prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: When did the majority party in the body which determines rules of the US House and US Senate gain control of the House?

The following are given passages.
Context 1: Passage 1:
Party leaders of the United States Senate
The positions of majority leader and minority leader are held by two United States senators and members of the party leadership of the United States Senate  They serve as the chief spokespersons for their respective political parties holding the majority and the minority in the United States Senate  They are each elected as majority leader and minority leader by the senators of their party caucuses: the Senate Democratic Caucus and the Senate Republican Conference 
By Senate precedent, the presiding officer gives the majority leader priority in obtaining recognition to speak on the floor of the Senate  The majority leader serves as the chief representative of their party in the Senate, and is considered the most powerful member of the Senate  They also serve as the chief representative of their party in the entire Congress if the House of Representatives, and thus the office of the speaker of the House, is controlled by the opposition party  The Senate's executive and legislative business is also managed and scheduled by the majority leader                                                        
The assistant majority leader and assistant minority leader of the United States Senate, commonly called whips, are the second-ranking members of each party's leadership  The main function of the majority and minority whips is to gather votes of their respective parties on major issues  As the second-ranking members of Senate leadership, if there is no floor leader present, the whip may become acting floor leader 

Current floor leaders
The Senate is currently composed of 49 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and 3 independents; all the independents caucus with the Democrats 
The current leaders are Senators Chuck Schumer (D) of New York and Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky  The current assistant leaders, or whips, are Senators Dick Durbin (D) of Illinois and John Thune (R) of South Dakota 

History
By at least 1850, parties in each chamber of Congress began naming chairs, and while conference and caucus chairs carried very little authority, the Senate party floor leader positions arose from the position of conference chair  Senate Democrats began the practice of electing their floor leaders in 1920 while they were in the minority  John W  Kern was a Democratic senator from Indiana  While the title was not official, the Senate website identifies Kern as the first Senate party leader, serving in that capacity from 1913 through 1917 (and in turn, the first Senate Democratic leader), while serving concurrently as chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus  In 1925, the Republicans (who were in the majority at the time) also adopted this language when Charles Curtis became the first (official) majority leader, although his immediate predecessor Henry Cabot Lodge is considered the first (unofficial) Senate majority leader 
The United States Constitution designates the Vice President of the United States as president of the Senate  The Constitution also calls for a president pro tempore, to serve as the presiding officer when the president of the Senate (the vice president) is absent  In practice, neither the vice president nor the president pro tempore—customarily the most senior (longest-serving) senator in the majority party—actually presides over the Senate on a daily basis; that task is given to junior Senators of the majority party  Since the vice president may be of a different party from the majority and is not a Senate member subject to discipline, the rules of procedure of the Senate give the Vice President no power beyond the presiding role  For these reasons, it is the majority leader who, in practice, manages the Senate  This is in contrast to the House of Representatives, where the elected speaker of the House has a great deal of discretionary power and generally presides over votes on legislative bills 

List of party leaders
The Democratic Party first selected a leader in 1920  The Republican Party first formally designated a leader in 1925 

See also
Party leaders of the United States House of Representatives
President pro tempore of the United States Senate
Vice President of the United States (President of the United States Senate)
Party divisions of United States Congresses
List of political parties in the United States

Notes
Passage 2:
2014 United States Senate elections
The 2014 United States Senate elections were held on November 4, 2014  A total of 36 seats in the 100-member U S  Senate were contested  Thirty-three Class 2 seats were contested for regular six-year terms to be served from January 3, 2015, to January 3, 2021, and three Class 3 seats were contested in special elections due to Senate vacancies  The elections marked 100 years of direct elections of U S  senators  Going into the elections, 21 of the contested seats were held by the Democratic Party, while 15 were held by the Republican Party 
The Republicans regained the majority of the Senate in the 114th Congress, which started in January 2015; the Republicans had not controlled the Senate since January 2007  They needed a net gain of at least six seats to obtain a majority and were projected by polls to do so  On election night, they held all of their seats and gained nine Democratic-held seats  Republicans defeated five Democratic incumbents: Mark Begich of Alaska lost to Dan Sullivan, Mark Pryor of Arkansas lost to Tom Cotton, Mark Udall of Colorado lost to Cory Gardner, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana lost to Bill Cassidy, and Kay Hagan of North Carolina lost to Thom Tillis  Republicans also picked up another four open seats in Iowa, Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia  Democrats did not pick up any Republican-held seats, but they did hold an open seat in Michigan 
This was the second consecutive election held in a president's sixth year where control of the Senate changed hands, the first being in 2006  This was also the first time that the Democrats lost control of the Senate in a sixth-year midterm since 1918  With a total net gain of nine seats, the Republicans made the largest Senate gain by any party since 1980  This is also the first election since 1980 in which more than two incumbent Democratic Senators were defeated by their Republican challengers  Days after the election, the United States Election Project estimated that 36 4% of eligible voters voted, 4% lower than the 2010 elections, and possibly the lowest turnout rate since the 1942 election As of 2022, this remains the last time that a Republican has won a U S  Senate election in Colorado  This is the most recent Senate elections where any Republican flipped an open Democratic-held seat  This is also the most recent election where the party winning control of the Senate won the popular vote  It also remains the last time that the president's party has suffered a net loss of Senate seats in a midterm 

Partisan composition
For a majority, Republicans needed at least 51 seats  Democrats could have retained a majority with 48 seats (assuming the two Independents continued to caucus with them) because the Democratic Vice President Joe Biden would become the tie-breaker  From 1915 to 2013, control of the U S  Senate flipped in 10 of 50 cycles, or 20% of the time  Republicans had lost ground in the 2012 elections, leading to an internal fight among the Republican leadership over the best strategies and tactics for the 2014 Senate races  By December 2013, eight of the twelve incumbent Republicans running for re-election saw Tea Party challenges  However, Republican incumbents won every primary challenge  Although Democrats saw some opportunities for pickups, the combination of Democratic retirements and numerous Democratic seats up for election in swing states and red states gave Republicans hopes of taking control of the Senate  7 of the 21 states with Democratic seats up for election in 2014 had voted for Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election compared to just 1 state with a Republican senator that voted for Barack Obama  Democrats also faced the lower voter turnout that accompanies mid-term elections Poll aggregation website FiveThirtyEight gave the Republican Party a 60% chance of taking control of the Senate as of September 28  Another poll aggregation website, RealClearPolitics, gave the Republican Party a net gain of 7 seats  Due to the closeness of several races, it was initially believed that Senate control might not be decided on election night  Both Louisiana and Georgia were seen as competitive, and both states require a run-off election if no candidate takes a majority of the vote 
Two independent candidates (in Kansas and South Dakota) refused to commit to caucusing with either party  In the final months of the race, polls showed them with viable chances of winning, leading some analysts to speculate on the possibility of an "Independent caucus" that could also include Maine Senator Angus King and possibly Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders  However, no Independent won a Senate race in 2014, and King and Sanders continue to caucus with the Democratic Party following the 2014 election 
By midnight ET, most major networks projected that the Republicans would take control of the Senate  The party held all three competitive Republican-held seats (Kentucky, Kansas, and Georgia), and defeated incumbent Democrats in North Carolina, Colorado, and Arkansas  Combined with the pick-ups of open seats in Iowa, Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia, the Republicans made a net gain of 7 seats before the end of the night  Republicans defeated three incumbent Democrats, a task the party had not accomplished since the 1980 election  Five of the seven confirmed pickups were in states that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, but two of the seats that Republicans won represent states that voted for Barack Obama in 2012 (Colorado and Iowa)  Of the three races that were not called by the end of election night, Alaska and Virginia were still too close to call, while Louisiana held a December 6 run-off election  Virginia declared Democrat Mark Warner the winner of his race by a narrow margin over Republican Ed Gillespie on November 7, and Alaska declared Dan Sullivan the winner against Democratic incumbent Mark Begich a week later, on November 12  Republican Bill Cassidy defeated Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu in the Louisiana runoff on December 6 

Election spending
Altogether, at least $3 67 billion was spent by candidates, parties, committees and outside groups in the 2014 election  Spending on the 2014 Senate elections by outside groups (i e , organizations other than a candidate's campaign, such as super PACs and "dark money" nonprofit groups) more than doubled from 2010  In the 10 competitive races for which data was available, outside groups accounted for 47% of spending, candidates accounted for 41% of spending, and parties accounted for 12% of spending  The Senate race with the most outside spending was in North Carolina, at $80 million, a new record The top outside spenders in the 11 most competitive Senate races were the following:

On the Republican side, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Crossroads GPS, U S  Chamber of Commerce, Ending Spending Action Fund, Freedom Partners Action Fund, American Crossroads, and the NRA Political Victory Fund 
On the Democratic side, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Senate Majority PAC, and NextGen Climate Action Committee 

Results summary
The Republican Party made a net gain of nine U S  Senate seats in the 2014 elections Going into the elections, there were 53 Democratic, 45 Republican and 2 independent senators (both of whom caucus with the Democrats)  In all, there were 36 elections: 33 senators were up for election this year as class 2 senators, and 3 faced special elections (all from Class 3)  Of all these seats, 21 were held by Democrats and 15 were held by Republicans 

Colored shading indicates party with largest share of that row 

Source: Clerk of the U S  House of Representatives

Change in composition
Before the elections
After the elections
Gains and losses
Retirements
Four Democrats and two Republicans retired instead of seeking re-election 

Resignations
One Republican resigned four years into his six-year term 

Nomination withdrawn
One Democrat was originally to seek election for a full 6-year term in office but withdrew 

Defeats
Five Democrats sought re-election but lost in the general election 

Race summaries
Special elections during the preceding Congress
In these special elections, the winners were elected during 2014 and seated before January 3, 2015 — except that one was seated on January 3, 2015, the effective date of the predecessor's resignation 

Elections leading to the next Congress
In these general elections, the winners were elected for the term beginning January 3, 2015; ordered by state 
All of the elections involved the Class 2 seats 

Closest races
In seven races the margin of victory was under 10% 

Final pre-election predictions
Predicted probability of Republican takeover
Several websites used poll aggregation and psephology to estimate the probability that the Republican Party would gain enough seats to take control of the Senate 

Predictions
Republicans needed to win at least six in order to gain a majority of 51 seats and Democrats needed to win at least seven in order to hold a majority of 50 seats (including the two independents who currently caucus with the Democrats) and the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Joe Biden 

Alabama
Three-term incumbent Republican Jeff Sessions had been re-elected with 63% of the vote in 2008  Sessions sought re-election  Democrat Victor Sanchez Williams ran against Sessions as a write-in candidate  Sessions won with 97 3 percent of the vote against assorted write-in candidates 

Alaska
One-term incumbent Democrat Mark Begich had been first elected with 48% of the vote in 2008, defeating six-term Senator Ted Stevens by 3,953 votes (a margin of 1 25%)  Begich was 52 years old in 2014 and was seeking re-election to a second term  Stevens, who would have been almost 91 years old at the time of the election, had already filed for a rematch back in 2009, but was killed in a plane crash the following year 
Republican Lieutenant Governor Mead Treadwell, 2010 nominee Joe Miller, State Natural Resources Commissioner Daniel S  Sullivan, and Air Force veteran John Jaramillo ran for the GOP nomination  In the August 19 primary, Sullivan won the Republican nomination with 40% and defeated Begich in the general election 

Arkansas
Two-term incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor had been re-elected with 80% of the vote without Republican opposition in 2008  Pryor was running for a third term Freshman Representative Tom Cotton of Arkansas's 4th congressional district was the Republican nominee  In the general election, Cotton defeated Pryor 

Colorado
One-term incumbent Democrat Mark Udall had been elected with 53% of the vote in 2008  Udall was running for re-election Congressman Cory Gardner of Colorado's 4th congressional district was the Republican nominee; his late entry into the race caused numerous Republicans to withdraw their candidacies  Gaylon Kent was the Libertarian Party nominee  Unity Party of America founder and National Chairman Bill Hammons was the Unity Party nominee 

Delaware
Democrat Chris Coons won in the 2010 United States Senate special election in Delaware caused by Joe Biden's election as Vice President, winning by a 57% to 41% margin  Coons sought re-election  His Republican opponent was engineer Kevin Wade, whom Coons went on to defeat in the general election 

Georgia
Two-term incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss had been re-elected with 57% of the vote in 2008 in a runoff election with former state Representative Jim Martin; Georgia requires run-off elections when no Senate candidate wins over 50% of the vote  Chambliss did not seek a third term Political activist Derrick Grayson, Representatives Jack Kingston of Georgia's 1st congressional district, Paul Broun of Georgia's 10th congressional district, and Phil Gingrey of Georgia's 11th congressional district all declared their candidacy for the Republican nomination, as did former Secretary of State Karen Handel  In the May 20 primary, no candidate received a majority of votes, so the top two candidates faced each other in a runoff; Perdue narrowly won against Kingston in the runoff primary election on July 22 with 50 9% of the vote Michelle Nunn, CEO of Points of Light and the daughter of former U S  Senator Sam Nunn, won the Democratic nomination  Other declared Democratic candidates included former State Senator Steen Miles, psychiatrist Branko Radulovacki, and former US Army Ranger Todd Robinson  Amanda Swafford, a former Flowery Branch, Georgia, city councilwoman, received the Libertarian Party of Georgia nomination 

Hawaii (special)
Daniel Inouye, the second longest serving United States Senator in U S  history, died on December 17, 2012, after respiratory complications  Hawaii law allows the Governor of Hawaii, to appoint an interim Senator "who serves until the next regularly-scheduled general election, chosen from a list of three prospective appointees that the prior incumbent's political party submits"  Governor Neil Abercrombie did so, selecting Lieutenant Governor Brian Schatz to fill the Senate seat  Inouye had been re-elected in 2010 with 72% of the vote  Schatz was challenged in the Democratic primary by Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa of Hawaii's 1st congressional district, who Inouye had hoped would be his successor  Schatz defeated Hanabusa in the primary with 48 5% to 47 8% Campbell Cavasso, former State Representative and nominee for the U S  Senate in 2004 and 2010, was the Republican nominee 

Idaho
One-term incumbent Republican Jim Risch had been elected with 58% of the vote in 2008  Risch sought a second term Boise attorney Nels Mitchell was the Democratic nominee 

Illinois
Three-term incumbent and Senate Majority Whip Democrat Dick Durbin had been re-elected with 68% of the vote in 2008  Durbin ran for a fourth term State Senator Jim Oberweis was the Republican nominee  He defeated primary challenger Doug Truax with 56% of the vote 

Iowa
Five-term incumbent Democrat Tom Harkin had been re-elected with 63% of the vote in 2008  Harkin announced on January 26, 2013, that he would not seek a sixth term  Congressman Bruce Braley was the Democratic nominee State Senator Joni Ernst was the Republican nominee Doug Butzier, who was the Libertarian Party's nominee, died in a plane crash on October 13, 2014, but still appeared on the ballot 

Kansas
Three-term incumbent Republican Pat Roberts had been re-elected with 60% of the vote in 2008  Roberts sought a fourth term  He faced a primary challenge from radiologist Milton Wolf, a conservative Tea Party supporter  Roberts defeated Wolf in the Republican primary by 48% to 41%  Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor won the Democratic nomination  Randall Batson from Wichita was on the general election ballot as a Libertarian  Also, Greg Orman qualified for the ballot as an independent On September 3, Taylor announced he was dropping out of the election, leading to speculation that Democrats would support Orman's candidacy  On September 18, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that Taylor's name had to be removed from the ballot 

Kentucky
Five-term Republican incumbent and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had been re-elected with 53% of the vote in 2008  McConnell sought re-election to a sixth term  McConnell defeated businessman Matt Bevin in the Republican primary on May 20 Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, with support from much of Kentucky's Democratic leadership, won the Democratic primary  Actress Ashley Judd publicly claimed to be considering a run for the Democratic nomination, but ultimately decided against it Ed Marksberry pursued an independent bid after dropping out of the Democratic field in September 2013 

Louisiana
Three-term incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu had been re-elected with 52% of the vote in 2008  Landrieu ran for a fourth term Louisiana uses a unique jungle primary system that eschews primaries in favor of run-off elections between the top two candidates; this run-off can be avoided if the winning candidate receives over 50% of the vote  Democrats Wayne Ables, Vallian Senegal, and William Waymire ran against Landrieu in the election, as did Republicans Bill Cassidy (representative of Louisiana's 6th congressional district), Thomas Clements (small business owner), and retired Air Force Colonel Rob Maness  Electrical Engineer Brannon McMorris ran as a Libertarian Because Republican candidate Maness took almost 14% of the votes in the primary, there was a runoff election on December 6, 2014, between Landrieu (42%) and Cassidy (41%)  Cassidy won the runoff with 56% of the vote 

Maine
Three-term incumbent Republican Susan Collins was seeking a fourth term  Shenna Bellows, former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, was the Democratic nominee 

Massachusetts
Five-term incumbent and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry had been re-elected with 66% of the vote in 2008  Kerry resigned in early 2013 to become U S  Secretary of State  Governor Deval Patrick appointed Democrat Mo Cowan to the seat  Democratic Congressman Ed Markey beat Republican Gabriel E  Gomez in the June 25, 2013 special election by a 55% to 45% margin  Markey had served the remainder of Kerry's term before running for re-election to a first full term in 2014  Hopkinton Town Selectman Brian Herr was the Republican nominee 

Michigan
Six-term incumbent Senator and Chairman of the Armed Services Committee Democrat Carl Levin, the longest-serving senator in Michigan's history, had been re-elected with 63% of the vote in 2008  Levin announced on March 7, 2013, that he would not seek re-election 
Three term Democratic Representative Gary Peters of MI-14 was the Democratic nominee  He defeated Republican former Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land who was unopposed for the Republican nomination 

Minnesota
One-term incumbent Democrat Al Franken unseated one-term Republican Norm Coleman by 312 votes in a contested three-way race with 42% of the vote in 2008; the third candidate in the race, former Senator Dean Barkley of the Independence Party of Minnesota, won 15% of the vote  Franken sought re-election  State Representative Jim Abeler, St  Louis County Commissioner Chris Dahlberg, co-CEO of Lazard Middle Market Mike McFadden, bison farmer and former hair salon owner Monti Moreno, state Senator Julianne Ortman, and U S  Navy reservist Phillip Parrish ran for the Republican nomination  McFadden won the Republican primary and was the Republican nominee in the general election Hannah Nicollet of the Independence Party of Minnesota also ran 

Mississippi
Six-term incumbent Republican Thad Cochran, re-elected with 62% of the vote in 2008, ran for re-election  Cochran was the last incumbent Senator to declare his plans, leading to widespread speculation that he might announce his retirement Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel, a conservative Mississippi state senator, ran against Cochran in the Republican primary  Neither McDaniel nor Cochran was able to get 50% of the vote in the first round of the primary, so a runoff election was held June 24  Cochran won the runoff election by 51% to 49%, with the help of Democratic voters eligible to vote in the state's open primaries who chose Cochran as their preferred Republican  McDaniel filed a lawsuit to challenge the results of the run-off, but the challenge was rejected on appeal by the Supreme Court of Mississippi Former Congressman Travis Childers was the Democratic nominee 

Montana
Six-term incumbent Democrat Max Baucus, the longest-serving senator in Montana's history, had been re-elected with 73% of the vote in 2008  Baucus announced on April 23, 2013, that he would retire in 2014, rather than seek re-election to a seventh term  Baucus was appointed as the United States Ambassador to China, leading him to resign from the Senate in February 2014 Following Baucus's confirmation as ambassador, Governor Steve Bullock appointed the Lieutenant Governor John Walsh to fill the vacant senate seat  Former Lieutenant Governor John Bohlinger was defeated by Walsh in the Democratic primary  Amid controversy over alleged plagiarism in a 2007 research paper, Walsh pulled out of the race  The Montana Democratic Party held a special nominating convention on August 16 to choose a replacement for Walsh  First-term State Representative Amanda Curtis won the nomination, thereby becoming the new Democratic nominee Congressman Steve Daines won the Republican nomination over state Representative Champ Edmunds of Missoula and David Leaser of Kalispell 

Nebraska
One-term incumbent Republican Mike Johanns had been elected with 58% of the vote in 2008  He did not seek a second term  Term limited Republican Governor Dave Heineman considered running for the Republican nomination, but ultimately decided not to do so  Former state Treasurer Shane Osborn, attorney Bart McLeay, banker Sid Dinsdale, and Midland University President Ben Sasse ran for the Republican nomination  In the May 13 primary, Sasse won the Republican nomination 
Trial lawyer David Domina was the Democratic nominee 

New Hampshire
One-term incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen had been elected with 52% of the vote in 2008  Shaheen ran for re-election  Shaheen defeated Republican nominee Scott Brown, who had represented neighboring Massachusetts in the Senate from 2010 to 2013 

New Jersey
Incumbent Democrat Frank Lautenberg had been re-elected with 56% of the vote in 2008  After announcing he would not seek re-election, Lautenberg died in June 2013, aged 89, after a long period of ill health Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Democrat, defeated Republican nominee Steve Lonegan by 55%-to-45% in a 2013 special election to replace interim Republican appointee Jeffrey Chiesa  Booker ran for re-election to a full term in 2014  1978 and 1982 Republican candidate and political operative Jeff Bell was the Republican nominee 

