title: John the Fearless

text: John inherited the Duchy of Burgundy in 1404 upon the death of his father and the counties of Burgundy, Flanders, and Artois on his mother's death in 1405. He almost immediately entered into open conflict with Duke Louis I of Orléans, the younger brother of the increasingly disturbed King Charles VI of France. Both men attempted to fill the power vacuum left by the demented king.


title: John the Fearless

text: John played a game of marriages by exchanging his daughter Margaret of Burgundy for Michelle of Valois, who would marry his heir, Philip the Good. For her part, Margaret was married to Louis, Duke of Guyenne, the heir to the French throne from 1401 until his death in 1415. For all his concentration on aristocratic politics, John nonetheless did not overlook the importance of the middle class of merchants and tradesmen or the University of Paris.


title: John the Fearless

text: Louis tried to gain the favour of the wife of Charles VI, Queen Isabeau of France, and may have become her lover. After his son-in-law, the Dauphin Louis, was successively kidnapped and recovered by both parties, the Duke of Burgundy managed to gain appointment by royal decree—during one of the King's "absent" periods when mental illness manifested itself—as guardian of the Dauphin and the King's children. This did not improve relations between John and the Duke of Orléans. Soon the two rivals descended into making open threats. Their uncle, John, Duke of Berry, secured a vow of solemn reconciliation on 20 November 1407, but only three days later, on 23 November 1407, Louis was brutally assassinated in the streets of Paris. The order, no one doubted, had come from the Duke of Burgundy, who shortly admitted to the deed and declared it to be a justifiable act of "tyrannicide". According to Thomas Walsingham, Orléans had simply received his just deserts as he had been "taking his pleasure with whores, harlots, incest" and had committed adultery with the wife of an unnamed knight who had taken his revenge by killing him under the protection of the Duke of Burgundy. After an escape from Paris and a few skirmishes against the Orléans party, John managed to recover the King's favour. In the treaty of Chartres, signed on 9 March 1409, the King absolved the Duke of Burgundy of the crime, and he and Louis' son Charles pledged a reconciliation. A later edict renewed John's guardianship of the Dauphin.


title: John the Fearless

text: He moved further closer to securing the Regency for himself when he had Jean de Montagu, Grand Master of France and the King's long standing favorite and administrator aligned with the Orleanists, arrested during another one of Charles' manic episodes, and after an expedited summary trial carried out by the Burgundian-aligned politicians, Montagu was beheaded at the Gibbet of Montfaucon on 17 October 1409.


title: John the Fearless

text: Even with the Orléans dispute resolved in his favour, John did not lead a tranquil life. Charles, the son and heir of the murdered Duke of Orleans, was only 14 at the time of his father's death and was forced to depend heavily on allies to support his claims for the property that had been confiscated from him by the Duke of Burgundy. Chief among these allies was his father-in-law Bernard VII, Count of Armagnac. Because of this alliance, their faction became known as the Armagnacs in opposition to the Burgundians. With peace between the factions solemnly sworn in 1410, John returned to Burgundy and Bernard remained in Paris, where he reportedly shared the Queen's bed. The Armagnac party was not content with its level of political power, and after a series of riots and attacks against the citizens, John was recalled to the capital, then sent back to Burgundy in 1413. At this time, King Henry V of England invaded French territory and threatened to attack Paris. During the peace negotiations with the Armagnacs, Henry was also in contact with John, who was keen to wrest control of France away from King Charles VI. Despite this, he continued to be wary of forming an alliance with the English for fear of destroying his immense popularity with the common people of France. When Henry demanded Burgundy's support for his claim to be the rightful King of France, John backed away and decided to ally himself with the Armagnacs. Although he talked of helping his sovereign, his troops took no part in the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, although two of his brothers, Antoine, Duke of Brabant, and Philip II, Count of Nevers, died fighting for France during the battle.


title: John the Fearless

text: Two years later, with the rivalry between Burgundians and Armagnacs at an all-time high because of the shattering defeat at Agincourt, John's troops set about the task of capturing Paris. On 30 May 1418, he did capture the city, but not before the new Dauphin, the future Charles VII of France, had escaped. John then installed himself in Paris and made himself protector of the King. Although not an open ally of the English, John did nothing to prevent the surrender of Rouen in 1419. With the whole of northern France in English hands and Paris occupied by Burgundy, the Dauphin tried to bring about a reconciliation with John. They met in July and swore peace on the bridge of Pouilly, near Melun. On the grounds that peace was not sufficiently assured by the meeting at Pouilly, a fresh interview was proposed by the Dauphin to take place on 10 September 1419 on the bridge at Montereau. John of Burgundy was present with his escort for what he considered a diplomatic meeting. He was, however, assassinated by the Dauphin's companions. He was later buried in Dijon. Following this, his son and successor Philip the Good formed an alliance with the English, which would prolong the Hundred Years' War for decades and cause incalculable damage to France and its subjects.


title: Euphorbiaceae

text: Euphorbiaceae, the spurge family, is a large family of flowering plants. In English, they are also commonly called euphorbias, which is also the name of a genus in the family. Most spurges, such as "Euphorbia paralias", are herbs, but some, especially in the tropics, are shrubs or trees, such as "Hevea brasiliensis". Some, such as "Euphorbia canariensis", are succulent and resemble cacti because of convergent evolution. This family has a cosmopolitan global distribution. The greatest diversity of species is in the tropics, however, the Euphorbiaceae also have many species in nontropical areas of all continents except Antarctica.


title: Euphorbiaceae

text: The leaves are alternate, seldom opposite, with stipules. They are mainly simple, but where compound, are always palmate, never pinnate. Stipules may be reduced to hairs, glands, or spines, or in succulent species are sometimes absent.


title: Euphorbiaceae

text: The plants can be monoecious or dioecious. The radially symmetrical flowers are unisexual, with the male and female flowers usually on the same plant. As can be expected from such a large family, a wide variety exists in the structure of the flowers. The stamens (the male organs) number from one to 10 (or even more). The female flowers are hypogynous, that is, with superior ovaries.


title: Euphorbiaceae

text: The genera in tribe Euphorbieae, subtribe Euphorbiinae ("Euphorbia" and close relatives) show a highly specialized form of pseudanthium ("false flower" made up of several true flowers) called a cyathium. This is usually a small, cup-like involucre consisting of fused-together bracts and peripheral nectary glands, surrounding a ring of male flowers, each a single stamen. In the middle of the cyathium stands a female flower, a single pistil with branched stigmas. This whole arrangement resembles a single flower.


title: Euphorbiaceae

text: The fruit is usually a schizocarp, but sometimes a drupe. A typical schizocarp is the regma, a capsular fruit with three or more cells, each of which splits open explosively at maturity, scattering the small seeds.


title: Euphorbiaceae

text: The family contains a large variety of phytotoxins (toxic substances produced by plants), including diterpene esters, alkaloids, and cyanogenic glycosides (e.g. root tubers of cassava). The seeds of the castor oil plant "Ricinus communis" contain the highly toxic carbohydrate-binding protein ricin.


title: Euphorbiaceae

text: A milky latex is a characteristic of the subfamilies Euphorbioideae and Crotonoideae, and the latex of the rubber tree "Hevea brasiliensis" is the primary source of natural rubber. The latex is poisonous in the Euphorbioideae, but innocuous in the Crotonoideae. White mangrove, also known as blind-your-eye mangrove latex ("Excoecaria agallocha"), causes blistering on contact and temporary blindness if it contacts the eyes, hence its name. The latex of spurge was used as a laxative.


title: Euphorbiaceae

text: Recent molecular studies have shown that the enigmatic family Rafflesiaceae, which was only recently recognized to belong to order Malpighiales, is derived from within the Euphorbiaceae.


title: Euphorbiaceae

text: Euphorbiaceae are monoecious and open pollinated and so self-incompatibility is rare - although it has been reported in the past, apparently this was in error. It is confirmed to be absent or incomplete in herbaceous "Chamaesyce" by Ehrenfeld 1976, "Hevea" by Bouharmont 1962, and "Manihot" by Jennings 1963 and George & Shifriss 1967.


title: Euphorbiaceae

text: The family Euphorbiaceae is the fifth-largest flowering plant family and has about 7,500 species organised into 300 genera, 37 tribes, and three subfamilies; "Acalyphoideae", "Crotonoideae" and "Euphorbioideae". Amongst the oldest fossils of the group include the permineralised fruit "Euphorbiotheca deccanensis" from the Intertrappean Beds of India, dating to the late Maastrichtian at the end of the Cretaceous, around 66 million years ago.


title: Euphorbiaceae

text: Some species of Euphorbiaceae have economic significance, such as cassava ("Manihot esculenta"), castor oil plant ("Ricinus communis"), Barbados nut ("Jatropha curcas"), and the Pará rubber tree ("Hevea brasiliensis"). Many are grown as ornamental plants, such as poinsettia ("Euphorbia pulcherrima") or garden croton ("Codiaeum variegatum"). Leafy spurge ("Euphorbia esula") and Chinese tallow ("Triadica sebifera") are invasive weeds in North America.


title: Euphorbiaceae

text: Although some species of the Euphorbiaceae have been used in traditional medicine, , there is no rigorous clinical evidence that euphorbia extracts are effective for treating any disease. Numerous Euphorbiaceae species are listed on the poisonous plant database of the US Food and Drug Administration mainly because of the toxic sap.


title: Euphorbiaceae

text: Phytochemicals found in Euphorbiaceae species include diterpenoids, terpenoids, flavonoids, alkaloids, tannins, neriifolins (also found in oleander), cycloartenol, lectin, and taraxerol, among others.


