Optical tweezers (originally called single-beam gradient force trap) are scientific instruments that use a highly focused laser beam to hold and move microscopic and sub-microscopic objects like atoms, nanoparticles and droplets, in a manner similar to tweezers. If the object is held in air or vacuum without additional support, it can be called optical levitation.

The laser light provides an attractive or repulsive force (typically on the order of piconewtons), depending on the relative refractive index between particle and surrounding medium. Levitation is possible if the force of the light counters the force of gravity. The trapped particles are usually micron-sized, or even smaller. Dielectric and absorbing particles can be trapped, too.

Optical tweezers are used in biology and medicine (for example to grab and hold a single bacterium, a cell like a sperm cell or a blood cell, or a molecule like DNA), nanoengineering and nanochemistry (to study and build materials from single molecules), quantum optics and quantum optomechanics (to study the interaction of single particles with light). The development of optical tweezing by Arthur Ashkin was lauded with the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics.

History and development
The detection of optical scattering and the gradient forces on micron sized particles was first reported in 1970 by Arthur Ashkin, a scientist working at Bell Labs. Years later, Ashkin and colleagues reported the first observation of what is now commonly referred to as an optical tweezer: a tightly focused beam of light capable of holding microscopic particles stable in three dimensions. In 2018, Ashkin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this development.

One author of this seminal 1986 paper, Steven Chu, would go on to use optical tweezing in his work on cooling and trapping neutral atoms. This research earned Chu the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips. In an interview, Steven Chu described how Ashkin had first envisioned optical tweezing as a method for trapping atoms. Ashkin was able to trap larger particles (10 to 10,000 nanometers in diameter) but it fell to Chu to extend these techniques to the trapping of neutral atoms (0.1 nanometers in diameter) utilizing resonant laser light and a magnetic gradient trap (cf. Magneto-optical trap).

In the late 1980s, Arthur Ashkin and Joseph M. Dziedzic demonstrated the first application of the technology to the biological sciences, using it to trap an individual tobacco mosaic virus and Escherichia coli bacterium. Throughout the 1990s and afterwards, researchers like Carlos Bustamante, James Spudich, and Steven Block pioneered the use of optical trap force spectroscopy to characterize molecular-scale biological motors. These molecular motors are ubiquitous in biology, and are responsible for locomotion and mechanical action within the cell. Optical traps allowed these biophysicists to observe the forces and dynamics of nanoscale motors at the single-molecule level; optical trap force-spectroscopy has since led to greater understanding of the stochastic nature of these force-generating molecules.

Optical tweezers have proven useful in other areas of biology as well. They are used in synthetic biology to construct tissue-like networks of artificial cells, and to fuse synthetic membranes together to initiate biochemical reactions. They are also widely employed in genetic studies  and research on chromosome structure and dynamics. In 2003 the techniques of optical tweezers were applied in the field of cell sorting; by creating a large optical intensity pattern over the sample area, cells can be sorted by their intrinsic optical characteristics. Optical tweezers have also been used to probe the cytoskeleton, measure the visco-elastic properties of biopolymers, and study cell motility. A bio-molecular assay in which clusters of ligand coated nano-particles are both optically trapped and optically detected after target molecule induced clustering was proposed in 2011 and experimentally demonstrated in 2013.

Some other achievements have also been trapping a single atom in 2001, trapping of strongly interacting entangled pairs in 2010, great precision in 2-dimensional arrays of atoms in 2016 as well as 3-dimensional assemblings in 2018 and using the technique in quantum simulators to obtain programmable arrays of 196 and 256 atoms in 2021

The Kapitsa–Dirac effect effectively demonstrated during 2001 uses standing waves of light to affect a beam of particles.

Researchers have also worked to convert optical tweezers from large, complex instruments to smaller, simpler ones, for use by those with smaller research budgets.

Physics

General description
Optical tweezers are capable of manipulating nanometer and micron-sized dielectric particles by exerting extremely small forces via a highly focused laser beam. The beam is typically focused by sending it through a microscope objective. The narrowest point of the focused beam, known as the beam waist, contains a very strong electric field gradient. Dielectric particles are attracted along the gradient to the region of strongest electric field, which is the center of the beam. The laser light also tends to apply a force on particles in the beam along the direction of beam propagation. This is due to conservation of momentum: photons that are absorbed or scattered by the tiny dielectric particle impart momentum to the dielectric particle. This is known as the scattering force and results in the particle being displaced slightly downstream from the exact position of the beam waist, as seen in the figure.

Optical traps are very sensitive instruments and are capable of the manipulation and detection of sub-nanometer displacements for sub-micron dielectric particles. For this reason, they are often used to manipulate and study single molecules by interacting with a bead that has been attached to that molecule. DNA and the proteins and enzymes that interact with it are commonly studied in this way.

For quantitative scientific measurements, most optical traps are operated in such a way that the dielectric particle rarely moves far from the trap center. The reason for this is that the force applied to the particle is linear with respect to its displacement from the center of the trap as long as the displacement is small. In this way, an optical trap can be compared to a simple spring, which follows Hooke's law.

Detailed view
Proper explanation of optical trapping behavior depends upon the size of the trapped particle relative to the wavelength of light used to trap it. In cases where the dimensions of the particle are much greater than the wavelength, a simple ray optics treatment is sufficient. If the wavelength of light far exceeds the particle dimensions, the particles can be treated as electric dipoles in an electric field. For optical trapping of dielectric objects of dimensions within an order of magnitude of the trapping beam wavelength, the only accurate models involve the treatment of either time dependent or time harmonic Maxwell equations using appropriate boundary conditions.

Ray optics

In cases where the diameter of a trapped particle is significantly greater than the wavelength of light, the trapping phenomenon can be explained using ray optics. As shown in the figure, individual rays of light emitted from the laser will be refracted as it enters and exits the dielectric bead. As a result, the ray will exit in a direction different from which it originated. Since light has a momentum associated with it, this change in direction indicates that its momentum has changed. Due to Newton's third law, there should be an equal and opposite momentum change on the particle.

Most optical traps operate with a Gaussian beam (TEM00 mode) profile intensity. In this case, if the particle is displaced from the center of the beam, as in the right part of the figure, the particle has a net force returning it to the center of the trap because more intense beams impart a larger momentum change towards the center of the trap than less intense beams, which impart a smaller momentum change away from the trap center. The net momentum change, or force, returns the particle to the trap center.

If the particle is located at the center of the beam, then individual rays of light are refracting through the particle symmetrically, resulting in no net lateral force. The net force in this case is along the axial direction of the trap, which cancels out the scattering force of the laser light. The cancellation of this axial gradient force with the scattering force is what causes the bead to be stably trapped slightly downstream of the beam waist.

The standard tweezers works with the trapping laser propagated in the
direction of gravity and the inverted tweezers works against gravity.

Electric dipole approximation
In cases where the diameter of a trapped particle is significantly smaller than the wavelength of light, the conditions for Rayleigh scattering are satisfied and the particle can be treated as a point dipole in an inhomogeneous electromagnetic field. The force applied on a single charge in an electromagnetic field is known as the Lorentz force,

The force on the dipole can be calculated by substituting two terms for the electric field in the equation above, one for each charge. The polarization of a dipole is  where  is the distance between the two charges. For a point dipole, the distance is infinitesimal,  Taking into account that the two charges have opposite signs, the force takes the form

Notice that the  cancel out. Multiplying through by the charge, , converts position, , into polarization, ,

where in the second equality, it has been assumed that the dielectric particle is linear (i.e. ).

In the final steps, two equalities will be used: (1) a vector analysis equality, (2) Faraday's law of induction.

First, the vector equality will be inserted for the first term in the force equation above. Maxwell's equation will be substituted in for the second term in the vector equality. Then the two terms which contain time derivatives can be combined into a single term.

The second term in the last equality is the time derivative of a quantity that is related through a multiplicative constant to the Poynting vector, which describes the power per unit area passing through a surface. Since the power of the laser is constant when sampling over frequencies much longer than the frequency of the laser's light ~1014 Hz, the derivative of this term averages to zero and the force can be written as

where in the second part we have included the induced dipole moment (in MKS units) of a spherical dielectric particle: , where  is the particle radius,  is the index of refraction of the particle and  is the relative refractive index between the particle and the medium. The square of the magnitude of the electric field is equal to the intensity of the beam as a function of position. Therefore, the result indicates that the force on the dielectric particle, when treated as a point dipole, is proportional to the gradient along the intensity of the beam. In other words, the gradient force described here tends to attract the particle to the region of highest intensity. In reality, the scattering force of the light works against the gradient force in the axial direction of the trap, resulting in an equilibrium position that is displaced slightly downstream of the intensity maximum. Under the Rayleigh approximation, we can also write the scattering force as

Since the scattering is isotropic, the net momentum is transferred in the forward direction. On the quantum level, we picture the gradient force as forward Rayleigh scattering in which identical photons are created and annihilated concurrently, while in the scattering (radiation) force the incident photons travel in the same direction and 'scatter' isotropically. By conservation of momentum, the particle must accumulate the photons' original momenta, causing a forward force in the latter.

Harmonic potential approximation
A useful way to study the interaction of an atom in a Gaussian beam is to look at the harmonic potential approximation of the intensity profile the atom experiences. In the case of the two-level atom, the potential experienced is related to its AC Stark Shift,

where  is the natural line width of the excited state,  is the electric dipole coupling,  is the frequency of the transition, and  is the detuning or difference between the laser frequency and the transition frequency.

The intensity of a gaussian beam profile is characterized by the wavelength , minimum waist , and power of the beam . The following formulas define the beam profile:

To approximate this Gaussian potential in both the radial and axial directions of the beam, the intensity profile must be expanded to second order in  and  for  and  respectively and equated to the harmonic potential . These expansions are evaluated assuming fixed power.