New Mexico
One-term incumbent Democrat Tom Udall had been elected with 61% of the vote in 2008  Former Doña Ana County Republican Party Chairman David Clements and former New Mexico Republican Party Chairman Allen Weh sought the Republican nomination  Weh won the June 3 primary but lost to Udall in the general election 

North Carolina
One-term incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan had been elected with 53% of the vote against incumbent Republican Elizabeth Dole in 2008  Hagan was seeking re-election State House Speaker Thom Tillis was the Republican nominee  Sean Haugh won the Libertarian nomination 

Oklahoma
There were 2 elections in Oklahoma, due to the resignation of Tom Coburn 

Oklahoma (regular)
Three-term incumbent Republican Jim Inhofe had been re-elected with 57% of the vote in 2008  Inhofe sought re-election  Matt Silverstein, an insurance agency owner, ran for the Democratic nomination 

Oklahoma (special)
Two-term incumbent Republican Tom Coburn had been re-elected with 71% of the vote in 2010, and was not scheduled to be up for election again until 2016  However, Coburn announced his intention to resign at the end of the 113th Congress  A special election to fill his seat took place in November 2014, concurrent with the other Senate elections  Congressman James Lankford was the Republican nominee  State Senator Connie Johnson was the Democratic nominee 

Oregon
One-term incumbent Democrat Jeff Merkley was narrowly elected with 49% of the vote in 2008  Merkley was running for a second term  State representative Jason Conger, attorney Tim Crawley, IT consultant Mark Callahan, neurosurgeon Dr  Monica Wehby, and former Linn County Republican Chair Jo Rae Perkins all ran for the Republican nomination, with Wehby ultimately winning the nomination in the May 20 primary 

Rhode Island
Three-term incumbent Democrat Jack Reed had been re-elected with 73% of the vote in 2008  Reed defeated Republican nominee Mark Zaccaria in the 2014 election 

South Carolina
There were 2 elections in South Carolina, due to the resignation of Jim DeMint 

South Carolina (regular)
Two-term Republican Lindsey Graham had been re-elected with 58% of the vote in 2008  Graham won the Republican nomination over a field that included state senator Lee Bright  State Senator Brad Hutto won the Democratic nomination 

South Carolina (special)
Jim DeMint had been elected to a second term in 2010, but resigned from the Senate in January 2013 to become president of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank  Governor Nikki Haley appointed Congressman Tim Scott as DeMint's replacement  Scott, an African-American, was the Republican nominee to serve out the remainder of DeMint's term  Scott is the first African-American Republican since shortly after Reconstruction to represent a Southern state  Richland County Councilwoman Joyce Dickerson won the Democratic nomination 

South Dakota
Three-term incumbent Democrat Tim Johnson had been re-elected with 63% of the vote in 2008  Johnson announced on March 26, 2013, that he would not run for re-election  Former Congressional aide Rick Weiland was the Democratic nominee Among Republicans, former two-term Governor Mike Rounds announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination on November 29, 2012  Rounds won the Republican nomination over state senator Larry Rhoden, state representative Stace Nelson, and physician Annette Bosworth Former Republican U S  Senator Larry Pressler and Republican State Senator Gordon Howie ran as independents  Pressler did not commit to caucusing with either party, while Howie said he would caucus with the Senate Republicans 

Tennessee
Two-term incumbent Republican Lamar Alexander had been re-elected with 65% of the vote in 2008  Alexander sought re-election to a third term  On August 7, 2014, Alexander won the Republican nomination over six challengers, including State Representative Joe Carr On November 4, 2014, Alexander faced Democratic nominee Gordon Ball, Libertarian Party nominee Joshua James, Constitution Party nominee Joe Wilmothm, and independent Danny Page also ran in the general election 

Texas
Two-term incumbent Republican John Cornyn, the Senate Minority Whip, had been re-elected with 55% of the vote in 2008  Cornyn sought re-election, and won the 2014 Republican primary with 59% of the vote  David Alameel, a dentist, and Kesha Rogers, a volunteer for The Lyndon LaRouche Policy Institute, faced each other in a run-off election for the Democratic nomination  Alameel won the run-off and was the Democratic nominee 

Virginia
One-term incumbent Democrat Mark Warner had been elected with 65% of the vote in 2008; he sought re-election  Ed Gillespie, former RNC Chairman and presidential adviser, ran for the Republican nomination  Robert Sarvis, the Libertarian nominee for Governor in 2013, also ran 

West Virginia
Five-term incumbent Democrat Jay Rockefeller had been re-elected with 64% of the vote in 2008  He announced on January 11, 2013, that he would not seek re-election to a sixth term  Secretary of State Natalie Tennant won the Democratic nomination On November 26, 2012, Republican Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito announced her plans to run for the seat, in hopes of becoming the first Republican Senator elected from West Virginia since 1956  Moore Capito won the Republican nomination and the general election, the first woman to serve as United States Senator from West Virginia 

Wyoming
Three-term incumbent Republican Mike Enzi had been re-elected with 76% of the vote in 2008  Enzi sought re-election  Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, briefly entered the race for the Republican nomination, but dropped her bid in January 2014  On August 19, Enzi won the Republican primary election with 82% of the vote, and Democrat Charlie Hardy, a former Catholic priest, won his party's primary election with 48% of the vote 

See also
2014 United States elections
2014 United States gubernatorial elections
2014 United States House of Representatives elections
113th United States Congress
114th United States Congress

Notes
Passage 3:
Standing Rules of the United States Senate
The Standing Rules of the Senate are the parliamentary procedures adopted by the United States Senate that govern its procedure  The Senate's power to establish rules derives from Article One, Section 5 of the United States Constitution: "Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings    "
There are currently forty-five rules, with the latest revision adopted on January 24, 2013  The most recent addition of a new rule occurred in 2006, when The Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006 introduced a 44th rule on earmarks  The stricter rules are often waived by unanimous consent 

Outline of rules
Quorum
The Constitution provides that a majority of the Senate constitutes a quorum to do business  Under the rules and customs of the Senate, a quorum is always assumed to be present unless a quorum call explicitly demonstrates otherwise  Any senator may request a quorum call by "suggesting the absence of a quorum"; a clerk then calls the roll of the Senate and notes which members are present  In practice, senators almost always request quorum calls not to establish the presence of a quorum, but to temporarily delay proceedings without having to adjourn the session  Such a delay may serve one of many purposes; often, it allows Senate leaders to negotiate compromises off the floor or to allow senators time to come to the Senate floor to make speeches without having to constantly be present in the chamber while waiting for the opportunity  Once the need for a delay has ended, any senator may request unanimous consent to rescind the quorum call 

Debate
The Senate is presided over by the Presiding Officer, either the President of the Senate (the Vice President) or more often the President pro tempore (in special cases the Chief Justice presides)  During debates, senators may speak only if called upon by the Presiding Officer  The Presiding Officer is, however, required to recognize the first senator who rises to speak  Thus, the Presiding Officer has little control over the course of debate  Customarily, the majority leader and minority leader are accorded priority during debates, even if another senator rises first  All speeches must be addressed to the Presiding Officer, using the words "Mr  President" or "Madam President"  Only the Presiding Officer may be directly addressed in speeches; other members must be referred to in the third person  In most cases, senators refer to each other not by name, but by state, using forms such as "the senior senator from Virginia" or "the junior senator from California" 
There are very few restrictions on the content of speeches, and there is no requirement that speeches be germane to the matter before the Senate 
The Senate Rules provide that no senator may make more than two speeches on a motion or bill on the same legislative day (a legislative day begins when the Senate convenes and ends when it adjourns; hence, it does not necessarily coincide with the calendar day)  The length of these speeches is not limited by the rules; thus, in most cases, senators may speak for as long as they please  Often, the Senate adopts unanimous consent agreements imposing time limits  In other cases (for example, for the budget process), limits are imposed by statute  In general, however, the right to unlimited debate is preserved 

Filibuster
The filibuster is an obstructionary tactic used to defeat bills and motions by prolonging debate indefinitely  A filibuster may entail, but does not actually require, long speeches, dilatory motions, and an extensive series of proposed amendments  The longest filibuster speech in the history of the Senate was delivered by Strom Thurmond, who spoke for over twenty-four hours in an unsuccessful attempt to block the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957  The Senate may end a filibuster by invoking cloture  In most cases, cloture requires the support of three-fifths of the Senate  Cloture is invoked very rarely, particularly because bipartisan support is usually necessary to obtain the required supermajority  If the Senate does invoke cloture, debate does not end immediately; instead, further debate is limited to thirty additional hours unless increased by another three-fifths vote 

Closed session
On occasion, the Senate may go into what is called a secret or closed session  During a closed session, the chamber doors are closed and the galleries are completely cleared of anyone not sworn to secrecy, not instructed in the rules of the closed session, or not essential to the session  Closed sessions are rare and are usually held only under certain circumstances in which the Senate is discussing sensitive subject matter, such as information critical to national security, private communications from the president, or discussions of Senate deliberations during impeachment trials  Any Senator has the right to call a closed session as long as the motion is seconded 

Voting
When debate concludes, the motion in question is put to a vote  In many cases, the Senate votes by voice vote; the presiding officer puts the question, and Members respond either "Aye!" (in favor of the motion) or "No!" (against the motion)  The presiding officer then announces the result of the voice vote  Any senator, however, may challenge the presiding officer's assessment and request a recorded vote  The request may be granted only if it is seconded by one-fifth of the senators present  In practice, however, senators second requests for recorded votes as a matter of courtesy  When a recorded vote is held, the clerk calls the roll of the Senate in alphabetical order; each senator responds when their name is called  Senators who miss the roll call may still cast a vote as long as the recorded vote remains open  The vote is closed at the discretion of the presiding officer but must remain open for a minimum of fifteen minutes  If the vote is tied, the Vice President, if present, is entitled to a casting vote  If the Vice President is not present, however, the motion is resolved in the negative 

Committees
Tasks in the Senate are divided among sixteen standing committees, four select committees, four joint committees, and occasionally temporary committees  Senate rules establish the policy jurisdictions of each committee; for example, the Committee on Foreign Relations deals with all matters relating to foreign policy  Committees act, in effect, as "little legislatures", monitoring ongoing governmental operations, identifying issues suitable for legislative review, gathering and evaluating information, and recommending courses of action to their parent body in matters relating to their jurisdiction  Senate rules give committees significant gatekeeping authority over legislation that falls under their jurisdiction, with proposed bills submitted to the relevant committee, which can hold hearings, "mark up" bills, consolidate bills into a "clean bill", or ignore the bill altogether (there exist some workarounds for Senators to circumvent committees, but in general Senators work through the committee system) The size of each standing committee is established by Senate rules  The makeup of committees are established through inter-party negotiations before each new Congress, with the percentage of a party's representation within the Senate determining the percentage of seats it will have on each committee 

Reconciliation
Legislation affecting spending, revenues, and the federal debt limit is governed under a special rules process called "Reconciliation" that prohibits filibusters by limiting debate to twenty hours  Congress can pass up to three reconciliation bills per year, with each bill addressing one of the topics of reconciliation (revenue, spending, or the debt limit)  However, if Congress passes a reconciliation bill affecting more than one of those topics, it cannot pass another reconciliation bill later in the year affecting one of the topics addressed by the previous reconciliation bill  In practice, reconciliation bills have usually been passed once per year at most  Reconciliation cannot be used to enact or rescind discretionary spending (which is controlled through the annual appropriations process) or adjust Social Security spending, and is limited by the Byrd Rule, which allows senators to block provisions that are "extraneous" to spending, revenues, or the debt limit Reconciliation was created by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, and significantly altered with the introduction of the Byrd Rule in 1985 (amended in 1990)  Originally infrequently used (it did not see first use until 1980) 

Nominations
Selected public positions in the United States are appointed by the president but require Senate approval  Senate rule XXXI governs the Senate process for considering the president's nominations 
For most positions the nomination is passed first to a Senate committee for review  Generally it is the Senate committee with jurisdiction over the topic or department related to the position to be filled A public hearing by the committee is possible  Historically about half of civilian appointees were approved without a hearing  After consideration, the committee can report a favorable recommendation, or an unfavorable recommendation, or it can report no recommendation  It can also fail to act  To simplify the process, and with the support of the committee, the Senate by unanimous consent might discharge a nomination from the committee without the committee having acted It is up to the leadership of the Senate to then place the nomination on the Senate calendar for a vote in executive session  Some nominations are passed by unanimous consent  The leadership may delay putting a nomination on the calendar, in which case it may not be acted upon 

Nomination Time Limit
Paragraph 6 of rule XXXI specifies that if final action has not been taken before Congress adjourns the nomination is returned to the President  By the same rule nominations are returned when the Senate goes into recess for more than 30 days  However, in modern practice some nominations may stay active over long recesses if the Senate holds pro forma sessions during recess or agrees to suspend the rule by unanimous consent  When a nomination is returned without action, the president may nominate a different person or re-nominate the same person 

Rules by number
There are currently forty-four Standing Rules of the Senate:
SR Rule I: Appointment of a Senator to the Chair
SR Rule II: Presentation of Credentials and Questions of Privilege
SR Rule III: Oaths
SR Rule IV: Commencement of Daily Sessions
SR Rule V: Suspension and Amendment of the Rules
SR Rule VI: Quorum – Absent Senators May Be Sent For
SR Rule VII: Morning Business
SR Rule VIII: Order of Business
SR Rule IX: Messages
SR Rule X: Special Orders
SR Rule XI: Papers – Withdrawal, Printing, Reading of, and Reference
SR Rule XII: Voting Procedure
SR Rule XIII: Reconsideration
SR Rule XIV: Joint Resolutions, and Preambles Thereto
SR Rule XV: Amendments and Resolutions
SR Rule XVI: Appropriations and Amendments to General Appropriation Bills
SR Rule XVII: Reference to Committees; Motions to Discharge; Reports of Committees; and Hearings Available
SR Rule XVIII: Business Continued from Session to Session
SR Rule XIX: Debate
SR Rule XX: Questions for Order
SR Rule XXI: Session with Closed Doors
SR Rule XXII: Precedence of Motions
SR Rule XXIII: Privilege of the Floor
SR Rule XXIV: Appointments of Committee
SR Rule XXV: Standing Committees
SR Rule XXVI: Committee Procedure
SR Rule XXVII: Committee Staff
SR Rule XXVIII: Conference Committees; Reports; Open Meetings
SR Rule XXIX: Executive Sessions
SR Rule XXX: Executive Session – Proceedings on Treaties
SR Rule XXXI: Executive Session – Proceedings on Nominations
SR Rule XXXII: The President Furnished with Copies of Record Executive Sessions
SR Rule XXXIII: Senate Chamber – Senate Wing of the Capitol
SR Rule XXXIV: Public Financial Disclosure
SR Rule XXXV: Gifts
SR Rule XXXVI: Outside Earned Income
SR Rule XXXVII: Conflict of Interest
SR Rule XXXVIII: Prohibition of Unofficial Office Accounts
SR Rule XXXIX: Foreign Travel
SR Rule XL: Franking Privilege and Radio and Television Studios
SR Rule XLI: Political Fund Activity; Definitions
SR Rule XLII: Employment Practices
SR Rule XLIII: Representation by Members
SR Rule XLIV: Congressionally Directed Spending and Related ItemsThe latest change was the introduction in 2006 of a 44th rule on earmarks, by the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act 
Passage 4:
Majority leader
In U S  politics (as well as in some other countries utilizing the presidential system), the majority floor leader is a partisan position in a legislative body 

United States
In the federal Congress of the United States, the roles of the House Majority Leader and the Senate Majority Leader differ slightly  At the state level, the majority leader of a given state legislative chamber usually performs a similar role to that of their federal counterpart 

Senate
In the Senate, the Vice President of the United States is officially the President of the Senate and the President pro tempore serves as the President of the Senate in the absence of the Vice President  However, in reality, the Vice President seldom enters the Senate, let alone directly presides over the chamber, unless a tied vote is expected, and the President pro tempore has become a ceremonial role deprived of any leadership ability 
Thus, the Majority Leader is seen as the de facto leader of the Senate, especially in modern times, and thus, in accordance with Senate rules, the Presiding Officer of the day gives the Majority Leader priority in obtaining recognition to speak on the floor of the Senate and they determine which bills get voted on  The Majority Leader is seen as the chief spokesperson for their party in the Senate In the United States Senate, the current Majority Leader is Chuck Schumer, who assumed the office on January 20, 2021 

House of Representatives
In the House of Representatives the Majority Leader's presence and power often depends on the session  In some sessions, the Majority Leader takes precedence over the Speaker as House leader and legislative party leader either by force (which usually occurs when the Speaker of the House is unpopular) or because the Speaker of the House voluntarily surrenders power to the Majority Leader  In most sessions, the Speaker of the House takes precedence as house leader and party leader, with the Majority Leader being irrelevant and largely powerless outside the fact they might be Speaker of the House one day  Except, of course, for the fact that The Majority Leader (as well as the Speaker and the Minority Leader) are the only members of the House that can speak on the floor for an unlimited amount of time and cannot be interrupted by the chair 
In the United States House of Representatives, the current Majority Leader is Steve Scalise, who assumed office on January 3, 2023 

See also
Floor leader
Minority leader
Passage 5:
Party leaders of the United States Senate
The positions of majority leader and minority leader are held by two United States senators and members of the party leadership of the United States Senate  They serve as the chief spokespersons for their respective political parties holding the majority and the minority in the United States Senate  They are each elected as majority leader and minority leader by the senators of their party caucuses: the Senate Democratic Caucus and the Senate Republican Conference 
By Senate precedent, the presiding officer gives the majority leader priority in obtaining recognition to speak on the floor of the Senate  The majority leader serves as the chief representative of their party in the Senate, and is considered the most powerful member of the Senate  They also serve as the chief representative of their party in the entire Congress if the House of Representatives, and thus the office of the speaker of the House, is controlled by the opposition party  The Senate's executive and legislative business is also managed and scheduled by the majority leader                                                        
The assistant majority leader and assistant minority leader of the United States Senate, commonly called whips, are the second-ranking members of each party's leadership  The main function of the majority and minority whips is to gather votes of their respective parties on major issues  As the second-ranking members of Senate leadership, if there is no floor leader present, the whip may become acting floor leader 

Current floor leaders
The Senate is currently composed of 49 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and 3 independents; all the independents caucus with the Democrats 
The current leaders are Senators Chuck Schumer (D) of New York and Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky  The current assistant leaders, or whips, are Senators Dick Durbin (D) of Illinois and John Thune (R) of South Dakota 

History
By at least 1850, parties in each chamber of Congress began naming chairs, and while conference and caucus chairs carried very little authority, the Senate party floor leader positions arose from the position of conference chair  Senate Democrats began the practice of electing their floor leaders in 1920 while they were in the minority  John W  Kern was a Democratic senator from Indiana  While the title was not official, the Senate website identifies Kern as the first Senate party leader, serving in that capacity from 1913 through 1917 (and in turn, the first Senate Democratic leader), while serving concurrently as chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus  In 1925, the Republicans (who were in the majority at the time) also adopted this language when Charles Curtis became the first (official) majority leader, although his immediate predecessor Henry Cabot Lodge is considered the first (unofficial) Senate majority leader 
The United States Constitution designates the Vice President of the United States as president of the Senate  The Constitution also calls for a president pro tempore, to serve as the presiding officer when the president of the Senate (the vice president) is absent  In practice, neither the vice president nor the president pro tempore—customarily the most senior (longest-serving) senator in the majority party—actually presides over the Senate on a daily basis; that task is given to junior Senators of the majority party  Since the vice president may be of a different party from the majority and is not a Senate member subject to discipline, the rules of procedure of the Senate give the Vice President no power beyond the presiding role  For these reasons, it is the majority leader who, in practice, manages the Senate  This is in contrast to the House of Representatives, where the elected speaker of the House has a great deal of discretionary power and generally presides over votes on legislative bills 

List of party leaders
The Democratic Party first selected a leader in 1920  The Republican Party first formally designated a leader in 1925 

See also
Party leaders of the United States House of Representatives
President pro tempore of the United States Senate
Vice President of the United States (President of the United States Senate)
Party divisions of United States Congresses
List of political parties in the United States

Notes
Passage 6:
Party leaders of the United States Senate
The positions of majority leader and minority leader are held by two United States senators and members of the party leadership of the United States Senate  They serve as the chief spokespersons for their respective political parties holding the majority and the minority in the United States Senate  They are each elected as majority leader and minority leader by the senators of their party caucuses: the Senate Democratic Caucus and the Senate Republican Conference 
By Senate precedent, the presiding officer gives the majority leader priority in obtaining recognition to speak on the floor of the Senate  The majority leader serves as the chief representative of their party in the Senate, and is considered the most powerful member of the Senate  They also serve as the chief representative of their party in the entire Congress if the House of Representatives, and thus the office of the speaker of the House, is controlled by the opposition party  The Senate's executive and legislative business is also managed and scheduled by the majority leader                                                        
The assistant majority leader and assistant minority leader of the United States Senate, commonly called whips, are the second-ranking members of each party's leadership  The main function of the majority and minority whips is to gather votes of their respective parties on major issues  As the second-ranking members of Senate leadership, if there is no floor leader present, the whip may become acting floor leader 

