title: Emergence

text: Life is a major source of complexity, and evolution is the major process behind the varying forms of life. In this view, evolution is the process describing the growth of complexity in the natural world and in speaking of the emergence of complex living beings and life-forms.


title: Emergence

text: Life is thought to have emerged in the early RNA world when RNA chains began to express the basic conditions necessary for natural selection to operate as conceived by Darwin: heritability, variation of type, and competition for limited resources. Fitness of an RNA replicator (its per capita rate of increase) would likely be a function of adaptive capacities that were intrinsic (in the sense that they were determined by the nucleotide sequence) and the availability of resources. The three primary adaptive capacities may have been (1) the capacity to replicate with moderate fidelity (giving rise to both heritability and variation of type); (2) the capacity to avoid decay; and (3) the capacity to acquire and process resources. These capacities would have been determined initially by the folded configurations of the RNA replicators (see "Ribozyme") that, in turn, would be encoded in their individual nucleotide sequences. Competitive success among different replicators would have depended on the relative values of these adaptive capacities.


title: Emergence

text: Synergistic effects of various kinds have played a major causal role in the evolutionary process generally and in the evolution of cooperation and complexity in particular... Natural selection is often portrayed as a "mechanism", or is personified as a causal agency... In reality, the differential "selection" of a trait, or an adaptation, is a consequence of the functional effects it produces in relation to the survival and reproductive success of a given organism in a given environment. It is these functional effects that are ultimately responsible for the trans-generational continuities and changes in nature.


title: Emergence

text: [In] evolutionary processes, causation is iterative; effects are also causes. And this is equally true of the synergistic effects produced by emergent systems. In other words, emergence itself... has been the underlying cause of the evolution of emergent phenomena in biological evolution; it is the synergies produced by organized systems that are the key


title: Emergence

text: Swarming is a well-known behaviour in many animal species from marching locusts to schooling fish to flocking birds. Emergent structures are a common strategy found in many animal groups: colonies of ants, mounds built by termites, swarms of bees, shoals/schools of fish, flocks of birds, and herds/packs of mammals.


title: Emergence

text: An example to consider in detail is an ant colony. The queen does not give direct orders and does not tell the ants what to do. Instead, each ant reacts to stimuli in the form of chemical scent from larvae, other ants, intruders, food and buildup of waste, and leaves behind a chemical trail, which, in turn, provides a stimulus to other ants. Here each ant is an autonomous unit that reacts depending only on its local environment and the genetically encoded rules for its variety of ant. Despite the lack of centralized decision making, ant colonies exhibit complex behavior and have even demonstrated the ability to solve geometric problems. For example, colonies routinely find the maximum distance from all colony entrances to dispose of dead bodies.


title: Emergence

text: It appears that environmental factors may play a role in influencing emergence. Research suggests induced emergence of the bee species Macrotera portalis. In this species, the bees emerge in a pattern consistent with rainfall. Specifically, the pattern of emergence is consistent with southwestern deserts' late summer rains and lack of activity in the spring.


title: Emergence

text: A broader example of emergent properties in biology is viewed in the biological organisation of life, ranging from the subatomic level to the entire biosphere. For example, individual atoms can be combined to form molecules such as polypeptide chains, which in turn fold and refold to form proteins, which in turn create even more complex structures. These proteins, assuming their functional status from their spatial conformation, interact together and with other molecules to achieve higher biological functions and eventually create an organism. Another example is how cascade phenotype reactions, as detailed in chaos theory, arise from individual genes mutating respective positioning. At the highest level, all the biological communities in the world form the biosphere, where its human participants form societies, and the complex interactions of meta-social systems.


title: Emergence

text: Among the considered phenomena in the evolutionary account of life, as a continuous history, marked by stages at which fundamentally new forms have appeared – the origin of sapiens intelligence. The emergence of mind and its evolution is researched and considered as a separate phenomenon in a special system knowledge called noogenesis.


title: Emergence

text: Groups of human beings, left free to each regulate themselves, tend to produce spontaneous order, rather than the meaningless chaos often feared. This has been observed in society at least since Chuang Tzu in ancient China. Human beings are the basic elements of social systems, which perpetually interact and create, maintain, or untangle mutual social bonds. Social bonds in social systems are perpetually changing in the sense of the ongoing reconfiguration of their structure. A classic traffic roundabout is also a good example, with cars moving in and out with such effective organization that some modern cities have begun replacing stoplights at problem intersections with roundabouts, and getting better results. Open-source software and Wiki projects form an even more compelling illustration.


title: Emergence

text: Emergent processes or behaviors can be seen in many other places, such as cities, cabal and market-dominant minority phenomena in economics, organizational phenomena in computer simulations and cellular automata. Whenever there is a multitude of individuals interacting, an order emerges from disorder; a pattern, a decision, a structure, or a change in direction occurs.


title: Emergence

text: The stock market (or any market for that matter) is an example of emergence on a grand scale. As a whole it precisely regulates the relative security prices of companies across the world, yet it has no leader; when no central planning is in place, there is no one entity which controls the workings of the entire market. Agents, or investors, have knowledge of only a limited number of companies within their portfolio, and must follow the regulatory rules of the market and analyse the transactions individually or in large groupings. Trends and patterns which emerge are studied intensively by technical analysts.


title: Emergence

text: The World Wide Web is a popular example of a decentralized system exhibiting emergent properties. There is no central organization rationing the number of links, yet the number of links pointing to each page follows a power law in which a few pages are linked to many times and most pages are seldom linked to. A related property of the network of links in the World Wide Web is that almost any pair of pages can be connected to each other through a relatively short chain of links. Although relatively well known now, this property was initially unexpected in an unregulated network. It is shared with many other types of networks called small-world networks.


title: Emergence

text: Internet traffic can also exhibit some seemingly emergent properties. In the congestion control mechanism, TCP flows can become globally synchronized at bottlenecks, simultaneously increasing and then decreasing throughput in coordination. Congestion, widely regarded as a nuisance, is possibly an emergent property of the spreading of bottlenecks across a network in high traffic flows which can be considered as a phase transition.


title: Emergence

text: Another important example of emergence in web-based systems is social bookmarking (also called collaborative tagging). In social bookmarking systems, users assign tags to resources shared with other users, which gives rise to a type of information organisation that emerges from this crowdsourcing process. Recent research which analyzes empirically the complex dynamics of such systems has shown that consensus on stable distributions and a simple form of shared vocabularies does indeed emerge, even in the absence of a central controlled vocabulary. Some believe that this could be because users who contribute tags all use the same language, and they share similar semantic structures underlying the choice of words. The convergence in social tags may therefore be interpreted as the emergence of structures as people who have similar semantic interpretation collaboratively index online information, a process called semantic imitation.


title: Emergence

text: Emergent structures appear at many different levels of organization or as spontaneous order. Emergent self-organization appears frequently in cities where no planning or zoning entity predetermines the layout of the city. The interdisciplinary study of emergent behaviors is not generally considered a homogeneous field, but divided across its application or problem domains.


title: Emergence

text: Architects may not design all the pathways of a complex of buildings. Instead they might let usage patterns emerge and then place pavement where pathways have become worn, such as a desire path.


title: Emergence

text: The on-course action and vehicle progression of the 2007 Urban Challenge could possibly be regarded as an example of cybernetic emergence. Patterns of road use, indeterministic obstacle clearance times, etc. will work together to form a complex emergent pattern that can not be deterministically planned in advance.


title: Emergence

text: The architectural school of Christopher Alexander takes a deeper approach to emergence, attempting to rewrite the process of urban growth itself in order to affect form, establishing a new methodology of planning and design tied to traditional practices, an Emergent Urbanism. Urban emergence has also been linked to theories of urban complexity and urban evolution.


title: Emergence

text: Building ecology is a conceptual framework for understanding architecture and the built environment as the interface between the dynamically interdependent elements of buildings, their occupants, and the larger environment. Rather than viewing buildings as inanimate or static objects, building ecologist Hal Levin views them as interfaces or intersecting domains of living and non-living systems. The microbial ecology of the indoor environment is strongly dependent on the building materials, occupants, contents, environmental context and the indoor and outdoor climate. The strong relationship between atmospheric chemistry and indoor air quality and the chemical reactions occurring indoors. The chemicals may be nutrients, neutral or biocides for the microbial organisms. The microbes produce chemicals that affect the building materials and occupant health and well-being. Humans manipulate the ventilation, temperature and humidity to achieve comfort with the concomitant effects on the microbes that populate and evolve.


title: Emergence

text: Eric Bonabeau's attempt to define emergent phenomena is through traffic: "traffic jams are actually very complicated and mysterious. On an individual level, each driver is trying to get somewhere and is following (or breaking) certain rules, some legal (the speed limit) and others societal or personal (slow down to let another driver change into your lane). But a traffic jam is a separate and distinct entity that emerges from those individual behaviors. Gridlock on a highway, for example, can travel backward for no apparent reason, even as the cars are moving forward." He has also likened emergent phenomena to the analysis of market trends and employee behavior.


title: Emergence

text: Some artificially intelligent (AI) computer applications simulate emergent behavior. One example is Boids, which mimics the swarming behavior of birds.


title: Emergence

text: It has been argued that the structure and regularity of language grammar, or at least language change, is an emergent phenomenon. While each speaker merely tries to reach their own communicative goals, they use language in a particular way. If enough speakers behave in that way, language is changed. In a wider sense, the norms of a language, i.e. the linguistic conventions of its speech society, can be seen as a system emerging from long-time participation in communicative problem-solving in various social circumstances.


title: Emergence

text: Within the field of group facilitation and organization development, there have been a number of new group processes that are designed to maximize emergence and self-organization, by offering a minimal set of effective initial conditions. Examples of these processes include SEED-SCALE, appreciative inquiry, Future Search, the world cafe or knowledge cafe, Open Space Technology, and others (Holman, 2010).


