title: Nuclear terrorism

text: Nuclear weapons expert David Albright and author of "Peddling Peril" has also expressed concerns that Pakistan's stockpile may not be secure despite assurances by both Pakistan and U.S. government. He stated that Pakistan "has had many leaks from its program of classified information and sensitive nuclear equipment, and so you have to worry that it could be acquired in Pakistan". In 2015, Richard G. Olson, former US Ambassador to Pakistan, expressed confidence in the capabilities of the Pakistani security forces to control and


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: secure its nuclear weapons. He added that Islamabad has "specifically taken into account the insider threat".


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: A 2016 study by the Congressional Research Service titled 'Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons', noted that Pakistan's "initiatives, such as strengthened export control laws, improved personnel security, and international nuclear security cooperation programs, have improved Pakistan's nuclear security".


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: During the 2020 Armenian–Azerbaijani skirmishes Azerbaijan threatened to launch missile attacks on the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: Within the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops engaged in the Battle of Enerhodar began shelling the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on March 3, 2022. Units 2 and 3 were put into an emergency safe mode, while Unit 4 remained in operation due to being the furthest from the artillery firing range. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba had warned that potential damage from a Russian attack would be "ten times larger than Chernobyl". The attack caused significant damage to the plant, including a fire breaking out near Unit 1, which was under maintenance at the time. The fire was contained in the following morning. The attack was condemned by many within the international community, including being described as nuclear terrorism by Lithuanian President Nauseda, "incredible reckless and dangerous" by US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield, and a war crime by Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: In August 2022 Dmitry Medvedev published a comment warning that "accidents can happen at European nuclear plants too", which was widely interpreted as a concealed threat.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: While in office, President Barack Obama reviewed Homeland Security policy and concluded that "attacks using improvised nuclear devices ... pose a serious and increasing national security risk". In their presidential contest, President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry both agreed that the most serious danger facing the United States is the possibility that terrorists could obtain a nuclear bomb. Most nuclear-weapon analysts agree that "building such a device would pose few technological challenges to reasonably competent terrorists". The main barrier is acquiring highly enriched uranium.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: In 2004, Graham Allison, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Clinton administration, wrote that “on the current path, a nuclear terrorist attack on America in the decade ahead is more likely than not". In 2004, Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information stated: "I wouldn't be at all surprised if nuclear weapons are used over the next 15 or 20 years, first and foremost by a terrorist group that gets its hands on a Russian nuclear weapon or a Pakistani nuclear weapon". In 2006, Robert Galluccii, Dean of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, estimated that, “it is more likely than not that al-Qaeda or one of its affiliates will detonate a nuclear weapon in a U.S. city within the next five to ten years." Despite a number of claims, there is no credible evidence that any terrorist group has yet succeeded in obtaining a nuclear bomb or the materials needed to make one.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: Detonation of a nuclear weapon in a major U.S. city could kill more than 500,000 people and cause more than a trillion dollars in damage. Hundreds of thousands could die from fallout, the resulting fires and collapsing buildings. In this scenario, uncontrolled fires would burn for days and emergency services and hospitals would be completely overwhelmed. The likely socio-economic consequences in the United States outside the immediate vicinity of an attack, and possibly in other countries, would also likely be far-reaching. A Rand Corporation report speculates that there may be an exodus from other urban centers by populations fearful of another nuclear attack.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: The Obama administration claimed to focus on reducing the risk of high-consequence, non-traditional nuclear threats. Nuclear security was thought to be strengthened by enhancing "nuclear detection architecture and ensuring that our own nuclear materials are secure," and by "establishing well-planned, well-rehearsed, plans for co-ordinated response." According to senior Pentagon officials, the United States will make "thwarting nuclear-armed terrorists a central aim of American strategic nuclear planning." Nuclear attribution is another strategy being pursued to counter terrorism. Led by the National Technical Nuclear Forensics Center, attribution would allow the government to determine the likely source of nuclear material used in the event of a nuclear attack. This would prevent terrorist groups, and any states willing to help them, from being able to pull off a covert attack without assurance of retaliation.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: In July 2010 medical personnel from the U.S. Army practiced the techniques they would use to treat people injured by an atomic blast. The exercises were carried out at a training center in Indiana, and were set up to "simulate the aftermath of a small nuclear bomb blast, set off in a U.S. city by terrorists."


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: "Stuxnet" is a computer worm discovered in June 2010 that is believed to have been created by the United States and Israel to attack the nuclear facilities of Iran and North Korea.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: After 9/11, nuclear power plants were to be prepared for an attack by a large, well-armed terrorist group. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in revising its security rules, decided not to require that plants be able to defend themselves against groups carrying sophisticated weapons. According to a study by the Government Accountability Office, the N.R.C. appeared to have based its revised rules "on what the industry considered reasonable and feasible to defend against rather than on an assessment of the terrorist threat itself". If terrorist groups could sufficiently damage safety systems to cause a core meltdown at a nuclear power plant, and/or sufficiently damage spent fuel pools, such an attack could lead to widespread radioactive contamination. The Federation of American Scientists have said that if nuclear power use is to expand significantly, nuclear facilities will have to be made extremely safe from attacks that could release massive quantities of radioactivity into the community. New reactor designs have features of passive safety, which may help. In the United States, the NRC carries out "Force on Force" (FOF) exercises at all Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) sites at least once every three years.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: The peace group Plowshares have shown how nuclear weapons facilities can be penetrated, and the groups actions represent extraordinary breaches of security at nuclear weapons plants in the United States. The National Nuclear Security Administration has acknowledged the seriousness of the 2012 Plowshares action. Non-proliferation policy experts have questioned "the use of private contractors to provide security at facilities that manufacture and store the government's most dangerous military material".


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: In late 1974, President Gerald Ford was warned that the FBI received a communication from an extortionist wanting $200,000 ($ today) after claiming that a nuclear weapon had been placed somewhere in Boston. A team of experts rushed in from the United States Atomic Energy Commission but their radiation detection gear arrived at a different airport. Federal officials then rented a fleet of vans to carry concealed radiation detectors around the city but forgot to bring the tools they needed to install the equipment. The incident was later found to be a hoax. However, the government's response made clear the need for an agency capable of effectively responding to such threats in the future. Later that year, President Ford created the Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST), which under the Atomic Energy Act is tasked with investigating the "illegal use of nuclear materials within the United States, including terrorist threats involving the use of special nuclear materials".


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: One of its first responses by the Nuclear Emergency Search/Support Team was in Spokane, Washington on November 23, 1976. An unknown group called the "Days of Omega" had mailed an extortion threat claiming it would explode radioactive containers of water all over the city unless paid $500,000 ($ today). Presumably, the radioactive containers had been stolen from the Hanford Site, less than 150 miles to the southwest. Immediately, NEST flew in a support aircraft from Las Vegas and began searching for non-natural radiation, but found nothing. No one ever responded despite the elaborate instructions given, or made any attempt to claim the (fake) money which was kept under surveillance. Within days, the incident was deemed a hoax, though the case was never solved. To avoid panic, the public was not notified until a few years later.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program (CTR), which is also known as the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction, is a 1992 law sponsored by Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar. The CTR established a program that gave the U.S. Department of Defense a direct stake in securing loose fissile material inside the since-dissolved Soviet Union. According to Graham Allison, director of Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, this law is a major reason why not a single nuclear weapon has been discovered outside the control of Russia's nuclear custodians. The Belfer Center is itself running the "Project on Managing the Atom," Matthew Bunn is a co-principal investigator of the project, Martin B. Malin is its executive director (circa. 2014).


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: In August 2002, the United States launched a program to track and secure enriched uranium from 24 Soviet-style reactors in 16 countries, in order to reduce the risk of the materials falling into the hands of terrorists or "rogue states". The first such operation was "Project Vinca", "a multinational, public-private effort to remove nuclear material from a poorly-secured Yugoslav research institute." The project has been hailed as "a nonproliferation success story" with the "potential to inform broader 'global cleanout' efforts to address one of the weakest links in the nuclear nonproliferation chain: insufficiently secured civilian nuclear research facilities."


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: In 2004, the U.S. Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) was established in order to consolidate nuclear stockpiles of highly enriched uranium (HEU), plutonium, and assemble nuclear weapons at fewer locations. Additionally, the GTRI converted HEU fuels to low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuels, which has prevented their use in making a nuclear bomb within a short amount of time. HEU that has not been converted to LEU has been shipped back to secure sites, while amplified security measures have taken hold around vulnerable nuclear facilities.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: Robert Gallucci, President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, argues that traditional deterrence is not an effective approach toward terrorist groups bent on causing a nuclear catastrophe. Henry Kissinger, stating the wide availability of nuclear weapons makes deterrence “decreasingly effective and increasingly hazardous.” Preventive strategies, which advocate the elimination of an enemy before it is able to mount an attack, are risky and controversial, therefore difficult to implement. Gallucci believes that “the United States should instead consider a policy of expanded deterrence, which focuses not on the would-be nuclear terrorists but on those states that may deliberately transfer or inadvertently lead nuclear weapons and materials to them. By threatening retaliation against those states, the United States may be able to deter that which it cannot physically prevent.”.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: Graham Allison makes a similar case, arguing that the key to expanded deterrence is coming up with ways of tracing nuclear material to the country that forged the fissile material. “After a nuclear bomb detonates, nuclear forensic cops would collect debris samples and send them to a laboratory for radiological analysis. By identifying unique attributes of the fissile material, including its impurities and contaminants, one could trace the path back to its origin.” The process is analogous to identifying a criminal by fingerprints. “The goal would be twofold: first, to deter leaders of nuclear states from selling weapons to terrorists by holding them accountable for any use of their own weapons; second, to give every leader the incentive to tightly secure their nuclear weapons and materials.”


