the total acreage of Cabernet Franc in California to , most of which is in Napa and Sonoma counties. In 1986, Casa Nuestra Winery in Napa Valley initiated the first Cabernet Franc program in the United States, winning a Double Gold and Best of Class Medal in the Los Angeles Times Wine Competition for their first vintage. The program continues today.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: More recently the grape has caught the attention of growers in cooler areas such as Long Island and the Finger Lakes of New York, the Grand Valley AVA of Colorado, the Shawnee Hills AVA of southern Illinois, Pennsylvania, all sub-regions in Ohio, Michigan's west coast, Washington state and in the Monticello wine region in the Virginia Piedmont as well as the Roanoke metropolitan area, increasing planting in Missouri and Rocky Knob AVA areas of Southwestern Virginia. Michigan State University conducts research on Cabernet Franc at their agricultural research center in Benton Harbor, Michigan. In the Great Lakes Region and Virginia, Cabernet Franc is valued for its ability to ripen more reliably than other red "Vitis vinifera" and to produce wines of better quality than most hybrid grapes.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: In Washington State, the first plantings of Cabernet Franc were cultivated in experimental blocks by Washington State University in the Columbia Valley during the 1970s. In 1985, Cabernet Franc was planted in the Red Willow Vineyard for use in Bordeaux style blends. The first varietal Cabernet Franc in Washington was released in 1991 by Columbia Winery followed by Chateau Ste Michelle in 1992 with grapes planted from their Cold Creek Vineyard. In the 1990s, Chinook Winery introduced the state's first Cabernet Franc "rosé". Today it is the fourth most widely planted grape in the state behind Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Syrah. Washington Cabernet Franc is distinctive for its fruit forward style with blueberry and raspberry fruit. The characteristic vegetal notes are toned down in Washington, with the wines tending to show more notes of ground coffee and olives.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: Cabernet Franc plantings in Argentina have been producing top quality wines in recent years, and the varietal has been claimed as having the most potential in the country after Malbec. "Squeeze Magazine" has called it "the new, handsome superhero of Mendoza's wine scene". In 2014, the highest scoring Argentine wine in Robert Parker's "Wine Advocate" was a Cabernet Franc scored at 97 points. Cabernet Franc can be bottled alone, making lighter-bodied wines than the country's typical Malbecs (with wines scoring up to 95 points in Tim Atkin's report in 2016), or either as a majority or minority in blends.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: In the New World, Cabernet is used predominantly as a blending component and is found in scant amounts in Australia, South Africa, Chile and New Zealand. As with so many grapes, Cabernet Franc came to Australia in James Busby’s collection of 1832. It predominantly grows in cool, cool to warm and warm climates such as North-Eastern Victoria, McLaren Vale, the Adelaide Hills and the Clare Valley. In New Zealand, many winemakers have found that the cool climate of their "terroir" contributes to Cabernet Franc-like flavors in their Cabernet Sauvignon and plantings of true Cabernet Franc have remained limited with only around planted as of 2006. In South Africa, Cabernet Franc has become a favorite of some of the country's "boutique" wineries and acreage has slowly been increasing to nearly by the mid-2000s. In Chile there were around planted by the early 21st century.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: Cabernet Franc shares many of the same phenolic and aroma compounds as Cabernet Sauvignon but with some noticeable differences. Cabernet Franc tends to be more lightly pigmented and produces wines with the same level of intensity and richness. Cabernet Franc tends to have a more pronounced perfume with notes of raspberries, blackcurrants, violets and graphite. It is often characterized by a green, vegetal strike that can range from leaves to green bell peppers. It has slightly less tannins than Cabernet Sauvignon and tends to produce a wine with a smoother mouthfeel. New World examples of Cabernet Franc tend to emphasize the fruit more and may delay harvesting the grapes to try to minimize the green leafy notes.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: Other synonyms: Achéria (Basque Country, mainly in Irouléguy), Ardounet (Béarn), Bidure (Graves), Bordeaux (Switzerland), Bordo (Romania), Boubet (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), Bouchet Franc or Gros Bouchet (Saint-Émilion and Pomerol), Bouchy (Madiran and Béarn), Breton (Val de Loire), Cabernet Gris, Cabrunet (Pomerol), Capbreton Rouge (Landes), Carmenet (Médoc), Couahort (Béarn), Plant Breton or Plant de l’Abbé Breton (Chinon in Indre-et-Loire), Sable Rouge (Tursan), Trouchet (Béarn), Véron (Nièvre and Deux-Sèvres), Vidure, Vuidure, Grosse Vidure (Graves), Aceria, Arrouya, Burdeas Tinto, Cabernet, Cabernet Aunis, Cabernet Franco, Fer Servandou, Gamput, Grosse Vidure, Hartling, Kaberne Fran, Messanges Rouge, Morenoa, Noir Dur, Petit Fer, Petit Viodure, Petite Vidure, Petite Vignedure, Véron Bouchy, Véronais.


title: Cabernet Franc

text: Varieties commonly mistaken for Cabernet franc: Ardonnet (Béarn, no longer cultivated), Arrouya (Pyrénées), Béquignol noir (Dissay in the Vienne), Cabernet sauvignon, Carmenère , Gros Cabernet (Médoc, no longer cultivated), Hondarribi Beltza (País Vasco in Spain).


title: The Fourth Protocol (film)

text: The Fourth Protocol is a 1987 British Cold War spy film starring Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan. Directed by John Mackenzie, it is based on the 1984 novel "The Fourth Protocol" by Frederick Forsyth.


title: The Fourth Protocol (film)

text: In 1968, an East-West agreement is established to halt nuclear proliferation. One of its clauses, the Fourth Protocol, forbids the non-conventional delivery of a nuclear weapon to a target.


title: The Fourth Protocol (film)

text: MI5 officer John Preston breaks into the residence of British government official George Berenson on New Year's Eve and finds a number of top secret NATO files that should not have been there. He reports his findings to high-ranking British Secret Service official Sir Nigel Irvine, who deals with the leak. Preston's unauthorised method of retrieving the documents embarrasses the acting Director of MI5, Brian Harcourt-Smith, and as punishment for his insubordination, Preston is relegated to lowly "Airports and Ports".


title: The Fourth Protocol (film)

text: KGB officer Major Valeri Petrofsky is sent on a mission to the United Kingdom by General Govorshin, the head of the KGB. Govorshin's subordinate, Pavel Borisov, complains to his old friend General Yevgeny Karpov, about his department being stripped of resources and personnel, particularly his star officer Petrofsky. A surprised Karpov quietly investigates and learns about Petrofsky's unsanctioned mission – to violate the Fourth Protocol by assembling and detonating an atomic device as a false flag, to appear to be an American nuclear accident at a nearby military base, intended to strain British-US relations and strengthen the anti-nuclear movement in advance of an election in favour of the Soviet Union.


title: The Fourth Protocol (film)

text: In Glasgow, a Soviet sailor is struck by a truck while fleeing from a port guard. Among the dead man's possessions, Preston finds a disk of polonium, which could only be useful as a component of a detonator for a bomb. He informs Harcourt-Smith, but is promptly suspended, as Harcourt-Smith believes that Preston is manufacturing a fake incident to work his way back into MI5. Preston, however has the confidence of Sir Bernard Hemmings, the gravely-ill Director of MI5, as well as Irvine, who is happy to sidestep Harcourt-Smith's directives. Preston sets to work and eventually comes across Winkler, a known Czech KGB agent, and tails him from the airport.


title: The Fourth Protocol (film)

text: Meanwhile, Petrofsky meets KGB agent Irina Vassilievna, a bomb expert who is pretending to be his wife. Under her guidance, they assemble the device from the smuggled items and she sets it on a two-hour delay as they agreed on. Unbeknownst to Petrofsky, Vassilievna follows her own orders, resetting the delay to zero. After sleeping with Petrofsky, she finds his own secret order to eliminate her and tries to warn him about the double-cross, but he kills her before she can.


title: The Fourth Protocol (film)

text: Afterwards, Petrofsky is observed contacting Winkler. Preston tracks him to Ipswich, loses him, then finds him again. Preston eventually realises that Petrofsky's target is RAF Baywaters, and locates Petrofsky's house, which lies right next to the base.


title: The Fourth Protocol (film)

text: When Petrofsky starts to activate the bomb, on an impulse, he checks the timer first and realises he has been betrayed. At that moment, an SAS team storms the house and during a struggle, Preston subdues and disables Petrofsky. To Preston's outrage, one of the SAS team cold-bloodedly shoots and kills Petrofsky, explaining bluntly afterwards that he had orders to do so.


