title: Ethnic cleansing

text: There is no international treaty that specifies a specific crime of ethnic cleansing; however, ethnic cleansing in the broad sense—the forcible deportation of a population—is defined as a crime against humanity under the statutes of both the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The gross human rights violations integral to stricter definitions of ethnic cleansing are treated as separate crimes falling under public international law of crimes against humanity and in certain circumstances genocide. There are also situations, such as the expulsion of Germans after World War II, where ethnic cleansing has taken place without legal redress (see "Preussische Treuhand v. Poland"). Timothy V. Waters argues that similar ethnic cleansing could go unpunished in the future.


title: Ethnic cleansing

text: Some say that failed states see most mass killing, often in an anarchic manner. According to Michael Mann, in "The Dark Side of Democracy" (2004), murderous ethnic cleansing is strongly related to the creation of democracies. He argues that murderous ethnic cleansing is due to the rise of nationalism, which associates citizenship with a specific ethnic group. Democracy, therefore, is tied to ethnic and national forms of exclusion. Nevertheless, it is not democratic states that are more prone to commit ethnic cleansing, because minorities tend to have constitutional guarantees. Neither are stable authoritarian regimes (except the nazi and communist regimes) which are likely perpetrators of murderous ethnic cleansing, but those regimes that are in process of democratization. Ethnic hostility appears where ethnicity overshadows social classes as the primordial system of social stratification. Usually, in deeply divided societies, categories such as class and ethnicity are deeply intertwined, and when an ethnic group is seen as oppressor or exploitative of the other, serious ethnic conflict can develop. Michael Mann holds that when two ethnic groups claim sovereignty over the same territory and can feel threatened, their differences can lead to severe grievances and danger of ethnic cleansing. The perpetration of murderous ethnic cleansing tends to occur in unstable geopolitical environments and in contexts of war. As ethnic cleansing requires high levels of organisation and is usually directed by states or other authoritative powers, perpetrators are usually state powers or institutions with some coherence and capacity, not failed states as it is generally perceived. The perpetrator powers tend to get support by core constituencies that favour combinations of nationalism, statism and violence.


title: Ethnic cleansing

text: Ethnic cleansing is part of a continuum of violence whose most extreme form is genocide, where the perpetrator's goal is the destruction of the targeted group. Ethnic cleansing is similar to forced deportation or population transfer whereas genocide is the attempt to destroy part or all of a particular ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. While ethnic cleansing and genocide may share the same goal and the acts which are used to perpetrate both crimes may often resemble each other, ethnic cleansing is intended to displace a persecuted population from a given territory, while genocide is intended to destroy a group.


title: Ethnic cleansing

text: Some academics consider genocide to be a subset of "murderous ethnic cleansing". As Norman Naimark writes, these concepts are different but related, for "literally and figuratively, ethnic cleansing bleeds into genocide, as mass murder is committed in order to rid the land of a people". William Schabas adds, "Ethnic cleansing is also a warning sign of genocide to come. Genocide is the last resort of the frustrated ethnic cleanser." Sociologist Martin Shaw has criticized distinguishing between ethnic cleansing and genocide as both ultimately result in the destruction of a group though coercive violence.


title: Ethnic cleansing

text: The foibe massacres, or simply "the foibe", refers to mass killings both during and after World War II, mainly committed by Yugoslav Partisans and OZNA in the then-Italian territories of Julian March (Karst Region and Istria), Kvarner and Dalmatia also against the local ethnic Italian population (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians). The type of attack was state terrorism and ethnic cleansing against Italians. The foibe massacres were followed by the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus, which was the post-World War II exodus and departure of between 230,000 and 350,000 of local ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians) towards Italy, and in smaller numbers, towards the Americas and Australia. From 1947, after the war, they were subject by Yugoslav authorities to less violent forms of intimidation, such as nationalization, expropriation, and discriminatory taxation, which gave them little option other than emigration. In 1953, there were 36,000 declared Italians in Yugoslavia, just about 16% of the original Italian population before World War II. According to the census organized in Croatia in 2001 and that organized in Slovenia in 2002, the Italians who remained in the former Yugoslavia amounted to 21,894 people (2,258 in Slovenia and 19,636 in Croatia).


title: Ethnic cleansing

text: When enforced as part of a political settlement, as happened with the expulsion of Germans after World War II through the forced resettlement of ethnic Germans to Germany in its reduced borders after 1945, the forced population movements, constituting a type of ethnic cleansing, may contribute to long-term stability of a post-Conflict nation. Some justifications may be made as to why the targeted group will be moved in the conflict resolution stages, as in the case of the ethnic Germans, some individuals of the large German population in Czechoslovakia and prewar Poland had encouraged Nazi jingoism before World War II, but this was forcibly resolved.


title: Ethnic cleansing

text: In many cases, the side perpetrating the alleged ethnic cleansing and its allies have fiercely disputed the charge. Ethnic cleansing is usually accompanied by efforts to remove physical and cultural evidence of the targeted group in the territory through the destruction of homes, social centers, farms, and infrastructure, as well as through the desecration of monuments, cemeteries, and places of worship.


title: Ethnic cleansing

text: Mutual ethnic cleansing occurs when two groups commit ethnic cleansing against minority members of the other group within their own territories. For instance in the 1920s, Greece expelled its Turkish minority and Turkey expelled its Greek minority. Other examples of mutual ethnic cleansings include the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the demographic transfers of Poles and Ukrainians after WWII.


title: Brain tumor

text: A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and secondary tumors, which most commonly have spread from tumors located outside the brain, known as brain metastasis tumors. All types of brain tumors may produce symptoms that vary depending on the size of the tumor and the part of the brain that is involved. Where symptoms exist, they may include headaches, seizures, problems with vision, vomiting and mental changes. Other symptoms may include difficulty walking, speaking, with sensations, or unconsciousness.


title: Brain tumor

text: The cause of most brain tumors is unknown. Uncommon risk factors include exposure to vinyl chloride, Epstein–Barr virus, ionizing radiation, and inherited syndromes such as neurofibromatosis, tuberous sclerosis, and von Hippel-Lindau Disease. Studies on mobile phone exposure have not shown a clear risk. The most common types of primary tumors in adults are meningiomas (usually benign) and astrocytomas such as glioblastomas. In children, the most common type is a malignant medulloblastoma. Diagnosis is usually by medical examination along with computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The result is then often confirmed by a biopsy. Based on the findings, the tumors are divided into different grades of severity.


title: Brain tumor

text: Treatment may include some combination of surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Since the brain is the body's only non-fungible organ, surgery carries a risk of the tumor returning. If seizures occur, anticonvulsant medication may be needed. Dexamethasone and furosemide are medications that may be used to decrease swelling around the tumor. Some tumors grow gradually, requiring only monitoring and possibly needing no further intervention. Treatments that use a person's immune system are being studied. Outcomes for malignant tumors vary considerably depending on the type of tumor and how far it has spread at diagnosis. Although benign tumors only grow in one area, they may still be life-threatening depending on their size and location. Malignant glioblastomas usually have very poor outcomes, while benign meningiomas usually have good outcomes. The average five-year survival rate for all (malignant) brain cancers in the United States is 33%.


title: Brain tumor

text: Secondary, or metastatic, brain tumors are about four times as common as primary brain tumors, with about half of metastases coming from lung cancer. Primary brain tumors occur in around 250,000 people a year globally, and make up less than 2% of cancers. In children younger than 15, brain tumors are second only to acute lymphoblastic leukemia as the most common form of cancer. In NSW Australia in 2005, the average lifetime economic cost of a case of brain cancer was AU$1.9 million, the greatest of any type of cancer.


title: Brain tumor

text: The signs and symptoms of brain tumors are broad. People may experience symptoms regardless of whether the tumor is benign (not cancerous) or cancerous. Primary and secondary brain tumors present with similar symptoms, depending on the location, size, and rate of growth of the tumor. For example, larger tumors in the frontal lobe can cause changes in the ability to think. However, a smaller tumor in an area such as Wernicke's area (small area responsible for language comprehension) can result in a greater loss of function.


title: Brain tumor

text: Headaches as a result of raised intracranial pressure can be an early symptom of brain cancer. However, isolated headache without other symptoms is rare, and other symptoms including visual abnormalities may occur before headaches become common. Certain warning signs for headache exist which make the headache more likely to be associated with brain cancer. These are, as defined by the American Academy of Neurology: "abnormal neurological examination, headache worsened by Valsalva maneuver, headache causing awakening from sleep, new headache in the older population, progressively worsening headache, atypical headache features, or patients who do not fulfill the strict definition of migraine". Other associated signs are headaches that are worse in the morning or that subside after vomiting.


title: Brain tumor

text: The brain is divided into lobes and each lobe or area has its own function. A tumor in any of these lobes may affect the area's performance. The symptoms experienced are often linked to the location of the tumor, but each person may experience something different.


title: Brain tumor

text: A person's personality may be altered due to the tumor damaging lobes of the brain. Since the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes control inhibition, emotions, mood, judgement, reasoning, and behavior, a tumor in those regions can cause inappropriate social behavior, temper tantrums, laughing at things which merit no laughter, and even psychological symptoms such as depression and anxiety. More research is needed into the effectiveness and safety of medication for depression in people with brain tumors.


title: Brain tumor

text: Personality changes can have damaging effects such as unemployment, unstable relationships, and a lack of control.


title: Brain tumor

text: Epidemiological studies are required to determine risk factors. Aside from exposure to vinyl chloride or ionizing radiation, there are no known environmental factors associated with brain tumors. Mutations and deletions of tumor suppressor genes, such as P53, are thought to be the cause of some forms of brain tumor. Inherited conditions, such as Von Hippel–Lindau disease, tuberous sclerosis, multiple endocrine neoplasia, and neurofibromatosis type 2 carry a high risk for the development of brain tumors. People with celiac disease have a slightly increased risk of developing brain tumors. Smoking has been suggested to increase the risk but evidence remains unclear.


