Sir Nicholas Robert Hytner ( ; born 7 May 1956) is an English theatre director, film director, and film producer. He was previously the Artistic Director of London's National Theatre. His major successes as director include Miss Saigon, The History Boys and One Man, Two Guvnors. He has also known for directing films such as The Madness of King George (1994), The Crucible (1996), The History Boys (2006), and The Lady in the Van (2015). Hytner was knighted in the 2010 New Year Honours for services to drama by Queen Elizabeth II.

Early life and education
Hytner was born in the prosperous suburbs of south Manchester in 1956, to barrister Benet Hytner and his wife, Joyce. He is the eldest child of four, and has described his upbringing as being in "a typical Jewish, cultured family".

He attended Manchester Grammar School and went to university at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he studied English. He did some acting whilst at university, including co-scripting and performing in a televised production of the 1977 Cambridge Footlights Revue. However, Hytner did not consider acting his strong point. "I think I was savvy enough when I went to Cambridge to discover I was a poor actor," he said later. He also did some directing, including a production of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.

Career

Early career
After leaving Cambridge, Hytner's first "proper paid job" was as assistant to Colin Graham at English National Opera. Some of his earliest professional directing work was in opera, including at Kent Opera, Wexford Festival Opera and a production of Rienzi at English National Opera. His first theatre productions were at the Northcott Theatre, Exeter. He then directed a series of productions at the Leeds Playhouse, including  The Ruling Class by Peter Barnes, an adaptation of Tom Jones and a musical version of Alice in Wonderland. In 1985 he became an Associate Director of the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, a position he retained until 1989.

Theatre director
Hytner was hired by producer Cameron Mackintosh to direct Miss Saigon, the next work from Les Misérables creators Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg. "I had seen several of Nick's opera productions – Handel's 'Xerxes' and Mozart's 'Magic Flute' – as well as some of his classical plays, and he has a marvellously visual point of view," Mackintosh said. For Hytner, "It just felt like a huge lark... It was gigantic, and I was into gigantic at the time, so I threw everything I knew at it. It was big, honest, moving, brash, kind of crazy. I had no idea that it would take off."

Hytner's London production of Miss Saigon opened on 20 September 1989, and closed on 30 October 1999 after just over ten years, on its 4,274th performance, having grossed more than £150 million in ticket sales during its London run. Hytner also directed the New York production, where the show recouped its $10.9m investment in 39 weeks. The show, at New York's Broadway Theatre, opened on 11 April 1991 and closed on 28 January 2001 after 4,092 performances.

Hytner was on a percentage for both London and New York productions, allowing him (then aged 34) to never need worry about money again. "It was a huge– a massive stroke of fortune," he said in 2010. "It meant that thereafter I only needed to do what I wanted to do."

What Hytner did was to continue directing theatre and opera, including several productions at London's National Theatre (where he had first directed in 1989 with Ghetto). In 1990, he was appointed an Associate Director of the National by its then-Director Richard Eyre. One of the plays he directed was Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III. When a film adaptation was commissioned, Bennett insisted Hytner should direct it, and the retitled The Madness of King George (1994) became Hytner's film debut.

In 1994, Eyre announced he would be leaving the National Theatre in three years' time. "[It] made me begin to think about the vision that is needed in such a position and the fact that this needs refreshing under every directorate. I very much felt that you had to have a big idea in order to put yourself forward for such a role and as I didn't have this kind of idea at that time, I decided not to apply," Hytner said later. He continued as an Associate Director at the National until 1997, when the new Director, Trevor Nunn, took up his post.

Hytner directed more films: The Crucible (1996) with Daniel Day-Lewis, The Object of My Affection (1998) and Center Stage (2000). The last of these was not an adaptation from a play or novel, having been based on an original screenplay. He also spent 15 months developing a film of the musical Chicago, to star Madonna, but the project foundered and was later made with a different director and cast.