title: Euphorbiaceae

text: Some species of this family are facing the risk of extinction. These include the "Euphorbia" species "E. appariciana", "E. attastoma", "E. crossadenia", and "E. gymnoclada".


title: Olive (color)

text: As a color word in the English language, it appears in late Middle English. Shaded toward gray, it becomes olive drab.


title: Olive (color)

text: Olive drab is variously described as a "dull olive-green colour" ("Oxford English Dictionary"); "a shade of greenish-brown" ("Webster's New World Dictionary"); "a dark gray-green" ("MacMillan English dictionary"); "a grayish olive to dark olive brown or olive gray" ("American Heritage Dictionary"); or "A dull but fairly strong gray-green color" ("Collins English Dictionary"). It was widely used as a camouflage color for uniforms and equipment in the armed forces, particularly by the U.S. Army during the Second World War.


title: Olive (color)

text: The first recorded use of "olive drab" as a color name in English was in 1892. Drab is an older color name, from the middle of the 16th century. It refers to a dull light brown color, the color of cloth made from undyed homespun wool. It took its name from the old French word for cloth, "drap".


title: Olive (color)

text: Olive drab was the color of the standard fighting uniform for U.S. soldiers and military vehicles during World War II. The shade used by the U.S. Army at the beginning of the war was officially called "Olive Drab #3" (OD3), which was replaced in 1943 by the darker "Olive Drab #7" (OD7, hex code #3C341F). This was in turn replaced by the "Olive Green 107" or "OG-107" uniform in 1952, which continued as the official combat uniform through the Vietnam War until it was replaced as the primary U.S. battle uniform in 1981 by the four-color-camouflage-patterned M81 Battle Dress Uniform, which retained olive drab as one of the color swatches in the pattern.


title: Olive (color)

text: As a solid color, it is not as effective for camouflage as multi-color patterns, though it is still used by the U.S. military to color webbing and accessories. The armies of Israel, India, Cuba, and Venezuela wear solid-color olive drab uniforms.


title: Olive (color)

text: In the American novel "A Separate Peace", Finny says to Gene, "...and in these times of war, we all see olive drab, and we all know it is the patriotic color. All others aren't about the war; they aren't patriotic."


title: Olive (color)

text: There are many shades and variations of olive drab; one common version is defined by Federal Standard 595 in the United States.


title: Olive (color)

text: Olive green is greener than olive or olive drab but less green than dark olive green. An example is U.S. Army OG-107:


title: Olive (color)

text: Pantone 448 C, "the ugliest color in the world" commonly used in plain tobacco packaging, was initially described as a shade of olive green.


title: Olive (color)

text: This is one of the colors in the RAL color matching system, a color system widely used in Europe. The RAL color list originated in 1927, and it reached its present form in 1961.


title: Kevin Kwan

text: Kevin Kwan (born ) is a Singapore-born American novelist and writer of satirical novels "Crazy Rich Asians", "China Rich Girlfriend", and "Rich People Problems". His latest book, "Sex and Vanity", was released in June 2020.


title: Kevin Kwan

text: In 2014, Kwan was named as one of the "Five Writers to Watch" on the list of Hollywood's Most Powerful Authors published by "The Hollywood Reporter". In 2018, Kwan made "Time" magazine's list of 100 most influential people and was inducted into The Asian Hall of Fame.


title: Kevin Kwan

text: Kevin Kwan was born in Singapore as the youngest of three boys, into an established Chinese Singaporean family. His great-grandfather, Oh Sian Guan, was a founding director of Singapore's oldest bank, the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation. His paternal grandfather, Sir Arthur Kwan Pah Chien M.D., was an ophthalmologist who became Singapore's first Western-trained specialist and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his philanthropic efforts. His maternal grandfather, the Rev. Paul Hang Sing Hon, founded the Hinghwa Methodist Church. Kwan is also related to Hong Kong-born American actress Nancy Kwan and former Singaporean finance minister Richard Hu, who was a cousin of his father.


title: Kevin Kwan

text: While in Singapore, Kwan studied at the Anglo-Chinese School and lived with his paternal grandparents. Kwan's father and mother, an engineer and pianist respectively, moved the family to the United States when Kwan was 11. The family moved to Clear Lake, Texas, and Kwan attended Clear Lake High School, graduating when he was 16.


title: Kevin Kwan

text: He attended the University of Houston-Clear Lake, where he earned a BA in Media Studies, after which he moved to Manhattan to attend Parsons School of Design in order to pursue a BFA in Photography. In New York, Kwan worked for "Interview Magazine", "Martha Stewart Living", and Tibor Kalman's design firm M&Co. In 2000, Kwan established his own creative studio, clients of which included Ted.com, Museum of Modern Art, and "The New York Times".


title: Kevin Kwan

text: On August 22, 2018, Singapore's Ministry of Defence stated that Kwan is wanted in Singapore for defaulting on National Service obligation. The Ministry of Defence stated that Kwan had failed to register for National Service in 1990 and did not have a valid exit permit to remain overseas, even though he has been living outside of Singapore since he was 11 years old. In 1994, his application and subsequent appeal to renounce his Singapore citizenship without serving National Service were rejected. Kwan is liable to a fine of up to $10,000 under the Enlistment Act.


title: Kevin Kwan

text: Kwan edited "I Was Cuba" (featuring photographs collected by Ramiro A. Fernández, published in 2007) and coauthored the book "Luck: The Essential Guide" with Deborah Aaronson (published in 2008).


title: Kevin Kwan

text: Kwan became inspired to write "Crazy Rich Asians" in 2009 while caring for his father, who was dying of cancer. Kwan and his father would reminisce about their life in Singapore while driving to and from medical appointments, and Kwan began writing stories to capture those memories. Kwan stated one of his goals was to showcase the "educated families with style and taste that have been quietly going about their lives for generations" which went beyond the typical contemporary coverage of Asia which focused on conspicuous consumption. Friends had been urging him to commit his memories to paper as well. Moving to the United States has westernized his view of Asia, and he likens himself to "an outsider looking in" when describing his life in Singapore.


title: Kevin Kwan

text: Kwan published "Crazy Rich Asians" in 2013. The book was inspired by his childhood in Singapore; the second chapter more specifically was developed from a poem he had written years before entitled "Singapore Bible Study." Kwan wrote the poem, which describes the study group as "an excuse to gossip and show off new jewelry" for a creative writing course in college. In the process of turning that scene into a chapter of a novel, he was inspired to complete the entire story.


title: Kevin Kwan

text: The novel was described as "a sprawling, multi-generational mock epic that centers on a clan of Singaporeans whose various factions gather from their respective lairs around the globe for a wedding that is the year's most talked-about event among the international Chinese aristocracy." Upon publication, it received positive reviews, became both a national and an international bestseller, and has been translated into over 30 languages. In 2013, "Hunger Games" producer Nina Jacobson secured film rights to "Crazy Rich Asians". The film was released in the United States on August 15, 2018. Kwan served as executive producer on the film, one of the conditions to selling the rights.


title: Kevin Kwan

text: Kwan published the first sequel to "Crazy Rich Asians" entitled "China Rich Girlfriend" in June 2015. Similarly to "Crazy Rich Asians, China Rich Girlfriend" became an international bestseller. On August 15, 2018, it was reported that even before the release of the film adaptation of his first novel, Kwan had already been tasked with developing a film from the sequel "China Rich Girlfriend". On April 29, 2019, CNBC reported the back-to-back filming of two sequels to "Crazy Rich Asians" set for filming in 2020. "China Rich Girlfriend", as of April 2019, is currently in pre-production.


title: Kevin Kwan

text: Kwan's third and final installment of the "Crazy Rich" trilogy, titled "Rich People Problems", was released in May 2017. On April 29, 2019, CNBC reported the back-to-back filming of two sequels to "Crazy Rich Asians" set for filming in 2020. "Rich People Problems", as of April 2019, is currently in pre-production.


title: Kevin Kwan

text: In June 2020, Kwan's novel "Sex and Vanity" was published to good reviews, and with mention that this novel is not at all like "Crazy Rich Asians". The plot has a structure like that of "A Room with a View" by E. M. Forster, and major characters have similar names. As of July 2020, Sony Pictures has purchased the film rights and the project is now in development.


title: Kevin Kwan

text: In August 2018, Amazon Studios ordered a new drama series from Kwan and STX Entertainment. The unnamed series is set in Hong Kong and follows the "most influential and powerful family" along with their business empire.


title: James Lassiter

text: James Lassiter is an American film producer, known for being co-founder of Overbrook Entertainment and longtime business partner of actor and rapper Will Smith.


title: James Lassiter

text: Lassiter attended University of Miami and Temple University and befriended Jeffrey "Jazzy Jeff" Townes, who was in a rap duo with then-musician Will Smith. Lassiter met Smith through Townes, and he later became Smith's road manager. They worked together for two decades. Lassiter briefly worked with other companies including Handprint and The Firm, but he returned to being Will Smith's business partner. Lassiter and Smith formed the production company Overbrook Entertainment, which produced films like "Hitch" and "ATL". While Overbrook Entertainment had a deal with Universal Studios to produce films, none resulted, and the company was taken to Sony. The pair sought to market each of their productions to a different foreign market, promoting "I, Robot" in Russia and "Ali" in South Africa.