title: The Fourth Protocol (film)

text: At Hemmings' funeral, Preston is unsurprised to find Irvine secretly meeting with General Karpov. Preston had become suspicious when known KGB agent Winkler was used as a courier, making it easy to follow him, and also when Petrofsky was killed instead of being captured for questioning. He surmised that discrediting Govorshin would benefit both Irvine and Karpov (sneering to both that keeping hold over their careers is all that matters to them). Preston does not see any point in exposing them and leaves after expressing his contempt for their cynical power play (Irvine secretly assuring Karpov that they have control over Preston, as they covertly observe him reunite with his young son).


title: The Fourth Protocol (film)

text: Michael Caine read the draft manuscript of the novel and suggested to Forsyth that they produce a film together. They hired George Axelrod to write a script and John Frankenheimer to direct, but were unable to raise finance. Axelrod and Frankenheimer left the project, Forsyth wrote the script himself and they got a new producer and director.


title: The Fourth Protocol (film)

text: Much of the film was shot in the Heelands district of Milton Keynes, the main house featured is on Tranlands Brigg, Heelands, Milton Keynes. Scenes set on the London Underground were shot at Charing Cross, Green Park, and Aldwych stations. Colchester Station was also used in one scene, with star Michael Caine filmed standing on the tracks. For some of the interiors, rooms of King's College London on the Strand were used. The "RAF Baywaters" scenes were filmed at the now defunct RAF Upper Heyford as a take on the real life RAF Bentwaters. Filming also took place in Finland. Towards the end of the film, the car chase in Ipswich is actually shot in Chelmsford on the A1016 Chelmer Valley bypass which at the time was newly built. One shot shows helicopters flying under the Orwell Bridge which is often considered a local landmark.


title: The Fourth Protocol (film)

text: "The Globe and Mail"'s film critic Jay Scott said that "the movie is entertaining on a rudimentary, never-to-be-taken-seriously level. On the rare occasions when it does rise above the material, it's because Pierce Brosnan is chillingly effective as an assassin with the body temperature of a snake. The yarn is otherwise little more than "" tightly re-wound for the age of glasnost." Scott praised Michael Caine's excellent performance, but complained that the "role permits him to display only one of the three dimensions he was able to provide in his portrayal of the father in "The Whistle Blower" (1986)."


title: The Fourth Protocol (film)

text: "Halliwell's Film and Video Guide" described it as a "very competent but somehow old hat espionage thriller", awarding it one star from a possible four. Quoted in Halliwell's guide, "Daily Variety" stated that "there is an uneasy feeling that the whole affair could have been better made into an excellent miniseries". John Ferguson awarded it two stars out of five for "Radio Times", stating "what once made for diverting summer reading now appears tired and not particularly relevant".


title: Computational science

text: Computational science, also known as scientific computing or scientific computation (SC), is a field in mathematics that uses advanced computing capabilities to understand and solve complex problems. It is an area of science that spans many disciplines, but at its core, it involves the development of models and simulations to understand natural systems.


title: Computational science

text: In practical use, it is typically the application of computer simulation and other forms of computation from numerical analysis and theoretical computer science to solve problems in various scientific disciplines. The field is different from theory and laboratory experiments, which are the traditional forms of science and engineering. The scientific computing approach is to gain understanding through the analysis of mathematical models implemented on computers. Scientists and engineers develop computer programs and application software that model systems being studied and run these programs with various sets of input parameters. The essence of computational science is the application of numerical algorithms and computational mathematics. In some cases, these models require massive amounts of calculations (usually floating-point) and are often executed on supercomputers or distributed computing platforms.


title: Computational science

text: The term computational scientist is used to describe someone skilled in scientific computing. Such a person is usually a scientist, an engineer, or an applied mathematician who applies high-performance computing in different ways to advance the state-of-the-art in their respective applied disciplines in physics, chemistry, or engineering.


title: Computational science

text: Computational science is now commonly considered a third mode of science , complementing and adding to experimentation/observation and theory (see image). Here, one defines a system as a potential source of data, an experiment as a process of extracting data from a system by exerting it through its inputs and a model ("M") for a system ("S") and an experiment ("E") as anything to which "E" can be applied in order to answer questions about "S". A computational scientist should be capable of:


title: Computational science

text: Substantial effort in computational sciences has been devoted to developing algorithms, efficient implementation in programming languages, and validating computational results. A collection of problems and solutions in computational science can be found in Steeb, Hardy, Hardy, and Stoop (2004).


title: Computational science

text: Philosophers of science addressed the question to what degree computational science qualifies as science, among them Humphreys and Gelfert. They address the general question of epistemology: how does gain insight from such computational science approaches? Tolk uses these insights to show the epistemological constraints of computer-based simulation research. As computational science uses mathematical models representing the underlying theory in executable form, in essence, they apply modeling (theory building) and simulation (implementation and execution). While simulation and computational science are our most sophisticated way to express our knowledge and understanding, they also come with all constraints and limits already known for computational solutions.


title: Computational science

text: Predictive computational science is a scientific discipline concerned with the formulation, calibration, numerical solution, and validation of mathematical models designed to predict specific aspects of physical events, given initial and boundary conditions, and a set of characterizing parameters and associated uncertainties. In typical cases, the predictive statement is formulated in terms of probabilities. For example, given a mechanical component and a periodic loading condition, "the probability is (say) 90% that the number of cycles at failure (Nf) will be in the interval N1<Nf<N2".


title: Computational science

text: In 2018, over half the world's population lives in cities. By 2050, the United Nations estimates, 68% of the world's population will be urban. This urban growth is focused in the urban populations of developing countries where city dwellers will more than double, increasing from 2.5 billion in 2009 to almost 5.2 billion in 2050. Cities are massively complex systems created by humans, made up of humans, and governed by humans. Trying to predict, understand and somehow shape the development of cities in the future requires complex thinking and computational models and simulations to help mitigate challenges and possible disasters. The focus of research in urban complex systems is, through modeling and simulation, to build a greater understanding of city dynamics and help prepare for the coming urbanization.


title: Computational science

text: In financial markets, huge volumes of interdependent assets are traded by a large number of interacting market participants in different locations and time zones. Their behavior is of unprecedented complexity and the characterization and measurement of the risk inherent to this highly diverse set of instruments is typically based on complicated mathematical and computational models. Solving these models exactly in closed form, even at a single instrument level, is typically not possible, and therefore we have to look for efficient numerical algorithms. This has become even more urgent and complex recently, as the credit crisis has clearly demonstrated the role of cascading effects going from single instruments through portfolios of single institutions to even the interconnected trading network. Understanding this requires a multi-scale and holistic approach where interdependent risk factors such as market, credit, and liquidity risk are modeled simultaneously and at different interconnected scales.


title: Computational science

text: Exciting new developments in biotechnology are now revolutionizing biology and biomedical research. Examples of these techniques are high-throughput sequencing, high-throughput quantitative PCR, intra-cellular imaging, in-situ hybridization of gene expression, three-dimensional imaging techniques like Light Sheet Fluorescence Microscopy, and Optical Projection (micro)-Computer Tomography. Given the massive amounts of complicated data that is generated by these techniques, their meaningful interpretation, and even their storage, form major challenges calling for new approaches. Going beyond current bioinformatics approaches, computational biology needs to develop new methods to discover meaningful patterns in these large data sets. Model-based reconstruction of gene networks can be used to organize the gene expression data in a systematic way and to guide future data collection. A major challenge here is to understand how gene regulation is controlling fundamental biological processes like biomineralization and embryogenesis. The sub-processes like gene regulation, organic molecules interacting with the mineral deposition process, cellular processes, physiology, and other processes at the tissue and environmental levels are linked. Rather than being directed by a central control mechanism, biomineralization and embryogenesis can be viewed as an emergent behavior resulting from a complex system in which several sub-processes on very different temporal and spatial scales (ranging from nanometer and nanoseconds to meters and years) are connected into a multi-scale system. One of the few available options to understand such systems is by developing a multi-scale model of the system.


title: Computational science

text: Using information theory, non-equilibrium dynamics, and explicit simulations, computational systems theory tries to uncover the true nature of complex adaptive systems.


title: Computational science

text: Computational science and engineering (CSE) is a relatively new discipline that deals with the development and application of computational models and simulations, often coupled with high-performance computing, to solve complex physical problems arising in engineering analysis and design (computational engineering) as well as natural phenomena (computational science). CSE has been described as the "third mode of discovery" (next to theory and experimentation). In many fields, computer simulation is integral and therefore essential to business and research. Computer simulation provides the capability to enter fields that are either inaccessible to traditional experimentation or where carrying out traditional empirical inquiries is prohibitively expensive. CSE should neither be confused with pure computer science, nor with computer engineering, although a wide domain in the former is used in CSE (e.g., certain algorithms, data structures, parallel programming, high-performance computing), and some problems in the latter can be modeled and solved with CSE methods (as an application area).


