Showgirls is a 1995 erotic drama film written by Joe Eszterhas and directed by Paul Verhoeven. It stars former teen actress Elizabeth Berkley, Kyle MacLachlan, Gina Gershon; the film centers on a "street-smart" drifter who ventures to Las Vegas and climbs the seedy hierarchy from stripper to showgirl. Produced on a then-sizable budget of $45 million, significant controversy and hype surrounding the film's amounts of sex and nudity preceded its theatrical release. In the United States, the film was rated NC-17 for "nudity and erotic sexuality throughout, some graphic language, sexual violence." Showgirls was the first NC-17 rated film to be given a wide release in mainstream theaters. Distributor United Artists dispatched several hundred staffers to theaters across North America playing Showgirls to ensure that patrons would not sneak into the theater from other films, to make sure film-goers were over the age of 17. Audience restriction due to the NC-17 rating coupled with poor reviews resulted in the film becoming a box office bomb, grossing just $37 million.

Despite a negative theatrical and critical consensus, Showgirls enjoyed success on the home video market, generating more than $100 million from video rentals, allowing the film to turn a profit and become one of MGM's top 20 all-time bestsellers. For its video premiere, Verhoeven prepared an R-rated cut for rental outlets that would not carry NC-17 films; this edited version deletes some of the more graphic footage. Despite being ranked as one of the worst films made, Showgirls has become regarded as a cult classic, was released on Blu-ray in June 2010 and has been subject to critical re-evaluation, with some notable directors and critics declaring it a serious satire worthy of praise. An unofficial spin-off sequel entitled Showgirls 2: Penny's from Heaven, focused on the minor character Penny, played by Rena Riffel, was written, produced and directed by Riffel, it was released at midnight film showings, art house theaters, film festivals, charity non-profit organizations, was direct-to-video.

Nomi Malone is a young drifter. After being robbed by her driver, Nomi meets Molly Abrams, a costume designer who becomes her roommate. Molly invites Nomi backstage at Goddess, the Stardust Casino show where she works, to meet Cristal Connors, the diva star of the casino's topless dance revue; when Nomi tells Cristal she dances at Cheetah's Topless Club, Cristal derisively tells her that what she does is akin to prostitution. When Nomi is too upset to go to work that night, Molly takes her dancing at The Crave Club. Nomi is arrested after causing a fight involving a bouncer at the club. James bails Nomi out of jail. Cristal and her boyfriend Zack Carey, the entertainment director at the Stardust, visit Cheetah's and request a lap dance from Nomi. Although the bisexual Cristal is attracted to Nomi, her request is based more on her desire to humiliate Nomi by proving she engages in sex work. Nomi reluctantly performs the lap dance after Cristal offers her $500. James happens to witnesses the lap dance.

He visits Nomi's trailer the next morning and, like Cristal, tells Nomi that what she is doing is no different from prostitution. Nomi and James have a brief fling. Cristal arranges for Nomi to audition for the chorus line of Goddess. Tony Moss, the show's director, humiliates Nomi by asking her to put ice on her nipples to make them hard while Cristal eagerly watches offstage. Furious, Nomi abruptly leaves the audition after scattering ice everywhere in a fit. Despite her outburst, Nomi quits Cheetah's. Cristal further humiliates Nomi by suggesting she make a "goodwill appearance" at a boat trade show which turns out to be a thinly disguised form of prostitution. Undeterred, Nomi claim her mantle, she seduces Zack. Nomi wins the role, but when Cristal threatens legal action against the Stardust Resort and Casino, the offer is rescinded. After Cristal taunts her, Nomi pushes her down a flight of stairs. Unable to perform, Cristal is replaced by Nomi as the show's lead. Although Nomi has secured the fame she sought, she alienates Molly, who realizes she pushed Cristal down the stairs.

Molly relents and attends Nomi's opening night celebration at a posh hotel, where she meets her idol, musician Andrew Carver. Carver lures Molly to a room where he brutally beats her and leads his bodyguards in gang-raping her. Molly is hospitalized after the assault. Nomi wants to report the assault to the police, but Zack tells her the Stardust will bribe Molly with hush money to protect Carver, their star performer. Zack confronts Nomi about her sordid past: her real name is Polly, she became a runaway and prostitute after her parents' murder-suicide, she has been arrested several times for drug possession and assault with a deadly weapon. Zack blackmails Nomi by vowing to keep her past quiet if she will not tell the police about the assault. Unable to obtain justice for Molly without exposing her past, Nomi decides to take justice into her own hands, she beats him severely. Nomi pays two hospital visits: one to Molly to let her know that Carver's actions did not go unpunished, another to Cristal to apologize for injuring her.