title: Goodwill (accounting)

text: Under US GAAP and IFRS, goodwill is never amortized, because it is considered to have an indefinite useful life. (Though private companies in the United States may elect to amortize goodwill over a period of ten years or less under an accounting alternative from the Private Company Council of the FASB.) Instead, management is responsible for valuing goodwill every year and to determine if an impairment is required. If the fair market value goes below historical cost (what goodwill was purchased for), an impairment must be recorded to bring it down to its fair market value. However, an increase in the fair market value would not be accounted for in the financial statements.


title: Goodwill (accounting)

text: The concept of commercial goodwill developed together with the capitalist economy. In England, contracts from the 15th century onward refer to the purchase and conveyance of goodwill, roughly meaning the transfer of continuing business, as distinguished from the transfer of business property. Such agreements were initially unenforceable under the restraint of trade doctrine, which held that one could not claim property in business activity, until "Broad v. Jolyffe" (1620) established that restraints could be legal in exceptional cases. John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon defined the concept succinctly in 1810 as "the probability that the old customers will resort to the old place."


title: Goodwill (accounting)

text: In order to calculate goodwill, the fair market value of identifiable assets and liabilities of the company acquired is deducted from the purchase price. For instance, if company A acquired 100% of company B, but paid more than the net market value of company B, a goodwill occurs. In order to calculate goodwill, it is necessary to have a list of all of company B's assets and liabilities at fair market value.


title: Goodwill (accounting)

text: In order to acquire company B, company A paid $20. Hence, goodwill would be $11 ($20 − $9). The journal entry in the books of company A to record the acquisition of company B would be:


title: Goodwill (accounting)

text: Goodwill is a special type of intangible asset that represents that portion of the entire business value that cannot be attributed to other income producing business assets, tangible or intangible.


title: Goodwill (accounting)

text: For example, a privately held software company may have net assets (consisting primarily of miscellaneous equipment and/or property, and assuming no debt) valued at $1 million, but the company's overall value (including customers and intellectual capital) is valued at $10 million. Anybody buying that company would book $10 million in total assets acquired, comprising $1 million physical assets and $9 million in other intangible assets. And any consideration paid in excess of $10 million shall be considered as goodwill. In a private company, goodwill has no predetermined value prior to the acquisition; its magnitude depends on the two other variables "by definition". A publicly traded company, by contrast, is subject to a constant process of market valuation, so goodwill will always be apparent.


title: Goodwill (accounting)

text: While a business can invest to increase its reputation, by advertising or assuring that its products are of high quality, such expenses cannot be capitalized and added to goodwill, which is technically an intangible asset. Goodwill and intangible assets are usually listed as separate items on a company's balance sheet.


title: Goodwill (accounting)

text: There are two types of goodwill: institutional (enterprise) and professional (personal). Institutional goodwill may be described as the intangible value that would continue to inure to the business without the presence of specific owner.  Professional goodwill may be described as the intangible value attributable solely to the efforts of or reputation of an owner of the business. The key difference between the two types of goodwill is whether the goodwill is transferable upon a sale to a third party without a non-competition agreement.


title: Goodwill (accounting)

text: Previously, companies could structure many acquisition transactions to determine the choice between two accounting methods to record a business combination: purchase accounting or pooling-of-interests accounting. Pooling-of-interests method combined the book value of assets and liabilities of the two companies to create the new balance sheet of the combined companies. It therefore did not distinguish between who is buying whom. It also did not record the price the acquiring company had to pay for the acquisition. Since 2001, U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (FAS 141) no longer allows the pooling-of-interests method.


title: Goodwill (accounting)

text: Goodwill is no longer amortized under U.S. GAAP (FAS 142). FAS 142 was issued in June 2001. Companies objected to the removal of the option to use pooling-of-interests, so amortization was removed by Financial Accounting Standards Board as a concession. As of 2005-01-01, it is also forbidden under International Financial Reporting Standards. Goodwill can now only be impaired under these GAAP standards.


title: Goodwill (accounting)

text: Instead of deducting the value of goodwill annually over a period of maximal 40 years, companies are now required to determine the fair value of the reporting units, using present value of future cash flow, and compare it to their carrying value (book value of assets plus goodwill minus liabilities.) If the fair value is less than carrying value (impaired), the goodwill value needs to be reduced so the carrying value is equal to the fair value. The impairment loss is reported as a separate line item on the income statement, and new adjusted value of goodwill is reported in the balance sheet.


title: Goodwill (accounting)

text: When the business is threatened with insolvency, investors will deduct the goodwill from any calculation of residual equity because it has no resale value.


title: Goodwill (accounting)

text: The accounting treatment for goodwill remains controversial, within both the accounting and financial industries, because it is, fundamentally, a workaround employed by accountants to compensate for the fact that businesses, when purchased, are valued based on estimates of future cash flows and prices negotiated by the buyer and seller, and not on the fair value of assets and liabilities to be transferred by the seller. This creates a mismatch between the reported assets and net incomes of companies that have grown without purchasing other companies, and those that have.


title: Goodwill (accounting)

text: While companies will follow the rules prescribed by the Accounting Standards Boards, there is not a fundamentally correct way to deal with this mismatch under the current financial reporting framework. Therefore, the accounting for goodwill will be rules based, and those rules have changed, and can be expected to continue to change, periodically along with the changes in the members of the Accounting Standards Boards. The current rules governing the accounting treatment of goodwill are highly subjective and can result in very high costs, but have limited value to investors.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: In object-oriented programming, a class is an extensible program-code-template for creating objects, providing initial values for state (member variables) and implementations of behavior (member functions or methods). In many languages, the class name is used as the name for the class (the template itself), the name for the default constructor of the class (a subroutine that creates objects), and as the type of objects generated by instantiating the class; these distinct concepts are easily conflated. Although, to the point of conflation, one could argue that is a feature inherent in a language because of its polymorphic nature and why these languages are so powerful, dynamic and adaptable for use compared to languages without polymorphism present. Thus they can model dynamic systems (i.e. the real world, machine learning, AI) more easily.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: When an object is created by a constructor of the class, the resulting object is called an instance of the class, and the member variables specific to the object are called instance variables, to contrast with the class variables shared across the class.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: In certain languages, classes are, as a matter of fact, only a compile-time feature (new classes cannot be declared at run-time), while in other languages classes are first-class citizens, and are generally themselves objects (typically of type or similar). In these languages, a class that creates classes within itself is called a metaclass.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: In its most casual usage, people often refer to the "class" of an object, but narrowly speaking objects have "type": the interface, namely the types of member variables, the signatures of member functions (methods), and properties these satisfy. At the same time, a class has an implementation (specifically the implementation of the methods), and can create objects of a given type, with a given implementation. In the terms of type theory, a class is an implementationa "concrete" data structure and collection of subroutineswhile a type is an interface. Different (concrete) classes can produce objects of the same (abstract) type (depending on type system); for example, the type might be implemented with two classes (fast for small stacks, but scales poorly) and (scales well but high overhead for small stacks). Similarly, a given class may have several different constructors.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Class types generally represent nouns, such as a person, place or thing, or something nominalized, and a class represents an implementation of these. For example, a type might represent the properties and functionality of bananas in general, while the and classes would represent ways of producing bananas (say, banana suppliers or data structures and functions to represent and draw bananas in a video game). The class could then produce particular bananas: instances of the class would be objects of type . Often only a single implementation of a type is given, in which case the class name is often identical with the type name.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Classes are composed from structural and behavioral constituents. Programming languages that include classes as a programming construct offer support, for various class-related features, and the syntax required to use these features varies greatly from one programming language to another.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: A class contains data field descriptions (or "properties", "fields", "data members", or "attributes"). These are usually field types and names that will be associated with state variables at program run time; these state variables either belong to the class or specific instances of the class. In most languages, the structure defined by the class determines the layout of the memory used by its instances. Other implementations are possible: for example, objects in Python use associative key-value containers.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Some programming languages such as Eiffel support specification of invariants as part of the definition of the class, and enforce them through the type system. Encapsulation of state is necessary for being able to enforce the invariants of the class.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: The behavior of class or its instances is defined using methods. Methods are subroutines with the ability to operate on objects or classes. These operations may alter the state of an object or simply provide ways of accessing it. Many kinds of methods exist, but support for them varies across languages. Some types of methods are created and called by programmer code, while other special methods—such as constructors, destructors, and conversion operators—are created and called by compiler-generated code. A language may also allow the programmer to define and call these special methods.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Every class "implements" (or "realizes") an interface by providing structure and behavior. Structure consists of data and state, and behavior consists of code that specifies how methods are implemented. There is a distinction between the definition of an interface and the implementation of that interface; however, this line is blurred in many programming languages because class declarations both define and implement an interface. Some languages, however, provide features that separate interface and implementation. For example, an abstract class can define an interface without providing implementation.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Languages that support class inheritance also allow classes to inherit interfaces from the classes that they are derived from.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: For example, if "class A" inherits from "class B" and if "class B" implements the interface "interface B" then "class A" also inherits the functionality(constants and methods declaration) provided by "interface B".


title: Class (computer programming)

text: In languages that support access specifiers, the interface of a class is considered to be the set of public members of the class, including both methods and attributes (via implicit getter and setter methods); any private members or internal data structures are not intended to be depended on by external code and thus are not part of the interface.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Object-oriented programming methodology dictates that the operations of any interface of a class are to be independent of each other. It results in a layered design where clients of an interface use the methods declared in the interface. An interface places no requirements for clients to invoke the operations of one interface in any particular order. This approach has the benefit that client code can assume that the operations of an interface are available for use whenever the client has access to the object.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: The buttons on the front of your television set are the interface between you and the electrical wiring on the other side of its plastic casing. You press the "power" button to toggle the television on and off. In this example, your particular television is the instance, each method is represented by a button, and all the buttons together compose the interface (other television sets that are the same model as yours would have the same interface). In its most common form, an interface is a specification of a group of related methods without any associated implementation of the methods.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: A television set also has a myriad of "attributes", such as size and whether it supports colour, which together comprise its structure. A class represents the full description of a television, including its attributes (structure) and buttons (interface).


