title: The Good, the Bart, and the Loki

text: Jean felt choosing which Springfield residents would be which members of the Avengers was "the most fun thing". Lisa Simpson was chosen to become Thor as a reference to Natalie Portman's Jane Foster becoming Thor in "" (2022), with Jean noting the parallels between Thor and Loki and Lisa and Bart Simpson were "pretty clear". The creative team had hoped to include a cameo from Stan Lee, but were dissuaded by Marvel Studios who informed them they no longer feature Lee in cameos following his death. The team also wanted to include a "ridiculous amount of post-credit sequences for a four-minute short". The post-credits scene from "Loki" was based only on the first episode of the series, with the team having a week to complete it and add it to the film.


title: The Good, the Bart, and the Loki

text: Tom Hiddleston reprises his role as Loki in the short. Marvel helped the "Simpsons" team get Hiddleston "on board", who recorded his part remotely in England. Regular "Simpsons" voice actors Dan Castellaneta, Nancy Cartwright, and Yeardley Smith reprise their roles as Homer Simpson, Bart Simpson, and Lisa Simpson, respectively, while Maurice LaMarche voices Odin, and Dawnn Lewis voices Ravonna Renslayer.


title: The Good, the Bart, and the Loki

text: Marvel Studios provided the music from "The Avengers" (2012) composed by Alan Silvestri to feature in "The Good, the Bart, and the Loki".


title: The Good, the Bart, and the Loki

text: "The Good, the Bart, and the Loki" was released on Disney+ on July 7, 2021, alongside "Journey into Mystery", the fifth episode of "Loki". The promotional poster for the short was inspired by the poster for "" (2019).


title: The Good, the Bart, and the Loki

text: Max Marriner at "GameRant" gave the short 2 out of 5 stars, saying it "embodies The Walt Disney Company at its coldest and most corporate" and was disappointed it did not feature any of the series' "signature snappy satire and absurdity", calling the humor "tired and drab". He did enjoy the art in the credits and the "Simpsons" design of Loki, but ultimately felt "The Good, the Bart, and the Loki" lacked the same passion Marvel Studios gave to their projects. In April 2022, Rich Knight of "CinemaBlend" ranked "The Good, the Bart, and the Loki" second on their list of "The Simpsons" shorts, believing it to be funnier than "The Force Awakens from Its Nap" and called the several mid-credits scenes the short's best part.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: The Obelisk Gate is a 2016 science fantasy novel by N. K. Jemisin and the second volume in the Broken Earth series—following "The Fifth Season", and preceding "The Stone Sky". "The Obelisk Gate" was released to strong reviews and, like its predecessor in the series, won the Hugo Award for Best Novel.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: "The Obelisk Gate" takes place on a single supercontinent, the Stillness, which suffers from catastrophic climate change every few centuries (the so-called "Fifth Season"). The book continues forward from an especially bad Fifth Season, one that may become an apocalypse. It follows two main characters: a mother and daughter, both of whom are magically talented ("orogenes"), who were separated just before the most recent Fifth Season. The plot revolves around their journey to find each other again, and their efforts to discover why Fifth Seasons exist.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: The story is told primarily from the perspectives of Essun, a powerful orogene driven out of her home at the beginning of the first book, and Nassun, her 10 year-old daughter.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: Schaffa, Essun's former Guardian, awakens underwater after Essun's devastating counterattack during the climax of "The Fifth Season". He is about to drown when, out of desperation, he allows the entity (manifested as a force of pure rage) that powers his and the other Guardians' abilities to take control of his body for a brief period. Though he is saved from death, the resulting brain damage leaves him with profound memory loss, and he is unable to fully recall his past as a Guardian. He is rescued by a family of fishermen on the coast. His memory of being a Guardian is triggered by a young boy who needs him, and the two set out south in response to a vague half-remembered memory.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: The story resumes soon after Nassun's father discovers her brother is an orogene. In a blind rage, he beats Nassun's brother to death and deducing Nassun is likely an orogene as well, abducts her as he flees Tirimo, their hometown. He intends to take Nassun south, where he has heard of a group of Guardians that can "cure" Nassun of orogeny.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: Nassun has always been close to her father, due largely to her strict and unforgiving relationship with her mother Essun, who has been secretly teaching her to hone her orogenic abilities in order to avoid detection. Nevertheless, she fears her father, who now is aware she is an orogene as well. Her father strikes her early in the journey, and is immediately overcome with guilt; Nassun, however, learns to harden her heart against him, and stops viewing him as her true father at all.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: They move south through much hardship, and witness firsthand the devastation wrought by Alabaster's fracturing of the entire continent further north. The Fifth Season triggered by this event steadily worsens as they travel. Finally, they reach the promised settlement: a town called Found Moon, administered by a group of Guardians, though not affiliated with the Fulcrum. The town is led by Schaffa, who has used it to shelter young orogenes during the years since he arrived.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: Nassun and her father settle in Found Moon, and Nassun begins to rapidly advance through the ranks of the makeshift Fulcrum the Guardians have established. She forms a particularly strong bond with Schaffa, who is fiercely protective of her and becomes her father figure in lieu of her biological father. She begins to understand that orogeny, in contrast to the teachings of her mother and the Guardians, is not just about moving heat energy from one place to another; she learns to perceive a mysterious silver energy, generated by living things, that underpins all of her orogenic powers. Her abilities increase to the point where she begins to learn to draw power from one of the obelisks floating nearby, much as her mother had many years earlier. Her use of this power causes her to accidentally kill one of her classmates by turning him to stone while suffering a nightmare.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: As Nassun grows in her abilities, her father starts to realize she is not being "cured" of her "sickness". He confronts Schaffa and later attempts to kill Nassun. She reluctantly uses her powers to turn her father to stone as well.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: Essun remains in Castrima, a comm that lives in a huge underground geode. Ykka, the comm's leader, is an orogene herself, and due to her influence, orogenes are permitted to live openly alongside others. The comm is sustained by many mysterious functions of the geode that appear to operate by magic, such as air recyclers and climate control; Ykka has deduced that the mechanisms only function when orogenes are present.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: Also present in Castrima is Alabaster, Essun's former lover and an immensely powerful Fulcrum orogene. Alabaster is dying, his body slowly turning to stone as a consequence of using the energy of the obelisks to break the entire continent in half and trigger the current Fifth Season. He is watched over by a stone eater he has named Antimony, who appears to have an adversarial relationship with the mysterious "child" Hoa, now revealed to be a stone eater himself, who accompanied Essun as she fled Tirimo.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: Alabaster begins imparting some of his knowledge to Essun concerning the obelisks and the nature of orogeny. As revealed at the end of "The Fifth Season", the Moon has not been seen for at least several thousand years prior to the events of the book, and most are not aware it ever existed. Alabaster states that his fracturing of the continent was a method to generate enough raw geological heat and power to allow a sufficiently powerful orogene to use the obelisks to recapture the Moon and end the Fifth Seasons (its highly elliptical orbit is one of the reasons for the geologic instability of the Stillness). Alabaster is also aware of the silver energy Nassun discovered, which he identifies as magic, the true fundamental force that makes orogeny (and the mechanisms of Castrima) possible. He struggles to teach Essun to use it effectively as his condition deteriorates, all the while reconciling with Essun over the death of their child years ago. He finally dies, his body turning completely to stone, after expending the last of his strength to rescue Essun from an attempt to harness the power of one of the nearby obelisks.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: Throughout, tensions within the society of Castrima are revealed, as the coexistence of orogenes and non-orogenic people (“stills”) within the community is uneasy at best. These issues are exacerbated by the appearance of a raiding party from a rival comm, Rennanis, who have left their home further north and intend to take Castrima by force. Initially unable to win in an outright attack, they besiege the comm by locating the ventilation shafts for the geode, intending to force them out into the open.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: Having no choice, the inhabitants of Castrima prepare for battle. Rennanis' offensive is aided by their own faction of stone eaters, who are opposed to Alabaster and Antimony's plans. Facing the loss of her new home, Essun successfully uses Alabaster's training to repeat his accomplishment, tapping the power of all the obelisks worldwide to form the Obelisk Gate. She uses the immense power of the Gate to turn every inhabitant of Rennanis to stone simultaneously.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: Castrima is saved, but the mechanisms of the geode have been irreparably damaged by the assault, and the comm faces starvation and suffocation if they remain. They begin preparations to set out into the worsening Fifth Season to find a new home.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: "The Obelisk Gate" was anticipated on its debut, and reviews were highly positive. Writing for NPR, poet Amal El-Mohtar said that "Not only could I not put it down—I couldn't come up for air long enough to comment on it while forsaking sleep and food in order to finish it", continuing on to say that "It pole vaults over the expectations I had for what epic fantasy should be and stands in magnificent testimony to what it could be." It later appeared on "The Verge"s list of the best science fiction and fantasy novels of 2016, where they wrote that the book "is an incredibly ambitious and important novel" that "continues to build on its predecessor's brilliance", as well as "Wired"s, who believed that it was better than "The Fifth Season".