Cristal admits. Because her lawy

Open peer review is a term that describes various possible modifications of the traditional scholarly peer review process. The three most common modifications to which the term is applied are: Open identities: Authors and reviewers are aware of each other’s identity. Open reports: Review reports are published alongside the relevant article. Open participation: The wider community are able to contribute to the review process; these modifications are supposed to address various perceived shortcomings of the traditional scholarly peer review process, in particular its lack of transparency, lack of incentives, wastefulness. Open peer review may be defined as "any scholarly review mechanism providing disclosure of author and referee identities to one another at any point during the peer review or publication process". Reviewer's identities may or may not be disclosed to the public; this is in contrast to the traditional peer review process where reviewers remain anonymous to anyone but the journal's editors, while authors' names are disclosed from the beginning.

Open peer review may be defined as making the reviewers' reports public, instead of disclosing them to the article's authors only. This may include publishing the rest of the peer review history, i.e. the authors' replies and editors' recommendations. Most this concerns only articles that are accepted for publication, not those that are rejected. Open peer review may be defined as allowing self-selected reviewers to comment on an article, rather than having reviewers who are selected by the editors; this assumes that the text of the article is accessible. The self-selected reviewers may or may not be screened for their basic credentials, they may contribute either short comments or full reviews; these publishers operate various flavours of open peer review: BMJ Group BioMed Central European Geosciences Union European Molecular Biology Organization PeerJ eLife PLOS WikiJournal SciPost NaturePeer review at BMJ, BioMed Central, EMBO, eLife, PLOS involves posting the entire pre-publication history of the article online, including not only signed reviews of the article, but its previous versions and author responses to the reviewers.

The European Geosciences Union operates public discussions where open peer review is conducted before suitable articles are accepted for publication in the actual journal. Some platforms, including some preprint servers, facilitate open peer review of preprints. In 2019, the preprint server BioRxiv started allowing posting reviews alongside preprints, in addition to allowing comments on preprints; the reviews can come from platforms such as Review Commons. In 2020, in the context of the 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak, the platform Outbreak Science Rapid PREreview was launched in order to perform rapid open peer review of preprints related to emerging outbreaks; the platform worked with preprints from medRxiv, bioRxiv and arXiv. Open identities have been argued to incite reviewers to be "more tactful and constructive" than they would be if they could remain anonymous, while however allowing authors to accumulate enemies who try to keep their papers from being published or their grant applications from being successful.

Open peer review in all its forms has been argued to favour more honest reviewing, to prevent reviewers from following their individual agendas. Some studies have found that open identities lead to an increase in the quality of reviews, while other studies find no significant effect. Open peer review at BMJ journals has lent itself to randomized trials that compared open peer review with non-open peer review; these studies did not find that open peer review affected the quality of review or the rate of acceptance of articles for publication, there was only one reported instance of a conflict between authors and reviewers. The only significant negative effect of open peer review was "increasing the likelihood of reviewers declining to review". In some cases, open identities have helped detect reviewers' conflicts of interests. According to a 2020 Nature editorial, experience from Nature Communications negates the concerns that open reports would be less critical, or would require an excessive amount of work from reviewers.

Open research Open science Open science data

The Fall of Osaka Castle occurred between Imperial and Tokugawa shogunate forces during the Boshin War in Japan, where soon after the Battle of Toba–Fushimi, the Tokugawa-held Osaka Castle was captured by pro-Imperial "Kangun" forces in February 2, 1868. The Castle of Osaka was symbolic, it was historically significant and it had been the location of the Siege of Osaka, the decisive battle which established the power of the Tokugawa more than two centuries before. Following the Tokugawa Shogunate's defeat in the Battle of Toba–Fushimi in January 31, 1868. Troops loyal to the bakufu tried to regroup under Tokugawa Yoshinobu. At Osaka Castle, Tokugawa Yoshinobu gathered his advisors and military leaders to plan strategy and, to boost morale, advised that he would take to the field as commander of bakufu forces; however on that evening, Tokugawa Yoshinobu slipped away from Osaka Castle accompanied by the daimyōs of Aizu and Kuwana to escape back to Edo on the shogunate warship Kaiyō maru. As Kaiyō maru had not arrived, he took refuge for the night on an American warship, USS Iroquois, anchored in Osaka Bay.

