query: What was the lingua franca of the Ottoman Empire?

title: Languages of the Ottoman Empire

text: The language of the court and government of the Ottoman Empire was Ottoman Turkish,[1] but many other languages were in contemporary use in parts of the empire. Although the minorities of the Ottoman Empire were free to use their language amongst themselves, if they needed to communicate with the government they had to use Ottoman Turkish.[2]

title: Lingua franca

text: The use of lingua francas has existed since antiquity. Latin and Koine Greek were the lingua francas of the Roman Empire and the Hellenistic culture. Akkadian (died out during Classical antiquity) and then Aramaic remained the common languages of a large part of Western Asia from several earlier empires.

title: Languages of the Ottoman Empire

text: The language became the lingua franca of educated groups, including Sephardic Jews, and versions of official documents in languages of non-Muslims such as the 1876 Ottoman Constitution originated from the French translations. Strauss wrote that the Treaty of Paris of 1856 "seems to have been translated from the French."[6] In addition, newspapers written in other western European languages had editions in French or editions with portions in French.[7]

title: List of lingua francas

text: Portuguese served as lingua franca in the Portuguese Empire, Africa, South America and Asia in the 15th and 16th centuries. When the Portuguese started exploring the seas of Africa, America, Asia and Oceania, they tried to communicate with the natives by mixing a Portuguese-influenced version of lingua franca with the local languages. When English or French ships came to compete with the Portuguese, the crews tried to learn this "broken Portuguese". Through a process of change the lingua franca and Portuguese lexicon was replaced with the languages of the people in contact.

title: List of lingua francas

text: Classical Nahuatl was the lingua franca of the Aztec Empire in Mesoamerica prior to the Spanish invasion in the 16th century. An extensive corpus of the language as spoken exists. Like Latin and Hebrew (prior to the founding of modern Israel), Classical Nahuatl was more of a sociolect spoken among the elites (poets, priests, traders, teachers, bureaucrats) than a language spoken in any common family household.

title: List of lingua francas

text: Turkish is still in use and widely spoken in several areas formerly part of the Ottoman Empire and may be understood by older people in other parts of the Middle East.

title: List of lingua francas

text: With the growth of the Spanish Empire, Spanish became established in the Americas, as well as in parts of Africa, Asia and Oceania. It became the language of global trade until Napoleonic Wars and the breakup of the Spanish Empire at the beginning of the 19th century. Spanish was used as a lingua franca throughout the former Spanish Colonial Empire, including territory in present-day U.S., but particularly in present-day Mexico, Spanish Caribbean, Central, South America and the Philippines, and still remains the lingua franca within Hispanic America.

title: List of lingua francas

text: Arabic, the native language of the Arabs, who originally came from the Arabian Peninsula, became the lingua franca of the Islamic (Arab) Empire (from CE 733 – 1492), which at its greatest extent was bordered by China and Northern India, Central Asia, Persia, Asia Minor, the Middle East, North Africa, Spain and Portugal.

title: Lingua franca

text: International auxiliary languages created with the purpose of being lingua francas such as Esperanto and Lingua Franca Nova have not had a great degree of adoption globally so they cannot be described as global lingua francas.

title: List of lingua francas

text: The Mediterranean Lingua Franca was largely based on Italian and Provençal. This language was spoken from the 11th to 19th centuries around the Mediterranean basin, particularly in the European commercial empires of Italian cities (Genoa, Venice, Florence, Milan, Pisa, Siena) and in trading ports located throughout the eastern Mediterranean rim.[31]

title: Bagnio

text: The term was used to refer to the prison for hostages in Constantinople, which was near the bath-house, and thereafter all the slave quarters in the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary regencies. The hostages of the Barbary pirates slept in the prisons at night, leaving during the day to work as laborers, galley slaves, or domestic servants. The communication between master and slave and between slaves of different origins was made in a "lingua franca" known as "Sabir" or Mediterranean Lingua Franca, a Mediterranean pidgin language with Romance and Arabic vocabulary.

title: Legacy of the Roman Empire

text: Latin was the lingua franca of the early Roman Empire and later the Western Roman Empire, while particularly in the East indigenous languages such as Greek and to a lesser degree Egyptian and Aramaic language continued to be in use. Despite the decline of the Western Roman Empire, the Latin language continued to flourish in the very different social and economic environment of the Middle Ages, not least because it became the official language of the Roman Catholic Church. Koine Greek, which served as a lingua franca in the Eastern Empire, is still used today as a sacred language in some Eastern Orthodox churches.

title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: Lingua Franca left traces in present Algerian slang and Polari. There are traces even in geographical names, such as Cape Guardafui (that literally means cape "look and escape" in Lingua Franca and ancient Italian).

title: List of lingua francas

text: Until the early 20th century, Classical Chinese served as both the written lingua franca and the diplomatic language in Far East Asia including China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Ryūkyū Kingdom, and Vietnam. In the early 20th century, vernacular written Chinese replaced Classical Chinese within China as both the written and spoken lingua franca for speakers of different Chinese dialects, and because of the falling power and cultural influence of China in East Asia, English has since replaced Classical Chinese as the lingua franca in East Asia.

title: Lingua Franca (magazine)

text: "Lingua Franca" was where the Sokal Affair — a parody of academic practices and post-structuralist language — was first revealed; "Lingua Franca" editors later produced a book of selected papers on the subject, "The Sokal Hoax", published by the University of Nebraska Press.

title: List of lingua francas

text: Examples of lingua francas are numerous, and exist on every continent. The most obvious modern example is English, which is the current dominant lingua franca of international diplomacy, business, science, technology and aviation, but many other languages serve, or have served at different historical periods, as lingua francas in particular regions, or in special contexts.

title: Demographics of Pakistan

text: On the annexation of Sindh (1843) and Punjab (1849), the British Raj encouraged its use as the "lingua franca" and subsequently banned the use of Persian, which had been the "lingua franca" of the region for many centuries before. Persian had been introduced by Central Asian Turkic invaders who migrated into South Asia, and had been patronised by the Turko-Afghan Delhi Sultanate. This language change was designed to institute a universal language throughout the then British Raj in South Asia as well as minimize the influence that Persia, the Ottoman Empire and Afghanistan had on this transitional region.

title: List of lingua francas

text: This is a list of lingua francas. A lingua franca (English plural "lingua francas", although the pseudo-Latin form "linguae francae" is also seen) is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a first language, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both speakers' first languages.

title: List of lingua francas

text: Polish was a lingua franca in areas of Central and Eastern Europe, especially regions that belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Polish was for several centuries the main language spoken by the ruling classes in Lithuania and Ukraine, and the modern state of Belarus.[34] After the Partitions of Poland and the incorporation of most of the Polish areas into the Russian Empire as Congress Poland, the Russian language almost completely supplanted Polish.

title: List of lingua francas

text: Portuguese and Spanish started to grow as lingua francas in the region in since the conquests of the 16th century. In the Case of Spanish this process was not even and as the Spanish used the structure of Inca Empire to consolidate their rule Quechua remained the lingua franca of large parts of what is now Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. Quechua importance as a language for trade and dealing with Spanish-approved indigenous authorities (curaca) made the language expand even after the Spanish conquest. It was not until the rebellion of Túpac Amaru II that the Spanish authorities changed to a policy of Hispanization that was continued by the republican states of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. Quechua also lost influence to Spanish as the commerce circuits grew to integrate other parts of the Spanish Empire where Quechua was unknown, for example in the Rio de la Plata.

title: Lingua franca

text: Whereas a vernacular language is the native language of a specific geographical community, a lingua franca is used beyond the boundaries of its original community, for trade, religious, political or academic reasons. For example, English is a vernacular in the United Kingdom but is used as a lingua franca in the Philippines. Arabic, French, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian, serve a similar purpose as industrial/educational lingua francas, across regional and national boundaries.

title: Aramaic language

text: During the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires, Arameans, the native speakers of Aramaic, began to settle in greater numbers, at first in Babylonia, and later in Assyria (Upper Mesopotamia, modern-day northern Iraq, northeast Syria, northwest Iran, and south eastern Turkey (what was Armenia at the time). The influx eventually resulted in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC) adopting an Akkadian-influenced Imperial Aramaic as the "lingua franca" of its empire. This policy was continued by the short-lived Neo-Babylonian Empire and Medes, and all three empires became operationally bilingual in written sources, with Aramaic used alongside Akkadian. The Achaemenid Empire (539–323 BC) continued this tradition, and the extensive influence of these empires led to Aramaic gradually becoming the lingua franca of most of western Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Egypt.

