title: University of Miami

text: In 2008 and 2009, in part stemming from the Great Recession, the university endowment lost 26.8% of its capital and additional associated losses from diminished endowment income. The university responded by tightening expenditures. Damage from the endowment's negative performance was limited, however, because the university receives over 98 percent of its operating budget from non-endowment sources. In 2011, the university was ranked the nation's most fiscally responsible nonprofit organization in a Charity Navigator report published in collaboration with "Worth magazine".


title: University of Miami

text: On April 13, 2015, the University of Miami announced the appointment of Julio Frenk, former dean of Harvard University School of Public Health and former Secretary of Health for the government of Mexico, as the university's sixth president.


title: University of Miami

text: On March 10, 2016, the University of Miami hosted the 2016 Republican presidential primary's twelfth and final debate at BankUnited Center on the university campus, which was aired nationally on CNN.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami's main campus spans in Coral Gables, south of Downtown Miami. Most of the university's academic programs are based on its main Coral Gables campus, which houses seven schools and two colleges, including the Frost School of Music, Herbert Business School, and the University of Miami School of Law. The campus has over of building space valued in excess of $657 million. Lake Osceola, a man-made freshwater lake developed in the late 1940s, is located at the center of campus.


title: University of Miami

text: The university's campus theater, Jerry Herman Ring Theatre, is named for University of Miami alumnus Jerry Herman, a composer and lyricist responsible for some of Broadway's most successful productions, including "Hello Dolly!", "La Cage aux Folles", and other Broadway hits.


title: University of Miami

text: The John C. Gifford Arboretum, a campus arboretum and botanical garden, is located on the northwest corner of the main Coral Gables campus. The Jorge M. Perez Architecture Center at the University of Miami's School of Architecture holds periodic architecture and design exhibitions.


title: University of Miami

text: Transportation to the Coral Gables campus is provided by Miami Metrorail, whose University Station stop is within walking distance of the campus. The Metro connects the University of Miami to Downtown Miami, Brickell, Coconut Grove, Civic Center, Miami International Airport, and other Miami neighborhoods. The University of Miami's Coral Gables campus is about a 15-minute train ride from Downtown and Brickell. The Hurry 'Canes shuttle bus service operates two routes on campus, including to University Station, and weekend routes to various off-campus stores and facilities during the academic year; an additional shuttle route provides service to the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science campus on Virginia Key and Vizcaya Station. The university also has a Zipcar service.


title: University of Miami

text: In February 2018, rap artist Drake filmed substantial portions of the music video for his song "God's Plan" on the University of Miami campus.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami's main campus in Coral Gables houses 5,415 enrolled students, 89 percent of whom are freshman. The university's on-campus housing consists of five residential colleges and one apartment-style housing area available only to undergraduate degree-seeking students. The residential colleges are divided into two dormitory-style residence halls and three suite-style residence halls: The first, McDonald and Pentland Towers of Hecht Residential College and the Walsh and Rosborough Towers of Stanford Residential College, are commonly referred to as the "Freshman Towers". The second, Eaton Residential College, which originally housed only women, and Mahoney/Pearson Residential Colleges have suite-style housing with double-occupancy rooms connected by a shared bathroom.


title: University of Miami

text: In addition to these five residential colleges, the university campus includes a student residential area called University Village, which consists of seven buildings with apartment-style annual contract housing including fully furnished kitchen facilities. University Village is available only to juniors and seniors but previously had been open to graduate students and students of the School of Law until 2009. The University of Miami also has seven fraternity houses, on San Amaro Drive opposite the university's intramural fields, called "Fraternity Row". The seven fraternities, which offer housing to student members of these fraternities, include: Alpha Epsilon Pi, Alpha Sigma Phi, Lambda Chi Alpha, Pi Kappa Phi, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Chi, and Zeta Beta Tau. Sororities are housed in on-campus suites, which do not currently serve as residences.


title: University of Miami

text: Lakeside Village, a residential complex of 25 interconnected buildings, provides student housing for 1,115 sophomores, juniors, and seniors. This $153 million project was completed in August 2020.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami's Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine campus, located on Northwest 10th Avenue in Miami's Health District, has 1,523 full-time faculty and 819 students as of 2022. The campus includes within the University of Miami Jackson Memorial Medical Center's complex.


title: University of Miami

text: The medical center includes three University of Miami-owned hospitals: University of Miami Hospital, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Anne Bates Leach Eye Hospital. Jackson Memorial Hospital, Holtz Children's Hospital, and Miami Veterans Affairs Medical Center are based on the medical center and maintain affiliations with the University of Miami but are not owned by the university. The heart of the School of Medicine campus, the original City of Miami Hospital that opened in 1918, is known colloquially as "The Alamo", and has been named to the National Register of Historic Places.


title: University of Miami

text: In 2006, the University of Miami opened a , 15-story Clinical Research Building and Wellness Center. In 2007, the university purchased Cedars Medical Center and renamed it University of Miami Hospital. Situated in Miami's Health District, the hospital is close to Jackson Memorial Hospital, which is used by University of Miami medical students and faculty to provide patient care.


title: University of Miami

text: In 2009, a LEED-certified nine-story biomedical research building, a laboratory, and an office facility were opened to house the University of Miami's Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute and its John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics. The University of Miami has completed a Life Science Park adjacent to the university's medical campus that houses medical offices and laboratories. The University of Miami's medical campus is connected to the university's main campus by the Metrorail with direct stations at University Station for the main Coral Gables campus and Civic Center Station for the medical campus.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science maintains its campus on the Biscayne Bay waterfront on Virginia Key. It is the only subtropical marine and atmospheric research institute in the continental United States. The school is home to the world's largest hurricane simulation tank. The Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, a federal research laboratory, maintains its headquarters next to the Rosenstiel School campus on Rickenbacker Causeway and collaborates on various academic projects with the Rosenstiel School.


title: University of Miami

text: The school maintains a research facility on the eastern end of the Caribbean nation of Barbados called the Rosenstiel School's Barbados Atmospheric Chemistry Observatory (BACO). This facility provides detailed documentation and research on summertime transport of Saharan dust particles across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean Basin and South America.


title: University of Miami

text: The school's origins date back to 1945 when construction began on Rickenbacker Causeway to make Virginia Key accessible by car. During the Causeway's construction, Miami-Dade County offered the university a part of the island adjacent to Miami Seaquarium in exchange for it agreeing to assume operational management of the aquarium. In 1951, however, the aquarium's construction was delayed following the failure of a bond referendum designed to fund it, and the university instead chose to begin leasing the land from the county. In 1953, the university built classroom and lab buildings on a campus to house what would become the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS). Additional buildings were added in 1957, 1959, and 1965. From 1947 to 1959, the State of Florida funded the University of Miami Marine Lab on Virginia Key until the state completed construction of its own marine laboratory in St. Petersburg. In 2009, the University of Miami received a $15 million federal grant to help construct a new $43.8 million, Marine Technology and Life Sciences Seawater Research Building on the Rosenstiel School campus.


title: University of Miami

text: In 1946, following the U.S. military's deactivation of Richmond Naval Air Station in southwestern Miami, the University of Miami acquired the facility to accommodate its vast increase in post-World War II students. The property included classrooms, housing, and other amenities capable of accommodating approximately 1,100 students. Two years later, in 1948, the property was repurposed by the University of Miami as a research facility. In the 1960s, the university opted to lease some of its buildings to the Central Intelligence Agency. Another section of the property, established in 1948, was called South Campus and included a plot used for university-sponsored agricultural and horticultural research. For 20 years, the University of Miami used radioactive isotopes in biological research on the South Campus and buried these radioactive materials, including animals eradicated in research, on the site. In August 2006, the University of Miami agreed to reimburse the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers $393,473 for clean up costs at the site made available under the 1980 Superfund law. Six buildings on the site provide and currently house the Global Public Health Research Group, Miami Institute for Human Genomics, and Forensic Toxicology Laboratory. The University of Miami once considered building a south campus on the property but instead opted in 2014 to sell the 80 acres of land.


title: University of Miami

text: The Richmond campus is a site that was formerly the United States Naval Observatory Secondary National Time Standard Facility, which already had buildings and a 20M antenna used for long interferometry. The University of Miami's Rosenstiel School's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing and Richmond Satellite Operations Center (RSOC) maintain their research facilities on part of this campus.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami maintains one of the nation's largest university library systems, which currently hold in excess of four million volumes, over four million microforms, over 1.3 million electronic books, 138,402 active serials titles, 137,723 electronic journals, and 210,000 audio, film, video, and cartographic materials as of 2022. The University of Miami's libraries have a staff of 71 librarians, 33 professional staff, and 76 support staff.


title: University of Miami

text: Four of the University of Miami's libraries are located on the Coral Gables campus: Otto G. Richter Library (the university's primary interdisciplinary library), the Architecture Research Center at the School of Architecture, the Judi Prokop Newman Information Resource Center at the Herbert Business School, and the Marta and Austin Weeks Library at Frost School of Music.


title: University of Miami

text: The Miller School of Medicine's main library, Louis Calder Memorial Library, is located on Northwest 10th Avenue on the medical campus in the Miami Health District. The medical school also maintains and manages two specialized medical libraries: The Mary and Edward Norton Library in ophthalmology focused on ophthalmology and the Pomerance Library focused on psychiatry. The Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science Library is based on the Rosentiel School's campus on Virginia Key.


title: University of Miami

text: Otto G. Richter Library, the largest of the university's libraries on the Coral Gables campus, houses art, architecture, humanities, social sciences, and science collections. The Richter Library also serves as a depository for federal and state government publications. Rare books, maps, manuscript collections, and the University of Miami Archives are housed in the library's Special Collections Division. The Richter's Cuban Heritage Collection, which specializes in Cuba-related collections, maintains some of world's largest Cuba-related holdings.


