title: Huma Abedin

text: The letters' claims were debunked and flagged as conspiracy theories. "The Washington Post" editorial board called the allegations "paranoid", a "baseless attack", and a "smear". The letter was also criticized by, among others, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota, the first Muslim member of Congress, who called the allegations "reprehensible". Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, also rejected the allegations, saying: "The letter and the report offer not one instance of an action, a decision or a public position that Huma has taken while at the State Department that would lend credence to the charge that she is promoting anti-American activities within our government. These attacks on Huma have no logic, no basis and no merit." Bachmann's former campaign manager Ed Rollins said the allegations were "extreme and dishonest", and called for Bachmann to apologize to Abedin. The Anti-Defamation League condemned the letter, calling upon the representatives involved to "stop trafficking in anti-Muslim conspiracy theories".


title: Huma Abedin

text: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, raised questions about Abedin's work as a State Department employee, concerning the fact that she held four jobs from June 2012 to February 2013. These included serving as a part-time aide to Clinton at the State Department while also working as a consultant to private clients for the consulting firm Teneo Holdings, a consulting firm run by Douglas Band, a longtime aide to former president Bill Clinton. At the time, she was also being paid a salary for work at the Clinton Foundation, and working as Hillary Clinton's personal assistant. The State Department and Abedin both responded, with the State Department indicating that it uses special government employees routinely "to provide services and expertise that executive agencies require", and Abedin stating that she did not provide any government information or inside information gained from her State Department job to her private employers. Grassley said he found the letters unresponsive. In July 2015, Grassley released information indicating that the State Department's inspector general had found that Abedin was overpaid by almost $10,000 for unused leave time when she left the government, resulting from violations of the rules governing vacation and sick leave during her tenure on the payroll as a Federal employee in the department. Abedin's attorneys said that she had learned in May that the Department's inspector general had found that she improperly collected $9,857 for periods when she was on vacation or leave, responded with a 12-page letter contesting the findings, and formally requested an administrative review of the investigation's conclusions. Her lawyer, Miguel Rodriguez, told "The New York Times" that the inspector general's report showed that Abedin worked during her maternity leave and had thus earned the pay.


title: Huma Abedin

text: In October 2015, a federal court in Washington, D.C., heard arguments on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by conservative watchdog organization Judicial Watch for records related to Abedin. Judicial Watch asked to make Abedin's emails and employment records public, requesting details of the arrangement under which she was designated a "special government employee", allowing her to also perform outside consulting work while on the federal payroll. On October 6, the State Department said it would be able to hand over 69 pages of emails in response to the FOIA request.


title: Huma Abedin

text: In 2015, emails by Abedin became part of the FBI investigation and controversy concerning Hillary Clinton's private email account while she was Secretary of State, resulting in various allegations by Republicans of violations of State Department regulations. Some officials within the intelligence community have stated that potentially classified information was contained in e-mails from Abedin relating to the 2012 Benghazi attack and its aftermath, which had been sent through Clinton's private, non-government server. As of February 2016, 1,818 emails were found containing classified information on the private server; 22 of those were classified as Top Secret. They were not marked classified at the time they were sent, but they did contain classified information. Clinton's aides also sent and received classified information.


title: Huma Abedin

text: On October 16, 2015, Abedin testified in closed session before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, in a session that was expected to focus on the 2012 Benghazi attack during which Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed. The committee had previously heard closed-door testimony from two other Clinton aides, Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan, in September 2015, and Clinton appeared before the panel in a public hearing on October 22.


title: Huma Abedin

text: The Republican-led committee's top Democratic representative, Elijah Cummings of Maryland, questioned the panel's decision to hear testimony from Abedin, arguing that her knowledge of details at the time of the attacks was minimal. Republican Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas defended the decision to interview Abedin, saying: "Ms. Abedin was a senior official at the State Department at all of the relevant times. Every witness has a different set of knowledge." Although there were political tensions surrounding Abedin's appearance, the proceedings were friendly. After almost eight hours of testimony, Abedin said: "I came here today to be as helpful as I could be to the committee."


title: Huma Abedin

text: In February 2016, "The Washington Post" reported that the United States Department of State had issued a subpoena to the Clinton Foundation in the fall of 2015. According to the report, the subpoena focused on documents about the charity's projects that may have required approval from the federal government during Clinton's term as secretary of state; it also asked for records related to Abedin.


title: Huma Abedin

text: On October 28, 2016, the FBI announced that while investigating illicit text messages allegedly from Anthony Weiner to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina, they discovered emails related to Clinton's private server on a laptop computer belonging to Weiner, Abedin's husband at the time. FBI Director James Comey said the agency would review the e-mails to see if they contained classified material. Clinton called for the FBI to release its findings as soon as possible. CNN reported that "the Justice Department and FBI officials are working to secure approval that would allow the FBI to conduct a full search of top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin's newly discovered emails." The issue is complex because Abedin shared a computer with Weiner, according to officials, and the case may raise "spousal privilege legal protections" for Abedin since the laptop belongs to her husband.


title: Huma Abedin

text: The FBI's New York field office was conducting the Weiner investigation and found the Abedin emails on the computer, which they thought were only Weiner's, the officials said. They then stopped their work and contacted the team of investigators from FBI headquarters who had handled the probe of Clinton's private email server. The investigators saw enough of the emails to decide that they seemed pertinent to the Clinton server investigation and that they might be emails not seen before. Because they felt they needed a warrant specific to Abedin's emails, officials did not examine them further.


title: Huma Abedin

text: Abedin cooperated with the investigation, according to Justice Department and FBI officials. Investigators believed that some emails deleted from the Clinton server were possibly among those in question. They would need to interview Abedin again after examining the emails on Weiner's computer.


title: Huma Abedin

text: On October 30, 2016, the FBI obtained a search warrant for the Abedin-linked emails found on Weiner's laptop. Abedin used the same laptop to send thousands of emails to Clinton, according to NBC sources. On November 6, in a letter to Congress, the FBI said that, after reviewing all of Clinton's emails from her tenure as Secretary of State, it had not changed its conclusion reached in July exonerating Clinton.


title: Huma Abedin

text: Abedin started dating then-U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner in 2007, and they were engaged in 2009. They were married on July 10, 2010, with former U.S. President Bill Clinton officiating the wedding ceremony. In December 2011, Abedin gave birth to a boy. On August 29, 2016, Abedin announced her separation from Weiner after new sexting allegations were made against him. In early 2017, Abedin announced her intent to file for divorce with sole physical custody of their son. On May 19, 2017, after Weiner pled guilty, she filed for divorce. Abedin and Weiner withdrew their divorce case in January 2018, stating that they decided to settle privately in order to spare their son further embarrassment. As of November 2021, their divorce is in its final stages, although they still see each other and raise their son.


title: Huma Abedin

text: Hillary Clinton has been described as a mentor and mother figure to Abedin. In 2010, at Abedin's wedding to Weiner, Clinton said: "I have one daughter. But if I had a second daughter, it would [be] Huma." During a trip that Clinton and Abedin made to Saudi Arabia, Abedin's mother said to Clinton, "Hillary, you have spent more time with my daughter than I have in the past 15 years. I'm jealous of you!"


title: Huma Abedin

text: In a May 2022 interview, Abedin said she struggles with anxiety and has been in therapy due to the shock and trauma of dealing with her husband's sexting scandal. She also said she has started dating again and feels excited about the process. In July 2022 it was reported that Abedin was in a relationship with actor Bradley Cooper.


title: Huma Abedin

text: Abedin is featured in "Weiner," a documentary about her former husband's unsuccessful 2013 campaign for Mayor of New York.


title: Huma Abedin

text: In July 2022, Freida Pinto announced she would be developing and starring in a television series based upon Abedin's memoir. Abedin will be an executive producer of the program along with Emily Verellen.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Athletics is a group of sporting events that involves competitive running, jumping, throwing, and walking. The most common types of athletics competitions are track and field, road running, cross country running, and racewalking.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The results of racing events are decided by finishing position (or time, where measured), while the jumps and throws are won by the athlete that achieves the highest or furthest measurement from a series of attempts. The simplicity of the competitions, and the lack of a need for expensive equipment, makes athletics one of the most common types of sports in the world. Athletics is mostly an individual sport, with the exception of relay races and competitions which combine athletes' performances for a team score, such as cross country.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Organized athletics are traced back to the Ancient Olympic Games from 776 BC. The rules and format of the modern events in athletics were defined in Western Europe and North America in the 19th and early 20th century, and were then spread to other parts of the world. Most modern top level meetings are held under the auspices of World Athletics, the global governing body for the sport of athletics, or its member continental and national federations.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The athletics meeting forms the backbone of the Summer Olympics. The foremost international athletics meeting is the World Athletics Championships, which incorporates track and field, marathon running and race walking. Other top level competitions in athletics include the World Athletics Cross Country Championships and the World Half Marathon Championships. Athletes with a physical disability compete at the Summer Paralympics and the World Para Athletics Championships.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The word athletics is derived from the Ancient Greek (, "combatant in public games") from (, "prize") or (, "competition"). Initially, the term described athletic contests in general – i.e. sporting competition based primarily on human physical feats. In the 19th century, the term athletics acquired a more narrow definition in Europe and came to describe sports involving competitive running, walking, jumping and throwing. This definition continues to be prominent in the United Kingdom and the former British Empire. Related words in Germanic and Romance languages also have a similar meaning.