National Theatre Director (2003-15)
When Trevor Nunn announced that he would be leaving the National Theatre, Hytner "really felt that this time I had a strong sense of what the NT should be doing under a new Director. I had a long conversation with Christopher Hogg, then Chairman of the NT Board, and Tom Stoppard about my ideas for the NT's future. These included a redefinition of how it might be possible to use the theatre spaces and opening up the NT to new audiences by lowering prices for some performances." Hytner was successful in his application for the post, and his appointment as Director was announced in September 2001. He took over from Nunn in April 2003.

Hytner's role as Director of the National involves decisions about what plays are staged. "Essentially what I do is produce 20 shows a year here," he stated in one interview. "To produce as opposed to direct, as I generate the ideas, generate the repertoire. What I do is put together the team that are going to stage the repertoire together then stand back and come in at a later stage to see how it's all going." (Hytner does also direct plays himself at the National, and all his theatre work since 2003 has originated there.) But his role is also about the overall direction of the National Theatre as an organisation. "It would be wrong to say that I confine myself only to the repertoire – I don't. I think how we allocate our resources, exactly what we spend money on, is always an artistic decision. I think the amount of attention we give to what goes on in the foyers, what goes on outside, how the building looks at night, the amount of attention we give to our education work and our website are all artistic matters. They all stem from a sense of the artistic direction of the organization."

Under Hytner's directorship, the National has innovated with Sunday openings, live cinema broadcasts of NT plays around the world, National Theatre Live, and with its reduced price ticket seasons. These seasons, sponsored by Travelex, have offered large numbers of reduced price seats (for £10 when the scheme was introduced in 2003, with prices rising to £12 from 2011). The reduced price seasons were credited with achieving high usage for the Olivier auditorium – between 90% and 100% full during the summer months compared to a historic average of 65%, with no loss in overall income, and with encouraging a younger and more diverse audience. In 2003 it was reported that one third of the audience for the multiracial production of Henry V in modern dress (directed by Hytner) had never been to the theatre before, and that a large section of the audience for the drama Elmina's Kitchen were Black east Londoners new to the National.

Hytner has said that this diversity is a consequence of the theatre's direction rather than the motivation for it. "I think our repertoire is more diverse than it's ever been," he said, "and I think that reflects a more diverse society and a more diverse audience. The aim, though, was not to go out and find a diverse audience but for the repertoire to reflect a greater diversity in our culture." He has also said: "The rep[ertoire] should reflect the world we're part of, and it should put the society in which we live in the context of the past and, as far as we can, of the wider world."

Hytner's latest innovation is NT Future, a £70 million scheme (of which £59 million had been raised at October 2012) to open up the National's building and to contribute to the regeneration of the South Bank, to transform facilities for education and participation, and to keep ahead of new technologies and the changing needs of theatre artists and audiences.

Hytner stated as early as 2010 that he did not wish to stay as head of the National indefinitely, saying, "I've been here seven years. My predecessors have averaged 12. It's important that someone else comes in and shakes it up again so I won't be here in 10 years, that's for sure." In April 2013, he announced that he would step down as Director of the National Theatre at the end of March 2015. In his role as Director of National Theatre, he appeared on the Cultural Exchange as part of the Radio Four programme Front Row, where he chose The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart as his work of art.

The London Theatre Company and Bridge Theatre (2017-present)
Following the National Theatre, Hytner and Nick Starr founded the London Theatre Company and a new 900-seat adaptable commercial theatre the Bridge Theatre near Tower Bridge, which opened in October 2017. Hytner directed the inaugural production of Young Marx.

Opera and film
Hytner has worked extensively in opera, with many of his productions achieving critical acclaim and commercial success – his English National Opera staging of The Magic Flute was in repertory for 25 years. But Hytner has described himself (to an opera-related audience) as "someone who is unimpressed by his own work on the operatic stage".

