title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Prevention of severe disease involves screening the at-risk population with blood tests for TbG. Treatment is easier when the disease is detected early and before neurological symptoms occur. Treatment of the first stage has been with the medications pentamidine or suramin. Treatment of the second stage has involved eflornithine or a combination of nifurtimox and eflornithine for TbG. Fexinidazole is a more recent treatment that can be taken by mouth, for either stages of TbG. While melarsoprol works for both types, it is typically only used for TbR, due to serious side effects. Without treatment, sleeping sickness typically results in death.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: The disease occurs regularly in some regions of sub-Saharan Africa with the population at risk being about 70 million in 36 countries. An estimated 11,000 people are currently infected with 2,800 new infections in 2015. In 2018 there were 977 new cases. In 2015 it caused around 3,500 deaths, down from 34,000 in 1990. More than 80% of these cases are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Three major outbreaks have occurred in recent history: one from 1896 to 1906 primarily in Uganda and the Congo Basin, and two in 1920 and 1970, in several African countries. It is classified as a neglected tropical disease. Other animals, such as cows, may carry the disease and become infected in which case it is known as Nagana or animal trypanosomiasis.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: African trypanosomiasis symptoms occur in two stages: the hemolymphatic stage and the neurological stage (the latter being characterised by parasitic invasion of the central nervous system). Neurological symptoms occur in addition to the initial features, however, and the two stages may be difficult to distinguish based on clinical features alone.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: The disease has been reported to present with atypical symptoms in infected individuals who originate from non-endemic areas (e.g. travelers). The reasons for this are unclear and may be genetic. The low number of such cases may also have skewed findings. In such persons, the infection is said to present mainly as fever with gastrointestinal symptoms (e.g. diarrhoea and jaundice) with lymphadenopathy developing only rarely.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Systemic disease is sometimes presaged by a trypanosomal chancre developing at the site of the infectious fly bite within 2 days of infection. The chancre is most commonly observed in "T. b. rhodesiense" infection, and only rarely in "T. b. gambiense" (however, in "T. b. gambiense" infection, chancres are more common in persons from non-endemic areas).


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Incubation period is 1–3 weeks for "T. b. rhodesiense," and longer (but less precisely characterised) in "T. b. gambiense" infection. The first/initial stage, known as the hemolymphatic phase, is characterized by non-specific, generalised symptoms like: fever (intermittent), headaches (severe), joint pains, itching, weakness, malaise, fatigue, weight loss, lymphadenopathy, and hepatosplenomegaly.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Diagnosis may be delayed due to the vagueness of initial symptoms. The disease may also be mistaken for malaria (which may in fact occur as a co-infection).


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Fever is intermittent, with attacks lasting from a day to a week, separated by intervals of a few days to a month or longer. Episodes of fever become less frequent over the course of the disease.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Invasion of the circulatory and lymphatic systems by the parasite is associated with severe swelling of lymph nodes, often to tremendous sizes. Posterior cervical lymph nodes are most commonly affected, however, axillary, inguinal, and epitrochlear lymph node involvement may also occur. Winterbottom's sign, the tell-tale swollen lymph nodes along the back of the neck, may appear. Winterbottom's sign is common in "T. b. gambiense" infection.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Those affected may additionally present with: skin rash, haemolytic anaemia, hepatomegaly and abnormal liver function, splenomegaly, endocrine disturbance, cardiac involvement (e.g. pericarditis, and congestive heart failure), and ophthalmic involvement.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: The second phase of the disease, the neurological phase (also called the "meningoencephalic stage"), begins when the parasite invades the central nervous system by passing through the blood–brain barrier. Progression to the neurological phase occurs after an estimated 21–60 days in case of "T. b. rhodesiens"e infection, and 300–500 days in case of "T. b. gambiense" infection.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: In actuality, the two phases overlap and are difficult to distinguish based on clinical features alone; determining the actual stage of the disease is achieved by examining the cerebrospinal fluid for the presence of the parasite.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Sleep-wake disturbances are a leading feature of neurological stage and gave the disease its common name "African sleeping sickness". Infected individuals experience a disorganized and fragmented sleep-wake cycle. Those affected experience sleep inversion resulting in daytime sleep and somnolence, and nighttime periods of wakefulness and insomnia. Additionally, those affected also experience episodes of sudden sleepiness.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Neurological symptoms include: tremor, general muscle weakness, hemiparesis, paralysis of a limb, abnormal muscle tone, gait disturbance, ataxia, speech disturbances, paraesthesia, hyperaesthesia, anaesthesia, visual disturbance, abnormal reflexes, seizures, and coma. Parkinson-like movements might arise due to non-specific movement disorders and speech disorders.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Individuals may exhibit psychiatric symptoms which may sometimes dominate the clinical diagnosis and may include aggressiveness, apathy, irritability, psychotic reactions and hallucinations, anxiety, emotional lability, confusion, mania, attention deficit, and delirium.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Without treatment, the disease is invariably fatal, with progressive mental deterioration leading to coma, systemic organ failure, and death. An untreated infection with "T. b. rhodesiense" will cause death within months whereas an untreated infection with "T. b. gambiense" will cause death after several years. Damage caused in the neurological phase is irreversible.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: "Trypanosoma brucei gambiense" accounts for the majority of African trypanosomiasis cases, with humans as the main reservoir needed for the transmission, while "Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense" is mainly zoonotic, with the occasional human infection. African trypanosomiasis is dependent on the interaction of the parasite (trypanosome) with the tsetse flies (vector), as well as the host (human for "Trypanosoma brucei gambiense", and animals for "Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense"). The risk of contracting African trypanosomiasis is dependent on coming in contact with an infected tsetse fly.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: There are two subspecies of the parasite that are responsible for starting the disease in humans. "Trypanosoma brucei gambiense" causes the diseases in west and central Africa, whereas "Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense" has a limited geographical range and is responsible for causing the disease in east and southern Africa. In addition, a third subspecies of the parasite known as "Trypanosoma brucei brucei" is responsible for affecting animals but not humans.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Humans are the main reservoir for "T. b. gambiense" but this species can also be found in pigs and other animals. Wild game animals and cattle are the main reservoir of "T. b. rhodesiense". These parasites primarily infect individuals in sub-Saharan Africa because that is where the vector (tsetse fly) is located. The two human forms of the disease also vary greatly in intensity. "T. b. gambiense" causes a chronic condition that can remain in a passive phase for months or years before symptoms emerge and the infection can last about three years before death occurs.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: "T. b. rhodesiense" is the acute form of the disease, and death can occur within months since the symptoms emerge within weeks and it is more virulent and faster developing than "T. b. gambiense". Furthermore, trypanosomes are surrounded by a coat that is composed of variant surface glycoproteins (VSG). These proteins act to protect the parasite from any lytic factors that are present in human plasma. The host's immune system recognizes the glycoproteins present on the coat of the parasite leading to the production of different antibodies (IgM and IgG).


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: These antibodies will then act to destroy the parasites that circulate around the blood. However, from the several parasites present in the plasma, a small number of them will experience changes in their surface coats resulting in the formation of new VSGs. Thus, the antibodies produced by the immune system will no longer recognize the parasite leading to proliferation until new antibodies are created to combat the novel VSGs. Eventually, the immune system will no longer be able to fight off the parasite due to the constant changes in VSGs and infection will arise.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: The tsetse fly (genus "Glossina") is a large, brown, biting fly that serves as both a host and vector for the trypanosome parasites. While taking blood from a mammalian host, an infected tsetse fly injects metacyclic trypomastigotes into skin tissue. From the bite, parasites first enter the lymphatic system and then pass into the bloodstream. Inside the mammalian host, they transform into bloodstream trypomastigotes, and are carried to other sites throughout the body, reach other body fluids (e.g., lymph, spinal fluid), and continue to replicate by binary fission.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: The entire life cycle of African trypanosomes is represented by extracellular stages. A tsetse fly becomes infected with bloodstream trypomastigotes when taking a blood meal on an infected mammalian host. In the fly's midgut, the parasites transform into procyclic trypomastigotes, multiply by binary fission, leave the midgut, and transform into epimastigotes. The epimastigotes reach the fly's salivary glands and continue multiplication by binary fission.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: The entire life cycle of the fly takes about three weeks. In addition to the bite of the tsetse fly, the disease can be transmitted by:


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Horse-flies (Tabanidae) and stable flies (Muscidae) possibly play a role in transmission of nagana (the animal form of sleeping sickness) and the human disease form.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Tryptophol is a chemical compound produced by the trypanosomal parasite in sleeping sickness which induces sleep in humans.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: The gold standard for diagnosis is identification of trypanosomes in a sample by microscopic examination. Samples that can be used for diagnosis include chancre fluid, lymph node aspirates, blood, bone marrow, and, during the neurological stage, cerebrospinal fluid. Detection of trypanosome-specific antibodies can be used for diagnosis, but the sensitivity and specificity of these methods are too variable to be used alone for clinical diagnosis. Further, seroconversion occurs after the onset of clinical symptoms during a "T. b. rhodesiense" infection, so is of limited diagnostic use.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Trypanosomes can be detected from samples using two different preparations. A wet preparation can be used to look for the motile trypanosomes. Alternatively, a fixed (dried) smear can be stained using Giemsa's or Field's technique and examined under a microscope. Often, the parasite is in relatively low abundance in the sample, so techniques to concentrate the parasites can be used prior to microscopic examination. For blood samples, these include centrifugation followed by examination of the buffy coat; mini anion-exchange/centrifugation; and the quantitative buffy coat (QBC) technique. For other samples, such as spinal fluid, concentration techniques include centrifugation followed by examination of the sediment.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Three serological tests are also available for detection of the parasite: the micro-CATT (card agglutination test for trypanosomiasis), wb-CATT, and wb-LATEX. The first uses dried blood, while the other two use whole blood samples. A 2002 study found the wb-CATT to be the most efficient for diagnosis, while the wb-LATEX is a better exam for situations where greater sensitivity is required.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Currently there are few medically related prevention options for African trypanosomiasis (i.e. no vaccine exists for immunity). Although the risk of infection from a tsetse fly bite is minor (estimated at less than 0.1%), the use of insect repellants, wearing long-sleeved clothing, avoiding tsetse-dense areas, implementing bush clearance methods and wild game culling are the best options to avoid infection available for local residents of affected areas.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: In July 2000, a resolution was passed to form the Pan African Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Eradication Campaign (PATTEC). The campaign works to eradicate the tsetse vector population levels and subsequently the protozoan disease, by use of insecticide-impregnated targets, fly traps, insecticide-treated cattle, ultra-low dose aerial/ground spraying (SAT) of tsetse resting sites and the sterile insect technique (SIT). The use of SIT in Zanzibar proved effective in eliminating the entire population of tsetse flies but was expensive and is relatively impractical to use in many of the endemic countries afflicted with African trypanosomiasis.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: A pilot program in Senegal has reduced the tsetse fly population by as much as 99% by introducing male flies which have been sterilized by exposure to gamma rays.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Regular active surveillance, involving detection and prompt treatment of new infections, and tsetse fly control is the backbone of the strategy used to control sleeping sickness. Systematic screening of at-risk communities is the best approach, because case-by-case screening is not practical in endemic regions. Systematic screening may be in the form of mobile clinics or fixed screening centres where teams travel daily to areas of high infection rates. Such screening efforts are important because early symptoms are not evident or serious enough to warrant people with gambiense disease to seek medical attention, particularly in very remote areas. Also, diagnosis of the disease is difficult and health workers may not associate such general symptoms with trypanosomiasis. Systematic screening allows early-stage disease to be detected and treated before the disease progresses, and removes the potential human reservoir. A single case of sexual transmission of West African sleeping sickness has been reported.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: The treatment for first-stage disease is fexinidazole by mouth or pentamidine by injection for "T. b. gambiense". Suramin by injection is used for "T. b. rhodesiense".


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Fexinidazole may be used for the second stage of TbG, if the disease is not severe. Otherwise a regimen involving the combination of nifurtimox and eflornithine, nifurtimox-eflornithine combination treatment (NECT), or eflornithine alone appear to be more effective and result in fewer side effects. These treatments may replace melarsoprol when available. NECT has the benefit of requiring less injections of eflornithine.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Intravenous melarsoprol was previously the standard treatment for second-stage (neurological phase) disease and is effective for both types. Melarsoprol is the only treatment for second stage "T. b. rhodesiense"; however, it causes death in 5% of people who take it. Resistance to melarsoprol can occur.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: If untreated, "T. b. gambiense" almost always results in death, with only a few individuals shown in a long-term 15 year follow-up to have survived after refusing treatment. "T. b. rhodesiense", being a more acute and severe form of the disease, is consistently fatal if not treated. Disease progression greatly varies depending on disease form. For individuals which are infected by "T. b. gambiense", which accounts for 98% of all of the reported cases, a person can be infected for months or even years without signs or symptoms until the advanced disease stage, where it is too late to be treated successfully. For individuals affected by "T. b. rhodesiense", which accounts for 2% of all reported cases, symptoms appear within weeks or months of the infection. Disease progression is rapid and invades the central nervous system, causing death within a short amount of time.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: In 2010, it caused around 9,000 deaths, down from 34,000 in 1990. As of 2000, the disability-adjusted life-years (9 to 10 years) lost due to sleeping sickness are 2.0 million. From 2010 to 2014, there was an estimated 55 million people at risk for "gambiense" African Trypanosomiasis and over 6 million people at risk for "rhodesiense" African trypanosomiasis. In 2014, the World Health Organization reported 3,797 cases of Human African Trypanosomiasis when the predicted number of cases were to be 5,000. The number of total reported cases in 2014 is an 86% reduction to the total number of cases reported in 2000.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: The disease has been recorded as occurring in 37 countries, all in sub-Saharan Africa. It occurs regularly in southeast Uganda and western Kenya, and killed more than 48,000 Africans in 2008. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most affected country in the world, accounting for 75% of the "Trypanosoma brucei gambiense" cases. The population at risk being about 69 million with one third of this number being at a 'very high' to 'moderate' risk and the remaining two thirds at a 'low' to 'very low' risk. The number of people being affected by the disease has declined. At this rate, sleeping sickness elimination is a possibility. The World Health Organization plans to eradicate sleeping sickness by 2030.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: The condition has been present in Africa for thousands of years. Because of a lack of travel between indigenous people, sleeping sickness in humans had been limited to isolated pockets. This changed after Arab slave traders entered central Africa from the east, following the Congo River, bringing parasites along. Gambian sleeping sickness travelled up the Congo River, and then further east.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: An Arab writer of the 14th century left the following description in the case of a sultan of the Mali Kingdom: "His end was to be overtaken by the sleeping sickness ("illat an-nawm") which is a disease that frequently befalls the inhabitants of these countries especially their chieftains. Sleep overtakes one of them in such a manner that it is hardly possible to awake him."


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: French naval surgeon Marie-Théophile Griffon du Bellay treated and described cases while stationed aboard the hospital ship "Caravane" in Gabon in the late 1860s.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: In 1901, a devastating epidemic erupted in Uganda, killing more than 250,000 people, including about two-thirds of the population in the affected lakeshore areas. According to "The Cambridge History of Africa", "It has been estimated that up to half the people died of sleeping-sickness and smallpox in the lands on either bank of the lower river Congo."


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: The causative agent and vector were identified in 1903 by David Bruce, and the subspecies of the protozoa were differentiated in 1910. Bruce had earlier shown that "T. brucei" was the cause of a similar disease in horses and cattle that was transmitted by the tsetse fly ("Glossina morsitans").


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: The first effective treatment, atoxyl, an arsenic-based drug developed by Paul Ehrlich and Kiyoshi Shiga, was introduced in 1910, but blindness was a serious side effect.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Suramin was first synthesized by Oskar Dressel and Richard Kothe in 1916 for Bayer. It was introduced in 1920 to treat the first stage of the disease. By 1922, Suramin was generally combined with tryparsamide (another pentavalent organoarsenic drug), the first drug to enter the nervous system and be useful in the treatment of the second stage of the gambiense form. Tryparsamide was announced in the "Journal of Experimental Medicine" in 1919 and tested in the Belgian Congo by Louise Pearce of the Rockefeller Institute in 1920. It was used during the grand epidemic in West and Central Africa on millions of people and was the mainstay of therapy until the 1960s. American medical missionary Arthur Lewis Piper was active in using tryparsamide to treat sleeping sickness in the Belgian Congo in 1925.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Pentamidine, a highly effective drug for the first stage of the disease, has been used since 1937. During the 1950s, it was widely used as a prophylactic agent in western Africa, leading to a sharp decline in infection rates. At the time, eradication of the disease was thought to be at hand.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: The organoarsenical melarsoprol (Arsobal) developed in the 1940s is effective for people with second-stage sleeping sickness. However, 3–10% of those injected have reactive encephalopathy (convulsions, progressive coma, or psychotic reactions), and 10–70% of such cases result in death; it can cause brain damage in those who survive the encephalopathy. However, due to its effectiveness, melarsoprol is still used today. Resistance to melarsoprol is increasing, and combination therapy with nifurtimox is currently under research.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Eflornithine (difluoromethylornithine or DFMO), the most modern treatment, was developed in the 1970s by Albert Sjoerdsma and underwent clinical trials in the 1980s. The drug was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration in 1990. Aventis, the company responsible for its manufacture, halted production in 1999. In 2001, Aventis, in association with Médecins Sans Frontières and the World Health Organization, signed a long-term agreement to manufacture and donate the drug.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: In addition to sleeping sickness, previous names have included negro lethargy, maladie du sommeil (Fr), Schlafkrankheit (Ger), African lethargy, and Congo trypanosomiasis.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: The genome of the parasite has been sequenced and several proteins have been identified as potential targets for drug treatment. Analysis of the genome also revealed the reason why generating a vaccine for this disease has been so difficult. "T. brucei" has over 800 genes that make proteins the parasite "mixes and matches" to evade immune system detection.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Using a genetically modified form of a bacterium that occurs naturally in the gut of the vectors is being studied as a method of controlling the disease.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Recent findings indicate that the parasite is unable to survive in the bloodstream without its flagellum. This insight gives researchers a new angle with which to attack the parasite.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Additionally, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative has contributed to the African sleeping sickness research by developing a compound called fexinidazole. This project was originally started in April 2007 and enrolled 749 people in the DRC and Central African Republic. The results showed efficacy and safety in both stages of the disease, both in adults and children ≥ 6 years old and weighing ≥ 20 kg. The European Medicines Agency approved it for first and second stage disease outside of Europe in November 2018. The treatment was approved in the DRC in December 2018.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: For current funding statistics, human African trypanosomiasis is grouped with kinetoplastid infections. Kinetoplastids refer to a group of flagellate protozoa. Kinetoplastid infections include African sleeping sickness, Chagas' disease, and Leishmaniasis. All together, these three diseases accounted for 4.4 million disability adjusted life years (DALYs) and an additional 70,075 recorded deaths yearly. For kinetoplastid infections, the total global research and development funding was approximately $136.3 million in 2012. Each of the three diseases, African sleeping sickness, Chagas' disease, and Leishmaniasis each received approximately a third of the funding, which was about $36.8 million US dollars, $38.7 million US dollars, and $31.7 million US dollars, respectively.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: For sleeping sickness, funding was split into basic research, drug discovery, vaccines, and diagnostics. The greatest amount of funding was directed towards basic research of the disease; approximately $21.6 million US dollars was directed towards that effort. As for therapeutic development, approximately $10.9 million was invested.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: The top funder for kinetoplastid infection research and development are public sources. About 62% of the funding comes from high-income countries while 9% comes from low- and middle-income countries. High-income countries' public funding is the largest contributor to the neglected disease research effort. However, in recent years, funding from high-income countries has been steadily decreasing; in 2007, high-income countries provided 67.5% of the total funding whereas, in 2012, high-income countries public funds only provided 60% of the total funding for kinetoplastid infections. This downwards trend leaves a gap for other funders, such as philanthropic foundations and private pharmaceutical companies to fill.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Much of the progress that has been made in African sleeping sickness and neglected disease research as a whole is a result of the other non-public funders. One of these major sources of funding has come from foundations, which have increasingly become more committed to neglected disease drug discovery in the 21st century. In 2012, philanthropic sources provided 15.9% of the total funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been a leader in providing funding for neglected disease drug development. They have provided $444.1 million US dollars towards neglected disease research in 2012. To date, they have donated over $1.02 billion US dollars towards the neglected disease discovery efforts.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: For kinetoplastid infections specifically, they have donated an average of $28.15 million US dollars annually between the years 2007 to 2011. They have labeled human African trypanosomiasis a high-opportunity target meaning it is a disease that presents the greatest opportunity for control, elimination, and eradication, through the development of new drugs, vaccines, public-health programs, and diagnostics. They are the second-highest funding source for neglected diseases, immediately behind the US National Institutes of Health. At a time where public funding is decreasing and government grants for scientific research are harder to obtain, the philanthropic world has stepped in to push the research forward.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: Another important component of increased interest and funding has come from industry. In 2012, they contributed 13.1% total to the kinetoplastid research and development effort, and have additionally played an important role by contributing to public-private partnerships (PPP) as well as product-development partnerships (PDP). A public-private partnership is an arrangement between one or more public entities and one or more private entities that exists to achieve a specific health outcome or to produce a health product. The partnership can exist in numerous ways; they may share and exchange funds, property, equipment, human resources, and intellectual property. These public-private partnerships and product-development partnerships have been established to address challenges in pharmaceutical industry, especially related to neglected disease research. These partnerships can help increase the scale of the effort towards therapeutic development by using different knowledge, skills, and expertise from different sources. These types of partnerships have been shown to be more effective than industry or public groups working independently.