title: Sport of athletics

text: In much of North America, "athletics" is synonymous with sports in general, maintaining the historical usage of the term. The word "athletics" is rarely used to refer to the sport of athletics in this region. "Track and field" is preferred, and is used in the United States and Canada to refer to athletics events, including race-walking and marathon running (although cross country running is typically considered a separate sport).


title: Sport of athletics

text: Athletic contests in running, walking, jumping and throwing are among the oldest of all sports and their roots are prehistoric. Athletics events were depicted in the Ancient Egyptian tombs in Saqqara, with illustrations of running at the Heb Sed festival and high jumping appearing in tombs from as early as of 2250 BC. The Tailteann Games were an ancient Celtic festival in Ireland, founded circa 1800 BC, and the thirty-day meeting included running and stone-throwing among its sporting events. The original and only event at the first Olympics in 776 BC was a stadium-length running event known as the "stadion". This later expanded to include throwing and jumping events within the ancient pentathlon. Athletics competitions also took place at other Panhellenic Games, which were founded later around 500 BC.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The Cotswold Olympic Games, a sports festival which emerged in 17th century England, featured athletics in the form of sledgehammer throwing contests. Annually, from 1796 to 1798, L'Olympiade de la République was held in revolutionary France, and is an early forerunner to the modern Olympic Games. The premier event of this competition was a running event, but various ancient Greek disciplines were also on display. The 1796 Olympiade marked the introduction of the metric system into the sport.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Athletics competitions were held about 1812 at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and in 1840 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire at the Royal Shrewsbury School Hunt. The Royal Military Academy at Woolwich held an organised competition in 1849, and a regular series of closed meetings open only to undergraduates, was held by Exeter College, Oxford, from 1850. The annual Wenlock Olympian Games, first held in 1850 in Wenlock, England, incorporated athletics events into its sports programme.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The first modern-style indoor athletics meetings were recorded shortly after in the 1860s, including a meet at Ashburnham Hall in London which featured four running events and a triple jump competition.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The Amateur Athletic Association (AAA) was established in England in 1880 as the first national body for the sport of athletics and began holding its own annual athletics competition – the AAA Championships. The United States also began holding an annual national competition – the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships – first held in 1876 by the New York Athletic Club. Athletics became codified and standardized via the English AAA and other general sports organisations in the late 19th century, such as the Amateur Athletic Union (founded in the US in 1888) and the Union des sociétés françaises de sports athlétiques (founded in France in 1889).


title: Sport of athletics

text: An athletics competition was included in the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 and it has been as one of the foremost competitions at the quadrennial multi-sport event ever since. Originally for men only, the 1928 Olympics saw the introduction of women's events in the athletics programme. Athletics is part of the Paralympic Games since the inaugural Games in 1960. Athletics has a very high-profile during major championships, especially the Olympics, but otherwise is less popular.


title: Sport of athletics

text: An international governing body, the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF), was founded in 1912. It enforced amateur sport status on competitions during much of the 20th century. Professional competition continued at a low level, becoming increasingly more common as the century progressed. The International Track Association briefly formed a professional track and field circuit in the United States in the 1970s. Athletes used their increasing status to push for remuneration and the IAAF responded with the IAAF Golden Events series and the establishment an outdoor World Championships in 1983, including track and field, racewalking and a marathon event. In modern times, athletes can receive money for racing, putting an end to the so-called "amateurism" that existed before. The global body updated the name to the International Association of Athletics Federations in 2001, moving away from its amateur origins, before taking on its current name World Athletics in 2019.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The Comité International Sports des Sourds had been formed by 1922, to govern international deaf sports, including athletics.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The first organized international competitions for athletes with a physical disability (not deaf) began in 1952, when the first international Stoke Mandeville Games were organized for World War II veterans. This only included athletes in a wheelchair. This inspired the first Paralympic Games, held in 1960. Competitions would over time be expanded to include mainly athletes with amputation, cerebral palsy and visual impairment, in addition to wheelchair events.


title: Sport of athletics

text: World Athletics, the sport's governing body, defines athletics in six disciplines: track and field, road running, race walking, cross country running, mountain running, and trail running. Mountain running was added in 2003 and trail running was added in 2015.


title: Sport of athletics

text: All forms of athletics are individual sports with the exception of relay races. However, athletes' performances are often tallied together by country at international championships, and, in the case of cross country and road races, finishing positions or times of the top athletes from a team may be combined to declare a team victor.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Several further forms of competitive running exist outside of the governance of World Athletics. The International Skyrunning Federation (ISF) governs high-altitude mountain running, defined as skyrunning, and is affiliated with the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation rather than World Athletics. Competitive stair climbing events, usually hosted in skyscrapers, has two common names: vertical running (as described by the ISF) and tower running (as described by the Towerrunning World Association). Snowshoe running is a winter sport governed by the World Snowshoe Federation, which is similarly to cross country running but has athletes wearing snowshoes to race over deep snow on an obstacle-free course. The International Association of Ultrarunners organises ultra running as an affiliate of World Athletics, but these long-distance forms of competition fit within World Athletics disciplines, albeit with additional distance.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Track and field competitions emerged in the late 19th century and were typically contested between athletes who were representing rival educational institutions, military organisations and sports clubs. Participating athletes may compete in one or more events, according to their specialities. Men and women compete separately. Track and field comes in both indoor and outdoor formats, with most indoor competitions occurring in winter, while outdoor events are mostly held in summer. The sport is defined by the venue in which the competitions are held – the track and field stadium.


title: Sport of athletics

text: A variety of running events are held on the track which fall into three broad distance categories: sprints, middle-distance, and long-distance track events. Relay races feature teams comprising four runners each, who must pass a baton to their teammate after a specified distance with the aim of being the first team to finish. Hurdling events and the steeplechase are a variation upon the flat running theme in that athletes must clear obstacles on the track during the race. The field events come in two types – jumping and throwing competitions. In throwing events, athletes are measured by how far they hurl an implement, with the common events being the shot put, discus, javelin, and hammer throw. There are four common jumping events: the long jump and triple jump are contests measuring the horizontal distance an athlete can jump, while the high jump and pole vault are decided on the height achieved. Combined events, which include the decathlon (typically competed by men) and heptathlon (typically competed by women), are competitions where athletes compete in a number of different track and field events, with each performance going toward a final points tally.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The most prestigious track and field contests occur within athletics championships and athletics programmes at multi-sport events. The Olympic athletics competition and World Championships in Athletics, and the Paralympic athletics competition and World Para Athletics Championships, are the highest and most prestigious levels of competition in track and field. Track and field events have become the most prominent part of major athletics championships and many famous athletes within the sport of athletics come from this discipline. Discrete track and field competitions are found at national championships-level and also at annual, invitational track and field meets. Meetings range from elite competitions – such as those in the IAAF Diamond League series – to basic all comers track meets, inter-sports club meetings and schools events, which form the grassroots of track and field.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Road running competitions are running events (predominantly long distance) which are mainly conducted on courses of paved or tarmac roads, although major events often finish on the track of a main stadium. In addition to being a common recreational sport, the elite level of the sport – particularly marathon races – are one of the most popular aspects of athletics. Road racing events can be of virtually any distance, but the most common and well known are the marathon, half marathon, 10 km and 5 km. The marathon is the only road running event featured at the IAAF World Championships in Athletics and the Summer Olympics, although there is also an annual IAAF World Half Marathon Championships. The marathon is also the only road running event featured at the World Para Athletics Championships and the Summer Paralympics. The World Marathon Majors series includes the six most prestigious marathon competitions at the elite level – the Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, New York City and Tokyo Marathons.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The sport of road running finds its roots in the activities of footmen: male servants who ran alongside the carriages of aristocrats around the 18th century, and who also ran errands over distances for their masters. Foot racing competitions evolved from wagers between aristocrats, who pitted their footman against that of another aristocrat in order to determine a winner. The sport became professionalised as footmen were hired specifically on their athletic ability and began to devote their lives to training for the gambling events. The amateur sports movement in the late 19th century marginalised competitions based on the professional, gambling model. The 1896 Summer Olympics saw the birth of the modern marathon and the event led to the growth of road running competitions through annual events such as the Boston Marathon (first held in 1897) and the Lake Biwa Marathon and Fukuoka Marathons, which were established in the 1940s. The 1970s running boom in the United States made road running a common pastime and also increased its popularity at the elite level.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Ekiden contests – which originated in Japan and remain very popular there – are a relay race variation on the marathon, being in contrast to the typically individual sport of road running.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Cross country running is the most naturalistic of the sports in athletics as competitions take place on open-air courses over surfaces such as grass, woodland trails, and earth. It is both an individual and team sport, as runners are judged on an individual basis and a points scoring method is used for teams. Competitions are typically long distance races of or more which are usually held in autumn and winter. Cross country's most successful athletes often compete in long-distance track and road events as well.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The Crick Run in England in 1838 was the first recorded instance of an organised cross country competition. The sport gained popularity in British, then American schools in the 19th century and culminated in the creation of the first International Cross Country Championships in 1903. The annual IAAF World Cross Country Championships was inaugurated in 1973 and this remains the highest level of competition for the sport. A number of continental cross country competitions are held, with championships taking place in Asia, Europe, North America and South America. The sport has retained its status at the scholastic level, particularly in the United Kingdom and United States. At the professional level, the foremost competitions come under the banner of the IAAF Cross Country Permit Meetings.