title: University of Miami

text: In January 2017, the Jay I. Kislak Foundation announced it was making a substantial donation of rare books, maps, and manuscripts to the university's libraries. In preparation for the extensive donation, the University of Miami renovated a former lecture hall, now called the Kislak Center at the University of Miami, to house the works and the university's existing special collections and archives. Among the vast holdings in the university's Kislak Center are Christopher Columbus' original published copies of his letter on the first voyage aboard the "Niña", which Columbus authored on February 15, 1493.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami currently employs 2,697 full-time faculty members with 98 percent of them holding either doctorates or terminal degrees in their respective specialties. The university's student-faculty ratio, as of 2018, was 12:1.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami is a broadly accredited academic institution, including by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and the Florida Department of Education and by 22 programmatic accrediting bodies, including the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, the American Bar Association, the American Dental Association Commission on Dental Accreditation, the American Physical Therapy Association Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education, the American Psychological Association, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education, the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, the Council on Education for Public Health, the EQUIS, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the National Association of Schools of Music, and the Society for Simulation in Healthcare.


title: University of Miami

text: The university is a member of the American Association of University Women, the American Council on Education, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, the Florida Association of Colleges and Universities, the Independent Colleges and Universities of Florida, and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.


title: University of Miami

text: In September 2022, Miami Herbert Business School was awarded AMBA accreditation, securing "triple crown" accreditation status, which includes accreditation by EQUIS, AACSB International, and AMBA. Less than one percent of the world's business schools have been recognized with accreditation from all three of these academic accrediting bodies.


title: University of Miami

text: Admission to the University of Miami is ranked as the most selective and competitive among all of Florida's 171 universities and colleges. For the Class of 2025 (enrolled fall 2021), UMiami received 42,244 applications and accepted 12,036 (28.5%). Of those accepted, 2,766 enrolled, a yield rate (the percentage of accepted students who choose to attend the university) of 23.0%.


title: University of Miami

text: The enrolled first-year class of 2025 had the following standardized test scores: the middle 50% range (25th percentile-75th percentile) of SAT scores was 1310-1450, while the middle 50% range of ACT scores was 30-33.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami attracts students from around the world and nation. As of 2019, 23 percent of University of Miami undergraduates were from the Miami metropolitan area, 10 percent were from other parts of Florida, 51 percent were from other U.S. states, and 15 percent were international students. Among graduate students, 42 percent were from the Greater Miami area, 11 percent were from other parts of Florida, 28 percent were from other U.S. states, and 19 percent were international students. As of November 2020, the University of Miami ranks eleventh nationally in combined diversity across racial, geographic, gender and age factors.


title: University of Miami

text: UMiami's freshman retention rate is 93%, with 84% going on to graduate within six years. As of 2015, the university reported that 73 percent of undergraduates graduated within four years, 82 percent graduated within five years, and 84 percent graduated within six years. Male student athletes and female student athletes have graduation rates of 56 percent and 67 percent, respectively, within six years.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami is managed by a board of trustees that includes 48 elected members, three alumni representatives, 23 senior members, four national members, six "ex officio" members, 14 emeriti members, and one student representative. Ex officio members, who serve by virtue of their positions in the university, include the university's current president, the president and immediate past president of the university's citizens board, and the president, president-elect, and immediate past president of the university's alumni association. Since 1982, the board has developed eleven visiting committees, which include both trustees and outside experts to assist in overseeing the university's 12 academic units.


title: University of Miami

text: As of 2015, University of Miami president Julio Frenk, who also serves as the university's chief executive officer, was paid $1.14 million annually. Each of the University of Miami's 12 schools and colleges within the university is managed by a dean.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami's also maintains a division of continuing and international education and an executive education program in the Herbert Business School.


title: University of Miami

text: Under a partnership with nearby Florida International University, students from both schools are permitted to take graduate classes at either university, affording graduate students at both universities a wider range of course selections.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami's startup ecosystem, called The Launch Pad, assists entrepreneurial University of Miami students of all majors in obtaining assistance in starting, building, and scaling their own business. The program offers startup and business law-related legal assistance for student businesses in coordination with the University of Miami School of Law. The University of Miami also maintains an angel investor network, called Cane Angel Network, that allows university-affiliated investors to fund entrepreneurs with ties to the university.


title: University of Miami

text: In addition to its medical degree program, the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine offers separate PhD and combined MD/PhD degrees in several biomedical sciences. The University of Miami's Department of Community Service, staffed by volunteer medical students and physicians from the medical school, provide free medical and other community services in Miami and surrounding communities.


title: University of Miami

text: For the 2022–2023 academic year, the University of Miami reports that the estimated total annual cost of attendance for full-time undergraduate students residing on campus is $78,640; the estimated total annual cost of attendance for full-time undergraduate students residing in University Village or off-campus is $83,260; and the estimated total annual cost of attendance for full-time undergraduate students residing with parents or relatives is $69,160.


title: University of Miami

text: In its 2022 edition of "America's Best Colleges," "U.S. News & World Report" ranks the University of Miami 55th among all national universities. Also in 2022, "U.S. News" ranks the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine the nation's 43rd best medical school. In its "2023 Best Law Schools" report, "U.S. News" ranks the School of Law the nation's 73rd best law school, down from 72nd best in 2022.


title: University of Miami

text: In 2022, the "Academic Ranking of World Universities" ranked the University of Miami the ninth best university in the world for oceanography and the 25th best university in the world for business administration.


title: University of Miami

text: In 2018, "U.S. News & World Report" ranked the University of Miami Physical Therapy Department the nation's tenth best physical therapy program and its Department of Psychology Clinical Training Program the nation's 25th best for psychology.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami is classified among "Doctoral Universities: Very High Research Activity" and ranks 71st among all U.S. universities in research and sponsored programs expenditures, which totaled $375 million in 2021.


title: University of Miami

text: In addition to research conducted in its individual academic schools and departments, the University of Miami maintains several university-wide research centers, including:


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine receives more than $200 million annually in external grants and contracts to fund 1,500 ongoing projects. The medical campus includes more than of research space and the University of Miami's Life Science Park provides an additional of space adjacent to the university's medical campus in Miami's Health District. University of Miami's Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute researches the biology of stem cells and translates basic research into new regenerative therapies.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami houses one of the nation's largest centralized academic cyber infrastructures. In 2007, the university launched the Center for Computational Science High Performance Computing group. Since then, the group has grown from a zero HPC cyberinfrastructure to a regional high-performance computing environment that currently supports more than 1,200 users, 220 TFlops of computational power, and more than three petabytes of disk storage.


title: University of Miami

text: As of 2008, the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science receives $50 million in annual external research funding. Their laboratories include a saltwater wave tank, a five tank conditioning and spawning system, a multi-tank Aplysia culture laboratory, controlled corals climate tanks, and DNA profiling equipment. The campus also houses an invertebrate museum with 400,000 specimens. The University of Miami operates the Bimini Biological Field Station in Bimini district in the western Bahamas, an array of oceanographic high-frequency radar along the East Coast of the United States, and a Bermuda-based aerosol observatory. The university owns Little Salt Spring, a National Register of Historic Places site, in North Port, Florida where the Rosenstiel School performs archaeological and paleontological research.


title: University of Miami

text: In 2010, the University of Miami built a brain imaging annex to the James M. Cox, Jr. Science Center within the College of Arts and Sciences, which includes a functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) system and a laboratory where scientists, clinicians, and engineers study fundamental aspects of brain function. Construction of the lab was funded in part by a $14.8 million stimulus grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).


title: University of Miami

text: In 2016, the University of Miami received $195 million in federal research funding, including $131.3 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and $14.1 million from the National Science Foundation. The University of Miami's Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine received a record $149.5 million in NIH funding in 2019, making the Miller School of Medicine the world's 39th largest NIH grant recipient institution and largest NIH grant recipient of any medical school in Florida.


title: University of Miami

text: Also in 2016, the university received $161 million in science and engineering funding from the U.S. federal government, making the university the largest Hispanic-serving recipient and 56th overall largest recipient of federal science and engineering funding. Within the $161 million in funding, $117 million was granted through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and was used largely for the medical campus.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami is affiliated with 31 social fraternities and sororities. Seven of them (Alpha Epsilon Pi, Alpha Sigma Phi, Lambda Chi Alpha, Pi Kappa Phi, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Chi, and Zeta Beta Tau) have houses on campus. Others have suites, including Beta Theta Pi, Kappa Sigma, Sigma Alpha Mu, and Sigma Phi Epsilon. Multicultural fraternities and sororities include six of the nine historically African-American organizations (collectively known as the Divine Nine), Latino, and Asian-interest fraternities and sororities.


title: University of Miami

text: As of 2022, the University of Miami has 356 student organizations, including Amnesty International, Habitat for Humanity, the "Ibis" yearbook, UMTV (an award-winning cable television channel with nine programs broadcast on Comcast Channel 96), UniMiami (a Spanish cable television broadcast), the student-run "Distraction Magazine", and the campus radio station WVUM, which has broadcast to the Miami metropolitan media market continuously since 1967. Since 1929, students have published "The Miami Hurricane", which is currently published weekly and has been named to the Associated Collegiate Press Hall of Fame.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami has several selective and prestigious student honor societies. Founded in 1926, Iron Arrow Honor Society (which also considers select faculty, staff, and alumni for induction) is the highest honor awarded by the university. The university maintains a chapter of Mortar Board. In 1959, Order of Omega was founded at the University of Miami and then ultimately blossomed into a national honor society in addition to maintaining its ongoing founding chapter at the University of Miami. It is now a national honorary for fraternity and sorority members with its founding chapter continuing at the University of Miami.


title: University of Miami

text: The university has appointed individuals in various departments, called "troubleshooters", to address student problems and complaints, and it employs an ombudsman to mediate complaints that go unresolved by these troubleshooters. Since 1986, the university operates under an enforceable honor code that governs student conduct.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami's athletic teams are the Miami Hurricanes and are widely referred to as "The 'Canes" or "The U." The Hurricanes are members of NCAA Division I, the highest level of athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and compete primarily in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). Prior to joining the ACC in 2004, the University of Miami competed in the Big East Conference. The Hurricanes maintain seven NCAA men's athletics teams (baseball, basketball, cross-country, diving, football, tennis, and track and field) and ten women's teams (basketball, cross-country, diving, golf, rowing, soccer, swimming, tennis, track and field, and volleyball).