title: Computational science

text: Algorithms and mathematical methods used in computational science are varied. Commonly applied methods include:


title: Computational science

text: Historically and today, Fortran remains popular for most applications of scientific computing. Other programming languages and computer algebra systems commonly used for the more mathematical aspects of scientific computing applications include GNU Octave, Haskell, Julia, Maple, Mathematica, MATLAB, Python (with third-party SciPy library), Perl (with third-party PDL library), R, Scilab, and TK Solver. The more computationally intensive aspects of scientific computing will often use some variation of C or Fortran and optimized algebra libraries such as BLAS or LAPACK. In addition, parallel computing is heavily used in scientific computing to find solutions of large problems in a reasonable amount of time. In this framework, the problem is either divided over many cores on a single CPU node (such as with OpenMP), divided over many CPU nodes networked together (such as with MPI), or is run on one or more GPUs (typically using either CUDA or OpenCL).


title: Computational science

text: Computational science application programs often model real-world changing conditions, such as weather, airflow around a plane, automobile body distortions in a crash, the motion of stars in a galaxy, an explosive device, etc. Such programs might create a 'logical mesh' in computer memory where each item corresponds to an area in space and contains information about that space relevant to the model. For example, in weather models, each item might be a square kilometer; with land elevation, current wind direction, humidity, temperature, pressure, etc. The program would calculate the likely next state based on the current state, in simulated time steps, solving differential equations that describe how the system operates, and then repeat the process to calculate the next state.


title: Computational science

text: In 2001, the "International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS)" was first organized. Since then, it has been organized yearly. ICCS is an A-rank conference in CORE classification.


title: Computational science

text: The "Journal of Computational Science" published its first issue in May 2010. The "Journal of Open Research Software" was launched in 2012"."


title: Computational science

text: The ReScience C initiative, which is dedicated to replicating computational results, was started on GitHub in 2015.


title: Computational science

text: At some institutions, a specialization in scientific computation can be earned as a "minor" within another program (which may be at varying levels). However, there are increasingly many bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs in computational science. The joint degree program master program computational science at the University of Amsterdam and the Vrije Universiteit in computational science was first offered in 2004. In this program, students:


title: Computational science

text: ETH Zurich offers a bachelor's and master's degree in Computational Science and Engineering. The degree equips students with the ability to understand scientific problem and apply numerical methods to solve such problems. The directions of specializations include Physics, Chemistry, Biology and other Scientific and Engineering disciplines.


title: Computational science

text: George Mason University was one of the early pioneers first offering a multidisciplinary doctorate Ph.D. program in Computational Sciences and Informatics in 1992 that focused on a number of specialty areas, including bioinformatics, computational chemistry, earth systems, and global changes, computational mathematics, computational physics, space sciences, and computational statistics.


title: Computational science

text: The School of Computational and Integrative Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University (erstwhile School of Information Technology) also offers a vibrant master's science program for computational science with two specialties: Computational Biology and Complex Systems.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: Poisoned candy myths are urban legends about malevolent strangers intentionally hiding poisons, drugs, or sharp objects such as razor blades, needles, or broken glass in candy and distributing the candy in order to harm random children, especially during Halloween trick-or-treating. These stories serve as modern cautionary tales to children and parents and repeat two themes that are common in urban legends: danger to children and contamination of food.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: No cases of strangers killing or permanently injuring children this way have been proven. Commonly, the story appears in the media when a young child dies suddenly after Halloween. Medical investigations into the actual cause of death have always shown that these children did not die from eating candy given to them by strangers. However, in rare cases, adult family members have spread this story in an effort to cover up murder or accidental deaths. In other incidents, a child who has been told about poisoned candy places a dangerous object or substance in a pile of candy and pretends that it was the work of a stranger. This behavior is called the "copycat effect". Folklorists, scholars, and law enforcement experts say that the story that strangers put poison into candy and give that candy to trick-or-treating children has been "thoroughly debunked".


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: Worries that candy from strangers might be poisoned has led to the rise of alternative events to trick-or-treating, such as events held at Christian churches, police and fire stations, community centers, and retail stores. The primary risk to children's health and safety on Halloween is being killed by a car.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: Claims that candy was poisoned or adulterated gained general credence during the Industrial Revolution, when food production moved out of the home or local area, where it was made in familiar ways by known and trusted people, to strangers using unknown ingredients and unfamiliar machines and processes. Some doctors publicly claimed that they were treating children poisoned by candy every day. If a child became ill, and had eaten candy, the candy was widely assumed to be the cause. However, no cases of illness or death were ever substantiated.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: In the 1890s and 1900s, the US Bureau of Chemistry, in conjunction with state agencies, tested hundreds of kinds of candy and found no evidence of poisons or adulteration. These tests revealed that inexpensive glucose (from corn syrup) was in common use for cheap candies, that some candies contained trace amounts of copper from uncoated copper cooking pans, and that aniline was being used for coloring, but there was no evidence of the many types of poison, industrial waste, garbage, or other adulterants alleged to be present. Eventually, the claims that children were being sickened by candy were put down to indigestion due to overeating, or to other causes, including food poisoning due to improper cooking, hygiene, or storage of meat and other foods.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: The prevalence and persistence of these myths during the 1960s and 1970s, a time of social upheaval, greater racial integration, and improved status for women, reflected societal questions about who was trustworthy. Because society was struggling with questions about whether to trust neighbors in newly integrated neighborhoods, or young women who were publicly rejecting the subservient, motherhood-focused roles previously assigned to women, these stories about unidentifiable neighbors allegedly harming random, innocent children during an event intended to bring happiness to these children caught and retained the public imagination in a way that accurate stories about a judgmental neighbor, an abusive parent, or an adult carelessly leaving harmful chemicals where children can reach them, would not have. An academic view sees this as an example of a rumor panic, with Halloween developing as a carnival-like folk institution – meant to release social tensions – losing its functionality as neighborhoods themselves break down (for various reasons).


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: Due to their fears, parents and communities restricted trick-or-treating and developed alternative "safe" events, such as trunk-or-treat events held at Christian churches. This collective fear also served as the impetus for the "safe" trick-or-treating offered by many local malls.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: This story also promoted the sale of individually wrapped, brand-name candies and discouraged people from giving homemade treats to children.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: The myth may also distract parents from the primary safety risk on Halloween, which is children being killed by cars. In the US, young children ages 4 to 8 are ten times as likely to be killed by a car on Halloween than on any other day of the year. Children of all ages (age 0 to 17) are three times as likely to be killed by a vehicle on Halloween than during the rest of the year.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: In 1959, a California dentist, William Shyne, gave candy-coated laxative pills to trick-or-treaters. He was charged with outrage of public decency and unlawful dispensing of drugs.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: In 1964, a disgruntled Long Island, New York woman gave out packages of inedible objects to children who she believed were too old to be trick-or-treating. The packages contained items such as steel wool, dog biscuits, and ant buttons (which were clearly labeled with the word "poison"). Though nobody was injured, she was prosecuted and pleaded guilty to endangering children. The same year saw media reports of lye-filled bubble gum being handed out in Detroit and rat poison being given in Philadelphia, although these media reports were never substantiated to be actual events.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: Another notable milestone in the spread of the candy tampering myths was an article published in "The New York Times" in 1970. This article claimed that "Those Halloween goodies that children collect this weekend on their rounds of 'trick or treating' may bring them more horror than happiness", and provided specific examples of potential tamperings.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: Reports and copycat incidents peaked shortly after the Chicago Tylenol murders, which were first reported one month before Halloween and continued into October in 1982, further contributing to the myth of candy tampering. The Chicago Tylenol murders involved an unidentified murderer who tampered with and added poison to a few bottles of over-the-counter medication after the medication had been delivered to stores, resulting in the deaths of several people who then ingested the medication.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: In 2022, police in Eugene, Oregon said they were investigating three credible reports of razor blades that were found inside Halloween candy. Police reported that the discovered razor blade was about an inch long and was similar to a blade in a manual pencil sharpener. The police reported that the razors may have also been inserted inside the wrappers through small slits. The blades were inside two Kit Kat bars and an Almond Joy bar. Trick-or-treaters likely picked up the manipulated candy within a 4-by-4-block radius, police said.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: Joel Best, a sociologist at the University of Delaware, specializes in the scholarly study of candy-tampering legends. He collected newspaper reports from 1958 to 1983 in search of evidence of candy tampering. Fewer than 90 instances might have qualified as actual candy tampering. In none of the cases does he attribute the events to "random attempts to harm children" at the Halloween holiday. Instead, most cases were attempts by adults to gain financial compensation or, far more commonly, by children to get attention. Best found five child deaths that were initially thought by local authorities to be caused by homicidal strangers, but none of those were sustained by investigation.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: Fabrications by children are particularly common. Children sometimes copy or act out the stories about tampered candy that they overhear, by adding pins to or pouring household cleaners on their own candy and then reporting the now-unsafe candy to their parents. In these incidents, the children have not been harmed; they know that the dangerous item is present and that it would be unsafe to eat the candy.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: Far more prevalent during the same period were reports of vandalism, racist incidents, or children being injured in pedestrian–vehicle collisions on Halloween.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: The deaths of five children were initially blamed on stranger poisoning. However, all of these claims were proven false upon investigation.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: Despite these claims of poisoned candy being eventually proved false, the news media promoted the story continuously throughout the 1980s, with local news stations featuring frequent coverage. During this time cases of poisoning were repeatedly reported based on unsubstantiated claims or before a full investigation could be completed and often never followed up on. This one-sided coverage contributed to the overall panic and caused rival media outlets to issue reports of candy tampering as well. However, Joel Best says that the spread of the myth cannot be blamed solely on the media, and that it must have been transmitted via word of mouth as well.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: By 1985, the media had driven the hysteria about candy poisonings to such a point that an ABC News/"Washington Post" poll that found 60% of parents feared that their children would be injured or killed because of Halloween candy sabotage.