title: Sport of athletics

text: While cross country competitions are no longer held at the Olympics, having featured in the athletics programme from 1912 to 1924, it has been present as one of the events within the modern pentathlon competition since the 1912 Summer Olympics. One variation on traditional cross country is mountain running, which incorporates significant uphill and/or downhill sections as an additional challenge to the course. Fell running and Orienteering are other competitive sports similar to cross country, although they feature an element of navigation which is absent from the set courses of cross country.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Racewalking is a form of competitive walking that usually takes place on open-air roads, although running tracks are also occasionally used. Racewalking is the only sport in athletics in which judges monitor athletes on their technique. Racewalkers must always have a foot in contact with the ground and their advancing leg must be straightened, not bent at the knee – failure to follow these rules results in disqualification from the race.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Racewalking finds its roots in the sport of pedestrianism which emerged in the late 18th century in England. Spectators would gamble on the outcome of the walking competitions. The sport took on an endurance aspect and competitions were held over long distances or walkers would have to achieve a certain distance within a specified time frame, such as Centurion contests of walking within 24 hours. During this period, racewalking was frequently held on athletics tracks for ease of measurement, and the 1908 Summer Olympics in London saw the introduction of the 3500-metre and 10-mile walks. Racewalking was briefly dropped from the Olympic programme in 1928, but the men's 50 kilometres race walk has been held at every Olympic Games but one since 1932. The men's 20 kilometres race walk was added to the Olympic athletics schedule in 1956 and the women's event was first held in 1992. The most common events in modern competition are over 10 km, 20 km and 50 km on roads, although women's 3 km and men's 5 km are held on indoor tracks.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The highest level racewalking competitions occur at the IAAF World Championships in Athletics and at the Summer Olympics, although the sport also has its own separate major competition – the IAAF World Race Walking Cup – which has been held since 1961. The IAAF World Race Walking Challenge forms the primary seasonal competition – athletes earn points for their performances at ten selected racewalking competitions and the highest scoring walkers are entered into that year's IAAF Race Walking Challenge Final.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The significant variation in people's abilities in the sport of athletics has led to the creation of numerous competitive categories, in order that athletes are pitted against rivals of a similar kind or ability, and to include groups of people who would otherwise not be competitive in open-to-all events. The eligibility of athletes for a given category is occasionally a source of controversy among the sport's participants, officials and spectators, with disputes typically being rooted in deliberate cheating in order to gain a competitive advantage or differing cultural perspectives over the eligibility of a category.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Beyond the primary categories based on physical attributes, some competitions have further eligibility criteria based on nationality, community membership or occupation.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The foremost division of this kind is by sex[ling]: in athletics, men and women almost exclusively compete against people of the same sex. In contrast to the men's division, the development of the women's division has caused regular dispute in terms of eligibility. Several intersex athletes had success in the women's division in the early 20th century, such as Stanisława Walasiewicz and Mary Weston (later Mark), and the IAAF responded by introducing sex verification for all athletes in the women's category, beginning with the disqualification of sprinter Foekje Dillema in 1950 after she refused to be tested. Olympic champion Ewa Kłobukowska became the first athlete to publicly fail the test in 1967 and the humiliation she suffered as a result of the announcement led to sex tests becoming a confidential process. Hurdler Maria José Martínez-Patiño failed a test and was disqualified in 1985, but publicly fought the ban in court and was reinstated in 1988. In 1991, the IAAF replaced the sex chromatin test with general medical tests for athletes of all divisions, due to changes in ethical and scientific viewpoints.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The question of eligibility for the women's division continued to be a contentious and public issue into the 21st century, with Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand bearing periods of ineligibility and taking the IAAF to the Court of Arbitration for Sport over their bans under the hyperandrogenism rules. An increasing number of trans men and trans women began to compete in the women's division in the 2010s, which caused other athletes in the division to raise questions of fairness in competition.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The dispute reached new heights in 2019 with the United Nations Human Rights Council issuing a statement that the IAAF was breaching "international human rights norms and standards" through its practice of allowing some athletes to compete in the women's division only once they had lowered their testosterone levels through medical intervention. The IAAF and several prominent women athletes, such as Paula Radcliffe, said this was required in order to prevent a situation where countries deliberately sought out athletes who were intersex, transgender or had a difference in sex development in order to succeed in women's sport. Others have argued for the abolition of gender verification testing, with academic Maren Behrensen citing the harm to tested athletes' social and emotional well-being, the inaccuracy of the medical tests, the difficulty of determining the exact performance advantage provided by a given condition, and the moral risk of "gender-engineering" by setting a biological definition for a female athlete.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Age is a significant determiner of ability to compete in athletics, with athletic ability generally increasing through childhood and adolescence, peaking in early adulthood, then gradually declining from around the age of 30 onwards. As a result, numerous age categories have been created to encourage younger and older athletes to engage in competition. At international level, there are three major categories for young athletes: under-23, under-20 (formerly junior), and under-18 (formerly youth). Beyond international rules, different youth categories are in use in the sport, often in the form of two-year or single age groupings. Age categories are more extensive for older athletes and these are commonly organised under the umbrella of masters athletics, which has age groups spanning five years for all athletes aged 35 and above. There is no limit to the number of age groupings, hence Stanisław Kowalski holds a world record for men aged 105 years and over. For competitions where age is not taken into account, this is known as senior or open class athletics; in international rules there remain some restrictions on younger people competing in endurance events for health reasons .


title: Sport of athletics

text: Athletes' eligibility for a competitive age grouping is typically assessed through official documentation, such as birth records or passports. Instances of age cheating have occurred at all of the IAAF's global age category championships. One prominent incident was Olympic medalist Thomas Longosiwa, who provided a falsified passport to compete at the 2006 World Junior Championships in Athletics at age 24. Age falsification for youth categories is mostly limited to less developed parts of the world, such as Africa and South Asia, which have less stringent controls on official documentation and many mature athletes engaging in high school competition due to disruptions to education. The same regions of the world also present issues with age verification in masters age categories, with examples such as Indian distance runners Dharampal Singh Gudha and Fauja Singh (both claiming to be over 100 years old) reaching mainstream attention.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Athletes with physical disabilities have competed at separate international events since 1952. The International Paralympic Committee governs the competitions in athletics, and hosts the Paralympic Games, which have continued since 1960.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Competitors at elite level competitions, are classified by disability, to arrange athletes with a similar disability in the same event. A classified T12 athlete for example, is a track athlete with a visual impairment.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Operating independently of the Paralympic movement, deaf athletes have a long-established tradition of organised athletics, with the first major world competition being included at the 1924 Deaflympics. The primary impediments to the inclusion of deaf athletes in mainstream athletics are sound based elements of the sport, such as the starter's pistol. This can be a disadvantage even in Paralympic sport, as shown in by the example of Olivia Breen who failed to hear a false start in a cerebral palsy class race at the 2012 Paralympics.


title: Sport of athletics

text: In wheelchair racing athletes compete in lightweight racing chairs. Most major marathons have wheelchair divisions and the elite racers consistently beat the runners on foot. The speed of wheel chair racers has caused difficulties for race organisers in properly staggering their start times compared to runners. A collision between Josh Cassidy (a wheelchair racer) and Tiki Gelana (a leading female marathoner) at the 2013 London Marathon brought the issue into the spotlight again.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Occasionally, athletes with a disability reach a level at which they can compete against able-bodied athletes. Legally blind Marla Runyan ran in the 2000 and 2004 Olympics and won a gold medal in the 1500 metres at the 1999 Pan American Games. Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee, was a semi-finalist at the 2011 World Championships and won a silver medal as part of South Africa's 4 × 400 metres relay team. In masters athletics it is far more common to make an accommodation for athletes with a disability. Blind Ivy Granstrom set numerous Masters world records while being guided around the track.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The disability categories have caused dispute among athletes, with some athletes being accused of exaggerating their level of disability in order to compete in less challenging categories. Athletes with intellectual disabilities were banned from competition in all Paralymic sports in response to verification issues and cheating at the 2000 Summer Paralympics and the intellectual disability athletics programme was only restored twelve years later at the 2012 Summer Paralympics.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Professional athletics almost exclusively takes place in one of three types of venue: stadiums, set courses on grass or woodland, and road-based courses. Such venues ensure that events take place in a relatively standardised manner, as well as improving the safety of athletes and enjoyment for spectators. At a more basic level, many forms of athletics demand very little in terms of venue requirements; almost any open space or area of field can provide a suitable venue for basic running, jumping and throwing competitions.


title: Sport of athletics

text: A standard outdoor track is in the shape of a stadium, 400 metres in length, and has at least eight lanes 1.22 m in width (small arenas might have six lanes). Older track facilities may have nonstandard track lengths, such as 440 yards (402.3 m; 1/4 mile) (common in the United States). Historically, tracks were covered by a dirt running surface. Modern All-weather running tracks are covered by a synthetic weather-resistant running surface, which typically consists of rubber (either black SBR or colored EPDM granules), bound by polyurethane or latex resins. Older tracks may be cinder-covered.