Similarly, most of Hytner's films have achieved critical and commercial success, with The Madness of King George winning BAFTA and Evening Standard awards for best British film, but he still sees himself as primarily a theatre practitioner. "I think I'm a theatre director who does other stuff," he has said. "I can't see myself as a film-maker. I love doing opera when ever I've done it, but I always see myself as visiting from the theatre, which is where I belong. The real film-maker thinks with a camera, which is something I just can't do."

Personal life
Hytner is gay. Although brought up in a Jewish household, Hytner said in 2010, "I'm not a believer, but I do think it is a significant part of my adventure and it fascinates me. I couldn't say I'm a member of the Jewish community or gay community in that I don't seek out either of those communities to hang out with, but it is an important part of who I believe myself to [be]."

Hytner's mother, Joyce Hytner OBE, is a theatrical fundraiser, who has served on the board of many organisations including The Old Vic, the Criterion Theatre, the Royal Court Theatre and Historic Royal Palaces.

Filmography

Film
As a Director

Theatre

Opera

Awards and honours
Hytner is on the Board of Trustees of the Royal Opera House. He is a patron of many organisations including London International Festival of Theatre, HighTide Festival Theatre, the Shakespeare Schools Festival, Dance UK, Action for Children's Arts, Pan Intercultural Arts and Prisoners' Penfriends.

He was elected an Honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 2005, and was Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University in 2000–01.

Hytner was knighted in the 2010 New Year Honours for services to drama. In Spring 2014, the Royal Northern College of Music announced it was to confer Honorary Membership of the College upon Hytner. In 2014 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Arts.

References

External links

1956 births
Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge
English Jews
English film directors
English theatre directors
English theatre managers and producers
Fellows of St Catherine's College, Oxford
Knights Bachelor
British LGBT film directors
LGBT theatre directors
Gay Jews
English gay men
Living people
People educated at Manchester Grammar School
People from Didsbury
Tony Award winners
Fellows of King's College London
20th-century English LGBT people
21st-century English LGBT people

Nicholas Hytner


The Mitsubishi K3M is a Japanese training aircraft used during World War II. It is a single-engine aircraft built of metal and wood, for a crew of four people. Its first flight was in 1930. It was used by Japan Naval Aviation from 1931 to 1945. It was known as Pine by Allies of World War II registration.

World War II Japanese aircraft

Mitsubishi K3M


Herbert W. Boyer (born July 10, 1936 in Derry, Pennsylvania) received the 1990 National Medal of Science, and is a co-founder of Genentech. He served as Vice President of Genentech from 1976 until his retirement in 1991.

With Stanley Cohen, he did possibly the first piece of genetic engineering.

Career
Boyer was a Professor of Biochemistry from 1976 to 1991, where he discovered that genes from bacteria could be combined with genes from eukaryotes. In 1977, Boyer's laboratory and collaborators described the first-ever synthesis and expression of a peptide-coding gene. In August 1978, he produced synthetic insulin using his new transgenic genetically modified bacteria, followed in 1979 by a growth hormone.

In 1976, Boyer founded Genentech with venture capitalist Robert A. Swanson.  Genentech's approach to the first synthesis of insulin beat Walter Gilbert's approach at Biogen which used genes from natural sources. Boyer built his gene from its individual nucleotides.

In 1990, Boyer and his wife Grace gave the single largest donation ($10,000,000) bestowed on the Yale School of Medicine by an individual. The Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine was named after the Boyer family in 1991.

In 2007, St. Vincent College announced that they had renamed the School of Natural Science, Mathematics, and Computing the Herbert W. Boyer School.

Boyer is on the Board of Scientific Governors of The Scripps Research Institute.

Awards
1980 the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
1989 the National Medal of Technology
1990 the National Medal of Science from President George H. W. Bush
2009 CSHL Double Helix Medal Honoree

References

1936 births
American biochemists
American civil rights activists
Living people
Scientists from Pittsburgh

Herbert Boyer


In aphasia (sometimes called dysphasia), a person may be unable to comprehend or unable to formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine but aphasia due to stroke is estimated to be 0.1–0.4% in the Global North. Aphasia can also be the result of brain tumors, epilepsy, brain damage and brain infections, or neurodegenerative diseases (such as dementias).