title: Sarah Knauss

text: Sarah DeRemer Knauss (; September 24, 1880 – December 30, 1999) was an American supercentenarian. She is the oldest person ever from the United States and, on April 16, 1998, became the world's oldest living person. She remains as the third-oldest well-documented person ever, living to the age of 119 years and 97 days. Her birthdate has been independently verified through numerous census and other records.


title: Sarah Knauss

text: Sarah DeRemer Clark was born on September 24, 1880, to Walter Clark and his wife Amelia, the daughter of German immigrants, in Hollywood, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, a small coal-mining community. Her family later moved to South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She was the third of her parent's seven children, but three of her brothers died in infancy and childhood.


title: Sarah Knauss

text: She married Abraham Lincoln Knauss (1878–1965) in 1901; Abraham was originally a tanner. He later became a prominent Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Republican leader and the recorder of deeds for this county, serving from 1937 until retiring in 1951. Abraham died in 1965, at the age of 86. Their only child, Kathryn, was born in 1903 and died in 2005 at the age of 101. Through most of her life, Knauss acted as a housewife. She enjoyed knitting, crocheting, and sewing.


title: Sarah Knauss

text: Before Knauss' death, there were six living generations in her family. Life magazine, in February 1999, took a photo of Knauss along with a member from each of these generations, up to her newborn great-great-great grandchild.


title: Sarah Knauss

text: It was not until Knauss reached 111 years old that she took up residency at a nursing home in Allentown, Pennsylvania due to her frailness and failing eyesight. In 1995, Knauss remarked that she enjoyed her life because she still had her health and could "do things." At 117 years old, Knauss underwent a blood transfusion due to having low haemoglobin, and she continued to take heart medication for the rest of her life. Those around her believed her to be of sound mind up until her death, and within the last year of her life, she still had conversations with her daughter Kathryn. Eventually, she did struggle to recognize her daughter; however, this may have been due to her failing hearing and eyesight rather than a failing mind.


title: Sarah Knauss

text: When asked how she had survived to her great age, Knauss responded that one should “keep yourself busy, work hard, and not worry about how old you are.” She was a non-smoker and was never considered obese at any point in her life. She did have a fondness for sweets, however, and her great-granddaughter claimed that Knauss "hated vegetables." A member of the staff at Knauss' nursing home claimed that she was the friendliest of all residents at the home, and her relatives failed to remember a point in her life that she scolded anyone or even appeared stressed.


title: Sarah Knauss

text: Knauss died of natural causes on December 30, 1999 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. An autopsy was performed on her body, but the results were never made public; however, she was not known to have been suffering from any illness at the time of her death. After her death, Eva Morris of the United Kingdom (1885–2000) became the world's oldest living person.


title: Sarah Knauss

text: At age 116, Knauss was recognized as being the new United States national longevity record holder, then thought to have been Carrie C. White (reportedly 1874–1991). On April 16, 1998, she became the world's oldest person after 117-year-old French Canadian Marie-Louise Meilleur died. Knauss remains the oldest documented person from the United States, and is the third-oldest fully documented person ever, after French supercentenarian Jeanne Calment and Japanese supercentenarian Kane Tanaka. She was recognized as the world's oldest living person by Guinness World Records from April 16, 1998 until her death the next year at the age of 119 years and 97 days.


title: Sarah Knauss

text: Knauss' records have been heavily reviewed to ensure the claims surrounding her lifespan are legitimate. Many records have been found that verify her claim, including the record of the 1890 census, taken when Knauss was still in childhood.


title: Firebase

text: Firebase is a set of hosting services for any type of application (Android, iOS, Javascript, Node.js, Java, Unity, PHP, C++ ...). It offers NoSQL and real-time hosting of databases, content, social authentication (Google, Facebook, Twitter and Github), and notifications, or services, such as a real-time communication server.


title: Firebase

text: Firebase evolved from Envolve, a prior startup founded by James Tamplin and Andrew Lee in 2011. Envolve provided developers an API that enables the integration of online chat functionality into their websites. After releasing the chat service, Tamplin and Lee found that it was being used to pass application data that were not chat messages. Developers were using Envolve to sync application data such as game state in real time across their users. Tamplin and Lee decided to separate the chat system and the real-time architecture that powered it. They founded Firebase as a separate company in 2011 and it launched to the public in April 2012.


title: Firebase

text: Firebase's first product was the Firebase Realtime Database, an API that synchronizes application data across iOS, Android, and Web devices, and stores it on Firebase's cloud. The product assists software developers in building real-time, collaborative applications.


title: Firebase

text: In May 2012, a month after the beta launch, Firebase raised $1.1 million in seed funding from venture capitalists Flybridge Capital Partners, Greylock Partners, Founder Collective, and New Enterprise Associates. In June 2013, the company further raised $5.6 million in Series A funding from Union Square Ventures and Flybridge Capital Partners.


title: Firebase

text: In 2014, Firebase launched two products: Firebase Hosting and Firebase Authentication. This positioned the company as a mobile backend as a service.


title: Firebase

text: In October 2014, Firebase was acquired by Google. A year later, in October 2015, Google acquired Divshot, an HTML5 web-hosting platform, to merge it with the Firebase team.


title: Firebase

text: In May 2016, at Google I/O, the company's annual developer conference, Firebase introduced Firebase Analytics and announced that it was expanding its services to become a unified backend-as-a-service (BaaS) platform for mobile developers. Firebase now integrates with various other Google services, including Google Cloud Platform, AdMob, and Google Ads to offer broader products and scale for developers. Google Cloud Messaging, the Google service to send push notifications to Android devices, was superseded by a Firebase product, Firebase Cloud Messaging, which added the functionality to deliver push notifications to both iOS and web devices.


title: Firebase

text: In July 2016, Google announced that it was acquiring the mobile developer platform LaunchKit, which specialized in app developer marketing, and would be folding it into the Firebase Growth Tools team. In January 2017, Google acquired Fabric and Crashlytics from Twitter to add those services to Firebase.


title: Firebase

text: In October 2017, Firebase launched Cloud Firestore, a real-time document database as the successor product to the original Firebase Realtime Database.


title: Firebase

text: Firebase has been claimed to be used by Google to track users without their knowledge. On July 14, 2020, a lawsuit was filed accusing Google of violating federal wire tap law and California privacy law. It stated that through Firebase, Google collected and stored user data, logging what the user was looking at in many types of apps, despite the user following Google's own instructions to turn off the web and app activity collected by the company. The lawsuit was dismissed in January 2022, with Chief US District Judge Richard Seeborg ruling that a promise to avoid collecting user data did not amount to a contract.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Kim Antonie Lode Clijsters (; born 8 June 1983) is a Belgian former professional tennis player. Clijsters reached the world No. 1 ranking in both singles and doubles, having held both rankings simultaneously in 2003. She won six major titles, four in singles and two in doubles.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters competed professionally from 1997 in an era in which her primary rivals were compatriot Justine Henin and Serena Williams. Coming from a country with limited success in men's or women's tennis, Clijsters became the first Belgian player to attain the No. 1 ranking. Together with Henin, she established Belgium as a leading force in women's tennis as the two of them led their country to their first Fed Cup crown in 2001 and were the top two players in the world in late 2003. Individually, Clijsters won 41 singles titles and 11 doubles titles on the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Tour. She was a three-time winner of the WTA Tour Championships. Between singles and doubles, she has been a champion at all four Grand Slam tournaments, winning the US Open and the Australian Open in singles and Wimbledon and the French Open in doubles partnering Ai Sugiyama. Her success at the majors was highlighted by winning three consecutive appearances at the US Open.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Plagued by injuries and having lost some of her desire to compete, Clijsters retired from tennis in 2007 at the age of 23 in order to get married and have a daughter. She returned to the sport two years later and won her second US Open title as an unranked player in just her third tournament back. She defended her title the following year and then won the Australian Open in 2011 en route to becoming the first mother to be the world No. 1. Along with Margaret Court, she also holds the record for most Grand Slam singles titles won as a mother, with three such titles, and was the first to win one since Evonne Goolagong Cawley in 1980. Clijsters retired again following the 2012 US Open. Seven years later, she began a second comeback in early 2020, ending in 2022.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters was born to athletic parents with backgrounds in professional football and gymnastics. She was renowned for her athleticism, which was highlighted by her ability to perform splits on court in the middle of points. She built the offensive side of her game around controlled aggression while also using her exceptional movement to become an elite defensive player. Clijsters was very popular and well-liked as a player, having won the Karen Krantzcke Sportsmanship Award eight times. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2017.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Kim Clijsters was born on 8 June 1983 in Bilzen, a small town in northeastern Belgium. She grew up with her younger sister Elke in the nearby town of Bree in the Flemish province of Limburg. Kim is the daughter of Lei Clijsters and Els Vandecaetsbeek, both of whom were accomplished athletes. Her mother Els was a Belgian national artistic gymnastics champion. Her father Lei was a professional football defender who played for a variety of clubs in the top-flight Belgian First Division, including KV Mechelen with whom he won the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1988. He was also a member of the Belgium national football team, tallying 40 caps and competing in two World Cups. Clijsters credits her parents for giving her a footballer's legs and a gymnast's flexibility. She also attributes her success to the freedom they gave her when she was a young player, saying, "Without the support I've had from my family, I wouldn't be where I am. They've let me make my own decisions."