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: John Mueller, a scholar of international relations at the Ohio State University, is a prominent nuclear skeptic. He makes three claims: (1) the nuclear intent and capability of terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda has been “fundamentally exaggerated;” (2) “the likelihood a terrorist group will come up with an atomic bomb seems to be vanishingly small;” and (3) policymakers are guilty of an “atomic obsession” that has led to “substantively counterproductive” policies premised on “worst case fantasies.” In his book "Atomic Obsession": "Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda" he argues that: "anxieties about terrorists obtaining nuclear weapons are essentially baseless: a host of practical and organizational difficulties make their likelihood of success almost vanishingly small".


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: Intelligence officials have pushed back, testifying before Congress that the inability to recognize the shifting modus operandi of terrorist groups was part of the reason why members of Aum Shinrikyo, for example, were “not on anybody’s radar screen.” Matthew Bunn, associate professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, argues that “Theft of HEU and plutonium is not a hypothetical worry, it is an ongoing reality." Almost all of the stolen HEU and plutonium that has been seized over the years had never been missed before it was seized. The IAEA Illicit Nuclear Trafficking Database notes 1,266 incidents reported by 99 countries over the last 12 years, including 18 incidents involving HEU or plutonium trafficking.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: Keir Lieber and Daryl Press argue that despite the prominent U.S. focus on nuclear terrorism, "the fear of terrorist transfer [of nuclear weapons] seems greatly exaggerated... [and] the dangers of a state giving nuclear weapons to terrorists have been overstated." A decade of terrorism statistics show a strong correlation between attack fatalities and the attribution of the attack, and Lieber and Press assert that "neither a terror group nor a state sponsor would remain anonymous after a nuclear terror attack." About 75 percent of attacks with 100 or more fatalities were traced to the culprits; also, 97 percent of attacks on U.S. soil or that of a major ally (resulting in 10 or more deaths) were attributed to the guilty party. Lieber and Press conclude that the lack of anonymity would deter a state from providing terrorist groups with nuclear weapons.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: The use of HEU and plutonium in satellites has raised the concern that a sufficiently motivated rogue state could retrieve materials from a satellite crash (notably on land as occurred with Kosmos-954, Mars-96 and Fobos-Grunt) and then use these to supplement the yield of an already working nuclear device. This has been discussed recently in the UN and the Nuclear Emergency Search Team regularly consults with Roscosmos and NASA about satellite re-entries that may have contained such materials. As yet no parts were verifiably recovered from Mars 96 but recent WikiLeaks releases suggest that one of the "cells" may have been recovered by mountain climbers in Chile.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: On April 12–13, 2010, President of the United States Barack Obama initiated and hosted the first-ever nuclear security summit in Washington D.C., commonly known as the Washington Nuclear Security Summit. The goal was to strengthen international cooperation to prevent nuclear terrorism. President Obama, along with nearly fifty world leaders, discussed the threat of nuclear terrorism, what steps needed to be taken to mitigate illicit nuclear trafficking, and how to secure nuclear material. The Summit was successful in that it produced a consensus delineating nuclear terrorism as a serious threat to all nations. Finally, the Summit produced over four-dozen specific actions embodied in commitments by individual countries and the Joint Work Plan. However, world leaders at the Summit failed to agree on baseline protections for weapons-usable material, and no agreement was reached on ending the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in civil nuclear functions. Many of the shortcomings of the Washington Nuclear Security Summit were addressed at the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit in March 2012.


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: According to Graham Allison, director of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the objectives of the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul are to continue to, “assess the progress made since the Washington Summit and propose additional cooperation measures to (1) Combat the threat of nuclear terrorism, (2) protect nuclear materials and related facilities, and (3) prevent illicit trafficking in nuclear materials."


title: Nuclear terrorism

text: In 2011, the British news agency, "The" "Telegraph", received leaked documents regarding the Guantanamo Bay interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The documents cited Khalid saying that, if Osama bin Laden is captured or killed by the Coalition of the Willing, an al-Qaeda sleeper cell will detonate a "weapon of mass destruction" in a "secret location" in Europe, and promised it would be "a nuclear hellstorm". No such attack occurred after the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: Thomas Strakosha (born 19 March 1995) is a professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Premier League club Brentford. Born in Greece, he plays for the Albania national team.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: Born in Athens, Strakosha played youth football at Panionios before joining Italian club Lazio in 2012. He made his professional debut in August 2015, while on a loan spell at Salernitana. Strakosha made 208 appearances in total for Lazio and won the Coppa Italia and the Supercoppa Italiana twice each.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: After playing for Albania at under-19 and under-21 levels, Strakosha made his senior international debut in March 2017 against Italy.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: Strakosha began his youth career in 2011 at Panionios, from where in the next year he was signed by Lazio for a €75,000 transfer fee. He became a regular starter for the Primavera team and was a key player with the Primavera team that won the 2012–13 Campionato Nazionale Primavera after defeating Atalanta Primavera in the final, 3–0.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: Following the departure of Lazio first-team starting goalkeeper Juan Pablo Carrizo to Internazionale, in the second half of the 2012–13 season, Strakosha gained entry with the first team as third-choice goalkeeper, behind Federico Marchetti and Albano Bizzarri. He was member of the team that won 2012–13 Coppa Italia after defeating city rivals Roma 0–1 in the final on 26 May 2013. On 18 August 2013, Strakosha was again on the substitutes' bench as Lazio lost 4–0 to Juventus in the 2013 Supercoppa Italiana.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: On 2 September 2013, Lazio sold Bizzarri to Genoa and at the same time purchased fellow Albanian goalkeeper Etrit Berisha from Kalmar. This made Strakosha to stand still as a third choice and being only an unused substitute for the 2013–14 season behind the strong challenge for the starting place between Berisha and Marchetti.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: On 11 July 2014, Igli Tare, Lazio's sports director, announced that Strakosha's contract was extended until 2019. Strakosha was on the bench for the 2014–15 Coppa Italia final against Juventus on 21 May 2015 where Lazio lost 2–1 in extra-time following a 97th-minute goal by Alessandro Matri.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: In July 2015, Lazio agreed to loan Strakosha to newly promoted Serie B side Salernitana. He was allocated squad number 12, and made his professional debut on 9 August 2015 in the 1–0 win against Pisa for the 2015–16 Coppa Italia second round. A week after his debut, Strakosha played another Coppa Italia match, making several decisive saves and keeping his goal intact for 120 minutes as Salernitana won 1–0 against Chievo Verona to progress to the next round.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: Strakosha made his league debut for Salernitana on 6 September in the opening 2015–16 Serie B match against Avellino where he managed to play the full 90-minutes match and his side won 3–1. He was an unused substitute in the next Coppa Italia game on 1 December 2015 against Spezia as the coach Vincenzo Torrente gave the starting place to Pietro Terracciano as Salernitana was eliminated from Coppa Italia, losing the game by 2–0.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: In July 2016, following the loan's end, Strakosha returned to Lazio. With the injury of Marchetti and the departure of Berisha to Atalanta, Strakosha was able to make his Lazio debut on 20 September in the league match against Milan. Despite the 2–0 defeat, Strakosha's performance was considered positive, being man of the match for Lazio. Five days later, Strakosha collected his first Serie A clean-sheet only in his second appearance in the 2–0 home win against Empoli, which led the 1982 FIFA World Cup-winner Dino Zoff to praise him by saying: "I can not judge him with only two matches played, but, according to me, he performed well in both matches."


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: On 22 February 2017, Strakosha renewed his contract with Lazio until 2022. He went on to play as starter until the end of the season, collecting 1844 minutes on field, as Lazio finished the championship in 5th position. He also contributed with 4 matches in the Coppa Italia, including the final, as Lazio was defeated by Juventus 2–0.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: Strakosha started the 2017–18 season on 13 August 2017 by playing in the 2017 Supercoppa Italiana against Juventus, winning his maiden trophy as Lazio won 3–2 after a last-minute goal. Against the same opponent on 14 October, Strakosha saved Paulo Dybala's penalty in the 97th minute to rescue a 1–2 win for his team and to put Lazio in 3rd position. It was Strakosha's first Serie A penalty save and Juventus' first Serie A home defeat since August 2015. A week later, he agreed a contract extension, signing until June 2022. Later, he was named as the best young goalkeeper of the 2017–18 season.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: Strakosha was called up for the first time to Albania's U17 squad by coach Džemal Mustedanagić to participate in the 2012 UEFA European Under-17 Championship elite round. He was an unused substitute for all 3 matches, serving as second choice goalkeeper behind Aldo Teqja.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: Strakosha was called up to the Albania national under-19 football team to participate in the 2013 UEFA European Under-19 Championship qualification, coached by his father, Foto Strakosha. Thomas played every minute of all 3 matches of the Group 7. Albania finished in the 4th place, with Strakosha conceding in total 6 goals, despite Albania beating top of the table Belgium 3–1 with goals from Enis Gavazaj, Elvis Kabashi and Lorenc Shehaj.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: In the 2014 UEFA European Under-19 Championship qualification, Strakosha again played every minute in all 3 matches of the Group 6, leaving behind youth Juventus goalkeeper, Entonjo Elezaj.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: Strakosha was called up to the U20 team by coach Skënder Gega for the 2013 Mediterranean Games football tournament, which began on 19 June, in Mersin, Turkey. However, Strakosha didn't participate in any match of the tournament.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: Strakosha was selected for the Albania U21 side that took part in the 2015 UEFA Euro Under-21 qualification. He played in half of all Group 4 matches (4 of 8), as the 4 other matches were played by fellow goalkeepers, Aldo Teqja and Orestis Menka, who each played 2 matches.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: In the 2017 UEFA European Under-21 Championship qualification he retained his starting place playing overall 7 out 10 games for full 90-minutes under coach Redi Jupi. He missed out the opening match due to the injury, the closing match due to engagement with Albania senior team and was left on the bench for 1 game against Portugal U21 as Jupi wanted to test Teqja. Following the engagement of Amir Rrahmani with Albania senior team and then his departure to Kosovo national team in September 2016, Strakosha became the under-21 team's captain playing for his 6 last games.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: Strakosha was called up for the first time to the senior Albania squad in August 2016 by coach Gianni De Biasi for the friendly match against Morocco on 31 August 2016 and the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification opening match against North Macedonia on 5 September 2016 as a 4th choice keeper along Etrit Berisha, Orges Shehi and Alban Hoxha. However, he did not feature in both matches. He continued to be part of the team for the next matches, making his competitive debut on 24 March 2017 due to Berisha's suspension in the match against Italy as Albania trailed 0–2. He went on to make another appearance in Albania's 3–0 win over Israel as Albania finished Group G in 3rd position with 13 points.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: In a 2017 interview, Strakosha stated that his main influences and his idol as a goalkeeper was his own father Foto Strakosha, whom he tries to imitate.