title: African trypanosomiasis

text: "Trypanosoma" of both the "rhodesiense" and "gambiense" types can affect other animals such as cattle and wild animals. African trypanosomiasis has generally been considered an anthroponotic disease and thus its control program was mainly focused on stopping the transmission by treating human cases and eliminating the vector. However, animal reservoirs were reported to possibly play an important role in the endemic nature of African trypanosomiasis, and for its resurgence in the historic foci of West and Central Africa.


title: OKR

text: Objectives and key results (OKR, alternatively OKRs) is a goal-setting framework used by individuals, teams, and organizations to define measurable goals and track their outcomes. The development of OKR is generally attributed to Andrew Grove who introduced the approach to Intel in the 1970s. John Doerr published an OKR book which is called "Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs" in 2017.


title: OKR

text: OKRs comprise an "objective" (a significant, concrete, clearly defined goal) and 3–5 "key results" (measurable success criteria used to track the achievement of that goal).


title: OKR

text: Not only should objectives be significant, concrete, and clearly defined, they should also be inspirational for the individual, team, or organization that is working towards them. Objectives can also be supported by initiatives, which are the plans and activities that help to move forward the key results and achieve the objective.


title: OKR

text: Key results should be measurable, either on a scale or with any numerical value (e.g. count, dollar amount, or percentage) that can be used by planners and decision makers to determine whether those involved in working towards the key result have been successful. There should be no opportunity for "grey area" when defining a key result.


title: OKR

text: Andrew Grove popularised the concept of OKR during his tenure at Intel in the 1970s. He later documented OKR in his 1983 book "High Output Management".


title: OKR

text: In 1975, John Doerr, at the time a salesperson working for Intel, attended a course within Intel taught by Grove where he was introduced to the theory of OKRs, then called "iMBOs" ("Intel Management by Objectives").


title: OKR

text: Doerr, who by 1999 was working for venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, introduced the idea of OKRs to Google. The idea took hold and OKRs quickly became central to Google's culture as a "management methodology that helps to ensure that the company focuses efforts on the same important issues throughout the organization".


title: OKR

text: Christina Wodtke's 2016 book "Radical Focus" popularised the concept of OKRs through a fable about a young startup.


title: OKR

text: Doerr published a book about the OKR framework titled "Measure What Matters" in 2018. Grove's simple but effective concept is explained by John Doerr in his book:


title: OKR

text: Larry Page, former CEO of Alphabet and co-founder of Google, credited OKRs within the foreword to Doerr's book:


title: OKR

text: Since becoming popular at Google, OKRs have found favor with several other similar large tech organizations including LinkedIn, Twitter, Uber, Microsoft and GitLab.


title: OKR

text: Doerr recommends that an organization's target success rate for key results be 70%. A 70% success rate encourages competitive goal-making that is meant to stretch workers at low risk. If 100% of the key results are consistently being met, the key results should be reevaluated.


title: OKR

text: Organizations should be careful in crafting their OKRs such that they don't represent business as usual since those objectives are, by definition, not action-oriented and inspirational. Words like "help" and "consult" should also be avoided as they tend to be used to describe vague activities rather than concrete, measurable outcomes.


title: OKR

text: When coming up with key results, it is also recommended to measure leading indicators instead of lagging indicators. Leading indicators are readily measurable and provide organizations with an early warning when something isn't going right so they can course-correct. Conversely, lagging indicators are those metrics which can't be attributed to particular changes and so prevent organizations from course-correcting in time.


title: OKR

text: Ben Lamorte, author of The OKRs Field Book, suggests 5 best practices for OKRs coaches: 1) "Less is more" - define a small set of OKRs, 2) "Crawl-walk-run" - Deploy OKRs piecemeal. Begin with pilot teams rather than a full-scale deployment across an entire organization. In the first cycle, emphasize learning about OKRs. Reserve the second cycle to explore how best to scale the program, 3) "Outcomes, not output" - Write key results that mostly reflect outcomes (results) rather than output (amount of work delivered), 4) "OKRs are not everything" - Write OKRs that reflect the most important areas to make measurable progress rather than attempting to reflect everything you do. Distinguish OKRs from tasks and health metrics. Health metrics are monitored and important to track, but, unlike key results, they are not the focus for near-term improvement, and 5) The only way to learn OKRs is to do OKRs.


title: OKR

text: OKRs were once typically set at the individual, team, and organization levels; however, most organizations no longer define OKRs for individual contributors as these OKRs tend to look like a task list and lead to conflating OKRs with performance reviews. The motivation for starting OKRs at the company, team, and individual levels was inspired by the 2014 Google Ventures Workshop Recording in which Rick Klau explains that OKRs exist at 3 levels. Subsequently, in November 2017, Klau clarified via twitter: “6- Skip individual OKRs altogether. Especially for younger, smaller companies. They’re redundant. Focus on company- and team-level OKRs.” Additionally, there is criticism that creating OKRs at multiple levels may cause too much of a waterfall approach, something that OKRs in many ways intend to avoid.


title: OKR

text: There is an overlap with other strategic planning frameworks like Objectives, goals, strategies and measures (OGSM) and Hoshin Kanri's X-Matrix. OGSM however explicitly includes "Strategy" as one of its components.


title: OKR

text: In addition, OKRs overlap with other performance management frameworks, sitting somewhere between performance indicator (KPI) and balanced scorecard.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno (born February 3, 1949), commonly referred to by his alias El Azul (English: "The Blue One"), was a Mexican drug lord and leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, a drug trafficking organization. Originally a member of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) police agency, he founded the Guadalajara Cartel in the 1970s along with other drug kingpins in Mexico. Following its disintegration in the late 1980s, he went on to lead the Juárez Cartel and eventually settled in the Sinaloa Cartel. He worked alongside Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, once considered Mexico's most-wanted drug lord.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno was born in Huixiopa, Badiraguato, Sinaloa, Mexico on 3 February 1949. He has an alternative date of birth on 2 March 1949 listed on the United States government databases. In the 1970s, he joined the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS), a now-extinct Mexican federal police agency, where he befriended police commanders involved in organized crime. Esparragoza Moreno's nickname, "El Azul" (English: "The Blue One"), derives from his complexion. He is said to be "so dark that his skin appears to be blue".