title: Kim Clijsters

text: When Clijsters was five years old, her father built a clay tennis court at their home as a gift to his daughter to celebrate him winning the 1988 "Gouden Schoen", an award given to the player of the year in the Belgian First Division. He had previously announced the idea of the gift as a celebration of the award during a television interview. Clijsters began playing tennis earlier that year after attending a lesson with her cousins and her uncle while her parents were away. From then on, she became fixated on the sport. She began playing with her sister at the Tennisdel club in Genk by the time she was seven. Her first coach Bart Van Kerckhoven recalled that she was extremely energetic and never wanted to leave the tennis court, adding that, "If the group before her did some sprints to finish off the session, Kim would join in. Then she put her heart and soul into her own training session, after which she joined the next group for their warm-up exercises."


title: Kim Clijsters

text: At the age of nine, Clijsters began working with Benny Vanhoudt in the more distant town of Diest. Along with her sister, she trained for fifteen hours a week, including five hours of individual instruction, which Vanhoudt said was "an insane amount [of total hours]." She continued to train in Diest until she was twelve. During this time, she also first worked with Carl Maes and Wim Fissette, both of whom would coach Clijsters later in her professional career. When she was thirteen, Maes took over as her primary coach at the Flemish Tennis Association in Antwerp.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters had success at both the national and international levels at a very young age. In 1993, she won the 12-and-under division of the Belgian Junior Championships (the Coupe de Borman) in doubles with her future longtime rival Justine Henin. At the time, Clijsters was ten years old and Henin was eleven. A year later, she won the 12-and-under singles event at the same tournament. Clijsters continued to play alongside Henin, winning the doubles event at the 14-and-under European Junior Championships as well as the 14-and-under European Junior Team Championships for Belgium, both in 1996 and the latter of which also with Leslie Butkiewicz. Her first big international junior title came at Les Petits As, a high-level 14-and-under tournament. She defeated future top 25 players Iveta Benešová and Elena Bovina in the semifinals and final respectively.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters played two full seasons on the ITF Junior Circuit, the premier junior tour that is run by the International Tennis Federation (ITF). At the very end of 1997, she partnered with Zsófia Gubacsi to win her first ITF title in the doubles event at the Grade A Orange Bowl, one of the highest level junior tournaments. In 1998, Clijsters had her best year on the junior tour, finishing the season at career-high rankings of world No. 11 in singles and world No. 4 in doubles. She won two junior Grand Slam doubles titles, the French Open with Jelena Dokic and the US Open with Eva Dyrberg. She defeated her French Open partner Dokic in the US Open doubles final. In singles, she made it to the Wimbledon final, but finished runner-up to Katarina Srebotnik.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: As a fourteen year old, Clijsters could only enter professional tournaments through qualifying since the WTA Tour's policy did not allow players her age to receive main draw wild cards. In August 1997, Clijsters qualified for her first main draw at her second career tournament on the lower-level ITF Women's Circuit, which was held in the Belgian coastal town of Koksijde. She won seven matches in total, including five in qualifying, to reach the quarterfinals. Clijsters did not enter another professional tournament until after her runner-up finish at the Wimbledon girls' singles event the following summer. Playing in Brussels in July 1998, she won both the singles and doubles events for her first career professional titles. Clijsters continued to excel at the ITF level, winning four more titles within the next year, two in both singles and doubles.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters began 1999 with a WTA singles ranking of No. 420 in the world. Around this time, Belgian women's tennis was beginning to flourish. Both Dominique Van Roost and Sabine Appelmans had been ranked in the top 20 within the previous two years, complementing the rise of Clijsters and Henin on the junior tour. This success helped lead to the revival of the only WTA tournament in Belgium, which was relaunched as the Flanders Women's Open in Antwerp after not being held in six years. Clijsters made her WTA debut at the tournament in May, entering the main draw as a lucky loser after losing in the final round of qualifying. She won her first career tour-level match against Miho Saeki and advanced to the quarterfinals, where she was defeated by top seed Sarah Pitkowski despite holding match points.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: One week after Clijsters turned sixteen, she entered Wimbledon as the youngest player in the top 200. After barely having a high enough ranking to get into the qualifying draw, she ultimately made it to the round of sixteen in her Grand Slam tournament debut. She defeated world No. 10 Amanda Coetzer in the third round and did not drop a set until losing to Steffi Graf one round later, her only career match against her childhood idol. Clijsters also had a good showing at the US Open, losing to the eventual champion Serena Williams in the third round after squandering a chance to serve for the match. Clijsters next played at the Luxembourg Open held in the town of Kockelscheuer just outside the capital. She won the title with relative ease in just her fourth career WTA event, taking affinity for the friendly atmosphere of the smaller tournament and the faster carpet courts. Most notably, she faced off against Van Roost in the final and only conceded four games to the top-ranked Belgian. Clijsters also made the singles final in Bratislava at her next tournament, finishing runner-up to No. 11 Amélie Mauresmo. Nonetheless, she was able to win the doubles event with compatriot Laurence Courtois as her partner. At the end of the season, Clijsters was named WTA Newcomer of the Year, having risen to No. 47 in the world.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters was unable to repeat her success at the Grand Slam tournaments in 2000, not advancing past the second round at any of the singles events. However, she continued her steady climb in the rankings up to No. 18 on the strength of two more titles, one at the Tasmanian International in her first tournament of the year and another at the Sparkassen Cup in Germany near the end of the season. The latter victory was Clijsters's first at a Tier II event (the second highest level tournament) and followed up a loss in another Tier II final to world No. 1 Martina Hingis earlier that month. In the middle of the year, Clijsters also finished runner-up at the Wimbledon mixed doubles event alongside her boyfriend Lleyton Hewitt.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: At the Indian Wells Open in early 2001, Clijsters finally defeated Hingis in her fourth meeting against the world No. 1 player to reach her first Tier I final. After winning the first set of the final, she ended up losing in three sets to Serena Williams. The match was overshadowed by the controversy of the crowd booing Williams for her sister Venus's late withdrawal from their semifinal, leading to both sisters boycotting the tournament for 14 years. A few months later at the French Open, Clijsters became the first Belgian to contest a Grand Slam singles final. She had defeated No. 16 Henin in the semifinals in their closest and highest profile match to date, coming back from a set and a break down, and also having saved three break points that would have put her behind 5–2 in the second set. The final against Australian Open champion and world No. 4 Jennifer Capriati was an even tighter match. Playing a day after her 18th birthday, Clijsters won the first set but lost the second. After a French Open final record 22 games and 2 hours 21 minutes in total, she was defeated by Capriati 12–10 in the deciding set. The match was ranked as the greatest French Open women's final in Open Era history by "Tennis.com". Clijsters would go on to make it to at least the quarterfinals at each of the next three majors. She also played in her first Grand Slam doubles final at Wimbledon later that year, with Ai Sugiyama as her partner. She won three singles titles in 2001, including her second titles at both the Luxembourg Open and the Sparkassen Cup, to help her finish the season at No. 5 in the world. With four doubles finals in total, she was also ranked No. 15 in doubles at the end of the year.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters maintained her top ten ranking throughout 2002 despite struggling with an ongoing shoulder injury in the first half of the year. Her best result at a Grand Slam event came at the Australian Open, where she lost another three-set match to Capriati in the semifinals in their first meeting since the French Open final. Nonetheless, she continued to rise in the rankings to No. 3 by March, her best ranking for the season. Although Clijsters did not reach another Grand Slam quarterfinal the rest of the year, she won three more titles leading up to the year-end WTA Tour Championships in Los Angeles. She received her third invite to the event, which only the top 16 players in the world are guaranteed entry. Clijsters made it to the final with ease after dropping only six games in the first three rounds, including a victory over Henin in the quarterfinals and a retirement due to injury from Venus Williams in the semifinals. Her opponent in the final was Serena Williams, who entered the match with a 56–4 record on the season and having won the last three majors of the year. Although Serena had won their first five encounters and was considered a clear favourite, Clijsters upset Serena in straight sets to win the championship. After the tournament, she said, "This is the best victory of my career."