title: Brain tumor

text: Although studies have not shown any link between cell phone or mobile phone radiation and the occurrence of brain tumors, the World Health Organization has classified mobile phone radiation on the IARC scale into Group 2B – possibly carcinogenic. The claim that cell phone usage may cause brain cancer is likely based on epidemiological studies which observed a slight increase in glioma risk among heavy users of wireless phones. When those studies were conducted, GSM (2G) phones were in use. Modern, third-generation (3G) phones emit, on average, about 1% of the energy emitted by those GSM (2G) phones, and therefore the finding of an association between cell phone usage and increased risk of brain cancer is not based upon current phone usage.


title: Brain tumor

text: Human brains are surrounded by a system of connective tissue membranes called meninges that separate the brain from the skull. This three-layered covering is composed of (from the outside in) the dura mater, arachnoid mater, and pia mater. The arachnoid and pia are physically connected and thus often considered as a single layer, the "leptomeninges". Between the arachnoid mater and the pia mater is the subarachnoid space which contains cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). This fluid circulates in the narrow spaces between cells and through the cavities in the brain called ventricles, to support and protect the brain tissue. Blood vessels enter the central nervous system through the perivascular space above the pia mater. The cells in the blood vessel walls are joined tightly, forming the blood–brain barrier which protects the brain from toxins that might enter through the blood.


title: Brain tumor

text: Tumors of the meninges are meningiomas and are often benign. Though not technically a tumor of brain tissue, they are often considered brain tumors since they protrude into the space where the brain is, causing symptoms. Since they are usually slow-growing tumors, meningiomas can be quite large by the time symptoms appear.


title: Brain tumor

text: The brains of humans and other vertebrates are composed of very soft tissue and have a gelatin-like texture. Living brain tissue has a pink tint in color on the outside (gray matter), and nearly complete white on the inside (white matter), with subtle variations in color. The three largest divisions of the brain are:


title: Brain tumor

text: These areas are composed of two broad classes of cells: neurons and glia. These two types are equally numerous in the brain as a whole, although glial cells outnumber neurons roughly 4 to 1 in the cerebral cortex. Glia come in several types, which perform a number of critical functions, including structural support, metabolic support, insulation, and guidance of development. Primary tumors of the glial cells are called gliomas and often are malignant by the time they are diagnosed.


title: Brain tumor

text: The thalamus and hypothalamus are major divisions of the diencephalon, with the pituitary gland and pineal gland attached at the bottom; tumors of the pituitary and pineal gland are often benign.


title: Brain tumor

text: The brainstem lies between the large cerebral cortex and the spinal cord. It is divided into the midbrain, pons, and medulla oblongata.


title: Brain tumor

text: The spinal cord is considered a part of the central nervous system. It is made up of the same cells as the brain: neurons and glial cells.


title: Brain tumor

text: Although there is no specific or singular symptom or sign, the presence of a combination of symptoms and the lack of corresponding indications of other causes can be an indicator for investigation towards the possibility of a brain tumor. Brain tumors have similar characteristics and obstacles when it comes to diagnosis and therapy with tumors located elsewhere in the body. However, they create specific issues that follow closely to the properties of the organ they are in.


title: Brain tumor

text: The diagnosis will often start by taking a medical history noting medical antecedents, and current symptoms. Clinical and laboratory investigations will serve to exclude infections as the cause of the symptoms. Examinations in this stage may include the eyes, otolaryngological (or ENT) and electrophysiological exams. The use of electroencephalography (EEG) often plays a role in the diagnosis of brain tumors.


title: Brain tumor

text: Brain tumors, when compared to tumors in other areas of the body, pose a challenge for diagnosis. Commonly, radioactive tracers are uptaken in large volumes in tumors due to the high activity of tumor cells, allowing for radioactive imaging of the tumor. However, most of the brain is separated from the blood by the blood–brain barrier (BBB), a membrane that exerts a strict control over what substances are allowed to pass into the brain. Therefore, many tracers that may reach tumors in other areas of the body easily would be unable to reach brain tumors until there was a disruption of the BBB by the tumor. Disruption of the BBB is well imaged via MRI or CT scan, and is therefore regarded as the main diagnostic indicator for malignant gliomas, meningiomas, and brain metastases.


title: Brain tumor

text: Swelling or obstruction of the passage of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from the brain may cause (early) signs of increased intracranial pressure which translates clinically into headaches, vomiting, or an altered state of consciousness, and in children changes to the diameter of the skull and bulging of the fontanelles. More complex symptoms such as endocrine dysfunctions should alarm doctors not to exclude brain tumors.


title: Brain tumor

text: A bilateral temporal visual field defect (due to compression of the optic chiasm) or dilation of the pupil, and the occurrence of either slowly evolving or the sudden onset of focal neurologic symptoms, such as cognitive and behavioral impairment (including impaired judgment, memory loss, lack of recognition, spatial orientation disorders), personality or emotional changes, hemiparesis, hypoesthesia, aphasia, ataxia, visual field impairment, impaired sense of smell, impaired hearing, facial paralysis, double vision, or more severe symptoms such as tremors, paralysis on one side of the body hemiplegia, or (epileptic) seizures in a patient with a negative history for epilepsy, should raise the possibility of a brain tumor.


title: Brain tumor

text: Medical imaging plays a central role in the diagnosis of brain tumors. Early imaging methods – invasive and sometimes dangerous – such as pneumoencephalography and cerebral angiography have been abandoned in favor of non-invasive, high-resolution techniques, especially magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) scans, though MRI is typically the reference standard used. Neoplasms will often show as differently colored masses (also referred to as processes) in CT or MRI results.


title: Brain tumor

text: More recently, advancements have been made to increase the utility of MRI in providing physiological data that can help to inform diagnosis and prognosis. MRI itself is sufficient in identifying the brain tumor’s location and morphology, but other types of MRI may be used on top of that, such as MRA, MRS, pMRI, fMRI, and DWI. These imaging techniques help doctors and surgeons to diagnose the type of tumor, to plan for surgery, and to assess treatment and radiation/chemotherapy.


title: Brain tumor

text: Magnetic Resonance Angiography (MRA)- looks at the blood vessels in the brain. In the diagnosis of brain tumor, MRAs are typically carried out before surgery to help surgeons get a better understanding of the tumor vasculature. For example, a study was done where surgeons were able to separate benign brain tumors from malignant ones by analyzing the shapes of the blood vessels that were extracted from MRA. Although not required, some MRA may inject contrast agent, gadolinium, into the patient to get an enhanced image


title: Brain tumor

text: Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS)- measures the metabolic changes or chemical changes inside the tumor. The most common MRS is proton spectroscopy with its frequency measured in parts per million (ppm). Gliomas or malignant brain tumors have different spectra from normal brain tissue in that they have greater choline levels and lower N-acetyl aspartate (NAA) signals. Using MRS in brain tumor diagnosis can help doctors identify the type of tumor and its aggressiveness. For example, benign brain tumors or meningioma have increased alanine levels. It can also help to distinguish brain tumors from scar tissues or dead tissues caused by previous radiation treatment, which does not have increased choline levels that brain tumors have, and from tumor-mimicking lesions such as abscesses or infarcts.


title: Brain tumor

text: Perfusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (pMRI)- assess the blood volume and blood flow of different parts of the brain and brain tumors. pMRI requires the injection of contrast agent, usually gadopentetate dimeglumine (Gd-DTPA) into the veins in order to enhance the contrast. pMRI provides a cerebral blood volume map that shows the tumor vascularity and angiogenesis. Brain tumors would require a larger blood supply and thus, would show a high cerebral blood volume on the pMRI map. The vascular morphology and degree of angiogenesis from pMRI help to determine the grade and malignancy of brain tumors. For brain tumor diagnosis, pMRI is useful in determining the best site to perform biopsy and to help reduce sampling error. pMRI is also valuable for after treatment to determine if the abnormal area is a remaining tumor or a scar tissue. For patients that are undergoing anti-angiogenesis cancer therapy, pMRI can give the doctors a better sense of efficacy of the treatment by monitoring tumor cerebral blood volume.


title: Brain tumor

text: Functional MRI (fMRI)- measures blood flow changes in active parts of the brain while the patient is performing tasks and provides specific locations of the brain that are responsible for certain functions. Before performing a brain tumor surgery on patients, neurosurgeons would use fMRI to avoid damage to structures of the brain that correspond with important brain functions while resecting the tumor at the same time. Preoperative fMRI is important because it is often difficult to distinguish the anatomy near the tumor as it distorts its surrounding regions. Neurosurgeons would use fMRI to plan whether to perform a resection where tumor is surgically removed as much as possible, a biopsy where they take a surgical sampling amount to provide a diagnosis, or to not undergo surgery at all. For example, a neurosurgeon may be opposed to resecting a tumor near the motor cortex as that would affect the patient’s movements. Without preoperative fMRI, the neurosurgeon would have to perform an awake-craniotomy where the patient would have to interact during open surgery to see if tumor removal would affect important brain functions.


title: Brain tumor

text: Diffusion Weighted Imaging (DWI)- a form of MRI that measures random Brownian motion of water molecules along a magnetic field gradient. For brain tumor diagnosis, measurement of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) in brain tumors allow doctors to categorize tumor type. Most brain tumors have higher ADC than normal brain tissues and doctors can match the observed ADC of the patient’s brain tumor with a list of accepted ADC to identify tumor type. DWI is also useful for treatment and therapy purposes where changes in diffusion can be analyzed in response to drug, radiation, or gene therapy. Successful response results in apoptosis and increase in diffusion while failed treatment results in unchanged diffusion values.


title: Brain tumor

text: Computed Tomography (CT) Scan- uses x-rays to take pictures from different angles and computer processing to combine the pictures into a 3D image. A CT scan usually serves as an alternative to MRI in cases where the patient cannot have an MRI due to claustrophobia or pacemaker. Compared to MRI, a CT scan shows a more detailed image of the bone structures near the tumor and can be used to measure the tumor’s size. Like an MRI, a contrast dye may also be injected into the veins or ingested by mouth before a CT scan to better outline any tumors that may be present. CT scans use contrast materials that are iodine-based and barium sulfate compounds. The downside of using CT scans as opposed to MRI is that some brain tumors do not show up well on CT scans because some intra-axial masses are faint and resemble normal brain tissue. In some scenarios, brain tumors in CT scans may be mistaken for infarction, infection, and demyelination. To suspect that an intra-axial mass is a brain tumor instead of other possibilities, there must be unexplained calcifications in the brain, preservation of the cortex, and disproportionate mass effect.


