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Susan Wloszczyna of RogerEbert.com stated "Underscoring the cruelty is the aptly unsettling and sometimes discordant soundtrack by Hans Zimmer" but nothing similarities with Zimmer's predescending score for Inception whilst acknowledging differentiation in "reminiscent of his own strong work on "Inception" but to much different effect". Glenn Kay of CinemaStance wrote positively by stating, "the score by Hans Zimmer is sparse and repetitive, but incredibly effective at invoking an emotional response when it's used." Drew McWeeny of HitFix highly praised the score and said, "The score by Hans Zimmer is just as heart-breaking as the script or the performances."
Nicholas Mennuti of Mulholland Books highly praised the score, calling it one of the best film scores of 2013, stating, "His [Zimmer] work on 12 Years A Slave comes as such a pleasant surprise" and then adding, "Zimmer does what Zimmer does best – he finds the sonic heart of Solomon Northrop ... Try not to be moved by it." Josh Hall of Soton Tab professed of the score, "Another impressive element of 12 Years a Slave is Hans Zimmer's haunting score; it closely accompanies the distressing tragedies on the screen." and added to it further by signifying the importance of music, "Music is a key element of the film; it is ironic that it is Solomon's musical talents that get him captured in the first place."
Richard Lawson of The Wire praised the mood of Zimmer's piece by saying, "Hans Zimmer's lush score is at first eerie and foreboding, but by the movie's end has become something approaching a hymn." Awards and nominations References Category:2013 soundtracks Category:Hans Zimmer soundtracks Category:Works about American slavery Category:Columbia Records soundtracks
Three-drum boilers are a class of water-tube boiler used to generate steam, typically to power ships. They are compact and of high evaporative power, factors that encourage this use. Other boiler designs may be more efficient, although bulkier, and so the three-drum pattern was rare as a land-based stationary boiler. The fundamental characteristic of the "three-drum" design is the arrangement of a steam drum above two water drums, in a triangular layout. Water tubes fill in the two sides of this triangle between the drums, and the furnace is in the centre. The whole assembly is then enclosed in a casing, leading to the exhaust flue.
Firing can be by either coal or oil. Many coal-fired boilers used multiple firedoors and teams of stokers, often from both ends. Development Development of the three-drum boiler began in the late 19th century, with the demand from naval ships that required high power and a compact boiler. The move to water-tube boilers had already begun, with designs such as the Babcock & Wilcox or the Belleville. The three-drum arrangement was lighter and more compact for the same power. The new generation of "small-tube" water-tube boilers used water-tubes of around diameter, compared to older designs of 3 or 4 inches.
This gave a greater ratio of tube surface heating area to the tube volume, thus more rapid steaming. These small-tube boilers also became known as "express" boilers. Although not all of these were three-drum designs (notably the Thornycroft), most were some variation of this. As the tubes of the three-drum are close to vertical (compared to the Babcock & Wilcox), this encourages strong circulation by the thermosyphon effect, further encouraging steaming. The development of the three-drum pattern was generally one of simplification, rather than increasing complexity or sophistication. Even the first boilers packed a large heating area into a compact volume, their difficulty was in manufacturing and particularly for their maintenance on-board ship.
Tubes The convoluted tubes of early designs such as the du Temple and Normand were the first to go. A multi-row bank of tubes could provide adequate heating area, without this complexity. Tubes also became straighter, mostly to ease their cleaning. Yarrow had demonstrated that straight tubes did not cause any problems with expansion, but circular drums and perpendicular tube entry were both valuable features for a long service life. Where tubes entered drums at an angle, heating and cooling tended to bend the tube back and forth, leading to leaks. A perpendicular entry was easier to expand the tubes for a reliable seal and to avoid these sideways stresses.
It was worth the compromise of the Admiralty boiler's bent tube ends to keep these two features, and these tubes were still simple enough in shape to clean easily. Some of the first boiler tubes, particularly the du Temple with its sharp corners, could not be cleaned of scale internally. Tubes were later cleaned internally by attempting to pass a hinged rod through, with a brush at the end. For the curved tube designs, often only part of the tube could be reached. Another method was to pass a chain down the tube from above, pulling a brush behind it, although this was unworkable for boilers like the Thornycroft where the tubes first travelled horizontally or upwards.
The eventual method was to use 'bullet' brushes that were fired from one drum into the other by use of compressed air. Sets of brushes were used, one for each tube, and they were carefully numbered and counted afterwards to ensure that none had been left behind, blocking a tube. Downcomers Separate downcomers were used by most designs, even after Yarrow's experiments had demonstrated that circulation could still take place amongst the heated tubes alone. Again, the Admiralty boiler (which omitted downcomers) was the culmination of this approach, placing the superheater within the tube bank, so as to encourage the necessary temperature difference.
Furnaces The Admiralty boiler is usually considered to be a direct evolution of the Yarrow, although the White-Forster also had an influence, probably as a result of the large number in service with the Royal Navy. The circular water drums, and their raising above the furnace floor, are White-Forster features. The first reduces the risk of grooving, the latter is appropriate for oil firing. Types du Temple boiler The du Temple was an early naval water-tube boiler, patented in 1876. It was invented by Félix du Temple in France and was tested in a Royal Navy torpedo gunboat. Water tubes were convoluted, arranged in four rows to a bank, and S-shaped with sharp right angle bends.
This packed a large tube heating area into a small volume, but made tube cleaning impractical. The drums were cylindrical, with perpendicular tube entry and external downcomers between them. White-Forster boiler The White-Forster was of simple construction, with tubes that had only a gentle curvature to them. This was sufficient to allow them to be replaced in-situ, working through the manhole at the end of the large steam drum. Each tube was sufficiently curved to allow it to be extracted through the steam drum, but sufficiently straight that a single tube could be replaced from a tube bank, without requiring other tubes to be removed so as to permit access.
This was one of many features of the White-Forster intended to make it reliable in naval service and easy to maintain. These tubes were of particularly small diameter, only and especially numerous, a total of 3,744 being used in some boilers. The tubes were arranged in 24 rows to a bank, each requiring a different length of tube, and 78 rows per drum. All tubes were curved to the same radius, facilitating repair and replacement on board, but requiring the tube holes in the drums to be reamed to precise angles on a jig during manufacture. This small tube diameter gave a high heating surface, but probably too much: the ratio of surface to volume became excessive and gas flow through the tube banks was affected, giving the boiler furnaces something of a reputation as poor burners.
Downcomers were used, either the usual two large pipes, or an unusual but characteristic arrangement of four small tubes to each drum. This was a feature intended to improve survivability after damage, when used on-board warships. The boiler could remain in service with a damaged downcomer tube plugged. The mud drums were raised above the floor of the furnace on steel girder stools, increasing the furnace volume available for combustion. This feature was intended to encourage the use of oil burning, an innovation on warships around this time. The general appearance of the White-Forster is similar to that of the later Admiralty pattern.