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami's mascot, first introduced in 1957, is Sebastian the Ibis. The university's 179-member marching band, established in 1933, is Band of the Hour.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami football team has won five national championships (1983, 1987, 1989, 1991, and 2001) and has appeared in the AP Top 25 frequently since the 1980s. University of Miami football alumni include nine members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, two Heisman Trophy winners, and dozens of players who have gone on to NFL careers. As of 2022, at least one University of Miami football player has been selected in the NFL Draft in 48 consecutive NFL drafts, dating back to 1975. Among all colleges and universities, as of 2022, the University of Miami holds all-time records for most defensive linemen (49) and is tied with USC for most wide receivers (40) to go on to play at the NFL level.


title: University of Miami

text: Beginning in the 1980s with the arrival of former head coach Howard Schnellenberger, the University of Miami football program blossomed quickly and unpredictably into one of the nation's most high profile and elite college football programs and began developing what now is one of the sport's largest and most passionate global fan bases. Since then, it also has developed several of the most famed, flamboyant, and successful players at the NFL level and also, along the way, been subjected to vast scrutiny and some criticism during its rise to national prominence, which featured three national championships in the 1980s followed by scandal-related damage to its recruiting capabilities, a subsequent comeback leading to its 2001 national championship, yet a second scandal-plagued descent, and, most recently, a second comeback that now has the program on solid footing again recognized as a national college football force (ranked in the top 25 nationally as the 2022 season began).


title: University of Miami

text: Much of the program's dramatic history from the 1980s is captured in a widely-viewed December 12, 2009, ESPN documentary, "The U", which drew 2.3 million viewers, then making it the most watched documentary in ESPN history. A 2014 sequel, "The U Part 2", picked up where "The U" left off, covering the University of Miami as it launched a comeback from these 1980s scandals leading up to its 2001 national championship team (widely considered one of the best, and possibly the best team, in college football history) followed by yet a second series of widespread scandals that cost scholarships and inflicted multi-year damage on the program's competitiveness.


title: University of Miami

text: On December 7, 2021, Mario Cristobal, a former University of Miami college football player and University of Oregon head coach, was hired as the University of Miami's new head football coach and provided a ten-year, $80 million contract.


title: University of Miami

text: The Hurricanes play their home games at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens. In 2007, the university signed a 25-year contract for the team to play at Hard Rock Stadium through 2033. Prior to moving to Hard Rock Stadium, from 1937 through 2007, the Hurricanes played their home football games at the Miami Orange Bowl in Little Havana. Ater 60 years as one of professional and collegiate football's most famed stadiums, the Miami Orange Bowl was demolished in 2008.


title: University of Miami

text: Like its football program, the University of Miami baseball team has proven one of the most successful in the nation over the past four decades, winning four national championships (1982, 1985, 1999, and 2001). Multiple Miami Hurricanes baseball players have gone on to professional careers in Major League Baseball.


title: University of Miami

text: The Hurricanes' baseball team plays their home games at Alex Rodriguez Park at Mark Light Field, an on-campus baseball stadium named for New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez who contributed $3.9 million toward the stadium's renovation.


title: University of Miami

text: The team is coached currently by Gino DiMare, and its baseball-only mascot, introduced in 1982, is the Miami Maniac.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami's men's basketball team has been coached since 2011 by Jim Larrañaga. The Hurricanes' men's basketball team has reached the NCAA Championship's "Sweet 16" three times (1999–2000, 2012–2013, and 2021–2022). In the 2021–2022 season, the team reached the "Elite 8" for the first time in school history. Several Miami Hurricanes men's basketball players have gone on to NBA careers. The University of Miami's women's basketball team has been coached since 2005 by Katie Meier, and several of its players have gone on to WNBA professional careers.


title: University of Miami

text: Both basketball teams play their home games at Watsco Center, an 8,000-capacity indoor stadium on the University of Miami campus.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami's tennis program has produced several players who have gone on to amateur and professional accomplishment, including Israel team player Maya Tahan, Wimbledon Singles champion Rod Mandelstam, Pan American Games Doubles gold medal winner Ronni Reis, NCCA Women's Singles champion Audra Cohen, Wimbledon Doubles champion Doris Hart, three-time NCAA Singles champion Pancho Segura, and former professional tennis players Monique Albuquerque, Julia Cohen, Gardnar Mulloy, Ed Rubinoff, Michael Russell, Jodi Appelbaum-Steinbauer, and Todd Widom.


title: University of Miami

text: The University of Miami women's soccer team and both its men's and women's track and field teams host their home meets in Cobb Stadium, which opened in 1999 on San Amaro Drive on the University of Miami campus.


title: University of Miami

text: Since its 1925 founding, several notable University of Miami alumni have gone on to vast globally-recognized accomplishment, influence, and notoriety in their respective fields. Among them are former Honduran president Porfirio Lobo Sosa, former Peruvian president Fernando Belaúnde, former Belize prime minister Dean Barrow, former Iceland prime minister Bjarni Benediktsson, economist and former Bahamas Central Bank governor Wendy Craigg, former Peruvian vice president and minister Mercedes Aráoz, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and writing professor Donald Justice, actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Grammy Award-winning musicians Gloria Estefan, Bruce Hornsby, Enrique Iglesias, Jaco Pastorius, and Jon Secada, chief executive officers of various companies, public officials, heads of governmental agencies, scientists, academics, media personalities, authors and writers, and multiple professional athletes in Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NFL, including nine NFL Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees.


title: University of Miami

text: University of Miami faculty include, or have included, a number of notable academics, including four Nobel Prize recipients and globally-recognized experts across nearly every academic discipline. Among them are physicist Paul Dirac, biochemists Robert F. Furchgott and Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr., writers Paul Holdengräber and Juan Ramón Jiménez, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Peter Burleigh, sinologist Edward L. Dreyer, international affairs expert Leon Gouré, historians Mary Lindemann and Joan R. Piggott, economist Neil Wallace, finance and business management expert Henrik Cronqvist, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Services Donna Shalala, healthcare policy and management expert John Quelch, international business expert Yadong Luo, audio engineer Bill Porter, artist and architect Bonnie Seeman, architect Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, sociologist Lowell Juilliard Carr, constitutional law expert John Hart Ely, administrative law expert Paul R. Verkuil, musicians Jaco Pastorius and Pat Metheny, artist Walter Darby Bannard, philosopher Colin McGinn, and others.


title: Apep

text: Apep, also spelled Apepi or Aapep, (Ancient Egyptian: ; Coptic: ) or Apophis (; Ancient Greek: ) was the ancient Egyptian deity who embodied chaos ("ı͗zft" in Egyptian) and was thus the opponent of light and Ma'at (order/truth). He appears in art as a giant serpent. Apep was first mentioned in the Eighth Dynasty, and he was honored in the names of the Fourteenth Dynasty king 'Apepi and of the Greater Hyksos king Apophis.


title: Apep

text: Ra was the solar deity, bringer of light, and thus the upholder of Ma'at. Apep was viewed as the greatest enemy of Ra, and thus was given the title "Enemy of Ra", and also "the Lord of Chaos".


title: Apep

text: Apep was seen as a giant snake or serpent leading to such titles as "Serpent from the Nile" and "Evil Dragon". Some elaborations said that he stretched 16 yards in length and had a head made of flint. Already on a Naqada I (c. 4000 BCE) C-ware bowl (now in Cairo) a snake was painted on the inside rim combined with other desert and aquatic animals as a possible enemy of a deity, possibly a solar deity, who is invisibly hunting in a big rowing vessel.


title: Apep

text: The few descriptions of Apep's origin in myth usually demonstrate that it was born after Ra, usually from his umbilical cord. Combined with its absence from Egyptian creation myths, this has been interpreted as suggesting that Apep was not a primordial force in Egyptian theology, but a consequence of Ra's birth. This suggests that evil in Egyptian theology is the consequence of an individual's own struggles against non-existence.


title: Apep

text: Tales of Apep's battles against Ra were elaborated during the New Kingdom. Storytellers said that every day Apep must lie below the horizon and not persist in the mortal kingdom. This appropriately made him a part of the underworld. In some stories, Apep waited for Ra in a western mountain called "Bakhu", where the sun set, and in others, Apep lurked just before dawn, in the "Tenth region of the Night". The wide range of Apep's possible locations gained him the title "World-Encircler". It was thought that his terrifying roar would cause the underworld to rumble. Myths sometimes say that Apep was trapped there, because he had been the previous chief god overthrown by Ra, or because he was evil and had been imprisoned.


title: Apep

text: The Coffin Texts imply that Apep used a magical gaze to overwhelm Ra and his entourage. Ra was assisted by a number of defenders who travelled with him, including Set and possibly the Eye of Ra. Apep's movements were thought to cause earthquakes, and his battles with Set may have been meant to explain the origin of thunderstorms. In one account, Ra himself defeats Apep in the form of a cat.