title: Brain tumor

text: CT Angiography (CTA)- provides information about the blood vessels in the brain using X-rays. A contrast agent is always required to be injected into the patient in the CT scanner. CTA serves as an alternative to MRA.


title: Brain tumor

text: Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Scan- uses radioactive substances, with the most common one being a sugar known as FDG. This injected substance is taken up by cells that are actively dividing. Tumor cells are more active in dividing so they would absorb more of the radioactive substance. After injection, a scanner would be used to create an image of the radioactive areas in the brain. PET scans are used more often for high-grade tumors than for low-grade tumors. It is useful after treatment to help doctors determine if the abnormal area on an MRI image is a remaining tumor or a scar tissue. Scar tissues will not show up on PET scans while tumors would.


title: Brain tumor

text: However, these techniques cannot alone diagnose high- versus low-grade gliomas, and thus the definitive diagnosis of brain tumor should only be confirmed by histological examination of tumor tissue samples obtained either by means of brain biopsy or open surgery. The histological examination is essential for determining the appropriate treatment and the correct prognosis. This examination, performed by a pathologist, typically has three stages: interoperative examination of fresh tissue, preliminary microscopic examination of prepared tissues, and follow-up examination of prepared tissues after immunohistochemical staining or genetic analysis.


title: Brain tumor

text: Tumors have characteristics that allow the determination of malignancy and how they will evolve, and determining these characteristics will allow the medical team to determine the management plan.


title: Brain tumor

text: Anaplasia or dedifferentiation: loss of differentiation of cells and of their orientation to one another and blood vessels, a characteristic of anaplastic tumor tissue. Anaplastic cells have lost total control of their normal functions and many have deteriorated cell structures. Anaplastic cells often have abnormally high nuclear-to-cytoplasmic ratios, and many are multinucleated. Additionally, the nucleus of anaplastic cells is usually unnaturally shaped or oversized. Cells can become anaplastic in two ways: neoplastic tumor cells can dedifferentiate to become anaplasias (the dedifferentiation causes the cells to lose all of their normal structure/function), or cancer stem cells can increase their capacity to multiply (i.e., uncontrollable growth due to failure of differentiation).


title: Brain tumor

text: Atypia: an indication of abnormality of a cell (which may be indicative of malignancy). Significance of the abnormality is highly dependent on context.


title: Brain tumor

text: Neoplasia: the (uncontrolled) division of cells. As such, neoplasia is not problematic but its consequences are: the uncontrolled division of cells means that the mass of a neoplasm increases in size, and in a confined space such as the intracranial cavity this quickly becomes problematic because the mass invades the space of the brain pushing it aside, leading to compression of the brain tissue and increased intracranial pressure and destruction of brain parenchyma. Increased intracranial pressure (ICP) may be attributable to the direct mass effect of the tumor, increased blood volume, or increased cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) volume, which may, in turn, have secondary symptoms.


title: Brain tumor

text: Necrosis: the (premature) death of cells, caused by external factors such as infection, toxin or trauma. Necrotic cells send the wrong chemical signals which prevent phagocytes from disposing of the dead cells, leading to a buildup of dead tissue, cell debris and toxins at or near the site of the necrotic cells


title: Brain tumor

text: Arterial and venous hypoxia, or the deprivation of adequate oxygen supply to certain areas of the brain, occurs when a tumor makes use of nearby blood vessels for its supply of blood and the neoplasm enters into competition for nutrients with the surrounding brain tissue. More generally a neoplasm may cause release of metabolic end products (e.g., free radicals, altered electrolytes, neurotransmitters), and release and recruitment of cellular mediators (e.g., cytokines) that disrupt normal parenchymal function.


title: Brain tumor

text: Tumors can be benign or malignant, can occur in different parts of the brain, and may be classified as primary or secondary. A primary tumor is one that has started in the brain, as opposed to a metastatic tumor, which is one that has spread to the brain from another area of the body. The incidence of metastatic tumors is approximately four times greater than primary tumors. Tumors may or may not be symptomatic: some tumors are discovered because the patient has symptoms, others show up incidentally on an imaging scan, or at an autopsy.


title: Brain tumor

text: Grading of the tumors of the central nervous system commonly occurs on a 4-point scale (I-IV) created by the World Health Organization in 1993. Grade I tumors are the least severe and commonly associated with long-term survival, with severity and prognosis worsening as the grade increases. Low-grade tumors are often benign, while higher grades are aggressively malignant and/or metastatic. Other grading scales do exist, many based upon the same criteria as the WHO scale and graded from I-IV.


title: Brain tumor

text: Secondary tumors of the brain are metastatic and have invaded the brain from cancers originating in other organs. This means that a cancerous neoplasm has developed in another organ elsewhere in the body and that cancer cells have leaked from that primary tumor and then entered the lymphatic system and blood vessels. They then circulate through the bloodstream, and are deposited in the brain. There, these cells continue growing and dividing, becoming another invasive neoplasm of primary cancer's tissue. Secondary tumors of the brain are very common in the terminal phases of patients with an incurable metastasized cancer; the most common types of cancers that bring about secondary tumors of the brain are lung cancer, breast cancer, malignant melanoma, kidney cancer, and colon cancer (in decreasing order of frequency).


title: Brain tumor

text: Secondary brain tumors are more common than primary ones; in the United States, there are about 170,000 new cases every year. Secondary brain tumors are the most common cause of tumors in the intracranial cavity. The skull bone structure can also be subject to a neoplasm that by its very nature reduces the volume of the intracranial cavity, and can damage the brain.


title: Brain tumor

text: Brain tumors or intracranial neoplasms can be cancerous (malignant) or non-cancerous (benign). However, the definitions of malignant or benign neoplasms differ from those commonly used in other types of cancerous or non-cancerous neoplasms in the body.


title: Brain tumor

text: In cancers elsewhere in the body, three malignant properties differentiate benign tumors from malignant forms of cancer: benign tumors are self-limited and do not invade or metastasize. Characteristics of malignant tumors include:


title: Brain tumor

text: Of the above malignant characteristics, some elements do not apply to primary neoplasms of the brain:


title: Brain tumor

text: In 2016, the WHO restructured their classifications of some categories of gliomas to include distinct genetic mutations that have been useful in differentiating tumor types, prognoses, and treatment responses. Genetic mutations are typically detected via immunohistochemistry, a technique that visualizes the presence or absence of a targeted protein via staining.


title: Brain tumor

text: Anaplastic astrocytoma, Anaplastic oligodendroglioma, Astrocytoma, Central neurocytoma, Choroid plexus carcinoma, Choroid plexus papilloma, Choroid plexus tumor, Colloid cyst, Dysembryoplastic neuroepithelial tumour, Ependymal tumor, Fibrillary astrocytoma, Giant-cell glioblastoma, Glioblastoma multiforme, Gliomatosis cerebri, Gliosarcoma, Hemangiopericytoma, Medulloblastoma, Medulloepithelioma, Meningeal carcinomatosis, Neuroblastoma, Neurocytoma, Oligoastrocytoma, Oligodendroglioma, Optic nerve sheath meningioma, Pediatric ependymoma, Pilocytic astrocytoma, Pinealoblastoma, Pineocytoma, Pleomorphic anaplastic neuroblastoma, Pleomorphic xanthoastrocytoma, Primary central nervous system lymphoma, Sphenoid wing meningioma, Subependymal giant cell astrocytoma, Subependymoma, Trilateral retinoblastoma.


title: Brain tumor

text: A medical team generally assesses the treatment options and presents them to the person affected and their family. Various types of treatment are available depending on tumor type and location, and may be combined to produce the best chances of survival:


title: Brain tumor

text: Survival rates in primary brain tumors depend on the type of tumor, age, functional status of the patient, the extent of surgical removal and other factors specific to each case.


title: Brain tumor

text: Standard care for anaplastic oligodendrogliomas and anaplastic oligoastrocytomas is surgery followed by radiotherapy. One study found a survival benefit for the addition of chemotherapy to radiotherapy after surgery, compared with radiotherapy alone.


title: Brain tumor

text: The primary and most desired course of action described in medical literature is surgical removal (resection) via craniotomy. Minimally invasive techniques are becoming the dominant trend in neurosurgical oncology. The main objective of surgery is to remove as many tumor cells as possible, with complete removal being the best outcome and cytoreduction ("debulking") of the tumor otherwise. A Gross Total Resection (GTR) occurs when all visible signs of the tumor are removed, and subsequent scans show no apparent tumor. In some cases access to the tumor is impossible and impedes or prohibits surgery.


title: Brain tumor

text: Many meningiomas, with the exception of some tumors located at the skull base, can be successfully removed surgically.


title: Brain tumor

text: Most pituitary adenomas can be removed surgically, often using a minimally invasive approach through the nasal cavity and skull base (trans-nasal, trans-sphenoidal approach). Large pituitary adenomas require a craniotomy (opening of the skull) for their removal. Radiotherapy, including stereotactic approaches, is reserved for inoperable cases.


title: Brain tumor

text: Several current research studies aim to improve the surgical removal of brain tumors by labeling tumor cells with 5-aminolevulinic acid that causes them to fluoresce. Postoperative radiotherapy and chemotherapy are integral parts of the therapeutic standard for malignant tumors.


title: Brain tumor

text: Multiple metastatic tumors are generally treated with radiotherapy and chemotherapy rather than surgery and the prognosis in such cases is determined by the primary tumor, and is generally poor.


title: Brain tumor

text: The goal of radiation therapy is to kill tumor cells while leaving normal brain tissue unharmed. In standard external beam radiation therapy, multiple treatments of standard-dose "fractions" of radiation are applied to the brain. This process is repeated for a total of 10 to 30 treatments, depending on the type of tumor. This additional treatment provides some patients with improved outcomes and longer survival rates.