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Getting the total number of televisions manufactured could be a "static method" of the television class. This method is clearly associated with the class, yet is outside the domain of each individual instance of the class. A static method that finds a particular instance out of the set of all television objects is another example.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Although many object-oriented languages support the above access specifiers, their semantics may differ.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Object-oriented design uses the access specifiers in conjunction with careful design of public method implementations to enforce class invariants—constraints on the state of the objects. A common usage of access specifiers is to separate the internal data of a class from its interface: the internal structure is made private, while public accessor methods can be used to inspect or alter such private data.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Access specifiers do not necessarily control "visibility", in that even private members may be visible to client external code. In some languages, an inaccessible but visible member may be referred to at run-time (for example, by a pointer returned from a member function), but an attempt to use it by referring to the name of the member from client code will be prevented by the type checker.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: The various object-oriented programming languages enforce member accessibility and visibility to various degrees, and depending on the language's type system and compilation policies, enforced at either compile-time or run-time. For example, the Java language does not allow client code that accesses the private data of a class to compile.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: In addition to the design of standalone classes, programming languages may support more advanced class design based upon relationships between classes. The inter-class relationship design capabilities commonly provided are "compositional" and "hierarchical".


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Classes can be composed of other classes, thereby establishing a compositional relationship between the enclosing class and its embedded classes. Compositional relationship between classes is also commonly known as a "has-a" relationship. For example, a class "Car" could be composed of and contain a class "Engine". Therefore, a Car "has an" Engine. One aspect of composition is containment, which is the enclosure of component instances by the instance that has them. If an enclosing object contains component instances by value, the components and their enclosing object have a similar lifetime. If the components are contained by reference, they may not have a similar lifetime. For example, in Objective-C 2.0:


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Classes can be "derived" from one or more existing classes, thereby establishing a hierarchical relationship between the derived-from classes ("base classes", "parent classes" or ') and the derived class ("child class" or "subclass") . The relationship of the derived class to the derived-from classes is commonly known as an is-a relationship. For example, a class 'Button' could be derived from a class 'Control'. Therefore, a Button is a"' Control. Structural and behavioral members of the parent classes are "inherited" by the child class. Derived classes can define additional structural members (data fields) and behavioral members (methods) in addition to those that they "inherit" and are therefore "specializations" of their superclasses. Also, derived classes can override inherited methods if the language allows.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Not all languages support multiple inheritance. For example, Java allows a class to implement multiple interfaces, but only inherit from one class. If multiple inheritance is allowed, the hierarchy is a directed acyclic graph (or DAG for short), otherwise it is a tree. The hierarchy has classes as nodes and inheritance relationships as links. Classes in the same level are more likely to be associated than classes in different levels. The levels of this hierarchy are called layers or levels of abstraction.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Conceptually, a superclass is a superset of its subclasses. For example, a common class hierarchy would involve as a superclass of and , while would be a subclass of . These are all subset relations in set theory as well, i.e., all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: A common conceptual error is to mistake a "part of" relation with a subclass. For example, a car and truck are both kinds of vehicles and it would be appropriate to model them as subclasses of a vehicle class. However, it would be an error to model the component parts of the car as subclass relations. For example, a car is composed of an engine and body, but it would not be appropriate to model engine or body as a subclass of car.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: In object-oriented modeling these kinds of relations are typically modeled as object properties. In this example, the class would have a property called . would be typed to hold a collection of objects, such as instances of , , , etc.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Object modeling languages such as UML include capabilities to model various aspects of "part of" and other kinds of relations – data such as the cardinality of the objects, constraints on input and output values, etc. This information can be utilized by developer tools to generate additional code beside the basic data definitions for the objects, such as error checking on get and set methods.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: One important question when modeling and implementing a system of object classes is whether a class can have one or more superclasses. In the real world with actual sets it would be rare to find sets that didn't intersect with more than one other set. However, while some systems such as Flavors and CLOS provide a capability for more than one parent to do so at run time introduces complexity that many in the object-oriented community consider antithetical to the goals of using object classes in the first place. Understanding which class will be responsible for handling a message can get complex when dealing with more than one superclass. If used carelessly this feature can introduce some of the same system complexity and ambiguity classes were designed to avoid.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Most modern object-oriented languages such as Smalltalk and Java require single inheritance at run time. For these languages, multiple inheritance may be useful for modeling but not for an implementation.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: However, semantic web application objects do have multiple superclasses. The volatility of the Internet requires this level of flexibility and the technology standards such as the Web Ontology Language (OWL) are designed to support it.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: A similar issue is whether or not the class hierarchy can be modified at run time. Languages such as Flavors, CLOS, and Smalltalk all support this feature as part of their meta-object protocols. Since classes are themselves first-class objects, it is possible to have them dynamically alter their structure by sending them the appropriate messages. Other languages that focus more on strong typing such as Java and C++ do not allow the class hierarchy to be modified at run time. Semantic web objects have the capability for run time changes to classes. The rational is similar to the justification for allowing multiple superclasses, that the Internet is so dynamic and flexible that dynamic changes to the hierarchy are required to manage this volatility.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Although class-based languages are commonly assumed to support inheritance, inheritance is not an intrinsic aspect of the concept of classes. Some languages, often referred to as "object-based languages", support classes yet do not support inheritance. Examples of object-based languages include earlier versions of Visual Basic.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: In object-oriented analysis and in UML, an association between two classes represents a collaboration between the classes or their corresponding instances. Associations have direction; for example, a bi-directional association between two classes indicates that both of the classes are aware of their relationship. Associations may be labeled according to their name or purpose.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: An association role is given end of an association and describes the role of the corresponding class. For example, a "subscriber" role describes the way instances of the class "Person" participate in a "subscribes-to" association with the class "Magazine". Also, a "Magazine" has the "subscribed magazine" role in the same association. Association role multiplicity describes how many instances correspond to each instance of the other class of the association. Common multiplicities are "0..1", "1..1", "1..*" and "0..*", where the "*" specifies any number of instances.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: In a language that supports inheritance, an abstract class, or abstract base class (ABC), is a class that cannot be instantiated because it is either labeled as abstract or it simply specifies abstract methods (or "virtual methods"). An abstract class may provide implementations of some methods, and may also specify virtual methods via signatures that are to be implemented by direct or indirect descendants of the abstract class. Before a class derived from an abstract class can be instantiated, all abstract methods of its parent classes must be implemented by some class in the derivation chain.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Most object-oriented programming languages allow the programmer to specify which classes are considered abstract and will not allow these to be instantiated. For example, in Java, C# and PHP, the keyword "abstract" is used. In C++, an abstract class is a class having at least one abstract method given by the appropriate syntax in that language (a pure virtual function in C++ parlance).


title: Class (computer programming)

text: A class consisting of only virtual methods is called a Pure Abstract Base Class (or "Pure ABC") in C++ and is also known as an "interface" by users of the language. Other languages, notably Java and C#, support a variant of abstract classes called an interface via a keyword in the language. In these languages, multiple inheritance is not allowed, but a class can implement multiple interfaces. Such a class can only contain abstract publicly accessible methods.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: In some languages, classes can be declared in scopes other than the global scope. There are various types of such classes.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: An inner class is a class defined within another class. The relationship between an inner class and its containing class can also be treated as another type of class association. An inner class is typically neither associated with instances of the enclosing class nor instantiated along with its enclosing class. Depending on language, it may or may not be possible to refer to the class from outside the enclosing class. A related concept is "inner types", also known as "inner data type" or "nested type", which is a generalization of the concept of inner classes. C++ is an example of a language that supports both inner classes and inner types (via "typedef" declarations).


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Another type is a local class, which is a class defined within a procedure or function. This limits references to the class name to within the scope where the class is declared. Depending on the semantic rules of the language, there may be additional restrictions on local classes compared to non-local ones. One common restriction is to disallow local class methods to access local variables of the enclosing function. For example, in C++, a local class may refer to static variables declared within its enclosing function, but may not access the function's automatic variables.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Metaclasses are classes whose instances are classes. A metaclass describes a common structure of a collection of classes and can implement a design pattern or describe particular kinds of classes. Metaclasses are often used to describe frameworks.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: In some languages, such as Python, Ruby or Smalltalk, a class is also an object; thus each class is an instance of a unique metaclass that is built into the language.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: The Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) provides metaobject protocols (MOPs) to implement those classes and metaclasses.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Non-subclassable classes allow programmers to design classes and hierarchies of classes where at some level in the hierarchy, further derivation is prohibited (a stand-alone class may be also designated as non-subclassable, preventing the formation of any hierarchy). Contrast this to "abstract" classes, which imply, encourage, and require derivation in order to be used at all. A non-subclassable class is implicitly "concrete".


title: Class (computer programming)

text: A non-subclassable class is created by declaring the class as in C# or as in Java or PHP. For example, Java's class is designated as "final".