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: Niall Alexander, on "Tor.com", by contrast, was critical of "The Obelisk Gate" for falling into what he called "middle volume syndrome", believing that the book"Wired", on the other hand, praised the book for escaping that syndrome, or what it called the typical "stalling" of middle books.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: "The Obelisk Gate" won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2017. It was the second award for Jemisin's Broken Earth series (after "The Fifth Season" in 2016), making Jemisin the first author in over two decades to win the Best Novel Hugo in two consecutive years. Moreover, "The Obelisk Gate"s victory came as part of a women-heavy slate of winners at the 2017 Hugos, which included best novel, novella, novelette, and short story.


title: The Obelisk Gate

text: Outside of the Hugos, "The Obelisk Gate" was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel, but lost to Charlie Jane Anders' "All the Birds in the Sky". It won RT Book Reviews' 2016 award for best high fantasy novel.


title: Chick lit

text: Chick lit is a term used to describe a type of popular fiction targeted at younger women. Widely used in the 1990s and 2000s, the term has fallen out of fashion with publishers while writers and critics have rejected its inherent sexism. Novels identified as chick lit typically address romantic relationships, female friendships, and workplace struggles in humorous and lighthearted ways. The typical protagonists are urban, heterosexual women in their late twenties and early thirties.


title: Chick lit

text: The format developed through the early 1990s on both sides of the Atlantic with books such as Terry McMillan's "Waiting to Exhale" (1992, US) and Catherine Alliott's "The Old Girl Network" (1994, UK). Helen Fielding's "Bridget Jones's Diary" (1996, UK), wildly popular globally, is the "ur text" of chick lit, while Candace Bushnell's (US) 1997 novel "Sex and the City" has huge ongoing cultural influence. By the late 1990s, chick lit titles regularly topped bestseller lists, and many imprints were created devoted entirely to chick lit. By the mid-2000s, commentators noted that the chick lit market was increasingly saturated, and by the early 2010s, publishers had largely abandoned the category. The term "chick lit" maintains an afterlife as a popular category for readers and amateur writers on the Internet.


title: Chick lit

text: In 1992, "Los Angeles Times" critic Carolyn See was probably the first to spot that a new style of popular women's fiction was emerging. Though she didn't use the term chick lit, in a review of Terry McMillan's "Waiting to Exhale", the critic noted that McMillan's book was not "lofty" or "luminous" but was likely to be highly commercially successful. Carolyn See wrote, "McMillan’s new work is part of another genre entirely, so new it doesn’t really have a name yet. This genre has to do with women, triumph, revenge, comradeship."


title: Chick lit

text: Chick lit did not become an established term for a style of novel until the second half of the 1990s. "Chick" is American slang for a young woman, and "lit" is a shortened form of the word "literature." There was probably no single origin of the term: Princeton University students were reported in 1988 to use chick lit as slang for a course on women's writing and, in the UK, "Oxford Reference" report that the term arose as a "flippant counterpart" to the term "lad lit". The parallel term used for movies, chick flick, enjoyed slightly earlier uptake (chick flick is said to have been coined after the 1993 film "Sleepless in Seattle" in which a male character discusses "chicks' movie[s]"). In what was probably one of its first major outings, the term chick lit was deployed ironically: a 1995 anthology edited by Cris Mazza and Jeffrey DeShell entitled "Chick Lit: Postfeminist Fiction" contained 22 short fiction pieces in response to Mazza and DeShell's call for "postfeminist writing". Early use of the term was heavily associated with journalism (both "Bridget Jones Diary" and "Sex in the City" began as newspaper columns) and James Wolcott's 1996 article in "The New Yorker", "Hear Me Purr," co-opted the term chick lit to proscribe what he called the trend of "girlishness" evident in the writing of female newspaper columnists at that time.


title: Chick lit

text: In the early years, there was some variation on the exact term used: in 2000, the "Sydney Morning Herald" reported the birth of a "publishing phenomenon" that can be called "chick fiction."


title: Chick lit

text: At the peak of the term's popularity, a slew of related sub-genres were proposed with similar names: sistah lit (targeted at Black readers), chick lit jr (for young readers), mommy lit, and chick lit in corsets (historical fiction, and a term only found in one academic paper). The relationship with the term lad lit is more complicated; lad lit arose before or in parallel with chick lit. Of these parallel terms, mommy lit, and lad lit are the only terms to have enjoyed any significant uptake - and that a tiny fraction of the use of the primary term chick lit.


title: Chick lit

text: Controversy over chick lit focused at first on the literary value of books identified or promoted as part of the genre. Over time, controversy has focused more on the term itself, and whether the concept of a chick lit genre is inherently sexist.


title: Chick lit

text: In 1998, reviewer Alex Kuczynski, writing for "The New York Times", condemned Fielding's novel in particular, writing: "Bridget is such a sorry spectacle, wallowing in her man-crazed helplessness, that her foolishness cannot be excused." In 2001, writer Doris Lessing deemed the genre "instantly forgettable" while Beryl Bainbridge called the genre "a froth sort of thing". Author Jenny Colgan immediately fired back at Lessing and Bainbridge, explaining why, for a new generation of women, chick lit was an important development:


title: Chick lit

text: Two years later Colgan had turned strongly against the term chick lit, being the first to state what is now a mainstream position among writers of women's popular fiction: she rejected the term "chick lit" while defending the cultural value of her work. She observed, "Chick-lit is a deliberately condescending term they use to rubbish us all. If they called it slut-lit it couldn't be any more insulting." Much of the debate at this time was between different generations of women writers: for example, Maureen Dowd (b.1952) described the younger women's work as "all chick and no lit," while Colgan (b.1972) derided the older, female critics of chick lit as "hairy-leggers." There was a "troubling" lack of solidarity.


title: Chick lit

text: In 2005, debate continued with the publication of editor Elizabeth Merrick's anthology of women's fiction, "This Is Not Chick Lit" (2005), where Merrick argued in her introduction that "Chick lit's formula numbs our senses." In response, self-identifying chick-lit author Lauren Baratz-Logsted published her own anthology of stories "This Is Chick Lit" whose project was "born out of anger" and aimed to prove that chick lit was not all "Manolos and cosmos, and cookie-cutter books about women juggling relationships and careers in the new millennium," but rather that the genre deals with "friendship and laughter, love and death - i.e. the stuff of life."


title: Chick lit

text: In 2007, Diane Shipley came to the genre's defence, arguing that chick lit books increasingly covered serious topics but, anyway, "I just don't see what's morally or intellectually wrong with reading a book you enjoy and relate to, that might not draw deep conclusions about the future of humanity but might cheer you up after a bad day, or see you through your own health problems."


title: Chick lit

text: However, in general through the late 2000s and 2010s writers of women's popular fiction increasingly distanced themselves from the term chick lit, while arguing that blanket critical dismissals of their work were rooted in sexism. For example, in a 2010 "Guardian" article, humor writer DJ Connell leads with changing her writing name from Diane to DJ to avoid the chick lit label. Sophie Kinsella and Marian Keyes, two authors who have enjoyed huge success through and beyond the chick lit era, both now reject the term. Kinsella refers to her own work as "romantic comedy". Keyes said of the term in 2014,


title: Chick lit

text: At an event at the Edinburgh Book Festival in August 2020, Keyes again rejected the term chick lit as dismissive and sexist, as popular fiction written by men is not described as "dick lit".


title: Chick lit

text: In 2000, "Sydney Morning Herald" described the "publishing phenomenon" of what it called "chicfic," books with "Covers [that] are candy-bright, heavy in pink and fluorescence. The titles are also candy-bright, hinting at easy digestion and a good laugh... ...Such books are positioned in a marketplace as hybrids of the magazine article, fictional or fictionalised, television...and comfort food digestible over a single night at home."


title: Chick lit

text: Through the 2000s publishers continue to push the subgenre because sales continue to be high. In 2003, "Publishers Weekly" reported on numerous new chick lit imprints, such as, "Kensington's "Strapless", which launched in April 2003 and has one book a month scheduled through the end of 2004. Kensington editorial director John Scognamiglio explained that the imprint was created in response to requests from salespeople for a chick lit brand." Nonetheless, the same "Publishers Weekly" article was already looking back enviously at the massive sales achieved by "Bridget Jones's Diary" in 1998 and commenting on the challenges for chick lit publishers in a now-overcrowded market. Already, "Publishers Weekly" suggested, chick lit was - if not in decline - at least at a turning point.


title: Chick lit

text: In 2008, editor Sara Nelson stated that the definition of what's considered to be within the genre of chick lit has become more accomplished and "grown up".


title: Chick lit

text: By 2012 news sources were reporting the death of chick lit. Salon.com reported that "Because chick lit (whatever it is - or was) provoked so many ideologically fraught arguments about the values placed on women's vs. men's tastes, high- vs. lowbrow culture, comedy vs. drama and so on, it's tempting to read particular significance into its decline," but went on to argue that the decline was due to a normal process of changing fashion and taste in genre fiction.


title: Chick lit

text: Though chick lit originated in the UK and U.S., it rapidly became a global publishing phenomenon - and indeed may have been one of the first truly global publishing trends.


title: Chick lit

text: In India, Rajashree's "Trust Me" was the biggest-selling Indian chick lit novel. The popularity of novels like "Trust Me", Swati Kaushal's "Piece of Cake" can be seen in the context of the rise of regional varieties of chick lit. In an interview with the "New York Times", Helen Fielding said, "I think it had far more to do with zeitgeist than imitation." If the chick lit explosion has "led to great new female writers emerging from Eastern Europe and India, then it's worth any number of feeble bandwagon jumpers." Sunaina Kumar wrote in the "Indian Express", "Ten years after the publication of "Bridget Jones's Diary", the genre of fiction most recognisable for its pink cover art of stilettos, martini glasses and lipsticks, is now being colourfully infused with bindis, saris, and bangles." Indian chick lit is sometimes referred to as 'ladki-lit'.


title: Chick lit

text: In Brazil, chick lit in translation is categorised as "Literatura de mulherzinha." "-inha" is the Portuguese diminutive form, so this means, literally, "little-women's literature." One Brazilian commentator notes, "The diminutive is not by accident. Just as its not by accident that the covers of books by women writers are usually, stereotypically feminine. With covers that suggest a light and romantic, commercial plot.. ...books by female authors arrive to the a reader with a series of biases which ensure that these authors remain on the cultural bottom rung."


title: Chick lit

text: The development and decline of chick lit as a publishing phenomenon coincided with an explosion in internet usage in the developed world. The academic Sandra Folie argues that "Fans and their websites or blogs, online presences of newspapers, magazines, or publishing houses, and also the free encyclopedia Wikipedia" played a key part in defining and shaping the concept of a chick lit genre. Folie discusses the British site "chicklit.co.uk" which was online from 2002-2014 and included information no just on books and authors but also lifestyle issues for young women. The American "Chicklitbooks.com" was online from 2003 to 2013 discussing, "Hip, bright literature for today’s modern woman." As chick lit declined as a publishing category fans online created their own response: in 2012 a website called "chicklitisnotdead.com" was reported to have 25,000 users. In 2022 an active chick lit community group on the goodreads.com site had 4,756 members.


