title: Paregoric

text: The differences between Tincture of Opium (Laudanum) and Camphorated Tincture of Opium (Paregoric) are important and should be kept in mind when administering either of these drugs. Care and caution should always be taken in administering doses of Tincture of Opium, such as the use of a dosage syringe or other suitable measurement device, and by pharmacists in preparing Paregoric from Laudanum, and to note that the dosages noted here refer to Apothecaries weight and fluid measure. In particular, "the difference between a minim and a drop should be borne in mind when figuring doses. A minim is always a sixtieth part of a fluid drachm regardless of the character of the substance, while a drop varies from a forty-fifth to a two-hundred-and-fiftieth part, according to the surface tension of the fluid." Tincture of Opium (Laudanum) and Camphorated Tincture of Opium (Paregoric) each have 50.9 drops per gram; 50.0 drops per cc; 185.0 drops per fluid drachm; and 3.10 drops per minim." The importance of these distinctions is evident in view of the dangers of erroneously relying upon more general descriptions of Apothecaries' fluid measures, which typically list 60 minims per fluid dram, and 8 fluid drams per fluid ounce (480 minims).


title: Paregoric

text: The main effects of paregoric are to increase the muscular tone of the intestine, to inhibit normal peristalsis, and as an expectorant; a peer-reviewed clinical study in 1944 reported "that all of [its] ingredients have been found to contribute toward the expectorant action of paregoric, and, further, that an advantage is contained in the combination over the sum of the effects of the individual constituents," that Paregoric "is expectorant by virtue of a reflex from the stomach," and "preparations of paregoric which have aged for two or three years are superior as an expectorant to preparations aged for less time.". Its main medical use is to control fulminant diarrhea, and as an antitussive (cough suppressant). Problems with its use include opiate dependency and analgesia which can mask symptoms of diseases that need treatment.


title: Paregoric

text: However, Paregoric was characterized as "a needlessly complex pharmacopeial mixture... of a former day" by a 1966 study. In the 21st century its two main uses have been largely supplanted by minimally psychoactive cough-suppressant drugs (such as dextromethorphan) and non-psychoactive antidiarrheal drugs (such as loperamide).


title: History of the National Football League

text: The National Football League (NFL) was founded in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association (APFA) with ten teams from four states, all of whom existed in some form as participants of regional leagues in their respective territories. The league took on its current name in 1922. The NFL was the first professional football league to successfully establish a nationwide presence, after several decades of failed attempts. Only two founding members, the Decatur Staleys (now the Chicago Bears) and the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals), are still in the league. The Green Bay Acme Packers, founded in 1919 (joined the NFL in 1921, now the Green Bay Packers) is the oldest NFL franchise with continuous operation in the same location.


title: History of the National Football League

text: League membership gradually stabilized throughout the 1920s and 1930s as the league adopted progressively more formal organization. The first official championship game was held in 1933. The NFL stopped signing black players in 1927 but reintegrated in 1946 following World War II. Other changes followed after the war; the office of league President evolved into the more powerful Commissioner post, mirroring a similar move in Major League Baseball. Teams became more financially viable, the last team folding in 1952 and the league absorbing teams from the briefly more successful All-America Football Conference in 1950, of which only the San Francisco 49ers and the Cleveland Browns survive to the present day. By 1958, when that season's NFL championship game became known as "the most exciting game ever played", the NFL was on its way to becoming one of the most popular sports leagues in the United States.


title: History of the National Football League

text: The rival American Football League was founded in 1960. It was very successful, and forced a merger with the older NFL that resulted in a greatly expanded league and the creation of the Super Bowl, which has become the most-watched annual sporting event in the United States. The league continued to expand to its current size of 32 teams. A series of labor agreements during the 1990s and increasingly large television contracts have helped keep the league one of the most profitable in the U.S., and the only major league in the U.S. since 1990 to avoid a work stoppage that resulted in the loss of regular-season games.


title: History of the National Football League

text: American football first became a professional sport in the year of 1892, when Pudge Heffelfinger and Ben "Sport" Donnelly each received a gigantic sum of cash to play for the Allegheny Athletic Association of the Western Pennsylvania Senior Independent Football Conference. Throughout the 1890s and the early part of the 20th century, professional football was primarily a regional sport, with most informal circuits centered around one state or region with only limited play outside the state lines. There were no national leagues or tournaments for the professional game, despite lots of tries: an earlier National Football League (backed by what would become today's Major League Baseball) was unable to expand beyond Pennsylvania in the year of 1902, the New York City-based World Series of Pro Football tournament disbanded after two seasons and lack of fan interest, and other attempts to either combine existing circuits or create new ones from scratch never materialized. The regional circuits had coalesced into more or fewer leagues of varying degrees of organization. One of the most prominent at the time was the Ohio League, which boasted the services of legendary Native American athlete Jim Thorpe, among other stars. Another was the somewhat lower-caliber, but better-organized, New York Pro Championship; two of the New York circuit's best teams, the Rochester Jeffersons and the Buffalo All-Stars, went on a barnstorming tour of Ohio in 1917. After the Jeffersons played, and lost badly to Thorpe's Canton Bulldogs in a 1917 match, Jefferson's owner Leo Lyons (believing that the foundation of a league could build a sport that rivaled baseball, which then held an effective monopoly on professional sport, in popularity) suggested to Thorpe that a league be formed.


title: History of the National Football League

text: Lyons' vision of a national league of existing football clubs (which, at the time, was competing with another proposed league, again backed by baseball) was cut short by the United States' entry into World War I and further hampered by a flu pandemic in 1918, which forced most of the Ohio League teams to suspend operations due to either travel restrictions or loss of players to the war effort. New York's teams, although they were forced to reduce their schedules, continued and (along with the few other remaining teams that survived the suspension, including the OL's Dayton Triangles and Michigan's Detroit Heralds) picked up many of the stars that remained stateside. A particularly important team that played the 1918 season was the Great Lakes Navy Bluejackets football team, which included future Hall of Famers Paddy Driscoll, George Halas and Jimmy Conzelman, all of whom were in the armed forces together and, despite some of them being professionals, competed against college football squads and won the 1919 Rose Bowl. These factors had the effect of spreading out the talent across a broader geographic area. Over the course of 1919, as professional football had increased in parity, teams began reaching out and participating in more barnstorming tours. By then, two informal but distinct interstate circuits had developed: one around the Eastern Seaboard (particularly New York City, New Jersey, and Philadelphia) that played mostly on Saturdays due to blue laws, and another centered around the Midwestern region (Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, and upstate New York) that played on Sundays. It was the latter that formed the basis of what would eventually become the modern National Football League.


title: History of the National Football League

text: Ohio's teams went along with the idea in the face of escalating costs: several bidding wars in the early 1900s, both in Pennsylvania and Ohio, had damaged the sport significantly, and another bidding war was about to erupt if something was not done. By forming a national league, teams reasoned that it would eliminate the practices of looting other teams' rosters and concentrating top talent in only a few teams, thus distributing talent more evenly and efficiently thereby reducing costs for each individual team while still keeping a top-level product on the field.


title: History of the National Football League

text: On August 20, 1920, at a Hupmobile dealership in Canton, Ohio, the league was formalized, originally as the American Professional Football Conference, initially consisting only of the Ohio League teams, although some of the teams declined participation. One month later on September 17, the league was renamed the American Professional Football Association, adding Buffalo and Rochester from the New York league, and Detroit, Hammond (a suburban Chicago squad), and several other teams from nearby circuits. The eleven founding teams initially struck an agreement over player poaching and the declaration of an end-of-season champion. Thorpe, while still playing for the Bulldogs, was elected president. Only four of the founding teams finished the 1920 schedule and the undefeated Akron Pros claimed the first championship. Membership of the league increased to 22 teams – including more of the New York teams – in 1921, but throughout the 1920s the membership was unstable and the league was not a major national sport. On June 24, 1922, the organization, now headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, changed its title a final time to the National Football League.


title: History of the National Football League

text: Two charter members, the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals) and the Decatur Staleys (now the Chicago Bears), are still in existence. The Green Bay Packers franchise, founded in 1919, is the oldest team not to change locations, but did not begin league play until 1921. The New York Football Giants (now known as New York Giants) joined in 1925, followed by the Portsmouth Spartans in 1930, who relocated to Detroit in 1934 to become the Lions. The heritage of the Indianapolis Colts includes several predecessors, including one of the league's founding teams, the Dayton Triangles. However, both the Colts and the NFL reckon the Colts as a separate franchise which was founded as the Baltimore Colts in 1953. Although the original NFL teams representing Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago and Detroit no longer exist, replacement franchises have since been established for those cities.


title: History of the National Football League

text: Early championships were awarded to the team with the best won-lost record, initially rather haphazardly, as some teams played more or fewer games than others, or scheduled games against non-league, amateur or collegiate teams; this led to the title being decided on a tiebreaker in 1921, a disputed title in 1925, and the scheduling of an impromptu indoor playoff game in 1932. The lack of a firm league structure meant that numerous teams regularly were added and removed from the league each year; a franchise owner might trade in his franchise in one city for one in another (as was the case with the Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Bulldogs and Detroit Wolverines), and if a larger-market or more established team wanted a player on a smaller-market upstart, it could buy out the team outright and fold it to gain rights to that player, as the New York Giants did to the Wolverines in 1928 to get Benny Friedman.


