title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: Procedures such as Episiotomies and cesareans, while helpful in some cases, when administered unnecessarily increase the risk of maternal death. Midwifery and mainstream obstetric care can be complementary, which is commonly the case in Canada, where women have a wide arrange of pregnancy and birthing options, wherein informed choice and consent are fundamental tenants of their reformed maternity care. The maternal mortality rate is two times lower in Canada than the United States, according to a global survey conducted by the United Nations and the World Bank.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: Gender bias, implicit bias, and obstetric violence in the medical field are also important factors when discussing maternal wellness, care, and death in the United States.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: Seeing as more than 80% of pregnancy related deaths are preventable, there is much room for improvement. According to the Centers for Disease and Prevention state prevention strategies are best developed using data from Maternal Mortality Review Committees.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: It is clear that the U.S. has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. is to be considered one of the wealthiest and most developed countries on the globe but seems to lack in some areas in the health system. In the U.S., hospital bills for maternal healthcare costs over $98 billion, and concerns about the degradation of the maternal resulted in a state-by-state breakdown. In the United States, Maternal Mortality has been increasing in the South for the past couple of years, specifically in Georgia. The lack of health professionals has limited access to healthcare, especially in communities where they lack knowledge of prevention. Maternal mortality is one of the health issues that can be prevented if it's addressed appropriately. This is a gap in healthcare that needs to be addressed for further prevention especially as the demand for maternal healthcare workers was expected to increase by 6% by 2020. It is clear that Georgia lacks prevention because they do not have access to care and providers in their community. The Spotlight in Poverty states 730,000 Hispanics and Blacks are below 200% level. Less than a quarter of Georgia's population lives in poverty and they are minorities. Living in poverty does increase the chances of maternal mortality because women and children do not have the finances to travel to areas in Georgia that have healthcare access. As of 2018, only 79 counties have OBGYN, within the past two years this has declined especially under the Trump Administration.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: This shortage of maternal healthcare workers is prevalent throughout the country, where as of 2016, 46 percent of U.S. counties have no OB-GYNs and 56 percent have no nurse midwives, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: Differences in Medicaid coverage also factor into disparities in maternal mortality, given that over 40% of births nationally are covered by Medicaid, which is administered by state governments and therefore can vary based on location. Currently, all pregnant people at or below 138% of the federal poverty level qualify for Medicaid coverage, however states can choose to include pregnant people with higher incomes, or allow people to receive covered healthcare temporarily while their application is still being processed. Some state-by-state variations consist of eligibility to qualify for Medicaid, which services fall under the umbrella of covered prenatal and maternity care and how patients are reimbursed for care they receive. Medicaid coverage affects birthing parents from the process of receiving prenatal care through birth and postpartum care, although not all states cover the same range of prenatal services or offer postpartum care after the federally mandated 60-day period. Expansion of care past the 60 day period may prevent some pregnancy-related deaths, 11.7% of which occur between 42 days and 1 year. Only 27 states had expanded this coverage period as of September 2022, with 9 others proposing some sort of extension. As of the same date, 12 states had not implemented any Medicaid expansions.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: Another difference is in how much of the state's hospitals are considered rural, since rural hospitals are 6% less likely to offer delivery services than urban hospitals. Rural hospitals also have higher rates of Cesarean sections, which can increase the risk of complications for the person giving birth, although why rates are higher is still unclear.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: Comparison of the US maternal death rate to the death rate in other countries is complicated by the lack of standardization. Some countries do not have a standard method for reporting maternal deaths and some count in statistics death only as a direct result of pregnancy.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: In the 1950s, the maternal mortality rate in the United Kingdom and the United States was the same. By 2018, the rate in the UK was one-third of that in the United States due to implementing a standardized protocol. In 2010, Amnesty International published a 154-page report on maternal mortality in the United States. In 2011, the United Nations described maternal mortality as a human rights issue at the forefront of American healthcare, as the mortality rates worsened over the years. According to a 2015 WHO report, in the United States the MMR between 1990 and 2013 "more than doubled from an estimated 12 to 28 maternal deaths per 100,000 births." By 2015, the United States had a higher MMR than the "Islamic Republic of Iran, Libya and Turkey". In the 2017 NPR and ProPublica series "Lost Mothers: Maternal Mortality in the U.S." based on a six-month long collaborative investigation, they reported that the United States has the highest rate of maternal mortality than any other developed country, and it is the only country where mortality rate has been rising. The maternal mortality rate in the United States is three times higher than that in neighboring Canada and six times higher than in Scandinavia. As of 2020, the United States maternal mortality rate was two times higher than Canada and 10 times higher than New Zealand's.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: In the United States specifically, maternal mortality is still a prevalent issue in health care. From the year 2003 to 2013, only 8 countries worldwide saw an increase of the maternal mortality rate. The United States was included in this group, seeing an increase in the pregnancy-related mortality ratio over the past 3 decades. Looking at the years 1990-2013 from a world-wide perspective, the United States of America was the only country to see an increase in the maternal mortality rate over this time period.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: The US has the worst rate of maternal deaths in the developed world. The US has the "highest rate of maternal mortality in the industrialized world." In the United States, the maternal death rate averaged 9.1 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births during the years 1979–1986, but then rose rapidly to 14 per 100,000 in 2000 and 17.8 per 100,000 in 2009. In 2013 the rate was 18.5 deaths per 100,000 live births. It has been suggested that the rise in maternal death in the United States may be due to improved identification and misclassification resulting in false positives. The rate has steadily increased to 18.0 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2014. Between 2011 and 2014, there were 7,208 deaths that were reported to the CDC that occurred for women within a year of the end of their pregnancy. Out of this there were 2,726 that were found to be pregnancy-related deaths.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: Since 2016, ProPublica and NPR investigated factors that led to the increase in maternal mortality in the United States. They reported that the "rate of life-threatening complications for new mothers in the U.S. has more than doubled in two decades due to pre-existing conditions, medical errors and unequal access to care." According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, c. 4 million women who give birth in the US annually, over 50,000 a year, experience "dangerous and even life-threatening complications."


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: According to a report by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 1993 the rate of Severe Maternal Morbidity, rose from 49.5 to 144 "per 10,000 delivery hospitalizations" in 2014, an increase of almost 200 percent. Blood transfusions also increased during the same period with "from 24.5 in 1993 to 122.3 in 2014 and are considered to be the major driver of the increase in SMM. After excluding blood transfusions, the rate of SMM increased by about 20% over time, from 28.6 in 1993 to 35.0 in 2014."


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: The past 60 years have consistently shown considerable racial disparities in pregnancy-related deaths. Between 2011 and 2014, the mortality ratio for different racial populations based on pregnancy-related deaths was as follows: 12.4 deaths per 100,000 live births for white women, 40.0 for black women, and 17.8 for women of other races. This shows that black women have between three and four times greater chance of dying from pregnancy-related issues. It has also been shown that one of the major contributors to maternal health disparities within the United States is the growing rate of non-communicable diseases. In addition, women of color have not received equal access to healthcare professionals and equal treatment by those professionals.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: "Black women's poor reproductive outcomes are often seen as a women's personal failure. For example, Black women's adverse birth outcomes are typically discussed in terms of what the women do, such as drinking alcohol, smoking, and having less than optimal eating habits that lead to obesity and hypertension. They may be seen to be at risk based on the presumption that they are 'single,' when in fact they have a partner- but are unmarried.". Black women in the United States are dying at higher rates than white women in the United States. The United States has one of the worst maternal mortality rates despite it being a developed nation.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: It is unclear why pregnancy-related deaths in the United States have increased. It seems that the use of computerized data servers by the states and changes in the way deaths are coded, with a pregnancy checkbox added to death certificates in many states, have been shown to improve the identification of these pregnancy-related deaths. Before 2016, there was not a standardized way to report maternal deaths in the United States. Each state was using a different method causing variation in MMR across the country. As more and more states implemented the checkbox however, there was a large increase in the number of Maternal deaths reported. However, this does not contribute to decreasing the actual number of deaths. Also, errors in reporting of pregnancy status have been seen, which most likely leads to an overestimation of the number of pregnancy-related deaths. Again, this does not contribute to explaining why the death rate has increased but does show complications between reporting and actual contributions to the overall rate of maternal mortality.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: Even though 99% of births in the United States are attended by some form of skilled health professional, the maternal mortality ratio in 2015 was 14 deaths per 100,000 live births and it has been shown that the maternal mortality rate has been increasing. Also, the United States is not as efficient at preventing pregnancy-related deaths when compared to most of the other developed nations.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: The United States took part in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set forth from the United Nations. The MDGs ended in 2015 but were followed-up in the form of the Sustainable Development Goals starting in 2016. The MDGs had several tasks, one of which was to improve maternal mortality rates globally. Despite their participation in this program as well as spending more than any other country on hospital-based maternal care, however, the United States has still seen increased rates of maternal mortality. This increased maternal mortality rate was especially pronounced in relation to other countries who participated in the program, where during the same period, the global maternal mortality rate decreased by 44%. Also, the United States is not currently on track to meet the Healthy People 2020 goal of decreasing maternal mortality by 10% by the year 2020 and continues to fail in meeting national goals in maternal death reduction. Only 23 states have some form of policy that establishes review boards specific to maternal mortality as of the year 2010.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: In an effort to respond to the maternal mortality rate in the United States, the CDC requests that the 52 reporting regions (all states and New York City and Washington DC) send death certificates for all those women who have died and may fit their definition of pregnancy-related death, as well as copies of the matching birth or death records for the infant. However, this request is voluntary and some states may not have the ability to abide by this effort.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: The Affordable Care Act (ACA) provided additional access to maternity care by expanding opportunities to obtain health insurance for the uninsured and mandating that certain health benefits have coverage. It also expanded the coverage for women who have private insurance. This expansion allowed them better access to primary and preventative health care services, including for screening and management of chronic diseases. An additional benefit for family planning services was the requirement that most insurance plans cover contraception without cost-sharing. However, more employers are able to claim exemptions for religious or moral reasons under the current administration. Also under the current administration, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has decreased funding for pregnancy prevention programs for adolescent girls.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: Those women covered under Medicaid are covered when they receive prenatal care, care received during childbirth, and postpartum care. These services are provided to nearly half of the women who give birth in the United States. Currently, Medicaid is required to provide coverage for women whose incomes are at 133% of the federal poverty level in the United States.


title: Maternal mortality in the United States

text: There are many possible reasons why the United States has a much larger MMR than other developed countries: many hospitals are unprepared for maternal emergencies, 44% of maternal-fetal grants do not go towards the health of the mother, and pregnancy complication rates are continually increasing.


Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub is a biome defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. The biome is generally characterized by dry summers and rainy winters, although in some areas rainfall may be uniform. Summers are typically hot in low-lying inland locations but can be cool near colder seas. Winters are typically mild to cool in low-lying locations but can be cold in inland and higher locations. All these ecoregions are highly distinctive, collectively harboring 10% of the Earth's plant species.


The Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome mostly occurs in, but not limited to, the Mediterranean climate zones, in the mid-latitudes:


title: Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub

text: The biome is not limited to the Mediterranean climate zone. It can also be present in other climate zones (which typically border the Mediterranean climate zone), such as the drier regions of the oceanic and humid subtropical climates, and as well as the lusher areas of the semi-arid climate zone. Non-Mediterranean climate regions that would feature Mediterranean vegetation include the Nile River Valley in Egypt (extending upstream along the riverbanks), parts of the Eastern Cape in South Africa, southeastern Australia, southeastern Azerbaijan, southeastern Turkey, far northern Iraq, the Mazandaran Province in Iran, Central Italy, parts of the Balkans (including Northern Greece), as well as Northern and Western Jordan.


text: Vegetation types range from forests to woodlands, savannas, shrublands, and grasslands; "mosaic habitat" landscapes are common, where differing vegetation types are interleaved with one another in complex patterns created by variations in soil, topography, exposure to wind and sun, and fire history. Much of the woody vegetation in Mediterranean-climate regions is sclerophyll, which means 'hard-leaved' in Greek. Sclerophyllous vegetation generally has small, dark leaves covered with a waxy outer layer to retain moisture in the dry summer months.


text: Phytogeographers consider the fynbos (South Africa) as a separate floral kingdom because 68% of the 8,600 vascular plant species crowded into its are endemic and highly distinctive at several taxonomic levels. This is equivalent to about 40% of the plant species of the United States and Canada combined, found within an area the size of the state of Maine. The fynbos and Southwest Australia shrublands have flora that are significantly more diverse than the other ecoregions, although any Mediterranean shrubland is still rich in species and endemics relative to other non-forest ecoregions.


text: Fire, both natural and human-caused, has played a large role in shaping the ecology of Mediterranean ecoregions. The hot, dry summers make much of the region prone to fires, and lightning-caused fires occur with some frequency. Many of the plants are pyrophytes, or fire-loving, adapted or even depending on fire for reproduction, recycling of nutrients, and the removal of dead or senescent vegetation. In both the Australian and Californian Mediterranean-climate eco-regions, native peoples used fire extensively to clear brush and trees, making way for the grasses and herbaceous vegetation that supported game animals and useful plants.


text: The plant communities in these areas adapted to the frequent human-caused fires, and pyrophyte species grew more common and more fire-loving, while plants that were poorly adapted to fire retreated. After European colonization of these regions, fires were suppressed, which has caused some unintended consequences in these ecoregions; fuel builds up, so that when fires do come they are much more devastating, and some species dependent on fire for their reproduction are now threatened. The European shrublands have also been shaped by anthropogenic fire, historically associated with transhumance herding of sheep and goats.


text: Though adapted to infrequent fires, chaparral plant communities can be eliminated by frequent fires. A high frequency of fire (less than ten years) will result in the loss of obligate seeding shrub species such as "Manzanita" spp. This high frequency disallows seeder plants to reach their reproductive size before the next fire and the community shifts to a sprouter-dominance. If high frequency fires continue over time, obligate resprouting shrub species can also be eliminated by exhausting their energy reserves below-ground. Today, frequent accidental ignitions can convert chaparral from a native shrubland to non-native annual grassland and drastically reduce species diversity, especially under drought brought about by climate change.


text: Mediterranean ecoregions are some of the most endangered and vulnerable on the planet. Many have suffered tremendous degradation and habitat loss through logging, overgrazing, conversion to agriculture, urbanization, fire suppression, and introduction of exotic and invasive species. The ecoregions around the Mediterranean basin and in California have been particularly affected by degradation due to human activity, suffering extensive loss of forests and soil erosion, and many native plants and animals have become extinct or endangered.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: Mercedes Ritchie Lackey (born June 24, 1950) is an American writer of fantasy novels. Many of her novels and trilogies are interlinked and set in the world of Velgarth, mostly in and around the country of Valdemar. Her Valdemar novels include interaction between human and non-human protagonists with many different cultures and social mores.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: Her other main world is one much like our own, but it includes clandestine populations of elves, mages, vampires, and other mythical beings. The "Bedlam's Bard" books describe a young man with the power to work magic through music; the "SERRAted Edge" books are about racecar driving elves; and the "Diana Tregarde" thrillers center on a Wiccan who combats evil.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: She has also published several novels re-working well-known fairy tales set in a mid-19th to early 20th century setting in which magic is real, although hidden from the mundane world. These novels explore issues of ecology, social class, and gender roles.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: Lackey has published over 140 books and writes novels at a rate of 5.5 per year on average. She has been called one of the "most prolific science fiction and fantasy writers of all time." In 2021, Lackey was named the 38th Damon Knight Grand Master.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: Lackey was born in Chicago. Her birth prevented her father from being called to serve in the Korean War.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: She places her meeting with science fiction at age 10 or 11, when she picked up her father's copy of James H. Schmitz's "Agent of Vega". She then read Andre Norton's "Beast Master" and "Lord of Thunder" and continued to read all of Norton's works. Lackey had difficulties obtaining enough interesting books from the public library to sate her passion for reading. She wrote for herself but without real direction or purpose until she attended Purdue University. Lackey graduated from Purdue in 1972.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: While at Purdue, she took a one-on-one class of English Literature Independent Studies with a professor who was a fellow science fiction fan. He helped her analyze books she enjoyed and then use that knowledge. Lackey then encountered fan fiction, which further encouraged her writing. She began publishing work in science fiction fanzines and then discovered filk and had some filk lyrics published by Off Centaur Publications.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: Lackey submitted a story to "Sword and Sorceress", then sold the rewritten story to "Fantasy Book Magazine". Her first sale was to "Friends of Darkover".


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: She met C. J. Cherryh through filk. Cherryh helped Lackey through 17 rewrites of 'Arrows'. During this time, Marion Zimmer Bradley included Lackey's short stories in an anthology, "Friends of Darkover". Lackey claims to have been writing so much during this time that she had no social life at all. She divorced Tony Lackey, and eventually married Larry Dixon.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: Despite getting her own start as a fan fiction author, she and her agent forbade fan fiction based on her own books for many years, whether distributed offline or online. Lackey stated on her website that this was due to the 1992 Marion Zimmer Bradley fan fiction affair, when a fan accused Bradley of copying the fan's work, and demanded writing credit and remuneration. After several years, Lackey's policy permitted offline fanfic, but only if the author got a release form from Mercedes Lackey that said the author acknowledged that they were using characters that belong to Mercedes Lackey and that the author's work essentially became Mercedes Lackey's property to prevent "infringing on my right to make a living from my own imagination". As of 2009 this policy changed, permitting fan fiction to be licensed as derivative fiction under the Creative Commons umbrella.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: She married Anthony Lackey in 1972, and they divorced in 1990. In 1990, she married Larry Dixon. She describes their home outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma as a "-story concrete dome with an octagonal wooden shell over it to make it look more like a normal house ... it's round with curved outer walls, which makes placement of furniture kind of awkward."


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: Lackey and Dixon have in the past worked in raptor rehabilitation. She refers to her various parrots as her "feathered children". The afterwords to some of her books refer to rehabilitation and falconry, and this interest has influenced and informed her writing. She also enjoys beadwork, costuming, and needlework. She claims, however, to be a "wretched housekeeper, and by and large an indifferent cook" Besides this, she does radar-reading during tornado season. She helps support the Alex Foundation.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: Historically, Lackey was active in the filking community. She was a major contributor to an early album of space filk, "Minus Ten and Counting". She has won five Pegasus Awards, mostly for her songwriting. She was also active in the Society for Creative Anachronism, and belongs to the Great Dark Horde.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: She participates in The Stellar Guild series published by Phoenix Pick. The series pairs bestselling authors like Lackey with lesser known authors in science fiction and fantasy to help provide additional visibility to them.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: Lackey is active in the online question and answer forum of Quora, answering questions about writing, birds, pets, current events, and politics and has her own profile page.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: Mercedes Lackey was a protégée of Marion Zimmer Bradley, and got her start writing short stories in Bradley's story collections. Other mentors include writers C. J. Cherryh and Andre Norton, along with her editor, Elizabeth (Betsy) Wollheim of DAW Books.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: Her earlier Velgarth novels are all solo projects, but later volumes in the Valdemar saga are illustrated by her husband Larry Dixon, and in many of her latest works he is also credited as co-author. Many of her other novels are collaborations. She has worked with fantasy authors Andre Norton (such as the Halfblood Chronicles), Marion Zimmer Bradley (such as "Rediscovery" and "Tigers Burning Bright"), Anne McCaffrey (such as "The Ship Who Searched"), and Piers Anthony ("If I Pay Thee Not in Gold"). She has most recently written "The Obsidian Trilogy" with historian James Mallory; a historical fantasy series about an "alternative" Elizabeth I with romance writer Roberta Gellis; and the "Heirs of Alexandria series" with Dave Freer and Eric Flint.