title: Thomas Strakosha

text: Strakosha was born in Athens, Greece. His father, Foto, played as a goalkeeper for two Albanian clubs and several Greek clubs, in addition to representing the Albania national team in the years spanning 1990–2005.


title: GRU (Soviet Union)

text: Main Intelligence Directorate (), abbreviated GRU (), was the foreign military intelligence agency of the Soviet Army General Staff of the Soviet Union until 1991. For a few months it was also the foreign military intelligence agency of the newly established Russian Federation until 7 May 1992 when it was dissolved and the Russian GRU took over its activities.


title: GRU (Soviet Union)

text: The GRU's first predecessor in Russia formed on October 21, 1918 by secret order under the sponsorship of Leon Trotsky (then the civilian leader of the Red Army), signed by Jukums Vācietis, the first commander-in-chief of the Red Army (RKKA), and by Ephraim Sklyansky, deputy to Trotsky; it was originally known as the Registration Directorate ("Registrupravlenie", or RU). Semyon Aralov was its first head. In his history of the early years of the GRU, Raymond W. Leonard writes:


title: GRU (Soviet Union)

text: As originally established, the Registration Department was not directly subordinate to the General Staff (at the time called the Red Army Field Staff – "Polevoi Shtab"). Administratively, it was the Third Department of the Field Staff's Operations Directorate. In July 1920, the RU was made the second of four main departments in the Operations Directorate. Until 1921, it was usually called the "Registrupr" (Registration Department). That year, following the Soviet–Polish War, it was elevated in status to become the Second (Intelligence) Directorate of the Red Army Staff, and was thereafter known as the "Razvedupr". This probably resulted from its new primary peacetime responsibilities as the main source of foreign intelligence for the Soviet leadership. As part of a major re-organization of the Red Army, sometime in 1925 or 1926 the RU (then Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenye) became the Fourth (Intelligence) Directorate of the Red Army Staff, and was thereafter also known simply as the "Fourth Department." Throughout most of the interwar period, the men and women who worked for Red Army Intelligence called it either the Fourth Department, the Intelligence Service, the "Razvedupr", or the RU. […] As a result of the re-organization [in 1926], carried out in part to break up Trotsky's hold on the army, the Fourth Department seems to have been placed directly under the control of the State Defense Council (Gosudarstvennaia komissiia oborony, or GKO), the successor of the RVSR. Thereafter its analysis and reports went directly to the GKO and the Politburo, apparently even bypassing the Red Army Staff.


title: GRU (Soviet Union)

text: The first head of the 4th Directorate was Yan Karlovich Berzin, a Latvian Communist and former member of the Cheka, who served until 1935 and again in 1937. He was arrested (May 1938) and subsequently murdered (July 1938) during the so-called "Latvian Operation" of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.


title: GRU (Soviet Union)

text: The GRU in its modern form was created by Joseph Stalin in February 1942, less than a year after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany. From April 1943 the GRU handled human intelligence exclusively outside the USSR.


title: GRU (Soviet Union)

text: The GRU had the task of handling all military intelligence, particularly the collection of intelligence of military or political significance from sources outside the Soviet Union. It operated "rezidenturas" (residencies) all over the world, along with the SIGINT (signals intelligence) station in Lourdes, Cuba, and throughout the Soviet-bloc countries.


title: GRU (Soviet Union)

text: The GRU was known in the Soviet government for its fierce independence from the rival "internal intelligence organizations", such as the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB), State Political Directorate (GPU), MGB, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, KGB and the First Chief Directorate (PGU). At the time of the GRU's creation, Lenin infuriated the Cheka (the predecessor of the KGB) by ordering it not to interfere with the GRU's operations.


title: GRU (Soviet Union)

text: Nonetheless, the Cheka infiltrated the GRU in 1919. That worsened a fierce rivalry between the two agencies, which were both engaged in espionage. The rivalry became even more intense than that between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency in the US.


title: GRU (Soviet Union)

text: The existence of the GRU was not publicized during the Soviet era, but documents concerning it became available in the West in the late 1920s, and it was mentioned in the 1931 memoirs of the first OGPU defector, Georges Agabekov, and described in detail in the 1939 autobiography of Walter Krivitsky ("I Was Stalin's Agent"), who was the most senior Red Army intelligence officer ever to defect. It became widely known in Russia, and in the West outside the narrow confines of the intelligence community, during perestroika, in part thanks to the writings of "Viktor Suvorov" (Vladimir Rezun), a GRU officer who defected to Great Britain in 1978 and wrote about his experiences in the Soviet military and intelligence services. According to Suvorov, even the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when entering the GRU headquarters, needed to go through a security screening. In "Aquarium", "Viktor Suvorov" alleges that during his training and service he was often reminded that exiting the GRU (retiring) was only possible through "The Smoke Stack". This was a GRU reference to a training film shown to him, in which he alleges he watched a condemned agent being burned alive in a furnace.


title: GRU (Soviet Union)

text: During the Cold War, the Sixth Directorate was responsible for monitoring Intelsat communication satellites traffic.


title: GRU (Soviet Union)

text: GRU Sixth Directorate officers reportedly visited North Korea following the capture (January 1968) of the USS "Pueblo", inspecting the vessel and receiving some of the captured equipment.


title: When We Were Kings

text: When We Were Kings is a 1996 American documentary film directed by Leon Gast about the "Rumble in the Jungle" heavyweight championship match that was held on October 30, 1974, in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) between world heavyweight champion George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. It features archival footage of celebrities, including James Brown, B.B. King, and promoter Don King, in the lead-up to the fight and accompanying Zaire 74 music festival, alongside interview footage of Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, Spike Lee and Thomas Hauser from the 1990s.


title: When We Were Kings

text: The film took Gast 22 years to edit and finance, but it was finally released to strong reviews and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature of 1996.


title: When We Were Kings

text: Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, Spike Lee, Malik Bowens, and Thomas Hauser were interviewed for the film in the 1990s. These interviews describe the historical importance of the fight, the questionable ethics of locating the fight in Zaire and accepting funding from the brutal dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, the fight itself, and, particularly, the interviewee's impressions of Ali. The interviews are accompanied by many news clips and photos to summarize Ali and Foreman's careers leading up to the Rumble.


title: When We Were Kings

text: During the buildup to the fight, Ali is shown trash-talking Foreman and talking about his beliefs regarding Africans and African-Americans in more private settings. He speaks of the inherent dignity of the native Africans and his hopes for African-Americans in the future. His relationship of mutual love with the people of Zaire is contrasted with Foreman's awkward and unsuccessful efforts to build his own popularity. Promoter Don King is seen working on his first big promotion.


title: When We Were Kings

text: Performers such as James Brown, B.B. King, and The Spinners are seen performing at Zaire 74, the "black Woodstock" soul music festival that was supposed to accompany the fight, but ended up preceding it by a month because Foreman was injured in training and the fight was delayed (the festival is more fully documented in the 2008 film "Soul Power").


title: When We Were Kings

text: The film culminates with footage of much of the fight itself, interspersed with analysis of Ali's repeated use of the "right-hand lead" in the early rounds (a rarely used punch in professional boxing because it opens the boxer up for easy counterattacks, which Ali surmised would make it the punch for which Foreman was the least prepared) and his famous "rope-a-dope" strategy. This technique entailed Ali taking heavy blows from Foreman over several rounds while using his quick reflexes and the ropes to lessen their impact, which wore out Foreman. Ali knocked out Foreman in the eighth round, regaining the championship taken from him seven years earlier for his refusal to be drafted into the United States Army during the Vietnam War.


title: When We Were Kings

text: A soundtrack album for the film was released in 1997. It features live festival performances, in addition to new music by Zelma Davis, the duet "When We Were Kings" performed by Brian McKnight and Diana King, and "Rumble in the Jungle", the final recording done by The Fugees, in a collaboration with A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes, and John Forté.


title: When We Were Kings

text: "When We Were Kings" is regarded as one of the best boxing documentaries ever made. It maintains a 98% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes and received strong reviews from critics such as Roger Ebert and Edward Guthmann. It was nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding News, Talk or Information - Special in 1998, but lost to "Dinner with Oprah: A Lifetime Exclusive - Toni Morrison".


title: When We Were Kings

text: The film won the 1996 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. At the presentation, both Ali and Foreman came up to join the filmmakers to make it clear they had long-since made peace after the fight, with Foreman even helping Ali up the stairs. It was also nominated for the Grand Prix of the Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics.


title: Turlough Convery

text: Turlough Convery (born 18 March 1991) is a Northern Irish actor. He is best known for his television roles in series 3 of the BBC America series "Killing Eve" and in the ITV series "Sanditon".


title: Turlough Convery

text: He has appeared in films such as "Ready Player One" and on television in Netflix "Resident Evil" the E4 series "My Mad Fat Diary", the Channel 4 series "Fresh Meat", 2014 "Black Mirror" episode 'White Christmas', the BBC One series "Poldark", the 2018 miniseries "Les Misérables". the 2019 psychological horror film "Saint Maud" and the 2021 film "Belfast".