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: After the implementation of Operation Condor (Spanish: "Operación Cóndor"), a Mexican antidrug program carried out in the 1970s to stop the flow of drugs from Mexico to the United States, many drug traffickers from the state of Sinaloa regrouped in Guadalajara, Jalisco to continue their operations. The regrouping led to the formation of the Guadalajara Cartel, a drug trafficking organization that eventually managed to control nearly all the narcotics trafficking operations in Mexico throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. Among their original founders were Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (alias "El Padrino"), Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo (alias "Don Neto"), Rafael Caro Quintero (alias "Rafa"), Esparragoza Moreno, and other Sinaloan drug kingpins. Throughout most of the 1970s and early 1980s, most of the cocaine that was smuggled to the United States was trafficked by the Colombian drug cartels through Florida and the Caribbean Sea. However, with increased law enforcement measures in these areas by the mid-1980s, the Colombian drug kingpins shifted their operations to Mexico.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: The Guadalajara Cartel took advantage of this opportunity and began supplying cocaine for the Colombian groups through the U.S-Mexico border. But instead of simply acting as smugglers, the cartel leaders decided to take a share of the cocaine profits for themselves (the shares were often as high as 50%). Under their leadership, the Guadalajara Cartel initially oversaw the production and distribution of marijuana and opium poppies to the United States; by the 1980s, the cartel began to expand its operations and include cocaine in its repertoire. The Guadalajara Cartel managed to traffic cocaine to the U.S. in multi-ton shipments each month, and their leaders reportedly amassed a fortune. At the same time, the cartel enjoyed a level of protection through the DFS police agency; several of its members were involved in organized crime directly by actively participating in murder and drug trafficking on the cartel's behalf.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: With the growing influence of the Guadalajara Cartel, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) started to conduct covert operations in Mexico. One of its special agents, Enrique Camarena Salazar, was sent to the DEA offices in Guadalajara and started to work undercover by infiltrating the Guadalajara Cartel. During his tenure in Guadalajara, Camarena uncovered what seemed to be a never ending field of marijuana. In November 1984, Camarena directed Mexican authorities to a marijuana plantation in Chihuahua known as Rancho Búfalo (English: "Buffalo Ranch"), which was owned by the Guadalajara Cartel. Upon their arrival, the Mexican soldiers destroyed tons in marijuana valuing in over US$8 billion. The raid resulted in a major financial blow for the Guadalajara Cartel, and its leaders vowed to retaliate against those responsible for directing the Mexican government to the location.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: In broad daylight on 7 February 1985, several DFS police officers kidnapped Camarena as he left the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara. A few hours after the incident, his pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar, who had conducted operations for the DEA alongside Camarena, was abducted. Camarena was taken to a home at 881 Lope de Vega in Guadalajara, where he was tortured to gain information regarding his knowledge of law enforcement operations directed against the Guadalajara Cartel; as well as any information that the DEA may have on Mexican politicians involved in drug trafficking. Over the course of the 30 plus hour torture session, Camarena's skull, jaw, nose, cheekbones, windpipe, and ribs were broken; the kidnappers brought in a doctor to administer drugs to the agent to keep him conscious throughout the whole session. The kidnappers made audio recordings of some parts of Camarena's interrogation. The final blow was apparently done when the torturers crushed his skull with a piece of rebar or other similar piece of metal. About a month later, Camarena and Zavala's corpses were taken to the neighboring state of Michoacán and dumped in a roadside ditch to be discovered on 5 March 1985.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: The murder of Camarena outraged the U.S. government and put pressure on Mexico to arrest all the major players involved in the incident, resulting in a four-year law enforcement manhunt that brought down several leaders of the Guadalajara Cartel. Caro Quintero was arrested in Costa Rica on 4 April 1985 after fleeing Mexico; on 7 April 1985, Fonseca Carrillo was nabbed by the Mexican police in Jalisco; in March 1986, authorities arrested Esparragoza Moreno in Mexico City under the direction of the DFS police commander Florentino Ventura. He was imprisoned at the Reclusorio Sur penitentiary in Mexico City on 11 March 1986 for drug trafficking charges and for his alleged participation in the murder of Camarena. Esparragoza Moreno did not admit to the charges against him and said that he was innocent. A federal judge, however, sentenced him to seven years and two months behind bars. On 9 July 1990, he was transferred to another prison in Mexico City, and in March 1992 he was moved to the Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1 (known simply as "La Palma") in Almoloya de Juárez, State of Mexico. A year later, Esparragoza Moreno fulfilled his sentence and was released from prison.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: While Esparragoza Moreno was in prison, Félix Gallardo was arrested at his home in Guadalajara in April 1989. In efforts to keep the drug trade in Mexico working while he was behind bars, Félix Gallardo called for an organized crime summit in Acapulco, Guerrero. At the meeting, those present agreed to dismantle the Guadalajara Cartel and divide its territories among themselves. Each drug lord was given a certain region where they could traffic drugs to the U.S. and tax smugglers that wished to move merchandise on their turf. The Arellano Félix brothers and other drug traffickers formed the Tijuana Cartel, which controlled the Tijuana corridor and parts of Baja California; in Chihuahua state, a group controlled by the Carrillo Fuentes family formed the Juárez Cartel; and the remaining faction left to Sinaloa and the Pacific Coast and formed the Sinaloa Cartel under the traffickers Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, Héctor "El Güero" Palma, and Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. When Esparragoza Moreno became a free man, he joined the forces of the Juárez Cartel.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: In 1993, Esparragoza Moreno joined the forces of the Juárez Cartel under the tutelage of the cartel's leader Amado Carrillo Fuentes (alias "El Señor de los Cielos"), a top drug baron in Mexico. During Esparragoza Moreno's tenure under Carrillo Fuentes, the Juárez Cartel used sophisticated technology, such as large aircraft, to smuggle narcotics, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine, from Mexico to the U.S. The cartel had an important business relationship with the Cali Cartel in Colombia, and owned a number of storage places along the U.S.-Mexico border that were used to hide their merchandise before it was smuggled. The cartel's connection with Mexico's justice system was reportedly well-established too; it is believed that the former Mexican Army General José de Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo protected the Juárez Cartel until he was incarcerated for drug trafficking offenses in 1997. In addition, during the 1990s, the Juárez Cartel reportedly spent between US$20 and US$30 million financing each of their smuggling networks, and generated millions more a week from drug proceeds. Through a large network spread across the U.S., the Juárez Cartel recruited gang members to move the drugs for them across urban areas like Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Houston, Denver, Phoenix, and New York City.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: In the cartel, Esparragoza Moreno initially worked as the operational chief and later became the second-in-command, just behind Carrillo Fuentes. He was also a business partner with the imprisoned drug lord Juan José Quintero Payán (alias "Don Juanjo"), one of the founders of the Juárez Cartel. Esparragoza Moreno's role in the Juárez Cartel was that of a negotiator, and he was responsible for forging alliances with Peruvian and Colombian drug suppliers. He was also a dispute arbitrator within the cartel and was credited for organizing a peace agreement with the Gulf Cartel in northern Mexico. Since his tenure in the Juárez Cartel, Esparragoza Moreno has traditionally held leadership positions as a number-two figure, given his preference to maintain a low-profile status and avoid getting arrested or killed as the top kingpins usually do.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: In an attempt to change his physical appearance and avoid detection from Mexican and U.S. law enforcement, Carrillo Fuentes decided in 1997 to undergo plastic surgery and relocate outside of Mexico. After the eight-hour-long surgery at the Santa Mónica Hospital in Mexico City, Carrillo Fuentes reportedly died of a heart attack which was caused either by an overdose of the tranquilizer Dormicum or by a defect in a respirator. With Carrillo Fuentes's leadership void open, a power struggle within the cartel ensued as their leaders and rival crime groups scrambled to take over the kingpin's empire. The natural successor was his brother Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, who appointed his brother Rodolfo, his nephew Vicente Carrillo Leyva, and others as part of his faction. Esparragoza Moreno and others within the cartel, however, disagreed with the imposition of Carrillo Fuentes as the leader.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: Esparragoza has most recently been linked to leading "The Federation", an alliance of the Sinaloa, Juárez and Sonora (Caro-Quintero Organization) cartels.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: Esparragoza Moreno is currently wanted by the United States Department of State under its Narcotics Rewards Program and is offering a US$5 million bounty. In Mexico, he is included in the list of Mexico's 37 most-wanted drug lords, and the Mexican government is offering a $2 million bounty. In its wanted-poster description, the drug lord is said to have several aliases aside from his trademark "El Azul": Juan José Esparragoza Martínez, José Luis Esparragosa, Juan Esparragosa Ualino, Juan José Esparragoza Italino, Juan José Esparraguza Valino, Juan Manuel Ortiz Moreno, Arturo Beltrán, Raúl González, Juan Robles, Juan Robledo, and El Huarache. The free toll telephone tip lines made by the U.S. and Mexican governments are the following: in the U.S. it is 1-866-EL-AZUL-5 (1-866-352-9855) and in Mexico it is 01-800-9000-234 or 01-800-0025-200.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: The United States Department of the Treasury placed economic sanctions on nine entities and ten individuals linked to Esparragoza Moreno on 24 June 2012. In the statement, the United States froze the assets of the drug lord's family members, which consisted of several gas stations, a shopping center, a housing company, and other businesses. The Treasury blacklisted the ten individuals and prohibited U.S. companies from doing business with them. Six of the ten people sanctioned were family members of Esparragoza Moreno: two wives and four of his children. One of his wives, however, owned a property directly under his name. The other wife was sanctioned for owning seven gas stations on Esparragoza Moreno's behalf.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: The Treasury called Esparragoza Moreno a "godfather of Mexican narcotics" who has used illicit money to build a network in the legitimate business. While other Mexican drug lords have sought for more attention, Esparragoza Moreno tried to keep a low-profile in hopes of avoiding detection. Mexican investigators, however, have expressed their frustrations in the announcements the United States makes on the kingpin act designations, because they say that U.S. officials do not provide the evidence necessary to prosecute the drug lords and their associates in Mexican courts.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: Alejandra Araujo Uriarte, his mother-in-law, was blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury in December 2014 for allegedly having had concealed assets owned by Esparragoza Moreno. She was blacklisted because authorities believe that after the drug lord's family members were sanctioned, his wife began money laundering through her bank accounts.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: On June 7, 2014, Esparragoza Moreno reportedly died of a heart attack at the age of 65, apparently following a car accident he had suffered fifteen days earlier. According to unconfirmed reports, Esparragoza Moreno was confined to a bed after injuring his vertebral column in the wreck. When he tried to get up from his bed, he suffered a heart attack and died.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: Sources disagree on the exact location of his death; some state he died in Mexico City, while others suggest it may have been in Guadalajara. Esparragoza Moreno's remains were reportedly cremated and sent to Culiacán, Sinaloa by his family members and friends.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: The Mexican law enforcement and intelligence agencies, Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) and the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional (CISEN), led the investigation along with the DEA. The PGR chief Jesús Murillo Karam indicated that the Mexican government did not have sufficient evidence to confirm the rumors surrounding the drug lord's death. The mayor of Badiraguato Mario Valenzuela as well as the Governor of Sinaloa, Mario López Valdez, stated that the rumors were false.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: On 11 June 2014, the CISEN, the PGR, and the Policía Ministerial revealed that they had intelligence reports indicating that Esparragoza Moreno may have died at a hospital in Culiacán (not in Guadalajara or Mexico City, as previously stated). According to those unconfirmed reports, Esparragoza Moreno was registered at the hospital under a fake name and died there from a heart attack. Before authorities had a chance to confirm his death, the investigation states, his corpse was taken from the hospital and cremated the next day. The authorities carried out similar investigations in Mexico City, Jalisco, Nuevo León, and Sinaloa, but they have not found any information to confirm or deny the rumors surrounding Esparragoza Moreno's death.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: In August 2014, José Juan Esparragoza Jiménez, the son of Esparragoza Moreno, was arrested on charges of trafficking methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana. During his police interrogation, he stated that his father was deceased.


title: Juan José Esparragoza Moreno

text: In "", El Azul is portrayed by Fermín Martínez. The series portrays that he was killed by the Tijuana cartel in the 90’s however this was not true.