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Non-subclassable classes may allow a compiler (in compiled languages) to perform optimizations that are not available for subclassable classes.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: An open class is one that can be changed. Typically, an executable program cannot be changed by customers. Developers can often change some classes, but typically cannot change standard or built-in ones. In Ruby, all classes are open. In Python, classes can be created at runtime, and all can be modified afterwards. Objective-C categories permit the programmer to add methods to an existing class without the need to recompile that class or even have access to its source code.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Some languages have special support for mixins, though in any language with multiple inheritance a mixin is simply a class that does not represent an is-a-type-of relationship. Mixins are typically used to add the same methods to multiple classes; for example, a class might provide a method called when included in classes and that do not share a common parent.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: In languages supporting the feature, a partial class is a class whose definition may be split into multiple pieces, within a single source-code file or across multiple files. The pieces are merged at compile-time, making compiler output the same as for a non-partial class.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: The primary motivation for introduction of partial classes is to facilitate the implementation of code generators, such as visual designers. It is otherwise a challenge or compromise to develop code generators that can manage the generated code when it is interleaved within developer-written code. Using partial classes, a code generator can process a separate file or coarse-grained partial class within a file, and is thus alleviated from intricately interjecting generated code via extensive parsing, increasing compiler efficiency and eliminating the potential risk of corrupting developer code. In a simple implementation of partial classes, the compiler can perform a phase of precompilation where it "unifies" all the parts of a partial class. Then, compilation can proceed as usual.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Partial classes have existed in Smalltalk under the name of "Class Extensions" for considerable time. With the arrival of the .NET framework 2, Microsoft introduced partial classes, supported in both C# 2.0 and Visual Basic 2005. WinRT also supports partial classes.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: This simple example, written in Visual Basic .NET, shows how parts of the same class are defined in two different files.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: In Objective-C, partial classes, also known as categories, may even spread over multiple libraries and executables, like the following example. But a key difference is that Objective-C's categories can overwrite definitions in another interface declaration, and that categories aren't equal to original class definition (the first requires the last). Instead, .NET partial class can't have conflicting definitions, and all partial definitions are equal to the others.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: The dispatcher will find both methods called over the NSData instance and invoke both of them correctly.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Uninstantiable classes allow programmers to group together per-class fields and methods that are accessible at runtime without an instance of the class. Indeed, instantiation is prohibited for this kind of class.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: For example, in C#, a class marked "static" can not be instantiated, can only have static members (fields, methods, other), may not have "instance constructors", and is "sealed".


title: Class (computer programming)

text: An unnamed class or anonymous class is a class that is not bound to a name or identifier upon definition. This is analogous to named versus unnamed functions.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Object classes facilitate rapid development because they lessen the semantic gap between the code and the users. System analysts can talk to both developers and users using essentially the same vocabulary, talking about accounts, customers, bills, etc. Object classes often facilitate rapid development because most object-oriented environments come with powerful debugging and testing tools. Instances of classes can be inspected at run time to verify that the system is performing as expected. Also, rather than get dumps of core memory, most object-oriented environments have interpreted debugging capabilities so that the developer can analyze exactly where in the program the error occurred and can see which methods were called to which arguments and with what arguments.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Object classes facilitate ease of maintenance via encapsulation. When developers need to change the behavior of an object they can localize the change to just that object and its component parts. This reduces the potential for unwanted side effects from maintenance enhancements.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: Software re-use is also a major benefit of using Object classes. Classes facilitate re-use via inheritance and interfaces. When a new behavior is required it can often be achieved by creating a new class and having that class inherit the default behaviors and data of its superclass and then tailor some aspect of the behavior or data accordingly. Re-use via interfaces (also known as methods) occurs when another object wants to invoke (rather than create a new kind of) some object class. This method for re-use removes many of the common errors that can make their way into software when one program re-uses code from another.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: As a data type, a class is usually considered as a compile-time construct. A language or library may also support prototype or factory metaobjects that represent run-time information about classes, or even represent metadata that provides access to reflection facilities and ability to manipulate data structure formats at run-time. Many languages distinguish this kind of run-time type information about classes from a class on the basis that the information is not needed at run-time. Some dynamic languages do not make strict distinctions between run-time and compile-time constructs, and therefore may not distinguish between metaobjects and classes.


title: Class (computer programming)

text: For example, if Human is a metaobject representing the class Person, then instances of class Person can be created by using the facilities of the Human metaobject.


title: Vivek Athreya

text: Vivek Athreya is an Indian film director and screenwriter who works in Telugu cinema. He directed three films, the romantic comedy "Mental Madhilo" (2017) and the crime comedy "Brochevarevarura" (2019), and the romcom "Ante Sundaraniki" (2022).


title: Vivek Athreya

text: Vivek Athreya is from Guntur. Both his parents work in India Post. He is an Electronics Engineering graduate from Sastra University and worked at IBM, Chennai for five years before resigning to pursue a career as film director.


title: Vivek Athreya

text: In 2017, Athreya debuted as a director with Mental Madhilo, a romantic comedy produced by Raj Kandukuri of Pelli Choopulu fame. The film stars Sree Vishnu and Nivetha Pethuraj as the main leads.


title: Vivek Athreya

text: Athreya's second film "Brochevarevarura" was praised for the writing and the message the movie has for women. The film stars Nivetha Thomas, Sree Vishnu, Satyadev Kancharana, Nivetha Pethuraj, Rahul Ramakrishna, and Priyadarshi.


title: Vivek Athreya

text: His third directorial was "Ante Sundaraniki", which co-starred Nani and Nazriya Nazim, released on 10 June 2022, another romantic comedy which tells the story of an inter religious love couple, woven upon lies, which leads into more complex problems. This film also received positive reviews from critics.


title: Vivek Athreya

text: Athreya is also a lyricist. He wrote two songs each in "Mental Madhilo" and "Ee Nagaraniki Emaindi" (2018).


The American Association of Professional Baseball is an independent professional baseball league founded in 2005. It operates in the central United States and Canada, mostly in cities not served by Major League Baseball teams or their minor league affiliates. Joshua Schaub is the league commissioner. League offices are located in Moorhead, Minnesota. Though a separate entity, the league shared a commissioner and director of umpires with the Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball during that league's existence. The American Association of Professional Baseball has 501(c)(6) tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service. In 2020, as part of MLB's reorganization of the minor leagues, the American Association, together with the Atlantic League and the Frontier League, became an official MLB Partner League.


title: American Association of Professional Baseball

text: The American Association was founded in October 2005 when the St. Paul Saints, Lincoln Saltdogs, Sioux City Explorers, and Sioux Falls Canaries announced they were leaving the Northern League. Around the same time, the Central Baseball League announced it was disbanding after four seasons. The Fort Worth Cats, Shreveport-Bossier Sports, Pensacola Pelicans, Coastal Bend Aviators, and El Paso Diablos joined the four former Northern League teams and the expansion St. Joe Blacksnakes to form the American Association as a ten-team league. The new league began play in 2006, with a 96-game schedule, which has since expanded to 100 games.


text: 2008 saw the league lose the Blacksnakes and Aviators, with the Grand Prairie AirHogs and Wichita Wingnuts joining in their place. In 2011 and 2012 the league went through a significant shift. Fort Worth was kicked out of the AA and moved to the North American League, while Shreveport and Pensacola both relocated. The Pelicans moved to Amarillo, Texas and became the Amarillo Sox (later the Amarillo Thunderheads) while Shreveport, who had changed their name to the Shreveport-Bossier Captains, moved to Laredo, Texas and became the Laredo Lemurs. In addition, four more Northern League franchises (Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks, Gary SouthShore RailCats, Kansas City T-Bones, and Winnipeg Goldeyes) joined the American Association as that league's stability came into question.


text: For the 2012 season, the American Association began interleague play with the Can-Am League. The two leagues were both headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, and both had Miles Wolff as their commissioner. This was similar to interleague play in Major League Baseball, but American Association and Can-Am League were separate legal entities and had separate playoffs/championships.


text: At the end of the 2013 season, due to the Tucson Padres relocating to their city, the El Paso Diablos suspended operations. The team was eventually revived and relocated, operating as the Joplin Blasters. The Blasters ceased operations after the conclusion of the 2016 season.


text: On November 19, 2015, Miles Wolff announced that there would no longer be interleague play. It also was announced that for the Amarillo Thunderheads and Grand Prairie AirHogs would operate as a joint team, the Texas AirHogs, playing 25 games in Amarillo and 25 games in Grand Prairie to make up a 12-team league. The team remained in Grand Prairie full-time in 2017, with the Cleburne Railroaders joining the league the same season. Shortly before the 2017 season, the Laredo Lemurs withdrew from the league. They were temporarily replaced by the Salina Stockade from the Pecos League for the season. The Chicago Dogs joined for 2018 and the Milwaukee Milkmen joined in 2019, replacing the Wichita Wingnuts, who folded in large part due to the demolition of Lawrence-Dumont Stadium and their eventual replacement by the Wichita Wind Surge.


text: In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the league announced that 6 of its 12 clubs would play an abbreviated 60-game season beginning on July 3, 2020. Five stadiums were used for gameplay: Sioux Falls Stadium (hosting the Sioux Falls Canaries and St. Paul Saints during July), Newman Outdoor Field (hosting the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks and Winnipeg Goldeyes), Franklin Field (hosting the Milwaukee Milkmen), Impact Field (hosting the Chicago Dogs), and CHS Field (hosting the St. Paul Saints beginning in August). Players from non-participating teams had the opportunity to be drafted by one of the six active clubs. A limited number of fans were allowed to attend games, in accordance with local government guidelines and restrictions.


text: The 2021 season saw the league lose both the Texas AirHogs, who dropped out of the league, and the St. Paul Saints who move to affiliated ball as the Triple-A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins. Joining the league in 2021 is the Kane County Cougars, who were dropped from affiliated ball during the 2021 minor league reorganization, as well as the Houston Apollos who will be a traveling team for the 2021 campaign.