title: Turlough Convery

text: Born, March 1991, Convery attended Rockport School in Holywood where he excelled at Drama, and the sixth form at Our Lady and St Patrick's College in Belfast, where he received a number of drama prizes. He trained in Musical Theatre at the Guildford School of Acting, where he won the 2013 Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year Award.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: Crash of the Titans is a 2007 platform beat 'em up video game developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Vivendi Games for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Wii and Xbox 360. It is the first game in the "Crash Bandicoot" series not to have a Japanese release. It was the last game to be published by Vivendi Games before Activision merged with the company the following year. Amaze Entertainment developed a version of the game for Nintendo DS.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: "Crash of the Titans" is the fourteenth installment in the "Crash Bandicoot" video game series, and the sixth game in the main franchise. The game's story centers on the discovery of a substance known as "Mojo", which series antagonist Doctor Neo Cortex and his niece Nina harvest to turn the inhabitants of the Wumpa Islands into an army of ferocious mutants known as "Titans". The protagonist of the series, Crash Bandicoot, must stop Cortex and Nina by using the technique of "jacking" to take control of and destroy the Titans while collecting mojo; he must also rescue his sister Coco, who has been kidnapped and forced to help build a doomsday machine that will assist the Titans in Cortex and Nina's bid for world domination.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: "Crash of the Titans" received mixed reviews upon release. Although the jacking mechanic, visuals, voice acting, and humor were generally met with positivity, critics considered the combat to be repetitive and unbalanced, and criticized the nonadjustable camera. The game was nominated for three awards.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: "Crash of the Titans" is a beat-em-up game with platforming aspects in which the player controls Crash Bandicoot, whose main objective is to rescue his sister, Coco, and save his home, the Wumpa Island, from being destroyed by the main antagonist's gigantic robot. The player's first goal is to rescue the sentient mask Aku Aku, who gives the player basic instructions, shields Crash from enemy attacks, and can be used as a board to help Crash traverse slippery terrain. From there, each level (known as an "episode") asks players to complete fights against large groups of enemies or simply progress through the episode.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: Crash starts the game with four lives. The length of each of Crash's lives is tied to his health meter, which decreases whenever Crash is damaged from enemy attacks or falls down a bottomless pit. The player can replenish Crash's health meter by collecting Wumpa Fruit. Each time the health meter is fully depleted, Crash loses a life. However, the player can gain an additional life for Crash by collecting 25,000 units of the magical substance Mojo or by collecting a rare type of Golden Wumpa Fruit. After the last life is lost, the player can continue playing by restarting the current episode.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: Each episode contains a portal leading to a simple mini-game arena, where the player must accomplish a task in a set time. Generally the task involves collecting a specified quantity of Mojo, jacking a titan and using its abilities, or simply defeating a select number of enemies. At the end of each episode, the player earns a rank of a bronze, silver, or gold voodoo doll; the rank can be improved by defeating a set number of minions, destroying three robotic toilets or inflicting a minimum number of consecutive hits in combat. All three tasks must be accomplished in an episode if a gold voodoo doll is to be obtained for that episode. Hidden voodoo dolls unlock concept art packages for each episode.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: Whereas the previous games featured Crash spinning into or jumping on an enemy to attack, "Crash of the Titans" gives him more options for attack. Early in the game, Crash has a light-powered attack and a heavy-powered attack and can also block, dodge or break an enemy's block. When he defeats an enemy or destroys an object, a magical substance known as Mojo is released. When Crash collects enough Mojo, he will earn either an ability upgrade or a new move, such as the Norris Roundhouse or the Triple Dragon. His classic spin attack, named "Old Skool", is an unlockable move, along with an aerial variant that allows Crash to float over chasms.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: While small minions require only a single combo attack for Crash to defeat, larger enemies, known as "Titans", require more effort to subdue. Each of the fifteen unique Titans in the game possess a star meter that indicates how close they are to being stunned. The meter rises when Crash starts attacking a Titan, and depletes when he stops. When it is full, the Titan is stunned and susceptible to "jacking", meaning Crash can mount the creature and control it. While controlled by the player, the Titan possesses a similar moveset to Crash, although some jacked Titans can shoot projectiles. Besides greater health, the Titans controlled by Crash have a purple Titan Meter. When this meter is full, players can make the Titan unleash a special attack, which fully drains the meter in the process.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: A player using a second controller can join the game at any time in the form of a white-furred version of Crash known as "Carbon Crash". The second player appears in the first player's backpack, and can usually enter or exit the pack. However, the second player has to stay in the backpack if the first player is in mid-air or climbing a wall. This method of play is useful for overpowering enemies and collecting Mojo faster. There are two modes of co-op play; in "Leapfrog Mode", the players swap control each time the front player jumps, swings, or slides, while in "Piggyback Mode", each player is equipped with their own backpack and can hide in the other player's backpack if the action becomes too intense, such as when jumping over a chasm.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: In the beginning of the game, Crash aids Coco with a butter-recycling device. When Dr. Neo Cortex arrives, not only does he capture Aku Aku and Coco, but encases Crunch in ice. Crash throws Coco's machine at Cortex's airship, severing the chain holding Aku Aku's cage, which causes the cage to fall into the nearby forest. After Crash rescues Aku Aku, they discover that Cortex and Uka Uka are stealing Mojo from a nearby temple and decide to stop them. On reaching the temple, Cortex reveals his plot to use the stolen Mojo to create an army of loyal mutants, which will be used to build a robot known as the Doominator, that will crush Wumpa Island and take over the world. After failing to defeat Crash with his Yuktopus cyborg, Cortex boasts that Crash will never find his base and flies off, leaving Crash and Aku Aku to follow him.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: At Cortex's base, Uka Uka derides Cortex for failing to destroy Crash and replaces Cortex with his niece, Nina Cortex, despite protests from Cortex, N. Gin and Tiny Tiger. Nina has Coco brainwashed and makes her participate in the construction of the Doominator. Throughout the course of the game, Crash and Aku Aku interrogate Tiny Tiger, Doctor N. Gin, and Uka Uka for Coco's whereabouts. When they confront Nina inside the Doominator robot, she summons her Arachnina cyborg and fights Crash. Crash eventually destroys the robot, liberating Coco and disabling the Doominator. The Doominator collapses and barely misses the Bandicoot home (and Crunch), sparing much of Wumpa Island. Escaping from the collapsed Doominator, Cortex praises Nina for betraying him, and promises to be more evil in the near future. The Bandicoots decide to celebrate their victory.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: "Crash of the Titans" was developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Vivendi Games under its Sierra Entertainment label. Development began immediately following the completion of "Crash Tag Team Racing", and was conducted by the same team behind the preceding title as well as "". Lead designer Joe McGinn explained that the game's focus on action-oriented gameplay and the jacking mechanic was influenced by an aim to recapture the difficulty of the original "Crash Bandicoot" trilogy while accommodating for advances in gameplay since that time. The development team sought to achieve this by granting Crash a wider variety of fighting moves, which they described as ""Street Fighter" lite"; McGinn elaborated that while the combat system would lack the hardcore appeal of "Soulcalibur", it would be deep enough for skilled gamers to explore. He added that the jacking mechanic would grant Crash more moves than he would have on his own, as well as appeal to a gamer's sense of fairness. To achieve this, all the Titans' moves were constructed with the mindset that the player would be using them. Designer Josh Mitchell acknowledged that the level design lacks traditional puzzles due to the emphasis on combat, though elements requiring the use of a certain Titan's abilities were incorporated. The Wii version of the game incorporates the console's motion control feature, with the gestures being designed to feel natural, be completely reliable, and to not tire the player; gestures that would be better served by a button press were avoided. Several projectile-wielding Titans were designed to take advantage of the Wii Remote's "light gun" pointing interface. The Xbox 360 version includes over 40 achievements designed to accommodate various gaming styles. The PlayStation 2 version was the development team's fourth title for the console.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: Art director Yousuf Mapara acknowledged great difficulty in developing a strong artistic direction for three technologically different consoles. The art team decided to base the game's presentation around the principles of traditional art rather than focus on the available technology. With this in mind, the concept art was primarily created around lighting composition, color theory, graceful shapes, and areas of focus. The Xbox 360's more powerful hardware allowed for more subtle features such as depth of field, motion blur, heat shimmer, softer shaders, soft shadows, and soft particles, which necessitated two extra months of development time to improve the visuals. Concerning the characters' redesign, producer Kirsten Forbes noted that the cast had gone through several iterations over the course of the series, and the team sought to realign the characters into a unified style as well as make them more modern and distinct from other cartoon characters; in summary, she described the new designs as having a "punk" edge to them.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: The game includes 7,000 lines of dialogue, with the intent of limiting repetition and encouraging players to battle enemies for their humorous responses. Though writer Chris Mitchell found this task challenging, the focus on comedic depth granted by amusing character flaws made it attainable. Much of the voice actors from "Crash Tag Team Racing" reprised their roles, including Jess Harnell as Crash, Lex Lang as Cortex, Debi Derryberry as Coco, Nolan North as N. Gin, and Amy Gross as Nina. Chris Williams, along with reprising his role as Crunch, also voices Tiny. Greg Eagles inherited the role of Aku Aku from Mel Winkler, while John DiMaggio voiced Uka Uka. Tom Kenny voices several enemy characters in the game. A 32-track soundtrack, composed by Marc Baril, was made available on the iTunes Music Store on December 18, 2007.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: During the game's development, Vivendi Games entered a partnership with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and on August 6, 2007, they jointly announced that Crash Bandicoot would serve as a mascot for the Society's "School and Youth" programs, with Crash appearing on the programs' web site and printed materials. A Hummer with a playable Wii inside was painted with imagery from the game and displayed at the Annual Balloon Fiesta in Bristol, United Kingdom.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: The game was revealed in a pre-alpha state in April 2007, and was showcased at E3 2007. It was released for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, and Wii in North America on October 2, 2007, with an Australian release following on October 18. A "Monster Edition" of the game was released exclusively in Europe on October 12, 2007 for the PlayStation 2. This special edition of the game features "Making-of" videos, water-on tattoos, game hints, a cheat code list, and the game's E3 and theatrical trailers in multiple languages.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: "Crash of the Titans" received "mixed or average" reviews upon its release, according to Metacritic. Critics felt that the game's combat, despite the jacking mechanic adding a unique flavor to the gameplay, quickly became repetitive due to the game's lack of puzzles and exploration. They added that the combat was unbalanced by an abundance of enemy characters with inconsistent AI. Brian Rowe of "GameRevolution" and Ryan Davis of "GameSpot" deemed the platforming easy and predictable, and Davis felt that the game lacked a distinct personality, saying that "you could swap Crash out for any number of other cartoony platforming heroes and not really know the difference". The game's co-op mode was considered to be enjoyable, though Rowe found the Leapfrog mode to be "wholly disorienting", and Matt Keller of "PALGN" deemed the multiplayer mode to be superfluous and not well-implemented. Mike Thomsen of "Nintendo World Report" observed a slight lag in some of the Wii version's motion controls, which he said highlighted the fact that not all of the game's control's were specifically calibrated to take advantage of the Wii Remote. The camera was criticized for its lack of adjustability, which would often result in attacks by enemy characters outside of the player's range of vision.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: The visuals were generally assessed positively. Thomsen complimented the game's "wacky and detailed" art direction, elaborating that "The game looks like a kind of Tim Burton tropical fantasy with looping tendrils and exaggerated angles crammed into the game's twenty-some levels". Davis considered the Xbox 360 version to have the best visuals based on its textures, lighting and particle effects, and added that while the PS2 and Wii versions were similar in presentation, he opined that the Wii version had better particle effects and looked better on a high-definition display. Periera and Michael Knutson of "GameZone" commended the character models and animations as sharp and well-done, but considered the environments to be bland, although Periera was impressed by the levels' focal points. Dakota Grabowski, also of "GameZone", complimented the environmental textures and lighting, but admitted to not having been won over by the character redesigns, and said that "a lot of the up-close environments look dismal". Keller considered the character models and animation to be the most detailed in the series, and commended the color palette and large levels. Rowe, while lamenting the linearity of the levels, praised the color and liveliness of the settings. The motion blur effects added to Crash in the Xbox 360 version were derided as excessive.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: The audio was met with mixed responses, though reactions to the voice acting and humor were mostly positive. Thomsen praised the game's "kooky Danny Elfman-esque" score, exaggerated voice-acting, sophisticated writing and variety of enemy voice lines. Davis and Grabowski felt that the voice cast was strong and lent a good amount of humor to the game. Periera acknowledged the dialogue of the minion characters as funny but dated. Rowe claimed that the game "might be the first script since "Ratchet & Clank" that made me laugh out loud", but considered Greg Eagles' performance as Aku Aku to be a "gratingly poor" impersonation of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" character Frylock. Knutson and Keller dismissed the soundtrack as forgettable and criticized the voice-acting as annoying; Keller elaborated that "Crash, who is supposed to be a deranged bandicoot, sounds more like a confused baby. Other characters such as Coco have really annoying voices that make you want to take a power drill to your temple to make the pain stop. The only voices that have any merit are the smaller creatures in the first five levels, who sound a lot like Jerry Lewis from "The Nutty Professor"".