The Secret Life of the American Teenager (often shortened to Secret Life) is an American teen drama television series created by Brenda Hampton. It aired on ABC Family from July 1, 2008 to June 3, 2013.


title: The Secret Life of the American Teenager

text: The series received mixed to somewhat negative reviews from critics when it began broadcasting, but was nonetheless generally well received among female and teenage viewers. The pilot episode broke the record for the highest rated debut on ABC Family with 2.82 million viewers, a record previously held by "Kyle XY". The season one finale brought in 4.50 million viewers, beating that night's episode of "Gossip Girl", which had less than half its usual number of viewers. Premiering with mixed to somewhat positive reviews from critics, and mostly well received among viewers, the second season of "Secret Life" opened with the largest audience for the series, posting a series high in total viewers with 4.68 million viewers; in adults 18–34, it was the number one scripted original premiere of summer 2009. Furthermore, the mid-season premiere became ABC Family's most watched telecast of all time with viewers ages 12–34, with more than three million viewers watching.


text: The show earned the Teen Choice Award for Choice Summer TV Show during its premiere season, and spawned a book entitled "The Secret Diary of Ashley Juergens".


text: In season one, fifteen-year-old Amy Juergens finds out that she is pregnant after having sex at band camp with a handsome and popular boy, Ricky Underwood. Amy first confides in her two best friends Lauren and Madison about it. Amy also tells Ben Boykewich (the guy she started dating after becoming pregnant) the truth, but he is surprisingly supportive and offers to marry her anyway, despite the protests of his friends, Henry and Alice. When Ricky finds out he is the father, he is willing to be a part of his future child's life, causing Adrian Lee, Ricky's fling for a while to become jealous, especially since Ricky already has his sights on the sweet and virginal Grace Bowman, who was going out with Jack Pappas until he kissed Adrian in front of Grant High School. Much to Adrian's surprise, Grace is not angry at her after a while, and the two girls become friends despite being romantic rivals. Ricky and Ben also compete with each other for Amy's attention and at the end of the season, Amy has her child, a boy whom her sister, Ashley, names John. Amy decides to keep John, after struggling with the decision over the course of the season. Ricky said he would do anything to take care of his new son, John.


text: In season two, Amy's parents Anne and George are divorced, and Anne begins dating again, but when she becomes pregnant, it is revealed that the baby is George's. At the same time, Ashley begins her freshman year at Grant High and resents Amy's legacy as a teenage mother. She befriends a gay classmate named Griffin and they both pledge to remain abstinent throughout high school. Ben returns from his summer trip to Italy. Meanwhile, Amy struggles to raise John and frequently argues with Ricky over custodial arrangements, especially since Ben is becoming jealous of Ricky's constant presence. Eventually, Ben and Amy break up while Ricky and Adrian have agreed to date officially, but Ricky struggles to remain faithful. Grace loses her virginity to Jack on the same night her father dies in a plane crash and is wracked with guilt. She blames Jack and herself for her father's death, which causes Jack to be so upset that he begins drinking heavily. Grace refuses to get out of the car to attend her father's funeral, so Ricky forces her. Grace's brother Tom has trouble adjusting when their mother decides to remarry. Adrian begins to reach out to Amy in order to make peace, so Amy, John, and Ricky can be a family. The season's events culminate with Adrian's cheating on Ricky with Ben on the night of the Mother/Daughter dance, in an attempt to get back at Ricky for kissing Amy. Ricky is angry at both, breaking up with Adrian and refusing to forgive Ben, thus crushing their already-fragile friendship.


text: In season three, everyone finds out Adrian is pregnant with Ben's baby, except for Amy. So, Ben and Amy continue to date and start considering taking their relationship to the next level, while Ben struggles to tell Amy about Adrian. George and Anne Juergens have officially divorced and Anne lives closer to her mother while George stays at the house with Amy and Ashley. Ashley drops out of school and begins homeschooling herself. Kathleen Bowman's husband goes to Zimbabwe for a medical mission to bring aid to third-world people and returns in the season finale with a proposal that he and Kathleen return to live and explore the world. Kathleen is hesitant to accept, not wanting to leave Grace and Tom behind by themselves. Towards the middle of the season, Amy and Ricky begin to date, and everyone is doubtful that Ricky will be faithful. Adrian and Ben decide to get married and the ceremony occurs near the end of the season. In the two-part season finale, Ben and Adrian are living together in their condo and Adrian begins to sense that something might be wrong with their baby. They decide to call the doctor, who has them meet her at the hospital as soon as possible. Adrian gives birth to their stillborn daughter. They named her Mercy. Amy and Ricky have sex after getting home from the hospital.


text: In season four, Amy and Ricky begin to get closer when Amy and John move in with Ricky in his apartment, which is above the butcher shop. Ashley decides to leave LA to go on a road trip with her friend, Toby. Grace goes to Didiju and meets someone new. Jack and Madison break up after learning Jack still has feelings for someone else. Adrian and Ben deal with the miscarriage, which makes Ben want to leave her. Adrian finds out his plan and tries anything to keep him. While still in mourning, Ben meets someone who immediately has a bad influcence on him. Ricky proposes to Amy. Jesse has a graduation party and everyone is invited. But the party ends with 2 broken friendships and 1 broken relationship. George and Nora grow closer, now as roommates and friends. Anne has an adventure that sparks rumors, realizations, and unexpected journeys.


text: In the final season, Amy tells everyone that she and Ricky eloped, but little do they know Amy has another secret. Jack does a heroic act that gets him in serious trouble, which makes Grace rethink about her feelings for him. Leo and Camille get married. George learns a startling a secret from David. Adrian and Omar get engaged. Amy is faced with a tough decision regarding her life with Ricky and College.


text: "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" first aired on ABC Family on July 1, 2008. Season 1 began with 11 episodes broadcast from July 1, 2008, to September 9, 2008. After a hiatus, 12 first-season episodes aired January 5, 2009, through March 23, 2009, despite being marketed as season 2, for a total of 23 episodes. The first season was aired on Canadian broadcaster City starting on September 3, 2008. In early 2009, City removed "Secret Life" from its schedule. Therefore, MuchMusic started to air the first season in Canada on November 30, 2009, followed by the second season on December 7, 2009. In the United Kingdom Secret Life is available on ABC Studios via sky on demand. It is however broken up into eight seasons in contrast to the original five.


text: Following the success of its first season, ABC Family announced on January 31, 2009, plans to renew "Secret Life". The official press release was released on February 9 and was added to ABC Family's line up on April 7, 2009. The show was renewed for a 24-episode second season, which began airing on June 22, 2009. Season 2 began with 12 episodes broadcast starting June 22, 2009, through September 7, 2009. After a four-month hiatus, the second half of the season returned on January 4, 2010, and concluded on March 22, 2010.


text: Following their record-breaking, mid-season returns, "Make It or Break It", and "Secret Life" were both picked up for an additional season. The third-season premiere of "Secret Life" was aired on June 7, 2010, at 8 pm. On January 10, 2011, it was reported that "Secret Life" was picked up for a fourth season to be shown in Summer 2011 and season three would resume on March 28, 2011, after an extended season break. The second half of the fourth season is set to air on March 26, 2012.


text: On February 2, 2012, it was announced ABC Family renewed "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" for a fifth season.


text: "Secret Life" has a score of 48 out of 100 on Metacritic based on reviews from 15 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". The "New York Post" praised the series for having a set of characters that are "... real and come from families of all stripes – from intact to single-parent households to one boy in foster care..." However, most mainstream critics didn't embrace the show, likening it to an after-school special "filled with didactic messages and a lotta wooden acting," in the words of Ken Tucker of "Entertainment Weekly". "The New York Times" claimed that ""Secret Life" must surely be the collective effort of an anti-pregnancy cabal. [...] ABC Family means well but could not have done worse. "Secret Life" doesn’t take the fun out of teenage pregnancy, it takes the fun out of television" and called the show a "Prime-Time Cautionary Tale". "Variety" magazine reported that "ABC Family's latest original drama wants to be a slow-motion version of "Juno" but settles for being an obvious, stereotype-laden teen soap [...] based on first impressions, "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" should probably stay a secret." ReporterMag's Andrew Rees said, "The show...might be the worst scripted drama on television. Suffering from gag-worthy dialog, horrific plot twists, terrible acting, and characters who not even the best of 3-D glasses could give depth to, it’s a wonder how this show stays on the air."


text: Some critics praised the new developments of the show's second season, saying they could be "interesting material to build on." Jean Bently of EW Popwatch said that now that the whole "teen going through a pregnancy" plot has played out and the "frustrated young mother" thing is going on, we have room to explore some other topics. She remained hopeful that the writers will not just turn these new problems into issues of the week, instead allowing time for the characters to grieve Marshall's death, deal with Anne's accidental pregnancy, and explore the more emotionally complex aspects of teenage sex.