To be diagnosed with aphasia, a person's language must be significantly impaired in one (or more) of the four aspects of communication. Alternatively, in the case of progressive aphasia, it must have significantly declined over a short period of time. The four aspects of communication are spoken language production and comprehension, and written language production and comprehension, impairments in any of these aspects can impact on functional communication.

The difficulties of people with aphasia can range from occasional trouble finding words, to losing the ability to speak, read, or write; intelligence, however, is unaffected. Expressive language and receptive language can both be affected as well. Aphasia also affects visual language such as sign language. In contrast, the use of formulaic expressions in everyday communication is often preserved. For example, while a person with aphasia, particularly expressive aphasia (Broca's aphasia), may not be able to ask a loved one when their birthday is, they may still be able to sing "Happy Birthday". One prevalent deficit in the aphasias is anomia, which is a difficulty in finding the correct word.

With aphasia, one or more modes of communication in the brain have been damaged and are therefore functioning incorrectly. Aphasia is not caused by damage to the brain that results in motor or sensory deficits, which produces abnormal speech; that is, aphasia is not related to the mechanics of speech but rather the individual's language cognition (although a person can have both problems, as an example, if they have a haemorrhage that damaged a large area of the brain). An individual's language is the socially shared set of rules, as well as the thought processes that go behind communication (as it affects both verbal and nonverbal language). It is not a result of a more peripheral motor or sensory difficulty, such as paralysis affecting the speech muscles or a general hearing impairment.

Neurodevelopmental forms of auditory processing disorder are differentiable from aphasia in that aphasia is by definition caused by acquired brain injury, but acquired epileptic aphasia has been viewed as a form of APD.

Signs and symptoms
People with aphasia may experience any of the following behaviors due to an acquired brain injury, although some of these symptoms may be due to related or concomitant problems, such as dysarthria or apraxia, and not primarily due to aphasia. Aphasia symptoms can vary based on the location of damage in the brain. Signs and symptoms may or may not be present in individuals with aphasia and may vary in severity and level of disruption to communication. Often those with aphasia may have a difficulty with naming objects, so they might use words such as thing or point at the objects. When asked to name a pencil they may say it is a "thing used to write".

 Inability to comprehend language
 Inability to pronounce, not due to muscle paralysis or weakness
 Inability to form words
 Inability to recall words (anomia)
 Poor enunciation
 Excessive creation and use of personal neologisms
 Inability to repeat a phrase
 Persistent repetition of one syllable, word, or phrase (stereotypies, recurrent/recurring utterances/speech automatism) also known as perseveration.
 Paraphasia (substituting letters, syllables or words)
 Agrammatism (inability to speak in a grammatically correct fashion)
 speaking in incomplete sentences
 Inability to read
 Inability to write
 Limited verbal output
 Difficulty in naming
 Speech disorder
 Speaking gibberish
 Inability to follow or understand simple requests

Related behaviors
Given the previously stated signs and symptoms, the following behaviors are often seen in people with aphasia as a result of attempted compensation for incurred speech and language deficits:
 Self-repairs: Further disruptions in fluent speech as a result of mis-attempts to repair erred speech production.
 Struggle in non-fluent aphasias: A severe increase in expelled effort to speak after a life where talking and communicating was an ability that came so easily can cause visible frustration.
 Preserved and automatic language: A behavior in which some language or language sequences that were used so frequently prior to onset are still produced with more ease than other language post onset.

Subcortical
 Subcortical aphasias characteristics and symptoms depend upon the site and size of subcortical lesion. Possible sites of lesions include the thalamus, internal capsule, and basal ganglia.

