Synapse Films

Synapse Films is an American DVD and Blu-ray label owned and operated by Don May, Jr. and his business partners Jerry Chandler and Charles Fiedler. The company was started in 1997 and it specializes in cult horror, science fiction, and exploitation films. May graduated from Illinois State University in 199. He always had an interest in television and film. “I caught the laserdisc bug while working at a local laserdisc store while I was in college. I was selling laserdisc players and buying product and I pretty much spent every extra dollar I had on laserdiscs. I loved movies and the disc format and knew this was a business I wanted to be in.” May became a part owner of Elite Entertainment. This was after he quit his job at laserdisc retailer.

Synapse's focus has been to provide quality restoration and video transfers to genre films usually neglected or granted shoddy release on home video. May has brought to the company an expertise in video mastering and film restoration gleaned from nearly a decade of experience in the LaserDisc industry, and personal enthusiasm for exploitation film of all stripe.

Synapse

In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that permits a neuron (or nerve cell) to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another neuron. Some authors generalize this concept to include the communication from a neuron to any other cell type, although such non-neuronal contacts may be referred to as junctions (a historically older term). Santiago Ramón y Cajal proposed that neurons are not continuous throughout the body, yet still communicate with each other, an idea known as the neuron doctrine.

The word "synapse" – from the Greek synapsis (συνάπσις), meaning "conjunction", in turn from συνάπτεὶν (συν ("together") and ἅπτειν ("to fasten")) – was introduced in 1897 by English physiologist Michael Foster at the suggestion of English classical scholar Arthur Woollgar Verrall.

Synapses are essential to neuronal function: neurons are cells that are specialized to pass signals to individual target cells, and synapses are the means by which they do so. At a synapse, the plasma membrane of the signal-passing neuron (the presynaptic neuron) comes into close apposition with the membrane of the target (postsynaptic) cell. Both the presynaptic and postsynaptic sites contain extensive arrays of molecular machinery that link the two membranes together and carry out the signaling process. In many synapses, the presynaptic part is located on an axon, but some postsynaptic sites are located on a dendrite or soma. Astrocytes also exchange information with the synaptic neurons, responding to synaptic activity and, in turn, regulating neurotransmission.

Alfonso Cano

Guillermo León Sáenz Vargas (22 July 1948 – 4 November 2011), more commonly known by his nom de guerre Alfonso Cano was the commander of the militant group known as Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC). He succeeded founder Manuel Marulanda (alias Sureshot, in Spanish: Tirofijo) in March 2008 and commanded the Marxist rebel group until being killed in action by the Colombian Army.

Early life

Born into a middle-class family in Bogotá, Cano began his studies in anthropology at the National University of Colombia in 1968, where he became a member and leader of the Communist Youth. It was there that he met members of FARC, who invited him often to lecture about Marxism for a number of guerrilla columns. He dropped out of university to join the group and devoted himself to political activism. Ideologically he was described as a hardliner, with the belief that his ideas and side would ultimately win.

Joining FARC

During the late 1970s Cano is believed to have joined FARC, where he quickly rose through the ranks, working with the group's co-founder and chief ideologue, Jacobo Arenas. His main role was originally to serve as a sort of political commissary for the urban network of the guerrilla in Bogota, and in 1978 he was appointed chief of finances for the Central High Command. A search warrant on his apartment, where he lived with his first wife (Maria Eugenia) and son (Federico), ended in his arrest in 1981 and imprisonment in the La Modelo Penitentiary, where he founded a library. He was freed in 1983 as a result of the amnesty offered by the government of president Belisario Betancur.