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: Advice columnists entered the fray during the 1980s and 1990s with both "Ask Ann Landers" and "Dear Abby" warning parents of the horrors of candy tampering:


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: "In recent years, there have been reports of people with twisted minds putting razor blades and poison in taffy apples and Halloween candy. It is no longer safe to let your child eat treats that come from strangers." –Ann Landers in 1995


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: "Somebody's child will become violently ill or die after eating poisoned candy or an apple containing a razor blade." –Dear Abby in 1983


title: Poisoned candy myths

text: Almost all tampering cases—at a rate of one or two per year—involve a friend or family member, usually as a prank. Almost all of those involved sharp objects, rather than poisoning. Three-quarters of them resulted in no injuries, and the rest resulted in only minor injuries. No child has ever been killed by eating a Halloween candy from a stranger.


title: Sarah Blackwood (Canadian singer)

text: Sarah Nicole Blackwood (born 15 October 1980), also known as Sarah Sin, is a Canadian singer-songwriter. In 2012, she joined the indie rock band Walk off the Earth.


title: Sarah Blackwood (Canadian singer)

text: Blackwood was born in Burlington, Ontario. Most widely known as the frontwoman for Walk off the Earth, Blackwood got her start in the Canadian psychobilly band The Creepshow at the age of 27. Blackwood was initially supposed to fill in temporarily for her older sister, Jen "Hellcat" Blackwood, who was pregnant at the time. When Jen decided not to return to the band, Sarah became a full-time member. Blackwood has a brother, Ian Blackwood, who is also a musician. Blackwood has commented on her and her siblings’ musical and artistic upbringings, often attributing her love of music to her parents’ influence. Blackwood also advocates for anti-bullying initiatives and improved mental health services.


title: Sarah Blackwood (Canadian singer)

text: In 2008, Sarah published her debut solo album "Way Back Home" and her first album with The Creepshow, "Run For Your Life". In 2010, she released a second solo album, "Wasting Time" and "They All Fall Down" with The Creepshow. After gaining international fame with Walk off the Earth's cover of the song "Somebody That I Used to Know" by Australian singer Gotye, which went viral on YouTube with over 35 million views in two weeks, Sarah left The Creepshow in 2012. Fans of the Walk off the Earth, or WOTE-lings as they are referred to, sent the band's video to The Ellen DeGeneres Show and on 23 January 2012, the band made an appearance on the popular talk show, performing the song that propelled them to fame and would make way for their 2013 album "R.E.V.O."


title: Sarah Blackwood (Canadian singer)

text: In 2013, Blackwood was featured on the song "Lonesome Rider" from the Danish heavy metal band Volbeat's fifth album "Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies". The band's frontman Michael Poulsen told Ultimate-Guitar.com: "We knew her from back when we wanted to bring [The] Creepshow on tour."


title: Sarah Blackwood (Canadian singer)

text: Blackwood is the singer for Canadian indie band Walk off the Earth alongside members Gianni Luminati, and Joel Cassady. The band has been together since 2006 and was signed to Columbia Records in 2012.


title: Sarah Blackwood (Canadian singer)

text: In addition, Blackwood continues to produce videos to her solo YouTube channel, mainly cover songs, featuring her singing and playing acoustic guitar.


title: Sarah Blackwood (Canadian singer)

text: Blackwood has been in a relationship with Walk off the Earth bandmate Gianni "Luminati" Nicassio since January 2012, and the couple have three sons: Giorgio Michael, born 18 June 2013; Luigi Colombo, born 25 July 2015; and Romeo Aniello, born 23 August 2017. Blackwood and Luminati are known for taking their children with them on tour, giving their eclectic musical style an added family-friendly element.


title: Sarah Blackwood (Canadian singer)

text: In 2015, while with her then two-year-old son Giorgio and seven months pregnant with her second child, Blackwood was kicked off a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Vancouver because her baby would not stop crying. After being warned three times, Blackwood and her child were forced to exit the plane, yet the toddler was sound asleep by the time the singer's baggage was removed from the aircraft. Blackwood took to social media to air her grievances with the airline, who received negative feedback from what the Canadian musician called "discrimination", and positive reinforcement from frequent flyers who feel the air travel industry has been too accommodating to parents of disruptive and sometimes dangerously unruly children.


title: Rhineland Bastard

text: Rhineland Bastard () was a derogatory term used in Nazi Germany to describe Afro-Germans, believed fathered by French Army personnel of African descent who were stationed in the Rhineland during its occupation by France after World War I. There is evidence that other Afro-Germans, born from unions between German men and African women in former German colonies in Africa, were also referred to as "Rheinlandbastarde".


title: Rhineland Bastard

text: After 1933, under Nazi racial theories, Afro-Germans deemed to be "Rheinlandbastarde" were persecuted. They were rounded up in a campaign of compulsory sterilization.


title: Rhineland Bastard

text: The term "Rhineland Bastard" can be traced to 1919, just after World War I, when Entente troops, most of them French, occupied the Rhineland. The British historian Richard J. Evans suggests the number of mixed-race children among them was not more than five or six hundred.


title: Rhineland Bastard

text: All World War I belligerents with colonial possessions went to great lengths to recruit soldiers from their colonies. Germany was the only one of the Central Powers with substantial overseas possessions; it used numerous non-white troops to defend its colonies. Regardless of German attitudes toward the indigenous inhabitants of German colonies, Germany's lack of control of the sea lanes would have made it nearly impossible for the German Army to bring any substantial number of colonial troops to European battlefields. Notwithstanding the exact circumstances, most Germans quickly came to view non-white Allied troops with disdain and were contemptuous of the Allies' willingness to use these troops in Europe.


title: Rhineland Bastard

text: Germans across the political spectrum regarded the occupation as a national disgrace. Many considered all forms of collaboration and fraternization with the occupiers as immoral (if not illegal) treason. From the spring of 1920 onward, German newspapers frequently ran hysterical stories about the alleged "Black Horror on the Rhine", accusing Senegalese soldiers of routinely gang-raping thousands of German women and girls on a daily basis. In the popular 1921 novel "Die Schwarze Schmach: Der Roman des geschändeten Deutschlands" ("The Black Shame A Novel of Disgraced Germany") by Guido Kreutzer, he wrote that all mixed race children born in the Rhineland are born "physically and morally degenerate" and are not German at all. Kreutzer also declared that the mothers of these children ceased to be German the moment they had sex with non-white men, and they could never join the "Volksgemeinschaft".


title: Rhineland Bastard

text: As Germans considered the occupation to be carried out by "B-grade" troops (a notion that was drawn from colonial and racial stereotypes), their humiliation was heightened, increasing hostility toward the women and children in these unions. In May 1920 the foreign minister of the new German government lodged a protest to his French counterpart stating that "we will accept the inferior discipline amongst your white troops if you will only rid us as fast as possible of this black plague".


title: Rhineland Bastard

text: In the Rhineland itself, local opinion of the troops was very different. The soldiers were described as "courteous and often popular", possibly because French colonial soldiers harbored less ill-will towards Germans than war-weary French occupiers.