text: In May 2021, the league announced the approval of Lake Country Baseball, based in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, as a new member of the league starting in 2022. Construction commenced later that summer on a new stadium and multi-use indoor sports facility, which opened for play on May 20, 2022 as Wisconsin Brewing Company Park. The team selected the name Lake Country DockHounds, after hosting an online name the team contest.


text: With the DockHounds joining the league for the 2022 season, the American Association opted for realignment of the divisions. Going away from the prior North/South divisions, the league decided to go with East/West divisions. The league placed Cleburne, Chicago, Kane County, Gary SouthShore, Milwaukee, and Lake Country in the East Division; and Winnipeg, Fargo-Moorhead, Sioux Falls, Sioux City, Lincoln, and Kansas City in the West Division. The league also changed the playoff format taking the top four teams in each division into the playoffs, and allowing the team in each division with the best record to choose their first round opponent from the remaining three division teams.


text: The American Association (AA) typically recruits college and former major and minor league players. Former affiliated-league players who get injured or have other circumstances join the AA as an opportunity to get re-signed by major league organizations. For example, David Peralta was signed in 2004 as a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals but suffered injuries and was released in 2009. He resurrected his career as an outfielder with teams such as the AA's Wichita Wingnuts and Amarillo Sox in 2012 and 2013, then became a starting outfielder for the Arizona Diamondbacks.


text: Other players include college players who were not drafted into MLB but seek the opportunity to be seen by major league scouts and possibly get signed by major league organizations. Other former MLB players join the AA as a way to stay involved in baseball after their MLB career, often as coaches and managers.


text: As of 2008, the salary cap for each team was $100,000, with a minimum salary of $800 per month. The price of an expansion team is also about $750,000. This is in stark contrast with the minor and major leagues. Former Commissioner Miles Wolff stated in an interview that "We have to pay the salaries of the players, which they don't in an affiliated [league]. It's a much riskier business. Just because of the longevity and tradition, we usually don't get the best cities, either, so some of the markets we're in are not great markets. But as I say, I think it's a better product."


text: In 2018, the league raised the minimum salary to $1,200 per month to comply with the new Save America's Pastime Act.


text: Rosters are limited to 25 players, with a maximum of six may be veterans and minimum of five must be rookies or LS-1. The remaining players will be designated limited service players and of those LS players only six (6) may be LS-4. Two of the LS-4 players may have LS-5 status.


text: Veteran: A player with six or more years of service. If a player has six or more years of service but has not reached the age of 26 by September 1 of that season, he will be considered an LS-4. If he has not reached the age of 24 by September 1 of that season, he will be considered an LS-3.


text: The American Association hosted an annual All-Star Game from 2006 to 2010. The league's first All-Star game was played in El Paso, Texas, on July 18, 2006, which pit a team of American Association All-Stars against an All-Star team from the Can-Am League. Its current format pits the all-stars from each division against each other. There was no All-Star game in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2018, 2020, or 2021.


title: Legend of Mana

text: Legend of Mana is a 1999 action role-playing game developed and published by Square (now Square Enix) for the PlayStation. It is the fourth game in the "Mana" series, following 1995's "Trials of Mana". Set in a high fantasy universe, the game follows an unnamed hero as they restore the land of Fa'Diel by creating the world around them and completing a number of interrelated quests in order to restore the Tree of Mana.


title: Legend of Mana

text: While incorporating action role-playing elements from the prior games in the series, such as real-time battles, "Legend of Mana" has its own distinct style of gameplay. Most notably, it gives the player the ability to shape the world's structure through the Land Make system, generating regions and quests in a non-linear gameplay system rather than a strong main plotline. "Legend of Mana" was directed by series creator Koichi Ishii, designed by Akihiko Matsui, and produced by veteran Square director and producer Akitoshi Kawazu.


title: Legend of Mana

text: The game had high sales, selling 400,000 copies in its first week of release and 700,000 by the end of 1999. Reviews were less positive than for prior games in the series. Critics gave considerable acclaim to its vibrant and colorful hand-drawn graphics and soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura, but were critical of the lack of a clear main storyline, stating that it left the game feeling disjointed. The game was re-released as a part of both the PlayStation's and Square Enix's best-sellers lines. It was released as a PSOne Classic in Japan and North America.


title: Legend of Mana

text: A remastered version was released on June 24, 2021 for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4, and on December 7, 2021 for Android and iOS.


title: Legend of Mana

text: An anime adaptation by Yokohama Animation Laboratory and Graphinica titled "" was announced in June 2021. The series premiered in October 2022.


title: Legend of Mana

text: Like previous games in the "Mana" series, "Legend of Mana" displays an angled top-down perspective, in which the player characters navigate the terrain and fight off hostile creatures. The player controls the unnamed main character, and is assisted by up to two companions. One of these companions is an optional support character, which depends on what quest the player is performing, while another companion can be chosen by the player out of a roster of monsters, pets, and golems. Both companions are typically controlled by the game's AI, though a second player can take control of the support character, or load in their own character from a different save file, if present. The main character and companions each have their own set of numerical attributes including hit points and strength, which represent the amount of damage the player can take or cause. These stats grow whenever the player advances a level, after gaining enough experience points from battle with enemies.


title: Legend of Mana

text: Battles occur when the player character encounters an enemy while traversing the world. Combat takes place in real-time, and in the location the player found the enemy rather than a separate battle screen. The main character can equip a variety of weapons, armors, and accessories. Weapons let the player perform abilities in combat. Referred to as Special Techs, these abilities are powerful attacks by the main characters and support characters that can be used when the special move meter is full. This meter fills as the player damages enemies. Each weapon, such as a sword or spear, has a set number of special attacks to learn, which can hit single or multiple targets and can be assigned to different buttons on the controller.


title: Legend of Mana

text: "Legend of Mana", unlike previous games in the Mana series, does not feature a set journey through a fixed world. Instead, it features a unique "Land Make" system where the player generates the structure of the game world by placing objects, named Artifacts, on empty square plots on a map. This map takes the form of a grid of spaces presented in an isometric viewpoint on a map screen. When an Artifact is placed in a space on the map, it creates a Land, and the player can enter that Land by selecting the position on the map. Adjacent Lands are not connected; to move from one land to another the player must first return to the map screen. Different Lands are generated from different Artifacts, each containing a quest which upon completion usually gives the player another Artifact to place. Lands can also contain additional quests. Each Land is ranked from 0 (no presence) to 3 (strong presence) in its strength in each Spirit of Mana; this in turn causes magic of that element to be stronger in that Land. The strength of the rankings is dependent on the Artifact, its position on the Map, and the rankings of adjacent Lands. Many locations have non-player characters who give quests and information or sell equipment. Other areas feature enemies and bosses with which the player can battle.


title: Legend of Mana

text: In addition to the main game, after certain quests are completed "Legend of Mana" gives the player the option to delve into optional gameplay aspects centered around the hero or heroine's house. The player can forge or improve weapons and armor using raw materials found throughout the game, or combine equipment with items to change their power or add special effects. They can grow different types of fruit in the orchard, raise pets to use as adventuring companions, create items, and build golems. Pets can also be raised with the Japan-only PocketStation peripheral, and two players can battle each other in an arena.


title: Legend of Mana

text: "Legend of Mana" is set in the fictional world of Fa'Diel. The Mana Tree, the giver of mana and life for the world, burned down almost entirely nine centuries prior to the events of the game. A war erupted between faeries, human, and others seeking the scarce power of mana that was left. When the war concluded, the burnt Mana Tree slept as it regrew and the many lands of the world were stored in ancient artifacts. A hero, controlled by the player, is self-charged with restoring the world, and mana, to its former self. The Lands of Fa'Diel are populated with a large number of different creatures, including humans, faeries, demons, the jewel-hearted Jumi race, plant-like Sproutlings and Flowerlings, miner bears called Dudbears, and shadowy beings of the Underworld known as Shadoles. Fa'Diel is also the home of a host of anthropomorphic animals and objects, as well as monsters from other "Mana" titles such as Rabites, Chobin Hoods, and Goblins. The player controls the protagonist of the game, who is either a male or female silent protagonist. The character is unnamed and no information is given about their past; their history and personality is meant to be determined by the player.


title: Legend of Mana

text: Rather than a single, overarching plot, the story of "Legend of Mana" is composed of a multitude of quests split into three main quest arcs, numerous other quests, and a final quest arc. Each main quest arc contains optional side-quests in addition to the main quests. Whenever the player completes the required portions of one of the quest arcs they are allowed to begin the final arc and finish the game, even if the other arcs have not yet been started or completed. The three main quest arcs prior to the final arc are: the Jumi arc, the Larc and Sierra arc, and the Matilda and Irwin arc.


title: Legend of Mana

text: The first main arc is the story of the Jumi, a dying race of people who have external jewel hearts which are considered valuable. The Jumi have long been a persecuted people, and many magic characters in this game refer to them as "dirt" as a pejorative on their jewel cores. This branch focuses on Elazul and Pearl, who are among the few survivors of the Jumi. Elazul is a Jumi Knight, and the mission of his life is to protect the Jumi Guardian Pearl at any cost, even in the face of the jewel hunter, Sandra. The player assists them in helping the Jumi.


title: Legend of Mana

text: The second arc is the story of Larc and Sierra—brother and sister dragoons who serve different dragon masters and fight on opposite sides of the same war for power. Larc serves the dragon Drakonis, who wants to kill the other three dragons so that he can rule the world. Larc blackmails the game's protagonist to help him in this quest. Sierra, a dragoon for Vadise the White Dragon, wants to stop Drakonis without hurting her brother Larc. In the end, Drakonis is defeated again and banished to the underworld, and Larc is freed from Drakonis' rule.