title: History of the National Football League

text: In league meetings prior to the 1933 season, three new teams, the Pirates, the Cincinnati Reds and the Eagles, were admitted to the NFL. Ten teams were then in the NFL and, at George Preston Marshall's urging, with Halas' support, the NFL was reorganized into an Eastern Division and a Western Division. In the Eastern Division were the Philadelphia Eagles, Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, Boston Redskins (now the Washington Commanders), and the Pittsburgh Pirates (now the Pittsburgh Steelers). In the Western Division were the Chicago Bears, Portsmouth Spartans, Chicago Cardinals, Green Bay Packers, and the Cincinnati Reds. Furthermore, the two owners convinced the league to have the two division winners meet in an NFL Championship Game.


title: History of the National Football League

text: By 1934, all of the small-town teams, with the exception of the Green Bay Packers, had moved to or been replaced by teams in big cities, and even Green Bay had begun to play a portion of its home schedule in much larger Milwaukee for more support (a practice they continued well into the 1990s). In 1941, the corporate headquarters moved from Columbus, Ohio, to Chicago. During the early years of the league, rather than coming up with original team names, many NFL teams simply chose the name of the Major League Baseball team in the same city. Thus the Pittsburgh Steelers were the "Pittsburgh Pirates" for the first seven years of existence and other teams such as the Brooklyn Dodgers, Cleveland Indians, Cincinnati Reds, Detroit Tigers, New York Yankees, Washington Senators and Buffalo Bisons all represented the NFL at one time or another, with the NFL's New York Giants even outlasting their baseball counterpart in New York City, as the baseball Giants moved to San Francisco following the 1957 season. The NFL’s Boston Braves (est. 1932) moved from Braves Field to Fenway Park in 1933, where they changed their name to the Boston Redskins to echo that of their Fenway landlords, the Red Sox, while retaining an American Indian theme.


title: History of the National Football League

text: An annual draft of college players was first held in 1936. The first televised NFL game was on October 22, 1939, in a game the Eagles lost 23–14 to the host Dodgers at Ebbets Field. It was during this era, however, that the NFL became segregated: there were no black players in professional football in the United States between 1933 and 1945, mainly due to the influence of George Preston Marshall, who entered the league in 1932 as the owner of the Boston Braves. Other NFL owners emulated Marshall's whites-only policy to mollify southern fans, and even after the NFL's color barrier had been broken in the 1950s, Marshall's Washington Redskins remained all-white until forced to integrate by the Kennedy administration in 1962. Despite his bigotry, Marshall was selected as a charter member of the NFL-inspired Pro Football Hall of Fame, primarily for the numerous innovations (fixed schedules, separate conferences and championship games) Marshall encouraged during his time in the league.


title: History of the National Football League

text: College football was the bigger attraction, but by the end of World War II, pro football began to rival the college game for fans' attention. Rule changes and innovations such as the T formation led to a faster-paced, higher-scoring game. The league also expanded out of its eastern and midwestern cradle; in 1945, the Cleveland Rams moved to Los Angeles, becoming the first big-league sports franchise on the West Coast. In 1950, the NFL accepted three teams – the Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, and Baltimore Colts – from the defunct All-America Football Conference, expanding to thirteen clubs. For a three-month period in 1950 the league was renamed the National-American Football League, that was subsequently changed back. In 1958, the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants played "The Greatest Game Ever Played" for the championship. Being the first nationally televised football game, along with its thrilling ending greatly increased the popularity of the NFL. Through these breakthroughs, pro football finally earned its place as a major sport.


title: History of the National Football League

text: The NFL's precursor, the American Professional Football Association, had several minority players, including African-American players: between 1920 and 1926, nine black players suited up for NFL squads. It was also common, due to the number of talented players that were produced by the Carlisle Indian School's football team, to see teams (both inside and outside the NFL) openly market Native Americans; in fact, the Oorang Indians of 1922 to 1923 consisted entirely of Native American talent. Running back Walter Achiu and quarterback Arthur Matsu, both of the Dayton Triangles, were the first Asian-American players in the NFL, having joined the league in 1927 and 1928 respectively. Ignacio Molinet and Jess Rodriguez were the first Hispanic players in the NFL and each played one season in 1927 and 1929 respectively.


title: History of the National Football League

text: However, since Carlisle had closed in 1918, the talent pool of Indians had dried up. Meanwhile, all black players in the NFL (including future Hall of Famer Fritz Pollard) were summarily kicked out prior to the 1927 season for reasons unexplained . From 1928 to 1932, no more than one black player could be found in the league each season, and none played more than two seasons. In 1933, there were two: Joe Lillard and Ray Kemp. Lillard was kicked off the Chicago Cardinals for fighting, while Kemp left to pursue what would become a successful coaching career. The moves left the league as all-white, and Boston Redskins owner George Preston Marshall allegedly used his pressure to keep it that way for the next several years, though each team's internal politics and cronyism, as well as the rising tide of racism in the United States as a whole, also played a significant role. Even during the wartime years, when much of the NFL's talent was overseas fighting World War II, players such as Kenny Washington who stayed in the United States were still passed up in favor of white players with normally debilitating medical conditions such as partial blindness.


title: History of the National Football League

text: NFL integration occurred only when the Cleveland Rams wanted to move to Los Angeles, and the venue, the Los Angeles Coliseum, required them to integrate their team. They then signed two black players, Kenny Washington and Woody Strode. Other NFL teams eventually followed suit, but Marshall refused to integrate the Redskins until forced to by the Kennedy administration as a condition for using D.C. Stadium (now RFK Stadium). In spite of this open bias, Marshall was elected to the NFL's Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963. In 1946, the Cleveland Browns of a rival Professional Football league, the All-America Football Conference, signed two black players. Teams would often add black players and release them soon after to give an appearance of recruiting more black football players. By 1960, the NFL's new competitor, the American Football League, actively recruited players from smaller predominantly black colleges that had been largely ignored by the NFL, giving those schools' black players the opportunity to play professional football. Early AFL teams averaged more blacks than did their NFL counterparts.


title: History of the National Football League

text: However, despite the NFL's previous segregationist policies, the clear competitive advantage of AFL teams with liberal signing policies affected the NFL's drafts. By 1969, a comparison of the two leagues' championship team photos showed the AFL's Chiefs with 23 black players out of 51 players (45%) pictured, while the NFL's Vikings had 11 blacks, of 42 players (26%) in the photo. Chiefs players have been quoted as saying that one motivating factor in their defeat of the Vikings in Super Bowl IV was their pride in their diverse squad. Recent surveys have shown that the current, post-merger NFL is approximately 67–71% non-white (this includes African Americans, Polynesians, non-white Hispanics, Asians, and people that are mixed race), significantly higher than the national average; certain positions, such as cornerback and running back, are almost entirely black.


title: History of the National Football League

text: In 1946, after World War II, the struggling league had headquarters in Chicago. Commissioner Elmer Layden could not handle the pressure of the AAFC set up in the same year. DeBenneville Bert Bell was hired to be the commissioner, and he accepted the office only on condition that the headquarters would move to Philadelphia. Bell had founded, owned, and coached the Eagles, and played for Penn before that. Till 1959, when he died of a heart attack at a Steelers–Eagles game at Franklin Field, the headquarters of NFL were on Walnut Street in Philadelphia, and Bert Bell had transformed the NFL into a commercial and popular success. Within a short period of his death, the NFL offices were moved to Manhattan, where they remain to this day.


title: History of the National Football League

text: The NFL held a monopoly on professional football in the United States for most of the 1950s, a rare occurrence for a league that had at least one competing league in every year since 1934. By 1960, a group of potential professional football owners that would become known as the Foolish Club had become frustrated with their efforts to buy into the NFL (some were NFL franchise minority owners such as Harry Wismer and Ralph Wilson; others, such as Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams, had tried but failed to buy NFL teams) and formed a new league, the American Football League. It was the eighth professional football league to use the name and the fourth to be universally considered a major-league competitor to the NFL. The AFL would prove to be the NFL's most formidable challenger to date.


title: History of the National Football League

text: By the middle of the 1960s competition for players, including separate college drafts, was driving up player salaries. In 1965, in the most high-profile such contest and a major boost to the AFL, University of Alabama quarterback Joe Namath signed with the New York Jets rather than the NFL's St. Louis Cardinals for a then-record $427,000. In 1966, the NFL's New York Giants broke an informal agreement and signed placekicker Pete Gogolak, who was under contract to the AFL's Buffalo Bills. Then AFL Commissioner Al Davis embarked on a campaign to sign players away from the NFL, especially quarterbacks, but behind the scenes a number of NFL team owners began action to end the detrimental rivalry.


title: History of the National Football League

text: Several NFL franchises led by Cowboys General Manager Tex Schramm asked to meet with AFL owners to negotiate a merger. In an agreement brokered by Schramm and AFL founder Lamar Hunt, the two leagues announced their merger deal on June 8, 1966. The leagues would thenceforth hold a Common Draft and an end-of-season World Championship Game between the two league champions (later known as the Super Bowl and reverting to simply an NFL championship game). Still another city received an NFL franchise thanks to the AFL, as New Orleans was awarded an NFL team after Louisiana's federal Congressmen pushed for the passage of Public Law 89-800, which permitted the merger and exempted the action from antitrust restrictions. The monopoly that would be created needed to be legitimized by an act of Congress. In 1970, the leagues fully merged under the name National Football League and divided into two conferences of an equal number of teams. Since the pre-merger NFL had six more teams than the AFL, three NFL teams – the Pittsburgh Steelers, Cleveland Browns, and Baltimore Colts – moved to the AFC, the conference containing the AFL teams. Two other teams, the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, were also added to the NFL as part of the merger agreement. (These two teams were not added until 1976; during the early 1970s, there were some concerns that several of the newly transplanted teams did not have stadiums big or modern enough to accommodate the NFL, and Seattle and Tampa Bay unsuccessfully attempted to court teams such as the Buffalo Bills and Boston Patriots to their cities. Once the Bills and Patriots built new stadiums and solidified their place in their home markets, the NFL awarded Seattle and Tampa Bay expansion franchises of their own.) There was also a financial settlement, with the AFL teams paying a combined $18 million over 20 years.


