title: United States Army Air Forces

text: Officers wore black and khaki neckties until after February 1942 when neckties of wool cotton blend khaki shade 5 were authorized. Male officer's summer service uniforms usually consisted of the wash-and-wear cotton khaki shade 1 uniforms like those of the enlisted men, the main difference being that the shirts had shoulder straps. An OD wool shirt and cotton khaki trouser combination was also authorized. However, for dress purposes they also had the option of purchasing a khaki shade 1 summer service uniform of tropical weight suiting fabric. This uniform was identical in cut to the winter officers' uniform except for the color and cloth. However, the cloth belt of the winter coat was omitted.


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: Personnel stationed in Europe, and after 1944 in the U.S., were authorized to wear a wool waist-length jacket, in either OD Shade 51 (for officers only) or OD Shade 33, nicknamed the "Ike jacket" and eventually standardized as the M-1944 Field Jacket, in lieu of the full-length tunic of the service dress uniform.


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: Headgear for service uniforms consisted of two types, similar to those in use in the Army's ground forces, in olive drab for winter wear and khaki for summer. The garrison cap, commonly called the "flight cap" in the air forces, had been authorized for all ranks since 1926 to facilitate the wearing of radio headsets during flights. The "curtain" had piping for enlisted men in the USAAF branch colors of orange and ultramarine blue. The caps of warrant officers were piped with black and silver cord; commissioned officers had black and gold piping except for general officer caps, which used gold cord. The oval service cap was fitted with a spring stiffening device called a grommet, and prior to World War II uniform regulations authorized officers to remove the grommet to permit the use of headsets. This style became widely popular during World War II as a symbol of being a combat veteran, and was known as a "50-mission crush" cap. The service cap however was no longer generally issued to enlisted men after 1942.


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: Leather items, including shoes, were russet in color, and the AAF became known as the "Brown Shoe Air Force" after the United States Air Force became a separate service.


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: Female USAAF uniforms were either the uniform of the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) or that of the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) with appropriate USAAF branch insignia. In the summer of 1943 the Women's Army Corps (WAC) replaced the WAAC. Although female auxiliary organizations such as the WAAC, Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) and Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) performed valuable service to the AAF, only the ANC and the WAC were official members of the U.S. Armed Forces. In the AAF servicewomen became unofficially known as "Air WACs".


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: Nurses attached to the AAF wore Army hospital whites, or prior to 1943, the ANC winter service uniform consisting of the ANC pattern dark blue cap or garrison cap with maroon piping, suit jacket with maroon cuff braid and gold army buttons, light blue or white shirt, black tie and light blue skirt, shoes were black or white. The ANC summer service uniform consisted of a similar suit in beige with maroon shoulder strap piping and cuff braid, beige ANC cap or beige garrison cap with maroon piping, white shirt, and black four-in-hand tie. During World War II the first flight nurses uniform consisted of a blue wool battle dress jacket, blue wool trousers and a blue wool men's style maroon piped garrison cap. The uniform was worn with either the ANC light blue or white shirt and black tie. After 1943 the ANC adopted olive drab service uniforms similar to the newly formed WAC.


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: Female service dress went through an evolution of patterns over the course of the war years, however throughout the period the service uniforms both summer and winter generally consisted of the WAC pattern hat or women's garrison cap, suit coat (winter only for enlisted women), shirtwaist, four-in-hand tie, skirt, russet leather women's service shoes and hand bag. The women's olive drab wool "Ike jacket" was also worn as were women's service trousers. The colors essentially mirrored those of their male counterparts of corresponding rank in the equivalent service uniform although fabrics differed. There were also special off duty dresses of summer beige and winter tan. The new olive drab ANC uniforms were the same as those for WAC officers except for the ANC pattern hat and the ANC pattern handbag. The off duty dress was a separate ANC pattern in olive drab shade 51 or beige. The ANC beige summer service uniform with maroon trim was retained except that the tie was changed to maroon. Sage green fatigue uniforms of herringbone cotton twill for women, along with women's combat boots, field jackets and flight clothing, were manufactured by the U.S. Army during World War II. However, when women's versions of these items were not available, as was often the case during the war, men's issue items were used instead.


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: Flight clothing varied widely by theater of operation and type of mission. Innovative aviation flight suits, boots, leather helmets, goggles, and gloves were issued as early as 1928 to the Air Corps, and at least one style, the Type A-3 flight suit, continued in service until 1944. However, A-2 flight jackets, made standard issue on 9 May 1931, became one of the best known symbols of the AAF. Made of seal brown horsehide leather (later supplemented by goatskin) with a beige spun silk lining (cotton after 1939), the jackets featured an officer's stand-up collar, shoulder straps, knit waistbands and cuffs, a zipper closing, and unit insignia. Heavy, sheepskin-lined B-3 and B-6 flight jackets, A-3 winter flying trousers, and B-2 "gunner's" caps, all in seal brown shearling, proved insufficient for the extreme cold temperatures of high altitude missions in unpressurized aircraft, and were supplemented by a variety of one-piece electrically heated flying suits manufactured by General Electric. In addition to men's flight clothing, flight nurses wore specially manufactured women's lightweight and intermediate weight flight jackets and pants. Flight clothing such as the A-2 jacket was not authorized to be worn off the camp or post unless required for flight duty. The same sage green fatigue uniforms of herringbone cotton twill, and wind-resistant poplin field jackets used by Army ground troops, were also worn by AAF troops depending on duty assignment.


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: In early 1943 the AAF did not renew its contracts for leather flight garments and began production of flight jackets and flying trousers made of cotton twill and nylon blends with alpaca pile linings. The AAF standardized the sage green or light olive drab B-10 flight jacket on 22 July 1943, accompanied by matching A-9 flying trousers with built-in suspenders, and the combination became widespread in the Eighth Air Force by early 1944. The heavier B-15 jacket followed at the end of the year, with the A-11 trousers issued in the last months of the war. Most jackets featured a Mouton fur or shearling collar, but a popular variation known as the "tanker jacket" had a wool knit collar that was less confining. These new jackets were lighter in weight than their leather predecessors while just as warm. Hooded variants designated B-9 and B-11 also appeared in early 1944 but because they were bulky and their fur-lined hoods impractical in combat, these were worn primarily by noncombat personnel or during ground duties.


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: AAF uniforms were subject to Army Regulations, specifically AR 600-35 and AR 600–40, authorizing the wearing of badges, insignia, and emblems on the uniform. The vast size of the service saw the wearing of many custom-made variants of authorized badges, insignia, and emblems, and numerous examples of unauthorized insignia and emblems appeared throughout the forces, particularly in combat units overseas.


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: To denote the special training and qualifications required for air crew and technical personnel in the USAAF, in most categories known as being rated, the following military badges (known familiarly but ubiquitously throughout the service as "wings") were authorized for wear by members of the Army Air Forces:


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: These aviation qualification badges were typically worn in full three-inch (76 mm) size on service or dress uniforms, but two-inch versions (nicknamed "sweetheart wings") were also authorized for less-formal shirt wear. Most aviation badges were made of sterling silver or were given a silver finish, and various devices were used to attach them to uniforms. These included the traditional pin and safety catch and, later, clutch-back fasteners. Most USAAF badges of World War II became obsolete, having been superseded by later designs or with their aeronautical rating discontinued, and were not authorized for wear on the uniform after 1955.


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: In order to recognize and differentiate combat aircrews from other airmen in Europe, on 29 March 1943 the European Theater Headquarters of the U.S. Army created an ultramarine blue cloth patch 1" × 3.25" to be sewn on the service coat behind the aviation badge. According to General Order 18 Hq ETOUSA the patch was to be worn by personnel of the Army Air Forces who held currently effective aeronautical ratings or who were authorized to wear the aviation badge for air crew members, during the time such personnel were currently assigned to combat flight duty. The patch was to be promptly removed when the individual ceased to serve in such capacity or left the theater.


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: The rank structure and insignia of the U.S. Army Air Forces was that of the United States Army of World War II.


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: The first shoulder sleeve insignia authorized for Air Corps wear was that of the General Headquarters Air Force, approved 20 July 1937. This sleeve insignia, which consisted of a blue triskelion superimposed on a gold circle, was retained after GHQ Air Force became Air Force Combat Command on 20 June 1941. The triskelion represented a stylized propeller that symbolized the three combat wings of GHQ Air Force. On 23 February 1942, the GHQ AF patch was discontinued and the service-wide AAF sleeve insignia ("Hap Arnold Emblem") approved. The patch was designed by a member of Gen. Arnold's staff, James T. Rawls, and was based on the V-for-Victory sign popularized by Winston Churchill.


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: The wearing of sleeve insignia was authorized for members of numbered air forces based overseas on 2 March 1943, and for air forces in the United States on 25 June 1943. From that date forward, the "Hap Arnold Emblem" was worn only by personnel of units not assigned to a numbered air force. AR 600–40, "Wearing of the Service Uniform", subsequently limited sleeve insignia to the 16 air forces and the AAF patch. The Quartermaster Corps, responsible for the design and supply of all authorized insignia, resisted further designs for the AAF until 28 July 1945, when command arcs (arc-shaped tabs, see example above in "Command structure") were authorized for wear above the AAF insignia by members of the various support commands.


title: United States Army Air Forces

text: As all 48 states then part of the Union were contained within the contiguous United States, the term "Zone of the Interior" for the First through Fourth Air Forces' areas of assignment was the Second World War's term for what is called "CONUS" by today's United States Department of Defense in the 21st century.


title: Constructivism (philosophy of education)

text: Constructivism is a theory in education which posits that individuals or learners do not acquire knowledge and understanding by passively perceiving it within a direct process of knowledge transmission, rather they "construct" new understandings and knowledge through experience and social discourse, integrating new information with what they already know (prior knowledge). For children, this includes knowledge gained prior to entering school. It is associated with various philosophical positions, particularly in epistemology as well as ontology, politics, and ethics. The origin of the theory is also linked to Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development.


text: Constructivism in education has roots in epistemology, which - in philosophy - is a theory of knowledge, which is concerned with the logical categories of knowledge and its justificational basis. Epistemology also focuses on both the warranting of the subjective knowledge of a single knower and conventional knowledge. In constructivism, hence, it is recognized that the learner has prior knowledge and experiences, which are often determined by their social and cultural environment. Learning is therefore done by students' “constructing” knowledge out of their experiences. While the Behaviorist school of learning may help understand what students are doing, educators also need to know what students are thinking, and how to enrich what students are thinking. There are scholars who state that the constructivist view emerged as a reaction to the so-called "transmission model of education", including the realist philosophy that it is based on.


text: Constructivism can be traced back to educational psychology in the work of Jean Piaget (1896–1980) identified with Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Piaget focused on how humans make meaning in relation to the interaction between their experiences and their ideas. His views tended to focus on human development in relation to what is occurring with an individual as distinct from development influenced by other persons. Lev Vygotsky's (1896-1934) theory of social constructivism emphasized the importance of sociocultural learning; how interactions with adults, more capable peers, and cognitive tools are internalized by learners to form mental constructs through the zone of proximal development.


text: Expanding upon Vygotsky's theory Jerome Bruner and other educational psychologists developed the important concept of instructional scaffolding, whereby the social or informational environment offers supports (or scaffolds) for learning that are gradually withdrawn as they become internalized.


text: Views more focused on human development in the context of the social world include the sociocultural or socio-historical perspective of Lev Vygotsky and the situated cognition perspectives of Mikhail Bakhtin, Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger; Brown, Collins and Duguid; Newman, Griffin and Cole, and Barbara Rogoff.


text: The concept of constructivism has influenced a number of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, education and the history of science. During its infancy, constructivism examined the interaction between human experiences and their reflexes or behavior-patterns. Piaget called these systems of knowledge "schemes."


text: Schemes are not to be confused with "schema", a term that comes from schema theory, which is from information-processing perspectives on human cognition. Whereas Piaget's schemes are content-free, schemata (the plural of schema) are concepts; for example, most humans have a schema for "grandmother", "egg", or "magnet."


text: Constructivism does not refer to a specific pedagogy, although it is often confused with constructionism, an educational theory developed by Seymour Papert, inspired by constructivist and experiential learning ideas of Piaget.


text: Piaget's theory of constructivist learning has had wide-ranging impact on learning theories and teaching methods in education, and is an underlying theme of education reform movements.


text: Earlier educational philosophies did not place much value on what would become constructivist ideas; children's play and exploration were seen as aimless and of little importance. Jean Piaget did not agree with these traditional views; he saw play as an important and necessary part of the student's cognitive development and provided scientific evidence for his views. Today, constructivist theories are influential throughout the formal and informal learning sectors. In museum education, constructivist theories inform exhibit design. One good example of constructivist learning in a non-formal setting is the Investigate Centre at The Natural History Museum, London. Here visitors are encouraged to explore a collection of real natural history specimens, to practice some scientific skills and make discoveries for themselves. Writers who influenced constructivism include:


text: The formalization of constructivism from a within-the-human perspective is generally attributed to Jean Piaget, who articulated mechanisms by which information from the environment and ideas from the individual interact and result in internalized structures developed by learners. He identified processes of "assimilation" and "accommodation" that are key in this interaction as individuals construct new knowledge from their experiences.


text: When individuals "assimilate" new information, they incorporate it into an already existing framework without changing that framework. This may occur when individuals' experiences are aligned with their internal representations of the world, but may also occur as a failure to change a faulty understanding; for example, they may not notice events, may misunderstand input from others, or may decide that an event is a fluke and is therefore unimportant as information about the world. In contrast, when individuals' experiences contradict their internal representations, they may change their perceptions of the experiences to fit their internal representations.


text: According to the theory, "accommodation" is the process of reframing one's mental representation of the external world to fit new experiences. Accommodation can be understood as the mechanism by which failure leads to learning: when we act on the expectation that the world operates in one way and it violates our expectations, we often fail, but by accommodating this new experience and reframing our model of the way the world works, we learn from the experience of failure, or others' failure.


text: It is important to note that constructivism is not a particular pedagogy. In fact, constructivism is a theory describing how learning happens, regardless of whether learners are using their experiences to understand a lecture or following the instructions for building a model airplane. In both cases, the theory of constructivism suggests that learners construct knowledge out of their experiences.


text: However, constructivism is often associated with pedagogic approaches that promote active learning, or learning by doing. There are many critics of "learning by doing" (a.k.a. "discovery learning") as an instructional strategy (e.g. see the criticisms below). While there is much enthusiasm for constructivism as a design strategy, according to Tobias and Duffy "... to us it would appear that constructivism remains more of a philosophical framework than a theory that either allows us to precisely describe instruction or prescribe design strategies."


text: Social constructivism not only acknowledges the uniqueness and complexity of the learner, but actually encourages, utilizes and rewards it as an integral part of the learning process.


text: Social constructivisms or socioculturalism encourage the learner or learners to arrive at his or her version of the truth, influenced by his or her background, culture or embedded worldview. Historical developments and symbol systems, such as language, logic, and mathematical systems, are inherited by the learner as a member of a particular culture and these are learned throughout the learner's life. This also stresses the importance of the nature of the learner's social interaction with knowledgeable members of the society. Without the social interaction with other more knowledgeable people, it is impossible to acquire social meaning of important symbol systems and learn how to utilize them. Young children develop their thinking abilities by interacting with other children, adults and the physical world. From the social constructivist viewpoint, it is thus important to take into account the background and culture of the learner throughout the learning process, as this background also helps to shape the knowledge and truth that the learner creates, discovers and attains in the learning process.


text: Furthermore, it is argued that the responsibility of learning should reside increasingly with the student. Social constructivism thus emphasizes the importance of the student being actively involved in the learning process, unlike previous educational viewpoints where the responsibility rested with the instructor to teach and where the learner played a passive, receptive role. Von Glasersfeld (1989) emphasized that learners construct their own understanding and that they do not simply mirror and reflect what they read. Learners look for meaning and will try to find regularity and order in the events of the world even in the absence of full or complete information.


text: It is called the "Harkness" discussion method because it was developed at Phillips Exeter Academy with funds donated in the 1930s by Edward Harkness. This is also named after the Harkness table and involves students seated in a circle, motivating and controlling their own discussion. The teacher acts as little as possible. Perhaps the teacher's only function is to observe, although he/she might begin or shift or even direct a discussion. The students get it rolling, direct it, and focus it. They act as a team, cooperatively, to make it work. They all participate, but not in a competitive way. Rather, they all share in the responsibility and the goals, much as any members share in any team sport. Although the goals of any discussion will change depending upon what's under discussion, some goals will always be the same: to illuminate the subject, to unravel its mysteries, to interpret and share and learn from other points of view, to piece together the puzzle using everyone's contribution. Discussion skills are important. Everyone must be aware of how to get this discussion rolling and keep it rolling and interesting. Just as in any sport, a number of skills are necessary to work on and use at appropriate times. Everyone is expected to contribute by using these skills.


text: Another crucial assumption regarding the nature of the student concerns the level and source of motivation for learning. According to Von Glasersfeld, sustaining motivation to learn is strongly dependent on the student's confidence of potential for learning. These feelings of competence and belief in potential to solve new problems, are derived from first-hand experience of mastery of problems in the past and are much more than any external acknowledgment and motivation. This links up with Vygotsky's "zone of proximal development" where students are challenged in close proximity to, yet slightly above, their current level of development. By experiencing the successful completion of challenging tasks, students gain confidence and motivation to embark on more complex challenges.


text: According to the social constructivist approach, instructors have to adapt to the role of facilitators and not teachers. Whereas a teacher gives a didactic lecture that covers the subject matter, a facilitator helps the student to get to his or her own understanding of the content. In the former scenario the learner plays a passive role and in the latter scenario the student plays an active role in the learning process. The emphasis thus turns away from the instructor and the content, and towards the student. This dramatic change of role implies that a facilitator needs to display a totally different set of skills than that of a teacher. A teacher tells, a facilitator asks; a teacher lectures from the front, a facilitator supports from the back; a teacher gives answers according to a set curriculum, a facilitator provides guidelines and creates the environment for the learner to arrive at his or her own conclusions; a teacher mostly gives a monologue, a facilitator is in continuous dialogue with the learners. A facilitator should also be able to adapt the learning experience 'in mid-air' by taking the initiative to steer the learning experience to where the learners want to create value.


text: The learning environment should also be designed to support and challenge the student's thinking. While it is advocated to give the student ownership of the problem and solution process, it is not the case that any activity or any solution is adequate. The critical goal is to support the student in becoming an effective thinker. This can be achieved by assuming multiple roles, such as consultant and coach.


text: Social constructivism, strongly influenced by Vygotsky's (1978) work, suggests that knowledge is first constructed in a social context and is then appropriated by individuals. According to social constructivists, the process of sharing individual perspectives — called "collaborative elaboration" — results in learners constructing understanding together that wouldn't be possible alone.


text: Social constructivist scholars view learning as an active process where students should learn to discover principles, concepts and facts for themselves, hence the importance of encouraging guesswork and intuitive thinking in students.


text: Other constructivist scholars agree with this and emphasize that individuals make meanings through the interactions with each other and with the environment they live in. Knowledge is thus a product of humans and is socially and culturally constructed. McMahon (1997) agrees that learning is a social process. He further stated that learning is not a process that only takes place inside our minds, nor is it a passive development of our behaviors that is shaped by external forces. Rather, meaningful learning occurs when individuals are engaged in social activities.


text: Vygotsky (1978) also highlighted the convergence of the social and practical elements in learning by saying that the most significant moment in the course of intellectual development occurs when speech and practical activity, two previously completely independent lines of development, converge. Through practical activity a child constructs meaning on an intra-personal level, while speech connects this meaning with the interpersonal world shared by the child and her/his culture.


text: A further characteristic of the role of the facilitator in the social constructivist viewpoint, is that the instructor and the students are equally involved in learning from each other as well. This means that the learning experience is both subjective and objective and requires that the instructor's culture, values and background become an essential part of the interplay between students and tasks in the shaping of meaning. Students compare their version of thought with that of the instructor and fellow students to get to a new, socially tested version of context. The task or problem is thus the interface between the instructor and the student. This creates a dynamic interaction between task, instructor and student. This entails that students and instructors should develop an awareness of each other's viewpoints and then look to their own beliefs, standards and values, thus being both subjective and objective at the same time.


text: Some studies argue for the importance of mentoring in the process of learning. The social constructivist model thus emphasizes the importance of the relationship between the student and the instructor in the learning process.


text: Some learning approaches that could harbour this interactive learning include reciprocal teaching, peer collaboration, cognitive apprenticeship, problem-based instruction, web quests, Anchored Instruction and other approaches that involve learning with others.


text: Learners with different skills and backgrounds should collaborate in tasks and discussions to arrive at a shared understanding of the truth in a specific field.


text: Some social constructivist models also stress the need for collaboration among learners, in direct contradiction to traditional competitive approaches. One Vygotskian notion that has significant implications for peer collaboration, is that of the zone of proximal development. Defined as the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem-solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers, it differs from the fixed biological nature of Piaget's stages of development. Through a process of 'scaffolding' a learner can be extended beyond the limitations of physical maturation to the extent that the development process lags behind the learning process.


text: If students have to present and train new contents with their classmates, a non-linear process of collective knowledge-construction will be set up.


text: The social constructivist paradigm views the context in which the learning occurs as central to the learning itself.


text: Underlying the notion of the learner as an active processor is "the assumption that there is no one set of generalised learning laws with each law applying to all domains". Decontextualised knowledge does not give us the skills to apply our understandings to authentic tasks because we are not working with the concept in the complex environment and experiencing the complex interrelationships in that environment that determine how and when the concept is used. One social constructivist notion is that of authentic or situated learning, where the student takes part in activities directly relevant to the application of learning and that take place within a culture similar to the applied setting. Cognitive apprenticeship has been proposed as an effective constructivist model of learning that attempts to "enculturate students into authentic practices through activity and social interaction in a way similar to that evident, and evidently successful, in craft apprenticeship".


text: Holt and Willard-Holt (2000) emphasize the concept of dynamic assessment, which is a way of assessing the true potential of learners that differs significantly from conventional tests. Here, the essentially interactive nature of learning is extended to the process of assessment. Rather than viewing assessment as a process carried out by one person, such as an instructor, it is seen as a two-way process involving interaction between both instructor and learner. The role of the assessor becomes one of entering into dialogue with the persons being assessed to find out their current level of performance on any task and sharing with them possible ways in which that performance might be improved on a subsequent occasion. Thus, assessment and learning are seen as inextricably linked and not separate processes.


text: According to this viewpoint, instructors should see assessment as a continuous and interactive process that measures the achievement of the learner, the quality of the learning experience and courseware. The feedback created by the assessment process serves as a direct foundation for further development.


text: Knowledge should not be divided into different subjects or compartments, but should be discovered as an integrated whole.


text: This also again underlines the importance of the context in which learning is presented. The world, in which the learner needs to operate, does not approach one in the form of different subjects, but as a complex myriad of facts, problems, dimensions, and perceptions.


text: Learners should constantly be challenged with tasks that refer to skills and knowledge just beyond their current level of mastery. This captures their motivation and builds on previous successes to enhance student confidence. This is in line with Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, which can be described as the distance between the actual developmental level (as determined by independent problem-solving) and the level of potential development (as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers).


text: Vygotsky (1978) further claimed that instruction is good only when it proceeds ahead of development. Then it awakens and rouses to life an entire set of functions in the stage of maturing, which lie in the zone of proximal development. It is in this way that instruction plays an extremely important role in development.


text: To fully engage and challenge the student, the task and learning environment should reflect the complexity of the environment that the student should be able to function in at the end of learning. Students must not only have ownership of the learning or problem-solving process, but of the problem itself.


text: Where the sequencing of subject matter is concerned, it is the constructivist viewpoint that the foundations of any subject may be taught to anybody at any stage in some form. This means that instructors should first introduce the basic ideas that form topics or subject areas, and then revisit and build upon these repeatedly. This notion has been extensively used in curricula.


text: It is important for instructors to realize that although a curriculum may be set down for them, it inevitably becomes shaped by them into something personal that reflects their own belief systems, their thoughts and feelings about both the content of their instruction and their students. Thus, the learning experience becomes a shared enterprise. The emotions and life contexts of those involved in the learning process must therefore be considered as an integral part of learning. The goal of the student is central in considering why to learn.


text: It is important to achieve the right balance between the degree of structure and flexibility that is built into the learning process. Savery (1994) contends that the more structured the learning environment, the harder it is for the learners to construct meaning based on their conceptual understandings. A facilitator should structure the learning experience just enough to make sure that the students get clear guidance and parameters within which to achieve the learning objectives, yet the learning experience should be open and free enough to allow for the learners to discover, enjoy, interact and arrive at their own, socially verified version of truth.


text: Constructivist ideas have been used to inform adult education. Current trends in higher education push for more "active learning" teaching approaches which are often based on constructivist views.


text: Approaches based on constructivism stress the importance of mechanisms for mutual planning, diagnosis of learner needs and interests, cooperative learning climate, sequential activities for achieving the objectives, formulation of learning objectives based on the diagnosed needs and interests. While adult learning often stresses the importance of personal relevance of the content, involvement of the learner in the process, and deeper understanding of underlying concepts, all of these are principles that may benefit learners of all ages as even children connect their every day experiences to what they learn.


text: Various approaches in pedagogy derive from constructivist theory. They usually suggest that learning is accomplished best using a hands-on approach. Learners learn by experimentation, and not by being told what will happen, and are left to make their own inferences, discoveries and conclusions.


text: Hmelo-Silver, Duncan, & Chinn cite several studies supporting the success of the constructivist problem-based and inquiry learning methods. For example, they describe a project called GenScope, an inquiry-based science software application. Students using the GenScope software showed significant gains over the control groups, with the largest gains shown in students from basic courses.


text: Hmelo-Silver et al. also cite a large study by Geier on the effectiveness of inquiry-based science for middle school students, as demonstrated by their performance on high-stakes standardized tests. The improvement was 14% for the first cohort of students and 13% for the second cohort. This study also found that inquiry-based teaching methods greatly reduced the achievement gap for African-American students.


text: Guthrie et al. (2004) compared three instructional methods for third-grade reading: a traditional approach, a strategies instruction only approach, and an approach with strategies instruction and constructivist motivation techniques including student choices, collaboration, and hands-on activities. The constructivist approach, called CORI (Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction), resulted in better student reading comprehension, cognitive strategies, and motivation.


text: Jong Suk Kim found that using constructivist teaching methods for 6th graders resulted in better student achievement than traditional teaching methods. This study also found that students preferred constructivist methods over traditional ones. However, Kim did not find any difference in student self-concept or learning strategies between those taught by constructivist or traditional methods.


text: Doğru and Kalender compared science classrooms using traditional teacher-centered approaches to those using student-centered, constructivist methods. In their initial test of student performance immediately following the lessons, they found no significant difference between traditional and constructivist methods. However, in the follow-up assessment 15 days later, students who learned through constructivist methods showed better retention of knowledge than those who learned through traditional methods.


text: Several cognitive psychologists and educators have questioned the central claims of constructivism. It is argued that constructivist theories are misleading or contradict known findings. Matthews (1993) attempts to sketch the influence of constructivism in current mathematics and science education, aiming to indicate how pervasive Aristotle's empiricist epistemology is within it and what problems constructivism faces on that account.


text: In the neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development it is maintained that learning at any age depends upon the processing and representational resources available at this particular age. That is, it is maintained that if the requirements of the concept to be understood exceeds the available processing efficiency and working memory resources then the concept is by definition not learnable. This attitude toward learning impedes the learning from understanding essential theoretical concepts or, in other words, reasoning. Therefore, no matter how active a child is during learning, to learn the child must operate in a learning environment that meets the developmental and individual learning constraints that are characteristic for the child's age and this child's possible deviations from her age's norm. If this condition is not met, construction goes astray.


text: Several educators have also questioned the effectiveness of this approach toward instructional design, especially as it applies to the development of instruction for novices. While some constructivists argue that "learning by doing" enhances learning, critics of this instructional strategy argue that little empirical evidence exists to support this statement given novice learners. Sweller and his colleagues argue that novices do not possess the underlying mental models, or "schemas" necessary for "learning by doing". Indeed, Mayer (2004) reviewed the literature and found that fifty years of empirical data do not support using the constructivist teaching technique of pure discovery; in those situations requiring discovery, he argues for the use of guided discovery instead.


text: Mayer (2004) argues that not all teaching techniques based on constructivism are efficient or effective for all learners, suggesting many educators misapply constructivism to use teaching techniques that require learners to be behaviorally active. He describes this inappropriate use of constructivism as the "constructivist teaching fallacy". "I refer to this interpretation as the constructivist teaching fallacy because it equates active learning with active teaching." Instead Mayer proposes learners should be "cognitively active" during learning and that instructors use "guided practice."


text: In contrast, Kirschner "et al." (2006) describe constructivist teaching methods as "unguided methods of instruction." They suggest more structured learning activities for learners with little to no prior knowledge. Slezak states that constructivism "is an example of fashionable but thoroughly problematic doctrines that can have little benefit for practical pedagogy or teacher education." Similar views have been stated by Meyer, Boden, Quale and others.


text: Kirschner "et al." group a number of learning theories together (Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based learning) and stated that highly scaffolded constructivist methods like problem-based learning and inquiry learning are ineffective. Kirschner "et al." described several research studies that were favorable to problem-based learning given learners were provided some level of guidance and support.


text: While there are critics of the Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark article, Sweller and his associates have written in their articles about:


text: Kirschner "et al." (2006) describe worked examples as an instructional design solution for procedural learning. Clark, Nguyen, and Sweller (2006) describe this as a very effective, empirically validated method of teaching learners procedural skill acquisition. Evidence for learning by studying worked-examples, is known as the worked-example effect and has been found to be useful in many domains (e.g. music, chess, athletics) concept mapping, geometry, physics, mathematics, or programming.


text: Kirschner "et al." (2006) describe why they group a series of seemingly disparate learning theories (Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based learning). The reasoning for this grouping is because each learning theory promotes the same constructivist teaching technique—"learning by doing." While they argue "learning by doing" is useful for more knowledgeable learners, they argue this teaching technique is not useful for novices. Mayer states that it promotes behavioral activity too early in the learning process, when learners should be cognitively active.


text: In addition, Sweller and his associates describe a continuum of guidance, starting with worked examples to slowly fade guidance. This continuum of faded guidance has been tested empirically to produce a series of learning effects: the worked-example effect, the guidance fading effect, and the expertise-reversal effect.


text: Mayer (2004) argues against discovery-based teaching techniques and provides an extensive review to support this argument. Mayer's arguments are against pure discovery, and are not specifically aimed at constructivism: "Nothing in this article should be construed as arguing against the view of learning as knowledge construction or against using hands-on inquiry or group discussion that promotes the process of knowledge construction in learners. The main conclusion I draw from the three research literatures I have reviewed is that it would be a mistake to interpret the current constructivist view of learning as a rationale for reviving pure discovery as a method of instruction."


text: Mayer's concern is how one applies discovery-based teaching techniques. He provides empirical research as evidence that discovery-based teaching techniques are inadequate. Here he cites this literature and makes his point "For example, a recent replication is research showing that students learn to become better at solving mathematics problems when they study worked-out examples rather than when they solely engage in hands-on problem solving. Today's proponents of discovery methods, who claim to draw their support from constructivist philosophy, are making inroads into educational practice. Yet a dispassionate review of the relevant research literature shows that discovery-based practice is not as effective as guided discovery."


text: Mayer's point is that people often misuse constructivism to promote pure discovery-based teaching techniques. He proposes that the instructional design recommendations of constructivism are too often aimed at discovery-based practice. Sweller (1988) found evidence that practice by novices during early schema acquisition, distracts these learners with unnecessary search-based activity, when the learner's attention should be focused on understanding (acquiring schemas).


text: The study by Kirschner et al. from which the quote at the beginning of this section was taken has been widely cited and is important for showing the limits of minimally-guided instruction. Hmelo-Silver et al. responded, pointing out that Kirschner et al. conflated constructivist teaching techniques such as inquiry learning with "discovery learning". (See the preceding two sections of this article.) This would agree with Mayer's viewpoint that even though constructivism as a theory and teaching techniques incorporating guidance are likely valid applications of this theory, nevertheless a tradition of misunderstanding has led to some question "pure discovery" techniques.


text: The math wars controversy in the United States is an example of the type of heated debate that sometimes follows the implementation of constructivist-inspired curricula in schools. In the 1990s, mathematics textbooks based on new standards largely informed by constructivism were developed and promoted with government support. Although constructivist theory does not require eliminating instruction entirely, some textbooks seemed to recommend this extreme. Some parents and mathematicians protested the design of textbooks that omitted or de-emphasized instruction of standard mathematical methods. Supporters responded that the methods were to be eventually discovered under direction by the teacher, but since this was missing or unclear, many insisted the textbooks were designed to deliberately eliminate instruction of standard methods. In one commonly adopted text, the standard formula for the area of a circle is to be derived in the classroom, but not actually printed in the student textbook as is explained by the developers of CMP: "The student role of formulating, representing, clarifying, communicating, and reflecting on ideas leads to an increase in learning. If the format of the texts included many worked examples, the student role would then become merely reproducing these examples with small modifications."


text: Similarly, this approach has been applied to reading with whole language and inquiry-based science that emphasizes the importance of "devising" rather than just performing hands-on experiments as early as the elementary grades (traditionally done by research scientists), rather than studying facts. In other areas of curriculum such as social studies and writing are relying more on "higher order thinking skills" rather than memorization of dates, grammar or spelling rules or reciting correct answers. Advocates of this approach counter that the constructivism does not require going to extremes, that in fact teachable moments should regularly infuse the experience with the more traditional teaching. The primary differentiation from the traditional approach being that the engagement of the students in their learning makes them more receptive to learning things at an appropriate time, rather than on a preset schedule.


text: During the 1990s, several theorists began to study the cognitive load of novices (those with little or no prior knowledge of the subject matter) during problem solving. Cognitive load theory was applied in several contexts. Based on the results of their research, these authors do not support the idea of allowing novices to interact with ill-structured learning environments. Ill-structured learning environments rely on the learner to discover problem solutions. Jonassen (1997) also suggested that novices be taught with "well-structured" learning environments.


text: Jonassen (1997) also proposed well-designed, well-structured learning environments provide scaffolding for problem-solving. Finally, both Sweller and Jonassen support problem-solving scenarios for more advanced learners.


text: Sweller and his associates even suggest well-structured learning environments, like those provided by worked examples, are not effective for those with more experience—this was later described as the "expertise reversal effect". Cognitive load theorists suggest worked examples initially, with a gradual introduction of problem solving scenarios; this is described as the "guidance fading effect" Each of these ideas provides more evidence for Anderson's ACT-R framework. This ACT-R framework suggests learning can begin with studying examples.


text: Finally Mayer states: "Thus, the contribution of psychology is to help move educational reform efforts from the fuzzy and unproductive world of educational ideology—which sometimes hides under the banner of various versions of constructivism—to the sharp and productive world of theory-based research on how people learn."


text: Many people confuse constructivist with maturationist views. The constructivist (or cognitive-developmental) stream "is based on the idea that the dialectic or interactionist process of development and learning through the student's active construction should be facilitated and promoted by adults". Whereas, "The romantic maturationist stream is based on the idea that the student's naturally occurring development should be allowed to flower without adult interventions in a permissive environment." In other words, adults play an active role in guiding learning in constructivism, while they are expected to allow children to guide themselves in maturationism.


text: According to William Cobern (1991) Contextual constructivism is "about understanding the fundamental, culturally based beliefs that both students and teachers bring to class, and how these beliefs are supported by culture. Contextual constructivists not only raise new research questions, they also call for a new research paradigm. The focus on contextualization means that qualitative, especially ethnographic, techniques are to be preferred" (p. 3).


text: Ernst von Glasersfeld developed radical constructivism by coupling Piaget's theory of learning and philosophical viewpoint about the nature of knowledge with Kant's rejection of an objective reality independent of human perception or reason. Radical constructivism does not view knowledge as an attempt to generate ideas that match an independent, objective reality. Instead, theories and knowledge about the world, as generated by our senses and reason, either fit within the constraints of whatever reality may exist and, thus, are viable or do not and are not viable. As a theory of education, radical constructivism emphasizes the experiences of the learner, differences between learners and the importance of uncertainty.


text: Björn Kraus' relational constructivism can be perceived as a relational consequence of radical constructivism. In contrast to social constructivism, it picks up the epistemological threads and maintains the radical constructivist idea that humans cannot overcome their limited conditions of reception. Despite the subjectivity of human constructions of reality, relational constructivism focuses on the relational conditions that apply to human perceptional processes.


text: In recent decades, constructivist theorists have extended the traditional focus on individual learning to address collaborative and social dimensions of learning. It is possible to see "social constructivism" as a bringing together of aspects of the work of Piaget with that of Bruner and Vygotsky.


text: The concept "Communal constructivism" was developed by Leask and Younie in 1995 through their research on the European SchoolNet which demonstrated the value of experts collaborating to push the boundaries of knowledge i.e. communal construction of new knowledge between experts rather than social construction of knowledge as described by Vygotsky where there is a learner to teacher scaffolding relationship. "Communal constructivism" as a concept applies to those situations in which there is currently no expert knowledge or research to underpin knowledge in an area. "Communal constructivism" refers specifically to the process of experts working together to create, record and publish new knowledge in emerging areas. In the seminal European SchoolNet research where for the first time academics were testing out how the internet could support classroom practice and pedagogy, experts from a number of countries set up test situations to generate and understand new possibilities for educational practice.


text: Bryan Holmes in 2001 applied this to student learning as described in an early paper, "in this model, students will not simply pass through a course like water through a sieve but instead leave their own imprint in the learning process."


text: Constructivism has influenced the course of programming and computer science. Some famous programming languages have been created, wholly or in part, for educational use, to support the constructionist theory of Seymour Papert. These languages have been dynamically typed, and reflective. Logo and its successor Scratch are the best known of them. Constructivism has also informed the design of interactive machine learning systems, whereas Radical Constructivism has been explored as a paradigm to design experiments in rehabilitation robotics, more precisely in prosthetics.


title: Wade Boggs

text: Wade Anthony Boggs (born June 15, 1958) is an American former professional baseball third baseman. He spent 18 seasons in Major League Baseball, primarily with the Boston Red Sox. He also played for the New York Yankees (1993-1997), and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (1998-1999). He won the 1996 World Series with the Yankees over the Atlanta Braves. Boggs became the 23rd player to reach 3,000 career hits. His hitting in the 1980s and 1990s made him a perennial contender for American League batting titles. He is 33rd on the list of career leaders for batting average among Major League Baseball players with a minimum of 1,000 plate appearances and has the highest ranking of those still alive. Boggs was elected to the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2004 and the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005.


title: Wade Boggs

text: With 12 straight All-Star appearances, Boggs is third only to Brooks Robinson and George Brett in number of consecutive appearances as a third baseman. In 1997, he ranked number 95 on the "Sporting News" list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players. Boggs, a 1976 graduate of Plant High School in Tampa, Florida, resides in the Tampa Palms neighborhood of Tampa.


title: Wade Boggs

text: Born in Omaha, Nebraska, the youngest of three sons of Winfield Kennedy Boggs Jr. and Sue Nell Graham, Wade had a regimented military upbringing. Winfield and Sue met in 1946 at a military base in Georgia. Winfield served with the Marines in World War II and flew for the Air Force in the Korean War, while Sue piloted mail planes in World War II. The Boggs family lived in several different places (including Puerto Rico and Savannah, Georgia) before settling in Tampa, Florida when Wade was 11 years old. He attended Plant High School in Tampa, where he played baseball and was an All-State football player as a senior. Boggs played quarterback until his senior year when he switched positions to avoid injury and thereby protect his baseball career. His success as a left-footed placekicker and punter earned him a scholarship offer from the University of South Carolina. He graduated from Plant High School in 1976 and was selected by the Boston Red Sox in the seventh round of the 1976 MLB draft on the advice of veteran scout George Digby. He signed with the club for $7,500.


title: Wade Boggs

text: Boggs played in the longest game in professional baseball history as a member of the Pawtucket Red Sox in 1981 against Cal Ripken Jr. and the Rochester Red Wings. It lasted for 33 innings over eight hours and 25 minutes. The game took place from April 18–19, 1981, at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. During his last year in the minor leagues with Pawtucket, he led the league with a .335 batting-average, 167 hits, and 41 doubles.


title: Wade Boggs

text: A left-handed hitter, Boggs won five batting titles starting in 1983. He also batted .349 in his rookie year, which would have won the batting title, but he was 121 plate appearances short of the required minimum of 502. From 1982 to 1988, Boggs hit below .349 only once, hitting .325 in 1984. From 1983 to 1989, Boggs rattled off seven consecutive seasons in which he collected 200 or more hits, an American League record for consecutive 200-hit seasons that was surpassed by Seattle's Ichiro Suzuki. Boggs also had six seasons with 200 or more hits, 100+ runs, and 40+ doubles. Although he would not win another batting title after 1988 (his batting title that year broke Bill Madlock's Major League record of four by a third baseman), he regularly appeared among the league leaders in hitting.


title: Wade Boggs

text: In 1986, Boggs made it to the World Series with the Red Sox, but they lost to the New York Mets in seven games. He holds the record for batting average at Fenway Park, at .369.


title: Wade Boggs

text: Boggs had a power surge in 1987, setting career-highs with 24 home runs, 89 RBIs, and a .588 slugging percentage. He never hit half as many home runs in any other season.


title: Wade Boggs

text: In 1992, Boggs slumped to .259—one of only three times in his career that he failed to reach .300—and at the end of the season, he left the Red Sox, with whom he had spent his entire career to that point. He was heavily pursued by two teams: the Los Angeles Dodgers and the arch-rival of the Red Sox, the New York Yankees. He chose the Yankees when they added the third year to the contract that the Dodgers would not offer. Boggs went on to be awarded three straight All-Star appearances, had four straight .300-plus seasons, and even collected two Gold Glove Awards for his defense.


title: Wade Boggs

text: In 1996, Boggs helped the Yankees win their first World Series title in 18 years against the Atlanta Braves, which became his only World Series title. In the series' fourth game that saw the Yankees rally from six runs down to tie it, Boggs was called on to pinch hit in the tenth inning. Using the batting eye he was known for throughout his career, he drew a bases-loaded walk out of Steve Avery, forcing in the go-ahead run and ultimately win 8–6, evening the series. After the Yankees won the series in game 6, Boggs memorably celebrated by jumping on the back of an NYPD horse, touring the field with his index finger in the air, despite his self-professed fear of horses.


title: Wade Boggs

text: Boggs signed with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for the final two seasons of his career. He hit the first home run in Devil Rays history in the sixth inning of the inaugural game on March 31, 1998. On August 7, 1999, he collected his 3,000th hit with a home run. Despite his reputation for lacking home-run power, he was the first player in history to make such a hit a home run, followed by Derek Jeter on July 9, 2011, and Alex Rodriguez on June 19, 2015. Boggs retired in 1999 after sustaining a knee injury, leaving with a career batting average of .328 and 3,010 hits. His last game was on August 27, 1999; he went 0-for-3 with a walk against the Cleveland Indians. Two yellow seats among the rest of the Tropicana's blue seats mark where both historic balls landed in right field, each with a small metal plate noting it as the area that the ball landed. Due to the fact that he signed with the first-year expansion team Devil Rays so late in his career, he is the oldest former Devil Ray. (This only includes the time where they were called the Devil Rays.) He was also the first Tampa Bay area native to play for the team.


title: Wade Boggs

text: Boggs' career paralleled that of Tony Gwynn, who also debuted (in the National League) in 1982. Boggs and Gwynn were the premier contact hitters of their era. They both won multiple batting titles—Boggs, five and Gwynn, eight—and each won four straight batting titles to join Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, and Rod Carew as the only players to do so. Gwynn and Boggs each hit over .350 in four straight seasons, the only players to do so since 1931. They joined Lou Brock and Rod Carew as the only players whose careers ended after World War II who finished with 3,000 hits and fewer than 160 home runs.


title: Wade Boggs

text: Tommy John noted that Boggs always seemed to know what the next pitch was going to be. "...for pure hitting, Boggs is the best I've ever seen," John wrote in 1991. "He's a phenomenon, a pure hitting machine. I've never seen anything like him. He lit me up."


title: Wade Boggs

text: Boggs recorded 2.1 innings of pitching at the Major League level. His main pitch was a knuckleball, which he used 16 times (along with one fastball) in one shutout inning for the Yankees against the Anaheim Angels in a 1997 game. Boggs recorded a strike-out pitching during that game. Boggs also pitched 1.1 innings for Tampa Bay against the Orioles in a 1999 game, allowing one run.


title: Wade Boggs

text: On December 21, 2015, the Red Sox announced that they would retire Boggs' number (26). The ceremony was held on May 26, 2016. Boggs occasionally appears in the Yankees' annual Old-Timers' Day, a celebration of past Yankees in which the players play a multi-inning game of baseball at Yankee Stadium.


title: Wade Boggs

text: His own style included mental preparedness techniques, which consisted in visualizing four at-bats each evening before a game and imagining himself successfully getting four hits.


title: Wade Boggs

text: As of June 8, 1986—over the course of the previous 162 games (equivalent to a full season, though across two seasons)—Boggs was hitting .400, with 254 hits in 635 at-bats.


title: Wade Boggs

text: In his 18-year major league career, Boggs recorded 3 five-hit games and 59 four-hit games. On June 29, 1987, he had a career-high seven RBI against the Orioles in a 14–3 victory at Fenway.


title: Wade Boggs

text: The Tampa Bay Devil Rays retired his #12 on April 7, 2000. It is the only number to have been issued only once by the Rays.


title: Wade Boggs

text: The Boston Red Sox inducted Boggs into the team's Hall of Fame in 2004 and his number 26 was retired during a pre-game ceremony on May 26, 2016.


title: Wade Boggs

text: Boggs was known for his superstitions. He ate chicken before every game (Jim Rice once called Boggs "chicken man"), woke up at the same time every day, and ran sprints at 7:17 pm. His route to and from his position in the field beat a path to the home dugout. He drew the Hebrew word "Chai" (meaning "life") in the batter's box before each at-bat, though he is not Jewish. He asked Fenway Park public address announcer Sherm Feller not to say his uniform number when he introduced him because Boggs once broke out of a slump on a day when Feller forgot to announce his number.


title: Wade Boggs

text: Boggs garnered non-baseball-related media attention in 1989 for his four-year extramarital affair with Margo Adams, a California mortgage broker. After Boggs ended the relationship in 1988, Adams filed a $12 million lawsuit for emotional distress and breach of oral contract. She argued that Boggs had verbally agreed to compensate her for lost income and services performed while accompanying Boggs on road trips. Boggs' reputation was further sullied when Adams agreed to an interview with "Penthouse" magazine in which she discussed intimate details of her time with Boggs. While acknowledging the affair, Boggs went on the offensive in order to combat the wave of negative press, denying many of the claims made by Adams. Boggs' rebuttal included an appearance on the ABC program "20/20" in which he presented his side of the story to Barbara Walters. In February 1989, an appeals court threw out $11.5 million of the initial lawsuit, ruling that Adams could not seek compensation for emotional distress. The remaining demand for $500,000 was settled out of court later that year for an undisclosed amount.


title: Wade Boggs

text: Before his retirement, Boggs was plagued by newspaper reports that the expansion Devil Rays gave him financial compensation in return for selecting a Devil Rays cap for his plaque at the Baseball Hall of Fame, though he has denied that any such condition was part of his contract. In light of those reports (and other rumors that teams were offering number retirement, money, or organizational jobs in exchange for the cap designation) the Hall decided in 2001 to change its practice of deferring to players' wishes regarding cap logo selection and reinforced the Hall's authority to determine with which cap the player would be depicted. Boggs is wearing a Boston cap on his plaque.


title: Wade Boggs

text: Boggs' mother died in June 1986 in a car accident in Tampa while he was with the Red Sox. Shortly after her death, Boggs and his father bought a fish camp on U.S. 301 just south of Hawthorne, Florida, that they named Yankee Landing-"Finway Fish Camp"; his father operated it until shortly before he died.


title: Wade Boggs

text: Wade Boggs was named one of the "Top 10 Most Superstitious Athletes" by "Men's Fitness" for his well known superstitions about baseball, including his habit of eating chicken before every game and practicing at only specific times of day. His chicken eating habits earned him the nickname "Chicken Man".


title: Wade Boggs

text: As a baseball player, Boggs made an appearance for the professional wrestling promotion World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1992. He appeared in a vignette with wrestler Mr. Perfect (Curt Hennig) in which Perfect played baseball. The two remained good friends afterward; 15 years later, in 2007, Boggs inducted the late Perfect into the WWE Hall of Fame. In the DVD "The Life and Times of Mr. Perfect", Boggs related how Hennig saved his life, carrying Boggs to help after he had severely cut his leg climbing over a broken barbed wire fence during a hunting trip.


title: Wade Boggs

text: Boggs was one of the baseball players featured in the classic "The Simpsons" episode "Homer at the Bat," in which he was recruited as a ringer by Mr. Burns for the Power Plant's softball team, only to later be knocked out in a bar fight by Barney Gumble. (The depicted fight was over whether Lord Palmerston or Pitt the Elder was England's greatest Prime Minister.) Boggs appeared as himself in the "Cheers" episode ""Bar Wars"" in which he was sent to the bar as an apology by a rival bar. He was accosted by the regulars who thought he was a fake. ("Cheers" writer Ken Levine revealed in 2009 that Boggs had promised to bring Kirstie Alley's panties back to spring training with him, but in fact, brought back his mistress Margo Adams' panties instead.) In "Seinfeld"'s "The Chaperone," George convinces the Yankees to switch to cotton uniforms, assuring manager Buck Showalter that the Bombers would be "five degrees cooler than the other team." Wade Boggs was quoted as saying. "What a fabric! Finally we can breathe."


title: Wade Boggs

text: In 2011, he also appeared in the "Psych" episode "Dead Man's Curveball." In the episode he tells Danny Glover's character that he drank 74 beers on the infamous flight.


title: Wade Boggs

text: In 2015, Boggs guest starred in the Season 10 premiere ("The Gang Beats Boggs") of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", in which characters in the show tried to drink more than 70 beers while flying across country, emulating a feat Boggs once allegedly accomplished during his career. Boggs denied that the number of beers was 64, and he reportedly told Charlie Day that he drank 107 beers in a day. One of the characters in the episode confuses Boggs with Boss Hogg; another character believes that Boggs is dead. The scene has become a popular joke among baseball fans.


title: Wade Boggs

text: In August 2017, Boggs served as a fill-in color commentator for some Red Sox games played in Tampa Bay and broadcast on New England Sports Network (NESN), working with play-by-play announcer Dave O'Brien.


title: Wade Boggs

text: In 2018, Wade Boggs was mentioned in a "Good Mythical Morning" episode by hosts Rhett and Link, involving his Wade Boggs .352 Bar that was made in 1990. He later made a cameo appearance on the show in 2021.


title: Liborio Bellomo

text: Liborio Salvatore Bellomo (born January 8, 1957) is an American mobster and boss of the Genovese crime family. He served in the 116th Street Crew of Saverio "Sammy Black" Santora and was initiated in 1977. His father was a soldier and close to Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno. In 1990, Kenneth McCabe, then-organized crime investigator for the United States attorney's office in Manhattan, identified Bellomo as "acting boss" of the crime family following the indictment of Vincent Gigante in the "Windows Case". In June 1996, Bellomo was indicted on charges of extortion, labor racketeering and for ordering the deaths of Ralph DeSimone in 1991 and Antonio DiLorenzo in 1988; DeSimone was found shot 5 times in the trunk of his car at LaGuardia Airport and DiLorenzo was shot and killed in the backyard of his home. Since around 2016, Bellomo was recognised, most likely, to be official boss of the Genovese family.


title: Liborio Bellomo

text: Bellomo is the son of Salvatore Bellomo. He is the double cousin of Genovese associate Liborio Thomas Bellomo; their fathers are brothers and their mothers are sisters. This has led law enforcement to confuse their identities on several occasions. In 1997, Liborio Thomas Bellomo swore in an affidavit that he was guilty of federal charges instead of Bellomo.


title: Liborio Bellomo

text: In 1990, after Vincent Gigante's indictment in the Windows Case, Bellomo was appointed acting boss of the Genovese family. On June 11, 1996, Bellomo was indicted on Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) charges, including the murders of mobster Ralph DeSimone and Antonio DiLorenzo, extortion, and labor racketeering. DiLorenzo was found shot to death in the backyard of his home in West New York, New Jersey. DeSimone was found in the trunk of his car at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, shot five times. Both DeSimone and DiLorenzo were murdered because the Genovese leadership thought they were government informants.


title: Liborio Bellomo

text: Bellomo's lawyers stated that their client passed two polygraph tests in which he denied killing anyone. FBI agents shaved Bellomo's head, looking for evidence that Bellomo had used lithium to beat the polygraph machines.


title: Liborio Bellomo

text: In February 1997, prosecutors dropped the DeSimone and DiLorenzo murder charges and offered Bellomo a chance to plead guilty to extorting payoffs from a construction union and a garbage hauling company. Bellomo accepted the deal and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.


title: Liborio Bellomo

text: On July 13, 2001, the imprisoned Bellomo was indicted on money laundering charges related to the Genovese family's involvement in the waterfront rackets and control of the ILA. Bellomo was accused of hiding money stolen from the ILA's members pension fund account between 1996 and 1997. Bellomo again pleaded guilty to lesser charges, pushing back his scheduled release date in 2004.


title: Liborio Bellomo

text: On February 23, 2006, Bellomo and over 30 Genovese family members were indicted on more racketeering charges. Bellomo was specifically charged with ordering the 1998 murder of Ralph Coppola, the acting captain of Bellomo's crew and Bellomo's good friend. On September 16, 1998, Coppola disappeared a few weeks before his sentencing on fraud charges and was never found. Government witness Peter Peluso, a former lawyer for the Genovese family, stated that he had transported a message from Bellomo in prison ordering Coppola's murder. Some accounts state that Coppola was disrespectful, others say that he was stealing family profits.


title: Liborio Bellomo

text: Peluso pleaded guilty to his role in the murder. However, the government had no proof that Peluso had indeed met with Bellomo. With insufficient evidence to press the murder charge against Bellomo, the government offered him a plea bargain for mail fraud. Bellomo accepted and received one additional year in prison. His daughter Sabrina, is credited with helping get her father a light sentence with a tearful plea to judge Lewis A. Kaplan. Due to his 12-year imprisonment, he missed her high school, college, and law school graduations.


title: Mean Streets

text: Mean Streets is a 1973 American crime film directed by Martin Scorsese and co-written by Scorsese and Mardik Martin. The film stars Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. It was released by Warner Bros. on October 2, 1973. De Niro won the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as "Johnny Boy" Civello.


title: Mean Streets

text: In 1997, "Mean Streets" was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: Mean Streets

text: Charlie Cappa, a young Italian-American in the Little Italy neighborhood of New York City, is hampered by his feeling of responsibility toward his reckless younger friend John "Johnny Boy" Civello, a small-time gambler and ne'er-do-well who refuses to work and owes money to many loan sharks. Charlie is also having a secret affair with Johnny's cousin Teresa, who has epilepsy and is ostracized because of her condition—especially by Charlie's Uncle Giovanni, a powerful mafioso. Giovanni wants Charlie to distance himself from Johnny, saying "honorable men go with honorable men."


title: Mean Streets

text: Charlie is torn between his devout Catholicism and his illicit Mafia work for Giovanni. Johnny becomes increasingly self-destructive and disrespectful of his Mafia-connected creditors. Failing to receive redemption in the Church, Charlie seeks it through sacrificing himself on Johnny's behalf. At a bar, a loan shark named Michael comes looking for Johnny to pay up. To his surprise, Johnny insults him. Michael lunges at Johnny, who pulls a gun. After a tense standoff, Michael walks away and Charlie convinces Johnny that they should leave town for a brief period. Teresa insists on coming with them. Charlie borrows a car and they drive off, leaving the neighborhood without incident.


title: Mean Streets

text: A car that has been following them suddenly pulls up, with Michael at the wheel and his henchman, Jimmy Shorts, in the backseat. Jimmy fires several shots at Charlie's car, hitting Johnny in the neck and Charlie in the hand, causing Charlie to crash the car into a fire hydrant. Johnny is seen in an alleyway staggering toward a white light which is revealed to be a police car. Charlie gets out of the crashed vehicle and kneels in the spurting water from the hydrant, dazed and bleeding. Paramedics take Teresa and Charlie away while Johnny's fate remains unknown.


title: Mean Streets

text: Apart from his first actual feature, "Who's That Knocking at My Door", and a directing project given to him by early independent film maker Roger Corman, "Boxcar Bertha", this was Scorsese's first feature film of his own design. Director John Cassavetes told him after he completed "Boxcar Bertha": "You’ve just spent a year of your life making a piece of shit." This inspired Scorsese to make a film about his own experiences. Cassavetes told Scorsese he should do something like "Who's That Knocking at My Door", which Cassavetes had liked. "Mean Streets" was based on events Scorsese saw almost regularly while growing up in New York City's Little Italy.


title: Mean Streets

text: The screenplay began as a continuation of the characters in "Who's That Knocking". Scorsese changed the title from "Season of the Witch" to "Mean Streets", a reference to Raymond Chandler's essay "The Simple Art of Murder", where Chandler writes, "But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid." Scorsese sent the script to Corman, who agreed to back the film if all the characters were black. Scorsese was anxious to make the film so he considered this option, but actress Verna Bloom arranged a meeting with potential financial backer Jonathan Taplin, the road manager for The Band. Taplin liked the script and was willing to raise the $300,000 Scorsese wanted if Corman promised, in writing, to distribute the film. The blaxploitation suggestion came to nothing when funding from Warner Bros. allowed him to make the film with Italian-American characters.


title: Mean Streets

text: The film was well received by most critics; Pauline Kael was among the enthusiastic critics, calling it "a true original, and a triumph of personal filmmaking" and "dizzyingly sensual". Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" reflected that "no matter how bleak the milieu, no matter how heartbreaking the narrative, some films are so thoroughly, beautifully realized they have a kind of tonic effect that has no relation to the subject matter". "Time Out" magazine called it "one of the best American films of the decade". David Denby, writing for "Sight and Sound", praised the film's acting, saying that Scorsese had used improvisation "better than anyone in American movies so far." He concluded by saying that, "Scorsese's impulse to express all he feels about life in every scene (a cannier, more prudent director wouldn't have started his film with that great De Niro monologue), and thus to wrench his audience upwards into a new state of consciousness with one prolonged and devastating gesture, infinitely hurting and infinitely tender. "Mean Streets" comes close enough to this feverish ideal to warrant our love and much of our respect."


title: Mean Streets

text: Retrospectively, Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" inducted "Mean Streets" on his Great Movies list and wrote, "In countless ways, right down to the detail of modern TV crime shows, "Mean Streets" is one of the source points of modern movies." In 2013, the staff of "Entertainment Weekly" voted the film the seventh greatest of all time. In 2015, it was ranked 93rd on the BBC's list of the 100 greatest American films. James Gandolfini, when asked on "Inside the Actors Studio" (season 11, episode two) which films most influenced him, cited "Mean Streets", saying "I saw that 10 times in a row." Likewise, director Kathryn Bigelow said that "Mean Streets" was one of her five favorite movies. In an interview with GQ Magazine, Spike Lee named "Mean Streets" as one of his influences, along with "On The Waterfront". In 2011, Empire Magazine listed the film as #1 on its "50 Greatest American Independent Films" list.


title: Mean Streets

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 96% based on 67 reviews, with an average rating of 8.90/10. The website's critics consensus reads: ""Mean Streets" is a powerful tale of urban sin and guilt that marks Scorsese's arrival as an important cinematic voice and features electrifying performances from Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro." According to Metacritic, which assigned a weighted average of 96 out of 100 based on 11 critics, the film received "universal acclaim".


title: Mean Streets

text: "Mean Streets" was released on VHS and Betamax in 1985. The film debuted as a letterboxed LaserDisc on October 7, 1991 in the US. It was released on Blu-ray on April 6, 2011 in France, and in America on July 17, 2012. The home media releases use the original mono audio track, rather than a modern surround sound mix as is common even for films that originally had mono audio.


title: Midori Francis

text: Midori Iwama (born April 16, 1994), known professionally as Midori Francis, is an American actress. She began her career in theatre, earning NYIT, Obie, and Drama Desk Awards. She received a Daytime Emmy nomination for her role as Lily in the Netflix series "Dash & Lily" (2020).


title: Midori Francis

text: Francis grew up in Rumson, New Jersey. She is the daughter of Joanne and Ken Iwama, the current chancellor of Indiana University Northwest. Named after her paternal grandmother, Francis is of Japanese descent on her father's side and Irish and Italian on her mother's. On growing up in a predominantly white town in the 90s and early 2000s, she commented "I was teased a lot for being Asian, I was bullied, made to feel like I was ugly or weird". She identifies as Hapa (a term for people of mixed European and Asian or Pacific Islander ancestry).


title: Midori Francis

text: Francis attended Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School, graduating in 2009. She went on to obtain a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2014. She studied abroad in London, training with Tim Carroll and performing "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" at Shakespeare's Globe.


title: Midori Francis

text: Upon graduating from Rutgers, Francis landed stage roles in regional productions of "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike" and "Peter and the Starcatcher" as Nina and Molly respectively. She won Best Actress at the 2016 New York Innovative Theatre Awards as well as receiving a Best Ensemble nomination for her role as Meghan in the Off-Broadway play "Connected" at 59E59 Theaters. From 2017 to 2018, she was in the original cast of "The Wolves", garnering ensemble awards at the Obie and Drama Desk Awards. At the latter, Francis was also nominated for Outstanding Actress in Play for her role in Ming Peiffer's "Usual Girls".


title: Midori Francis

text: In 2018, Francis made her feature film debut in "Ocean's 8". The following year, she appeared in "South Mountain" and "Good Boys". In October 2019, it was announced Francis would star in her first lead role opposite Austin Abrams in the 2020 Netflix Christmas romantic comedy series "Dash & Lily", an adaptation of the young adult novel by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn. Francis was included in the creative process, as elements from her real life background and experiences were incorporated. For her performance, Francis was nominated for Lead Actress in a Daytime Fiction Program at the 2021 Daytime Emmy Awards.


title: Midori Francis

text: Francis appeared alongside Victoria Justice in the Netflix fantasy comedy film "Afterlife of the Party" in 2021.


title: Midori Francis

text: In March 2021, it was announced Francis had joined the main cast of the HBO Max series "The Sex Lives of College Girls", which premiered later that year.


title: Midori Francis

text: In January 2022, Francis was set to star in the TV thriller film "Unseen" with Jolene Purdy, helmed by Yoko Okumura in her feature directing debut.


title: Midori Francis

text: Francis identifies as queer. She is vocal about Asian representation in media and speaks frequently about her experience as an Asian-American in Hollywood.


title: Mekong

text: The Mekong or Mekong River is a trans-boundary river in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It is the world's twelfth longest river and the third longest in Asia. Its estimated length is , and it drains an area of , discharging of water annually.


title: Mekong

text: From the Tibetan Plateau the river runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The extreme seasonal variations in flow and the presence of rapids and waterfalls in the Mekong make navigation difficult. Even so, the river is a major trade route between western China and Southeast Asia.


title: Mekong

text: The Mekong was originally called "Mae Nam Khong" from a contracted form of Tai shortened to "Mae Khong". In Thai and Lao, "Mae Nam" ("Mother of Water[s]") is used for large rivers and "Khong" is the proper name referred to as "River Khong". However, "Khong" is an archaic word meaning "river", loaned from Austroasiatic languages, such as Vietnamese "sông" (from *"krong") and Mon "kruŋ" "river", which led to Chinese whose Old Chinese pronunciation has been reconstructed as and which long served as the proper name of the Yangtze before becoming a generic word for major rivers. To the early European traders, the Mekong River was also known as "Mekon River", "May-Kiang River" and "Cambodia River".


title: Mekong

text: 括盟認 (Quas Hmoob Leeg/K̤uə̀ Hmống Le̤ng) or 括苗 (Quas Hmaob/K̤uə̀ Hmáo) : 個 娘 水 "媽 河 江" => (Tug NamDlej "Maem Naam Khmzoov"). IPA [tṳ na̰tlê] = "The Mother River" & [mæ̰ na̰ŋ kʰrǒŋ] = Mother Water River which is a loan word from ไทย(Thāi)🇹🇭: แม่ น้ำ [mæ̂ nə́m] & ខ្មែរ (Khmer)🇰🇭: គរូ័ង [kʰrǒŋ]


title: Mekong

text: The Mekong rises as the Za Qu (; ) and soon becomes known as the Lancang (, from the old name of Lao kingdom Lan Xang; the characters may also be literally understood as "turbulent green river"). It originates in the "three rivers source area" on the Tibetan Plateau in the Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve. The reserve protects the headwaters of, from north to south, the Yellow (Huang He), the Yangtze, and the Mekong Rivers. It flows through the Tibetan Autonomous Region and then southeast into Yunnan Province, and then the Three Parallel Rivers Area in the Hengduan Mountains, along with the Yangtze to its east and the Salween River (Nu Jiang in Chinese) to its west.


title: Mekong

text: Then the Mekong meets the China–Myanmar border and flows about along that border until it reaches the tripoint of China, Myanmar and Laos. From there it flows southwest and forms the border of Myanmar and Laos for about until it arrives at the tripoint of Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand. This is also the point of confluence between the Ruak River (which follows the Thai–Myanmar border) and the Mekong. The area of this tripoint is sometimes termed the Golden Triangle, although the term also refers to the much larger area of those three countries that was notorious as a drug producing region.


title: Mekong

text: From the Golden Triangle tripoint, the Mekong turns southeast to briefly form the border of Laos with Thailand.


title: Mekong

text: Khon Pi Long is a series of rapids along a 1.6-kilometre section of the Mekong River dividing Chiang Rai and Bokeo Province in Laos. The name of the rapids means 'where the ghost lost its way'. It then turns east into the interior of Laos, flowing first east and then south for some before meeting the border with Thailand again. Once more, it defines the Laos-Thailand border for some as it flows first east, passing the capital of Laos, Vientiane, then turns south. A second time, the river leaves the border and flows east into Laos soon passing the city of Pakse. Thereafter, it turns and runs more or less directly south, crossing into Cambodia.


title: Mekong

text: At Phnom Penh the river is joined on the right bank by the river and lake system the Tonlé Sap. When the Mekong is low, the Tonle Sap is a tributary: water flows from the lake and river into the Mekong. When the Mekong floods, the flow reverses: the floodwaters of the Mekong flow up the Tonle Sap.


title: Mekong

text: Immediately after the Sap River joins the Mekong by Phnom Penh, the Bassac River branches off the right (west) bank. The Bassac River is the first and main distributary of the Mekong. This is the beginning of the Mekong Delta. The two rivers, the Bassac to the west and the Mekong to the east, enter Vietnam shortly after this. In Vietnam, the Bassac is called the Hậu River (Sông Hậu or Hậu Giang); the main, eastern, branch of the Mekong is called the Tiền River or Tiền Giang. In Vietnam, distributaries of the eastern (main, Mekong) branch include the Mỹ Tho River, the Ba Lai River, the Hàm Luông River, and the Cổ Chiên River.


title: Mekong

text: The Mekong Basin can be divided into two parts: the "upper Mekong basin" in Tibet, and the "lower Mekong basin" from Yunnan downstream from China to the South China Sea. From the point where it rises to its mouth, the most precipitous drop in the Mekong occurs in the upper Mekong basin, a stretch of some . Here, it drops before it enters the lower basin where the borders of Thailand, Laos, China, and Myanmar come together in the Golden Triangle. Downstream from the Golden Triangle, the river flows for a further through Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia before entering the South China Sea via a complex delta system in Vietnam.


title: Mekong

text: The upper basin makes up 24% of the total area and contributes 15–20% of the water that flows into the Mekong River. The catchment here is steep and narrow. Soil erosion has been a major problem and approximately 50% of the sediment in the river comes from the upper basin.


title: Mekong

text: In Yunnan Province in China, the river and its tributaries are confined by narrow, deep gorges. The tributary river systems in this part of the basin are small. Only 14 have catchment areas that exceed , yet the greatest amount of loss of forest cover in the entire river system per square kilometer has occurred in this region due to heavy unchecked demand for natural resources. In the south of Yunnan, in Simao and Xishuangbanna Prefectures, the river changes as the valley opens out, the floodplain becomes wider, and the river becomes wider and slower.


title: Mekong

text: Major tributary systems develop in the lower basin. These systems can be separated into two groups: tributaries that contribute to the major wet season flows, and tributaries that drain low relief regions of lower rainfall. The first group are left bank tributaries that drain the high rainfall areas of Laos. The second group are those on the right bank, mainly the Mun and Chi Rivers, that drain a large part of northeast Thailand.


title: Mekong

text: Laos lies almost entirely within the lower Mekong basin. Its climate, landscape and land use are the major factors shaping the hydrology of the river. The mountainous landscape means that only 16% of the country is farmed under lowland terrace or upland shifting cultivation. With upland shifting agriculture (slash and burn), soils recover within 10 to 20 years but the vegetation does not. Shifting cultivation is common in the uplands of northern Laos and is reported to account for as much as 27% of the total land under rice cultivation. As elsewhere in the basin, forest cover has been steadily reduced during the last three decades by shifting agriculture and permanent agriculture. The cumulative impacts of these activities on the river regime have not been measured. However, the hydrological impacts of land cover changes induced by the Vietnam War were quantified in two sub-catchments of the lower Mekong River basin.


title: Mekong

text: Loss of forest cover in the Thai areas of the lower basin has been the highest of all the lower Mekong countries over the past 60 years. On the Khorat Plateau, which includes the Mun and Chi tributary systems, forest cover was reduced from 42% in 1961 to 13% in 1993. Although this part of northeast Thailand has an annual rainfall of more than 1,000 mm, a high evaporation rate means it is classified as a semi-arid region. Consequently, although the Mun and Chi basins drain 15% of the entire Mekong basin, they only contribute 6% of the average annual flow. Sandy and saline soils are the most common soil types, which makes much of the land unsuitable for wet rice cultivation. In spite of poor fertility, however, agriculture is intensive. Glutinous rice, maize, and cassava are the principal crops. Drought is by far the major hydrological hazard in this region.


title: Mekong

text: As the Mekong enters Cambodia, over 95% of its flows have already joined the river. From here on downstream the terrain is flat and water levels rather than flow volumes determine the movement of water across the landscape. The seasonal cycle of changing water levels at Phnom Penh results in the unique "flow reversal" of water into and out of the Great Lake via the Tonle Sap River. Phnom Penh also marks the beginning of the delta system of the Mekong River. Here the mainstream begins to break up into an increasing number of branches.


title: Mekong

text: In Cambodia, wet rice is the main crop and is grown on the flood plains of the Tonle Sap, Mekong, and Bassac (the Mekong delta distributary known as the Hậu in Vietnam) Rivers. More than half of Cambodia remains covered with mixed evergreen and deciduous broadleaf forest, but forest cover has decreased from 73% in 1973 to 63% in 1993. Here, the river landscape is flat. Small changes in water level determine the direction of water movement, including the large-scale reversal of flow into and out of the Tonle Sap basin from the Mekong River.


title: Mekong

text: The Mekong delta in Vietnam is farmed intensively and has little natural vegetation left. Forest cover is less than 10%. In the Central Highlands of Vietnam, forest cover was reduced from over 95% in the 1950s to around 50% in the mid-1990s. Agricultural expansion and population pressure are the major reasons for land use and landscape change. Both drought and flood are common hazards in the Delta, which many people believe is the most sensitive to upstream hydrological change.


title: Mekong

text: By taking into account hydrological regimes, physiography land use, and existing, planned and potential resource developments, the Mekong is divided into six distinct reaches:


title: Mekong

text: "Reach 1: Lancang Jiang or Upper Mekong River in China". In this part of the river, the major source of water flowing into the river comes from melting snow on the Tibetan plateau. This volume of water is sometimes called the "Yunnan component" and plays an important role in the low-flow hydrology of the lower mainstream. Even as far downstream as Kratie, the Yunnan component makes up almost 30% of the average dry season flow. A major concern is that the ongoing and planned expansion of dams and reservoirs on the Mekong mainstream in Yunnan could have a significant effect on the low-flow regime of the lower Mekong basin system.


title: Mekong

text: "Reach 2: Chiang Saen to Vientiane and Nong Khai". This reach is almost entirely mountainous and covered with natural forest although there has been widespread slash and burn agriculture. Although this reach cannot be termed "unspoiled", the hydrological response is perhaps the most natural and undisturbed of all the lower basin. Many hydrological aspects of the lower basin start to change rapidly at the downstream boundary of this reach.


title: Mekong

text: On 19 July 2019 this reach of the river dropped to its lowest level in a century. Officials are particularly concerned as July is in the wet season, when mainstream flows are abundant historically. Locals are blaming low water on the newly constructed Xayaburi Dam, as it enters its test phase prior to the start of commercial operation in October 2019.


title: Mekong

text: "Reach 3: Vientiane and Nong Khai to Pakse". The boundary between Reach 2 and 3 is where the Mekong hydrology starts to change. Reach 2 is dominated in both wet and dry seasons by the Yunnan Component. Reach 3 is increasingly influenced by contributions from the large left bank tributaries in Laos, namely the Nam Ngum, Nam Theun, Nam Hinboun, Se Bang Fai, Se Bang Hieng and Se Done Rivers. The Mun-Chi river system from the right bank in Thailand enters the mainstream within this reach.


title: Mekong

text: "Reach 4: Pakse to Kratie". The main hydrological contributions to the mainstream in this reach come from the Se Kong, Se San, and Sre Pok catchments. Together, these rivers make up the largest hydrological sub-component of the lower basin. Over 25% of the mean annual flow volume to the mainstream at Kratie comes from these three river basins. They are the key element in the hydrology of this part of the system, especially to the Tonle Sap flow reversal.


title: Mekong

text: "Reach 5: Kratie to Phnom Penh". This reach includes the hydraulic complexities of the Cambodian floodplain, the Tonle Sap and the Great Lake. By this stage, over 95% of the total flow has entered the Mekong system. The focus turns from hydrology and water discharge to the assessment of water level, over- bank storage and flooding and the hydrodynamics that determine the timing, duration and volume of the seasonal flow reversal into and out of the Great Lake.


title: Mekong

text: "Reach 6: Phnom Penh to the South China Sea". Here the mainstream divides into a complex and increasingly controlled and artificial system of branches and canals. Key features of flow behaviour are tidal influences and salt water intrusion. Every year, 35–50% of this reach is flooded during the rainy season. The impact of road embankments and similar infrastructure developments on the movement of this flood water is an increasingly important consequence of development.


title: Mekong

text: Table 2 summarises the mean annual flows along the mainstream. The mean annual flow entering the lower Mekong from China is equivalent to a relatively modest 450 mm depth of runoff. Downstream of Vientiane this increases to over 600 mm as the principal left bank tributaries enter the mainstream, mainly the Nam Ngum and Nam Theun. The flow level falls again, even with the right bank entry of the Mun-Chi system from Thailand. Although the Mun–Chi basin drains 20% of the lower system, average annual runoff is only 250 mm. Runoff in the mainstream increases again with the entry from the left bank of the Se Kong from southern Laos and Se San and Sre Pok from Vietnam and Cambodia.