title: Brain tumor

text: Radiosurgery is a treatment method that uses computerized calculations to focus radiation at the site of the tumor while minimizing the radiation dose to the surrounding brain. Radiosurgery may be an adjunct to other treatments, or it may represent the primary treatment technique for some tumors. Forms used include stereotactic radiosurgery, such as Gamma knife, Cyberknife or Novalis Tx radiosurgery.


title: Brain tumor

text: Radiotherapy is the most common treatment for secondary brain tumors. The amount of radiotherapy depends on the size of the area of the brain affected by cancer. Conventional external beam "whole-brain radiotherapy treatment" (WBRT) or "whole-brain irradiation" may be suggested if there is a risk that other secondary tumors will develop in the future. Stereotactic radiotherapy is usually recommended in cases involving fewer than three small secondary brain tumors. Radiotherapy may be used following, or in some cases in place of, resection of the tumor. Forms of radiotherapy used for brain cancer include external beam radiation therapy, the most common, and brachytherapy and proton therapy, the last especially used for children.


title: Brain tumor

text: People who receive stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and whole-brain radiation therapy (WBRT) for the treatment of metastatic brain tumors have more than twice the risk of developing learning and memory problems than those treated with SRS alone. Results of a 2021 systematic review found that when using SRS as the initial treatment, survival or death related to brain metastasis was not greater than alone versus SRS with WBRT.


title: Brain tumor

text: Postoperative conventional daily radiotherapy improves survival for adults with good functional well-being and high grade glioma compared to no postoperative radiotherapy. Hypofractionated radiation therapy has similar efficacy for survival as compared to conventional radiotherapy, particularly for individuals aged 60 and older with glioblastoma.


title: Brain tumor

text: Patients undergoing chemotherapy are administered drugs designed to kill tumor cells. Although chemotherapy may improve overall survival in patients with the most malignant primary brain tumors, it does so in only about 20 percent of patients. Chemotherapy is often used in young children instead of radiation, as radiation may have negative effects on the developing brain. The decision to prescribe this treatment is based on a patient's overall health, type of tumor, and extent of cancer. The toxicity and many side effects of the drugs, and the uncertain outcome of chemotherapy in brain tumors puts this treatment further down the line of treatment options with surgery and radiation therapy preferred.


title: Brain tumor

text: UCLA Neuro-Oncology publishes real-time survival data for patients with a diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme. They are the only institution in the United States that displays how brain tumor patients are performing on current therapies. They also show a listing of chemotherapy agents used to treat high-grade glioma tumors.


title: Brain tumor

text: Genetic mutations have significant effects on the effectiveness of chemotherapy. Gliomas with IDH1 or IDH2 mutations respond better to chemotherapy than those without the mutation. Loss of chromosome arms 1p and 19q also indicate better response to chemoradiation.


title: Brain tumor

text: A shunt may be used to relieve symptoms caused by intracranial pressure, by reducing the build-up of fluid (hydrocephalus) caused by the blockage of the free flow of cerebrospinal fluid.


title: Brain tumor

text: The prognosis of brain cancer depends on the type of cancer diagnosed. Medulloblastoma has a good prognosis with chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgical resection while glioblastoma multiforme has a median survival of only 12 months even with aggressive chemoradiotherapy and surgery. Brainstem gliomas have the poorest prognosis of any form of brain cancer, with most patients dying within one year, even with therapy that typically consists of radiation to the tumor along with corticosteroids. However, one type, focal brainstem gliomas in children, seems open to exceptional prognosis and long-term survival has frequently been reported.


title: Brain tumor

text: Prognosis is also affected by presentation of genetic mutations. Certain mutations provide better prognosis than others. IDH1 and IDH2 mutations in gliomas, as well as deletion of chromosome arms 1p and 19q, generally indicate better prognosis. TP53, ATRX, EGFR, PTEN, and TERT mutations are also useful in determining prognosis.


title: Brain tumor

text: Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most aggressive (grade IV) and most common form of a malignant brain tumor. Even when aggressive multimodality therapy consisting of radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and surgical excision is used, median survival is only 12–17 months. Standard therapy for glioblastoma multiforme consists of maximal surgical resection of the tumor, followed by radiotherapy between two and four weeks after the surgical procedure to remove the cancer, then by chemotherapy, such as temozolomide. Most patients with glioblastoma take a corticosteroid, typically dexamethasone, during their illness to relieve symptoms. Experimental treatments include targeted therapy, gamma knife radiosurgery, boron neutron capture therapy, gene therapy, and chemowafer implants.


title: Brain tumor

text: Oligodendrogliomas are incurable but slowly progressive malignant brain tumors. They can be treated with surgical resection, chemotherapy, radiotherapy or a combination. For some suspected low-grade (grade II) tumors, only a course of watchful waiting and symptomatic therapy is opted for. These tumors show a high frequency of co-deletions of the p and q arms of chromosome 1 and chromosome 19 respectively (1p19q co-deletion) and have been found to be especially chemosensitive with one report claiming them to be one of the most chemosensitive tumors. A median survival of up to 16.7 years has been reported for grade II oligodendrogliomas.


title: Brain tumor

text: Acoustic neuromas are non-cancerous tumors. They can be treated with surgery, radiation therapy, or observation. Early intervention with surgery or radiation is recommended to prevent progressive hearing loss.


title: Brain tumor

text: Figures for incidences of cancers of the brain show a significant difference between more- and less-developed countries (the less-developed countries have lower incidences of tumors of the brain). This could be explained by undiagnosed tumor-related deaths (patients in extremely poor situations do not get diagnosed, simply because they do not have access to the modern diagnostic facilities required to diagnose a brain tumor) and by deaths caused by other poverty-related causes that preempt a patient's life before tumors develop or tumors become life-threatening. Nevertheless, statistics suggest that certain forms of primary brain tumors are more common among certain populations.


title: Brain tumor

text: The incidence of low-grade astrocytoma has not been shown to vary significantly with nationality. However, studies examining the incidence of malignant central nervous system (CNS) tumors have shown some variation with national origin. Since some high-grade lesions arise from low-grade tumors, these trends are worth mentioning. Specifically, the incidence of CNS tumors in the United States, Israel, and the Nordic countries is relatively high, while Japan and Asian countries have a lower incidence. These differences probably reflect some biological differences as well as differences in pathologic diagnosis and reporting.


title: Brain tumor

text: Worldwide data on incidence of cancer can be found at the WHO (World Health Organization) and is handled by the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) located in France.


title: Brain tumor

text: In the United States in 2015, approximately 166,039 people were living with brain or other central nervous system tumors. Over 2018, it was projected that there would be 23,880 new cases of brain tumors and 16,830 deaths in 2018 as a result, accounting for 1.4 percent of all cancers and 2.8 percent of all cancer deaths. Median age of diagnosis was 58 years old, while median age of death was 65. Diagnosis was slightly more common in males, at approximately 7.5 cases per 100 000 people, while females saw 2 fewer at 5.4. Deaths as a result of brain cancer were 5.3 per 100 000 for males, and 3.6 per 100 000 for females, making brain cancer the 10th leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Overall lifetime risk of developing brain cancer is approximated at 0.6 percent for men and women.


title: Brain tumor

text: Brain, other CNS or intracranial tumors are the ninth most common cancer in the UK (around 10,600 people were diagnosed in 2013), and it is the eighth most common cause of cancer death (around 5,200 people died in 2012). White British patients with brain tumour are 30% more likely to die within a year of diagnosis than patients from other ethnicities. The reason for this is unknown.


title: Brain tumor

text: In the United States more than 28,000 people under 20 are estimated to have a brain tumor. About 3,720 new cases of brain tumors are expected to be diagnosed in those under 15 in 2019. Higher rates were reported in 1985–1994 than in 1975–1983. There is some debate as to the reasons; one theory is that the trend is the result of improved diagnosis and reporting, since the jump occurred at the same time that MRIs became available widely, and there was no coincident jump in mortality. Central nervous system tumors make up 20–25 percent of cancers in children.


title: Brain tumor

text: The average survival rate for all primary brain cancers in children is 74%. Brain cancers are the most common cancer in children under 19, are result in more death in this group than leukemia. Younger people do less well.


title: Brain tumor

text: The most common brain tumor types in children (0-14) are: pilocytic astrocytoma, malignant glioma, medulloblastoma, neuronal and mixed neuronal-glial tumors, and ependymoma.


title: Brain tumor

text: In children under 2, about 70% of brain tumors are medulloblastomas, ependymomas, and low-grade gliomas. Less commonly, and seen usually in infants, are teratomas and atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumors. Germ cell tumors, including teratomas, make up just 3% of pediatric primary brain tumors, but the worldwide incidence varies significantly.


title: Brain tumor

text: In the UK, 429 children aged 14 and under are diagnosed with a brain tumour on average each year, and 563 children and young people under the age of 19 are diagnosed.


title: Brain tumor

text: Cancer immunotherapy is being actively studied. For malignant gliomas no therapy has been shown to improve life expectancy as of 2015.


title: Brain tumor

text: In 2000, researchers used the vesicular stomatitis virus, or VSV, to infect and kill cancer cells without affecting healthy cells.


title: Brain tumor

text: Led by Prof. Nori Kasahara, researchers from USC, who are now at UCLA, reported in 2001 the first successful example of applying the use of retroviral replicating vectors towards transducing cell lines derived from solid tumors. Building on this initial work, the researchers applied the technology to "in vivo" models of cancer and in 2005 reported a long-term survival benefit in an experimental brain tumor animal model. Subsequently, in preparation for human clinical trials, this technology was further developed by Tocagen (a pharmaceutical company primarily focused on brain cancer treatments) as a combination treatment (Toca 511 & Toca FC). This has been under investigation since 2010 in a Phase I/II clinical trial for the potential treatment of recurrent high-grade glioma including glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) and anaplastic astrocytoma. No results have yet been published.


title: Brain tumor

text: Efforts to detect and monitor development and treatment response of brain tumors by liquid biopsy from blood, cerebrospinal fluid or urine, are in the early stages of development.


title: Katrina Bowden

text: Katrina Bowden (born September 19, 1988) is an American actress. She is best known for her roles as Cerie on the NBC sitcom "30 Rock" (2006–2013) and as Flo Fulton on the CBS daytime soap opera "The Bold and the Beautiful" (2019–present). She has also appeared in the films "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil", "Sex Drive", "Piranha 3DD", "American Reunion", and "Scary Movie 5".