title: Rhineland Bastard

text: In his book "Mein Kampf", Adolf Hitler described children resulting from any kind of relationship to African occupation soldiers as a contamination of the white race "by Negro blood on the Rhine in the heart of Europe." He thought that "Jews were responsible for bringing Negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate." He also implied that this was a plot on the part of the French, since the population of France was being increasingly "negrified".


title: Rhineland Bastard

text: Most of the tiny multiracial population in Germany at that time were children of German settlers and missionaries in the former German colonies in Africa and Melanesia, who had married local women or had children with them out of wedlock. With the loss of the German colonial empire after World War I, some of these colonists returned to Germany with their mixed-race families. While the black population of Nazi Germany was small20–25,000 in a population of over 65 millionthe Nazis decided to take action against those in the Rhineland. They despised black culture, which they considered inferior, and sought to prohibit "traditionally black" musical genres such as American jazz as being "corrupt negro music". No official laws were enacted against the black population, or against the children of mixed parentage, as they were born from marriages and informal unions that preceded the Nuremberg laws of September 1935. The latter prohibited "miscegenation". However, future sexual relations and "mixed marriages", between so-called "Aryans" and "non-Aryans" were banned. In addition, persons of mixed parentage were deprived completely of the right to marry.


title: Rhineland Bastard

text: The government established the "Sonder Kommission Nr.3" ("Special Commission 3") and appointed Eugen Fischer, of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, to head it. He was tasked with preventing procreation and reproduction by "Rhineland Bastards". It was decided that anyone so deemed would be sterilized under the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.


title: Rhineland Bastard

text: The program began in 1937, when local officials were asked to identify all "Rhineland Bastards" under their jurisdiction. All together, some 800 children of mixed parentage were arrested and sterilized. According to Susan Samples, the Nazis went to great lengths to conceal their sterilization and abortion program.


title: Radio propagation

text: Radio propagation is the behavior of radio waves as they travel, or are propagated, from one point to another in vacuum, or into various parts of the atmosphere. As a form of electromagnetic radiation, like light waves, radio waves are affected by the phenomena of reflection, refraction, diffraction, absorption, polarization, and scattering. Understanding the effects of varying conditions on radio propagation has many practical applications, from choosing frequencies for amateur radio communications, international shortwave broadcasters, to designing reliable mobile telephone systems, to radio navigation, to operation of radar systems.


title: Radio propagation

text: Several different types of propagation are used in practical radio transmission systems. "Line-of-sight propagation" means radio waves which travel in a straight line from the transmitting antenna to the receiving antenna. Line of sight transmission is used for medium-distance radio transmission, such as cell phones, cordless phones, walkie-talkies, wireless networks, FM radio, television broadcasting, radar, and satellite communication (such as satellite television). Line-of-sight transmission on the surface of the Earth is limited to the distance to the visual horizon, which depends on the height of transmitting and receiving antennas. It is the only propagation method possible at microwave frequencies and above.


title: Radio propagation

text: At lower frequencies in the MF, LF, and VLF bands, diffraction allows radio waves to bend over hills and other obstacles, and travel beyond the horizon, following the contour of the Earth. These are called "surface waves" or "ground wave propagation". AM broadcast and amateur radio stations use ground waves to cover their listening areas. As the frequency gets lower, the attenuation with distance decreases, so very low frequency (VLF) to extremely low frequency (ELF) ground waves can be used to communicate worldwide. VLF to ELF waves can penetrate significant distances through water and earth, and these frequencies are used for mine communication and military communication with submerged submarines.


title: Radio propagation

text: At medium wave and shortwave frequencies (MF and HF bands) radio waves can refract from the ionosphere. This means that medium and short radio waves transmitted at an angle into the sky can be refracted back to Earth at great distances beyond the horizon – even transcontinental distances. This is called "skywave propagation". It is used by amateur radio operators to communicate with operators in distant countries, and by shortwave broadcast stations to transmit internationally.


title: Radio propagation

text: In addition, there are several less common radio propagation mechanisms, such as "tropospheric scattering" (troposcatter), "tropospheric ducting" (ducting) at VHF frequencies and "near vertical incidence skywave" (NVIS) which are used when HF communications are desired within a few hundred miles.


title: Radio propagation

text: At different frequencies, radio waves travel through the atmosphere by different mechanisms or modes:


title: Radio propagation

text: In free space, all electromagnetic waves (radio, light, X-rays, etc.) obey the inverse-square law which states that the power density formula_1 of an electromagnetic wave is proportional to the inverse of the square of the distance formula_2 from a point source or:


title: Radio propagation

text: At typical communication distances from a transmitter, the transmitting antenna usually can be approximated by a point source. Doubling the distance of a receiver from a transmitter means that the power density of the radiated wave at that new location is reduced to one-quarter of its previous value.


title: Radio propagation

text: The power density per surface unit is proportional to the product of the electric and magnetic field strengths. Thus, doubling the propagation path distance from the transmitter reduces each of these received field strengths over a free-space path by one-half.


title: Radio propagation

text: Radio waves in vacuum travel at the speed of light. The Earth's atmosphere is thin enough that radio waves in the atmosphere travel very close to the speed of light, but variations in density and temperature can cause some slight refraction (bending) of waves over distances.


title: Radio propagation

text: Line-of-sight refers to radio waves which travel directly in a line from the transmitting antenna to the receiving antenna. It does not necessarily require a cleared sight path; at lower frequencies radio waves can pass through buildings, foliage and other obstructions. This is the most common propagation mode at VHF and above, and the only possible mode at microwave frequencies and above. On the surface of the Earth, line of sight propagation is limited by the visual horizon to about . This is the method used by cell phones, cordless phones, walkie-talkies, wireless networks, point-to-point microwave radio relay links, FM and television broadcasting and radar. Satellite communication uses longer line-of-sight paths; for example home satellite dishes receive signals from communication satellites above the Earth, and ground stations can communicate with spacecraft billions of miles from Earth.


title: Radio propagation

text: Ground plane reflection effects are an important factor in VHF line-of-sight propagation. The interference between the direct beam line-of-sight and the ground reflected beam often leads to an effective inverse-fourth-power law for ground-plane limited radiation.


title: Radio propagation

text: Lower frequency (between 30 and 3,000 kHz) vertically polarized radio waves can travel as surface waves following the contour of the Earth; this is called "ground wave" propagation.


title: Radio propagation

text: In this mode the radio wave propagates by interacting with the conductive surface of the Earth. The wave "clings" to the surface and thus follows the curvature of the Earth, so ground waves can travel over mountains and beyond the horizon. Ground waves propagate in vertical polarization so vertical antennas (monopoles) are required. Since the ground is not a perfect electrical conductor, ground waves are attenuated as they follow the Earth's surface. Attenuation is proportional to frequency, so ground waves are the main mode of propagation at lower frequencies, in the MF, LF and VLF bands. Ground waves are used by radio broadcasting stations in the MF and LF bands, and for time signals and radio navigation systems.


title: Radio propagation

text: At even lower frequencies, in the VLF to ELF bands, an Earth-ionosphere waveguide mechanism allows even longer range transmission. These frequencies are used for secure military communications. They can also penetrate to a significant depth into seawater, and so are used for one-way military communication to submerged submarines.


title: Radio propagation

text: Early long-distance radio communication (wireless telegraphy) before the mid-1920s used low frequencies in the longwave bands and relied exclusively on ground-wave propagation. Frequencies above 3 MHz were regarded as useless and were given to hobbyists (radio amateurs). The discovery around 1920 of the ionospheric reflection or skywave mechanism made the medium wave and short wave frequencies useful for long-distance communication and they were allocated to commercial and military users.


title: Radio propagation

text: Skywave propagation, also referred to as skip, is any of the modes that rely on reflection and refraction of radio waves from the ionosphere. The ionosphere is a region of the atmosphere from about that contains layers of charged particles (ions) which can refract a radio wave back toward the Earth. A radio wave directed at an angle into the sky can be reflected back to Earth beyond the horizon by these layers, allowing long-distance radio transmission. The F2 layer is the most important ionospheric layer for long-distance, multiple-hop HF propagation, though F1, E, and D-layers also play significant roles. The D-layer, when present during sunlight periods, causes significant amount of signal loss, as does the E-layer whose maximum usable frequency can rise to 4 MHz and above and thus block higher frequency signals from reaching the F2-layer. The layers, or more appropriately "regions", are directly affected by the sun on a daily diurnal cycle, a seasonal cycle and the 11-year sunspot cycle and determine the utility of these modes. During solar maxima, or sunspot highs and peaks, the whole HF range up to 30 MHz can be used usually around the clock and F2 propagation up to 50 MHz is observed frequently depending upon daily solar flux values. During solar minima, or minimum sunspot counts down to zero, propagation of frequencies above 15 MHz is generally unavailable.