title: Sport of athletics

text: A standard indoor track is designed similarly to an outdoor track, but is only 200 metres in length and has between four and eight lanes, each with width between 0.90 m and 1.10 m. Often, the bends of an indoor track will be banked to compensate for the small turning radius. However, because of space limitations, indoor tracks may have other nonstandard lengths, such as 160-yard (146.3 m) indoor track at Madison Square Garden used for the Millrose Games. Because of space limitations, meetings held at indoor facilities do not hold many of athletics events typically contested outdoors.


title: Sport of athletics

text: There is no standardised form of cross country course and each venue is significantly defined by the environment it contains – some may be relatively flat and featureless, while others may be more challenging with natural obstacles, tight turns, and undulating ground. While a small number of purpose-built courses exist, the vast majority of cross country running courses are created by cordoning a specific area within any open natural land, typically a park, woodland or greenspace near a settlement.


title: Sport of athletics

text: At the elite and professional level, courses must be looped and each lap must be between 1750 m and 2000 m in length. Severe obstacles such as deep ditches, high barriers and thick undergrowth not normally present; the course should be able to be completed whilst remaining on foot throughout. In order to maintain the sport's distinction from road running, the usage of unnatural or macadamised surfaces is generally kept to a minimum or avoided entirely.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Because the majority of races take place on areas of grass, soil, mud or earth, weather conditions can significantly affect the difficulty of cross country courses, as snow and rain reduces traction and can create areas of standing water.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The surface of road races is highly important and the IAAF dictate that the courses must be along man-made roads, bicycle paths or footpaths. Courses set along major roads of cities are typical of road running events, and traffic is usually cordoned off from the area during the competition. While soft ground, such as grass, is generally avoided, races may start and finish on soft ground or within a track and field stadium. Road racing courses come in two primary types: looped and point-to-point. Courses may be measured and designed to cover a standardised distance, such as , or they may simply follow a set route between two landmarks.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Road running courses over 5 km usually offer drinks or refreshment stations for runners at designated points alongside the course and medical professionals are present at the courses of major races due to the health risks involved with long-distance running.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Elite road walks are conducted on closed loop courses (usually loops of 2,000 or 2,500 meters). Refreshment stations are also present over long distance walking competitions, with drinks being available on every lap for races longer than 10 km.


title: Sport of athletics

text: In 1912, the formation of the international governing body for athletics, the International Amateur Athletics Federation, began. In recognition of the movement of the sport from amateurism towards professionalism that began in the late 1970s, the word "amateur" was dropped from the name, and the organization was rebranded as the International Association of Athletics Federations in 2001. In late 2019, another rebranding began, with World Athletics as the new title of the governing body.


title: Sport of athletics

text: World Athletics has 215 member nations and territories, which are divided into six continental areas (or area associations). The six association areas are for Asia, Africa, Europe, Oceania, North America and South America. The sports within athletics do not have their own independent governing bodies at either international or continental level; instead, all fall under the athletics authorities.


title: Sport of athletics

text: National level athletics organisations are responsible for the regulation of the sport within their respective countries and most major competitions have some form of permit or approval from their national body.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Athletics competitions can be broadly divided into three types: international championships, national championships, and annual meetings and races. Athletics at international championships, or Games, represent the pinnacle of competition within the sport, and they are contested between athletes representing their country or region. The organisation of these competitions is usually overseen by either a world, continental, or regional athletics governing body. Athletes gain entry into these competitions by earning selection from their national athletics governing body, which is generally done by assessing athletes via their past achievements or performances at a national selection event. National championships are annual competitions endorsed by a national governing body which serve the purpose of deciding the country's best athlete in each event. Annual one-day meetings and races form the most basic level of competition and are the most common format of athletics contests. These events are often invitational and are organised by sports organisations, sports promoters, or other institutions.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Competitions typically feature only one of the sports within athletics. However, major outdoor international athletics championships and athletics competitions held as part of multi-sport events usually feature a combination of track and field, road running and racewalking events


title: Sport of athletics

text: The modern Summer Olympics was the first event at which a global athletics competition took place. All the four major sports within athletics have featured in the Olympic athletics programme since its inception in 1896, although cross country has since been dropped. The Olympic competition is the most prestigious athletics contest, and many athletics events are among the most watched events at the Summer Olympics. A total of 47 athletics events are held at the Olympics, 24 for men and 23 for women (as of London 2012). The events within the men's and women's programmes are either identical or have a similar equivalent, with the sole exception being that men contest the 50 km race walk.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Following the model of the Olympics, various other multi-sport events arose during the 20th century, which included athletics as a core sport within the programme from the outset. These included the Commonwealth Games, the Central American and Caribbean Games, Universiade, and many others.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The Summer Paralympics include athletes with a physical disability. Track and field, and road events have featured in the Paralympic athletics programme since its inception in 1960. The Paralympic competition is the most prestigious athletics contest where athletes with a physical disability compete. Athletics at the Paralympic Games also include wheelchair racing where athletes compete in lightweight racing chairs. Athletes with a visual impairment compete with a sighted guide. At the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, for the first time at an international athletics event, the guides received medals, such as the pilots in cycling, and the guides at the Paralympic Winter Games have done for a while.


title: Sport of athletics

text: The World Athletics Championships is the primary global athletics championships held by World Athletics. The biennial competition was first held in 1983 and now features an event programme which is identical to the Olympics. Thus, road running, racewalking and track and field are the sports which feature at the competition. Cross country running has its own discrete global championships – the World Athletics Cross Country Championships – which has been held annually since 1973. The World Athletics Indoor Championships is a biennial athletics championships which features solely indoor track and field events. The foremost separate road running event is the annual World Athletics Half Marathon Championships (formerly "IAAF World Half Marathon Championships"). While not having official world championship status, the biennial World Athletics Race Walking Team Championships fulfils a similar role for the sport of racewalking. Outdoor track and field is the only sport in athletics that does not have a its own distinct global championship which is separate from other types of athletics, although the IAAF Continental Cup (a quadrennial competition between continental teams) is composed entirely of outdoor track and field events.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Other world championships include the World Athletics U20 Championships and the 2017 defunct World Youth Championships in Athletics, which are for athletes under-19 and under-17, respectively. World Masters Athletics conducts the World Masters Athletics Championships for athletes in 5-year age divisions over the age of 35. The now defunct IAAF World Road Relay Championships served as the global event for ekiden marathon relay races.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Athletics, and its athletes in particular, has been artistically depicted since ancient times – one of the surviving instances include runners and high jumpers in the motifs of Ancient Egyptian tombs dating from 2250 BC. Athletics was much respected in Ancient Greece and the events within the ancient pentathlon provided inspiration for large statues such as the Discobolus and Discophoros, and for motifs on countless vase and pottery works. Aristotle discussed the significance of the pentathlon in his treatise "Rhetoric" and reflected on the athlete aesthetic of the period: "a body capable of enduring all efforts, either of the racecourse or of bodily strength...This is why the athletes in the pentathlon are most beautiful".


title: Sport of athletics

text: Films about athletics are overwhelmingly focused on running events: the 1962 film "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" (based on the book of the same name) explores cross country running as a means of escape. "Chariots of Fire", perhaps one of the most well-known athletics films, is a fictionalised account of Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams's chase for sprint gold medals at the 1924 Olympics. Track and field has been the subject of American films such as "Personal Best" (1981) and "Across the Tracks" (1991). Biopics are found within the genre, including "Prefontaine" (regarding Steve Prefontaine) and "Jim Thorpe – All-American" (1951) featuring Burt Lancaster as Thorpe. Documentaries are also common with examples such as 2007 film "Spirit of the Marathon", which follows runners' preparations for the 2005 Chicago Marathon.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Books on the subject are predominantly non-fiction, and tend towards the forms of training manuals and historical accounts of athletics. The story of the four-minute mile has been a particularly popular subject, spawning books such as "The Perfect Mile" and "".


title: Sport of athletics

text: Athletics journalism has spawned a number of dedicated periodicals including "Athletics Weekly" and "Race Walking Record", both of which were first published in England in the early 1940s, and "Track & Field News" which was first published in the United States in 1948. "Runner's World" has been in print since 1966 and the "Track & Field Magazine of Japan" ("Rikujyo Kyogi Magazine") is another long-running publication.


title: Sport of athletics

text: Athletics events have been selected as a main motif in numerous collectors' coins. One of the recent samples is the €10 Greek Running commemorative coin, minted in 2003 to commemorate the 2004 Summer Olympics. In the obverse of the coin, a modern athlete figure appears in the foreground, shown in the starting position, while in the background two ancient runners are carved in a manner that gives the appearance of a coin that is "worn" by time. This scene originally appeared on a black-figure vase of the 6th century BC.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Hill Street Blues is an American serial police procedural television series that aired on NBC in prime-time from January 15, 1981, to May 12, 1987, for 146 episodes. The show chronicles the lives of the staff of a single police station located on Hill Street in an unnamed large city. The "blues" are the police officers in their blue uniforms. The show received critical acclaim, and its production innovations influenced many subsequent dramatic television series produced in the United States and Canada. In its debut season, the series won eight Emmy Awards, a debut season record later surpassed only by "The West Wing". The show won a total of 26 Emmy Awards (out of 98 Emmy Award nominations) during its run, including four consecutive wins for Outstanding Drama Series.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: MTM Enterprises developed the series on behalf of NBC, appointing Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll as series writers. The writers were allowed freedom to create a series that brought together a number of fresh ideas in TV drama. Each episode featured intertwined storylines, some of which were resolved within the episode, with others developing throughout a season. The conflicts between the work lives and private lives of the characters were also significant.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: The series featured a strong focus on the workplace struggle between what is right and what works. Television author John Javna described it as "... a cop show for the "Big Chill" generation, discovering... ...that it takes all of their energy to keep even a few of their ideals alive while they struggle to succeed."