Features such as the raised mud drums and the shape of the tubes were an influence. White-Forster boilers were introduced into the Royal Navy from 1906, for light cruisers and torpedo boat destroyers. Normand boiler The Normand boiler was developed by the French Normand shipyard of Le Havre. It was used by the navies of several nations, notably those of France, Russia, Britain and United States. In 1896, the Royal Navy had them installed in twenty-six boats, more than any other water-tube design. Initial design of the Normand boiler was as a development of the Du Temple, with the sharp corners of the tubes replaced by a smooth radiused bend, but still retaining the S shape.
The design of the Normand gave a particularly large heating area (tube surface area) in relation to the grate area. The cost of this was a dense nest of tubes, where each of the numerous rows of tubes was bent into a different and complex shape. Tube ends entered the cylindrical drums perpendicularly, for good sealing. The space needed for all these tubes filled the entire lower half of the steam drum, requiring both a large drum and a separate steam dome from which to collect dry steam. The external boiler casing entered the flue uptake at one end, usually enclosing this dome.
The ends of the drums extended outside the casing as hemispherical domes. Cold downcomers outside the casing linked these drums, providing a path for the return circulation of cold water. A further development was the Normand-Sigaudy, where two Normand boilers were coupled back-to-back, for use in large ships. This effectively gave a double-ended Normand (as was later common with the Yarrow) that could be fired from both ends. Reed boiler The Reed boiler was used by Palmers of Jarrow. It was similar to the Normand, with downcomers and curved tubes that entered cylindrical drums perpendicularly. Thornycroft boiler The Thornycroft boiler is a variant that splits the usual central furnace into two.
There are four drums: two main drums vertically in the centre – a steam and a water drum – also two wing drums at the outside edges of the furnace. The design was notable for its early use of the water-wall furnace. The outer bank of tubes was shallow, consisting of only two rows of tubes. These rows were spaced closely, so that the tubes formed a solid wall, without gasflow between them. The inner bank of tubes was similar: the two rows of tubes closest to the furnace formed a similar water wall. These tubes were splayed apart at their base, so as to provide space for gasflow between them.
Within the tube bank, gas flow is mostly parallel to the tubes, similar to some early designs, but contrary to the crossflow design of later three-drum boilers. The exhaust gas emerged into the heart-shaped space below the upper central drum, exiting to the funnel through the rear wall. The steam drum is circular, with perpendicular tube entry. The tube ends span a considerable circumference of the drum, so that the upper tubes enter above the water level. They are thus 'non-drowned' tubes. The upper and lower central drums are linked by downcomers. Unusually these are internal to the boiler and are heated, although not strongly, by the exhaust gases.
They are formed as several (eight or nine) vertical tubes on the centreline of the boiler. They are formed into a shallow S-shape to give a little flexibility against thermal expansion. The small wing drums are connected to the lower central drum alone, by large external pipes outside the rear casing of the boiler. Owing to its early use in the Thornycroft-built destroyer HMS Daring of 1893, this design became known as the 'Daring' boiler. A small single-sided version of this boiler was also produced for launches. The first small version of this also dispensed with the wing drum, the water-wall tubes bending at right angles and passing back to the central water drum, the tubes also forming the grate to support the fire.
Thornycroft-Schulz boiler Later designs, the Thornycroft-Schulz pattern, made the outer wings more important. The number of their tubes was increased, such that they became the majority of the heating surface and the main gas path for the exhaust gases. The wing drums became large enough to permit a man access inside, for cleaning and expanding new tubes into place. The earlier Thornycroft-Marshall design of water-tube boiler used horizontal hairpin water-tubes fitted into sectional headers. It has little relation to the types described here. Yarrow boiler The Yarrow boiler design is characterised by its use of straight water-tubes, without downcomers. Circulation, both upwards and downwards, occurs within this same tube bank.
Alfred Yarrow developed his boiler as a response to other water-tube designs, and his perception in 1877 that Yarrow & Co were lagging behind other shipbuilders. His initial thoughts already defined the key features of the design, a three-drum boiler with straight tubes, yet it took ten years of research before the first boiler was supplied for a torpedo boat of 1887. Straight tubes Early water-tube designers had been concerned with the expansion of the boiler's tubes when heated. Efforts were made to permit them to expand freely, particularly so that those closest to the furnace might expand relatively more than those further away.
Typically this was done by arranging the tubes in large looping curves. These had difficulties in manufacturing and required support in use. Yarrow recognised that the temperature of the water-tubes was held relatively low and was consistent amongst them, provided that they remained full of water and boiling was not allowed to occur within the tubes themselves, i.e. they would remain as drowned tubes. High temperatures and variations only arose when tubes became steam filled, which also disrupted circulation. His conclusion was thus that straight water-tubes were acceptable, and these would have obvious advantages for manufacture and cleaning in service.
Yarrow's circulation experiments It was already recognised that a water-tube boiler relied on a continuous flow through the water-tubes, and that this must be by a thermosyphon effect rather than requiring an impractical pump. Forced-circulation boilers with pumps, such as the Velox, did not appear for another thirty years and even then they were initially unreliable. The assumption was that flow through the water-tubes would be upwards, owing to their heating by the furnace, and that the counterbalancing downward flow would require external unheated downcomers. Alfred Yarrow conducted a famous experiment where he disproved this assumption. A vertical U-shaped tube was arranged so that it could be heated by a series of Bunsen burners on each side.
When only one side of the U was heated, there was the expected upward flow of heated water in that arm of the tube. When heat was also applied to the unheated arm, conventional theory predicted that the circulatory flow would slow or stop completely. In practice, the flow actually increased. Provided that there was some asymmetry to the heating, Yarrow's experiment showed that circulation could continue and heating of the cooler downcomer could even increase this flow. The Yarrow boiler could thus dispense with separate external downcomers. Flow was entirely within the heated watertubes, upwards within those closest to the furnace and downwards through those in the outer rows of the bank.
Later evolution in design Water drums The first Yarrow water drums or "troughs" were D-shaped with a flat tubeplate, so as to provide an easy perpendicular mounting for the tubes. The tubeplate was bolted to the trough and could be dismantled for maintenance and tube cleaning. This D shape is not ideal for a pressure drum though, as pressure will tend to distort it into a more circular section. This flexing led to leakage where the water tubes entered the drum; a problem, termed 'wrapperitis', which was shared with the White-Forster. Experience of boiler explosions had shown that sharp internal corners inside boilers were also prone to erosion by grooving.
Later boilers used a more rounded section, although still asymmetrical rather than fully cylindrical. Downcomers The circulation in a Yarrow boiler depended on a temperature difference between the inner and outer tube rows of a bank, and particularly upon the rates of boiling. Whilst this is easy to maintain at low powers, a higher pressure Yarrow boiler will tend to have less temperature difference and thus will have less effective circulation. Some later and higher-pressure boilers were fitted with external downcomers, outside the heated flue area. Superheaters When superheating was adopted, primarily for use with steam turbines after 1900, the first Yarrow boilers placed their superheater coil outside the main tube bank.