title: Mercedes Lackey

text: On August 3, 2021, Deadline reported that Radar Pictures had acquired the television rights to the Valdemar novels and that Ted Field would be Executive Producer on the series. The first season is being developed as an adaptation of the Last Herald-Mage trilogy. Kit Williamson and Brittany Cavallaro have been announced as writers and producers for the show.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards designed by Singaporean technology company Creative Technology (known in the US as Creative Labs). Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system platform, until the widespread transition to "Microsoft" Windows 95, which standardized the programming interface at application level (eliminating the importance of backward compatibility with Sound Blaster), and the evolution in PC design led to onboard audio electronics, which commoditized PC audio functionality. By 1995, Sound Blaster cards had sold over 15 million units worldwide and accounted for seven out of ten sound card sales.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The history of Creative sound cards started with the release of the Creative Music System ("C/MS") CT-1300 board in August 1987. It contained two Philips SAA1099 integrated circuits, which, together, provided 12 channels of square-wave "bee-in-a-box" stereo sound, 4 channels of which can be used for noise.


title: Sound Blaster

text: These ICs were featured earlier in various popular electronics magazines around the world. For many years Creative tended to use off-the-shelf components and manufacturers' reference designs for their early products. The various integrated circuits had white or black paper stickers fully covering their top thus hiding their identity. On the C/MS board in particular, the Philips chips had white pieces of paper with a fantasy CMS-301 inscription on them: real Creative parts usually had consistent CT "number" references.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Surprisingly, the board also contained a large 40-pin DIP integrated circuit, bearing a CT 1302A CTPL 8708 (Creative Technology Programmable Logic) serigraphed inscription and looking exactly like the DSP of the later Sound Blaster. This chip allows software to automatically detect the card by certain register reads and writes.


title: Sound Blaster

text: A year later, in 1988, Creative marketed the C/MS via Radio Shack under the name Game Blaster. This card was identical in every way to the precursor C/MS hardware. Whereas the C/MS package came with five floppy disks full of utilities and song files, Creative supplied only a single floppy with the basic utilities and game patches to allow Sierra Online's games using the Sierra Creative Interpreter engine to play music with the card and it also included a later revision of the game Silpheed that added C/MS support.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The Sound Blaster 1.0 (code named "Killer Kard"), CT1320A, was released in 1989. In addition to Game Blaster features, it had a 9-voice (11 voices in drum mode) FM synthesizer using the Yamaha YM3812 chip, also known as OPL2. It provided perfect compatibility with the market leader AdLib sound card, which had gained support in PC games in the preceding year. Creative used the "DSP" acronym to designate the digital audio part of the Sound Blaster. This actually stood for Digital Sound Processor, rather than the more common digital signal processor, and was really a simple micro-controller from the Intel MCS-51 family (supplied by Intel and Matra MHS, among others). It could play back 8-bit monaural sampled sound at up to 23kHz sampling frequency and record 8-bit at up to 12kHz. The sole DSP-like features of the circuit were ADPCM decompression and a primitive non-MPU-401 compatible MIDI interface. The ADPCM decompression schemes supported were 2 to 1, 3 to 1 and 4 to 1. The CT1320B variety of the Sound Blaster 1.0 typically has C/MS chips installed in sockets rather than soldered on the PCB, though units do exist with the C/MS chips soldered on.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Some sources note that the original Sound Blaster 1.0 was produced under the CT1310 number. This however is a topic of ongoing debate. Creative refers to CT1310 for the Sound Blaster 1.0 on its website.


title: Sound Blaster

text: In spite of these limitations, in less than a year, the Sound Blaster became the top-selling expansion card for the PC. It achieved this by providing a fully AdLib-compatible product, with additional features, for the same, and often a lower price. The inclusion of the game port, and its importance to its early success, is often forgotten or overlooked. PCs of this era did not include a game port. Game port cards were costly (around $50) and used one of the few expansion slots PCs had at the time. Given the choice between an AdLib card or a fully compatible Sound Blaster card that came with a game port, saved a slot, and included the "DSP" for not much more in price, many consumers opted for the Sound Blaster. In-game support for the digital portion of the card did not happen until after the Sound Blaster had gained dominance.


title: Sound Blaster

text: When Microsoft announced Multimedia PC (MPC) in November 1990, it suggested to developers that they use the Sound Blaster as it was the only sound card that came close to complying with the MPC standard. The press speculated that Microsoft based the MPC standard on the Sound Blaster's specifications. By 1993 "Computer Gaming World" wondered "why would a gamer" buy a competing AdLib card that was not Sound Blaster-compatible. Creative advertised the Sound Blaster 16 ("the 16-bit sound standard") with the slogan "Get Real", emphasizing its "real 100% Sound Blaster compatibility" and rhetorically asking "why those other manufacturers spend so much time comparing themselves to Sound Blaster".


title: Sound Blaster

text: "Compute!" in 1989 stated that with Sound Blaster, "IBM-compatible computers have taken the lead in sound and music for personal computers". Naming it a Compute! Choice, the magazine described the quality of the opening music of "Space Quest III" with the card as "extraordinary", praising the quality compared to the Roland MT-32 and Ad Lib versions. "Compute!" approved of the card's DMA and Creative's dissemination of technical information, and concluded that while the more-expensive MT-32 was superior, Sound Blaster's audio quality was better than that of Ad Lib or Game Blaster.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Released in 1990, the Sound Blaster 1.5, CT1320C, dropped the C/MS chips, which were no longer popular with game developers. Instead, the board had two empty sockets, which could be user upgraded by purchasing the C/MS chips directly from Creative or Phillips SAA-1099s from another source. Otherwise the card functions identically to the Sound Blaster 1.0. The CT1320U variety has the same layout as the CT1320C.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The final revision of the original Sound Blaster, the Sound Blaster 2.0 was released in October 1991, CT1350, added support for "auto-init" DMA, which assisted in producing a continuous loop of double-buffered sound output. Similar to version 1.0 and 1.5, it used a 1-channel 8-bit DAC. However, the maximum sampling rate was increased to 44kHz for playback, and 15kHz for record. The DSP's MIDI UART was upgraded to full-duplex and offered time stamping features, but was not yet compatible with the MPU-401 interface used by professional MIDI equipment. The Sound Blaster 2.0's PCB-layout used more highly integrated components, both shrinking the board's size and reducing manufacturing cost.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Owners of previous revision Sound Blaster boards could upgrade their board by purchasing the V2.00 DSP chip from Creative Labs, and swapping the older DSP V1.0x with the newer replacement. The upgraded board gained the auto-init DMA and new MIDI capabilities of the Sound Blaster 2.0 but not the expanded sampling rates. The upgrade was necessary for full compatibility with the Windows 3.0 Multimedia Extensions upgrade.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Sound Blaster MCV, CT5320, was a version created for IBM PS/2 model 50 and higher and their ISA-incompatible Micro Channel architecture. The MCV Sound Blaster has some issues outputting audio while running on PS/2s with CPUs running faster than 16MHz. However, the joystick interface is still inoperable on PS/2s it was designed for due to the slow-speed Schottky chips that have been installed. None of these timing issues affect the Yamaha YM3812. Some of the MCV Sound Blasters were released with faster Schottkys which eradicated some of the problems.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Model CT1330, announced in May 1991, was the first significant redesign of the card's core features, and complied with the Microsoft MPC standard.. The Sound Blaster Pro supported faster digital input and output sampling rates (up to 22.05kHz stereo or 44.1kHz mono), added a "mixer" to provide a crude master volume control (independent of the volume of sound sources feeding the mixer), and a crude high pass or low pass filter. The Sound Blaster Pro used a pair of YM3812 chips to provide stereo music-synthesis (one for each channel). The Sound Blaster Pro was fully backward compatible with the original Sound Blaster line, and by extension, the AdLib sound card. The Sound Blaster Pro was the first Creative sound card to have a built-in CD-ROM interface. Most Sound Blaster Pro cards featured a proprietary interface for a Panasonic (Matsushita MKE) drive. The Sound Blaster Pro cards are basically 8-bit ISA cards, they use only the lower 8 data bits of the ISA bus. While at first glance it appears to be a 16-bit ISA card, it does not have 'fingers' for data transfer on the higher "AT" portion of the bus connector. It uses the 16-bit extension to the ISA bus to provide the user with an additional choice for an IRQ (10) and DMA (0)m channel only found on the 16-bit portion of the edge connector.


title: Sound Blaster

text: A short lived joint developed project between Creative and Tandy resulted in the Creative/Tandy Multimedia Sound Adapter, 849–3030. This Sound Blaster Pro derived card was factory installed in Tandy Multimedia PCs. It combined the CT1330 with Tandy joystick and MIDI ports (not MPU-401 compatible).