title: Apep

text: What few accounts there are of Apep's origin usually describe it as being born from Ra's umbilical cord.


title: Apep

text: Ra's victory each night was thought to be ensured by the prayers of the Egyptian priests and worshippers at temples. The Egyptians practiced a number of rituals and superstitions that were thought to ward off Apep, and aid Ra in continuing his journey across the sky.


title: Apep

text: In an annual rite called the "Banishing of Chaos", priests would build an effigy of Apep that was thought to contain all of the evil and darkness in Egypt, and burn it to protect everyone from Apep's evil for another year.


title: Apep

text: The Egyptian priests had a detailed guide to fighting Apep, referred to as "The Books of Overthrowing Apep" (or the "Book of Apophis", in Greek). The chapters described a gradual process of dismemberment and disposal, and include:


title: Apep

text: In addition to stories about Ra's victories, this guide had instructions for making wax models, or small drawings, of the serpent, which would be spat on, mutilated and burnt, whilst reciting spells that would kill Apep. Fearing that even the image of Apep could give power to the demon, any rendering would always include another deity to subdue the monster.


title: Apep

text: As Apep was thought to live in the underworld, he was sometimes thought of as an "Eater of Souls". Thus the dead also needed protection, so they were sometimes buried with spells that could destroy Apep. The "Book of the Dead" does not frequently describe occasions when Ra defeated the chaos snake explicitly called Apep. Only Book of the Dead Spells 7 and 39 can be explained as such.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Sea cucumbers are echinoderms from the class Holothuroidea (). They are marine animals with a leathery skin and an elongated body containing a single, branched gonad. Sea cucumbers are found on the sea floor worldwide. The number of holothurian () species worldwide is about 1,717, with the greatest number being in the Asia-Pacific region. Many of these are gathered for human consumption and some species are cultivated in aquaculture systems. The harvested product is variously referred to as "trepang", "namako", "bêche-de-mer", or "balate". Sea cucumbers serve a useful role in the marine ecosystem as they help recycle nutrients, breaking down detritus and other organic matter, after which bacteria can continue the decomposition process.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Like all echinoderms, sea cucumbers have an endoskeleton just below the skin, calcified structures that are usually reduced to isolated microscopic ossicles (or sclerietes) joined by connective tissue. In some species these can sometimes be enlarged to flattened plates, forming an armour. In pelagic species such as "Pelagothuria natatrix" (order Elasipodida, family Pelagothuriidae), the skeleton is absent and there is no calcareous ring.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Most sea cucumbers, as their name suggests, have a soft and cylindrical body, more or less lengthened, rounded off and occasionally fat in the extremities, and generally without solid appendages. Their shape ranges from almost spherical for "sea apples" (genus "Pseudocolochirus") to serpent-like for Apodida or the classic sausage-shape, while others resemble caterpillars. The mouth is surrounded by tentacles, which can be pulled back inside the animal. Holothurians measure generally between 10 and 30 centimetres long, with extremes of some millimetres for "Rhabdomolgus ruber" and up to more than 3 metres for "Synapta maculata". The largest American species, "Holothuria floridana", which abounds just below low-water mark on the Florida reefs, has a volume of well over , and long. Most possess five rows of tube feet (called "podia"), but Apodida lacks these and moves by crawling; the podia can be of smooth aspect or provided with fleshy appendages (like "Thelenota ananas"). The podia on the dorsal surface generally have no locomotive role, and are transformed into papillae. At one of the extremities opens a rounded mouth, generally surrounded with a crown of tentacles which can be very complex in some species (they are in fact modified podia); the anus is postero-dorsal.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Holothurians do not look like other echinoderms at first glance, because of their tubular body, without visible skeleton nor hard appendixes. Furthermore, the fivefold symmetry, classical for echinoderms, although preserved structurally, is doubled here by a bilateral symmetry which makes them look like chordates. However, a central symmetry is still visible in some species through five 'radii', which extend from the mouth to the anus (just like for sea urchins), on which the tube feet are attached. There is thus no "oral" or "aboral" face as for sea stars and other echinoderms, but the animal stands on one of its sides, and this face is called "trivium" (with three rows of tube feet), while the dorsal face is named "bivium".


title: Sea cucumber

text: A remarkable feature of these animals is the "catch" collagen that forms their body wall. This can be loosened and tightened at will, and if the animal wants to squeeze through a small gap, it can essentially liquefy its body and pour into the space. To keep itself safe in these crevices and cracks, the sea cucumber will hook up all its collagen fibers to make its body firm again.


title: Sea cucumber

text: The most common way to separate the subclasses is by looking at their oral tentacles. Order Apodida have a slender and elongate body lacking tube feet, with up to 25 simple or pinnate oral tentacles. Aspidochirotida are the most common sea cucumbers encountered, with a strong body and 10–30 leaflike or shield-like oral tentacles. Dendrochirotida are filter-feeders, with plump bodies and 8–30 branched oral tentacles (which can be extremely long and complex).


title: Sea cucumber

text: Sea cucumbers are typically in length, although the smallest known species are just long, and the largest can reach . The body ranges from almost spherical to worm-like, and lacks the arms found in many other echinoderms, such as starfish. The anterior end of the animal, containing the mouth, corresponds to the oral pole of other echinoderms (which, in most cases, is the underside), while the posterior end, containing the anus, corresponds to the aboral pole. Thus, compared with other echinoderms, sea cucumbers can be said to be lying on their side.


title: Sea cucumber

text: The body of a holothurian is roughly cylindrical. It is radially symmetrical along its longitudinal axis, and has weak bilateral symmetry transversely with a dorsal and a ventral surface. As in other Echinozoans, there are five ambulacra separated by five ambulacral grooves, the interambulacra. The ambulacral grooves bear four rows of tube feet but these are diminished in size or absent in some holothurians, especially on the dorsal surface. The two dorsal ambulacra make up the bivium while the three ventral ones are known as the trivium.


title: Sea cucumber

text: At the anterior end, the mouth is surrounded by a ring of tentacles which are usually retractable into the mouth. These are modified tube feet and may be simple, branched or arborescent. They are known as the introvert and posterior to them there is an internal ring of large calcareous ossicles. Attached to this are five bands of muscle running internally longitudinally along the ambulacra. There are also circular muscles, contraction of which cause the animal to elongate and the introvert to extend. Anterior to the ossicles lie further muscles, contraction of which cause the introvert to retract.


title: Sea cucumber

text: The body wall consists of an epidermis and a dermis and contains smaller calcareous ossicles, the types of which are characteristics which help to identify different species. Inside the body wall is the coelom which is divided by three longitudinal mesenteries which surround and support the internal organs.


title: Sea cucumber

text: A pharynx lies behind the mouth and is surrounded by a ring of ten calcareous plates. In most sea cucumbers, this is the only substantial part of the skeleton, and it forms the point of attachment for muscles that can retract the tentacles into the body for safety as for the main muscles of the body wall. Many species possess an oesophagus and stomach, but in some the pharynx opens directly into the intestine. The intestine is typically long and coiled, and loops through the body three times before terminating in a cloacal chamber, or directly as the anus.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Sea cucumbers have no true brain. A ring of neural tissue surrounds the oral cavity, and sends nerves to the tentacles and the pharynx. The animal is, however, quite capable of functioning and moving about if the nerve ring is surgically removed, demonstrating that it does not have a central role in nervous coordination. In addition, five major nerves run from the nerve ring down the length of the body beneath each of the ambulacral areas.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Most sea cucumbers have no distinct sensory organs, although there are various nerve endings scattered through the skin, giving the animal a sense of touch and a sensitivity to the presence of light. There are, however, a few exceptions: members of the Apodida order are known to possess statocysts, while some species possess small eye-spots near the bases of their tentacles.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Sea cucumbers extract oxygen from water in a pair of "respiratory trees" that branch in the cloaca just inside the anus, so that they "breathe" by drawing water in through the anus and then expelling it. The trees consist of a series of narrow tubules branching from a common duct, and lie on either side of the digestive tract. Gas exchange occurs across the thin walls of the tubules, to and from the fluid of the main body cavity.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Together with the intestine, the respiratory trees also act as excretory organs, with nitrogenous waste diffusing across the tubule walls in the form of ammonia and phagocytic coelomocytes depositing particulate waste.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Like all echinoderms, sea cucumbers possess both a water vascular system that provides hydraulic pressure to the tentacles and tube feet, allowing them to move, and a "haemal system". The latter is more complex than that in other echinoderms, and consists of well-developed vessels as well as open sinuses.


title: Sea cucumber

text: A central haemal ring surrounds the pharynx next to the ring canal of the water vascular system, and sends off additional vessels along the radial canals beneath the ambulacral areas. In the larger species, additional vessels run above and below the intestine and are connected by over a hundred small muscular ampullae, acting as miniature hearts to pump blood around the haemal system. Additional vessels surround the respiratory trees, although they contact them only indirectly, via the coelomic fluid.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Indeed, the blood itself is essentially identical with the coelomic fluid that bathes the organs directly, and also fills the water vascular system. Phagocytic coelomocytes, somewhat similar in function to the white blood cells of vertebrates, are formed within the haemal vessels, and travel throughout the body cavity as well as both circulatory systems. An additional form of coelomocyte, not found in other echinoderms, has a flattened discoid shape, and contains hemoglobin. As a result, in many (though not all) species, both the blood and the coelomic fluid are red in colour.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Vanadium has been reported in high concentrations in holothurian blood, however researchers have been unable to reproduce these results.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Like all echinoderms, sea cucumbers possess pentaradial symmetry, with their bodies divided into five nearly identical parts around a central axis. However, because of their posture, they have secondarily evolved a degree of bilateral symmetry. For example, because one side of the body is typically pressed against the substratum, and the other is not, there is usually some difference between the two surfaces (except for Apodida). Like sea urchins, most sea cucumbers have five strip-like ambulacral areas running along the length of the body from the mouth to the anus. The three on the lower surface have numerous tube feet, often with suckers, that allow the animal to crawl along; they are called "trivium". The two on the upper surface have under-developed or vestigial tube feet, and some species lack tube feet altogether; this face is called "bivium".