Later designs became asymmetrical, with the tube bank on one side doubled and a hairpin-tube superheater placed between them. Adoption by the Royal Navy HMS Havock, the lead ship of the Havock class destroyers, was built with the then current form of locomotive boiler; its sister ship HMS Hornet with a Yarrow boiler for comparison. The trials were successful and the Yarrow boiler was adopted for naval service, particularly in small ships. In time the Navy would develop its own Admiralty pattern of three-drum boiler. Mumford boiler The Mumford boiler was a variety built by the boilermakers Mumford of Colchester, intended for use in smaller boats.
The tube banks separated into two groups, with the short tubes slightly curved away from each other. Entry into the lower water drum was perpendicular, requiring an almost rectangular drum with the tubes entering on separate faces. The mechanical weakness of such a shape was acceptable in this small size, but limited the boiler's potential. The casing was small and only enclosed part of the upper steam drum, leading directly to a funnel. A single inverted tee-shaped downcomer linked the drums at the rear of the boiler. Woolnough boiler The Woolnough design was used by Sentinel for their larger railway locomotives.
It resembled most other three-drum designs, having almost-straight tubes. Its distinguishing feature was a firebrick wall two-thirds of the way down the furnace. The furnace grate was on the longer side of this, with the combustion gases passing out through the tube bank, along inside a steel outer casing, then back within the shorter tube bank. Coiled tube superheaters were placed in the gas flow outside the tubes. The combustion gases thus passed through the tube bank twice, once outwards and then again inwards. A single central chimney exhausted from the centre of the far end, not as usual from outside the tubes.
The relative temperature difference between gas passage through the two sections of the bank led to a circulation current that was upwards through the first, hotter, part of the bank and downwards through the further, less hot, bank. Circulation was also controlled by an internal weir plate within the upper water drum, so as to keep a depth of water above the ends of the hotter tubes, thus avoiding overheating of dry tubes. Sentinel used the Woolnough boiler on a number of their larger locomotives, instead of their usual small vertical boiler. These included railcars for the LNER and LMS.
Sentinel's best-known use of the Woolnough was for the 'Colombian' articulated locomotives. These were a series of four, metre gauge locomotives of Co-Co wheel arrangement, built in 1934. They ran at the unusually high pressure of and each axle was driven by a separate steam motor, designed by Abner Doble. The first was supplied to Belgian Railways, the following three were built for the Société National des Chemins de Fer en Colombe of Colombia, but first shipped to Belgium for testing. Most photographs that exist of these locomotives were taken in Belgium. Little is known of their history after arrival in Colombia.
Admiralty boiler A later development of the Yarrow was the Admiralty three-drum boiler, developed for the Royal Navy between the First and Second World Wars. Much of the design work was conducted at Admiralty Fuel Experimental Station at Haslar and the first boilers were installed in three of the A class destroyers of 1927. These boilers established new Royal Navy standard operating conditions for boilers of 300 psi (2.0 MPa) / . The design was broadly similar to later, high-pressure and oil-fired, versions of the Yarrow. The waterdrums were cylindrical and downcomers were sometimes, but not always, used. The only major difference was in the tube banks.
Rather than straight tubes, each tube was mostly straight, but slightly cranked towards their ends. These were installed in two groups within the bank, so that they formed a gap between them within the bank. Superheaters were placed inside this gap and hung by hooks from the steam drum. The advantage of placing the superheaters here was that they increased the temperature differential between the inner and outer tubes of the bank, thus encouraging circulation. In the developed form, the boiler had four rows of tubes on the furnace-side of the superheater and thirteen for the outer-side. Feedwater The first boilers suffered problems with the superheaters and with poor circulation for the tube rows in the centre of the bank, leading to overheating and tube failure.
The circulation problems were addressed by re-arranging the feedwater pipes and by placing baffles inside the steam drum, so as to give a more clearly defined circulation. A circulation augmenter, a steel trough, was placed over the tops of the furnace-side tubes, encouraging a single central upwelling flow to above the water level, encouraging steam bubbles to escape and acting as a steam separator before the water re-circulated down the outer-side tubes. In a manner similar to work taking place around the same time on the LMS railway and the development of top feed for steam locomotives, the feedwater was also routed upwards through 'spray pots' and thus passed through the steam space as droplets.
The cold feedwater was thus heated to the same temperature as the boiler water before mixing with it, avoiding disturbance to the circulation path. Superheaters Initial superheat performance was disappointing. Superheat at full power was limited deliberately to so as to avoid reliability problems, which then meant that it was ineffective at low powers. Development work by Babcock & Wilcox resolved this by increasing the steam flow speed through the superheater to , avoiding the problems of tube distortion and metallurgical failure. New boilers for the Nelson-class battleships and the Kent-class cruisers could achieve a superheat of throughout the operating power range at .
Backwall Unlike contemporary American practice, British naval boilers had a large proportion of furnace brickwork, leading to a high temperature within the furnace and consequently a high loading upon the tubes. The use of a water-wall furnace could reduce this. From 1929, Hawthorn Leslie constructed a trial boiler with a partial water-wall to the rear of the furnace. Unlike other water-wall designs, this additional water drum spanned only the centre of the furnace, the vertical tubes were enclosed in a refractory casing and did not form a closely packed solid wall. The concern was that a full water-wall would unbalance the existing header arrangement of the three-drum boiler, which indeed showed to be the case.
Excess steam production at the rear of the steam drum led to disrupted circulation and a problem with priming. The development of water-walls for this type of boiler was abandoned, although trials did continue with which was trialled with a single water-wall Johnson boiler replacing one of its three three-drum boilers. Engine 10000 The only large three-drum boiler used in a railway locomotive was Nigel Gresley's experimental Engine 10000 of 1924 for the LNER company. Having observed the benefits of higher pressures and compound engines in marine practice, Gresley was keen to experiment with this approach in a railway locomotive.
As with the land-based boilers, Harold Yarrow was keen to expand the market for Yarrow's boiler. The boiler was not the usual Yarrow design. In operation, particularly its circulation paths, the boiler had more in common with other three-drum designs such as the Woolnough. It has also been described as an evolution of the Brotan-Deffner water-tube firebox, with the firebox extended to become the entire boiler. Working pressure was of as opposed to the of the contemporary Gresley A1 locomotives. The boiler resembled two elongated marine Yarrow boilers, placed end to end. Both had the usual Yarrow arrangement of a central large steam drum above two separated water drums, linked by four rows of slightly curved tubes.
The upper drum was shared, but the lower water drums were separate. The rearward "firebox" area was wide and spanned the frames, placing the water drums at the limits of the loading gauge. The forward "boiler" region was narrow-set, with its water drums placed between the frames. Although the outer casings were of similar width, the tube banks for the forward section were much closer. The space outboard of the tubes formed a pair of exhaust flues leading forwards. A large space outside these flue walls but inside the boiler casing was used as an air duct from the air inlet, a crude rectangular slot beneath the smokebox door, which had the effect of both pre-heating the combustion air and of cooling the outer casing to prevent overheating.