This means that when solving for the harmonic frequencies (or trap frequencies when considering optical traps for atoms), the frequencies are given as:

so that the relative trap frequencies for the radial and axial directions as a function of only beam waist scale as:

Optical levitation
In order to levitate the particle in air, the downward force of gravity must be countered by the forces stemming from photon momentum transfer. Typically photon radiation pressure of a focused laser beam of enough intensity counters the downward force of gravity while also preventing lateral (side to side) and vertical instabilities to allow for a stable optical trap capable of holding small particles in suspension.

Micrometer sized (from several to 50 micrometers in diameter) transparent dielectric spheres such as fused silica spheres, oil or water droplets, are used in this type of experiment. The laser radiation can be fixed in wavelength such as that of an argon ion laser or that of a tunable dye laser. Laser power required is of the order of 1 Watt focused to a spot size of several tens of micrometers. Phenomena related to morphology-dependent resonances in a spherical optical cavity have been studied by several research groups.

For a shiny object, such as a metallic micro-sphere, stable optical levitation has not been achieved. Optical levitation of a macroscopic object is also theoretically possible, and can be enhanced with nano-structuring.

Materials that have been successfully levitated include Black liquor, aluminum oxide, tungsten, and nickel.

Optothermal tweezers
In the last two decades, optical forces are combined with thermophoretic forces to enable trapping at reduced laser powers, thus resulting in minimized photon damage. By introducing light-absorbing elements (either particles or substrates), microscale temperature gradients are created, resulting in thermophoresis. Typically, particles (including biological objects such as cells, bacteria, DNA/RNA) drift towards the cold - resulting in particle repulsion using optical tweezers. Overcoming this limitation, different techniques such as beam shaping and solution modification with electrolytes and surfactants were used to successfully trap the objects. Laser cooling was also achieved with Ytterbium-doped yttrium lithium fluoride crystals to generate cold spots using lasers to achieve trapping with reduced photobleaching.  The sample temperature has also been reduced to achieve optical trapping for a significantly increased selection of particles using optothermal tweezers for drug delivery applications.

Setups

The most basic optical tweezer setup will likely include the following components: a laser (usually Nd:YAG), a beam expander, some optics used to steer the beam location in the sample plane, a microscope objective and condenser to create the trap in the sample plane, a position detector (e.g. quadrant photodiode) to measure beam displacements and a microscope illumination source coupled to a CCD camera.

An Nd:YAG laser (1064 nm wavelength) is a common choice of laser for working with biological specimens. This is because such specimens (being mostly water) have a low absorption coefficient at this wavelength. A low absorption is advisable so as to minimise damage to the biological material, sometimes referred to as opticution. Perhaps the most important consideration in optical tweezer design is the choice of the objective. A stable trap requires that the gradient force, which is dependent upon the numerical aperture (NA) of the objective, be greater than the scattering force. Suitable objectives typically have an NA between 1.2 and 1.4.

While alternatives are available, perhaps the simplest method for position detection involves imaging the trapping laser exiting the sample chamber onto a quadrant photodiode. Lateral deflections of the beam are measured similarly to how it is done using atomic force microscopy (AFM).

Expanding the beam emitted from the laser to fill the aperture of the objective will result in a tighter, diffraction-limited spot. While lateral translation of the trap relative to the sample can be accomplished by translation of the microscope slide, most tweezer setups have additional optics designed to translate the beam to give an extra degree of translational freedom. This can be done by translating the first of the two lenses labelled as "Beam Steering" in the figure. For example, translation of that lens in the lateral plane will result in a laterally deflected beam from what is drawn in the figure. If the distance between the beam steering lenses and the objective is chosen properly, this will correspond to a similar deflection before entering the objective and a resulting lateral translation in the sample plane. The position of the beam waist, that is the focus of the optical trap, can be adjusted by an axial displacement of the initial lens. Such an axial displacement causes the beam to diverge or converge slightly, the end result of which is an axially displaced position of the beam waist in the sample chamber.

Visualization of the sample plane is usually accomplished through illumination via a separate light source coupled into the optical path in the opposite direction using dichroic mirrors. This light is incident on a CCD camera and can be viewed on an external monitor or used for tracking the trapped particle position via video tracking.

Alternative laser beam modes
The majority of optical tweezers make use of conventional TEM00 Gaussian beams. However a number of other beam types have been used to trap particles, including high order laser beams i.e. Hermite-Gaussian beams (TEMxy), Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beams (TEMpl) and Bessel beams.

Optical tweezers based on Laguerre-Gaussian beams have the unique capability of trapping particles that are optically reflective and absorptive. Laguerre-Gaussian beams also possess a well-defined orbital angular momentum that can rotate particles. This is accomplished without external mechanical or electrical steering of the beam.

Both zero and higher order Bessel Beams also possess a unique tweezing ability. They can trap and rotate multiple particles that are millimeters apart and even around obstacles.

Micromachines can be driven by these unique optical beams due to their intrinsic rotating mechanism due to the spin and orbital angular momentum of light.

Multiplexed optical tweezers
A typical setup uses one laser to create one or two traps. Commonly, two traps are generated by splitting the laser beam into two orthogonally polarized beams. Optical tweezing operations with more than two traps can be realized either by time-sharing a single laser beam among several optical tweezers, or by diffractively splitting the beam into multiple traps. With acousto-optic deflectors or galvanometer-driven mirrors, a single laser beam can be shared among hundreds of optical tweezers in the focal plane, or else spread into an extended one-dimensional trap. Specially designed diffractive optical elements can divide a single input beam into hundreds of continuously illuminated traps in arbitrary three-dimensional configurations. The trap-forming hologram also can specify the mode structure of each trap individually, thereby creating arrays of optical vortices, optical tweezers, and holographic line traps, for example. When implemented with a spatial light modulator, such holographic optical traps also can move objects in three dimensions. Advanced forms of holographic optical traps with arbitrary spatial profiles, where smoothness of the intensity and the phase are controlled, find applications in many areas of science, from micromanipulation to ultracold atoms.
Ultracold atoms could also be used for realization of quantum computers.

Single mode optical fibers
The standard fiber optical trap relies on the same principle as the optical trapping, but with the Gaussian laser beam delivered through an optical fiber. If one end of the optical fiber is molded into a lens-like facet, the nearly gaussian beam carried by a single mode standard fiber will be focused at some distance from the fiber tip. The effective Numerical Aperture of such assembly is usually not enough to allow for a full 3D optical trap but only for a 2D trap (optical trapping and manipulation of objects will be possible only when, e.g., they are in contact with a surface ).
A true 3D optical trapping based on a single fiber, with a trapping point which is not in nearly contact with the fiber tip, has been realized based on a not-standard annular-core fiber arrangement and a total-internal-reflection geometry.

On the other hand, if the ends of the fiber are not moulded, the laser exiting the fiber will be diverging and thus a stable optical trap can only be realised by balancing the gradient and the scattering force from two opposing ends of the fiber. The gradient force will trap the particles in the transverse direction, while the axial optical force comes from the scattering force of the two counter propagating beams emerging from the two fibers. The equilibrium z-position of such a trapped bead is where the two scattering forces equal each other. This work was pioneered by A. Constable et al., Opt. Lett. 18,1867 (1993), and followed by J.Guck et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 5451 (2000), who made use of this technique to stretch microparticles. By manipulating the input power into the two ends of the fiber, there will be an increase of an "optical stretching" that can be used to measure viscoelastic properties of cells, with sensitivity sufficient to distinguish between different individual cytoskeletal phenotypes. i.e. human erythrocytes and mouse fibroblasts. A recent test has seen great success in differentiating cancerous cells from non-cancerous ones from the two opposed, non-focused laser beams.

Multimode fiber-based traps

While earlier version of fiber-based laser traps exclusively used single mode beams, M. Kreysing and colleagues recently showed that the careful excitation of further optical modes in a short piece of optical fiber allows the realization of non-trivial trapping geometries. By this the researchers were able to orient various human cell types (individual cells and clusters) on a microscope. The main advantage of the so-called "optical cell rotator" technology over standard optical tweezers is the decoupling of trapping from imaging optics. This, its modular design, and the high compatibility of divergent laser traps with biological material indicates the great potential of this new generation of laser traps in medical research and life science. Recently, the optical cell rotator technology was implemented on the basis of adaptive optics, allowing to dynamically reconfigure the optical trap during operation and adapt it to the sample.

Cell sorting
One of the more common cell-sorting systems makes use of flow cytometry through fluorescence imaging. In this method, a suspension of biologic cells is sorted into two or more containers, based upon specific fluorescent characteristics of each cell during an assisted flow. By using an electrical charge that the cell is "trapped" in, the cells are then sorted based on the fluorescence intensity measurements. The sorting process is undertaken by an electrostatic deflection system that diverts cells into containers based upon their charge.

In the optically actuated sorting process, the cells are flowed through into an optical landscape i.e. 2D or 3D optical lattices. Without any induced electrical charge, the cells would sort based on their intrinsic refractive index properties and can be re-configurability for dynamic sorting. An optical lattice can be created using diffractive optics and optical elements.

On the other hand, K. Ladavac et al. used a spatial light modulator to project an intensity pattern to enable the optical sorting process. K. Xiao and D. G. Grier applied holographic video microscopy to demonstrate that this technique can sort colloidal spheres with part-per-thousand resolution for size and refractive index.

The main mechanism for sorting is the arrangement of the optical lattice points. As the cell flow through the optical lattice, there are forces due to the particles drag force that is competing directly with the optical gradient force (See Physics of optical tweezers) from the optical lattice point. By shifting the arrangement of the optical lattice point, there is a preferred optical path where the optical forces are dominant and biased. With the aid of the flow of the cells, there is a resultant force that is directed along that preferred optical path. Hence, there is a relationship of the flow rate with the optical gradient force. By adjusting the two forces, one will be able to obtain a good optical sorting efficiency.

Competition of the forces in the sorting environment need fine tuning to succeed in high efficient optical sorting. The need is mainly with regards to the balance of the forces; drag force due to fluid flow and optical gradient force due to arrangement of intensity spot.

Scientists at the University of St. Andrews have received considerable funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for an optical sorting machine. This new technology could rival the conventional fluorescence-activated cell sorting.