title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: Hugo Schuchardt (1842–1927) was the first scholar to investigate the Lingua Franca systematically. According to the monogenetic theory of the origin of pidgins he developed, Lingua Franca was known by Mediterranean sailors including the Portuguese. When Portuguese started exploring the seas of Africa, America, Asia and Oceania, they tried to communicate with the natives by mixing a Portuguese-influenced version of Lingua Franca with the local languages. When English or French ships came to compete with the Portuguese, the crews tried to learn this "broken Portuguese". Through a process of relexification, the Lingua Franca and Portuguese lexicon was substituted by the languages of the peoples in contact.

title: Beklan Empire

text: The "lingua franca" of the empire is the Beklan language.

title: Mediterranean Lingua Franca

text: The Mediterranean Lingua Franca or Sabir was a pidgin language used as a lingua franca in the Mediterranean Basin from the 11th to the 19th century.

title: Lingua franca

text: In Lingua Franca (the specific language), "lingua" means a language, as in Portuguese and Italian, and "franca" is related to "phrankoi" in Greek and "faranji" in Arabic as well as the equivalent Italian. In all three cases, the literal sense is "Frankish", but the name actually applied to all Western Europeans during the late Byzantine Empire.

title: List of lingua francas

text: Aramaic was the native language of the Aramaeans and became the lingua franca of the Assyrian Empire and the western provinces of the Persian Empire, and was adopted by conquered peoples such as the Hebrews. A dialect of Old Aramaic developed into the literary language Syriac. The Syriacs, such as the Syriac-Aramaean, Assyrian and Chaldean Christians, continued the use of Aramaic which ultimately evolved into the Neo-Aramaic dialects of the Middle East.

title: List of lingua francas

text: When the United Kingdom became a colonial power, English served as the lingua franca of the colonies of the British Empire. In the post-colonial period, some of the newly created nations which had multiple indigenous languages opted to continue using English as an official language to avoid the political difficulties inherent in promoting any one indigenous language above the others. The British Empire established the use of English in regions around the world such as North America, India, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, so that by the late 19th century its reach was truly global,[27] and in the latter half of the 20th century, widespread international use of English was much reinforced by the global economic, financial, scientific, military, and cultural pre-eminence of the English-speaking countries and especially the U.S. Today, more than half of all scientific journals are published in English, while in France, almost one-third of all natural science research appears in English,[28] lending support to English being the lingua franca of science and technology. English is also the lingua franca of international air traffic control and seafaring communications.

title: Lingua franca (disambiguation)

text: Lingua Franca or lingua franca may also refer to:

title: List of lingua francas

text: German served as a lingua franca in large portions of Europe for centuries, mainly the Holy Roman Empire outside of the sphere of influence of the Hanseatic League, which used Low German. Over time, the political expansion of German-speaking powers and the influence of German-language culture caused High German to eclipse other forms of German as well as to become a lingua franca in large parts of Slavic-, Baltic- and Hungarian-speaking Europe.

title: Lingua franca

text: The term "lingua franca" derives from Mediterranean Lingua Franca, the language that people around the Levant and the eastern Mediterranean Sea used as the main language of commerce and diplomacy from late medieval times, especially during the Renaissance era, to the 18th century. At that time, Italian-speakers dominated seaborne commerce in the port cities of the Ottoman Empire and a simplified version of Italian, including many loan words from Greek, Old French, Portuguese, Occitan, and Spanish as well as Arabic and Turkish came to be widely used as the "lingua franca" (in the generic sense used) of the region.


query: How was microglia discovered?

title: Microglia

text: The ability to view and characterize different neural cells including microglia began in 1880 when Nissl staining was developed by Franz Nissl. Franz Nissl and F. Robertson first described microglial cells during their histology experiments. The cell staining techniques in the 1880s showed that microglia are related to macrophages. The activation of microglia and formation of ramified microglial clusters was first noted by Victor Babeş while studying a rabies case in 1897. Babeş noted the cells were found in a variety of viral brain infections but did not know what the clusters of microglia he saw were.[30] Pío del Río Hortega, a student of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, first called the cells "microglia" around 1920. He went on to characterize microglial response to brain lesions in 1927 and note the "fountains of microglia" present in the corpus callosum and other perinatal white matter areas in 1932. After many years of research Rio-Hortega became generally considered as the "Father of Microglia."[31][32] For a long period of time little improvement was made in our knowledge of microglia. Then, in 1988, Hickey and Kimura showed that perivascular microglial cells are bone-marrow derived, and express high levels of MHC class II proteins used for antigen presentation. This confirmed Pio Del Rio-Hortega's postulate that microglial cells functioned similarly to macrophages by performing phagocytosis and antigen presentation.

title: Wallerian degeneration

text: Oligodendrocytes fail to recruit macrophages for debris removal. Macrophage entry in general into CNS site of injury is very slow. In contrast to PNS, Microglia play a vital role in CNS wallerian degeneration. However, their recruitment is slower in comparison to macrophage recruitment in PNS by approximately 3 days. Further, microglia might be activated but hypertrophy, and fail to transform into fully phagocytic cells. Those microglia that do transform, clear out the debris effectively. Differentiating phagocytic microglia can be accomplished by testing for expression of Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I and II during wallerian degeneration.[18] The rate of clearance is very slow among microglia in comparison to macrophages. Possible source for variations in clearance rates could include lack of opsonin activity around microglia, and the lack of increased permeability in the blood–brain barrier. The decreased permeability could further hinder macrophage infiltration to the site of injury.[10]

title: Microglia

text: In addition to being able to destroy infectious organisms through cell to cell contact via phagocytosis, microglia can also release a variety of cytotoxic substances. Microglia in culture secrete large amounts of hydrogen peroxide and nitric oxide in a process known as ‘respiratory burst'. Both of these chemicals can directly damage cells and lead to neuronal cell death. Proteases secreted by microglia catabolise specific proteins causing direct cellular damage, while cytokines like IL-1 promote demyelination of neuronal axons. Finally, microglia can injure neurons through NMDA receptor-mediated processes by secreting glutamate, aspartate and quinolinic acid. Cytotoxic secretion is aimed at destroying infected neurons, virus, and bacteria, but can also cause large amounts of collateral neural damage. As a result, chronic inflammatory response can result in large scale neural damage as the microglia ravage the brain in an attempt to destroy the invading infection.[8]

title: Role of microglia in disease

text: Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is the major component of the outer membrane of a gram-negative bacterial cell wall. LPS has been shown to activate microglia in vitro and stimulates microglia to produce cytokines, chemokines, and prostaglandins. "Although LPS has been used as a classic activating agent, a recent study of rat microglia demonstrated that prolonged LPS exposure induces a distinctly different activated state from that in microglia acutely exposed to LPS."

title: Microglia

text: This state is actually part of a graded response as microglia move from their ramified form to their fully active phagocytic form. Microglia can be activated by a variety of factors including: pro-inflammatory cytokines, cell necrosis factors, lipopolysaccharide, and changes in extracellular potassium (indicative of ruptured cells). Once activated the cells undergo several key morphological changes including the thickening and retraction of branches, uptake of MHC class I/II proteins, expression of immunomolecules, secretion of cytotoxic factors, secretion of recruitment molecules, and secretion of pro-inflammatory signaling molecules (resulting in a pro-inflammation signal cascade). Activated non-phagocytic microglia generally appear as "bushy," "rods," or small ameboids depending on how far along the ramified to full phagocytic transformation continuum they are. In addition, the microglia also undergo rapid proliferation in order to increase their numbers. From a strictly morphological perspective, the variation in microglial form along the continuum is associated with changing morphological complexity and can be quantitated using the methods of fractal analysis, which have proven sensitive to even subtle, visually undetectable changes associated with different morphologies in different pathological states.[8][16][17][21]

title: Allograft inflammatory factor 1

text: AIF1 is a protein that exists in the cytoplasm, and it is highly evolutionarily conserved. It is also possibly identical to three other proteins, Iba-2, MRF-1 (microglia response factor) and daintain. However complete functional profiles of all three proteins and how they overlap is unknown. IBA1 is a 17-kDa EF hand protein that is specifically expressed in macrophages / microglia and is upregulated during the activation of these cells. Iba1 expression is up-regulated in microglia following nerve injury, central nervous system ischemia, and several other brain diseases.