Longitudinal superheater tubes were placed in the central space between the steam generating tubes. The third area forwards contained superheater headers, the regulators and the smokebox, but no deliberate heating surface. The external boiler casing remained at much the same width throughout, giving an overall triangular, but curved, appearance. The lower edge of each section stepped upwards, and was obvious externally. Firing was with coal, at just one end through a conventional locomotive single firedoor, and a single manual fireman. Owing to the single-ended firing and the predominantly longitudinal gasflow, compared to the Yarrow's normal through-bank gasflow, there was a pronounced temperature difference between the front and back of the boiler.
This led to the water circulation currents, especially in the second section, to be longitudinal through the water drums, like the Woolnough, rather than the usual Yarrow. The first section, which included some water-tubes to the rear wall, was radiant heated and effectively a water-wall furnace, without any gas flow through the tube bank. Despite this, it still used four rows of tubes. The second section had its gasflow arranged by steel and firebrick baffles so that the combustion gases entered through the centre and passed through the tube banks into the side flues, giving better convective heat transfer. References External links Category:Express boilers Category:Water-tube boilers Category:Steam boiler types Category:Marine boilers Category:Boilers Category:Maritime history of the United Kingdom Category:History of science and technology in the United Kingdom Category:Maritime history of France
Gamma-glutamyltransferase (also γ-glutamyltransferase, GGT, gamma-GT; ) is a transferase (a type of enzyme) that catalyzes the transfer of gamma-glutamyl functional groups from molecules such as glutathione to an acceptor that may be an amino acid, a peptide or water (forming glutamate). GGT plays a key role in the gamma-glutamyl cycle, a pathway for the synthesis and degradation of glutathione as well as drug and xenobiotic detoxification. Other lines of evidence indicate that GGT can also exert a pro-oxidant role, with regulatory effects at various levels in cellular signal transduction and cellular pathophysiology. This transferase is found in many tissues, the most notable one being the liver, and has significance in medicine as a diagnostic marker.
Nomenclature The name γ-glutamyltransferase is preferred by the Nomenclature Committee of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The Expert Panel on Enzymes of the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry also used this name. The older name is gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGTP). Function GGT is present in the cell membranes of many tissues, including the kidneys, bile duct, pancreas, gallbladder, spleen, heart, brain, and seminal vesicles. It is involved in the transfer of amino acids across the cellular membrane and leukotriene metabolism. It is also involved in glutathione metabolism by transferring the glutamyl moiety to a variety of acceptor molecules including water, certain L-amino acids, and peptides, leaving the cysteine product to preserve intracellular homeostasis of oxidative stress.
This general reaction is: (5-L-glutamyl)-peptide + an amino acid peptide + 5-L-glutamyl amino acid Structure In prokaryotes and eukaryotes, it is an enzyme that consists of two polypeptide chains, a heavy and a light subunit, processed from a single chain precursor by an autocatalytic cleavage. The active site of GGT is known to be located in the light subunit. Medical applications GGT is predominantly used as a diagnostic marker for liver disease. Latent elevations in GGT are typically seen in patients with chronic viral hepatitis infections often taking 12 months or more to present. Elevated serum GGT activity can be found in diseases of the liver, biliary system, and pancreas.
In this respect, it is similar to alkaline phosphatase (ALP) in detecting disease of the biliary tract. Indeed, the two markers correlate well, though there are conflicting data about whether GGT has better sensitivity. In general, ALP is still the first test for biliary disease. The main value of GGT over ALP is in verifying that ALP elevations are, in fact, due to biliary disease; ALP can also be increased in certain bone diseases, but GGT is not. More recently, slightly elevated serum GGT has also been found to correlate with cardiovascular diseases and is under active investigation as a cardiovascular risk marker.
GGT in fact accumulates in atherosclerotic plaques, suggesting a potential role in pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases, and circulates in blood in the form of distinct protein aggregates, some of which appear to be related to specific pathologies such as metabolic syndrome, alcohol addiction and chronic liver disease. GGT is elevated by ingestion of large quantities of alcohol. However, determination of high levels of total serum GGT activity is not specific to alcohol intoxication, and the measurement of selected serum forms of the enzyme offer more specific information. Isolated elevation or disproportionate elevation compared to other liver enzymes (such as ALT or alanine transaminase) can indicate alcohol abuse or alcoholic liver disease, and can indicate excess alcohol consumption up to 3 or 4 weeks prior to the test.
The mechanism for this elevation is unclear. Alcohol might increase GGT production by inducing hepatic microsomal production, or it might cause the leakage of GGT from hepatocytes. Numerous drugs can raise GGT levels, including barbiturates and phenytoin. GGT elevation has also been occasionally reported following nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (including aspirin), St. John's wort and kava. Elevated levels of GGT can also be due to congestive heart failure. Individual test results should always be interpreted using the reference range from the laboratory that performed the test, though example reference ranges are 15-85 IU/L for men, and 5-55 IU/L for women. Examples Human proteins that belong to this family include GGT1, GGT2, GGT6, GGTL3, GGTL4, GGTLA1 and GGTLA4.
References External links GGT - Lab Tests Online Category:Chemical pathology Category:EC 2.3.2
Raymond William Stacy Burr (May 21, 1917September 12, 1993) was a Canadian-American actor primarily known for his title roles in the television dramas Perry Mason and Ironside. Burr's early acting career included roles on Broadway, radio, television, and film, usually as the villain. His portrayal of the suspected murderer in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Rear Window (1954) is his best-known film role, although he is also remembered for his role in the 1956 film Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, which he reprised in the 1984 film Godzilla 1985. He won Emmy Awards for acting in 1959 and 1961 for the role of Perry Mason, which he played for nine seasons (1957–66) and reprised in a series of 26 Perry Mason TV movies (1985–93).
His second TV series Ironside earned him six Emmy and two Golden Globe nominations. Burr died of cancer in 1993, and his personal life came into question, as many details of his biography appeared to be unverifiable. He was ranked number 44 of the 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time by TV Guide magazine in 1996. Early life Raymond William Stacy Burr was born May 21, 1917, in New Westminster, British Columbia. His father William Johnston Burr (1889–1985) was a hardware salesman; his mother Minerva Annette (née Smith, 1892–1974) was a pianist and music teacher. When Burr was six, his parents divorced.
His mother moved to Vallejo, California, with him and his younger siblings Geraldine and James, while his father remained in New Westminster. Burr briefly attended San Rafael Military Academy in San Rafael, California, and graduated from Berkeley High School. In later years, Burr freely invented stories of a happy childhood. In 1986, he told journalist Jane Ardmore that, when he was 12 years old, his mother sent him to New Mexico for a year to work as a ranch hand. He was already his full adult height and rather large and "had fallen in with a group of college-aged kids who didn't realize how young Raymond was, and they let him tag along with them in activities and situations far too sophisticated for him to handle".
He developed a passion for growing things and joined the Civilian Conservation Corps for a year in his teens. He did acting work in his teen years, making his stage debut at age 12 with a Vancouver stock company. Theater Burr grew up during the Great Depression and hoped to study acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, but he was unable to afford the tuition. In 1934, he joined a repertory theatre group in Toronto that toured throughout Canada, then joined another company that toured India, Australia, and England. He briefly attended Long Beach Junior College and taught for a semester at San Jose Junior College, working nights as a radio actor and singer.