title: Kim Clijsters

text: The 2003 season was Clijsters's ""annus mirabilis"". She competed in 21 singles events, reaching the semifinals in all but one of them, advancing to 15 finals, and winning nine titles. With a record of 90–12, she was the first player to accrue 90 wins since Martina Navratilova in 1982 and the first to play more than 100 matches since Chris Evert in 1974. Clijsters also played an extensive doubles schedule, compiling a total of 170 matches between both disciplines. She partnered with Sugiyama the entire year, winning seven titles in thirteen events. This season also marked the peak of the rivalry between Clijsters and Henin, as the pair faced each other eight matches, the last six of which were in finals. In doubles, five of her ten finals were against the team of Virginia Ruano Pascual and Paola Suárez. With her success, Clijsters became the first Belgian world No. 1 in singles or doubles, achieving both feats in August.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters began her singles season by winning the Sydney International over Lindsay Davenport, her third consecutive title. She extended her tour win streak to 17 matches—all without dropping a set—before she was defeated by Serena Williams in an Australian Open semifinal where she had a 5–1 lead in the third set as well as two match points on serve. She said afterwards, "The only thing I regret a little bit, is those two double faults [to start the game at 5–4]. I could feel that she was really trying to step it up, and that she was hitting the balls a lot more aggressive and had almost no unforced errors at the end." Williams won the title to complete her "Serena Slam". After losing in the final at her next two tournaments, Clijsters recovered at the Indian Wells Open to win her first Tier I title. Like in Sydney, she defeated Davenport in the final. She won another Tier I title on clay in May at the Italian Open over No. 4 Amélie Mauresmo, who had a chance to serve for the match in the second set.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: At the French Open, both Clijsters and Henin reached the final to guarantee that the winner would become the first Belgian Grand Slam singles champion. Henin had won their only meeting in a final in 2003 thus far at the German Open, which was also their only other encounter on clay. While both players had match points in Germany, Henin won in Paris in a lopsided affair where she only lost four games. After losing in the semifinals at Wimbledon to Venus Williams, Clijsters rebounded to win two Tier II titles at the Stanford Classic and the Los Angeles Open. With the second of those titles, she attained the world No. 1 ranking, in part because the top-ranked Serena Williams had not played on tour since Wimbledon due to a knee injury. She was the first woman to become No. 1 without winning a Grand Slam singles title. Clijsters regained the top ranking in doubles the following week to become only the fifth player in WTA history to be No. 1 in singles and doubles simultaneously. Despite playing the US Open as the top seed, Clijsters again lost to Henin in the final in straight sets. Clijsters had been regarded as the favourite entering the match because of her performance in the earlier rounds and Henin's lengthy semifinal match the previous day. The title helped Henin rise to No. 2 in the world.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: The last stage of the season featured Clijsters battling Henin for the top ranking. Clijsters defeated Henin in the final of the Tennis Grand Prix in Filderstadt to defend her title and her world No. 1 ranking. This was the eighth time in WTA history where the top two players in the world faced off for the top ranking. Although Clijsters lost the top ranking to Henin the following week, she regained it a week later by winning the Luxembourg Open for the third year in a row. She finished her season by defending her title at the WTA Tour Championships in the first year where the tournament switched to a round robin format in the initial stage. Clijsters swept her group of Mauresmo, Elena Dementieva, and Chanda Rubin. She won her semifinal against Capriati before defeating Mauresmo again for the title. With the million dollar prize, Clijsters finished the season as the tour prize money leader and became the first player to earn four million dollars in a season on the WTA Tour. Nonetheless, Henin took the year-end No. 1 ranking by improving on her performance at the event from the previous season.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: In the early part of the season, Clijsters and Sugiyama won three titles on hard courts. However, they did not win any big titles through May, losing in the Australian Open quarterfinals to the Williams sisters and finishing runners-up at their first two Tier I finals. They entered the French Open and Wimbledon and made it to the finals at both events. Clijsters and Sugiyama defeated the top seeds Ruano Pascual and Suarez in both finals for Clijsters's first two Grand Slam tournament titles. The French Open final was a tighter match, ending 9–7 in the third set. Despite these titles, the duo remained behind Ruano Pascual and Suarez in the rankings until August when Clijsters became world No. 1. She held the top ranking for four non-consecutive weeks. The pair were the top seeds at the US Open, but withdrew in the second round due to rain delaying Sugiyama's fourth round singles match for three days. They ended the season by finishing runners-up to Ruano Pascual and Suarez at the WTA Tour Championships. Despite Clijsters's success in 2003, she seldom played doubles during the rest of her career.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Although Clijsters maintained her form into 2004, her season was ultimately marred by injuries. It was feared that she would need surgery and miss the Australian Open after she injured her left ankle in the Hopman Cup. Nonetheless, she competed at the event and reached the championship match without dropping a set, despite aggravating her ankle injury in the quarterfinals. Her opponent in the final was Henin and unlike their previous two Grand Slam finals, Clijsters was able to win a set. With Henin up a break at 4–3 in the third set, the chair umpire incorrectly overruled a line call on break point that would have leveled the match. Henin ended up winning the game and the match. Clijsters said afterwards, "I'm just as disappointed as after the last two grand slam [finals], but I played a lot better this time". In February, she won her next two tournaments, including the Diamond Games in Antwerp for her first WTA title in her home country. After Clijsters withdrew from the Indian Wells Open following one match with a torn left wrist tendon, she only played in two more WTA events the remainder of the season. She returned to the WTA Tour six weeks later with a wrist brace, but again withdrew after one match. In June, she found out she would need surgery to remove a cyst in her wrist. As a result, she remained out until the Hasselt Cup in Belgium where she needed to retire in her third match.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: There were few expectations on Clijsters entering 2005, as it still was not certain whether she would be able to play. After missing the Australian Open, she returned to the tour in February. In her second and third tournaments back, Clijsters won both Tier I events in March, the Indian Wells Open and the Miami Open, to become the second woman to complete the Sunshine Double after Steffi Graf in 1994 and 1996. She defeated world No. 1 Lindsay Davenport in the final of Indian Wells, as well as No. 2 Amélie Mauresmo and No. 3 Maria Sharapova in her last two matches in Miami. These titles lifted her ranking from outside the top 100 back into the top 20. Clijsters was unable to continue her success into the clay or grass court seasons, winning just one title and losing in the fourth round in three sets to Davenport at both the French Open and Wimbledon.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: After Wimbledon in late June, Clijsters only lost one more match through early October. During this stretch, she won five titles including her third Stanford Classic and her fifth Luxembourg Open. She also built up a 22-match win streak and defeated Henin in the final of the Tier I Canadian Open in their only meeting of the year. Clijsters's most important title of the season was the US Open, her first Grand Slam singles title. As the fourth seed, she was not tested until the quarterfinals, when Venus Williams was two games away from defeating her at a set and a break up. Clijsters rebounded to win the match in three sets and then defeated the top seed and world No. 2 Sharapova in the semifinals, also in three sets. Despite her previous struggles in Grand Slam singles finals, she won the championship against No. 13 Mary Pierce with ease, only conceding four games. As the winner of the US Open Series, Clijsters received double the standard amount of prize money. Her $2.2 million prize was the largest in women's sports history at the time. Clijsters's last tournament of the year was the WTA Tour Championships. Although she had a chance to return to No. 1 if she outperformed the top-ranked Davenport, she only won one match and did not advance out of her round robin group. She finished the year ranked No. 2, having won a tour-best nine titles and all of her finals. She was named both the WTA Player of the Year and the WTA Comeback Player of the Year. Despite this success, Clijsters announced in August that she was planning to retire in 2007 because of her injury troubles.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: The 2006 season saw a variety of injury issues for Clijsters. She only played in 14 tournaments, missing the US Open as well as the Fed Cup final. While she reached the semifinals at the other three Grand Slam singles events, she was unable to advance to another final. Clijsters withdrew from her first tournament of the year, the Sydney International with hip and back problems. Although she recovered from those issues in time to reach the semifinals at the Australian Open, she needed to retire from that match as well after twisting her ankle while down a break in the third set against Amélie Mauresmo. Nonetheless, with Davenport losing in the quarterfinals, Clijsters regained the No. 1 ranking. She held the top ranking through mid-March. Clijsters returned for the Diamond Games where she finished runner-up to Mauresmo, but needed to withdraw from the Indian Wells Open because of the same ankle injury. While she was healthy enough to play a regular schedule during the clay and grass court seasons, Henin continued her recent dominance of their rivalry over this stretch. She defeated Clijsters in the semifinals of three consecutive events, including the French Open and Wimbledon.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: During the US Open Series, Clijsters won her fourth Stanford Classic and finished runner-up to Maria Sharapova at the Tier I San Diego Classic. However, her summer season came to an end when she fell on her left wrist in her opening round match at the Canadian Open. This injury kept her out until late October. She made her return at the Hasselt Cup and won her second consecutive title at the event. Clijsters entered the WTA Tour Championships ranked No. 5 in the world, where all three other players she was grouped with were Russian. Although she lost to her group's top seed, Sharapova, she defeated Svetlana Kuznetsova and Elena Dementieva to advance. Her season ended in the semifinals, where she lost to world No. 1 Mauresmo.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters entered 2007 intending to retire at the end of the season, but only ended up playing in five tournaments due to injuries. She won her only title of the year in her first tournament, the Sydney International. The Australian Open was her only Grand Slam event of the season. For the second consecutive season, she lost in the semifinals, this time to top seed Sharapova. Clijsters's last tournament in Belgium was the Diamond Games, where she finished runner-up to Mauresmo for the second year in a row. A hip injury limited Clijsters's remaining schedule. In her last two tournaments, she lost to Li Na in the fourth round of the Miami Open in March and qualifier Julia Vakulenko in her opening match at the Warsaw Open in May. Her last win was against Samantha Stosur in Miami. A few days after losing in Warsaw, Clijsters announced her retirement at the age of 23, forgoing plans to finish the season.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: A few months after Clijsters retired, she married basketball player Brian Lynch. She gave birth to a daughter in early 2008, less than two months after her father Leo Clijsters was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died twelve months later in January 2009. Clijsters said, "The birth of Jada was the best moment of my life, but it also taught me a lesson because we knew that my Dad was terminally ill. I realised that new life had been born, but a few months later another life would disappear. It was a very intense period in our lives."