Evanescent fields
An evanescent field is a residue optical field that "leaks" during total internal reflection. This "leaking" of light fades off at an exponential rate. The evanescent field has found a number of applications in nanometer resolution imaging (microscopy); optical micromanipulation (optical tweezers) are becoming ever more relevant in research.

In optical tweezers, a continuous evanescent field can be created when light is propagating through an optical waveguide (multiple total internal reflection). The resulting evanescent field has a directional sense and will propel microparticles along its propagating path. This work was first pioneered by S. Kawata and T. Sugiura, in 1992, who showed that the field can be coupled to the particles in proximity on the order of 100 nanometers. This direct coupling of the field is treated as a type of photon tunnelling across the gap from prism to microparticles. The result is a directional optical propelling force.

A recent updated version of the evanescent field optical tweezers makes use of extended optical landscape patterns to simultaneously guide a large number of particles into a preferred direction without using a waveguide. It is termed as Lensless Optical Trapping ("LOT"). The orderly movement of the particles is aided by the introduction of Ronchi Ruling that creates well-defined optical potential wells (replacing the waveguide). This means that particles are propelled by the evanescent field while being trapped by the linear bright fringes. At the moment, there are scientists working on focused evanescent fields as well.

In recent studies, the evanescent field generated by mid-infrared laser has been used to sort particles by molecular vibrational resonance selectively. Mid-infrared light is commonly used to identify molecular structures of materials because the vibrational modes exist in the mid-infrared region. A study by Statsenko et al. described optical force enhancement by molecular vibrational resonance by exciting the stretching mode of Si-O-Si bond at 9.3 μm. It is shown that silica microspheres containing significant Si-O-Si bond move up to ten times faster than polystyrene microspheres due to molecular vibrational resonance. Moreover, this same group also investigated the possibility of optical force chromatography based on molecular vibrational resonance.

Another approach that has been recently proposed makes use of surface plasmons, which is an enhanced evanescent wave localized at a metal/dielectric interface. The enhanced force field experienced by colloidal particles exposed to surface plasmons
at a flat metal/dielectric interface has been for the first time measured using a photonic force microscope, the total force magnitude being found 40 times stronger compared to a normal evanescent wave. By patterning the surface with gold microscopic islands it is possible to have selective and parallel trapping in these islands. The forces of the latter optical tweezers lie in the femtonewton range.

The evanescent field can also be used to trap cold atoms and molecules near the surface of an optical waveguide or optical nanofiber.

Indirect approach
Ming Wu, a UC Berkeley Professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences invented the new optoelectronic tweezers.

Wu transformed the optical energy from low powered light emitting diodes (LED) into electrical energy via a photoconductive surface. The idea is to allow the LED to switch on and off the photoconductive material via its fine projection. As the optical pattern can be easily transformable through optical projection, this method allows a high flexibility of switching different optical landscapes.

The manipulation/tweezing process is done by the variations between the electric field actuated by the light pattern. The particles will be either attracted or repelled from the actuated point due to its induced electrical dipole. Particles suspended in a liquid will be susceptible to the electrical field gradient, this is known as dielectrophoresis.

One clear advantage is that the electrical conductivity is different between different kinds of cells. Living cells have a lower conductive medium while the dead ones have minimum or no conductive medium. The system may be able to manipulate roughly 10,000 cells or particles at the same time.

See comments by Professor Kishan Dholakia on this new technique, K. Dholakia, Nature Materials 4, 579–580 (01 Aug 2005) News and Views.

"The system was able to move live E. coli bacteria and 20-micrometre-wide particles, using an optical power output of less than 10 microwatts. This is one-hundred-thousandth of the power needed for [direct] optical tweezers".

Another notably new type of optical tweezers is optothermal tweezers invented by Yuebing Zheng at The University of Texas at Austin. The strategy is to use light to create a temperature gradient and exploit the thermophoretic migration of matter for optical trapping. The team further integrated thermophoresis with laser cooling to develop opto-refrigerative tweezers to avoid thermal damages for noninvasive optical trapping and manipulation.

Optical binding
When a cluster of microparticles are trapped within a monochromatic laser beam, the organization of the microparticles within the optical trapping is heavily dependent on the redistributing of the optical trapping forces amongst the microparticles. This redistribution of light forces amongst the cluster of microparticles provides a new force equilibrium on the cluster as a whole. As such we can say that the cluster of microparticles are somewhat bound together by light. One of the first experimental evidence of optical binding was reported by Michael M. Burns, Jean-Marc Fournier, and Jene A. Golovchenko, though it was originally predicted by T. Thirunamachandran. One of the many recent studies on optical binding has shown that for a system of chiral nanoparticles, the magnitude of the binding forces are dependent on the polarisation of the laser beam and the handedness of interacting particles themselves, with potential applications in areas such as enantiomeric separation and optical nanomanipulation.

Fluorescence optical tweezers
In order to simultaneously manipulate and image samples that exhibit fluorescence, optical tweezers can be built alongside a fluorescence microscope. Such instruments are particularly useful when it comes to studying single or small numbers of biological molecules that have been fluorescently labelled, or in applications in which fluorescence is used to track and visualize objects that are to be trapped.

This approach has been extended for simultaneous sensing and imaging of dynamic protein complexes using long and strong tethers generated by a highly efficient multi-step enzymatic approach and applied to investigations of disaggregation machines in action.

Tweezers combined with other imaging techniques
Other than 'standard' fluorescence optical tweezers are now being built with multiple color Confocal, Widefield, STED, FRET, TIRF or IRM.

This allows applications such as measuring: protein/DNA localization binding, protein folding, condensation, motor protein force generation, visualization of cytoskeletal filaments and motor dynamics, microtubule dynamics, manipulating liquid droplet (rheology) or fusion. These setups are difficult to build and traditionally are found in non correlated 'academic' setups. In the recent years even home builders (both biophysics and general biologists) are converting to the alternative and are acquiring total correlated solution with easy data acquisition and data analysis.

See also
 Levitation
 List of laser articles
 Quantum optics
 Atom optics
 Quantum control

References

External links
 Video: Levitating DIAMONDS with a laser beam

Levitation
Photonics
Condensed matter physics
Molecular biology
Cell biology
Biophysics
Optical trapping
1986 introductions
Force lasers

Optical tweezers


Erythropoietin (; EPO), also known as erythropoetin,  haematopoietin, or haemopoietin, is a glycoprotein cytokine secreted mainly by the kidneys in response to cellular hypoxia; it stimulates red blood cell production (erythropoiesis) in the bone marrow. Low levels of EPO (around 10 mU/mL) are constantly secreted in sufficient quantities to compensate for normal red blood cell turnover. Common causes of cellular hypoxia resulting in elevated levels of EPO (up to 10 000 mU/mL) include any anemia, and  hypoxemia due to chronic lung disease.

Erythropoietin is produced by interstitial fibroblasts in the kidney in close association with the peritubular capillary and proximal convoluted tubule.  It is also produced in perisinusoidal cells in the liver. Liver production predominates in the fetal and perinatal period; renal production  predominates in adulthood. It is homologous with thrombopoietin.

Exogenous erythropoietin, recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO), is produced by recombinant DNA technology in cell culture and are collectively called erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESA): two examples are epoetin alfa and epoetin beta. ESAs are used in the treatment of anemia in chronic kidney disease, anemia in myelodysplasia, and in anemia from cancer chemotherapy. Risks of therapy include death, myocardial infarction, stroke, venous thromboembolism, and tumor recurrence.  Risk increases when EPO treatment raises hemoglobin levels over 11 g/dL to 12 g/dL: this is to be avoided.

rhEPO has been used illicitly as a performance-enhancing drug. It can often be detected in blood, due to slight differences from the endogenous protein; for example, in features of posttranslational modification.

Pharmacology
EPO is highly glycosylated (40% of total molecular weight), with half-life in blood around 5 h. EPO's half-life may vary between endogenous and various recombinant versions. Additional glycosylation or other alterations of EPO via recombinant technology have led to the increase of EPO's stability in blood (thus requiring less frequent injections).

Function

Red blood cell production
Erythropoietin is an essential hormone for red blood cell production. Without it, definitive erythropoiesis does not take place. Under hypoxic conditions, the kidney will produce and secrete erythropoietin to increase the production of red blood cells by targeting CFU-E, proerythroblast and basophilic erythroblast subsets in the differentiation. Erythropoietin has its primary effect on red blood cell progenitors and precursors (which are found in the bone marrow in humans) by promoting their survival through protecting these cells from apoptosis, or cell death.

Erythropoietin is the primary erythropoietic factor that cooperates with various other growth factors (e.g., IL-3, IL-6, glucocorticoids, and SCF) involved in the development of erythroid lineage from multipotent progenitors. The burst-forming unit-erythroid (BFU-E) cells start erythropoietin receptor expression and are sensitive to erythropoietin. Subsequent stage, the colony-forming unit-erythroid (CFU-E), expresses maximal erythropoietin receptor density and is completely dependent on erythropoietin for further differentiation. Precursors of red cells, the proerythroblasts and basophilic erythroblasts also express erythropoietin receptor and are therefore affected by it.

Nonhematopoietic roles
Erythropoietin was reported to have a range of actions beyond stimulation of erythropoiesis including vasoconstriction-dependent hypertension, stimulating angiogenesis, and promoting cell survival via activation of EPO receptors resulting in anti-apoptotic effects on ischemic tissues. However this proposal is controversial with numerous studies showing no effect. It is also inconsistent with the low levels of EPO receptors on those cells. Clinical trials in humans with ischemic heart, neural and renal tissues have not demonstrated the same benefits seen in animals. In addition some research studies have shown its neuroprotective effect on diabetic neuropathy, however these data were not confirmed in clinical trials that have been conducted on the deep peroneal, superficial peroneal, tibial and sural nerves.

Mechanism of action
Erythropoietin has been shown to exert its effects by binding to the erythropoietin receptor (EpoR). EPO binds to the erythropoietin receptor on the red cell progenitor surface and activates a JAK2 signalling cascade. This initiates the STAT5, PIK3 and Ras MAPK pathways. This results in differentiation, survival and proliferation of the erythroid cell. SOCS1, SOCS3 and CIS are also expressed which act as negative regulators of the cytokine signal.