title: Katrina Bowden

text: Bowden was raised in Wyckoff, New Jersey. She attended the now-defunct Saint Thomas More School in Midland Park, New Jersey. She later attended Immaculate Heart Academy in Washington Township, New Jersey.


title: Katrina Bowden

text: In 2006, Bowden landed her first acting role in a two-episode arc on ABC's daytime soap opera "One Life to Live" as Britney. She has since guest-starred on shows such as "" and "Ugly Betty". Bowden's breakthrough role came when she was cast as a recurring character on the Emmy Award-winning television series "30 Rock", which premiered on October 11, 2006 on NBC. She portrayed the attractive receptionist Cerie, and with the cast received seven Screen Actors Guild Award nominations and one win. She signed on as a regular for the show's second season in 2007, and appeared in the series through to its series finale in January 2013.


title: Katrina Bowden

text: She appears in the music videos "Dance, Dance" by Fall Out Boy, as well as "After Hours" by We Are Scientists, and "Miss Jackson" by Panic! at the Disco.


title: Katrina Bowden

text: In 2008, Bowden made her film debut in the Summit Entertainment comedy film "Sex Drive", released to theaters on October 17, 2008. The following year, Bowden starred in two low-budget straight-to-DVD projects "The Shortcut" and "". In 2010 Bowden starred in the widely acclaimed horror-comedy film "Tucker & Dale vs Evil" as Allison. The film had a limited release and grossed over $4,749,516 and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film holds a 'fresh' rating of 85% on Rotten Tomatoes.


title: Katrina Bowden

text: In April 2011, Bowden was voted as "Esquire Magazine"s Sexiest Woman Alive. She was also the face of the Jordache television campaign that made its premiere in September 2011. In April 2011, Universal Pictures announced that Bowden was cast as the role of Mia, an "L.A. party girl type", and girlfriend to Chris Klein's character, in the fourth installment of the "American Pie" film trilogy, "American Reunion". The film was released on April 5, 2012 to mixed reviews but financial success. Also in 2012, Bowden appeared in the horror films "Piranha 3DD", which was panned by critics, and "Hold Your Breath", which received a limited theatrical release before being released to DVD. Bowden co-starred in "Nurse 3D" (2013). In 2018, the actress played the lead role in the Hallmark Channel movie "Love on the Slopes", a part of the channel's Winterfest event. She starred in "Great White", an Australian survivor horror film, in which two great white sharks circle the crew of a stranded seaplane, which was released in 2021.


title: Katrina Bowden

text: In May 2013, Bowden married musician and singer Ben Jorgensen, of the band Armor for Sleep. They divorced in 2020.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: Brimstone is a ground or air-launched ground attack missile developed by MBDA UK for the UK's Royal Air Force. It was originally intended for "fire-and-forget" use against mass formations of enemy armour, using a millimetre wave (mmW) active radar homing seeker to ensure accuracy even against moving targets. Experience in Afghanistan led to the addition of laser guidance in the dual-mode Brimstone missile, allowing a "spotter" to pick out specific and the highest priority targets, particularly useful to minimise collateral damage when friendly forces or civilians were in the area. The tandem shaped-charge warhead is much more effective against modern tanks than older similar weapons such as the AGM-65G Maverick missile. Three Brimstones are carried on a launcher that occupies a single weapon station, allowing a single aircraft to carry many missiles.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: After a protracted development programme, single-mode or "millimetric" Brimstone entered service with RAF Tornado aircraft in 2005, and the dual-mode variant in 2008. The latter was used extensively in Afghanistan and Libya. An improved Brimstone 2 was expected to enter service in October 2012, but problems with the new warhead from TDW and the ROXEL rocket motor put back the planned date to November 2015. MBDA is studying the use of Brimstone on ships, attack helicopters, UAVs, and from surface launchers. However, it will not be integrated on the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. Germany, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have purchased the missile. The cost per missile has been quoted as £175,000 each in 2015, or "over £100,000".


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: The missile was originally supposed to be an evolution of the original laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire missile, with the laser seeker replaced by a millimetre wave (mmW) seeker. During development, virtually the entire missile was redesigned, resulting in a weapon that – other than the external shape – bears no relation to the original. It is unrelated to the separate development of the mmW Hellfire for the Apache Longbow attack helicopter.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: Brimstone has a tandem shaped-charge warhead employing a smaller initial charge around , designed to initiate reactive armour, followed by a larger, more destructive charge, designed to penetrate and defeat the base armour. It was estimated that Brimstone would be several times more effective than the AGM-65G Maverick against modern tanks, and 20 times more effective than the BL755 cluster bomb. In combat, Brimstone has demonstrated accuracy and reliability "both well above 90 percent" according to the MoD; Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton has said that 98.3% to 98.7% of Brimstone fired in Libya "did exactly what we expected".


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: Brimstone is a "fire-and-forget" missile, which is loaded with targeting data by the weapon systems officer (WSO) prior to launch. It is programmable to adapt to particular mission requirements. This capability includes the ability to find targets within a certain area (such as those near friendly forces), and to self-destruct if it is unable to find a target within the designated area.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: In addition to the semi-autonomous ability to decide its own targets, the Brimstone has the capacity to determine where on a target to best impact causing the most damage.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: The missile's advanced sensor package includes its extremely high frequency millimetric wave radar, which allows the weapon to image the target and hence choose a target location. With as many as twenty-four missiles in the air, the missile's targeting system also required an algorithm to ensure that missiles hit their targets in a staggered order, rather than all simultaneously.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: Brimstone can be fired in a number of attack profiles; direct or indirect against single targets, a column of targets or against an array of targets. The latter utilises a salvo attack capability for


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: multiple kills per engagement. Once launched, the platform is free to manoeuvre away from the target area or engage other targets.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: Each launch system carries three missiles on rails. This allows a single aircraft to carry large numbers of missiles; for example, a Typhoon fighter could carry up to six launch systems, which gives a maximum payload of eighteen Brimstone missiles, in addition to a useful air-to-air payload. The missile was carried by the Tornado GR4 aircraft in RAF service. In February 2014 the National Audit Office warned of a possible capability gap under existing plans to fit Brimstone to Typhoon in 2021, two years after the Tornado retired; in June 2014 the MoD announced a study to accelerate this to 2018 and look at a common launcher that could also launch SPEAR Cap 3. MBDA has fired test rounds from an MQ-9 Reaper drone and is studying the use of Brimstone on attack helicopters and from surface launchers.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: It was intended that Brimstone would be integrated on the RAF Harrier aircraft fleet under Capability D of the JUMP programme with a scheduled in-service date of 2009. A Harrier GR9 first flew with 12 Brimstones on 14 February 2007. In late 2009 Brimstone was "nearing completion for integration on the Harrier", but in July 2010 it was reported that this would be postponed until the insensitive-munition version of the missile became available in 2012. Brimstone had not been officially cleared for use on the type when the UK Harriers were withdrawn from service in late 2010.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: Brimstone was originally initiated by Marconi Defence Systems and Rockwell International in the late 1980s to meet the RAF's requirement for a long range anti-armour weapon, requiring strike aircraft to attack armoured vehicles at stand-off range and be ten times as effective over older weapons. This requirement was issued in 1982 as a replacement for the BL755 cluster bomb. The programme was initially cancelled in 1990 at the end of the Cold War, but was restarted in 1992 following an assessment of the British military's performance in the Gulf War. GEC-Marconi (whose missile interests now form part of MBDA) was originally awarded the contract on 7 November 1996.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: The first ground firing of the Brimstone missile occurred in August 1999, followed by the first air-launched firing from a Tornado GR4 in September 2000. Clearance of the missile was delayed by 12 months due to the unavailability of a Tornado trials aircraft, as the RAF chose instead to rush the development of the Storm Shadow air launched cruise missile ahead of the Iraq war, but another delay of 6 months resulted from redesigning the autopilot for safe release at higher speeds. Over 2,000 missiles were produced.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: The original Brimstone could not be used in Afghanistan as the rules of engagement required a "man-in-the-loop". Under an Urgent Operational Requirement in 2008, modifications were made to the seeker and software of over 300 existing missiles to create Dual-Mode Brimstone. The new missiles can be laser guided according to the STANAG 3733 standard as well as retaining the millimetre wave seeker; the pilot can select either mode from the cockpit or use both simultaneously. Laser guidance allows specific enemy targets to be picked out in cluttered environments, the mmW radar ensures accuracy against moving targets.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: The development and procurement of the original single-mode missiles cost £370m, a figure inflated by accounting charges relating to the delays. The development of the dual-mode version cost an additional £10m. "The Daily Telegraph" reported that the dual mode missiles cost £105,000, which is comparable to the cost of the AGM-65 Maverick; the MoD quote only a gross book value of £175,000, which includes development costs as well as the purchase cost of the missile. Upgrading a single-mode missile to dual mode costs between £35,000 and £45,000 plus VAT, depending on quantities ordered.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: In March 2010 Brimstone was selected as the basis for the RAF's requirement under the Selective Precision Effects At Range (SPEAR) Capability 2 Block 1 programme. The Demonstration and Manufacture contract increased the missile's performance "significantly", and converted the warhead and rocket motor to use insensitive munitions. Brimstone 2 has an improved seeker, a more modular design and improvements to airframe and software for "an overall increase in performance with improvements in range and engagement footprint", including a "more than 200% increase" in maximum range. A five-release test campaign in October 2013 culminated in a successful strike against a pickup truck travelling at in a cluttered road environment. Brimstone 2 was planned to enter service on the Tornado in November 2015, and was further updated with an insensitive munition compliant rocket motor and warhead in July 2016. It was successfully integrated onto the Tornado GR4 and has trialed on the Eurofighter Typhoon and AH-64E Apache.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: In February 2016, integration trials with the Tornado GR4s saw 11 missiles fired at "[various] structures, a very small fast-moving vehicle, and [targets at the] edge of the weapon system’s performance envelope." All in all 10, or 91%, of the 11 missiles were successful; the only missile that missed its target was involved in a very short-range shot in which the missile's semi-active laser homing and millimetric-Wave seekers did not have enough time to effectively acquire its target.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: In July 2016, MBDA further proposed a new variant of Brimstone 2 for the AH-64E Apache. It would specifically be for non-armoured targets in land and sea domains, but will not compromise Brimstone's anti-armour capability. It will have a launch aircraft cockpit-selectable trajectory, which will allow line-of-sight engagement (flat trajectory) and high and low missile flight profiles to avoid close-in obstacles; a cockpit-selectable capability that allows the pilot to determine the elevation and impact angle on the target to maximise weapon effect; and a new set of warhead modes, which includes delayed, airburst, impact and proximity fuzing. This weapon will be known as the Future Attack Helicopter Weapon (FAHW).