Cognitive deficits
While aphasia has traditionally been described in terms of language deficits, there is increasing evidence that many people with aphasia commonly experience co-occurring non-linguistic cognitive deficits in areas such as attention, memory, executive functions and learning. By some accounts, cognitive deficits, such as attention and working memory constitute the underlying cause of language impairment in people with aphasia. Others suggest that cognitive deficits often co-occur but are comparable to cognitive deficits in stroke patients without aphasia and reflect general brain dysfunction following injury. The degree to which deficits in attention and other cognitive domains underlie language deficits in aphasia is still unclear.

In particular, people with aphasia often demonstrate short-term and working memory deficits. These deficits can occur in both the verbal domain as well as the visuospatial domain. Furthermore, these deficits are often associated with performance on language specific tasks such as naming, lexical processing, and sentence comprehension, and discourse production. Other studies have found that most, but not all people with aphasia demonstrate performance deficits on tasks of attention, and their performance on these tasks correlate with language performance and cognitive ability in other domains. Even patients with mild aphasia, who score near the ceiling on tests of language often demonstrate slower response times and interference effects in non-verbal attention abilities.

In addition to deficits in short-term memory, working memory, and attention, people with aphasia can also demonstrate deficits in executive function. For instance, people with aphasia may demonstrate deficits in initiation, planning, self-monitoring, and cognitive flexibility. Other studies have found that people with aphasia demonstrate reduced speed and efficiency during completion executive function assessments.

Regardless of their role in the underlying nature of aphasia, cognitive deficits have a clear role in the study and rehabilitation of aphasia. For instance, the severity of cognitive deficits in people with aphasia has been associated with lower quality of life, even more so than the severity of language deficits. Furthermore, cognitive deficits may influence the learning process of rehabilitation and language treatment outcomes in aphasia. Non-linguistic cognitive deficits have also been the target of interventions directed at improving language ability, though outcomes are not definitive. While some studies have demonstrated language improvement secondary to cognitively-focused treatment, others have found little evidence that the treatment of cognitive deficits in people with aphasia has an influence on language outcomes.

One important caveat in the measurement and treatment of cognitive deficits in people with aphasia is the degree to which assessments of cognition rely on language abilities for successful performance. Most studies have attempted to circumvent this challenge by utilizing non-verbal cognitive assessments to evaluate cognitive ability in people with aphasia. However, the degree to which these tasks are truly 'non-verbal' and not mediated by language in unclear. For instance, Wall et al. found that language and non-linguistic performance was related, except when non-linguistic performance was measured by 'real life' cognitive tasks.

Causes
Aphasia is most often caused by stroke, where about a quarter of patients who experience an acute stroke develop aphasia. However, any disease or damage to the parts of the brain that control language can cause aphasia. Some of these can include brain tumors, traumatic brain injury, epilepsy and progressive neurological disorders. In rare cases, aphasia may also result from herpesviral encephalitis. The herpes simplex virus affects the frontal and temporal lobes, subcortical structures, and the hippocampal tissue, which can trigger aphasia. In acute disorders, such as head injury or stroke, aphasia usually develops quickly. When caused by brain tumor, infection, or dementia, it develops more slowly.

Substantial damage to tissue anywhere within the region shown in blue (on the figure in the infobox above) can potentially result in aphasia. Aphasia can also sometimes be caused by damage to subcortical structures deep within the left hemisphere, including the thalamus, the internal and external capsules, and the caudate nucleus of the basal ganglia. The area and extent of brain damage or atrophy will determine the type of aphasia and its symptoms. A very small number of people can experience aphasia after damage to the right hemisphere only. It has been suggested that these individuals may have had an unusual brain organization prior to their illness or injury, with perhaps greater overall reliance on the right hemisphere for language skills than in the general population.

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA), while its name can be misleading, is actually a form of dementia that has some symptoms closely related to several forms of aphasia. It is characterized by a gradual loss in language functioning while other cognitive domains are mostly preserved, such as memory and personality. PPA usually initiates with sudden word-finding difficulties in an individual and progresses to a reduced ability to formulate grammatically correct sentences (syntax) and impaired comprehension. The etiology of PPA is not due to a stroke, traumatic brain injury (TBI), or infectious disease; it is still uncertain what initiates the onset of PPA in those affected by it.