title: Sound Blaster

text: The revised version, the Sound Blaster Pro 2, CT1600, replaced the YM3812s with a more advanced Yamaha YMF262 ("OPL3"). Otherwise it is functionally identical to the original Sound Blaster Pro. Shortly after the release of the Sound Blaster Pro 2 version, Creative discontinued the original Sound Blaster Pro.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Packaged Sound Blaster cards were initially marketed and sold into the retail-channel. Creative's domination of the PC audio card business soon had them selling the Sound Blaster Pro 2 OEM, CT1680, to customers for integration into pre-assembled PCs.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Creative also sold Multimedia Upgrade Kits containing the Sound Blaster Pro. The kit bundled the sound card, a Matsushita CD-ROM drive (model 531 for single-speed, or 562/3 for the later double-speed (2x) drives), and several CD-ROMs of multimedia software titles. As CD-ROM technology was new, the kit included CD-ROM software, representing a very good value to customers. One such kit, named "OmniCD", included the 2x Matsushita drive along with an ISA controller card and software, including Software Toolworks Encyclopedia and Aldus PhotoStyler SE. It was compliant with the MPC Level 2 standard.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The Sound Blaster Pro 2 MCV, CT5330, was a version created for IBM PS/2 model 50 and higher and their MicroChannel bus.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Eventually this design proved so popular that Creative made a PCI version of this card. Creative's audio revenue grew from US$40 million per year to nearly US$1 billion following the launch of the Sound Blaster 16 and related products. Rich Sorkin was General Manager of the global business during this time, responsible for product planning, product management, marketing and OEM sales. Moving the card off the ISA bus, which was already approaching obsolescence, this meant that no line for host-controlled ISA DMA was available, as the PCI slot offers no such line. Instead, the card used PCI bus mastering to transfer data from the main memory to the D/A converters. Since existing DOS programs expected to be able to initiate host-controlled ISA DMA for producing sound, backward compatibility with the older Sound Blaster cards for DOS programs required a software driver work-around; since this work-around necessarily depended on the virtual 8086 mode of the PC's CPU in order to catch and reroute accesses from the ISA DMA controller to the card itself, it failed for a number of DOS games that either were not fully compatible with this CPU mode or needed so much free conventional memory that they could not be loaded with the driver occupying part of this memory. In Microsoft Windows, there was no problem, as Creative's Windows driver software could handle both ISA and PCI cards correctly.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The Sound Blaster ViBRA16 was an inexpensive single-chip implementation of the Sound Blaster 16 for the OEM market. Creative Labs also used this chip for the Sound Blaster 32, Phone Blaster and Phone Blaster 28.8 (VIBRA + modem, CT3120 and CT3220.) and many other value-edition cards. External Yamaha OPL3 FM music synthesis was retained in earlier boards built around the ViBRA16 or ViBRA16s controllers, whilst the later (and more common) ViBRA16 boards used CQM (Creative Quadratic Modulation) developed by E-mu Systems. This series included the ViBRA16 (CT2501), ViBRA16s (CT2502, CT2504), ViBRA16c (CT2505) PnP and ViBRA16XV (CT2511) chips. The primary advantage of the ViBRA16 was the inclusion of a 14.4 Kbit/s telephony Modem; it also functioned as a telephone.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Released in March 1994, the "Sound Blaster AWE32 (Advanced WavEffects)" introduced an all new MIDI synthesizer section based on the EMU8000. The "AWE32" consisted of two distinct audio sections; the Creative digital audio section (audio codec, optional CSP/ASP chip socket, Yamaha OPL3), and the E-mu MIDI synthesizer section. The synthesizer section consisted of the EMU8000 sampler and effects processor, an EMU8011 1MB sample ROM, and 512KB of sample RAM (expandable to 28MB). To fit the new hardware, the AWE32 was a full-length ISA card, measuring .


title: Sound Blaster

text: A derivative of the AWE32 design, the "Sound Blaster 32" (SB32) was a value-oriented offering from Creative. Announced on June 6, 1995, the SB32 became the new entry-level card in the AWE32 product-line (previously held by the "AWE32 Value".) The SB32 retained the AWE32's EMU8000/EMU8011 MIDI-synthesis engine and built-in instrument ROM, but dropped the onboard RAM, the Wave Blaster header, and the CSP port. The SB32 used the "Vibra" chip to reduce component count, which meant bass/treble/gain control was limited compared to the AWE32. The loss of onboard RAM is offset by the inclusion of 30-pin SIMM RAM sockets, which allow up to 28MB RAM to be installed and used by the EMU engine.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The AWE32's successor, the "Sound Blaster AWE64" (November 1996), was significantly smaller, being a "half-length ISA card" (that term is misleading — see the pictures for size comparison). It offered similar features to the AWE32, but also had a few notable improvements, including support for greater polyphony, although this was a product of 32 extra software-emulated channels. The 30-pin SIMM slots from AWE32/SB32 were replaced with a proprietary memory format which could be (expensively) purchased from Creative.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The main improvements were better compatibility with older SB models, and an improved signal-to-noise ratio. The AWE64 came in two versions: A standard version (later rebranded as "Value") with 512KB of RAM and a Gold version with 4MB of RAM and a separate S/PDIF output.


title: Sound Blaster

text: In 1998, Creative acquired Ensoniq Corporation, manufacturer of the AudioPCI, a card popular with OEMs at the time. It was a full-featured solution with wavetable MIDI (sample-based synthesizer), 4-speaker DirectSound3D surround sound, A3D emulation, and DOS legacy support via a terminate-and-stay-resident program. It was cheap due to lack of hardware acceleration. It is full-duplex but at least in MS Windows cannot play back several sources at once.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Creative released many cards using the original AudioPCI chip, Ensoniq ES1370, and several boards using revised versions of this chip (ES1371 and ES1373), and some with Creative-labeled AudioPCI chips. Boards using AudioPCI tech are usually easily identifiable by the board design and the chip size because they all look quite similar. Such boards include Sound Blaster PCI64 (April 1998), PCI128 (July 1998), Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI, Vibra PCI and Sound Blaster 16 PCI.


title: Sound Blaster

text: An ES137x chip contains 3 stereo sample rate converters, some buffers and a PCI busmaster interface. Analogue interfacing is done by a codec chip, which runs at a fixed sampling frequency of 44 (Ensoniq Audio PCI) or 48kHz (Creative's versions). (ISA soundcards had not resampled but switched between different time bases.) ES137x do not support SoundFonts but a filter-less MIDI engine with wavetable (sample table) sets of 2, 4, and 8MB size.


title: Sound Blaster

text: When the "Sound Blaster Live!" was introduced in August 1998, the use of a programmable digital signal processor in PC-audio was not unprecedented, as IBM had already done that with cheap Mwave sound- & modem-cards and Turtle Beach with their professional Hurricane soundcards.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The Live! was built around Creative's new EMU10K1 chip, which contained 2.44million transistors and was advertised of processing a flashy 1,000MIPS. The EMU10K1 (and its successors) did not use on-card RAM/ROM storage for instrument samples, instead it used a PCI busmaster interface to access sample-data stored in the host-PC's system memory. A/D- and D/A- converters as well as analogue mixing is done by an AC'97 chip running at 48kHz sampling rate. All members of the SB Live! family have at least four-channel analog audio outputs and a 15-pin MIDI/Joystick multiport.


title: Sound Blaster

text: For game titles, "EAX" 1.0 (and later 2.0) (environmental audio extensions, which briefly competed with the now defunct A3D 2.0) added hardware-accelerated acoustic effects. The EMU10K1 provided high-quality 64-voice sample-based synthesizer (a.k.a. wavetable), with self-produced or third-party customized patches or "Soundfonts", and the ability to resample the audio output as input and apply a range of real-time DSP effects to any set of audio subchannels present in the device.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The first model and flagship of the SB/Live family was the "SB Live! Gold". Featuring gold tracings on all major analog traces and external sockets, an EMI-suppressing printed circuit board substrate and lacquer, the Gold came standard with a daughterboard that implemented a separate 4-channel alternative mini-DIN digital output to Creative-branded internal-DAC speaker sets, a S/P-DIF digital audio Input and Output with separate software mappings, and a fully decoded MIDI interface with separate Input and Output (along with on mini-DIN converter.) The Gold highlighted many features aimed at music composition; ease-of-use (plug-and-play for musicians), real-time loopback-recording of the MIDI-synthesizer (with full freedom of Soundfonts, and environmental effects such as reverb, etc.), and bundled MIDI-software.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The mainstream model was the "Sound Blaster Live!" Like the Gold, the Live featured multi-speaker analog output (up to four channels), and identical music/sound generation capabilities (without the bundled MIDI software and interfacing-equipment.)


title: Sound Blaster

text: Later versions of the Live!, usually called "Live! 5.1", offered 5.1-channel support which adds a center channel speaker and LFE subwoofer output, most useful for movie watching. The Live! 5.1 could also use one of the 3.5mm jack ports as an SPDIF out, which allowed the connection of an external decoder.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Creative also released a "Sound Blaster Live! Player 1024" edition, which is identical to the regular "Sound Blaster Live!", but with the addition of some extra software.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The "Sound Blaster PCI 512" (CT4790) is an EMU10K1-based sound card designed to fill a lower cost segment than the Live! Value. It is capable of most of the Live! Value's features aside from being limited to 512 MIDI voice polyphony (a software-based limitation), lacking digital I/O, removal of expansion headers, and only stereo or quadraphonic output support. The card's circuit layout is somewhat simpler than that of the Live! series.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The "Sound Blaster Audigy" (August 2001) featured the Audigy processor (EMU10K2), an improved version of the EMU10K1 processor that shipped with the "Sound Blaster Live!". The Audigy could process up to four EAX environments simultaneously with its upgraded on-chip DSP and native EAX 3.0 ADVANCED HD support, and supported up to 5.1-channel output.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The Audigy was controversially advertised as a 24-bit sound card. The EMU10K2's audio transport (DMA engine) was fixed at 16-bit sample precision at 48kHz (like the EMU10K1 in the original Live!), and all audio had to be resampled to 48kHz in order to be accepted by the DSP (for recording or rendering to output.)


title: Sound Blaster

text: "Sound Blaster Audigy 2" (September 2002) featured an updated EMU10K2 processor, sometimes referred to as EMU10K2.5, with an improved DMA engine capable of 24-bit precision. Up to 192kHz was supported for stereo playback/record, while 6.1 was capped at 96kHz. In addition, Audigy 2 supported up to 6.1 (later 7.1) speakers and had improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) over the Audigy (106 vs. 100 decibels (A)). It also featured built-in Dolby Digital EX 6.1 and 7.1 decoding for improved DVD play-back. The Audigy 2 line were the first sound cards to receive THX certification.


title: Sound Blaster

text: "Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS" (September 2003) is essentially an Audigy 2 with updated DAC and op-amps. Audigy 2 ZS uses the Cirrus Logic CS4382 DAC together with the op-amps and can produce an output SNR of 108dB. There were a few slight printed circuit board modifications and 7.1 audio support was added.