The Kaiyō maru arrived two hours and picked up the Tokugawa party. When the remnants of his forces learned that the Shōgun had abandoned them, they departed Osaka Castle, surrendered to Imperial forces without resistance; the castle was seized and burnt on February 2, 1868. Once the Osaka Castle was burnt and reduced to ruins by the new government, it was used as a ground for military barracks. Yoshinobu stated that he had been disturbed by the Imperial approval given to the actions of Satsuma and Chōshū, once the Imperial brocade banner had appeared, he had lost all will to fight

The Fort Saint-André is a medieval fortress in the commune of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon in the Gard département of France, dating from the first half of the 14th century. The treaty of Paris, signed in 1229 at the end of the Albigensian Crusade, handed the French crown land to the west of the Rhone from Pont-Saint-Esprit to the Mediterranean and a joint interest in the city of Avignon. In 1290 the French king, Philip IV, ceded his claim to Avignon to his father's cousin, Charles II of Naples, the Count of Provence through his marriage to Beatrice of Provence; the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-André occupied a strategic position on Mount Andaon within sight of the town of Avignon which lay on the other side of the Rhone. Mount Andaon is a rocky outcrop with steep sides to the north and the east that rises 50 m above the floodplain of the Rhone. Prior to the 1770s the river flowed next to the base of the eastern side of the mount; the plateau at the top covers an area of around 3.5 hectare and extends for 220 m in an east-west direction and 160 m north-south.

The top rises from south to north by 24 m. The abbey was built at the eastern end of the plateau; the abbey had been founded at the end of the 10th century and possessed extensive property with over 200 churches spread over a wide area of southern France. In 1290 Philip IV instructed Adam de Montcéliard, the sénéchal of Beaucaire, to negotiate an agreement with the abbey to cooperate in the defense of the right bank of the Rhone; the paréage treaty signed in 1292 specified that Philippe le Bel could build a fortress with a permanent garrison next to the abbey and a castle by the river. The abbey surrendered temporal power but obtained protection from the unwanted pressure from the city of Avignon which wished to control both banks of the Rhone. By 1302 fortifications, including an initial Tour Philippe-le-Bel, had been built at the western end of the Pont Saint-Bénézet which lay less than kilometer from the abbey. In 1309, Pope Clement V moved the papacy from Rome to Avignon; the fortress of Saint-André, with the curtain wall that surrounded the abbey, was built in several stages during the first half of the 14th century.

The surviving manuscripts do not allow the construction to be dated. A châtelain is mentioned in documents dating from 1314 and 1344, a guard is mentioned in 1318; the carved crest placed by the abbey above the entrance is dated 20 July 1367. This was when modifications were made to the entrance arch; the fortress was continually occupied by officers of the crown up to the time of French revolution. The fortress was visible from Papal State across the Rhone in the town of Avignon and was intended to demonstrate the power of the Kingdom of France; the Fort Saint-André is included as a monument historique by decrees of the 25 April 1903 and 14 November 1925. The site is open to the public for a fee, though it receives a fraction of the visitors at the nearby Palais des Papes. List of castles in France Tower of Philip the Fair - a contemporary construction only a few hundred meters from the castle "Fort Saint-André à Villeneuve-lez-Avignon". Centre des Monuments Nationaux. Official website. "Jardins de L'abbaye Saint-André - Réseau Meli Mélo".

Office de Tourisme, Villeneuve lez Avignon. Fort Saint-André at Structurae Ministry of Culture photos

Rutland Mill was a cotton spinning mill on Linney Lane, in Shaw and Crompton, Greater Manchester, England. It was built by F. W. Son in 1907 for the Rutland Mill Co. Ltd.. It was taken over by the Lancashire Cotton Corporation in the 1930s. By 1964, it was in the Courtaulds Group. In the late 1980s, as Courtaulds moved operations to other parts of the world, the mill was bought by Littlewoods who demolished it and replaced it with a new automated storage warehouse. Shaw and Crompton is a town and civil parish within the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, in Greater Manchester, England, it lies on the River Beal at the foothills of the Pennines, 2.3 miles north of Oldham, 3.6 miles southeast of Rochdale, 8.7 miles to the northeast of the city of Manchester. It is referred to as Shaw, it is not served by any canal but a rail service was provided by the Oldham Loop Line, built in 1863 by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. Rutland Mill was in the centre of Shaw close to the Milnrow Road; the manufacture of textiles in Crompton can be traced back to 1474, when a lease dated from that year outlines that the occupant of Crompton Park had spinning wheels and looms, all of which suggest that cloth was being produced in large quantities.