title: History of the National Football League

text: Although the AFL's identity was subsumed by the NFL, the NFL eventually adopted many of the AFL's innovations including the on-field game clock, names on player jerseys, recruiting at small and predominantly black colleges, gate and television revenue-sharing, establishment of southern franchises, and more wide-open offensive rules.


title: History of the National Football League

text: Unlike previous armed conflicts such as World War I and World War II, both of which effectively stopped or dramatically reduced the amount of professional football played in the United States, both the AFL and NFL were largely unaffected by the Vietnam War and did not lose a significant number of players to the war draft. There is at least one recorded incidence of the NFL using champagne units to keep its players from being sent overseas (the Dallas Cowboys used the Texas Air National Guard's 147th Fighter Interceptor Group, a well-known champagne unit to shield seven Cowboys players from combat in Vietnam). Bob Kalsu, then a player with the AFL's Buffalo Bills, left the team to serve in Vietnam and died in combat; he was the only casualty of the Vietnam War that the league would sustain. (Don Steinbrunner, who briefly played for the Cleveland Browns, also died in Vietnam, but he left the NFL over a decade before his deployment there.)


title: History of the National Football League

text: In the 1970s and 1980s, the NFL solidified its dominance as America's top spectator sport, and its important role in American culture. The Super Bowl became an unofficial national holiday and the top-rated television program most years. "Monday Night Football", which first aired in 1970, brought in high ratings by mixing sports and entertainment. Rule changes in the late 1970s ensured a fast-paced game with much passing to attract the casual fan.


title: History of the National Football League

text: The World Football League was the first post-merger challenge to the NFL's dominance, and in 1974, successfully lured some top NFL talent to its league and prompted a few rules changes in the NFL. However, financial problems led the league to fold halfway through its 1975 season. Two teams, the Birmingham Vulcans and Memphis Southmen, made unsuccessful efforts to move from the WFL to the NFL.


title: History of the National Football League

text: In 1982 and 1987 there were player strikes. The 1982 NFL strike, which lasted for eight weeks, forced the 1982 season to be shortened to 9 games per team. The 1987 NFL strike, which lasted for 24 days and forced the 1987 season to be shortened to 15 games per team.


title: History of the National Football League

text: The founding of the United States Football League in the early 1980s would prove to be the longest sustained challenge to the NFL's dominance since the 1970 merger, lasting three seasons. The USFL was a relatively well-financed competitor with big-name players and a national television contract, but overspending on that talent and a decision to move its niche spring operation into a head-to-head competition with the NFL in the fall (abandoning some of its biggest cities in the process) over the objections of many of its original owners were two major factors in the league's demise. The league's last-ditch effort to sue the NFL for hundreds of millions of dollars in antitrust damages, while a technical victory, failed to secure the funds the USFL needed to survive.


title: History of the National Football League

text: The XFL was established in 2001 as an attempt by Vince McMahon and NBC, which had lost the NFL broadcast rights for that year, to compete with the league; the XFL folded after just one season. Unlike the WFL and USFL, the XFL had no impact on the NFL's rules or franchise locations, but a few NFL players used the XFL to relaunch their careers, and the league, while still considered a failure, has been reassessed in the 2010s and earned some greater respect for its attempt at integrating sports entertainment and innovative presentations into professional football. McMahon relaunched the XFL in 2020.


title: History of the National Football League

text: Prior to the 2002 season, the league realigned the divisions. The realignment consisted of eight divisions of four teams each. The NFC and AFC Central were renamed the NFC and AFC North, and the NFC and AFC South were created as brand new divisions. Arizona and Seattle join the NFC West, with Arizona leaving the NFC East and Seattle leaving the AFC West. Atlanta, New Orleans, and Carolina move from the NFC West to the new NFC South, along with Tampa Bay leaving the old NFC Central to join the NFC South. Jacksonville and Tennessee move from the old AFC Central to join to the new AFC South, along with Indianapolis moving from the AFC East to the AFC South. The other team to join the AFC South is the brand new expansion franchise Houston Texans. This realignment marked the first time the divisions were realigned in the league since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970.


title: History of the National Football League

text: The United Football League, which began play in 2009, had originally planned to take a direct challenge to the NFL with NFL-comparable salaries and teams in New York City and Los Angeles, but the UFL never did play in those cities (an ostensibly New York team played in Long Island and New Jersey), cut back its salaries, and instead opted for a complementary approach with teams in cities such as Las Vegas, Sacramento and Omaha; after four years, the UFL folded due to massive financial losses. Numerous other leagues have attempted to form over the years, but none have succeeded in having any level of competition comparable to the NFL (most never made it to their first game).


title: History of the National Football League

text: On August 31, 2007, a story in "USA Today" unveiled the first changes to the league's shield logo since 1980, which took effect with the 2008 season. The redesign reduced the number of stars in the logo from 25 (which were found not to have a meaning beyond being decorative) to eight (for each of the league's divisions), repositioned the football in the manner of the Vince Lombardi Trophy, and changed the "NFL" letters to a straight, serifed font. The redesign was created with television and digital media, along with clothing, in mind. The shield logo itself dates back to the 1940s.


title: History of the National Football League

text: In 1987, through a short stint with NBC Sports, Gayle Sierens became the first woman to do play-by-play for an NFL regular season football game when she called the December 27 game between the Seattle Seahawks and the Kansas City Chiefs. She was originally to be a regular play-by-play announcer for the season, but a contract dispute with WFLA prevented her from continuing in that role beyond her lone game. In May 2017, Beth Mowins was reported by "Sports Illustrated"s Richard Deitsch to be the chosen play-by-play announcer on ESPN's "Monday Night Football" opening week late broadcast between the Los Angeles Chargers and Denver Broncos. She did that announcing job in September of that year, and thus became the first woman to call a nationally televised NFL game; in contrast to Sierens, Mowins has been a semi-regular broadcaster for the NFL since then. In 2018 Hannah Storm and Andrea Kremer became the first all-female broadcast team to call an NFL game, which they did for an Amazon Prime stream of "Thursday Night Football".


title: History of the National Football League

text: Shannon Eastin became the first woman to officiate an NFL game in 2012, in a pre-season matchup between the Green Bay Packers and the San Diego Chargers. In 2015 Sarah Thomas became the first full-time female official in NFL history. In 2021 she became the first woman to officiate a Super Bowl.


title: History of the National Football League

text: On March 3, 2013, Lauren Silberman became the first woman to ever try out for the NFL when she appeared as a kicker at the NFL Regional Scouting Combine in Florham Park, New Jersey. However, after two poor kicks, Silberman left the field, citing an injury to her quadriceps; the tryout was suspected by members of the press and public as being nothing more than a publicity stunt. Olympic pole-vaulter Jenn Suhr publicly expressed interest in attending an NFL scouting combine in 2014, but did not indicate what position she would play.


title: History of the National Football League

text: On July 27, 2015, the Arizona Cardinals hired Jennifer Welter as an assistant coaching intern for training camp and the preseason; as such, she is believed to be the first female coach in the NFL. The Buffalo Bills hired Kathryn Smith as an assistant special teams coach for the 2016 season making Smith the first full-time female assistant coach in the NFL. In 2017, Katie Sowers was hired as an assistant coach for the San Francisco 49ers. Later that year, she came out as gay becoming the NFL's first openly LGBT coach and the first openly LGBT coach in U.S. men's professional sports. In 2020, the 49ers played in Super Bowl LIV making Sowers the first female and first openly gay coach in Super Bowl history. Also in 2020, Callie Brownson became the first woman to coach an NFL position group in a regular-season game when she filled in for the Cleveland Browns tight ends coach Drew Petzing. Jennifer King was promoted to assistant running backs coach for the Washington Football Team in 2021, becoming the first black woman to be a full-time coach in NFL history. Also in 2021, with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' victory in Super Bowl LV, assistant defensive line coach Lori Locust and assistant strength and conditioning coach Maral Javadifar became the first female coaches to win a Super Bowl.


title: History of the National Football League

text: In recent years, the NFL has expanded into new markets and ventures outside of the United States, beginning with a regular series of exhibition games known as the American Bowl, then with a European-based developmental league culminating in the now defunct NFL Europa, and starting in 2005 the league began hosting regular season games outside the United States, the first in Mexico City, Mexico, and then from 2007 hosting games in London, England, and from 2008 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.


title: History of the National Football League

text: The American Bowl games began in 1986 and continued until 2005 at various sites in countries around the world. Then in 1991, the league formed the World League of American Football, later known as NFL Europe and still later as NFL Europa, a developmental league that had teams in Britain, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands. The NFL shut down the program in June 2007.


title: History of the National Football League

text: The league played a regular-season NFL game in Mexico City in 2005, the first-ever NFL regular season game held outside the United States, and marketed across the league as the Fútbol Americano game. On October 28, 2007, a regular season game between the Miami Dolphins and the New York Giants was held outside of North America for the first time in Wembley Stadium, the 90,000-seat national stadium, in London. It was a financial success with nearly 40,000 tickets sold within ninety minutes of the start of sales, and a game-day attendance of over 80,000. In 2008, the New Orleans Saints and San Diego Chargers played at Wembley, and in October 2009, the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers met. In 2010, it was the Denver Broncos and the San Francisco 49ers that played in London. Starting from the 2008–09 season, building on league links with Toronto, the Buffalo Bills play an annual home game in Toronto's Rogers Centre, marketed by the team as the Bills Toronto Series. In 2014, the Detroit Lions and the Atlanta Falcons played at Wembley Stadium. In 2016, the Raiders and Texans played a game in Estadio Azteca, Mexico. The Raiders and Patriots played here in 2017.


