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Aphasia
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Neuroimaging methods
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Neuroimaging methods
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are the most common neuroimaging tools used in identifying aphasia and studying the extent of damage in the loss of language abilities. This is done by doing MRI scans and locating the extent of lesions or damage within brain tissue, particularly within areas of the left frontal and temporal regions- where a lot of language related areas lie. In fMRI studies a language related task is often completed and then the BOLD image is analyzed. If there are lower than normal BOLD responses that indicate a lessening of blood flow to the affected area and can show quantitatively that the cognitive task is not being completed.
There are limitations to the use of fMRI in aphasic patients particularly. Because a high percentage of aphasic patients develop it because of stroke there can be infarct present which is the total loss of blood flow. This can be due to the thinning of blood vessels or the complete blockage of it. This is important in fMRI as it relies on the BOLD response (the oxygen levels of the blood vessels), and this can create a false hyporesponse upon fMRI study. Due to the limitations of fMRI such as a lower spatial resolution, it can show that some areas of the brain are not active during a task when they in reality are. Additionally, with stroke being the cause of many cases of aphasia the extent of damage to brain tissue can be difficult to quantify therefore the effects of stroke brain damage on the functionality of the patient can vary.
Neural substrates of aphasia subtypes
MRI is often used to predict or confirm the subtype of aphasia present. Researchers compared three subtypes of aphasia — nonfluent-variant primary progressive aphasia (nfPPA), logopenic-variant primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA), and semantic-variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and Alzheimer's disease. This was done by analyzing the MRIs of patients with each of the subsets of PPA. Images which compare subtypes of aphasia as well as for finding the extent of lesions are generated by overlapping images of different participant's brains (if applicable) and isolating areas of lesions or damage using third-party software such as MRIcron. MRI has also been used to study the relationship between the type of aphasia developed and the age of the person with aphasia. It was found that patients with fluent aphasia are on average older than people with non-fluent aphasia. It was also found that among patients with lesions confined to the anterior portion of the brain an unexpected portion of them presented with fluent aphasia and were remarkably older than those with non-fluent aphasia. This effect was not found when the posterior portion of the brain was studied.
Associated conditions
In a study on the features associated with different disease trajectories in Alzheimer's disease (AD)-related primary progressive aphasia (PPA), it was found that metabolic patterns via PET SPM analysis can help predict progression of total loss of speech and functional autonomy in AD and PPA patients. This was done by comparing an MRI or CT image of the brain and presence of a radioactive biomarker with normal levels in patients without Alzheimer's Disease. Apraxia is another disorder often correlated with aphasia. This is due to a subset of apraxia which affects speech. Specifically, this subset affects the movement of muscles associated with speech production, apraxia and aphasia are often correlated due to the proximity of neural substrates associated with each of the disorders. Researchers concluded that there were 2 areas of lesion overlap between patients with apraxia and aphasia, the anterior temporal lobe and the left inferior parietal lobe.
Treatment and neuroimaging
Evidence for positive treatment outcomes can also be quantified using neuroimaging tools. The use of fMRI and an automatic classifier can help predict language recovery outcomes in stroke patients with 86% accuracy when coupled with age and language test scores. The stimuli tested were sentences both correct and incorrect and the subject had to press a button whenever the sentence was incorrect. The fMRI data collected focused on responses in regions of interest identified by healthy subjects. Recovery from aphasia can also be quantified using diffusion tensor imaging. The accurate fasciculus (AF) connects the right and left superior temporal lobe, premotor regions/posterior inferior frontal gyrus. and the primary motor cortex. In a study which enrolled patients in a speech therapy program, an increase in AF fibers and volume was found in patients after 6-weeks in the program which correlated with long-term improvement in those patients. The results of the experiment are pictured in Figure 2. This implies that DTI can be used to quantify the improvement in patients after speech and language treatment programs are applied.
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Aphasia
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Classification
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Classification
Aphasia is best thought of as a collection of different disorders, rather than a single problem. Each individual with aphasia will present with their own particular combination of language strengths and weaknesses. Consequently, it is a major challenge just to document the various difficulties that can occur in different people, let alone decide how they might best be treated. Most classifications of the aphasias tend to divide the various symptoms into broad classes. A common approach is to distinguish between the fluent aphasias (where speech remains fluent, but content may be lacking, and the person may have difficulties understanding others), and the nonfluent aphasias (where speech is very halting and effortful, and may consist of just one or two words at a time).
However, no such broad-based grouping has proven fully adequate, or reliable. There is wide variation among people even within the same broad grouping, and aphasias can be highly selective. For instance, people with naming deficits (anomic aphasia) might show an inability only for naming buildings, or people, or colors. Unfortunately, assessments that characterize aphasia in these groupings have persisted. This is not helpful to people living with aphasia, and provides inaccurate descriptions of an individual pattern of difficulties.
There are typical difficulties with speech and language that come with normal aging as well. As we age, language can become more difficult to process, resulting in a slowing of verbal comprehension, reading abilities and more likely word finding difficulties. With each of these, though, unlike some aphasias, functionality within daily life remains intact.
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Aphasia
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Boston classification
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Boston classification
+ Major characteristics of different types of aphasia according to the Boston classification Type of aphasia Speech repetition Naming Auditory comprehension Fluency Expressive aphasia (Broca's aphasia) Moderate–severe Moderate–severe Mild difficulty Non-fluent, effortful, slow Receptive aphasia (Wernicke's aphasia) Mild–severe Mild–severe Defective Fluent paraphasic Conduction aphasia Poor Poor Relatively good Fluent Mixed transcortical aphasia Moderate Poor Poor Non-fluent Transcortical motor aphasia Good Mild–severe Mild Non-fluent Transcortical sensory aphasia Good Moderate–severe Poor Fluent Global aphasia Poor Poor Poor Non-fluent Anomic aphasia Mild Moderate–severe Mild Fluent
Individuals with receptive aphasia (Wernicke's aphasia), also referred to as fluent aphasia, may speak in long sentences that have no meaning, add unnecessary words, and even create new "words" (neologisms). For example, someone with receptive aphasia may say, "delicious taco", meaning "The dog needs to go out so I will take him for a walk". They have poor auditory and reading comprehension, and fluent, but nonsensical, oral and written expression. Individuals with receptive aphasia usually have great difficulty understanding the speech of both themselves and others and are, therefore, often unaware of their mistakes. Receptive language deficits usually arise from lesions in the posterior portion of the left hemisphere at or near Wernicke's area. It is often the result of trauma to the temporal region of the brain, specifically damage to Wernicke's area. Trauma can be the result from an array of problems, however it is most commonly seen as a result of stroke
Individuals with expressive aphasia (Broca's aphasia) frequently speak short, meaningful phrases that are produced with great effort. It is thus characterized as a nonfluent aphasia. Affected people often omit small words such as "is", "and", and "the". For example, a person with expressive aphasia may say, "walk dog", which could mean "I will take the dog for a walk", "you take the dog for a walk" or even "the dog walked out of the yard." Individuals with expressive aphasia are able to understand the speech of others to varying degrees. Because of this, they are often aware of their difficulties and can become easily frustrated by their speaking problems. While Broca's aphasia may appear to be solely an issue with language production, evidence suggests that it may be rooted in an inability to process syntactical information. Individuals with expressive aphasia may have a speech automatism (also called recurring or recurrent utterance). These speech automatisms can be repeated lexical speech automatisms; e.g., modalisations ('I can't ..., I can't ...'), expletives/swearwords, numbers ('one two, one two') or non-lexical utterances made up of repeated, legal, but meaningless, consonant-vowel syllables (e.g.., /tan tan/, /bi bi/). In severe cases, the individual may be able to utter only the same speech automatism each time they attempt speech.
Individuals with anomic aphasia have difficulty with naming. People with this aphasia may have difficulties naming certain words, linked by their grammatical type (e.g., difficulty naming verbs and not nouns) or by their semantic category (e.g., difficulty naming words relating to photography, but nothing else) or a more general naming difficulty. People tend to produce grammatic, yet empty, speech. Auditory comprehension tends to be preserved. Anomic aphasia is the aphasial presentation of tumors in the language zone; it is the aphasial presentation of Alzheimer's disease. Anomic aphasia is the mildest form of aphasia, indicating a likely possibility for better recovery.
Individuals with transcortical sensory aphasia, in principle the most general and potentially among the most complex forms of aphasia, may have similar deficits as in receptive aphasia, but their repetition ability may remain intact.
Global aphasia is considered a severe impairment in many language aspects since it impacts expressive and receptive language, reading, and writing. Despite these many deficits, there is evidence that has shown individuals benefited from speech language therapy. Even though individuals with global aphasia will not become competent speakers, listeners, writers, or readers, goals can be created to improve the individual's quality of life. Individuals with global aphasia usually respond well to treatment that includes personally relevant information, which is also important to consider for therapy.
Individuals with conduction aphasia have deficits in the connections between the speech-comprehension and speech-production areas. This might be caused by damage to the arcuate fasciculus, the structure that transmits information between Wernicke's area and Broca's area. Similar symptoms, however, can be present after damage to the insula or to the auditory cortex. Auditory comprehension is near normal, and oral expression is fluent with occasional paraphasic errors. Paraphasic errors include phonemic/literal or semantic/verbal. Repetition ability is poor. Conduction and transcortical aphasias are caused by damage to the white matter tracts. These aphasias spare the cortex of the language centers, but instead create a disconnection between them. Conduction aphasia is caused by damage to the arcuate fasciculus. The arcuate fasciculus is a white matter tract that connects Broca's and Wernicke's areas. People with conduction aphasia typically have good language comprehension, but poor speech repetition and mild difficulty with word retrieval and speech production. People with conduction aphasia are typically aware of their errors. Two forms of conduction aphasia have been described: reproduction conduction aphasia (repetition of a single relatively unfamiliar multisyllabic word) and repetition conduction aphasia (repetition of unconnected short familiar words.
Transcortical aphasias include transcortical motor aphasia, transcortical sensory aphasia, and mixed transcortical aphasia. People with transcortical motor aphasia typically have intact comprehension and awareness of their errors, but poor word finding and speech production. People with transcortical sensory and mixed transcortical aphasia have poor comprehension and unawareness of their errors. Despite poor comprehension and more severe deficits in some transcortical aphasias, small studies have indicated that full recovery is possible for all types of transcortical aphasia.
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Aphasia
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Classical-localizationist approaches
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Classical-localizationist approaches
thumb|Cortex
Localizationist approaches aim to classify the aphasias according to their major presenting characteristics and the regions of the brain that most probably gave rise to them.Goodglass, H., Kaplan, E., & Barresi, B. (2001). The assessment of aphasia and related disorders. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.Kertesz, A. (2006). Western Aphasia Battery-Revised (WAB-R). Austin, TX: Pro-Ed. Inspired by the early work of nineteenth-century neurologists Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke, these approaches identify two major subtypes of aphasia and several more minor subtypes:
Expressive aphasia (also known as "motor aphasia" or "Broca's aphasia"), which is characterized by halted, fragmented, effortful speech, but well-preserved comprehension relative to expression. Damage is typically in the anterior portion of the left hemisphere, most notably Broca's area. Individuals with Broca's aphasia often have right-sided weakness or paralysis of the arm and leg, because the left frontal lobe is also important for body movement, particularly on the right side.
Receptive aphasia (also known as "sensory aphasia" or "Wernicke's aphasia"), which is characterized by fluent speech, but marked difficulties understanding words and sentences. Although fluent, the speech may lack in key substantive words (nouns, verbs, adjectives), and may contain incorrect words or even nonsense words. This subtype has been associated with damage to the posterior left temporal cortex, most notably Wernicke's area. These individuals usually have no body weakness, because their brain injury is not near the parts of the brain that control movement.
Conduction aphasia, where speech remains fluent, and comprehension is preserved, but the person may have disproportionate difficulty repeating words or sentences. Damage typically involves the arcuate fasciculus and the left parietal region.
Transcortical motor aphasia and transcortical sensory aphasia, which are similar to Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia respectively, but the ability to repeat words and sentences is disproportionately preserved.
Recent classification schemes adopting this approach, such as the Boston-Neoclassical Model, also group these classical aphasia subtypes into two larger classes: the nonfluent aphasias (which encompasses Broca's aphasia and transcortical motor aphasia) and the fluent aphasias (which encompasses Wernicke's aphasia, conduction aphasia and transcortical sensory aphasia). These schemes also identify several further aphasia subtypes, including: anomic aphasia, which is characterized by a selective difficulty finding the names for things; and global aphasia, where both expression and comprehension of speech are severely compromised.
Many localizationist approaches also recognize the existence of additional, more "pure" forms of language disorder that may affect only a single language skill. For example, in pure alexia, a person may be able to write, but not read, and in pure word deafness, they may be able to produce speech and to read, but not understand speech when it is spoken to them.
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Aphasia
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Cognitive neuropsychological approaches
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Cognitive neuropsychological approaches
Although localizationist approaches provide a useful way of classifying the different patterns of language difficulty into broad groups, one problem is that most individuals do not fit neatly into one category or another. Another problem is that the categories, particularly the major ones such as Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia, still remain quite broad and do not meaningfully reflect a person's difficulties. Consequently, even amongst those who meet the criteria for classification into a subtype, there can be enormous variability in the types of difficulties they experience.
Instead of categorizing every individual into a specific subtype, cognitive neuropsychological approaches aim to identify the key language skills or "modules" that are not functioning properly in each individual. A person could potentially have difficulty with just one module, or with a number of modules. This type of approach requires a framework or theory as to what skills/modules are needed to perform different kinds of language tasks. For example, the model of Max Coltheart identifies a module that recognizes phonemes as they are spoken, which is essential for any task involving recognition of words. Similarly, there is a module that stores phonemes that the person is planning to produce in speech, and this module is critical for any task involving the production of long words or long strings of speech. Once a theoretical framework has been established, the functioning of each module can then be assessed using a specific test or set of tests. In the clinical setting, use of this model usually involves conducting a battery of assessments,Porter, G., & Howard, D. (2004). CAT: comprehensive aphasia test. Psychology Press. each of which tests one or a number of these modules. Once a diagnosis is reached as to the skills/modules where the most significant impairment lies, therapy can proceed to treat these skills.
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Aphasia
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Progressive aphasias
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Progressive aphasias
Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative focal dementia that can be associated with progressive illnesses or dementia, such as frontotemporal dementia / Pick Complex Motor neuron disease, Progressive supranuclear palsy, and Alzheimer's disease, which is the gradual process of progressively losing the ability to think. Gradual loss of language function occurs in the context of relatively well-preserved memory, visual processing, and personality until the advanced stages. Symptoms usually begin with word-finding problems (naming) and progress to impaired grammar (syntax) and comprehension (sentence processing and semantics). The loss of language before the loss of memory differentiates PPA from typical dementias. People with PPA may have difficulties comprehending what others are saying. They can also have difficulty trying to find the right words to make a sentence. There are three classifications of Primary Progressive Aphasia : Progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA), Semantic Dementia (SD), and Logopenic progressive aphasia (LPA).
Progressive Jargon Aphasia is a fluent or receptive aphasia in which the person's speech is incomprehensible, but appears to make sense to them. Speech is fluent and effortless with intact syntax and grammar, but the person has problems with the selection of nouns. Either they will replace the desired word with another that sounds or looks like the original one or has some other connection or they will replace it with sounds. As such, people with jargon aphasia often use neologisms, and may perseverate if they try to replace the words they cannot find with sounds. Substitutions commonly involve picking another (actual) word starting with the same sound (e.g., clocktower – colander), picking another semantically related to the first (e.g., letter – scroll), or picking one phonetically similar to the intended one (e.g., lane – late).
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Aphasia
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Deaf aphasia
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Deaf aphasia
There have been many instances showing that there is a form of aphasia among deaf individuals. Sign languages are, after all, forms of language that have been shown to use the same areas of the brain as verbal forms of language. Mirror neurons become activated when an animal is acting in a particular way or watching another individual act in the same manner. These mirror neurons are important in giving an individual the ability to mimic movements of hands. Broca's area of speech production has been shown to contain several of these mirror neurons resulting in significant similarities of brain activity between sign language and vocal speech communication. People use facial movements to create, what other people perceive, to be faces of emotions. While combining these facial movements with speech, a more full form of language is created which enables the species to interact with a much more complex and detailed form of communication. Sign language also uses these facial movements and emotions along with the primary hand movement way of communicating. These facial movement forms of communication come from the same areas of the brain. When dealing with damages to certain areas of the brain, vocal forms of communication are in jeopardy of severe forms of aphasia. Since these same areas of the brain are being used for sign language, these same, at least very similar, forms of aphasia can show in the Deaf community. Individuals can show a form of Wernicke's aphasia with sign language and they show deficits in their abilities in being able to produce any form of expressions. Broca's aphasia shows up in some people, as well. These individuals find tremendous difficulty in being able to actually sign the linguistic concepts they are trying to express.
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Aphasia
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Severity
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Severity
The severity of the type of aphasia varies depending on the size of the stroke. However, there is much variance between how often one type of severity occurs in certain types of aphasia. For instance, any type of aphasia can range from mild to profound. Regardless of the severity of aphasia, people can make improvements due to spontaneous recovery and treatment in the acute stages of recovery. Additionally, while most studies propose that the greatest outcomes occur in people with severe aphasia when treatment is provided in the acute stages of recovery, Robey (1998) also found that those with severe aphasia are capable of making strong language gains in the chronic stage of recovery as well. This finding implies that persons with aphasia have the potential to have functional outcomes regardless of how severe their aphasia may be. While there is no distinct pattern of the outcomes of aphasia based on severity alone, global aphasia typically makes functional language gains, but may be gradual since global aphasia affects many language areas.
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Aphasia
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Prevention
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Prevention
Aphasia is largely caused by unavoidable instances. However, some precautions can be taken to decrease risk for experiencing one of the two major causes of aphasia: stroke and traumatic brain injury (TBI). To decrease the probability of having an ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke, one should take the following precautions:
Exercising regularly
Eating a healthy diet, avoiding cholesterol in particular
Keeping alcohol consumption low and avoiding tobacco use
Controlling blood pressure
Going to the emergency room immediately if you begin to experience unilateral extremity (especially leg) swelling, warmth, redness, and/or tenderness as these are symptoms of a deep vein thrombosis which can lead to a stroke
To prevent aphasia due to traumatic injury, one should take precautionary measures when engaging in dangerous activities such as:
Wearing a helmet when operating a bicycle, motor cycle, ATV, or any other moving vehicle that could potentially be involved in an accident
Wearing a seatbelt when driving or riding in a car
Wearing proper protective gear when playing contact sports, especially American football, rugby, and hockey, or refraining from such activities
Minimizing anticoagulant use (including aspirin) if at all possible as they increase the risk of hemorrhage after a head injury
Additionally, one should always seek medical attention after sustaining head trauma due to a fall or accident. The sooner that one receives medical attention for a traumatic brain injury, the less likely one is to experience long-term or severe effects.
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Aphasia
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Management
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Management
Most acute cases of aphasia recover some or most skills by participating in speech and language therapy. Recovery and improvement can continue for years after the stroke. After the onset of aphasia, there is approximately a six-month period of spontaneous recovery; during this time, the brain is attempting to recover and repair the damaged neurons. Improvement varies widely, depending on the aphasia's cause, type, and severity. Recovery also depends on the person's age, health, motivation, handedness, and educational level.
Speech and language therapy that is higher intensity, higher dose or provided over a long duration of time leads to significantly better functional communication, but people might be more likely to drop out of high intensity treatment (up to 15 hours per week). A total of 20–50 hours of speech and language therapy is necessary for the best recovery. The most improvement happens when 2–5 hours of therapy is provided each week over 4–5 days. Recovery is further improved when besides the therapy people practice tasks at home. Speech and language therapy is also effective if it is delivered online through video or by a family member who has been trained by a professional therapist.
Recovery with therapy is also dependent on the recency of stroke and the age of the person. Receiving therapy within a month after the stroke leads to the greatest improvements. Three or six months after the stroke more therapy will be needed, but symptoms can still be improved. People with aphasia who are younger than 55 years are the most likely to improve, but people older than 75 years can still get better with therapy.
There is no one treatment proven to be effective for all types of aphasias. The reason that there is no universal treatment for aphasia is because of the nature of the disorder and the various ways it is presented. Aphasia is rarely exhibited identically, implying that treatment needs to be catered specifically to the individual. Studies have shown that, although there is no consistency on treatment methodology in literature, there is a strong indication that treatment, in general, has positive outcomes. Therapy for aphasia ranges from increasing functional communication to improving speech accuracy, depending on the person's severity, needs and support of family and friends. Group therapy allows individuals to work on their pragmatic and communication skills with other individuals with aphasia, which are skills that may not often be addressed in individual one-on-one therapy sessions. It can also help increase confidence and social skills in a comfortable setting.
Evidence does not support the use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for improving aphasia after stroke. Moderate quality evidence does indicate naming performance improvements for nouns, but not verbs using tDCS
Specific treatment techniques include the following:
Copy and recall therapy (CART) – repetition and recall of targeted words within therapy may strengthen orthographic representations and improve single word reading, writing, and namingBeeson, P. M., Egnor, H. (2007), Combining treatment for written and spoken naming, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 12(6); 816–827.
Visual communication therapy (VIC) – the use of index cards with symbols to represent various components of speech
Visual action therapy (VAT) – typically treats individuals with global aphasia to train the use of hand gestures for specific items"Aphasia". American Speech Language Hearing Association. Retrieved from http://www.asha.org/PRPSpecificTopic.aspx?folderid=8589934663§ion=Treatment
Functional communication treatment (FCT) – focuses on improving activities specific to functional tasks, social interaction, and self-expression
Promoting aphasic's communicative effectiveness (PACE) – a means of encouraging normal interaction between people with aphasia and clinicians. In this kind of therapy, the focus is on pragmatic communication rather than treatment itself. People are asked to communicate a given message to their therapists by means of drawing, making hand gestures or even pointing to an object
Melodic intonation therapy (MIT) – aims to use the intact melodic/prosodic processing skills of the right hemisphere to help cue retrieval of words and expressive language
Centeredness Theory Interview (CTI) - Uses client centered goal formation into the nature of current patient interactions as well as future / desired interactions to improve subjective well-being, cognition and communication.
Other – i.e., drawing as a way of communicating, trained conversation partners
Semantic feature analysis (SFA) — a type of aphasia treatment that targets word-finding deficits — is based on the theory that neural connections can be strengthened by using related words and phrases that are similar to the target word, to eventually activate the target word in the brain. SFA can be implemented in multiple forms such as verbally, written, using picture cards, etc. The SLP provides prompting questions to the individual with aphasia in order for the person to name the picture provided. Studies show that SFA is an effective intervention for improving confrontational naming.
Melodic intonation therapy is used to treat non-fluent aphasia and has proved to be effective in some cases. However, there is still no evidence from randomized controlled trials confirming the efficacy of MIT in chronic aphasia. MIT is used to help people with aphasia vocalize themselves through speech song, which is then transferred as a spoken word. Good candidates for this therapy include people who have had left hemisphere strokes, non-fluent aphasias such as Broca's, good auditory comprehension, poor repetition and articulation, and good emotional stability and memory. An alternative explanation is that the efficacy of MIT depends on neural circuits involved in the processing of rhythmicity and formulaic expressions (examples taken from the MIT manual: "I am fine," "how are you?" or "thank you"); while rhythmic features associated with melodic intonation may engage primarily left-hemisphere subcortical areas of the brain, the use of formulaic expressions is known to be supported by right-hemisphere cortical and bilateral subcortical neural networks.
Systematic reviews support the effectiveness and importance of partner training. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), involving family with the treatment of an aphasic loved one is ideal for all involved, because while it will no doubt assist in their recovery, it will also make it easier for members of the family to learn how best to communicate with them.
When a person's speech is insufficient, different kinds of augmentative and alternative communication could be considered such as alphabet boards, pictorial communication books, specialized software for computers or apps for tablets or smartphones.
When addressing Wernicke's aphasia, according to Bakheit et al. (2007), the lack of awareness of the language impairments, a common characteristic of Wernicke's aphasia, may affect the rate and extent of therapy outcomes. Robey (1998) determined that at least 2 hours of treatment per week is recommended for making significant language gains. Spontaneous recovery may cause some language gains, but without speech-language therapy, the outcomes can be half as strong as those with therapy.
When addressing Broca's aphasia, better outcomes occur when the person participates in therapy, and treatment is more effective than no treatment for people in the acute period. Two or more hours of therapy per week in acute and post-acute stages produced the greatest results. High-intensity therapy was most effective, and low-intensity therapy was almost equivalent to no therapy.
People with global aphasia are sometimes referred to as having irreversible aphasic syndrome, often making limited gains in auditory comprehension, and recovering no functional language modality with therapy. With this said, people with global aphasia may retain gestural communication skills that may enable success when communicating with conversational partners within familiar conditions. Process-oriented treatment options are limited, and people may not become competent language users as readers, listeners, writers, or speakers no matter how extensive therapy is. However, people's daily routines and quality of life can be enhanced with reasonable and modest goals. After the first month, there is limited to no healing to language abilities of most people. There is a grim prognosis, leaving 83% who were globally aphasic after the first month that will remain globally aphasic at the first year. Some people are so severely impaired that their existing process-oriented treatment approaches offer no signs of progress, and therefore cannot justify the cost of therapy.
Perhaps due to the relative rareness of conduction aphasia, few studies have specifically studied the effectiveness of therapy for people with this type of aphasia. From the studies performed, results showed that therapy can help to improve specific language outcomes. One intervention that has had positive results is auditory repetition training. Kohn et al. (1990) reported that drilled auditory repetition training related to improvements in spontaneous speech, Francis et al. (2003) reported improvements in sentence comprehension, and Kalinyak-Fliszar et al. (2011) reported improvements in auditory-visual short-term memory.
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Aphasia
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Individualized service delivery
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Individualized service delivery
Intensity of treatment should be individualized based on the recency of stroke, therapy goals, and other specific characteristics such as age, size of lesion, overall health status, and motivation. Each individual reacts differently to treatment intensity and is able to tolerate treatment at different times post-stroke. Intensity of treatment after a stroke should be dependent on the person's motivation, stamina, and tolerance for therapy.
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Aphasia
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Outcomes
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Outcomes
If the symptoms of aphasia last longer than two or three months after a stroke, a complete recovery is unlikely. However, it is important to note that some people continue to improve over a period of years and even decades. Improvement is a slow process that usually involves both helping the individual and family understand the nature of aphasia and learning compensatory strategies for communicating.
After a traumatic brain injury (TBI) or cerebrovascular accident (CVA), the brain undergoes several healing and re-organization processes, which may result in improved language function. This is referred to as spontaneous recovery. Spontaneous recovery is the natural recovery the brain makes without treatment, and the brain begins to reorganize and change in order to recover. There are several factors that contribute to a person's chance of recovery caused by stroke, including stroke size and location. Age, sex, and education have not been found to be very predictive. There is also research pointing to damage in the left hemisphere healing more effectively than the right.
Specific to aphasia, spontaneous recovery varies among affected people and may not look the same in everyone, making it difficult to predict recovery.
Though some cases of Wernicke's aphasia have shown greater improvements than more mild forms of aphasia, people with Wernicke's aphasia may not reach as high a level of speech abilities as those with mild forms of aphasia.
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Aphasia
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Prevalence
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Prevalence
Aphasia affects about two million people in the U.S. and 250,000 people in Great Britain. Nearly 180,000 people acquire the disorder every year in the U.S., 170,000 due to stroke. Any person of any age can develop aphasia, given that it is often caused by a traumatic injury. However, people who are middle aged and older are the most likely to acquire aphasia, as the other etiologies are more likely at older ages. For example, approximately 75% of all strokes occur in individuals over the age of 65. Strokes account for most documented cases of aphasia: 25% to 40% of people who survive a stroke develop aphasia as a result of damage to the language-processing regions of the brain.
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Aphasia
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History
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History
The first recorded case of aphasia is from an Egyptian papyrus, the Edwin Smith Papyrus, which details speech problems in a person with a traumatic brain injury to the temporal lobe.
During the second half of the 19th century, aphasia was a major focus for scientists and philosophers who were working in the beginning stages of the field of psychology.
In medical research, speechlessness was described as an incorrect prognosis, and there was no assumption that underlying language complications existed. Broca and his colleagues were some of the first to write about aphasia, but Wernicke was the first credited to have written extensively about aphasia being a disorder that contained comprehension difficulties. Despite claims of who reported on aphasia first, it was F.J. Gall that gave the first full description of aphasia after studying wounds to the brain, as well as his observation of speech difficulties resulting from vascular lesions. A recent book on the entire history of aphasia is available (Reference: Tesak, J. & Code, C. (2008) Milestones in the History of Aphasia: Theories and Protagonists. Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Press).
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Aphasia
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Etymology
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Etymology
Aphasia is from Greek a- ("without", negative prefix) + phásis (φάσις, "speech").
The word aphasia comes from the word ἀφασία aphasia, in Ancient Greek, which means "speechlessness",ἀφασία, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus. derived from ἄφατος aphatos, "speechless"ἄφατος, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus. from ἀ- a-, "not, un" and φημί phemi, "I speak".
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Aphasia
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Further research
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Further research
Research is currently being done using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to witness the difference in how language is processed in normal brains vs aphasic brains. This will help researchers to understand exactly what the brain must go through in order to recover from Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and how different areas of the brain respond after such an injury.
Another intriguing approach being tested is that of drug therapy. Research is in progress that will hopefully uncover whether or not certain drugs might be used in addition to speech-language therapy in order to facilitate recovery of proper language function. It's possible that the best treatment for Aphasia might involve combining drug treatment with therapy, instead of relying on one over the other.
One other method being researched as a potential therapeutic combination with speech-language therapy is brain stimulation. One particular method, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), alters brain activity in whatever area it happens to stimulate, which has recently led scientists to wonder if this shift in brain function caused by TMS might help people re-learn language. Another type of external brain stimulation is transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), but existing research has not shown it to be useful for improving aphasia after a stroke.
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Aphasia
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See also
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See also
Agnosia, inability to process sensory information (e.g. inability to recognize objects)
Aphasiology, study of language impairment (usually from brain damage)
Apraxia of speech, difficulty connecting speech messages from the brain to the mouth
Aprosodia
Auditory processing disorder
Lethologica
Lists of language disorders
My Beautiful Broken Brain, a 2014 documentary
Origin of speech
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Aphasia
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Notes
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Notes
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Aphasia
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References
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References
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Aphasia
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External links
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External links
National Aphasia Association
Category:Alexia (condition)
Category:Communication disorders
Category:Language disorders
Category:Symptoms and signs: Speech and voice
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Aphasia
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Table of Content
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Short description, Signs and symptoms, Related behaviors, Subcortical, Cognitive deficits, Causes, Diagnosis, Neuroimaging methods, Classification, Boston classification, Classical-localizationist approaches, Cognitive neuropsychological approaches, Progressive aphasias, Deaf aphasia, Severity, Prevention, Management, Individualized service delivery, Outcomes, Prevalence, History, Etymology, Further research, See also, Notes, References, External links
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Aorta
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Short description
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The aorta ( ; : aortas or aortae) is the main and largest artery in the human body, originating from the left ventricle of the heart, branching upwards immediately after, and extending down to the abdomen, where it splits at the aortic bifurcation into two smaller arteries (the common iliac arteries). The aorta distributes oxygenated blood to all parts of the body through the systemic circulation.
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Aorta
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Structure
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Structure
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Aorta
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Sections
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Sections
thumb|250x250px|Course of the aorta in the thorax (anterior view), starting posterior to the main pulmonary artery, then anterior to the right pulmonary arteries, the trachea and the esophagus, then turning posteriorly to course dorsally to these structures.
In anatomical sources, the aorta is usually divided into sections.
One way of classifying a part of the aorta is by anatomical compartment, where the thoracic aorta (or thoracic portion of the aorta) runs from the heart to the diaphragm. The aorta then continues downward as the abdominal aorta (or abdominal portion of the aorta) from the diaphragm to the aortic bifurcation.
Another system divides the aorta with respect to its course and the direction of blood flow. In this system, the aorta starts as the ascending aorta, travels superiorly from the heart, and then makes a hairpin turn known as the aortic arch. Following the aortic arch, the aorta then travels inferiorly as the descending aorta. The descending aorta has two parts. The aorta begins to descend in the thoracic cavity and is consequently known as the thoracic aorta. After the aorta passes through the diaphragm, it is known as the abdominal aorta. The aorta ends by dividing into two major blood vessels, the common iliac arteries and a smaller midline vessel, the median sacral artery.
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Aorta
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Ascending aorta
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Ascending aorta
The ascending aorta begins at the opening of the aortic valve in the left ventricle of the heart. It runs through a common pericardial sheath with the pulmonary trunk. These two blood vessels twist around each other, causing the aorta to start out posterior to the pulmonary trunk, but end by twisting to its right and anterior side.
The transition from ascending aorta to aortic arch is at the pericardial reflection on the aorta.
At the root of the ascending aorta, the lumen has small pockets between the cusps of the aortic valve and the wall of the aorta, which are called the aortic sinuses or the sinuses of Valsalva. The left aortic sinus contains the origin of the left coronary artery and the right aortic sinus likewise gives rise to the right coronary artery. Together, these two arteries supply the heart. The posterior aortic sinus does not give rise to a coronary artery. For this reason the left, right and posterior aortic sinuses are also called left-coronary, right-coronary and non-coronary sinuses.
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Aorta
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Aortic arch
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Aortic arch
The aortic arch loops over the left pulmonary artery and the bifurcation of the pulmonary trunk, to which it remains connected by the ligamentum arteriosum, a remnant of the fetal circulation that is obliterated a few days after birth. In addition to these blood vessels, the aortic arch crosses the left main bronchus. Between the aortic arch and the pulmonary trunk is a network of autonomic nerve fibers, the cardiac plexus or aortic plexus. The left vagus nerve, which passes anterior to the aortic arch, gives off a major branch, the recurrent laryngeal nerve, which loops under the aortic arch just lateral to the ligamentum arteriosum. It then runs back to the neck.
The aortic arch has three major branches: from proximal to distal, they are the brachiocephalic trunk, the left common carotid artery, and the left subclavian artery. The brachiocephalic trunk supplies the right side of the head and neck as well as the right arm and chest wall, while the latter two together supply the left side of the same regions.
The aortic arch ends, and the descending aorta begins at the level of the intervertebral disc between the fourth and fifth thoracic vertebrae.
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Aorta
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Thoracic aorta
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Thoracic aorta
The thoracic aorta gives rise to the intercostal and subcostal arteries, as well as to the superior and inferior left bronchial arteries and variable branches to the esophagus, mediastinum, and pericardium. Its lowest pair of branches are the superior phrenic arteries, which supply the diaphragm, and the subcostal arteries for the twelfth rib.
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Aorta
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Abdominal aorta
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Abdominal aorta
The abdominal aorta begins at the aortic hiatus of the diaphragm at the level of the twelfth thoracic vertebra. It gives rise to lumbar and musculophrenic arteries, renal and middle suprarenal arteries, and visceral arteries (the celiac trunk, the superior mesenteric artery and the inferior mesenteric artery). It ends in a bifurcation into the left and right common iliac arteries. At the point of the bifurcation, there also springs a smaller branch, the median sacral artery.
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Aorta
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Development
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Development
The ascending aorta develops from the outflow tract, which initially starts as a single tube connecting the heart with the aortic arches (which will form the great arteries) in early development but is then separated into the aorta and the pulmonary trunk.
The aortic arches start as five pairs of symmetrical arteries connecting the heart with the dorsal aorta, and then undergo a significant remodelling to form the final asymmetrical structure of the great arteries, with the 3rd pair of arteries contributing to the common carotids, the right 4th forming the base and middle part of the right subclavian artery and the left 4th being the central part of the aortic arch. The smooth muscle of the great arteries and the population of cells that form the aorticopulmonary septum that separates the aorta and pulmonary artery is derived from cardiac neural crest. This contribution of the neural crest to the great artery smooth muscle is unusual as most smooth muscle is derived from mesoderm. In fact the smooth muscle within the abdominal aorta is derived from mesoderm, and the coronary arteries, which arise just above the semilunar valves, possess smooth muscle of mesodermal origin. A failure of the aorticopulmonary septum to divide the great vessels results in persistent truncus arteriosus.
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Aorta
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Microanatomy
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Microanatomy
thumb|250px|
The aorta is an elastic artery, and as such is quite distensible. The aorta consists of a heterogeneous mixture of smooth muscle, nerves, intimal cells, endothelial cells, immune cells, fibroblast-like cells, and a complex extracellular matrix. The vascular wall is subdivided into three layers known as the tunica externa, tunica media, and tunica intima. The aorta is covered by an extensive network of tiny blood vessels called vasa vasorum, which feed the tunica externa and tunica media, the outer layers of the aorta. The aortic arch contains baroreceptors and chemoreceptors that relay information concerning blood pressure and blood pH and carbon dioxide levels to the medulla oblongata of the brain. This information along with information from baroreceptors and chemoreceptors located elsewhere is processed by the brain and the autonomic nervous system mediates appropriate homeostatic responses.
Within the tunica media, smooth muscle and the extracellular matrix are quantitatively the largest components, these are arranged concentrically as musculoelastic layers (the elastic lamella) in mammals. The elastic lamella, which comprise smooth muscle and elastic matrix, can be considered as the fundamental structural unit of the aorta and consist of elastic fibers, collagens (predominately type III), proteoglycans, and glycoaminoglycans. The elastic matrix dominates the biomechanical properties of the aorta. The smooth muscle component, while contractile, does not substantially alter the diameter of the aorta, but rather serves to increase the stiffness and viscoelasticity of the aortic wall when activated.
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Aorta
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Variation
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Variation
Variations may occur in the location of the aorta, and the way in which arteries branch off the aorta. The aorta, normally on the left side of the body, may be found on the right in dextrocardia, in which the heart is found on the right, or situs inversus, in which the location of all organs are flipped.
Variations in the branching of individual arteries may also occur. For example, the left vertebral artery may arise from the aorta, instead of the left common carotid artery.
In patent ductus arteriosus, a congenital disorder, the fetal ductus arteriosus fails to close, leaving an open vessel connecting the pulmonary artery to the proximal descending aorta.MedlinePlus > Patent ductus arteriosus Update Date: 21 December 2009
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Aorta
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Function
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Function
thumb|Major aorta anatomy displaying ascending aorta, brachiocephalic trunk, left common carotid artery, left subclavian artery, aortic isthmus, aortic arch, and descending thoracic aorta
The aorta supplies all of the systemic circulation, which means that the entire body, except for the respiratory zone of the lung, receives its blood from the aorta. Broadly speaking, branches from the ascending aorta supply the heart; branches from the aortic arch supply the head, neck, and arms; branches from the thoracic descending aorta supply the chest (excluding the heart and the respiratory zone of the lung); and branches from the abdominal aorta supply the abdomen. The pelvis and legs get their blood from the common iliac arteries.
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Aorta
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Blood flow and velocity
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Blood flow and velocity
The contraction of the heart during systole is responsible for ejection and creates a (pulse) wave that is propagated down the aorta, into the arterial tree. The wave is reflected at sites of impedance mismatching, such as bifurcations, where reflected waves rebound to return to semilunar valves and the origin of the aorta. These return waves create the dicrotic notch displayed in the aortic pressure curve during the cardiac cycle as these reflected waves push on the aortic semilunar valve. With age, the aorta stiffens such that the pulse wave is propagated faster and reflected waves return to the heart faster before the semilunar valve closes, which raises the blood pressure. The stiffness of the aorta is associated with a number of diseases and pathologies, and noninvasive measures of the pulse wave velocity are an independent indicator of hypertension. Measuring the pulse wave velocity (invasively and non-invasively) is a means of determining arterial stiffness. Maximum aortic velocity may be noted as Vmax or less commonly as AoVmax.
Mean arterial pressure (MAP) is highest in the aorta, and the MAP decreases across the circulation from aorta to arteries to arterioles to capillaries to veins back to atrium. The difference between aortic and right atrial pressure accounts for blood flow in the circulation.Nichols WW, O'Rourke MF. McDonald's Blood Flow in Arteries: Theoretical, Experimental and Clinical Principles. 4th ed. London, UK: Edward Arnold; 1998 When the left ventricle contracts to force blood into the aorta, the aorta expands. This stretching gives the potential energy that will help maintain blood pressure during diastole, as during this time the aorta contracts passively. This Windkessel effect of the great elastic arteries has important biomechanical implications. The elastic recoil helps conserve the energy from the pumping heart and smooth out the pulsatile nature created by the heart. Aortic pressure is highest at the aorta and becomes less pulsatile and lower pressure as blood vessels divide into arteries, arterioles, and capillaries such that flow is slow and smooth for gases and nutrient exchange.
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Aorta
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Clinical significance
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Clinical significance
Central aortic blood pressure has frequently been shown to have greater prognostic value and to show a more accurate response to antihypertensive drugs than has peripheral blood pressure.
Aortic aneurysm – mycotic, bacterial (e.g. syphilis), senile, genetic, associated with valvular heart disease
Aortic coarctation – pre-ductal, post-ductal
Aortic dissection
Aortic stenosis
Abdominal aortic aneurysm
Aortitis, inflammation of the aorta that can be seen in trauma, infections, and autoimmune disease
Atherosclerosis
Ehlers–Danlos syndrome
Marfan syndrome
Trauma, such as traumatic aortic rupture, most often thoracic and distal to the left subclavian arterySamett EJ.
http://www.emedicine.com/radio/topic44.htm Aorta, Trauma. eMedicine.com. Accessed on: April 24, 2007. and often quickly fatal
Transposition of the great vessels, see also dextro-Transposition of the great arteries and levo-Transposition of the great arteries
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Aorta
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Other animals
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Other animals
All amniotes have a broadly similar arrangement to that of humans, albeit with a number of individual variations. In fish, however, there are two separate vessels referred to as aortas. The ventral aorta carries de-oxygenated blood from the heart to the gills; part of this vessel forms the ascending aorta in tetrapods (the remainder forms the pulmonary artery). A second, dorsal aorta carries oxygenated blood from the gills to the rest of the body and is homologous with the descending aorta of tetrapods. The two aortas are connected by a number of vessels, one passing through each of the gills.
Amphibians also retain the fifth connecting vessel, so that the aorta has two parallel arches.
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Aorta
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History
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History
The word aorta stems from the Late Latin from Classical Greek aortē (), from aeirō, "I lift, raise" ()Illustrated Steadman's Dictionary, 24th ed. This term was first applied by Aristotle when describing the aorta and describes accurately how it seems to be "suspended" above the heart.
The function of the aorta is documented in the Talmud, where it is noted as one of three major vessels entering or leaving the heart, and where perforation is linked to death.
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Aorta
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References
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References
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Aorta
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External links
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External links
Category:Arteries of the thorax
Category:Arteries of the abdomen
Category:Cardiac anatomy
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Aorta
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Table of Content
|
Short description, Structure, Sections, Ascending aorta, Aortic arch, Thoracic aorta, Abdominal aorta, Development, Microanatomy, Variation, Function, Blood flow and velocity, Clinical significance, Other animals, History, References, External links
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Abimelech
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Short description
|
thumb|270px|Abimelech spying on Isaac and Rebekah; dish with serrated edge; majolica ceramics – Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon
Abimelech (also spelled Abimelek or Avimelech; ) was the generic name given to all Philistine kings in the Hebrew Bible from the time of Abraham through King David. In the Book of Judges, Abimelech, son of Gideon, of the Tribe of Manasseh, is proclaimed king of Shechem after the death of his father.
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Abimelech
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Etymology
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Etymology
The name or title Abimelech is formed from Canaanite words for "father" and "king," and may be interpreted in a variety of ways, including "Father-King", "My father is king," or "Father of a king." In the Pentateuch, it is used as a title for kings in the land of Canaan.
Abimelech can be translated in Arabic as well into "My father is king", "My father is owner" or "Father of a king," where () means father or my father while () means king or () for owner.
At the time of the Amarna tablets (mid-14th century BC), there was an Egyptian governor of Tyre similarly named Abimilki,
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Abimelech
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{{anchor
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Abimelech of Gerar
Abimelech was most prominently the name of a polytheistic king of Gerar who is mentioned in two of the three wife–sister narratives in the Book of Genesis, in connection with both AbrahamGenesis chap. 20 and Isaac.Genesis chap. 26
King Abimelech of Gerar also appears in an extra-biblical tradition recounted in texts such as the Arabic Apocalypse of Peter, the Cave of Treasures and the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, as one of twelve regional kings in Abraham's time said to have built the city of Jerusalem for Melchizedek.
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Abimelech
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Abimelech son of Jerubbaal/Gideon
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Abimelech son of Jerubbaal/Gideon
The Book of Judges mentions Abimelech, son of judge Gideon (also known as Jerubbaal). According to the biblical narrative, Abimelech was an extremely conniving and evil person. He persuaded his mother's brothers to encourage the people of Shechem to back him in a plot to overthrow his family rule and make him sole ruler.
After slaying all but one of his seventy brothers, Abimelech was crowned king. The brother who escaped, Jotham youngest son of Jerrubaal, made a pronouncement against Abimelech and those who had crowned him.
The curse was that if they had not dealt righteously with the family of Jerrubaal, then fire would come against Abimelech from the people of Shechem and fire would come out of Abimelech against the people who had backed him in this bloody coup.
After Abimelech ruled for three years, the pronouncement came through. The people of Shechem set robbers to lie in wait of any goods or money headed to Abimelech and steal everything.
Then Gaal Son of Ebed went to Shechem and drunkenly bragged that he would remove Abimelech from the throne. Zebul, ruler of Shechem, sent word to Abimelech along with a battle strategy. Once Zebul taunted Gaal into fighting Abimelech, he shut Gaal and his brethren out of the city.
Abimelech then slew the field workers that came out of the city of Shechem the next day. When he heard that the people of Shechem had locked themselves in a strong tower, he and his men set fire to it, killing about a thousand men and women.
After this, Abimelech went to Thebez and camped against it. When he went close to the tower in Thebez to set it on fire, a woman dropped an upper millstone on Abimelech's head. He did not want to be known as having been killed by a woman, so he asked his armour bearer to run him through with a sword. His place of death is cited as being Thebez.
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Abimelech
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Russian use
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Russian use
Avimelekh () is a Russian male first name derived from Abimelech.Superanskaya, p. 32 It was included into various, often handwritten, church calendars throughout the 17th–19th centuries, but was omitted from the official Synodal Menologium at the end of the 19th century.А. В. Суперанская (A. V. Superanskaya). "Словарь русских имён" (Dictionary of Russian Names). Издательство Эксмо. Москва, 2005. , pp. 23 and 32
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Abimelech
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Other people with this name
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Other people with this name
Apart from the king (or kings) of Gerar, the Bible also records this name for:
The father of Abiathar, and high priest in the time of David. In the parallel passage, the name is given as Ahimelech; most authorities consider this the more correct reading.
The king of Gath better known as Achish, referred to as Abimelech or Achimelech in the title of Psalm 34.
The husband of Naomi, and father of Mahlon and Chilion who leaves Bethlehem and dies in the land of Moab, in the Hebrew, his name is given as Elimelek, which is likely the correct reading.
Other literary references include:
Abimélech, Satrap of Gaza is a character baritone in Camille Saint-Saëns' Samson and Delilah.Weimar, 1877
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Abimelech
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See also
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See also
Abimelech (oratorio)
Wife–sister narratives in the Book of Genesis
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Abimelech
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References
|
References
Category:Philistine kings
Category:Monarchs in the Torah
Category:Set index articles on Hebrew Bible people
Category:Vayeira
Category:Shechem
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Abimelech
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Table of Content
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Short description, Etymology, {{anchor, Abimelech son of Jerubbaal/Gideon, Russian use, Other people with this name, See also, References
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Andrew Tridgell
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Short description
|
Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell (born 28 February 1967) is an Australian computer programmer. He is the author of and a contributor to the Samba file server, and co-inventor of the rsync algorithm.
He has analysed complex proprietary protocols and algorithms, to allow compatible free and open source software implementations.
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Andrew Tridgell
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Projects
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Projects
Tridgell was a major developer of the Samba software, analyzing the Server Message Block protocol used for workgroup and network file sharing by Microsoft Windows products. He developed the hierarchical memory allocator, originally as part of Samba.
For his PhD dissertation, he co-developed rsync, including the rsync algorithm, a highly efficient file transfer and synchronisation tool. He was also the original author of rzip, which uses a similar algorithm to rsync. He developed spamsum, based on locality-sensitive hashing algorithms.
He is the author of KnightCap, a reinforcement-learning based chess engine.
Tridgell was also a leader in hacking the TiVo to make it work in Australia, which uses the PAL video format.
In April 2005, Tridgell tried to produce free software (now known as SourcePuller) that interoperated with the BitKeeper source code repository. This was cited as the reason that BitMover revoked a license allowing Linux developers free use of their BitKeeper product.git [LWN.net] Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, and Tridgell were thus involved in a public debate about the events, in which Tridgell stated that, not having bought or owned BitKeeper – and thus having never agreed to its license – he could not violate it, and was analyzing the protocol ethically, as he had done with Samba. Tridgell's involvement in the project resulted in Torvalds accusing him of playing dirty tricks with BitKeeper. Tridgell claimed his analysis started with simply telneting to a BitKeeper server and typing help.
In 2011 Tridgell became involved with the software development of ArduPilot Mega,Andrew Tridgell's Page . DIY Drones. Retrieved on 19 September 2013. an open source Arduino-based UAV controller board, working on an entry with CanberraUAV for the UAV Challenge Outback Rescue.UAV Challenge – Outback Rescue 2013 – Home . Retrieved on 19 September 2013.
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Andrew Tridgell
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Academic achievements
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Academic achievements
Tridgell completed a PhD at the Computer Sciences Laboratory of the Australian National University. His original doctorate work was in the area of speech recognition but was never completed. His submitted dissertation 'Efficient Algorithms for Sorting and Synchronization' was based on his work on the rsync algorithm.
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Andrew Tridgell
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Awards and honours
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Awards and honours
In October 2003, The Bulletin magazine judged Tridgell to be Australia's smartest Information and Communications Technology person.The Bulletin Smart 100 The Bulletin publishes for the last time
In July 2008, Tridgell was named "Best Interoperator" at the Google–O'Reilly Open Source Awards, for his work on Samba and rsync.Google Open Source Blog: ... and the winners of the 2008 Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards are
Tridgell (along with Jeremy Allison and Volker Lendecke) has been called a "guru in its traditional Indian meaning" by IT writer, Sam Varghese.FOSS folk who make us proud, Sam Varghese, iTWire, 2007-12-25, accessed 27 September 2009
On 11 December 2018, Tridgell was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) by the Australian National University, for authoring Samba, co-inventing rsync; and contributions to free and open source software.
On 26 January 2020, Tridgell was awarded the Medal (OAM) of the Order of Australia in the General Division for service to Information Technology. The biographical notes for the award noted his contributions to software development and education including his work on rsync, Samba, ArduPilot, MAVProxy as well as teaching at the Australian National University.
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Andrew Tridgell
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References
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References
|
Andrew Tridgell
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External links
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External links
Andrew Tridgell's website, Newer Personal Website
Andrew Tridgell's "Junk Code" collection
Efficient Algorithms for Sorting and Synchronization (PhD thesis) – (406kB PDF)
Active Directory in Samba 4 'an old story'
FOSS folk who make us proud
Patent Defence for Free Software, January 2010 presentation transcript
Category:Australian computer programmers
Category:Free software programmers
Category:IBM employees
Category:1967 births
Category:Living people
Category:People from the Australian Capital Territory
Category:University of Sydney alumni
Category:Australian National University alumni
Category:Geeknet
Category:People educated at Barker College
Category:Recipients of the Medal of the Order of Australia
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Andrew Tridgell
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Table of Content
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Short description, Projects, Academic achievements, Awards and honours, References, External links
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Applesoft BASIC
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Use mdy dates
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Applesoft BASIC is a dialect of Microsoft BASIC, developed by Marc McDonald and Ric Weiland, supplied with Apple II computers. It supersedes Integer BASIC and is the BASIC in ROM in all Apple II series computers after the original Apple II model. It is also referred to as FP BASIC (from floating point) because of the Apple DOS command FP used to invoke it, instead of INT for Integer BASIC.
Applesoft BASIC was supplied by Microsoft and its name is derived from the names of both Apple Computer and Microsoft. Apple employees, including Randy Wigginton, adapted Microsoft's interpreter for the Apple II and added several features. The first version of Applesoft was released in 1977 on cassette tape and lacked proper support for high-resolution graphics. Applesoft II, which was made available on cassette and disk and in the ROM of the Apple II Plus and subsequent models, was released in 1978. It is this latter version, which has some syntax differences and support for the Apple II high-resolution graphics modes, that is usually synonymous with the term "Applesoft."
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Applesoft BASIC
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History
|
History
When Steve Wozniak wrote Integer BASIC for the Apple II, he did not implement support for floating-point arithmetic because he was primarily interested in writing games, a task for which integers alone were sufficient. In 1976, Microsoft had developed Microsoft BASIC for the MOS Technology 6502, but at the time there was no production computer that used it. Upon learning that Apple had a 6502 machine, Microsoft asked if the company were interested in licensing BASIC, but Steve Jobs replied that Apple already had one.
The Apple II was unveiled to the public at the West Coast Computer Faire in April 1977 and became available for sale in June. One of the most common customer complaints about the computer was BASIC's lack of floating-point math. Making things more problematic was that the rival Commodore PET personal computer had a floating point-capable BASIC interpreter from the beginning. As Wozniak—the only person who understood Integer BASIC well enough to add floating point features—was busy with the Disk II drive and controller and with Apple DOS, Apple turned to Microsoft.
Apple reportedly obtained an eight-year license for Applesoft BASIC from Microsoft for a flat fee of $31,000, renewing it in 1985 through an arrangement that gave Microsoft the rights and source code for Apple's Macintosh version of BASIC. Applesoft was designed to be backwards-compatible with Integer BASIC and uses the core of Microsoft's 6502 BASIC implementation, which includes using the GET command for detecting key presses and not requiring any spaces on program lines. While Applesoft BASIC is slower than Integer BASIC, it has many features that the older BASIC lacks:
Atomic strings: A string is no longer an array of characters (as in Integer BASIC and C); it is instead a garbage-collected object (as in Scheme and Java). This allows for string arrays; creates an array of eleven string variables numbered 0–10.
Multidimensional arrays (numbers or strings)
Single-precision floating-point variables with an 8-bit exponent and a 31-bit significand and improved math capabilities, including trigonometry and logarithmic functions
Commands for high-resolution graphics
DATA statements, with READ and RESTORE commands, for representing numerical and string values in quantity
CHR$, STR$, and VAL functions for converting between string and numeric types (both languages did have the ASC function)
User-defined functions: simple one-line functions written in BASIC, with a single parameter
Error-trapping: allowing BASIC programs to handle unexpected errors via subroutine written in BASIC
Conversely, Applesoft lacks the MOD (remainder) operator from Integer BASIC.
Adapting BASIC for the Apple II was a tedious job as Apple received a source listing for Microsoft 6502 BASIC which proved to be buggy and also required the addition of Integer BASIC commands. Since Apple had no 6502 assembler on hand, the development team was forced to send the source code over the phone lines to Call Computer, an outfit that offered compiler services. This was an extremely tedious, slow process and after Call Computer lost the source code due to an equipment malfunction, one of the programmers, Cliff Huston, used his own IMSAI 8080 computer to cross assemble the BASIC source.
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Applesoft BASIC
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Features
|
Features
Applesoft is similar to Commodore's BASIC 2.0 aside from features inherited from Integer BASIC. There are a few minor differences such as Applesoft's lack of bitwise operators; otherwise most BASIC programs that do not use hardware-dependent features will run on both BASICs.
The statement redirects output to an expansion card, and redirects input from an expansion card. The slot number of the card is specified after the or within the statement. The computer locks-up if there is no card present in the slot. restores output to the 40 column screen and to the keyboard.
The statement can be used to redirect output to the printer (e.g. ) where x is the slot number containing the printer port card. To send a BASIC program listing to the printer, the user types .
Using on a slot with a disk drive (usually in slot 6) causes Applesoft to boot the disk drive. Using on a slot with an 80 column card (usually in slot 3) switches to 80 column text mode.
As with Commodore BASIC, numeric variables are stored as 40-bit floating point; each variable requires five bytes of memory. The programmer may designate variables as integer by following them with a percent sign, in which case they use two bytes and are limited to a range of -32768 to 32767; however BASIC internally converts them back to floating point when performing calculations, while each percent sign also takes an additional byte of program code, so in practice this feature is only useful for reducing the memory usage of large array variables, as it offers no performance benefit.
The RND function generates a pseudorandom fractional number between 0 and 1. returns the most recently generated random number. with a negative number will jump to a point in the sequence determined by the particular negative number used. RND with any positive value generates the next number in the sequence, not dependent on the actual value given.
Like other implementations of Microsoft BASIC, Applesoft discards spaces (outside of strings and comments) on program lines. LIST adds spaces when displaying code for the sake of readability. Since adds a space before and after every tokenized keyword, it often produces two spaces in a row where one would suffice for readability.
The default prompt for INPUT is a question mark. PRINT does not add a leading space in front of numbers.
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Applesoft BASIC
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Limitations
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Limitations
Through several early models of the Apple II, Applesoft BASIC did not support the use of lowercase letters in programs, except in strings. PRINT is a valid command but print and Print result in a syntax error.
Applesoft lacks several commands and functions common to most of the non-6502 Microsoft BASIC interpreters, such as:
INSTR (search for a substring in a string)
PRINT USING (format numbers in printed output)
INKEY$ (check for a keypress without stopping the program; although a PEEK to location $C000 achieves this action)
LPRINT (output to a printer instead of the screen)
Applesoft does not have commands for file or disk handling, other than to save and load programs via cassette tape. The Apple II disk operating system, known simply as DOS, augments the language to provide such abilities.
Only the first two letters of variables names are significant. For example, "LOW" and "LOSS" are treated as the same variable, and attempting to assign a value to "LOSS" overwrites any value assigned to "LOW". A programmer also has to avoid consecutive letters that are Applesoft commands or operations. The name "SCORE" for a variable is interpreted as containing the OR Boolean operator, rendered as SC OR E. "BACKGROUND" contains GR, the command to invoke the low-resolution graphics mode, and results in a syntax error.
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Applesoft BASIC
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Sound and graphics
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Sound and graphics
The only sound support is the option to PRINT an ASCII bell character to sound the system alert beep, and a PEEK command to click the speaker. The language is not fast enough to produce more than a baritone buzz from repeated clicks. Programs can, however, store a machine-language routine to be called to generate electronic musical tones spanning several octaves.
Applesoft supports drawing in the Apple II's low resolution and high resolution modes. There are commands to plot pixels and draw horizontal and vertical lines in low resolution. High resolution allows arbitrary lines and vector-based shape tables for drawing scaled and rotated objects. The only provision for mixing text and graphics is the four lines of text at the bottom of a graphic display.
Beginning with the Apple IIe, a "double-high resolution" mode became available on machines with 128k of memory. This mode essentially duplicates the resolution of the original high resolution mode, but including all 16 colors of the low resolution palette. Applesoft does not provide direct support for this mode. Apple IIGS-specific modes are likewise not supported.
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Applesoft BASIC
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Extensions
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Extensions
Applesoft BASIC can be extended by two means: the ampersand () command and the function. These are two features that call low-level machine-language routines stored in memory, which is useful for routines that need to be fast or require direct access to arbitrary functions or data in memory. The function takes one argument, and can be programmed to derive and return a calculated function value to be used in a numerical expression. is effectively a shorthand for , with an address that is predefined. By calling routines in the Applesoft ROM, it is possible for ampersand routines to parse values that follow the ampersand. Numerous third-party commercial packages were available to extend Applesoft using ampersand routines.
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Applesoft BASIC
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Bugs
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Bugs
A deficiency with error-trapping via ONERR means that the system stack is not reset if an error-handling routine does not invoke RESUME, potentially leading to a crash. The built-in pseudorandom number generator function RND is capable of producing a predictable series of outputs due to the manner in which the generator is seeded when first powering on. This behavior is contrary to how Apple's documentation describes the function.
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Applesoft BASIC
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Performance
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Performance
Wozniak originally referred to his Integer BASIC as "Game BASIC" (having written it so he could implement a Breakout clone for his new computer). Few action games were written in Applesoft BASIC, in large part because the use of floating-point numbers for all math operations degrades performance.
Applesoft BASIC programs are stored as a linked list of lines; a GOTO or GOSUB takes linear time. Some programs have the subroutines at the top to reduce the time for calling them.
Unlike Integer BASIC, Applesoft does not convert literal numbers (like 100) in the source code to binary when a line is entered. Rather, the ASCII string is converted whenever the line is executed. Since variable lookup is often faster than this conversion, it can be faster to store numeric constants used inside loops in variables before the loop is entered.
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Applesoft BASIC
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Sample code
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Sample code
thumb|Hello, World!, with inverse video and bell character, run then listed
Hello, World! in Applesoft BASIC can be entered as the following:
10TEXT:HOME
20?"HELLO WORLD"
Multiple commands can be included on the same line of code if separated by a colon (:). The ? can be used in Applesoft BASIC (and almost all versions of Microsoft BASIC) as a shortcut for "PRINT", though spelling out the word is not only acceptable but canonical—Applesoft converted "?" in entered programs to the same token as "PRINT" (thus no memory is actually saved by using "?"), thus either appears as "PRINT" when a program is listed. The program above appears in a LIST command as:
10 TEXT : HOME
20 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
When Applesoft II BASIC was initially released in mid-1978, it came on cassette tape and could be loaded into memory via the Apple II's machine language monitor. When the enhanced Apple II+ replaced the original II in 1979, Applesoft was now included in ROM and automatically started on power-up if no bootable floppy disk was present. Conversely, Integer BASIC was now removed from ROM and turned into an executable file on the DOS 3.3 disk.
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Applesoft BASIC
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Early evolution
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Early evolution
The original Applesoft, stored in RAM as documented in its Reference Manual of November 1977, has smaller interpreter code than the later Applesoft II, occupying 8½ KB of memory, instead of the 10 KB used by the later Applesoft II. Consequently, it lacks a number of command features developed for the later, mainstream version:
All commands supporting Apple's "high resolution" graphics (9 total)
Error-trapping with ONERR...GOTO and RESUME
Machine-routine shorthand call "&"
Screen-clearing HOME (a call to a system ROM routine)
Text-output control NORMAL, INVERSE, FLASH and SPEED=
The print-space function SPC() is listed among reserved words in the manual, but is not otherwise documented (the TAB() print-function is documented)
Cassette tape storage of numerical arrays: STORE and RECALL
Device response: WAIT
as well as several the later version would have, that had already been present in Apple's Integer BASIC:
Program-line deletion: DEL
Machine-routine access: CALL
Peripheral device access: IN# and PR# (although IN without "#" is listed among reserved words)
Memory range control: HIMEM: and LOMEM:
Execution tracking for debugging: TRACE and NOTRACE
Screen-positioning: HTAB and VTAB
Subroutine aborting POP
Functions PDL() to read the analog controllers, and SCRN() to read the low-resolution graphics screen (both accessing system ROM routines)
In addition, its low-resolution graphics commands have different names from their Integer BASIC/Applesoft II counterparts. All command names are of the form PLTx such that GR, COLOR=, PLOT, HLIN and VLIN are called PLTG, PLTC, PLTP, PLTH, and PLTV, respectively. The command for returning to text mode, known as TEXT in other versions, is simply TEX, and carries the proviso that it has to be the last statement in a program line.
Applesoft BASIC 1.x was closer to Microsoft's original 6502 BASIC code than the later Applesoft II; it retained the Memory Size? prompt and displayed a Microsoft copyright notice. To maintain consistency with Integer BASIC, the "Ok" prompt from Microsoft's code was replaced by a ] character. Applesoft 1.x also prompted the user upon loading if they wished to disable the REM statement and the LET keyword in assignment statements in exchange for lores graphics commands.
The USR() function is also defined differently, serving as a stand-in for the absent CALL command. Its argument is not for passing a numerical value to the machine-language routine, but is instead the call-address of the routine itself; there is no "hook" to pre-define the address. All of several examples in the manual use the function only to access "system monitor ROM" routines, or short user-routines to manipulate the ROM routines. No mention is made of any code to calculate the value returned by the function itself; the function is always shown being assigned to "dummy" variables, which, without action to set a value by user-code, just receive a meaningless value handed back to them. Even accessed ROM routines that return values (in examples, those that provide the service of PDL() and SCRN() functions) merely have their values stored, by user-routines, in locations that are separately PEEKed in a subsequent statement.
Unlike in Integer BASIC and Applesoft II, the Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT perform bitwise operations on 16-bit integer values. If they are given values outside that range, an error results.
The terms OUT and PLT (and the aforementioned IN) appear in the list of reserved words, but are not explained anywhere in the manual.
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Applesoft BASIC
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Related BASICs
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Related BASICs
Several compilers for Applesoft BASIC exist, including TASC (The Applesoft Compiler) from Microsoft in 1981.
Coleco claimed that its Adam home computer's SmartBASIC was source-code compatible with Applesoft.
Microsoft licensed a BASIC compatible with Applesoft to VTech for its Laser 128 clone.
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Applesoft BASIC
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See also
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See also
ALF's Formula Transfer Link, speed enhancement for Applesoft BASIC
Chinese BASIC, a Chinese-localized version of Applesoft BASIC
Apple III BASICs from Apple and Microsoft
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Applesoft BASIC
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References
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References
This article includes text from Everything2, licensed under GFDL.
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Applesoft BASIC
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External links
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External links
Disassembled ROM
AppleSoft BASIC in JavaScript
Category:Apple II software
Category:BASIC interpreters
Category:Discontinued Microsoft BASICs
Category:BASIC programming language family
Category:Microsoft programming languages
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Applesoft BASIC
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Table of Content
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Use mdy dates, History, Features, Limitations, Sound and graphics, Extensions, Bugs, Performance, Sample code, Early evolution, Related BASICs, See also, References, External links
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Asterix
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Short description
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Asterix ( or , "Asterix the Gaul"; also known as Asterix and Obelix in some adaptations or The Adventures of Asterix) is a French comic album series about a Gaulish village which, thanks to a magic potion that enhances strength, resists the forces of Julius Caesar's Roman Republic Army in a nonhistorical telling of the time after the Gallic Wars. Many adventures take the titular hero Asterix and his friend Obelix to Rome and beyond.
The series first appeared in the Franco-Belgian comic magazine Pilote on 29 October 1959. It was written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo until Goscinny's death in 1977. Uderzo then took over the writing until 2009, when he sold the rights to publishing company Hachette; he died in 2020. In 2013, a new team consisting of Jean-Yves Ferri (script) and Didier Conrad (artwork) took over. , 40 volumes have been released; the most recent was penned by new writer Fabcaro and released on 26 October 2023.
By that year, the volumes in total had sold 393 million copies, making them the best-selling European comic book series, and the second best-selling comic book series in history after One Piece.
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Asterix
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Description
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Description
thumb|Some of the many characters in Asterix. In the front row are the regular characters, with Asterix himself in the centre, along with Obelix, Getafix, Vitalstatistix and others.
Asterix comics usually start with the following introduction: The year is 50 BC. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely... One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders. And life is not easy for the Roman legionaries who garrison the fortified camps of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium...The series follows the adventures of a village of Gauls as they resist Roman occupation in 50 BC. They do so using a magic potion, brewed by their druid Getafix (Panoramix in the French version), which temporarily gives the recipient superhuman strength. The protagonists, the title character Asterix and his friend Obelix, have various adventures. The "-ix" ending of both names (as well as all the other pseudo-Gaulish "-ix" names in the series) alludes to the "-rix" suffix (meaning "king", like "-rex" in Latin) present in the names of many real Gaulish chieftains such as Vercingetorix, Orgetorix, and Dumnorix.
In some of the stories, they travel to foreign countries, whilst other tales are set in and around their village. For much of the history of the series (volumes 4 through 29), settings in Gaul and abroad alternate, with even-numbered volumes set abroad and odd-numbered volumes set in Gaul, mostly in the village.
The Asterix series is one of the most popular Franco-Belgian comics in the world, with the series being translated into 111 languages and dialects .
The success of the series has led to the adaptation of its books into 15 films: ten animated, and five live action (two of which, Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra and Asterix and Obelix vs. Caesar, were major box office successes in France). There have also been a number of games based on the characters, and a theme park near Paris, Parc Astérix. The very first French satellite, Astérix, launched in 1965, was named after the character, whose name is close to Greek ἀστήρ and Latin astrum, meaning a "star". As of 20 April 2022, 385million copies of Asterix books had been sold worldwide and translated in 111 languages making it the world's most widely translated comic book series, with co-creators René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo being France's best-selling authors abroad.
In April 2022, Albert and René's general director, Céleste Surugue, hosted a 45-minute talk entitled 'The Next Incarnation of a Heritage Franchise: Asterix' and spoke about the success of the Asterix franchise, of which he noted "The idea was to find a subject with a strong connection with French culture and, while looking at the country's history, they ended up choosing its first defeat, namely the Gaul's Roman colonisation". He also went on to say how, since 1989, Parc Asterix has attracted an average of 2.3 million visitors per year. Other notable mentions were how the franchise includes 10 animated movies, which recorded over 53 million viewers worldwide. The inception of Studios Idéfix in 1974 and the opening of Studio 58 in 2016 were among the necessary steps to make Asterix a "100% Gaulish production", considered the best solution to keep the creative process under control from start to finish and to employ French manpower. He also noted how a new album is now published every two years, with print figures of 5 million and an estimated readership of 20 million.
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Asterix
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Publication history
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Publication history
thumb|Évariste Vital Luminais' (1821–1896) paintings of Goths had been rather popular in France and are a possible model for the Asterix series.
Prior to creating the Asterix series, Goscinny and Uderzo had had success with their series Oumpah-pah, which was published in Tintin magazine.
Astérix was originally serialised in Pilote magazine, debuting in the first issue on 29 October 1959. In 1961, the first book was put together, titled Asterix the Gaul. From then on, books were released generally on a yearly basis. Their success was exponential; the first book sold 6,000 copies in its year of publication; a year later, the second sold 20,000. In 1963, the third sold 40,000; the fourth, released in 1964, sold 150,000. A year later, the fifth sold 300,000; 1966's Asterix and the Big Fight sold 400,000 upon initial publication. The ninth Asterix volume, when first released in 1967, sold 1.2 million copies in two days.
Uderzo's first preliminary sketches portrayed Asterix as a huge and strong traditional Gaulish warrior. But Goscinny had a different picture in his mind, visualizing Asterix as a shrewd, compact warrior who would possess intelligence and wit more than raw strength. However, Uderzo felt that the downsized hero needed a strong but dim companion, to which Goscinny agreed. Hence, Obelix was born. Despite the growing popularity of Asterix with the readers, the financial backing for the publication Pilote ceased. Pilote was taken over by Georges Dargaud.
When Goscinny died in 1977, Uderzo continued the series by popular demand of the readers, who implored him to continue. He continued to issue new volumes of the series, but on a less frequent basis. Many critics and fans of the series prefer the earlier collaborations with Goscinny. Uderzo created his own publishing company, Éditions Albert René, which published every album drawn and written by Uderzo alone since then. However, Dargaud, the initial publisher of the series, kept the publishing rights on the 24 first albums made by both Uderzo and Goscinny. In 1990, the Uderzo and Goscinny families decided to sue Dargaud to take over the rights. In 1998, after a long trial, Dargaud lost the rights to publish and sell the albums. Uderzo decided to sell these rights to Hachette instead of Albert-René, but the publishing rights on new albums were still owned by Albert Uderzo (40%), Sylvie Uderzo (20%) and Anne Goscinny (40%).
In December 2008, Uderzo sold his stake to Hachette, which took over the company. In a letter published in the French newspaper Le Monde in 2009, Uderzo's daughter, Sylvie, attacked her father's decision to sell the family publishing firm and the rights to produce new Astérix adventures after his death. She said:
... the co-creator of Astérix, France's comic strip hero, has betrayed the Gaulish warrior to the modern-day Romans – the men of industry and finance.
However, René Goscinny's daughter, Anne, also gave her agreement to the continuation of the series and sold her rights at the same time. She is reported to have said that "Asterix has already had two lives: one during my father's lifetime and one after it. Why not a third?". A few months later, Uderzo appointed three illustrators, who had been his assistants for many years, to continue the series. In 2011, Uderzo announced that a new Asterix album was due out in 2013, with Jean-Yves Ferri writing the story and Frédéric Mébarki drawing it. A year later, in 2012, the publisher Albert-René announced that Frédéric Mébarki had withdrawn from drawing the new album, due to the pressure he felt in following in the steps of Uderzo. Comic artist Didier Conrad was officially announced to take over drawing duties from Mébarki, with the due date of the new album in 2013 unchanged.
In January 2015, after the murders of seven cartoonists at the satirical Paris weekly Charlie Hebdo, Astérix creator Albert Uderzo came out of retirement to draw two Astérix pictures honouring the memories of the victims.
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Asterix
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List of titles
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List of titles
Numbers 1–24, 32 and 34 are by Goscinny and Uderzo. Numbers 25–31 and 33 are by Uderzo alone. Numbers 35–39 are by Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conrad. Years stated are for their initial album release.
Asterix the Gaul (1961)
Asterix and the Golden Sickle (1962)
Asterix and the Goths (1963)
Asterix the Gladiator (1964)
Asterix and the Banquet (1965)
Asterix and Cleopatra (1965)
Asterix and the Big Fight (1966)
Asterix in Britain (1966)
Asterix and the Normans (1967)
Asterix the Legionary (1967)
Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield (1967)
Asterix at the Olympic Games (1968)
Asterix and the Cauldron (1969)
Asterix in Spain (1969)
Asterix and the Roman Agent (1970)
Asterix in Switzerland (1970)
The Mansions of the Gods (1971)
Asterix and the Laurel Wreath (1972)
Asterix and the Soothsayer (1972)
Asterix in Corsica (1973)
Asterix and Caesar's Gift (1974)
Asterix and the Great Crossing (1975)
Obelix and Co. (1976)
Asterix in Belgium (1979)
Asterix and the Great Divide (1980)
Asterix and the Black Gold (1981)
Asterix and Son (1983)
Asterix and the Magic Carpet (1987)
Asterix and the Secret Weapon (1991)
Asterix and Obelix All at Sea (1996)
Asterix and the Actress (2001)
Asterix and the Class Act (2003)
Asterix and the Falling Sky (2005)
Asterix and Obelix's Birthday: The Golden Book (2009)
Asterix and the Picts (2013)
Asterix and the Missing Scroll (2015)
Asterix and the Chariot Race (2017)
Asterix and the Chieftain's Daughter (2019)
Asterix and the Griffin (2021)
Asterix and the White Iris (2023)
(2025)
Non-canonical volumes:
Asterix Conquers Rome, to be the 23rd volume, before Obelix and Co. (1976) – comic
How Obelix Fell into the Magic Potion When he was a Little Boy (1989) – special issue album
Uderzo Croqué par ses Amis (Uderzo sketched by his friends) (1996) – tribute album by various artists
The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (2016) – special issue album, illustrated text
Asterix Conquers Rome is a comics adaptation of the animated film The Twelve Tasks of Asterix. It was released in 1976 and was the 23rd volume to be published, but it has been rarely reprinted and is not considered to be canonical to the series. The only English translations ever to be published were in the Asterix Annual 1980 and never an English standalone volume. A picture-book version of the same story was published in English translation as The Twelve Tasks of Asterix by Hodder & Stoughton in 1978.
In 1996, a tribute album in honour of Albert Uderzo was released titled Uderzo Croqué par ses Amis, a volume containing 21 short stories with Uderzo in Ancient Gaul. This volume was published by Soleil Productions and has not been translated into English.
In 2007, Éditions Albert René released a tribute volume titled Astérix et ses Amis, a 60-page volume of one-to-four-page short stories. It was a tribute to Albert Uderzo on his 80th birthday by 34 European cartoonists. The volume was translated into nine languages. , it has not been translated into English.
In 2016, the French publisher Hachette, along with Anne Goscinny and Albert Uderzo decided to make the special issue album The XII Tasks of Asterix for the 40th anniversary of the film The Twelve Tasks of Asterix. There was no English edition.
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Asterix
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Synopsis and characters
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Synopsis and characters
The main setting for the series is an unnamed coastal village, rumoured to be inspired by Erquy in Armorica (present-day Brittany), a province of Gaul (modern France), in the year 50 BC. Julius Caesar has conquered nearly all of Gaul for the Roman Republic during the Gallic Wars. The little Armorican village, however, has held out because the villagers can gain temporary superhuman strength by drinking a magic potion brewed by the local village druid, Getafix. His chief is Vitalstatistix.
The main protagonist and hero of the village is Asterix, who, because of his shrewdness, is usually entrusted with the most important affairs of the village. He is aided in his adventures by his rather corpulent and slower thinking friend, Obelix, who, because he fell into the druid's cauldron of the potion as a baby, has permanent superhuman strength (because of this, Getafix steadfastly refuses to allow Obelix to drink the potion, as doing so would have a dangerous and unpredictable result, as shown in Asterix and Obelix All at Sea). Obelix is usually accompanied by Dogmatix, his little dog. (Except for Asterix and Obelix, the names of the characters change with the language. For example, Obelix's dog's name is "Idéfix" in the original French edition.)
Asterix and Obelix (and sometimes other members of the village) go on various adventures both within the village and in far away lands. Places visited in the series include parts of Gaul (Lutetia, Corsica etc.), neighbouring nations (Belgium, Spain, Britain, Germany etc.), and far away lands (North America, Middle East, India etc.).
The series employs science-fiction and fantasy elements in the more recent books; for instance, the use of extraterrestrials in Asterix and the Falling Sky and the city of Atlantis in Asterix and Obelix All at Sea.
With rare exceptions, the ending of the albums usually shows a big banquet with the village's inhabitants gathering – the sole exception is the bard Cacofonix restrained and gagged to prevent him from singing (but in Asterix and the Normans the blacksmith Fulliautomatix was tied up). Mostly the banquets are held under the starry nights in the village, where roast boar is devoured and all (but one) are set about in merrymaking. However, there are a few exceptions, such as in Asterix and Cleopatra.
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Asterix
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Humour
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Humour
The humour encountered in the Asterix comics often centers around puns, caricatures, and tongue-in-cheek stereotypes of contemporary European nations and French regions. Much of the multi-layered humour in the initial Asterix books was French-specific, which delayed the translation of the books into other languages for fear of losing the jokes and the spirit of the story. Some translations have actually added local humour: In the Italian translation, the Roman legionaries are made to speak in 20th-century Roman dialect, and Obelix's famous Ils sont fous, ces Romains ! ("These Romans are crazy") is translated as Sono pazzi questi romani, a long-established humorous expansion of the Roman abbreviation SPQR.See, e.g. In another example: Hiccups are written onomatopoeically in French as hips, but in English as "hic", allowing Roman legionaries in more than one of the English translations to decline their hiccups absurdly in Latin (hic, haec, hoc). The newer albums share a more universal humour, both written and visual.
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Asterix
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Character names
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Character names
All the fictional characters in Asterix have names which are puns on their roles or personalities, and which follow certain patterns specific to nationality. Certain rules are followed (most of the time) such as Gauls (and their neighbours) having an "-ix" suffix for the men and ending in "-a" for the women; for example, Chief Vitalstatistix (so called due to his portly stature) and his wife Impedimenta (often at odds with the chief). The male Roman names end in "-us", echoing Latin nominative male singular form, as in Gluteus Maximus, a muscle-bound athlete whose name is literally the butt of the joke. Gothic names (present-day Germany) end in "-ic", after Gothic chiefs such as Alaric and Theoderic; for example Rhetoric the interpreter. Greek names end in "-os" or "-es"; for example, Thermos the restaurateur. British names usually end in "-ax" or "-os" and are often puns on the taxation associated with the later United Kingdom; examples include Mykingdomforanos, a British tribal chieftain, Valuaddedtax the druid, and Selectivemploymentax the mercenary. Names of Normans end with "-af", for example Nescaf or Cenotaf. Egyptian characters often end in -is, such as the architects Edifis and Artifis, and the scribe Exlibris. Indic names, apart from the only Indic female characters Orinjade and Lemuhnade, exhibit considerable variation; examples include Watziznehm, Watzit, Owzat, and Howdoo. Other nationalities are treated to pidgin translations from their language, like Huevos y Bacon, a Spanish chieftain (whose name, meaning eggs and bacon, is often guidebook Spanish for tourists), or literary and other popular media references, like Dubbelosix (a sly reference to James Bond's codename "007").
Most of these jokes, and hence the names of the characters, are specific to the translation; for example, the druid named Getafix in English translation – "get a fix", referring to the character's role in dispensing the magic potion – is Panoramix in the original French and Miraculix in German. Even so, occasionally the wordplay has been preserved: Obelix's dog, known in the original French as Idéfix (from idée fixe, a "fixed idea" or obsession), is called Dogmatix in English, which not only renders the original meaning strikingly closely ("dogmatic") but in fact adds another layer of wordplay with the syllable "Dog-" at the beginning of the name.
The name Asterix, French Astérix, comes from , meaning "asterisk", which is the typographical symbol * indicating a footnote, from the Greek word ἀστήρ (aster), meaning a "star". His name is usually left unchanged in translations, aside from accents and the use of local alphabets. For example, in Esperanto, Polish, Slovene, Latvian, and Turkish it is Asteriks (in Turkish he was first named Bücür meaning "shorty", but the name was then standardised). Two exceptions include Icelandic, in which he is known as Ástríkur ("Rich of love"), and Sinhala, where he is known as (Soora Pappa), which can be interpreted as "Hero". The name Obelix (Obélix) may refer to "obelisk", a stone column from ancient Egypt (and hence his large size and strength and his task of carrying around menhirs), but also to another typographical symbol, the obelisk or obelus ().
For explanations of some of the other names, see List of Asterix characters.
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Asterix
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Ethnic stereotypes
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Ethnic stereotypes
Many of the Asterix adventures take place in other countries away from their homeland in Gaul. In every album that takes place abroad, the characters meet (usually modern-day) stereotypes for each country, as seen by the French.
Italics (Italians) are the inhabitants of Italy. In the adventures of Asterix, the term "Romans" is used by non-Italics to refer to all inhabitants of Italy, who at that time had extended their dominion over a large part of the Mediterranean basin. But as can be seen in Asterix and the Chariot Race, in the Italian Peninsula this term is used only to refer to the people from the capital, with many Italics preferring to identify themselves as Umbrians, Etruscans, Venetians, etc. Various topics from this country are explored, as in this example, Italian cuisine (pasta, pizza, wine), art, famous people (Luciano Pavarotti, Silvio Berlusconi, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa), and even the controversial issues of political corruption. Romans in general appear more similar to the historical Romans than to modern-age Italians.
Goths (Germans) are disciplined and militaristic, but divided into many factions that fight amongst each other (which is a reference to Germany before Otto von Bismarck, and to the rivalry between East Germany and West Germany in the Aftermath of World War II), and they wear the Pickelhaube helmet common during the German Empire. In later appearances, the Goths tend to be more good-natured.
Helvetians (Swiss) are neutral, eat fondue, and are obsessed with cleaning, accurate time-keeping, and banks.
The Britons (English) are phlegmatic, and speak with early 20th-century aristocratic slang (similar to Bertie Wooster). They stop for tea every day (making it with hot water and a drop of milk until Asterix brings them actual tea leaves), drink lukewarm beer (Bitter), eat foods with mint sauce that are considered tasteless by the non-Briton characters (Rosbif), and live in streets containing rows of identical houses. In Asterix and Obelix: God Save Britannia the Britons all wore woollen pullovers and Tam o' shanters.
Hibernians (Irish) inhabit Hibernia, the Latin name of Ireland and they fight against the Romans alongside the Britons to defend the British Isles.
Iberians (Spanish) are filled with pride and have rather choleric tempers. They produce olive oil, provide very slow aid for chariot problems on the Roman roads and (thanks to Asterix) adopt bullfighting as a tradition.
When the Gauls visited North America in Asterix and the Great Crossing, Obelix punches one of the attacking Native Americans with a knockout blow. The warrior first hallucinates American-style emblematic eagles; the second time, he sees stars in the formation of the Stars and Stripes; the third time, he sees stars shaped like the United States Air Force roundel. Asterix's inspired idea for getting the attention of a nearby Viking ship (which could take them back to Gaul) is to hold up a torch; this refers to the Statue of Liberty (which was a gift from France).
Corsicans are proud, patriotic, and easily aroused but lazy, making decisions by using pre-filled ballot boxes. They harbour vendettas against each other, and always take their siesta.
Greeks are chauvinists and consider Romans, Gauls, and all others to be barbarians. They eat stuffed grape leaves (dolma), drink resinated wine (retsina), and are hospitable to tourists. Most seem to be related by blood, and often suggest some cousin appropriate for a job. Greek characters are often depicted in side profile, making them resemble figures from classical Greek vase paintings.
Normans (Vikings) drink endlessly, they always use cream in their cuisine, they don't know what fear is (which they're trying to discover), and in their home territory (Scandinavia), the night lasts for 6 months.Their depiction in the albums is a mix of stereotypes of Scandinavian Vikings and the Norman French. Their names end in "-af".
Cimbres (Danes) are very similar to the Normans with the greatest difference being that the Gauls are unable to communicate with them. Their names end in "-sen", a common ending of surnames in Denmark and Norway akin to "-son".
Belgians speak with a funny accent, snub the Gauls, and always eat sliced roots deep-fried in bear fat. They also tell Belgian jokes.
Lusitanians (Portuguese) are short in stature and polite (Uderzo said all the Portuguese who he had met were like that). Their most recent appearance in the albums depicts them with an easy-going and procrastinating nature.
The Indians have elephant trainers, as well as gurus who can fast for weeks and levitate on magic carpets. They worship thirty-three million deities and consider cows as sacred. They also bathe in the Ganges river.
Egyptians are short with prominent noses, endlessly engaged in building pyramids and palaces. Their favorite food is lentil soup and they sail feluccas along the banks of the Nile River.
Persians (Iranians) produce carpets and staunchly refuse to mend foreign ones. They eat caviar, as well as roasted camel and the women wear burqas.
Hittites, Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians are perpetually at war with each other and attack strangers because they confuse them with their enemies, but they later apologize when they realize that the strangers are not their enemies. This is likely a criticism of the constant conflicts among the Middle Eastern peoples.
The Jews are all depicted as Yemenite Jews, with dark skin, black eyes, and beards, a tribute to Marc Chagall, the famous painter whose painting of King David hangs at the Knesset (Israeli Parliament).
Numidians, contrary to the Berber inhabitants of ancient Numidia (located in North Africa), are obviously Africans from sub-Saharan Africa. The names end in "-tha", similar to the historical king Jugurtha of Numidia.
The Picts (Scots) wear a typical dress with a kilt (skirt), have the habit of drinking "malt water" (whisky) and throwing logs (caber tossing) as a popular sport and their names all start with "Mac-".
Sarmatians (Ukrainians) inhabit the North Black Sea area, which represents present-day Ukraine. Their names end in "-ov", like many Ukrainian surnames.
When the Gauls see foreigners speaking their foreign languages, these have different representations in the cartoon speech bubbles:
Iberian: Same as Spanish, with inversion of exclamation marks ('¡') and question marks ("¿")
Goth language: Gothic script (incomprehensible to the Gauls, except Getafix, who speaks Gothic)
Cimbres: "Ø" and "Å" instead of "O" and "A" (incomprehensible to the Gauls)
Amerindian: Pictograms and sign language (generally incomprehensible to the Gauls)
Egyptians and Kushites: Hieroglyphs with explanatory footnotes (incomprehensible to the Gauls)
Greek: Straight letters, carved as if in stone
Sarmatian: In their speech balloons, some letters (E, F, N, R ...) are written in a mirror-reversed form, which evokes the modern Cyrillic alphabet.
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Asterix
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Translations
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Translations
The various volumes have been translated into more than 120 languages and dialects. Besides the original French language, most albums are available in Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Latvian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Ukrainian.
Some books have also been translated into languages including Esperanto, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Scots, Indonesian, Hindi, Persian, Bengali, Afrikaans, Arabic, Frisian, Romansch, Thai, Vietnamese, Welsh, Sinhala, Ancient Greek, and Luxembourgish.
In Europe, several volumes were translated into a variety of regional languages and dialects, such as Alsatian, Breton, Chtimi (Picard), and Corsican in France; Bavarian, Swabian, and Low German in Germany; and Savo, Karelia, Rauma, and Helsinki slang dialects in Finland. In Portugal a special edition of the first volume, Asterix the Gaul, was translated into local language Mirandese. In Greece, a number of volumes have appeared in the Cretan Greek, Cypriot Greek, and Pontic Greek dialects. In the Italian version, while the Gauls speak standard Italian, the legionaries speak in the Romanesque dialect. In the former Yugoslavia, the "Forum" publishing house translated Corsican text in Asterix in Corsica into the Montenegrin dialect of Serbo-Croatian (today called Montenegrin).
In the Netherlands, several volumes were translated into West Frisian, a Germanic language spoken in the province of Friesland; into Limburgish, a regional language spoken not only in Dutch Limburg but also in Belgian Limburg and North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany; and into Tweants, a dialect in the region of Twente in the eastern province of Overijssel. Hungarian-language books were published in the former Yugoslavia for the Hungarian minority living in Serbia. Although not translated into a fully autonomous dialect, the books differ slightly from the language of the books issued in Hungary. In Sri Lanka, the cartoon series was adapted into Sinhala as Sura Pappa.
Most volumes have been translated into Latin and Ancient Greek, with accompanying teachers' guides, as a way of teaching these ancient languages.
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Asterix
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English translation
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English translation
Before Asterix became famous in the English-speaking world, translations of some strips were published in British comics including Valiant, Ranger, and Look & Learn, under names Little Fred and Big Ed and Beric the Bold, set in Roman-occupied Britain. These were included in an exhibition on Goscinny's life and career, and Asterix, in London's Jewish Museum in 2018.
In 1970, William Morrow and Company published English translations in hardback of three Asterix albums for the American market. These were Asterix the Gaul, Asterix and Cleopatra and Asterix the Legionary. Lawrence Hughes in a letter to The New York Times stated, "Sales were modest, with the third title selling half the number of the first. I was publisher at the time, and Bill Cosby tried to buy film and television rights. When that fell through, we gave up the series."
The first 33 Asterix albums were translated into English by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge (including the three volumes reprinted by William Morrow), who were widely praised for maintaining the spirit and humour of the original French versions. Hockridge died in 2013, so Bell translated books 34 to 36 by herself, before retiring in 2016 for health reasons. She died in 2018. Adriana Hunter became translator.
US publisher Papercutz in December 2019 announced it would begin publishing "all-new more American translations" of the Asterix books, starting on 19 May 2020. The launch was postponed to 15 July 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The new translator is Joe Johnson, a professor of French and Spanish at Clayton State University.
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Asterix
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Adaptations
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Adaptations
The series has been adapted into various media. There are 18 films, 15 board games, 40 video games, and 1 theme park.
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Asterix
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Films
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Films
Deux Romains en Gaule, 1967 black and white television film, mixed media, live-action with Asterix and Obelix animated. Released on DVD in 2002.
Asterix the Gaul, 1967, animated, based on the album Asterix the Gaul.
Asterix and the Golden Sickle, 1967, animated, based upon the album Asterix and the Golden Sickle, incomplete and never released.
Asterix and Cleopatra, 1968, animated, based on the album Asterix and Cleopatra.
The Dogmatix movie, 1973, animated, a unique story based on Dogmatix and his animal friends, Albert Uderzo created a comic version (consisting of eight comics, as the film is a combination of 8 different stories) of the never-released movie in 2003.
The Twelve Tasks of Asterix, 1976, animated, a unique story not based on an existing comic.
Asterix Versus Caesar, 1985, animated, based on both Asterix the Legionary and Asterix the Gladiator.
Asterix in Britain, 1986, animated, based upon the album Asterix in Britain.
Asterix and the Big Fight, 1989, animated, based on both Asterix and the Big Fight and Asterix and the Soothsayer.
Asterix Conquers America, 1994, animated, loosely based upon the album Asterix and the Great Crossing.
Asterix and Obelix vs. Caesar, 1999, live-action, based primarily upon Asterix the Gaul, Asterix and the Soothsayer, Asterix and the Goths, Asterix the Legionary, and Asterix the Gladiator.
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, 2002, live-action, based upon the album Asterix and Cleopatra.
Asterix and the Vikings, 2006, animated, loosely based upon the album Asterix and the Normans along with some side references to Asterix and the Great Crossing.
Asterix at the Olympic Games, 2008, live-action, loosely based upon the album Asterix at the Olympic Games.
Asterix and Obelix: God Save Britannia, 2012, live-action, loosely based upon the album Asterix in Britain and Asterix and the Normans.
Asterix: The Mansions of the Gods, 2014, animated, based upon the album The Mansions of the Gods and is the first animated Asterix movie in stereoscopic 3D.
Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion, 2018, animated, original story.
Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom, 2023, live-action, original story, consisting of Asterix and Obelix traveling to China to rescue the empress from Julius Caesar and his ally, Prince Deng Tsin Quin.
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Asterix
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Television series
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Television series
Dogmatix and the Indomitables, an animated series of eleven-minute episodes, was produced by Studio 58 and Futurikon, and premiered on the Okoo streaming service on 2 July 2021 before beginning its linear broadcast on France 4 on 28 August 2021. The animation is produced by o2o Studio.
The show is distributed globally by LS Distribution.
thumb|left|The official Netflix announcement poster
Asterix and Obelix: The Big Fight, a CG-animated miniseries based on the 1966 album, and directed by Alain Chabat, debuted on Netflix in 2025.
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Asterix
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Games
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Games
Many gamebooks, board games and video games are based upon the Asterix series. In particular, many video games were released by various computer game publishers.
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Asterix
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Theme park
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Theme park
Parc Astérix, a theme park 22 miles north of Paris, based upon the series, was opened in 1989. It is one of the most visited sites in France, with around 2.3 million visitors per year.
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Asterix
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In popular culture
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In popular culture
thumb|upright|Asterix ham and cheese-flavored potato chips
The first French satellite, which was launched in 1965, was named Astérix-1 in honour of Asterix. Asteroids 29401 Asterix and 29402 Obelix were also named in honour of the characters. Coincidentally, the word Asterix/Asterisk originates from the Greek for Little Star.
During the campaign for Paris to host the 1992 Summer Olympics in 1986, Asterix appeared in many posters over the Eiffel Tower, later it was lost to Barcelona and the 2024 Summer Olympics held 32 years later in the same city after Tokyo in 2021.
The French company Belin introduced a series of Asterix crisps shaped in the forms of Roman shields, gourds, wild boar, and bones.
In the UK in 1995, Asterix coins were presented free in every Ferrero Nutella jars.
In 1991, Asterix and Obelix appeared on the cover of Time for a special edition about France, art directed by Mirko Ilić. In a 2009 issue of the same magazine, Asterix is described as being seen by some as a symbol for France's independence and defiance of globalisation. Despite this, Asterix has made several promotional appearances for fast food chain McDonald's, including one advertisement which featured members of the village enjoying the traditional story-ending feast at a McDonald's restaurant.
Version 4.0 of the operating system OpenBSD features a parody of an Asterix story.
Action Comics Issue #579, published by DC Comics in 1986, written by Lofficier and Illustrated by Keith Giffen, featured a homage to Asterix where Superman and Jimmy Olsen are drawn back in time to a small village of indomitable Gauls.
In 2005, the Mirror World Asterix exhibition was held in Brussels. The Belgian post office also released a set of stamps to coincide with the exhibition. A book was released to coincide with the exhibition, containing sections in French, Dutch and English.
On 29 October 2009, the Google homepage of a great number of countries displayed a logo (called Google Doodle) commemorating the 50th anniversary of Asterix.
Although they have since changed, the #2 and #3 heralds in the Society for Creative Anachronism's Kingdom of Ansteorra were the Asterisk and Obelisk Heralds.
Asterix and Obelix were the official mascots of the 2017 IIHF World Championships, jointly hosted by France and Germany.
In 2019, France issued a commemorative €2 coin to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Asterix.
The Royal Canadian Navy has a supply vessel named MV Asterix. A second Resolve-Class ship, to have been named MV Obelix, was cancelled.
Asterix, Obelix and Vitalstatistix appear in Larry Gonick's The Cartoon History of the Universe volume 2, especially in the depiction of the Gallic invasion of Italy (390 – 387 BCE). In the final panel of that sequence, as they trudge off into the sunset, Obelix says "Come on, Asterix! Let's get our own comic book."
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Asterix
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See also
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See also
List of Asterix characters
Bande dessinée
English translations of Asterix
List of Asterix games
List of Asterix volumes
Kajko i Kokosz
Potion
Roman Gaul, after Julius Caesar's conquest of 58–51 BC that consisted of five provinces
Commentarii de Bello Gallico
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Asterix
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References
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References
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Asterix
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Sources
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Sources
Astérix publications in Pilote BDoubliées
Astérix albums Bedetheque
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Asterix
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Further reading
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Further reading
– This is Chapter #16, in Part III: Translations, Transformations, Migrations
Tosina Fernández, Luis J. "Creatividad paremiológica en las traducciones al castellano de Astérix". Proverbium vol. 38, 2021, pp. 361–376. Proverbiium PDF
Tosina Fernández, Luis J. "Paremiological Creativity and Visual Representation of Proverbs: An Analysis of the Use of Proverbs in the Adventures of Asterix the Gaul". Proceedings of the Fourteenth Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Proverbs, 2 to 8 November 2020, at Tavira, Portugal, edited by Rui J.B. Soares and Outi Lauhakangas, Tavira: Tipografia Tavirense, 2021, pp. 256–277.
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Asterix
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External links
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External links
Official site
Asterix the Gaul at Don Markstein's Toonopedia, from the original on 6 April 2012.
Asterix around the World – The many languages
Alea Jacta Est (Asterix for grown-ups) Each Asterix book is examined in detail
Les allusions culturelles dans Astérix – Cultural allusions
The Asterix Annotations – album-by-album explanations of all the historical references and obscure in-jokes
Category:Bandes dessinées
Category:French comic strips
Category:Pilote titles
Category:Dargaud titles
Category:Alternate history comics
Category:Lagardère SCA franchises
Category:Satirical comics
Category:Comic franchises
Category:Fantasy comics
Category:Historical comics
Category:Humor comics
Category:Pirate comics
Category:1959 comics debuts
Category:Works set in Roman Gaul
Category:Comics set in ancient Rome
Category:Comics set in France
Category:Comics set in Brittany
Category:Comics set in the 1st century BC
Category:French comics adapted into films
Category:Comics adapted into animated films
Category:Comics adapted into animated series
Category:Comics adapted into video games
Category:1959 establishments in France
Category:Works about rebels
Category:Works about rebellions
Category:Fiction about rebellions
Category:Gallia Lugdunensis
Category:Comics by Albert Uderzo
Category:Armorica
Category:Potions
Category:Slapstick comedy
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Asterix
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Table of Content
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Short description, Description, Publication history, List of titles, Synopsis and characters, Humour, Character names, Ethnic stereotypes, Translations, English translation, Adaptations, Films, Television series, Games, Theme park, In popular culture, See also, References, Sources, Further reading, External links
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Arizona Cardinals
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Short description
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The Arizona Cardinals are a professional American football team based in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The Cardinals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) West division. The team plays its home games at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, a suburb northwest of the state capital of Phoenix.