title: Sound Blaster

text: "Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro" (November 2004) was an Audigy 2 ZS with updated DACs and ADCs, the new DAC being the Cirrus Logic CS4398, boosting the output SNR to 113dB. Other than a breakout box, it has no distinguishable difference from the Audigy 2 ZS. The DSP is identical to the Audigy 2 ZS's but Creative put an "Audigy 4" sticker to cover the chip, making it appear as if it is a new chip. The Audigy 4 Pro is not to be confused with the Audigy 4 (Value) which contains lower quality DACs and does not have golden plated jacks. The Audigy 4 (Value) is more in line with the Audigy 2 Value series. The Audigy 4 had a shorter life span than its predecessors, due to the short window between it and the next-generation Sound Blaster X-Fi.


title: Sound Blaster

text: "Sound Blaster Audigy Rx" (September 2013) is similar to the "Audigy 4" but with a dedicated 600-ohm headphone amplifier and a PCIe 1x interface.


title: Sound Blaster

text: "Sound Blaster Audigy Fx" (September 2013) also features a 600-ohm amplifier and a PCIe interface, but lacks the EMU10K DSP.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The "X-Fi" (for "Extreme Fidelity") was released in August 2005 and came in "XtremeGamer", "Titanium", "Titanium Fatal1ty Professional", "Titanium Fatal1ty Champion" and "Elite Pro" configurations. The 130nm EMU20K1 (or EMU20K2 for Titanium series models) audio chip operates at 400MHz and has 51million transistors. The computational power of this processor, i.e. its performance, is estimated as 10,000MIPS, which is about 24 times higher than the estimated performance of its predecessor, the Audigy processor. Beginning with the 2008 Titanium models, newer X-Fi cards switched from PCI to PCI Express x1 connectors. With the X-Fi's "Active Modal Architecture" (AMA), the user can choose one of three optimization modes: Gaming, Entertainment, and Creation; each enabling a combination of the features of the chipset. The X-Fi uses EAX 5.0 which supports up to 128 3D-positioned voices with up to four effects applied to each. This release also included the 24-bit crystallizer, which is intended to pronounce percussion elements by placing some emphasis on low and high pitched parts of the sound. The X-Fi, at its release, offered some of the most powerful mixing capabilities available, making it a powerful entry-level card for home musicians. The other big improvement in the X-Fi over the previous Audigy designs was the complete overhaul of the resampling engine on the card. The previous Audigy cards had their DSPs locked at 48/16, meaning any content that did not match was resampled on the card in hardware; which was done poorly and resulted in a lot of intermodulation distortion. Many hardcore users worked around this by means of resampling their content using high quality software decoders, usually in the form of a plugin in their media player. Creative completely re-wrote the resampling method used on the X-Fi and dedicated more than half of the power of the DSP to the process; resulting in a very clean resample.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The Recon3D series was announced in September 2011 and includes the "Recon3D PCIe", "Recon3D Fatal1ty Professional" and "Recon3D Fatal1ty Champion". The cards use the new integrated "Sound Core3D" chip, which features the "Quartet DSP" from the X-Fi series as well as integrated DAC, ADC and I/O interface in a 56-pin package. The Asia-only "Recon3D Professional Audio" is basically a "Recon3D PCIe" with some extra accessories such as cables.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The Recon3D comes with a bundled software called the SBX Pro Studio. SBX Pro Studio allows users to adjust the amount of virtual Surround, Crystallizer, Bass, Smart Volume and Dialog Plus for their Recon3D sound cards. The Recon3D also has got the Crystal Voice feature that reduces the pickup of background noises like the hairdryer or vacuum cleaner when a beamforming microphone is used.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Reviews have been generally positive, but pricing and small model differences have raised questions. Especially the low and mid priced models "Recon3D PCIe" and "Recon3D Fatal1ty Professional" have only cosmetic differences, but considerable price difference: the "Fatal1ty Professional", adds a beamforming microphone, some red LED lights and a metal shroud over the board, but has no real hardware improvements.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The Sound Blaster Z-Series was announced in August 2012 and includes the PCI Express x1 cards, "Z", "Zx" and "ZxR" which use the same "Sound Core3D" chip as the previous Sound Blaster Recon3D series. The Z-Series improved sound quality over the Recon3D series by including more dedicated audio hardware such as Op-Amps, DACs, and ADCs.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The Sound BlasterX AE-5 was announced in June 2017, the first discrete sound card made by Creative in five years since the introduction of the Z-series. The card is the first in the Sound Blaster series to use a 32-bit/384kHz SABRE 32 Ultra DAC (ES9016K2M), along with a custom-designed discrete headphone amplifier (1W output power and low output impedance of 1 Ohm so it can provide high damping factor for virtually any dynamic headphone). The card has an additional RGB lighting courtesy of a MOLEX power connection and accompanying RGB LED strip. In late 2017, a white colored model of the sound card called the Sound BlasterX AE-5 Pure Edition was released with 4 RGB LED strips instead of one with the standard black model.


title: Sound Blaster

text: In 2020, the AE-5 Plus was released which is similar to the previous model, but the sound card comes with hardware Dolby Digital Live and DTS encoding. There is a white colored Pure Edition released alongside the standard black model.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The Sound Blaster AE-7 was released in July 2019 alongside the Sound Blaster AE-9. It is equipped with an ESS SABRE 9018 DAC, and it features an ACM (Audio Control Module), which connects to the sound card via two of the audio ports available on the card itself. It doesn't feature RGB lighting, contrary to the AE-5, and it doesn't require external power either.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The Sound Blaster AE-9 was announced in December 2018, targeting the audiophile audience. This soundcard is equipped with an ESS SABRE 9038 DAC, and it features an external Audio Control Module which connects to the sound card with a mini-HDMI cable, containing an XLR port for a microphone and a toggleable 48+volt phantom power rail; the sound card itself features replaceable operational amplifiers. The sound card with the external DAC consumes 75W, and thus is the first sound card from Creative that requires auxiliary power, using a 6-pin PCI-E connector to supply power to the external DAC.


title: Sound Blaster

text: The card was officially released on July 10, 2019 to celebrate 30 years since the introduction of the original Sound Blaster.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Sound Blaster cards since 1999 conform to Microsoft's PC 99 standard for color-coding the external connectors as follows:


title: Sound Blaster

text: Up until the AWE line in 1994, Creative cards have short text inscriptions on the backplane of the card, indicating which port does what (i.e. Mic, Spk, Aux In, Aux Out). On later cards, the text inscriptions were changed to icons. With the latest cards from Creative, the cards were changed to use numbers as the ports are flexi-jacks and can have different functions assigned to them at run-time (i.e. changed from speaker output to mic in), but a color overlay sticker is included with retail units to help consumers identify the commonly used functions of the ports in their default modes.


title: Sound Blaster

text: A lot of audio/data pin connectors and jumpers-setting is present in the internal body of the sound blaster, different from card to card, and along the years of productions.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Some drivers from the Audigy 2 ZS have been soft-modded by enthusiasts. These can be installed on Creative's older cards, including Sound Blaster Live!, Audigy, and Audigy 2. It has been claimed to offer improved sound quality, hardware acceleration of higher EAX versions in games, 64-channel mixing for Audigy 1, and an overall improvement in the card's performance. Several forum posts across the web have reported favorable results with this technique, excepting Live! users where the drivers only add the ability to use the newer software applications (i.e. the newer mixer applet). Comments on forums from developers of the software mod have said that Live's hardware is not capable of EAX3 nor 64-channels of hardware sound mixing.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Later, in 2004, Creative released updated drivers top-to-bottom for the Audigy through Audigy 4 line that put these cards basically at feature parity on a software level. As of 2006, the entire Audigy lineup uses the same driver package. DSP decoding at the driver level on other cards than Audigy 2 ZS and 4 is still not supported by official drivers, but it works with soft-modded drivers on the other cards with hardware DSP (like Audigy 2 6.1).


title: Sound Blaster

text: When Windows Vista was released, there was only a single beta driver for the Creative Audigy series that was usable on the operating system with minimal functionality and frequent instability reported by users. A Creative Forum activist named Daniel K. modified drivers from the X-Fi and applied it to the Audigy and Live! series, restoring most if not all of the features that came with the original XP setup CD in Vista. X-Fi drivers have noticeably better sound quality under Vista, and more bug fixes because of the newer build (last modified version is 2.15.0004EQ April). He managed to enable the X-Fi Crystallizer to work on Audigy series cards in software, however because of the patents involved, he was forced to remove all the modified drivers and DLL patch.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Creative then released a newer official Audigy Vista driver (2.18.0000 as of 28 July 2008) due to public and consumer pressure. However, some form of agreement between Creative and Daniel K has been achieved, as he returned to the Creative forums, posting updated versions of his modified drivers. He released the final version of his modded driver package as of January 12, 2012.


title: Sound Blaster

text: All recent Linux distributions support Sound Blaster Cards via kernel drivers. In case of non-Plug-and-Play ISA cards, a configuration file in must be reconfigured, writing for example with Sound Blaster 16 card installed: .


title: Sound Blaster

text: X-Fi series cards have basic support in Linux, but the advanced features like signal routing, relay control or external I/O consoles are not supported.