Current floor leaders
The Senate is currently composed of 49 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and 3 independents; all the independents caucus with the Democrats 
The current leaders are Senators Chuck Schumer (D) of New York and Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky  The current assistant leaders, or whips, are Senators Dick Durbin (D) of Illinois and John Thune (R) of South Dakota 

History
By at least 1850, parties in each chamber of Congress began naming chairs, and while conference and caucus chairs carried very little authority, the Senate party floor leader positions arose from the position of conference chair  Senate Democrats began the practice of electing their floor leaders in 1920 while they were in the minority  John W  Kern was a Democratic senator from Indiana  While the title was not official, the Senate website identifies Kern as the first Senate party leader, serving in that capacity from 1913 through 1917 (and in turn, the first Senate Democratic leader), while serving concurrently as chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus  In 1925, the Republicans (who were in the majority at the time) also adopted this language when Charles Curtis became the first (official) majority leader, although his immediate predecessor Henry Cabot Lodge is considered the first (unofficial) Senate majority leader 
The United States Constitution designates the Vice President of the United States as president of the Senate  The Constitution also calls for a president pro tempore, to serve as the presiding officer when the president of the Senate (the vice president) is absent  In practice, neither the vice president nor the president pro tempore—customarily the most senior (longest-serving) senator in the majority party—actually presides over the Senate on a daily basis; that task is given to junior Senators of the majority party  Since the vice president may be of a different party from the majority and is not a Senate member subject to discipline, the rules of procedure of the Senate give the Vice President no power beyond the presiding role  For these reasons, it is the majority leader who, in practice, manages the Senate  This is in contrast to the House of Representatives, where the elected speaker of the House has a great deal of discretionary power and generally presides over votes on legislative bills 

List of party leaders
The Democratic Party first selected a leader in 1920  The Republican Party first formally designated a leader in 1925 

See also
Party leaders of the United States House of Representatives
President pro tempore of the United States Senate
Vice President of the United States (President of the United States Senate)
Party divisions of United States Congresses
List of political parties in the United States

Notes
Passage 7:
2010 United States House of Representatives elections
The 2010 United States House of Representatives elections were held on November 2, 2010, as part of the 2010 midterm elections during President Barack Obama's first term in office  Voters of the 50 U S  states chose 435 U S  Representatives to serve in the 112th United States Congress  Also, voters of the U S  territories, commonwealths and District of Columbia chose their non-voting delegates  U S  Senate elections and various state and local elections were held on the same date 
Republicans regained control of the U S  House they had lost in the 2006 midterm election, picking up a net total of 63 seats and erasing the gains Democrats made in 2006 and 2008  Although the sitting President's party usually loses seats in a midterm election, the 2010 election resulted in the highest losses by a party in a House midterm election since 1938, as well as the largest House swing since 1948  In total, 52 House Democrats were defeated, including 34 freshman and sophomore representatives 
Republicans made their largest gain in House seats since 1938  Three Democratic committee chairmen were defeated: transportation chairman Jim Oberstar of Minnesota, armed services chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri, and budget chairman John Spratt of South Carolina  Democrats made three pick-ups, winning an open seat in Delaware and defeating Republican incumbents in Hawaii and Louisiana 
The heavy Democratic Party losses in 2010 were attributed to anger at President Obama, opposition to the Affordable Care Act and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, large budget deficits, and the weak economy As of 2023, this is the last election in which Democrats won a seat in Arkansas 

Background
Following the 2006 elections, Democrats took control of the House as well as the Senate  In the 2008 elections, which coincided with Democrat Barack Obama's victory over Republican John McCain for the presidency, Democrats increased their majorities in both chambers  Of the 435 congressional districts, 242 were carried by Obama, while 193 voted for McCain  Of the districts Obama won, 34 elected a Republican to the House, while 49 of the districts McCain won elected a Democrat 

Republican gains
The Republicans' 63-seat pickup in the House to take control of that chamber, as well as their gain of six Senate seats, signified a dramatic rollback of recent Democratic gains  In the election, Republicans won their greatest number of House seats since 1946  This has been attributed to the continued economic recession, as well as President Obama's controversial stimulus and health care reform bills  Republicans also took control of 29 of the 50 state governorships and gained 690 seats in state legislatures, to hold their greatest number since the 1928 elections Republicans also made historic gains in state legislatures, adding more than 675 state legislative seats, by far surpassing their state-legislative gains in 1994  Republicans gained control of dozens of state legislative chambers, and took control of "seven more legislatures outright than they did after 1994 and the most since 1952 " Republicans picked up control of the Alabama Legislature for the first time since Reconstruction; control of the North Carolina Senate for the first time since 1870; and control of the Minnesota Senate for the first time since the state returned to partisan elections in 1974 The Great Lakes region, which until then had recently favored the Democratic Party, went strongly Republican  In California and the Pacific Northwest, however, the Democrats retained the upper hand  The biggest change in 2010 occurred in the Southeastern United States, which had previously been roughly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans for everything except for president  Just one white Democrat from the Deep South won reelection to the US House in 2010  Prior to 2010, many white conservative southerners had voted Republican for president, but Democratic for other offices 

Results summary
Federal
Sources: House Clerk – Statistics of the Congressional Election, 2010

Voter demographics
Source: CNN exit poll

Retiring incumbents
37 incumbents retired 

Democrats
17 incumbent Democrats retired 

Alabama 7: Artur Davis: To run for Governor of Alabama 
Arkansas 1: Marion Berry: Retired due to health concerns 
Arkansas 2: Vic Snyder: Retired to spend more time with family 
California 33: Diane Watson: Retired; "It should be a seat inherited by someone who can represent everyone in this district "
Florida 17: Kendrick Meek: To run for U S  Senator 
Indiana 8: Brad Ellsworth: To run for U S  Senator 
Kansas 3: Dennis Moore: Retired; "Time for a new generation of leadership "
Louisiana 3: Charlie Melançon: To run for U S  Senator 
Massachusetts 10: Bill Delahunt: Retired; "Life is about change  I think it's healthy  It's time "
Michigan 1: Bart Stupak: Retired; "I've accomplished what I want to do "
New Hampshire 2: Paul Hodes: To run for U S  Senator 
Pennsylvania 7: Joe Sestak: To run for U S  Senator 
Rhode Island 1: Patrick J  Kennedy: Retired to "[take] a new direction "
Tennessee 6: Bart Gordon: Retired; "…it's time for a new chapter "
Tennessee 8: John S  Tanner: Retired; decided 20 years was long enough 
Washington 3: Brian Baird: Retired, to pursue other options 
Wisconsin 7: Dave Obey: Retired; "But even more frankly, I am bone tired " Media reports indicated Obey's future plans included joining a DC lobbying firm run by former Representative Dick Gephardt 

Republicans
19 incumbent Republicans retired 

Arkansas 3: John Boozman: to run for U S  Senator 
Arizona 3: John Shadegg: to pursue other interests 
California 19: George Radanovich: to put family obligations first 
Delaware at-large: Mike Castle: to run for U S  Senator 
Florida 5: Ginny Brown-Waite: due to health issues 
Florida 12: Adam Putnam: to run for Florida Commissioner of Agriculture 
Florida 21: Lincoln Díaz-Balart: to return to law practice 
Georgia 7: John Linder
Illinois 10: Mark Kirk: to run for U S  Senator 
Indiana 4: Steve Buyer: due to wife's illness
Kansas 1: Jerry Moran: to run for U S  Senator 
Kansas 4: Todd Tiahrt: to run for U S  Senator 
Michigan 2: Pete Hoekstra: to run for Governor of Michigan 
Michigan 3: Vern Ehlers
Missouri 7: Roy Blunt: to run for U S  Senator 
Oklahoma 5: Mary Fallin: to run for Governor of Oklahoma 
South Carolina 1: Henry E  Brown Jr : to spend more time with his family 
South Carolina 3: Gresham Barrett: to run for Governor of South Carolina 
Tennessee 3: Zach Wamp: to run for Governor of Tennessee 

Incumbents defeated
There were nine Democrats who survived reelection in the 1994 Republican Revolution, but were defeated this year 

Lost renomination
Democrats
Two Democrats lost renomination  One seat was held by Democrats, while the other flipped to Republicans 

Michigan 13: Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick lost to Hansen Clarke 
West Virginia 1: Alan Mollohan lost to Mike Oliverio, who lost the general election to David McKinley 

Republicans
Two Republicans lost renomination  Both seats were eventually held by Republicans 

Alabama 5: Parker Griffith (first elected in 2008 as a Democrat; switched parties in 2009) lost to Mo Brooks 
South Carolina 4: Bob Inglis lost to Trey Gowdy 

Lost re-election
54 incumbents lost in the general election; all but two were Democrats  Many of the Democrats who lost had been initially elected in the Democratic wave years of 2006 and 2008, and several others were longtime incumbents from the southeast 

Democrats
52 Democrats lost re-election 

Alabama 2, Bobby Bright (first elected in 2008) lost to Martha Roby
Arizona 1, Ann Kirkpatrick (first elected in 2008) lost to Paul Gosar
Arizona 5, Harry Mitchell (first elected in 2006) lost to David Schweikert
Colorado 3, John Salazar (first elected in 2004) lost to Scott Tipton
Colorado 4, Betsy Markey (first elected in 2008) lost to Cory Gardner
Florida 2, Allen Boyd (first elected in 1996) lost to Steve Southerland
Florida 8, Alan Grayson (first elected in 2008) lost to Daniel Webster
Florida 22, Ron Klein (first elected in 2006) lost to Allen West
Florida 24, Suzanne Kosmas (first elected in 2008) lost to Sandy Adams
Georgia 8, Jim Marshall (first elected in 2002) lost to Austin Scott
Idaho 1, Walt Minnick (first elected in 2008) lost to Raúl Labrador
Illinois 8, Melissa Bean (first elected in 2004) lost to Joe Walsh
Illinois 11, Debbie Halvorson (first elected in 2008) lost to Adam Kinzinger
Illinois 14, Bill Foster (first elected in 2008) lost to Randy Hultgren
Illinois 17, Phil Hare (first elected in 2006) lost to Bobby Schilling
Indiana 9, Baron Hill (originally elected in 1998) lost to Todd Young
Maryland 1, Frank Kratovil (first elected in 2008) lost to Andrew P  Harris
Michigan 7, Mark Schauer (first elected in 2008) lost to Tim Walberg
Minnesota 8, Jim Oberstar (first elected in 1974) lost to Chip Cravaack
Mississippi 1, Travis Childers (first elected in 2008) lost to Alan Nunnelee
Mississippi 4, Gene Taylor (first elected in 1989) lost to Steven Palazzo
Missouri 4, Ike Skelton (first elected in 1976) lost to Vicky Hartzler
Nevada 3, Dina Titus (first elected in 2008) lost to Joe Heck
New Hampshire 1, Carol Shea-Porter (first elected in 2006) lost to Frank Guinta
New Jersey 3, John Adler (first elected in 2008) lost to Jon Runyan
New Mexico 2, Harry Teague (first elected in 2008) lost to Steve Pearce
New York 13, Michael McMahon (first elected in 2008) lost to Michael Grimm
New York 19, John Hall (first elected in 2006) lost to Nan Hayworth
New York 20, Scott Murphy (first elected in 2009) lost to Chris Gibson
New York 24, Mike Arcuri (first elected in 2006) lost to Richard L  Hanna
New York 25, Dan Maffei (first elected in 2008) lost to Ann Marie Buerkle
North Carolina 2, Bob Etheridge (first elected in 1996) lost to Renee Ellmers
North Dakota at-large, Earl Pomeroy (first elected in 1992) lost to Rick Berg
Ohio 1, Steve Driehaus (first elected in 2008) lost to Steve Chabot
Ohio 6, Charlie Wilson (first elected in 2006) lost to Bill Johnson
Ohio 15, Mary Jo Kilroy (first elected in 2008) lost to Steve Stivers
Ohio 16, John Boccieri (first elected in 2008) lost to Jim Renacci
Ohio 18, Zack Space (first elected in 2006) lost to Bob Gibbs
Pennsylvania 3, Kathy Dahlkemper (first elected in 2008) lost to Mike Kelly
Pennsylvania 8, Patrick Murphy (first elected in 2006) lost to Mike Fitzpatrick
Pennsylvania 10, Chris Carney (first elected in 2006) lost to Tom Marino
Pennsylvania 11, Paul E  Kanjorski (first elected in 1984) lost to Lou Barletta
South Carolina 5, John Spratt (first elected in 1982) lost to Mick Mulvaney
South Dakota at-large, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (first elected in 2004) lost to Kristi Noem
Tennessee 4, Lincoln Davis (first elected in 2002) lost to Scott DesJarlais
Texas 17, Chet Edwards (first elected in 1990) lost to Bill Flores
Texas 23, Ciro Rodriguez (originally elected in 1996) lost to Quico Canseco
Texas 27, Solomon P  Ortiz (first elected in 1982) lost to Blake Farenthold
Virginia 2, Glenn Nye (first elected in 2008) lost to Scott Rigell
Virginia 5, Tom Perriello (first elected in 2008) lost to Robert Hurt
Virginia 9, Rick Boucher (first elected in 1982) lost to Morgan Griffith
Wisconsin 8, Steve Kagen (first elected in 2006) lost to Reid Ribble

Republicans
Two Republicans lost re-election 

Hawaii 1, Charles Djou (first elected in 2010) lost to Colleen Hanabusa
Louisiana 2, Joseph Cao (first elected in 2008) lost to Cedric Richmond

Open seats that changed parties
Democratic seats won by Republicans
14 open seats, held by Democrats, were won by Republicans 

Arkansas 1: Won by Rick Crawford
Arkansas 2: Won by Tim Griffin
Indiana 8: Won by Larry Bucshon
Kansas 3: Won by Kevin Yoder
Louisiana 3: Won by Jeff Landry
Michigan 1: Won by Dan Benishek
New Hampshire 2: Won by Charles Bass
New York 29: Won by Tom Reed
Pennsylvania 7: Won by Pat Meehan
Tennessee 6: Won by Diane Black
Tennessee 8: Won by Stephen Fincher
Washington 3: Won by Jaime Herrera Beutler
West Virginia 1: Won by David McKinley
Wisconsin 7: Won by Sean Duffy

Republican seats won by Democrats
One open seat, held by a Republican, was won by a Democrat 

Delaware at-large: Won by John Carney

Closest races
Eighty-four races were decided by 10% or lower 

Election ratings
Special elections
There were six special elections in 2010 to the 111th United States Congress, listed here by date and district 

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Non-voting delegates
The House of Representatives includes five Delegates from the District of Columbia and outlying territories elected to two-year terms and one Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico elected to a four-year term (for which the last election was held in 2008, so the seat was not up for reelection in 2010)  These delegates are not allowed to vote on the floor of the House of Representatives 

See also
2010 United States elections
2010 United States gubernatorial elections
2010 United States Senate elections
111th United States Congress
112th United States Congress

Notes
Context 3: Passage 1:
Le Saut à la couverture
Le Saut à la couverture (also known as Brimade dans une caserne) is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Louis Lumière 
The film formed part of the first commercial presentation of the Lumière Cinématographe on 28 December 1895 at the Salon Indien, Grand Café, 14 Boulevard des Capuchins, Paris 

Production
As with all early Lumière movies, this film was made in a 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1 33:1  It was filmed by means of the Cinématographe, an all-in-one camera, which also serves as a film projector and developer 

Plot
Four men stand holding what appears to be a blanket, while one wearing a hat stands watching  A sixth man then runs towards them and attempts to jump into the blanket  He attempts this unsuccessfully twice in a row failing to jump high enough  On the third attempt he is able to jump and spin in the air, nearly clearing in the blanket  The man who are holding it then flip it a little in the air causing him to fall to the ground  His fourth attempt is more successful and he is able to roll on the blanket and land on his feet at the other side  He runs around for a fifth and final attempt but this is less successful and he gets stuck in the blanket and has difficulty getting out despite the attempts by the four men to throw him free 
Passage 2:
Black Death
The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353  It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causing the deaths of 75–200 million people, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351  Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis spread by fleas, but during the Black Death it probably also took a secondary form, spread by person-to-person contact via aerosols, causing pneumonic plague The Black Death was the beginning of the second plague pandemic  The plague created religious, social and economic upheavals, with profound effects on the course of European history 
The origin of the Black Death is disputed  Genetic analysis points to the evolution of Yersinia pestis in the Tian Shan mountains on the border between Kyrgyzstan and China 2,600 years ago  The immediate territorial origins of the Black Death and its outbreak remains unclear with some pointing towards Central Asia, China, the Middle East and Europe  The pandemic was reportedly first introduced to Europe during the siege of the Genoese trading port of Kaffa in Crimea by the Golden Horde army of Jani Beg in 1347  From Crimea, it was most likely carried by fleas living on the black rats that travelled on Genoese ships, spreading through the Mediterranean Basin and reaching North Africa, Western Asia and the rest of Europe via Constantinople, Sicily and the Italian Peninsula  There is evidence that once it came ashore, the Black Death mainly spread person-to-person as pneumonic plague, thus explaining the quick inland spread of the epidemic, which was faster than would be expected if the primary vector was rat fleas causing bubonic plague  In 2022, it was discovered that there was a sudden surge of deaths in what is today Kyrgyzstan from the Black Death in the late 1330s; when combined with genetic evidence, this implies that the initial spread may not have been due to Mongol conquests in the 14th century, as previously speculated The Black Death was the second great natural disaster to strike Europe during the Late Middle Ages (the first one being the Great Famine of 1315–1317) and is estimated to have killed 30 percent to 60 percent of the European population, as well as about one-third of the population of the Middle East  The plague might have reduced the world population from c  475 million to 350–375 million in the 14th century  There were further outbreaks throughout the Late Middle Ages and, with other contributing factors (the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages), the European population did not regain its level in 1300 until 1500  Outbreaks of the plague recurred around the world until the early 19th century 

Names
European writers contemporary with the plague described the disease in Latin as pestis or pestilentia, 'pestilence'; epidemia, 'epidemic'; mortalitas, 'mortality'  In English prior to the 18th century, the event was called the "pestilence" or "great pestilence", "the plague" or the "great death"  Subsequent to the pandemic "the furste moreyn" (first murrain) or "first pestilence" was applied, to distinguish the mid-14th century phenomenon from other infectious diseases and epidemics of plague The 1347 pandemic plague was not referred to specifically as "black" in the time of occurrence in any European language, though the expression "black death" had occasionally been applied to fatal disease beforehand  "Black death" was not used to describe the plague pandemic in English until the 1750s; the term is first attested in 1755, where it translated Danish: den sorte død, lit  'the black death'  This expression as a proper name for the pandemic had been popularized by Swedish and Danish chroniclers in the 15th and early 16th centuries, and in the 16th and 17th centuries was transferred to other languages as a calque: Icelandic: svarti dauði, German: der schwarze Tod, and French: la mort noire  Previously, most European languages had named the pandemic a variant or calque of the Latin: magna mortalitas, lit  'Great Death' The phrase 'black death' – describing Death as black – is very old  Homer used it in the Odyssey to describe the monstrous Scylla, with her mouths "full of black Death" (Ancient Greek: πλεῖοι μέλανος Θανάτοιο, romanized: pleîoi mélanos Thanátoio)  Seneca the Younger may have been the first to describe an epidemic as 'black death', (Latin: mors atra) but only in reference to the acute lethality and dark prognosis of disease  The 12th–13th century French physician Gilles de Corbeil had already used atra mors to refer to a "pestilential fever" (febris pestilentialis) in his work On the Signs and Symptoms of Diseases (De signis et symptomatibus aegritudium)  The phrase mors nigra, 'black death', was used in 1350 by Simon de Covino (or Couvin), a Belgian astronomer, in his poem "On the Judgement of the Sun at a Feast of Saturn" (De judicio Solis in convivio Saturni), which attributes the plague to an astrological conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn  His use of the phrase is not connected unambiguously with the plague pandemic of 1347 and appears to refer to the fatal outcome of disease The historian Cardinal Francis Aidan Gasquet wrote about the Great Pestilence in 1893 and suggested that it had been "some form of the ordinary Eastern or bubonic plague"  In 1908, Gasquet said use of the name atra mors for the 14th-century epidemic first appeared in a 1631 book on Danish history by J  I  Pontanus: "Commonly and from its effects, they called it the black death" (Vulgo & ab effectu atram mortem vocitabant) 

Previous plague epidemics
Research from 2017 suggests plague first infected humans in Europe and Asia in the Late Neolithic-Early Bronze Age  Research in 2018 found evidence of Yersinia pestis in an ancient Swedish tomb, which may have been associated with the "Neolithic decline" around 3000 BCE, in which European populations fell significantly  This Y  pestis may have been different from more modern types, with bubonic plague transmissible by fleas first known from Bronze Age remains near Samara The symptoms of bubonic plague are first attested in a fragment of Rufus of Ephesus preserved by Oribasius; these ancient medical authorities suggest bubonic plague had appeared in the Roman Empire before the reign of Trajan, six centuries before arriving at Pelusium in the reign of Justinian I  In 2013, researchers confirmed earlier speculation that the cause of the Plague of Justinian (541–542 CE, with recurrences until 750) was Y  pestis  This is known as the first plague pandemic  In 610, the Chinese physician Chao Yuanfang described a "malignant bubo" "coming in abruptly with high fever together with the appearance of a bundle of nodes beneath the tissue " The Chinese physician Sun Simo who died in 652 also mentioned a "malignant bubo" and plague that was common in Lingnan (Guangzhou)  Ole Jørgen Benedictow believes that this indicates it was an offshoot of the first plague pandemic which made its way eastward to Chinese territory by around 600 