title: Sea cucumber

text: In some species, the ambulacral areas can no longer be distinguished, with tube feet spread over a much wider area of the body. Those of the order Apodida have no tube feet or ambulacral areas at all, and burrow through sediment with muscular contractions of their body similar to that of worms, however five radial lines are generally still obvious along their body.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Even in those sea cucumbers that lack regular tube feet, those that are immediately around the mouth are always present. These are highly modified into retractile tentacles, much larger than the locomotive tube feet. Depending on the species, sea cucumbers have between ten and thirty such tentacles and these can have a wide variety of shapes depending on the diet of the animal and other conditions.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Many sea cucumbers have papillae, conical fleshy projections of the body wall with sensory tube feet at their apices. These can even evolve into long antennae-like structures, especially on the abyssal genus "Scotoplanes".


title: Sea cucumber

text: Echinoderms typically possess an internal skeleton composed of plates of calcium carbonate. In most sea cucumbers, however, these have become reduced to microscopic ossicles embedded beneath the skin. A few genera, such as "Sphaerothuria", retain relatively large plates, giving them a scaly armour.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Sea cucumbers can be found in great numbers on the deep seafloor, where they often make up the majority of the animal biomass. At depths deeper than , sea cucumbers comprise 90% of the total mass of the macrofauna. Sea cucumbers form large herds that move across the bathygraphic features of the ocean, hunting food. The body of some deep water holothurians, such as "Enypniastes eximia", "Peniagone leander" and "Paelopatides confundens", is made of a tough gelatinous tissue with unique properties that makes the animals able to control their own buoyancy, making it possible for them to either live on the ocean floor or to actively swim or float over it in order to move to new locations, in a manner similar to how the group Torquaratoridae floats through water.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Holothurians appear to be the echinoderms best adapted to extreme depths, and are still very diversified beyond 5,000 m deep: several species from the family Elpidiidae ("sea pigs") can be found deeper than 9,500 m, and the record seems to be some species of the genus "Myriotrochus" (in particular "Myriotrochus bruuni"), identified down to 10,687 meters deep.


title: Sea cucumber

text: In more shallow waters, sea cucumbers can form dense populations. The strawberry sea cucumber ("Squamocnus brevidentis") of New Zealand lives on rocky walls around the southern coast of the South Island where populations sometimes reach densities of 1,000 animals per square meter (93 /sq ft). For this reason, one such area in Fiordland is called the strawberry fields.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Some abyssal species in the abyssal order Elasipodida have evolved to a "benthopelagic" behaviour: their body is nearly the same density as the water around them, so they can make long jumps (up to high), before falling slowly back to the ocean floor. Most of them have specific swimming appendages, such as some kind of umbrella (like "Enypniastes"), or a long lobe on top of the body ("Psychropotes"). Only one species is known as a true completely pelagic species, that never comes close to the bottom: "Pelagothuria natatrix".


title: Sea cucumber

text: Holothuroidea are generally scavengers, feeding on debris in the benthic zone of the ocean. Exceptions include some pelagic cucumbers and the species "Rynkatorpa pawsoni", which has a commensal relationship with deep-sea anglerfish. The diet of most cucumbers consists of plankton and decaying organic matter found in the sea. Some sea cucumbers position themselves in currents and catch food that flows by with their open tentacles. They also sift through the bottom sediments using their tentacles. Other species can dig into bottom silt or sand until they are completely buried. They then extrude their feeding tentacles, ready to withdraw at any hint of danger.


title: Sea cucumber

text: In the South Pacific sea cucumbers may be found in densities of 40 individuals per square meter (33 /sq yd). These populations can process 19 kilograms of sediment per square meter (34 lb /sq yd) per year.


title: Sea cucumber

text: The shape of the tentacles is generally adapted to the diet, and to the size of the particles to be ingested: the filter-feeding species mostly have complex arborescent tentacles, intended to maximize the surface area available for filtering, while the species feeding on the substratum will more often need digitate tentacles to sort out the nutritional material; the detritivore species living on fine sand or mud more often need shorter "peltate" tentacles, shaped like shovels. A single specimen can swallow more than 45 kg of sediment a year, and their excellent digestive capacities allow them to reject a finer, purer and homogeneous sediment. Therefore, sea cucumbers play a major role in the biological processing of the sea bed (bioturbation, purge, homogenization of the substratum etc.).


title: Sea cucumber

text: Most sea cucumbers reproduce by releasing sperm and ova into the ocean water. Depending on conditions, one organism can produce thousands of gametes. Sea cucumbers are typically dioecious, with separate male and female individuals, but some species are protandric. The reproductive system consists of a single gonad, consisting of a cluster of tubules emptying into a single duct that opens on the upper surface of the animal, close to the tentacles.


title: Sea cucumber

text: At least 30 species, including the red-chested sea cucumber ("Pseudocnella insolens"), fertilize their eggs internally and then pick up the fertilized zygote with one of their feeding tentacles. The egg is then inserted into a pouch on the adult's body, where it develops and eventually hatches from the pouch as a juvenile sea cucumber. A few species are known to brood their young inside the body cavity, giving birth through a small rupture in the body wall close to the anus.


title: Sea cucumber

text: In all other species, the egg develops into a free-swimming larva, typically after around three days of development. The first stage of larval development is known as an auricularia, and is only around in length. This larva swims by means of a long band of cilia wrapped around its body, and somewhat resembles the bipinnaria larva of starfish. As the larva grows it transforms into the doliolaria, with a barrel-shaped body and three to five separate rings of cilia. The pentacularia is the third larval stage of sea cucumber, where the tentacles appear. The tentacles are usually the first adult features to appear, before the regular tube feet.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Numerous small animals can live in symbiosis or commensalism with sea cucumbers, as well as some parasites.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Some cleaner shrimps can live on the tegument of holothurians, in particular several species of the genus "Periclimenes" (genus which is specialized in echinoderms), in particular "Periclimenes imperator".


title: Sea cucumber

text: A variety of fish, most commonly pearl fish, have evolved a commensalistic symbiotic relationship with sea cucumbers in which the pearl fish will live in sea cucumber's cloaca using it for protection from predation, a source of food (the nutrients passing in and out of the anus from the water), and to develop into their adult stage of life. Many polychaete worms (family Polynoidae) and crabs (like "Lissocarcinus orbicularis") have also specialized to use the mouth or the cloacal respiratory trees for protection by living inside the sea cucumber. Nevertheless, holothurians species of the genus "Actinopyga" have anal teeth that prevent visitors from penetrating their anus.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Sea cucumbers are often ignored by most of the marine predators because of the toxins they contain (in particular holothurin) and because of their often spectacular defensive systems. However, they remain a prey for some highly specialized predators which are not affected by their toxins, such as the big mollusks "Tonna galea" and "Tonna perdix", which paralyzes them using powerful poison before swallowing them completely.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Some other less specialized and opportunist predators can also prey on sea cucumbers sometimes when they cannot find any better food, such as certain species of fish (triggerfish, pufferfish) and crustaceans (crabs, lobsters, hermit crabs).


title: Sea cucumber

text: Some species of coral-reef sea cucumbers within the order Aspidochirotida can defend themselves by expelling their sticky cuvierian tubules (enlargements of the respiratory tree that float freely in the coelom) to entangle potential predators. When startled, these cucumbers may expel some of them through a tear in the wall of the cloaca in an autotomic process known as evisceration. Replacement tubules grow back in one and a half to five weeks, depending on the species. The release of these tubules can also be accompanied by the discharge of a toxic chemical known as holothurin, which has similar properties to soap. This chemical can kill animals in the vicinity and is one more method by which these sedentary animals can defend themselves.


title: Sea cucumber

text: If the water temperature becomes too high, some species of sea cucumber from temperate seas can aestivate. While they are in this state of dormancy they stop feeding, their gut atrophies, their metabolism slows down and they lose weight. The body returns to its normal state when conditions improve.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Holothuroidea (sea cucumbers) are one of five extant classes that make up the phylum Echinodermata. This is one of the most distinctive and diverse phyla, ranging from starfish to urchins to sea cucumbers and many other organisms. The echinoderms are mainly distinguished from other phyla by their body plan and organization. While the organisms in this phylum may not all look the same from the outside, their make-up is another story. The earlliest sea cucumbers are known from the middle Ordovician, over 450 million years ago. The apodida is the sister group to the other orders of sea cucumbers.


title: Sea cucumber

text: All echinoderms share three main characteristics. When mature, echinoderms have a pentamerous radial symmetry. While this can easily be seen in a sea star or brittle star, in the sea cucumber it is less distinct and seen in their five primary tentacles. The pentamerous radial symmetry can also be seen in their five ambulacral canals. The ambulacral canals are used in their water vascular system which is another characteristic that binds this phylum together.


title: Sea cucumber

text: The water vascular system develops from their middle coelom or hydrocoel. Echinoderms use this system for many things including movement by pushing water in and out of their podia or "tube feet". Echinoderms tube feet (including sea cucumbers) can be seen aligned along the side of their axes.


title: Sea cucumber

text: While echinoderms are invertebrates, meaning they do not have a spine, they do all have an endoskeleton that is secreted by the mesenchyme. This endoskeleton is composed of plates called ossicles. They are always internal but may only be covered by a thin epidermal layer like in sea urchin's spines. In the sea cucumber the ossicles are only found in the dermis, making them a very supple organism. For most echinoderms, their ossicles are found in units making up a three dimensional structure. However, in sea cucumbers the ossicles are found in a two-dimensional network.