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Nearly two months after her father's death, it was announced that Clijsters would play in an exhibition in May with Tim Henman against Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi to test the new retractable roof on Centre Court at Wimbledon. In March, Clijsters stated that she was planning to come out of retirement, motivated by returning to the "training schedule from [her] pro days" to prepare for the Wimbledon exhibition. She added that she was taking a different approach to tennis, saying, "I am looking at this as a second career, not as a comeback as I am now in a situation where not everything revolves around tennis 24 hours a day." Clijsters and Henman won the exhibition doubles, and Clijsters also defeated her idol Graf in singles. She commented, "I wanted to feel good here on court. And I've enjoyed it. This is the pleasure which was lacking at the end of my first career. But now I've got my motivation back."


title: Kim Clijsters

text: With no ranking, Clijsters needed wild cards to begin her comeback. She requested and received wild cards for the Cincinnati Open, the Canadian Open, and the US Open. In her return to the tour in Cincinnati, Clijsters defeated three top 20 opponents, including No. 6 Svetlana Kuznetsova, before losing to world No. 1 Dinara Safina in the quarterfinals. She recorded another top ten victory in Canada over No. 9 Victoria Azarenka. Clijsters was still unranked entering the US Open, as players needed three tour events to have a ranking at the time. Nonetheless, she made it to the final, notably upsetting both Williams sisters, No. 3 Venus in the fourth round and No. 2 Serena in the semifinals. She defeated Venus in a tight third set after they split the first two 6–0. Her straight sets win over Serena was overshadowed by her opponent receiving a point penalty on match point for verbally abusing a line judge. Clijsters then defeated No. 8 Caroline Wozniacki to win her second US Open championship. She became the first unseeded woman to win the title at the event, and the first mother to win a Grand Slam singles title since Evonne Goolagong Cawley in 1980. With the title, she entered the WTA rankings at No. 19. Her only other tournament of the year was the Luxembourg Open, where she lost her second match. At the end of the season, she won the WTA Comeback Player of the Year award for the second time.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters planned a limited schedule for 2010 to keep her focus on her family and ended up playing just eleven tournaments. In her first event of the year, she won the Brisbane International, narrowly defeating Henin in a third set tiebreak in Henin's first tournament back from her own retirement. She entered the Australian Open as one of the favourites, but was upset by No. 19 Nadia Petrova in the third round, only winning one game in that loss. Clijsters did not return to the tour until March. After an early loss at the Indian Wells Open, she won the Miami Open for the second time. The only set she lost was in the semifinals to Henin, who she again defeated in a third set tiebreak. She only conceded three games in the final against Venus Williams. During the clay court season, Clijsters tore a muscle in her left foot, which kept her out of the French Open. Although she returned for Wimbledon, she was upset in the quarterfinals by Vera Zvonareva after recording another win over Henin in the previous round.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: In the latter half of the year, Clijsters entered only four tournaments. During the US Open Series, she won the Cincinnati Open, the tournament where she returned from retirement a year earlier. At her next event, she was eliminated in the quarterfinals of the Canadian Open by Zvonareva while struggling with a thigh injury. Nonetheless, Clijsters recovered to defend her title at the US Open. In the last three rounds, she defeated three top ten players in No. 6 Samantha Stosur, No. 4 Venus Williams, and No. 8 Vera Zvonareva. Venus came the closest to ending her title defense, but lost in three sets after serving two double faults in the second set tiebreak which could have won her the match. Clijsters won the final over Zvonareva with ease in less than an hour. This was her third consecutive title at the US Open and the fourth consecutive time she made it to the championship match, having skipped the tournament four times since 2003. Clijsters' final event of the season was the WTA Tour Championships, where she qualified for the seventh time. Despite a loss to Zvonareva in her last round robin match, she advanced to the knockout rounds and defeated No. 5 Stosur and world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki for her third title at the year-end championships. Clijsters finished the season at No. 3 and was named WTA Player of the Year for the second time.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: By the start of 2011, Clijsters knew she was planning to retire in 2012 as she did not want to be on the tour while her daughter was in school. She began the season at the Sydney International, where she finished runner-up to Li Na in straight sets despite winning the first five games of the match. The two also met in the final of their next tournament, the Australian Open. Although Clijsters again lost the first set, she recovered to win the championship, her fourth Grand Slam singles title and first outside of the US Open. This title would be the last of Clijsters's career. She made one last final at her next WTA event, the Paris Open, where she was defeated by Petra Kvitová. Nonetheless, this result helped Clijsters regain the world No. 1 ranking before Caroline Wozniacki took it back one week later. During the rest of the season, Clijsters was limited by a variety of injuries and only played five more tournaments. She needed to retire from a fourth round match at the Indian Wells Open due to a shoulder injury. Then, as a result of a right ankle injury suffered while dancing at a wedding in April, the French Open was the only clay court event she entered. At the second Grand Slam tournament of the year, she was upset in the second round by No. 114 Arantxa Rus after failing to convert two match points in the second set. Aggravating that ankle injury at her next event then forced her to miss Wimbledon. Clijsters returned for the Canadian Open, where she suffered an abdominal injury that kept her out the remainder of the season.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters was unable to stay healthy in her last year on the WTA Tour. In the first week of the season, she returned to the tour for the Brisbane International. After winning her first three matches back, she needed to retire in the semifinals due to hip spasms, a precautionary measure to prepare for the Australian Open. As the defending champion at the year's first Grand Slam event, Clijsters made it to the semifinals. Her fourth round victory came against No. 5 Li Na in a rematch of the 2011 final. She overcame rolling her ankle in the first set and saved four match points at 6–2 in the second set tiebreak to win in three sets. After Clijsters defeated world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki in the quarterfinals, she lost to No. 3 Victoria Azarenka in another three-set match. Both her hip and ankle continued to trouble her for months after the tournament, forcing her to skip the clay court season. After playing once in March and returning in mid-June, the last WTA events of Clijsters's career were the final two Grand Slam tournaments of the season. She lost at Wimbledon in the fourth round to No. 8 Angelique Kerber, only winning two games. Clijsters entered the US Open having not lost a match there since the 2003 final. She recorded her last WTA singles match win against Victoria Duval in the first round before falling to Laura Robson in her next match. Her career ended with a second round mixed doubles loss alongside Bob Bryan to the eventual champions Ekaterina Makarova and Bruno Soares, at which point she officially retired.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: After more than seven years of retirement, Clijsters returned to professional tennis in February 2020 at the Dubai Tennis Championships as a wildcard. Clijsters lost to Australian Open runner-up Garbiñe Muguruza in the opening round. She next entered the Monterrey Open as a wildcard losing in the first round to Johanna Konta in two sets. No tournaments were played due to the COVID-19 pandemic from March to July. Clijsters received wildcards at the inaugural Top Seed Open in singles and doubles alongside Sabine Lisicki. Clijsters withdrew from both singles and doubles. Clijsters next played the US Open on a main draw wildcard losing in the first round to Ekaterina Alexandrova in three sets. Clijsters underwent knee surgery in October and did not play another tournament in 2020.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters pulled out of the 2021 Miami Open, saying she did not feel ready to compete after her surgery and contracting COVID-19 in January. She played her first tournament of the year at the Chicago Fall Tennis Classic, having accepted a wildcard, but lost in the first round to Hsieh Su-Wei in three sets. She entered the doubles draw too, the partner was Kirsten Flipkens, but they lost in the first round. Clijsters then participated in postponed Indian Wells Masters, drew Kateřina Siniaková and lost in three sets in the first round. Clijsters played a number of matches for World TeamTennis in 2021, aligned with the New York Empire.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: With many tournaments having been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Clijsters had only been able to play five matches within the two years that she had returned to the tour. On 12 April 2022, Clijsters announced that she was ending her comeback and again retiring from tennis, citing a desire to focus more on family life.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters made her Fed Cup debut for Belgium in 2000 at the age of 16. The top-tier World Group that year consisted of 13 teams, 12 of which were divided into three round robin groups. The winners of the round robin groups in April would compete with the defending champion United States team in a knockout format for the title in November. Belgium was placed in a group with Australia, France, and Russia. Each tie was contested over one day as a best-of-three rubbers, two in singles and the last in doubles. Clijsters only played singles, while Els Callens and Laurence Courtois played all three doubles matches. Although Clijsters narrowly lost her debut to Jelena Dokic of Australia by a score of 9–7 in the third set, her teammates were able to secure the tie. She won her other two matches against Nathalie Tauziat of France and Anna Kournikova of Russia, both of which were crucial as Belgium won each of those ties 2–1 as well to win the group. In the semifinals, Henin returned to the team as they faced the United States, the hosts for the final rounds. After Henin lost to Monica Seles, Clijsters needed to defeat Lindsay Davenport to keep Belgium in the tournament. She won the second set, but ultimately lost the match.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: The following year, the format for the Fed Cup changed again. The entire competition was played out in November. The three round robin pools were reduced to two and the winners of each pool would contest a final tie for the title. Belgium's team of Clijsters, Henin, Callens, and Courtois from the 2000 final all returned for 2001. The United States withdrew before the start of the event, citing security concerns a few months after the 11 September terrorist attacks. With Henin and Clijsters exclusively playing singles, and Callens and Courtois playing doubles, Belgium won all nine of their rubbers against Spain, Germany, and Australia to advance to the final. Facing Russia, Henin defeated Nadia Petrova and Clijsters defeated Elena Dementieva to secure Belgium's first Fed Cup crown. Courtois commented, "We were never under any pressure, mainly because Kim and Justine were so strong."