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Almost every episode began with a pre-credit sequence (or teaser) consisting of (mission) briefing and roll call to start the day shift. From season three on, a "Previously on..." montage of clips of up to six episodes preceded the roll call. Steven Johnson wrote of the importance to viewers of each episode's roll calls, saying that they "...performed a crucial function, introducing some of the primary threads and providing helpful contextual explanations for them.". Also, almost all episodes took place over the course of a single day, many concluding with Capt. Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti) and public defender Joyce Davenport (Veronica Hamel) in a domestic situation, often in bed, discussing how their respective days went. The series dealt with real-life issues and employed professional jargon and slang to a greater extent than had been seen before on television.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Each week after roll call, from Season 1 until Michael Conrad's death, partway through Season 4, Sgt. Phil Esterhaus would say, "Let's be careful out there." Sgt. Lucille Bates continued the tradition through the end of Season 4, as a tribute to Michael Conrad. From Season 5 until most of Season 6, Sgt. Stan Jablonski concluded his roll calls with, "Let's go out there and do it to them before they do it to us." (At one point, at the suggestion of Det. Mayo, Jablonski softened this to "Let's do our job before they do theirs.") From then on, the show changed directions and conclusions (and even roll calls) were dropped.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: "Hill Street Blues" employed what was, at that time, a unique style of camera usage for weeknight television productions, such as filming close in with action cuts rapidly between stories. Rather than studio (floor) cameras, handhelds were used to enhance this style.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Overheard, off-screen dialogue aurally-augmented the "documentary" feel with respect to the filmed action of a scene.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Although primarily filmed in Los Angeles (both on location and at CBS Studio Center in Studio City), the series is set in a generic unnamed inner-city location with a feel of a U.S. urban center in the Midwest or Northeast. Bochco reportedly intended this fictional city to be a hybrid of Chicago, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh. The show's opening and closing and cut-scenes were filmed in Chicago.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: The program's focus on failure and those at the bottom of the social scale is pronounced, in contrast to Bochco's later project "L.A. Law". Inspired by police procedural detective novels such as Ed McBain's 1956 "Cop Hater", the show has been described as "Barney Miller" out of doors. The focus on the bitter realities of 1980s urban living was revolutionary for its time.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: The theme music for "Hill Street Blues" was written by Mike Post, featuring Larry Carlton on guitar. It was released as a single and became a major US hit, reaching #10 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 in November 1981. It was also an adult contemporary hit in the US and Canada. The song has no lyrics.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Pilot: Brandon Tartikoff commissioned a series from MTM Productions, which assigned Bochco and Kozoll to the project. The pilot was produced in 1980, but was held back as a mid-season replacement so as not to get lost among the other programs debuting in the fall of 1980. Barbara Bosson, who was married to Bochco, had the idea to fashion the series into four- or five-episode story "arcs". Robert Butler directed the pilot and developed a look and style inspired by the 1977 documentary "The Police Tapes", in which filmmakers used handheld cameras to follow police officers in the South Bronx.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Butler went on to direct the first four episodes of the series, and Bosson had hoped he would stay on permanently. However, he felt he was not being amply recognized for his contributions to the show's look and style and left to pursue other projects. He would return to direct just one further episode, "The Second Oldest Profession" in season two.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Season 1: The pilot aired on Thursday, January 15, 1981, at 10:00 pm, which would be the show's time slot for nearly its entire run. The second episode aired two nights later; the next week followed a similar pattern (episode 3 on Thursday, episode 4 on Saturday). NBC had ordered 13 episodes and the season was supposed to end on May 25 with a minor cliffhanger (the resolution of Sgt. Esterhaus' wedding). Instead, growing critical acclaim prompted NBC to order an additional four episodes to air during the May sweeps. Bochco and Kozoll quickly fashioned this into a new story arc, which aired as two two-hour episodes to close the season. In the first season's original ending, Officer Joe Coffey (Ed Marinaro) is shot dead during a vehicle stop. However, later on the producers decided that Coffey should remain, so the scene was edited to show him being seriously wounded and taken to hospital. (The character would eventually be killed in the sixth season.) This echoes the shooting and resurrection of Renko and Hill at the beginning of the season, providing unintentional thematic bookends to the first season.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: In early episodes, the opening theme had several clearly audible edits; this was replaced by a longer, unedited version partway through the second season. The end credits for the pilot differed from the rest of the series in that the background still shot of the station house was completely different; it was also copyrighted 1980 instead of 1981. Ranking 87th out of 96 shows, it became the lowest-rated program ever renewed for a second season at the time. However, it was only renewed for ten episodes. A full order was picked up partway through the season.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Season 2: A writers strike pushed the start of the season forward to October 29, meaning that only 18 episodes were completed that year. Kozoll was now listed as a consultant, signifying his diminished role in the show. He later stated he was already feeling burnt out, and in fact was relying more on car chases and action to fill the scripts. A less muted version of the closing theme was played over the end credits.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Season 3: Kozoll left the show at the end of season two, replaced for the most part by Anthony Yerkovich (who later created "Miami Vice" after leaving "Hill Street Blues" at the end of this season) and David Milch. This was the show's most popular in terms of viewership, as it finished at #21. This was also the birth of "Must See TV", as the show was joined by "Cheers", "Taxi" and "Fame". The network promoted Thursdays as "the best night of television on television." Michael Conrad was increasingly absent from the show due to his ongoing, and ultimately unsuccessful, battle with cancer.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Season 4: Following his death on November 22, 1983, Michael Conrad's final appearance was broadcast halfway through the season in February 1984 in a memorable send-off episode, "". Det. Harry Garibaldi (Ken Olin) was introduced at the end of the season as a temporary replacement for Det. J.D. LaRue (Kiel Martin) who was supposedly suffering from mononucleosis. The show won its fourth and final Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series this season.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Season 5: The show changed drastically this season, entering a somewhat "soap opera-ish" period according to Bochco. New characters included Sgt. Stanislaus Jablonski (Robert Prosky) and Det. Patsy Mayo (Mimi Kuzyk). Det. Garibaldi was now a regular, while Fay Furillo became a full-time member of the squad room as a victim's advocate. Bochco was dismissed at season's end by then-MTM President Arthur Price. The firing was due to Bochco's cost overruns, coupled with the fact that the show had achieved the 100-episode milestone needed to successfully syndicate it.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Betty Thomas won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series this season. However, at the awards ceremony, Barry Bremen, aka "The Great Imposter", rushed the stage ahead of Thomas and claimed she was unable to attend. He then claimed the award and left the stage, confusing viewers and robbing Thomas of her moment in the sun, although she returned and spoke after the ad break. Presenter Peter Graves suggested that the imposter was "on his way to the cooler."


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Season 6: Major changes occurred as Det. Mayo, Det. Garibaldi, Lt. Ray Calletano (René Enríquez), Fay Furillo (Barbara Bosson) and Officer Leo Schnitz (Robert Hirschfeld) were all phased out at the start of the season, and Joe Coffey left near the end. The sole addition was Lt. Norman Buntz, played by Dennis Franz, who had played a different character, the corrupt "bad guy" Detective Sal Benedetto, in several season 3 episodes. Buntz and Benedetto were doppelgängers. Peter Jurasik played a new recurring character ("Sid the Snitch"), who often teamed with Buntz. In a 1991 interview on "Later with Bob Costas", Ken Olin claimed these characters were removed so the new show-runners would receive royalties. Bosson's departure, however, was voluntary. She left after a salary conflict with the new executive producer who, according to the actress, had also wanted her character, Fay, to go back to being a shrewish "thorn in her ex-husband's side".


title: Hill Street Blues

text: The season premiere opened with a roll call filled with officers never before seen on the show, briefly fooling viewers into thinking the entire cast had been replaced. It was then revealed that this was, in fact, the night shift. The action then cut to the day shift pursuing their after-work activities. Another unique episode from this season explained through flashbacks how Furillo and Davenport met and fell in love. This was the first season that Travanti and Hamel were not nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor/Actress in a Drama Series.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Season 7: Up until now, each episode of the series started with the morning roll call. Episodes from season 7 break away from tradition, showing characters at home or working. The roll call becomes a minor part of the beginning. Some episodes don't show roll call at all.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Officer Patrick Flaherty (Robert Clohessy) and Officer Tina Russo (Megan Gallagher) joined this season in an attempt to rekindle the Bates/Coffey relationship of years past. Stan Jablonski became a secondary character part way through this season, and when Travanti announced he would not return the next year, the producers decided to end the show in 1987. The program was also moved to Tuesday nights almost midway through the season after nearly six years to make way for "L.A. Law" on Thursdays. During this season the show featured the first lesbian recurring character on a major network; the character was a police officer called Kate McBride, played by Lindsay Crouse.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: This was the only season that Bruce Weitz (Det. Mick Belker) was not nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. Only Betty Thomas was nominated, making her the sole member of the cast to be nominated all seasons. This was the only season for which the show was not nominated for Outstanding Drama Series.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Years after the show had run, Daniel J. Travanti commented: "NBC tried their best to get rid of us, and heaven knows why... ...They did their best to destroy us and only ordered 13 episodes — that's how confident they weren't. And when did they put us on the air? Jan. 15, 17, 22 and 24. That's disgustingly destructive, stupid and idiotic. There aren't words strong enough... ...You put us on the air for four episodes that are thrown away in nine days? People barely saw us. What the f – – k was that? Everyone was up in arms and screaming at NBC, and NBC was screaming at them. If they had dumped "Hill Street Blues" they would've been called the idiots of all time. Their being in that weak position worked in our favor — but also threatened us all the time."