title: History of the National Football League

text: After 100 years of American football influence in Mexican territory, in 1998 the NFL opened a representation office in Mexico, called NFL México, as the NFL identified Mexico as a key market outside the United States due to proximity and tradition. The Mexican office handles sponsorship, licensing, detail dealers, sport culture, broadcasting, public relationships and community


title: History of the National Football League

text: In the early years, the league was not stable and teams moved frequently. Franchise mergers were popular during World War II in response to the scarcity of players. An example of this was the Steagles, temporarily formed as a merger between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles.


title: History of the National Football League

text: Franchise moves became far more controversial in the late twentieth century when a vastly more popular NFL was free from financial instability and allowed many franchises to abandon long-held strongholds for perceived financially greener pastures. This was done in spite of the promises to Congress by Pete Rozelle in 1966 that if the AFL–NFL merger were allowed, no city would lose its franchise. Those promises were made to ensure passage of PL 89-800, which granted antitrust immunity to the merged professional football leagues. While owners invariably cited financial difficulties as the primary factor in such moves, many fans bitterly disputed these contentions, especially in Cleveland (the Rams and the Browns), Baltimore (the Colts), Houston (the Oilers), and St. Louis (the Cardinals and the Rams), each of which eventually received teams some years after their original franchises left (the Browns, another Browns, Ravens, Texans, and Rams, respectively). Notably, the second-largest media market in the United States, Los Angeles, did not have an NFL team from 1994, after both the Raiders and the Rams relocated elsewhere, until 2016, when the Rams returned. The San Diego Chargers, who played their inaugural season in Los Angeles before spending the next 55 years in San Diego, returned to Los Angeles following the 2016 season. The Oakland Raiders (who themselves relocated to Los Angeles from 1982 to 1994 before returning to Oakland in 1995) relocated to Las Vegas, Nevada in 2020. The driving force behind the 2010s relocations was not directly related to finances, as the league was lucrative and stable by this point; instead, the promise of better stadiums drove those relocations.


title: History of the National Football League

text: While baseball is known as "America's national pastime," football is the most popular spectator sport in the United States. According to the Harris Poll, professional football moved ahead of baseball as the fans' favorite in 1965, during the emergence of the NFL's challenger, the American Football League, as a major professional football league. Football has remained America's favorite sport ever since. In a Harris Poll conducted in 2008, the NFL was the favorite sport of as many people (30%) as the combined total of the next three professional sports – baseball (15%), auto racing (10%), and hockey (2%).


title: History of the National Football League

text: Additionally, football's American television viewership ratings now surpass those of other sports, although football season comprises far fewer games than the seasons of other sports.


title: History of the National Football League

text: However, the Harris Poll only allows one unaided selection of a "favorite sport." Other studies and polls such as the ESPN Sports Poll and the studies released by the Associated Press (AP) and conducted by Sports Marketing Group (SMG) from 1988 to 2004, show far higher levels of popularity for NFL football since they list from thirty to over 100 sports that each respondent must rate. According to the AP, the SMG polls from 1988 to 2004 show NFL football to be the most popular spectator sport in America. The AP stated that "In the most detailed survey ever of America's sports tastes" researching "114 spectator sports they might attend, follow on television or radio or read about in newspapers or magazines, the NFL topped all sports with 39 percent of Americans saying they loved it or considered it one of their favorites." In a 2003 study conducted by SMG and released by the AP, the NFL was loved or liked a lot by 42.8% of Americans over 18.


title: History of the National Football League

text: The NFL has the highest per-game attendance of any domestic professional sports league in the world. The NFL's overall attendance, however, is only approximately 20 percent of Major League Baseball, because of the latter's longer schedule (162-game scheduled regular season).


title: History of the National Football League

text: A 2007 Turnkey Sports & Entertainment's Team Brand Index for "team loyalty" ranked NFL teams in twelve of the top twenty-five spots out of 122 total between the four major sports leagues. The Pittsburgh Steelers and their fanbase had the top spot, while the New England Patriots, and Indianapolis Colts had the following two spots, followed by the New Orleans Saints at number seven and the Green Bay Packers and their fanbase ranked at number ten. The Arizona Cardinals finished last in the entire survey of 122 teams, though the survey was taken before the team's appearance against the Steelers in Super Bowl XLIII.


title: History of the National Football League

text: In the 2016 preseason, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat and later knelt during the national anthem. He did it in protest of racial injustice and police brutality, and he referenced a series of African-American deaths caused by law enforcement. Inspired by Kaepernick, other NFL players conducted various forms of silent protests during the national anthem. The protests received highly polarized reactions, with some praising him and his stand against racism and others denouncing the protests. In September 2017 President Donald Trump said that NFL owners should "fire" players who protest the national anthem.


title: History of the National Football League

text: In May 2018, the NFL prohibited players from kneeling in protests during the national anthem. During an interview, President Trump said that the NFL did "the right thing" of releasing the new policy. He added, "You have to stand proudly for the national anthem or you shouldn’t be playing. You shouldn’t be there. Maybe you shouldn’t be in the country." Following his departure from the 49ers in 2016, Kaepernick went unsigned through the off-season and 2017 training camps, leading to allegations that he was being blackballed because of his on-field political statements as opposed to his performance. In October 2017, Kaepernick filed a grievance against the NFL, accusing league owners of collusion to keep him out of the league. On February 15, 2019, it was announced that Kaepernick reached a confidential settlement with the NFL and withdrew the grievance.


title: History of the National Football League

text: In June 2020, amid the George Floyd protests, "The New York Times" wrote that the NFL had wrestled with the issue of race, noting that three-quarters of NFL players are African-American, yet nearly every NFL team owner is white. Goodell put out a statement where he apologized for not listening to the concerns of African-American players. "The Times" wrote that Goodell's "words were panned as hypocritical because of the league owners’ rejection of Kaepernick." Michael Rosenberg of "Sports Illustrated" wrote, "Mainstream white America is going to reconsider Kaepernick at some point — the way it reconsidered Muhammad Ali years after he refused to go to Vietnam, the way it reconsidered Jackie Robinson and Jack Johnson. Progress comes in fits and starts, and this country tends to punish those who urge it to move faster. The reconsideration of Kaepernick has begun."


title: History of the National Football League

text: The league has been criticized for its efforts in preventing concussions, in which eight former players have died, and have also had concussions throughout their careers. In 1994, former commissioner Paul Tagliabue created the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee in order to study the effects of concussions on players. With the suicide of linebacker Junior Seau in 2012, concerns arose about the connection between player deaths and concussions. As a result, on April 9, 2013, a lawsuit involving 4,100 plaintiffs and 222 consolidated lawsuits against the NFL will be held by a federal court.


title: History of the National Football League

text: In 2005, Bennet Omalu found evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the brain of former Pittsburgh Steelers player Mike Webster. The NFL initially hounded Omalu and tried to force him to withdraw his findings. Since this discovery, however, 91 other former NFL players have been tested for CTE at the VA-BU-CLF Brain bank at Boston University, with 87 of these tests showing signs of CTE. The story of Bennet Omalu has since been made into a major motion picture.


title: Mafia: Chapter 1

text: Mafia: Chapter 1, known simply as Mafia, is a 2020 Indian Tamil-language action crime film directed and Written by Karthick Naren and produced by Allirajah Subaskaran under the banner of Lyca Productions. The film starring Arun Vijay and Priya Bhavani Shankar in leading roles with Prasanna playing the antagonist. The film's music composed by Jakes Bejoy, while cinematography and editing are handled by Gokul Benoy and Sreejith Sarang respectively. Filming was completed on 29 August 2019, and the film was released on 21 February 2020 to mixed to positive reviews from critics and audience, and became an commercial success at the box office. A sequel is in development


title: Mafia: Chapter 1

text: Aryan is a cop from the Narcotics Division in Chennai, who works alongside his batchmates Sathya and Varun. Aryan lost his twin brother, Dillip, who was addicted to narcotics, due to which he became a cop and his main aim is to eradicate all drug lords, known as "Snake's den". Alongside his team are Selvam, his team supervisor and Mugilan, a social activist and also Aryan's neighbour. When Aryan arrives home after catching two culprits, who were into drugs, he receives a news that Selvam has died due to a gunshot.


title: Mafia: Chapter 1

text: Previously, Selvam had concluded the guy behind this, but did not reveal so the culprit wouldn't know about it. Aryan and Sathya investigate around the house, and Aryan concludes that a drug lord was also involved in the murder, and they must find evidence. Mugilan is also targeted by the drug lord and his bodyguard and is killed. Before his death, he provides information about the drug lord in a USB stick, attached to his dog, Pogo's collar and sends Aryan a message. Aryan tracks down Pogo with the tracking chip installed in his collar and checks the information.


title: Mafia: Chapter 1

text: The drug baron is apparently Diwakar Kumaran (D.K), a philanthropic drug trafficker. Mugilan suspects his early source of income was with links of international drug cartels. D.K and his brother/bodyguard Rudra have links with politicians, so that their business cannot be derailed. Knowing this Mugilan and Selvam decides to investigate a place thought to be D.K's secret hideout, but they were both caught. Aryan starts a shootout at the place, and finally concludes D.K's role in drug dealing. D.K, who deduces that Aryan and his team were involved after checking the warehouse cameras, abducts Aryan's family and asks Aryan to meet his doom at a warehouse.