title: Linda Nolan

text: Linda Nolan (born 23 February 1959) is an Irish singer, actress and television personality. After moving with her family to Blackpool, at the age of three in 1962, she attained fame as a member of the girl group The Nolans in 1974, along with her sisters Anne, Denise, Maureen, Bernie and Coleen. As a member of the Nolans, she toured with Frank Sinatra in 1975, won the Tokyo Music Festival in 1981, and had seven UK top 20 hits between 1979 and 1982.


title: Linda Nolan

text: Soon after leaving the group, she supported Gene Pitney on his 1984 UK tour. She then went on to perform in theatre, including an eight-season residency as Maggie May on Blackpool's Central Pier (1986–93), where she clocked up over 1,000 performances, followed by two seasons as Rosie O'Grady on Blackpool's South Pier (1994–95). She reunited with the Nolans for the 2009 "I'm in the Mood Again" album and tour, and in 2014, she took part in the 13th series of "Celebrity Big Brother". In 2018, she was a recurring guest panellist on "Loose Women".


title: Linda Nolan

text: Linda Nolan was born in Holles Street Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, to Tommy and Maureen Nolan. The family lived in Raheny, a suburb of Dublin. They lived there until she was three before moving to Blackpool in 1962, at which point Tommy and Maureen formed the Singing Nolans of which Nolan was a member. She went to school at Blackpool's St Catherine's Catholic Secondary School, and also attended The Cardinal Wiseman School in Greenford, West London.


title: Linda Nolan

text: In 1981, she scored a minor hit with her sister Coleen as part of the Young & Moody Band, with "Don't Do That" (UK No. 63) which also featured Lemmy from Motörhead and Cozy Powell.


title: Linda Nolan

text: She left The Nolans in December 1983 and quickly gained the label "Naughty Nolan" due to her posing in risqué publicity photos. The Nolans reunited as a five-piece (Bernie, Anne, Coleen, Maureen and Linda) for one-off performances of "I'm in the Mood for Dancing" first for BBC One's "All Time Greatest Party Songs", hosted by Tess Daly, which aired on 17 December 2005 and again on 9 August 2007 on "Loose Women".


title: Linda Nolan

text: Four of the sisters (Linda, Bernie, Coleen & Maureen) reunited in 2009 for a successful tour of the UK and Ireland. They also released an album "I'm in the Mood Again", which reached No. 22 on the UK Album Chart.


title: Linda Nolan

text: On leaving the group, Nolan went on to play the role of Maggie May at Blackpool's Central Pier for eight summer seasons (1986–93), clocking up more than 1,000 performances. She then starred for two seasons in a similar show on Blackpool's South Pier called Rosie O' Grady's (1994–95).


title: Linda Nolan

text: From 1996 to 1997, she starred as the prison governor in two UK tours of "Prisoner: Cell Block H – The Musical", alongside Paul O'Grady.


title: Linda Nolan

text: From 2000, she starred as Mrs Johnstone in "Blood Brothers" for three years in the West End, and regularly played the role in the UK touring production until 2008. She was the third Nolan sister to play the role, after Bernie and Denise. Maureen Nolan has also since played the role in the West End on the UK tour for several years, earning the sisters a place in the Guinness World Records, as the most siblings to play the same role in a musical.


title: Linda Nolan

text: Nolan has also appeared on Blankety Blank, with Anne and her daughter Alex on Celebrity Pressure Pad and with Bernie on Pointless Celebrities.


title: Linda Nolan

text: In January 2014, Nolan participated in the thirteenth series of "Celebrity Big Brother". Prior to this, her sister Coleen had participated in and achieved second place in the tenth series.


title: Linda Nolan

text: Upon learning that she was to be handcuffed, she confirmed her "Naughty Nolan" nickname by saying "I like a bit of bondage".


title: Linda Nolan

text: Jim Davidson, who was also a contestant in the house that year has history with Nolan; in 1995, Nolan's husband Brian Hudson was caught red-handed stealing money from comic Frank Carson's dressing room at the South Pier Theatre Blackpool. This raised the ire of Davidson, who was playing up the road at the time and promptly lost his temper, yelling "no one steals from my mates" and threatened to punch him. Davidson was promptly thrown out of that nightclub. On Day 15, Nolan was reminded by Davidson of his antics, prompting an argument. She was evicted on Day 22.


title: Linda Nolan

text: Nolan met Brian Hudson in 1979 and they married in 1981. He was the Nolans' tour manager until 1983 and became his wife's manager after she left the group. They were married for 26 years until his death on 21 September 2007, from liver failure.


title: Linda Nolan

text: In 2006, Nolan was diagnosed with breast cancer. As part of her treatment, she underwent a single mastectomy. She was given the all-clear from cancer in 2011. In 2007, she was diagnosed with cellulitis and lymphedema in her arm.


title: Linda Nolan

text: In 2017, Nolan fell on her hip and was taken to hospital, where doctors discovered a form of incurable secondary breast cancer on her pelvis. She began undergoing regular radiotherapy treatment to make sure that the cancer would not spread, but has said that she would reject chemotherapy if the cancer was found to be terminal, after seeing how Bernie was in pain from her chemotherapy in 2013.


title: Linda Nolan

text: On 7 July 2014, she claimed that she was sexually assaulted by Rolf Harris in 1975 while The Nolans were supporting Harris in a tour of South Africa.


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: Grover Cleveland Alexander (February 26, 1887 – November 4, 1950), nicknamed "Old Pete", was an American Major League Baseball pitcher. He played from 1911 through 1930 for the Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs, and St. Louis Cardinals. He was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938.


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: Alexander was born in Elba, Nebraska in the first term of President Grover Cleveland and was one of 13 children.


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: Alexander played semi-professional baseball in his youth, signing his first professional contract at age 20 in 1907 for $50 per month ($ in current dollar terms). In 1909, he played for the Galesburg Boosters in the Class D Illinois–Missouri League and went 15–8 that year with a 1.36 ERA. His career was almost ended when he was struck by a thrown ball while baserunning. Although this ended his 1909 season, he recovered by 1910 to become a star pitcher again, finishing with a 29–11 record for the Syracuse Stars in the Class B New York State League, before being sold to the Philadelphia Phillies for $750 ($ in current dollar terms).


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: Alexander made his Philadelphia Phillies debut during the pre-season 1911 City Series, pitching five innings of no-hit, no-run baseball against the Athletics. He made his official Major League debut on April 15. He was joined on the Phillies that year by catcher Bill Killefer, who went on to become Alexander's favorite battery mate, catching 250 of his games.


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: In his rookie year, Alexander led the league with 28 wins (a modern-day rookie record), 31 complete games, 367 innings pitched, and seven shutouts, while finishing second in strikeouts and fourth in ERA. From 1912 to 1921, Alexander led the league in ERA four times (1915–16, 1919, and 1920), wins five times (1914–17, 1920), innings six times (1912, 1914–17, 1920), strikeouts six times (1912, 1914–1917, 1920), complete games five times (1914–1917, 1920), and shutouts five times (1915, 1916 [a single-season record 16], 1917, 1919, 1921). He won the National League pitching Triple Crown in 1915, 1916, and 1920, and is sometimes credited with a fourth in 1917. In 1915, he was instrumental in leading the Phillies to their first pennant, pitching a record five one-hitters and winning his only Major League triple crown. Along the way, Alexander began to have problems with alcohol, a struggle that would plague him the rest of his life. In 1915, he won his first World Series game (the opening game of that series), for the Phillies. It would be 65 years before the Phillies won another World Series game.


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: After the 1917 season, the Phillies traded Alexander and catcher Bill Killefer to the Cubs for catcher Pickles Dillhoefer, pitcher Mike Prendergast, and $60,000. Phillies owner William Baker later admitted, "I needed the money."


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: After the United States entered World War I, Alexander was drafted into the Army, and one month before shipping out, he married Amy Marie Arrants on May 31 in a courthouse ceremony in Manhattan, Kansas (the couple divorced in 1929, remarried in 1931, and divorced again in 1941).


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: Alexander spent most of the season in France as a sergeant with the 342nd Field Artillery Regiment, 89th Division. While he was serving in France, he was exposed to German mustard gas and a shell exploded near him, causing partial hearing loss and triggering the onset of epilepsy. Alexander returned to the United States in April 1919 on the SS Rochambeau. Following his return from the war, Alexander suffered from shell shock and was plagued with epileptic seizures, which people often misinterpreted as a sign of drunkenness; this only exacerbated his drinking problem.


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: In spite of all this, Alexander gave Chicago several successful years and won another pitching triple crown in 1920. Tiring of his increasing drunkenness and insubordination that was often directly related to his epilepsy, the Cubs sold him to the Cardinals in the middle of the 1926 season for the waiver price. The Cubs manager, Joe McCarthy, supposedly said that even with Alexander, the Cubs had finished last the previous season, "...and if they finished last again, I'd rather it was without him."


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: The Cardinals won the National League pennant that year and met the New York Yankees in the World Series, where Alexander pitched complete game victories in Games 2 and 6. According to teammate Bob O'Farrell in "The Glory of Their Times", after the game six victory, Alexander got drunk that night and was still feeling the effects when he was sent out to pitch the next day in Game 7. Alexander came to the game in the seventh inning after starter Jesse Haines developed a blister, with the Cardinals ahead 3–2, the bases loaded and two out. Facing Yankee slugger Tony Lazzeri, Alexander struck him out and then held the Yankees scoreless for two more innings to preserve the win and give St. Louis the championship. The final out of the 7th game was made when Babe Ruth tried to steal second base.


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: He had one last 20-win season for the Cardinals in 1927, but his continued drinking cut his career short. After a brief return to the Phillies in 1930, he left the major leagues.