text: Despite its lackluster critical reviews, "Secret Life" received the highest premiere viewership ratings ever for an ABC Family original program. The pilot episode brought in 2.82 million viewers and a 0.9/3 share in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic. "Secret Life" also scored high in the female demographic, registering a 6.5/24 among female teenagers and a 3.1/11 among 12- to 34-year-old females. The mid-season finale of season one defeated the first hour of the much-publicized series premiere of "90210" on The CW in viewers 12–34 and females 12–34, beating "90210" in total viewers and all their key demographics, and bringing in some of the best ratings of the season for "Secret Life". The season one finale brought in 4.50 million viewers and was the highest rated telecast on March 23, 2009 in viewers aged 12–34 and the number one scripted telecast that night. The episode also beat "90210", which had 2.20 million viewers, more than half the usual number.


text: On Monday, June 22, 2009, "Secret Life" opened its second season with the largest audience so far, posting a series high in total viewers with 4.68 million viewers, and second-best numbers ever in adults 18–34 with 1.4 million viewers, behind season one's mid-season finale, adults 18–49 with 2.1 million viewers and viewers 12–34 with 2.9 million viewers. In June 2009, "Secret Life" ranked as cable's number one scripted telecast in females 12–34, and the number one scripted series telecast in viewers 12–34 and female teens. Additionally, "Secret Life" stood as ad-supported cable's number one telecast this month in female teens. The season debut became cable's number one scripted series premiere of the 2008/2009 season to date in women 18–34, women 18–49, and viewers 12–34, and the number one scripted original premiere of summer 2009 in adults 18–34.


text: "Secret Life's" second season debut stands as cable's number one scripted original series season premiere of summer 2009 in adults ages 18–34 and across core female 18–34, 18–49 and 12–34 demos, ahead of such high-profile series as USA's "Royal Pains" and "Burn Notice", and TNT's "The Closer".


text: With more than 4.55 million people watching the season two mid-season premiere, the episode became ABC Family's most-watched telecast ever in the key 12–34 and teen demos. The episode stands as the series’ second-most-watched episode in viewers and is TV's number one telecast of the season in female teens, cable's number one telecast in females 12–34, and cable's number one scripted telecast in viewers 12–34. The season two mid-season premiere remains cable's number one scripted premiere of the 2009/10 season. It improved nearly one million total viewers over its season two mid-season finale, and was number one in all target demos for the hour.


text: On Monday, June 7, 2010, "Secret Life" opened its third season as the number one summer premiere for the 2010 summer season. It drew 1.3 million women 18–49 viewers, 2.3 million viewers 12–34, 1.8 million female 12–34 viewers, and 1.0 million teen viewers, topping high profiles premieres of "Burn Notice", "Royal Pains", and "Pawn Stars". Additionally, Monday's "Secret Life" ranks as summer's number one scripted premiere on cable with 1.2 million viewers adults 18–34. It improved over its season 2 finale, growing by 20% in adults 18–34, by 21% in adults 18–49, and by 10% in viewers 12–34.


text: Regarding "The Secret Life"'s advertising, Laura Caraccioli-Davis, executive vice president of the media buyer Starcom, said, "Nielsen numbers will do the talking in the advertising community, which has a deep respect for success."


text: The following is a table with the average estimated number of viewers per episode, each season of "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" on ABC Family.


text: Throughout its five seasons, "Secret Life" has been nominated for several Teen Choice Awards, and won a Gracie Allen Award. It won a Teen Choice Award for Choice Summer TV Show during its premiere season. In 2009, it was nominated for three Teen Choice Awards, including Choice TV Show Drama, Choice TV Breakout Show, and Choice Summer TV. Kenny Baumann was nominated for Choice TV Actor Drama and Choice Summer TV Star: Male, Shailene Woodley was nominated for Choice TV Actress Drama and Choice Summer TV Star: Female, Daren Kagasoff was nominated for Choice TV Breakout Star: Male and won Choice Summer TV Star Male, and Molly Ringwald and Mark Derwin were nominated for Choice TV Parental Unit. A Gracie Allen Award was awarded to the show for Outstanding Drama in 2009. In 2010, the show was nominated as a Favorite TV Obsession at the 2010 People's Choice Awards; Shailene Woodley won a 2010 Gracie Award for Outstanding Female Rising Star in a Drama Series; the show was nominated as the Choice Summer TV show at the 2010 Teen Choice Awards; Ken Baumann and Daren Kagasoff were nominated as the Choice Male Summer TV Star; and Shailene Woodley was also nominated as the Choice Female Summer TV Star.


text: Each "Secret Life" season is released on DVD in separate volumes. For unknown reasons, Season one is sold as "Season One and Season Two". Season two is sold as "Volume Three and Volume Four", and similarly for the later seasons. The DVD releases include commentary by cast and crew members on selected episodes, deleted scenes, interviews with the cast, and behind-the-scenes featurettes. The season two, volume two DVD includes a preview of "Ashley Juergen's Secret Diary", a novella released on June 15, 2010.


text: On June 15, 2010, "The Secret Diary of Ashley Juergens" was published. Written by Kelly and Courtney Turk, whose previous credits include episodes of "7th Heaven" and "NCIS", it documents the thoughts of the character Ashley Juergens in the events chronicling the first and part of the second season. It also includes new characters that were not shown on "Secret Life". "We watched the episodes together and then talked briefly about ideas we each had and what we thought Ashley would have to say about whatever the storyline was. Then we separated and exchanged our chapters," Courtney stated while talking about the difference between writing a book and writing for television.


text: The series theme, sung by Molly Ringwald, is an upbeat version of Cole Porter's "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)." Other noteworthy music featured in the installments includes:


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: The Kingdom of Naples (; ; ), also known as the Kingdom of Sicily, was a state that ruled the part of the Italian Peninsula south of the Papal States between 1282 and 1816. It was established by the War of the Sicilian Vespers (1282–1302), when the island of Sicily revolted and was conquered by the Crown of Aragon, becoming a separate kingdom also called the Kingdom of Sicily. In 1816, it reunified with the island of Sicily to form the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: The territory of the Kingdom of Naples corresponded to the current Italian regions of Campania, Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Abruzzo, Molise and also included some areas of today's southern and eastern Lazio.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: The term "Kingdom of Naples" is in near-universal use among historians, but it was not used officially by the government. Since the Angevins remained in power on the Italian peninsula, they kept the original name of the Kingdom of Sicily (). At the end of the War of the Vespers, the Peace of Caltabellotta (1302) provided that the name of the kingdom would be Kingdom of Sicily had become known colloquially as the Kingdom of Naples ( or ).


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: In the late Middle Ages, it was common to distinguish the two Sicilies by noting its location relative to the rest of Italy and the , i.e., the Strait of Messina. The peninsular kingdom was known as Sicily or ('on this side of Faro'), and the island kingdom was known as Sicily or (on the other side of Faro). When both kingdoms came under the rule of Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1442, this usage became official, although Ferdinand I (1458–94) preferred the simple title King of Sicily ().


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: In the 18th century, the Neapolitan intellectual Giuseppe Maria Galanti argued that Apulia was the true "national" name of the kingdom. By the time of Alfonso the Magnanimous, the two kingdoms were sufficiently distinct that they were no longer seen as divisions of a single kingdom. Despite being repeatedly in personal union, they remained administratively separate. In 1816, the two kingdoms finally merged to form the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: Naples, which was the capital of the Duchy of Naples since the 7th century, surrendered to Roger II of Sicily in 1137, and was annexed to the Kingdom of Sicily. The Normans were the first to bring political unity to southern Italy in the centuries after the failure of the Byzantine effort to reconquer Italy. The Normans established a kingdom that included southern mainland Italy and the island of Sicily, which was primarily ruled from Palermo. The title of "King of Sicily" was established by the Antipope Anacletus II as early as 1130 and subsequently legitimized, in 1139, by Pope Innocent II. Since the royal titles over the State had been assigned to the Normans by Innocent II, the popes, in particular Pope Innocent III and Pope Innocent IV, claimed the feudal rights of the Church State over the Kingdom. After Constance, Queen of Sicily married Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor, the region was inherited by their son Frederick II, as King of Sicily. The region that later became the separate Kingdom of Naples under the Angevins formed part of the Kingdom of Sicily, which included the island of Sicily and Apulia.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: Following the rebellion in 1282, King Charles I of Sicily (Charles of Anjou) was forced to leave the island of Sicily by Peter III of Aragon's troops. Charles, however, maintained his possessions on the mainland, customarily known as the "Kingdom of Naples", after its capital city.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: Charles and his Angevin successors maintained a claim to Sicily, warring against the Aragonese until 1373, when Queen Joan I of Naples formally renounced the claim by the Treaty of Villeneuve. Joan's reign was contested by Louis the Great, the Angevin King of Hungary, who captured the kingdom several times (1348–1352).