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: MBDA tested a maritime variant for use against swarms of small boats named Sea SPEAR. On 25 June 2012 a Tornado GR4 dropped a prototype that hit and sank a 6-metre inflatable boat travelling at 20 kn in sea state 3. On 29 May 2013, MBDA conducted a salvo firing of three millimetric wave operational Brimstone missiles, launched from a fixed offshore platform, against a simulated attack formation of five targets representing FIACs (Fast Inshore Attack Craft). The successful test firing demonstrated Sea SPEAR's ability to strike numerous individual targets. During the test one of the targets, a 15-metre craft, was travelling at 20 knots. MBDA pitted Sea SPEAR against the Raytheon Sea Griffin missile for integration onto American littoral combat ships. The US Navy instead selected the AGM-114L Hellfire as a stop-gap missile for the littoral combat ships.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: In March 2019, MBDA successfully tested the latest Brimstone 3 version in Sweden, now including surface-to-surface firing, plus new hardware allowing future enhancements.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: In 2010, MBDA was awarded an assessment phase contract for a network-enabled standoff missile, named SPEAR 3, which reuses technology derived from Brimstone. SPEAR 3 flies at high subsonic speed and can reach ranges of at least . It features a Hamilton Sundstrand TJ-150 turbojet engine, wing kit, multi-mode seeker, INS/GPS guidance and datalink. The missile is designed to equip Eurofighter Typhoon and Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II multirole fighter aircraft and is expected to enter service with the Royal Air Force in the mid-2020's. Flight trials were carried out in 2014 from a Eurofighter Typhoon. An electronic warfare version with a swarm capability, named SPEAR EW, has also been proposed.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: In March 2005, Brimstone entered service with No. 31 Squadron RAF. Full Operational Capability (FOC) was declared for the Tornado GR4 in December 2005 The first operational sortie of dual-mode Brimstone was over Iraq as part of Operation Telic on 18 December 2008 by a Tornado GR4 of IX(B) Squadron. It was first fired in combat in June 2009, the month in which the Tornado GR4s of 12 Squadron arrived in Afghanistan as part of Operation Herrick.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: Brimstone was used during Operation Ellamy over Libya in 2011. Sixty Brimstone were fired in the first four weeks of the Libya campaign, out of 110 Brimstone fired in all operations up to that time. This prompted the MoD to ask MBDA to convert more missiles to the dual-mode version. 150 dual-mode missiles had been ordered in December 2010, but according to the Royal United Services Institute, stocks of usable dual-mode missiles fell to single figures at one stage of the Libya campaign. The 500th dual-mode Brimstone was delivered in March 2012, at which time over 200 had been fired in combat. The single-mode missile was not fired in combat until 15 September 2011 when a pair of RAF Tornado GR4 of IX(B) Squadron fired 22 missiles (including a salvo of 12 by one aircraft) against an armoured column near Sebha/Sabha, 400 miles south of Tripoli.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: In September 2014, Tornado GR4 strike aircraft of No. 2 Squadron RAF began flying armed sorties over Iraq in support of Operation Shader, the UK's contribution to the Military intervention against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. On September 30, the aircraft flew their first bombing raids, engaging a heavy artillery position with a Paveway IV laser-guided bomb, and an armed pickup truck with a Brimstone air-to-ground missile. Brimstone is the preferred weapon for these kinds of targets due to its effectiveness against moving targets.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: Around £10 million of Brimstones from the RAF stock were sold to the Royal Saudi Air Force for use on its Tornados. In April 2011, the RAF's Assistant Chief of the Air Staff Air Vice-Marshal Baz North reported that the missiles were "being sought by both the United States of America and the French" in the light of Brimstone's success in Libya. France's DGA procurement agency held meetings in late May 2011 to discuss a lightweight air-to-surface weapon for the Dassault Rafale aircraft; Stéphane Reb of the DGA would merely say that "Brimstone is a solution, but it's not the only option". In early 2014 the US Congress' House Armed Services Committee showed interest again in the missile; high-ranking members of the US armed services have stated they "like it". The French Air Force were still thinking about a purchase in March 2012, with a prime consideration being lower collateral damage compared to the AASM missile. India made a request for information about integrating Brimstone on their Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighter fleet. In July 2014, it was revealed that the United States Navy was studying the Dual Mode Brimstone for use on the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet aircraft. The United States Army also considered the Brimstone as "an option" in its Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM) program, but selected Lockheed Martin's dual-mode seeker upgrade for the Hellfire missile. In September 2015, MBDA displayed the dual-mode Brimstone for the first time as a helicopter-mounted weapon to fulfill the British Army Air Corps' need for a future attack helicopter weapon for the AgustaWestland Apache. In January 2016, it was reported that Germany was considering arming its newly leased Heron TP drones with Brimstone. In March 2016, France was reportedly considering Brimstone for its Tiger attack helicopters.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: In December 2017 it was announced that Qatar had purchased Brimstone missiles to arm its Eurofighter Typhoon fighter aircraft. In September 2019, MBDA was reportedly partnering with the Polish defence firm PGZ to produce a Brimstone carrying missile tank destroyer. The two proposed variants consist of one vehicle based on a modernised BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle chassis, carrying a launch module of 12 missiles. The other is based on the K9 Thunder howitzer chassis, featuring three launch modules of eight missiles each.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: In April 2022, the UK Ministry of Defence supplied Brimstones to the Ukrainian Armed Forces for use as a surface-launched ground-attack system to strike Russian ground forces. By 12 May 2022, training on a surface-launch system was happening in Ukraine. On 17 May 2022, it was claimed that ground-launched Brimstone missiles had destroyed two Russian targets. It is claimed that these two targets are Russian tanks, operating behind their lines, and the missiles were fired by Ukrainian soldiers. If correct, it would be the first time a surface-launched Brimstone missile has destroyed a target.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: In May 2022 MBDA and the Polish Armaments Group announced that Brimstone would arm the latter's upcoming tank destroyer.


title: Brimstone (missile)

text: On 22 November, the UK has started supplying Brimstone 2 missiles to Ukraine. Brought into service in 2016 it has double the range of the first Brimstone. It has an inertial navigation system and can get to an area on autopilot before choosing targets autonomously. However it is still being fired by trucks which reduce its range compared to air launched versions since a ground launched missile lacks "an aircraft's speed and altitude".


title: Beanie Babies

text: Beanie Babies are a line of stuffed toys created by American businessman H. Ty Warner, who founded Ty Inc. in 1986. The toys are stuffed with plastic pellets ("beans") rather than conventional soft stuffing. They come in many different forms, mostly animals.


title: Beanie Babies

text: Created in 1993, Beanie Babies emerged as a major fad and collectible during the second half of the 1990s. They have been cited as being the world's first Internet sensation in 1995. They were collected not only as toys, but also as a financial investment, due to the high resale value of particular ones.


title: Beanie Babies

text: Beanie Babies were first introduced in 1993 by Ty Warner at the World Toy Fair in New York City, New York. It was not until 1994 that the toys were put into factory production, first being sold in local stores located in Chicago, Illinois, for around $5 U.S. Dollars. There were nine original Beanie Babies, which includes: Legs the Frog, Squealer the Pig, Spot the Dog, Flash the Dolphin, Splash the Whale, Chocolate the Moose, Patti the Platypus, Brownie the Bear (later renamed "Cubbie"), and Pinchers the Lobster (with some tag errors labeled "Punchers"). Since 1994, Beanie Babies cannot be found in larger chain stores, as they continue to only be found in small, specialty stores, such as gift stores and small toy stores.


title: Beanie Babies

text: At first, sales were relatively slow, in that by 1995 many retailers refused to buy the bundles the toys were offered in, while some retailers refused to buy them entirely. Yet, around the same time, Ty Warner made the decision to restrict the amount of Beanie Babies that are produced and distributed by the company. This was done in two ways, the first way by limiting the amount of Beanies Babies a store could buy per month, which was 36 of each character. The second way was by "retiring" the characters after a certain period of time, meaning that production of those specific characters would then cease, while eventually new characters would be introduced. As this created an idea of scarcity surrounding the toys, it in turn led to a significant increase in sales and started the trend of people collecting and reselling Beanie Babies. Their popularity soon grew into a national craze in the US.


title: Beanie Babies

text: In 1996, Ty Inc. released a new product called Teenie Beanies, a miniature cutoff of the original Beanie Babies line. They were sold alongside McDonald's Happy Meals to celebrate that product's 17th anniversary. They also partnered with other companies.


title: Beanie Babies

text: Ty, Inc. stopped producing the product in December 1999, but consumer demand led them to reconsider. Production restarted in 2000 with a Beanie Baby named "The Beginning".


title: Beanie Babies

text: In early 2008, Ty released a new version of Beanie Babies called Beanie Babies 2.0. The purchase of a Beanie Baby 2.0 provided its owner with a code to access an online Beanie Babies interactive website. The website has since been shut down.


title: Beanie Babies

text: Beanie Babies are deliberately under-stuffed. This led to a criticism that the toys looked "cheap"; however, this set them apart from most stuffed animals on the market which could not be posed easily. Ty Warner has said that this understuffing method made the toys look "real".