title: Hill Street Blues

text: The series later aired in reruns on TV Land, Bravo, AmericanLife TV, and NuvoTV. It has been running since September 2015 on Heroes & Icons network. Seasons one through seven can also be viewed on Hulu and Star. Season three can be viewed as streaming video on commercial sites and is also available in many countries from Channel 4 on YouTube.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Series producers deliberately left the exact city in which the series was set vague and a variety of methods are employed to imply different general locations. The call letters of local TV stations were usually obscured to avoid showing whether they began with "W" (the Federal Communications Commission designation for stations east of the Mississippi River) or "K" (signifying a station west of the Mississippi River). An episode in season three specifically mentions a radio station of WDPD, suggesting a city east of the Mississippi. However, in bar scenes throughout the series, characters are frequently shown drinking bottles of beer that strongly resemble Coors Beer. Coors did not obtain national distribution until 1986, and as a result of national distribution laws was not available east of the Mississippi until that year, implying the location is west of the Mississippi.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Though most of the series' scenes were filmed in Los Angeles (on location and at CBS Studio Center in Studio City), the series' introduction shows exterior shots entirely of Chicago and Cutaway shots from Chicago were used in production, with police cars painted to resemble the color schemes of Chicago Police Department patrol vehicles. Chicago's 7th District Police Station is frequently shown in cutaway shots and also during the closing credits. (This station was closed by the Chicago Police in 1998 and later repurposed as the headquarters for the University of Illinois at Chicago police.)


title: Hill Street Blues

text: The first episode of season three shows both a TV camera labeled "WREQ", and a shot of a Regional Transportation Authority suburban train arriving at the Chicago and North Western Terminal. However, in the penultimate episode of season 2, a street sign for Los Angeles Street – a major thoroughfare in downtown Los Angeles – is visible outside the fictitious Hotel Doane.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: There are several mentions through the series of characters going down to "the shore", which implies a lake or oceanfront setting. One indication of setting within the show was given by the Southern-accented character Officer Andy Renko when he stated in the season one episode "Politics as Usual": "Just drop that cowboy stuff. I was born in New Jersey, never been west of Chicago in my life." In Season 1 episode 12, Captain Frank Furillo informs Lieutenant Howard Hunter that the armored vehicle he was test driving has been found "in the East River", implying New York City. In Season 2, Episode 3, Sergeant Phil Esterhaus references guarding "the national guard armory in Newark", implying a location in or near New Jersey. Season 2 episode 18 shows an elevated train on which "CTA" can clearly be seen, suggesting Chicago. Throughout the series, characters occasionally mention well-known Chicago street names, such as Michigan Avenue, or other Chicago-related landmarks, such as the Blue Line subway and Mercy Hospital. Both of the characters played by Dennis Franz employ a heavy Chicago-type accent, also employed by Dan Aykroyd in The Blues Brothers, a motion picture set and filmed in Chicago.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: In a Season 5 episode, during an undercover detail, Detective Belker is knocked unconscious by a criminal and stashed in the luggage compartment of an interstate bus. A package labeled "Springfield ILL" (using the old three-letter Postal Service state abbreviation) is next to him. When he is finally freed from the compartment and told he is in Springfield, it is still daytime and after he rides a bus back to his origin, it is now early evening and the other detective at his detail is not alarmed when Belker explains his absence as "following a tail", implying the distance was not very great (Springfield is roughly 3 hours drive from Chicago via I-55).


title: Hill Street Blues

text: The show also contains numerous references to streets, schools and locations in Buffalo. In one episode, Lt. Hunter talks about needing to get rid of tickets for the "Sabres." Other Buffalo place names mentioned on the show include frequent show destination the Kubiak Lodge, Ganson St. and the canals, Gabriel's Gate bar, Decker St. and West Utica St.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Show writer Steven Bochco attended college at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh. The run-down, shabby, drug-ridden impression of Pittsburgh's Hill District that Bochco acquired was apparently part of the inspiration for the show. He intended the setting to resemble several cities, including Chicago, Pittsburgh and Buffalo.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Although the city is never named, the Illinois state flag is visible over the judge's left shoulder in the courtroom scenes in the Season 2 episode "Fruits of the Poisonous Tree," suggesting that the location is Chicago. Some outdoor scenes, particularly in the first two seasons, erroneously captures palm trees and other southern California flora not typically found in the northeastern United States.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: While most vehicles sport generic, stateless licence plates, 1980s-era California licence plates are easily spotted on many large trucks used on set.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: "Hill Street Blues" refers to the blue uniforms worn by many police officers in the United States and, by extension, the depressing nature of inner-city police work. The phrase is uttered only once in the series, apart from introductions such as "Previously on "Hill Street Blues"." It is spoken by Detective Emil Schneider (Dolph Sweet) in the first-season episode "Gator Bait." Schneider says it in a slightly mocking tone, in reference to officers Hill and Renko, who he feels are out of their league at a particular crime scene. The precinct bowling team is the "Hill Street Blue Ballers."


title: Hill Street Blues

text: The ranks and titles held by the characters are listed below when pertinent; Some characters held more than one rank over the course of the series, and in those cases, both ranks are shown.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Hill Street Blues featured many guest actors who were establishing careers in television and film. It also occasionally featured well-known character actors. Notable guest actors include:


title: Hill Street Blues

text: Initially, "Hill Street Blues" received rave reviews from critics but had dismal Nielsen ratings. Early schedule switching did not help; the show was broadcast once weekly on four different nights during its first season alone but gradually settled into a Thursday night time slot. The NBC Broadcast Standards Unit deemed it "too violent, too sexy, too grim." The producers described the show as "an hour drama with 13 continuing characters living through a Gordian knot of personal and professional relationships." In a May 1981 review, John J. O'Connor charted the show's growing popularity and called it "a comfortable balance between comedy and drama."


title: Hill Street Blues

text: The choice to include African-Americans as mainstays in the core ensemble cast and to feature several interracial and interethnic cop partnerships drew notice and praise, as did the overlapping plots and examinations of moral conundrums such as police corruption, racism, alcoholism and both interpersonal and institutional forgiveness.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: The show was very influential, with many others imitating its use of handheld cameras, ensemble casts, and multiple overlapping story lines lasting for several episodes, set in urban decay. Alan Sepinwall wrote in 2014 that it "is on the short list of the most influential TV shows ever made. Whether through shared actors, writers, directors or through stylistic and thematic complexity, its DNA can be found in nearly every great drama produced in the 30-plus years since it debuted." He compared "Hill Street Blues" to "Casablanca", which was so influential on other films that "if you come to see it for the first time after a lifetime of watching the copies, it could be at risk of playing like a bundle of clichés—even though it invented those clichés."


title: Hill Street Blues

text: In 1993, "TV Guide" named the series its All-Time Best Cop Show in an issue celebrating 40 years of television. In 1997, the episode "Grace Under Pressure" was ranked number 49 on "TV Guide"s 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. When the list was revised in 2009, "Freedom's Last Stand" was ranked number 57. In 1998, "Entertainment Weekly" named it in the top 20 television shows of all time, saying it "...took the cop show and turned it upside down". In 2002, "Hill Street Blues" ranked number 14 on "TV Guide"s 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time, and in 2013 "TV Guide" ranked it #1 in its list of the 60 Greatest Dramas of All Time and #23 of the 60 Best Series.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: 20th Century Fox released the first two seasons of "Hill Street Blues" on DVD in Region 1 in 2006. Both releases contain special features including gag reel, deleted scenes, commentary tracks and featurettes.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: On December 5, 2013, Shout! Factory announced its acquisition of the rights to the series in Region 1, releasing "Hill Street Blues: The Complete Series" on DVD on April 29, 2014. In late 2014, Shout! began releasing single-season sets.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: In Region 4, Shock Records released the first three seasons on DVD in Australia on December 4, 2013, and the remaining four seasons on April 30, 2014.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: "Beverly Hills Buntz" aired on NBC from November 5, 1987 to April 22, 1988. It was a half-hour comedy, a hybrid between light private eye fare and a sitcom. Main character Norman Buntz (Dennis Franz) quits Hill Street, moves to Beverly Hills with Sid "The Snitch" Thurston (Peter Jurasik) and becomes a private investigator. Thirteen episodes were filmed, though only nine were broadcast.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: "Hill Street Blues" has inspired parodies, storylines, characters, and cultural references in numerous media vehicles.


title: Hill Street Blues

text: In 1991, Krisalis Software released the computer game "Hill Street Blues", based on the TV show. The game runs on the Amiga, Atari ST and DOS platforms, and places the player in charge of Hill Street Station and its surrounding neighborhood with the aim of promptly dispatching officers to reported crimes, apprehending criminals, and making them testify at court. If certain areas have less serious crimes unresolved, such as bag snatching, they soon escalate to more serious ones, such as murder in broad daylight. The game received mixed reviews. The game can be downloaded from abandonware websites.