The upland geography of the area constrained the output of crop growing, so prior to industrialisation the area was used for grazing sheep, which provided the raw material for a local woollen weaving trade. Until the mid-18th century, Crompton's textile sector had been linked with that of Rochdale and Saddleworth in the north and east. However, as the demand for cotton goods increased, Crompton mirrored developments in Oldham and Manchester in the south and southwest, importing raw cotton and making cotton cloth. Oldham rose to prominence during the 19th century as an international centre of textile manufacture, it was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution, amongst the first industrialised towns becoming "one of the most important centres of cotton and textile industries in England", spinning Oldham counts, the coarser counts of cotton. It was in the second half of the 19th century, that Oldham became the world centre for spinning cotton yarn; this was due in a large part to the formation of limited liability companies known as Oldham Limiteds.

In 1851, over 30% of Oldham's population was employed within the textile sector, compared to 5% across Great Britain. At its zenith, it was the most productive cotton spinning mill town in the world; when suitable land in Oldham had become scarce in the 1860s, there was a mill building boom in Shaw and Crompton, giving rise to the area as major mill town. The local townscape became dominated by distinctive rectangular brick-built mills, its former villages and hamlets agglomerated as a single town around these factories. Shaw and Crompton railway station and a goods yard was opened in 1863, allowing improved transportation of textile goods and raw materials to and from the township. Neighbouring Royton had begun to encroach upon southern boundary, forming a continuous urban cotton-spinning district with Oldham. By 1871 Oldham had more spindles than any country in the world except the United States, in 1909, was spinning more cotton than France and Germany combined; the demand for cheap cotton goods from this area prompted the flotation of cotton spinning companies.

Rutland mill opened in 1907. By 1911 there were 16.4 million spindles in Oldham, compared with a total of 58 million in the United Kingdom and 143.5 million in the world. At its peak, there were over operating night and day. Many mills were refloated at valuations of up to £500,000, or five times what they had cost to build before the war, resulting in the town being nicknamed "The Golden City" as the scramble for shares intensified; because of this profitable share dealing, it was reported in the national press that Shaw and Crompton had more millionaires per capita than any other town in the world. The number of cotton mills in the township peaked at 36 in 1920; the industry peaked in 1912. The Great War of 1914–18 halted the supply of raw cotton, the British government encouraged its colonies to build mills to spin and weave cotton; the war over, Lancashire never regained its markets. The independent mills were struggling; the Bank of England set up the Lancashire Cotton Corporation in 1929 to attempt to rationalise and save the industry.

Rutland Mill In the late 1980s, as Courtaulds moved operations to other parts of the world, the mill was bought by Littlewoods. Under the Littlewoods name it was run as warehousing for a short time before it was demolished and replaced by a new automated storage warehouse; this was a five storey F. W. Dixon & Son mill, built in 1907, with 24 bays, it was driven by a 1700 hp cross compound engine by George Saxon & Co of Openshaw, built in 1908, but altered in 1913. It had a 26-foot flywheel with 35 ropes, operating at 67 rpm 68 rpm, it had 58 "LP cylinders X 5ft stroke. This was altered in 1913, to a 29 ½" HP, 63"LP, this raised the speed to 68rpm. In 1950, in LCC ownership it had 20,000 mule spindles. Rutland Mill Ltd. Lancashire Cotton Corporation Courtaulds Littlewoods Textile manufacturing Cotton Mill Dunkerley, Philip. "Dunkerley-Tuson Family Website, The Regent

Somerville Junction was the name of a railroad junction and station in Somerville, United States. The station, which closed in 1927, was located at the site of the present-day park near the intersection of Centre and Woodbine Streets. Nearby, a westward connector split off from the main line of the Lowell Railroad, it was built by the B&L to connect to the Lexington and Arlington Railroad after its 1870 acquisition. A branch was added, extending the connector to form the Fitchburg Cutoff. A publication highlighting Somerville railroad history in connection with the MBTA Green Line extension project includes a photo of the depot and a discussion of Somerville Junction's history. Per 1895 maps, the station was situated about 70 yards from the Central Street bridge, the junction of the tracks was about 240 yards farther northwest; the station was still in use in 1947. It was closed prior to the 1958 cuts that closed North Somerville, Tufts College, Medford Hillside stations