14th-century plague
Causes
Early theory
The most authoritative contemporary account is found in a report from the medical faculty in Paris to Philip VI of France  It blamed the heavens, in the form of a conjunction of three planets in 1345 that caused a "great pestilence in the air" (miasma theory)  Muslim religious scholars taught that the pandemic was a "martyrdom and mercy" from God, assuring the believer's place in paradise  For non-believers, it was a punishment  Some Muslim doctors cautioned against trying to prevent or treat a disease sent by God  Others adopted preventive measures and treatments for plague used by Europeans  These Muslim doctors also depended on the writings of the ancient Greeks 

Predominant modern theory
Due to climate change in Asia, rodents began to flee the dried-out grasslands to more populated areas, spreading the disease  The plague disease, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is enzootic (commonly present) in populations of fleas carried by ground rodents, including marmots, in various areas, including Central Asia, Kurdistan, Western Asia, North India, Uganda and the western United States Y  pestis was discovered by Alexandre Yersin, a pupil of Louis Pasteur, during an epidemic of bubonic plague in Hong Kong in 1894; Yersin also proved this bacillus was present in rodents and suggested the rat was the main vehicle of transmission  The mechanism by which Y  pestis is usually transmitted was established in 1898 by Paul-Louis Simond and was found to involve the bites of fleas whose midguts had become obstructed by replicating Y  pestis several days after feeding on an infected host  This blockage starves the fleas and drives them to aggressive feeding behaviour and attempts to clear the blockage by regurgitation, resulting in thousands of plague bacteria being flushed into the feeding site, infecting the host  The bubonic plague mechanism was also dependent on two populations of rodents: one resistant to the disease, which act as hosts, keeping the disease endemic, and a second that lacks resistance  When the second population dies, the fleas move on to other hosts, including people, thus creating a human epidemic 

DNA evidence
Definitive confirmation of the role of Y  pestis arrived in 2010 with a publication in PLOS Pathogens by Haensch et al  They assessed the presence of DNA/RNA with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques for Y  pestis from the tooth sockets in human skeletons from mass graves in northern, central and southern Europe that were associated archaeologically with the Black Death and subsequent resurgences  The authors concluded that this new research, together with prior analyses from the south of France and Germany, "ends the debate about the cause of the Black Death, and unambiguously demonstrates that Y  pestis was the causative agent of the epidemic plague that devastated Europe during the Middle Ages"  In 2011, these results were further confirmed with genetic evidence derived from Black Death victims in the East Smithfield burial site in England  Schuenemann et al  concluded in 2011 "that the Black Death in medieval Europe was caused by a variant of Y  pestis that may no longer exist" Later in 2011, Bos et al  reported in Nature the first draft genome of Y  pestis from plague victims from the same East Smithfield cemetery and indicated that the strain that caused the Black Death is ancestral to most modern strains of Y  pestis Since this time, further genomic papers have further confirmed the phylogenetic placement of the Y  pestis strain responsible for the Black Death as both the ancestor of later plague epidemics including the third plague pandemic and as the descendant of the strain responsible for the Plague of Justinian  In addition, plague genomes from significantly earlier in prehistory have been recovered DNA taken from 25 skeletons from 14th century London have shown plague is a strain of Y  pestis almost identical to that which hit Madagascar in 2013  Further DNA evidence also proves the role of Y  Pestis and traces the source to the Tian Shan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan 

Alternative explanations
It is recognised that an epidemiological account of plague is as important as an identification of symptoms, but researchers are hampered by the lack of reliable statistics from this period  Most work has been done on the spread of the disease in England, and even estimates of overall population at the start vary by over 100% as no census was undertaken in England between the time of publication of the Domesday Book of 1086 and the poll tax of the year 1377  Estimates of plague victims are usually extrapolated from figures for the clergy 
Mathematical modelling is used to match the spreading patterns and the means of transmission  A research in 2018 challenged the popular hypothesis that "infected rats died, their flea parasites could have jumped from the recently dead rat hosts to humans"  It suggested an alternative model in which "the disease was spread from human fleas and body lice to other people"  The second model claims to better fit the trends of death toll because the rat-flea-human hypothesis would have produced a delayed but very high spike in deaths, which contradict historical death data Lars Walløe complains that all of these authors "take it for granted that Simond's infection model, black rat → rat flea → human, which was developed to explain the spread of plague in India, is the only way an epidemic of Yersinia pestis infection could spread", whilst pointing to several other possibilities  Similarly, Monica Green has argued that greater attention is needed to the range of (especially non-commensal) animals that might be involved in the transmission of plague Archaeologist Barney Sloane has argued that there is insufficient evidence of the extinction of numerous rats in the archaeological record of the medieval waterfront in London and that the disease spread too quickly to support the thesis that Y  pestis was spread from fleas on rats; he argues that transmission must have been person to person  This theory is supported by research in 2018 which suggested transmission was more likely by body lice and fleas during the second plague pandemic 

Summary
Although academic debate continues, no single alternative solution has achieved widespread acceptance  Many scholars arguing for Y  pestis as the major agent of the pandemic suggest that its extent and symptoms can be explained by a combination of bubonic plague with other diseases, including typhus, smallpox and respiratory infections  In addition to the bubonic infection, others point to additional septicaemic (a type of "blood poisoning") and pneumonic (an airborne plague that attacks the lungs before the rest of the body) forms of plague, which lengthen the duration of outbreaks throughout the seasons and help account for its high mortality rate and additional recorded symptoms  In 2014, Public Health England announced the results of an examination of 25 bodies exhumed in the Clerkenwell area of London, as well as of wills registered in London during the period, which supported the pneumonic hypothesis  Currently, while osteoarcheologists have conclusively verified the presence of Y  pestis bacteria in burial sites across northern Europe through examination of bones and dental pulp, no other epidemic pathogen has been discovered to bolster the alternative explanations 

Transmission
Lack of hygiene
The importance of hygiene was recognised only in the nineteenth century with the development of the germ theory of disease; until then streets were commonly filthy, with live animals of all sorts around and human parasites abounding, facilitating the spread of transmissible disease By the early fourteenth century so much filth had collected inside urban Europe that French and Italian cities were naming streets after human waste  In medieval Paris, several street names were inspired by merde, the French word for "shit"  There were rue Merdeux, rue Merdelet, rue Merdusson, rue des Merdons and rue Merdiere—as well as a rue du Pipi Pigs, cattle, chickens, geese, goats and horses roamed the streets of medieval London and Paris  Medieval homeowners were supposed to police their housefronts, including removing animal dung, but most urbanites were as careless as William E  Cosner, a resident of the London suburb of Farringdon Without  A complaint lodged against Cosner charges that "men could not pass [by his house] for the stink [of]       horse dung and horse piss "One irate Londoner complained that the runoff from the local slaughterhouse had made his garden "stinking and putrid", while another charged that the blood from slain animals flooded nearby streets and lanes, "making a foul corruption and abominable sight to all dwelling near " In much of medieval Europe, sanitation legislation consisted of an ordinance requiring homeowners to shout, "Look out below!" three times before dumping a full chamber pot into the street Early Christians, who thought self-abnegation a cardinal virtue, considered bathing, if not a vice, then a temptation  "Who knows what impure thoughts might arise in a tub of warm water? With this danger in mind, St  Benedict declared, "To those who are well, and especially to the young, bathing shall seldom be permitted " St  Agnes took the injunction to heart and died without ever bathing 

Territorial origins
According to a team of medical geneticists led by Mark Achtman that analysed the genetic variation of the bacterium Yersinia pestis "evolved in or near China" over 2,600 years ago  Later research by a team led by Galina Eroshenko places the origins more specifically in the Tian Shan mountains on the border between Kyrgyzstan and China  However more recent research notes that the previous sampling had a very heavy East Asian bias and that sampling since then has discovered strains of Y  pestis in the Caucasus region that were previously thought to be restricted to China  There is also no physical or specific textual evidence of the Black Death in 14th century China  As a result, China's place in the sequence of the plague's spread is still debated to this day  According to Charles Creighton, records of epidemics in 14th century China suggest nothing more than typhus and major Chinese outbreaks of epidemic disease post-date the European epidemic by several years  The earliest Chinese descriptions of the bubonic plague do not appear until the 1640s Nestorian graves dating to 1338–1339 near Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan have inscriptions referring to plague, which has led some historians and epidemiologists to think they mark the outbreak of the epidemic; this is supported by recent direct findings of Y  pestis DNA in teeth samples from graves in the area with inscriptions referring to "pestilence" as the cause of death  Epidemics killed an estimated 25 million across Asia during the fifteen years before the Black Death reached Constantinople in 1347 
The evidence does not suggest, at least at present, that these mortality crises were caused by plague  Although some scholars, including McNeill and Cao, see the 1333 outbreak as a prelude to the outbreaks in Europe from the late 1340s to the early 1350s, scholars of the Yuan and Ming periods remain skeptical about such an interpretation  Nonetheless, the remarkably high mortality rates during the Datong mortality should discourage us from rejecting the possibility of localized/regional outbreaks of plague in different parts of China, albeit differing in scale from, and unrelated to, the pandemic mortality of the Black Death  What we lack is any indication of a plague pandemic that engulfed vast territories of the Yuan Empire and later moved into western Eurasia through Central Asia 
According to John Norris, evidence from Issyk-Kul indicates a small sporadic outbreak characteristic of transmission from rodents to humans with no wide-scale impact  According to Achtman, the dating of the plague suggests that it was not carried along the Silk Road, and its widespread appearance in that region probably postdates the European outbreak  There are no records of the symptoms of the Black Death from Mongol sources or writings from travelers east of the Black Sea prior to the Crimean outbreak in 1346  Finally, the Silk Road had already been heavily disrupted before the spread of the Black Death  Western and Middle Eastern traders found it difficult to trade on the Silk Road by 1325 and impossible by 1340, making spread of the plague less likely Others still favor an origin in China or even Kurdistan, and not Central Asia  According to the theory of Chinese origin, the disease may have traveled along the Silk Road with Mongol armies and traders, or it could have arrived via ship, but this theory is still contested  It is speculated that rats aboard Zheng He's ships in the 15th century may have carried the plague to Southeast Asia, India and Africa 
Research on the Delhi Sultanate and the Yuan Dynasty shows no evidence of any serious epidemic in fourteenth-century India and no specific evidence of plague in fourteenth-century China, suggesting that the Black Death may not have reached these regions  Ole Benedictow argues that since the first clear reports of the Black Death come from Kaffa, the Black Death most likely originated in the nearby plague focus on the northwestern shore of the Caspian Sea 
Demographic historians estimate that China's population fell by at least 15 percent, and perhaps as much as a third, between 1340 and 1370  This population loss coincided with the Black Death that ravaged Europe and much of the Islamic world in 1347–52  However, there is a conspicuous lack of evidence for pandemic disease on the scale of the Black Death in China at this time  War and famine – and the diseases that typically accompanied them – probably were the main causes of mortality in the final decades of Mongol rule 
Monica H  Green suggests that the reason why other parts of Eurasia outside the west do not contain the same evidence of the Black Plague is because there were actually four strains of Yersinia pestis that became predominant in different parts of the world  Mongol records of illness such as food poisoning may have been referring to the Black Plague  Another theory is that the Black Death originated near Europe and cycled through the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and Russia before making its way to China  Other historians such as John Norris and Ole Benedictaw believe the Black Death likely originated in Europe or the Middle East and never reached China 

European outbreak
Plague was reportedly first introduced to Europe via Genoese traders from their port city of Kaffa in the Crimea in 1347  During a protracted siege of the city, in 1345–1346 the Mongol Golden Horde army of Jani Beg, whose mainly Tatar troops were suffering from the disease, catapulted infected corpses over the city walls of Kaffa to infect the inhabitants, though it is more likely that infected rats travelled across the siege lines to spread the epidemic to the inhabitants  As the disease took hold, Genoese traders fled across the Black Sea to Constantinople, where the disease first arrived in Europe in summer 1347 The epidemic there killed the 13-year-old son of the Byzantine emperor, John VI Kantakouzenos, who wrote a description of the disease modelled on Thucydides's account of the 5th century BCE Plague of Athens, but noting the spread of the Black Death by ship between maritime cities  Nicephorus Gregoras also described in writing to Demetrios Kydones the rising death toll, the futility of medicine, and the panic of the citizens  The first outbreak in Constantinople lasted a year, but the disease recurred ten times before 1400 Carried by twelve Genoese galleys, plague arrived by ship in Sicily in October 1347; the disease spread rapidly all over the island  Galleys from Kaffa reached Genoa and Venice in January 1348, but it was the outbreak in Pisa a few weeks later that was the entry point to northern Italy  Towards the end of January, one of the galleys expelled from Italy arrived in Marseilles From Italy, the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France, Spain (the epidemic began to wreak havoc first on the Crown of Aragon in the spring of 1348), Portugal and England by June 1348, then spread east and north through Germany, Scotland and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350  It was introduced into Norway in 1349 when a ship landed at Askøy, then spread to Bjørgvin (modern Bergen) and Iceland  Finally, it spread to northwestern Russia in 1351  Plague was somewhat more uncommon in parts of Europe with less developed trade with their neighbours, including the majority of the Basque Country, isolated parts of Belgium and the Netherlands, and isolated Alpine villages throughout the continent According to some epidemiologists, periods of unfavourable weather decimated plague-infected rodent populations and forced their fleas onto alternative hosts, inducing plague outbreaks which often peaked in the hot summers of the Mediterranean, as well as during the cool autumn months of the southern Baltic region  Among many other culprits of plague contagiousness, malnutrition, even if distantly, also contributed to such an immense loss in European population, since it weakened immune systems 

Western Asian and North African outbreak
The disease struck various regions in the Middle East and North Africa during the pandemic, leading to serious depopulation and permanent change in both economic and social structures  As infected rodents infected new rodents, the disease spread across the region, entering also from southern Russia 
By autumn 1347, plague had reached Alexandria in Egypt, transmitted by sea from Constantinople; according to a contemporary witness, from a single merchant ship carrying slaves  By late summer 1348 it reached Cairo, capital of the Mamluk Sultanate, cultural centre of the Islamic world, and the largest city in the Mediterranean Basin; the Bahriyya child sultan an-Nasir Hasan fled and more than a third of the 600,000 residents died  The Nile was choked with corpses despite Cairo having a medieval hospital, the late 13th century bimaristan of the Qalawun complex  The historian al-Maqrizi described the abundant work for grave-diggers and practitioners of funeral rites, and plague recurred in Cairo more than fifty times over the following one and a half centuries During 1347, the disease travelled eastward to Gaza by April; by July it had reached Damascus, and in October plague had broken out in Aleppo  That year, in the territory of modern Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Palestine, the cities of Ascalon, Acre, Jerusalem, Sidon and Homs were all infected  In 1348–1349, the disease reached Antioch  The city's residents fled to the north, but most of them ended up dying during the journey  Within two years, the plague had spread throughout the Islamic world, from Arabia across North Africa  The pandemic spread westwards from Alexandria along the African coast, while in April 1348 Tunis was infected by ship from Sicily  Tunis was then under attack by an army from Morocco; this army dispersed in 1348 and brought the contagion with them to Morocco, whose epidemic may also have been seeded from the Islamic city of Almería in al-Andalus Mecca became infected in 1348 by pilgrims performing the Hajj  In 1351 or 1352, the Rasulid sultan of the Yemen, al-Mujahid Ali, was released from Mamluk captivity in Egypt and carried plague with him on his return home  During 1348, records show the city of Mosul suffered a massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of the disease 

Signs and symptoms
Bubonic plague
Symptoms of the disease include fever of 38–41 °C (100–106 °F), headaches, painful aching joints, nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise  Left untreated, of those that contract the bubonic plague, 80 percent die within eight days Contemporary accounts of the pandemic are varied and often imprecise  The most commonly noted symptom was the appearance of buboes (or gavocciolos) in the groin, neck and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened  Boccaccio's description:

In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg     From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute and numerous  As the gavocciolo had been and still was an infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they showed themselves 
This was followed by acute fever and vomiting of blood  Most people died two to seven days after initial infection  Freckle-like spots and rashes, which could have been caused by flea-bites, were identified as another potential sign of plague 

Pneumonic plague
Lodewijk Heyligen, whose master the Cardinal Colonna died of plague in 1348, noted a distinct form of the disease, pneumonic plague, that infected the lungs and led to respiratory problems  Symptoms include fever, cough and blood-tinged sputum  As the disease progresses, sputum becomes free-flowing and bright red  Pneumonic plague has a mortality rate of 90 to 95 percent 

Septicaemic plague
Septicaemic plague is the least common of the three forms, with a mortality rate near 100%  Symptoms are high fevers and purple skin patches (purpura due to disseminated intravascular coagulation)  In cases of pneumonic and particularly septicaemic plague, the progress of the disease is so rapid that there would often be no time for the development of the enlarged lymph nodes that were noted as buboes 

Consequences
Deaths
There are no exact figures for the death toll; the rate varied widely by locality  In urban centres, the greater the population before the outbreak, the longer the duration of the period of abnormal mortality  It killed some 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia  A study published in 2022 of pollen samples across Europe between 1250 and 1450 was used to estimate changes in agricultural output before and after the Black Death  The authors found great variability in different regions, with evidence for high mortality in areas of Scandinavia, France, western Germany, Greece and central Italy, but uninterrupted agricultural growth in central and eastern Europe, Iberia and Ireland The mortality rate of the Black Death in the 14th century was far greater than the worst 20th-century outbreaks of Y  pestis plague, which occurred in India and killed as much as 3% of the population of certain cities  The overwhelming number of deceased bodies produced by the Black Death caused the necessity of mass burial sites in Europe, sometimes including up to several hundred or several thousand skeletons  The mass burial sites that have been excavated have allowed archaeologists to continue interpreting and defining the biological, sociological, historical and anthropological implications of the Black Death According to medieval historian Philip Daileader, it is likely that over four years, 45–50% of the European population died of plague  Norwegian historian Ole Benedictow suggests it could have been as much as 60% of the European population  In 1348, the disease spread so rapidly that before any physicians or government authorities had time to reflect upon its origins, about a third of the European population had already perished  In crowded cities, it was not uncommon for as much as 50% of the population to die  Half of Paris' population of 100,000 people died  In Italy, the population of Florence was reduced from between 110,000 and 120,000 inhabitants in 1338 down to 50,000 in 1351  At least 60% of the population of Hamburg and Bremen perished, and a similar percentage of Londoners may have died from the disease as well, with a death toll of approximately 62,000 between 1346 and 1353  Florence's tax records suggest that 80% of the city's population died within four months in 1348  Before 1350, there were about 170,000 settlements in Germany, and this was reduced by nearly 40,000 by 1450  The disease bypassed some areas, with the most isolated areas being less vulnerable to contagion  Plague did not appear in Douai in Flanders until the turn of the 15th century, and the impact was less severe on the populations of Hainaut, Finland, northern Germany and areas of Poland  Monks, nuns and priests were especially hard-hit since they cared for people with the Black Death 
The physician to the Avignon Papacy, Raimundo Chalmel de Vinario (Latin: Magister Raimundus, lit  'Master Raymond'), observed the decreasing mortality rate of successive outbreaks of plague in 1347–48, 1362, 1371 and 1382 in his 1382 treatise On Epidemics (De epidemica)  In the first outbreak, two thirds of the population contracted the illness and most patients died; in the next, half the population became ill but only some died; by the third, a tenth were affected and many survived; while by the fourth occurrence, only one in twenty people were sickened and most of them survived  By the 1380s in Europe, it predominantly affected children  Chalmel de Vinario recognised that bloodletting was ineffective (though he continued to prescribe bleeding for members of the Roman Curia, whom he disliked), and said that all true cases of plague were caused by astrological factors and were incurable; he himself was never able to effect a cure The most widely accepted estimate for the Middle East, including Iraq, Iran and Syria, during this time, is for a death toll of about a third of the population  The Black Death killed about 40% of Egypt's population  In Cairo, with a population numbering as many as 600,000, and possibly the largest city west of China, between one third and 40% of the inhabitants died within eight months Italian chronicler Agnolo di Tura recorded his experience from Siena, where plague arrived in May 1348:

Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through the breath and sight  And so they died  And none could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship  Members of a household brought their dead to a ditch as best they could, without priest, without divine offices     great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead  And they died by the hundreds both day and night     And as soon as those ditches were filled more were dug   



ground_truth: the 2010 election

prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What undertaking included the person who discovered that the number of protons in each element's atoms is unique?