title: Radio propagation

text: Although the claim is commonly made that two-way HF propagation along a given path is reciprocal, that is, if the signal from location A reaches location B at a good strength, the signal from location B will be similar at station A because the same path is traversed in both directions. However, the ionosphere is far too complex and constantly changing to support the reciprocity theorem. The path is never exactly the same in both directions. In brief, conditions at the two end-points of a path generally cause dissimilar polarization shifts, hence dissimilar splits into ordinary rays and extraordinary rays ("Pedersen rays") which have different propagation characteristics due to differences in ionization density, shifting zenith angles, effects of the Earth's magnetic dipole contours, antenna radiation patterns, ground conditions, and other variables.


title: Radio propagation

text: Forecasting of skywave modes is of considerable interest to amateur radio operators and commercial marine and aircraft communications, and also to shortwave broadcasters. Real-time propagation can be assessed by listening for transmissions from specific beacon transmitters.


title: Radio propagation

text: Meteor scattering relies on reflecting radio waves off the intensely ionized columns of air generated by meteors. While this mode is very short duration, often only from a fraction of second to couple of seconds per event, digital Meteor burst communications allows remote stations to communicate to a station that may be hundreds of miles up to over away, without the expense required for a satellite link. This mode is most generally useful on VHF frequencies between 30 and 250 MHz.


title: Radio propagation

text: Intense columns of Auroral ionization at 100 km (60 mile) altitudes within the auroral oval backscatter radio waves, including those on HF and VHF. Backscatter is angle-sensitive—incident ray vs. magnetic field line of the column must be very close to right-angle. Random motions of electrons spiraling around the field lines create a Doppler-spread that broadens the spectra of the emission to more or less noise-like – depending on how high radio frequency is used. The radio-auroras are observed mostly at high latitudes and rarely extend down to middle latitudes. The occurrence of radio-auroras depends on solar activity (flares, coronal holes, CMEs) and annually the events are more numerous during solar cycle maxima. Radio aurora includes the so-called afternoon radio aurora which produces stronger but more distorted signals and after the Harang-minima, the late-night radio aurora (sub-storming phase) returns with variable signal strength and lesser doppler spread. The propagation range for this predominantly back-scatter mode extends up to about 2000 km (1250 miles) in east–west plane, but strongest signals are observed most frequently from the north at nearby sites on same latitudes.


title: Radio propagation

text: Rarely, a strong radio-aurora is followed by Auroral-E, which resembles both propagation types in some ways.


title: Radio propagation

text: Sporadic E (Es) propagation occurs on HF and VHF bands. It must not be confused with ordinary HF E-layer propagation. Sporadic-E at mid-latitudes occurs mostly during summer season, from May to August in the northern hemisphere and from November to February in the southern hemisphere. There is no single cause for this mysterious propagation mode. The reflection takes place in a thin sheet of ionization around 90 km (55 miles) height. The ionization patches drift westwards at speeds of few hundred km (miles) per hour. There is a weak periodicity noted during the season and typically Es is observed on 1 to 3 successive days and remains absent for a few days to reoccur again. Es do not occur during small hours; the events usually begin at dawn, and there is a peak in the afternoon and a second peak in the evening. Es propagation is usually gone by local midnight.


title: Radio propagation

text: Observation of radio propagation beacons operating around 28.2 MHz, 50 MHz and 70 MHz, indicates that maximum observed frequency (MOF) for Es is found to be lurking around 30 MHz on most days during the summer season, but sometimes MOF may shoot up to 100 MHz or even more in ten minutes to decline slowly during the next few hours. The peak-phase includes oscillation of MOF with periodicity of approximately 5...10 minutes. The propagation range for Es single-hop is typically 1000 to 2000 km (600 to 1250 miles), but with multi-hop, double range is observed. The signals are very strong but also with slow deep fading.


title: Radio propagation

text: Radio waves in the VHF and UHF bands can travel somewhat beyond the visual horizon due to refraction in the troposphere, the bottom layer of the atmosphere below 20 km (12 miles). This is due to changes in the refractive index of air with temperature and pressure. Tropospheric delay is a source of error in radio ranging techniques, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS). In addition, unusual conditions can sometimes allow propagation at greater distances:


title: Radio propagation

text: Sudden changes in the atmosphere's vertical moisture content and temperature profiles can on random occasions make UHF, VHF and microwave signals propagate hundreds of kilometers (miles) up to about —and for ducting mode even farther—beyond the normal radio-horizon. The inversion layer is mostly observed over high pressure regions, but there are several tropospheric weather conditions which create these randomly occurring propagation modes. Inversion layer's altitude for non-ducting is typically found between and for ducting about , and the duration of the events are typically from several hours up to several days. Higher frequencies experience the most dramatic increase of signal strengths, while on low-VHF and HF the effect is negligible. Propagation path attenuation may be below free-space loss. Some of the lesser inversion types related to warm ground and cooler air moisture content occur regularly at certain times of the year and time of day. A typical example could be the late summer, early morning tropospheric enhancements that bring in signals from distances up to few hundred kilometers (miles) for a couple of hours, until undone by the Sun's warming effect.


title: Radio propagation

text: At VHF and higher frequencies, small variations (turbulence) in the density of the atmosphere at a height of around can scatter some of the normally line-of-sight beam of radio frequency energy back toward the ground. In tropospheric scatter (troposcatter) communication systems a powerful beam of microwaves is aimed above the horizon, and a high gain antenna over the horizon aimed at the section of the troposphere though which the beam passes receives the tiny scattered signal. Troposcatter systems can achieve over-the-horizon communication between stations apart, and the military developed networks such as the White Alice Communications System covering all of Alaska before the 1960s, when communication satellites largely replaced them.


title: Radio propagation

text: Rain scattering is purely a microwave propagation mode and is best observed around 10 GHz, but extends down to a few gigahertz—the limit being the size of the scattering particle size vs. wavelength. This mode scatters signals mostly forwards and backwards when using horizontal polarization and side-scattering with vertical polarization. Forward-scattering typically yields propagation ranges of 800 km (500 miles). Scattering from snowflakes and ice pellets also occurs, but scattering from ice without watery surface is less effective. The most common application for this phenomenon is microwave rain radar, but rain scatter propagation can be a nuisance causing unwanted signals to intermittently propagate where they are not anticipated or desired. Similar reflections may also occur from insects though at lower altitudes and shorter range. Rain also causes attenuation of point-to-point and satellite microwave links. Attenuation values up to 30 dB have been observed on 30 GHz during heavy tropical rain.


title: Radio propagation

text: Airplane scattering (or most often reflection) is observed on VHF through microwaves and, besides back-scattering, yields momentary propagation up to 500 km (300 miles) even in mountainous terrain. The most common back-scatter applications are air-traffic radar, bistatic forward-scatter guided-missile and airplane-detecting trip-wire radar, and the US space radar.


title: Radio propagation

text: Lightning scattering has sometimes been observed on VHF and UHF over distances of about 500 km (300 miles). The hot lightning channel scatters radio-waves for a fraction of a second. The RF noise burst from the lightning makes the initial part of the open channel unusable and the ionization disappears quickly because of recombination at low altitude and high atmospheric pressure. Although the hot lightning channel is briefly observable with microwave radar, no practical use for this mode has been found in communications.


title: Radio propagation

text: "Knife-edge diffraction" is the propagation mode where radio waves are bent around sharp edges. For example, this mode is used to send radio signals over a mountain range when a line-of-sight path is not available. However, the angle cannot be too sharp or the signal will not diffract. The diffraction mode requires increased signal strength, so higher power or better antennas will be needed than for an equivalent line-of-sight path.


title: Radio propagation

text: Diffraction depends on the relationship between the wavelength and the size of the obstacle. In other words, the size of the obstacle in wavelengths. Lower frequencies diffract around large smooth obstacles such as hills more easily. For example, in many cases where VHF (or higher frequency) communication is not possible due to shadowing by a hill, it is still possible to communicate using the upper part of the HF band where the surface wave is of little use.


title: Radio propagation

text: Diffraction phenomena by small obstacles are also important at high frequencies. Signals for urban cellular telephony tend to be dominated by ground-plane effects as they travel over the rooftops of the urban environment. They then diffract over roof edges into the street, where multipath propagation, absorption and diffraction phenomena dominate.