title: Sea cucumber

text: All echinoderms also possess anatomical feature(s) called mutable collagenous tissues, or MCTs. Such tissues can rapidly change their passive mechanical properties from soft to stiff under the control of the nervous system and coordinated with muscle activity. Different echinoderm classes use MCTs in different ways. The asteroids, sea stars, can detach limbs for self-defense and then regenerate them. The Crinoidea, sea fans, can go from stiff to limp depending on the current for optimal filter feeding. The Echinoidea, sand dollars, use MCTs to grow and replace their rows of teeth when they need new ones. The Holothuroidea, sea cucumbers, use MCTs to eviscerate their gut as a self-defense response. MCTs can be used in many ways but are all similar at the cellular level and in mechanics of function. A common trend in the uses of MCTs is that they are generally used for self-defense mechanisms and in regeneration.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Holothurian classification is complex and their paleontological phylogeny relies on a limited number of well-preserved specimens. The modern taxonomy is based first of all on the presence or the shape of certain soft parts (podia, lungs, tentacles, peripharingal crown) to determine the main orders, and secondarily on the microscopic examination of ossicles to determine the genus and the species. Contemporary genetic methods have been helpful in clarifying their classification.


title: Sea cucumber

text: To supply the markets of Southern China, Makassar trepangers traded with the Indigenous Australians of Arnhem Land from at least the 18th century and probably earlier. This is the first recorded example of trade between the inhabitants of the Australian continent and their Asian neighbours.


title: Sea cucumber

text: There are many commercially important species of sea cucumber that are harvested and dried for export for use in Chinese cuisine as "hoisam". Some of the more commonly found species in markets include:


title: Sea cucumber

text: According to the American Cancer Society, although it has been used in traditional Asian folk medicine for a variety of ailments, "there is little reliable scientific evidence to support claims that sea cucumber is effective in treating cancer, arthritis, and other diseases" but research is examining "whether some compounds made by sea cucumbers may be helpful against cancer".


title: Sea cucumber

text: Various pharmaceutical companies emphasize "gamat", the traditional medicinal usage of this animal. Extracts are prepared and made into oil, cream or cosmetics. Some products are intended to be taken internally.


title: Sea cucumber

text: A review article found that chondroitin sulfate and related compounds found in sea cucumbers can help in treating joint-pain, and that dried sea cucumber is "medicinally effective in suppressing arthralgia".


title: Sea cucumber

text: Another study suggested that sea cucumbers contain all the fatty acids necessary to play a potentially active role in tissue repair. Sea cucumbers are under investigation for use in treating ailments including colorectal cancer. Surgical probes made of nanocomposite material based on the sea cucumber have been shown to reduce brain scarring. One study found that a lectin from "Cucumaria echinata" impaired the development of the malaria parasite when produced by transgenic mosquitoes.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Sea cucumbers are harvested from the environment, both legally and illegally, and are increasingly farmed via aquaculture. The harvested animals are normally dried for resale. In 2016, prices on Alibaba ranged up to $1,000/kg.


title: Sea cucumber

text: In recent years, the sea cucumber industry in Alaska has increased due to increased demand for the skins and muscles to China. Wild sea cucumbers are caught by divers. Wild Alaskan sea cucumbers have higher nutritional value and are larger than farmed Chinese sea cucumbers. Larger size and higher nutritional value has allowed the Alaskan fisheries to continue to compete for market share.


title: Sea cucumber

text: One of Australia's oldest fisheries is the collection of sea cucumber, harvested by divers from throughout the Coral Sea in far North Queensland, Torres Straits and Western Australia. In the late 1800s as many as 400 divers operated from Cook Town, Queensland.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Overfishing of sea cucumbers in the Great Barrier Reef is threatening their population. Their popularity as luxury seafood in East Asian countries poses a serious threat.


title: Sea cucumber

text: As of 2013 a thriving black market was driven by demand in China where at its peak might have sold for the equivalent of US$300 and a single sea cucumber for about US$160. A crackdown by governments both in and out of China reduced both prices and consumption, particularly among government officials who had been known to eat (and were able to afford purchasing) the most expensive and rare species. In the Caribbean Sea off the shores of the Yucatán Peninsula near fishing ports such as Dzilam de Bravo, illegal harvesting had devastated the population and resulted in conflict as rival gangs struggled to control the harvest.


title: Sea cucumber

text: Overexploitation of sea cucumber stocks in many parts of the world provided motivation for the development of sea cucumber aquaculture in the early 1980s. The Chinese and Japanese were the first to develop successful hatchery technology on "Apostichopus japonicus", prized for its high meat content and success in commercial hatcheries. Using techniques pioneered by the Chinese and Japanese, a second species, "Holothuria scabra", was cultured for the first time in India in 1988. In recent years Australia, Indonesia, New Caledonia, Maldives, Solomon Islands and Vietnam have successfully cultured "H. scabra" using the same technology, and now culture other species.


title: Sea cucumber

text: In 2020, the Indian government created the world's first sea cucumber conservation area, the Dr KK Mohammed Koya Sea Cucumber Conservation Reserve, to protect the sea cucumber species. In India, the commercial harvesting and transportation of sea cucumbers is banned.


title: Devils Tower

text: Devils Tower (also known as Bear Lodge Butte) is a butte, possibly laccolithic, composed of igneous rock in the Bear Lodge Ranger District of the Black Hills, near Hulett and Sundance in Crook County, northeastern Wyoming, above the Belle Fourche River. It rises 1,267 feet (386 m) above the Belle Fourche River, standing 867 feet (265 m) from summit to base. The summit is 5,112 feet (1,559 m) above sea level.


title: Devils Tower

text: Devils Tower was the first United States national monument, established on September 24, 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt. The monument's boundary encloses an area of .


title: Devils Tower

text: Native American names for the monolith include "Bear's House" or "Bear's Lodge" (or "Bear's Tipi", "Home of the Bear", "Bear's Lair"); Cheyenne, , ("Home of Bears"), "Aloft on a Rock" (Kiowa), "Tree Rock", "Great Gray Horn", and "Brown Buffalo Horn" ().


title: Devils Tower

text: The name "Devil's Tower" originated in 1875 during an expedition led by Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, when his interpreter reportedly misinterpreted a native name to mean "Bad God's Tower". All information signs in that area use the name "Devils Tower", following a geographic naming standard whereby the apostrophe is omitted.


title: Devils Tower

text: In 2005, a proposal to recognize several Native American ties through the additional designation of the monolith as "Bear Lodge National Historic Landmark" were opposed by United States Representative Barbara Cubin, arguing that a "name change will harm the tourist trade and bring economic hardship to area communities". In November 2014, Arvol Looking Horse proposed renaming the geographical feature "Bear Lodge" and submitted the request to the United States Board on Geographic Names. A second proposal was submitted to request that the U.S. acknowledge what it described as the "offensive" mistake in keeping the current name and to rename the monument and sacred site "Bear Lodge National Historic Landmark". The formal public comment period ended in fall 2015. Local state senator Ogden Driskill opposed the change. The name was not changed.


title: Devils Tower

text: The landscape surrounding Devils Tower is composed mostly of sedimentary rocks. The oldest rocks visible in Devils Tower National Monument were laid down in a shallow sea during the Triassic. This dark red sandstone and maroon siltstone, interbedded with shale, can be seen along the Belle Fourche River. Oxidation of iron minerals causes the redness of the rocks. This rock layer is known as the Spearfish Formation. Above the Spearfish Formation is a thin band of white gypsum, called the Gypsum Springs Formation, Jurassic in age. Overlying this formation is the Sundance Formation. During the Paleocene Epoch, 56 to 66 million years ago, the Rocky Mountains and the Black Hills were uplifted. Magma rose through the crust, intruding into the existing sedimentary rock layers.


title: Devils Tower

text: Geologists Carpenter and Russell studied Devils Tower in the late 19th century and came to the conclusion that it was formed by an igneous intrusion. In 1907, geologists Nelson Horatio Darton and C. C. O'Harra (of the South Dakota School of Mines) theorized that Devils Tower must be an eroded remnant of a laccolith.


title: Devils Tower

text: The igneous material that forms the Tower is a phonolite porphyry intruded about 40.5 million years ago, a light to dark-gray or greenish-gray igneous rock with conspicuous crystals of white feldspar. As the magma cooled, hexagonal columns formed (though sometimes 4-, 5-, and 7-sided columns were possible), up to wide and tall.


title: Devils Tower

text: As rain and snow continue to erode the sedimentary rocks surrounding the Tower's base, more of Devils Tower will be exposed. Nonetheless, the exposed portions of the Tower still experience certain amounts of erosion. Cracks along the columns are subject to water and ice erosion. Portions, or even entire columns, of rock at Devils Tower are continually breaking off and falling. Piles of broken columns, boulders, small rocks, and stones, called scree, lie at the base of the tower, indicating that it was once wider than it is today.


title: Devils Tower

text: According to the traditional Indigenous beliefs of the Kiowa and Lakota, a group of girls went out to play and were spotted by several giant bears, who began to chase them. In an effort to escape the bears, the girls climbed atop a rock, fell to their knees, and prayed to the Great Spirit to save them. Hearing their prayers, the Great Spirit made the rock rise from the ground towards the heavens so that the bears could not reach the girls. The bears, in an effort to climb the rock, left deep claw marks in the sides, which had become too steep to climb. Those are the marks which appear today on the sides of Devils Tower. When the girls reached the sky, they were turned into the stars of the Pleiades.