title: Crash of the Titans

text: In Australia, "Crash of the Titans" was the second highest-selling game in its first week below "Halo 3". The game was not as successful in the United Kingdom, where the PS2 version of the game debuted at #32 in the sales charts. The game made £3.35 million in the UK by the end of 2007.


title: Crash of the Titans

text: "Crash of the Titans" was a nominee in the Writers Guild of America's inaugural video game writing awards, competing against "Dead Head Fred", "The Simpsons Game", "The Witcher" and "World in Conflict"; "Dead Head Fred" won the award. "Crash of the Titans" was also selected as a nominee in the "Best Sound Design" and "Best Character" categories of the Second Annual Elan Awards. It lost both awards to "Skate" and "Mass Effect"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s Commander Shepard respectively.


title: Mountain warfare

text: Mountain warfare (also known as alpine warfare) is warfare in mountains or similarly rough terrain. Mountain ranges are of strategic importance since they often act as a natural border, and may also be the origin of a water source (for example, the Golan Heights).


title: Mountain warfare

text: Attacking a prepared enemy position in mountain terrain generally requires a greater ratio of attacking soldiers to defending soldiers than a war conducted on level ground. Mountains present natural hazards such as lightning, strong gusts of wind, rock falls, avalanches, snow packs, ice, extreme cold, and glaciers with their crevasses. The general uneven terrain and the slow pace of troop and material movement are all additional threats to combatants. Movement, reinforcements, and medical evacuation up and down steep slopes and areas where even pack animals cannot reach involves an enormous exertion of energy.


title: Mountain warfare

text: In 218 BC (DXXXVI a.u.c.) the Carthaginian army commander Hannibal marched troops, cavalry and African elephants across the Alps in an effort to conquer Rome by approaching it from north of the Italian peninsula. The Roman government was complacent because the Alps were viewed as a secure natural obstacle to would-be invaders. In December 218 BC the Carthaginian forces defeated Roman troops, in the north, with the use of elephants. Many elephants did not survive the cold weather and disease that was typical of the European climate. Hannibal's army fought Roman troops in Italy for 15 years but failed to conquer Rome. Carthage was ultimately defeated by Roman general Scipio Africanus at Zama in North Africa in 202 BC (DLII a.u.c.).


title: Mountain warfare

text: The term mountain warfare is said to have come about in the Middle Ages after the monarchies of Europe found it difficult to fight the Swiss armies in the Alps because the Swiss were able to fight in smaller units and took vantage points against a huge unmaneuverable army. Similar styles of attack and defence were later employed by guerrillas, partisans and irregulars who hid in the mountains after an attack, making it challenging for an army of regulars to fight back. In Bonaparte's Italian campaign and the 1809 rebellion in Tyrol, mountain warfare played a large role.


title: Mountain warfare

text: Another example of mountain warfare was the Crossing of the Andes carried out by the Argentinean Army of the Andes () commanded by General José de San Martín in 1817. One of the divisions surpassed 5000 m in height.


title: Mountain warfare

text: Mountain warfare came to the fore once again during World War I, when some of the nations involved in the war had mountain divisions that had hitherto not been tested. The Austro-Hungarian defence repelled Italian attacks as they took advantage of the terrain in the Julian Alps and the Dolomites, where frostbite and avalanches proved deadlier than bullets. During the summer of 1918, the Battle of San Matteo took place on the Italian front; this battle was fought at the highest elevation of any in the war. In December 1914, another offensive was launched by the Turkish supreme commander Enver Pasha with 95,000–190,000 troops against the Russians in the Caucasus. Insisting on a frontal attack against Russian positions in the mountains in the heart of winter, the result was devastating and Enver lost 86% of his forces.


title: Mountain warfare

text: Since the Partition of India in 1947, India and Pakistan have been in conflict over the Kashmir region. They have fought two wars and numerous additional skirmishes or border conflicts in the region. Kashmir is located in the Himalayas, the highest mountain range in the world.


title: Mountain warfare

text: The first hostilities between the two nations, in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947, showed that both were ill-equipped to fight in biting cold, let alone at the highest altitudes in the world. During the Sino-Indian War of 1962, hostilities broke out between India and China in the same area.


title: Mountain warfare

text: The subsequent Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 between India and Pakistan was mainly fought in Kashmir's valleys rather than the mountains themselves, although several mountain battles took place. In the Kargil War (1999) Indian forces sought to flush out opponents who had captured high mountain posts. The proxy warfare in 1999 was the only modern war that was fought exclusively on mountains. Following the Kargil War, the Indian Army implemented specialist training on artillery use in the mountains, where ballistic projectiles have different characteristics than at sea level.


title: Mountain warfare

text: Most of the Falklands War took place on hills in semi-Arctic conditions on the Falkland Islands. However, during the opening stage of the war, there was military action on the bleak mountainous island of South Georgia, when a British expedition sought to eject occupying Argentine forces. South Georgia is a periantarctic island, and the conflict took place during the southern winter, so Alpine conditions prevailed almost down to sea level. The operation (codenamed Operation Paraquet) was unusual, in that it combined aspects of long-range amphibious warfare, arctic warfare and mountain warfare. It involved several ships, special forces troops and helicopters.


title: Mountain warfare

text: Throughout history but especially since 1979, many mountain warfare operations have taken place throughout Afghanistan. Since the coalition invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 these have been primarily in the eastern provinces of Kunar and Nuristan.


title: Mountain warfare

text: Kunar and eastern Nuristan are strategic terrain. The area constitutes a major infiltration route into Afghanistan, and insurgents can enter the provinces from any number of places along the Pakistani border to gain access to a vast network of river valleys. In that part of Afghanistan (Regional Command East), the US military adopted a hybrid style of mountain warfare incorporating counterinsurgency (COIN) theory in which the population is paramount as the center of gravity in the fight.


title: Mountain warfare

text: In counterinsurgency, seizing and holding territory is less important than avoiding civilian casualties. The primary goal of counterinsurgency is to secure the backing of the populace and thereby to legitimize the government, rather than to focus on militarily defeating the insurgents. Counterinsurgency doctrine has proved difficult to implement in Kunar and Nuristan. In the sparsely-populated mountain regions of eastern Afghanistan, strategists have argued for holding the high ground, a tenet of classical mountain warfare. The argument suggests that if the counterinsurgent does not deny the enemy the high ground, the insurgents can attack at will. In the Kunar and Nuristan regions, US forces continue to pursue a hybrid style of counterinsurgency warfare, with its focus on winning hearts and minds, and mountain warfare, with the US forces seizing and holding the high ground.


title: Mountain warfare

text: The expense of training mountain troops precludes them from being on the order of battle of most armies except those who reasonably expect to fight in such terrain. Mountain warfare training is arduous and in many countries is the exclusive preserve of elite units such as special forces or commandos, who as part of their remit should have the ability to fight in difficult terrain (e.g. the Royal Marines). Regular units may also occasionally undertake training of this nature.