title: Radio propagation

text: Low-frequency radio waves travel easily through brick and stone and VLF even penetrates sea-water. As the frequency rises, absorption effects become more important. At microwave or higher frequencies, absorption by molecular resonances in the atmosphere (mostly from water, HO and oxygen, O) is a major factor in radio propagation. For example, in the 58–60 GHz band, there is a major absorption peak which makes this band useless for long-distance use. This phenomenon was first discovered during radar research in World War II. Above about 400 GHz, the Earth's atmosphere blocks most of the spectrum while still passing some - up to UV light, which is blocked by ozone - but visible light and some of the near-infrared is transmitted.


title: Radio propagation

text: HF propagation conditions can be simulated using radio propagation models, such as the Voice of America Coverage Analysis Program, and realtime measurements can be done using chirp transmitters. For radio amateurs the WSPR mode provides maps with real time propagation conditions between a network of transmitters and receivers. Even without special beacons the realtime propagation conditions can be measured: A worldwide network of receivers decodes morse code signals on amateur radio frequencies in realtime and provides sophisticated search functions and propagation maps for every station received.


title: Radio propagation

text: In AM broadcasting, the dramatic ionospheric changes that occur overnight in the mediumwave band drive a unique broadcast license scheme in the United States, with entirely different transmitter power output levels and directional antenna patterns to cope with skywave propagation at night. Very few stations are allowed to run without modifications during dark hours, typically only those on clear channels in North America. Many stations have no authorization to run at all outside of daylight hours.


title: Radio propagation

text: For FM broadcasting (and the few remaining low-band TV stations), weather is the primary cause for changes in VHF propagation, along with some diurnal changes when the sky is mostly without cloud cover. These changes are most obvious during temperature inversions, such as in the late-night and early-morning hours when it is clear, allowing the ground and the air near it to cool more rapidly. This not only causes dew, frost, or fog, but also causes a slight "drag" on the bottom of the radio waves, bending the signals down such that they can follow the Earth's curvature over the normal radio horizon. The result is typically several stations being heard from another media market – usually a neighboring one, but sometimes ones from a few hundred kilometers (miles) away. Ice storms are also the result of inversions, but these normally cause more scattered omnidirection propagation, resulting mainly in interference, often among weather radio stations. In late spring and early summer, a combination of other atmospheric factors can occasionally cause skips that duct high-power signals to places well over 1000 km (600 miles) away.


title: Radio propagation

text: Non-broadcast signals are also affected. Mobile phone signals are in the UHF band, ranging from 700 to over 2600 MHz, a range which makes them even more prone to weather-induced propagation changes. In urban (and to some extent suburban) areas with a high population density, this is partly offset by the use of smaller cells, which use lower effective radiated power and beam tilt to reduce interference, and therefore increase frequency reuse and user capacity. However, since this would not be very cost-effective in more rural areas, these cells are larger and so more likely to cause interference over longer distances when propagation conditions allow.


title: Radio propagation

text: While this is generally transparent to the user thanks to the way that cellular networks handle cell-to-cell handoffs, when cross-border signals are involved, unexpected charges for international roaming may occur despite not having left the country at all. This often occurs between southern San Diego and northern Tijuana at the western end of the U.S./Mexico border, and between eastern Detroit and western Windsor along the U.S./Canada border. Since signals can travel unobstructed over a body of water far larger than the Detroit River, and cool water temperatures also cause inversions in surface air, this "fringe roaming" sometimes occurs across the Great Lakes, and between islands in the Caribbean. Signals can skip from the Dominican Republic to a mountainside in Puerto Rico and vice versa, or between the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, among others. While unintended cross-border roaming is often automatically removed by mobile phone company billing systems, inter-island roaming is typically not.


title: Radio propagation

text: A radio propagation model, also known as the radio wave propagation model or the radio frequency propagation model, is an empirical mathematical formulation for the characterization of radio wave propagation as a function of frequency, distance and other conditions. A single model is usually developed to predict the behavior of propagation for all similar links under similar constraints. Created with the goal of formalizing the way radio waves are propagated from one place to another, such models typically predict the path loss along a link or the effective coverage area of a transmitter.


title: Radio propagation

text: As the path loss encountered along any radio link serves as the dominant factor for characterization of propagation for the link, radio propagation models typically focus on realization of the path loss with the auxiliary task of predicting the area of coverage for a transmitter or modeling the distribution of signals over different regions


title: Radio propagation

text: Because each individual telecommunication link has to encounter different terrain, path, obstructions, atmospheric conditions and other phenomena, it is intractable to formulate the exact loss for all telecommunication systems in a single mathematical equation. As a result, different models exist for different types of radio links under different conditions. The models rely on computing the median path loss for a link under a certain probability that the considered conditions will occur.


title: Radio propagation

text: Radio propagation models are empirical in nature, which means, they are developed based on large collections of data collected for the specific scenario. For any model, the collection of data has to be sufficiently large to provide enough likeliness (or enough scope) to all kind of situations that can happen in that specific scenario. Like all empirical models, radio propagation models do not point out the exact behavior of a link, rather, they predict the most likely behavior the link may exhibit under the specified conditions.


title: Radio propagation

text: Different models have been developed to meet the needs of realizing the propagation behavior in different conditions. Types of models for radio propagation include:


title: Betty Boo

text: Alison Moira Clarkson (born 6 March 1970 in Kensington, London), better known as Betty Boo, is an English singer, songwriter and rapper. She first came to mainstream prominence in the late 1980s following a collaboration with the Beatmasters on the song "Hey DJ/I Can't Dance (To That Music You're Playing)". Between 1990 and 1992 she had a successful solo career, which spawned a number of chart-placing singles, most notably "Doin' the Do", "Where Are You Baby?", and "Let Me Take You There".


title: Betty Boo

text: Clarkson studied sound engineering at the Holloway School of Audio Engineering before having a string of hits between 1989 and 1992. Originally nicknamed "Betty Boop" for her similarity to the cartoon character, she changed it to avoid trademark disputes. Of mixed Dusun and Scottish ancestry, she had an unusual, striking Emma Peel-like look, dressed in mildly revealing outfits and proved to be an influential pop music figure whose "sassy, powerful music and image launched a thousand wannabe's". Writing for "The Guardian" in August 1990, Lucy O'Brien noted the difference between the "quietly spoken" Clarkson and her "lovable toughie" pop star alter-ego, describing the latter as "a cartoon combination of Betty Boop, Barbarella and Buck Rogers".


title: Betty Boo

text: Whilst still at school, Boo began her musical career in hip-hop groups such as Hit ’N’ Run and the She Rockers, the latter act who were signed to the British independent record label Music of Life. The She Rockers' success led her to New York and work with Public Enemy, who encouraged her to pursue a solo career. Commenting on her time spent supporting Public Enemy on tour in the US, as well as working with Professor Griff in the recording studio on the song "Give It A Rest", Boo revealed that things did not go as expected: "They were producing our single and I thought it would sound like their stuff, but it didn't at all. And some of the crowds were hostile to us. They didn't throw anything, no, but they wanted to see Public Enemy and they just weren't interested in us."


title: Betty Boo

text: Her big break came when she appeared as a guest vocalist on the 1989 number 7 UK hit single, "Hey DJ – I Can't Dance (To That Music You're Playing)" by The Beatmasters, which was included in original form on their album "Anywayawanna". Boo's first solo single, "Doin' The Do", followed and was also a UK number 7 success for her in 1990, selling 200,000 copies and reaching number one on Billboard's dance chart in the United States. One year later, the song was used as the title tune for "Magic Pockets" video game by the Bitmap Brothers. "Boomania", her platinum-selling debut album, was largely self-written and self-produced in her bedroom. Her second solo single, "Where Are You Baby?", which reached number 3 in August 1990, is her biggest solo hit to date. "24 Hours" was the third and final single to be issued from "Boomania", and although it was a hit, it was less so than previous releases, stalling at number 25 in December 1990. Her initial success was compounded at the 1991 BRIT Awards ceremony where she was voted that year's best British Breakthrough Act. In 1991, her "Why, Oh Why?" 1950s-style love ballad featured on the soundtrack to the American film "A Rage in Harlem".


title: Betty Boo

text: Her career suffered a setback when in July 1991, while touring Australia, Boo was revealed to be lip-synching at a concert rather than performing live. The 21st Century Dance Club in Frankston, Australia received "hundreds of complaints" after her performance, during which Boo fled the stage after dropping her microphone, revealing she was miming to a backing track. The incident was widely reported, and Boo cancelled the remainder of her tour, citing influenza and fever.