title: Legend of Mana

text: The third arc is the complicated love story of four childhood friends: Matilda, Irwin, Daena and Escad. Irwin is a half-demon who is angry that society prevents him from a relationship with the holy leader Matilda, and seeks to destroy the world in retribution. Escad seeks to destroy Irwin, and Daena tries to act as a mediator between all parties while keeping Matilda away from Irwin. The conflict eventually escalates into a war between humans and faeries. Depending on the choices of the player, either Daena or Escad will die, while the player helps bring an end to the conflict.


title: Legend of Mana

text: Regardless of which path(s) the hero decides to take, they begin the game's final story, titled "Legend of Mana". This arc concerns the re-appearance of the Mana Tree. The player journeys to the Mana Tree and scales it, but upon reaching the top they find that the Mana Goddess has become corrupted and the tree is rotten. The player is forced to fight the Mana Goddess, and after winning a Sproutling plants itself in the Mana Tree's rotten trunk. Calling upon the other Sproutlings to join them, they restore the Mana Tree.


title: Legend of Mana

text: "Legend of Mana" was directed by "Mana" series creator Koichi Ishii, who had worked on the three previous games in the series. Many of the other developers were new to the series, including producer Akitoshi Kawazu, the director and producer of many games in Square's "SaGa" series, and designer Akihiko Matsui, who had been the director for "Chrono Trigger". The game's character designs and illustrations were done by Shinichi Kameoka, who was also new to the series. "Retro Gamer", in 2011, stated that although Ishii kept the game tied to previous titles in the series by reusing gameplay elements, Kawazu had a heavy influence on the gameplay design of the game.


title: Legend of Mana

text: "Legend of Mana" was designed as a 2D game, despite the PlayStation's 3D-focus, as the console could not handle the full 3D world Ishii envisioned where one could interact with natural shaped objects. Kawazu initially let Ishii have a relaxed schedule and budget, as Ishii had a great number of ideas he wanted in the game, but when the project began to get out of control and out of time Kawazu tightened down the rest of the development schedule and convinced the Square executives to delay the game by two months—even though it had already been announced to the public—to allow it to be completed as Ishii envisioned. Kawazu has said that this experience taught him that his true skill in game development lay in working as a producer.


title: Legend of Mana

text: "Legend of Mana" was first announced by Square in March 1999 just before its debut at the Tokyo Game Show. The game was released in Japan in July 1999 with considerable hype, packaged with demos of Square's future releases "Vagrant Story", "Chrono Cross", "Front Mission 3", and "Threads of Fate". It was planned to be released in North America alongside the July and August 2000 releases of "Chrono Cross" and "Threads of Fate", but was instead released early on June 6.


title: Legend of Mana

text: The original score for "Legend of Mana" was composed, arranged, and produced by Yoko Shimomura. Shimomura was a newcomer to the series; the previous two "Mana" games were scored by Hiroki Kikuta, and the first by Kenji Ito. Shimomura said in 2002 that she considered the soundtrack to "Legend of Mana" to be the one that best expresses herself. She claims that she prefers "passionate music that comes from the heart", and that she has to "feel the emotions of a piece in the extreme before I am able to write" the music by putting herself in the same mood as the piece is supposed to be in. "Legend of Mana" featured the first vocal track of any "Mana" game, "Song of Mana", which also serves as the game's opening theme. It was sung by Swedish vocalist Annika Ljungberg, who was chosen by Shimomura because she "wanted to stay away from working with someone popular that everyone already knows". After hearing a sample of Ljungberg's music, she flew to Sweden "straight away" to do an analog recording of the song.


title: Legend of Mana

text: The 1999 soundtrack album "Seiken Densetsu / Legend of Mana Original Soundtrack" collects 55 tracks of music from "Legend of Mana" on two discs. The music covers many styles including piano, hard rock, and electronic music. The soundtrack was published by DigiCube, and was reprinted by Square Enix in 2004. The album reached #65 on the Japanese Oricon music charts and stayed on the charts for two weeks. "Song of Mana" was later made available on the "Square Vocal Collection" album in 2001. Four of the game's tracks were released as part of "Drammatica: The Very Best Works of Yoko Shimomura", an album of arrangements highlighting the composer's work.


title: Legend of Mana

text: Upon the game's Japanese release, several promotional items were made available from Square, including stuffed toy dolls of the rabite enemy and mascot of the series, a necklace, and lighters. As a promotion for Square's "Summer of Adventure" release schedule in 2000, which the North American release of the game was a part of, those who preordered the game were given a free music CD with select tracks from the game. "Legend of Mana" was re-released in Japan late in 2000 as part of the Square Millennium Collection at a budget price along with a special music box and two character figurines. A companion book titled "Seiken Densetsu: Legend of Mana Ultimania" including artwork and interviews was released as part of Square's "Ultimania" series. It was published by DigiCube in 1999 and later reprinted by Square Enix in 2004 after the subsidiary's closing. An artbook, "Legend of Mana: Making of Mana", was published in 2000 by ASCII. A five-volume manga series, created by Shiro Amano, was published between 2000 and 2002.


title: Legend of Mana

text: In Japan, "Legend of Mana" was a bestseller at the time of release, and sold over 400,000 units in its first week alone as the highest-selling release that week in Japan. By the end of the year, it had sold over 700,000 copies in Japan. "Legend of Mana" was also the top selling PlayStation game during the week of its release in North America.


title: Legend of Mana

text: "Legend of Mana" received mixed reviews from critics. The game's presentation was almost universally praised, especially its use of vibrant and colorful hand-drawn graphics. David Smith of IGN claimed that the graphics were one of the game's best points, and RPGamer's Andrew P. Bilyk noted that the visuals "may be the most impressive two-dimensional graphics ever to grace an RPG". Andrew Pfister of "Electronic Gaming Monthly" praised them even more, calling them "the most impressive 2D artwork ever seen on a console". Damian Thomas's RPGFan review likened the graphics to Disney animation for having "a very storybook, cutesy cartoony feel to them", while Andrew Vestal of GameSpot said that the graphics were some of the most lush and ornate 2D graphics ever made. The game won an award for best graphics at the 4th Japan Game Awards from the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association. The music in "Legend of Mana" was also a high point in many reviews; the reviewers for "Electronic Gaming Monthly" called it "fantastic" and "wonderful". Smith of IGN's review stated that the soundtrack is "as good as any you'll hear today" with a good mix of intensity, suspense, and subtle nuance, and Vestal of GameSpot termed it "excellently orchestrated" and a perfect fit for the game in each environment.


title: Legend of Mana

text: Much of the game's criticism stemmed from its substitution of mostly unrelated quests over a main storyline. "GamePro", while praising the Land Make system, found that the "focus of "Legend of Mana" is obscured by the over-abundance of subplots". Similarly, Game Revolution's Johnny Liu commented that the game lacked depth and felt like a collection of short quests rather than a single game, while Vestal of GameSpot noted that the game's use of miniquests will likely disappoint those seeking an action-RPG classic, and said that, although fun, the gameplay had a "schizophrenic and disjointed nature". "Next Generation" agreed, saying that the Land Make system was an "innovative feature" but that it left the game disjointed without a solid plot to keep everything together. The Japanese "Weekly Famitsu" reviewers felt that the system was ambitious, but left the game feeling disconnected, and that the divided plotlines kept the beginning of the game from having the charm of the end.


title: Legend of Mana

text: Gary Steinman of "Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine" said that the lack of a plotline gave the player no incentive to keep playing through what he felt was a poor combat system. Both of those criticisms were repeated by "Electronic Gaming Monthly"s Sam Kennedy in his review. RPGamer's Bilyk felt that the smaller plots, while sometimes simplistic and not focused on the player, were enjoyable experiences. IGN's Smith concluded that while he enjoyed the game, he felt that it was not a complete game like "Secret of Mana", but instead a collection of fun experiences.


title: Legend of Mana

text: In November 2000, "Legend of Mana" was ranked number 48 on "Weekly Famitsu"s list of top 100 PlayStation games of all time. The game was re-released on February 21, 2002 as part of the PSone Books best-sellers series in Japan, in 2006 as part of Square Enix's Ultimate Hits collection, and re-released on the PlayStation 3 PlayStation Network store as part of the PSone Classics series on March 22, 2011. A remastered version was released on June 24, 2021 for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PC. This version of the game was later released for Android and iOS on December 7, 2021.


title: Metropolitan line

text: The Metropolitan line, colloquially known as the Met, is a London Underground line between in the City of London and and in Buckinghamshire, with branches to in Hertfordshire and in Hillingdon. Printed in magenta on the tube map, the line is in length and serves 34 stations (9 of which are step free). Between Aldgate and , the track is mostly in shallow "cut and cover" tunnels, apart from short sections at and Farringdon stations. The rest of the line is above ground, with a loading gauge of a similar size to those on main lines. Just under passenger journeys were made on the line in 2011/12.


title: Metropolitan line

text: The line is one of just two Underground lines to cross the Greater London boundary (the other being the Central line). It is the only Underground line with an express service at peak times; the resulting longer distance between stations means trains can achieve the system's highest speeds of over on some sections.