title: Variance inflation factor

text: In statistics, the variance inflation factor (VIF) is the ratio (quotient) of the variance of estimating some parameter in a model that includes multiple other terms (parameters) by the variance of a model constructed using only one term. It quantifies the severity of multicollinearity in an ordinary least squares regression analysis. It provides an index that measures how much the variance (the square of the estimate's standard deviation) of an estimated regression coefficient is increased because of collinearity. Cuthbert Daniel claims to have invented the concept behind the variance inflation factor, but did not come up with the name.


title: Variance inflation factor

text: The standard error of the estimate of "β" is the square root of the "j" + 1 diagonal element of "s"("X"′"X"), where "s" is the root mean squared error (RMSE) (note that RMSE is a consistent estimator of the true variance of the error term, formula_1); "X" is the regression design matrix — a matrix such that "X" is the value of the "j" independent variable for the "i" case or observation, and such that "X", the predictor vector associated with the intercept term, equals 1 for all "i". It turns out that the square of this standard error, the estimated variance of the estimate of "β", can be equivalently expressed as:


title: Variance inflation factor

text: where "R" is the multiple "R" for the regression of "X" on the other covariates (a regression that does not involve the response variable "Y"). This identity separates the influences of several distinct factors on the variance of the coefficient estimate:


title: Variance inflation factor

text: The remaining term, 1 / (1 − "R") is the VIF. It reflects all other factors that influence the uncertainty in the coefficient estimates. The VIF equals 1 when the vector "X" is orthogonal to each column of the design matrix for the regression of "X" on the other covariates. By contrast, the VIF is greater than 1 when the vector "X" is not orthogonal to all columns of the design matrix for the regression of "X" on the other covariates. Finally, note that the VIF is invariant to the scaling of the variables (that is, we could scale each variable "X" by a constant "c" without changing the VIF).


title: Variance inflation factor

text: Now let formula_5, and without losing generality, we reorder the columns of "X" to set the first column to be formula_6


title: Variance inflation factor

text: Here formula_12 is the coefficient of regression of dependent variable formula_13 over covariate formula_14. formula_15 is the corresponding residual sum of squares.


title: Variance inflation factor

text: First we run an ordinary least square regression that has "X" as a function of all the other explanatory variables in the first equation. If "i" = 1, for example, equation would be


title: Variance inflation factor

text: where "R" is the coefficient of determination of the regression equation in step one, with formula_20 on the left hand side, and all other predictor variables (all the other X variables) on the right hand side.


title: Variance inflation factor

text: Analyze the magnitude of multicollinearity by considering the size of the formula_21. A rule of thumb is that if formula_22 then multicollinearity is high (a cutoff of 5 is also commonly used). However, there is no value of VIF greater than 0 in which the variance of the slopes of predictors isn't inflated. As a result, including two or more variables in a multiple regression that are not orthogonal (i.e. have correlation = 0), will alter each other's slope, SE of the slope, and P-value, because there is shared variance between the predictors that can't be uniquely attributed to any one of them.


title: Variance inflation factor

text: Some software instead calculates the tolerance which is just the reciprocal of the VIF. The choice of which to use is a matter of personal preference.


title: Variance inflation factor

text: The square root of the variance inflation factor indicates how much larger the standard error increases compared to if that variable had 0 correlation to other predictor variables in the model.


title: Variance inflation factor

text: If the variance inflation factor of a predictor variable were 5.27 (√5.27 = 2.3), this means that the standard error for the coefficient of that predictor variable is 2.3 times larger than if that predictor variable had 0 correlation with the other predictor variables.


title: Metallo

text: Metallo () is a name used by multiple supervillains appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, commonly as an adversary of Superman.


title: Metallo

text: Metallo is usually depicted as a cyborg with a kryptonite power source in his heart, which he uses as a weapon against Superman. In 2009, Metallo was ranked as IGN's 52nd-greatest comic book villain of all time.


title: Metallo

text: John Corben and Metallo first appeared in the "Superman" comic strip storyline "The Menace of Metallo", which ran from 15 December 1958 to 4 April 1959.


title: Metallo

text: The character debuted in comic books in "Action Comics" #252 (May 1959), in a story by Robert Bernstein and Al Plastino.


title: Metallo

text: There was an earlier "Metalo" who appeared in "World's Finest" #6 (Summer 1942). This was just a man who discovered the most powerful metal on Earth and invented a strength serum.


title: Metallo

text: Metalo (note the alternate spelling) is the identity of an inventor/scientist named George Grant who had built a powered suit of armor made from "the most powerful metal on Earth" as well as a "strength serum" that made him a near-match for Superman. To draw him out, Metalo captured Lois Lane. At the end of their battle, Metalo fell into a crevice to what Superman assumed would be his death. Metalo was revealed to the reader to have "narrowly escaped destruction" and vowed to take revenge.


title: Metallo

text: Nearly 40 years would pass before the character reappeared in print to challenge Superman again. Metalo had improved his armor and serum and also exposed Superman to a ray that reduced his power significantly, giving Metalo superior strength in their first battle. Superman engaged in a lengthy regimen of exercise and training to restore his powers and returned to easily defeat Metalo.


title: Metallo

text: John Corben was originally a journalist (and secretly a thief and murderer) who had just committed what he thought was the perfect murder. While fleeing from the scene of the crime, he suffered a near-fatal accident that mangled his body beyond repair. An elderly scientist, Professor Vale, happened to come upon him and used his scientific skill to transfer Corben's brain into a robotic body covered by a flesh-like artificial skin. Corben discovered that his power source, a capsule of uranium, would only last one day, but was told by Vale that kryptonite would provide him an indefinite power supply.


title: Metallo

text: After obtaining a job with the "Daily Planet", Corben briefly tried to romance Lois Lane, while deciding that he would use his powers to eliminate Superman, the one person who might expose his criminal deeds. After setting a kryptonite death-trap for Superman, Corben stole what he thought was another sample of kryptonite from a museum as a new power supply, not knowing it was a fake prop; this mistake caused him to die just as he was about to kill Lois Lane for discovering that he was not Superman (as he had pretended to be, being super-strong and invulnerable as a cyborg). Superman eventually escaped from the kryptonite trap and arrived just after Metallo (John Corben) had died.


title: Metallo

text: After John Byrne rewrote Superman's origins in the 1986 miniseries "The Man of Steel", Metallo was also given an altered backstory. In this version, John Wayne Corben was a small-time con man who was fatally injured in a car crash, but thanks to luck, Professor Emmet Vale happened to pass by. Professor Vale was a pioneer in robotics and erroneously believed that Superman was the first in a wave of superpowered Kryptonian invaders after recovering Superman's ship and mistranslating Jor-El's message to his son. Vale transplanted Corben's brain into a robotic alloy body, which was powered by a two-pound chunk of kryptonite, and instructed him to kill Superman. Metallo, now Corben's new moniker, thanked Vale by snapping his neck and killing him.


title: Metallo

text: Despite ignoring Vale's commands, Metallo came into conflict with Superman on various occasions, largely due to his continued activities as a petty thug. Metallo later lost his kryptonite heart to Lex Luthor, though back-up life support systems allowed him to reactivate himself and escape. He remained a thorn in Superman's side and was powerful enough to cripple the Doom Patrol. Still, the Indian-born hero who called herself Celsius did blow him apart with her thermal powers. Metallo later received a major upgrade via an unholy bargain with the demon Neron. As a result, Metallo could morph his body into any mechanical shape he could imagine (such as turning his hands into guns or "growing" a jet pack from his back) and project his consciousness into any technological or metallic device. He could also grow to monstrous size. During one battle, his gigantic fists were separated and later turned into housing by other superheroes. In another incident, Metallo was rendered more insane by the Joker and used his height to destroy an elevated train of commuters.


title: Metallo

text: As Superman and others learned on various occasions, the most effective way to neutralize Metallo was to remove his (largely invulnerable) head and isolate it from other metallic items.


title: Metallo

text: In "Superman/Batman" #2 (November 2003), Lex Luthor fabricated evidence implicating John Corben as the criminal who shot and killed Thomas Wayne and Martha Wayne instead of Joe Chill.


title: Metallo

text: In the 2009–10 miniseries "", (which retells the origins of Superman and his supporting cast), Metallo is Sgt. John Corben and serves under Lois Lane's father, General Sam Lane. General Lane is trying to push his daughter, Lois into a relationship with Corben. Though they had one date, she does not return his feelings for her. Corben is next seen signing up for a military option to neutralize Superman (ostensibly with the help of a powersuit built by LexCorp). However, in his first encounter with Superman, a stray bullet hit the Kryptonite rock inside the suit, leading to a disastrous energy cascade within the battlesuit which almost killed Corben. Through the efforts of Lex Luthor and a crack team of scientists, Corben survived, part-man, part-machine, with the Kryptonite rock functioning as his new heart. Driven by a hatred for this alien invader, he became the villain known as Metallo. Metallo, now wearing a green, orange and red armor, subsequently attacked Superman again in a rampage which endangered not only the citizens of Metropolis, but his own fellow soldiers. He was defeated by Superman once more.


title: Metallo

text: In September 2011, "The New 52" rebooted DC's continuity. In this new timeline, John Corben is under the command of General Sam Lane. General Lane tells him to talk to Lois Lane, when she keeps questioning where Superman is. It is implied that Corben and Lois once had a relationship. When Superman escapes from the military's custody, Corben is seen enlisting in what appears to be a military project co-opted by Lex Luthor, General Lane, and young scientist Dr. John Henry Irons—"Project Steel Soldier"—to go against Superman. Corben is seen in the experimental Metal-Zero/"Metal 0" suit with scientists, mostly Irons, trying to help him. He continues believing that he did it for the affection of Lois and when the robotic needles are in his head, Coined "Metallo", he takes control and his heart bursts, then screams "Where is Superman?" Although the attack on Superman succeeds, Metallo is revealed to have been subverted by Brainiac as part of his own plans, and his rampage is defeated when Doctor Irons uses an armored suit of his own to fight Corben and upload a computer virus that he designed in the event of such a situation. After escaping, and still under Brainiac's control, Corben continued to fight Superman until he was able to reason with Metallo and to fight Brainiac's influence because of his feelings for Lois Lane. In doing so, Corben attacked Brainiac until Superman could defeat the villain, but he subsequently fell into a coma and was taken back by the army.