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: Alexander's 90 shutouts are a National League record and his 373 wins are tied with Christy Mathewson for first in the National League record book. He is also tied for third all time in wins, tenth in innings pitched (5190), second in shutouts, and eighth in hits allowed (4868). At the time of Alexander's final victory in August 1929, the news media reported that he had broken Mathewson's career victories record of 372. In the 1940s, Mathewson was discovered to have qualified for an additional victory (May 21, 1912) and his total was officially upped to 373 and into a tie with Alexander. Alexander posted a lifetime winning percentage of , compared to Mathewson's .665. Alexander has the most career wins of any pitcher who never threw a no-hitter.


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: Alexander was a good fielding pitcher for his era, committing only 25 errors in 1,633 total chances for a career .985 fielding percentage. As a hitter, he accumulated 378 hits in 1,810 at-bats for a .209 batting average with 11 home runs, 163 runs batted in, 154 runs and 77 bases on balls in a 20-year career.


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: During the late 1930s and early 1940s, Alexander continued to play baseball, touring as a player-coach for the Grover Cleveland Alexander's House of David Team. The team's tour was managed by J. L. Wilkinson and often played against the Kansas City Monarchs. Alexander played with and against many of the Negro league stars of the day, including Satchel Paige, John Donaldson, Newt Joseph, Chet Brewer, and Andy Cooper. After the end of prohibition, Alexander operated a tavern in St. Louis with Hughie Miller as his partner.


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: Alexander was elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame in 1938, the third year of the Hall. Alexander was the only player elected that year.


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: Alexander attended Game 3 of the 1950 World Series at Yankee Stadium, where he saw the Phillies lose to the Yankees. He died less than a month later, on November 4 in St. Paul, Nebraska, at the age of 63. He is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in St Paul.


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: Alexander was the subject of the 1952 biographical film "The Winning Team", portrayed by Ronald Reagan, giving Alexander the unique distinction of being named for one U.S. president and being portrayed by another. The film earned an estimated $1.7 million at the North American box office in 1952.


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: In 1999, he ranked number 12 on "The Sporting News" list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was a nominee for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. Since he played before the Phillies adopted uniform numbers, the block-letter "P" from the 1915 season uniforms was retired by the team in 2001 to honor his career with them.


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: Newspapers often mentioned Alexander's full name when writing about him, in addition to just "Grover". He was also sometimes called "Alec", and on occasions when he succeeded in grand fashion (as with the 1926 World Series), they would call him "Alexander the Great". He was so dominant during the 1910s that many players and writers of his era referred to him as "the best pitcher to ever put on a pair of shoes".


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: The nickname of "Old Pete" began as "Alkali Pete", which was in itself a pastiche, based on a series of early silent film westerns based on characters named Alkali Ike and Mustang Pete. While on a hunting trip with Bill Killefer in Texas, Alexander's dusty appearance prompted Killefer to name him "Alkali Pete" and it stuck. Before going to war, he was given a watch engraved with the nickname, dating its origin to no later than 1918. By the late 1920s, it had morphed into "Old Pete."


title: Grover Cleveland Alexander

text: It is uncertain how frequently Alexander was publicly called by that nickname during his playing days. When he won his 373rd game on August 10, 1929, one newspaper had called him "old Pete", indicating that the nickname was in public circulation. On his 1940 Playball baseball card he was referred to as "Ol' Pete." In "The World Series and Highlights of Baseball", by Lamont Buchanan, published in 1951, the year after Alexander died, on pages 106–107 the author refers to "Pete Alexander" and "Ol' Pete" in a matter-of-fact way, suggesting the nickname was well known.


title: Lillestrøm SK

text: Lillestrøm Sportsklubb is a Norwegian professional football club from the city of Lillestrøm, just outside of the capital Oslo. Lillestrøm SK is a Norwegian football club based in Lillestrøm, playing in Eliteserien. The club was founded in 1917, after the merger of two local football clubs. Their home ground is Åråsen Stadion, which has a capacity of 12,250 people, while the principal training ground is Lillestrøm stadion, or the indoor arena, LSK-Hallen. The club holds the Norwegian record for the most consecutive years without being relegated, having played 45 seasons from 1975 until 2019. Over the years the club has had around 40 players who have represented the Norwegian national team. There has also been a number of foreigners who have represented the national teams of Sweden, Iceland, Senegal, Finland, Malta, Australia, South Africa, Slovenia, Tunisia, Canada, Somalia and Nigeria.


title: Lillestrøm SK

text: Lillestrøm SK was founded on 2 April 1917. It has been Norwegian League champions five times, most recently in 1989, and also in 1986, 1977, 1976 and 1959. Additionally, they have won the Norwegian Cup in 1985, 1981, 1978, 1977, 2007 and 2017.


title: Lillestrøm SK

text: When Arne Erlandsen left for Sweden and IFK Göteborg after the 2004 season, former LSK player and German international Uwe Rösler took over as head coach of the team. His first season in charge became a successful one, with Lillestrøm finishing fourth in the league. This position secured LSK a place in the Royal League. The team also made it to the 2005 Norwegian Cup final, but lost 4–2 to Molde in front of a crowd of 25,000 at Ullevaal Stadion.


title: Lillestrøm SK

text: In the 2006 season Lillestrøm were among the top favourites to win the league. Following a disappointing 4th place, it was announced on 13 November 2006 that Uwe Rösler had been fired from his position as head coach of Lillestrøm. Only a few days later Tom Nordlie signed a three-year contract.


title: Lillestrøm SK

text: A key signing ahead of the 2007 season included Fredrikstad's Simen Brenne, an attacking midfielder with a knack for scoring important goals. LSK under Nordlie played a 4–3–3 system, which invites rapid transitional play between defence and attack, Lillestrøm finished fourth in the league and won the 2007 Norwegian cup, beating Haugesund 2–0 in the final at Ullevaal Stadion.


title: Lillestrøm SK

text: On 29 May 2008, Tom Nordlie resigned from his position as head coach after a disappointing start of the 2008 season. Statements from Nordlie suggested that fundamental disagreements with club director Jan Åge Fjørtoft also contributed to his resignation. It later emerged that the conflict between the controversial coach and the players was another big contributor behind Nordlie's departure, his punishing training regime in the run-up to the 2008 season being cited as the main complaint. Nordlie, no stranger to controversy during his career, had reportedly "lost the dressing room" as early as autumn 2007.


title: Lillestrøm SK

text: Erland Johnsen and Frode Grodås stepped in as caretakers until a new head coach was hired. On 19 August 2008, the club announced that Henning Berg would take over as head coach on 1 January 2009, after leaving his post at Lyn. Berg's first task would be to rescue the team from relegation, a feat he accomplished in his very first match as head coach. LSK beat Rosenborg 4–2 in a classic encounter to secure their place in the Tippeligaen.


title: Lillestrøm SK

text: The 2009 season was one of great upheaval. In an increasingly tight economic position, LSK sold or released 11 players before and during the season, with Berg also restructuring the squad and bringing in new talent. Enormous injury problems also made the start to the season a difficult one for Berg's charges. After 9 games, LSK had won none and drawn four and seemed destined for relegation. An impressive comeback saw Lillestrøm deliver a strong second half to the season, eventually finishing 11th. Newcomer Nosa Igiebor had an especially impressive first season in the Lillestrøm jersey.


title: Lillestrøm SK

text: The team continued to impress over the course of the winter and start of the 2010 season. LSK were in early June fifth in the Tippeligaen, undefeated in 14 league matches. They saw however a dramatic drop in form over the summer which saw them briefly flirt with relegation, before a late surge of form late in the season salvaged 10th place.


title: Lillestrøm SK

text: In 2011 LSK made an exciting start to the new season, scoring an incredible 18 goals from their first five league matches, including a 7–0 drubbing of Stabæk in their first league match of the season – away from home. Early season form was good enough for the team to flirt with the top three until the end of July. Early in August, however, stars Anthony Ujah and Nosa Igiebor were sold to stave off the dire economic straits of the club. Also, in-form Icelandic midfielder Stefán Gíslason was out of contract and left the club. In mid-August, prodigy striker Björn Bergmann Sigurðarson was injured for the rest of the season, and the club failed to win any of their last 11 league games, a new record for Lillestrøm.


title: Lillestrøm SK

text: Coach Henning Berg was sacked three matches before the end of the season as investor Per Berg promised fresh funds for acquiring quality players after the season. The club again flirted with the prospect of relegation; however, the incessant poor form of Start and Sarpsborg meant Lillestrøm again saved themselves. This despite an abject 34 points gathered over 30 league matches, which normally would mean relegation.


title: Lillestrøm SK

text: Former Elfsborg coach Magnus Haglund was appointed coach after the season. Lillestrøm was quite active in the transfer window ahead of the 2012 season, and bought 11 new players. The change of coach and flurry of transfers did the club no good however as they again flirted with relegation until just a few weeks before the end of the season, hovering between 12th and 14th place before a strong finish to the season propelled them into 9th. On the whole the season was deemed a big disappointment however and Haglund's position has been subject to debate throughout the winter pre-season.


title: Lillestrøm SK

text: Ahead of the 2013 season, the club again has reined in spending and started the season with a first team squad of just 18 full senior players and additional backup players from the youth academy. LSK under Haglund have performed well away from home (2nd best away record in 2012), but often struggled on their own turf.


title: Lillestrøm SK

text: Lillestrøm is one of the most supported clubs in Norway, and has the second biggest fan-club in Norway, as the official fan-club, Kanarifansen has more than 5,000 members. Kanarifansen was founded on 3 December 1992 and publishes its own magazines and has its own collection of clothing.


title: Lillestrøm SK

text: Lillestrøm's biggest rival is Vålerenga Fotball. The club also has a rivalry with Rosenborg. Their traditional local rival dated back to the clubs foundation is Strømmen IF.


title: Neighbor Discovery Protocol

text: The Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP), or simply Neighbor Discovery (ND), is a protocol of the Internet protocol suite used with Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). It operates at the link layer of the Internet model, and is responsible for gathering various information required for network communication, including the configuration of local connections and the domain name servers and gateways.