title: Metropolitan line

text: In 1863, the Metropolitan Railway began the world's first underground railway between Paddington and with wooden carriages and steam locomotives, but its most important route became the line north-west into the Middlesex countryside, where it stimulated the development of new suburbs. Harrow was reached in 1880, and ultimately the line continued as far as in Buckinghamshire, more than from . From the end of the 19th century, the railway shared tracks with the Great Central Railway out of . The central London lines were electrified by 1907 but electric locomotives were exchanged for steam locomotives on trains heading north of Harrow. After the railway was absorbed by the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933, the line was cut back to . Steam trains ran until 1961, when the line was electrified to and services were curtailed at Amersham. The Hammersmith & City line was shown on the tube map as a part of the Metropolitan line until 1990, when it appeared as a separate line. The current S8 Stock trains entered service between 2010 and 2012, replacing the A Stock trains, that served the line since 1961.


title: Metropolitan line

text: The section between Aldgate and Baker Street is shared with the Circle line; between Liverpool Street and Baker Street with the Hammersmith & City line; between and Uxbridge with the Piccadilly line; and between and Amersham with the London–Aylesbury line operated by Chiltern Railways. Baker Street is the southbound terminus for some trains not continuing to Aldgate. Most of the route has two tracks, except for the single-track Chesham branch and a four-track section between and that allows fast and semi-fast services to overtake "all stations" trains. There are four tracks between Wembley Park and Finchley Road, but only the outer ones are used by the Metropolitan line's non-stop trains: the inner pair was transferred to the Bakerloo line in 1939 (becoming the Jubilee line in 1979) with services calling at all stations.


title: Metropolitan line

text: The Metropolitan Railway, also known as "the Met", was a passenger and goods railway that served London from 1863 to 1933, its main line heading north-west from the City to what were to become the Middlesex suburbs. Its first line connected the mainline railway termini at , and King's Cross to the City, built beneath the New Road using the cut-and-cover method between Paddington and King's Cross, and in tunnel and cuttings beside Farringdon Road from King's Cross to near Smithfield. The world's first underground railway, it opened on 10 January 1863 with gas-lit wooden carriages hauled by steam locomotives. The line operated at a frequency of three trains per hour, rising to four trains per hour during the peak periods. In the 1871 plans for an underground railway in Paris, it was called the "Métropolitain".


title: Metropolitan line

text: The railway was soon extended from both ends and northwards via a branch from Baker Street. It reached Hammersmith in 1864 and Richmond in 1877; it completed the "Inner Circle" in 1884, but the most important route became the line west and north-west into the Middlesex countryside, where it stimulated the development of new suburbs. Harrow was reached in 1880, and ultimately, as far as in Buckinghamshire, more than from Baker Street. From the end of the 19th century, the railway shared tracks with the Great Central Railway route out of .


title: Metropolitan line

text: Electric traction was introduced in 1905 with electric multiple units operating between Uxbridge, Harrow-on-the-Hill and Baker Street. To remove steam and smoke from the tunnels in central London, the railway purchased electric locomotives, exchanged for steam locomotives at Harrow from 1908. In 1910, a seventeen-minute silent film was made showing large portions of the journey from Baker Street to Aylesbury and Uxbridge, seen from the cab of a train.


title: Metropolitan line

text: Unlike other railways in the London area, the Met developed land for housing, thus benefitting from the increase in the value of its land caused by the building of the railway. After World War I it promoted its housing estates near the railway with the "Metro-land" brand.


title: Metropolitan line

text: To improve services, more powerful electric and steam locomotives were purchased in the 1920s. A short branch opened from Rickmansworth to Watford in 1925. After World War I, the Stanmore branch was built from Wembley Park.


title: Metropolitan line

text: On 1 July 1933, the Metropolitan was amalgamated with other Underground railways, tramway companies and bus operators to form the London Passenger Transport Board, and a period of rationalisation followed.


title: Metropolitan line

text: While the Metropolitan was run as an outer suburban route with steam-hauled trains and goods services, the LPTB wished to focus on electrified trains and suburban traffic. Goods services were passed to the London and North Eastern Railway, which also took over the role of providing steam locomotives for trains beyond the end of electrification at Rickmansworth. All services north-west of were withdrawn by 1936 though services returned to between 1943 and 1948.


title: Metropolitan line

text: The 1930s was a period of rapid growth for the north-western suburbs of London, and LPTB developed ambitious plans to simplify the Metropolitan line and expand capacity. Several stations on the Uxbridge branch were rebuilt, replacing temporary wooden buildings with modernist designs and giving Uxbridge station a new site in the town centre. A major bottleneck in the line, the double-track tunnel from Baker Street to Finchley Road, was bypassed by boring two tube tunnels underneath the Metropolitan tunnels, transferring slow services and the Stanmore branch to the Bakerloo line. (This route was transferred to the Jubilee line in 1979.) In 1936, the line was extended east from to along the tracks of the District line. London Transport inherited incompatible electric multiple units from the railway, including the 1927–33 multiple-unit compartment stock used on routes to Watford and Rickmansworth, and these were refurbished to form a uniform fleet and designated London Underground T Stock. In the 1950s, F Stock trains, with sliding doors under the control of the guard, were transferred from the District line; these mainly worked the semi-fast Harrow and Uxbridge services.


title: Metropolitan line

text: A major rebuilding of the main line from Wembley Park to Amersham was planned in the 1930s but delayed by the war. The line from Wembley to Harrow was rebuilt immediately after the war and the project was completed from 1956–1962, on a more modest scale than originally planned. Until 1961, passenger trains continued to be attached to a steam locomotive at to run to Aylesbury. The rebuilding electrified the line from Rickmansworth to Amersham, transferring all Aylesbury services to British Railways. A pair of fast lines was added from Harrow to north of Moor Park by 1962, allowing outer-suburban trains to run fast to Moor Park. Aluminium A stock, originally unpainted, replaced the T stock and locomotive-hauled trains. More A Stock trains were built in 1962–63 to replace the trains on the Uxbridge service, giving the main line a single train type for all services. A Stock was four-car units that could operate as four- or eight-car trains; normally operated as eight cars, a four-car unit operated the Chesham shuttle. One person operation of the trains was proposed in 1972, but due to conflict with the trade unions was not introduced on the line until 1986.


title: Metropolitan line

text: Although the East London line had been an isolated shuttle since 1939, it was shown on London Underground maps as part of the Metropolitan line until 1968. In 1970, it was shown with a thin white line in the middle and labelled the "East London section". By the 1985 map, it had become the "East London Line", remaining the same colour as the Metropolitan line with a white line in the middle, changed to orange by the 1990 map. In 1990, the Hammersmith & City line became a separate line from Hammersmith to Whitechapel (Barking during the peak), the Metropolitan line being from Aldgate to Baker Street and northwards to Amersham with branches to Chesham, Uxbridge and Watford.


title: Metropolitan line

text: In 2003, the infrastructure was partly privatised in a public–private partnership managed by the Metronet consortium. Metronet entered administration in 2007 and Transport for London took over responsibilities.


title: Metropolitan line

text: On 12 December 2010, the service to Amersham was reduced from four trains per hour to two, and a direct service between Chesham and central London was introduced, replacing the 4-car Chesham to Chalfont & Latimer shuttle. The final passenger services operated by the A Stock ran on 26 September 2012, followed by a ticketed public railtour on 29 September.


title: Metropolitan line

text: The Metropolitan line is long and serves 34 stations. It is electrified with a four-rail DC system: a central conductor rail is energised at –250 V and a rail outside the running rail at +500 V, giving a potential difference of 750 V, except for the section from Uxbridge to Finchley Road (via Harrow-on-the-Hill) which is energised at –210 V and +420 V respectively (630 V potential difference) to maintain compatibility with 1973 Stock and 1996 Stock that runs in those areas. The first from Aldgate are below ground, shared with the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines to Baker Street, where the line diverges, remaining in tunnel until Finchley Road. Metropolitan line trains essentially skips two stops between Baker Street and Finchley Road, with the Jubilee line serving the intermediate stations on an adjacent parallel line. The Jubilee line then joins the Metropolitan line in the same right-of-way at Finchley Road. Metropolitan line trains then run express from Finchley Road to Wembley Park, with the Jubilee line serving the intermediate stations. Metropolitan line platforms at and remain for emergency use. At Wembley Park the Jubilee line diverges to the Stanmore branch at a grade-separated junction. From just after Finchley Road, these four tracks run parallel with the Network Rail Chiltern Main Line from Marylebone.


title: Metropolitan line

text: Between Wembley Park and Harrow-on-the-Hill, the Metropolitan is four-track, with fast and slow lines paired by direction, paralleling the two-track un-electrified London–Aylesbury line. The slow lines are between the fast lines, and the two intermediate stations have island platforms. Harrow-on-the-Hill has platforms on all six lines. The central slow lines diverge here at a grade-separated junction to become the Uxbridge branch. After West Harrow, at Rayners Lane the line is joined by the Piccadilly line, which shares the tracks to Uxbridge; a turnback siding allows some Piccadilly line services to terminate at Rayners Lane.


title: Metropolitan line

text: On the main line between Harrow-on-the-Hill and Moor Park, the line is four-track, paired by use. The western fast tracks are shared with Aylesbury line services from Marylebone; the eastern slow tracks have platforms at the intermediate stations.


title: Metropolitan line

text: North of Moor Park, the Watford branch diverges from the slow lines. This double-track branch has stations at Croxley and Watford. The Watford branch has a triangle junction with the main line, with a north-facing curve between and . This route, Watford North Curve, is used daily for a few services and empty stock movements.


title: Metropolitan line

text: From the Watford triangle to Amersham, the line has two tracks. At Chalfont & Latimer, the single-track Chesham branch diverges, running parallel to the main line for a distance. The Metropolitan line ends at Amersham, where there are turnback sidings just beyond the platforms. The route continues to Aylesbury with Chiltern Railways trains only.