The following are given passages.
Context 2: Passage 1:
Neodymium
Neodymium is a chemical element with the symbol Nd and atomic number 60  It is the fourth member of the lanthanide series and is considered to be one of the rare-earth metals  It is a hard, slightly malleable, silvery metal that quickly tarnishes in air and moisture  When oxidized, neodymium reacts quickly producing pink, purple/blue and yellow compounds in the +2, +3 and +4 oxidation states  It is generally regarded as having one of the most complex spectra of the elements  Neodymium was discovered in 1885 by the Austrian chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach, who also discovered praseodymium  It is present in significant quantities in the minerals monazite and bastnäsite  Neodymium is not found naturally in metallic form or unmixed with other lanthanides, and it is usually refined for general use  Neodymium is fairly common—about as common as cobalt, nickel, or copper—and is widely distributed in the Earth's crust  Most of the world's commercial neodymium is mined in China, as is the case with many other rare-earth metals 
Neodymium compounds were first commercially used as glass dyes in 1927 and remain a popular additive  The color of neodymium compounds comes from the Nd3+ ion and is often a reddish-purple  However, this changes with the type of lighting because of the interaction of the sharp light absorption bands of neodymium with ambient light enriched with the sharp visible emission bands of mercury, trivalent europium or terbium  Neodymium-doped glasses are used in lasers that emit infrared with wavelengths between 1047 and 1062 nanometers  These lasers have been used in extremely high-power applications, such as experiments in inertial confinement fusion  Neodymium is also used with various other substrate crystals, such as yttrium aluminium garnet in the Nd:YAG laser 
Neodymium alloys are used to make high-strength neodymium magnets—a type of powerful permanent magnet  These magnets are widely used in products like microphones, professional loudspeakers, in-ear headphones, high-performance hobby DC electric motors, and computer hard disks, where low magnet mass (or volume) or strong magnetic fields are required  Larger neodymium magnets are used in electric motors with a high power-to-weight ratio (e g , in hybrid cars) and generators (e g , aircraft and wind turbine electric generators) 

Characteristics
Physical properties
Metallic neodymium has a bright, silvery metallic luster  Neodymium commonly exists in two allotropic forms, with a transformation from a double hexagonal to a body-centered cubic structure taking place at about 863 °C  Neodymium, like most of the lanthanides, is paramagnetic at room temperature and becomes an antiferromagnet upon cooling to 20 K (−253 2 °C)  Neodymium is a rare-earth metal that was present in the classical mischmetal at a concentration of about 18%  To make neodymium magnets it is alloyed with iron, which is a ferromagnet 

Electron configuration
In the periodic table, it appears between the lanthanides praseodymium to its left and the radioactive element promethium to its right, and above the actinide uranium  Its 60 electrons are arranged in the configuration [Xe]4f46s2, of which the six 4f and 6s electrons are valence  Like most other metals in the lanthanide series, neodymium usually only uses three electrons as valence electrons, as afterwards the remaining 4f electrons are strongly bound: this is because the 4f orbitals penetrate the most through the inert xenon core of electrons to the nucleus, followed by 5d and 6s, and this increases with higher ionic charge  Neodymium can still lose a fourth electron because it comes early in the lanthanides, where the nuclear charge is still low enough and the 4f subshell energy high enough to allow the removal of further valence electrons 

Chemical properties
Neodymium is the fourth member of the lanthanide series  It has a melting point of 1,024 °C (1,875 °F) and a boiling point of 3,074 °C (5,565 °F)  Neodymium, like other lanthanides, usually has the oxidation state +3, but it can also form in the +2 and +4 oxidation states, and even, in very rare conditions, +0  Neodymium metal quickly oxidizes at ambient conditions, forming an oxide layer like iron rust that spalls off and exposes the metal to further oxidation; a centimeter-sized sample of neodymium corrodes completely in about a year  Nd3+ is generally soluble in water  Like its neighbor praseodymium, it readily burns at about 150 °C to form neodymium(III) oxide; the oxide peels off, exposing the bulk metal to the further oxidation:
4Nd + 3O2 → 2Nd2O3Neodymium is a quite electropositive element, and it reacts slowly with cold water, or quickly with hot water, to form neodymium(III) hydroxide:

2Nd (s) + 6H2O (l) → 2Nd(OH)3 (aq) + 3H2 (g)Neodymium metal reacts vigorously with all the stable halogens:
2Nd (s) + 3F2 (g) → 2NdF3 (s) [a violet substance]
2Nd (s) + 3Cl2 (g) → 2NdCl3 (s) [a mauve substance]
2Nd (s) + 3Br2 (g) → 2NdBr3 (s) [a violet substance]
2Nd (s) + 3I2 (g) → 2NdI3 (s) [a green substance]Neodymium dissolves readily in dilute sulfuric acid to form solutions that contain the lilac Nd(III) ion  These exist as a [Nd(OH2)9]3+ complexes:
2Nd (s) + 3H2SO4 (aq) → 2Nd3+ (aq) + 3SO2−4 (aq) + 3H2 (g)

Compounds
Some of the most important neodymium compounds include:

halides: NdF3; NdCl2; NdCl3; NdBr3; NdI2; NdI3
oxides: Nd2O3
hydroxide: Nd(OH)3
carbonate: Nd2(CO3)3
sulfate: Nd2(SO4)3
acetate: Nd(CH3COO)3
neodymium magnets (Nd2Fe14B)Some neodymium compounds have colors that vary based on the type of lighting 

Organoneodymium compounds
Organoneodymium compounds are compounds that have a neodymium–carbon bond  These compounds are similar to those of the other lanthanides, characterized by an inability to undergo π backbonding  They are thus mostly restricted to the mostly ionic cyclopentadienides (isostructural with those of lanthanum) and the σ-bonded simple alkyls and aryls, some of which may be polymeric 

Isotopes
Naturally occurring neodymium (60Nd) is composed of five stable isotopes—142Nd, 143Nd, 145Nd, 146Nd and 148Nd, with 142Nd being the most abundant (27 2% of the natural abundance)—and two radioisotopes with extremely long half-lives, 144Nd (alpha decay with a half-life (t1/2) of 2 29×1015 years) and 150Nd (double beta decay, t1/2 ≈ 7×1018 years)  In all, 33 radioisotopes of neodymium have been detected as of 2022, with the most stable radioisotopes being the naturally occurring ones: 144Nd and 150Nd  All of the remaining radioactive isotopes have half-lives that are shorter than twelve days, and the majority of these have half-lives that are shorter than 70 seconds; the most stable artificial isotope is 147Nd with a half-life of 10 98 days 
Neodymium also has 13 known metastable isotopes, with the most stable one being 139mNd (t1/2 = 5 5 hours), 135mNd (t1/2 = 5 5 minutes) and 133m1Nd (t1/2 ~70 seconds)  The primary decay modes before the most abundant stable isotope, 142Nd, are electron capture and positron decay, and the primary mode after is beta minus decay  The primary decay products before 142Nd are element Pr (praseodymium) isotopes and the primary products after are element Pm (promethium) isotopes  Four of the five stable isotopes have been predicted to decay to isotopes of cerium or samarium and are only observationally stable  Additionally, some observationally stable isotopes of samarium are predicted to decay to isotopes of neodymium Neodymium isotopes are used in various scientific applications  142Nd has been used for the production of short-lived Tm and Yb isotopes  146Nd has been suggested for the production of 147Pm, which is a source of radioactive power  Several neodymium isotopes have been used for the production of other promethium isotopes  The decay from 147Sm (t1/2 = 1 06×1011 y) to the stable 143Nd allows samarium–neodymium dating  150Nd has also been used to study double beta decay 

History
In 1751, the Swedish mineralogist Axel Fredrik Cronstedt discovered a heavy mineral from the mine at Bastnäs, later named cerite  Thirty years later, fifteen-year-old Wilhelm Hisinger, a member of the family owning the mine, sent a sample to Carl Scheele, who did not find any new elements within  In 1803, after Hisinger had become an ironmaster, he returned to the mineral with Jöns Jacob Berzelius and isolated a new oxide, which they named ceria after the dwarf planet Ceres, which had been discovered two years earlier  Ceria was simultaneously and independently isolated in Germany by Martin Heinrich Klaproth  Between 1839 and 1843, ceria was shown to be a mixture of oxides by the Swedish surgeon and chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander, who lived in the same house as Berzelius; he separated out two other oxides, which he named lanthana and didymia  He partially decomposed a sample of cerium nitrate by roasting it in air and then treating the resulting oxide with dilute nitric acid  The metals that formed these oxides were thus named lanthanum and didymium, officially discovered in Vienna in 1885 by Carl Gustaf Mosander  Von Welsbach confirmed the separation by spectroscopic analysis, but the products were of relatively low purity  Didymium was discovered by Carl Gustaf Mosander in 1841, and pure neodymium was isolated from it in 1925  The name neodymium is derived from the Greek words neos (νέος), new, and didymos (διδύμος), twin Double nitrate crystallization was the means of commercial neodymium purification until the 1950s  Lindsay Chemical Division was the first to commercialize large-scale ion-exchange purification of neodymium  Starting in the 1950s, high purity (>99%) neodymium was primarily obtained through an ion exchange process from monazite, a mineral rich in rare-earth elements  The metal is obtained through electrolysis of its halide salts  Currently, most neodymium is extracted from bastnäsite and purified by solvent extraction  Ion-exchange purification is used for the highest purities (typically >99 99%)  The evolving technology, and improved purity of commercially available neodymium oxide, was reflected in the appearance of neodymium glasses in collections today  Early neodymium glasses made in the 1930s have a more reddish or orange tinge than modern versions, which are more cleanly purple, because of the difficulties in removing traces of praseodymium using early technology, namely fractional crystallization Because of its role in permanent magnets used for direct-drive wind turbines, it has been argued that neodymium will be one of the main objects of geopolitical competition in a world running on renewable energy  This perspective has been criticised for failing to recognise that most wind turbines do not use permanent magnets, and for underestimating the power of economic incentives for expanded production 

Occurrence and production
Occurrence
Neodymium is rarely found in nature as a free element, instead occurring as ores, such as monazite and bastnäsite (these are mineral group names rather than single mineral names) that contain small amounts of all rare-earth metals  In these minerals neodymium is rarely dominant; some exceptions include monazite-(Nd) and kozoite-(Nd)  The main mining areas are in China, United States, Brazil, India, Sri Lanka, and Australia  World reserves of neodymium are estimated at eight million tonnes The Nd3+ ion is similar in size to the early lanthanides of the cerium group (those from lanthanum up to samarium and europium) that immediately follow in the periodic table, and hence it tends to occur along with them in phosphate, silicate and carbonate minerals, such as monazite (MIIIPO4) and bastnäsite (MIIICO3F), where M refers to all the rare-earth metals except scandium and the radioactive promethium (mostly Ce, La, and Y, with somewhat less Pr and Nd)  Bastnäsite is usually lacking in thorium and the heavy lanthanides, and the purification of the light lanthanides from it is less involved  The ore, after being crushed and ground, is first treated with hot concentrated sulfuric acid, evolving carbon dioxide, hydrogen fluoride, and silicon tetrafluoride  The product is then dried and leached with water, leaving the early lanthanide ions, including lanthanum, in solution 

In space
Neodymium's per-particle abundance in the Solar System is 0 083 ppb (parts per billion)  This figure is about two thirds of that of platinum, but two and a half times more than mercury, and nearly five times more than gold  The lanthanides are not usually found in space, and are much more abundant in the Earth's crust 

In the Earth's crust
Neodymium is classified as a lithophile under the Goldschmidt classification, meaning that it is generally found combined with oxygen  Although it belongs to the rare-earth metals, neodymium is not rare at all  Its abundance in the Earth's crust is about 38 mg/kg, making it the 27th most common element  It is similar in abundance to lanthanum  Cerium is the most common rare-earth metal, followed by neodymium, and then lanthanum 

Production
The world's production of neodymium was about 7,000 tons in 2004  The bulk of current production is from China  Historically, the Chinese government imposed strategic material controls on the element, causing large fluctuations in prices  The uncertainty of pricing and availability have caused companies (particularly Japanese ones) to create permanent magnets and associated electric motors with fewer rare-earth metals; however, so far they have been unable to eliminate the need for neodymium  According to the US Geological Survey, Greenland holds the largest reserves of undeveloped rare-earth deposits, particularly neodymium  Mining interests clash with native populations at those sites, due to the release of radioactive substances during the mining process 

Neodymium is typically 10–18% of the rare-earth content of commercial deposits of the light rare-earth-element minerals bastnäsite and monazite  With neodymium compounds being the most strongly colored for the trivalent lanthanides, it can occasionally dominate the coloration of rare-earth minerals when competing chromophores are absent  It usually gives a pink coloration  Outstanding examples of this include monazite crystals from the tin deposits in Llallagua, Bolivia; ancylite from Mont Saint-Hilaire, Quebec, Canada; or lanthanite from the Saucon Valley, Pennsylvania, United States  As with neodymium glasses, such minerals change their colors under the differing lighting conditions  The absorption bands of neodymium interact with the visible emission spectrum of mercury vapor, with the unfiltered shortwave UV light causing neodymium-containing minerals to reflect a distinctive green color  This can be observed with monazite-containing sands or bastnäsite-containing ore The demand for mineral resources, such as rare-earth elements (including neodymium) and other critical materials, has been rapidly increasing owing to the growing human population and industrial development  Recently, the requirement for a low-carbon society has led to a significant demand for energy-saving technologies such as batteries, high-efficiency motors, renewable energy sources, and fuel cells  Among these technologies, permanent magnets are often used to fabricate high-efficiency motors, with neodymium-iron-boron magnets (Nd2Fe14B sintered and bonded magnets; hereinafter referred to as NdFeB magnets) being the main type of permanent magnet in the market since their invention  NdFeB magnets are used in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), electric vehicles (EVs), and fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) (hereinafter referred to as xEVs), wind turbines, home appliances, computers, and many small consumer electronic devices  Furthermore, they are indispensable for energy savings  Toward achieving the objectives of the Paris Agreement, the demand for NdFeB magnets is expected to increase significantly in the future 

Applications
Neodymium has an unusually large specific heat capacity at liquid-helium temperatures, so is useful in cryocoolers 
Neodymium acetate can be a substitute for the radioactive and toxic uranyl acetate (used as a standard contrasting agent in electron microscopy) 
Probably because of similarities to Ca2+, Nd3+ has been reported to promote plant growth  Rare-earth element compounds are frequently used in China as fertilizer 
Samarium–neodymium dating is useful for determining the age relationships of rocks  and meteorites
Neodymium isotopes recorded in marine sediments are used to reconstruct changes in past ocean circulation 

Magnets
Neodymium magnets (an alloy, Nd2Fe14B) are the strongest permanent magnets known  A neodymium magnet of a few tens of grams can lift a thousand times its own weight, and can snap together with enough force to break bones  These magnets are cheaper, lighter, and stronger than samarium–cobalt magnets  However, they are not superior in every aspect, as neodymium-based magnets lose their magnetism at lower temperatures and tend to corrode, while samarium–cobalt magnets do not Neodymium magnets appear in products such as microphones, professional loudspeakers, headphones, guitar and bass guitar pick-ups, and computer hard disks where low mass, small volume, or strong magnetic fields are required  Neodymium is used in the electric motors of hybrid and electric automobiles and in the electricity generators of some designs of commercial wind turbines (only wind turbines with "permanent magnet" generators use neodymium)  For example, drive electric motors of each Toyota Prius require one kilogram (2 2 pounds) of neodymium per vehicle In 2020, physics researchers at Radboud University and Uppsala University announced they had observed a behavior known as "self-induced spin glass" in the atomic structure of neodymium  One of the researchers explained, "…we are specialists in scanning tunneling microscopy  It allows us to see the structure of individual atoms, and we can resolve the north and south poles of the atoms  With this advancement in high-precision imaging, we were able to discover the behavior in neodymium, because we could resolve the incredibly small changes in the magnetic structure "  Neodymium behaves in a complex magnetic way that had not been seen before in a periodic table element 

Glass
Neodymium glass (Nd:glass) is produced by the inclusion of neodymium oxide (Nd2O3) in the glass melt  Usually in daylight or incandescent light neodymium glass appears lavender, but it appears pale blue under fluorescent lighting  Neodymium may be used to color glass in delicate shades ranging from pure violet through wine-red and warm gray The first commercial use of purified neodymium was in glass coloration, starting with experiments by Leo Moser in November 1927  The resulting "Alexandrite" glass remains a signature color of the Moser glassworks to this day  Neodymium glass was widely emulated in the early 1930s by American glasshouses, most notably Heisey, Fostoria ("wisteria"), Cambridge ("heatherbloom"), and Steuben ("wisteria"), and elsewhere (e g  Lalique, in France, or Murano)  Tiffin's "twilight" remained in production from about 1950 to 1980  Current sources include glassmakers in the Czech Republic, the United States, and China The sharp absorption bands of neodymium cause the glass color to change under different lighting conditions, being reddish-purple under daylight or yellow incandescent light, but blue under white fluorescent lighting, or greenish under trichromatic lighting  This color-change phenomenon is highly prized by collectors  In combination with gold or selenium, red colors are produced  Since neodymium coloration depends upon "forbidden" f-f transitions deep within the atom, there is relatively little influence on the color from the chemical environment, so the color is impervious to the thermal history of the glass  However, for the best color, iron-containing impurities need to be minimized in the silica used to make the glass  The same forbidden nature of the f-f transitions makes rare-earth colorants less intense than those provided by most d-transition elements, so more has to be used in a glass to achieve the desired color intensity  The original Moser recipe used about 5% of neodymium oxide in the glass melt, a sufficient quantity such that Moser referred to these as being "rare-earth doped" glasses  Being a strong base, that level of neodymium would have affected the melting properties of the glass, and the lime content of the glass might have had to be adjusted accordingly Light transmitted through neodymium glasses shows unusually sharp absorption bands; the glass is used in astronomical work to produce sharp bands by which spectral lines may be calibrated  Another application is the creation of selective astronomical filters to reduce the effect of light pollution from sodium and fluorescent lighting while passing other colours, especially dark red hydrogen-alpha emission from nebulae  Neodymium is also used to remove the green color caused by iron contaminants from glass 

Neodymium is a component of "didymium" (referring to mixture of salts of neodymium and praseodymium) used for coloring glass to make welder's and glass-blower's goggles; the sharp absorption bands obliterate the strong sodium emission at 589 nm  The similar absorption of the yellow mercury emission line at 578 nm is the principal cause of the blue color observed for neodymium glass under traditional white-fluorescent lighting  Neodymium and didymium glass are used in color-enhancing filters in indoor photography, particularly in filtering out the yellow hues from incandescent lighting  Similarly, neodymium glass is becoming widely used more directly in incandescent light bulbs  These lamps contain neodymium in the glass to filter out yellow light, resulting in a whiter light which is more like sunlight  During World War I, didymium mirrors were reportedly used to transmit Morse Code across battlefields  Similar to its use in glasses, neodymium salts are used as a colorant for enamels 

Lasers
Certain transparent materials with a small concentration of neodymium ions can be used in lasers as gain media for infrared wavelengths (1054–1064 nm), e g  Nd:YAG (yttrium aluminium garnet), Nd:YAP (yttrium aluminium perovskite), Nd:YLF (yttrium lithium fluoride), Nd:YVO4 (yttrium orthovanadate), and Nd:glass  Neodymium-doped crystals (typically Nd:YVO4) generate high-powered infrared laser beams which are converted to green laser light in commercial DPSS hand-held lasers and laser pointers 

Trivalent neodymium ion Nd3+ was the first lanthanide from rare-earth elements used for the generation of laser radiation  The Nd:CaWO4 laser was developed in 1961  Historically, it was the third laser which was put into operation (the first was ruby, the second the U3+:CaF laser)  Over the years the neodymium laser became one of the most used lasers for application purposes  The success of the Nd3+ ion lies in the structure of its energy levels and in the spectroscopic properties suitable for the generation of laser radiation  In 1964 Geusic et al  demonstrated the operation of neodymium ion in YAG matrix Y3Al5O12  It is a four-level laser with lower threshold and with excellent mechanical and temperature properties  For optical pumping of this material it is possible to use non-coherent flashlamp radiation or a coherent diode beam 

The current laser at the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), the HELEN (High Energy Laser Embodying Neodymium) 1-terawatt neodymium-glass laser, can access the midpoints of pressure and temperature regions and is used to acquire data for modeling on how density, temperature, and pressure interact inside warheads  HELEN can create plasmas of around 106 K, from which opacity and transmission of radiation are measured Neodymium glass solid-state lasers are used in extremely high power (terawatt scale), high energy (megajoules) multiple beam systems for inertial confinement fusion  Nd:glass lasers are usually frequency tripled to the third harmonic at 351 nm in laser fusion devices 

Substitute for uranyl acetate
Uranyl acetate has been the standard contrasting agent in transmission electron microscopy (TEM) for decades  However, its use is increasingly hampered by regulations by governments due to its radioactive properties as well as its high toxicity  Therefore, alternatives are being searched for, including lanthanide acetates or platinum blue  as well as the use of less defined substances such as oolong tea extract  Despite these published alternatives, uranyl acetate (UAc) is still the standard for EM contrasting In the periodic table the vertical ordering of elements in groups is based on the presence of the same number of electrons in their outermost shell, which determines their chemical and physical properties  Because neodymium (Nd) is right above uranium (U) the chemical properties of UAc and NdAc would be very similar in binding to tissue in ultrathin sections thus leading to a similar amount of contrast 

Biological role and precautions
The early lanthanides have been found to be essential to some methanotrophic bacteria living in volcanic mudpots, such as Methylacidiphilum fumariolicum: lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, and neodymium are about equally effective  Neodymium is otherwise not known to have a biological role in any other organisms Neodymium metal dust is combustible and therefore an explosion hazard  Neodymium compounds, as with all rare-earth metals, are of low to moderate toxicity; however, its toxicity has not been thoroughly investigated  Neodymium salts are regarded as more toxic if they are soluble than if they are insoluble if they are ingested  Neodymium dust and salts are very irritating to the eyes and mucous membranes, and moderately irritating to skin  Breathing the dust can cause lung embolisms, and accumulated exposure damages the liver  Neodymium also acts as an anticoagulant, especially when given intravenously Neodymium magnets have been tested for medical uses such as magnetic braces and bone repair, but biocompatibility issues have prevented widespread application  Commercially available magnets made from neodymium are exceptionally strong and can attract each other from large distances  If not handled carefully, they come together very quickly and forcefully, causing injuries  For example, there is at least one documented case of a person losing a fingertip when two magnets he was using snapped together from 50 cm away Another risk of these powerful magnets is that if more than one magnet is ingested, they can pinch soft tissues in the gastrointestinal tract  This has led to an estimated 1,700 emergency room visits and necessitated the recall of the Buckyballs line of toys, which were construction sets of small neodymium magnets 

See also
Neodymium compounds
Category:Neodymium compounds
Lanthanides
Period 6 elements
Rare earth metals

Notes
Passage 2:
James Chadwick
Sir James Chadwick,  (20 October 1891 – 24 July 1974) was a British physicist who was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the neutron in 1932  In 1941, he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which inspired the U S  government to begin serious atom bomb research efforts  He was the head of the British team that worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II  He was knighted in Britain in 1945 for his achievements in physics 
Chadwick graduated from the Victoria University of Manchester in 1911, where he studied under Ernest Rutherford (known as the "father of nuclear physics")  At Manchester, he continued to study under Rutherford until he was awarded his MSc in 1913  The same year, Chadwick was awarded an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851  He elected to study beta radiation under Hans Geiger in Berlin  Using Geiger's recently developed Geiger counter, Chadwick was able to demonstrate that beta radiation produced a continuous spectrum, and not discrete lines as had been thought  Still in Germany when World War I broke out in Europe, he spent the next four years in the Ruhleben internment camp 
After the war, Chadwick followed Rutherford to the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, where Chadwick earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree under Rutherford's supervision from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in June 1921  He was Rutherford's assistant director of research at the Cavendish Laboratory for over a decade at a time when it was one of the world's foremost centres for the study of physics, attracting students like John Cockcroft, Norman Feather, and Mark Oliphant  Chadwick followed his discovery of the neutron by measuring its mass  He anticipated that neutrons would become a major weapon in the fight against cancer  Chadwick left the Cavendish Laboratory in 1935 to become a professor of physics at the University of Liverpool, where he overhauled an antiquated laboratory and, by installing a cyclotron, made it an important centre for the study of nuclear physics 
During the Second World War, Chadwick carried out research as part of the Tube Alloys project to build an atom bomb, while his Manchester lab and environs were harassed by Luftwaffe bombing  When the Quebec Agreement merged his project with the American Manhattan Project, he became part of the British Mission, and worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory and in Washington, D C  He surprised everyone by earning the almost-complete trust of project director Leslie R  Groves, Jr  For his efforts, Chadwick received a knighthood in the New Year Honours on 1 January 1945  In July 1945, he viewed the Trinity nuclear test  After this, he served as the British scientific advisor to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission  Uncomfortable with the trend toward Big Science, he became the Master of Gonville and Caius College in 1948  He retired in 1959 

Education and early life
James Chadwick was born in Bollington, Cheshire, on 20 October 1891, the first child of John Joseph Chadwick, a cotton spinner, and Anne Mary Knowles, a domestic servant  He was named James after his paternal grandfather  In 1895, his parents moved to Manchester, leaving him in the care of his maternal grandparents  He went to Bollington Cross Primary School, and was offered a scholarship to Manchester Grammar School, which his family had to turn down as they could not afford the small fees that still had to be paid  Instead he attended the Central Grammar School for Boys in Manchester, rejoining his parents there  He now had two younger brothers, Harry and Hubert; a sister had died in infancy  At the age of 16, he sat two examinations for university scholarships, and won both of them Chadwick chose to attend Victoria University of Manchester, which he entered in 1908  He meant to study mathematics, but enrolled in physics by mistake  Like most students, he lived at home, walking the 4 miles (6 4 km) to the university and back each day  At the end of his first year, he was awarded a Heginbottom Scholarship to study physics  The physics department was headed by Ernest Rutherford, who assigned research projects to final-year students, and he instructed Chadwick to devise a means of comparing the amount of radioactive energy of two different sources  The idea was that they could be measured in terms of the activity of 1 gram (0 035 oz) of radium, a unit of measurement which would become known as the curie  Rutherford's suggested approach was unworkable—something Chadwick knew but was afraid to tell Rutherford—so Chadwick pressed on, and eventually devised the required method  The results became Chadwick's first paper, which, co-authored with Rutherford, was published in 1912  He graduated with first class honours in 1911 Having devised a means of measuring gamma radiation, Chadwick proceeded to measure the absorption of gamma rays by various gases and liquids  This time the resulting paper was published under his name alone  He was awarded his Master of Science (MSc) degree in 1912, and was appointed a Beyer Fellow  The following year he was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship, which allowed him to study and research at a university in continental Europe  He elected to go to the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin in 1913, to study beta radiation under Hans Geiger  Using Geiger's recently developed Geiger counter, which provided more accuracy than the earlier photographic techniques, he was able to demonstrate that beta radiation did not produce discrete lines, as has been previously thought, but rather a continuous spectrum with peaks in certain regions  On a visit to Geiger's laboratory, Albert Einstein told Chadwick that: "I can explain either of these things, but I can't explain them both at the same time " The continuous spectrum would remain an unexplained phenomenon for many years Chadwick was still in Germany at the start of the First World War, and was interned in the Ruhleben internment camp near Berlin, where he was allowed to set up a laboratory in the stables and conduct scientific experiments using improvised materials such as radioactive toothpaste  With the help of Charles Drummond Ellis, he worked on the ionisation of phosphorus, and the photochemical reaction of carbon monoxide and chlorine  He was released after the Armistice with Germany came into effect in November 1918, and returned to his parents' home in Manchester, where he wrote up his findings over the previous four years for the 1851 Exhibition commissioners Rutherford gave Chadwick a part-time teaching position at Manchester, allowing him to continue research  He looked at the nuclear charge of platinum, silver, and copper, and experimentally found that this was the same as the atomic number within an error of less than 1 5 per cent  In April 1919, Rutherford became director of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, and Chadwick joined him there a few months later  Chadwick was awarded a Clerk-Maxwell studentship in 1920, and enrolled as a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) student at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge  The first half of his thesis was his work with atomic numbers  In the second, he looked at the forces inside the nucleus  His degree was awarded in June 1921  In November, he became a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College 

Researcher
Cambridge
Chadwick's Clerk-Maxwell studentship expired in 1923, and he was succeeded by the Russian physicist Pyotr Kapitza  The Chairman of the Advisory Council of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Sir William McCormick arranged for Chadwick to become Rutherford's assistant director of research  In this role, Chadwick helped Rutherford select PhD students  Over the next few years these would include John Cockcroft, Norman Feather and Mark Oliphant, who would become firm friends with Chadwick  As many students had no idea what they wanted to research, Rutherford and Chadwick would suggest topics  Chadwick edited all the papers produced by the laboratory 

In 1925, Chadwick met Aileen Stewart-Brown, the daughter of a Liverpool stockbroker  The two were married in August 1925, with Kapitza as Best Man  The couple had twin daughters, Joanna and Judith, who were born in February 1927 In his research, Chadwick continued to probe the nucleus  In 1925, the concept of spin had allowed physicists to explain the Zeeman effect, but it also created unexplained anomalies  At the time it was believed that the nucleus consisted of protons and electrons, so nitrogen's nucleus, for example, with a mass number of 14, was assumed to contain 14 protons and 7 electrons  This gave it the right mass and charge, but the wrong spin At a conference at Cambridge on beta particles and gamma rays in 1928, Chadwick met Geiger again  Geiger had brought with him a new model of his Geiger counter, which had been improved by his post-doctoral student Walther Müller  Chadwick had not used one since the war, and the new Geiger–Müller counter was potentially a major improvement over the scintillation techniques then in use at Cambridge, which relied on the human eye for observation  The major drawback with it was that it detected alpha, beta and gamma radiation, and radium, which the Cavendish laboratory normally used in its experiments, emitted all three, and was therefore unsuitable for what Chadwick had in mind  However, polonium is an alpha emitter, and Lise Meitner sent Chadwick about 2 millicuries (about 0 5 μg) from Germany In Germany, Walther Bothe and his student Herbert Becker had used polonium to bombard beryllium with alpha particles, producing an unusual form of radiation  Chadwick had his Australian 1851 Exhibition scholar, Hugh Webster, duplicate their results  To Chadwick, this was evidence of something that he and Rutherford had been hypothesising for years: the neutron, a theoretical nuclear particle with no electric charge  Then in January 1932, Feather drew Chadwick's attention to another surprising result  Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie had succeeded in knocking protons from paraffin wax using polonium and beryllium as a source for what they thought was gamma radiation  Rutherford and Chadwick disagreed; protons were too heavy for that  But neutrons would need only a small amount of energy to achieve the same effect  In Rome, Ettore Majorana came to the same conclusion: the Joliot-Curies had discovered the neutron but did not know it 

Chadwick dropped all his other responsibilities to concentrate on proving the existence of the neutron, assisted by Feather and frequently working late at night  He devised a simple apparatus that consisted of a cylinder containing a polonium source and beryllium target  The resulting radiation could then be directed at a material such as paraffin wax; the displaced particles, which were protons, would go into a small ionisation chamber where they could be detected with an oscilloscope 
In February 1932, after only about two weeks of experimentation with neutrons, Chadwick sent a letter to Nature titled "Possible Existence of a Neutron"  He communicated his findings in detail in an article sent to Proceedings of the Royal Society A titled "The Existence of a Neutron" in May  His discovery of the neutron was a milestone in understanding the nucleus  Reading Chadwick's paper, Robert Bacher and Edward Condon realised that anomalies in the then-current theory, like the spin of nitrogen, would be resolved if the neutron has a spin of 1/2 and that a nitrogen nucleus consisted of seven protons and seven neutrons The theoretical physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg considered whether the neutron could be a fundamental nuclear particle like the proton and electron, rather than a proton–electron pair   Heisenberg showed that the neutron was best described as a new nuclear particle, but its exact nature remained unclear   In his 1933 Bakerian Lecture, Chadwick estimated that a neutron had a mass of about 1 0067 u  Since a proton and an electron had a combined mass of 1 0078 u, this implied the neutron as a proton–electron composite had a binding energy of about 2 MeV, which sounded reasonable, although it was hard to understand how a particle with so little binding energy could be stable   Estimating such a small mass difference required challenging precise measurements, however, and several conflicting results were obtained in 1933–4   By bombarding boron with alpha particles, Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie obtained a large value for the mass of a neutron, but Ernest Lawrence's team at the University of California produced a small one   Then Maurice Goldhaber, a refugee from Nazi Germany and a graduate student at the Cavendish Laboratory, suggested to Chadwick that deuterons could be photodisintegrated by the 2 6 MeV gamma rays of 208Tl (then known as thorium C"):

An accurate value for the mass of the neutron could be determined from this process  Chadwick and Goldhaber tried this and found that it worked   They measured the kinetic energy of the proton produced as 1 05 MeV, leaving the mass of the neutron as the unknown in the equation   Chadwick and Goldhaber calculated that it was either 1 0084 or 1 0090 atomic units, depending on the values used for the masses of the proton and deuteron   (The modern accepted value for the mass of the neutron is 1 00866 u ) The mass of the neutron was too large to be a proton–electron pair For his discovery of the neutron, Chadwick was awarded the Hughes Medal by the Royal Society in 1932, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1935, the Copley Medal in 1950 and the Franklin Medal in 1951  His discovery of the neutron made it possible to produce elements heavier than uranium in the laboratory by the capture of slow neutrons followed by beta decay  Unlike the positively charged alpha particles, which are repelled by the electrical forces present in the nuclei of other atoms, neutrons do not need to overcome any Coulomb barrier, and can therefore penetrate and enter the nuclei of even the heaviest elements such as uranium  This inspired Enrico Fermi to investigate the nuclear reactions brought about by collisions of nuclei with slow neutrons, work for which Fermi would receive the Nobel Prize in 1938 Wolfgang Pauli proposed another kind of particle on 4 December 1930 in order to explain the continuous spectrum of beta radiation that Chadwick had reported in 1914  Since not all of the energy of beta radiation could be accounted for, the law of conservation of energy appeared to be violated, but Pauli argued that this could be redressed if another, undiscovered, particle was involved  Pauli also called this particle a neutron, but it was clearly not the same particle as Chadwick's neutron  Fermi renamed it the neutrino, Italian for "little neutron"  In 1934, Fermi proposed his theory of beta decay which explained that the electrons emitted from the nucleus were created by the decay of a neutron into a proton, an electron, and a neutrino   The neutrino could account for the missing energy, but a particle with little mass and no electric charge was difficult to observe  Rudolf Peierls and Hans Bethe calculated that neutrinos could easily pass through the Earth, so the chances of detecting them were slim  Frederick Reines and Clyde Cowan would confirm the neutrino on 14 June 1956 by placing a detector within a large antineutrino flux from a nearby nuclear reactor 

Liverpool
With the onset of the Great Depression in the United Kingdom, the government became more parsimonious with funding for science  At the same time, Lawrence's recent invention, the cyclotron, promised to revolutionise experimental nuclear physics, and Chadwick felt that the Cavendish laboratory would fall behind unless it also acquired one  He therefore chafed under Rutherford, who clung to the belief that good nuclear physics could still be done without large, expensive equipment, and turned down the request for a cyclotron 

Chadwick was himself a critic of Big Science in general, and Lawrence in particular, whose approach he considered careless and focused on technology at the expense of science  When Lawrence postulated the existence of a new and hitherto unknown particle that he claimed was a possible source of limitless energy at the Solvay Conference in 1933, Chadwick responded that the results were more likely attributable to contamination of the equipment  While Lawrence rechecked his results at Berkeley only to find that Chadwick was correct, Rutherford and Oliphant conducted an investigation at the Cavendish that found that deuterium fuses to form helium-3, thereby causing the effect that Lawrence had observed  This was another major discovery, but the Oliphant-Rutherford particle accelerator was an expensive state-of-the-art piece of equipment In March 1935, Chadwick received an offer of the Lyon Jones Chair of physics at the University of Liverpool, in his wife's home town, to succeed Lionel Wilberforce  The laboratory was so antiquated that it still ran on direct current electricity, but Chadwick seized the opportunity, assuming the chair on 1 October 1935  The university's prestige was soon bolstered by Chadwick's Nobel Prize, which was announced in November 1935  His medal was sold at auction in 2014 for $329,000 Chadwick set about acquiring a cyclotron for Liverpool  He started by spending £700 to refurbish the antiquated laboratories at Liverpool, so some components could be made in-house  He was able to persuade the university to provide £2,000 and obtained a grant for another £2,000 from the Royal Society  To build his cyclotron, Chadwick brought in two young experts, Bernard Kinsey and Harold Walke, who had worked with Lawrence at the University of California  A local cable manufacturer donated the copper conductor for the coils  The cyclotron's 50-ton magnet was manufactured in Trafford Park by Metropolitan-Vickers, which also made the vacuum chamber  The cyclotron was completely installed and running in July 1939  The total cost of £5,184 was more than Chadwick had received from the University and the Royal Society, so Chadwick paid the rest from his 159,917 kr (£8,243) Nobel Prize money At Liverpool the Medicine and Science faculties worked together closely  Chadwick was automatically a committee member of both faculties, and in 1938 he was appointed to a commission headed by Lord Derby to investigate the arrangements for cancer treatment in Liverpool  Chadwick anticipated that neutrons and radioactive isotopes produced with the 37-inch cyclotron could be used to study biochemical processes, and might become a weapon in the fight against cancer 

Second World War
Tube Alloys and the MAUD Report
In Germany, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann bombarded uranium with neutrons, and noted that barium, a lighter element, was among the products produced  Hitherto, only the same or heavier elements had been produced by the process  In January 1939, Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch astounded the physics community with a paper that explained this result  They theorised that uranium atoms bombarded with neutrons can break into two roughly equal fragments, a process they called fission  They calculated that this would result in the release of about 200 MeV, implying an energy release orders of magnitude greater than chemical reactions, and Frisch confirmed their theory experimentally  It was soon noted by Hahn that if neutrons were released during fission, then a chain reaction was possible  French scientists, Pierre Joliot, Hans von Halban and Lew Kowarski, soon verified that more than one neutron was indeed emitted per fission  In a paper co-authored with the American physicist John Wheeler, Bohr theorised that fission was more likely to occur in the uranium-235 isotope, which made up only 0 7 percent of natural uranium 

Chadwick did not believe that there was any likelihood of another war with Germany in 1939, and took his family for a holiday on a remote lake in northern Sweden  The news of the outbreak of the Second World War therefore came as a shock  Determined not to spend another war in an internment camp, Chadwick made his way to Stockholm as fast as he could, but when he arrived there with his family, he found that all air traffic between Stockholm and London had been suspended  They made their way back to England on a tramp steamer  When he reached Liverpool, Chadwick found Joseph Rotblat, a Polish post-doctoral fellow who had come to work with the cyclotron, was now destitute, as he was cut off from funds from Poland  Chadwick promptly hired Rotblat as a lecturer, despite his poor grasp of English In October 1939, Chadwick received a letter from Sir Edward Appleton, the Secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, asking for his opinion on the feasibility of an atom bomb  Chadwick responded cautiously  He did not dismiss the possibility, but carefully went over the many theoretical and practical difficulties involved  Chadwick decided to investigate the properties of uranium oxide further with Rotblat  In March 1940, Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls at the University of Birmingham re-examined the theoretical issues involved in a paper that became known as the Frisch–Peierls memorandum  Instead of looking at unenriched uranium oxide, they considered what would happen to a sphere of pure uranium-235, and found that not only could a chain reaction occur, but that it might require as little as 1 kilogram (2 2 lb) of uranium-235, and unleash the energy of tons of dynamite 

A special subcommittee of the Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Warfare (CSSAW), known as the MAUD Committee, was created to investigate the matter further  It was chaired by Sir George Thomson and its original membership included Chadwick, along with Mark Oliphant, John Cockcroft and Philip Moon  While other teams investigated uranium enrichment techniques, Chadwick's team at Liverpool concentrated on determining the nuclear cross section of uranium-235  By April 1941, it had been experimentally confirmed that the critical mass of uranium-235 might be 8 kilograms (18 lb) or less  His research into such matters was complicated by all-but-incessant Luftwaffe bombings of the environs of his Liverpool lab; the windows were blown out so often that they were replaced by cardboard In July 1941, Chadwick was chosen to write the final draft of the MAUD Report, which, when presented by Vannevar Bush to President Franklin D  Roosevelt in October 1941, inspired the U S  government to pour millions of dollars into the pursuit of an atom bomb  When George B  Pegram and Harold Urey visited Britain to see how the project, now known as Tube Alloys, was going, Chadwick was able to tell them: "I wish I could tell you that the bomb is not going to work, but I am 90 per cent sure that it will "In a recent book about the Bomb project, Graham Farmelo wrote that "Chadwick did more than any other scientist to give Churchill the Bomb      Chadwick was tested almost to the breaking point " So worried that he could not sleep, Chadwick resorted to sleeping pills, which he continued to take for most of his remaining years  Chadwick later said that he realised that "a nuclear bomb was not only possible—it was inevitable  Sooner or later these ideas could not be peculiar to us  Everybody would think about them before long, and some country would put them into action"  Sir Hermann Bondi suggested that it was fortunate that Chadwick, not Rutherford, was the doyen of UK physics at the time, as the latter's prestige might otherwise have overpowered Chadwick's interest in "looking forward" to the Bomb's prospects 

Manhattan Project
Owing to the danger from aerial bombardment, the Chadwicks sent their twins to Canada as part of a government evacuation scheme  Chadwick was reluctant to move Tube Alloys there, believing that the United Kingdom was a better location for the isotope separation plant  The enormous scope of the effort became more apparent in 1942: even a pilot separation plant would cost over £1 million and strain Britain's resources, to say nothing of a full-scale plant, which was estimated to cost somewhere in the vicinity of £25 million  It would have to be built in America  At the same time that the British became convinced that a joint project was necessary, the progress of the American Manhattan Project was such that British cooperation seemed less essential, although the Americans were still eager to utilise Chadwick's talents The matter of cooperation had to be taken up at the highest level  In September 1943, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and President Roosevelt negotiated the Quebec Agreement, which reinstated cooperation between Britain, the United States and Canada  Chadwick, Oliphant, Peierls and Simon were summoned to the United States by the director of Tube Alloys, Sir Wallace Akers, to work with the Manhattan Project  The Quebec Agreement established a new Combined Policy Committee to direct the joint project  The Americans disliked Akers, so Chadwick was appointed technical advisor to the Combined Policy Committee, and the head of the British Mission Leaving Rotblat in charge in Liverpool, Chadwick began a tour of the Manhattan Project facilities in November 1943, except for the Hanford Site where plutonium was produced, which he was not allowed to see  He became the only man apart from Groves and his second in command to have access to all the American research and production facilities for the uranium bomb  Observing the work on the K-25 gaseous diffusion facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Chadwick realised how wrong he had been about building the plant in wartime Britain  The enormous structure could never have been concealed from the Luftwaffe  In early 1944, he moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico, with his wife and their twins, who now spoke with Canadian accents  For security reasons, he was given the cover name of James Chaffee 

Chadwick accepted that the Americans did not need British help, but that it could still be useful in bringing the project to an early and successful conclusion  Working closely with the director of the Manhattan Project, Major General Leslie R  Groves, Jr , he attempted to do everything he could to support the effort  He also endeavoured to place British scientists in as many parts of the project as possible in order to facilitate a post-war British nuclear weapons project to which Chadwick was committed  Requests from Groves via Chadwick for particular scientists tended to be met with an immediate rejection by the company, ministry or university currently employing them, only to be overcome by the overriding priority accorded to Tube Alloys  As a result, the British team was critical to the Project's success Although he had more knowledge of the project than anyone else from Britain, Chadwick had no access to the Hanford site  Lord Portal was offered a tour of Hanford in 1946  "This was the only plant to which Chadwick had been denied access in wartime, and now he asked Groves if he could accompany Portal  Groves replied that he could, but if he did then 'Portal will not see very much' " For his efforts, Chadwick received a knighthood in the New Year Honours on 1 January 1945  He considered this to be a recognition of the work of the whole Tube Alloys project By early 1945, Chadwick was spending most of his time in Washington, D C , and his family relocated from Los Alamos to a house on Washington's Dupont Circle in April 1945  He was present at the meeting of the Combined Policy Committee on 4 July when Field Marshal Sir Henry Maitland Wilson gave Britain's agreement to use the atom bomb against Japan, and at the Trinity nuclear test on 16 July, when the first atom bomb was detonated  Inside its pit was a polonium-beryllium modulated neutron initiator, a development of the technique that Chadwick had used to discover the neutron over a decade before  William L  Laurence, The New York Times reporter attached to the Manhattan Project, wrote that "never before in history had any man lived to see his own discovery materialize itself with such telling effect on the destiny of man "

Later life
Shortly after the war ended, Chadwick was appointed to the Advisory Committee on Atomic Energy (ACAE)  He was also appointed as the British scientific advisor to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission  He clashed with fellow ACAE member Patrick Blackett, who disagreed with Chadwick's conviction that Britain needed to acquire its own nuclear weapons; but it was Chadwick's position that was ultimately adopted  He returned to Britain in 1946, to find a country still beset by wartime rationing and shortages At this time, Sir James Mountford, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, wrote in his diary "he had never seen a man 'so physically, mentally and spiritually tired" as Chadwick, for he "had plumbed such depths of moral decision as more fortunate men are never called upon even to peer into     [and suffered]     almost insupportable agonies of responsibility arising from his scientific work' "In 1948, Chadwick accepted an offer to become the Master of Gonville and Caius College  The job was prestigious but ill-defined; the Master was the titular head of the College, but authority actually resided in a council of 13 fellows, of whom one was the Master  As Master, Chadwick strove to improve the academic reputation of the college  He increased the number of research fellowships from 31 to 49, and sought to bring talent into the college  This involved controversial decisions, such as hiring in 1951 the Chinese biochemist Tien-chin Tsao and the Hungarian-born economist Peter Bauer  In what became known as the Peasants' Revolt, fellows led by Patrick Hadley voted an old friend of Chadwick's off the council and replaced him with Bauer  More friends of Chadwick's were removed over the following years, and he retired in November 1958  It was during his mastership that Francis Crick, a PhD student at Gonville and Caius College, and James Watson discovered the structure of DNA Over the years, Chadwick received many honours, including the Medal for Merit from the United States, and the Pour le Mérite from Germany  He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1927  He became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1946 and an International member of the American Philosophical Society in 1948  He was made a Companion of Honour in the New Year Honours on 1 January 1970 for "services to science", and went to Buckingham Palace for the investiture ceremony  He became more frail, and seldom left his flat, although he travelled to Liverpool for celebrations of his eightieth birthday   A lifelong atheist, he saw no reason to adopt religious faith in later life  He died in his sleep on 24 July 1974 His papers are held at the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, and are accessible to the public  The Chadwick Laboratory at the University of Liverpool is named after him, as is its Sir James Chadwick Chair of Experimental Physics, which was named after him in 1991 as part of celebrations of the centenary of his birth  A crater on the moon is also named after him  The James Chadwick Building, which houses part of the School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Sciences, University of Manchester is named in his honour  He was described by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority official historian Lorna Arnold as "a physicist, a scientist-diplomat, and a good, wise, and humane man "

Notes
Passage 3:
Synthetic element
A synthetic element is one of 24 known chemical elements that do not occur naturally on Earth: they have been created by human manipulation of fundamental particles in a nuclear reactor, a particle accelerator, or the explosion of an atomic bomb; thus, they are called "synthetic", "artificial", or "man-made"  The synthetic elements are those with atomic numbers 95–118, as shown in purple on the accompanying periodic table: these 24 elements were first created between 1944 and 2010  The mechanism for the creation of a synthetic element is to force additional protons into the nucleus of an element with an atomic number lower than 95  All known (see: Island of stability) synthetic elements are unstable, but they decay at widely varying rates: the half-lives of their longest-lived isotopes range from microseconds to millions of years  
Five more elements that were first created artificially are strictly speaking not synthetic because they were later found in nature in trace quantities: 43Tc, 61Pm, 85At, 93Np, and 94Pu, though are sometimes classified as synthetic alongside exclusively artificial elements  The first, technetium, was created in 1937  Plutonium (Pu, atomic number 94), first synthesized in 1940, is another such element  It is the element with the largest number of protons (atomic number) to occur in nature, but it does so in such tiny quantities that it is far more practical to synthesize it  Plutonium is known mainly for its use in atomic bombs and nuclear reactors No elements with atomic numbers greater than 99 have any uses outside of scientific research, since they have extremely short half-lives, and thus have never been produced in large quantities 

Properties
All elements with atomic number greater than 94 decay quickly enough into lighter elements such that any atoms of these that may have existed when the Earth formed (about 4 6 billion years ago) have long since decayed  Synthetic elements now present on Earth are the product of atomic bombs or experiments that involve nuclear reactors or particle accelerators, via nuclear fusion or neutron absorption Atomic mass for natural elements is based on weighted average abundance of natural isotopes in Earth's crust and atmosphere  For synthetic elements, there is no "natural isotope abundance"  Therefore, for synthetic elements the total nucleon count (protons plus neutrons) of the most stable isotope, i e , the isotope with the longest half-life—is listed in brackets as the atomic mass 

History
Technetium
The first element to be synthesized, rather than discovered in nature, was technetium in 1937  This discovery filled a gap in the periodic table, and the fact that technetium has no stable isotopes explains its natural absence on Earth (and the gap)  With the longest-lived isotope of technetium, 97Tc, having a 4 21-million-year half-life, no technetium remains from the formation of the Earth  Only minute traces of technetium occur naturally in Earth's crust—as a product of spontaneous fission of 238U, or from neutron capture in molybdenum—but technetium is present naturally in red giant stars 

Curium
The first entirely synthetic element to be made was curium, synthesized in 1944 by Glenn T  Seaborg, Ralph A  James, and Albert Ghiorso by bombarding plutonium with alpha particles 

Eight others
Synthesis of americium, berkelium, and californium followed soon  Einsteinium and fermium were discovered by a team of scientists led by Albert Ghiorso in 1952 while studying the composition of radioactive debris from the detonation of the first hydrogen bomb  The isotopes synthesized were einsteinium-253, with a half-life of 20 5 days, and fermium-255, with a half-life of about 20 hours  The creation of mendelevium, nobelium, and lawrencium followed 

Rutherfordium and dubnium
During the height of the Cold War, teams from the Soviet Union and the United States independently created rutherfordium and dubnium  The naming and credit for synthesis of these elements remained unresolved for many years, but eventually shared credit was recognized by IUPAC/IUPAP in 1992  In 1997, IUPAC decided to give dubnium its current name honoring the city of Dubna where the Russian team worked since American-chosen names had already been used for many existing synthetic elements, while the name rutherfordium (chosen by the American team) was accepted for element 104 

The last thirteen
Meanwhile, the American team had created seaborgium, and the next six elements had been created by a German team: bohrium, hassium, meitnerium, darmstadtium, roentgenium, and copernicium  Element 113, nihonium, was created by a Japanese team; the last five known elements, flerovium, moscovium, livermorium, tennessine, and oganesson, were created by Russian–American collaborations and complete the seventh row of the periodic table 

List of synthetic elements
The following elements do not occur naturally on Earth  All are transuranium elements and have atomic numbers of 95 and higher 

Other elements usually produced through synthesis
All elements with atomic numbers 1 through 94 occur naturally at least in trace quantities, but the following elements are often produced through synthesis: technetium, promethium, astatine, neptunium, and plutonium, which were discovered through synthesis before being found in nature 
Passage 4:
Atomic number
The atomic number or nuclear charge number (symbol Z) of a chemical element is the charge number of an atomic nucleus  For ordinary nuclei composed of protons and neutrons, this is equal to the proton number (np) or the number of protons found in the nucleus of every atom of that element  The atomic number can be used to uniquely identify ordinary chemical elements  In an ordinary uncharged atom, the atomic number is also equal to the number of electrons 
For an ordinary atom which contains protons, neutrons and electrons, the sum of the atomic number Z and the neutron number N gives the atom's atomic mass number A  Since protons and neutrons have approximately the same mass (and the mass of the electrons is negligible for many purposes) and the mass defect of the nucleon binding is always small compared to the nucleon mass, the atomic mass of any atom, when expressed in daltons (making a quantity called the "relative isotopic mass"), is within 1% of the whole number A 
Atoms with the same atomic number but different neutron numbers, and hence different mass numbers, are known as isotopes  A little more than three-quarters of naturally occurring elements exist as a mixture of isotopes (see monoisotopic elements), and the average isotopic mass of an isotopic mixture for an element (called the relative atomic mass) in a defined environment on Earth, determines the element's standard atomic weight  Historically, it was these atomic weights of elements (in comparison to hydrogen) that were the quantities measurable by chemists in the 19th century 
The conventional symbol Z comes from the German word Zahl 'number', which, before the modern synthesis of ideas from chemistry and physics, merely denoted an element's numerical place in the periodic table, whose order was then approximately, but not completely, consistent with the order of the elements by atomic weights  Only after 1915, with the suggestion and evidence that this Z number was also the nuclear charge and a physical characteristic of atoms, did the word Atomzahl (and its English equivalent atomic number) come into common use in this context 
The rules above do not always apply to exotic atoms which contain short-lived elementary particles other than protons, neutrons and electrons 

History
The periodic table and a natural number for each element
Loosely speaking, the existence or construction of a periodic table of elements creates an ordering of the elements, and so they can be numbered in order 
Dmitri Mendeleev claimed that he arranged his first periodic tables (first published on March 6, 1869) in order of atomic weight ("Atomgewicht")  However, in consideration of the elements' observed chemical properties, he changed the order slightly and placed tellurium (atomic weight 127 6) ahead of iodine (atomic weight 126 9)  This placement is consistent with the modern practice of ordering the elements by proton number, Z, but that number was not known or suspected at the time 

A simple numbering based on periodic table position was never entirely satisfactory, however  Besides the case of iodine and tellurium, later several other pairs of elements (such as argon and potassium, cobalt and nickel) were known to have nearly identical or reversed atomic weights, thus requiring their placement in the periodic table to be determined by their chemical properties  However the gradual identification of more and more chemically similar lanthanide elements, whose atomic number was not obvious, led to inconsistency and uncertainty in the periodic numbering of elements at least from lutetium (element 71) onward (hafnium was not known at this time) 

The Rutherford-Bohr model and van den Broek
In 1911, Ernest Rutherford gave a model of the atom in which a central nucleus held most of the atom's mass and a positive charge which, in units of the electron's charge, was to be approximately equal to half of the atom's atomic weight, expressed in numbers of hydrogen atoms  This central charge would thus be approximately half the atomic weight (though it was almost 25% different from the atomic number of gold (Z = 79, A = 197), the single element from which Rutherford made his guess)  Nevertheless, in spite of Rutherford's estimation that gold had a central charge of about 100 (but was element Z = 79 on the periodic table), a month after Rutherford's paper appeared, Antonius van den Broek first formally suggested that the central charge and number of electrons in an atom was exactly equal to its place in the periodic table (also known as element number, atomic number, and symbolized Z)  This proved eventually to be the case 

Moseley's 1913 experiment
The experimental position improved dramatically after research by Henry Moseley in 1913  Moseley, after discussions with Bohr who was at the same lab (and who had used Van den Broek's hypothesis in his Bohr model of the atom), decided to test Van den Broek's and Bohr's hypothesis directly, by seeing if spectral lines emitted from excited atoms fitted the Bohr theory's postulation that the frequency of the spectral lines be proportional to the square of Z 
To do this, Moseley measured the wavelengths of the innermost photon transitions (K and L lines) produced by the elements from aluminium (Z = 13) to gold (Z = 79) used as a series of movable anodic targets inside an x-ray tube  The square root of the frequency of these photons (x-rays) increased from one target to the next in an arithmetic progression  This led to the conclusion (Moseley's law) that the atomic number does closely correspond (with an offset of one unit for K-lines, in Moseley's work) to the calculated electric charge of the nucleus, i e  the element number Z  Among other things, Moseley demonstrated that the lanthanide series (from lanthanum to lutetium inclusive) must have 15 members—no fewer and no more—which was far from obvious from known chemistry at that time 

Missing elements
After Moseley's death in 1915, the atomic numbers of all known elements from hydrogen to uranium (Z = 92) were examined by his method  There were seven elements (with Z < 92) which were not found and therefore identified as still undiscovered, corresponding to atomic numbers 43, 61, 72, 75, 85, 87 and 91  From 1918 to 1947, all seven of these missing elements were discovered  By this time, the first four transuranium elements had also been discovered, so that the periodic table was complete with no gaps as far as curium (Z = 96) 

The proton and the idea of nuclear electrons
In 1915, the reason for nuclear charge being quantized in units of Z, which were now recognized to be the same as the element number, was not understood  An old idea called Prout's hypothesis had postulated that the elements were all made of residues (or "protyles") of the lightest element hydrogen, which in the Bohr-Rutherford model had a single electron and a nuclear charge of one  However, as early as 1907, Rutherford and Thomas Royds had shown that alpha particles, which had a charge of +2, were the nuclei of helium atoms, which had a mass four times that of hydrogen, not two times  If Prout's hypothesis were true, something had to be neutralizing some of the charge of the hydrogen nuclei present in the nuclei of heavier atoms 
In 1917, Rutherford succeeded in generating hydrogen nuclei from a nuclear reaction between alpha particles and nitrogen gas, and believed he had proven Prout's law  He called the new heavy nuclear particles protons in 1920 (alternate names being proutons and protyles)  It had been immediately apparent from the work of Moseley that the nuclei of heavy atoms have more than twice as much mass as would be expected from their being made of hydrogen nuclei, and thus there was required a hypothesis for the neutralization of the extra protons presumed present in all heavy nuclei  A helium nucleus was presumed to be composed of four protons plus two "nuclear electrons" (electrons bound inside the nucleus) to cancel two of the charges  At the other end of the periodic table, a nucleus of gold with a mass 197 times that of hydrogen was thought to contain 118 nuclear electrons in the nucleus to give it a residual charge of +79, consistent with its atomic number 

The discovery of the neutron makes Z the proton number
All consideration of nuclear electrons ended with James Chadwick's discovery of the neutron in 1932  An atom of gold now was seen as containing 118 neutrons rather than 118 nuclear electrons, and its positive nuclear charge now was realized to come entirely from a content of 79 protons  Since Moseley had previously shown that the atomic number Z of an element equals this positive charge, it was now clear that Z is identical to the number of protons of its nuclei 

Chemical properties
Each element has a specific set of chemical properties as a consequence of the number of electrons present in the neutral atom, which is Z (the atomic number)  The configuration of these electrons follows from the principles of quantum mechanics  The number of electrons in each element's electron shells, particularly the outermost valence shell, is the primary factor in determining its chemical bonding behavior  Hence, it is the atomic number alone that determines the chemical properties of an element; and it is for this reason that an element can be defined as consisting of any mixture of atoms with a given atomic number 

New elements
The quest for new elements is usually described using atomic numbers  As of 2023, all elements with atomic numbers 1 to 118 have been observed  Synthesis of new elements is accomplished by bombarding target atoms of heavy elements with ions, such that the sum of the atomic numbers of the target and ion elements equals the atomic number of the element being created  In general, the half-life of a nuclide becomes shorter as atomic number increases, though undiscovered nuclides with certain "magic" numbers of protons and neutrons may have relatively longer half-lives and comprise an island of stability  
A hypothetical element composed only of neutrons has also been proposed and would have atomic number 0 

See also



ground_truth: Manhattan Project

prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: By how much of the population of the region where Baton a feu originated reduced by the black death?

The following are given passages.
Context 3:  And I, Agnolo di Tura     buried my five children with my own hands  And there were also those who were so sparsely covered with earth that the dogs dragged them forth and devoured many bodies throughout the city  There was no one who wept for any death, for all awaited death  And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world 

Economic
It has been suggested that the plague, like some others in history, disproportionately affected the poorest people, who were already in generally worse physical condition than the wealthier citizens   Nevertheless, with such a large overall population decline from the pandemic, wages soared in response to a labour shortage  On the other hand, in the quarter century after the Black Death in England, it is clear many labourers, artisans and craftsmen, those living from money-wages alone, did suffer a reduction in real incomes owing to rampant inflation  Landowners were also pushed to substitute monetary rents for labour services in an effort to keep tenants 

Environmental
A study performed by Thomas Van Hoof of the Utrecht University suggests that the innumerable deaths brought on by the pandemic cooled the climate by freeing up land and triggering reforestation  This may have led to the Little Ice Age 

Persecutions
Renewed religious fervour and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of the Black Death  Some Europeans targeted "various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims", lepers and Romani, blaming them for the crisis  Lepers, and others with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were killed throughout Europe 
Because 14th-century healers and governments were at a loss to explain or stop the disease, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for outbreaks  Many believed the epidemic was a punishment by God for their sins, and could be relieved by winning God's forgiveness There were many attacks against Jewish communities  In the Strasbourg massacre of February 1349, about 2,000 Jews were murdered  In August 1349, the Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne were annihilated  By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed  During this period many Jews relocated to Poland, where they received a warm welcome from King Casimir the Great 

Social
One theory that has been advanced is that the devastation in Florence caused by the Black Death, which hit Europe between 1348 and 1350, resulted in a shift in the world view of people in 14th-century Italy and led to the Renaissance  Italy was particularly badly hit by the pandemic, and it has been speculated that the resulting familiarity with death caused thinkers to dwell more on their lives on Earth, rather than on spirituality and the afterlife  It has also been argued that the Black Death prompted a new wave of piety, manifested in the sponsorship of religious works of art This does not fully explain why the Renaissance occurred in Italy in the 14th century  The Black Death was a pandemic that affected all of Europe in the ways described, not only Italy  The Renaissance's emergence in Italy was most likely the result of the complex interaction of the above factors, in combination with an influx of Greek scholars following the fall of the Byzantine Empire  As a result of the drastic reduction in the populace the value of the working class increased, and commoners came to enjoy more freedom  To answer the increased need for labour, workers travelled in search of the most favorable position economically Prior to the emergence of the Black Death, the workings of Europe were run by the Catholic Church and the continent was considered a feudalistic society, composed of fiefs and city-states  The pandemic completely restructured both religion and political forces; survivors began to turn to other forms of spirituality and the power dynamics of the fiefs and city-states crumbled Cairo's population, partly owing to the numerous plague epidemics, was in the early 18th century half of what it was in 1347  The populations of some Italian cities, notably Florence, did not regain their pre-14th century size until the 19th century  The demographic decline due to the pandemic had economic consequences: the prices of food dropped and land values declined by 30–40% in most parts of Europe between 1350 and 1400  Landholders faced a great loss, but for ordinary men and women it was a windfall  The survivors of the pandemic found not only that the prices of food were lower but also that lands were more abundant, and many of them inherited property from their dead relatives, and this probably destabilised feudalism The word "quarantine" has its roots in this period, though the concept of isolating people to prevent the spread of disease is older  In the city-state of Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik, Croatia), a thirty-day isolation period was implemented in 1377 for new arrivals to the city from plague-affected areas  The isolation period was later extended to forty days, and given the name "quarantino" from the Italian word for "forty" 