Epilepsy can also include transient aphasia as a prodromal or episodic symptom. However, the repeated seizure activity within language regions may also lead to chronic, and progressive aphasia.  Aphasia is also listed as a rare side-effect of the fentanyl patch, an opioid used to control chronic pain.

Diagnosis

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 3 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.

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.

It is important to note that 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.

Boston classification

 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.

Classical-localizationist approaches

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. 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.

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, 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.

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).

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. Facial communication is a significant portion of how animals interact with each other. Humans use facial movements to create, what other humans 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.

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.

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.

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. 3 or 6 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 naming
 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
 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. It 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 they 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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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", derived from ἄφατος aphatos, "speechless" from ἀ- a-, "not, un" and φημί phemi, "I speak".

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 languages.

The research being put into Aphasia has only just begun. Researchers appear to have multiple ideas on how Aphasia could be more effectively treated in the future.

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

Notes

References

External links

 National Aphasia Association

Alexia (condition)
Communication disorders
Language disorders
Symptoms and signs: Speech and voice

Aphasia


Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a 2019 animated crossover  superhero movie, directed by Jake Castorena, written by Marly Halpern-Graser, and produced by Warner Bros. Animation, DC Entertainment, and Nickelodeon. The movie is an adaptation of the six-issue inter-company crossover comic book miniseries Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by James Tynion IV and Freddie Williams II. The story focuses on Batman, Robin and Batgirl teaming up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in order to save Gotham City from chaos at the hands of both Shredder and Ra's al Ghul with their sect: the Foot Clan and the League of Assassins. The movie itself features the voices of Troy Baker, Darren Criss, Eric Bauza, Cas Anvar and Andrew Kishino.

The movie is the first collaboration between Warner Bros. and Nickelodeon, and was devised for the direct-to-video market. It was released on both Blu-ray and Digital HD on June 4, 2019. It was well-liked, and grossed over $3.8 million from sales.

Voice cast
 Troy Baker as Batman and Joker
 Eric Bauza as Leonardo
 Darren Criss as Raphael
 Baron Vaughn as Donatello
 Kyle Mooney as Michelangelo
 Ben Giroux as Damian Wayne / Robin
 Rachel Bloom as Barbara Gordon / Batgirl
 Brian George as Alfred Pennyworth
 Jim Meskimen as Commissioner Gordon and Dr. Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow
 Andrew Kishino as Oroku Saki / Shredder
 Cas Anvar as Ra's al Ghul
 Keith Ferguson as Dr. Baxter Stockman and Harvey Dent / Two-Face
 Tom Kenny as Oswald Cobblepot / Penguin
 Tara Strong as Dr. Harleen Quinzel / Harley Quinn, Dr. Pamela Isley / Poison Ivy and Pizza Delivery Girl
 John DiMaggio as Dr. Victor Fries / Mr. Freeze
 Carlos Alazraqui as Bane

Production

Development
Warner Bros. Animation was considering adaptations of Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Wonder Woman as possible direct-to-video movies. The animated adaptation of the miniseries was officially announced in February 2019 to be in production and was released later in the spring.

Casting
The initial announcement revealed Troy Baker would reprise his roles as both Batman from Batman: The Telltale Series video game and various Lego video games and movies, and the Joker from Batman: Arkham Origins, Batman: Assault on Arkham, and the Batman Unlimited series, making Baker the first actor to portray both characters in the same property. The movie also features Darren Criss and Eric Bauza reprising their roles as Raphael and Leonardo, while Kyle Mooney and Baron Vaughn voice Michelangelo and Donatello, respectively. Rachel Bloom voices Batgirl and Cas Anvar voices Ra's al Ghul. In addition, Tom Kenny, John DiMaggio, Carlos Alazraqui and Tara Strong reprise their roles as the Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Bane, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy from various DC properties. Other key cast members of the movie were revealed a month later, which consists of Ben Giroux as Robin, Andrew Kishino as the Shredder, Keith Ferguson as both Baxter Stockman and Two-Face, Brian George reprising his role as Alfred Pennyworth from Batman: The Killing Joke, and Jim Meskimen as both Commissioner James Gordon and the Scarecrow.