title: Kim Clijsters

text: While Clijsters and Henin were on the team, Belgium came closest to another Fed Cup triumph in 2006. In this year, the World Group consisted of eight teams in a knockout tournament. The three rounds were spread out over April, July, and September. Each tie was played as a best-of-five rubbers, with four singles followed by one doubles. In the first round against Russia, both Clijsters and Henin made themselves available and won three out of four singles matches to advance. Although Henin missed the semifinal, Clijsters and Kirsten Flipkens were able to lead Belgium to a victory over the United States, who were also short-handed without Lindsay Davenport or the Williams sisters. However, Clijsters was forced to miss the Fed Cup final due to a wrist injury. Henin and Flipkens returned for the final, which Belgium hosted against Italy. The tie was decided by the doubles rubber, which Belgium lost after Henin aggravated a knee injury she suffered in one of her singles rubbers and needed to retire down 2–0 in the third set.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters also played on the Belgium Fed Cup team from 2002 to 2005, and 2010–11 after she returned from retirement. The team's best results in those years were two semifinal appearances in 2003 and 2011. Clijsters missed the ties in which Belgium was eliminated in both instances. Overall, Clijsters compiled a 24–4 record in Fed Cup, split across 21–3 in singles and 3–1 in doubles.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters participated in the Hopman Cup from 2001 to 2004, partnering with Olivier Rochus in the first instance and Xavier Malisse thereafter. The tournament consists of eight teams, each with one female and one male player from the same country. The teams are divided into two round robin groups, the winners of which compete for the title. Each tie consists of a women's singles match, a men's singles match, and a mixed doubles match. The Belgian team did not advance to final in any of the years Clijsters participated. Their best performances came in 2002 and 2003 when they won two out of three round robin ties.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: In 2002, they finished tied for first with the United States and Italy in a group that also featured France. Belgium's only loss came against the United States, with Clijsters and Malisse losing both singles matches to Monica Seles and Jan-Michael Gambill respectively. Although the United States lost to Italy, they advanced out of the group on the tiebreak criteria, having won six rubbers compared to the five won by each of Belgium and Italy. Both of the ties Belgium had won were by a score of 2–1, with Clijsters losing to Francesca Schiavone against Italy and the pair losing the mixed doubles against the French team of Virginie Razzano and Arnaud Clément. The following year, Clijsters and Malisse again lost to the United States, who fielded a different team of Serena Williams and James Blake.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters did not compete at the Olympics until 2012 near the end of her career. She had been ranked inside the top 40 in the months leading up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics in September, high enough to qualify. However, she did not make herself available for selection for a variety of reasons including issues with her shoulder and the event's timing a week after the US Open. During the 2004 Athens Olympics, she was in the middle of a long absence from competition after undergoing wrist surgery. However, she had announced before the year began that she did not intend to compete at the Games because Adidas was the Belgian team's uniform sponsor and her contract with Fila forbade her from wearing clothing from another company. The 2008 Beijing Olympics took place during her first retirement.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Having missed these three previous events, Clijsters's desire to represent Belgium at the Olympics was one of the underlying reasons why she prolonged her second career until the 2012 London Games in late July. At the time, she did not have good results at her most recent tournaments, withdrawing from the Rosmalen Grass Court Championships in the semifinals in June due to injury and suffering a lopsided loss in the fourth round at Wimbledon. In her Olympic debut, Clijsters won her first three matches in straight sets, defeating Roberta Vinci, Carla Suárez Navarro, and No. 12 Ana Ivanovic in succession. She faced No. 3 Maria Sharapova in the quarterfinals, losing in straight sets one match before the medal rounds.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters's biggest rival was Justine Henin, who grew up in the French-speaking part of Belgium. They have been regarded as having little in common except their nationality and their relationship has varied over time. Their rivalry began during their junior years when they were both considered promising young talents. They started out as friends and won the Belgian Junior Championships as doubles partners at ages ten and eleven respectively, despite only being able to communicate with hand signals due to Clijsters not knowing French and Henin not knowing Flemish. However, their friendship began to fade by their mid-teens, leading to disputes that their coaches would try to keep out of the media. Clijsters attributed this deterioration in part to one of Henin's coaches telling Henin, "she had to hate all of her opponents, and only then could she win." She also acknowledged they had very different personalities.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters and Henin typically downplayed any disagreements between them, saying they were overdramatized by the media. When they were professionals, Clijsters accused Henin of routinely faking injuries in their matches to receive medical timeouts. Additionally, Clijsters's father seemed to allege that Henin was taking performance-enhancing drugs. Although they had won the Fed Cup together in 2001, they were not interested in playing on the same team in 2004 or 2005. The following year, Clijsters's former coach Carl Maes, who was then the Belgium Fed Cup captain, helped convince Clijsters to reunite with Henin, and together they ultimately reached another final.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: On the court, they played each other in 25 WTA matches, making each of them the other's most frequent opponent. Although Clijsters won the series 13–12, Henin won seven out of their eleven meetings in finals including all three at Grand Slam tournaments. The latest stage win Clijsters had at a major was in the semifinals of the 2001 French Open. She also defeated Henin en route to her first WTA Tour Championship in 2002. Clijsters dominated their hard court meetings 8–4, while Henin dominated on clay 5–1. Henin also won three of their five grass court encounters. Before both of their first retirements, Henin was leading the series 12–10. However, Clijsters won all three of their meetings during their comebacks to win the series.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: The Williams sisters are frequently recognized for having a transformative impact on tennis through the power in their style of play, their longevity, their marketability, and their success at the Grand Slam tournaments and Olympics. They were both No. 1 in the world and combined for 15 Grand Slam singles titles while Clijsters was on tour, and Serena in particular has been ranked as the greatest women's tennis player of the Open Era. Clijsters had a record of just 2–7 against Serena, who she called her toughest opponent. She fared better against Venus, compiling a winning record of 7–6.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters's rivalry with Serena included two of the biggest controversies in Serena's career: the 2001 Indian Wells final which led to both Williams sisters' long boycott of the tournament, and the 2009 US Open semifinal which Serena lost on a point penalty. Serena defeated Clijsters in their first five meetings. She also won all four of their three-set encounters, including their 1999 US Open third round match and their 2003 Australian Open semifinal where Clijsters had the opportunity to serve for both matches. Although Clijsters only had two wins against Serena, both were considered big upsets and among the most important wins of her career. Her victory in the 2002 WTA Tour Championship final gave Clijsters her biggest title at the time, and her win at the 2009 US Open set up her first Grand Slam singles title as a mother one match later. Clijsters also defeated Venus in both of those tournaments, making her the only player to record wins over both Williams sisters at the same event twice.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Venus also initially dominated her rivalry with Clijsters. She won six of their first eight meetings, including two in the late stages of Grand Slam tournaments in the quarterfinals of the 2001 US Open and the semifinals of 2003 Wimbledon. Venus also eliminated Clijsters from the Diamond Games in Belgium twice in 2003 and 2005. Additionally, one of Clijsters's first two wins against Venus was a retirement due to injury at the 2002 WTA Tour Championships. Nonetheless, Clijsters rebounded to win their last five meetings and end her career leading in their head-to-head record. Three of those five victories came at the US Open en route to her three titles at the event in 2005, 2009, and 2010.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: In addition to Henin and the Williams sisters, Clijsters also developed rivalries with several other players who had been ranked No. 1 in the world. Two of her most frequent opponents were Lindsay Davenport and Amélie Mauresmo. Clijsters narrowly had winning records against both of them, going 9–8 versus Davenport and 8–7 versus Mauresmo. Davenport had won six of their first seven meetings before Clijsters won eight of their next nine encounters, including all five in 2003. Clijsters defeated Davenport in all four of their meetings in finals, including two at the Indian Wells Open. While Davenport had a 5–1 lead in Grand Slam tournaments, Clijsters won their latest-stage such meeting in the semifinals of the 2003 US Open. Unlike against Davenport, Clijsters initially dominated her rivalry with Mauresmo, winning eight of their first ten matches before Mauresmo took the last five. They met in two WTA Tour Championship finals, which they split. Mauresmo also denied Clijsters chances to win more titles in her home country when she won their finals at both the 2006 and 2007 Diamond Games.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: During Clijsters's first retirement, the invitation to participate in the roof test exhibition series at Wimbledon in May 2009 inspired her to return to the WTA Tour. In the summer, she joined the St. Louis Aces of the World Team Tennis league to help prepare for her comeback. She also participated in World Team Tennis the following year as a member of the New York Sportimes. Ten years after the roof test on Centre Court that inspired her comeback, Clijsters returned to Wimbledon to participate in an exhibition series to test the new roof on Court No. 1 in which she played a set of singles against Venus Williams as well as a set of mixed doubles.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: On 8 July 2010, an exhibition match between Clijsters and Henin was scheduled as an attempt to set a new world record for largest attendance at a tennis match. The contest took place at the King Baudouin Stadium and was a part of the Best of Belgium national festival. After Henin needed to withdraw from the match due to an elbow injury, Serena Williams was chosen as a replacement. Although Williams injured her foot several days before the match, she chose to play. Clijsters defeated Williams in straight sets. A total of 35,681 people attended the match, breaking the world record of 30,472 set in 1973 by the Battle of the Sexes between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Beginning in 2009, the Diamond Games in Antwerp was reorganized from a WTA tournament into an exhibition series. During her comeback, Clijsters played at the event three times, winning matches against Venus Williams in 2009, Henin in 2010, and world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki in 2011. She continued to play at the event after retiring. The 2012 edition was named "Kim's Thank You Games" in honor of her retirement, and the following year the event was known as the Kim Clijsters Invitational. In 2015, the Diamond Games were revived as a WTA event with Clijsters serving as the tournament director. She also played an exhibition set with finalist Andrea Petkovic after her opponent withdrew before the start of the championship match due to injury.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Since her retirement in 2012, Clijsters has regularly played in the legends, champions, and invitation doubles events at all four Grand Slam tournaments. One of her matches in the 2017 Wimbledon ladies' invitation doubles event drew public interest for Clijsters inviting a male spectator onto the court to play a few points. The spectator, Chris Quinn, had suggested Clijsters try a body serve when she had asked the crowd whether she should serve left or right. Before playing the points, she gave Quinn a women's shirt and skort so that he could abide by Wimbledon's all-white dress code. A video of the incident has over four million views on YouTube.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters has been ranked as the 14th-greatest women's tennis player in the Open Era by "Tennis.com". Her 41 singles titles are the 14th-most in the Open Era. Since 2000, only the Williams sisters, Justine Henin, and Maria Sharapova have won more than her four Grand Slam singles titles. The three titles she won at the WTA Tour Championships are tied for the fifth-most in history behind only Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Serena Williams, and Chris Evert. Clijsters was a champion at all four Grand Slam tournaments, winning the French Open and Wimbledon in doubles and the US Open and Australian Open in singles. Her prowess at singles and doubles is also highlighted by her becoming one of six players in WTA history to be No. 1 in the world in both rankings at the same time.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters and Henin are recognized for "putting Belgium on the tennis map". Before they established themselves in the upper echelon of women's tennis, Dominique Van Roost was the only player in Belgian history to be ranked in the top ten of the ATP or WTA rankings, a mark she did not achieve until 1998 after Clijsters and Henin turned professional. The Belgium Fed Cup team had never reached the quarterfinals until 1997 when they made the semifinals. With Clijsters on the team, Belgium made it to at least the semifinals four times, reaching the final in 2006 and winning the championship in 2001. She also became the first Belgian to be ranked No. 1 in each of singles and doubles. Belgium was regarded as dominating women's tennis when Clijsters and Henin were the top two players in the world for several months in late 2003. After Clijsters's retirement, she established the Kim Clijsters Academy in her hometown of Bree. The academy is run by Clijsters's longtime coach Carl Maes and is intended to serve young players. Compatriot Elise Mertens is among those who train at the facility.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters was one of the most popular and well-liked players in tennis among both fans and her fellow players. She won the Karen Krantzcke Sportsmanship Award a record eight times. Clijsters was proud of her reputation as one of the nicest players on the WTA Tour, saying, "I always try every day to be a good person and to be nice to others, and I think that’s probably the most important thing. I’m proud that I won tournaments and everything, but I want players to think that Kim was a nice person." Clijsters was also regarded as a source of inspiration to mothers on the WTA Tour, a role she embraced. She is one of three mothers to win a Grand Slam singles title, and her three such titles are tied with Margaret Court for the most of all-time. Additionally, Clijsters is the only mother to be ranked No. 1 in the world since the start of the WTA rankings in 1975. She appeared on the "Time" 100 list in 2011 as one of the most influential people in the world in large part because of her successful comeback.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters is an all-court player who employed a mixture of offensive and defensive styles of play. On the defensive side, her movement is regarded as exceptional, enabling her to endure long rallies. Maria Sharapova has commented that, "You just have to expect that she's going to get every ball back."