title: Sir

text: Sir is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as part of "Monsieur", with the equivalent "My Lord" in English. Traditionally, as governed by law and custom, Sir is used for men titled as knights, often as members of orders of chivalry, as well as later applied to baronets and other offices. As the female equivalent for knighthood is damehood, the female equivalent term is typically Dame. The wife of a knight or baronet tends to be addressed as Lady, although a few exceptions and interchanges of these uses exist.


title: Sir

text: Additionally, since the late modern period, Sir has been used as a respectful way to address a man of superior social status or military rank. Equivalent terms of address for women are Madam (shortened to Ma'am), in addition to social honorifics such as Mrs, Ms or Miss.


title: Sir

text: "Sir" derives from the honorific title "sire"; "sire" developed alongside the word "seigneur", also used to refer to a feudal lord. Both derived from the Vulgar Latin , "sire" comes from the nominative case declension and "seigneur", the accusative case declension .


title: Sir

text: The form 'Sir' is first documented in English in 1297, as the title of honour of a knight, and latterly a baronet, being a variant of "sire", which was already used in English since at least c.1205 (after 139 years of Norman rule) as a title placed before a name and denoting knighthood, and to address the (male) Sovereign since c.1225, with additional general senses of 'father, male parent' is from c.1250, and 'important elderly man' from 1362.


title: Sir

text: The prefix is used with the holder's given name or full name, but never with the surname alone. For example, whilst Sir Alexander and Sir Alexander Fleming would be correct, Sir Fleming would not.


title: Sir

text: Today, in the UK and in certain Commonwealth realms, a number of men are entitled to the prefix of 'Sir', including knights bachelor, knights of the orders of chivalry and baronets; although foreign nationals can be awarded honorary knighthoods. Honorary knights do not bear the prefix "Sir" nor do they receive an accolade; instead they use the associated post-nominal letters.


title: Sir

text: Church of England clergy who receive knighthoods do also not receive an accolade and therefore do not use the title 'Sir', but instead refer to their knighthood using post-nominal letters. For example, the Reverend John Polkinghorne, KBE would never be referred to as "Sir John Polkinghorne". Clergy of other denominations may use different conventions.


title: Sir

text: Only citizens of Commonwealth realms may receive substantive knighthoods and have the privilege of the accompanying style. In general, only knighthoods in dynastic orders – those orders in the personal gift of the Sovereign and Head of the Commonwealth (the Order of the Garter, the Order of the Thistle and the knighthoods in the Royal Victorian Order) – are recognised across the Commonwealth realms, along with their accompanying styles.


title: Sir

text: British knighthoods (in the Orders of the Bath, St. Michael and St. George, and in the Order of the British Empire, along with Knights Bachelor) were known as "imperial honours" during the existence of the British Empire. Those honours continued to be conferred as substantive, not honorary, awards by most Commonwealth realms into the 1990s. Since then, though former imperial honours are still awarded by certain Commonwealth realms, many of them have discontinued grants of British honours as they have developed their own honours systems, some of which include knighthoods. Today, British honours are only substantive for British nationals so recognised, including dual nationals, and for nationals of those realms which have retained them as part of their honours systems.


title: Sir

text: Dual national recipients of British knighthoods who hold British citizenship, such as academic and immunologist Sir John Bell, are entitled to the style of "Sir" as their knighthoods are substantive. This may not necessarily be the case for dual nationals who are not British citizens and who instead hold citizenship of another Commonwealth realm. In 1974, Lynden Pindling, the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, recommended dual Bahamian-American citizen Sidney Poitier for an honorary knighthood as an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), an imperial honour, as the Bahamas did not have its own honours system at the time. Although Poitier, as a Bahamian citizen by descent, was eligible for a substantive ('ordinary') award of the KBE, the Bahamian government preferred the knighthood to be honorary as Poitier was permanently residing in the United States. Knighthoods in the gift of the government of a Commonwealth realm only permit the bearer to use his style within that country or as its official representative, provided he is a national of that country; knighthoods granted by other realms may be considered foreign honours. For instance, Anthony Bailey was reprimanded by Buckingham Palace and the British government in 2016 for asserting that an honorary Antiguan knighthood (which was revoked in 2017) allowed him the style of 'Sir' in the UK.


title: Sir

text: The equivalent for a female who holds a knighthood or baronetcy in her own right is 'Dame', and follows the same usage customs as 'Sir'. Although this form was previously also used for the wives of knights and baronets, it is now customary to refer to them as 'Lady', followed by their surname; they are never addressed using their full names. For example, while Lady Fiennes is correct, Lady Virginia and Lady Virginia Fiennes are not. The widows of knights retain the style of wives of knights, however widows of baronets are either referred to as 'dowager', or use their forename before their courtesy style. For example, the widow of Sir Thomas Herbert Cochrane Troubridge, 4th Baronet, would either be known as "Dowager Lady Troubridge" or "Laura, Lady Troubridge".


title: Sir

text: Prior to becoming a republic in November 2021, Barbados awarded the title Knight or Dame of St. Andrew within the Order of Barbados. This practice has now been discontinued, though individuals who received a knighthood or damehood when the country was still a Commonwealth realm may continue to use the titles "Sir" and "Dame" within their lifetimes.


title: Sir

text: As part of the consolidation of the crown colony of India, the Order of the Star of India was established in 1861 to reward prominent British and Indian civil servants, military officers and prominent Indians associated with the Indian Empire. The Order of the Indian Empire was established in 1878 as a junior-level order to accompany the Order of the Star of India, and to recognise long service.


title: Sir

text: From 1861 to 1866, the Order of the Star of India had a single class of Knights (KSI), who were entitled to the style of 'Sir'. In 1866, the order was reclassified into three divisions: Knights Grand Commander (GCSI), Knights Commander (KCSI) and Companions (CSI); holders of the upper two degrees could use the title 'Sir'. From its creation in 1878 until 1887, the Order of the Indian Empire had a single class, Companion (CIE), which did not entitle the recipient to a style of knighthood.


title: Sir

text: In 1887, two higher divisions, Knight Grand Commander (GCIE) and Knight Commander (KCIE) were created, which entitled holders of those ranks to the style of 'Sir'. The last creations of knights of either order were made on 15 August 1947 upon Indian independence. All British honours and their accompanying styles were officially made obsolete in India when the Dominion of India became a modern republic in the Commonwealth of Nations in 1950, followed by Islamic Republic of Pakistan in 1956.


title: Sir

text: The Order of the Star of India became dormant in the Commonwealth realms from February 2009, and the Order of the Indian Empire after August 2010, when the last knights of the orders died.


title: Sir

text: In Nigeria, holders of religious honours like the Knighthood of St. Gregory make use of the word as a pre-nominal honorific in much the same way as it is used for secular purposes in Britain and the Philippines. Wives of such individuals also typically assume the title of Lady.


title: Sir

text: Knights and Dames of papal orders may elect the "Sir" or "Dame" prefix with post-nominal letters, subject to the laws and conventions of the country they are in. The Pope, the sovereign of the Catholic Church and Vatican City, delegates the awarding orders of knighthood to bishops and Grand Masters. Their precedence is as follows:


title: Sir

text: Lieutenants of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, are styled as "Your Excellency", such as H.E. Dame Trudy Comeau, DC*HS.


title: Sir

text: Catholic clergy who are invested as Knight Chaplains may use post-nominal letters, but must retain their clerical titles, like Rev. Robert Skeris, KCHS.


title: Sir

text: Knights and Dames of papal orders are not allowed to use the prefix "Sir" or "Dame" in the United Kingdom, although they may use post-nominal letters. Not allowing the prefix is because the use of foreign titles is not permitted by the British Crown without a Royal Licence, and as a matter of policy (currently based on a Royal Warrant of 27 April 1932), a Royal Licence to bear any foreign title is never granted. On the other hand, allowing the post-nominal letters would be explained by the highest and lowest dignities being universal, a king was recognized as king everywhere, and also a knight: "though a Knight receive his Dignity of a Foreign Prince, he is so to be stiled in all Legal Proceedings within England .. and Knights in all Foreign Countries have ever place and precedency according to their Seniority of being Knighted"


title: Sir

text: Established in 1783 and primarily awarded to men associated with the Kingdom of Ireland, Knights of the Order of St. Patrick were entitled to the style of 'Sir'. Regular creation of new knights of the order ended in 1921 upon the formation of the Irish Free State. With the death of the last knight in 1974, the Order became dormant.


title: Sir

text: As a privilege of the members of the Order of the Knights of Rizal, the prefix "Sir" is attached to their forenames while wives of Knights add the prefix "Lady" to their first names. These apply to both spoken and written forms of address. The Knights of Rizal is the sole order of knighthood in the Philippines and a constituted Order of Merit recognized by the Orders, decorations, and medals of the Philippines. The prefix is appended with the relevant post-nominal according to their rank at the end of their names: Knight of Rizal (KR), Knight Officer of Rizal (KOR), Knight Commander of Rizal (KCR), Knight Grand Officer of Rizal (KGOR) and Knight Grand Cross of Rizal (KGCR). Among the notable members of the Knights of Rizal include King Juan Carlos I of Spain who was conferred a Knight Grand Cross of Rizal on 11 February 1998.