High level erythropoietin receptor expression is localized to erythroid progenitor cells. While there are reports that EPO receptors are found in a number of other tissues, such as heart, muscle, kidney and peripheral/central nervous tissue, those results are confounded by nonspecificity of reagents such as anti-EpoR antibodies. In controlled experiments, a functional EPO receptor is not detected in those tissues. In the bloodstream, red cells themselves do not express erythropoietin receptor, so cannot respond to EPO. However, indirect dependence of red cell longevity in the blood on plasma erythropoietin levels has been reported, a process termed neocytolysis. In addition, there is conclusive evidence that EPO receptor expression is upregulated in brain injury.

Synthesis and regulation
Erythropoietin levels in blood are quite low in the absence of anemia, at around 10 mU/mL. However, in hypoxic stress, EPO production may increase up to 1000-fold, reaching 10 000 mU/mL of blood. In adults, EPO is synthesized mainly by interstitial cells in the peritubular capillary bed of the renal cortex, with additional amounts being produced in the liver, and the pericytes in the brain. Regulation is believed to rely on a feedback mechanism measuring blood oxygenation and iron availability. Constitutively synthesized transcription factors for EPO, known as hypoxia-inducible factors, are hydroxylated and proteosomally digested in the presence of oxygen and iron. During normoxia GATA2 inhibits the promoter region for EPO. GATA2 levels decrease during hypoxia and allow the promotion of EPO production.

Erythropoietin production can be induced by HIF-2α as well as by PGC-1α. Erythropoietin also activates these factors, resulting in a positive feedback loop.

Medical uses

Erythropoietins available for use as therapeutic agents are produced by recombinant DNA technology in cell culture, and include Epogen/Procrit (epoetin alfa) and Aranesp (darbepoetin alfa); they are used in treating anemia resulting from chronic kidney disease, chemotherapy induced anemia in patients with cancer, inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis) and myelodysplasia from the treatment of cancer (chemotherapy and radiation). The package inserts include boxed warnings of increased risk of death, myocardial infarction, stroke, venous thromboembolism, and tumor recurrence, particularly when used to increase the hemoglobin levels to more than 11 g/dL to 12 g/dL.

History
In 1905, Paul Carnot proposed the idea that a hormone regulates the production of red blood cells. After conducting experiments on rabbits subject to bloodletting, Carnot and his graduate student Clotilde-Camille Deflandre attributed an increase in red blood cells in rabbit subjects to a hemotropic factor called hemopoietin. Eva Bonsdorff and Eeva Jalavisto called the hemopoietic substance 'erythropoietin'. K.R. Reissman and Allan J. Erslev  demonstrated that a certain substance, circulated in the blood, is able to stimulate red blood cell production and increase hematocrit. This substance was purified and confirmed as erythropoietin.

In 1977, Goldwasser and Kung purified EPO. Pure EPO allowed the amino acid sequence to be partially identified and the gene to be isolated. Synthetic EPO was first successfully used to correct anemia in 1987. In 1985, Lin et al isolated the human erythropoietin gene from a genomic phage library and used it to produce EPO. In 1989, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the hormone Epogen for use in certain anemias.

Gregg L. Semenza and Peter J. Ratcliffe studied the EPO gene and its oxygen-dependent regulation. Along with William Kaelin Jr., they were awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF), which regulates the EPO gene, as well as other genes, in response to hypoxia.

Biosimilars

In December 2007, Retacrit and Silapo (both epoetin zeta) were approved for use in the European Union.

Usage as doping product
As a performance-enhancing drug, EPO has been banned since the early 1990s, but a first test was not available until the 2000 Summer Olympics. Before this test was available, some athletes were sanctioned after confessing to having used EPO, for example in the Festina affair, when a car with doping products for the Festina cycling team was found.

The first doping test in cycling was used in the 2001 La Flèche Wallonne. The first rider to test positive in that race was Bo Hamburger, although he was later acquitted because his B-sample was not conclusive.

The U.S. Postal Service Pro Cycling Team, under the leadership of Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel, ran a sophisticated doping program that lasted for many years during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Erythropoietin was a common substance used by the cyclists.

A 2007 study showed that EPO has a  a 2017 study showed at submaximal exertion the effects of EPO were not distinguishable from a placebo. Stating "[At] Submaximal [exertion]...[mean power] did not differ between groups." Nevertheless, at "maximal [exertion power output was] higher in the rHuEPO group compared with the placebo group." So, even though there was no difference at lower levels of exertion at maximal exertion the EPO group still performed better than the placebo group.

In March 2019, American mixed martial artist and former UFC Bantamweight Champion T.J. Dillashaw tested positive for EPO in a drug test administered by USADA, and was stripped of the UFC bantamweight title and suspended for 2 years. In September of 2023 two-time tennis major champion Simona Halep received a 4-year suspension by the International Tennis Integrity Agency for two separate violations, one concerning the level of EPO in a blood sample collected in August 2022; Halep maintained her innocence, and indicated she would appeal the ban.

EPO has been used as a performance enhancing agent in horse racing since at least 2019.

References

Further reading

External links

Cytokines
Growth factors
Hormones of the kidneys
Nephrology procedures

Erythropoietin


Oh Stacey (Look What You've Done!) was the third single from The Zutons second album Tired of Hanging Around, to be released, on 18 September 2006. It entered as the band's eighth consecutive UK Top 40 single, peaking at No. 24 in the UK Singles Chart.

Video
The music video shows a blonde woman (presumably called Stacey) murdering the band members one by one, and their ghosts singing the song in the morgue. Stacey (whose face is hidden by shadow) cuts off McCabe's head with an axe, flattens Pritchard with a car, ties up and suffocates Harding with a rag soaked in something and sends Payne and Chowdhury over the edge of a building. It is revealed that the blonde woman is Harding's evil twin and the death scenes are shown again with Stacey's face revealed, she is played by Harding in a blonde wig.

Track listing

CD Version 1
 "Oh Stacey (Look What You've Done!)"
 "Please Calm Me Down"

CD Version 2
 "Oh Stacey (Look What You've Done!)"
 "You Know You Can Be Friends"
 "Tired of Hanging Around" (Alternate Version)
 "Oh Stacey (Look What You've Done!)" (Video)

7" Version
 "Oh Stacey (Look What You've Done!)"
 "Some Say It's Wise"

External links
 Video

The Zutons songs
2006 singles
2006 songs
Songs written by Dave McCabe

Oh Stacey (Look What You've Done!)


Gilbert Taylor, B.S.C. (12 April 1914 – 23 August 2013) was a British cinematographer, best known for his work on films such as Dr. Strangelove, A Hard Day's Night (both 1964), Repulsion (1965), The Omen (1976), and Star Wars (1977). In the course of his career, he collaborated with directors like Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, and Mike Hodges. He was nominated for two BAFTA Awards, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Society of Cinematographers.

Early life
The son of a Hertfordshire builder, Taylor grew up in Bushey Heath. A paternal uncle was a newsreel cameraman and contact with him from the age of ten gave Taylor early experience of working with cameras and developing film stock. As a teenager, he studied architecture before deciding to pursue a career in film. While his father disapproved of the film industry, populated he thought by "harridans, whores and gypsies", it was his mother who consented to their son's altered career plans.

A neighbour offered Taylor, aged 15, a job as a camera assistant to William Shenton, a cinematographer working for Gainsborough Studios at their Islington base. In 1929, Taylor worked on the studio's final two silent films. Shenton took Taylor to Paris where he worked on two more silent films, before returning to Gainsborough. He then worked at Elstree for British International Pictures, where he was clapper loader on the Alfred Hitchcock film Number Seventeen (1932). Despite his junior status, formally a second camera assistant, Taylor was entrusted with some of the special effects work, including the use of mattes, to disguise the roofs of poorly-maintained buildings.

During six years service in World War II as an officer in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, he became an operational cameraman flying in Avro Lancaster bombers, documenting the damage after British bombing raids. Taylor recalled: "This was requested by Winston Churchill, and my material was delivered to 10 Downing Street for him to view. He was keen for the public to see what our lads were doing. I did 10 of those operations, including raids on Cologne and Dresden".

Career
After demobilisation, he worked for Two Cities Films. In Fame Is the Spur (1947), he worked on a dream sequence using deep focus. The Boulting brothers were the co-producers of the film and they placed Taylor under contract. For the Boultings, Taylor, now promoted to full cinematographer, or director of photography, shot The Guinea Pig (US, The Outsider, 1948), Seven Days to Noon (1950) and High Treason (1951). From this point, Taylor began to use bounced and reflected light gaining a more naturalistic look, whereas the use of direct light was still the common practice by his contemporaries. Because it was necessary for London to look unpopulated in Seven Days to Noon, the first of three "end of the world films" Taylor worked on, it was necessary for him to arise at five-o-clock in the morning during a seven-week shoot.

Kubrick, Lester and Polanski
Taylor worked on a number of films commended for their black and white photography, such as Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night (both 1964). Taylor, without Kubrick who was unwilling to fly in an aircraft, filmed material in the Arctic to be used as background plates in the flying sequences.

He commented later: "Strangelove was at the time a unique experience because the lighting was to be incorporated in the sets, with little or no other light used". Concerning the war room set designed by Ken Adam: "Lighting that set was sheer magic, and I don't quite know how I got away with it all". He continued: "Much of it was the same formula based on the overheads as fill and blasting in the key on faces from the side". Although Kubrick and Taylor had a rapport, he found the director to be autocratic. An easier project to work on was the Richard Lester film with The Beatles which was heavily improvised.

With Lester, Chris Pizzello wrote in 2003, Taylor "adopted a roving, multiple-camera technique (aided by new, versatile 10:1 zoom lenses) so that the Beatles could move about freely and not worry about technicalities like hitting marks. This fast, fresh brand of filmmaking was a perfect fit for the film's tiny budget, tight schedule and simple black-and-white aesthetic". Taylor and five other operators on the film used hand-held Arriflex cameras. "The key is not to hold the camera completely still", he once commented "but to let it 'breathe' with you, to move with it".