The team was established in Chicago in 1898 as the Morgan Athletic Club, and joined the NFL as a charter member on September 17, 1920. The Cardinals are the oldest continuously run professional football franchise in the United States, and, along with the Chicago Bears, are the only NFL charter member franchises still in operation. In , the team moved to St. Louis, where it was commonly referred to as the "Football Cardinals", the "Gridbirds", or the "Big Red" to avoid confusion with Major League Baseball's (MLB) St. Louis Cardinals. Before the season, the team moved to Tempe, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, where it played home games for the next 18 seasons at Sun Devil Stadium on the campus of Arizona State University. In , the team moved to their current home field in suburban Glendale, although their executive offices and training facility remain in Tempe. From 1988 to 2012 (except 2005, when they trained in Prescott), the Cardinals conducted their annual summer training camp at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. The Cardinals moved their training camp to State Farm Stadium, then known as University of Phoenix Stadium, in 2013.
The Cardinals have won two NFL championships, both while the team was in Chicago. The first, in , was disputed by supporters of the runner-up Pottsville Maroons. Their second, and the first to be won in a championship game, came in , nearly two decades before the first Super Bowl. They returned to the title game to defend in 1948, but lost the rematch 7–0 in a snowstorm in Philadelphia.
The team has since suffered many losing seasons and, as of 2024, has the longest active championship drought in North American sports at 77 seasons (one more than MLB's Cleveland Guardians, who last won the World Series in 1948). The Cardinals have recorded the most losses by a franchise in NFL history with 812 regular season losses as of 2024. The team's all-time win–loss record (including regular season and playoff games) at the conclusion of the 2024 season was ( in the regular season, in the playoffs). They have been to the playoffs 11 times and have won seven playoff games, including three in the 2008–09 NFL playoffs. During that season, they won their only NFC Championship Game since the 1970 AFL–NFL merger, and reached Super Bowl XLIII, losing 27–23 to the Pittsburgh Steelers. The team has won five division titles (, , , , and ) since their 1947–48 NFL championship game appearances. The Cardinals are the only NFL team that has never lost a playoff game at home: their 5–0 record encompasses the 1947 NFL Championship Game, two games during the 2008–09 NFL playoffs, one during the 2009–10 playoffs, and one during the 2015–16 playoffs. In their 36 seasons since moving to the Valley of the Sun in 1988, the Cardinals have a total of six playoff appearances, three division titles, and the one NFC championship.
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Arizona Cardinals
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History
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History
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Arizona Cardinals
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Chicago Cardinals (1920–1959)
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Chicago Cardinals (1920–1959)
thumb|left|The Morgan Athletic Club (pictured c. 1900), predecessor to the Arizona Cardinals|191x191px
The franchise dates to 1898, when a neighborhood group gathered to play on the South Side of Chicago, calling themselves the Morgan Athletic Club. Chicago painting and building contractor Chris O'Brien acquired the team, which he moved to Normal Field on Racine Avenue. The team was known as the Racine Normals until 1901, when O'Brien bought used jerseys from the University of Chicago. After he described the faded maroon clothing as "Cardinal red", the team became the Racine Street Cardinals. Eventually in 1920, the team became a charter member of the American Professional Football Association (APFA), which was rechristened the National Football League (NFL) two years later. The team entered the league as the Racine Cardinals, but changed their name to the Chicago Cardinals in 1922 to avoid confusion with the Horlick-Racine Legion, who entered the league the same year.
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Arizona Cardinals
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NFL champions (1925)
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NFL champions (1925)
In 1925, the Cardinals were awarded the NFL Championship after the Pottsville Maroons were suspended for playing a game in what was deemed "another team's territory." Having beat the Cardinals in a head-to-head game earlier in the season, the Pottsville Maroons won their extra game against the University of Notre Dame, helping them finish the year with the same record as the Cardinals. The Cardinals were also guilty of breaking NFL rules by scheduling two additional games against the Hammond Pros and the Milwaukee Badgers, both of whom had already disbanded for the season. The game against the Badgers spurred a scandal when the Badgers filled out their roster with four high school players, in violation of NFL rules.
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Arizona Cardinals
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NFL Champions (1947)
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NFL Champions (1947)
During the post-World War II years, the team reached two straight NFL finals against the Philadelphia Eagles, winning in 1947 (eight months after Charles Bidwill's death) but losing the following year. In the late 1950s, after years of bad seasons and losing fans to their crosstown rivals, the Chicago Bears, the Cardinals were almost bankrupt, and owner Violet Bidwill Wolfner became interested in moving the team to a new city.
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Arizona Cardinals
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St. Louis Cardinals (1960–1987)
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St. Louis Cardinals (1960–1987)
Due to the formation of the rival American Football League, the NFL allowed Bidwill to move the team to St. Louis, Missouri, where they became the St. Louis Cardinals. They were locally called the "Big Red", the "Gridbirds" or the "Football Cardinals" to avoid confusion with the local baseball team of the same name. During the Cardinals' 28-year stay in St. Louis, they advanced to the playoffs just three times (1974, 1975 and 1982), never hosting or winning. They did, however, win the Playoff Bowl, a now-defunct post-season game for third place, in 1964 against the Green Bay Packers by a score of 24–17. The overall mediocrity of the Cardinals, combined with a then-21-year-old stadium, caused game attendance to dwindle, and owner Bill Bidwill decided to move the team to Arizona.
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Arizona Cardinals
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Phoenix/Arizona Cardinals (1988–present)
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Phoenix/Arizona Cardinals (1988–present)
Not long after the end of the 1987 NFL season, Bidwill agreed to move to Phoenix on a handshake deal with state and local officials, and the team became the Phoenix Cardinals. The team changed their name to the Arizona Cardinals on March 17, 1994.
The Cardinals hired Vince Tobin as head coach prior to the 1996 season. In his first season, he led the team to a 7–9 mark in the 1996 season. The team regressed in the 1997 season with a 4–12 record. The 1998 NFL season saw the Cardinals break two long droughts, qualifying for the playoffs for the first time in 16 years. The team got their first postseason win since 1947 by defeating the Dallas Cowboys 20–7 in the wild-card round of the playoffs. The Cardinals saw their run end in the Divisional Round with a 41–21 loss to the Minnesota Vikings. The Cardinals regressed to a 6–10 record in the 1999 season. In the 2000 season, Tobin was fired after a 2–5 start. Dave McGinnis finished the season out with a 1–8 record.
Prior to the 2001 season, the Cardinals named McGinnis as their full-time head coach. He coached for three seasons, regressing each year record-wise. He was fired by the team following the 2003 season.
Prior to the 2004 season, the Cardinals hired Dennis Green as head coach. He coached the team to three consecutive losing seasons before being fired following the 2006 season.
The Cardinals hired Ken Whisenhunt as head coach prior to the 2007 season. In his first season with the team, Whisenhunt led the Cardinals to a 8–8 record in the 2007 season. In the 2008 postseason, the Cardinals, led by quarterback Kurt Warner, won the Wild Card Round over the Atlanta Falcons, the Divisional Round against the Carolina Panthers, and the NFC Championship Game against the Philadelphia Eagles to advance to the Super Bowl for the first time in their history. They lost Super Bowl XLIII 27–23 to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the final seconds of the game.
After their historic 2008 season, the Cardinals posted a 10–6 record in , their first season with 10 wins in Arizona. The Cardinals clinched their second consecutive NFC West title but were defeated by eventual Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints, 45–14 in the divisional playoffs. After the 2012 season, the Cardinals fired Whisenhunt as head coach. Prior to the 2013 season, the team hired Bruce Arians as head coach. Arians' first season with the team saw the Cardinals go 10–6 but miss the postseason in 2013. The next time they would make the playoffs would be in , as a wild card. They set the best regular-season record in their history in Arizona at 11–5 but were defeated by the 7–8–1 NFC South champions, the Carolina Panthers.
The next year, the Cardinals set a franchise-best 13–3 record and clinched their first-ever first-round playoff bye as the NFC's second seed. They defeated the Green Bay Packers 26–20 in overtime, giving quarterback Carson Palmer his first playoff victory. The Cardinals then advanced to their second NFC Championship Game in their history but were blown out by the top-seeded 15–1 Panthers 49–15, committing seven turnovers.
The Cardinals then fell to 7–8–1 in and 8–8 in . After the 2017 season, Arians retired as head coach. The Cardinals hired Steve Wilks to be the head coach prior to the 2018 season. The team dropped to a 3–13 record in , tying the franchise record set in for the worst record in a 16-game season. Wilks was fired following the season. The Cardinals hired Kliff Kingsbury as head coach prior to the 2019 season. At the 2019 NFL Draft, the Cardinals used the top overall pick in the draft on Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray. The team improved to 5–10–1 in and 8–8 in . In , the Cardinals went 11–6, posting a winning record and returning to the postseason for the first time since 2015, but lost to the Los Angeles Rams in the Wild Card round. They failed to improve their record in 2022, dropping to the bottom of NFC West at 4–13, and missing the playoffs. Kingsbury was fired as head coach following the 2022 season. Under first year head coach Jonathan Gannon, the Cardinals once again finished in fourth in the NFC West with a 4–13 record in 2023.
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Arizona Cardinals
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Logos and uniforms
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Logos and uniforms
thumb|left|150px|Phoenix Cardinals uniform: 1989–1995
thumb|left|150px|Arizona Cardinals uniform: 1996–2004
thumb|left|150px|Arizona Cardinals uniform: 2005–2022
Starting in , the team had a logo of a cardinal bird (pyrrhuloxia) perched on the laces of a football.
The Cardinals moved to Arizona in , and the flag of Arizona was added to the sleeves the following year. In , the team began wearing red pants with their white jerseys, as new coach Joe Bugel wanted to emulate his former employer, the Washington Redskins, who at the time wore burgundy pants with their white jerseys (the Redskins later returned to their 1970s gold pants with all their jerseys).
In , the Cardinals participated in the NFL's 75th-anniversary throwback uniform program. The jerseys were similar to those of the 1920s Chicago Cardinals, with an interlocking "CC" logo and three stripes on each sleeve. The uniform numbers were moved to the right chest. The pants were khaki to simulate the color and material used in that era. The Cardinals also stripped the logos from their helmets for two games: at Cleveland and home vs. Pittsburgh.
thumb|150px|Chicago Cardinals logo.
The Cardinal head on the helmet also appeared on the sleeve of the white jersey from 1982 to 1995. In 1996, the state flag of Arizona was moved higher on the sleeve after the Cardinal head was eliminated as sleeves on football jerseys became shorter, and black was removed as an accent color, instead replaced with a blue to match the predominant color of the state flag. In 2002, the Cardinals began to wear all-red and all-white combinations, and continued to do so through 2004, prior to the team's makeover.
In , the team unveiled its first major changes in a century. The cardinal-head logo was updated to look sleeker and meaner than its predecessor. Numerous fans had derisively called the previous version a "parakeet". Black again became an accent color after an eight-year absence, while trim lines were added to the outside shoulders, sleeves, and sides of the jerseys and pants. Both the red and white jerseys have the option of red or white pants.
Hoping to break a six-game losing streak, the Cardinals wore the red pants for the first time on October 29, 2006, in a game at Lambeau Field against the Green Bay Packers. The Packers won 31–14, and the Cards headed into their bye week with a 1–7 mark. Following the bye week, the Cardinals came out in an all-red combination at home against the Dallas Cowboys and lost, 27–10. Arizona did not wear the red pants for the remainder of the season and won four of their last seven games. However, the following season, in , the Cardinals again wore their red pants for their final 3 home games. They wore red pants with white jerseys in games on the road at the Cincinnati Bengals and Seattle Seahawks. They paired red pants with red jerseys, the all-red combination, for home games against the Detroit Lions, San Francisco 49ers, Cleveland Browns, and St. Louis Rams. The red pants were not worn at all in , but they were used in home games against Seattle, Minnesota, and St. Louis in . The red pants were paired with the white road jersey for the first time in three years during a 2010 game at Carolina, but the white jersey/red pants combination was not used again until 2018, when they broke out the combination against the Kansas City Chiefs.
The Cardinals' first home game in Arizona, in 1988, saw them play in red jerseys. Thereafter, for the next 18 years in Arizona, the Cardinals, like a few other NFL teams in warm climates, wore their white jerseys at home during the first half of the season—forcing opponents to suffer in their darker jerseys during Arizona autumns that frequently see temperatures over 100 °F (38 °C). However, this tradition did not continue when the Cardinals moved from Sun Devil Stadium to State Farm Stadium in 2006, as early-season games (and some home games late in the season) were played with the roof closed. With the temperature inside at a comfortable 70 °F (21 °C), the team opted to wear red jerseys at home full-time. The Cardinals wore white jerseys at home for the first time at State Farm Stadium on August 29, 2008, in a preseason game against the Denver Broncos.
The Cardinals wore white at home for the first time in a regular-season game at State Farm Stadium against the Houston Texans on October 11, . In October 2009, the NFL recognized Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and players wore pink-accented items, including gloves, wristbands, and shoes. The team thought the pink accents looked better with white uniforms than with red.
From 1970 through 1983, and again in many seasons between 1989 and 2002, the Cardinals would wear white when hosting the Dallas Cowboys in order to force the Cowboys to don their "jinxed" blue jerseys. They have not done this since moving into State Farm Stadium, however.
The season saw the Cardinals debut a new, alternate black jersey. In , the Cardinals debuted an all-black set for the NFL Color Rush program. While the regular black alternates featured white lettering and are paired with white pants, the Cardinals' Color Rush alternates used red lettering and black pants for the occasion. Starting in 2022, both black uniforms would be paired with an alternate black helmet with black facemasks.
Before the season, the Cardinals unveiled new uniforms. Most notably, the team opted to wear all-red uniforms at home and all-white uniforms on the road, with all-black uniforms as the alternate. The red uniform featured the state name in front in addition to white numbers with silver trim. The white uniform featured red numbers with black trim, and red and silver stripes along the pants and sleeves. The black alternate uniform design mirrored that of the white uniform, featuring red numbers with silver trim, and red and silver stripes along the pants and sleeves. On both uniforms, the silver sleeve stripe contained the team name. Both the red and white uniforms are worn with white helmets and silver facemasks, while the black uniform is worn with the black helmets from 2022. The new helmets featured silver flakes while the black helmet had red flakes in them.
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