title: Mafia: Chapter 1

text: With a plan, Aryan and his team, tries foiling all of D.K's plan in one night and finally manages to catch D.K, who kills himself to prevent going into custody. In his dying moments, D.K tells Aryan that he is not the main drug lord where it is revealed that Aryan's twin brother Dilip is alive and is actually the main drug lord, who goes by the name "Dexter". In a flashback, D.K and Dilip were best friends, who escaped from a police attack and Dilip had faked his death, when he and D.K found a bounty to start their drug business. After learning Aryan's involvement in destroying his business and on the suicide of his best friend, Dilip/Dexter swears vengeance on Aryan.


title: Mafia: Chapter 1

text: After the success of "Dhuruvangal Pathinaaru", Karrthick Naren started work on his second project "Naragasooran", which remained unreleased due to financial constraints, despite production completed in 2017. Also Naren's third film "Naadaga Medai", starring Kalidas Jayaram, Rahman, Parthiban and Gautham Karthik also put on hold. In June 2018, Naren narrated a script to Silambarasan, for which he agreed to do the film. However, the project was not being confirmed. In March 2019, the production house Lyca Productions signed Naren for his upcoming project, which stars Arun Vijay in the leading role. Prasanna was reported to play the antagonist and Nivetha Pethuraj was signed in for a pivotal role, whom she was replaced by Priya Bhavani Shankar. In May 2019, the makers announced the film's title as "Mafia".


title: Mafia: Chapter 1

text: Principal photography began on 31 May 2019 in Chennai. The shooting of the film's first schedule undergone a brisk pace and was completed on 2 July 2019. The makers started the second schedule of the film on 5 July 2019, soon after the completion of the first schedule. It was touted to be shot in eleven days, thus the film's shoot is scheduled to be completed within 37 days. On 18 August, Priya Bhavani Shankar tweeted that she had completed shooting her portions for the film. Within few days, Arun Vijay and Prasanna headed to Thailand to shoot some crucial action sequences. On 26 August, it was announced that the makers had completed shooting for the film.


title: Mafia: Chapter 1

text: The film's music is composed by Jakes Bejoy with lyrics written by Vivek and Travis A. King. The soundtrack album featuring three tracks was released on 7 February 2020.


title: Mafia: Chapter 1

text: "The Times of India" praised the performances and wrote ""Mafia" would appeal to fans of action movies, especially those which have stylish narcotics backdrop." "Behindwoods" gave it 2.75 stars out of 5, calling it "an action flick that is majorly uplifted by the stylish treatment and a smart climax for the sequel." "Indiaglitz" similarly gave it 2.75/5 and praised the lead actors, action sequences and technical aspects while criticizing the predictability of several scenes. Nevertheless, the reviewer felt the film was "an interesting start for an action franchise."Firstpost rated 3 out of 5 stars stating "On the whole Mafia: Chapter I is stylishly cut but has very little substance. But the climax has kindled the expectation meter for Chapter II. In fact, just for the seven minute climax surprise twist we are going with a higher rating than it would have deserved."The Hindu stated "Arun Vijay and Prasanna struggle hard to keep the tension alive in an adequate thriller that abuses its own substance".Deccan Chronicle rated 2.5 out of 5 stars stating "The problem with 'Mafia' is that it makes plenty of noise but has little substance".The Indian Express rated 2 out of 5 stars stating "The biggest problem is that Mafia: Chapter 1 is so randomly written".The News Minute rated 2 out of 5 stars stating "Karthick falls back on voiceovers and an excessive use of English in the dialogues to keep up the sophisticated tone, but the writing falls flat".Hindustan Times stated "Mafia may come across as slightly over stylised for a story set in Chennai and involving officers of the Narcotics Control Bureau, but once you get used to the world, you’re in for a surprise".Sify rated 2.5 out of 5 stars stating "All style and no substance". Baradwaj Rangan of Film Companion South wrote "The single-minded pursuit of surface style kills the movie. The rhythms are flat. The scenes play like summaries that nobody bothered to shape into… a “scene”. There's a lot of dead air."


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: In evolutionary biology, punctuated equilibrium (also called punctuated equilibria) is a theory that proposes that once a species appears in the fossil record, the population will become stable, showing little evolutionary change for most of its geological history. This state of little or no morphological change is called "stasis". When significant evolutionary change occurs, the theory proposes that it is generally restricted to rare and geologically rapid events of branching speciation called cladogenesis. Cladogenesis is the process by which a species splits into two distinct species, rather than one species gradually transforming into another.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Punctuated equilibrium is commonly contrasted with phyletic gradualism, the idea that evolution generally occurs uniformly by the steady and gradual transformation of whole lineages (anagenesis).


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: In 1972, paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould published a landmark paper developing their theory and called it "punctuated equilibria". Their paper built upon Ernst Mayr's model of geographic speciation, I. M. Lerner's theories of developmental and genetic homeostasis,


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: and their own empirical research. Eldredge and Gould proposed that the degree of gradualism commonly attributed to Charles Darwin


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: is virtually nonexistent in the fossil record, and that stasis dominates the history of most fossil species.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Punctuated equilibrium originated as a logical consequence of Ernst Mayr's concept of genetic revolutions by allopatric and especially peripatric speciation as applied to the fossil record. Although the sudden appearance of species and its relationship to speciation was proposed and identified by Mayr in 1954, historians of science generally recognize the 1972 Eldredge and Gould paper as the basis of the new paleobiological research program. Punctuated equilibrium differs from Mayr's ideas mainly in that Eldredge and Gould placed considerably greater emphasis on stasis, whereas Mayr was concerned with explaining the morphological discontinuity (or "sudden jumps") found in the fossil record. Mayr later complimented Eldredge and Gould's paper, stating that evolutionary stasis had been "unexpected by most evolutionary biologists" and that punctuated equilibrium "had a major impact on paleontology and evolutionary biology."


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: A year before their 1972 Eldredge and Gould paper, Niles Eldredge published a paper in the journal "Evolution" which suggested that gradual evolution was seldom seen in the fossil record and argued that Ernst Mayr's standard mechanism of allopatric speciation might suggest a possible resolution.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: The Eldredge and Gould paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in 1971. The symposium focused its attention on how modern microevolutionary studies could revitalize various aspects of paleontology and macroevolution. Tom Schopf, who organized that year's meeting, assigned Gould the topic of speciation. Gould recalls that "Eldredge's 1971 publication [on Paleozoic trilobites] had presented the only new and interesting ideas on the paleontological implications of the subject—so I asked Schopf if we could present the paper jointly." According to Gould "the ideas came mostly from Niles, with yours truly acting as a sounding board and eventual scribe. I coined the term "punctuated equilibrium" and wrote most of our 1972 paper, but Niles is the proper first author in our pairing of Eldredge and Gould." In his book "Time Frames" Eldredge recalls that after much discussion the pair "each wrote roughly half. Some of the parts that would seem obviously the work of one of us were actually first penned by the other—I remember for example, writing the section on Gould's snails. Other parts are harder to reconstruct. Gould edited the entire manuscript for better consistency. We sent it in, and Schopf reacted strongly against it—thus signaling the tenor of the reaction it has engendered, though for shifting reasons, down to the present day."


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: John Wilkins and Gareth Nelson have argued that French architect Pierre Trémaux proposed an "anticipation of the theory of punctuated equilibrium of Gould and Eldredge."


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: The fossil record includes well documented examples of both phyletic gradualism and punctuational evolution. As such, much debate persists over the prominence of stasis in the fossil record. Before punctuated equilibrium, most evolutionists considered stasis to be rare or unimportant. The paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson, for example, believed that phyletic gradual evolution (called "horotely" in his terminology) comprised 90% of evolution. More modern studies, including a meta-analysis examining 58 published studies on speciation patterns in the fossil record showed that 71% of species exhibited stasis, and 63% were associated with punctuated patterns of evolutionary change. According to Michael Benton, "it seems clear then that stasis is common, and that had not been predicted from modern genetic studies." A paramount example of evolutionary stasis is the fern "Osmunda claytoniana". Based on paleontological evidence it has remained unchanged, even at the level of fossilized nuclei and chromosomes, for at least 180 million years.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: When Eldredge and Gould published their 1972 paper, allopatric speciation was considered the "standard" model of speciation. This model was popularized by Ernst Mayr in his 1954 paper "Change of genetic environment and evolution," and his classic volume "Animal Species and Evolution" (1963).