Recurrences
Second plague pandemic
The plague repeatedly returned to haunt Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the 14th to 17th centuries  According to Jean-Noël Biraben, the plague was present somewhere in Europe in every year between 1346 and 1671  (Note that some researchers have cautions about the uncritical use of Biraben's data ) The second pandemic was particularly widespread in the following years: 1360–63; 1374; 1400; 1438–39; 1456–57; 1464–66; 1481–85; 1500–03; 1518–31; 1544–48; 1563–66; 1573–88; 1596–99; 1602–11; 1623–40; 1644–54; and 1664–67  Subsequent outbreaks, though severe, marked the retreat from most of Europe (18th century) and northern Africa (19th century)  The historian George Sussman argued that the plague had not occurred in East Africa until the 1900s  However, other sources suggest that the Second pandemic did indeed reach Sub-Saharan Africa According to historian Geoffrey Parker, "France alone lost almost a million people to the plague in the epidemic of 1628–31 " In the first half of the 17th century, a plague killed some 1 7 million people in Italy  More than 1 25 million deaths resulted from the extreme incidence of plague in 17th-century Spain The Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world  Plague could be found in the Islamic world almost every year between 1500 and 1850  Sometimes the outbreaks affected small areas, while other outbreaks affected multiple regions  Plague repeatedly struck the cities of North Africa  Algiers lost 30,000–50,000 inhabitants to it in 1620–21, and again in 1654–57, 1665, 1691 and 1740–42  Cairo suffered more than fifty plague epidemics within 150 years from the plague's first appearance, with the final outbreak of the second pandemic there in the 1840s  Plague remained a major event in Ottoman society until the second quarter of the 19th century  Between 1701 and 1750, thirty-seven larger and smaller epidemics were recorded in Constantinople, and an additional thirty-one between 1751 and 1800  Baghdad has suffered severely from visitations of the plague, and sometimes two-thirds of its population had died 

Third plague pandemic
The third plague pandemic (1855–1859) started in China in the mid-19th century, spreading to all inhabited continents and killing 10 million people in India alone  The investigation of the pathogen that caused the 19th-century plague was begun by teams of scientists who visited Hong Kong in 1894, among whom was the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin, after whom the pathogen was named Twelve plague outbreaks in Australia between 1900 and 1925 resulted in well over 1,000 deaths, chiefly in Sydney  This led to the establishment of a Public Health Department there which undertook some leading-edge research on plague transmission from rat fleas to humans via the bacillus Yersinia pestis The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904, followed by another outbreak in 1907–1908 

Modern-day
Modern treatment methods include insecticides, the use of antibiotics, and a plague vaccine  It is feared that the plague bacterium could develop drug resistance and again become a major health threat  One case of a drug-resistant form of the bacterium was found in Madagascar in 1995  A further outbreak in Madagascar was reported in November 2014  In October 2017, the deadliest outbreak of the plague in modern times hit Madagascar, killing 170 people and infecting thousands An estimate of the case fatality rate for the modern bubonic plague, following the introduction of antibiotics, is 11%, although it may be higher in underdeveloped regions 

See also
Black Death in England
Black Death in medieval culture
Crisis of the Late Middle Ages
Flagellant
Globalization and disease
List of epidemics
Second plague pandemic
Timeline of plague
Passage 3:
Saint-Laurent-des-Bâtons
Saint-Laurent-des-Bâtons (French pronunciation: ​[sɛ̃ loʁɑ̃ de batɔ̃]; Occitan: Sent Laurenç deus Bastons) is a former commune in the Dordogne department in southwestern France  On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune Sainte-Alvère-Saint-Laurent Les Bâtons, which merged into the new commune Val de Louyre et Caudeau on 1 January 2017 

Population
See also
Communes of the Dordogne department
Passage 4:
Bâton à feu
The Bâton à feu, or Baston à feu (French for "Fire stick"), is a type of hand cannon developed in the 14th century in Western Europe  This weapon type corresponds to the portable artillery of the second half of 14th century The Bâton à feu at the Musée de l'Armée in Paris has an hexagonal cross-section, and looks like a steel tube  It weighs 1 04 kg, and has a length of 18 cm  Its caliber is 2 cm 

In order to facilitate handling, the metal piece was placed at the end of a wooden pole  The powder was ignited through a small hole at the top, with a red-hot steel stick 

See also
Hand cannon


== Notes ==
Passage 5:
Consequences of the Black Death
The Black Death peaked in Europe between 1348 and 1350, with an estimated third of the continent's population ultimately succumbing to the disease  Often simply referred to as "The Plague", the Black Death had both immediate and long-term effects on human population across the world as one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, including a series of biological, social, economic, political and religious upheavals that had profound effects on the course of world history, especially European history  Symptoms of the Bubonic Plague included painful and enlarged or swollen lymph nodes, headaches, chills, fatigue, vomiting, and fevers, and within 3 to 5 days, 80% of the victims would be dead  Historians estimate that it reduced the total world population from 475 million to between 350 and 375 million  In most parts of Europe, it took nearly 80 years for population sizes to recover, and in some areas, it took more than 150 years From the perspective of many of the survivors, the effect of the plague may have been ultimately favourable, as the massive reduction of the workforce meant their labor was suddenly in higher demand  R  H  Hilton has argued that the English peasants who survived found their situation to be much improved  For many Europeans, the 15th century was a golden age of prosperity and new opportunities  The land was plentiful, wages were high and serfdom had all but disappeared  A century later, as population growth resumed, the lower classes once again faced deprivation and famine 

Death toll
Figures for the death toll vary widely by area and from source to source, and estimates are frequently revised as historical research brings new discoveries to light  Most scholars estimate that the Black Death killed up to 75 million people in the 14th century, at a time when the entire world population was still less than 500 million  Even where the historical record is considered reliable, only rough estimates of the total number of deaths from the plague are possible 

Europe
Europe suffered an especially- significant death toll from the plague  Modern estimates range between roughly one third and one half of the total European population in the five-year period of 1347 to 1351 died during which the most severely-affected areas may have lost up to 80% of the population  Contemporary chronicler Jean Froissart estimated the toll to be one-third, which modern scholars consider less an accurate assessment than an allusion to the Book of Revelation meant to suggest the scope of the plague  Deaths were not evenly distributed across Europe, and some areas were affected very little, but others were all but entirely depopulated The Black Death hit the culture of towns and cities disproportionately hard although rural areas, where most of the population lived at the time, were also significantly affected  Larger cities were the worst off, as population densities and close living quarters made disease transmission easier  Cities were also strikingly filthy, infested with lice, fleas, and rats, and subject to diseases caused by malnutrition and poor hygiene  The population of the city of Florence was reduced from 110,000 to 120,000 inhabitants in 1338 to 50,000 in 1351  In the cities of Hamburg and Bremen, 60–70% of the inhabitants died  In Provence, Dauphiné, and Normandy, historians observe a decrease of 60% of fiscal hearths  In some regions, two thirds of the population was annihilated  In the town of Givry, in the Bourgogne region of France, the local friar, who used to note 28–29 funerals a year, recorded 649 deaths in 1348, half of them in September  About half the population of Perpignan died over the course of several months (only two of the eight physicians survived the plague)  Over 60% of Norway's population died between 1348 and 1350  London may have lost two thirds of its population during the 1348–49 outbreak; England as a whole may have lost 70% of its population, which declined from 7 million before the plague to 2 million in 1400 Some places, including the Kingdom of Poland, parts of Hungary, the Brabant region, Hainaut, and Limbourg (in modern Belgium), as well as Santiago de Compostela, were unaffected for unknown reasons  Some historians have assumed that the presence of resistant blood groups in the local population helped them resist infection, but the regions were touched by the second plague outbreak in 1360–1363 (the "little mortality") and later during the numerous resurgences of the plague (in 1366–1369, 1374–75, 1400, 1407 etc )  Other areas escaping the plague were isolated in mountainous regions such as the Pyrenees 
All social classes were affected, but the lower classes, living together in unhealthy places, were most vulnerable  Alfonso XI of Castile and Joan of Navarre (daughter of Louis X le Hutin and Margaret of Burgundy) were the only European monarchs to die of the plague, but Peter IV of Aragon lost his wife, his daughter and a niece in six months  Joan of England, daughter of Edward III, died in Bordeaux on her way to Castile to marry Alfonso's son Pedro  The Byzantine Emperor lost his son, while in the Kingdom of France, Bonne of Luxembourg, the wife of the future John II of France, died of the plague 

Asia
Estimates of the demographic effect of the plague in Asia are based on population figures during the time and estimates of the disease's toll on population centers  The most severe outbreak of plague, in the Chinese province of Hubei in 1334, claimed up to 80% of the population  China had several epidemics and famines from 1200 to the 1350s and its population decreased from an estimated 125 million to 65 million in the late 14th century The precise demographic effect of the disease in the Middle East is very difficult to calculate  Mortality was particularly high in rural areas, including significant areas of Gaza and Syria  Many rural people fled, leaving their fields and crops, and entire rural provinces are recorded as being totally depopulated  Surviving records in some cities reveal a devastating number of deaths  The 1348 outbreak in Gaza left an estimated 10,000 people dead, and Aleppo recorded a death rate of 500 per day during the same year  In Damascus, at the disease's peak in September and October 1348, a thousand deaths were recorded every day, with overall mortality estimated at between 25 and 38 percent  Syria had lost a total of 400,000 people when the epidemic subsided, in March 1349  In contrast to some higher mortality estimates in Asia and Europe, scholars such as John Fields of Trinity College, Dublin, believe the mortality rate in the Middle East to have been less than one third of the total population, with higher rates in selected areas 

Social, environmental, and economic effects
Because 14th-century healers were at a loss to explain the cause of the Black Death, many Europeans gave supernatural forces, earthquakes, malicious conspiracies and other things as possible reasons for the plague's emergence  No one in the 14th century considered rat control a way to ward off the plague, and people began to believe that only God's anger could produce such horrific displays of suffering and death  Giovanni Boccaccio, an Italian writer and poet of the era, questioned whether it was sent by God for their correction, or if it came through the influence of the heavenly bodies  Christians accused Jews of poisoning public water supplies and alleged that Jews were making an effort to ruin European civilization  The spreading of those rumours led to the complete destruction of entire Jewish towns  In February 1349, 2,000 Jews were murdered in Strasbourg  In August that year, the Jewish communities of Mainz and Cologne were murdered Where government authorities were concerned, most monarchs instituted measures that prohibited exports of foodstuffs, condemned black market speculators, set price controls on grain and outlawed large-scale fishing  At best, those proved mostly unenforceable; at worst, they contributed to a continental downward spiral  The hardest-hit lands, like England, were unable to buy grain abroad from France because of the prohibition and from most of the rest of the grain producers because of crop failures from shortage of labour  Any grain that could be shipped was eventually taken by pirates or looters to be sold on the black market  Meanwhile, many of the largest countries, most notably England and Scotland, had been at war, used up much of their treasury which exacerbated inflation  In 1337, on the eve of the first wave of the Black Death, England and France went to war in what would become known as the Hundred Years' War  Malnutrition, poverty, disease and hunger, coupled with war, growing inflation and other economic concerns, made Europe in the mid-14th century ripe for tragedy 
The historian Walter Scheidel contends that waves of plague following the initial outbreak of the Black Death had a levelling effect, which changed the ratio of land to labour by reducing the value of the former and boosting that of the latter, which lowered economic inequality by making landowners and employers less well-off and improved the lot of the workers: "the observed improvement in living standards of the laboring population was rooted in the suffering and premature death of tens of millions over the course of several generations"  The levelling effect was reversed by a "demographic recovery that resulted in renewed population pressure"  On the other hand, in the quarter-century after the Black Death, many labourers, artisans, and craftsmen, those living from money-wages alone, suffer a reduction in real incomes in England from rampant inflation  In 1357, a third of property in London was unused because of a severe outbreak in 1348–49  However, for reasons still debated, population levels declined after the Black Death's first outbreak until around 1420 and did not begin to rise again until 1470 and so the initial Black Death event on its own does not entirely provide a satisfactory explanation to that extended period of decline in prosperity  See medieval demography for a more complete treatment of this issue and current theories on why improvements in living standards took longer to evolve 

Peasantry
The great population loss brought favorable results to the surviving peasants in England and the rest of Western Europe  There was increased social mobility, as depopulation further eroded the peasants' already-weakened obligations to remain on their traditional holdings  Seigneurialism never recovered  Land was plentiful, wages high, and serfdom had all but disappeared  It was possible to move about and rise higher in life  Younger sons and women especially benefited  As population growth resumed, however, peasants again faced deprivation and famine In Eastern Europe, by contrast, renewed stringency of laws tied the remaining peasantry more tightly to the land than ever before through serfdom 
Furthermore, the plague's great population reduction brought cheaper land prices; more food for the average peasant; and a relatively large increase in per capita income among the peasantry, if not immediately, in the coming century  Since the plague left vast areas of farmland untended, they were made available for pasture and put more meat on the market  The consumption of meat and dairy products went up, as did the export of beef and butter from the Low Countries, Scandinavia and northern Germany  However, the upper class often attempted to stop the changes, initially in Western Europe and more forcefully and successfully in Eastern Europe, by instituting sumptuary laws  They regulated what people (particularly of the peasant class) could wear so that nobles could ensure that peasants did not begin to dress and act as a higher-class member with their increased wealth  Another tactic was to fix prices and wages so that peasants could not demand more with increasing value  In England, the Statute of Labourers 1351 was enforced, which stated that no peasant could ask for more wages than in 1346  That was met with varying success depending on the amount of rebellion it inspired  Such a law was one of the causes of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt in England 
The rapid development of the use was probably one of the consequences of the Black Death during which many landowning nobles died and left their realty to their widows and minor orphans 

Urban workers
In the wake of the drastic population decline brought on by the plague, wages shot up, and labourers could move to new localities in response to wage offers  Local and royal authorities in Western Europe instituted wage controls  The government controls sought to freeze wages at the old levels before the Black Death  Within England, for example, the Ordinance of Labourers, enacted in 1349, and the Statute of Labourers, enacted in 1351, restricted both wage increases and the relocation of workers  If workers attempted to leave their current post, employers were given the right to have them imprisoned  The statute was poorly enforced in most areas, and farm wages in England on average doubled between 1350 and 1450, but they were then static until the late 19th century Cohn, comparing numerous countries, argues that the laws were not designed primarily to freeze wages  Instead, he says that the energetic local and royal measures to control labour and artisans' prices were responses to elite fears of the greed and the possible new powers of the lesser classes that had gained new freedom  Cohn continues that the laws reflected the anxiety that followed the Black Death's new horrors of mass mortality and destruction and from elite anxiety about manifestations, such as the flagellant movement and the persecution of Jews, Catalans (in Sicily) and beggars 

Labour-saving adaptations
The Black Death encouraged innovation of labour-saving technologies, leading to higher productivity  There was also a shift from grain farming to animal husbandry  Grain farming was very labor-intensive, but animal husbandry needed only a shepherd and a few dogs and pastureland By 1200, virtually all of the Mediterranean basin and most of northern Germany had been deforested and cultivated  Indigenous flora and fauna were replaced by domestic grasses and animals, and domestic woodlands were lost  With depopulation, the process was reversed  Much of the primeval vegetation returned, and abandoned fields and pastures were reforested 

Changing land-contracts and end of serfdom
Plague brought an eventual end of serfdom in Western Europe  The manorial system was already in trouble, but the Black Death assured its demise throughout much of Western and Central Europe by 1500  Severe depopulation and migration of the village to cities caused an acute shortage of agricultural labourers  Many villages were abandoned  In England, more than 1300 villages were deserted between 1350 and 1500  Wages of labourers were high, but the rise in nominal wages after the Black Death was swamped by inflation and so real wages fell Labour was in such a short supply that landlords were forced to give better terms of tenure  That resulted in much lower rents in Western Europe  By 1500, a new form of tenure called copyhold became prevalent in Europe  In copyhold, both a landlord and peasant made their best business deal, whereby the peasant got use of the land and the landlord got a fixed annual payment, and both possessed a copy of the tenure agreement  Serfdom did not end everywhere and lingered in parts of Western Europe and was introduced to Eastern Europe only after the Black Death There was also a change in inheritance law  Before the plague, only sons, especially the eldest son, inherited the ancestral property  After the Plague, all sons and daughters started to inherit property 

Persecutions
Renewed religious fervor and fanaticism came in the wake of the Black Death  Some Europeans targeted "groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims" lepers and Romani, who were thought to have caused the crisis 
Differences in cultural and lifestyle practices also led to persecution  As the plague swept across Europe in the mid-14th century and annihilating more than half the population, Jews were taken as scapegoats, in part because better hygiene among Jewish communities and isolation in the ghettos meant that Jews were less affected  Accusations spread that Jews had caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells  Mobs attacked Jewish settlements across Europe; by 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed, and more than 350 separate massacres had occurred 
According to Joseph P  Byrne, women also faced persecution during the Black Death  Muslim women in Cairo became scapegoats when the plague struck  Byrne writes that in 1438, the sultan of Cairo was informed by his religious lawyers, that the arrival of the plague was "Allah's punishment for the sin of fornication" and that in accordance with that theory, a law was set in place stating that women were not allowed to make public appearances, as "they may tempt men into sin"  Byrne describes that law as being lifted only when "the wealthy complained that their female servants could not shop for food" 

Religion
The Black Death hit the monasteries very hard because of their proximity with the sick who sought refuge there  That left a severe shortage of clergy after the epidemic cycle  Eventually, the losses were replaced by hastily-trained and inexperienced clergy members, many of whom knew little of the rigours of their predecessors  New colleges were opened at established universities, and the training process was sped up  The shortage of priests opened new opportunities for laywomen to assume more extensive and more important service roles in the local parish 

Flagellants practiced self-flogging (whipping of oneself) to atone for sins  The movement became popular after the Black Death  It may be that the flagellants' later involvement in hedonism was an effort to accelerate, to absorb God's wrath and to shorten the time with which others suffered  More likely, the focus of attention and popularity of their cause contributed to a sense that the world itself was ending and that their individual actions were of no consequence 
Reformers rarely pointed to failures on the part of the Church in dealing with the catastrophe 

Cultural effects
The Black Death had profound effects on art and literature  After 1350, European culture in general turned very morbid  The general mood was one of pessimism, and contemporary art turned dark with representations of death  The widespread image of the "dance of death" showed death (a skeleton) choosing victims at random  Many of the most graphic depictions come from writers such as Boccaccio and Petrarch  Peire Lunel de Montech, writing about 1348 in the lyric style long out of fashion, composed the following sorrowful sirventes "Meravilhar no·s devo pas las gens" during the height of the plague in Toulouse:

They died by the hundreds, both day and night, and all were thrown in    ditches and covered with earth  And as soon as those ditches were filled, more were dug  And I, Agnolo di Tura    buried my five children with my own hands     And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world 
Boccaccio wrote:

How many valiant men, how many fair ladies, breakfast with their kinfolk and the same night supped with their ancestors in the next world! The condition of the people was pitiable to behold  They sickened by the thousands daily, and died unattended and without help  Many died in the open street, others dying in their houses, made it known by the stench of their rotting bodies  Consecrated churchyards did not suffice for the burial of the vast multitude of bodies, which were heaped by the hundreds in vast trenches, like goods in a ship's hold and covered with a little earth 

Medicine
Although the Black Death highlighted the shortcomings of medical science in the Middle Ages, it also led to positive changes in the field of medicine  As described by David Herlihy in The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, more emphasis was placed on "anatomical investigations" after the Black Death  The way that individuals studied the human body notably changed and became a process that dealt more directly with the human body in varied states of sickness and health  Furthermore, the importance of surgeons became more evident A theory put forth by Stephen O'Brien is that the Black Death is likely responsible by natural selection for the high frequency of the CCR5-Δ32 genetic defect in people of European descent  The gene affects T cell function and provides protection against HIV, smallpox and possibly plague, but for the last, no explanation exists on how it would do that  However, that is now challenged since the CCR5-Δ32 gene has been found to be just as common in Bronze Age tissue samples 

Architecture
The Black Death also inspired European architecture to move in two different directions: (1) a revival of Greco-Roman styles, and (2) a further elaboration of the Gothic style  Late medieval churches had impressive structures centred on verticality in which one's eye is drawn up towards the high ceiling  The basic Gothic style was revamped with elaborate decoration in the late medieval period  Sculptors in Italian city-states emulated the work of their Roman forefathers, and sculptors in Northern Europe, no doubt inspired by the devastation they had witnessed, gave way to a heightened expression of emotion and an emphasis on individual differences  A tough realism came forth in architecture as in literature  Images of intense sorrow, decaying corpses and individuals with faults as well as virtues emerged  North of the Alps, painting reached a pinnacle of precise realism with Early Dutch painting by artists such as Jan van Eyck (c  1390 – 1441)  The natural world was reproduced in those works with meticulous detail whose realism was not unlike photography 

See also
Economic consequences of population decline
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic



ground_truth: 30% to 65%