He began his association with the Pasadena Playhouse in 1937. Burr moved to New York in 1940 and made his first Broadway appearance in Crazy With the Heat, a two-act musical revue produced by Kurt Kasznar that quickly folded. His first starring role on the stage came in November 1942 when he was an emergency replacement in a Pasadena Playhouse production of Quiet Wedding. He became a member of the Pasadena Playhouse drama faculty for 18 months, and he performed in some 30 plays over the years. He returned to Broadway for Patrick Hamilton's The Duke in Darkness (1944), a psychological drama set during the French Wars of Religion.
His performance as the loyal friend of the imprisoned protagonist led to a contract with RKO Radio Pictures. Film Burr appeared in more than 50 feature films between 1946 and 1957, creating an array of villains that established him as an icon of film noir. Film historian Alain Silver concluded that Burr's most significant work in the genre is in ten films: Desperate (1947), Sleep, My Love (1948), Raw Deal (1948), Pitfall (1948), Abandoned (1949), Red Light (1950), M (1951), His Kind of Woman (1951), The Blue Gardenia (1953), and Crime of Passion (1957). Silver described Burr's private detective in Pitfall as "both reprehensible and pathetic", a characterization also cited by film historian Richard Schickel as a prototype of film noir, in contrast with the appealing television characters for which Burr later became famous.
"He tried to make you see the psychosis below the surface, even when the parts weren't huge," said film historian James Ursini. "He was able to bring such complexity and different levels to those characters, and create sympathy for his characters even though they were doing reprehensible things." Other titles in Burr's film noir legacy include Walk a Crooked Mile (1948), Borderline (1950), Unmasked (1950), The Whip Hand (1951), FBI Girl (1951), Meet Danny Wilson (1952), Rear Window (1954), They Were So Young (1954), A Cry in the Night (1956), and Affair in Havana (1957). His villains were also seen in Westerns, period dramas, horror films, and adventure films.
"I was just a fat heavy," Burr told journalist James Bawden. "I split the heavy parts with Bill Conrad. We were both in our twenties playing much older men. I never got the girl but I once got the gorilla in a 3-D picture called Gorilla at Large. I menaced Claudette Colbert, Lizabeth Scott, Paulette Goddard, Anne Baxter, Barbara Stanwyck. Those girls would take one look at me and scream and can you blame them? I was drowned, beaten, stabbed and all for my art. But I knew I was horribly overweight. I lacked any kind of self esteem. At 25 I was playing the fathers of people older than me."
Burr's occasional roles on the right side of the law include the aggressive prosecutor in A Place in the Sun (1951). His courtroom performance in that film made an impression on Gail Patrick and her husband Cornwell Jackson, who had Burr in mind when they began casting the role of Los Angeles district attorney Hamilton Burger in the CBS-TV series Perry Mason. Radio By the age of 12, Burr was appearing in national radio dramas broadcasting in nearby San Francisco. As a young man Burr weighed more than 300 lbs., which limited his on-screen roles. "But in radio this presented no problems, given the magnificent quality of his voice," reported The Globe and Mail.
"He played romantic leads and menacing villains with equal authority, and he earned a steady and comfortable income." Working steadily in radio since the 1940s, often uncredited, Burr was a leading player on the West Coast. He had a regular role in Jack Webb's first radio show, Pat Novak for Hire (1949), and in Dragnet (1949–50) he played Joe Friday's boss, Ed Backstrand, chief of detectives. Burr worked on other Los Angeles-based series including Suspense, Screen Directors Playhouse, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, Family Theater, Hallmark Playhouse and Hallmark Hall of Fame. He performed in five episodes of the experimental dramatic radio anthology series CBS Radio Workshop, and had what is arguably his best radio role in "The Silent Witness" (1957), in which his is the only voice.
In 1956 Burr was the star of CBS Radio's Fort Laramie, an adult Western drama produced, written and directed by the creators of Gunsmoke. He played the role of Lee Quince, captain of the cavalry, in the series set at a post-Civil War military post where disease, boredom, the elements and the uncharted terrain were the greatest enemies of "ordinary men who lived in extraordinary times". The half-hour transcribed program aired Sundays at 5:30 p.m. ET January 22 – October 28, 1956. Burr told columnist Sheilah Graham that he had received 1,500 fan letters after the first broadcasts, and he continued to receive letters praising the show's authenticity and presentation of human dignity.
In August 1956, CBS announced that Burr would star in the television series Perry Mason. Although the network wanted Burr to continue work on Fort Laramie as well, the TV series required an extraordinary commitment and the radio show ended. Known for his loyalty and consciousness of history, Burr went out of his way to employ his radio colleagues in his television programs. Some 180 radio celebrities appeared on Perry Mason during the first season alone. Television Burr emerged as a prolific television character actor in the 1950s. He made his television debut in 1951, appearing in episodes of Stars Over Hollywood, The Bigelow Theatre, Family Theater and the debut episode of Dragnet.
He went on to appear in such programs as Gruen Playhouse, Four Star Playhouse, Ford Theatre, Lux Video Theatre, Mr. and Mrs. North, Schlitz Playhouse of Stars and Playhouse 90. Perry Mason In 1956, Burr auditioned for the role of District Attorney Hamilton Burger in Perry Mason, a new CBS-TV courtroom drama based on the highly successful novels by Erle Stanley Gardner. Executive producer Gail Patrick Jackson had been impressed with Burr's courtroom performance in A Place in the Sun (1951), and she told Burr that he was perfect for Perry Mason but at least overweight. He went on a crash diet over the following month; he then tested as Perry Mason and was cast in the role.
While Burr's test was running, Gardner reportedly stood up, pointed at the screen, and said, "That's Perry Mason." William Hopper also auditioned as Mason, but he was cast instead as private detective Paul Drake. The series also starred Barbara Hale as Della Street, Mason's secretary, William Talman as Hamilton Burger, the district attorney who loses nearly every case to Mason, and Ray Collins as homicide detective Lieutenant Arthur Tragg. The series ran from 1957-66. Burr received three consecutive Emmy Award nominations and won the award in 1959 and 1961 for his performance as Perry Mason. The series has been rerun in syndication ever since, and was released on DVD between 2006 and 2013.
Burr's character is often said never to have lost a case, although he did lose two murder cases off-screen in early episodes of the series. Ironside Burr moved from CBS to Universal Studios, where he played the title role in the television drama Ironside, which ran on NBC from 1967 to 1975. In the pilot episode, San Francisco Chief of Detectives Robert T. Ironside is wounded by a sniper during an attempt on his life and, after his recovery, uses a wheelchair for mobility, in the first crime drama show to star a police officer with a disability. The show earned Burr six Emmy nominations—one for the pilot and five for his work in the series—and two Golden Globe nominations.