title: Sound Blaster

text: Support for the newer Sound Blaster cards (Z and AE series) was added to the kernel during 4.19–4.20 release timeframe.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: RAF Ascension Island , also known as Wideawake Airfield or Ascension Island Auxiliary Field, is a military airfield and facility located on Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean. The airfield is jointly operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Space Force (USSF). Under the terms of an international agreement between the UK and US governments, only state aircraft (e.g. military and diplomatic flights) are authorised to land at Ascension; however, it is also open to air services between Saint Helena and Ascension.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: The facility is home to a U.S. Space Force ground tracking station in support of the Eastern Range and rocket launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: In 1939 Ascension became important as a high-frequency direction finding radio station covering trade routes. Wideawake Airfield (named after a noisy colony of sooty terns nearby) was built by the US military in 1942 by arrangement with the British government. The airfield was built using a US task force. The work was done by the USAAF 38th Engineer Combat Regiment and the airfield opened on 10 July 1942. The first aircraft to land on Ascension Island was a Fairey Swordfish from HMS "Archer" in June, 1942 and it went on to be used by more than 25,000 aircraft as a staging point during the Second World War.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: A U.S. Air Force tracking station (now administered by the U.S. Space Force) was officially activated as a satellite of Patrick Air Force Base (now Patrick Space Force Base) in Florida on 25 June 1956.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: The airfield's runway was extended in the latter part of 1980. The base was re-garrisoned by the RAF in 1982 and used extensively as a staging airfield during the Falklands War. At one stage, Wideawake became the busiest airport in the world for the number of aircraft movements. A series of long-range bombing raids was carried out from there under the name Operation Black Buck. The first mission was on 30 April 1982.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: In 2017 a parliamentary answer disclosed the runway needed a 'full depth resurfacing'. In June 2020 the U.S. Department of Defense announced the runway would be repaired, with a completion date in 2022 after eighteen months work; until then commercial flights were suspended.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: The USAF relies upon contractors to maintain the airfield facilities and the satellite station. An update is underway, with a completion date in 2025.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: The Target Tracking Radar Station was a Nike Zeus test facility for tracking reentry vehicles from Cape Canaveral missile launches. Built from 1960-1961 for anti-ballistic missile measurement, the "Golf Ball" radar antenna was on Cat Hill, and a collimation tower for radar calibration was towards English Bay. The facility is home to the Detachment 2 of the 45th Mission Support Group, part of the U.S. Space Force's Delta 45. It operates a ground tracking station in support of the Eastern Range and rocket launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: The NASA Tracking Station at Devil's Ashpit and the Cable & Wireless Earth Station at Donkey Plain were built in the mid-1960s for space operations and communications, including the latter's use for transmitting "microwave borne data via the Early Bird Satellite back to the NASA facility at Andover, Maine".


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: The station comes under the overall jurisdiction of the Commander British Forces South Atlantic Islands, an officer of one-star rank. , the incumbent is Commodore Jonathan Lett.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: The RAF airfield on Ascension Island is run on a day-to-day basis by around 19 RAF personnel, headed by a wing commander.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: RAF Ascension Island is normally the refuelling point for the Ministry of Defence's South Atlantic air bridge flights to RAF Mount Pleasant, on the Falkland Islands, from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, in the UK.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: Beginning in November 2017, the Ascension Island Government has contracted South African air carrier Airlink to conduct regularly scheduled charter flights between Saint Helena Airport and Ascension Island on a monthly basis. Flights are currently scheduled on the second week of every month, arriving at Ascension on Saturday afternoon and returning to Saint Helena on Sunday morning. The first of these flights are scheduled for 18 and 19 November 2017. Additionally civilian passengers had been permitted on flights to and from RAF Brize Norton with reservations handled by AW Ship Management, with some customers doing package deals combined with the RMS "Saint Helena", which travelled between Saint Helena and Cape Town, South Africa until the opening of St Helena Airport to passenger flights.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: Ascension serves as a diversion airport for ETOPS aircraft crossing the Atlantic. In January 2013, a Delta Air Lines Boeing 777-200LR en route from Johannesburg to Atlanta diverted to Ascension as a result of engine problems.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: The site is home to a high frequency radio station forming part of the Defence High Frequency Communications Service. The station is operated by Babcock International Group on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: Potholes on the runway led to the suspension in April 2017 of all Ministry of Defence South Atlantic Air Bridge Flights between RAF Mount Pleasant and RAF Brize Norton until at least 2019/2020. An Airbus A330 aircraft operated by AirTanker Services on behalf of the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom) carried out those flights although a limited number of commercial passenger tickets were available. Those flights now travel via Dakar. Planes for emergency medical evacuation flights and the newly established monthly charter flight to Saint Helena Airport are not impacted given the size of aircraft used. Essential personnel and equipment are also exempt from the suspension.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: While A330s are for now unable to land at the airport, the United States military continues to maintain a weekly flight between the island and Patrick Space Force Base in Florida, only for the use of its personnel, while the MV "Ascension" supply ship regularly services US facilities.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: A repair project aimed at restoring service to the airport celebrated its halfway point in March 2022. In August 2022, the eastern portion of the runway was completed, allowing flight operations to resume, with a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III of the 21st Airlift Squadron being the first aircraft to use the improved runway on 31 August 2022. The runway repairs are expected to be completed in Spring of 2023.


title: RAF Ascension Island

text: On 18 November 2017, SA Airlink started a scheduled weekly charter from Longwood, Saint Helena to the island.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: Patrick Maroon (born April 23, 1988) is an American professional ice hockey left winger for the Tampa Bay Lightning of the National Hockey League (NHL). Nicknamed the "Big Rig", Maroon has previously played for the Anaheim Ducks, Edmonton Oilers, New Jersey Devils, and St. Louis Blues. Maroon is a three time Stanley Cup champion, winning in three consecutive seasons (with the Blues in 2019 and the Lightning in 2020, and 2021).


title: Patrick Maroon

text: Growing up in St. Louis, Maroon attended Oakville High School where he was recruited to play in the North American Hockey League (NAHL) by Kelly Chase and Al MacInnis. Following two standout seasons with the Texarkana Bandits, he was drafted 161st overall by the Philadelphia Flyers in the 2007 NHL Entry Draft. He spent three years within their organization before being traded to the Anaheim Ducks and subsequently making his NHL debut in the 2011–12 season.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: Maroon played three seasons at the NHL level with the Ducks where he made an impact during their 2015 Stanley Cup playoffs run. Due to inconsistency, he was traded to the Edmonton Oilers and New Jersey Devils before landing in St. Louis Blues in 2018.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: In his only season with the Blues, he helped them win the Stanley Cup for the first time in franchise history. He would win the Stanley Cup twice more in the next two years with the Lightning, becoming one of twelve players in NHL history to win back-to-back Stanley Cups on different teams, and the first since Cory Stillman in 2006. In 2021, Maroon became the first player to win three consecutive Stanley Cups since several members of the New York Islanders did so from 1980 to 1983.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: Maroon was born on April 23, 1988, in St. Louis, Missouri, to parents Patti and Phil Maroon. His father formerly played Division I soccer at St. Louis University and wished to encourage his sons to play the sport. He grew up the youngest of four siblings, two brothers, and one sister. His father owned season passes to the St. Louis Blues and he would alternate going to games with his brother Phil or one would sit on their father's lap. When reflecting on his childhood, Maroon said, "My family has been the biggest influence on my career...my parents have always been so dedicated and my brothers were always into the game, and helped me along."


title: Patrick Maroon

text: Growing up in St. Louis, Maroon attended Rogers Elementary, Oakville Middle School, and Oakville High School. He played minor ice hockey for the St. Louis Amateur Blues from 2003 until 2005 where he was nicknamed "Fat Pat" due to his size, and . In order to improve on his playmaking ability, Maroon would stickhandle a golf ball in his garage for hours and skate in roller rinks. As a youth, Maroon also competed in the 2002 Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament with the St. Louis Blues minor ice hockey team. In 2004, Maroon was drafted in the 11th round of the 2004 Ontario Hockey League (OHL) draft by the London Knights but was dismissed from their training camp due to his weight. When he entered high school with his older brother Justin, Maroon earned a spot on the varsity team as a freshman. By the time he reached senior year, Maroon led the team to the 2006 Missouri State Championship.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: While playing high school hockey, Maroon caught the attention of Kelly Chase and Al MacInnis who had recently purchased a North American Hockey League (NAHL) team, the Texarkana Bandits. After meeting with his parents, Maroon joined their team for one season and recorded 60 points in 57 games. He was subsequently named to the NAHL's All-Rookie Team. As the team was in its early stages, Maroon and other rookies would build the rink, paint the ice, and put up boards, as well as cover the ice if the rodeo was in town. In spite of his success, he still went undrafted in the 2006 NHL Entry Draft and Chase and MacInnis encouraged him to work out every day. This resulted in him losing 30 pounds over the summer and increasing his offensive output to 95 points in 57 games during the 2006–07 season. In the same season, the team moved to St. Louis and won their first Robertson Cup National Championship title. During their playoff berth, Maroon recorded 23 points in 12 playoff games and set the league record for most points in a single postseason. Maroon subsequently became the first Bandits player to win the NAHL's MVP award and was drafted by the Philadelphia Flyers in the sixth round, 161st overall, in the 2007 NHL Entry Draft. He had been unaware he had been drafted until his father saw his name on ESPN while watching Maroon at a roller hockey tournament. Prior to his selection, Maroon was ranked by the NHL Central Scouting Bureau as a "B" prospect, meaning he was expected to be drafted in the later rounds.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: Following the draft, Maroon was assigned to major junior ice hockey team, the London Knights of the OHL, who had drafted him in the 2004 OHL Selection Draft. Maroon had been invited to the Flyers' rookie and main training camps but was reassigned to the Knights after one exhibition game with their American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate. Although he had previously agreed to play NCAA ice hockey with Ferris State University, Mark and Dale Hunter convinced him to play in the OHL. When speaking about his decision, Maroon said "I am really excited about coming to London and playing for the Knights. I think it is a great place for me to develop to be a hockey player." Due to his consistent weight struggles, the Knights hired Maroon a personal trainer during the season and he dropped to 217 pounds. In his first, and only, season with the team Maroon was named to the Western Conference All-Star Team and earned team MVP. He ended the season leading the team with 90 points in 64 games and one assist in five playoff games before joining the Flyers' AHL affiliate the Philadelphia Phantoms. He played one game with the Phantoms as they closed out their 2007–08 season.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: Maroon began his first full professional season during the 2008–09 AHL season with the Phantoms after being assigned to the AHL following the Flyers' training camp. He ranked fourth on the team with 54 points in 80 games and recorded a team-high three points in four playoff games. The following year, the Phantoms were the only team in the league to record under 200 goals, of which Maroon contributed 11. His season lacked consistency due to injuries but he managed to set a new career-high in assists with 33.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: During the summer of 2010, Maroon led the United States men's national inline hockey team to a gold medal performance at the 2010 IIHF InLine Hockey World Championship. He had been allowed on the team without trying out due to his infamous play at the AHL level. He scored 7 goals and 14 points in 6 games at the in-line worlds including a goal and an assist in the gold medal game in Karlstad, Sweden, against the Czech Republic. When he returned to the AHL, the coaching staff was unhappy with his conditioning and released him from the team. Head coach Greg Gilbert told the media that "he wasn't committed to himself...in Patrick's case, I don't really think he knew how to train and play at that level." His agent tried arraigning for him to play in the ECHL or with a Swiss team but the Flyers wouldn't release his rights. For two months, he skated with the Montclair State University Red Hawks Men's Hockey team to stay in shape. He considered enrolling in college but was then informed he had been traded. On November 21, 2010, Philadelphia traded Maroon and David Laliberté to the Anaheim Ducks in exchange for forward Rob Bordson and defenseman Danny Syvret.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: Shortly after the trade, Maroon was assigned to Anaheim's AHL affiliate, the Syracuse Crunch. Upon his arrival in Syracuse, coach Mark Holick told him, "I traded my best player for you. I don't know what you did in Philly, but I hope you can play." He scored 11 minutes 10 seconds into his first game with the Crunch, and ended the season with 21 goals and 48 points in 57 games. Maroon credited his success to his off-season training and the Crunch's coaching staff. As a result of his successful season, he was invited to the Ducks' training camp prior to the 2011–12 season but was sent on waivers back to the Crunch. After scoring three points in the Crunch's home opener against his former team, the Ducks recalled him to the NHL level for his debut. He made his debut on October 25 against the Chicago Blackhawks, playing 15:19 minutes of ice time. He played two more games for the team alongside Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf before being returned to the AHL. Upon reuniting with the Crunch, Maroon eclipsed 200 AHL points and recorded a hat trick in a 6–3 win over the Norfolk Admirals. He was subsequently signed to a contract extension with the Ducks through the 2012–13 season.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: The 2012–13 season was shortened due to a lockout but when the Ducks returned to play, Maroon was placed on a line with Mathieu Perreault and Teemu Selanne. Speaking of the experience, Maroon said "hugging Teemu Selanne, scoring goals, you'll never forget those moments...Those are the moments I can tell Anthony, tell my future kids, that I played with the best players in the world." He played the majority of the season in the AHL but scored two goals in 11 games with the Ducks during call ups throughout the season. On March 21, 2013, the Ducks signed Maroon to a two-year contract extension. The 2013–14 season was Maroon's first full NHL season, during which he appeared in 62 games, scoring 11 goals to go with 18 assists. Although he had a year left on his contract, the Ducks signed him to a three-year contract extension on August 2, 2014.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: In the final year of his second contract, Maroon appeared in 71 games, only missing a few due to injury. He missed four weeks at the beginning of the season due to a sprained MCL which he suffered during a game against the Buffalo Sabres. Upon returning to the lineup, Maroon would appear in 71 games, scoring a career high 9 goals with 25 assists. His offensive game came alive in the 2015 Stanley Cup playoffs, scoring 8 goals in 16 games while playing on the Ducks' top line. Maroon was one of the Ducks' most consistent players during their series, finishing third on the team in goals and power play points as well as limited his penalty minutes.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: In the 2015–16 season, Maroon found himself playing with the fourth line for the Ducks at the beginning of the season. At times his play was exemplary and other times he often saw his ice time drop to below ten minutes a game. He was reunited with Corey Perry and found his scoring touch, picking up consecutive points in consecutive games, while scoring just 4 goals and 13 points in 56 games. In spite of his low offensive output, he traveled with Perry and his wife to Pelican Hill Resort on trade deadline day where he was then informed by his mother that he had been traded to Edmonton.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: On February 29, 2016, Maroon was traded to the Edmonton Oilers in exchange for Martin Gernát and a fourth-round pick in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft. He made his Oilers debut on March 3 against the Philadelphia Flyers, where he scored his fifth goal of the season during the second period to bring their lead to three. After scoring against his old organization, Maroon said "it all hit me...it brought me back to my time in Philly, when I didn't know how to train, I was out of shape, my dark days. And then now, like, holy f---, this is really happening." His style of play earned him time on the wing of Connor McDavid who he said played differently than his former Ducks teammates. "With Connor, you have great speed in the neutral zone and I just try to play big on the boards, chip the puck out and make sure he gets it. He skates with speed, and Ebs has got really good skill and a good shot. It’s been good. They’re two different experiences, but it’s been good for me." As the Oilers failed to qualify for the 2016 Stanley Cup playoffs, Maroon, Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli and head coach Todd McLellan discussed their expectations of Maroon for his offseason conditioning. During the offseason, Maroon returned home to St. Louis where he made a change to his lifestyle and training habits. The Oilers Head Strength and Conditioning Coach Chad Drummond teamed him up with a nutritionist who helped him manage his portion controls and eating habits. As a result, he dropped roughly 15 pounds and 3% body fat in the off-season.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: On April 11, 2016, Maroon was named to Team USA's 2016 IIHF World Championship roster alongside teammate Matt Hendricks. He became the first United States player to represent his country at both an inline and ice hockey world championship. In his debut game with the United States men's national ice hockey team, Maroon scored their first and only goal in an eventual 5–1 loss to Canada. His goal came less than five minutes into the first period off an assist from Kyle Connor. He would end the tournament collecting two more points as Team USA failed to medal. When Maroon returned to the Oilers for their 2016 training camp, McLellan was pleased with Maroon's offseason condition. During a preseason game against the Vancouver Canucks, Maroon was checked hard into a corner and was forced to leave the game early. In spite of this, he returned to the Oilers lineup for their preseason game against the Anaheim Ducks on October 5 where he recorded one assist and his first goal of the preseason. Following the exhibition games, the Oilers opened their 2016–17 season playing in their new arena, Rogers Place. In the Oilers first home game on October 12, Maroon scored the first goal in the Rogers Place arena in a 7–4 victory over the Calgary Flames.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: Maroon continued to play the remainder of the 2016–17 season with the Oilers alongside Connor McDavid where they recorded a combined Corsi percentage above 50 percent. During the offseason, the Oilers had signed Milan Lucic to play with McDavid but Maroon was deemed to be a better fit. On January 5, 2017, Maroon scored his first career NHL hat-trick in a 4–3 win over the Boston Bruins, breaking the Oilers losing record against Boston which began in November 1996. He ended the season with a new career high 27 total goals and 15 assists, the best for any NHL player born and raised in St. Louis. McDavid, who ended the season with 100 points, assisted on 14 of Maroon's 27 goals. In March, Maroon was named the Oilers nominee for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, given to a player who "best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to ice hockey." With his assistance, the Oilers qualified for the 2017 Stanley Cup playoffs where they faced off against the San Jose Sharks in Round 1. He scored his first goal of the playoffs in Game 5 to lift the Oilers 4–3 over the Sharks and lead the series 3–2. Upon winning their first series against the Sharks, Maroon and the Oilers began the Western Conference Second Round against the Anaheim Ducks. In Game 2 of the series, Maroon scored his first career goal against his former team to lift the Oilers in a 2–1 win. The Ducks would come back to win the series in seven games and Maroon recorded eight points in 13 games.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: Following his career-best season, Maroon returned to the Oilers for the 2017–18 season determined to continue his high scoring play on McDavid's wing. Both McDavid and winger Leon Draisaitl had signed contracts to remain with the Oilers during the offseason while Maroon remained unsigned on his final year of his contract. During training camp, Maroon continued to play with McDavid and Draisaitl on the Oilers top line. On January 3, 2018, Maroon was suspended for two games for interfering against Los Angeles Kings defenseman Drew Doughty. Following the game, Doughty publicly stated that he felt no ill will towards Maroon and acknowledged that "he’s just trying to finish a hit. I don’t know that he meant to try and hurt me. I forgive him." He later missed another game against the Los Angeles Kings in February due to a lower body injury. At the time of his injury, he had recorded 14 goals and 16 assists in 57 games. Maroon acknowledged that as an upcoming unrestricted free-agent in July, there was a high likelihood of him being traded before the season ended. He said, "you know the situation I’m in...but I’m an Edmonton Oiler, I want to stay here. I love this city, the fans, this group of guys. I think my teammates know that."


title: Patrick Maroon

text: On February 25, 2018, Maroon was traded to the New Jersey Devils in exchange for J. D. Dudek and a third-round pick in the 2019 NHL Entry Draft. He was displeased with the trade and said "I didn’t really want to get traded out of Edmonton...I actually loved it there. I actually liked it. The fans are great. I liked it. You know what the most important thing was? The guys were great. Unbelievable guys. You could not have found a better group of guys. But obviously I got traded for a reason. We weren’t winning." He made an immediate impact on the team, recording eight points in his first 12 games and earned praise from his teammates on his playmaking ability. Center Travis Zajac spoke highly of Maroon saying, "we're a high-skill, fast team, but you add a player like Patty who can grind away and protect the puck, and bring pucks to the net, go to the net, it adds another threat for us, and it's been a good addition." He ended the season with 13 points in 16 games as he underwent surgery during the offseason to repair a herniated disc in his back.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: Due to his success with the Devils and Oilers, Maroon expected to be selected quickly as a free agent. Yet, after a week passed and he had only met with the St. Louis Blues, Maroon switched agents. His newest agent tried to bring him another deal with New Jersey but Maroon chose to return home and be closer to his son. On July 10, 2018, Maroon signed a one-year, $1.75 million contract with his hometown St. Louis Blues. In 74 regular season games, Maroon scored 10 goals to go with 18 assists for 28 points.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: The Blues qualified for the 2019 Stanley Cup playoffs as the third seed from the Central Division, capping a turnaround in a campaign that saw them in last place in the NHL as late as January 2019. As the Blues geared up to face the Winnipeg Jets in the first round of the playoffs, Maroon's grandfather died. Maroon returned to play with the team for Game 1 and later said he felt his grandfather's presence while assisting on the game-winning goal. He helped the team eliminate the Jets in six games and faced off against the Dallas Stars in the second round. Their series was tied 3–3 and they entered Game 7 facing elimination. During the game, Maroon scored the game-winning goal in double overtime to give the Blues a 4–3 series win. Following the win, the Blues defeated the San Jose Sharks in the Western Conference Final to face the Bruins in the Stanley Cup Finals. On June 12, Maroon and the Blues won the Stanley Cup for the first time in franchise history, defeating the Bruins in seven games. He finished the playoffs with seven points.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: During the offseason, Tampa Bay Lightning coach Jon Cooper pursued Maroon in order to sign him with the team. Cooper had previously coached Maroon while he played in the North American Hockey League. On August 24, 2019, Maroon signed a one-year, $900,000 contract with the Lightning and changed his jersey number to 14. He played the entirety of the 2019–20 season, which was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pause in play, Maroon used inline skating to remain in shape. He was named to the Lightning's return to play roster for the Stanley Cup Qualifiers on July 26, 2020. On September 28, 2020, after the Lightning won the Stanley Cup, Maroon became the third player in the post-expansion era to win consecutive Stanley Cups with different teams, following Claude Lemieux and Cory Stillman.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: Following the Lightnings' Stanley Cup win, Maroon signed a two-year, $1.8 million contract to remain with the Lightning on October 29, 2020. On July 7, 2021, the Tampa Bay Lightning won their franchise’s third Stanley Cup, and Maroon won his third straight Stanley Cup. He subsequently is the first player to go three-for-three in different uniforms since the expansion era began in 1967 and expanded the league beyond six teams. By February 2022, Maroon was re-signed to a two-year contract after tallying seven goals and 13 points through 45 games.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: Maroon is married to Francesca Vangel, another St. Louis native whose family runs a restaurant called Charlie Gitto's. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Missouri, they distributed food from the restaurant to the Clayton Missouri Police Department and the City of Clayton Fire Department. Maroon has a son from a previous relationship.


title: Patrick Maroon

text: In November 2022, after Bruins commentator Jack Edwards remarked about his weight during a game broadcast, Maroon donated $2,000 to a Tampa Bay charity to support those struggling with mental health and body image.


title: Jonathan Lee Riches

text: Jonathan Lee Riches is a convicted fraudster known for the many lawsuits he has filed in various United States district courts. Riches was incarcerated at Federal Medical Center, Lexington, Kentucky, for wire fraud under the terms of a plea bargain. His release date was April 30, 2012. He was arrested for violating his federal probation in December 2012, when he left the Eastern District of the state of Pennsylvania without permission. He allegedly drove to Connecticut and impersonated the uncle of Adam Lanza, the shooter in the Sandy Hook Elementary School incident.


title: Jonathan Lee Riches

text: Since January 8, 2006, he has filed over 2600 lawsuits in federal district courts across the country, some of which have received considerable press attention. Among the more famous defendants of his lawsuits are New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, former President of the United States George W. Bush, former Attorney General of the United States Janet Reno, Martha Stewart, NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon, former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, entrepreneur Steve Jobs, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, Somali pirates, and pop star Britney Spears. He also sued the late Benazir Bhutto, Pervez Musharraf, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service on November 7, 2007, to prevent him from being deported to Pakistan and tortured upon his release from prison in March 2012. There is no evidence beyond this lawsuit of any attempt to deport Riches.


title: Jonathan Lee Riches

text: On April 9, 2008, Riches filed a request for a temporary restraining order in a US District Court against "Grand Theft Auto" publisher Take-Two, developer Rockstar Games, FCI Williamsburg, and "Grand Theft Auto" itself, claiming that the defendants "put me in prison." The inmate stated, "Defendants contributed to Plaintiff committing identity theft. Defendant's games show sex, drugs and violence which offends me." Riches continued, "Defendants put me in prison. I face imminent danger from violent inmates who played Grand Theft Auto who will knock me out and take my gold Jesus cross."


title: Jonathan Lee Riches

text: Riches attempted to intervene as a plaintiff in the Madoff investment scandal, claiming that he "met Bernard Madoff on eharmony.com in 2001" and taught Madoff identity theft skills.


title: Jonathan Lee Riches

text: In May 2009, Riches filed for an injunction against the Guinness Book of World Records, seeking to stop them from listing him as "the most litigious individual in history". Guinness spokesperson Sara Wilcox told "The Huffington Post" that there was no such listing, and no plan to create one. "'Most litigious man' is not something Guinness World Records has ever monitored as a record category," she said. The action—like the vast majority of Riches' filings—was dismissed.


title: Jonathan Lee Riches

text: Some of Riches' defendants are not even persons subject to suit. These include "Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party" and the "13 tribes of Israel." One lawsuit, in which George W. Bush was the first-named defendant, also includes another 783 defendants that cover 57 pages. They include Plato, Nostradamus, Che Guevara, James Hoffa, "Various Buddhist Monks," all survivors of the Holocaust, the Lincoln Memorial, the Eiffel Tower, the , the book "Mein Kampf", the Garden of Eden, the Roman Empire, the Appalachian Trail, Plymouth Rock, the Holy Grail, Nordic gods, the dwarf planet Pluto, and the entire Three Mile Island accident.


title: Jonathan Lee Riches

text: A number of Riches' lawsuits have been dismissed as being "frivolous, malicious" or for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Willis Hunt, the U.S. District Court Judge who dismissed Riches' suit against Vick as "farcical," opined that his lawsuits were clearly self-promotional. As per 28 U.S. Code § 1915(g), he is barred from proceeding in forma pauperis.


title: Jonathan Lee Riches

text: In July 2018, Riches was indicted by a federal grand jury in Arizona. He is charged with making false statements and other frauds after an attempt to file a lawsuit against Gabby Giffords while posing as Jared Lee Loughner.


title: Jonathan Lee Riches

text: In November 2018, Riches self-published "Nothing is Written in Stone: A Jonathan Lee Riches Companion", which contains a selection of his lawsuits as well as an autobiography.


title: Forks Over Knives

text: Forks Over Knives is a 2011 American advocacy film and documentary that advocates a low-fat, whole-food, plant-based diet (that excludes all animal products and processed foods) as a way to avoid or reverse several chronic diseases. The film recommends avoiding overly refined and processed foods, including refined sugars, bleached flours, and oils, and instead eating whole grains, legumes, tubers, vegetables, and fruits.


title: Forks Over Knives

text: Through an examination of the careers of American physician Caldwell Esselstyn and professor of nutritional biochemistry T. Colin Campbell, "Forks Over Knives" claims that many diseases, including obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer, can be prevented and treated by eating a whole-food, plant-based diet, avoiding processed food and food from animals.


title: Forks Over Knives

text: The film includes an overview of the 20-year China–Cornell–Oxford Project that led to Professor Campbell's findings, outlined in his book "The China Study" (2005), in which he suggests that coronary artery disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer can be linked to the Western diet of processed and animal-based foods (including dairy products).


title: Forks Over Knives

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 59% based on reviews from 37 critics. On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 57 out of 100, based on 18 reviews, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.


title: Forks Over Knives

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film three out of four stars and wrote: "here is a film that could save your life." He commented that ""Forks Over Knives" is not subtle. It plays as if it had been made for doctors to see in medical school." Loren King of "The Boston Globe" gave it three out of four stars and remarked that "what "An Inconvenient Truth" did for global warming, Lee Fulkerson's persuasive documentary does for a vegan diet". Carrie Rickey of "The Philadelphia Inquirer" gave the film three out of four stars and described it as "an earnest and fact-filled work of food evangelism."


title: Forks Over Knives

text: Sean O'Connell of "The Washington Post" gave the film two out of four stars and argued that it is "an interesting and informative health lecture that's sandwiched into a dry, repetitive documentary" and said that "it's desperately in need of charisma, humor or personality to balance the steady stream of scientific facts we’re asked to absorb". Rex Reed of "The New York Observer" gave the film 2/4, criticizing its "funereal" tone and writing, "the movie says nothing we don't already know, and 96 minutes is too long to tell us how sick we are." Corey Hall of the "Metro Times" gave the film a "C" and stated that "while it's impossible to dispute the basic premise that eating more vegetables is good for you, Forks adopts a staunch anti-meat and -dairy stance that leaves the door open for criticism."


title: Forks Over Knives

text: The film was awarded the Documentary/Special Interest Title of the Year in 2012 by the Entertainment Merchants Association.


The USA Basketball Women's National Team, commonly known as the United States women's national basketball team, is governed by USA Basketball and competes in FIBA Americas. The team is by far the most successful in international women's basketball, having won nine out of the eleven Olympic tournaments it had entered. It has also won nine of the last twelve World Cups (including the last four), and eleven titles overall. The team is currently ranked first in the FIBA World Rankings.


title: United States women's national basketball team

text: In 2016, it was named the USA Basketball Team of the Year for a record sixth time (having been previously honored in 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012). It was also named the USOC Team of the Year in 1996.


text: The team is one of the most dominant in all Olympic sports, with a 70–3 record in Olympic play, and a record seven consecutive titles. They have no Olympic losses since 1992, no losses in any tournament since 2006, and their gold medal in 2021 tied the US men's basketball team's record (1936–1968) for the most consecutive Olympic team victories in all Olympic sports.


title: Hafu (gamer)

text: Rumay Wang (born April 18, 1991), better known as Hafu, is an American Twitch streamer and former professional "World of Warcraft", "Bloodline Champions" and "Hearthstone" player.


title: Hafu (gamer)

text: Wang was born in Newton, Massachusetts to Chinese immigrant parents from Beijing. She grew up in Lexington. She was introduced to the MMORPG "World of Warcraft" in high school by her friends. She later studied at Bentley University but dropped out to focus on gaming.