Release
The first trailer was released on March 12, 2019. The movie had its world premiere at WonderCon Anaheim 2019 on March 31. The movie was later released to Digital on May 14 on 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack and Blu-ray Combo Pack on June 4, 2019.

Critical reception
Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was well-liked. Based on 13 reviews collected on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has an approval rating of 100% with an average rating of a 7.47/10.

The movie earned $3,898,811 from domestic home video sales.

References

Other websites
DC page

Animated Batman movies
Animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies
English-language movies
Superhero crossover movies
2019 movies

Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles


DraftKings is an American daily fantasy sports contest and sports betting company. The company allows users to enter daily and weekly fantasy sports–related contests and win money based on individual player performances in five major American sports (the MLB, the NHL, the NFL, the NBA and the PGA), Premier League and UEFA Champions League football, NASCAR auto racing, Canadian Football League, the XFL, mixed martial arts (MMA), Boxing, Tennis, All Elite Wrestling (AEW), and WWE.

DraftKings launched DraftKings Sportsbook in New Jersey. Since launching in New Jersey, DraftKings has opened mobile sports betting operations in Connecticut, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New Hampshire on December 30, 2019 after reaching agreement with the New Hampshire Lottery.

As of April 2016, the majority of U.S. states consider fantasy sports (including daily fantasy sports) a game of skill, rather than gambling. In November 2016, FanDuel and DraftKings, the two largest companies in the daily fantasy sports industry, reached an agreement to merge. However, the merger was terminated in July 2017-- blocked by the Federal Trade Commission to prevent potential monopoly, as the combined company would have controlled 90 percent of the market for daily fantasy sports. As of July 2017, DraftKings had eight million users.

DraftKings became a publicly traded company through a reverse merger with SBTech, a Bulgarian technology company, and special-purpose acquisition company Diamond Eagle Acquisition Corp in April 2020.

History

DraftKings was established in 2012 by Jason Robins, Matthew Kalish, and Paul Liberman, former Vistaprint employees. The company initially operated out of Liberman's house. The company's first product was a one-on-one baseball competition, launched to coincide with Major League Baseball's opening day in 2012.

In April 2013, Major League Baseball invested in DraftKings, becoming the first US professional sports organization to invest in daily fantasy sports. The investment was not disclosed at the time.

In February 2014, it was reported that the company awarded $50 million in prizes in 2013 to players in weekly fantasy football, daily fantasy baseball, daily fantasy basketball and daily fantasy hockey. The company also reported 50,000 active daily users and as many as one million registered players.

In July 2014, it announced the acquisition of the third largest company, rival DraftStreet, owned at the time by New York media company IAC. The acquisition reportedly increased DraftKings' user base by 50%. The company announced it would keep the DraftStreet NY office open and retain some employees.

In August 2014, the company announced $41 million in funding from a variety of investors, including The Raine Group, as well as existing investors Redpoint Ventures, GGV Capital, and Accomplice. The company also announced that it was acquiring the assets of Somerville, MA, competitor StarStreet.

In November 2014, DraftKings reached a two-year deal to become the official daily fantasy sports service of the National Hockey League. The deal included sponsorships of video features and other content across the NHL's digital outlets, co-branded free games with fan-oriented prizes, and in-venue ad placements during marquee NHL events. Yahoo! Sports remained the league's official season-length fantasy sports provider.