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Allopatric speciation suggests that species with large central populations are stabilized by their large volume and the process of gene flow. New and even beneficial mutations are diluted by the population's large size and are unable to reach fixation, due to such factors as constantly changing environments. If this is the case, then the transformation of whole lineages should be rare, as the fossil record indicates. Smaller populations on the other hand, which are isolated from the parental stock, are decoupled from the homogenizing effects of gene flow. In addition, pressure from natural selection is especially intense, as peripheral isolated populations exist at the outer edges of ecological tolerance. If most evolution happens in these rare instances of allopatric speciation then evidence of gradual evolution in the fossil record should be rare. This hypothesis was alluded to by Mayr in the closing paragraph of his 1954 paper:


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Although punctuated equilibrium generally applies to sexually reproducing organisms, some biologists have applied the model to non-sexual species like viruses, which cannot be stabilized by conventional gene flow. As time went on biologists like Gould moved away from wedding punctuated equilibrium to allopatric speciation, particularly as evidence accumulated in support of other modes of speciation. Gould, for example, was particularly attracted to Douglas Futuyma's work on the importance of reproductive isolating mechanisms.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain the putative causes of stasis. Gould was initially attracted to I. Michael Lerner's theories of developmental and genetic homeostasis. However this hypothesis was rejected over time, as evidence accumulated against it. Other plausible mechanisms which have been suggested include: habitat tracking, stabilizing selection, the Stenseth-Maynard Smith stability hypothesis, constraints imposed by the nature of subdivided populations, normalizing clade selection, and koinophilia.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Evidence for stasis has also been corroborated from the genetics of sibling species, species which are morphologically indistinguishable, but whose proteins have diverged sufficiently to suggest they have been separated for millions of years. Fossil evidence of reproductively isolated extant species of sympatric Olive Shells ("Amalda" sp.) also confirm morphological stasis in multiple lineages over three million years.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: According to Gould, "stasis may emerge as the theory's most important contribution to evolutionary science." Philosopher Kim Sterelny in clarifying the meaning of stasis adds, "In claiming that species typically undergo no further evolutionary change once speciation is complete, they are not claiming that there is no change at all between one generation and the next. Lineages do change. But the change between generations does not accumulate. Instead, over time, the species wobbles about its phenotypic mean. Jonathan Weiner's "The Beak of the Finch" describes this very process."


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Punctuated equilibrium has also been cited as contributing to the hypothesis that species are Darwinian individuals, and not just classes, thereby providing a stronger framework for a hierarchical theory of evolution.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Much confusion has arisen over what proponents of punctuated equilibrium actually argued, what mechanisms they advocated, how fast the punctuations were, what taxonomic scale their theory applied to, how revolutionary their claims were intended to be, and how punctuated equilibrium related to other ideas like saltationism, quantum evolution, and mass extinction.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: The punctuational nature of punctuated equilibrium has engendered perhaps the most confusion over Eldredge and Gould's theory. Gould's sympathetic treatment of Richard Goldschmidt, the controversial geneticist who advocated the idea of "hopeful monsters," led some biologists to conclude that Gould's punctuations were occurring in single-generation jumps. This interpretation has frequently been used by creationists to characterize the weakness of the paleontological record, and to portray contemporary evolutionary biology as advancing neo-saltationism.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Although there exist some debate over how long the punctuations last, supporters of punctuated equilibrium generally place the figure between 50,000 and 100,000 years.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Quantum evolution was a controversial hypothesis advanced by Columbia University paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson, regarded by Gould as "the greatest and most biologically astute paleontologist of the twentieth century." Simpson's conjecture was that according to the geological record, on very rare occasions evolution would proceed very rapidly to form entirely new families, orders, and classes of organisms. This hypothesis differs from punctuated equilibrium in several respects. First, punctuated equilibrium was more modest in scope, in that it was addressing evolution specifically at the species level. Simpson's idea was principally concerned with evolution at higher taxonomic groups. Second, Eldredge and Gould relied upon a different mechanism. Where Simpson relied upon a synergistic interaction between genetic drift and a shift in the adaptive fitness landscape, Eldredge and Gould relied upon ordinary speciation, particularly Ernst Mayr's concept of allopatric speciation. Lastly, and perhaps most significantly, quantum evolution took no position on the issue of stasis. Although Simpson acknowledged the existence of stasis in what he called the bradytelic mode, he considered it (along with rapid evolution) to be unimportant in the larger scope of evolution. In his "Major Features of Evolution" Simpson stated, "Evolutionary change is so nearly the universal rule that a state of motion is, figuratively, normal in evolving populations. The state of rest, as in bradytely, is the exception and it seems that some restraint or force must be required to maintain it." Despite such differences between the two models, earlier critiques—from such eminent commentators as Sewall Wright as well as Simpson himself—have argued that punctuated equilibrium is little more than quantum evolution relabeled.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Punctuated equilibrium is often portrayed to oppose the concept of gradualism, when it is actually a form of gradualism. This is because even though evolutionary change appears instantaneous between geological sedimentary layers, change is still occurring incrementally, with no great change from one generation to the next. To this end, Gould later commented that "Most of our paleontological colleagues missed this insight because they had not studied evolutionary theory and either did not know about allopatric speciation or had not considered its translation to geological time. Our evolutionary colleagues also failed to grasp the implication(s), primarily because they did not think at geological scales".


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Richard Dawkins dedicates a chapter in "The Blind Watchmaker" to correcting, in his view, the wide confusion regarding "rates of change". His first point is to argue that phyletic gradualism—understood in the sense that evolution proceeds at a single uniform speed, called "constant speedism" by Dawkins—is a "caricature of Darwinism" and "does not really exist". His second argument, which follows from the first, is that once the caricature of "constant speedism" is dismissed, we are left with one logical alternative, which Dawkins terms "variable speedism". Variable speedism may also be distinguished one of two ways: ""discrete variable" speedism" and ""continuously variable" speedism". Eldredge and Gould, proposing that evolution jumps between stability and relative rapidity, are described as "discrete variable speedists", and "in this respect they are genuinely radical." They assert that evolution generally proceeds in bursts, or not at all. "Continuously variable speedists", on the other hand, advance that "evolutionary rates fluctuate continuously from very fast to very slow and stop, with all intermediates. They see no particular reason to emphasize certain speeds more than others. In particular, stasis, to them, is just an extreme case of ultra-slow evolution. To a punctuationist, there is something very special about stasis."


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Richard Dawkins regards the apparent gaps represented in the fossil record as documenting migratory events rather than evolutionary events. According to Dawkins, evolution certainly occurred but "probably gradually" elsewhere. However, the punctuational equilibrium model may still be inferred from both the observation of stasis and examples of rapid and episodic speciation events documented in the fossil record.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Dawkins also emphasizes that punctuated equilibrium has been "oversold by some journalists", but partly due to Eldredge and Gould's "later writings". Dawkins contends that the hypothesis "does not deserve a particularly large measure of publicity". It is a "minor gloss," an "interesting but minor wrinkle on the surface of neo-Darwinian theory," and "lies firmly within the neo-Darwinian synthesis".


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: In his book "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", philosopher Daniel Dennett is especially critical of Gould's presentation of punctuated equilibrium. Dennett argues that Gould alternated between revolutionary and conservative claims, and that each time Gould made a revolutionary statement—or appeared to do so—he was criticized, and thus retreated to a traditional neo-Darwinian position. Gould responded to Dennett's claims in "The New York Review of Books", and in his technical volume "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory".


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: English professor Heidi Scott argues that Gould's talent for writing vivid prose, his use of metaphor, and his success in building a popular audience of nonspecialist readers altered the "climate of specialized scientific discourse" favorably in his promotion of punctuated equilibrium. While Gould is celebrated for the color and energy of his prose, as well as his interdisciplinary knowledge, critics such as Scott, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett have concerns that the theory has gained undeserved credence among non-scientists because of Gould's rhetorical skills. Philosopher John Lyne and biologist Henry Howe believed punctuated equilibrium's success has much more to do with the nature of the geological record than the nature of Gould's rhetoric. They state, a "re-analysis of existing fossil data has shown, to the increasing satisfaction of the paleontological community, that Eldredge and Gould were correct in identifying periods of evolutionary stasis which are interrupted by much shorter periods of evolutionary change."


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: The sudden appearance of most species in the geologic record and the lack of evidence of substantial gradual change in most species—from their initial appearance until their extinction—has , including by Charles Darwin, who appealed to the imperfection of the record as the favored explanation. When presenting his ideas against the prevailing influences of catastrophism and progressive creationism, which envisaged species being supernaturally created at intervals, Darwin needed to forcefully stress the gradual nature of evolution in accordance with the gradualism promoted by his friend Charles Lyell. He privately expressed concern, noting in the margin of his 1844 "Essay", "Better begin with this: If species really, after catastrophes, created in showers world over, my theory false."


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: It is often incorrectly assumed that he insisted that the rate of change must be constant, or nearly so, but even the first edition of "On the Origin of Species" states that "Species of different genera and classes have not changed at the same rate, or in the same degree. In the oldest tertiary beds a few living shells may still be found in the midst of a multitude of extinct forms... The Silurian "Lingula" differs but little from the living species of this genus". "Lingula" is among the few brachiopods surviving today but also known from fossils over 500 million years old. In the fourth edition (1866) of "On the Origin of Species" Darwin wrote that "the periods during which species have undergone modification, though long as measured in years, have probably been short in comparison with the periods during which they retain the same form." Thus punctuationism in general is consistent with Darwin's conception of evolution.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: According to early versions of punctuated equilibrium, "peripheral isolates" are considered to be of critical importance for speciation. However, Darwin wrote, ""I can by no means agree" ... that immigration and isolation are necessary elements. ... Although isolation is of great importance in the production of new species, on the whole I am inclined to believe that largeness of area is still more important, especially for the production of species which shall prove capable of enduring for a long period, and of spreading widely."