title: Devils Tower

text: Another version tells that two Sioux boys wandered far from their village when Mato the bear, a huge creature that had claws the size of tipi poles, spotted them, and wanted to eat them for breakfast. He was almost upon them when the boys prayed to Wakan Tanka the Creator to help them. They rose up on a huge rock, while Mato tried to get up from every side, leaving huge scratch marks as he did. Finally, he sauntered off, disappointed and discouraged. The bear came to rest east of the Black Hills at what is now Bear Butte. Wanblee, the eagle, helped the boys off the rock and back to their village. A painting depicting this legend by artist Herbert A. Collins hangs over the fireplace in the visitor center at Devils Tower.


title: Devils Tower

text: In a Cheyenne version of the story, the giant bear pursues the girls and kills most of them. Two sisters escape back to their home with the bear still tracking them. They tell two boys that the bear can only be killed with an arrow shot through the underside of its foot. The boys have the sisters lead the bear to Devils Tower and trick it into thinking they have climbed the rock. The boys attempt to shoot the bear through the foot while it repeatedly attempts to climb up and slides back down leaving more claw marks each time. The bear was finally scared off when an arrow came very close to its left foot. This last arrow continued to go up and never came down.


title: Devils Tower

text: Wooden Leg, a Northern Cheyenne, related another legend told to him by an old man as they were traveling together past the Devils Tower around 1866–1868. An Indigenous man decided to sleep at the base of Bear Lodge next to a buffalo head. In the morning he found that both he and the buffalo head had been transported to the top of the rock by the Great Medicine with no way down. He spent another day and night on the rock with no food or water. After he had prayed all day and then gone to sleep, he awoke to find that the Great Medicine had brought him back down to the ground, but left the buffalo head at the top near the edge. Wooden Leg maintained that the buffalo head was clearly visible through the old man's spyglass. At the time, the tower had never been climbed and a buffalo head at the top was otherwise inexplicable.


title: Devils Tower

text: The buffalo head gives this story special significance for the Northern Cheyenne. All the Cheyenne maintained in their camps a sacred teepee to the Great Medicine containing the tribal sacred objects. In the case of the Northern Cheyenne, the sacred object was a buffalo head.


title: Devils Tower

text: N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa) was given the name Tsoai-talee (Rock Tree Boy) by Pohd-lohk, a Kiowa elder, linking the child to the Devils Tower bear myth. To reinforce this mythic connection, his parents took him there. Momaday incorporated the bear myth as unifying subtext into his 1989 novel "The Ancient Child".


title: Devils Tower

text: Fur trappers may have visited Devils Tower, but they left no written evidence of having done so. The first documented non-Indigenous visitors were members of Captain William F. Raynolds's 1859 expedition to Yellowstone. Sixteen years later, Colonel Richard I. Dodge escorted an Office of Indian Affairs scientific survey party to the massive rock formation and coined the name Devils Tower. Recognizing its unique characteristics, the United States Congress designated the area a U.S. forest reserve in 1892 and in 1906 Devils Tower became the nation's first National monument.


title: Devils Tower

text: As of 1994, climbing Devils Tower had increased in popularity. About 1.3% of the monument's 400,000 annual visitors climbed Devils Tower, mostly using traditional climbing techniques. The first known ascent of Devils Tower by any method occurred on July 4, 1893, and is credited to William Rogers and Willard Ripley, local ranchers in the area. They completed this first ascent after constructing a ladder of wooden pegs driven into cracks in the rock face. A few of these wooden pegs are still intact and are visible on the tower when hiking along the Tower Trail at Devils Tower National Monument. Over the following 30 years, many climbs were made using this method before the ladder fell into disrepair.


title: Devils Tower

text: The first ascent using modern climbing techniques was made by Fritz Wiessner with William P. House and Lawrence Coveney in 1937. Wiessner led almost the entire climb free, placing only a single piece of fixed gear, a piton, which he later regretted, deeming it unnecessary.


title: Devils Tower

text: In 1941 George Hopkins parachuted onto Devils Tower, without permission, as a publicity stunt resulting from a bet. He had intended to descend by a rope dropped to him after successfully landing on the butte, but the package containing the rope, a sledge hammer and a car axle to be driven into the rock as an anchor point slid over the edge. As the weather deteriorated, a second attempt was made to drop equipment, but Hopkins deemed it unusable after the rope became snarled and frozen due to the rain and wind. Hopkins was stranded for six days, exposed to cold, rain and winds before a mountain rescue team led by Jack Durrance, who had successfully climbed Devils Tower in 1938, finally reached him and brought him down. His entrapment and rescue was widely covered by the media of the time.


title: Devils Tower

text: Today, hundreds of climbers scale the sheer rock walls of Devils Tower each summer. The most common route is the Durrance Route, which was the second free route established in 1938. There are many established and documented climbing routes covering every side of the tower, ascending the various vertical cracks and columns of the rock. The difficulty of these routes range from relatively easy to some of the most challenging in the world. All climbers are required to register with a park ranger before and after attempting a climb. No overnight camping at the summit is allowed; climbers return to base on the same day they ascend.


title: Devils Tower

text: The Tower is sacred to several Plains tribes, including the Lakota, Cheyenne and Kiowa. Because of this, many Native American leaders objected to climbers ascending the monument, considering this to be a desecration. The climbers argued that they had a right to climb the Tower, since it is on federal land. A compromise was eventually reached with a voluntary climbing ban during the month of June when the tribes are conducting ceremonies around the monument. Climbers are asked, but not required, to stay off the Tower in June. According to the PBS documentary "In the Light of Reverence", approximately 85% of climbers honor the ban and voluntarily choose not to climb the Tower during the month of June. However, several climbers along with the Mountain States Legal Foundation sued the Park Service, claiming an inappropriate government entanglement with religion.


title: Devils Tower

text: Devils Tower National Monument protects many species of wildlife, such as white-tailed deer, prairie dogs, and bald eagles.


title: Devils Tower

text: The 1977 movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" used the formation as a plot element and as the location of its climactic scenes. Its release was the cause of a large increase in visitors and climbers to the monument.


title: Fractured (2019 film)

text: Fractured is a 2019 American psychological thriller film directed by Brad Anderson from a screenplay by Alan B. McElroy. It stars Sam Worthington, Lily Rabe, Stephen Tobolowsky, Adjoa Andoh, and Lucy Capri.


title: Fractured (2019 film)

text: The film had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest on September 22, 2019. It was released on October 11, 2019, by Netflix.


title: Fractured (2019 film)

text: Ray Monroe is driving home with his wife Joanne and his daughter Peri after a Thanksgiving visit to Joanne's parents. Ray and Joanne argue about the state of their relationship. In the car, Peri's music device stops working due to dead batteries and Ray tells her that he will buy some for her at the next gas station. Soon, Peri says she needs to use a restroom and so they take a break at a gas station. The cashier tells Ray that they only take cash so Ray skips the batteries, but, in addition to a coke for Joanne and a coffee for himself, buys two small bottles of liquor. After returning to the car, he lies to Joanne saying the store didn't have batteries. Peri cannot find her compact mirror so Joanne goes to check the restroom and Ray searches the back seat. While Ray is distracted, Peri starts to wander towards a deserted construction site because of a balloon stuck on a rebar. She is menaced by a stray dog and starts backing towards an exposed pit. Ray throws a rock to scare the dog but it causes Peri to fall into the hole. Ray, aiming to grab her, falls in as well and hits his head. He comes around in a daze and to a distressed Joanne who has climbed down and is checking Peri for injuries. After his head clears, he picks Peri up and decides to have her injured arm seen to at a hospital they passed a few miles back.


title: Fractured (2019 film)

text: During the admissions process, the couple are asked if they would be willing for Peri to be placed on the organ donor register, which they decline. Peri is seen by a doctor who states that her arm is fractured and that he wants her to have a CAT scan in case she has a head injury. Joanne accompanies her to the scanning facility in the basement, while Ray falls asleep in the waiting area.


title: Fractured (2019 film)

text: Ray awakens hours later and asks the hospital staff if he can see his wife and daughter, but is told they have no record of them. Most of the doctors have changed shift, and the only nurse still there says that Ray came alone and was treated for a head wound. Ray becomes distressed, is restrained by security and, after being given a sedative, is locked in a room. He escapes and waves down two police officers, who agree to investigate.


title: Fractured (2019 film)

text: Further evidence is found that Ray's family never was at the hospital; and he is taken by the police, and a hospital psychiatrist, to the gas station. It is also found that Ray was a recovering alcoholic, whose first wife Abby died with their unborn child eight years ago. They find a large bloodstain in the pit and attempt to arrest Ray on suspicion of him murdering his wife and daughter. He takes an officer's gun and locks everyone in the gas station before returning to the hospital. He reaches the basement, after strangling a security guard to death, and finds that Peri is about to have her organs harvested. He drags her out of the operating theatre, along with a drugged Joanne, shooting a doctor as they leave. As they drive away, it is revealed that his family died in the pit; Peri from her fall and Joanne after Ray pushed her and her skull landed on a protruding piece of rebar. Their bodies have been in the trunk of the car the whole time, and the events of the hospital visit were the result of Ray's psyche trying to deny the reality of what had happened. In the back seat, a seriously ill patient who Ray extracted from surgery lies unconscious.


title: Fractured (2019 film)

text: In November 2018, Sam Worthington signed to star, with Brad Anderson attached to direct Alan B. McElroy's script, Paul Schiff, Neal Edelstein, and Mike Macari producing, and Netflix distributing. In December 2018, Lily Rabe, Stephen Tobolowsky, Adjoa Andoh, and Lucy Capri joined the cast. Production began that month. Principal photography for the film took place on location in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada from November 2018 to January 2019.


title: Fractured (2019 film)

text: The film had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest on September 22, 2019. It was released on Netflix on October 11, 2019.