His work on Dr Strangelove led Roman Polanski to seek Taylor for Repulsion (1965). In committing to the Polish director's first English-language film, Taylor rejected the opportunity to work on a Bond film (Thunderball) because he thought Polanski "was a very interesting guy". According to Polanski in his 1984 autobiography, Repulsions executive producer Michael Klinger "protested that Gil Taylor was one of the most expensive cameramen in the business, but I held out for Taylor and I got him". Taylor said his "aim was to get a stronger negative and good shadows in the final print. The shadows are what make good movies".

Their collaboration continued with Cul-de-sac (1966) and Macbeth (1971), the third and last film he shot with Polanski. According to Ronald Bergan, "although shot in colour", Macbeth, "is as near to black and white as possible, with its grey, misty landscape". Taylor received BAFTA nominations over two consecutive years for the first two collaborations.

Later work in colour
Hitchcock requested Taylor work on his penultimate film Frenzy (1972). Despite a claim in Bergan's obituary of the cinematographer that Hitchcock was unaware the two men had worked together forty years earlier, according to Taylor they had stayed in touch. Hitchcock never looked through the camera, because of his use of storyboards, leaving decisions to Taylor. The tracking shot, up and down a flight of stairs and then into the street, which invisibly merged shots from a studio set and street location took a day to achieve with the switch disguised by the movement of an extra in front of the camera.

Taylor's later films include The Omen (1976), and Star Wars (1977). On Star Wars, he established principles about visual aesthetics which have been maintained in the later films in the series. He told Mark Newbold in 2005: "I wanted to give Star Wars a unique visual style that would distinguish it from other films in the science fiction genre. I wanted Star Wars to have clarity because I think space isn't out of focus, also I was mindful that there was an enormous amount of process work to be done in America with Dykstra after we had finished shooting in England, and a crisp result would help this process".
Taylor found George Lucas an elusive person to consult, leading Taylor to make his own decisions as how to shoot the picture after multiple readings of the script. Differences of opinion between the director and cinematographer led to 20th Century Fox, for whom Taylor had shot The Omen, intervening to retain him on the picture. After the experience of working on Star Wars, Taylor decided he would never work again with Lucas.

His last film credit was Don't Get Me Started released in 1994, but he continued to work on commercials for some time afterwards.

Taylor was a founder member of the British Society of Cinematographers, receiving their lifetime achievement award in 2001. He received an international award from the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) in 2006.

Personal life
Taylor met his wife, former script supervisor Dee Vaughan, while both were working on comedian Tony Hancock's film, The Punch and Judy Man (1963), and married in 1967. The couple had a son and daughter. Taylor also had a son and daughter from an earlier marriage. He died on 23 August 2013, aged 99, at his home on the Isle of Wight.

Filmography

Film

Television
Director

Cinematographer

References

External links

 Profile and interview by the American Society of Cinematographers, on the occasion of his International Achievement Award

1914 births
2013 deaths
British cinematographers
People from Bushey
Royal Air Force officers
Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve personnel of World War II

Gilbert Taylor


The Tropidophiidae, common name dwarf boas or thunder snakes, are a family of nonvenomous snakes found from Mexico and the West Indies south to southeastern Brazil. These are small to medium-sized fossorial snakes, some with beautiful and striking color patterns. Currently, two living genera, containing 34 species, are recognized. Two other genera (Ungaliophis and Exiliboa) were once considered to be tropidophiids but are now known to be more closely related to the boids, and are classified in the subfamily Ungaliophiinae. There are a relatively large number of fossil snakes that have been described as tropidophiids (because their vertebrae are easy to identify), but which of these are more closely related to Tropidophis and Trachyboa and which are more closely related to Ungaliophis and Exiliboa is unknown.

Description
This family is confined to the neotropics, mainly in Hispaniola, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands, with the greatest diversity being in Cuba, where new species are still being discovered. These snakes are relatively small, averaging to about  in total length (including the tail).

Behavior
Most species spend their day burrowed underground or under vegetation, surfacing only at night or when it rains. Some species are arboreal and are often seen hiding in bromeliads in trees.

Color change
The dwarf boas can change color from light (when they are active at night) to dark (inactive in the day).
This color change is brought about by the movement of dark pigment granules.

Defensive behavior
When threatened, tropidophiids coil up into a tight ball. A more peculiar defensive behavior is their ability to bleed voluntarily from the eyes, mouth, and nostrils.

Distribution and habitat
They are found from southern Mexico and Central America, south to northwestern South America in Colombia, (Amazonian) Ecuador, and Peru, as well as in northwestern and southeastern Brazil, and also in the West Indies.

Fossils
Fossils of 10 extinct species in five genera from the Paleocene, Eocene, and Oligocene of Europe, Africa, and North and South America have been assigned to the Tropidophiidae, although all of them are probably actually either ungaliophiines or stem afrophidians. Two genera, Falseryx and Rottophis, both from the Oligocene of western Europe, have some similarities with living tropidophiids as well as with ungaliophiines, but for the most part their skulls are poorly preserved, leaving paleontologists to work on just their vertebrae. Paleogene erycines dominated the snake fauna of North America prior to the Miocene explosion of colubroids, but as far as we know all of these species were much more closely related to modern rosy and rubber boas than they were to tropidophiids. The only unequivocal tropidophiid fossils are from the Pleistocene of Florida and the Bahamas.

Genera

T Type genus.

Cited references

External links
Tropidophiidae at Life is Short but Snakes are Long

Taxa named by Leo Brongersma
Snake families

Tropidophiidae


What Is to Be Done?, sometimes translated as What Then Must We Do? (Russian: Так что же нам делать?), is a non-fiction work by Leo Tolstoy in which he describes the social conditions of Russia in his day.

Tolstoy completed the book in 1886 and the first English language publication came in 1887 as What to Do?. A revised translation with the current title was published in 1899.

The English title was also used for two better-known works by Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Vladimir Lenin. Tolstoy's Russian title is similar, but not identical to Chernyshevsky's and Lenin's (Что делать?), both of them sharing the same Biblical reference (Luke 3:10–14).

External links
 What Is To Be Done?, at TheAnarchistLibrary.org.
 What Shall We Do?, at Revoltlib.com.
 What Shall We Do? at Marxists.org
 What Then Must We Do? at Archive.org, OCR transcription needs work.
 What to Do?, 1887 English translation available on Google Books.
 What Is to Be Done?, 1899 English translation available on Google Books.
 What Then Must We Do?. Complete English translation.

1886 non-fiction books
Books by Leo Tolstoy
Works about Russia

What Is to Be Done? (Tolstoy book)


The Stenborg Company (Swedish: Stenborgsföretag) was a Swedish Theatre Company, active in Sweden and Finland in the 18th century. It was also called Stenborgska skådebanorna ('Stenborg Stages'), Svenska komeditruppen ('Swedish Comedy Troupe') and Svenska Comedien
('Swedish Comedy') or Svenska Teatern ('Swedish Theatre'). It is one of the most famous theatre troupes in its country's history. In the period of 1754–1773, between the closure of the first national Swedish theatre in Bollhuset and the foundation of the next, The Royal Swedish Opera and the Royal Dramatic Theatre, it was the only Theatre performing in the native language in Stockholm. It also has an importance for the history of Finland, being the first professional secular theatre troupe in this country. It was a traveling troupe in 1756–80 and then housed in several buildings.

History
When the Swedish troupe, active on the theater since 1737, was fired in 1753 and replaced with the French Du Londel Troupe, half of the staff left for the countryside to work as a traveling theater company under Peter Lindahl and Johan Bergholtz, while the rest remained in Stockholm in an attempt to start a new theatre. In 1756, The actor Petter Stenborg applied and was given permission to lead a theater company in the city of Stockholm, and between 1758 and for twenty years forward, he performed as the director of a troupe of native actors in both Stockholm, in temporary locales, and touring the country, mostly in Finland, first in companionship with the tight-rope-walker von Carl Fredrik von Eckenberg; when the troupe visited Åbo in 1761, it was probably the first time a theatre troupe visited Finland.

The first period

The Stenborg troupe is most known for its activity in Stockholm, where it preserved a Swedish-speaking theater during a period when the French culture otherwise dominated the Swedish stage. The theatre did not have a good reputation among the upper-classes; the actors were from "the jail, soldiers, alcoholized lawyers, servants, and washing-women", the costumes were from rag shops and the music from public-houses, (where they often performed), and the plays was described as vulgar; these judgements were given by members of the upper classes, who preferred French theater, but the Stenborg Company was much appreciated by the public, who could not understand the French language at Bollhuset. They represented a native speaking theater in the 1750s and 1760s. During the period of 1754–71, Swedish plays were only performed in the city stage of Bollhuset two times; Syrinx (1761) and Herkules på skiljovägen (1762) to the benefit of musician Petter Lillström, husband of Elisabeth Lillström actress in the Stenborg Troupe. At the performance of Jeppe på Berget by Holberg in 1763, the theatre on Kindstugatan, it was noted that the locale had places for three hundred spectators.

Among the actors were former tailor Jean Löfblad, the Harlequin of the troupe; the Harlekin of the company, Fredric Neuman; Johanna Löfblad, earlier active both at Bollhuset and the Lindahl troupe and active at the Stenborg troupe until the 1790s and thereby one of the longest active actors in Sweden in the 18th century; and the prima donna Christina Catharina Lindberg, also earlier active in Bollhuset.

The performances were often Harlequin-comedies, in which the star was Jean Löfblad, but also the old Swedish plays from Bollhuset and foreign plays, often from France. The most popular play was The defended Venus, which was first performed in Bollhuset, and it was said, that whenever the theatre needed money and had to be sure to have a large audience, the gave this play. In 1770, the Houseghost and then The enchanted bridegroom by Holberg was performed, which was aroused attention as the first play was performed only by men, the latter only by women.

In 1771, king Gustav III of Sweden fired the French theater company, and the Swedish actors, led by Petter Stenborg, saw their chance and asked to perform a play at the opening of the parliament of 1772. In the play, Stenborg asked the monarch to protect the native speaking theatre. At the opening of parliament in 1772, the troupe of Petter Stenborg appeared before King Gustav III and all the public in Bollhuset after the French troupe had left it, in which play the son of Stenborg, Carl, again asked for protection for the native theatre. The play was considered very bad by the nobility, but the public applauded it immensely, which was seen as a public appeal to open a theatre in the native language again. After this, the monarch decided to found a native speaking opera and theatre, though not with the Stenborg troupe.

The second period
In 1773, the troupe, whose biggest problem was the difficulty of getting venues, and had to move from one place to the next over the years. Finally, they found a good place to perform; the so-called Humlegårdsteatern, "The Humlegården Theatre", where they performed every summer until 1780. This was described as a sort of pavilion, Rotundan, in the public park Humlegården. Here, they played simple comedies in the native language, sometimes caricatures of the solemn performances in Bollhuset.

Humlegårdsteatern became a very popular part of the city's summer life; the opera-performances Thetis och Phelée became Petis och Nasenblom, Acis och Galathea became Kasper och Dorotea.

The last period

In 1780, Petter Stenborg retired, and his company was taken over by his son Carl Stenborg; he was a singer at the Opera and could not tour outside the city, and therefore searched for a real house for the troupe, where they could perform all year. He found one at Eriksberg, thereby called the Eriksbergsteatern (Eriksberg Theater), but it was uncomfortably outside town.

In 1784, he found the final location for the company at Munkbron, called the Munkbro Theater but commonly referred to as Stenborg Theater, who were the second most important theater in Stockholm until the monopoly of the Royal Dramatic Theater closed it down in 1799. In 1804–09, Carl Stenborg toured in the countryside with his own troupe, which could be considered as the very least period of the Stenborg troupe.

Localities for the Stenborg Theater in Stockholm
Until 1780, the troupe toured the country in both Sweden and Finland when it was not performing in Stockholm. When it performed in Stockholm, it used various localities until 1773.

 1760 The Theater in the Bergstrahl house.
 1762 The Theater in the loft on Kindstugatan.
 1768 The Theater at the camp of the royal guard.
 1769 The Theater in Dowager Lafont's Coffee-house at Järntorget.
 1773 The Pavilion Rotundan in the park of Humlegården, "Humlegårdsteatern".
 1780 The Eriksberg Theater, ("Eriksbergsteatern").
 1784 The Munkbro theater.

Actors in the troupe of 1765
When the troupe left Stockholm to tour in the Swedish countryside in May 1765, it was made of the following members:

 Petter Stenborg (with his sons Nils Gustaf Stenborg and Carl Stenborg)
 Jean Löfblad
 Johan Ahlbeck
 Carl Adam Höckerstedt
 Christian Vougt
 Johanna Catharina Enbeck
 Christina Catharina Lindberg
 Madame Schederman
 Brita Christina Neberg
 Lars Lindberg
 Madame Ulrika Mar. Christlieb

Actors in the troupe of 1773
After the inauguration of the theatre at Humlegården during 1773, the troupe toured in Finland the winter of 1773–74, consisting of the following:

 Jean Löfblad, the leading star
 Johanna Löfblad
 Jonas Daniel Beckman
 Emerentia Jakobina Sjöberg
 Ingeborg Stenbom
 Johan Nyholm
 Christian Freidrich Vougt
 Martha Leuch
 Rutger Ludvig Söderberg
 Jakob Medalliur
 Petter Lind
 Eva Floberg
 Martin Nürenbach, ("with wife"), dancer

Actors in the troupe of 1780
When the troupe stopped being a traveling theatre troupe and moved into the Eriksbergsteatern in 1780 it was made of:

 Rutger Ludvig Söderberg
 Johanna Löfblad
 Maria Katarina Öhrn, primadonna
 Olof Ljungren, f. 1748
 Ingeborg Ljungren
 Magnus Bonn
 Anders Lundberg
 Petter Johan Lindskog
 Johan Fredrik Scheiderman
 Johan Fredrik Köhn/Kjörn

See also
 Selander Company

References
 Nordisk familjebok / Uggleupplagan. 26. Slöke - Stockholm
 Nordisk familjebok / Uggleupplagan. 26. Slöke - Stockholm

 Svenska Familj-Journalen / Band V, årgång 1866
 Svenska Familj-Journalen / Band V, årgång 1866
 Andersson, Ingvar (red.), Gustavianskt: [1771-1810] : en bokfilm, [Ny utg.], Wahlström & Widstrand, Stockholm, 1979
 Byström, Tryggve, Svenska komedien 1737-1754: en studie i Stockholmsteaterns historia, Norstedt, Stockholm, 1981

 Anna Ivarsdotter Johnsson och Leif Jonsson: Musiken i Sverige, Frihetstiden och Gustaviansk tid 1720-1810
 Johan Flodmark (1893). Stenborgska skådebanorna: bidrag till Stockholms teaterhistoria. Stockholm: Norstedt. Libris 439864
 Glase, Béatrice; Glase, Gösta & Härén, Gunnar (1988). Gamla stan: historia som lever. Stockholm: Trevi. Libris 7612806.

18th century in Sweden
18th century in Finland
Swedish comedy troupes
Former theatres in Stockholm
1756 establishments in Sweden
Theatre companies in Sweden
Sweden during the Age of Liberty
18th century in Turku

Stenborg Company


The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act of 2019, , was signed into law by President Donald Trump on December 20, 2019 as part of the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 (2020 United States federal budget).

The SECURE Act changed the most popular retirement plans used in the United States and was the first major retirement-related legislation enacted since the 2006 Pension Protection Act.
 Major elements of the bill include: raising the minimum age for required minimum distributions from 70.5 years of age to 72 years of age; allowing workers to contribute to traditional IRAs after turning 70.5 years of age; allowing individuals to use 529 plan money to repay student loans; eliminating the so-called stretch IRA by requiring non-spouse beneficiaries of inherited IRAs to withdraw and pay taxes on all distributions from inherited accounts within 10 years; and making it easier for 401(k) plan administrators to offer annuities.

Legislative history

Richard Neal, the U.S. representative for  and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, introduced the SECURE Act as  on March 29, 2019. The bipartisan bill was co-introduced by Ranking Member Kevin Brady (R-TX) as well as Reps. Ron Kind (D-WI) and Mike Kelly (R-PA). It passed the House Ways and Means Committee on April 2, 2019 and passed the full House on May 23, 2019 by a vote of 417–3.

In the Senate, a companion bill called the Retirement Enhancement and Savings Act (RESA, ) was introduced by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. This bill, co-sponsored by Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR), failed to advance in committee.

Elements of both bills were incorporated into the fiscal year 2020 spending bill (). The SECURE Act, as part of the spending bill, was passed by the House on December 17, 2019 by a vote of 297–120 and by the Senate on December 19, 2019 by a vote of 71–23. It was signed into law by President Donald Trump on December 20, 2019.

Provisions

The SECURE Act was drafted to assist in saving and investing for retirement. To that end, it contains a number of provisions to incentivize retirement planning, diversify the options available to savers, and increase access to tax-advantaged savings programs.

Defined-contribution plan changes

For employers

The SECURE Act incentivizes employers to create 401(k) plans and to expand access to their existing plans to more workers. One provision allows unrelated small employers to join together to establish a shared 401(k) plan known as a Multiple Employer Plan (MEP). This allows small businesses to pool resources and mitigate the administrative expenses of establishing a plan. MEPs existed prior to the SECURE Act, but under the previous law they were required to be related in some way (e.g. through geography or through membership in a common industry or trade association). The SECURE Act waived this requirement for MEPs.

The law also shields employers who join a Multiple Employer Plan from liability for potential misconduct perpetrated by other employers who are in the same plan. In addition, the federal tax credit for defraying plan startup costs is increased from $500 to up to $5,000, and provides an additional $500 tax credit for plans that automatically enroll new hires. Another provision requires employers to cover long-term, part-time workers starting in 2021. "Long-term, part-time" workers are defined as workers at least 21 years of age who have completed at least 500 hours of service each year for 3 consecutive years.

Employers who offer annuities as part of their defined-contribution retirement plans are shielded from liability under a new safe-harbor provision even if the insurance company selling the annuity commits fraud or collapses, as long as they meet specific regulatory requirements.

The law also provides a maximum tax credit of $500 per year to small employers who create a 401(k) or SIMPLE IRA plan with automatic enrollment. If a multiple employer plan is set up with automatic enrollment, each eligible employer participating in the plan may claim a separate tax credit. For this tax credit, an employer is eligible if it had no more than 100 employees who received at least $5,000 of compensation from the employer in the preceding year.

For employees

Participants in 401(k) and other defined-contribution plans (including traditional IRAs) can delay taking required minimum distributions until they reach the age of 72, an increase from the current age of 70.5. Participants are also permitted to continue contributing to traditional IRAs even after turning 70.5, which was previously prohibited. The SECURE Act also permits graduate students to treat stipends and non-tuition fellowship payments as compensation for the purposes of contributing to IRAs.

Under the SECURE Act, parents can withdraw up to $5,000 from their individual 401(k) or similar workplace retirement savings plans for each new child within one year of the birth or adoption of the child, without incurring the 10% additional penalty tax for taking an early distribution.

Employees who purchase an annuity in their 401(k) can move their annuity to another 401(k) plan at a different employer or to an IRA without paying surrender charges or other penalty fees.

529 plan changes

The SECURE Act allows people saving money in a tax-advantaged 529 plan to use up to $10,000 to pay off student loans.

529 plans can now also be used to pay for the fees, books, supplies, and equipment for apprenticeship programs. In order to be eligible, the apprenticeship program must be registered with and certified by the U.S. Department of Labor under section 1 of the National Apprenticeship Act.

Tax changes

The SECURE Act partly revises the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), repealing certain "kiddie tax" provisions that increased taxes on the benefits received by family members of deceased United States military veterans and graduate students.

Funding

The SECURE Act is estimated to cost $15.7 billion. It is primarily funded through a change to "stretch" IRAs. In the past, non-spouse beneficiaries who inherit IRAs could spread disbursements from the IRA over their lifetime. Under the SECURE Act, disbursements must be collected and taxed within 10 years of the original account holder's death. This provision shortens the time period in which tax-advantaged accounts can grow and will increase the taxable income of beneficiaries during that ten-year period, generating tax revenue to fund the cost of the law.

Analysis and reaction

Support

The SECURE Act received support from a variety of special interest and consumer advocacy groups, including the Society for Human Resource Management and the AARP. The CEO of AARP, Jo Ann Jenkins, praised the bill, citing provisions that she claimed would reduce poverty risk among retirees and improve the nation's financial security.

It also received support from financial advisory firms such as Northwestern Mutual and T. Rowe Price, who praised the bill for expanding options for retirement saving and for making it easier for workers to participate in employer savings plans.

Though the proposal to limit "stretch IRAs" was controversial, it has received support from some commentators who argue that it is a good source of revenue and will help reduce intergenerational inequality by ensuring that IRAs are used for their intended purpose of saving for retirement.

Criticism

Some critics have expressed concern about the provision making it easier for 401(k) plan administrators to offer annuities, describing it as a "cave-in to the insurance lobby". David Moon, a columnist with the Knoxville News Sentinel, criticized the provision because it prohibited employees from suing employers if the 401k provider went out of business or defrauded the employees, and stated that it improperly exposed the least sophisticated investors to the most expensive and complex financial products. He also criticized a requirement in the SECURE Act which required 401k plan administrators to send annual income disclosures to plan participants, showing the amount of monthly income they would receive if their plan funds were converted into an annuity, something that he characterized as an "annuity advertisement".

Advocates of the so-called stretch IRAs have also criticized the provision that required beneficiaries of inherited IRAs to draw down (and pay taxes on) those inherited IRAs within 10 years.
 Jon Ham, an adviser at the New England Investment and Retirement Group, argued that this provision undermines the purpose of the SECURE Act by requiring people to draw down retirement accounts over 10 years rather than over the course of their lifetime, hurting their long-term financial planning.

Ed Slott, a leading financial planner and IRA specialist, wrote that the provision would not generate as much revenue as Congress hoped. He argued that the provision would discourage Americans from performing Roth conversions, which generate revenues. He also argued that eliminating stretch IRAs would encourage people to withdraw money from IRAs and into more lucrative tax-free investment vehicles such as life insurance.  Others such as Denise Appleby and Bruce Steiner contend that the SECURE Act will encourage more IRA owners to do Roth conversions now that many beneficiaries will be in higher tax brackets as a result of bunching the distributions into fewer years.

The Joint Congressional Committee on Taxation released a report suggesting that the SECURE Act's impact on retirement savings would be relatively modest. Aron Szapiro, a policy research director at Morningstar, argued that the types of tax incentives used by the SECURE Act to encourage retirement savings would not motivate major changes in savings rate. An analyst from the Brookings Institution noted as well that the provisions for multiple-employer plans, while significant, would not have a major impact on small employers.

References

Acts of the 116th United States Congress
United States federal taxation legislation
United States federal financial legislation
Presidency of Donald Trump
Retirement in the United States
United States federal labor legislation

SECURE Act


Isoelectronicity is a phenomenon observed when two or more molecules have the same structure (positions and connectivities among atoms) and the same electronic configurations, but differ by what specific elements are at certain locations in the structure. For example, , , and  are isoelectronic, while  and = are not.

This definition is sometimes termed valence isoelectronicity.  Definitions can sometimes be not as strict, sometimes requiring identity of the total electron count and with it the entire electronic configuration.  More usually, definitions are broader, and may extend to allowing different numbers of atoms in the species being compared.

The importance of the concept lies in identifying significantly related species, as pairs or series.  Isoelectronic species can be expected to show useful consistency and predictability in their properties, so identifying a compound as isoelectronic with one already characterised offers clues to possible properties and reactions. Differences in properties such as electronegativity of the atoms in isolelectronic species can affect reactivity.

In quantum mechanics, hydrogen-like atoms are ions with only one electron such as . These ions would be described as being isoelectronic with hydrogen.

Examples

The  atom and the  ion are isoelectronic because each has five valence electrons, or more accurately an electronic configuration of [He] 2s2 2p3.

Similarly, the cations , , and  and the anions , , and  are all isoelectronic with the  atom.

, , , and  are isoelectronic because each has two atoms triple bonded together, and due to the charge have analogous electronic configurations ( is identical in electronic configuration to  so  is identical electronically to ).

Molecular orbital diagrams best illustrate isoelectronicity in diatomic molecules, showing how atomic orbital mixing in isoelectronic species results in identical orbital combination, and thus also bonding.

More complex molecules can be polyatomic also. For example, the amino acids serine, cysteine, and selenocysteine are all isoelectronic to each other. They differ by which specific chalcogen is present at one location in the side-chain.

 (acetone) and  (azomethane) are not isoelectronic. They do have the same number of electrons but they do not have the same structure.

See also
 Isolobal principle

References

Theoretical chemistry

Isoelectronicity


Gloucester Castle was a Norman-era royal castle situated in the city of Gloucester in Gloucestershire, England. It was demolished in 1787 and replaced by Gloucester Prison.

Early Norman motte and bailey castle

It was probably constructed by the Anglo-Norman Roger de Pitres, the first post-Norman Conquest Sheriff of Gloucestershire, as a simple motte and bailey castle during the reign of William the Conqueror (1066–1087), when sixteen houses were demolished to make way for it. It was enlarged by King William II (1087–1100) who demolished eight more houses. Walter of Gloucester, Sheriff of Gloucestershire, succeeded his father Roger de Pitres as Constable of the castle. Before 1113 Walter built a new castle west of Barbican hill on a former garden of Gloucester Abbey, overlooking the River Severn. Walter's son, and the next Constable of Gloucester Castle, was Miles FitzWalter of Gloucester, 1st Earl of Hereford (d. 1143) (alias Miles of Gloucester), Sheriff of Gloucestershire, a great magnate based in the west of England who became hereditary Constable of England. He was succeeded as Constable of Gloucester Castle by his eldest son Roger Fitzmiles, 2nd Earl of Hereford (d. 1155). Later it was retained by the Crown.

King's residence
More improvements and some repairs were carried out by Henry III, these improvements included a bridge across the River Severn leading to a barbican in the outer wall. Henry III often used it as a residence, and it played an important role in the barons' war when it was besieged twice in 1264–1265. Part of the castle had been being used as a gaol by 1185 and it was probably then the official county gaol, as it certainly was by 1228, and Eleanor of Brittany, niece of King John and cousin of Henry III with a better claim to the throne according to primogeniture and thus becoming a state prisoner, had been briefly imprisoned there during the reign of John, from 1222 to 1223, and from 1237 to 1238.

Decline
The defences were kept in full repair until the mid-15th century. It is likely that in the reign of Richard III, the castle ceased to be maintained as a fortress, continuing in use only as the county gaol. Much of the stonework of the castle was taken to construct roads and other buildings and by the mid-17th century all the buildings around the curtain wall had apparently gone, leaving only the keep, used as the gaol, and the main gatehouse standing. In time the keep was considered to be unsuitable for use as a gaol and its demolition began in 1787. The new gaol was finished in 1791 leaving no visible remains of the castle.

Conservation
In December 2015, the castle's foundations were uncovered by archaeologists who were investigating the Gloucester Prison site ahead of a new development. Since being rediscovered there have been calls to make the site open to the public. The owners of the site are currently considering how they will include parts of the castle in their plans for the site's future.

See also
 Castles in Great Britain and Ireland
 List of castles in England

References

Further reading
Fry, Plantagenet Somerset. (1980) The David & Charles Book of Castles. London: David & Charles.

Castles in Gloucestershire
Buildings and structures in Gloucester
History of Gloucester
Demolished buildings and structures in England
Buildings and structures demolished in 1787

Gloucester Castle


The Aquascogoc is the name given to a Native American tribe of Secotan people and also the name of a village encountered by English colonists during their late 16th century attempts to settle and establish permanent colonies in what is now North Carolina, known at the time as Virginia. Together with the rest of Secotan people they formed a part of the Native American group known as the Carolina Algonquian Indians, and spoke the now extinct Carolina Algonquian language. In 1585 the village of Aquascogoc was burned by Sir Richard Grenville, in retaliation for the alleged theft of a silver drinking vessel.

Roanoke colony
Sir Richard Grenville was the leader of the 1585 expedition which first attempted to land English settlers on Roanoke island. Guided by Chief Manteo, Grenville arrived at the village but the inhabitants showed little inclination to meet with him, and the settlers soon returned to their boats. However, a silver drinking cup was found to be missing, and was believed to have been stolen by the Aquascogoc, leading to a furious reaction from Grenville. During the angry exchanges which followed, the village of Aquascogoc was torched on Grenville's orders.

The Aquascogoc would however have their revenge. Grenville left Roanoke, leaving behind fifteen men, who were all battle-hardened. When Governor John White returned in 1587 he searched for the fifteen, but found only bones. White quickly made contact with friendly natives led by Chief Manteo, who explained to him that the lost fifteen had been killed by hostile Secotan, Aquascogoc and Dasamongueponke warriors, choosing a time and place of attack "of great advantage to the savages".

Legacy
Much of what is known about the lives of the Aquascogoc and other Algonquian tribes in 16th-century North Carolina survives because of the watercolor paintings and the journal kept by Governor John White who was commissioned in 1585 to "draw to life" the inhabitants of the New World and their surroundings. During White's time at Roanoke Island, he completed numerous watercolor drawings of the surrounding landscape and native peoples. These works are significant as they are the most informative illustrations of a Native American society of the Eastern seaboard, and predate the first body of "discovery voyage art" created in the late 18th century by the artists who sailed with Captain James Cook.  They represent the sole surviving visual record of the native inhabitants of America, encountered by England's first settlers.

White's enthusiasm for watercolor paint was unusual; most contemporary painters preferred to use oil-based paints. White's watercolors would soon become a sensation in Europe, and it was not long before the paintings were engraved by the Flemish master engraver Theodore de Bry.  Through the medium of print, the illustrations became widely known and distributed; they were published in 1590 under the title "America".

See also
Algonquian peoples
Dasamongueponke
Pamlico
Secotan

Notes

References
Miller, Lee, Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony Retrieved April 2011
 Milton, Giles, Big Chief Elizabeth - How England's Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World, Hodder & Stoughton, London (2000)

External links
Aquascogoc at www.h-net.org Retrieved April 2011
Account of the Roanoke settlements Retrieved April 2011
 Location of Aquascogoc village in the Secotan territory

Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands
Algonquian peoples
Native American history of North Carolina
Native American tribes in North Carolina

Aquascogoc


LIBRIS (Library Information System) is a Swedish national union catalogue maintained by the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm. It is possible to freely search about 6.5 million titles nationwide.

In addition to bibliographic records, one for each book or publication, LIBRIS also contains an authority file of people. For each person there is a record connecting name, birth and occupation with a unique identifier.

The MARC Code for the Swedish Union Catalog is SE-LIBR, normalized: selibr.

The development of LIBRIS can be traced to the mid-1960s. While rationalization of libraries had been an issue for two decades after World War II, it was in 1965 that a government committee published a report on the use of computers in research libraries. The government budget of 1965 created a research library council (Forskningsbiblioteksrådet, FBR). A preliminary design document, Biblioteksadministrativt Information System (BAIS) was published in मई 1970, and the name LIBRIS, short for Library Information System, was used for a technical subcommittee that started on 1 July 1970. The newsletter LIBRIS-meddelanden () has been published since 1972 and is online since 1997.

संदर्भ

बाहरी कड़ी

  (select "In English" from the top menu, default language is Swedish)
 Open Data, Information about LIBRIS bibliographic records and authority file as open data, 3 अप्रैल 2012.

स्वीडन राष्ट्रीय लाइब्रेरी


There's Always Vanilla (also known as The Affair) is a 1971 romantic comedy film directed by George A. Romero and starring Raymond Laine, Judith Ridley, Roger McGovern, and Johanna Lawrence. It was Romero's second motion picture and his only romantic comedy.

It is one of the few Romero films that does not deal with a zombie apocalypse or supernatural horror themes. It was released on DVD from Something Weird Video and in the Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD release of Season of the Witch.

Romero himself has stated that he considers this film to be his worst, and has referred to this film as "a total mess". Like many of Romero's earlier films, he cites the reason as undercapitalization.

Plot
There's Always Vanilla follows the life of Chris Bradley (Raymond Laine) a former U.S. Army soldier who has become a drifter and makes money by various means, from pimping to guitar playing. After working with a band in New York City, Chris returns to his home city of Pittsburgh and visits his father who owns and operates a baby food factory. After an evening out with his father of drinking at a local bar, and visiting an old girlfriend named Terri Terrific (Johanna Lawrence), Mr. Bradley wants Chris to abandon his bohemian lifestyle and do what was agreed upon when he separated from the military; return to the family business, but Chris refuses.

At a local train station, Chris meets Lynn (Judith Ridley; billed as Judith Streiner) a beautiful young woman who works as a model and actress in local TV commercials. Chris charms his way into Lynn's life and moves in with her. At first their relationship is a pleasant escape from daily life, but when Lynn starts to resent supporting the freeloading Chris, she motivates him into getting a steady job. Lynn learns that she's pregnant and, knowing how irresponsible he is, decides to get an abortion without telling Chris.

Chris lands a job at a small advertising firm but when he's given an account to advertise enlistments for the U.S. Army, he quits out of his resentment of his military past. Meanwhile, Lynn cannot bring herself to have an abortion, she abandons Chris, and moves in with a high school boyfriend who agrees to marry her and raise the baby as his own.

His romance with Lynn ruined and his lifestyle destroyed, Chris swallows his pride and moves back in with his father, still unable to decide what to do with his life, but believing he ultimately must accept the old values like his father has. Chris has more encouragement after a talk at dinner at a Howard Johnson's with his father where he tells Chris that life is like an ice cream parlor, and that of all of life's most exotic flavors to choose from, there's always vanilla to fall back on.

The film's final scene shows a very pregnant Lynn living in a suburban house with her new husband. A large packaged box arrives at their house addressed to Lynn with Chris' home address on it. Upon opening the box on the front lawn of their house as instructed on the box, two helium-filled balloons float out of it and float away into the bright blue sky. On the bottom of the box is a note from Chris addressed to Lynn telling her to always remember the care-free time they had together.

See also
 List of American films of 1971

References

External links

1971 films
1971 independent films
1970s romantic comedy-drama films
American independent films
American romantic comedy-drama films
1970s English-language films
Films about abortion
Films about veterans
Films directed by George A. Romero
Films set in Pittsburgh
Films shot in Pittsburgh
1971 comedy films
1971 drama films
1970s American films

There's Always Vanilla


Geraldine Warrick-Crisman (May 22, 1930, Gary, Indiana – February 12, 2007, Scottsdale, Arizona) was a television executive.

She began her broadcasting career in the standards department of NBC's affiliate in Chicago.  She became one of the first African-American executives at NBC Television in New York City, holding various positions over two decades. She was the first black president of American Women in Radio and Television. In 1981, she left NBC to become president and general manager of WNJR Radio in Union Township, Union County, New Jersey. New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean soon appointed her assistant state treasurer.

In the 1990s, Warrick-Crisman moved to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, where she worked in public affairs and survived the 1993 World Trade Center explosion, which killed six people.

She retired to Scottsdale with her husband, Bruce Crisman, in 1997, and became a member of Tanner African Methodist Episcopal Church in Phoenix. She also served on the board of the New School for the Arts in Tempe.

Warrick-Crisman died on February 12, 2007, aged 76, following a 10-year battle with breast cancer, survived by two sisters, a daughter, a son and a stepdaughter. Her husband died in 1998.

Links
 Notice of death of Geraldine Warrick-Crisman; accessed November 1, 2015.

1930 births
2007 deaths
American television executives
Women television executives
Deaths from breast cancer
People from Gary, Indiana
People from Scottsdale, Arizona
Deaths from cancer in Arizona

Geraldine Warrick-Crisman


In linguistics, a figleaf is defined as language used to prevent a bigoted statement from being perceived as bigoted, for example, that a person making a racist statement is not racist. This includes plausible deniability, and can contribute to double standards. Figleaves may be used in regards to race, ethnicity, religion, and sex, causing them to "facilitat[e] the spread of racist speech". Figleaves may be caused by in-group bias as a part of in-group and out-group dynamics. For a figleaf to occur, users of figleaves must not have been intentionally used to manipulate their audience. Figleaves have "seriously damaging consequences, regardless of what speakers intend". The concept of a figleaf was created by Jennifer Saul, who coined "racial figleaves" and "gender figleaves", who says that they come from the social norms, "Don't be racist" and "Don't be sexist".

Figleaves are used across the political spectrum, meaning that they are used both people who are left-wing and also people who are right-wing, although it is not known if one side of the political spectrum uses figleaves more than the other, if there is a difference. They may be a form of motte-and-bailey fallacy which can cause a claim to have multiple different understandings.

Examples
Mentioning statistics can act as a figleaf. An example of this may include saying that "Black men are prone to criminal behaviour", followed by saying that they have a higher rate of incarceration.

John Turri listed examples from the left such as the hashtag #KillAllMen (a Twitter hashtag), using an example of Ezra Klein writing on the Vox website. Klein wrote that #KillAllMen is not sexist, despite calling the death for half of the human race. Klein denied that it is meant literally, which Turri listed as being a denial figleaf, denying allegations of bigotry by saying that they are not true. Turri also proposed a Humpty Dumpty figleaf based off Klein's writings, by redefining bigoted words.

Turri also listed other potential examples such as "no justice, no peace", and "defund the police", although he mentioned that these do not fit the preconceived idea of bigotry.

Racial figleaves
An example of a racial figleaf is someone saying "Black men are prone to criminal behaviour", and then follow up the statement with ""But don't get me wrong, some of my best friends are black", suggesting that one who says this cannot be racist if they have black friends, further suggesting that the listener is not racist if they believe, accept, and repeat it.

Gender figleaves
An example of a gender figleaf could be a person saying "Women are no good at math", following the statement with "In saying this, I want to make it clear that I have great respect for women". This suggests to the listener that the speaker is not sexist if they have respect for women, further suggesting that it would not be sexist for the listener to agree and repeat it.

Proposed figleaves
Turri also listed and negative comments toward white people, for example, "white men are bullshit" by Sarah Jeong who then said that these comments were imitation of online harassment that she had received. Turri proposed a new figleaf based on this, the force figleaf, where people say that they are pretending to be a bigot.

An example of the stipulative figleaf proposed by Turri were defenses on negative comments made about white people, saying that racism is "prejudice plus power" and saying that social structure benefits white people, meaning that racism against white people is "impossible". Another being that Jeong was not being racist because she herself is not white.

Types
Saul listed several types of figleaves, including denial, mention, and friendship figleaves. A denial figleaf is when someone denies that their comment is bigoted, a mention figleaf is when a bigoted comment is "merely mentioned rather than used", and a friendship figleaf "occurs when one indicates that one has friends in the group being singled out for bigotry".

Proposed
Proposed figleaves include force figleaves, Humpty Dumpty figleaves, and stipulative figleaves. The force figleaf is defined as when someone "claims that a bigoted statement didn't have the appropriate locutionary force to count as a bigoted statement" for example, a person is pretending to be racist rather than actually being racist; the Humpty Dumpty figleaf as "when one states that the bigoted statement meant something other than what it did, as intended by the speaker", and finally, the stipulative figleaf as "when one stipulatively defines the relevant form of bigotry in such a way that the speaker could not possibly have made a bigoted statement".

References

Linguistics terminology
Racism
Sexism

Figleaf (linguistics)