title: Microglia

text: Although historically frequently used, the term "activated" microglia should be replaced by "reactive" microglia.[19] Indeed, apparently quiescent microglia are not devoid of active functions and the "activation" term is misleading as it tends to indicate an "all or nothing" polarization of cell reactivity. The marker Iba1, which is upregulated in reactive microglia, is often used to visualize these cells.[20]

title: Microglia

text: A large part of microglial cell's role in the brain is maintaining homeostasis in non-infected regions and promoting inflammation in infected or damaged tissue. Microglia accomplish this through an extremely complicated series of extracellular signaling molecules which allow them to communicate with other microglia, astrocytes, nerves, T-cells, and myeloid progenitor cells. As mentioned above the cytokine IFN-γ can be used to activate microglial cells. In addition, after becoming activated with IFN-γ, microglia also release more IFN-γ into the extracellular space. This activates more microglia and starts a cytokine induced activation cascade rapidly activating all nearby microglia. Microglia-produced TNF-α causes neural tissue to undergo apoptosis and increases inflammation. IL-8 promotes B-cell growth and differentiation, allowing it to assist microglia in fighting infection. Another cytokine, IL-1, inhibits the cytokines IL-10 and TGF-β, which downregulate antigen presentation and pro-inflammatory signaling. Additional dendritic cells and T-cells are recruited to the site of injury through the microglial production of the chemotactic molecules like MDC, IL-8, and MIP-3β. Finally, PGE2 and other prostanoids prevent chronic inflammation by inhibiting microglial pro-inflammatory response and downregulating Th1 (T-helper cell) response.[16]

title: Role of microglia in disease

text: The chemokine receptor, CX3CR1, is expressed by microglia in the central nervous system. Fractalkine (CX3CL1) is the exclusive ligand for CX3CR1 and is made as a transmembrane glycoprotein from which a chemokine can be released. Cardona, et al. stated in 2006 that "using three different in vivo models, we show that CX3CR1 deficiency dysregulates microglial responses, resulting in neurotoxicity." Further studies into how CX3CR1 regulates microglial neurotoxicity could lead to new therapeutic strategies for neuroprotection.

title: Microglia

text: Microglia are a collective type of neuroglia (glial cell) located throughout the brain and spinal cord.[1], as of 2018 found to have 9 distinct subtypes with different functions, appearance, and presence[2][3]. Microglia account for 10–15% of all cells found within the brain.[4] As the resident macrophage cells, they act as the first and main form of active immune defense in the central nervous system (CNS).[5] Microglia (and other neuroglia including astrocytes) are distributed in large non-overlapping regions throughout the CNS.[6][7] Microglia are key cells in overall brain maintenance—they are constantly scavenging the CNS for plaques, damaged or unnecessary neurons and synapses, and infectious agents.[8] Since these processes must be efficient to prevent potentially fatal damage, microglia are extremely sensitive to even small pathological changes in the CNS.[9] This sensitivity is achieved in part by the presence of unique potassium channels that respond to even small changes in extracellular potassium.[8]

title: Radiation-induced cognitive decline

text: Radiation therapy usually results in chronic inflammation, and in the brain this inflammatory response comes in the form of activated microglia cells. Once activated, these microglia cells start to release stress hormones and various pro-inflammatory cytokines. Some of what is released by the activated microglia cells, like the glucocorticoid stress hormone, may result in a decrease in neurogenesis. To investigate this concept, an animal study was performed by Monje et al. in order to determine the specific cytokines or stress hormones that were released by activated microglial cells that decrease neurogenesis in an irradiated hippocampus. In this study, microglia cells were exposed to bacterial lipopolysaccharide to elicit an inflammatory response, thus activating the microglia cells. These activated microglia were then co-cultured with normal hippocampal neural stem cells. Also, as a control, non-activated microglia cells were co-cultured with normal hippocampal neural stem cells. In comparing the two co-cultures, it was determined that neurogenesis in the activated microglia cell culture was 50% less than in the control. A second study was also performed to ensure that the decrease in neurogenesis was the result of released cytokines and not cell-to-cell contact of microglia and stem cells. In this study, neural stem cells were cultured on preconditioned media from activated microglia cells and a comparison was made with a neural stem cells cultured on plain media. The results of this study indicated that neurogenesis also showed a similar decrease in the preconditioned media culture versus the control.

title: Role of microglia in disease

text: When microglia are activated they take on an amoeboid shape and they alter their gene expression. Altered gene expression leads to the production of numerous potentially neurotoxic mediators. These mediators are important in the normal functions of microglia and their production is usually decreased once their task is complete. In chronic neuroinflammation, microglia remain activated for an extended period during which the production of mediators is sustained longer than usual. This increase in mediators contributes to neuronal death.

title: Immunoglobulin therapy

text: A recent report stated that immunoglobulin application to activated T cells leads to their decreased ability to engage microglia. As a result of immunoglobulin treatment of T cells, the findings showed reduced levels of tumor necrosis factor-alpha and interleukin-10 in T cell-microglia co-culture. The results add to the understanding of how immunoglobulin may affect inflammation of the central nervous system in autoimmune inflammatory diseases.

title: Role of microglia in disease

text: Microglia synthesize amyloid precursor protein (APP) in response to excitotoxic injury. Plaques result from abnormal proteolytic cleavage of membrane bound APP. Amyloid plaques can stimulate microglia to produce neurotoxic compounds such as cytokines, excitotoxin, nitric oxide and lipophylic amines, which all cause neural damage. Plaques in Alzheimer's disease contain activated microglia. A study has shown that direct injection of amyloid into brain tissue activates microglia, which reduces the number of neurons. Microglia have also been suggested as a possible source of secreted β amyloid.

title: Role of microglia in disease

text: One preliminary model as to how this would occur involves a positive feedback loop. When activated, microglia will secrete proteases, cytokines, and reactive oxygen species. The cytokines may induce neighboring cells to synthesize amyloid precursor protein. The proteases then possibly could cause the cleaving required to turn precursor molecules into the beta amyloid that characterizes the disease. Then, the oxygen species encourage the aggregation of beta amyloid in order to form plaques. The growing size of these plaques then in turn triggers the action of even more microglia, which then secrete more cytokines, proteases, and oxygen species, thus amplifying the neurodegeneration.

title: Microglia

text: Unlike the other types of microglia mentioned above, "perivascular" microglia refers to the location of the cell rather than its form/function. Perivascular microglia are mainly found encased within the walls of the basal lamina. They perform normal microglial functions, but unlike normal microglia they are replaced by bone marrow derived precursor cells on a regular basis and express MHC class II antigens regardless of the outside environment. Perivascular microglia also react strongly to macrophage differentiation antigens.[8] These microglia have been shown to be essential to repair of vascular walls, as shown by Ritter's experiments and observations on ischemic retinopathy. Perivascular microglia promote endothelial cell proliferation allowing new vessels to be formed and damaged vessels to be repaired. During repair and development, myeloid recruitment and differentiation into microglial cells is highly accelerated to accomplish these tasks.[24]

title: Microglia

text: Like perivascular microglia, juxtavascular microglia can be distinguished mainly by their location. Juxtavascular microglia are found making direct contact with the basal lamina wall of blood vessels but are not found within the walls. Like perivascular cells, they express MHC class II proteins even at low levels of inflammatory cytokine activity. Unlike perivascular cells, but similar to resident microglia, juxtavascular microglia do not exhibit rapid turnover or replacement with myeloid precursor cells on a regular basis.[8]

title: Microglia

text: Unlike activated or ameboid microglia, ramified microglia do not phagocytose cells and secrete fewer immunomolecules (including the MHC class I/II proteins). Microglia in this state are able to search for and identify immune threats while maintaining homeostasis in the CNS.[16][17][18] Although this is considered the resting state, microglia in this form are still extremely active in chemically surveying the environment. Ramified microglia can be transformed into the activated form at any time in response to injury or threat.[10]

title: Beth Stevens

text: In 2012, Stevens’s team published evidence that microglia 'eat' synapses, especially those that are weak and unused. The findings pinned down a new role for microglia in wiring the brain, indicating that adult neural circuitry is determined not only by nerve cells but also by the brain’s immune cells; this helped to explain how the brain, which starts out with a surplus of neurons, trims some of the excess away. Neuron named the paper its most influential publication of 2012.

title: Microglia

text: Microglia undergo a burst of mitotic activity during injury; this proliferation is followed by apoptosis to reduce the cell numbers back to baseline.[28] Activation of microglia places a load on the anabolic and catabolic machinery of the cells causing activated microglia to die sooner than non-activated cells.[28] To compensate for microglial loss over time, microglia undergo mitosis and bone marrow derived progenitor cells migrate into the brain via the meninges and vasculature.[28]

title: Pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease

text: The fourth proposed major mechanism of neuronal death in Parkinson's Disease, neuroinflammation, is generally understood for neurodegenerative diseases, however, specific mechanisms are not completely characterized for PD. One major cell type involved in neuroinflammation is the microglia. Microglia are recognized as the innate immune cells of the central nervous system. Microglia actively survey their environment and change their cell morphology significantly in response to neural injury. Acute inflammation in the brain is typically characterized by rapid activation of microglia. During this period, there is no peripheral immune response. Over time, however, chronic inflammation causes the degradation of tissue and of the blood–brain barrier. During this time, microglia generate reactive oxygen species and release signals to recruit peripheral immune cells for an inflammatory response.

title: Microglia

text: This shape allows the microglial free movement throughout the neural tissue, which allows it to fulfill its role as a scavenger cell. Amoeboid microglia are able to phagocytose debris, but do not fulfill the same antigen-presenting and inflammatory roles as activated microglia. Amoeboid microglia are especially prevalent during the development and rewiring of the brain, when there are large amounts of extracellular debris and apoptotic cells to remove. This form of microglial cell is found mainly within the perinatal white matter areas in the corpus callosum known as the "Fountains of Microglia."[8][17][22]

title: Georg Kreutzberg

text: Georg Kreutzberg researched as experimental neuropathologist on the cellular mechanisms of brain and nerve disorders, especially on regeneration and repair mechanisms in the brain as well as the role of glia cells in brain diseases. He was regarded as a leader in the investigation of microglia cells - the crucial defense cells of brain tissue. He discovered the blocking effect of colchicine on axonal and dendritic transport in nerve cells. Using the experimental model provided by the facial motor nucleus following axotomy Kreutzberg and his fellow workers discovered essential parameters of the regeneration program of nerve cells. Here, he developed also the activation concept of microglia cells, which revealed new directions for the understanding of many brain diseases.

title: Role of microglia in disease

text: "Streptococcus pneumoniae" is the most common cause of bacterial meningitis. It is primarily localized to the subarachnoid space while cytokines and chemokines are produced inside the blood–brain barrier. Microglia interact with streptococcus via their TLR2 receptor; this interaction then activates microglia to produce nitric oxide which is neurotoxic. The inflammatory response, triggered by microglia, may cause intracerebral edema.

title: Effector cell

text: Microglia are located throughout the brain and spinal cord. They are the first line of immune defense in the CNS. Microglia are of utmost importance in brain maintenance. They constantly search around the CNS for any type of plaques, damaged neurons, and infections. Microglia are extremely sensitive forms of effector cells, because they must be alert enough to address possible life-threatening damage. This sensitivity is caused by unique forms of potassium channels. Microglia must always be capable of recognizing any foreign bodies, engulf them, and activate T-cells. Microglia can be found under a variety of different shapes and sizes, based on the location where they are found. The vast amount of shapes are required for the microglia to carry out their primary function. Microglia are distinguishable from macrophages because of their ability to transform, which allows them to protect the CNS under relatively short amounts of time. Microglia take on a unique phenotype when they detect local chemical signals. Microglia have a variety of different functions required to maintain homeostasis in the host body.

title: Microglia

text: Activated phagocytic microglia are the maximally immune responsive form of microglia. These cells generally take on a large, ameboid shape, although some variance has been observed. In addition to having the antigen presenting, cytotoxic and inflammatory mediating signaling of activated non-phagocytic microglia, they are also able to phagocytose foreign materials and display the resulting immunomolecules for T-cell activation. Phagocytic microglia travel to the site of the injury, engulf the offending material, and secrete pro-inflammatory factors to promote more cells to proliferate and do the same. Activated phagocytic microglia also interact with astrocytes and neural cells to fight off the infection as quickly as possible with minimal damage to the healthy brain cells.[8][16]

title: Gliotransmitter

text: Gliotransmission can also occur between two types of glial cells: astrocytes and microglia. Calcium waves within the intracellular matrix of the astrocyte can cause a response in microglia with the presence of ATP in the extracellular matrix. One study demonstrated that a mechanical stimulation caused astrocytes to release ATP, which in turn caused a delayed calcium response in microglia, suggesting that astrocyte-to-microglia communication could be mediated by ATP.

title: Microglia

text: Another difference between microglia and other cells that differentiate from myeloid progenitor cells is the turnover rate. Macrophages and dendritic cells are constantly being used up and replaced by myeloid progenitor cells which differentiate into the needed type. Due to the blood–brain barrier, it would be fairly difficult for the body to constantly replace microglia. Therefore, instead of constantly being replaced with myeloid progenitor cells, the microglia maintain their status quo while in their quiescent state, and then, when they are activated, they rapidly proliferate in order to keep their numbers up. Bone chimera studies have shown, however, that in cases of extreme infection the blood–brain barrier will weaken, and microglia will be replaced with haematogenous, marrow-derived cells, namely myeloid progenitor cells and macrophages. Once the infection has decreased the disconnect between peripheral and central systems is reestablished and only microglia are present for the recovery and regrowth period.[27]

title: Microglia

text: Research has discovered dystrophic (defective development) human microglia. "These cells are characterized by abnormalities in their cytoplasmic structure, such as deramified, atrophic, fragmented or unusually tortuous processes, frequently bearing spheroidal or bulbous swellings."[28] The incidence of dystrophic microglia increases with aging.[28] Microglial degeneration and death have been reported in research on Prion disease, Schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease, indicating that microglial deterioration might be involved in neurodegenerative diseases.[28] A complication of this theory is the fact that it is difficult to distinguish between "activated" and "dystrophic" microglia in the human brain.[28]

title: Role of microglia in disease

text: Many activated microglia are found to be associated with amyloid deposits in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Microglia interact with β-amyloid plaques through cell surface receptors that are linked to tyrosine kinase based signaling cascades that induce inflammation. When microglia interact with the deposited fibrillar forms of β-amyloid it leads to the conversion of the microglia into an activated cell and results in the synthesis and secretion of cytokines and other proteins that are neurotoxic.


query: What's the meaning of NBC?

title: NBC

text: The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial terrestrial television network that is a flagship property of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. The network is headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, with additional major offices near Los Angeles (at 10 Universal City Plaza), Chicago (at the NBC Tower) and Philadelphia (at the Comcast Technology Center). The network is one of the Big Three television networks. NBC is sometimes referred to as the "Peacock Network", in reference to its stylized peacock logo, introduced in 1956 to promote the company's innovations in early color broadcasting. It became the network's official emblem in 1979.

title: NBC chimes

text: It is sometimes incorrectly stated that this was the first grant of a U.S. service mark. Actually, numerous earlier service marks had been approved, but previously they had been logos or descriptive names for the service being provided. What made the NBC chimes grant unique was that this was the first time that a service — in this case NBC's radio broadcasts — was granted protection for the use of a service mark that was a "purely audible" trademark, or what became to be known as a "sound mark".

title: What Can't Wait

text: Juan Castillo of "NBC News" wrote that this book and another one of Pérez's novels, "The Knife and the Butterfly", explore what it means to grow up as a Hispanic or Latino teenager in the United States "amid difficult circumstances."

title: Sylvester Weaver (executive)

text: "NBC Monitor" long outlived Weaver's tenure running the network. His successors (first, David Sarnoff's son, Robert; then, Robert Kintner) standardized the network's programming practices. In November 1960, years after leaving NBC, Weaver displayed his frustration with the network in an article in the Sunday edition of "The Denver Post". What once was the Golden Age of Television in the early 1950s slowly diminished by the end of the decade into the early 1960s, when he claimed networks made a series of bad decisions. In the article he noted management problems within NBC, CBS, and ABC: "Television has gone from about a dozen forms to just two - news shows and the Hollywood stories. The blame lies in the management of NBC, CBS and ABC. Management doesn't give the people what they deserve. I don't see any hope in the system as it is."

title: Welcome to Sweden (2014 TV series)

text: On July 28, 2015, four episodes into season two, NBC cancelled the series due to what Poehler described as "craptastically" low ratings, with NBC further stating that production was "officially done". The remaining six episodes of season two were made available via online streaming at NBC's website.

title: The War for Late Night

text: NBC executives tried to solve the problem so that both Leno and O'Brien would keep their jobs. Jeff Gaspin, the chairman of NBC Universal Television, instructed both parties that he did not wish to make a difficult decision but that the most appropriate solution was to move Leno back to his previous timeslot and push O'Brien to 12:05. Carter details a heated exchange between NBC executive Jeff Zucker and O'Brien's agent Rick Rosen during which Zucker told O'Brien's representatives he could enforce O'Brien's contract and "ice him for two years", after details of the conflict were leaked to the media. The author cites O'Brien's disappointment with the perceived unfairness of the situation, and quotes O'Brien's comments at a meeting with NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios chairman Marc Graboff and Jeff Gaspin, "I know how hard I worked for this. It was promised to me. I had a shitty lead-in." Carter recounts how affiliates of NBC complained to the network about the poor ratings performance of Leno's program "The Jay Leno Show". O'Brien asked the two NBC executives, "What does Jay have on you? What does this guy have on you people? What the hell is it about Jay?"

title: Meshach Taylor

text: Other appearances include: "The Unit" (CBS), "Jessie" (Disney Channel), "Hannah Montana" (Disney Channel) as a fashion designer, "All of Us" as Neesee's father, "The Drew Carey Show" (ABC), "Static Shock" (Kids WB!), "Caroline in the City" (NBC), "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" (Nickelodeon), "Women of the House" (CBS), "In the Heat of the Night" (NBC), "Punky Brewster" (NBC), "What’s Happening Now!", "Hill Street Blues" (NBC), "ALF" (NBC), "Melba" (CBS), "The Golden Girls" (NBC), "Cagney & Lacey" (CBS), "Barney Miller" (ABC), "Lou Grant" (CBS), "The White Shadow" (CBS), "The Incredible Hulk" (CBS), and "Barnaby Jones" (CBS).

title: The NBC Monday Movie

text: The NBC Monday Movie was a television anthology series of films that debuted on February 4, 1963 (in the middle of the 1962-63 season), and ran off on NBC. It was referred to as NBC Monday Night at the Movies prior to the mid-1980s. The show moved to Wednesday nights in 1964 as NBC Wednesday Night at the Movies, and in 1965, the program moved to Tuesdays, under the title The NBC Tuesday Night Movie. The name would henceforth change depending on what night of the week the program was telecast. By 1968, there was once again a weekly NBC Monday Night Movie on the air.

title: Kent Bach

text: In his paper, "Content Ex Machina" Bach argues against over-interpreting what he labels the "contextualist platitude" which he defines as: “Generally what a speaker means in uttering a sentence, even if the sentence is devoid of ambiguity, vagueness, or indexicality, goes beyond what the sentence means.” Bach asserts that context does not establish meaning but is merely one of several conversational principles. He states that “context does not determine (in the sense of constitute), but merely enables the hearer to determine (in the sense of ascertain) what the speaker means.” Context provides constraints on what a speaker can reasonably mean and on what a hearer can reasonably interpret a speaker to mean. “contextualist platitude” does not preclude the “older picture of language and communication” and “a fairly standard semantic-pragmatic distinction.” Pragmatic considerations and context do not contribute to the content of what is said. Bach admits that there is meaning in utterances beyond the semantic content of a sentence, but he maintains that context does not determine speaker meaning but rather constrains how a speaker can expect to be understood and helps the hearer understand what is said. “We need the level of locutionary act and, correlatively, a strict, semantic notion of what is said in order to account for (the content of) what a speaker does in uttering a sentence independently of whatever communicative intention (if any) he has in uttering it and regardless of how the content of that intention may depart from the semantic content of the sentence.”

title: Boxing on NBC

text: On May 20, 1985, NBC broadcast in prime time the IBF Heavyweight Championship of the World bout between Larry Holmes and Carl Williams. In what would become NBC's final prime time boxing broadcast for 30 years, Dick Enberg hosted while Marv Albert provided blow-by-blow coverage with analyst Ferdie Pacheco.

title: Russian NBC Protection Troops

text: The NBCP Troops are developing as dual-purpose forces, able to solve tasks both in war and peace times, in the aftermath of accidents and disasters in industrial facilities hazardous radiatively, chemically and biologically. Further build-up of their capacity is realized by creating a modern system to identify and assess the extent and effects of weapons of mass destruction, integrated with automated control systems of troops and weapons and stable functioning in the NBC threat environment and strong electronic countermeasures. In addition, there is a process to equip formations, units and subdivisions of NBCP with new, highly effective means of NBC reconnaissance, individual and collective defence, technical means of reducing the visibility and masking, flame-throwing incendiary weapons, as well as to introduce improved materials, formulations, methods and technical means of decontamination.

title: V (1984 TV series)

text:
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote: "...a TV series with so much promise – based on two successful, highly rated science fiction miniseries on NBC in the early 1980s – produced such a silly, loathsome mess...NBC tried to make a weekly series out of [the mini-series that unraveled] the show so terribly it must surely rank as one of the worst TV sci-fi experiments ever. The cast becomes dangerously unstable. Ironside quits in the middle of the show's run with no apparent reason. Others are killed without meaning. The special effects are cheapened and the use of stock footage – previously filmed scenes used again and again – is maddening. (At one point, they actually used stock footage from the previous week's episode.)...
What was once a pretty decent science fiction saga with good drama, humor and suspense ends up becoming "Dynasty" with lizard makeup and laser guns. There's even an episode in which Diana marries her alien boss named (what else?) Charles."

title: NHL on NBC

text: For the season, NBC added an online, broadband-only pregame show to its NHL coverage (similar to what it does with its Notre Dame football coverage). Titled "NHL on NBC Countdown to Faceoff", the show airs for a half-hour before every "NHL on NBC" telecast on NBCSports.com and features a breakdown of upcoming action, as well as reports from the game sites and a feature on an NHL player.

title: Olympics on television

text: NBC Universal paid the IOC $793 million for U.S. broadcast rights, the most paid by any country. NBC made it possible for the network to broadcast over 1200 hours of coverage during the games, triple what was broadcast in the U.S. four years earlier. Between all the NBC Universal networks (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, USA Network & Telemundo) the games were on television 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

title: Mad Money

text: In March 2012, the program became a part of what was formerly branded as "NBC All Night" in the nominal 3:07 a.m. ET/2:07 a.m. timeslot on weeknights, replacing week-delayed repeats of NBC's late night talk shows. In that form, only the video for the program was presented on a screen with gray branded windowboxing and pillarboxing, with all enhanced business information, including the CNBC Ticker, removed. The continuing movement of morning local newscasts, and with it "Early Today" further into what is known as the graveyard slot eventually began to interfere with the airing of "Mad Money" in this late slot, especially if they aired at 4 a.m., and in the Eastern and Pacific time zones (meaning seven minutes would have to be cut-off "Mad Money" to fit in "Early Today" and a local newscast starting at 4:30 a.m.). On July 31, 2017, "Early Today" began to first record at 3:00 a.m. ET, and without any room on the schedule, the NBC version of "Mad Money" was discontinued on this date.

title: Al DeRogatis

text: Upon his death in 1995, DeRogatis was eulogized in the "Boston Globe" as a prototype for what it means to be a gentleman, in the sense of displaying a gracious, polite, kind and generous nature. The "Globe" also published a picture of DeRogatis in the NBC booth together with Curt Gowdy and Don Meredith in the "2006: The year in photos" series, after Curt Gowdy's death in 2006.

title: NBC College Football Game of the Week

text: By 1953, the NCAA allowed NBC to add what it called "panorama" coverage of multiple regional broadcasts for certain weeks – shifting national viewers to the most interesting game during its telecast. After NBC lost its college football contract following the 1953 season, they carried Canadian football in 1954. NBC regained college football rights in 1955 and aired games through the 1957 season.

title: Toyota Vitz

text: What became the XP10 series was shown earlier in concept form at the 1997 Frankfurt Motor Show. This concept, titled "Funtime" was developed under the leadership of Shuhei Toyoda, who also commissioned two additional models based on the same platform: the "Funcoupe" and the "Funcargo", the predecessor to the forthcoming production model Fun Cargo. Styled in Brussels by Toyota's "European Office of Creation" (EPOC), the "Fun project" as it was known, was envisaged to underline the versatility of shared platform engineering. These concept vehicles morphed into the "New Basic Car" (NBC) program, with each separate NBC model designated a number, "NBC1" in the case of the Vitz three-door. The name "Vitz" is the phonetic Anglicized spelling of the German word "Witz" which means "wit" (however, its principal meaning in contemporary German is "joke"). Toyota claims the contrived name "Yaris" is "intended to convey a European impression", while "Echo" "is intended to Echo nothing."

title: The Seinfeld Chronicles

text: Most critics reacted with disappointment to the fact that NBC had not picked up the show. Bob Niedt of the "Syracuse Herald-Journal" commented "What gives? Comedy this good, and NBC is keeping — excuse me — "A Different World" on the schedule?". Ken Tucker stated "NBC is making a mistake if it doesn't pick up "The Seinfeld Chronicles" as a midseason replacement; it's bound to be superior to most of what the network has planned for the fall". Additionally casting directors Hirschfeld and Meg Liberman were nominated for a Casting Society of America Artios Award for 'Best Casting for TV, Pilot', but lost to the casting directors of "Northern Exposure".

title: Reince Priebus

text: On October 30, 2015, after the third Republican presidential debate in Boulder, Colorado, in which there were clashes between the Republican candidates and the debate moderators, the RNC announced that NBC News would no longer host the February 26, 2016, debate in Houston. Priebus showed concerns that an NBC-hosted debate could result in a "repeat" of the CNBC debate, as both are divisions of NBCUniversal, although NBC News is editorially separate from CNBC. Priebus explained that CNBC had conducted the October 28 debate in "bad faith", arguing that "while debates are meant to include tough questions and contrast candidates' visions and policies for the future of America, CNBC's moderators engaged in a series of 'gotcha' questions, petty and mean-spirited in tone, and designed to embarrass our candidates. What took place Wednesday night was not an attempt to give the American people a greater understanding of our candidates' policies and ideas."

title: Flyers Postgame Live

text: Affiliate channels NBC and NBC Sports broadcast a few Flyers games each season nationally, amongst games of other National Hockey League teams. For those games, local "Flyers Postgame Live" is not aired. Instead, NBC/NBC Sports provides their own post-game shows. However, during the playoffs, especially in later rounds, "Flyers Postgame Live" is likely to air on NBCSP regardless of what channel airs the game.

title: Comcast Network

text: On August 23, 2017, NBC Sports Regional Networks announced that the TCN branding would be dropped on October 2, 2017; TCN Philadelphia was rebranded as NBC Sports Philadelphia +, and TCN Mid-Atlantic was to be rebranded as NBC Sports Washington +. The rebranding was concurrent with the renaming of the Comcast SportsNet networks under the NBC Sports brand. It is not clear what network, if any replaced the channel in the Pittsburgh market.

title: NBC Symphony Orchestra

text: In the first several seasons the NBC Symphony broadcasts were "sustaining" programs, meaning that they were paid for and presented by NBC itself. In later years the broadcasts were commercially sponsored, primarily by General Motors. Under GM's sponsorship the NBC Symphony broadcasts went out under the title of General Motors Symphony of the Air, not to be confused with the later orchestra of the same name. Other sponsors included the House of Squibb, the Reynolds Metals Company, and the Socony Vacuum Oil Company (Mobil).

title: The Who, What, or Where Game

text: The Who, What, or Where Game was an American television game show that was broadcast weekdays on NBC from December 29, 1969 to January 4, 1974. The host was Art James, and the announcer was Mike Darrow; Ron Greenberg packaged the show, which was recorded in NBC studios 6A and 8H in Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.

title: John Witherspoon (actor)

text: In 1981, he appeared in "Hill Street Blues", an NBC police drama, as a businessman who tries to buy a hotdog from an undercover Detective Belker. In 1981, he had an appearance on "L.A. Law", an NBC legal drama, in the episode "On Your Honor" as Mark Steadman. He appeared in other television series including "You Again?" as Osborne, "227", which was an NBC comedy about women who lived in a majority black apartment complex, and "What's Happening Now!!", the sequel to "What's Happening!!".

title: Viewing Party

text: "Viewing Party" aired on NBC on November 11, 2010. In its original American broadcast, it was viewed by an estimated 7.15 million viewers and received a 3.6 rating/10 percent share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49. This means that 3.6 percent of all 18- to 49-year-old households watched the episode, and ten percent of that demographic had their televisions tuned to the channel at any point. The night that this episode aired, the NBC affiliate in Baltimore carried the Ravens vs. Falcons NFL game, meaning that ratings for the regular Thursday NBC programming were lower than usual.

title: Homicide: Life on the Street (season 3)

text: We had some conflicts on the show. I was also not in the best of shape: I was feeling very passionately about the show, and I was very annoyed about NBC's—what NBC was doing with it. I was very passionate about it. I stepped on the wrong toes. And I made a major mistake. I did not know at the time that Tom Fontana—when Tom Fontana tells you, "You have to be dropped now, but I'll bring you back"—I didn't believe that because I'd been screwed by so many producers over the years. He is a serious man when he says that. I didn't know that. I didn't trust him. So after he said, "NBC wants to get the girl on the show, and they have to replace somebody, and we're gonna choose you, but I'll bring you back in the fall," I instead, very stupidly, went to the newspapers. And I said, rather openly, I said some very vicious comments, both about the way it was being handled by NBC and the way Fontana and Levinson were handling listening to NBC. I was totally wrong because, in fact, the changes they made meant that NBC put it on a better night, and it became a success. But aside from that, I was wrong to jump at Fontana and all that, and not believe in Fontana and Levinson, because they're great people and would've been faithful to me, but I just didn't trust it because I'd been screwed too many times before. I actually said in one newspaper, "The producers of the show are like the people on the Titanic," and the writer said, "You mean they're the captain of the ship?" and I said "No, no. They're on the iceberg saying, 'This way. Come this way.'" That's in print and that was wrong.

title: 2016 Republican Party presidential debates and forums

text: On October 30, 2015, the RNC announced that NBC News would no longer host the February 26, 2016, debate in Houston. RNC chairman Reince Priebus showed concerns that an NBC-hosted debate could result in a "repeat" of the CNBC debate, as both are divisions of NBCUniversal, although NBC News is editorially separate from CNBC. Priebus explained that CNBC had conducted the October 28 debate in "bad faith", arguing that "while debates are meant to include tough questions and contrast candidates' visions and policies for the future of America, CNBC's moderators engaged in a series of 'gotcha' questions, petty and mean-spirited in tone, and designed to embarrass our candidates. What took place Wednesday night was not an attempt to give the American people a greater understanding of our candidates' policies and ideas."

title: The Knife and the Butterfly

text: Juan Castillo of "NBC News" wrote that this book and another one of Pérez's novels, "What Can't Wait", explore what it means to grow up as a Hispanic or Latino teenager in the United States "amid difficult circumstances."

title: RKO General

text: In 1959, RKO and NBC reached an agreement on what would have been the highest-priced license transfer in broadcasting history to that time. The deal would have seen RKO acquire NBC's WRC-AM-FM-TV in Washington, swap WNAC-AM-TV and WRKO-FM (the former WNAC-FM) in Boston to NBC for that company's WRCV-AM-TV in Philadelphia, and sell the WGMS stations in Washington to Crowell-Collier Broadcasting (as Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations at that time would not permit ownership of both the WRC stations and the WGMS stations). The deal was an attempt to resolve a controversy surrounding a 1956 swap of NBC and Westinghouse Broadcasting stations in Philadelphia and Cleveland. In 1965, the FCC declared the 1956 trade null and void, effectively reversing the swap, and denied the proposed license transfers on what would prove to be the ironic ground that NBC would enter the Boston market as the product of its dishonesty in the Philadelphia/Cleveland transaction. Coincidentally, RKO's former Boston TV station became an NBC affiliate in 1995 after its longtime affiliate, Westinghouse-owned WBZ-TV, switched to CBS in a precursor to that network's merger with Westinghouse, which includes the aforementioned Philadelphia stations.

title: Aaron Sorkin

text: In 2002, Sorkin criticized NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw's TV special about a day in the life of a president, "The Bush White House: Inside the Real West Wing", comparing it to the act of sending a valentine to President George W. Bush instead of real news reporting. Sorkin's TV series "The West Wing" aired on the same network, and so at the request of NBC's Entertainment President Jeff Zucker he apologized, but would later say "there should be a difference between what NBC News does and what "The West Wing" TV series does."


query: Who is Taiwan's president?

title: Tsai Ing-wen

text: Tsai Ing-wen (born 31 August 1956) is a Chinese stateswoman, legal scholar and attorney currently serving as the President of the Republic of China, commonly known as Taiwan, since May 20, 2016. The first woman to be elected to the office, Tsai is the seventh president of the Republic of China under the 1947 Constitution and the second president from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP); part of Taiwan's Pan-Green Coalition. She is also the first president to be of both Hakka and aboriginal descent (a quarter Paiwan from her grandmother),[1] the first unmarried president, the first to have never held an elected executive post before presidency and the first to be popularly elected without having previously served as the Mayor of Taipei (Former presidents Lee Teng-hui, Chen Shui-bian and Ma Ying-jeou all served as the Mayor of Taipei). She was the Democratic Progressive Party candidate in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. Tsai previously served as party chair from 2008 to 2012, and from 2014 to 2018.

title: Lee Teng-hui

text: As a skilled technocrat, Lee soon caught the eye of President Chiang Ching-kuo as a strong candidate to serve as Vice President. Chiang sought to move more authority to the "bensheng ren" (residents on Taiwan before 1949 and their descendants) instead of continuing to promote "waisheng ren" (mainland Chinese immigrants who arrived in Taiwan after 1949 and their descendants) as his father had. President Chiang nominated Lee to become his Vice President. Lee was formally elected by the National Assembly in 1984.

title: Foreign relations of Taiwan

text: After pro-Taiwan Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare was ousted in a vote of no confidence in December 2007, and replaced by Derek Sikua, ROC President Chen telephoned Prime Minister Sikua, offering his congratulations and Taiwan's continued aid, and requested the Sikua government's continued diplomatic support. Chen also invited Sikua to visit Taiwan, which he did in March 2008. Sikua was welcomed with military honours by Chen, who stated: "Taiwan is the Solomon Islands' most loyal ally. [...] Taiwan will never forsake the people or government of the Solomon Islands." Solomon Islands has continued to recognize the ROC under Sikua's leadership.

title: Political status of Taiwan

text:
At the start of 1950, U.S. President Harry S. Truman appeared to accept the idea that sovereignty over Taiwan was already settled when the United States Department of State stated that "In keeping with these [Cairo and Potsdam] declarations, Formosa was surrendered to Generalissimo Chiang-Kai Shek, and for the past 4 years, the United States and Other Allied Powers have accepted the exercise of Chinese authority over the Island."
However, after the outbreak of the Korean War, Truman decided to "neutralize" Taiwan claiming that it could otherwise trigger another world war. In June 1950, President Truman, who had previously given only passive support to Chiang Kai-shek and was prepared to see Taiwan fall into the hands of the Chinese Communists, vowed to stop the spread of communism and sent the U.S. Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent the PRC from attacking Taiwan, but also to prevent the ROC from attacking mainland China. He then declared that "the determination of the future status of Formosa must await the restoration of security in the Pacific, a peace settlement with Japan, or consideration by the United Nations." President Truman later reaffirmed the position "that all questions affecting Formosa be settled by peaceful means as envisaged in the Charter of the United Nations" in his special message to the Congress in July 1950. The PRC denounced his moves as flagrant interference in the internal affairs of China.

title: Proposed National Unification Promotion Law

text: Since 1949, the PRC government has demanded that Taiwan unify under the PRC, and has reserved the right to use military force to compel Taiwan to do so if necessary. However, opinion polls conducted in Taiwan have indicated that there is very little support for unification on the PRC's terms, even among those who favor eventual unification, making peaceful unification unlikely for the foreseeable future. With the reelection of Chen Shui-bian to the ROC Presidency, and the growth of Taiwan independence sentiment, a new Taiwanese identity appears to be emerging on the island as opposed to identification with China. In 2008, the KMT regained both the presidency and the legislature with a pair of election victories over the DPP.

title: 1978 Taiwan presidential election

text: The 6th President and Vice President election of the Republic of China was held in Taiwan on March 21, 1978 at the Chung-Shan Building in Taipei. President of the Executive Yuan Chiang Ching-kuo, son of former President Chiang Kai-shek, was elected by the National Assembly of the Republic of China with Governor of Taiwan Province Hsieh Tung-min who became the first Taiwan-born Vice-President.

title: Taipei Zoo

text: In 2008, the zoo received two pandas from the People's Republic of China (PRC), named Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan (meaning "reunion"), as a gesture of unity. The gift of the endangered pandas had been rejected by President Chen Shui-bian in 2005 who viewed it as a propaganda tool against Taiwan's independence, but the next president, Ma Ying-jeou, of the Kuomintang, had forged stronger economic and diplomatic relations with the PRC under his presidency, and was willing to accept them. The offering of pandas as a gift from the PRC is often known as "panda diplomacy", and the zoo expected to draw around 30,000 visitors a day as a result of their arrival. The move was criticized by supporters of Taiwan's independence and the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, who said that "Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan means a union, which perfectly matches Beijing's goal of bringing Taiwan into its fold."

title: Freedom of religion in Taiwan

text: On 23 January 2007, President Chen personally congratulated local Muslims who had completed a pilgrimage to Mecca, and praised Taiwan's Muslim Association (Chinese Muslim Association, an organization that is fully independent from the government) for promoting frequent exchanges between Taiwan and the Islamic world. President Chen also credited practicing Muslims on Taiwan for helping to create a richer, more diverse culture on the island.

title: Women in Asia

text:
Women in Taiwan have especially achieved prominent roles in politics. In 2000, feminist movement advocator Annette Lu elected as first female vice president while Yeh Chu-lan was promoted to be the first female vice premier in 2004. In 2016, Tsai Ing-wen was elected as president of Taiwan. Nevertheless, as in other parts of East Asia, sex selective abortion is reported to happen in Taiwan.
Women in Thailand were among the first women in Asia who were granted the right to vote in 1932. However, they are still underrepresented in Thai politics.

title: Jim Garlow

text: Garlow has been involved in work to sway public opinion on US foreign policy. Recently Garlow criticized the president of Taiwan by praising President Trump for violating established US foreign policy by calling the president of Taiwan rather than the premiere of China, by saying: "However, while the fact that a US President Elect talked with a Taiwanese leader is a good thing, it is NOT good that it was THIS leader. President Tsai Ing-wen is the 'Hillary Clinton of Taiwan' - hellbent on destroying natural, orthodox, historic, tradition (biblical) marriage. Churches - that is, authentically biblical churches - are under severe attack. Legal challenges are underway. So - while it is good that the US recognizes Taiwan, it is NOT good to give President Tsai Ing-wen any credibility. We need to pray her out!"

title: Chinese unification

text: Unification proposals were not actively floated in Taiwan and the issue remained moot under President Chen Shui-bian, who refused to accept talks under Beijing's pre-conditions. Under the PRC administration of Hu Jintao, incorporating Taiwan lost emphasis amid the reality that the DPP presidency in Taiwan would be held by pro-independence President Chen until 2008. Instead, the emphasis shifted to meetings with politicians who opposed independence.

title: Taiwan–United States relations

text:
Taiwan has denied that they are providing American military secrets to the PRC.
On December 2, 2016, U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump accepted a congratulatory call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen, which was the first time since 1979 that a President-Elect has publicly spoken to a leader of Taiwan. Donald Trump stated the call was regarding "the close economic, political and security ties between Taiwan and the US". The phone call had been arranged by Robert Dole, who acted as a foreign agent on behalf of Taiwan.

title: How to Start a Business in Taiwan

text: How to Start a Business in Taiwan is a 2013 book by Elias Ek, a Swedish entrepreneur and writer. The book covers the main areas of information that a foreigner living in Taiwan who wants to set up a business or invest in a Taiwanese business needs to know. Launched during the 2013 Taipei International Book Exhibition (Jan 30-Feb 4, 2013) the book was very well received by both customers and society. The very first copy was handed over to Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) who said he hoped the book would help bring more foreign investors to Taiwan.

title: Wu Rong-i

text: From 1992 to 1993, Wu served as Commissioner and Member of the Fair Trade Commission (Taiwan). He became Director and President of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research from 1993 until 2005, and from 2005 onwards he was Vice Premier of the Executive Yuan of Taiwan. From 2001 to 2005, Wu was President and Chairman of Taiwan Stock Exchange. He has also served as Chairman of Taiwan Brain Trust and Taiwan Futures Exchange, and as Advisor to the Taiwan delegation to the APEC Ministerial and Leaders' Meetings.

title: Chain of Command (2000 film)

text: After the newly inaugurated president has been planning a meeting with Fung, the President of Taiwan to discuss the strained relationship between Taiwan and the People's Republic of China, one of the Secret Service agents returns home to find that his family is being held hostage by some men who are later revealed to be Fung's henchmen. They force him to participate in a plot to steal "the football". When President Cahill and President Fung are at Taiwan aboard Fung's ship, Fung insists that he feels that peaceful co-existence with mainland China may no longer be possible and that drastic action must be taken to ensure China does not invade Taiwan. Soon afterwards, Fung's henchmen begin killing all the other agents, leaving Mike Connelly as the only loyal Secret Service agent left.

title: Political status of Taiwan

text: Many political leaders who have maintained some form of One-China Policy have committed slips of the tongue in referring to Taiwan as a country or as the Republic of China. United States presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have been known to have referred to Taiwan as a country during their terms of office. Although near the end of his term as U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell said that Taiwan is not a state, he referred to Taiwan as the Republic of China twice during a testimony to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 9 March 2001. In the People's Republic of China Premier Zhu Rongji's farewell speech to the National People's Congress, Zhu accidentally referred to Mainland China and Taiwan as two countries. There are also those from the PRC who informally refer to Taiwan as a country. South Africa delegates once referred to Taiwan as the "Republic of Taiwan" during Lee Teng-hui's term as President of the ROC. In 2002, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, referred to Taiwan as a country. Most recently, former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated in a local Chinese newspaper in California in July 2005 that Taiwan is "a sovereign nation". The People's Republic of China discovered the statement about three months after it was made.

title: Lee Teng-hui

text: Lee Teng-hui, during his presidency, supported Taiwanization. The Taiwanization movement has its roots in Japanese rule founded during the Japanese era and sought to put emphasis on vernacular Taiwanese culture in Taiwan as the center of people's lives as opposed to Nationalist China. During the Chiang era, China was promoted as the center of an ideology that would build a Chinese national outlook in a people who had once considered themselves Japanese subjects. Taiwan was often relegated to a backwater province of China in the KMT-supported history books. People were discouraged from studying local Taiwanese customs, which were to be replaced by mainstream Chinese customs. Lee sought to turn Taiwan into a center rather than an appendage. This shift was widely supported in Taiwan and found expression in Taiwanese literature movement. He further stated that he believed a Chinese identity and a Taiwanese identity were ultimately incompatible, a notion controversial in the KMT, even among those members who generally supported Taiwanization.

title: Taiwanization

text: In response, the Pan-Blue Coalition within Taiwan sought to portray President Chen Shui-bian and his Democratic Progressive Party as radicals intent on implementing revolutionary desinicization that would disenfranchise various ethnic groups within Taiwan who have an affinity for China and the Chinese culture.

title: 1984 Taiwan presidential election

text: The 7th President and Vice President election of the Republic of China was held in Taiwan on March 21, 1984 at the Chung-Shan Building in Taipei. Incumbent President Chiang Ching-kuo was re-elected by the National Assembly of the Republic of China for the second term with Governor of Taiwan Province Lee Teng-hui.

title: President of the Republic of China

text: The PRC media does not use the terms ""President of Taiwan"" nor ""President of the Republic of China"", which could be inferred as implying recognition of Taiwan as a country, or of Two Chinas. Hence, the term ""Leader of the Taiwan Area"" is used- with "Area" to show that Taiwan is not a country; while "Leader" does not equal "President". According to criteria set by the authorities in Beijing, media in mainland China generally are not allowed to use terms related to the Republic of China to describe the Taiwan authorities. But if the official title cannot be avoided in a news article, quotation marks would be used around terms for all official ROC positions and organisations, e.g. "President of the Republic of China"; "Presidential Office Building" to imply non-recognition.

title: 1990 Taiwan presidential election

text: The 8th President and Vice President election of the Republic of China was held in Taiwan on March 21, 1984 at the Chung-Shan Building in Taipei. Incumbent president Lee Teng-hui was re-elected by the National Assembly of the Republic of China with Secretary-General to the President Lee Yuan-tsu as the vice president. It was the last indirect presidential election in Taiwan.

title: Taiwan independence movement

text: Most Taiwanese and political parties of the ROC support the status quo, and recognize that this is de facto independence through sovereign self-rule. Even among those who believe Taiwan is and should remain independent, the threat of war from PRC softens their approach, and they tend to support maintaining the status quo rather than pursuing an ideological path that could result in war with the PRC. When President Lee Teng-hui put forth the two-states policy, he received 80% support. A similar situation arose when President Chen Shui-bian declared that there was "one country on each side" of the Taiwan Strait. To this day, the parties disagree, sometimes bitterly, on such things as territory, name (R.O.C. or Taiwan), future policies, and interpretations of history. The Pan-Blue Coalition and the PRC believe that Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian are intent on publicly promoting a moderate form of Taiwan independence in order to advance secretly deeper forms of Taiwan independence, and that they intend to use popular support on Taiwan for political separation to advance notions of cultural and economic separation.

title: Taiwan, China

text: In an incident on 10 May 2011, the World Health Organization (WHO), an agency of the UN, referred to Taiwan as "Taiwan, China" in its documents. (The ROC participates in the WHO under the name "Chinese Taipei", due to political pressure from the PRC.) ROC president Ma Ying-jeou protested the WHO's action and accused the PRC of "pressuring the UN body into calling" the ROC "Chinese territory", and stated that Beijing's moves were "very negative" for bilateral ties. Ma, who took office in 2008, has taken many measures to improve Cross-Strait relations.

title: 2008 Taiwan Series

text: The 2008 Taiwan Series was played by the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions, team that placed first in the all-season standing, and the Brother Elephants, wild card winner who advanced to Taiwan Series by defeating La New Bears in the Playoff Series. The Lions defeated the Elephants four games to three and won the title and went on to represent Taiwan in the 2008 Asia Series.All regular season rules apply with the following exceptions:

title: Republic of China retreat to Taiwan

text: The failure of Chiang's Project National Glory changed the course of Chinese and Taiwanese history, forever altering China-Taiwan relations. For example, the Taiwanese “shifted the focus to modernizing and defending Taiwan instead of preparing Taiwan to take back China,” stated Andrew Yang, a political scientist specializing in Taiwan-China relations at the Taipei-based Council of Advanced Policy Studies. Chiang Kai-shek's son Chiang Ching-kuo, who later succeeded him as president, focused on maintaining peace between the mainland and Taiwan. Today, political relations between Taiwan and China have changed; "I hope it will develop peacefully... There's no need for war."

title: Taiwan Relations Act

text: The Taiwan Relations Act does not guarantee the USA will intervene militarily if the PRC attacks or invades Taiwan nor does it relinquish it, it primary purpose is to ensure the US's Taiwan policy will not be changed unilaterally by the president and ensure any decision to defend Taiwan will be made with the consent of Congress. The act states that "the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capabilities". However, the decision about the nature and quantity of defense services that America will provide to Taiwan is to be determined by the President and Congress. America's policy has been called "strategic ambiguity" and it is designed to dissuade Taiwan from a unilateral declaration of independence, and to dissuade the PRC from unilaterally unifying Taiwan with the PRC.

title: Taiwan independence movement

text: This movement also has international significance, because the PRC has stated, or implied, that it will force reunification by taking military action against Taiwan under one of these five conditions: (1) Taiwan makes a formal declaration of independence, (2) Taiwan forges a military alliance with any foreign power, (3) internal turmoil arises in Taiwan, (4) Taiwan gains weapons of mass destruction, (5) Taiwan shows no will to negotiate on the basis of “one China.” The PRC government warned that if the situation in Taiwan were to become “worse,” it will not look on “indifferently.” Such a military action would pose the threat of a superpower conflict in East Asia, as the United States would be obligated to come to Taiwan's aid according to US domestic law, under the terms of its Taiwan Relations Act. However, such interpretation of the act is disputed, because constitutional law requires that a formal declaration of war be sought by the President of the United States in an act of Congress signed by the President.

title: One-China policy

text: One China was the formulation held by the ROC government before the 1990s, but it was asserted that the one China was the Republic of China rather than PRC. However, in 1991, President Lee Teng-hui indicated that he would not challenge the Communist authorities to rule mainland China. This is a significant point in the history of Cross-Strait relations in that a president of the ROC no longer claims administrative authority over mainland China. Henceforth, the Taiwan independence movement gained a political boost, and under Lee's administration the issue is no longer who rules mainland China, but who claims legitimacy over Taiwan and the surrounding islands. Over the course of the 1990s, President Lee appeared to drift away from the One-China formulation, leading many to believe that he was actually sympathetic to Taiwan independence. In 1999, Lee proposed a special state-to-state relations for mainland China–Taiwan relations which was received angrily by Beijing, which ended semi-official dialogue until June 2008, when ARATS and SEF met, and in which President Ma Ying-jeou reiterated the 1992 Consensus and the different interpretation on "One China".

title: China Maritime Institute

text: The China Maritime Institute (CMI; ) was founded on 11 July 1962, and it is a non-profit institute based in the Taipei City, Taiwan. CMI's main mission is to promote and to engage in academic research on maritime and aviation research and to co-fund the publication of Maritime Quarterly journal in Taiwan. The founding chairman of CMI is the late Professor Kuang Wang. The late Professor Kuang Wang was a leading academic researcher and god father on maritime domain in both China and Taiwan. CMI together with CMRI (Chinese Maritime Research Institutes) is one of the major maritime research organizations in Taiwan. The permanent president of honour for CMI is Prof. Kuan Lin who is also the founder of one of the largest logistics companies, Pacific Star Group, in Taiwan. Dr. Kuan Lin together with his wife, Ms. Ivy Wang, donated a six-storey building, the Ivy Hall, to the National Taiwan Ocean University in 2011. Current chairman of the CMI is Professor Chih-Ching Chang of the National Taiwan Ocean University. Professor C.C. Chang was also the deputy president of the National Taiwan Ocean University between May 2011 and July 2012. The 17th Board members of CMI will held their posts for three years from May 27, 2011 until May 26, 2014.

title: Taiwan

text: The political scene is generally divided into two major camps in terms of views on how Taiwan should relate to China or the PRC, referred to as cross-Strait relations. It is the main political difference between two camps: the Pan-Blue Coalition, composed of the pro-unification Kuomintang, People First Party (PFP), and New Party, who believe that the ROC is the sole legitimate government of "China" (including Taiwan) and supports eventual Chinese reunification. The opposition Pan-Green Coalition is composed of the pro-independence DPP and Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU). It regards Taiwan as an independent, sovereign state synonymous with the ROC, opposes the definition that Taiwan is part of "China", and seeks wide diplomatic recognition and an eventual declaration of formal Taiwan independence. The Pan-Green camp tends to favour emphasizing the Republic of China as being a distinct country from the People's Republic of China. Thus, in September 2007, the then ruling Democratic Progressive Party approved a resolution asserting separate identity from China and called for the enactment of a new constitution for a ""normal country"". It called also for general use of ""Taiwan"" as the country's name, without abolishing its formal name, the "Republic of China". Some members of the coalition, such as former President Chen Shui-bian, argue that it is unnecessary to proclaim independence because "Taiwan is already an independent, sovereign country" and the Republic of China is the same as Taiwan. Despite being a member of KMT prior to and during his presidency, Lee Teng-hui also held a similar view and was a supporter of the Taiwanization movement.

title: Taiwan

text: In 2016, Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) became President of Taiwan. President Tsai called upon the international community to help Taiwan to preserve its democracy despite the threatening language used against Taiwan by PRC President Xi Jinping. President Tsai called upon the PRC to democratize, respect human rights, and renounce the use of military force against Taiwan.