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: The importance of isolation in forming species had played a significant part in Darwin's early thinking, as shown in his "Essay" of 1844. But by the time he wrote the "Origin" he had downplayed its importance. He explained the reasons for his revised view as follows:


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Throughout a great and open area, not only will there be a greater chance of favourable variations, arising from the large number of individuals of the same species there supported, but the conditions of life are much more complex from the large number of already existing species; and if some of these species become modified and improved, others will have to be improved in a corresponding degree, or they will be exterminated. Each new form, also, as soon as it has been improved, will be able to spread over the open and continuous area, and will thus come into competition with many other forms ... the new forms produced on large areas, which have already been victorious over many competitors, will be those that will spread most widely, and will give rise to the greatest number of new varieties and species. They will thus play a more important role in the changing history of the organic world.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Thus punctuated equilibrium is incongruous with some of Darwin's ideas regarding the specific mechanisms of evolution, but generally accords with Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Recent work in developmental biology has identified dynamical and physical mechanisms of tissue morphogenesis that may underlie abrupt morphological transitions during evolution. Consequently, consideration of mechanisms of phylogenetic change that have been found in reality to be non-gradual is increasingly common in the field of evolutionary developmental biology, particularly in studies of the origin of morphological novelty. A description of such mechanisms can be found in the multi-authored volume "Origination of Organismal Form" (MIT Press; 2003).


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: In linguistics, R. M. W. Dixon has proposed a punctuated equilibrium model for language histories, with reference particularly to the prehistory of the indigenous languages of Australia and his objections to the proposed Pama–Nyungan language family there. Although his model has raised considerable interest, it does not command majority support within linguistics.


title: Punctuated equilibrium

text: Separately, recent work using computational phylogenetic methods claims to show that punctuational bursts play an important factor when languages split from one another, accounting for anywhere from 10 to 33% of the total divergence in vocabulary.


title: Ingrid Andress

text: Ingrid Elizabeth Andress (born September 21, 1991) is an American country music singer-songwriter. Her breakthrough single, "More Hearts Than Mine", peaked at number 30 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. In March 2020, she released her debut studio album, "Lady Like", to critical acclaim. Her second studio album, "Good Person", followed in 2022.


title: Ingrid Andress

text: Andress was born in Southfield, Michigan and grew up in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. As a child, she learned to play piano and drums while also participating in high school choir competitions at Rock Canyon High School. Andress attended Berklee College of Music and majored in songwriting and performance.


title: Ingrid Andress

text: She joined an a cappella group called Pitch Slapped, which performed on the NBC singing competition "The Sing-Off". Another one of her groups, Delilah, also performed on the show and placed sixth. After leaving the show, Andress finished her degree and underwent a mentorship with pop songwriter Kara DioGuardi. She then moved to Nashville, Tennessee where she began writing songs for artists such as Sam Hunt, Alicia Keys, and Charli XCX.


title: Ingrid Andress

text: Andress signed with Warner Nashville in mid 2018. In 2019, she debuted with the single "More Hearts Than Mine". The song has charted on the "Billboard" Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts. Andress cites Faith Hill and The Chicks as her musical inspirations, and notes that she always wants to write her own songs unless she finds an exceptional song written by someone else. On March 27, 2020, she released her debut studio album "Lady Like" through Warner Music Nashville. Andress reached No. 1 on the "Billboard" Emerging Artists chart in April 2020 due to the chart arrival of "Lady Like" and the rise of her single "More Hearts Than Mine", which reached the top five of the American and Canadian country charts. The deluxe edition of "Lady Like" was released on October 2, 2020.


title: Posani Krishna Murali

text: Posani Krishna Murali (born 22 January 1958) is an Indian screenwriter, actor, director and producer who primarily works in Telugu cinema. He worked as a writer for over 150 Telugu films and directed a number of films. In 2009, he also contested in Andhra Pradesh state legislative assembly elections from Chilakaluripet constituency but lost the elections.


title: Posani Krishna Murali

text: Posani was born on 22 January 1958 in Pedakakani, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. His father Posani Subba Rao worked as a small-time employee in Pedakakani and his mother was a housewife. He has an elder sister Rajyalakshmi and a younger sister Prameela. He also has a younger brother Posani Amar Bhosale. He is the cousin of Boyapati Srinu. Growing up, Posani's family struggled financially and his father was not educated and wanted Posani to study well so that he could have a better life. Posani did his schooling in a small village in Guntur district and went on to do his BComm. He joined Acharya Nagarjuna University in Guntur and graduated with an MA degree. During his time in Nagarjuna University, he was elected as the general secretary for the student body. After completing his master's degree, he worked in a small chit fund company in Hyderabad. He was offered a job in Margadarsi Chit Fund. After a year of working there, he resigned his job and went back to Guntur. Posani, saddened and distressed after his father's untimely death, went to Chennai to find work. With no friends in Chennai, Posani met Paruchuri Gopala Krishna at his home and asked him for work. Gopal Krishna gave him an opportunity to work as an assistant under him. Posani later joined Presidency College and graduated with a MPhil degree, which was his second master's degree. He wanted to obtain a PhD degree. Although he joined a college to do so, he later discontinued his studies because of his work.


title: Posani Krishna Murali

text: He joined as an assistant writer under the writing duo Paruchuri Brothers. While he was still working under them and pursuing his MPhil degree in Madras, Ram Gopal Varma asked him to write dialogues for one of his films. Posani declined the offer and told Ram Gopal Varma that he still had a lot to learn from the Paruchuri Brothers and he wasn't ready to take up a film on his own. Posani worked for five years under the Paruchuri Brothers assisting them in over 100 films. In 1992, he finally quit as assistant writer to further his career. He played a small cameo role in the 1992 Telugu film "Dharma Kshetram". He landed a job of writing story and dialogues for the film "Police Brothers" under the direction of Mohan Gandhi. Also Ram Gopal Varma gave him an opportunity to write dialogues for his 1993 film "Gaayam". Varma also recommended Posani to Nagarjuna, which led him to write for the film "Rakshana". He was also given a breakthrough opportunity to write for Chiranjeevi's "Alluda Majaka" directed by E. V. V. Satyanarayana. He wrote the story, dialogues and screenplay for the film. He continued working in successful films such as Pavithra Bandham, Thaali, Preminchukundam Raa, Pellichesukundam, Gokulamlo Seetha, Sivayya, Ravanna and Master.


title: Posani Krishna Murali

text: In 1999, he worked as a writer for eight films, the highest by any Telugu writer in that year. In 2000, he worked as a writer for nine films. In 2001, while still busy as a writer, he began his acting career with Srihari's "Evadra Rowdy" for which he also wrote the story and screenplay. In 2002, his second film as an actor Gemini starring Venkatesh was released. The same year also saw Posani in Mahesh Babu's "Bobby" which was directed by Sobhan. Although the film was a failure at the boxoffice, Posani's performance in the film was praised. He continued to appear in films such as "Good Boy" and "Bhadradi Ramudu". He also continued writing for films such as "Orey Thammudu", "Raghavendra", "Simhachalam", "Bhadradi Ramudu", "Palanati Brahmanaidu", "Seetayya", "Tiger Harish Chandra Prasad" and "Gemini".


title: Posani Krishna Murali

text: After writing for about one hundred and fifty Telugu films, Posani Krishna Murali decided to direct a film. He established the production company called UP Cinema Lines. In 2005, he wrote, directed and produced "Sravanamasam" starring Krishna, Harikrishna, Suman, Vijaya Nirmala, Bhanupriya, Keerthi Chawla, Kalyani, and Gajala. Although the film had a big star cast and more than sixty character artists which included comedians and artists of Telugu cinema like Brahmanandam, Kota Srinivasa Rao, Krishna Bhagavaan, Tanikella Bharani, Giri Babu, Kondavalasa, Dharmavarapu Subramanyam, Sunil, Venu Madhav, L.B. Sriram, M. S. Narayana, Mallikarjuna Rao, AVS, Ali and Babu Mohan, the film was a failure at the box office and Posani's direction was heavily criticised. Posani also incurred heavy losses financially due to the failure of this film. Post Sravaanamasam, he acted in films such as "Athadu", "Game" and "Munna". In 2006, he began working on his next directorial venture. He wrote the script and approached Telugu actor Srikanth to play a lead role in the film. Impressed by the script, Srikanth agreed to do the film and Posani secured a producer for the project. The film was a political satire and was titled "Operation Duryodhana" and was released in 2007. The film was successful at the box office earning nearly ten times its budget. Posani's direction was also praised by the critics. He continued to direct films such as "Apadamokkulavadu", "Mental Krishna", "Rajavari Chepala Cheruvu", "Posani Gentleman" and "Dushasana". He also began acting in lead roles in films such as "Mental Krishna", "Rajavari Chepala Cheruvu" and "Posani Gentleman". He has also been playing supporting roles in prominent Telugu films, with his latest being the 2018 film "MLA".


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: The field of psychology has extensively studied homosexuality as a human sexual orientation. The American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM) in 1952, but that classification came under scrutiny in research funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. That research and subsequent studies consistently failed to produce any empirical or scientific basis for regarding homosexuality as anything other than a natural and normal sexual orientation that is a healthy and positive expression of human sexuality. As a result of this scientific research, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973. Upon a thorough review of the scientific data, the American Psychological Association followed in 1975 and also called on all mental health professionals to take the lead in "removing the stigma of mental illness that has long been associated" with homosexuality. In 1993, the National Association of Social Workers adopted the same position as the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association, in recognition of scientific evidence. The World Health Organization, which listed homosexuality in the ICD-9 in 1977, removed homosexuality from the ICD-10 which was endorsed by the 43rd World Health Assembly on 17 May 1990.


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: The consensus of scientific research and clinical literature demonstrate that same-sex attractions, feelings, and behaviors are normal and positive variations of human sexuality. There is now a large body of scientific evidence that indicates that being gay, lesbian, or bisexual is compatible with normal mental health and social adjustment.