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: Queen Joan I also played a part in the ultimate demise of the first Kingdom of Naples. As she was childless, she adopted Louis I, Duke of Anjou, as her heir, in spite of the claims of her cousin, the Prince of Durazzo, effectively setting up a junior Angevin line in competition with the senior line. This led to Joan I's murder at the hands of the Prince of Durazzo in 1382, and his seizing of the throne as Charles III of Naples.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: The two competing Angevin lines contested each other for the possession of the Kingdom of Naples over the following decades. In 1389 Louis II of Anjou son of Louis I managed to seize the throne from Ladislas of Naples son of Charles III, but was expelled by Ladislas in 1399. Charles III's daughter Joan II (r. 1414–1435) adopted Alfonso V of Aragon (whom she later repudiated) and Louis III of Anjou as heirs alternately, finally settling succession on Louis' brother René of Anjou of the junior Angevin line, and he succeeded her in 1435.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: René of Anjou temporarily united the claims of junior and senior Angevin lines. In 1442, however, Alfonso V conquered the Kingdom of Naples and unified Sicily and Naples once again as dependencies of Aragon. At his death in 1458, the War of the Neapolitan Succession (1458–1462) erupted, after which the kingdom was again separated and Naples was inherited by Ferrante, Alfonso's illegitimate son.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: When Ferrante died in 1494, Charles VIII of France invaded Italy, using as a pretext the Angevin claim to the throne of Naples, which his father had inherited in 1481 on the will of Charles IV of Anjou, nephew and heir of King René who had no surviving son. This began the Italian Wars.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: Charles VIII expelled Alfonso II of Naples from Naples in 1495, but was soon forced to withdraw due to the support of Ferdinand II of Aragon for his cousin, Alfonso II's son Ferrantino. Ferrantino was restored to the throne but died in 1496 and was succeeded by his uncle, Frederick IV.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: Charles VIII's successor, Louis XII reiterated the French claim. In 1501, he occupied Naples and partitioned the kingdom with Ferdinand of Aragon, who abandoned his cousin King Frederick. However, disputes over ownership of key Neapolitan territories made the deal quickly fall through, and Aragon and France resumed their war over the kingdom in 1502. The Spanish troops occupying Calabria and Apulia, led by Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordova, invaded and expelled all Frenchmen from the area. The resulting Aragonese victory left Ferdinand in full control of the kingdom by 1504.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: The peace treaties that continued were never definitive, but they established at least that the title of King of Naples was reserved for Ferdinand's grandson, the future Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Ferdinand nevertheless continued in possession of the kingdom, being considered the legitimate heir of his uncle Alfonso I of Naples and also to the former Kingdom of Sicily ("Regnum Utriusque Siciliae").


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: The kingdom continued to be disputed between France and Spain for the next several decades, but French efforts to gain control of it became feebler as the decades went on, and never genuinely endangered Spanish control.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: The French finally abandoned their claims to Naples by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559. In the Treaty of London (1557), five cities on the coast of Tuscany were designated the "Stato dei Presidi" (State of the Presidi), and part of the Kingdom of Naples.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: As the most populous holding of the Spanish Empire outside of Castile itself (with 3 million inhabitants in 1600), Naples remained an important source of economic and military power for the Spanish. Heavy taxation was levied upon the kingdom to pay for Spain's wars, especially after 1580. Beyond dispatching troops to fight the Eighty Years' War in the Low Countries, Naples also disbursed a third of the military expenditures accruing to Lombardy and paid for the Spanish garrisons in Tuscany. This all costed them 800,000 ducats annually, or about a third of the kingdom's revenues; moreover, the public debt also had a military origin, and interest payments on it devoured 40 percent of all tax income. Naples was rich enough to redeem the debt and pay an attractive ten percent in full to lenders. While the soldiers of Naples were under the command of the Spanish viceroy, Neapolitan nobles enjoyed ascendancy in the assemblies and committees that financed and administered the army.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: The kingdom suffered a heavy burden from the Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659). From 1631 to 1636 alone, Naples sent 53,500 soldiers and 3.5 million scudi to support the Spanish king. This was actually more than was raised in the same time by Castile, which had a population twice the size. Naples provided and paid for 10,000 troops and 1,000 horses annually from 1630 to 1643, on top of a 1 million ducat annual subsidy for the war effort and more funds and soldiers for the kingdom's garrisons and navy. The kingdom was increasingly forced to revert to borrowing to finance the war as it went on, which it could do due to its good credit. From 1612 to 1646, Neapolitan taxes tripled and the public debt quintupled, and 57 percent of the kingdom's revenue was devoted to interest payments. Spain's wars crushed the Neapolitan economy. Furthermore, 90 percent of taxes were collected by state creditors, meaning the state paid an effective interest rate of 70 percent annually on the money it borrowed to fight the war. The kingdom started selling state assets to anyone willing to buy them, which usually ended up being barons; these assets included prisons, forests, buildings, and even royal fortresses, as well as titles.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: After the War of the Spanish Succession in the early 18th century, possession of the kingdom again changed hands. Under the terms of the Treaty of Rastatt in 1714, Naples was given to Charles VI, the Holy Roman Emperor. He also gained control of Sicily in 1720, but Austrian rule did not last long. Both Naples and Sicily were conquered by a Spanish army during the War of the Polish Succession in 1734, and Charles, Duke of Parma, a younger son of King Philip V of Spain, the first member of the French House of Bourbon to rule in Spain, was installed as King of Naples and Sicily from 1735. When Charles inherited the Spanish throne from his older half-brother in 1759, he left Naples and Sicily to his younger son, Ferdinand IV. Despite the two Kingdoms being in a personal union under the Habsburg and Bourbon dynasties, they remained constitutionally separate.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: Being a member of the House of Bourbon, Ferdinand IV was a natural opponent of the French Revolution and Napoleon. On 29 November 1798, he effectively started the War of the Second Coalition by briefly occupying Rome, but was expelled from it by French Revolutionary forces within the year and safely returned home. Soon afterwards, on 23 December 1798, Ferdinand fled Naples to Palermo, Sicily as a French army closed in. In January 1799, the French armies installed a Parthenopaean Republic, but this proved short-lived, and a peasant counter-revolution inspired by the clergy allowed Ferdinand to return to his capital. However, in 1801 Ferdinand was compelled to make important concessions to the French by the Treaty of Florence, which reinforced France's position as the dominant power in mainland Italy.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: Ferdinand's decision to ally with the Third Coalition against Napoleon in 1805 proved more damaging. In 1806, following decisive victories over the allied armies at Austerlitz and over the Neapolitans at Campo Tenese, Napoleon installed his brother, Joseph as King of Naples, he conferred the title "Prince of Naples" to be hereditary on his children and grandchildren. When Joseph was sent off to Spain two years later, he was replaced by Napoleon's sister Caroline and his brother-in-law Marshal Joachim Murat, as "King of the Two Sicilies".


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: Meanwhile, Ferdinand had fled to Sicily, where he retained his throne, despite successive attempts by Murat to invade the island. The British would defend Sicily for the remainder of the war but despite the Kingdom of Sicily nominally being part of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Coalitions against Napoleon, Ferdinand and the British were unable to ever challenge French control of the Italian mainland.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: After Napoleon's defeat in 1814, Murat reached an agreement with Austria and was allowed to retain the throne of Naples, despite the lobbying efforts of Ferdinand and his supporters. However, with most of the other powers, particularly Britain, hostile towards him and dependent on the uncertain support of Austria, Murat's position became less and less secure. Therefore, when Napoleon returned to France for the Hundred Days in 1815, Murat once again sided with him. Realising the Austrians would soon attempt to remove him, Murat gave the Rimini Proclamation hoping to save his kingdom by allying himself with Italian nationalists.


title: Kingdom of Naples

text: The ensuing Neapolitan War between Murat and the Austrians was short, ending with a decisive victory for the Austrian forces at the Battle of Tolentino. Murat was forced to flee, and Ferdinand IV of Sicily was restored to the throne of Naples. Murat would attempt to regain his throne but was quickly captured and executed by firing squad in Pizzo, Calabria. The next year, 1816, finally saw the formal union of the Kingdom of Naples with the Kingdom of Sicily into the new Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: The Adirondack Mountains (; a-də-RÄN-dak) form a massif in northeastern New York with boundaries that correspond roughly to those of Adirondack Park. They cover about 5,000 square miles (13,000 km). The mountains form a roughly circular dome, about in diameter and about high. The current relief owes much to glaciation. There are more than 200 lakes around the mountains, including Lake George, Lake Placid, and Lake Tear of the Clouds, which is the source of the Hudson River. The Adirondack Region is also home to hundreds of mountain summits, with some reaching heights of or more.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: The word Adirondack is thought to come from the Mohawk word "ha-de-ron-dah" meaning "eaters of trees". The earliest written use of the name was in 1635 by Harmen Meyndertsz Van Den Bogaert in his Mohawk to Dutch glossary, found in his "Journey into Mohawk Country". He spelled it Adirondakx and said that it stood for Frenchmen, meaning the Algonquians who allied with the French. Another early use of the name, spelled "Rontaks", was in 1729 by French missionary Joseph-François Lafitau. He explained that the word was used by the Iroquois as a derogatory term for groups of Algonquians who did not practice agriculture and therefore sometimes had to eat tree bark to survive harsh winters.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: The Mohawks had no written language, so Europeans used various phonetic spellings of the word, including "Achkokx", "Rondaxe", and "Adirondax." Such words were strongly associated with the region, but they were not yet considered a place name; an English map from 1761 labels the area simply "Deer Hunting Country". In 1837, the mountains were named "Adirondacks" by Ebenezer Emmons.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: Humans have lived in the region of the Adirondack Mountains since the Paleo-Indian period (15,000 to 7,000 BC), shortly after the last ice age. The first group to move into the area came south from the St. Lawrence River Valley and settled along the shores of the Champlain Sea around 13,000 BC. These Archaic period people, known as the Laurentian culture, were semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. Evidence for their presence in the Adirondacks includes a projectile point of red-brown chert found in 2007 at the edge of Tupper Lake.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: Over the next 11,000 or so years, the region's climate slowly warmed, and forests began to replace the original tundra. Transitioning from the Archaic Period to the Woodland period, multiple different cultures— Sylvan Lake, River, Middlesex, Point Peninsula, and Owasco cultures— replaced the Laurentian culture over time. By the time of the Owasco culture, around 0 AD, maize and beans were being cultivated in the Adirondack uplands.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: The first Iroquoian peoples, the Mohawk (or Kanyengehaga) and the Oneida (or Oneyotdehaga), arrived in the Adirondack region between 4,000 and 1,200 years ago. Both groups claimed the Adirondack Mountains as hunting grounds. According to Haudenosaunee historian Rick Hill, the region was considered a 'Dish with One Spoon,' symbolizing shared hunting resources between the groups. A group of Algonquian people, known as the Mahicans, also occupied the region, particularly the Hudson River Valley.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: These were the groups that the first European explorers of the area encountered. European presence in the area began with a battle between Samuel de Champlain and a group of Mohawks, in what is now Ticonderoga in 1609. The Jesuit missionary Isaac Jogues became the first recorded European to travel through the center of the Adirondacks, as the captive of a Mohawk hunting party, in 1642.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: The early European perception of the Adirondacks was of a vast, inhospitable wilderness. One map of the area from 1771 shows the region as a blank space in the northeastern corner of New York. In 1784, Thomas Pownhall wrote that the Native Americans referred to the area as "the Dismal Wilderness, or the Habitation of Winter," and that the area was "either not much known to them, or, if known, very wisely by them kept from the Knowledge of the Europeans." He clearly had the impression that native people did not live within the Adirondack mountains.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: Because local Iroquoian and Algonquian tribes had been decimated first by smallpox and measles in the 1600s, then by wars with encroaching European settlers, there likely were very few people living in the region by the time Pownhall wrote his description. It is only relatively recently that numerous archaeological finds have definitively shown that Native Americans were indeed very present in the Adirondacks before European contact, hunting, making pottery, and practicing agriculture.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: The European impression of a wild region devoid of human connection set up a narrative about wilderness that would persist through the next 200-some years of the region's history. While society's perception of the Adirondacks' value changed, they were always seen as a land of natural resources and physical beauty, not of human history. First the area was an inhospitable tangle, then a lucrative store of lumber. After the American Revolutionary War, New York State gained ownership of most of the land in the region.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: Needing money to discharge war debts, the government sold nearly all the original public acreage about 7 million acres for pennies an acre. Lumbermen were welcomed to the interior, with few restraints, resulting in massive deforestation. Later, the wilderness character of the region became popular with the rise of the Romantic movement, and the Adirondacks became a destination for those wishing to escape the evils of city life. Rising concern over water quality and deforestation led to the creation of the Adirondack Park in 1885. In 1989, part of the Adirondack region was designated by UNESCO as the Champlain-Adirondack Biosphere Reserve.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: The rocks of the Adirondack mountains originated about two billion years ago as 50,000 feet (ca. 15,240 m) thick sediments at the bottom of a sea located near the equator. Because of plate tectonics these collided with Laurentia (the precursor of modern North America) in a mountain building episode known as the Grenville orogeny. During this time the sedimentary rock was changed into metamorphic rock. It is these Proterozoic minerals and lithologies that make up the core of the massif. Minerals of interest include:


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: Note: the Adirondacks are uplifted by a hot spot in the Canadian Shield in contrast to other mountain ranges in New York which are a part of the Appalachian chain (not to be confused with the cultural region of Appalachia).


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: Around 600 million years ago, as Laurentia drifted away from Baltica (European Craton), the area began to be pulled apart forming the Iapetus Ocean. Faults developed, running north to northeast which formed valleys and deep lakes. Examples visible today include the grabens Lake George and Schroon Lake. By this time the Grenville mountains had been eroded away and the area was covered by a shallow sea. Several thousand feet of sediment accumulated on the sea bed. Trilobites were the principal life-form of the sea bed, and fossil tracks can be seen in the Potsdam sandstone floor of the Paul Smiths Visitor Interpretive Center.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: About 10 million years ago, the region began to be uplifted. It has been lifted about 7000 feet (ca. 2,134 meters) and is continuing at about 2 millimeters per year, which is greater than the rate of denudation. The cause of the uplift is unknown, but geologists theorize that it is caused by a hot spot in the earth's crust. A recent study has revealed a column of seismically slow materials about 50–80 km deep beneath the Adirondack Mountains, which was interpreted to be the upwelling asthenosphere contributing to the uplift of the mountains. The occurrence of earthquake swarms near the center of the massif at Blue Mountain Lake may be evidence of this. Some of the earthquakes have exceeded 5 on the Richter magnitude scale.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: Starting about 2.5 million years ago, a cycle of Pleistocene glacial and interglacial periods began which covered the area in ice. During the most recent episode, the Laurentide Ice Sheet covered most of northern North America between about 95,000 and c. 20,000 years ago. After this the climate warmed, but it took nearly 10,000 years for a 10,000 feet (ca. 3,048 m) thick layer of ice to completely melt. Evidence of this period includes:


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: Soils in the area are generally thin, sandy, acidic, and infertile, having developed since the glacial retreat.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: The climate is strongly continental, with high humidity and precipitation year-round. The Adirondacks typically experience pleasantly warm, rainy weather in the summer (June-August), with temperatures in the range of , cooler than the rest of New York State due to the higher elevation. Summer evenings in the Adirondacks are chilly, with temperatures ranging on average between . Winters (December-March) are long, cold, snowy and harsh, with temperatures ranging from . Winter nights are frigid, with temperatures between . Spring (April-May) and fall (September-November) are short transitional seasons.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: The Adirondack Mountains form the southernmost part of the Eastern forest-boreal transition ecoregion. They are heavily forested, and contain one of the southernmost distributions of the taiga ecotype in North America. The forests of the Adirondacks include spruce, pine and deciduous trees. Lumbering, once an important industry, has been much restricted by the creation of state forest preserve.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: Breeding birds include northern forest specialists not found anywhere else in the state, such as boreal chickadees, Canada jays, spruce grouse, black-backed woodpeckers, common loons and crossbills. Mammals include raccoons, beavers, river otters, bobcats, moose, black bears, and coyotes. Extirpated or extinct mammals that formerly roamed the Adirondacks include the eastern cougar, eastern elk, wolverine, caribou, eastern wolf, and the Canada lynx. Attempted reintroductions of elk and lynx in the 20th century failed for numerous reasons, including poaching, vehicle collisions, and conservation incompetence.


title: Adirondack Mountains

text: Nearly 60 percent of the park is covered with northern hardwood forest. Above 2600 feet (~792 meters), conditions are too poor for hardwoods to thrive, and the trees become mixed with or replaced by balsam fir and red spruce. Above 3500 feet (~1,067 meters) black spruce replace red. Higher still, only trees short enough to be covered in snow during the winter can survive.


title: People's Action Party

text: The People's Action Party (abbreviation: PAP) is a major conservative centre-right political party in Singapore and is one of the three contemporary political parties represented in Parliament, alongside the opposition Workers' Party (WP) and Progress Singapore Party (PSP).


title: People's Action Party

text: Initially founded as a traditional centre-left party in 1954, the leftist faction was soon expelled from the party in 1961 by Lee Kuan Yew in the midst of Singapore's merger with Malaysia, desiring to move the party's ideology towards the centre after its first electoral victory in 1959. Beginning in the 1960s, the party henceforth began to move towards the centre-right. Following the 1965 agreement which led to Singapore's expulsion from the Malaysian federation, almost the entire opposition except for the WP boycotted the following elections in 1968 in response to their initial incredulity towards independence, thereafter allowing the PAP the opportunity to exercise exclusivity over its governance of national institutions and become the largest political party in the country.


title: People's Action Party

text: From 1965 to 1981, the PAP was the only political force represented in Parliament until it saw its first electoral defeat to the WP at a by-election in the constituency of Anson. Nevertheless, the PAP has not seen its hegemony effectively threatened and has always exceeded 60% of the votes and 80% of the seats in all subsequent elections. The PAP is the longest, uninterrupted governing party among multiparty parliamentary democracies in the world at 63 years as of 2022, and the second in history after Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which led for 71 years from 1929 to 2000.


title: People's Action Party

text: Positioned on the centre-right of Singapore politics, the PAP is ideologically socially conservative and economically liberal. The party generally favours free-market economics, having turned Singapore's economy into one of the world's freest and most open, but has at times engaged in state interventionism reminiscent of welfare capitalist policies. Socially, it supports communitarianism and civic nationalism, with the cohesion of the country's main ethnic groups of the Chinese, Malay and Indian into a united Singaporean national identity forming many of its policies. On foreign policy, it favours maintaining a strong and robust military, serving as an indispensable guarantor of the country's continued sovereignty stemming from its strategic position for international finance and trade.


title: People's Action Party

text: Lee Kuan Yew, Toh Chin Chye and Goh Keng Swee were involved in the Malayan Forum, a London-based student activist group that was against colonial rule in Malaya in the 1940s and early 1950s. Upon returning to Singapore, the group met regularly to discuss approaches to attain independence in Malayan territories and started looking for like-minded individuals to start a political party. Journalist S. Rajaratnam was introduced to Lee by Goh. Lee was also introduced to several English-educated left-wing students and Chinese-educated union and student leaders while working on the Fajar sedition trial and the National Service riot case.


title: People's Action Party

text: The PAP was officially registered as a political party on 21 November 1954. Convenors of the party include a group of trade unionists, lawyers and journalists such as Lee Kuan Yew, Abdul Samad Ismail, Toh Chin Chye, Devan Nair, S. Rajaratnam, Chan Chiaw Thor, Fong Swee Suan, Tann Wee Keng and Tann Wee Tiong. The political party was led by Lee Kuan Yew as its secretary-general, with Toh Chin Chye as its founding chairman. Other party officers include Tann Wee Tiong, Lee Gek Seng, Ong Eng Guan and Tann Wee Keng.


title: People's Action Party

text: The PAP first contested the 1955 general election in which 25 of 32 seats in the legislature were up for election. In this election, the PAP's four candidates gained much support from the trade union members and student groups such as the University Socialist Club, who canvassed for them. The party won three seats, one by its leader Lee Kuan Yew for the Tanjong Pagar division and one by PAP co-founder Lim Chin Siong for the Bukit Timah division. Then 22 years old unionist Lim Chin Siong was and remained the youngest Assemblyman ever to be elected to office. The election was won by the Labour Front headed by David Marshall.