title: Metallo

text: It was revealed during the "Forever Evil" storyline that the armor was keeping him alive thanks to alien technology, but without a heart he would soon die. General Lane told his scientists to find a way to save him since he helped to save Metropolis. He was later given a kryptonite heart to keep him alive since it was the only energy compatible with his cybernetics. After 31 months in a vegetative state, Corben was brought back with a shard of kryptonite to active duty in the U.S. Army. Since his actions caused the deaths of hundreds of civilians, General Lane tried to kill him by exploding the plane he was being carried in. He survived and sought vengeance against Lane at his base, only to be confronted by an upgraded soldier like himself "Metal-2.0". When Corben proves too much, Metal-2.0 activates his self-destruct mechanism, hoping to destroy Corben along with himself. However, he is saved by the Scarecrow and offered a place in the Secret Society of Super Villains, now calling himself Metallo. Ultraman later rips off his kryptonite heart, because of his addiction to the mineral.


title: Metallo

text: Corben was eventually seen again incarcerated in John Henry's isolated super-prison, eventually drafted by the U.S. government again shortly afterwards, but is only brought back into their service by compunction from Lois once more (who was secretly under Brainiac's influence). Given the present danger he represents as Doomsday was taking him over, Lois convinced Metallo to run Superman down in a kryptonite bombing run and was summarily incinerated by the blast; all that was left of him being the Metal Zero exo-mantel fused to his charred remains. Lois, now completely subsumed by the Brainiac consciousness inside of her, is able to recreate Corben's essential self by downloading her memory of the man he was into what's left of the old Metal-0 suit, said facsimile of the now-deceased military sergeant a loyal echo of whom he once was, obedient to Lane's every whim. He would serve as her bodyguard while Dox's influence compelled her to cripple military defense systems around the world. He would immediately switched sides once Lois is freed from the Coluan's control, however, and aided her in combating the extraterrestrial threat to their world. As Superman and Lois departed to stop Brainiac, Metallo was left on Earth to defend Metropolis in their stead. After the crisis is resolved, Corben is later seen standing guard over Metropolis with Krypto, seemingly contented with his current position.


title: Metallo

text: In the wake of Superman's identity being outed to the world as the hero began losing his powers, many an investigation was undertaken into his identity, contacts and motives by collective interests. Seeing as her life was in more danger than ever before, Metallo stuck close to his love as she went and did some investigating of her own in the meantime. While Vandal Savage made his play for ultimate power, Lois and Metallo were close by on the scene where Superman kept his warship from crushing a small town. While aiding Superman, as Lois refused to leave his side during the battle with Savage's empowered progeny, John's bionic shell was badly damaged. Looking to make good with all the bad in his life, he willingly offered his kryptonite heart to Superman (the depowered hero having discovered a treatment for his loss of powers that essentially involved giving himself chemotherapy with kryptonite), knowing full well that he could not survive without it.


title: Metallo

text: In "DC Rebirth", Metallo is briefly a member of a new version of the Superman Revenge Squad, also consisting of General Zod, Mongul, the Cyborg Superman, the Eradicator, and Blanque. After Superman is temporarily blinded, they are defeated when Lex Luthor, Supergirl, Superwoman, Kong Kenan, and Steel come to Superman's aid and Zod betrays the rest of the team for his own ends.


title: Metallo

text: A second Metallo, John's brother Roger Corben, debuted in "Superman" #310 by Curt Swan and Martin Pasko. This Metallo was created by a secret organization named "SKULL" that transferred Roger's brain into a new robotic body so that he could get revenge on Superman for his brother's death. Like the previous Metallo, this one was also powered by kryptonite, although this newer version wore orange and green armor, as well as a green helmet to conceal the "new" identity he had created using plastic surgery (which turned out to be WGBS Staffer Martin Korda).


title: Metallo

text: This version of Metallo returned throughout the Bronze Age. His final appearance was featured in Alan Moore's "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" (1986).


title: Metallo

text: Metallo's metallic body offers him a high degree of protection from physical and energy attacks. He has enhanced abilities and no longer needs to eat, sleep, or breathe. His brain is hermetically sealed inside a shielded alloy skull that has its own power supply. When he was first created, he was powered by a kryptonite heart; losing that, he subsisted on plutonium instead. Additionally, because of his cyborg body, Metallo possesses superhuman strength and speed, enough to pose a challenge and even a threat to opponents such as Superman (in that case, he also takes advantage of the weakening power of kryptonite besides his own strength).


title: Metallo

text: Over the course of his criminal career, Metallo's body would be decimated constantly by various circumstances. As such he would receive numerous upgrades or whole new chassis' to replace his damaged parts, such as by the obscure supervillain organization Cerberus, which modified him with a vastly superior body, one with lead-lined skull-plating and an anatomic layer that even Superman could not demolish. This gave him greatly enhanced strength and durability, coupled with moderate mechanical regeneration to repair internal damage. He was later outfitted with a larger LexCorp tech body, which gave him laser vision and further augmented his physical abilities. Soon after it was destroyed, Corben had received a new body from a fellow Kryptonite-powered supervillain Conduit; which gave Metallo radioactive blasts from his hands and could utilize geomagnetism to make him physically immovable, even by the Man of Steel, so long as he stood on solid ground or flooring within a building complex.


title: Metallo

text: Metallo would eventually sell his soul (or what was left of it) to the archdemon Neron in return for increased power, gaining the abilities to mentally control and absorb any mechanical or metal object he focuses on and transforming any technology (himself included) into an extension of his exoskeleton (an ability similar to Cyborg Superman).


title: Metallo

text: In experimenting with his newfound abilities, Metallo found he could alternate differing energy frequencies for harnessing and redistributing it from various power sources. Brainiac 13 upgraded Metallo to tap into various light spectra to better utilize his kryptonite-charged abilities. His mechanical body was also upgraded to be able to grow towards monolithic proportions. He is also occasionally portrayed as having a liquid metal-based endoskeleton, possessing the ability to morph parts of his body, specifically his limbs, into different weapons or tools, such as chainsaws, shovels, hammers, etc. While not a genius like Lex Luthor or Brainiac, Corben's time spent with machines has given him a gifted understanding of how they work, enabling him to tinker with their mechanical functions even before gaining his technomorphing capabilities.


title: Metallo

text: During the publishing of "Salvation Run" it is revealed Metallo also boasts a high-calculus cyber-mind with which to run the numbers of possible & probable outcomes as well as success ratios through. In the previous continuity, the Pre-"Flashpoint" Lex Luthor modified Corben to holster and utilize different forms of kryptonite; boasting mutagenic red-k, inverted blue-k and lastly, artificial depowering gold-k on top of the green he already possessed. He could even power a great many anti-Kryptonian armaments developed by Luthor through it.


title: Metallo

text: The John Corben incarnation of Metallo appears in Dirk Maggs' 1990 BBC Radio adaptation of "The Man of Steel", played by Simon Treves. This version wears a suit of battle armor and is sent by Lex Luthor to fight Superman. To cover his tracks, Luthor ensures that the suit's psionic interface was unstable, leaving Corben a vegetable. Corben is taken by Doctor Schwarz, a disgruntled former LexCorp employee who had been tracking the capsule that brought the infant Superman to Earth and stole it from Jonathan and Martha Kent's farm. Having built Corben an android body powered by the capsule's kryptonite power source, Schwarz and Corben plot to kill Luthor and Superman. However, Metallo betrays and kills Schwarz. Kidnapping Lois Lane and holding her hostage at Two Mile Island's power station, he awaits and eventually fights Superman until Luthor intervenes and tears out Metallo's kryptonite heart.


title: Metallo

text: A Metallo action figure was included as a "Collect and Connect" figure in Wave 5 of the DC Universe Classics line.


title: Adenosine diphosphate

text: Adenosine diphosphate (ADP), also known as adenosine pyrophosphate (APP), is an important organic compound in metabolism and is essential to the flow of energy in living cells. ADP consists of three important structural components: a sugar backbone attached to adenine and two phosphate groups bonded to the 5 carbon atom of ribose. The diphosphate group of ADP is attached to the 5’ carbon of the sugar backbone, while the adenine attaches to the 1’ carbon.


title: Adenosine diphosphate

text: ADP can be interconverted to adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and adenosine monophosphate (AMP). ATP contains one more phosphate group than does ADP. AMP contains one fewer phosphate group. Energy transfer used by all living things is a result of dephosphorylation of ATP by enzymes known as ATPases. The cleavage of a phosphate group from ATP results in the coupling of energy to metabolic reactions and a by-product of ADP. ATP is continually reformed from lower-energy species ADP and AMP. The biosynthesis of ATP is achieved throughout processes such as substrate-level phosphorylation, oxidative phosphorylation, and photophosphorylation, all of which facilitate the addition of a phosphate group to ADP.


title: Adenosine diphosphate

text: ADP cycling supplies the energy needed to do work in a biological system, the thermodynamic process of transferring energy from one source to another. There are two types of energy: potential energy and kinetic energy. Potential energy can be thought of as stored energy, or usable energy that is available to do work. Kinetic energy is the energy of an object as a result of its motion. The significance of ATP is in its ability to store potential energy within the phosphate bonds. The energy stored between these bonds can then be transferred to do work. For example, the transfer of energy from ATP to the protein myosin causes a conformational change when connecting to actin during muscle contraction.


title: Adenosine diphosphate

text: It takes multiple reactions between myosin and actin to effectively produce one muscle contraction, and, therefore, the availability of large amounts of ATP is required to produce each muscle contraction. For this reason, biological processes have evolved to produce efficient ways to replenish the potential energy of ATP from ADP.