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: The view of homosexuality as a psychological disorder has been seen in literature since research on homosexuality first began; however, psychology as a discipline has evolved over the years in its position on homosexuality. Current attitudes have their roots in religious, legal, and cultural underpinnings. Some Ancient Near Eastern communities, such as the Israelites, had strict codes forbidding homosexual activity, and this gave way to later usage of the same texts by the original missionaries of Christianity, who themselves descended from the tribes of Israel; Paul in particular is notable for his allusion to and reinforcement of such texts in his letters to nascent churches. Later, the Apostolic Fathers and their successors continued to speak against homosexual activity whenever they mentioned it in their (surviving) writings. In the early Middle Ages the Christian Church ignored homosexuality in secular society; however, by the end of the 12th century, hostility towards homosexuality began to emerge and spread through Europe's secular and religious institutions. There were official expressions condemning the "unnatural" nature of homosexual behavior in the works of Thomas Aquinas and others. Until the 19th century, homosexual activity was referred to as "unnatural, crimes against nature", "sodomy" or "buggery" and was punishable by law, sometimes by death.


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: As people became more interested in discovering the causes of homosexuality, medicine and psychiatry began competing with the law and religion for jurisdiction. In the beginning of the 19th century, people began studying homosexuality scientifically. At this time, most theories regarded homosexuality as a disease, which had a great influence on how it was viewed culturally. There was a paradigm shift in the mid 20th century in psychiatric science in regards to theories of homosexuality. Psychiatrists began to believe homosexuality could be cured through therapy and freedom of self, and other theories about the genetic and hormonal origin of homosexuality were becoming accepted. There were variations of how homosexuality was viewed as pathological. Some early psychiatrists such as Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis adopted more tolerant stances on homosexuality. Freud and Ellis believed that homosexuality was not normal, but was "unavoidable" for some people. Alfred Kinsey's research and publications about homosexuality began the social and cultural shift away from viewing homosexuality as an abnormal condition. These shifting viewpoints in the psychological studies of homosexuality are evident in its placement in the first version of the "Diagnostic Statistical Manual" (DSM) in 1952, and subsequent change in 1973, in which the diagnosis of ego-dystonic homosexuality replaced the DSM-II category of "sexual orientation disturbance". However, it was not until 1987 in DSM-III-R that it was entirely dropped as a mental disorder.


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: A 2016 survey of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights found that many medical professionals in countries such as Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia believed that homosexuality is a disease and that such interpretations continue to exist in professional materials. This goes against Council of Europe Recommendation 2010(5) which recommends that homosexuality not be treated as a disease.


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: Sigmund Freud's views on homosexuality were complex. In his attempts to understand the causes and development of homosexuality, he first explained bisexuality as an "original libido endowment", by which he meant that all humans are born bisexual. He believed that the libido has a homosexual portion and a heterosexual portion, and through the course of development one wins out over the other.


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: Some other causes of homosexuality for which he advocated included an inverted Oedipus complex where individuals begin to identify with their mother and take themselves as a love object. This love of one's self is defined as narcissism, and Freud thought that people who were high in the trait of narcissism would be more likely to develop homosexuality because loving the same sex is like an extension of loving oneself.


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: Freud believed treatment of homosexuality was not successful because the individual does not want to give up their homosexual identity because it brings them pleasure. He used psychoanalysis and hypnotic suggestion as treatments, but showed little success. It was through this that Freud arrived at the conclusion that homosexuality was "nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness, but a variation of sexual function". He further stated that psychoanalysts "should not promise to abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place", as he had concluded in his own practice that attempts to change homosexual orientations were likely to be unsuccessful. While Freud himself may have come to a more accepting view of homosexuality, his legacy in the field of psychoanalysis, especially in the United States viewed homosexuality as negative, abnormal and caused by family and developmental issues. It was these views that significantly impacted the rationale for putting homosexuality in the first and second publications of the American Psychiatric Association's DSM, conceptualizing it as a mental disorder and further stigmatizing homosexuality in society.


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) was working as a teacher in Australia, when he had a revelation that he wanted to dedicate his life to exploring the issue of sexuality. He returned to London in 1879 and enrolled in St. Thomas’s Hospital Medical School. He began to write, and in 1896 he co-authored "Sexual Inversion" with John Addington Symonds. The book was first published in German, and a year later it was translated into English. Their book explored homosexual relationships, and in a progressive approach for their time they refused to criminalize or pathologize the acts and emotions that were present in homosexual relationships.


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: Ellis disagreed with Freud on a few points regarding homosexuality, especially regarding its development. He argued that homosexuals do not have a clear cut Oedipus complex but they do have strong feelings of inadequacy, born of fears of failure, and may also be afraid of relations with women. Ellis argued that the restrictions of society contributed to the development of same-sex love. He believed that homosexuality is not something people are born with, but that at some point humans are all sexually indiscriminate, and then narrow down and choose which sex acts to stick with. According to Ellis, some people choose to engage in homosexuality, while others will choose heterosexuality. He proposed that being “exclusively homosexual” is to be deviant because the person is a member of a minority and therefore statistically unusual, but that society should accept that deviations from the "normal" were harmless, and maybe even valuable. Ellis believed that psychological problems arose not from homosexual acts alone, but when someone "psychologically harms himself by fearfully limiting his own sex behavior".


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: Ellis is often attributed with coining the term "homosexuality" but in reality he despised the word because it conflated Latin and Greek roots and instead used the term "invert" in his published works. Soon after "Sexual Inversion" was published in England, it was banned as lewd and scandalous. Ellis argued that homosexuality was a characteristic of a minority, and was not acquired or a vice and was not curable. He advocated changing the laws to leave those who chose to practice homosexuality at peace, because at the time it was a punishable crime. He believed societal reform could occur, but only after the public was educated. His book became a landmark in the understanding of homosexuality.


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: Alfred Charles Kinsey (1894–1956) was a sexologist who founded the Institute for Sex Research, which is now known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. His explorations into different sexual practices originated from his study of the variations in mating practices among wasps. He developed the Kinsey Scale, which measures sexual orientation in ranges from 0 to 6 with 0 being exclusively heterosexual and 6 being exclusively homosexual. His findings indicated that there was great variability in sexual orientations. Kinsey published the books "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" and "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female", which brought him a lot of fame and controversy. The prevailing approach to homosexuality at the time was to pathologize and attempt to change homosexuals. Kinsey's book demonstrated that homosexuality was more common than was assumed, suggesting that these behaviors are normal and part of a continuum of sexual behaviors.


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: The social, medical, and legal approach to homosexuality ultimately led for its inclusion in the first and second publications of the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual" (DSM). This served to conceptualize homosexuality as a mental disorder and further stigmatize homosexuality in society. However, the evolution in scientific study and empirical data from Kinsey, Evelyn Hooker, and others confronted these beliefs, and by the 1970s psychiatrists and psychologists were radically altering their views on homosexuality. Tests such as the Rorschach, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) indicated that homosexual men and women were not distinguishable from heterosexual men and women in functioning. These studies failed to support the previous assumptions that family dynamics, trauma, and gender identity were factors in the development of sexual orientation. Many psychologists have differing opinions about same-sex relationships. Some think that it is not healthy at all, some support it, and some cannot support it because of their own personal religious beliefs. Due to lack of supporting data, as well as exponentially increasing pressure from gay rights advocates, the Board of Directors for the American Psychiatric Association voted to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder from the DSM-II in 1973, but the DSM retained a diagnosis that could be used for distress due to one's sexual orientation until the DSM-5 (2013).


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: Psychological research in these areas has always been important to counteracting prejudicial attitudes and actions, and to the gay and lesbian rights movement generally.


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: Although no single theory on the cause of sexual orientation has yet gained widespread support, scientists favor biologically-based theories. There is considerably more evidence supporting nonsocial, biological causes of sexual orientation than social ones, especially for males.


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: Anti-gay attitudes and behaviors (sometimes called "homophobia" or "heterosexism") have been objects of psychological research. Such research usually focuses on attitudes hostile to gay men, rather than attitudes hostile to lesbians. Anti-gay attitudes are often found in those who do not know gay people on a personal basis. There is also a high risk for anti-gay bias in psychotherapy with lesbian, gay, and bisexual clients. One study found that nearly half of its sample had been the victim of verbal or physical violence because of their sexual orientation, usually committed by men. Such victimization is related to higher levels of depression, anxiety, anger, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Through the 2015 U.S Transgender Survey, which was conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality, transgender people of color were found to face disproportionate discrimination because of their overlapping identities. These forms of discrimination included violence, unreasonable unemployment, unfair policing, and unfair medical treatment.


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: Research suggests that parents who respond negatively to their child's sexual orientation tended to have lower self-esteem and negative attitudes toward women, and that "negative feelings about homosexuality in parents decreased the longer they were aware of their child's homosexuality".


title: Homosexuality and psychology

text: In addition, while research has suggested that "families with a strong emphasis on traditional values – implying the importance of religion, an emphasis on marriage and having children – were less accepting of homosexuality than were low-tradition families", emerging research suggests that this may not be universal. For example, recent research published in APA's "Psychology of Religion & Spirituality" journal by Chana Etengoff and Colette Daiute suggests that religious family members can alternatively use religious values and texts in support of their sexual minority relative. For example, a Catholic mother of a gay man shared that she focuses on "the greatest commandment of all, which is, love". Similarly, a Methodist mother referenced Jesus in her discussion of loving her gay son, as she said, "I look at Jesus' message of love and forgiveness and that we're friends by the blood, that I don't feel that people are condemned by the actions they have done." These religious values were similarly expressed by a father who is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who shared the following during his discussion of the biblical prohibition against homosexuality: "Your goal, your reason for being, should be to accept and to love and to lift up ... those in need no matter who they are".