Other series After Ironside went off the air, NBC failed in two attempts to launch Burr as the star of a new series. In a two-hour television movie format, Mallory: Circumstantial Evidence aired in February 1976 with Burr again in the role of the lawyer who outwits the district attorney. Despite good reviews for Burr, the critical reception was poor, and NBC decided against developing it into a series. In 1977, Burr starred in the short-lived TV series Kingston: Confidential as R.B. Kingston, a William Randolph Hearst-esque publishing magnate, owner of numerous newspapers and TV stations, who, in his spare time, solved crimes along with a group of employees.
It was a critical failure that was scheduled opposite the extraordinarily popular Charlie's Angels. It was cancelled after 13 weeks. Burr took on a shorter project next, playing an underworld boss in a six-hour miniseries, 79 Park Avenue. One last attempt to launch a series followed on CBS. The two-hour premiere of The Jordan Chance aroused little interest. On January 20, 1987, Burr hosted the television special that later served as the pilot for the long-running series Unsolved Mysteries. Television films In 1985, Burr was approached by producers Dean Hargrove and Fred Silverman to star in a made-for-TV movie, Perry Mason Returns.
The same week, Burr recalled, he was asked to reprise the role he played in Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), in a low-budget film that would be titled Godzilla 1985. "When they asked me to do it a second time, I said, 'Certainly,' and everybody thought I was out of my mind," Burr told Tom Shales of The Washington Post. "But it wasn't the large sum of money. It was the fact that, first of all, I kind of liked 'Godzilla,' and where do you get the opportunity to play yourself 30 years later? So I said yes to both of them."
Although Burr is best remembered for his role as Perry Mason, a devoted following continues to appreciate him as the actor that brought the Godzilla series to America. He agreed to do the Mason movie if Barbara Hale returned to reprise her role as Della Street. Hale agreed, and when Perry Mason Returns aired in December 1985, her character became the defendant. The rest of the principal cast had died, but Hale's real-life son William Katt played the role of Paul Drake, Jr. The movie was so successful that Burr made a total of 26 Perry Mason television films before his death.
Many were filmed in and around Denver, Colorado. By 1993, when Burr signed with NBC for another season of Mason films, he was using a wheelchair full-time because of his failing health. In his final Perry Mason movie, The Case of the Killer Kiss, he was shown either sitting or standing while leaning on a table, but only once standing unsupported for a few seconds. Twelve more Mason movies were scheduled before Burr's death, including one scheduled to film the month he died. As he had with the Perry Mason TV movies, Burr decided to do an Ironside reunion movie.
The Return of Ironside aired in May 1993, reuniting the entire original cast of the 1967–75 series. Like many of the Mason movies, it was set and filmed in Denver. Personal life Physical characteristics Burr said that he weighed 12.75 pounds (5.8 kg) at birth, and was chubby throughout his childhood. "When you're a little fat boy in public school, or any kind of school, you're just persecuted something awful," he remembered. His weight was always an issue for him in getting roles, and it became a public relations problem when Johnny Carson began making jokes about him during his Tonight Show monologues.
Burr refused to appear as Carson's guest from then on, and told Us Weekly years later: "I have been asked a number of times to do his show and I won't do it. Because I like NBC. He's doing an NBC show. If I went on I'd have some things to say, not just about the bad jokes he's done about me, but bad jokes he does about everybody who can't fight back because they aren't there. And that wouldn't be good for NBC." Family life Burr married actress Isabella Ward (1919–2004) on January 10, 1948. They met in 1943 while she was a student at the Pasadena Playhouse where Burr was teaching.
They met again in 1947 when she was in California with a theater company. They were married shortly before Burr began work on the 1948 film noir Pitfall. In May 1948, they appeared on stage together in a Pasadena Playhouse production based on the life of Paul Gauguin. They lived in the basement apartment of a large house in Hollywood that Burr shared with his mother and grandparents. The marriage ended within months, and Ward returned to her native Delaware. They divorced in 1952, and neither remarried. In 1960, Burr met Robert Benevides, an actor and Korean War veteran, on the set of Perry Mason.
Benevides gave up acting in 1963, and he became a production consultant for 21 of the Perry Mason TV movies. They owned and operated an orchid business and then a vineyard in California's Dry Creek Valley. They were domestic partners until Burr's death in 1993. Burr bequeathed his entire estate to Benevides, and Benevides renamed the Dry Creek property Raymond Burr Vineyards (reportedly against Burr's wishes) and managed it as a commercial enterprise. In 2017, the property was sold. Biographical contradictions At various times in his career, Burr and his managers and publicists offered spurious or unverifiable biographical details to the press and public.
Burr's obituary in The New York Times states that he entered the US Navy in 1944, after The Duke in Darkness, and left in 1946, weighing almost . Although Burr may have served in the Coast Guard, reports of his service in the US Navy cannot be confirmed, nor can his statements that he sustained battle injuries at Okinawa. Other invented biographical details include years of college education at a variety of institutions, being widowed twice, a son who died young, world travel and success in high school athletics. Most of these claims were accepted as fact by the press at the time of Burr's death and by his first biographer, Ona Hill.
Burr was reportedly married at the beginning of World War II to a Scottish actress named Annette Sutherland—killed, Burr said, in the same 1943 plane crash that claimed the life of actor Leslie Howard. However, multiple sources have reported that no one by that name appears on any of the published passenger manifests from the flight. A son supposedly born during this marriage, Michael Evan, was said to have died of leukemia in 1953 at the age of ten. Another marriage purportedly took place in the early 1950s to a Laura Andrina Morgan—who died of cancer, Burr said, in 1955.
Yet no evidence exists of either marriage, nor of a son's birth, other than Burr's own claims. As late as 1991, Burr stood by the account of this son's life and death. He told Parade Magazine that when he realized Michael was dying, he took him on a one-year tour of the United States. "Before my boy left, before his time was gone," he said, "I wanted him to see the beauty of his country and its people." After Burr's death, his publicist confirmed that Burr worked in Hollywood throughout the year that he was supposedly touring with his son.
In the late 1950s, Burr was rumored to be romantically involved with Natalie Wood. Wood's agent sent her on public dates so she could be noticed by directors and producers, and so the men she dated could present themselves in public as heterosexuals. The dates helped to disguise Wood's relationship with Robert Wagner, whom she later married. Burr reportedly resented Warner Bros.' decision to promote her attachment to another gay actor, Tab Hunter, rather than him. Robert Benevides later said, "He was a little bitter about it. He was really in love with her, I guess." Later accounts of Burr's life explain that he hid his homosexuality to protect his career.
"That was a time in Hollywood history when homosexuality was not countenanced", Associated Press reporter Bob Thomas recalled in a 2000 episode of Biography. "Ray was not a romantic star by any means, but he was a very popular figure … If it was revealed at that time in Hollywood history it would have been very difficult for him to continue." Arthur Marks, a producer of Perry Mason, recalled Burr's talk of wives and children: "I know he was just putting on a show. … That was my gut feeling. I think the wives and the loving women, the Natalie Wood thing, were a bit of a cover."