title: Betty Boo

text: Boo returned with a new record deal in 1992 having signed to WEA. Her follow-up album, "GRRR! It's Betty Boo", suffered very disappointing sales in the UK, peaking at number 62. It did, nevertheless, spawn another UK hit single titled "Let Me Take You There", which reached number 12 in August 1992. A further single, "I'm on My Way", featured a musical quote from The Beatles' "Lady Madonna" which, unusually, was not a sample—the song's brass riff was re-created using all the original players. However, the single did not sell well and entered the chart at number 44 in October 1992. Her next single, "Hangover", fared even worse, barely scraping the Top 50 upon release in April 1993. Following the release of "GRRR!", Clarkson turned down an offer to sign with Madonna's Maverick Records, and in 1999 a "Best Of" compilation album—effectively an expanded version of "Boomania" with extra remixes and a different running order—was released and sold moderately well.


title: Betty Boo

text: In 2006, Clarkson formed a pop duo called WigWam, with Alex James, bassist from Blur. Together, they worked with music producer Ben Hillier, along with former Boo collaborators The Beatmasters. Despite working to create "an album of experimental yet accessible 21st century pop", just one single emerged from their musical partnership, the self-titled "WigWam" released on 3 April 2006 via Instant Karma Records.


title: Betty Boo

text: In August 2007, she released a new single titled "Take Off". The song, which was playlisted on Radio 1's dance-orientated shows, was a joint project with the London-based dance act Jack Rokka and, as such, is much more dance-orientated than her previous work. She went on to perform the collaboration in a live set at Manchester Pride in 2007, along with some of her other songs. The video sees Betty Boo's trademark look resurrected and even features the 'Boosters' – Betty Boo's backing dancers, who always appear with identical hair and outfits to hers – and the Betty Boo spiral. Clarkson appeared on ITV's "Loose Women" on 16 October 2007 to promote the single, and has also appeared as an interviewee on BBC Three's "The Most Annoying Pop Songs..." show, passing comment on several songs that made the Top 100 list.


title: Betty Boo

text: In July 2009, historian Kate Williams reported on BBC Radio 4's "Broadcasting House" that she is working with Clarkson to develop a musical version of Williams' biography "England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton".


title: Betty Boo

text: In June 2011, Clarkson featured as Betty Boo (and is credited) on the track "Virtually Art" by The Feeling on the double-album edition of their 2011 release, "Together We Were Made" (disc 2 track 2).


title: Betty Boo

text: In July 2014, Betty Boo performed on stage at the Penn Festival, while in 2021 she was announced as one of the artists performing as part of the Let’s Rock retro music festival line-ups, at various dates throughout the UK.


title: Betty Boo

text: On 10 January 2022, the artist announced the release of the single "Get Me to the Weekend". The second single "Shining Star", was released on 12 May 2022. Her first album in 30 years, "Boomerang", was released on 14 October 2022.


title: Betty Boo

text: After her solo career effectively ended when her mother contracted terminal cancer in the early 1990s, Clarkson turned to songwriting, at the request of Chris Herbert, who was in the process of forming a new, all-girl group. Herbert asked her to contribute to the project after revealing that she was his inspiration in forming one of his previous projects, the Spice Girls: "He told me that when they were auditioning for the Spice Girls, they were looking for five Betty Boos – larger-than-life cartoon characters. He asked me to get involved in this other band he was putting together, Girl Thing, because he wanted this signature Betty Boo sound, a bit of hip-hop."


title: Betty Boo

text: Clarkson went on to co-write a number of songs for Girl Thing, including "Pure and Simple". Although the group's A&R man, Simon Cowell, initially rejected her song, it was included in the Japanese edition of Girl Thing's self-titled debut album, released in 2001. The song became a huge, record-breaking hit single when it was re-recorded and released as the debut single of Hear'Say—winners of the reality TV show, "Popstars"—in March of the same year. On the release, Clarkson commented: "The arrangement they used was almost identical. I never met the band. It was a bit disheartening". The song went on to win the Ivor Novello Award for the biggest selling single of 2001, however despite finding renewed success by writing for other artists, Clarkson did not care for the audition-based, manufactured pop process which spawned them:


title: Betty Boo

text: This audition-based pop star thing just didn't exist when I was around, or at least I wasn't aware of it. I came from a hip-hop background, did very credible underground music. As a pop artist, I had my own image. I had got to help the directors with the videos, I worked very closely with an art designer on the sleeves and stuff. It's completely different now...


title: Betty Boo

text: "Popstars" was the whole thing I completely loathe in pop music. I don't like the idea of people being auditioned to be in a pop band. They may as well be working on a cruise liner. Pop music will not evolve if it carries on like this. I think "Popstars" exposed how a pop group is made. It should put an end to it completely. Even if 'Pure and Simple' was a successful record, I'm not that passionate about it. I'm more passionate that the programme itself might have changed people's view about pop.


title: Betty Boo

text: Clarkson has also written songs for Girls Aloud (reunited with the Beatmasters), Louise Nurding, Dannii Minogue, The Tweenies and for Sophie Ellis-Bextor's fourth studio album.


title: Teresa Ann Savoy

text: Teresa Ann Savoy, FRSA (18 July 1955 – 9 January 2017) was a British actress who appeared in a number of Italian films.


title: Teresa Ann Savoy

text: Savoy was 18 years old when she appeared in the Italian adult magazine "Playmen" (October 1973), using an alias of "Terry". "Terry", who fled from home at 16, was living in a hippie community in Sicily and soon became an attention of the press.


title: Teresa Ann Savoy

text: In 1974, her acting career began when film director Alberto Lattuada (who discovered Federico Fellini and Silvana Mangano) gave her first role in the film "Le farò da padre" aka "La bambina", playing an intellectually disabled girl named Clotilde.


title: Teresa Ann Savoy

text: Her next film was "Private Vices, Public Pleasures" ("Vizi privati, pubbliche virtù") (1975) directed by the Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó. The film told the story of the Crown Prince Rudolf, son of the Austrian-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph and his rebellion against his father. Teresa played the baroness Mary Vetsera, Rudolf's lover, but in Jancso's vision, she appears as an intersex person.


title: Teresa Ann Savoy

text: In 1975 Savoy met Tinto Brass and they worked together in the successful film "Salon Kitty" (1976). In the film she played a young BDM girl (League of German Maidens, a female Nazi youth organization) who becomes a spy that poses as a prostitute for the SS Nazi paramilitary organization. In 1979 Brass directed her again as Drusilla in the controversial film "Caligula".


title: Teresa Ann Savoy

text: In 1977 Savoy played Jamilah in the Italian film made for TV "" ("Sandokan to the Rescue") based on the Sandokan novels by Emilio Salgari.


title: Teresa Ann Savoy

text: Savoy made a return to cinema in 1981 with "La disubbidienza" by Aldo Lado, where she played Edith, an attractive Jewish governess. The film covered events under the reign of the Republic of Salò. In the same year, director Miklós Jancsó worked with her again in the film "A zsarnok szíve, avagy Boccaccio Magyarországon" ("The Tyrant's Heart") in which she played alongside Ninetto Davoli.


title: Teresa Ann Savoy

text: At this point the stardom of Teresa had disappeared and she would be relegated to supporting roles in obscure movies and TV Series. In 1982, she had a cameo in the TV mini-series "" ("The Charterhouse of Parma", 1982), directed by Mauro Bolognini. In 1984, she was a terrorist in the very low budget movie "Il ragazzo di Ebalus" ("The Boy from Ebalus") alongside Saverio Marconi. In 1986, she took the part of Maria di Gallese, the first wife of the writer and poet Gabriele D'Annunzio (played by Robert Powell), in the film "D'Annunzio", directed by Sergio Nasca. Still in 1986, she appeared in "La Donna del Traghetto", directed by Amedeo Fago.


title: Teresa Ann Savoy

text: In 2000, she made her last film appearance in "La fabbrica del vapore", the first Italian digital movie.


title: Teresa Ann Savoy

text: In 2021 spanish journalist and writer Martín Llade published on Editorial Berenice the novel "Lo que nunca sabré de Teresa" in which he reconstructs Savoy's life and career.


title: Mexican Dirty War

text: The Mexican Dirty War () was the Mexican theater of the Cold War, an internal conflict from the 1960s to the 1980s between the Mexican PRI-ruled government under the presidencies of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverría and José López Portillo, which were backed by the US government, and left-wing student and guerrilla groups. During the war, government forces carried out disappearances, estimated at 1,200, systematic torture, and "probable extrajudicial executions".


title: Mexican Dirty War

text: In the 1960s and 1970s, Mexico was persuaded to be part of both Operation Intercept and Operation Condor, developed between 1975 and 1978, with the pretext to fight against the cultivation of opium and marijuana in the "Golden Triangle", particularly in Sinaloa.


title: Mexican Dirty War

text: The operation, commanded by General José Hernández Toledo, was a flop with no major drug-lord captures; however, many abuses and acts of repression were committed.