title: Kim Clijsters

text: In addition to her movement, Clijsters often extends points with her signature shot, a stretched-out wide forehand, also known as a squash shot. This type of forehand involves hitting the ball with slice to make up for being out of position. When hitting a squash shot on the run, Clijsters is known for her trademark play of sliding towards the ball and finishing in a split to extend her reach. While most players can only slide on clay, Clijsters can slide on any surface. Tennis journalist Peter Bodo has noted, "Grass and hard courts do not 'permit' sliding unless your name is Kim Clijsters."


title: Kim Clijsters

text: The strengths of Clijsters's game are built around playing aggressively to generate offense without losing control. She excels at hitting both forehand and backhand winners from the baseline. Clijsters is regarded as one of the best returners of serve and tries to "take control of the point immediately... to [put herself] in an offensive position from the beginning". She was aggressive in the middle of points as well. While the squash shot is generally regarded as a defensive shot, Clijsters can turn it into an offensive weapon by placing it well enough to have time to recover into a good court position. Additionally, she possesses the ability to quickly move in from the baseline to the net, setting herself up to hit winners and finish points. She is adept at hitting swinging volleys on both the forehand and backhand sides because of her solid groundstroke technique. Clijsters credits her experience in doubles for improving her net game in singles, saying "it made [her] focus on going to the net more" and helped her "know when to come to the net". Her coach Wim Fissette attributed her success at Grand Slam events after her comeback to being more aggressive than she was before her first retirement.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters worked with Belgian coaches throughout her career. Her first coach was Bart Van Kerckhoven, who she later invited to her championship match at the 2010 US Open. She began her professional career with Carl Maes as her coach. Maes was a student of Benny Vanhoudt who led the Saturday training sessions while Clijsters was also working with Vanhoudt in Diest. He moved to the Flemish Tennis Association Centre in Wilrijk when Clijsters was 13 years old and invited her to join him. In her first year in Wilrijk, she also worked with Marc De Hous. Maes coached Clijsters from 1996 to May 2002, during which she won the Fed Cup and finished as the runner-up at the 2001 French Open.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Shortly before the 2002 US Open, she hired De Hous as her new coach and continued to work with him through 2005. Under De Hous, Clijsters won two WTA Tour Championships and two Grand Slam doubles titles. They split a week after she won her first Grand Slam singles title at the 2005 US Open. It was reported that De Hous left because he was unhappy with only receiving a $7,500 bonus from her $2.2 million in US Open prize money; however, he denied this was his only financial compensation and attributed his departure to wanting to "take on new challenges" after all of their success in 2005. Clijsters opted to play without a coach from then until her first retirement.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: When Clijsters began her comeback in 2009, she hired Wim Fissette to be her coach. Fissette, who is three years older, had trained with Clijsters under Vanhoudt when they were both juniors. He had also served as her hitting partner from 2005 until her first retirement. With Fissette as her coach, Clijsters won three more Grand Slam singles titles and regained the world No. 1 ranking. In June 2011, she rehired Maes as her coach, leading to Fissette's departure several months later. Clijsters worked with Maes until her second retirement.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: During her playing career, Clijsters was represented by Belgian company Golazo Sports. Babolat has sponsored her racquets since 1999, and she specifically has used the Pure Drive model. Fila has been Clijsters's clothing sponsor since 2002. She had previously worn Nike apparel, but was not under contract.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters is conscious about selecting which products to endorse, saying, "If it's not healthy for kids, for example, I'm not going to endorse a product. I don't want to give the wrong impression. We try to live a healthy lifestyle and if it doesn't match me as a person, I turn it down. To have my name on a product, I want to be behind it fully." She has turned down Nutella in addition to endorsements that involved her daughter. While on tour, she endorsed banana supplier Chiquita and United Soft Drinks, the producer of the AA sports drink. Additionally, she was a brand ambassador for nutrition company USANA as well as the Citizen Watch Signature Collection. She also had endorsement deals with Belgian telecommunications company Telenet, personnel services firm Adecco, and the travel services company Thomas Cook Group.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters is married to Brian Lynch, an American basketball coach and former player. Lynch played college basketball at Villanova before pursuing a professional career in Europe. The two met while Lynch was a member of Euphony Bree, the team based in Clijsters's hometown, and initially bonded over both having pet bulldogs. They became a couple in 2005 and married in 2007. They have three children: a daughter Jada (born 2008), and two sons Jack (born 2013) and Blake (born 2016). The family splits their time living in Bree and New Jersey.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters's sister Elke, who is younger by a year and a half, was also a promising tennis player. Like Kim, Elke won two junior Grand Slam doubles titles. She was also the ITF World Junior Doubles Champion in 2002. On the professional tour, she achieved a top 400 ranking in singles and a top 250 ranking in doubles. Kim and Elke entered one doubles tournament together on the WTA Tour at the 2004 Diamond Games in Antwerp. They won their opening match against Selima Sfar and Caroline Vis before losing to the second-seeded team of Émilie Loit and Petra Mandula in the next round. Elke retired in 2004 at age 19 due to persistent back problems.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: In Clijsters's early career, she was in a long-term relationship with Australian tennis player Lleyton Hewitt. They met at the 2000 Australian Open and were engaged before mutually ending their relationship in late 2004. The pair entered the mixed doubles event at Wimbledon in 2000, losing in the final. Their relationship earned Clijsters the nickname "Aussie Kim" and made her popular among Australian tennis fans even after they separated. When Clijsters won the 2011 Australian Open, she believed she earned her nickname, saying, "Now you can finally call me Aussie Kim".


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters's childhood tennis idol was Steffi Graf. She cites her lone WTA Tour match against Graf at Wimbledon in 1999 as being very influential, saying, "It was unbelievable. All I wanted to do was watch her. I wanted to see how she tied her shoelaces, what her ponytail looked like, how she carried her bag. Even though I lost, the impact of that and the motivation it gave me was huge. It was definitely the biggest moment of my career". She also looked up to Monica Seles and viewed both Graf and Seles as role models, drawing inspiration from their level of focus.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: Clijsters is involved with multiple organizations that help children. She has served as an ambassador for SOS Children's Villages in Belgium since 2010. SOS provides aid to children living without their parents and to impoverished families. Clijsters has also founded Ten4Kim, a nonprofit that funds junior tennis players who cannot afford the costs associated with training at a high level.


title: Kim Clijsters

text: While Clijsters retired, she served as a part-time coach to several players, including compatriots Elise Mertens and Yanina Wickmayer. She also occasionally was a commentator at the Grand Slam tournaments, working for the BBC and Fox Sports Australia at Wimbledon and for Channel 7 at the Australian Open.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Adenomyosis is a medical condition characterized by the growth of cells that proliferate on the inside of the uterus (endometrium) atypically located among the cells of the uterine wall (myometrium), as a result, thickening of the uterus occurs. As well as being misplaced in patients with this condition, endometrial tissue is completely functional. The tissue thickens, sheds and bleeds during every menstrual cycle.


title: Adenomyosis

text: The condition is typically found in women between the ages of 35 and 50, but also affects younger women. Patients with adenomyosis often present with painful menses (dysmenorrhea), profuse menses (menorrhagia), or both. Other possible symptoms are pain during sexual intercourse, chronic pelvic pain and irritation of the urinary bladder.


title: Adenomyosis

text: In adenomyosis, "basal" endometrium penetrates into hyperplastic myometrial fibers. Unlike the functional layer, the basal layer does not undergo typical cyclic changes with the menstrual cycle. Adenomyosis may involve the uterus focally, creating an adenomyoma. With diffuse involvement, the uterus becomes bulky and heavier.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Adenomyosis can be found together with endometriosis; it differs in that patients with endometriosis present endometrial-like tissue located entirely outside the uterus. In endometriosis, the tissue is similar to, but not the same as, the endometrium. The two conditions are found together in many cases yet often occur separately. Before being recognized as a distinct condition, adenomyosis was called "endometriosis interna". The less-commonly-used term "adenomyometritis" is a more specific name for the condition, specifying involvement of the uterus.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Adenomyosis can vary widely in the type and severity of symptoms that it causes, ranging from being entirely asymptomatic 33% of the time to being a severe and debilitating condition in some cases. Women with adenomyosis typically first report symptoms when they are between 40 and 50, but symptoms can occur in younger women.