title: Fractured (2019 film)

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average of . The website's critical consensus reads, "Led by an arresting Sam Worthington performance, "Fractured" is a reasonably diverting mystery with enough thrills to make up for a familiar story." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 36 out of 100 based on 5 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews."


title: Max Levchin

text: Maksymilian Rafailovych "Max" Levchin (; born July 11, 1975) is a Ukrainian-American software engineer and businessman. In 1998, he co-founded the company that eventually became PayPal. Levchin made contributions to PayPal's anti-fraud efforts and was the co-creator of the Gausebeck-Levchin test, one of the first commercial implementations of a CAPTCHA challenge response human test.


title: Max Levchin

text: He founded or co-founded the companies Slide.com, HVF, and Affirm. He was an early investor in Yelp and was their largest shareholder in 2012. He left a leadership role in Yelp in 2015.


title: Max Levchin

text: Born in Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR to a Ukrainian-Jewish family, Levchin moved to the United States and settled in Chicago in 1991. In an interview with Emily Chang of "Bloomberg", Levchin discussed his overcoming adversity as a child. He had respiratory problems and doctors doubted his chance of living. With guidance from his grandmother and his parents he took up the clarinet to expand his lung capacity. He attended Mather High School, and then the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he earned a bachelor's degree in computer science in 1997.


title: Max Levchin

text: In the summer of 1995, Levchin and fellow University of Illinois students Luke Nosek and Scott Banister founded SponsorNet New Media.


title: Max Levchin

text: In 1998, Levchin and Peter Thiel founded Fieldlink, a security company that allowed users to store encrypted data on their PalmPilots and other PDA devices for handheld devices to serve as "digital wallets". After changing the company name to Confinity, they developed a popular payment product known as PayPal and focused on digital transfers of funds by PDA. The company merged with X.com in 2000, and in 2001, the company adopted the name PayPal after its main product. PayPal, Inc. went public in February 2002, and in July 2002 was acquired by eBay. Levchin's 2.3% stake in PayPal was worth approximately $34 million at the time of the acquisition.


title: Max Levchin

text: Levchin is primarily known for his contributions to PayPal's anti-fraud efforts and is also the co-creator of the Gausebeck-Levchin test, one of the first commercial implementations of a CAPTCHA.


title: Max Levchin

text: In 2002, he was named to the MIT "Technology Review" TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35, as well as Innovator of the Year.


title: Max Levchin

text: Levchin is one of a group of roughly twenty founders and former employees of PayPal who have become referred to as the "PayPal Mafia", due to their success in founding and investing in tech companies after leaving PayPal.


title: Max Levchin

text: In 2004, Levchin founded Slide, a personal media-sharing service for social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook. Slide was sold to Google in August 2010 for $182 million and, on August 25, Levchin joined the company as vice president of engineering. On August 26, 2011, Google announced it was shutting down Slide, and that Levchin was leaving the company.


title: Max Levchin

text: In late 2011, Levchin started a company called HVF (standing for "Hard, Valuable, and Fun") that was intended to explore and fund projects and companies in the area of leveraging data, such as data from analog sensors.


title: Max Levchin

text: In early 2012, the financial technology company Affirm was spun out of HVF, with the goal of building the next-generation credit network. Affirm was created by Levchin, Palantir Technologies co-founder Nathan Gettings, and Jeff Kaditz of First Data. The company is based in San Francisco.


title: Max Levchin

text: Levchin was a key early investor in Yelp, an online social networking and review service that started in 2004. He was the company's largest shareholder, owning more than 7 million shares as of 2012. Levchin served as chairman of Yelp's board of directors from its founding until July 2015.


title: Max Levchin

text: Levchin is an investor in Evernote. He served on the company's board of directors from August 7, 2006, to 2016.


title: Max Levchin

text: In 2015, Levchin was appointed to the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) advisory board for a three-year term, making him the first executive from Silicon Valley to be appointed to the board. In 2021, Levchin, after his experience on the advisory board at the CFPB, called for the necessity for the tech industry to engage more with regulators.


title: Max Levchin

text: Levchin appeared as a speaker at the 2007 Startup School organized by Y Combinator, where he described his own journey as an entrepreneur and the mistakes he made and lessons he learned. Levchin was also featured in "Brilliant Issue" of "Portfolio" by Condé Nast Publications. In 2022 Levchin was interviewed in an NPR podcast called "How I Built This" where he spoke about his early life and business endeavors including his role in PayPal.


title: Max Levchin

text: Levchin was listed as one of the contributors to FWD.us, a Silicon Valley-based lobbying group spearheaded by Mark Zuckerberg and Joe Green. The group is intended to concentrate on immigration liberalization for high-skilled immigrants to the United States, improvements to education, and facilitating technological breakthroughs with broad public benefits. Levchin also narrated his personal experience as an immigrant in a video released by the group.


title: Max Levchin

text: In 2013, amidst the controversy over mass surveillance and NSA espionage activities, Levchin defended the NSA. According to him, the agency was designed to protect the US from terrorism, so even if it oversteps its bounds, the public shouldn’t hate it. This opinion was opposed to that of many in the tech industry, including Michael Arrington who stated that NSA espionage does not stop terrorism - "it IS terrorism".


title: Rules of chess

text: The rules of chess (also known as the laws of chess) govern the play of the game of chess. Chess is a two-player abstract strategy board game. Each player controls sixteen pieces of six types on a chessboard. Each type of piece moves in a distinct way. The object of the game is to checkmate (inescapably threaten with capture) the opponent's king. A game can end in various ways besides checkmate: a player can resign, and there are several ways in which a game can end in a draw.


title: Rules of chess

text: While the exact origins of chess are unclear, modern rules first took form during the Middle Ages. The rules continued to be slightly modified until the early 19th century, when they reached essentially their current form. The rules also varied somewhat from place to place. Today, the standard rules are set by FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs), the international governing body for chess. Slight modifications are made by some national organizations for their own purposes. There are variations of the rules for fast chess, correspondence chess, online chess, and Chess960.


title: Rules of chess

text: Besides the basic moves of the pieces, rules also govern the equipment used, time control, conduct and ethics of players, accommodations for physically challenged players, and recording of moves using chess notation. Procedures for resolving irregularities that can occur during a game are provided as well.


title: Rules of chess

text: Chess is played on a chessboard, a square board divided into a grid of 64 squares (eight-by-eight) of alternating color (similar to the board used in draughts). No matter what the actual colors of the board, the lighter-colored squares are called "light" or "white", and the darker-colored squares are called "dark" or "black". Sixteen "white" and sixteen "black" pieces are placed on the board at the beginning of the game. The board is placed so that a white square is in each player's near-right corner. Horizontal rows are called , and vertical columns are called .


title: Rules of chess

text: At the beginning of the game, the pieces are arranged as shown in the diagram: for each side one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns. The pieces are placed, one per square, as follows:


title: Rules of chess

text: Popular mnemonics used to remember the setup are "queen on her own color" and "white on right". The latter refers to setting up the board so that the square closest to each player's right is white.


title: Rules of chess

text: The player controlling the white pieces is named "White"; the player controlling the black pieces is named "Black". White moves first, then players alternate moves. Making a move is required; it is not legal to skip a move, even when having to move is detrimental. Play continues until a king is checkmated, a player resigns, or a draw is declared, as explained below. In addition, if the game is being played under a time control, a player who exceeds the time limit loses the game unless they cannot be checkmated.


title: Rules of chess

text: The official chess rules do not include a procedure for determining who plays White. Instead, this decision is left open to tournament-specific rules (e.g. a Swiss system tournament or round-robin tournament) or, in the case of non-competitive play, mutual agreement, in which case some kind of random choice is often employed. A common method is for one player to conceal a piece (usually a pawn) of each color in either hand; the other player chooses a hand to open and receives the color of the piece that is revealed.


title: Rules of chess

text: Each type of chess piece has its own method of movement. A piece moves to a vacant square except when an opponent's piece.


title: Rules of chess

text: Except for any move of the knight and castling, pieces cannot jump over other pieces. A piece is captured (or taken) when an attacking enemy piece replaces it on its square. The captured piece is thereby permanently removed from the game. The king can be put in check but cannot be captured (see below).


title: Rules of chess

text: Castling consists of moving the king two squares towards a rook, then placing the rook on the other side of the king, adjacent to it. It is not allowed to move both king and rook in the same time, because "Each move must be played with one hand only." Castling is only permissible if all of the following conditions hold:


title: Rules of chess

text: An unmoved king and an unmoved rook of the same color on the same rank are said to have castling rights.


title: Rules of chess

text: When a pawn advances two squares from its original square and ends the turn adjacent to a pawn of the opponent's on the same , it may be captured "en passant" by that pawn of the opponent's, as if it had moved only one square forward. This capture is only legal on the opponent's next move immediately following the first pawn's advance. The diagrams on the right demonstrate an instance of this: if the white pawn moves from a2 to a4, the black pawn on b4 can capture it "en passant", moving from b4 to a3 while the white pawn on a4 is removed from the board.


title: Rules of chess

text: If a player advances a pawn to its eighth rank, the pawn is then promoted (converted) to a queen, rook, bishop, or knight of the same color at the choice of the player (a queen is usually chosen). The choice is not limited to previously pieces. Hence it is theoretically possible for a player to have up to nine queens or up to ten rooks, bishops, or knights if all of their pawns are promoted. If the desired piece is not available, the player must call the to provide the piece.


title: Rules of chess

text: A king is in check when it is under attack by at least one enemy piece. A piece unable to move because it would place its own king in check (it is pinned against its own king) may still deliver check to the opposing player.


title: Rules of chess

text: It is illegal to make a move that places or leaves one's king in check. The possible ways to get out of check are: