title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol is found in paints, tinctures, markers, and personal care products such as mouthwashes, perfumes and deodorants. However, polysaccharides precipitate from aqueous solution in the presence of alcohol, and ethanol precipitation is used for this reason in the purification of DNA and RNA.


title: Ethanol

text: Because of its low freezing point of and low toxicity, ethanol is sometimes used in laboratories (with dry ice or other coolants) as a cooling bath to keep vessels at temperatures below the freezing point of water. For the same reason, it is also used as the active fluid in alcohol thermometers.


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol is a 2-carbon alcohol. Its molecular formula is CHCHOH. An alternative notation is CH−CH−OH, which indicates that the carbon of a methyl group (CH−) is attached to the carbon of a methylene group (−CH–), which is attached to the oxygen of a hydroxyl group (−OH). It is a constitutional isomer of dimethyl ether. Ethanol is sometimes abbreviated as EtOH, using the common organic chemistry notation of representing the ethyl group (CH−) with Et.


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol is a volatile, colorless liquid that has a slight odor. It burns with a smokeless blue flame that is not always visible in normal light. The physical properties of ethanol stem primarily from the presence of its hydroxyl group and the shortness of its carbon chain. Ethanol's hydroxyl group is able to participate in hydrogen bonding, rendering it more viscous and less volatile than less polar organic compounds of similar molecular weight, such as propane.


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol is slightly more refractive than water, having a refractive index of 1.36242 (at λ=589.3 nm and ). The triple point for ethanol is at a pressure of .


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol is a versatile solvent, miscible with water and with many organic solvents, including acetic acid, acetone, benzene, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform, diethyl ether, ethylene glycol, glycerol, nitromethane, pyridine, and toluene. Its main use as a solvent is in making tincture of iodine, cough syrups etc. It is also miscible with light aliphatic hydrocarbons, such as pentane and hexane, and with aliphatic chlorides such as trichloroethane and tetrachloroethylene.


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol's miscibility with water contrasts with the immiscibility of longer-chain alcohols (five or more carbon atoms), whose water miscibility decreases sharply as the number of carbons increases. The miscibility of ethanol with alkanes is limited to alkanes up to undecane: mixtures with dodecane and higher alkanes show a miscibility gap below a certain temperature (about 13 °C for dodecane). The miscibility gap tends to get wider with higher alkanes, and the temperature for complete miscibility increases.


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol-water mixtures have less volume than the sum of their individual components at the given fractions. Mixing equal volumes of ethanol and water results in only 1.92 volumes of mixture. Mixing ethanol and water is exothermic, with up to 777 J/mol being released at 298 K.


title: Ethanol

text: Mixtures of ethanol and water form an azeotrope at about 89 mole-% ethanol and 11 mole-% water or a mixture of 95.6 percent ethanol by mass (or about 97% alcohol by volume) at normal pressure, which boils at 351K (78 °C). This azeotropic composition is strongly temperature- and pressure-dependent and vanishes at temperatures below 303 K.


title: Ethanol

text: Hydrogen bonding causes pure ethanol to be hygroscopic to the extent that it readily absorbs water from the air. The polar nature of the hydroxyl group causes ethanol to dissolve many ionic compounds, notably sodium and potassium hydroxides, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride, ammonium chloride, ammonium bromide, and sodium bromide. Sodium and potassium chlorides are slightly soluble in ethanol. Because the ethanol molecule also has a nonpolar end, it will also dissolve nonpolar substances, including most essential oils and numerous flavoring, coloring, and medicinal agents.


title: Ethanol

text: The addition of even a few percent of ethanol to water sharply reduces the surface tension of water. This property partially explains the "tears of wine" phenomenon. When wine is swirled in a glass, ethanol evaporates quickly from the thin film of wine on the wall of the glass. As the wine's ethanol content decreases, its surface tension increases and the thin film "beads up" and runs down the glass in channels rather than as a smooth sheet.


title: Ethanol

text: An ethanol–water solution will catch fire if heated above a temperature called its flash point and an ignition source is then applied to it. For 20% alcohol by mass (about 25% by volume), this will occur at about . The flash point of pure ethanol is , but may be influenced very slightly by atmospheric composition such as pressure and humidity. Ethanol mixtures can ignite below average room temperature. Ethanol is considered a flammable liquid (Class 3 Hazardous Material) in concentrations above 2.35% by mass (3.0% by volume; 6 proof).


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol is a byproduct of the metabolic process of yeast. As such, ethanol will be present in any yeast habitat. Ethanol can commonly be found in overripe fruit. Ethanol produced by symbiotic yeast can be found in bertam palm blossoms. Although some animal species, such as the pentailed treeshrew, exhibit ethanol-seeking behaviors, most show no interest or avoidance of food sources containing ethanol. Ethanol is also produced during the germination of many plants as a result of natural anaerobiosis. Ethanol has been detected in outer space, forming an icy coating around dust grains in interstellar clouds.


title: Ethanol

text: Minute quantity amounts (average 196 ppb) of endogenous ethanol and acetaldehyde were found in the exhaled breath of healthy volunteers. Auto-brewery syndrome, also known as gut fermentation syndrome, is a rare medical condition in which intoxicating quantities of ethanol are produced through endogenous fermentation within the digestive system.


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol is produced both as a petrochemical, through the hydration of ethylene and, via biological processes, by fermenting sugars with yeast. Which process is more economical depends on prevailing prices of petroleum and grain feed stocks.


title: Ethanol

text: World production of ethanol in 2006 was , with 69% of the world supply coming from Brazil and the U.S. Brazilian ethanol is produced from sugarcane, which has relatively high yields (830% more fuel than the fossil fuels used to produce it) compared to some other energy crops. Sugarcane not only has a greater concentration of sucrose than corn (by about 30%), but is also much easier to extract. The bagasse generated by the process is not discarded, but burned by power plants to produce electricity. Bagasse burning accounts for around 9% of the electricity produced in Brazil.


title: Ethanol

text: In the 1970s most industrial ethanol in the U.S. was made as a petrochemical, but in the 1980s the U.S. introduced subsidies for corn-based ethanol. According to the Renewable Fuels Association, as of 30 October 2007, 131 grain ethanol bio-refineries in the U.S. have the capacity to produce of ethanol per year. An additional 72 construction projects underway (in the U.S.) can add of new capacity in the next 18 months.


title: Ethanol

text: In India ethanol is made from sugarcane. Sweet sorghum is another potential source of ethanol, and is suitable for growing in dryland conditions. The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics is investigating the possibility of growing sorghum as a source of fuel, food, and animal feed in arid parts of Asia and Africa. Sweet sorghum has one-third the water requirement of sugarcane over the same time period. It also requires about 22% less water than corn. The world's first sweet sorghum ethanol distillery began commercial production in 2007 in Andhra Pradesh, India.


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol for use as an industrial feedstock or solvent (sometimes referred to as synthetic ethanol) is made from petrochemical feed stocks, primarily by the acid-catalyzed hydration of ethylene:


title: Ethanol

text: The catalyst is most commonly phosphoric acid, adsorbed onto a porous support such as silica gel or diatomaceous earth. This catalyst was first used for large-scale ethanol production by the Shell Oil Company in 1947. The reaction is carried out in the presence of high pressure steam at where a 5:3 ethylene to steam ratio is maintained. This process was used on an industrial scale by Union Carbide Corporation and others. It is no longer used in the US as fermentation ethanol produced from corn is more economical.


title: Ethanol

text: In an older process, first practiced on the industrial scale in 1930 by Union Carbide but now almost entirely obsolete, ethylene was hydrated indirectly by reacting it with concentrated sulfuric acid to produce ethyl sulfate, which was hydrolyzed to yield ethanol and regenerate the sulfuric acid:


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol has been produced in the laboratory by converting carbon dioxide via biological and electrochemical reactions.


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol in alcoholic beverages and fuel is produced by fermentation. Certain species of yeast (e.g., "Saccharomyces cerevisiae") metabolize sugar, producing ethanol and carbon dioxide. The chemical equations below summarize the conversion:


title: Ethanol

text: Fermentation is the process of culturing yeast under favorable thermal conditions to produce alcohol. This process is carried out at around . Toxicity of ethanol to yeast limits the ethanol concentration obtainable by brewing; higher concentrations, therefore, are obtained by fortification or distillation. The most ethanol-tolerant yeast strains can survive up to approximately 18% ethanol by volume.


title: Ethanol

text: To produce ethanol from starchy materials such as cereals, the starch must first be converted into sugars. In brewing beer, this has traditionally been accomplished by allowing the grain to germinate, or malt, which produces the enzyme amylase. When the malted grain is mashed, the amylase converts the remaining starches into sugars.


title: Ethanol

text: Sugars for ethanol fermentation can be obtained from cellulose. Deployment of this technology could turn a number of cellulose-containing agricultural by-products, such as corncobs, straw, and sawdust, into renewable energy resources. Other agricultural residues such as sugarcane bagasse and energy crops such as switchgrass may also be fermentable sugar sources.


title: Ethanol

text: Breweries and biofuel plants employ two methods for measuring ethanol concentration. Infrared ethanol sensors measure the vibrational frequency of dissolved ethanol using the C−H band at 2900 cm. This method uses a relatively inexpensive solid-state sensor that compares the C−H band with a reference band to calculate the ethanol content. The calculation makes use of the Beer–Lambert law. Alternatively, by measuring the density of the starting material and the density of the product, using a hydrometer, the change in specific gravity during fermentation indicates the alcohol content. This inexpensive and indirect method has a long history in the beer brewing industry.


title: Ethanol

text: Ethylene hydration or brewing produces an ethanol–water mixture. For most industrial and fuel uses, the ethanol must be purified. Fractional distillation at atmospheric pressure can concentrate ethanol to 95.6% by weight (89.5 mole%). This mixture is an azeotrope with a boiling point of , and "cannot" be further purified by distillation. Addition of an entraining agent, such as benzene, cyclohexane, or heptane, allows a new ternary azeotrope comprising the ethanol, water, and the entraining agent to be formed. This lower-boiling ternary azeotrope is removed preferentially, leading to water-free ethanol.


title: Ethanol

text: Apart from distillation, ethanol may be dried by addition of a desiccant, such as molecular sieves, cellulose, or cornmeal. The desiccants can be dried and reused. Molecular sieves can be used to selectively absorb the water from the 95.6% ethanol solution. Molecular sieves of pore-size 3 Ångstrom, a type of zeolite, effectively sequester water molecules while excluding ethanol molecules. Heating the wet sieves drives out the water, allowing regeneration of their dessicant capability.


title: Ethanol

text: Membranes can also be used to separate ethanol and water. Membrane-based separations are not subject to the limitations of the water-ethanol azeotrope because the separations are not based on vapor-liquid equilibria. Membranes are often used in the so-called hybrid membrane distillation process. This process uses a pre-concentration distillation column as the first separating step. The further separation is then accomplished with a membrane operated either in vapor permeation or pervaporation mode. Vapor permeation uses a vapor membrane feed and pervaporation uses a liquid membrane feed.


title: Ethanol

text: Pure ethanol and alcoholic beverages are heavily taxed as psychoactive drugs, but ethanol has many uses that do not involve its consumption. To relieve the tax burden on these uses, most jurisdictions waive the tax when an agent has been added to the ethanol to render it unfit to drink. These include bittering agents such as denatonium benzoate and toxins such as methanol, naphtha, and pyridine. Products of this kind are called "denatured alcohol."


title: Ethanol

text: Absolute or anhydrous alcohol refers to ethanol with a low water content. There are various grades with maximum water contents ranging from 1% to a few parts per million (ppm). If azeotropic distillation is used to remove water, it will contain trace amounts of the material separation agent (e.g. benzene). Absolute alcohol is not intended for human consumption. Absolute ethanol is used as a solvent for laboratory and industrial applications, where water will react with other chemicals, and as fuel alcohol. Spectroscopic ethanol is an absolute ethanol with a low absorbance in ultraviolet and visible light, fit for use as a solvent in ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy.


title: Ethanol

text: Rectified spirit, an azeotropic composition of 96% ethanol containing 4% water, is used instead of anhydrous ethanol for various purposes. Spirits of wine are about 94% ethanol (188 proof). The impurities are different from those in 95% (190 proof) laboratory ethanol.


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol is classified as a primary alcohol, meaning that the carbon that its hydroxyl group attaches to has at least two hydrogen atoms attached to it as well. Many ethanol reactions occur at its hydroxyl group.


title: Ethanol

text: In the presence of acid catalysts, ethanol reacts with carboxylic acids to produce ethyl esters and water:


title: Ethanol

text: This reaction, which is conducted on large scale industrially, requires the removal of the water from the reaction mixture as it is formed. Esters react in the presence of an acid or base to give back the alcohol and a salt. This reaction is known as saponification because it is used in the preparation of soap. Ethanol can also form esters with inorganic acids. Diethyl sulfate and triethyl phosphate are prepared by treating ethanol with sulfur trioxide and phosphorus pentoxide respectively. Diethyl sulfate is a useful ethylating agent in organic synthesis. Ethyl nitrite, prepared from the reaction of ethanol with sodium nitrite and sulfuric acid, was formerly used as a diuretic.


title: Ethanol

text: In the presence of acid catalysts, alcohols can be converted to alkenes such as ethanol to ethylene. Typically solid acids such as alumina are used.


title: Ethanol

text: Since water is removed from the same molecule, the reaction is known as intramolecular dehydration. Intramolecular dehydration of an alcohol requires a high temperature and the presence of an acid catalyst such as sulphuric acid.


title: Ethanol

text: Ethylene produced from sugar-derived ethanol (primarily in Brazil) competes with ethylene produced from petrochemical feedstocks such as naphtha and ethane.


title: Ethanol

text: At a lower temperature than that of intramolecular dehydration, intermolecular alcohol dehydration may occur producing a symmetrical ether. This is a condensation reaction. In the following example, diethyl ether is produced from ethanol:


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol is a neutral molecule and the pH of a solution of ethanol in water is nearly 7.00. Ethanol can be quantitatively converted to its conjugate base, the ethoxide ion (CHCHO), by reaction with an alkali metal such as sodium:


title: Ethanol

text: The acidities of water and ethanol are nearly the same, as indicated by their pKa of 15.7 and 16 respectively. Thus, sodium ethoxide and sodium hydroxide exist in an equilibrium that is closely balanced:


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol is not used industrially as a precursor to ethyl halides, but the reactions are illustrative. Ethanol reacts with hydrogen halides to produce ethyl halides such as ethyl chloride and ethyl bromide via an S2 reaction:


title: Ethanol

text: HBr requires refluxing with a sulfuric acid catalyst. Ethyl halides can, in principle, also be produced by treating ethanol with more specialized halogenating agents, such as thionyl chloride or phosphorus tribromide.


title: Ethanol

text: Upon treatment with halogens in the presence of base, ethanol gives the corresponding haloform (CHX, where X = Cl, Br, I). This conversion is called the haloform reaction.


title: Ethanol

text: An intermediate in the reaction with chlorine is the aldehyde called chloral, which forms chloral hydrate upon reaction with water:


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol can be oxidized to acetaldehyde and further oxidized to acetic acid, depending on the reagents and conditions. This oxidation is of no importance industrially, but in the human body, these oxidation reactions are catalyzed by the enzyme liver alcohol dehydrogenase. The oxidation product of ethanol, acetic acid, is a nutrient for humans, being a precursor to acetyl CoA, where the acetyl group can be spent as energy or used for biosynthesis.


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol is similar to macronutrients such as proteins, fats, and carbohydrates in that it provides calories. When consumed and metabolized, it contributes 7 calories per gram via ethanol metabolism.


title: Ethanol

text: Pure ethanol will irritate the skin and eyes. Nausea, vomiting, and intoxication are symptoms of ingestion. Long-term use by ingestion can result in serious liver damage. Atmospheric concentrations above one part per thousand are above the European Union occupational exposure limits.


title: Ethanol

text: The fermentation of sugar into ethanol is one of the earliest biotechnologies employed by humans. Ethanol has historically been identified variously as spirit of wine or ardent spirits, and as aqua vitae or aqua vita. The intoxicating effects of its consumption have been known since ancient times. Ethanol has been used by humans since prehistory as the intoxicating ingredient of alcoholic beverages. Dried residue on 9,000-year-old pottery found in China suggests that Neolithic people consumed alcoholic beverages.


title: Ethanol

text: The inflammable nature of the exhalations of wine was already known to ancient natural philosophers such as Aristotle (384–322 BCE), Theophrastus (–287 BCE), and Pliny the Elder (23/24–79 CE). However, this did not immediately lead to the isolation of ethanol, even despite the development of more advanced distillation techniques in second- and third-century Roman Egypt. An important recognition, first found in one of the writings attributed to Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (ninth century CE), was that by adding salt to boiling wine, which increases the wine's relative volatility, the flammability of the resulting vapors may be enhanced. The distillation of wine is attested in Arabic works attributed to al-Kindī (–873 CE) and to al-Fārābī (–950), and in the 28th book of al-Zahrāwī's (Latin: Abulcasis, 936–1013) "Kitāb al-Taṣrīf" (later translated into Latin as "Liber servatoris"). In the twelfth century, recipes for the production of "aqua ardens" ("burning water", i.e., ethanol) by distilling wine with salt started to appear in a number of Latin works, and by the end of the thirteenth century it had become a widely known substance among Western European chemists.


title: Ethanol

text: The works of Taddeo Alderotti (1223–1296) describe a method for concentrating ethanol involving repeated fractional distillation through a water-cooled still, by which an ethanol purity of 90% could be obtained. The medicinal properties of ethanol were studied by Arnald of Villanova (1240–1311 CE) and John of Rupescissa (–1366), the latter of whom regarded it as a life-preserving substance able to prevent all diseases (the "aqua vitae" or "water of life", also called by John the "quintessence" of wine).


title: Ethanol

text: In China, archaeological evidence indicates that the true distillation of alcohol began during the Jin (1115–1234) or Southern Song (1127–1279) dynasties. A still has been found at an archaeological site in Qinglong, Hebei, dating to the 12th century. In India, the true distillation of alcohol was introduced from the Middle East, and was in wide use in the Delhi Sultanate by the 14th century.


title: Ethanol

text: In 1796, German-Russian chemist Johann Tobias Lowitz obtained pure ethanol by mixing partially purified ethanol (the alcohol-water azeotrope) with an excess of anhydrous alkali and then distilling the mixture over low heat. French chemist Antoine Lavoisier described ethanol as a compound of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and in 1807 Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure determined ethanol's chemical formula. Fifty years later, Archibald Scott Couper published the structural formula of ethanol. It was one of the first structural formulas determined.


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol was first prepared synthetically in 1825 by Michael Faraday. He found that sulfuric acid could absorb large volumes of coal gas. He gave the resulting solution to Henry Hennell, a British chemist, who found in 1826 that it contained "sulphovinic acid" (ethyl hydrogen sulfate). In 1828, Hennell and the French chemist Georges-Simon Serullas independently discovered that sulphovinic acid could be decomposed into ethanol. Thus, in 1825 Faraday had unwittingly discovered that ethanol could be produced from ethylene (a component of coal gas) by acid-catalyzed hydration, a process similar to current industrial ethanol synthesis.


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol was used as lamp fuel in the U.S. as early as 1840, but a tax levied on industrial alcohol during the Civil War made this use uneconomical. The tax was repealed in 1906. Use as an automotive fuel dates back to 1908, with the Ford Model T able to run on petrol (gasoline) or ethanol. It fuels some spirit lamps.


title: Ethanol

text: Ethanol intended for industrial use is often produced from ethylene. Ethanol has widespread use as a solvent of substances intended for human contact or consumption, including scents, flavorings, colorings, and medicines. In chemistry, it is both a solvent and a feedstock for the synthesis of other products. It has a long history as a fuel for heat and light, and more recently as a fuel for internal combustion engines.


title: Kaitlin Olson

text: Kaitlin Willow Olson (born August 18, 1975) is an American actress. She began her career in The Sunday Company at the Groundlings, an improvisational theatre and school in Los Angeles, California. She had minor roles in several television series before being cast as Deandra "Sweet Dee" Reynolds on the FX comedy series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" (2005–present).


title: Kaitlin Olson

text: Olson starred as Mackenzie "Mickey" Murphy in the Fox comedy series "The Mick" (2017–2018) and as Cricket Melfi in the Quibi comedy series "Flipped" (2020), which earned her a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series.


title: Kaitlin Olson

text: Olson has also appeared in films, including "Leap Year" (2010), "The Heat" (2013), "Vacation" (2015), "Finding Dory" (2016), and "Arizona" (2018).


title: Kaitlin Olson

text: In 2022, Olson earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as DJ in HBO's "Hacks".


title: Kaitlin Olson

text: Olson was born in Portland, Oregon, on August 18, 1975, to Donald Lee Olson, a publisher, and Melinda Leora, a nurse. Shortly after her birth, Olson relocated with her family to Spokane, Washington, then to Vashon Island, Washington, in Puget Sound, west of Seattle, where she lived until age eight. Her family subsequently relocated back to the Portland area, settling in Tualatin, where Olson grew up on a farm. Her father worked as the publisher of the "Portland Tribune" from 2000 to 2001.


title: Kaitlin Olson

text: At age twelve, Olson was involved in a serious bicycle accident involving a vehicle, resulting in a fractured skull requiring reconstructive surgery. She graduated from Tigard High School in Tigard, Oregon in 1993.


title: Kaitlin Olson

text: Olson studied theater at the University of Oregon, graduating with a bachelor's degree in theater arts in 1997. After college, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting professionally.


title: Kaitlin Olson

text: Olson was a member of The Groundlings Sunday Company along with Dax Shepard. She toured with the USO to Bosnia, Kosovo and Norway. She made several guest appearances in films and television series such as "Curb Your Enthusiasm", "The Drew Carey Show", "The Jamie Kennedy Experiment", "Out of Practice", "Miss Match", "Family Guy", and "Punk'd". She had a minor role in the film "Coyote Ugly".


title: Kaitlin Olson

text: In 2004, she was cast as Deandra "Sweet Dee" Reynolds in the FX sitcom "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia". She also voiced Ethel in the first season of the Comedy Central animated series "Brickleberry". In the 2013 film "The Heat" she appeared as a Bulgarian druggie who engages in an exchange of cultural perspectives and insults with Melissa McCarthy's character.


title: Kaitlin Olson

text: She played a recurring role as Hartley Underwood, the "one-armed" neighbor in the FX series "The Riches". In June 2016, the Human Rights Campaign released a video in tribute to the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting; in the video, Olson and others told the stories of the people killed there. Also in 2016, Olson provided the voice of Destiny in Disney's "Finding Dory".


title: Kaitlin Olson

text: She starred in the Fox sitcom "The Mick", which premiered in January 2017. She also served as an executive producer for the series. The second season of "The Mick" premiered in September 2017. Fox cancelled the series after its second season ended in April 2018.


title: Kaitlin Olson

text: Olson married her "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" co-star, Rob McElhenney, in California on September 27, 2008. The couple started dating secretly during the second season of the series.


title: Kaitlin Olson

text: In 2009, McElhenney and Olson announced their purchase of Skinner's Bar in Philadelphia. It was renamed Mac's Tavern. Their first child is a son, Axel Lee. Olson went into labor at a game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies, and Axel was born in their California home as planned. Their second son is Leo Grey McElhenney.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: DuckDuckGo (DDG) is an internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers' privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results. DuckDuckGo does not show search results from content farms. It uses various APIs of other websites to show quick results to queries and for traditional links it uses the help of its partners (mainly Bing) and its own crawler. Because of its anonymity, it is impossible to know how many people use DuckDuckGo.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: The company is based in Paoli, Pennsylvania, in Greater Philadelphia and had 200 employees . The company name is a reference to the children's game duck, duck, goose.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: DuckDuckGo was founded by Gabriel Weinberg and launched on February 29, 2008, in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Weinberg is an entrepreneur who previously launched Names Database, a now-defunct social network. Initially self-funded by Weinberg until October 2011, it was then "backed by Union Square Ventures and a handful of angel investors." Union Square partner Brad Burnham stated, "We invested in DuckDuckGo because we became convinced that it was not only possible to change the basis of competition in search, it was time to do it." In addition, Trisquel, Linux Mint, and the Midori web browser switched to use DuckDuckGo as their default search engine. DuckDuckGo gains revenue via advertisements and affiliate programs. The search engine is written in Perl and runs on nginx, FreeBSD, and Linux. DuckDuckGo is built primarily upon search APIs from various vendors. Because of this, TechCrunch characterized the service as a "hybrid" search engine. Weinberg explained the beginnings of the name with respect to the children's game duck, duck, goose. He said of the origin of the name: "Really it just popped in my head one day and I just liked it. It is certainly influenced/derived from duck duck goose, but other than that there is no relation, e.g., a metaphor." DuckDuckGo was featured on TechCrunch's Elevator Pitch Friday in 2008, and it was a finalist in the 2008 BOSS Mashable Challenge.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: In July 2010, Weinberg started a DuckDuckGo community website (duck.co) to allow the public to report problems, discuss means of spreading the use of the search engine, request features, and discuss open sourcing the code. The company registered the domain name "ddg.gg" on February 22, 2011, and acquired "duck.com" in December 2018, which are used as shortened URL aliases that redirect to "duckduckgo.com".


title: DuckDuckGo

text: By May 2012, the search engine was attracting 1.5 million searches a day. Weinberg reported that it had earned in revenue in 2011 and had three employees, plus a small number of contractors. Compete.com estimated 266,465 unique visitors to the site in February 2012. On April 12, 2011, Alexa reported a 3-month growth rate of 51%. DuckDuckGo's own traffic statistics show that in August 2012 there were 1,393,644 visits per day, up from an average of 39,406 visits per day in April 2010 (the earliest data available). In a lengthy profile in November 2012, "The Washington Post" indicated that searches on DuckDuckGo numbered up to 45,000,000 per month in October 2012. The article concluded:


title: DuckDuckGo

text: "Weinberg's non-ambitious goals make him a particularly odd and dangerous competitor online. He can do almost everything that Google or Bing can't because it could damage their business models, and if users figure out that they like the DuckDuckGo way better, Weinberg could damage the big boys without even really trying. It's asymmetrical digital warfare, and his backers at Union Square Ventures say Google is vulnerable."


title: DuckDuckGo

text: GNOME released Web 3.10 on September 26, 2013, and starting with this version, the default search engine is DuckDuckGo.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: At its keynote speech at WWDC 2014 on September 18, 2014, Apple announced that DuckDuckGo would be included as an option for search on both iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite in its Safari browser. On March 10, the Pale Moon web browser, starting with version 24.4.0, included DuckDuckGo as its default search engine, as well as listed it on the browser's homepage. In May 2014, DuckDuckGo released a redesigned version to beta testers through DuckDuckHack. On May 21, 2014, DuckDuckGo officially released the redesigned version that focused on smarter answers and a more refined look. The new version added many new features such as images, local search, auto-suggest, weather, recipes, and more.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: On November 10, 2014, Mozilla added DuckDuckGo as a search option to Firefox 33.1. On May 30, 2016, The Tor Project, Inc made DuckDuckGo the default search engine for Tor Browser 6.0.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: In July 2016, DuckDuckGo officially announced the extension of its partnership with Yahoo! that brought new features to all users of the search engine, including date filtering of results and additional site links. It also partners with Bing, Yandex, and Wikipedia to produce results or make use of features offered. The company also confirmed that it does not share user information with partner companies, as has always been its policy.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: On January 23, 2018, DuckDuckGo revamped its browser extension and mobile app in an effort to keep Internet users safe "beyond the search box". The revamped extension and app include a tool for rating websites based on their use of encryption and ad-tracking networks as well as the ability to block ad-tracking networks. The extension also provides Terms of service summaries from Terms of Service; Didn't Read.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: In December 2018, it was reported that Google transferred ownership of the domain name Duck.com to DuckDuckGo. It is not known what price, if any, DuckDuckGo paid for the domain name.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: On January 15, 2019, DuckDuckGo announced that all map and address-related searches would be powered by Apple Maps, both on desktop and mobile devices.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: In July 2021, DuckDuckGo introduced its email forwarding feature Email Protection, which lets users claim an "@duck.com" email address generated by the service. That inbox will receive emails and strip them of data trackers before forwarding them to the user's private email address. The feature launched in beta for users of the DuckDuckGo iOS and Android apps.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: On March 1, 2022, in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, DuckDuckGo paused its partnership with Yandex Search. On March 9, 2022, Weinberg said in a tweet that DuckDuckGo will down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation, a move which some users criticized as censorship and a violation of the search engine's commitment to "unbiased search." DuckDuckGo has defended itself from the criticism, saying that "The primary utility of a search engine is to provide access to accurate information. Disinformation sites that deliberately put out false information to intentionally mislead people directly cut against that utility."


title: DuckDuckGo

text: In April 2022, TorrentFreak reported that DuckDuckGo had blocked search results for some major pirating websites, including The Pirate Bay, 1337x and FMovies, as well as video downloading software Youtube-dl. In a statement to "Engadget", DuckDuckGo said that The Pirate Bay and Youtube-dl were never removed from its search results if the user searched for those websites using their name or web address. DuckDuckGo also said that there were problems with "site:" search queries used for these websites and other searches and said that the problem had been fixed.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: Also in April, DuckDuckGo said that they would protect users from being tracked by Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages framework, stating: "When you load or share a Google AMP page anywhere from DuckDuckGo apps (iOS/Android/Mac) or extensions (Firefox/Chrome), the original publisher's webpage will be used in place of the Google AMP version".


title: DuckDuckGo

text: In May 2022, a report from "Bleeping Computer" by security researcher Zach Edwards found that DuckDuckGo's web browser allows Microsoft's trackers to continue running while visiting non-DuckDuckGo websites, contrary to Google and Facebook trackers, which are blocked. In response, Weinberg said that "this issue is occurring on browsers and only pertains to non-DuckDuckGo websites.", adding that "When you load our search results, you are completely anonymous, including ads", and that "Unfortunately our Microsoft search syndication agreement prevent us from doing more to Microsoft-owned properties. However, we have been continually pushing and expect to be doing more soon.", adding that "What we're talking about here is an above-and-beyond protection that most browsers don't even attempt to do — that is, blocking third-party tracking scripts before they load on 3rd party websites. Because we're doing this where we can, users are still getting significantly more privacy protection with DuckDuckGo than they would using Safari, Firefox and other browsers."


title: DuckDuckGo

text: DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources according to itself, including Bing, Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Yandex, and its own web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); but none from Google. It also uses data from crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia, to populate knowledge panel boxes to the right of the search results.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: Weinberg has refined the quality of his search engine results by deleting search results for companies he believes are content mills, such as eHow, which publishes 4,000 articles per day produced by paid freelance writers, which Weinberg states to be "low-quality content designed specifically to rank highly in Google's search index". DuckDuckGo also filters pages with substantial advertising.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: In addition to the indexed search results, DuckDuckGo displays relevant results, called Instant Answers, on top of the search page. These Instant Answers are collected from either third party APIs or static data sources like text files. The Instant Answers are called "zeroclickinfo" because the intention behind these is to provide what users are searching for on the search result page itself so that they do not have to click any results to find what they are looking for. Instant answers are created by and maintained by a community of over 1,500 open source contributors. This community has come to be known as DuckDuckHack. , there were 1236 Instant Answers active.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: In the DuckDuckHack documentation, four types of Instant Answers are described: "Goodies, Spices, Fatheads," and "Longtails". These types of Instant Answer extensions are differentiated by how their data is retrieved. Goodies do not retrieve data from a third party API, whereas Spices do. Goodies instead use some form of the aforementioned static data sources, such as text files or JSON files. Fathead Instant Answers are key-value answers hosted on DuckDuckGo's backend. Fathead key-value pairs function similarly to a trigger for showing the respective Instant Answer. Longtail Instant Answers are full text queries to a DuckDuckGo database of articles. Paragraphs or snippets from any matching articles are returned, and the section that matches the user's query is highlighted.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: In August 2010, DuckDuckGo introduced anonymous searching, including an exit enclave, for its search engine traffic using Tor network and enabling access through a "Tor hidden service" (onion service). "(deprecated) was the DuckDuckGo v2 onion service on Tor. This allows anonymity by routing traffic through a series of encrypted relays. Weinberg stated: "I believe this fits right in line with our privacy policy. Using Tor and DDG, you can now be end to end anonymous with your searching. And if you use our encrypted homepage, you can be end to end encrypted as well."


title: DuckDuckGo

text: DuckDuckGo includes "!Bang" keywords, which give users the ability to search on specific third-party websites – using the site's own search engine if applicable. As of August 2020, 13,564 "bangs" for a diverse range of internet sites are available. In December 2018, around 2,000 "bangs" were deleted. Some of them were deleted due to being broken, while others, such as searches of pirated content sites, were deleted for liability reasons.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: DuckDuckGo earns revenue by serving ads from the Yahoo-Bing search alliance network and through affiliate relationships with Amazon and eBay. As a privacy-focused search engine, the ads served on DuckDuckGo are based on keywords and terms of the search query.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: The company supports charitable organizations that work to improve privacy, In 2021 they donated US$1M to these causes and had donated $3,650,000 over the previous decade. Major donations for 2021 included $200,000 to the Center for Information Technology Policy, $150,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, $75,000 to European Digital Rights (EDRi) and $75,000 to The Markup.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: Some of DuckDuckGo's source code is free software hosted at GitHub under the Apache 2.0 License,<ref name="https://github.com/duckduckgo"></ref> but the core is proprietary. DuckDuckGo also hosts DuckDuckHack, a sister site for organizing open source contributions and community projects. The search engine's Instant Answers are open source and are maintained on GitHub, where anyone can view the source code. As of August 31, 2017, DuckDuckHack was placed on maintenance mode; as such, only pull requests for bug fixes will be approved.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: In a June 2011 article, Harry McCracken of "Time" commended DuckDuckGo, comparing it to his favorite hamburger restaurant, In-N-Out Burger:


title: DuckDuckGo

text: Thom Holwerda, who reviewed the search engine for "OSNews", praised its privacy features and shortcuts to site-specific searches as well as criticizing Google for "track[ing] pretty much everything you do", particularly because of the risk of such information being subject to a U.S. government subpoena. In 2012, in response to accusations that it was a monopoly, Google identified DuckDuckGo as a competitor. Weinberg was reportedly "pleased and entertained" by that acknowledgment.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: In November 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey revealed his preference for using the DuckDuckGo search engine rather than Google, stating, "I love @DuckDuckGo. My default search engine for a while now. The app is even better!". Conservative political commentators Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino have also endorsed DuckDuckGo.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: In June 2013, DuckDuckGo indicated that it had seen a significant traffic increase; according to the company's Twitter account, on Monday, June 17, 2013, it had three million daily direct searches. On average during May 2013, it had 1.8 million daily direct searches. Some relate this claim to the exposure of PRISM and to the fact that other programs operated by the National Security Agency (NSA) were leaked by Edward Snowden. Danny Sullivan wrote on "Search Engine Land" that despite the search engine's growth "it's not grown anywhere near the amount to reflect any substantial or even mildly notable switching by the searching public" for reasons due to privacy, and he concluded "No One Cares About "Private" Search". In response, Caleb Garling of the "San Francisco Chronicle" argued: "I think this thesis suffers from a few key failures in logic" because a traffic increase had occurred and because there was a lack of widespread awareness of the existence of DuckDuckGo.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: Later in September 2013, the search engine hit 4 million searches per day and in June 2015, it hit 10 million searches per day. In November 2017, DuckDuckGo hit 20 million searches per day. In January 2019, DuckDuckGo set a record of 1 billion monthly searches; and in November of the same year, it hit 50 million searches per day. , DuckDuckGo was receiving 102,704,358 queries per day on average. On January 11, 2021, a record of over 102.2 million daily searches was achieved. A new record of 111,703,299 daily searches was set on 17 January 2022.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: Internal surveys by DuckDuckGo found that users of DuckDuckGo had a wide variety of political leanings.


title: DuckDuckGo

text: In April 2022, DuckDuckGo released DuckDuckGo for Mac to beta, a privacy-oriented desktop browser which automatically blocks both web trackers and cookie consent pop-ups. DuckDuckGo chose to use the WebKit rendering engine that underpins Apple's Safari browser rather than the fork of it called Blink used by Chromium, Opera and Brave. Beah Burger-Lenehan, product manager for the Mac app stated: "We are building everything else from scratch. So beyond rendering, all the code is ours – written by DuckDuckGo engineers with privacy, security, and simplicity front of mind. This means we don't have the cruft and clutter that has accumulated in browsers over the years, both in code and design, giving you a modern look and feel and a faster speed."


title: Gout

text: Gout ( ) is a form of inflammatory arthritis characterized by recurrent attacks of a red, tender, hot and swollen joint, caused by deposition of monosodium urate monohydrate crystals. Pain typically comes on rapidly, reaching maximal intensity in less than 12 hours. The joint at the base of the big toe is affected in about half of cases. It may also result in tophi, kidney stones, or kidney damage.


title: Gout

text: Gout is due to persistently elevated levels of uric acid in the blood. This occurs from a combination of diet, other health problems, and genetic factors. At high levels, uric acid crystallizes and the crystals deposit in joints, tendons, and surrounding tissues, resulting in an attack of gout. Gout occurs more commonly in those who regularly drink beer or sugar-sweetened beverages or who eat foods that are high in purines such as liver, shellfish, or anchovies, or are overweight. Diagnosis of gout may be confirmed by the presence of crystals in the joint fluid or in a deposit outside the joint. Blood uric acid levels may be normal during an attack.


title: Gout

text: Treatment with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), glucocorticoids, or colchicine improves symptoms. Once the acute attack subsides, levels of uric acid can be lowered via lifestyle changes and in those with frequent attacks, allopurinol or probenecid provides long-term prevention. Taking vitamin C and eating a diet high in low-fat dairy products may be preventive.


title: Gout

text: Gout affects about 1 to 2% of adults in the developed world at some point in their lives. It has become more common in recent decades. This is believed to be due to increasing risk factors in the population, such as metabolic syndrome, longer life expectancy, and changes in diet. Older males are most commonly affected. Gout was historically known as "the disease of kings" or "rich man's disease". It has been recognized at least since the time of the ancient Egyptians.


title: Gout

text: Gout can present in several ways, although the most common is a recurrent attack of acute inflammatory arthritis (a red, tender, hot, swollen joint). The metatarsal-phalangeal joint at the base of the big toe is affected most often, accounting for half of cases. Other joints, such as the heels, knees, wrists, and fingers, may also be affected. Joint pain usually begins during the night and peaks within 24 hours of onset. This is mainly due to lower body temperature. Other symptoms may rarely occur along with the joint pain, including fatigue and a high fever.


title: Gout

text: Long-standing elevated uric acid levels (hyperuricemia) may result in other symptoms, including hard, painless deposits of uric acid crystals known as tophi. Extensive tophi may lead to chronic arthritis due to bone erosion. Elevated levels of uric acid may also lead to crystals precipitating in the kidneys, resulting in stone formation and subsequent urate nephropathy.


title: Gout

text: The crystallization of uric acid, often related to relatively high levels in the blood, is the underlying cause of gout. This can occur because of diet, genetic predisposition, or underexcretion of urate, the salts of uric acid. Underexcretion of uric acid by the kidney is the primary cause of hyperuricemia in about 90% of cases, while overproduction is the cause in less than 10%. About 10% of people with hyperuricemia develop gout at some point in their lifetimes. The risk, however, varies depending on the degree of hyperuricemia. When levels are between 415 and 530 μmol/L (7 and 8.9 mg/dl), the risk is 0.5% per year, while in those with a level greater than 535 μmol/L (9 mg/dL), the risk is 4.5% per year.


title: Gout

text: Dietary causes account for about 12% of gout, and include a strong association with the consumption of alcohol, sugar-sweetened beverages, meat, and seafood. Among foods richest in purines yielding high amounts of uric acid are dried anchovies, shrimp, organ meat, dried mushrooms, seaweed, and beer yeast. Chicken and potatoes also appear related. Other triggers include physical trauma and surgery.


title: Gout

text: Studies in the early 2000s found that other dietary factors are not relevant. Specifically, a diet with moderate purine-rich vegetables (e.g., beans, peas, lentils, and spinach) is not associated with gout. Neither is total dietary protein. Alcohol consumption is strongly associated with increased risk, with wine presenting somewhat less of a risk than beer or spirits. Eating skim milk powder enriched with glycomacropeptide (GMP) and G600 milk fat extract may reduce pain but may result in diarrhea and nausea.


title: Gout

text: Physical fitness, healthy weight, low-fat dairy products, and to a lesser extent, coffee and taking vitamin C, appear to decrease the risk of gout; however, taking vitamin C supplements does not appear to have a significant effect in people who already have established gout. Peanuts, brown bread, and fruit also appear protective. This is believed to be partly due to their effect in reducing insulin resistance.


title: Gout

text: Other than dietary and lifestyle choices, the recurrence of gout attacks is also linked to the weather. High ambient temperature and low relative humidity may increase the risk of a gout attack.


title: Gout

text: Gout is partly genetic, contributing to about 60% of variability in uric acid level. The "SLC2A9", "SLC22A12", and "ABCG2" genes have been found to be commonly associated with gout and variations in them can approximately double the risk. Loss-of-function mutations in "SLC2A9" and "SLC22A12" causes low blood uric acid levels by reducing urate absorption and unopposed urate secretion. The rare genetic disorders familial juvenile hyperuricemic nephropathy, medullary cystic kidney disease, phosphoribosylpyrophosphate synthetase superactivity and hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase deficiency as seen in Lesch–Nyhan syndrome, are complicated by gout.


title: Gout

text: Gout frequently occurs in combination with other medical problems. Metabolic syndrome, a combination of abdominal obesity, hypertension, insulin resistance, and abnormal lipid levels, occurs in nearly 75% of cases. Other conditions commonly complicated by gout include lead poisoning, kidney failure, hemolytic anemia, psoriasis, solid organ transplants, and myeloproliferative disorders such as polycythemia. A body mass index greater than or equal to 35 increases male risk of gout threefold. Chronic lead exposure and lead-contaminated alcohol are risk factors for gout due to the harmful effect of lead on kidney function.


title: Gout

text: Diuretics have been associated with attacks of gout, but a low dose of hydrochlorothiazide does not seem to increase risk. Other medications that increase the risk include niacin, aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid), ACE inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, beta blockers, ritonavir, and pyrazinamide. The immunosuppressive drugs ciclosporin and tacrolimus are also associated with gout, the former more so when used in combination with hydrochlorothiazide. Hyperuricemia may be induced by excessive use of Vitamin D supplements. Levels of serum uric acid have been positively associated with 25(OH) D. The incidence of hyperuricemia increased 9.4% for every 10 nmol/L increase in 25(OH) D (P < 0.001).


title: Gout

text: Gout is a disorder of purine metabolism, and occurs when its final metabolite, uric acid, crystallizes in the form of monosodium urate, precipitating and forming deposits (tophi) in joints, on tendons, and in the surrounding tissues. Microscopic tophi may be walled off by a ring of proteins, which blocks interaction of the crystals with cells and therefore avoids inflammation. Naked crystals may break out of walled-off tophi due to minor physical damage to the joint, medical or surgical stress, or rapid changes in uric acid levels. When they break through the tophi, they trigger a local immune-mediated inflammatory reaction in macrophages, which is initiated by the NLRP3 inflammasome protein complex. Activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome recruits the enzyme caspase 1, which converts pro-interleukin 1β into active interleukin 1β, one of the key proteins in the inflammatory cascade. An evolutionary loss of urate oxidase (uricase), which breaks down uric acid, in humans and higher primates has made this condition common.


title: Gout

text: The triggers for precipitation of uric acid are not well understood. While it may crystallize at normal levels, it is more likely to do so as levels increase. Other triggers believed to be important in acute episodes of arthritis include cool temperatures, rapid changes in uric acid levels, acidosis, articular hydration and extracellular matrix proteins. The increased precipitation at low temperatures partly explains why the joints in the feet are most commonly affected. Rapid changes in uric acid may occur due to factors including trauma, surgery, chemotherapy and diuretics. The starting or increasing of urate-lowering medications can lead to an acute attack of gout with febuxostat of a particularly high risk. Calcium channel blockers and losartan are associated with a lower risk of gout compared to other medications for hypertension.


title: Gout

text: Gout may be diagnosed and treated without further investigations in someone with hyperuricemia and the classic acute arthritis of the base of the great toe (known as podagra). Synovial fluid analysis should be done if the diagnosis is in doubt. Plain X-rays are usually normal and are not useful for confirming a diagnosis of early gout. They may show signs of chronic gout such as bone erosion.


title: Gout

text: A definitive diagnosis of gout is based upon the identification of monosodium urate crystals in synovial fluid or a tophus. All synovial fluid samples obtained from undiagnosed inflamed joints by arthrocentesis should be examined for these crystals. Under polarized light microscopy, they have a needle-like morphology and strong negative birefringence. This test is difficult to perform and requires a trained observer. The fluid must be examined relatively soon after aspiration, as temperature and pH affect solubility.


title: Gout

text: Hyperuricemia is a classic feature of gout, but nearly half of the time gout occurs without hyperuricemia and most people with raised uric acid levels never develop gout. Thus, the diagnostic utility of measuring uric acid levels is limited. Hyperuricemia is defined as a plasma urate level greater than 420 μmol/L (7.0 mg/dl) in males and 360 μmol/L (6.0 mg/dl) in females. Other blood tests commonly performed are white blood cell count, electrolytes, kidney function and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR). However, both the white blood cells and ESR may be elevated due to gout in the absence of infection. A white blood cell count as high as 40.0×10/l (40,000/mm) has been documented.


title: Gout

text: The most important differential diagnosis in gout is septic arthritis. This should be considered in those with signs of infection or those who do not improve with treatment. To help with diagnosis, a synovial fluid Gram stain and culture may be performed. Other conditions that can look similar include CPPD (pseudogout), rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, palindromic rheumatism, and reactive arthritis. Gouty tophi, in particular when not located in a joint, can be mistaken for basal cell carcinoma or other neoplasms.


title: Gout

text: Risk of gout attacks can be lowered by complete abstinence from drinking alcoholic beverages, reducing the intake of fructose (e.g. high fructose corn syrup) and purine-rich foods of animal origin, such as organ meats and seafood. Eating dairy products, vitamin C-rich foods, coffee, and cherries may help prevent gout attacks, as does losing weight. Gout may be secondary to sleep apnea via the release of purines from oxygen-starved cells. Treatment of apnea can lessen the occurrence of attacks.


title: Gout

text: As of 2020, allopurinol is generally the recommended preventative treatment if medications are used. A number of other medications may occasionally be considered to prevent further episodes of gout, including probenecid, febuxostat, benzbromarone, and colchicine. Long term medications are not recommended until a person has had two attacks of gout, unless destructive joint changes, tophi, or urate nephropathy exist. It is not until this point that medications are cost-effective. They are not usually started until one to two weeks after an acute flare has resolved, due to theoretical concerns of worsening the attack. They are often used in combination with either an NSAID or colchicine for the first three to six months.


title: Gout

text: While it has been recommended that urate-lowering measures should be increased until serum uric acid levels are below 300–360 µmol/L (5.0–6.0 mg/dl), there is little evidence to support this practice over simple putting people on a standard dose of allopurinol. If these medications are in chronic use at the time of an attack, it is recommended that they be continued. Levels that cannot be brought below 6.0 mg/dl while attacks continue indicates refractory gout.


title: Gout

text: While historically it is not recommended to start allopurinol during an acute attack of gout, this practice appears acceptable. Allopurinol blocks uric acid production, and is the most commonly used agent. Long term therapy is safe and well-tolerated and can be used in people with renal impairment or urate stones, although hypersensitivity occurs in a small number of individuals. The "HLA-B*58:01" allele of the human leukocyte antigen B ("HLA-B") is strongly associated with severe cutaneous adverse reactions during treatment with allopurinol and is most common among Asian subpopulations, notably those of Korean, Han-Chinese, or Thai descent.


title: Gout

text: Febuxostat is only recommended in those who cannot tolerate allopurinol. There are concerns about more deaths with febuxostat compared to allopurinol. Febuxostat may also increase the rate of gout flares during early treatment. However, there is tentative evidence that febuxostat may bring down urate levels more than allopurinol.


title: Gout

text: Probenecid appears to be less effective than allopurinol and is a second line agent. Probenecid may be used if undersecretion of uric acid is present (24-hour urine uric acid less than 800 mg). It is, however, not recommended if a person has a history of kidney stones. Pegloticase is an option for the 3% of people who are intolerant to other medications. It is a third line agent. Pegloticase is given as an intravenous infusion every two weeks, and reduces uric acid levels. Pegloticase is useful decreasing tophi but has a high rate of side effects and many people develop resistance to it. Using lesinurad plus febuxostat is more beneficial for tophi resolution than lesinural with febuxostat, with similar side effects. Lesinural plus allopurinol is not effective for tophi resolution. Potential side effects include kidney stones, anemia and joint pain. In 2016, it was withdrawn from the European market.


title: Gout

text: Lesinurad reduces blood uric acid levels by preventing uric acid absorption in the kidneys. It was approved in the United States for use together with allopurinol, among those who were unable to reach their uric acid level targets. Side effects include kidney problems and kidney stones.


title: Gout

text: The initial aim of treatment is to settle the symptoms of an acute attack. Repeated attacks can be prevented by medications that reduce serum uric acid levels. Tentative evidence supports the application of ice for 20 to 30 minutes several times a day to decrease pain. Options for acute treatment include nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), colchicine, and glucocorticoids. While glucocorticoids and NSAIDs work equally well, glucocorticoids may be safer. Options for prevention include allopurinol, febuxostat, and probenecid. Lowering uric acid levels can cure the disease. Treatment of associated health problems is also important. Lifestyle interventions have been poorly studied. It is unclear whether dietary supplements have an effect in people with gout.


title: Gout

text: NSAIDs are the usual first-line treatment for gout. No specific agent is significantly more or less effective than any other. Improvement may be seen within four hours and treatment is recommended for one to two weeks. They are not recommended for those with certain other health problems, such as gastrointestinal bleeding, kidney failure, or heart failure. While indometacin has historically been the most commonly used NSAID, an alternative, such as ibuprofen, may be preferred due to its better side effect profile in the absence of superior effectiveness. For those at risk of gastric side effects from NSAIDs, an additional proton pump inhibitor may be given. There is some evidence that COX-2 inhibitors may work as well as nonselective NSAIDs for acute gout attack with fewer side effects.


title: Gout

text: Colchicine is an alternative for those unable to tolerate NSAIDs. At high doses, side effects (primarily gastrointestinal upset) limit its usage. At lower doses, which are still effective, it is well tolerated. Colchicine may interact with other commonly prescribed drugs, such as atorvastatin and erythromycin, among others.


title: Gout

text: Glucocorticoids have been found to be as effective as NSAIDs and may be used if contraindications exist for NSAIDs. They also lead to improvement when injected into the joint. A joint infection must be excluded, however, as glucocorticoids worsen this condition. There were no short-term adverse effects reported.


title: Gout

text: Interleukin-1 inhibitors, such as canakinumab, showed moderate effectiveness for pain relief and reduction of joint swelling, but have increased risk of adverse events, such as back pain, headache, and increased blood pressure. They, however, may work less well than usual doses of NSAIDS. The high cost of this class of drugs may also discourage their use for treating gout.


title: Gout

text: Without treatment, an acute attack of gout usually resolves in five to seven days; however, 60% of people have a second attack within one year. Those with gout are at increased risk of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome, and kidney and cardiovascular disease and thus are at increased risk of death. It is unclear whether medications that lower urate affect cardiovascular disease risks. This may be partly due to its association with insulin resistance and obesity, but some of the increased risk appears to be independent.


title: Gout

text: Without treatment, episodes of acute gout may develop into chronic gout with destruction of joint surfaces, joint deformity, and painless tophi. These tophi occur in 30% of those who are untreated for five years, often in the helix of the ear, over the olecranon processes, or on the Achilles tendons. With aggressive treatment, they may dissolve. Kidney stones also frequently complicate gout, affecting between 10 and 40% of people, and occur due to low urine pH promoting the precipitation of uric acid. Other forms of chronic kidney dysfunction may occur.


title: Gout

text: Gout affects around 1–2% of people in the Western world at some point in their lifetimes and is becoming more common. Some 5.8 million people were affected in 2013. Rates of gout approximately doubled between 1990 and 2010. This rise is believed to be due to increasing life expectancy, changes in diet and an increase in diseases associated with gout, such as metabolic syndrome and high blood pressure. Factors that influence rates of gout include age, race, and the season of the year. In men over 30 and women over 50, rates are 2%.


title: Gout

text: In the United States, gout is twice as likely in males of African descent than those of European descent. Rates are high among Pacific Islanders and the Māori, but the disease is rare in aboriginal Australians, despite a higher mean uric acid serum concentration in the latter group. It has become common in China, Polynesia, and urban Sub-Saharan Africa. Some studies found that attacks of gout occur more frequently in the spring. This has been attributed to seasonal changes in diet, alcohol consumption, physical activity, and temperature.


title: Gout

text: The term "gout" was initially used by Randolphus of Bocking, around 1200 AD. It is derived from the Latin word "gutta", meaning "a drop" (of liquid). According to the "Oxford English Dictionary", this is derived from humorism and "the notion of the 'dropping' of a morbid material from the blood in and around the joints".


title: Gout

text: Gout has been known since antiquity. Historically, it was referred to as "the king of diseases and the disease of kings" or "rich man's disease". The Ebers papyrus and the Edwin Smith papyrus, () each mention arthritis of the first metacarpophalangeal joint as a distinct type of arthritis. These ancient manuscripts cite (now missing) Egyptian texts about gout that are claimed to have been written 1,000 years earlier by Imhotep. Greek physician Hippocrates around 400 BC commented on it in his "Aphorisms", noting its absence in eunuchs and premenopausal women. Aulus Cornelius Celsus (30 AD) described the linkage with alcohol, later onset in women and associated kidney problems:


title: Gout

text: Benjamin Welles, an English physician authored the first medical book on gout, "A Treatise of the Gout, or Joint Evil", in 1669. In 1683, Thomas Sydenham, an English physician, described its occurrence in the early hours of the morning and its predilection for older males:


title: Gout

text: Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first described the microscopic appearance of urate crystals in 1679. In 1848, English physician Alfred Baring Garrod identified excess uric acid in the blood as the cause of gout.


title: Gout

text: Gout is rare in most other animals due to their ability to produce uricase, which breaks down uric acid. Humans and other great apes do not have this ability; thus, gout is common. Other animals with uricase include fish, amphibians and most non-primate mammals. The "Tyrannosaurus rex" specimen known as "Sue" is believed to have had gout.


title: Gout

text: A number of new medications are under study for treating gout, including anakinra, canakinumab, and rilonacept. Canakinumab may result in better outcomes than a low dose of a glucocorticoid, but costs five thousand times more. A recombinant uricase enzyme (rasburicase) is available but its use is limited, as it triggers an immune response. Less antigenic versions are in development.


title: SWOT analysis

text: SWOT analysis (or SWOT matrix) is a strategic planning and strategic management technique used to help a person or organization identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats related to business competition or project planning. It is sometimes called situational assessment or situational analysis. Additional acronyms using the same components include TOWS and WOTS-UP.


title: SWOT analysis

text: This technique is designed for use in the preliminary stages of decision-making processes and can be used as a tool for evaluation of the strategic position of organizations of many kinds (for-profit enterprises, local and national governments, NGOs, etc.). It is intended to identify the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieving the objectives of the venture or project. Users of a SWOT analysis often ask and answer questions to generate meaningful information for each category to make the tool useful and identify their competitive advantage. SWOT has been described as a tried-and-true tool of strategic analysis, but has also been criticized for its limitations, and alternatives have been developed.


title: SWOT analysis

text: Strengths and weaknesses are usually considered internal, while opportunities and threats are usually considered external. The degree to which the internal strengths of the firm matches with the external opportunities is expressed by the concept of strategic fit.


title: SWOT analysis

text: Internal factors are viewed as strengths or weaknesses depending upon their effect on the organization's objectives. What may represent strengths with respect to one objective may be weaknesses (distractions, competition) for another objective. The factors may include personnel, finance, manufacturing capabilities, and all of the marketing mix's 4Ps.


title: SWOT analysis

text: External factors include macroeconomics, technological change, legislation, and sociocultural changes, as well as changes in the marketplace.


title: SWOT analysis

text: SWOT analysis has been used at different levels of analysis in many arenas, not just in profit-seeking organizations. Examples include non-profit organizations, governmental units, and individuals. SWOT analysis may also be used in pre-crisis planning and preventive crisis management. SWOT analysis may also be used in creating a recommendation during a viability study/survey.


title: SWOT analysis

text: Subscription databases that are available in many libraries, such as Business Source Elite and Gale Business Insights, regularly produce new SWOT analyses of companies.


title: SWOT analysis

text: SWOT analysis can be used to build organizational or personal strategy. Steps necessary to execute strategy-oriented analysis involve identification of internal and external factors (often using the popular 2 × 2 matrix), selection and evaluation of the most important factors, and identification of relations existing between internal and external features.


title: SWOT analysis

text: For instance, strong relations between strengths and opportunities can suggest good conditions in the company and allow using an strategy. On the other hand, strong interactions between weaknesses and threats could be analyzed as a potential warning and advice for using a strategy.


title: SWOT analysis

text: One form of TOWS matrix combines each of the four components with another to examine four distinct strategies:


title: SWOT analysis

text: One way of using SWOT is matching and converting. Matching is used to find competitive advantage by matching the strengths to opportunities. Another tactic is to convert weaknesses or threats into strengths or opportunities. An example of a conversion strategy is to find new markets. If the threats or weaknesses cannot be converted, a company should try to minimize or avoid them.


title: SWOT analysis

text: As part of the development of strategies and plans to enable an organization to achieve its objectives, that organization will use a systematic/rigorous process known as corporate planning. SWOT alongside PEST/PESTLE can be used as a basis for the analysis of internal and environmental factors.


title: SWOT analysis

text: In competitor analysis, marketers build detailed profiles of each competitor in the market, focusing especially on their relative competitive strengths and weaknesses using SWOT analysis. Marketing managers will examine each competitor's cost structure, sources of profits, resources and competencies, competitive positioning and product differentiation, degree of vertical integration, historical responses to industry developments, and other factors.


title: SWOT analysis

text: Marketing management often finds it necessary to invest in research to collect the data required to perform accurate marketing analysis. Accordingly, management often conducts market research (alternately marketing research) to obtain this information. Marketers employ a variety of techniques to conduct market research, but some of the more common include:


title: SWOT analysis

text: Marketing managers may also design and oversee various environmental scanning and competitive intelligence processes to help identify trends and inform the company's marketing analysis.


title: SWOT analysis

text: Below is an example SWOT analysis of a market position of a small management consultancy with a specialism in human resource management (HRM).


title: SWOT analysis

text: The SWOT analysis has been used in community work as a tool to identify positive and negative factors within organizations, communities, and the broader society that promote or inhibit successful implementation of social services and social change efforts. It is used as a preliminary resource, assessing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in a community served by a nonprofit or community organization.


title: SWOT analysis

text: Although the SWOT analysis was originally designed as an organizational method for business and industries, it has been replicated in community work as a tool for identifying external and internal support to combat the internal and external opposition. Understanding the particular community can be helped via public forums, listening campaigns, and informational interviews and other data collection. The SWOT analysis provides direction to the next stages of the change process. It has been used by community organizers and community members to further social justice in the context of social work practice.


title: SWOT analysis

text: SWOT analysis is intended as a starting point for discussion and cannot, in itself, show managers how to achieve a competitive advantage, particularly in a rapidly changing environment.


title: SWOT analysis

text: In a highly cited 1997 critique, "SWOT Analysis: It's Time for a Product Recall", Terry Hill and Roy Westbrook observed that one among many problems of SWOT analysis as it is often practiced is that "no-one subsequently used the outputs [of SWOT analysis] within the later stages of the strategy". Hill and Westbrook, among others, also criticized hastily designed SWOT lists. Other examples of potential pitfalls in practice are: preoccupation with a single strength, such as cost control, leading to a neglect of weaknesses, such as product quality; and domination by one or two team members doing the SWOT analysis and devaluing possibly important contributions of other team members. Many other limitations have been identified.


title: SWOT analysis

text: Michael Porter developed the five forces framework as a reaction to SWOT, which he found lacking in rigor and too .


title: SWOT analysis

text: Business professors have suggested various ways to remedy the common problems and limitations of SWOT analysis while retaining the SWOT framework.


title: SWOT analysis

text: SOAR (strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results) is an alternative technique inspired by appreciative inquiry. SOAR has been criticized as having similar limitations as SWOT, such as "the inability to identify the necessary data".


title: SWOT analysis

text: In project management, the alternative to SWOT known by the acronym SVOR (Strengths, Vulnerabilities, Opportunities, and Risks) compares the project elements along two axes: internal and external, and positive and negative. It takes into account the mathematical link that exists between these various elements, considering also the role of infrastructures. The SVOR table provides an intricate understanding of the elements hypothesized to be at play in a given project:


title: SWOT analysis

text: Constraints consist of: calendar of tasks and activities, costs, and norms of quality. The ""k"" constant varies with each project (for example, it may be valued at 1.3).


title: SWOT analysis

text: In 1965, three colleagues at the Long Range Planning Service of Stanford Research Institute—Robert F. Stewart, Otis J. Benepe, and Arnold Mitchell—wrote a technical report titled "Formal Planning: The Staff Planner's Role at Start-Up". The report described how a person in the role of a company's staff planner would gather information from managers assessing operational issues grouped into four components represented by the acronym SOFT: the "satisfactory" in present operations, "opportunities" in future operations, "faults" in present operations, and "threats" to future operations. Stewart et al. focused on internal operational assessment and divided the four components into (satisfactory and fault) and (opportunity and threat), and not, as would later become common in SWOT analysis, into (strengths and weaknesses) and (opportunities and threats).


title: SWOT analysis

text: Also in 1965, four colleagues at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration—Edmund P. Learned, C. Roland Christensen, Kenneth R. Andrews, and William D. Guth—published the first of many editions of the textbook "Business Policy: Text and Cases". ( was a term then current for what has come to be called strategic management.) The first chapter of the textbook stated, without using the acronym, the four components of SWOT and their division into internal and external appraisal:


title: SWOT analysis

text: Looking back from three decades later, in the book "Strategy Safari" (1998), management scholar Henry Mintzberg and colleagues said that "Business Policy: Text and Cases" "quickly became the most popular classroom book in the field", widely diffusing its authors' ideas, which Mintzberg et al. called the "design school" model (in contrast to nine other schools that they identified) of strategic management, "with its famous notion of SWOT" emphasizing assessment of a company's internal and external situations. However, the textbook contains neither a 2 × 2 SWOT matrix nor any detailed procedure for doing a SWOT assessment. "Strategy Safari" and other books identified Kenneth R. Andrews as the co-author of "Business Policy: Text and Cases" who was responsible for writing the theoretical part of the book containing the SWOT components. More generally, Mintzberg et al. attributed some conceptual influences on what they called the "design school" (of which they were strongly critical) to earlier books by Philip Selznick ("Leadership in Administration", 1957) and Alfred D. Chandler Jr. ("Strategy and Structure", 1962), with other possible influences going back to the McKinsey consulting firm in the 1930s.


title: SWOT analysis

text: By the end of the 1960s, the four components of SWOT (without using the acronym) had appeared in other publications on strategic planning by various authors, and by 1972 the acronym had appeared in the title of a journal article by Norman Stait, a management consultant at the British firm Urwick, Orr and Partners. By 1973, the acronym was well-known enough that accountant William W. Fea, in a published lecture, mentioned "the mnemonic, familiar to students, of S.W.O.T., namely strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats". An early example of a 2 × 2 SWOT matrix is found in a 1980 article by management professor Igor Ansoff (but Ansoff used the acronym T/O/S/W instead of SWOT).


title: SWOT analysis

text: SWOT analysis is described in very many publications. A few examples of books that describe SWOT analysis and are widely held by WorldCat member libraries and available in the Internet Archive are:


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: The Catcher in the Rye is an American novel by J. D. Salinger that was partially published in serial form from 1945–46 before being novelized in 1951. Originally intended for adults, it is often read by adolescents for its themes of angst and alienation, and as a critique of superficiality in society. The novel also deals with complex issues of innocence, identity, belonging, loss, connection, sex, and depression. The main character, Holden Caulfield, has become an icon for teenage rebellion. Caulfield, nearly of age, gives his opinion on just about everything as he narrates his recent life events.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: "The Catcher" has been translated widely. About one million copies are sold each year, with total sales of more than 65 million books. The novel was included on "Time"s 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, and it was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003, it was listed at number 15 on the BBC's survey "The Big Read".


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: Holden Caulfield, a depressed 16-year-old, lives in a sanitorium in California after the end of World War II. After his discharge within a month, he intends to go live with his brother D.B., an author and war veteran with whom Holden is angry for becoming a Hollywood screenwriter.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: Holden recalls the events of a weekend (Saturday afternoon to Monday afternoon) shortly before the previous year's Christmas, beginning at Pencey Preparatory Academy, a boarding school in Pennsylvania that Salinger may have based on the Valley Forge Military Academy and College. Holden has just been expelled from Pencey because he had failed all of his classes except English. After causing the fencing team to forfeit a fencing match in New York because he accidentally lost the team’s equipment on the subway, he says goodbye to his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, who is a well-meaning but long-winded old man. Spencer offers him advice and simultaneously embarrasses Holden by criticizing his history exam.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: Back at his dorm, Holden's dorm neighbor, Robert Ackley, who is unpopular among his peers, disturbs Holden with his impolite questioning and mannerisms. Holden, who feels sorry for Ackley, tolerates his presence. Later, Holden agrees to write an English composition for his roommate, Ward Stradlater, who is leaving for a date. Holden and Stradlater normally hang out well together, and Holden admires Stradlater's physique. He is distressed to learn that Stradlater's date is Jane Gallagher, with whom Holden was infatuated and whom he feels the need to protect. That night, Holden decides to go to a Cary Grant comedy with Mal Brossard and Ackley. Since Ackley and Mal had already seen the film, they ended up eating food, playing pinball for a while, and returning to Pencey. When Stradlater returns hours later, he fails to appreciate the deeply personal composition Holden wrote for him about the baseball glove of Holden's late brother Allie who died from leukemia a few years prior, and refuses to say whether he had sex with Jane. Enraged, Holden punches him, and Stradlater easily wins the fight. When Holden continues insulting him, Stradlater leaves him lying on the floor with a bloody nose. Fed up with the "phonies" at Pencey Prep, Holden decides to leave Pencey early and catches a train to New York. Holden intends to stay away from his home until Wednesday, when his parents will have received notification of his expulsion. Aboard the train, Holden meets the mother of a wealthy, obnoxious Pencey student, Ernest Morrow, and makes up nice but false stories about her son.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: In a taxicab, Holden asks the driver whether the ducks in the Central Park lagoon migrate during winter, a subject he brings up often, but the man barely responds. Holden checks into the Edmont Hotel and spends an evening dancing with three tourists at the hotel lounge. Holden is disappointed that they are unable to hold a conversation. Following an unpromising visit to a nightclub, Holden becomes preoccupied with his internal angst and agrees to have a prostitute named Sunny visit his room. His attitude toward the girl changes when she enters the room and takes off her clothes. Holden, who is a virgin, says he only wants to talk, which annoys her and causes her to leave. Even though he maintains that he paid her the right amount for her time, she returns with her pimp Maurice and demands more money. Holden insults Maurice, Sunny takes money from Holden's wallet, and Maurice snaps his fingers on Holden's groin and punches him in the stomach. Afterward, Holden imagines that he has been shot by Maurice and pictures murdering him with an automatic pistol.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: The next morning, Holden, becoming increasingly depressed and needing personal connection, calls Sally Hayes, a familiar date. Although Holden claims that she is "the queen of all phonies," they agree to meet that afternoon to attend a play at the Biltmore Theater. Holden shops for a special record, "Little Shirley Beans", for his 10-year-old sister Phoebe. He spots a small boy singing "If a body catch a body coming through the rye", which lifts his mood. After the play, Holden and Sally go ice skating at Rockefeller Center, where Holden suddenly begins ranting against society and frightens Sally. He impulsively invites Sally to run away with him that night to live in the wilderness of New England, but she is uninterested in his hastily conceived plan and declines. The conversation turns sour, and the two angrily part ways.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: Holden decides to meet his old classmate, Carl Luce, for drinks at the Wicker Bar. Holden annoys Carl, whom Holden suspects of being gay, by insistently questioning him about his sex life. Before leaving, Luce says that Holden should go see a psychiatrist, to understand himself better. After Luce leaves, Holden gets drunk, awkwardly flirts with several adults, and calls an icy Sally. Exhausted and out of money, Holden wanders over to Central Park to investigate the ducks, accidentally breaking Phoebe's record on the way. Nostalgic, he heads home to see his sister Phoebe. He sneaks into his parents' apartment while they are out and wakes up Phoebe — the only person with whom he seems to be able to communicate his true feelings. Although Phoebe is happy to see Holden, she quickly infers that he has been expelled and chastises him for his aimlessness and his apparent disdain for everything. When asked if he cares about anything, Holden shares a selfless fantasy he has been thinking about (based on a mishearing of Robert Burns's "Comin' Through the Rye"), in which he imagines himself as making a job of saving children running through a field of rye by catching them before they fell off a nearby cliff (a "catcher in the rye"). Phoebe points out that the actual poem says, "when a body meet a body, comin through the rye." Holden breaks down in tears, and his sister tries to console him.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: When his parents return home, Holden slips out and visits his former and much-admired English teacher, Mr. Antolini, who expresses concern that Holden is headed for "a terrible fall". Mr. Antolini advises him to begin applying himself and provides Holden with a place to sleep. Holden is upset when he wakes up to find Mr. Antolini patting his head, which he interprets as a sexual advance. He leaves and spends the rest of the night in a waiting room at Grand Central Terminal, where he sinks further into despair and expresses regret over leaving Mr. Antolini. He spends most of the morning wandering Fifth Avenue.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: Losing hope of finding belonging or companionship in the city, Holden impulsively decides that he will head out West and live a reclusive lifestyle as a deaf-mute gas station attendant living in a log cabin. He decides to see Phoebe at lunchtime to explain his plan and say goodbye. While visiting Phoebe's school, Holden sees graffiti containing a curse word and becomes distressed by the thought of children learning the word's meaning and tarnishing their innocence. When he meets Phoebe at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she arrives with a suitcase and asks to go with him, even though she was looking forward to acting as Benedict Arnold in a play that Friday. Holden refuses to let her come with him, which upsets Phoebe. He tries to cheer her up by allowing her to skip school and taking her to the Central Park Zoo, but she remains angry. They eventually reach the zoo's carousel, where Phoebe reconciles with Holden after he buys her a ticket. Holden is finally filled with happiness and joy at the sight of Phoebe riding the carousel.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: Holden finally alludes to encountering his parents that night and "getting sick", mentioning that he will be attending another school in September. Holden says he doesn't want to tell anything more because talking about them has made him miss his former classmates.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: Various older stories by Salinger contain characters similar to those in "The Catcher in the Rye". While at Columbia University, Salinger wrote a short story called "The Young Folks" in Whit Burnett's class; one character from this story has been described as a "thinly penciled prototype of Sally Hayes". In November 1941 he sold the story "Slight Rebellion off Madison", which featured Holden Caulfield, to "The New Yorker", but it wasn't published until December 21, 1946, due to World War II. The story "I'm Crazy", which was published in the December 22, 1945 issue of "Collier's", contained material that was later used in "The Catcher in the Rye".