title: Sir

text: In the case of a military officer who is also a knight, the appropriate form of address puts the professional military rank first, then the correct manner of address for the individual, then his name. Examples include:


title: Sir

text: This is also the case with academic ranks and titles, such as 'Professor'. For example, Patrick Bateson was both a professor and a knight bachelor; his correct title would be Professor Sir Patrick Bateson. However, the title of 'Doctor' (Dr.) is not used in combination with 'Sir', with the knighthood taking precedence. Knighted doctors are addressed as knights, though they may still use any post-nominal letters associated with their degrees.


title: Sir

text: Peers who have been knighted are neither styled as 'Sir' nor addressed as such in the formal sense of the style, as their titles of nobility take precedence. The same principle applies for the male heir apparent to a dukedom, marquessate or earldom, and for his eldest legitimate male heir if there are additional subsidiary peerages, as well as for the legitimate male issue of a duke or a marquess, who are styled 'Lord' followed by their first name. For instance, diplomat Lord Nicholas Gordon-Lennox, KCMG, KCVO, who was a younger son of the Duke of Richmond, continued to be styled as 'Lord Nicholas' following his knighthood in 1986, not 'Lord Sir Nicholas'. Other male heirs of an earl who lack courtesy titles, and the male heirs of a viscount or baron, do however use the style of 'Sir' if knighted, the style following that of 'The Hon'.


title: Sir

text: 'Sir', along with 'Miss' for women, is commonly used in the British school system to address teachers and other members of staff. Usage of these terms is considered a mark of respect, and can be dated back to the 16th century. The practice may have been an attempt to reinforce the authority of teachers from lower social classes among classes of largely upper class students. Jennifer Coates, emeritus professor of English language and linguistics at Roehampton University has criticised the use of the title for male teachers, saying that "'Sir' is a knight. There weren't women knights, but 'Miss' is ridiculous: it doesn't match 'Sir' at all. It's just one of the names you can call an unmarried woman", and that "It's a depressing example of how women are given low status and men, no matter how young or new in the job they are, are given high status". This view is not unchallenged, however. The chief executive of the Brook Learning Trust, Debbie Coslett, said "... they call me 'Miss', I'm fine with that. They're showing respect by giving me a title rather than 'hey' or 'oi, you' or whatever", and dismissed the male/female issue as "just the way the English language works".


title: Sir

text: In the Southern United States, the term 'sir' is often used to address someone in a position of authority or respect, and is commonly used in schools and universities by students to address their teachers and professors. Whereas the British and Commonwealth female equivalent is "Miss", students will often refer to female teachers as "Ma'am".


title: Sir

text: In the Northeast United States, particularly New England, there remains influence of both the British and French traditions as noted above; in general parlance, teachers, authority-figures, and so forth, are referred to by a title of respect such as 'Sir' for males and 'Miss, Ms, or Mrs' for females: 'Miss' for unmarried, younger females; 'Ms' for senior, elder, or ranking females that may or may not be married (see article Ms/Mrs/Miss); and 'Mrs' for married or widowed females. The predominant form of address remains "Sir/Ma'am", though in some sectors – such as service, hospitality, or politics – "Sir/Madam(e)" prevails, while in Northern Maine – Aroostock County and St John's Valley – most female teachers or public officials, regardless of marital status, are addressed "Miss" in English or "Madame" in French, though the two are not interchangeable. As noted in Coslett's statement above citing her personal acceptance of 'Miss', generally teachers or other public officials may specify to which form they prefer, while in other cases social and cultural norms dictate the appropriate form.


title: Sir

text: If not specifically using their rank or title, 'sir' is used in the United States Armed Forces to address a male commissioned officer. Lower-ranking and non-commissioned officers, such as corporals or sergeants, are addressed using their ranks, though in some of the branches (to be precise, in the Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard), "sir" can also be used to address a drill instructor although he is an NCO.


title: Sir

text: In the British Armed Forces, male commissioned officers and warrant officers are addressed as 'sir' by all ranks junior to them, male warrant officers are addressed as "Mr" by commissioned officers.


title: Sir

text: In the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), only commissioned officers are addressed as 'sir'; NCOs and constables are addressed by their rank. Male British police officers of the rank of Inspector or above are addressed as 'Sir' (women of inspecting rank are called Ma'am).


title: Sir

text: In the Hong Kong Police Force, male superiors are respectfully known by their surname followed by 'sir'. For example, Inspector Wong would be addressed or referred to as 'Wong-sir'. Male police officers are sometimes known colloquially as "Ah-sir" (阿Sir) to the wider public.


title: Sir

text: The term 'Sir' is also used frequently in the customer service industry, by employees to refer to customers, and sometimes vice versa. In the United States, it is much more common in certain areas (even when addressing male peers or men considerably younger). For example, a 1980 study showed that 80% of service interactions in the South were accompanied by 'Sir' or "Ma'am", in comparison to the Northern United States, where 'Sir' was only used 25% of the time.


title: Sir

text: 'Sir', in conjunction with 'Ma'am' or 'Madam', is also commonly used in the Philippines and South Asia, not only to address customers and vice versa, but also to address people of a higher social rank or age.


title: Sir

text: 'Sir' is used as gender-neutral term to address superior ranking officers in the series Star Trek and The Orville.


title: Neuroplasticity

text: Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity, or brain plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. It is when the brain is rewired to function in some way that differs from how it previously functioned. These changes range from individual neuron pathways making new connections, to systematic adjustments like cortical remapping. Examples of neuroplasticity include circuit and network changes that result from learning a new ability, environmental influences, practice, and psychological stress.


title: Neuroplasticity

text: Neuroplasticity was once thought by neuroscientists to manifest only during childhood, but research in the latter half of the 20th century showed that many aspects of the brain can be altered (or are "plastic") even through adulthood. However, the developing brain exhibits a higher degree of plasticity than the adult brain. Activity-dependent plasticity can have significant implications for healthy development, learning, memory, and recovery from brain damage.


title: Neuroplasticity

text: The term "plasticity" was first applied to behavior in 1890 by William James in "The Principles of Psychology". The first person to use the term "neural plasticity" appears to have been the Polish neuroscientist Jerzy Konorski.


title: Neuroplasticity

text: One of the first experiments providing evidence for the neuroplasticity phenomenon was conducted in 1793 by Italian anatomist Michele Vicenzo Malacarne who described experiments in which he paired animals, trained one of the pair extensively for years, and then dissected both. Malacarne discovered that the cerebellums of the trained animals were substantially larger than the cerebellum of the untrained animals. However, while these findings were significant, they were eventually forgotten. In 1890, the idea that the brain and its function are not fixed throughout adulthood was proposed by William James in "The Principles of Psychology", though the idea was largely neglected. Up until the 1970s, neuroscientists believed that the brain's structure and function was essentially fixed throughout adulthood.


title: Neuroplasticity

text: While the brain was commonly understood as a nonrenewable organ in the early 1900s, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, "father of neuroscience", used the term neuronal plasticity to describe nonpathological changes in the structure of adult brains. Based on his renowned neuron doctrine, Cajal first described the neuron as the fundamental unit of the nervous system that later served as an essential foundation to develop the concept of neural plasticity. He used the term plasticity in reference to his work on findings of degeneration and regeneration in the central nervous system after a person had reached adulthood, specifically. Many neuroscientists used the term plasticity only to explain the regenerative capacity of the peripheral nervous system, which Cajal's conceptual transfer of the term gave rise to a controversial discussion.


title: Neuroplasticity

text: In 1923, Karl Lashley conducted experiments on rhesus monkeys that demonstrated changes in neuronal pathways, which he concluded were evidence of plasticity. Despite this, and other research that suggested plasticity took place, neuroscientists did not widely accept the idea of neuroplasticity.


title: Neuroplasticity

text: In 1945, Justo Gonzalo concluded from his research on brain dynamics, that, contrary to the activity of the projection areas, the "central" cortical mass (more or less equidistant from the visual, tactile and auditive projection areas), would be a "maneuvering mass", rather unspecific or multisensory, with capacity to increase neural excitability and re-organize the activity by means of plasticity properties. He gives as a first example of adaptation, to see upright with reversing glasses in the Stratton experiment, and specially, several first-hand brain injuries cases in which he observed dynamic and adaptive properties in their disorders, in particular in the inverted perception disorder [e.g., see pp 260–62 Vol. I (1945), p 696 Vol. II (1950)]. He stated that a sensory signal in a projection area would be only an inverted and constricted outline that would be magnified due to the increase in recruited cerebral mass, and re-inverted due to some effect of brain plasticity, in more central areas, following a spiral growth.


title: Neuroplasticity

text: Marian Diamond of the University of California, Berkeley, produced the first scientific evidence of anatomical brain plasticity, publishing her research in 1964.


title: Neuroplasticity

text: Other significant evidence was produced in the 1960s and after, notably from scientists including Paul Bach-y-Rita, Michael Merzenich along with Jon Kaas, as well as several others.


title: Neuroplasticity

text: In the 1960s, Paul Bach-y-Rita invented a device that was tested on a small number of people, and involved a person sitting in a chair, embedded in which were nubs that were made to vibrate in ways that translated images received in a camera, allowing a form of vision via sensory substitution.


title: Neuroplasticity

text: Studies in people recovering from stroke also provided support for neuroplasticity, as regions of the brain that remained healthy could sometimes take over, at least in part, functions that had been destroyed; Shepherd Ivory Franz did work in this area.