title: Adenomyosis

text: The cause of adenomyosis is unknown, although it has been associated with any sort of uterine trauma that may break the barrier between the endometrium and myometrium, known as the junctional zone, such as a caesarean section, surgical pregnancy termination, and any pregnancy. It can be linked with endometriosis, but studies looking into similarities and differences between these two conditions have conflicting results.


title: Adenomyosis

text: The pathogenesis of adenomyosis still remains unclear, but the functioning of the inner myometrium, also called the junction zone (JZ), is believed to play a major role in the development of adenomyosis. It is also a matter of discussion whether the link between reproductive disorders and major obstetrical disorders also lies here. Parity, age, and previous uterine abrasion increase the risk of adenomyosis. Hormonal factors such as local hyperestrogenism and elevated levels of s-prolactin as well as autoimmune factors have also been identified as possible risk factors. As both the myometrium and stroma in an adenomyosis affected uterus show significant differences from those of a non-affected uterus, a complex origin that includes multifactorial changes on both genetic and biochemical levels is likely.


title: Adenomyosis

text: The tissue injury and repair (TIAR) theory is now widely accepted and suggests that uterine hyperperistalsis (i.e., increased peristalsis), during early periods of reproductive life will induce micro-injury at the endometrial-myometrial interface (EMI) region. That again leads to elevation of local estrogen in order to heal the damage. At the same time, estrogen treatment will increase uterine peristalsis again, leading to a vicious circle and a chain of biological alterations essential for the development of adenomyosis. Iatrogenic injury of the junctional zone or physical damage due to placental implantation most likely results in the same pathological cascade. This also explains that adenomyosis often becomes more severe after each pregnancy and childbirth, while endometriosis will ameliorate.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Misplaced endometrial tissue proliferation in the myometrium causes symptoms through different mechanisms.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Uterine menstrual contractions are caused by prostaglandin, which is produced by normal endometrial tissue. Dysmenorrhea is the main characteristic for this disease which are the result for high prostaglandin levels. Endometrial proliferation is also led by estrogen; some treatments try to reduce its levels in order to decrease symptoms.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Adenomyosis patients present with heavy menstrual bleeding due to the increase of endometrial tissue, greater degree of vascularization, atypical uterine contractions and increased levels of prostaglandins, estrogen and eicosanoids.


title: Adenomyosis

text: The diagnosis of adenomyosis is through a pathologist microscopically examining small tissue samples of the uterus. These tissue samples can come from a uterine biopsy or directly following a hysterectomy. Uterine biopsies can be obtained by either a laparoscopic procedure through the abdomen or hysteroscopy through the vagina and cervix.


title: Adenomyosis

text: The diagnosis is established when the pathologist finds invading clusters of endometrial tissue within the myometrium. Several diagnostic criterion can be used, but typically they require either the endometrial tissue to have invaded greater than 2% of the myometrium, or a minimum invasion depth between 2.5 and 8mm.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Adenomyosis can vary widely in the extent and location of its invasion within the uterus. As a result, there are no established pathognomonic features to allow for a definitive diagnosis of adenomyosis through non-invasive imaging. Nevertheless, non-invasive imaging techniques such as transvaginal ultrasonography (TVUS) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can both be used to strongly suggest the diagnosis of adenomyosis, guide treatment options, and monitor response to treatment. Indeed, TVUS and MRI are the only two practical means available to establish a pre-surgical diagnosis.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Transvaginal ultrasonography is a cheap and readily available imaging test that is typically used early during the evaluation of gynecologic symptoms. Ultrasound imaging, like MRI, does not use radiation and is safe for examination of the pelvis and female reproductive organs. Overall, it is estimated that transvaginal ultrasonography has a sensitivity of 79% and specificity of 85% for the detection of adenomyosis.


title: Adenomyosis

text: The power Doppler or Doppler ultrasonography function can be used during transvaginal ultrasonography to help differentiate adenomyomas from uterine fibroids. This is because uterine fibroids typically have blood vessels circling the fibroid's capsule. In contrast, adenomyomas are characterized by widespread blood vessels within the lesion. Doppler ultrasonography also serves to differentiate the static fluid within myometrial cysts from flowing blood within vessels.


title: Adenomyosis

text: The junction zone (JZ), or a small distinct hormone-dependent region at the endometrial-myometrial interface, may be assessed by three-dimensional transvaginal ultrasound (3D TVUS) and MRI. Features of adenomyosis are disruption, thickening, enlargement or invasion of the junctional zone.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides slightly better diagnostic capability compared to TVUS, due to the increased ability of MRI to differentiate objectively between different types of soft tissue. This is possible with MRI's higher spatial and contrast resolution. Overall, it is estimated that MRI has a sensitivity of 74% and specificity of 91% for the detection of adenomyosis. Diagnosis through MRI focuses predominately upon investigating the junctional zone. The uterus will have a thickened junctional zone with darker/diminished signal on both T1 and T2 weighted sequences.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Interspersed within the thickened, darker signal of the junctional zone, one will often see foci of hyperintensity (bright spots) on the T2 weighted scans representing small cystically dilatated glands or more acute sites of microhemorrhage.


title: Adenomyosis

text: MRI is limited by other factors, but not by calcified uterine fibroids (as is ultrasound). In particular, MRI is better able to differentiate adenomyosis from multiple small uterine fibroids.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Adenomyosis can only be cured definitively with surgical removal of the uterus. As adenomyosis is responsive to reproductive hormones, it reasonably abates following menopause when these hormones decrease. For women in their reproductive years, adenomyosis can typically be managed with the goals to provide pain relief, to restrict progression of the process, and to reduce significant menstrual bleeding.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Broadly speaking, surgical management of adenomyosis is split into two categories: uterine-sparing and non-uterine-sparing procedures. Uterine-sparing procedures are surgical operations that do not include surgical removal of the uterus. Some uterine-sparing procedures have the benefit of improving fertility or retaining the ability to carry a pregnancy to term. In contrast, some uterine-sparing procedures worsen fertility or even result in complete sterility. The impact of each procedure on a woman's fertility is of particular concern and typically guides the selection. Non-uterine-sparing procedures, by definition, include surgical removal of the uterus and consequently they will all result in complete sterility.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Hysterectomy, or surgical removal of the uterus, has historically been the primary method of diagnosing and treating adenomyosis. It was especially popular in women who had completed their childbearing or in cases where fertility was not desired. Today, there are many more medical and surgical interventions available. These treatments, such as hormonal therapy and endometrial ablation, have significantly reduced the number of women who require a hysterectomy. That being said, hysterectomies remain as the final treatment option for women in whom the other treatments have failed. Typically viewed as definitive treatment for the bleeding and pelvic pain associated with adenomyosis, a hysterectomy will always result in sterility and cessation of menstrual bleeding. Pelvic pain, on the other hand, can persist after a hysterectomy in as many as 22% of women.


title: Adenomyosis

text: There are many different types of hysterectomy, with varying options existing to removal the fallopian tubes, ovaries, and cervix. Also, the varying types of hysterectomy can be performed by many different surgical techniques.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Variants also exist which combine several of these techniques and surgeries can even change during the operation from one technique to another in response to unforeseen obstacles or individual anatomy considerations. For example, adenomyosis can increase the size of the uterus to such an extent that it physically cannot be removed through the vagina without first being cut into smaller pieces.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Adenomyosis is an often progressing condition. It is advocated that adenomyosis poses no increased risk for cancer development. However, both entities could coexist and the endometrial tissue within the myometrium could harbor endometrioid adenocarcinoma, with potentially deep myometrial invasion. As the condition is estrogen-dependent, menopause presents a natural cure. Ultrasound features of adenomyosis will still be present after menopause. People with adenomyosis are also more likely to have uterine fibroids or endometriosis.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Adenomyosis itself can cause infertility issues, however, fertility can be improved if the adenomyosis has resolved following hormone therapies like levonorgestrel therapy. The discontinuation of medication or removal of IUD can be timed to be coordinated with fertility treatments. There has also been one report of a successful pregnancy and healthy birth following high-frequency ultrasound ablation of adenomyosis.


title: Adenomyosis

text: Preterm labour and premature rupture of membranes both occur more frequently in women with adenomyosis.


title: Adenomyosis

text: In sub-fertile women who received in-vitro fertilization (IVF), women with adenomyosis were less likely to become pregnant and subsequently more likely to experience a miscarriage. Given this, it is encouraged to screen women for adenomyosis by TVUS or MRI before starting assisted reproduction treatments (ART).


title: Adenomyosis

text: The term "adenomyosis" is derived from the Greek terms "adeno-" (meaning "gland"), "myo-" (meaning "muscle"), and "-osis" (meaning "condition").


title: Resource

text: Resource refers to all the materials available in our environment which are technologically accessible, economically feasible and culturally sustainable and help us to satisfy our needs and wants. Resources can broadly be classified upon their availability — they are classified into renewable and non-renewable resources. They can also be classified as actual and potential on the basis of the level of development and use, on the basis of origin they can be classified as biotic and abiotic, and on the basis of their distribution, as ubiquitous and localised (private, community-owned, national and international resources). An item becomes a resource with time and developing technology. The benefits of resource utilization may include increased wealth, proper functioning of a system, or enhanced well-being. From a human perspective, a natural resource is anything obtained from the environment to satisfy human needs and wants. From a broader biological or ecological perspective, a resource satisfies the needs of a living organism (see biological resource).