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: In 1946, "The New Yorker" accepted a 90-page manuscript about Holden Caulfield for publication, but Salinger later withdrew it.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: "The Catcher in the Rye" is narrated in a subjective style from the point of view of Holden Caulfield, following his exact thought processes. There is flow in the seemingly disjointed ideas and episodes; for example, as Holden sits in a chair in his dorm, minor events, such as picking up a book or looking at a table, unfold into discussions about experiences.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: Critical reviews affirm that the novel accurately reflected the teenage colloquial speech of the time. Words and phrases that appear frequently include:


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: Bruce Brooks held that Holden's attitude remains unchanged at story's end, implying no maturation, thus differentiating the novel from young adult fiction.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: In contrast, Louis Menand thought that teachers assign the novel because of the optimistic ending, to teach adolescent readers that "alienation is just a phase." While Brooks maintained that Holden acts his age, Menand claimed that Holden thinks as an adult, given his ability to accurately perceive people and their motives. Others highlight the dilemma of Holden's state, in between adolescence and adulthood. Holden is quick to become emotional. "I felt sorry as hell for..." is a phrase he often uses. It is often said that Holden changes at the end, when he watches Phoebe on the carousel, and he talks about the golden ring and how it's good for kids to try and grab it.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: Peter Beidler in his "A Reader's Companion to J. D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye"", identifies the movie that the prostitute "Sunny" refers to. In chapter 13 she says that in the movie a boy falls off a boat. The movie is "Captains Courageous" (1937), starring Spencer Tracy. Sunny says that Holden looks like the boy who fell off the boat. Beidler shows a still of the boy, played by child-actor Freddie Bartholomew.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: Each Caulfield child has literary talent. D.B. writes screenplays in Hollywood; Holden also reveres D.B. for his writing skill (Holden's own best subject), but he also despises Hollywood industry-based movies, considering them the ultimate in "phony" as the writer has no space for his own imagination and describes D.B.'s move to Hollywood to write for films as "prostituting himself"; Allie wrote poetry on his baseball glove; and Phoebe is a diarist.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: This "catcher in the rye" is an analogy for Holden, who admires in children attributes that he often struggles to find in adults, like innocence, kindness, spontaneity, and generosity. Falling off the cliff could be a progression into the adult world that surrounds him and that he strongly criticizes. Later, Phoebe and Holden exchange roles as the "catcher" and the "fallen"; he gives her his hunting hat, the catcher's symbol, and becomes the fallen as Phoebe becomes the catcher.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: In their biography of Salinger, David Shields and Shane Salerno argue that: ""The Catcher in the Rye" can best be understood as a disguised war novel." Salinger witnessed the horrors of World War II, but rather than writing a combat novel, Salinger, according to Shields and Salerno, "took the trauma of war and embedded it within what looked to the naked eye like a coming-of-age novel."


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: "The Catcher in the Rye" has been consistently listed as one of the best novels of the twentieth century. Shortly after its publication, in an article for "The New York Times", Nash K. Burger called it "an unusually brilliant novel," while James Stern wrote an admiring review of the book in a voice imitating Holden's. George H. W. Bush called it a "marvelous book," listing it among the books that inspired him. In June 2009, the BBC's Finlo Rohrer wrote that, 58 years since publication, the book is still regarded "as the defining work on what it is like to be a teenager." Adam Gopnik considers it one of the "three perfect books" in American literature, along with "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "The Great Gatsby", and believes that "no book has ever captured a city better than "Catcher in the Rye" captured New York in the fifties." In an appraisal of "The Catcher in the Rye" written after the death of J. D. Salinger, Jeff Pruchnic says the novel has retained its appeal for many generations. Pruchnic describes Holden as a "teenage protagonist frozen midcentury but destined to be discovered by those of a similar age in every generation to come." Bill Gates said that "The Catcher in the Rye" is one of his favorite books.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: Not all reception has been positive. The book has had its share of naysayers, including the longtime "Washington Post" book critic Jonathan Yardley, who, in 2004, wrote that the experience of rereading the novel after several decades proved to be "a painful experience: The combination of Salinger's execrable prose and Caulfield's jejune narcissism produced effects comparable to mainlining castor oil." Yardley described the novel as among the worst popular books in the annals of American literature. "Why," Yardley asked, "do English teachers, whose responsibility is to teach good writing, repeatedly and reflexively require students to read a book as badly written as this one?" According to Rohrer, many contemporary readers, as Yardley found, "just cannot understand what the fuss is about... many of these readers are disappointed that the novel fails to meet the expectations generated by the mystique it is shrouded in. J. D. Salinger has done his part to enhance this mystique. That is to say, he has done nothing." Rohrer assessed the reasons behind both the popularity and criticism of the book, saying that it "captures existential teenage angst" and has a "complex central character" and "accessible conversational style"; while at the same time some readers may dislike the "use of 1940s New York vernacular" and the excessive "whining" of the "self-obsessed character."


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: In 1960, a teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma was fired for assigning the novel in class. She was later reinstated. Between 1961 and 1982, "The Catcher in the Rye" was the most censored book in high schools and libraries in the United States. The book was briefly banned in the Issaquah, Washington, high schools in 1978 when three members of the School Board alleged the book was part of an "overall communist plot." This ban did not last long, and the offended board members were immediately recalled and removed in a special election. In 1981, it was both the most censored book and the second most taught book in public schools in the United States. According to the American Library Association, "The Catcher in the Rye" was the 10th most frequently challenged book from 1990 to 1999. It was one of the ten most challenged books of 2005, and although it had been off the list for three years, it reappeared in the list of most challenged books of 2009.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: The challenges generally begin with Holden's frequent use of vulgar language; other reasons include sexual references, blasphemy, undermining of family values and moral codes, encouragement of rebellion, and promotion of drinking, smoking, lying, promiscuity, and sexual abuse. This book was written for an adult audience, which often forms the foundation of many challengers' arguments against it. Often the challengers have been unfamiliar with the plot itself. Shelley Keller-Gage, a high school teacher who faced objections after assigning the novel in her class, noted that "the challengers are being just like Holden... They are trying to be catchers in the rye." A Streisand effect has been that this incident caused people to put themselves on the waiting list to borrow the novel, when there was no waiting list before.


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: Several shootings have been associated with Salinger's novel, including Robert John Bardo's murder of Rebecca Schaeffer and John Hinckley Jr.'s assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. Additionally, after fatally shooting John Lennon, Mark David Chapman was arrested with a copy of the book that he had purchased that same day, inside of which he had written: "To Holden Caulfield, From Holden Caulfield, "This" is my statement".


title: The Catcher in the Rye

text: Early in his career, Salinger expressed a willingness to have his work adapted for the screen. In 1949, a critically panned film version of his short story "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" was released; renamed "My Foolish Heart", the film took great liberties with Salinger's plot and is widely considered to be among the reasons that Salinger refused to allow any subsequent film adaptations of his work. The enduring success of "The Catcher in the Rye", however, has resulted in repeated attempts to secure the novel's screen rights.