title: Adenosine diphosphate

text: Breaking one of ATP's phosphorus bonds generates approximately 30.5 kilojoules per mole of ATP (7.3 kcal). ADP can be converted, or powered back to ATP through the process of releasing the chemical energy available in food; in humans, this is constantly performed via aerobic respiration in the mitochondria. Plants use photosynthetic pathways to convert and store energy from sunlight, also conversion of ADP to ATP. Animals use the energy released in the breakdown of glucose and other molecules to convert ADP to ATP, which can then be used to fuel necessary growth and cell maintenance.


title: Adenosine diphosphate

text: The ten-step catabolic pathway of glycolysis is the initial phase of free-energy release in the breakdown of glucose and can be split into two phases, the preparatory phase and payoff phase. ADP and phosphate are needed as precursors to synthesize ATP in the payoff reactions of the TCA cycle and oxidative phosphorylation mechanism. During the payoff phase of glycolysis, the enzymes phosphoglycerate kinase and pyruvate kinase facilitate the addition of a phosphate group to ADP by way of substrate-level phosphorylation.


title: Adenosine diphosphate

text: Glycolysis is performed by all living organisms and consists of 10 steps. The net reaction for the overall process of glycolysis is:


title: Adenosine diphosphate

text: Steps 1 and 3 require the input of energy derived from the hydrolysis of ATP to ADP and P (inorganic phosphate), whereas steps 7 and 10 require the input of ADP, each yielding ATP. The enzymes necessary to break down glucose are found in the cytoplasm, the viscous fluid that fills living cells, where the glycolytic reactions take place.


title: Adenosine diphosphate

text: The citric acid cycle, also known as the Krebs cycle or the TCA (tricarboxylic acid) cycle is an 8-step process that takes the pyruvate generated by glycolysis and generates 4 NADH, FADH2, and GTP, which is further converted to ATP. It is only in step 5, where GTP is generated, by succinyl-CoA synthetase, and then converted to ATP, that ADP is used (GTP + ADP → GDP + ATP).


title: Adenosine diphosphate

text: Oxidative phosphorylation produces 26 of the 30 equivalents of ATP generated in cellular respiration by transferring electrons from NADH or FADH2 to O through electron carriers. The energy released when electrons are passed from higher-energy NADH or FADH2 to the lower-energy O is required to phosphorylate ADP and once again generate ATP. It is this energy coupling and phosphorylation of ADP to ATP that gives the electron transport chain the name oxidative phosphorylation.


title: Adenosine diphosphate

text: During the initial phases of glycolysis and the TCA cycle, cofactors such as NAD+ donate and accept electrons that aid in the electron transport chain's ability to produce a proton gradient across the inner mitochondrial membrane. The ATP synthase complex exists within the mitochondrial membrane (F portion) and protrudes into the matrix (F portion). The energy derived as a result of the chemical gradient is then used to synthesize ATP by coupling the reaction of inorganic phosphate to ADP in the active site of the ATP synthase enzyme; the equation for this can be written as ADP + P → ATP.


title: Adenosine diphosphate

text: Under normal conditions, small disk-shape platelets circulate in the blood freely and without interaction with one another. ADP is stored in dense bodies inside blood platelets and is released upon platelet activation. ADP interacts with a family of ADP receptors found on platelets (P2Y1, P2Y12, and P2X1), which leads to platelet activation.


title: Adenosine diphosphate

text: ADP in the blood is converted to adenosine by the action of ecto-ADPases, inhibiting further platelet activation via adenosine receptors.


title: Grand Union Canal

text: The Grand Union Canal in England is part of the British canal system. It is the principal navigable waterway between London and the Midlands. Starting in London, one arm runs to Leicester and another ends in Birmingham, with the latter stretching for with 166 locks from London. The Birmingham line has a number of short branches to places including Slough, Aylesbury, Wendover, and Northampton. The Leicester line has two short arms of its own, to Market Harborough and Welford.


title: Grand Union Canal

text: It has links with other canals and navigable waterways, including the River Thames, the Regent's Canal, the River Nene and River Soar, the Oxford Canal, the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal, the Digbeth Branch Canal and the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal.


title: Grand Union Canal

text: The canal south of Braunston to the River Thames at Brentford in London is the original Grand Junction Canal. At Braunston the latter met the Oxford Canal linking back to the Thames to the south and to Coventry to the north via the Coventry Canal. "Grand Union Canal" is also the original name for what is now the Leicester line of the modern Grand Union, running from short east of Braunston to Leicester, and which is now sometimes referred to as the Old Grand Union Canal to avoid ambiguity.


title: Grand Union Canal

text: The Grand Union Canal in its current form came into being on 1 January 1929 when the Regent's Canal and the Grand Junction Canal agreed that amalgamation and modernisation were the only way to remain competitive against rail and newly-developing road transport:


title: Grand Union Canal

text: A five/mile (eight-km) section of the Oxford Canal forms the main line of the Grand Union between Braunston and Napton-on-the-Hill. Although the Grand Union intended to buy the Oxford Canal and Coventry Canal, these purchases did not take place.


title: Grand Union Canal

text: The section of the main line between Brentford and Braunston (formerly the Grand Junction Canal) was built as a 'wide' or 'broad' canal – that is, its locks were wide enough to accommodate two narrowboats abreast (side by side) or a single wide barge up to in beam.


title: Grand Union Canal

text: However, the onward sections from Braunston to Birmingham had been built as 'narrow' canals – that is, the locks could accommodate only a single narrowboat. An Act of Parliament of 1931 was passed authorising a key part of the modernisation scheme of the Grand Union, supported by government grants. The narrow locks (and several bridges) between Napton and Camp Hill Top Lock in Birmingham were rebuilt to take widebeam boats or barges up to in beam, or two narrowboats. The canal was dredged and bank improvements carried out: the depth was increased to to allow heavier cargoes, and the minimum width increased to to enable two boats of 12 feet 6 inches to pass. Lock works were completed in 1934 when the Duke of Kent opened the new broad locks at Hatton, and other improvements finished by 1937.


title: Grand Union Canal

text: However, these improvements to depth and width were never carried out between Braunston and London. Camp Hill Locks in Birmingham were not widened, as it would have been very expensive and of little point, since they lead only to further flights of locks not in the ownership of the Grand Union. A new basin and warehouse were constructed at Tyseley, above Camp Hill, to deal with this. Although the Grand Union company had a number of broad boats built to take advantage of the improvements, they never really caught on and the canal continued to be operated largely by pairs of narrow boats, whose journeys were facilitated by the newly widened locks in which they could breast up.


title: Grand Union Canal

text: The three sections between Norton junction and the River Trent (collectively known as the 'Leicester line') are mixed in size. From Norton to Foxton, the route is a narrow canal. From below Foxton to Leicester it is a wide canal. From Leicester to the Trent, the route is effectively the River Soar and the locks and bridges are wide. Another Act of 1931 authorised the widening of the locks at Watford Locks and Foxton Locks, but with government grants for this section not forthcoming, the work was not carried out.


title: Grand Union Canal

text: The Grand Union Canal was nationalised in 1948, control transferring to the British Transport Commission, and in 1962 to the British Waterways Board, later British Waterways. Commercial traffic continued to decline, effectively ceasing in the 1970s, though lime juice was carried from Brentford to Boxmoor until 1981, and aggregates on the River Soar until 1995. However, leisure traffic took over, and the canal is now as busy as it ever was, with leisure boating complemented by fishing, towpath walking and gongoozling. More recently freight traffic returned with the carriage of aggregates from Denham to West Drayton in barges and narrow boats, and the opening of a new wharf for re-cyclables and aggregates at Old Oak Common.


title: Grand Union Canal

text: One end of the Grand Union Canal (Grand Junction Canal – Main Line) is at Brentford on the River Thames in west London, where the canal follows the engineered course of the Brent. The double Thames Lock at Brentford separates the Tideway administered by the Port of London Authority from the River Brent/Grand Union Canal, administered by the Canal & River Trust. The locks on the canal are partially numbered: numbered consecutively south of its turn-off for Leicester, Braunston Junction. Thames Lock is lock number 101.


title: Grand Union Canal

text: For more than upstream of Thames Lock, the canal and the Brent are one and the same, and the waterway is semi-tidal until the double Gauging Lock (lock 100) at Brentford. Just upstream of the Gauging Lock was a large canal basin, now known as Brentford Lock, from which the canal covers more distance passing through two more locks. The river and canal part at the base of the Hanwell flight of locks (92–97), before two more locks take the canal to Norwood Green. It then heads westward over level ground through Southall, Hayes and Yiewsley until it reaches the gentle valley of the Colne.


title: Grand Union Canal

text: Three miles (5 km) from Norwood on this long level is Bulls Bridge Junction, once the site of the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company's main dockyard. At Bulls Bridge, the Paddington Arm branches off to the north and runs to join the Regents Canal at Little Venice (see below). Just before Uxbridge is Cowley Peachey Junction, where the Slough Arm branches off westward.


title: Grand Union Canal

text: At suburban Cowley, before the 1930s a rural village, the canal begins to climb the valley of the River Colne north north-west into the adjoining town of Uxbridge. After Denham and Harefield villages, it passes to the south of Rickmansworth. Here it merges with the Rivers Chess, Colne and Gade. After Rickmansworth, the canal follows the valley of the Gade, passing the site of Croxley paper mill. The canal skirts Watford through Cassiobury Park, passing under the M25 motorway as it approaches Kings Langley.


title: Grand Union Canal

text: Locks become more frequent as the climb into the Chiltern Hills steepens. The original four locks here were replaced in 1819 by five shallower ones to alleviate problems with water supply to the nearby paper mills. This realigned the canal to the south of its former course; the locks here are still referred to – without irony – as "The New 'Uns" by traditional boaters, and the term has been passed on to a new generation of canal users.


title: Grand Union Canal

text: After Kings Langley and Apsley – the site of more former paper mills – the canal passes the town Hemel Hempstead and Boxmoor Common. From here the canal follows the course of the River Bulbourne through Bourne End with the well-known swingbridge at Winkwell, and the "Port of Berkhamsted, a small compact town". At Cow Roast Lock the canal reaches the 3-mile (5-km) summit at Tring in the Chiltern hills, having risen through 54 locks since Brentford.