Dean Hargrove, executive producer of the Perry Mason TV films, said in 2006, "I had always assumed that Raymond was gay, because he had a relationship with Robert Benevides for a very long time. Whether or not he had relationships with women, I had no idea. I did know that I had trouble keeping track of whether he was married or not in these stories. Raymond had the ability to mythologize himself, to some extent, and some of his stories about his past … tended to grow as time went by." Hobbies and businesses Burr had many hobbies over the course of his life: cultivating orchids and collecting wine, art, stamps, and seashells.
He was very fond of cooking. He was interested in flying, sailing, and fishing. According to A&E Biography, Burr was an avid reader with a retentive memory. He was also among the earliest importers and breeders of Portuguese Water Dogs in the United States. Burr developed his interest in cultivating and hybridizing orchids into a business with Benevides. Over 20 years, their company, Sea God Nurseries, had nurseries in Fiji, Hawaii, the Azores, and California, and was responsible for adding more than 1,500 new orchids to the worldwide catalog. Burr named one of them the "Barbara Hale Orchid" after his Perry Mason costar.
Burr and Benevides cultivated Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, and grapes for Port wine, as well as orchids, at Burr's farmland holdings in Sonoma County, California. In 1965, Burr purchased Naitauba, a island in Fiji, rich in seashells. There, he and Benevides oversaw the raising of copra (coconut meat) and cattle, as well as orchids. Burr planned to retire there permanently. However, medical problems made that impossible and he sold the property in 1983. Philanthropy Burr was a well-known philanthropist. He gave enormous sums of money, including his salaries from the Perry Mason movies, to charity. He was also known for sharing his wealth with friends.
He sponsored 26 foster children through the Foster Parents' Plan or Save The Children, many with the greatest medical needs. He also gave money and some of his Perry Mason scripts to the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California. Burr was an early supporter of the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum in Sanibel, Florida, raising funds and chairing its first capital campaign. He also donated a large collection of Fijian cowries and cones from his island in Fiji. In 1993, Sonoma State University awarded Burr an honorary doctorate. He supported medical and education institutions in Denver, and in 1993, the University of Colorado awarded him an honorary doctorate for his acting work.
Burr also founded and financed the American Fijian Foundation that funded academic research, including efforts to develop a dictionary of the language. Burr made repeated trips on behalf of the United Service Organizations (USO). He toured both Korea and Vietnam during wartime and once spent six months touring Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. He sometimes organized his own troupe and toured bases both in the U.S. and overseas, often small installations that the USO did not serve, like one tour of Greenland, Baffin Island, Newfoundland and Labrador. Returning from Vietnam in 1965, he made a speaking tour of the U.S. to advocate an intensified war effort.
As the war became more controversial, he modified his tone, called for more attention to the sacrifice of the troops, and said, "My only position on the war is that I wish it were over." In October 1967, NBC aired Raymond Burr Visits Vietnam, a documentary of one of his visits. The reception was mixed. "The impressions he came up with are neither weighty nor particularly revealing", wrote the Chicago Tribune; the Los Angeles Times called Burr's questions "intelligent and elicited some interesting replies". Burr had a reputation in Hollywood as a thoughtful, generous man years before much of his more-visible philanthropic work.
In 1960, Ray Collins, who portrayed Lt. Arthur Tragg on the original Perry Mason series, and who was by that time often ill and unable to remember all the lines he was supposed to speak, stated, "There is nothing but kindness from our star, Ray Burr. Part of his life is dedicated to us, and that's no bull. If there's anything the matter with any of us, he comes around before anyone else and does what he can to help. He's a great star—in the old tradition." Illness and death During the filming of his last Perry Mason movie in the spring of 1993, Burr fell ill. A Viacom spokesperson told the media that the illness might be related to the renal cell carcinoma (malignant kidney tumor) that had been removed from Burr that February.
It was determined that the cancer had spread to his liver and was at that point inoperable. Burr threw several "goodbye parties" before his death on September 12, 1993, at his Sonoma County ranch near Healdsburg. He was 76 years old. The day after Burr's death, American Bar Association president R. William Ide III released a statement: "Raymond Burr's portrayals of Perry Mason represented lawyers in a professional and dignified manner. ... Mr. Burr strove for such authenticity in his courtroom characterizations that we regard his passing as though we lost one of our own." The New York Times reported that Perry Mason had been named second—after F. Lee Bailey, and before Abraham Lincoln, Thurgood Marshall, Janet Reno, Ben Matlock and Hillary Clinton—in a recent National Law Journal poll that asked Americans to name the attorney, fictional or not, they most admired.
Burr was interred with his parents at Fraser Cemetery, New Westminster, British Columbia. On October 1, 1993, about 600 family members and friends paid tribute to Burr at a private memorial service at the Pasadena Playhouse. Although Burr had not revealed his homosexuality during his lifetime, it was an open secret and was reported in the press upon his death. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote that People magazine was preparing a story on Burr's "secret life" and asked, "Are the inevitable rumors true?" It received sensational treatment in the tabloid press; biographer Michael Starr wrote of the "wild stories about Raymond's private life spiced up with quotes from unidentified 'friends' who described his closeted homosexual lifestyle in almost cartoonish terms".
Burr bequeathed his estate to Robert Benevides, and excluded all relatives, including a sister, nieces, and nephews. His will was challenged, without success, by the two children of his late brother, James E. Burr. Benevides's attorney said that tabloid reports of an estate worth $32 million were an overestimate. Accolades For his work in the TV series Perry Mason, Burr received the Emmy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Continuing Character) in a Dramatic Series at the 11th Primetime Emmy Awards in 1959. Nominated again in 1960, he received his second Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Series (Lead) at the 13th Primetime Emmy Awards in 1961.
Burr was named Favorite Male Performer, for Perry Mason, in TV Guide magazine's inaugural TV Guide Award readers poll in 1960. He also received the second annual award in 1961. In 1960, Burr was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6656 Hollywood Boulevard. Burr received six Emmy nominations (1968–72) for his work in the TV series Ironside. He was nominated twice, in 1969 and 1972, for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama. A benefactor of legal education, Burr was principal speaker at the founders' banquet of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan, in June 1973.
The Raymond Burr Award for Excellence in Criminal Law was established in his honor. Burr was ranked #44 on TV Guides 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time in 1996. Completed in 1996, a circular garden at the entrance to the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum in Sanibel, Florida, honors Burr for his role in establishing the museum. Burr was a trustee and an early supporter who chaired the museum's first capital campaign and made direct contributions from his collection. A display about Burr as an actor, benefactor and collector opened in the museum's Great Hall of Shells in 2012. From 2000 to 2006, the Raymond Burr Performing Arts Society leased the historic Columbia Theatre from the city of New Westminster, and renamed it the Raymond Burr Performing Arts Centre.
Although the nonprofit organization hoped to raise funds to renovate and expand the venue, its contract was not renewed. The group was a failed bidder when the theater was sold in 2011. In 2008, Canada Post issued a postage stamp in its "Canadians in Hollywood" series featuring Burr. Burr received the 2009 Canadian Legends Award and a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto. The induction ceremony was held on September 12, 2009. A 2014 article in The Atlantic that examined how Netflix categorized nearly 77,000 different personalized genres found that Burr was rated as the favorite actor by Netflix users, with the greatest number of dedicated microgenres.