title: Beanie Babies

text: Another important design element is the tag. Since the beginning, Beanie Babies have included two tags for identification: a heart-shaped "swing tag" at the top, and a fabric "tush tag" at the bottom. Both tags have been redesigned completely over time. Between 1994 and 1996, the swing tags had "To" and "From" blanks in them for use as gifts. Starting in early 1996, the tags include four-line poems related to the Beanie Baby, and a date of birth for the toy. The poem and birthday concept was created by Lina Trivedi who is credited as authoring the poems on the first 136 Beanie Babies that were introduced to the marketplace.


title: Beanie Babies

text: It was not uncommon for Beanie Babies to be accidentally shipped out with incorrect or misspelled tags, which sometimes increased the toy's value. On occasion, the poems, birth dates and even the names have been changed on certain Beanie Babies.


title: Beanie Babies

text: Early on, Ty had trouble finding retailers to order Beanie Babies. To get small retailers to stock the product, Ty introduced Beanie Babies at the 1993 Toy Fair in New York City. This event helped garner attention for the set of plush toys. In 1994 small local stores in Chicago, Illinois, began selling Beanie Babies for around $5 U.S. Dollars.


title: Beanie Babies

text: Early in 1995, Ty created the first iteration of the Ty Web site, the first business to consumer website designed to sell products to consumers directly. To go along with the launch of the Ty website in 1995, all Beanie Baby hangtags were printed with the Ty website URL and a new piece of text was added with the company's name and the following message: "Visit our website! ! !" As a result, many consumers visited Ty's website for more information on Beanie Babies. This endeavor would mark the beginning of the Beanie Babies Boom.


title: Beanie Babies

text: Later in 1995, Ty was forced to end production on the popular toy Lovie the Lamb, due to an issue with suppliers in China. CEO Ty Warner came up with the solution to tell retailers that Lovie was merely discontinued, and even suggested that many other Beanie Babies would be discontinued as well. This news would spread via word of mouth, as motivated sellers began to stock up on Ty plush toys while they still could, thus creating a new demand for Beanie Babies. As a result of this artificial demand, consumers began buying Beanie Babies in bulk from the Ty Web site to relist them on auction sites for highly inflated prices.


title: Beanie Babies

text: Beanie Babies began to emerge as popular collectibles in late 1995, and became a hot toy. The company's strategy of deliberate scarcity, producing each new design in limited quantity, restricting individual store shipments to limited numbers of each design and regularly retiring designs, created a huge secondary market for the toys and increased their popularity and value as a collectible.


title: Beanie Babies

text: They systematically retired various designs, and many people assumed that all "retired" designs would rise in value the way that early retirees had. The craze lasted through 1999 and slowly declined after the Ty company announced that they would no longer be making Beanie Babies and made a bear called "The End". Some time after the original announcement that the company would stop production, Ty asked the public to vote on whether the product should continue; fans and collectors voted "overwhelmingly" to keep the toys on the market.


title: Beanie Babies

text: At its height of popularity people would flip Beanies for as much as ten-fold on eBay. Indeed, at the height, Beanies made up 10% of eBay's sales. Some collectors insured their purchases for thousands of dollars.


title: Beanie Babies

text: Warner was keenly aware that the Beanie Babies bubble could burst and eventually started requiring retailers who sold Beanies to also stock other product lines by his company if they wished to continue selling Beanies. None of these lines did as well as Beanie Babies, although they kept the company alive after the fad ended, and eventually some became successful in their own right.


title: Beanie Babies

text: Ty, Inc. was the first business to produce a business to consumer website designed to engage their market. This is a major contributing factor to the early and rapidly growing popularity of Beanie Babies. By the time the first iteration of the Ty Web site was published in late 1995 by Lina Trivedi, only 14% of Americans were using the Internet. In tandem with the launch of the Ty Website in 1995, all Beanie Baby hangtags had the Ty Website URL and a call to action printed underneath the poems and birthdays that commanded audiences to visit the company website with text that read: "Visit our web page!!!" As a result, hordes of consumers were visiting the Ty website to gain information about Beanie Babies which was unprecedented. Ty is the first business to leverage their website to connect and engage with consumers of their products. This effort evolved into the world's first Internet sensation.


title: Beanie Babies

text: Diana, Princess of Wales died in August 1997. Warner announced a purple Beanie Baby bear named "Princess" in October 1997 in honor of Princess Diana.


title: Beanie Babies

text: Counterfeit Beanie Babies began to surface in 1997. Early on, cheap knock-offs and fakes of common Beanies were widely available at discount prices.


title: Beanie Babies

text: Authorities cracked down on counterfeit Beanie Babies in the late 1990s. People were prosecuted for their involvement in the commerce of counterfeit Beanies. In 1998, UK authorities seized more than 6,000 counterfeit Princesses and Britannias. In 1999, a Minnesota man was imprisoned, fined, and put on probation for involvement in smuggling counterfeit Beanies.


title: Beanie Babies

text: During the wake of Beanie Babies' success, Beanie Baby-centric publications were issued. One of the largest was "Mary Beth's Bean Bag World", a monthly magazine dedicated to Beanie Babies and competing plush toys. It ran from 1997 to 2001.


title: Beanie Babies

text: A documentary film about Beanie Babies, titled "Beanie Mania", was released on December 23, 2021, on HBO Max.


title: Beanie Babies

text: In the late 2000s, Beanie Babies modeled after characters from popular children's franchises by Nickelodeon, DreamWorks and Paramount began appearing. These included characters from cartoons on the Nickelodeon television channel such as "SpongeBob SquarePants", "Dora the Explorer", "Blue's Clues" and "The Backyardigans", as well as characters from DreamWorks Animation movies such as "Shrek the Third", and 20th Century Fox's "". Beanie Babies have been produced for characters from "" and "Guardians of Ga'Hoole" book series, "Scooby-Doo", Hello Kitty, and "Peanuts". Recently Beanie Babies modeled after Disney characters have been created, including Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, and Olaf from "Frozen". In addition, they have produced toys based on characters from the Disney Junior TV series "Doc McStuffins", Pixar films like "Cars" and "Finding Dory", and Marvel Comics superheroes. They have recently partnered with Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures Animation, and Hasbro for characters from franchises such as "Despicable Me", "Sing", "My Little Pony", and "The Emoji Movie". Beanie Babies have expanded their Nickelodeon lineup with characters from "PAW Patrol", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "Peppa Pig".


title: Beanie Babies

text: In 2021, Beanie Babies was the season 1, episode 4 feature on Vice Media's "Dark Side of the 90's" entitled "Beanie Babies Go Bust".


title: Beanie Babies

text: In April 2020, H. Ty Warner pledged that 100% of profits from the sale of a limited edition Beanie Baby bear named "Hope" were to be donated to the United Way Worldwide COVID-19 Fund. On March 2, 2022, Warner declared all profits from the sales of Beanie Babies during the month of March would be donated to Save the Children, an organization providing emergency assistance to those in Ukraine.


title: Beanie Babies

text: Warner has donated over $300 million to various charities since the start of the company. Most recently, 100% of profits from a newly released "Max" the dog Beanie Baby will be donated to NEXT for Autism.


title: History of mobile phones

text: The history of mobile phones covers mobile communication devices that connect wirelessly to the public switched telephone network.


title: History of mobile phones

text: While the transmission of speech by signal has a long history, the first devices that were wireless, mobile, and also capable of connecting to the standard telephone network are much more recent. The first such devices were barely portable compared to today's compact hand-held devices, and their use was clumsy.


title: History of mobile phones

text: Drastic changes have taken place in both the networking of wireless communication and the prevalence of its use, with smartphones becoming common globally and a growing proportion of Internet access now done via mobile broadband.


title: History of mobile phones

text: In 1908, Professor Albert Jahn and the Oakland Transcontinental Aerial Telephone and Power Company claimed to have developed a wireless telephone. They were accused of fraud and the charge was then dropped, but they do not really seem to have proceeded with production. In 1917 the Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt successfully filed a patent for a "pocket-size folding telephone with a very thin carbon microphone". Beginning in 1918, the German railroad system tested wireless telephony on military trains between Berlin and Zossen. In 1924 public trials started with telephone connection on trains between Berlin and Hamburg. In 1925 the company was founded to supply train-telephony equipment and, in 1926 telephone service in trains of the Deutsche Reichsbahn and the German mail service on the route between Hamburg and Berlin was approved and offered to first-class travelers.


title: History of mobile phones

text: Fiction anticipated the development of real-world mobile telephones. In 1906 the English caricaturist Lewis Baumer published a cartoon in "Punch" entitled "Forecasts for 1907" in which he showed a man and a woman in London's Hyde Park each separately engaged in gambling and dating on wireless-telegraphy equipment. In 1923 Ilya Ehrenburg casually listed "pocket telephones" among the achievements of contemporary technology in a story in his collection "Thirteen Pipes" (). In 1926 the artist Karl Arnold drew a visionary cartoon about the use of mobile phones in the street, in the picture "wireless telephony", published in the German satirical magazine "Simplicissimus".


title: History of mobile phones

text: The Second World War (1939-1945) saw the military use of radio-telephony links. Hand-held radio transceivers have been available since the 1940s. Mobile telephones for automobiles became available from some telephone companies in the 1940s. Early devices were bulky, consumed large amounts of power, and the network supported only a few simultaneous conversations. (Modern cellular networks allow automatic and pervasive use of mobile phones for voice- and data-communication.)


title: History of mobile phones

text: In the United States, engineers from Bell Labs began work on a system to allow mobile users to place and receive telephone calls from automobiles, leading to the inauguration of mobile service on 17 June 1946 in St. Louis, Missouri. Shortly after, AT&T offered "Mobile Telephone Service". A wide range of mostly incompatible mobile-telephone services offered limited coverage areas and only a few available channels in urban areas. As calls were transmitted as unencrypted analog signals, anyone with radio equipment that could receive those frequencies could eavesdrop. The commercial introduction (in Japan in 1979) of cellular technology, which allowed re-use of frequencies many times in small adjacent areas covered by relatively low-powered transmitters, made widespread adoption of mobile telephones economically feasible.


title: History of mobile phones

text: In the USSR, Leonid Kupriyanovich, an engineer from Moscow, developed and presented a number of experimental pocket-sized communications radios in 1957–1961. The weight of one model, presented in 1961, was only 70 g and could fit in a palm. However, in the USSR the decision at first to develop the system of the automobile "Altai" phone was made.


title: History of mobile phones

text: In 1965 the Bulgarian company "Radioelektronika" presented a mobile automatic phone combined with a base station at the Inforga-65 international exhibition in Moscow. Solutions of this phone were based on a system developed by Leonid Kupriyanovich. One base station, connected to one telephone wire line, could serve up to 15 customers.


title: History of mobile phones

text: Advances in mobile telephony can be traced in successive "generations" from the early "0G" services like MTS and its successor Improved Mobile Telephone Service, to first-generation (1G) analog cellular networks (1979–), second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks (1991–), third-generation (3G) broadband data services (launched commercially in 2001) to the fourth-generation (4G) native-IP networks (launched in 2006 in South Korea). 5G began deployment in 2019.


title: History of mobile phones

text: In 1949, AT&T commercialized Mobile Telephone Service. From its start in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1946, AT&T introduced Mobile Telephone Service to one hundred towns and highway corridors by 1948. Mobile Telephone Service was a rarity with only 5,000 customers placing about each week. Calls were set up manually by an operator and the user had to depress a button on the handset to speak and release the button to listen. The call subscriber equipment weighed about


title: History of mobile phones

text: Subscriber growth and revenue generation were hampered by the constraints of the technology. Because only three radio channels were available, only three customers in any given city could make mobile telephone calls at one time. Mobile Telephone Service was expensive, costing US$15 per month, plus $0.30–0.40 per local call, equivalent to (in 2012 US dollars) about $176 per month and $3.50–4.75 per call.


title: History of mobile phones

text: In the UK, there was also a vehicle-based system called "Post Office Radiophone Service," which was launched around the city of Manchester in 1959, and although it required callers to speak to an operator, it was possible to be put through to any subscriber in Great Britain. The service was extended to London in 1965 and other major cities in 1972.


title: History of mobile phones

text: AT&T introduced the first major improvement to mobile telephony in 1965, giving the improved service the obvious name of Improved Mobile Telephone Service. IMTS used additional radio channels, allowing more simultaneous calls in a given geographic area, introduced customer dialing, eliminating manual call setup by an operator, and reduced the size and weight of the subscriber equipment.


title: History of mobile phones

text: Despite the capacity improvement offered by IMTS, demand outstripped capacity. In agreement with state regulatory agencies, AT&T limited the service to just system wide. In New York City, for example, shared just 12 radio channels and typically had to wait 30 minutes to place a call.


title: History of mobile phones

text: Radio Common Carrier or RCC was a service introduced in the 1960s by independent telephone companies to compete against AT&T's IMTS. RCC systems used paired UHF 454/459 MHz and VHF 152/158 MHz frequencies near those used by IMTS. RCC based services were provided until the 1980s when cellular AMPS systems made RCC equipment obsolete.


title: History of mobile phones

text: Some RCC systems were designed to allow customers of adjacent carriers to use their facilities, but equipment used by RCCs did not allow the equivalent of modern "roaming" because technical standards were not uniform. For example, the phone of an Omaha, Nebraska–based RCC service would not be likely to work in Phoenix, Arizona. Roaming was not encouraged, in part, because there was no centralized industry billing database for RCCs. Signaling formats were not standardized. For example, some systems used two-tone sequential paging to alert a mobile of an incoming call. Other systems used DTMF. Some used "Secode 2805", which transmitted an interrupted 2805 Hz tone (similar to IMTS signaling) to alert mobiles of an offered call. Some radio equipment used with RCC systems was half-duplex, push-to-talk LOMO equipment such as Motorola hand-helds or RCA 700-series conventional two-way radios. Other vehicular equipment had telephone handsets and rotary dials or pushbutton pads, and operated full duplex like a conventional wired telephone. A few users had full-duplex briefcase telephones (radically advanced for their day)


title: History of mobile phones

text: At the end of RCC's existence, industry associations were working on a technical standard that would have allowed roaming, and some mobile users had multiple decoders to enable operation with more than one of the common signaling formats (600/1500, 2805, and Reach). Manual operation was often a fallback for RCC roamers.


title: History of mobile phones

text: In 1969 Penn Central Railroad equipped commuter trains along the New York-Washington route with special pay phones that allowed passengers to place telephone calls while the train was moving. The system re-used six frequencies in the 450 MHz band in nine sites.


title: History of mobile phones

text: In the UK, Channel Islands and elsewhere the "Rabbit" phone system was briefly used, being a hybrid of "cell" base stations and handsets. One major limitation was that you had to be less than 300 feet (closer with buildings) from a base due to power limitations on a portable device.


title: History of mobile phones

text: With modern technology a similar variant is being considered for Apple's new 4G "smart watch" so they can be used in large events in a broadly similar way to a femtocell.


title: History of mobile phones

text: In 1966 Norway had a system called OLT which was manually controlled. Finland's ARP, launched in 1971, was also manual as was the Swedish MTD. All were replaced by the automatic NMT, (Nordic Mobile Telephone) system in the early 1980s.


title: History of mobile phones

text: In July 1971 Readycall was introduced in London by Burndept after obtaining a special concession to break the Post Office monopoly to allow selective calling to mobiles of calls from the public telephone system. This system was available to the public for a subscription of £16 month. A year later the service was extended to two other UK towns.


title: History of mobile phones

text: West Germany had a network called A-Netz launched in 1952 as the country's first public commercial mobile phone network. In 1972 this was displaced by B-Netz which connected calls automatically.


title: History of mobile phones

text: In December 1947, Douglas H. Ring and W. Rae Young, Bell Labs engineers, proposed hexagonal cells for mobile phones in vehicles. At this stage, the technology to implement these ideas did not exist, nor had the frequencies been allocated. Two decades would pass before Richard H. Frenkiel, Joel S. Engel and Philip T. Porter of Bell Labs expanded the early proposals into a much more detailed system plan. It was Porter who first proposed that the cell towers use the now-familiar directional antennas to reduce interference and increase channel reuse (see picture at right) Porter also invented the dial-then-send method used by all cell phones to reduce wasted channel time.


title: History of mobile phones

text: In all these early examples, a mobile phone had to stay within the coverage area serviced by one base station throughout the phone call, i.e. there was no continuity of service as the phones moved through several cell areas. The concepts of frequency reuse and handoff, as well as a number of other concepts that formed the basis of modern cell phone technology, were described in the late 1960s, in papers by Frenkiel and Porter. In 1970 Amos E. Joel, Jr., a Bell Labs engineer, invented a "three-sided trunk circuit" to aid in the "call handoff" process from one cell to another. His patent contained an early description of the Bell Labs cellular concept, but as switching systems became faster, such a circuit became unnecessary and was never implemented in a system.


title: History of mobile phones

text: A cellular telephone switching plan was described by Fluhr and Nussbaum in 1973, and a cellular telephone data signaling system was described in 1977 by Hachenburg et al.


title: History of mobile phones

text: The first fully automated mobile phone system for vehicles was launched in Sweden in 1956. Named MTA (Mobiltelefonisystem A), it allowed calls to be made and received in the car using a rotary dial. The car phone could also be paged. Calls from the car were direct dial, whereas incoming calls required an operator to locate the nearest base station to the car. It was developed by Sture Laurén and other engineers at Televerket network operator. Ericsson provided the switchboard while Svenska Radioaktiebolaget (SRA) and Marconi provided the telephones and base station equipment. MTA phones consisted of vacuum tubes and relays, and weighed . In 1962, an upgraded version called "Mobile System B (MTB)" was introduced. This was a push-button telephone, and used transistors and DTMF signaling to improve its operational reliability. In 1971 the MTD version was launched, opening for several different brands of equipment and gaining commercial success. The network remained open until 1983 and still had 600 customers when it closed.


title: History of mobile phones

text: In 1958 development began on a similar system for motorists in the USSR. The "Altay" national civil mobile phone service was based on Soviet MRT-1327 standard. The main developers of the Altay system were the Voronezh Science Research Institute of Communications (VNIIS) and the State Specialized Project Institute (GSPI). In 1963 the service started in Moscow, and by 1970 was deployed in 30 cities across the USSR. Versions of the Altay system are still in use today as a trunking system in some parts of Russia.


title: History of mobile phones

text: In 1959 a private telephone company in Brewster, Kansas, USA, the S&T Telephone Company, (still in business today) with the use of Motorola Radio Telephone equipment and a private tower facility, offered to the public mobile telephone services in that local area of NW Kansas. This system was a direct dial up service through their local switchboard, and was installed in many private vehicles including grain combines, trucks, and automobiles. For some as yet unknown reason, the system, after being placed online and operated for a very brief time period, was shut down. The management of the company was immediately changed, and the fully operable system and related equipment was immediately dismantled in early 1960, not to be seen again.


title: History of mobile phones

text: In 1966, Bulgaria presented the pocket mobile automatic phone RAT-0,5 combined with a base station RATZ-10 (RATC-10) on Interorgtechnika-66 international exhibition. One base station, connected to one telephone wire line, could serve up to six customers.


title: History of mobile phones

text: One of the first successful public commercial mobile phone networks was the ARP network in Finland, launched in 1971. Posthumously, ARP is sometimes viewed as a "zero generation" (0G) cellular network, being slightly above previous proprietary and limited coverage networks.


title: History of mobile phones

text: Prior to 1973, mobile telephony was limited to phones installed in cars and other vehicles. Motorola was the first company to produce a handheld mobile phone. On 3 April 1973, Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive, made the first mobile telephone call from handheld subscriber equipment, placing a call to Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, his rival. The prototype handheld phone used by Dr. Cooper weighed and measured . The prototype offered a talk time of just 30 minutes and took 10 hours to re-charge.


title: History of mobile phones

text: John F. Mitchell, Motorola's chief of portable communication products and Cooper's boss in 1973, played a key role in advancing the development of handheld mobile telephone equipment. Mitchell successfully pushed Motorola to develop wireless communication products that would be small enough to use anywhere and participated in the design of the cellular phone.


title: History of mobile phones

text: Newer technology has been developed and rolled out in a series of waves or generations. The "generation" terminology only became widely used when 3G was launched, but is now used retrospectively when referring to the earlier systems.