title: Neighbor Discovery Protocol

text: The protocol defines five ICMPv6 packet types to perform functions for IPv6 similar to the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) and Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) Router Discovery and Router Redirect protocols for IPv4. It provides many improvements over its IPv4 counterparts (RFC 4861, section 3.1). For example, it includes Neighbor Unreachability Detection (NUD), thus improving robustness of packet delivery in the presence of failing routers or links, or mobile nodes.


title: Neighbor Discovery Protocol

text: The Inverse Neighbor Discovery (IND) protocol extension (RFC 3122) allows nodes to determine and advertise an IPv6 address corresponding to a given link-layer address, similar to Reverse ARP for IPv4.


title: Neighbor Discovery Protocol

text: The Secure Neighbor Discovery Protocol (SEND), a security extension of NDP, uses Cryptographically Generated Addresses (CGA) and the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) to provide an alternative mechanism for securing NDP with a cryptographic method that is independent of IPsec. Neighbor Discovery Proxy (ND Proxy) (RFC 4389) provides a service similar to IPv4 Proxy ARP and allows bridging multiple network segments within a single subnet prefix when bridging cannot be done at the link layer.


title: Neighbor Discovery Protocol

text: NDP defines five ICMPv6 packet types for the purpose of router solicitation, router advertisement, neighbor solicitation, neighbor advertisement, and network redirects.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: The Feldgendarmerie (, "field gendarmerie") were a type of military police units of the armies of the Kingdom of Saxony (from 1810), the German Empire and Nazi Germany until the conclusion of World War II in Europe.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: From 1810 to 1812 Saxony, Württemberg, Prussia and Bavaria founded a rural police force after the model of the Napoleonic French Gendarmerie.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: The Prussian Gendarmerie staff ("Königlich Preußische Landgendarmerie"; Royal Prussian State Gendarmerie) were well-proven infantry and cavalry NCOs after serving their standard service time at the army and some COs. Officially they were still military personnel, equipped and paid by the Ministry of War, but in peacetime attached to the Ministry of the Interior, serving as normal or as mounted police.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: In case of a maneuver, mobilization or war 50% of the Gendarmerie formed the core of military police of the army, called Feldgendarmerie. Should more manpower be needed, regular infantry and cavalry corporals and some COs were seconded to the Feldgendarmerie under supervision of the former Gendarmerie NCOs/COs. The uniform of the Feldgendarmerie was identical with the uniform of the Landgendarmerie.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: At the outbreak of the First World War the Feldgendarmerie comprised 33 companies. They each had 60 men and two NCOs. By 1918, the number of companies had been expanded to 115 units.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: After World War I, all military police units were disbanded and no police units existed in the inter-war Weimar Republic era. Garrisons were patrolled by regular soldiers performing the duties of the military police.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, "Feldgendarmerie" were reintroduced into the "Wehrmacht". The new units received full infantry training and were given extensive police powers. A military police school was set up at Potsdam, near Berlin to train "Feldgendarmerie" personnel. Subjects included Criminal code, general and special police powers, reporting duties, passport and identification law, weapons drill, self-defence techniques, criminal police methodology, and general administration.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: All prospective candidates served at a "Feldgendarmerie" command after the first term of examinations. Courses lasted one year and failure rates were high: in 1935 only 89 soldiers graduated from an initial intake of 219 candidates. "Feldgendarmerie" were employed within army divisions and as self-contained units under the command of an army corps. They often worked in close cooperation with the "Geheime Feldpolizei" (), district commanders and SS and Police Leaders.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: "Feldgendarmerie" units were generally given occupation duties in territories directly under the control of the "Wehrmacht". Their duties policing the areas behind the front lines ranged from straightforward traffic control and population control to suppression and execution of partisans and the apprehension of enemy stragglers.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: When combat units moved forward out of a region, the "Feldgendarmerie" role would formally end as control was then transferred to occupation authorities under the control of the Nazi Party and SS. But "Feldgendarmerie" units are known to have assisted the SS in committing war crimes in occupied areas. Author Antony Beevor explores some well-documented cases of their participation in his book "Stalingrad". Also, "Felgendarmerie" units took active part in Jew hunting operations, including in Western Europe.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: But by 1943 as the tide of war changed for Nazi Germany, the "Feldgendarmerie" were given the task of maintaining discipline in the "Wehrmacht". Many ordinary soldiers deemed to be deserters were summarily executed by "Feldgendarmerie" units. This earned them the pejorative "Kettenhunde" () after the gorget they wore with their uniforms.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: The arbitrary and brutal policing of soldiers gave them the other nickname "Heldenklauer" () because they screened refugees and hospital transports for potential deserters with orders to kill suspected malingerers. Rear-echelon personnel would also be checked for passes that permitted them to be away from the front.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: The "Feldgendarmerie" also administered the "Strafbataillone" () which were "Wehrmacht" punishment units created for soldiers convicted by court martial and sentenced to a deferred execution. During the final days of the war, as the Third Reich crumbled, recruits or soldiers who committed even the slightest infraction were sent to a "Strafbataillon".


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: Like many other elements of the German Army, the "Feldgendarmerie" was involved in the Holocaust. For instance, in August 1942 "Feldgendarmerie" units rounded up Jews in the Occupied Zone of France as part of a mass deportation operation. "The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies" states that there is a need for further research into the role of the "Feldgendarmerie" during the Holocaust.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: The "SS-Feldgendarmerie" wore the same uniform and gorget as their Army counterparts but had an addition cuff title indicating they were military police. Generally they conducted the same policing role, such as controlling rear areas but they also conducted counter-insurgency and extermination operations with "Einsatzgruppen" against Jews, partisans and those deemed to be "enemies of the Reich". These SS units had a severe reputation for being strict enforcers of military law. Nicknamed "Kopf Jäger" (Head Hunters), they also tracked down and punished those deemed to be deserters. From 1944 onwards, former members of the "Ordnungspolizei" serving with the Waffen-SS, were also given military police powers and duties. These special "SS-Feldgendarmerie" were denoted by a diamond polizei-eagle insignia worn on the lower sleeve.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: In January 1944 as the Red Army began to advance on the Eastern Front, the power of the "Feldgendarmerie" was superseded by the creation of the "Feldjägerkorps". Answering only to the German High Command (OKW), its three regiments were founded to maintain discipline and military cohesion in all branches of the "Wehrmacht" (including the "Feldgendarmerie"). Feldjägers were recruited from decorated, battle-hardened officers and NCOs. They had the military authority of the OKW to arrest and execute officers and soldiers from either the "Wehrmacht" or the SS for desertion, defeatism and other duty violations. Every unit of the "Feldjäger" had command of a "Fliegendes Standgericht" (flying drumhead trial/flying court martial), which comprised three judges.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: Despite the surrender of all German forces in May 1945, some "Feldgendarmerie" and "Feldjägerkorps" units in the western zones of occupied Germany were allowed to keep their weapons by the Allies because of the number of POWs that required guarding and processing. For example, the British VIII Corps based in Schleswig-Holstein used an entire regiment of volunteers from the "Feldgendarmerie" to maintain discipline at its demobilisation center at Meldorf. Re-activated military police, who received extra rations as pay, were identified by an armband stating "Wehrmachtordnungstruppe" (Armed Forces Order Troop). In June 1946, more than 12 months after the official end of World War II, the "Feldgendarmerie" became the last German units to surrender their arms.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: The "Feldgendarmerie" was under the direct control of the German High Command O.K.H. ("Oberkommando des Heeres"). A "Feldgendarmerie" major general who was in charge of all "Feldgendarmerie" personnel attached to the Wehrmacht, was directly subordinated to the "Generalquartiermeister". He was responsible for postings and personnel administration, monitoring the performance of the police units, allocation of tasks, traffic regulations and training. His immediate subordinate was a staff officer attached to each Oberkommando Army who commanded the one or more "Feldgendarmerie" battalions attached to each Wehrmacht formation. The staff officer was responsible for maintaining order and discipline, traffic control during large scale troop movements and maintaining transport routes. Each Feldgendarmerie battalion also had support personnel such as cooks, clerks, and armourers.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: A battalion was subdivided into smaller-sized "Truppen" which were attached to each division or corps. A "Gruppe", a section sized unit, were then assigned to specific field or local commands. "Feldgendarmerie" sections would also be temporarily assigned to special operations, such as anti-partisan duties. A typical Truppe attached to an Infantry or Panzer Division would have up to three officers, 41 NCOs and 20 enlisted men. They would operate in Kübelwagen, trucks and motorcycles (with sidecars).


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: These battalions were equipped with motorcycles and sidecars, Kübelwagen, field cars such as the Horch 4x4 and 3 ton Opel Blitz lorries and a small number of armoured vehicles as a means of transport.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: Personal weapons consisted of small arms such as the Walther PP which was designed as a civilian police pistol (PP Polizei-Pistole) or the Walther PPK both of which were favoured by officers whereas the Luger P08 and Walther P38 were used by other ranks. Machine pistols were carried by NCOs and the Mauser Karabiner 98k, the MP40 was issued but was not widely used. The MG34 and MG42 were used as vehicle mounted armament for defending road blocks or vehicle checkpoints.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: Because the Feldgendarmerie did not have enough manpower to fulfill all of their tasks, the Wehrmacht established several military police like troops, some of them with limited authority.


title: Feldgendarmerie

text: With the creation of the "Bundeswehr" in 1955, many of its branches of service were given names that would at least nominally distinguish them from their logical "Wehrmacht" equivalents. Thus, military police in the modern "Bundeswehr" were not called "Feldgendarmerie." In fact, the original intent was to call the MPs "Militärpolizei," literally military police. However, state officials protested as the law enforcement function in the brand new German constitution had been given primarily to the states, not the federation. The word "Polizei" (Police) was jealously guarded by the states, so the Federal Defence Ministry searched for a new designation and adopted "Feldjäger" which was a traditional Prussian regiment with some military police type functions.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: Presque Isle is the commercial center and largest city in Aroostook County, Maine, United States. The population was 8,797 at the 2020 Census. The city is home to the University of Maine at Presque Isle, Northern Maine Community College, Husson University Presque Isle, Northern Maine Fairgrounds, The Aroostook Centre Mall, and the Presque Isle International Airport.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: The first European settlers were British Loyalists who reached the area in 1819 hoping to obtain land for lumber. Border disputes between the United States and the United Kingdom over the area, however, made it impossible for pioneers to gain title to the land. In response, the government of the neighboring British colony of New Brunswick (now a Canadian province) gave out patents for pioneers to live on the land but not claim ownership or sell it. By 1825, surveyors traveling along the Aroostook River noted that twenty families lived along it and noted that while agriculture was present, all of the families employed most of their time towards wood production.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: The boundary dispute slowed development in the area, but the government of Massachusetts, which governed the territory at the time, saw the territory as theirs and encouraged the development of settlements in northern Maine by offering land grants and mill privileges in the 1820s. The first American to settle in the area was Dennis Fairbanks in 1828 who gained ownership over the land under the provisions set up by Massachusetts and later Maine, which gained statehood in 1820.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: Originally known as Fairbanks for its founder Dennis Fairbanks, Presque Isle was settled in 1828 on land that was unknown to be part of British North America (Canada) or the United States. The Aroostook War broke out in 1838 because of boundary disputes between the two countries, which were resolved in 1842 by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. The township was incorporated from Plantations F, G and H on April 4, 1859, as Presque Isle, derived from the French term for peninsula ("presqu'île"), as the courses of the Aroostook River and Presque Isle Stream form a peninsula. In 1864, Fairmount Cemetery was established in the south of Presque Isle to accommodate Union soldiers returning from the Civil War. In 1883, the town of Maysville was annexed.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: The first industry to form in Presque Isle was the lumber industry. By the 1880s, industry included two lumbermills, a gristmill, a wool carding mill, a furniture factory, a carriage factory and a tinware factory.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: During the last 30 years of the 19th century, agriculture became important, and the entire county became noted for its production of potatoes. On October 9, 1851, the first Northern Maine Fair exhibition opened. A starch factory was opened in 1874, providing a ready market for local potatoes. In 1914 the Aroostook Farm was purchased as a Maine Agricultural Experiment Station.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: In 1881 the New Brunswick Railway created the first rail connection in Presque Isle. The Bangor and Aroostook Railroad arrived in 1895.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: A small airport was established in 1931. It was expanded within the decade and later assumed major military importance. The Presque Isle Air Force Base, in operation between 1941 and 1961, was a major departure point for U.S. fighter planes during World War II and the Korean War due to its relative proximity to Europe. When the base was sold, a piece of it became the Northern Maine Regional Airport. In June 2018, the Northern Maine Regional Airport was renamed Presque Isle International Airport.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: Beginning on July 2, 2018, United Airlines began service from the Presque Isle International Airport in Presque Isle, Maine to Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey. These flights are federally subsidized through the Essential Air Service (EAS) program, and are operated by United Express carrier, GoJet Airlines.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: In 1903, the Aroostook State Normal School began offering a two-year teacher preparation program. In 1968, it was renamed the University of Maine at Presque Isle. Northern Maine Technical College was established in 1961, now Northern Maine Community College. The first students entered the college in 1963. Today it serves about 2000 students.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: The first Presque Isle Hospital was established on April 8, 1912. Four physicians were affiliated with the hospital, whose dual aims were to serve the community and to provide a training school for nurses. The building was a white-frame structure, enlarged from a home under construction. The need and demand for the hospital increased so rapidly that in 1921 a new three-story brick hospital was dedicated. This hospital was in operation for nearly four decades, when it, too, proved inadequate. A major fundraising campaign was launched in the late 1950s. After a large donation was given by Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Wildes, the daughter of the late Senator Arthur Gould, the Arthur R. Gould Memorial Hospital was constructed and opened in 1960. The hospital has expanded and been modernized in recent years and in 1981 became a part of The Aroostook Medical Center.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: On August 11, 1978, the "Double Eagle II" was launched from a Presque Isle field carrying three passengers. It made the first successful transatlantic balloon crossing. In honor of the "Double Eagle II", the city holds an annual celebration called The Crown of Maine Balloon Festival. The popular event includes balloon rides, plane tours, amateur photo contests and children's fair rides. Sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce and other local organizations, it is held in late August. The field from which the "Double Eagle II" lifted off now features a commemorative model balloon.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water. Presque Isle is drained by the Aroostook River and Presque Isle Stream (also called Prestile Stream).


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: Presque Isle has a humid continental climate (Köppen: Dfb) typified by long cold winters and short warm summers.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: The City of Presque Isle operates under the council-manager form of government. The current city manager is Martin Puckett.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: As of the census of 2010, there were 9,692 people, 4,201 households, and 2,413 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 4,608 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 94.5% White, 0.6% African American, 2.4% Native American, 0.9% Asian, 0.2% from other races, and 1.4% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.3% of the population.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: There were 4,201 households, of which 25.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 41.1% were married couples living together, 12.1% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.2% had a male householder with no wife present, and 42.6% were non-families. 34.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.19 and the average family size was 2.78.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: The median age in the city was 40.2 years. 19.6% of residents were under the age of 18; 12.4% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 24.1% were from 25 to 44; 27.8% were from 45 to 64; and 16.2% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 48.2% male and 51.8% female.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: As of the census of 2000, there were 9,511 people, 3,963 households, and 2,464 families residing in the city. The population density was 125.6 people per square mile (48.5/km). There were 4,405 housing units at an average density of 58.2 per square mile (22.5/km). The racial makeup of the city was 95.13% White, 0.36% African American, 2.26% Native American, 0.84% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 0.17% from other races, and 1.21% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.65% of the population.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: There were 3,963 households, out of which 28.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.8% were married couples living together, 11.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 37.8% were non-families. 31.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.25 and the average family size was 2.82.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: In the city, the population was spread out, with 21.6% under the age of 18, 13.1% from 18 to 24, 27.0% from 25 to 44, 22.4% from 45 to 64, and 15.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.2 males.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: The median income for a household in the city was $29,325, and the median income for a family was $37,090. Males had a median income of $27,510 versus $19,785 for females. The per capita income for the city was $15,712. About 9.2% of families and 14.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.1% of those under age 18 and 15.2% of those age 65 or over.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: Due to being Aroostook County's largest city, Presque Isle is the retail center for a large number of both American and Canadian towns. The Aroostook Centre Mall became a major shopping center for residents during the 1990s. A Super Walmart center also attracts a large number of shoppers. Agriculture remains a top industry of Presque Isle and the surrounding area, with potatoes being the top crop. During the winter months many local businesses rely on the snowmobiling industry as there is a highly regarded trail system connecting far away towns and cities with Presque Isle. Presque Isle is also home to a significant industrial park near the Presque Isle International Airport.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: Presque Isle is home to one of the smallest TV markets as defined by Nielsen market research. It consists of WAGM-TV channel 8 (a CBS/Fox/CW+ affiliate), sister station WWPI-LD channel 16 (a NBC affiliate which launched on January 7, 2020), and WMEM-TV channel 10 (affiliated with the Maine Public Broadcasting Network ("Maine Public") and PBS). While not part of the Presque Isle TV market, WVII-TV, the ABC affiliate out of Bangor, Maine, airs in Presque Isle, as does NBC affiliate WLBZ.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: Several radio stations have studios located in Presque Isle, including WBPW, WOZI and WQHR, all owned by Townsquare Media. The city is also home to WUPI, the University of Maine Presque Isle's student radio station which broadcasts on 92.1. WMEM 106.1 is Maine Public's radio outlet for the area, affiliated with National Public Radio.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: There are no daily newspapers in Aroostook County. "The Presque Isle Star-Herald" is published Wednesdays, one of several weekly newspapers published in Aroostook County. Others include Caribou's "Aroostook Republican", Madawaska's "St. John Valley Times", "The Fort Fairfield Journal" and Houlton's "Pioneer Times". The "Bangor Daily News" has an Aroostook County edition.


title: Presque Isle, Maine

text: The city is also where Handy McKay retires to open a diner in the Parker novel series by Richard Stark.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: He played college football at Washington and was drafted by the Seattle Seahawks in the first round of the 2002 NFL Draft. Stevens played for the Seahawks and for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: With Washington, Stevens was among the team's top receivers in the 1999 and 2000 seasons and won the 2001 Rose Bowl with Washington following an 11–1 season in 2000. In 2005, Stevens became a regular starter at tight end for the Seattle Seahawks and played in Super Bowl XL.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: Jerramy Stevens attended River Ridge High School of Lacey, Washington. A 1998 graduate, Stevens was a letterman in football, basketball, and track. In football, Stevens originally played quarterback. He passed for 5,000 yards during his high school career, including throwing for 2,000 yards as a junior. As a senior, he earned first-team All-Narrows League and was named to The Olympian's All-Area team as a safety.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: During his senior year, he and another student were accused of beating a schoolmate over his head with a baseball bat and stomping on his face on June 2, 1998. The victim suffered a broken jaw and ate with a straw for six months. Upon questioning by authorities, Stevens initially denied being involved in the fight but admitted his wrongdoing later. Stevens was charged with felony assault and was ordered to home detention while awaiting trial. Because he tested positive for cannabis during home detention, Stevens spent three weeks in Thurston County jail. Three football coaches at the University of Washington wrote the trial judge affirming that Stevens's scholarship offer was still valid, and the judge allowed Stevens to participate in training camp with Washington even though Stevens violated home detention orders. As a result of a plea deal, Stevens was convicted of misdemeanor assault and received credit for time served.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: Stevens redshirted the 1998 season and played on the practice squad as quarterback. For his redshirt freshman season in 1999, Stevens converted to tight end. In 1999, Stevens made 21 receptions for 265 yards and 4 touchdowns.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: In 2000, Stevens made 43 receptions for 600 yards and 3 touchdowns and won the 2001 Rose Bowl with Washington. On September 9, in Washington's 34–29 upset over fourth-ranked Miami (Florida), Stevens made 7 receptions for 89 yards, including a 23-yard touchdown pass from Marques Tuiasosopo in a drive that put Washington up 21–3 at the half. The following game on September 16 against Colorado, Stevens made 7 receptions again but this time for 103 yards. In the Rose Bowl game, Stevens led Washington in receiving with 5 catches for 51 yards.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: In 2001, Stevens made 10 receptions for 88 yards and one touchdown. Stevens injured his right foot on September 24 and was sidelined until November.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: Stevens was selected by his hometown Seattle Seahawks as their first-round pick in the 2002 NFL Draft; he was the 28th player taken overall. Seattle traded its first-round (No. 20) and fifth-round (No. 156) choices to Green Bay for the Packers' first-round (No. 28) and second-round (No. 60) choices. Green Bay used the picks to select Javon Walker and Aaron Kampman.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: Because of Stevens's criminal history, Stevens's draft selection by the Seahawks was controversial to the fans. Coach Mike Holmgren acknowledged that drafting Stevens took him numerous deliberations with Stevens, Stevens's parents, Stevens's coaches at Washington, and even Holmgren's own family.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: Stevens played 12 games with one start in his rookie season in 2002 and debuted in the season opener against the Oakland Raiders on September 8. Forced by Raiders cornerback Charles Woodson, Stevens fumbled his first reception, a four-yard pass from Matt Hasselbeck but made two other receptions that game. On November 24, in a 39–32 win over the Kansas City Chiefs, Stevens made his first touchdown catch as a professional. The 6-yard touchdown pass from Hasselbeck marked a turning point in the game as Seattle took a 21–17 lead on that touchdown drive and never looked back. As a rookie, Stevens made 21 receptions for 252 yards and 3 touchdowns.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: In 2004, Stevens again played all 16 games and started 5. He made 31 receptions for 349 yards and 3 touchdowns.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: Before Super Bowl XL, Stevens said in a February 2, 2006 interview, "The story of Jerome Bettis returning to his hometown (Detroit) is heartwarming, but it's going be a sad day when he doesn't walk away with that trophy." This drew the ire of Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Joey Porter. On February 5, 2006, Stevens caught 3 passes for 25 yards in Super Bowl XL. Among his catches was Seattle's first-ever Super Bowl touchdown. However, he also dropped three key passes in the Seahawks' 21–10 loss to the Steelers.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: On November 6, 2006, in a game against the Oakland Raiders, Stevens was kneed in the groin by Raiders defensive end Tyler Brayton, who was then ejected from the game. Neither player was suspended, but Brayton was fined $25,000 by the NFL for the incident, and Stevens was fined $15,000 for his involvement, as well as an earlier taunting incident.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: Art Shell, the Raiders coach, said in an interview that Stevens was the instigator, and had tried to knee Brayton earlier. However Mike Holmgren, the Seahawks coach, responded by saying that Stevens was not attempting to strike Brayton, but was struggling for leverage which caused his leg to flare out.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: On March 20, 2007, Seattle general manager Tim Ruskell confirmed that Stevens' days with the Seahawks were done. "I would say it's probably a time for a change of scenery and to move on," Ruskell said. This move was widely expected, as only hours after Stevens' arrest on March 13, the Seahawks signed veteran Marcus Pollard, giving them four tight ends.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: On April 29, 2007, he signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He caught his first touchdown pass as a Buccaneer on December 2 (Week 13) against the New Orleans Saints, a four-yard reception from Luke McCown with 14 seconds left in the game in a drive that clinched a 27–23 victory for the Buccaneers and the team's fourth straight win. However, the NFL suspended Stevens for one game without pay on December 11 for a violation of league substance abuse policy.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: On May 30, 2008, Stevens was re-signed by the Buccaneers after the team waived quarterback Bruce Gradkowski. On June 4, 2008, Stevens was suspended for two games and fined three game checks after violating the NFL's substance abuse policy. In 14 games played, Stevens made three starts and made 36 receptions for 397 yards and 2 touchdowns.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: In 2009, Stevens played all 16 regular season games with eight starts for the Buccaneers. Stevens made 15 receptions for 130 yards and a touchdown.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: The Buccaneers waived Stevens on October 25, 2010, two days after Stevens was arrested for possessing marijuana. Stevens played in five games with one start in 2010 for Tampa and made three receptions for 43 yards.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: Stevens was born in Boise, Idaho, to a black father and a white mother, one of their four children. His mother Fran worked as a police officer and school administrator, and his father Bob was a teacher and high school sports coach. Bob Stevens died on September 4, 2012, at age 62, from cancer. Stevens grew up in Lacey, Washington.


title: Jerramy Stevens

text: Stevens married Hope Solo, a professional soccer goalkeeper formerly on the United States women's national soccer team, on November 13, 2012; the two had been dating for about two months, and the marriage came one day after Stevens was arrested for allegedly assaulting Solo. Solo attended the University of Washington from 1999 to 2003, nearly the same time as Stevens, and played for four seasons on the Washington Huskies women's soccer team. The couple welcomed Vittorio Genghis and Lozen Orianna Judith Stevens on March 4, 2020.


title: Blood culture

text: A blood culture is a medical laboratory test used to detect bacteria or fungi in a person's blood. Under normal conditions, the blood does not contain microorganisms: their presence can indicate a bloodstream infection such as bacteremia or fungemia, which in severe cases may result in sepsis. By culturing the blood, microbes can be identified and tested for resistance to antimicrobial drugs, which allows clinicians to provide an effective treatment.


title: Blood culture

text: To perform the test, blood is drawn into bottles containing a liquid formula that enhances microbial growth, called a culture medium. Usually, two containers are collected during one draw, one of which is designed for aerobic organisms that require oxygen, and one of which is for anaerobic organisms, that do not. These two containers are referred to as a "set" of blood cultures. Two sets of blood cultures are sometimes collected from two different blood draw sites. If an organism only appears in one of the two sets, it is more likely to represent contamination with skin flora than a true bloodstream infection. False negative results can occur if the sample is collected after the person has received antimicrobial drugs or if the bottles are not filled with the recommended amount of blood. Some organisms do not grow well in blood cultures and require special techniques for detection.


title: Blood culture

text: The containers are placed in an incubator for several days to allow the organisms to multiply. If microbial growth is detected, a Gram stain is conducted from the culture bottle to confirm that organisms are present and provide preliminary information about their identity. The blood is then subcultured, meaning it is streaked onto an agar plate to isolate microbial colonies for full identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing. Because it is essential that bloodstream infections are diagnosed and treated quickly, rapid testing methods have been developed using technologies like polymerase chain reaction and MALDI-TOF MS.


title: Blood culture

text: Procedures for culturing the blood were published as early as the mid-19th century, but these techniques were labour-intensive and bore little resemblance to contemporary methods. Detection of microbial growth involved visual examination of the culture bottles until automated blood culture systems, which monitor gases produced by microbial metabolism, were introduced in the 1970s. In developed countries, manual blood culture methods have largely been made obsolete by automated systems.


title: Blood culture

text: Blood is normally sterile. The presence of bacteria in the blood is termed bacteremia, and the presence of fungi is called fungemia. Minor damage to the skin or mucous membranes, which can occur in situations like toothbrushing or defecation, can introduce bacteria into the bloodstream, but this bacteremia is normally transient and is rarely detected in cultures because the immune system and reticuloendothelial system quickly sequester and destroy the organisms. Bacteria can enter the blood from infections such as cellulitis, UTIs and pneumonia; and infections within the vascular system, such as bacterial endocarditis or infections associated with intravenous lines, may result in a constant bacteremia. Fungemia occurs most commonly in people with poorly functioning immune systems. If bacteria or fungi are not cleared from the bloodstream, they can spread to other organs and tissues, or evoke an immune response that leads to a systemic inflammatory condition called sepsis, which can be life-threatening.


title: Blood culture

text: When sepsis is suspected, it is necessary to draw blood cultures to identify the causative agent and provide targeted antimicrobial therapy. People who are hospitalized and have a fever, a low body temperature, a high white blood cell count or a low count of granulocytes (a category of white blood cells) commonly have cultures drawn to detect a possible bloodstream infection. Blood cultures are used to detect bloodstream infections in febrile neutropenia, a common complication of chemotherapy in which fever occurs alongside a severely low count of neutrophils (white blood cells that defend against bacterial and fungal pathogens). Bacteremia is common in some types of infections, such as meningitis, septic arthritis and epidural abscesses, so blood cultures are indicated in these conditions. In infections less strongly associated with bacteremia, blood culture may still be indicated if the individual is at high risk of acquiring an intravascular infection or if cultures cannot be promptly obtained from the main site of infection (for example, a urine culture in pyelonephritis or a sputum culture in severe community-acquired pneumonia). Blood culture can identify an underlying microbial cause in cases of endocarditis and fever of unknown origin.


title: Blood culture

text: The pathogens most frequently identified in blood cultures include "Staphylococcus aureus", "Escherichia coli" and other members of the family "Enterobacteriaceae", "Enterococcus" species, "Pseudomonas aeruginosa" and "Candida albicans". Coagulase-negative staphylococci (CNS) are also commonly encountered, although it is often unclear whether these organisms, which constitute part of the normal skin flora, are true pathogens or merely contaminants. In blood cultures taken from newborn babies and children, CNS can indicate significant infections. The epidemiology of bloodstream infections varies with time and place; for instance, Gram-positive organisms overtook Gram-negative organisms as the predominant cause of bacteremia in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s, and rates of fungemia have greatly increased in association with a growing population of people receiving immunosuppressive treatments such as chemotherapy. Gram-negative sepsis is more common in Central and South America, Eastern Europe, and Asia than in North America and Western Europe; and in Africa, "Salmonella enterica" is a leading cause of bacteremia.


title: Blood culture

text: Blood cultures are typically drawn through venipuncture. Collecting the sample from an intravenous line is not recommended, as this is associated with higher contamination rates, although cultures may be collected from both venipuncture and an intravenous line to diagnose catheter-associated infections. Prior to the blood draw, the top of each collection bottle is disinfected using an alcohol swab to prevent contamination. The skin around the puncture site is then cleaned and left to dry; some protocols recommend disinfection with an alcohol-based antiseptic followed by either chlorhexidine or an iodine-based preparation, while others consider using only an alcohol-containing antiseptic to be sufficient. If blood must be drawn for other tests at the same time as a blood culture, the culture bottles are drawn first to minimize the risk of contamination. Because antimicrobial therapy can cause false negative results by inhibiting the growth of microbes, it is recommended that blood cultures are drawn before antimicrobial drugs are given, although this may be impractical in people who are critically ill.


title: Blood culture

text: A typical blood culture collection involves drawing blood into two bottles, which together form one "culture" or "set". One bottle is designed to enhance the growth of aerobic organisms, and the other is designed to grow anaerobic organisms. In children, infection with anaerobic bacteria is uncommon, so a single aerobic bottle may be collected to minimize the amount of blood required. It is recommended that at least two sets are collected from two separate venipuncture locations. This helps to distinguish infection from contamination, as contaminants are less likely to appear in more than one set than true pathogens. Additionally, the collection of larger volumes of blood increases the likelihood that microorganisms will be detected if present.


title: Blood culture

text: Blood culture bottles contain a growth medium, which encourages microorganisms to multiply, and an anticoagulant that prevents blood from clotting. Sodium polyanethol sulfonate (SPS) is the most commonly used anticoagulant because it does not interfere with the growth of most organisms. The exact composition of the growth medium varies, but aerobic bottles use a broth that is enriched with nutrients, such as brain-heart infusion or trypticase soy broth, and anaerobic bottles typically contain a reducing agent such as thioglycollate. The empty space in an anaerobic bottle is filled with a gas mixture that does not contain oxygen.


title: Blood culture

text: Many commercially manufactured bottles contain a resin that absorbs antibiotics to reduce their action on the microorganisms in the sample. Bottles intended for pediatric use are designed to accommodate lower blood volumes and have additives that enhance the growth of pathogens more commonly found in children. Other specialized bottles may be used to detect fungi and mycobacteria. In low and middle income countries, pre-formulated culture bottles can be prohibitively expensive, and it may be necessary to prepare the bottles manually. It can be difficult to access the proper supplies and facilities, and in some regions, it may not be possible to perform blood cultures at all.


title: Blood culture

text: It is important that the bottles are neither underfilled nor overfilled: underfilling can lead to false negative results as fewer organisms are present in the sample, while overfilling can inhibit microbial growth because the ratio of growth medium to blood is comparatively lower. A 1:10 to 1:5 ratio of blood to culture medium is suggested to optimize microbial growth. For routine blood cultures in adults, the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) recommends the collection of two sets of bottles from two different draws, with 20–30 mL of blood drawn in each set. In children, the amount of blood to be drawn is often based on the child's age or weight. If endocarditis is suspected, a total of six bottles may be collected.


title: Blood culture

text: After the blood is collected, the bottles are incubated at body temperature to encourage the growth of microorganisms. Bottles are usually incubated for up to five days in automated systems, although most common bloodstream pathogens are detected within 48 hours. The incubation time may be extended further if manual blood culture methods are used or if slower-growing organisms, such as certain bacteria that cause endocarditis, are suspected. In manual systems, the bottles are visually examined for indicators of microbial growth, which might include cloudiness, the production of gas, the presence of visible microbial colonies, or a change in colour from the digestion of blood, which is called hemolysis. Some manual blood culture systems indicate growth using a compartment that fills with fluid when gases are produced, or a miniature agar plate which is periodically inoculated by tipping the bottle. To ensure that positive blood cultures are not missed, a sample from the bottle is often inoculated onto an agar plate (subcultured) at the end of the incubation period regardless of whether or not indicators of growth are observed.


title: Blood culture

text: In developed countries, manual culture methods have largely been replaced by automated systems that provide continuous computerized monitoring of the culture bottles. These systems, such as the BACTEC, BacT/ALERT and VersaTrek, consist of an incubator in which the culture bottles are continuously mixed. Growth is detected by sensors that measure the levels of gases inside the bottle—most commonly carbon dioxide—which serve as an indicator of microbial metabolism. An alarm or a visual indicator alerts the microbiologist to the presence of a positive blood culture bottle. If the bottle remains negative at the end of the incubation period, it is generally discarded without being subcultured.


title: Blood culture

text: A technique called the lysis-centrifugation method can be used for improved isolation of slow-growing or fastidious organisms, such as fungi, mycobacteria, and "Legionella". Rather than incubating the blood in a bottle filled with growth medium, this method involves collecting blood into a tube containing an agent that destroys (lyses) red and white blood cells, then spinning the sample in a centrifuge. This process concentrates the solid contents of the sample, including microorganisms if present, into a pellet, which is used to inoculate the subculture media. While lysis-centrifugation offers greater sensitivity than conventional blood culture methods, it is prone to contamination because it requires extensive manipulation of the sample.


title: Blood culture

text: If growth is detected, a microbiologist will perform a Gram stain on a sample of blood from the bottle for a rapid preliminary identification of the organism. The Gram stain classifies bacteria as Gram-positive or Gram-negative and provides information about their shape—whether they are rod-shaped (referred to as bacilli), spherical (referred to as cocci), or spiral-shaped (spirochetes)—as well as their arrangement. Gram-positive cocci in clusters, for example, are typical of "Staphylococcus" species. Yeast and other fungi may also be identified from the Gram stain. A Gram stain identifying microbial growth from a blood culture is considered a critical result and must immediately be reported to the clinician. The Gram stain provides information about the possible identity of the organism, which assists the clinician in the selection of a more appropriate antimicrobial treatment before the full culture and sensitivity results are complete.


title: Blood culture

text: In traditional methods, the blood is then subcultured onto agar plates to isolate the organism for further testing. The Gram stain results inform microbiologists about what types of agar plates should be used and what tests might be appropriate to identify the organism. In some cases, no organisms are seen on the Gram stain despite the culture bottle showing indicators of growth or being reported as positive by automated instruments. This may represent a false positive result, but it is possible that organisms are present but cannot easily be visualized microscopically. Positive bottles with negative Gram stains are subcultured before being returned to the incubator, often using special culture media that promotes the growth of slow-growing organisms.


title: Blood culture

text: It typically takes 24 to 48 hours for sufficient growth to occur on the subculture plates for definitive identification to be possible. At this point, the microbiologist will assess the appearance of the bacterial or fungal colonies and carry out tests that provide information about the metabolic and biochemical features of the organism, which permit identification to the genus or species level. For example, the catalase test can distinguish streptococci and staphylococci (two genera of Gram-positive cocci) from each other, and the coagulase test can differentiate "Staphylococcus aureus", a common culprit of bloodstream infections, from the less pathogenic coagulase-negative staphylococci.


title: Blood culture

text: Microorganisms may also be identified using automated systems, such as instruments that perform panels of biochemical tests, or matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS), in which microbial proteins are ionized and characterized on the basis of their mass-to-charge ratios; each microbial species exhibits a characteristic pattern of proteins when analyzed through mass spectrometry.


title: Blood culture

text: Because bloodstream infections can be life-threatening, timely diagnosis and treatment is critical, and to this end several rapid identification methods have been developed. MALDI-TOF can be used to identify organisms directly from positive blood culture bottles after separation and concentration procedures, or from preliminary growth on the agar plate within a few hours of subculturing. Genetic methods such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and microarrays can identify microorganisms by detection of DNA sequences specific to certain species in blood culture samples. Several systems designed for the identification of common blood culture pathogens are commercially available. Some biochemical and immunologic tests can be performed directly on positive blood cultures, such as the tube coagulase test for identification of "S. aureus" or latex agglutination tests for "Streptococcus pneumoniae", and unlike PCR and MALDI-TOF, these methods may be practical for laboratories in low and middle income countries. It is also possible to directly inoculate microbial identification panels with blood from a positive culture bottle, although this is not as reliable as testing subcultured bacteria because additives from the growth media can interfere with the results.


title: Blood culture

text: Even faster diagnosis could be achieved through bypassing culture entirely and detecting pathogens directly from blood samples. A few direct testing systems are commercially available as of 2018, but the technology is still in its infancy. Most panels detect only a limited number of pathogens, and the sensitivity can be poor compared to conventional blood culture methods. Culturing remains necessary in order to carry out full antimicrobial sensitivity testing.


title: Blood culture

text: Antimicrobial treatment of bloodstream infections is initially empiric, meaning it is based on the clinician's suspicion about the causative agent of the disease and local patterns of antimicrobial resistance. Carrying out antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) on pathogens isolated from a blood culture allows clinicians to provide a more targeted treatment and to discontinue broad-spectrum antibiotics, which can have undesirable side effects. In traditional AST methods, such as the disk diffusion test, pure colonies of the organism are selected from the subculture plate and used to inoculate a secondary medium. These methods require overnight incubation before results can be obtained. There are automated systems which use pre-formulated antibiotic panels, measure microbial growth automatically, and determine the sensitivity results using algorithms; some of these can provide results in as little as five hours, but others require overnight incubation as well.


title: Blood culture

text: Rapid administration of effective antimicrobial drugs is crucial in the treatment of sepsis, so several methods have been developed to provide faster antibiotic sensitivity results. Conventional AST methods can be carried out on young growth from the subculture plate, pellets of microorganisms obtained from concentration and purification of the positive blood culture, or directly from the culture bottle. Because direct testing methods do not isolate the organisms, they do not provide accurate results if more than one microorganism is present, although this is an infrequent occurrence in blood cultures. Another source of error is the difficulty in standardizing the amount of bacteria in the sample (the inoculum), which has a profound effect on the test results.