Theatre credits Film credits Radio credits Television credits See also List of celebrities who own wineries and vineyards Notes References External links Raymond Burr at the MBC Encyclopedia of Television Complete biography of Raymond Burr Category:1917 births Category:1993 deaths Category:20th-century Canadian male actors Category:20th-century American male actors Category:Berkeley High School (Berkeley, California) alumni Category:Canadian expatriate male actors in the United States Category:Canadian male film actors Category:Canadian male radio actors Category:Canadian male television actors Category:Canadian people of American descent Category:Canadian people of German descent Category:Canadian people of Irish descent Category:Canadian people of English descent Category:Canadian people of Scottish descent Category:Canadian people of World War II Category:Civilian Conservation Corps people Category:Columbia University alumni Category:Deaths from cancer in California Category:Deaths from kidney cancer Category:LGBT male actors Category:LGBT entertainers from Canada Category:Male actors from British Columbia Category:Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor in a Drama Series Primetime Emmy Award winners Category:People from Healdsburg, California Category:People from New Westminster Category:Perry Mason Category:Stanford University alumni Category:Male actors from the San Francisco Bay Area
Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSECs) are university based research centers supported by the MRSEC Program of the Division of Materials Research at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The centers support interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research of fundamental and technological importance and integrate research with education. MRSECs require outstanding research quality, intellectual breadth, support for research infrastructure, and education outreach. MRSECs facilitate active collaborations between academic institutions, national laboratories, and industry, as well international collaborations. Introduction MRSECs form a significant component of NSF's center-based research portfolio, but are also of historical importance. MRSECs were established by NSF in 1994 but have their roots in the NSF Materials Research Laboratories (MRLs) started in 1972, which in turn evolved from the Interdisciplinary Laboratories (IDLs) initiated by the Department of Defense in 1960.
These cross-disciplinary, center-based activities required significant changes in how materials research and education were carried out at academic institutions and the IDLs/MRLs are credited with contributing to the accelerating growth of Materials Science and Engineering Departments in the U.S. in the 1960s to 1980s. They also made significant contributions to the National Materials Program that emerged from the early post Sputnik era, leading to a vigorous growth in science and engineering graduate education and the development of university based experimental facilities. Since much of the information regarding current MRSECs is available from websites only a brief overview of the current program is provided.
The main purpose of this article is to review the historical aspects of MRSECs and the significance of their impact on materials research and education in the U.S. Current MRSEC status Program summary The research carried out in MRSECs is carried out in interdisciplinary research groups (IRGs), teams of six to a dozen or more researchers working on a current research topic of national significance. MRSECs range in size from two to four IRGs. The topics of the IRGs within a center may be focused on closely related scientific or technological topics or can cover distinctly different areas of research.
Funding levels for a given MRSEC currently range approximately from $1.5 to $3.5 million annually, depending of the overall scope of the research program. Each center has considerable flexibility to distribute its funds consistent with its proposed and approved research and education proposal. In addition, the centers are strongly encouraged to apply a modest fraction of their funds for support of "seed projects," allowing them to respond quickly to promising new research opportunities. MRSECs feature partnerships with other academic institutions, national laboratories, and industry as well as international collaborations. The centers also feature extensive experimental and computational facilities, which are generally accessible to outside users.
A recently established facility network coordinates access to a broad range of experimental tools across the nationwide network of MRSECs. A key mandate for these centers is the training and education of a future highly skilled workforce. The largest component of the center's funding is directed toward support of students (undergraduate and graduate), and postdoctoral researchers. In addition, MRSECS carry out a broad range of education and outreach activities involving K - 12 students and public education through collaborations with museums and other public institutions. Recent Competition Results Generally, MRSEC awards are for six years with competitions held every three years.
Competitions are open to all US academic institutions and normally only one award is made per institution. Nine awards were made based on the competition held in 2010/2011 and twelve awards were made based on the 2013/2014 competition, bringing the total to 21 awards currently (June 2016) supported by the program.
The 2011 class of MRSECs: University of California at Santa Barbara - Materials Research Laboratory (3 IRGs) Cornell University - Center for Materials Research (3 IRGs) Duke University - Triangle Center for Excellence for Materials Research and Innovation: Programmable Assembly of Soft Matter (2 IRGs) University of Michigan - Photonic and Multiscale Nanomaterials (2 IRGs) Northwestern University - Multifunctional Nanoscale Materials Structures (3 IRGs) University of Pennsylvania - Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (4 IRGs) University of Utah - New Generation Materials for Plasmonics and Organic Spintronics (2 IRGs) University of Wisconsin-Madison - Nanostructured Materials and Interfaces (4 IRGs) Yale University - Center for Research on Innovative Structures and Phenomena (2 IRGs) The 2014 class of MRSEcs: Brandeis University- Bioinspired Soft Materials (2 IRGs) University of Chicago - Materials Research Center (3 IRGs) University of Colorado - Soft Materials Research Center (2 IRGs) Columbia University - Precision Assembly of Superstratic and Superatomic Solids (2 IRGs) Harvard University - Materials Research Center (3 IRGs) Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Center for Materials Science and Engineering (3 IRGs) University of MInnesota - Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (3 IRGs) University of Nebraska - Polarization and Spin Phenomena in Nanoferroic Structures (2 IRGs) New York University - Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (2 IRGs) Ohio State University - Center for Emergent Materials (3 IRGs) Pennsylvania State University - Center for Nanoscale Science (4 IRGs) Princeton University - Princeton Center for Complex Materials (3 IRGs) Historical Background State of Materials Research Prior to 1960 The modern study of materials intersects many of the traditional scientific disciplines, including physics, chemistry, engineering, and increasingly the biosciences and mathematics.
Until the middle of the 20th century the various disciplines approached the study of materials with their own distinctive methodologies. Interdisciplinary collaborations, especially at academic institutions, were not the norm. Past exceptions were the successful collaborative approaches leading to the intense technological developments during the Second World War, including the military and peaceful applications of nuclear energy production. The late 1950s saw important developments in how the federal government could play an increasing role in supporting interdisciplinary, collaborative research at academic institutions. The successful launch of the Russian space satellite Sputnik on October 4, 1957 had a profound impact on how scientific and technological research was carried out in the United States.
Within a year of this date the federal government established two new agencies: The National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), which was to define US supported space exploration for the remainder of the century and beyond, and the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA, later DARPA) within the Department of Defense. ARPA was tasked with expanding the frontiers of technology and science, often with potential military applications. In addition, the National Defense Education Act of 1958 had the main purpose to greatly increase the number of trained engineers, scientists, and mathematicians, and included provisions for financial assistance. The post Sputnik enthusiasm for more investment in science research led to a broader recommendation in March 1958 for coordinating materials research in the United States by President Eisenhower's Science and Advisory Committee (PSAC).