In April 2015, DraftKings reached a similar deal with Major League Baseball. The agreement allowed DraftKings to offer co-branded MLB daily fantasy games and extend its relationships with individual MLB clubs to offer in-stadium fantasy-related experiences. The company also announced it had received $304 million in users' entry fees in 2014.

In July 2015, DraftKings entered into a three-year advertising deal with ESPN Inc. valued at $250 million. This deal included "integration" of the service within ESPN's television and digital content, and having exclusivity in advertising DFS services on its networks beginning in January 2016.

Also in July 2015, DraftKings announced a round of funding totaling $300 million, led by Fox Sports, along with the Kraft Group, owners of the New England Patriots, and Boston financial giant Wellington Management. The agreement included a condition stating that DraftKings would spend $250 million on advertising with Fox Sports over the next three years. Due to the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney in March 2019, Fox's stake is now owned by The Walt Disney Company.

In August 2015, DraftKings announced that it had been granted a license by the Gambling Commission to operate pool wagering services in the United Kingdom and that it planned to open an office in London. The company also hired Jeffrey Haas, a veteran of the online poker industry, to serve as Chief International Officer to lead the company's international expansion. DraftKings officially launched in the UK on February 5, 2016, with daily fantasy soccer. As part of the launch, DraftKings enhanced its handling of soccer on the platform to appeal to the local audience. The following year, DraftKings was subsequently awarded a controlled skill games license in Malta, which would allow the service to expand into any European Union country that allows gambling services to operate under licensing from another EU country, such as Germany.

On October 5, 2015, an article in The New York Times indicated that an employee at DraftKings admitted to inadvertently releasing data before the start of week three's NFL football games. That same employee had won $350,000 on rival fantasy site FanDuel the same week. An internal review concluded the employee obtained the data after lineups were locked and couldn't have used that data for an unfair advantage. Both DraftKings and FanDuel released statements saying that "Nothing is more important... than the integrity of the games we offer to our customers," and they would work with the entire fantasy sports industry "so that fans everywhere can continue to enjoy and trust the games they love." The following day, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman opened an inquiry into DraftKings and FanDuel, asking each site for a range of internal data and details on how they prevent fraud. ESPN announced on October 6 that they would no longer be running segments sponsored by DraftKings, though paid DraftKings advertisements would continue.

In February 2016, ESPN backed out of its advertising deal with DraftKings due to the legal uncertainties surrounding the service.

On May 2, 2016 attorney general Lawrence Wasden banned DraftKings and FanDuel from operating in Idaho, calling them illegal gambling.

On November 18, 2016, DraftKings and FanDuel announced their intent to merge. The combined company would serve over five million users. On June 19, 2017, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it would seek a preliminary injunction to block the proposed merger. The FTC felt that the proposed transaction would give the combined company 90% of the U.S. DFS market, which is considered to be a monopoly position. On July 13, 2017, the merger was officially called off due to the threat of litigation from the FTC.

In September 2017, DraftKings and FanDuel each paid $1.3 million to settle with the Massachusetts Attorney General's office over allegations of unfair and deceptive practices by the companies prior to 2016.

In 2021, Draftkings agreed to pay at least $50 million over a three-year period to distribute a sports and pop-culture podcast hosted by Dan Le Batard. The agreement marks the first major licensing deal struck by Meadowlark Media, founded by Le Batard. The podcast averages around 10 to 12 million downloads monthly. As of July 2021, DraftKings reached a market capitalization of $20.64 billion.

In December 2021, DraftKings was sued by Colossus Bets over patent infringement. Colossus claimed DraftKings infringed seven patents covering sports betting and gaming products with a cash-out feature.

In May 2022, it was announced that DraftKings had acquired the online casino and sports betting operator, Golden Nugget Online Gaming.

Expansion into sports betting in the U.S.
In May 2018, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States, allowing states outside of Nevada to legalize sports betting. In August 2018, DraftKings launched its first legal online sportsbook in New Jersey. Since launching in New Jersey, DraftKings has opened sports betting operations in New York, West Virginia, Indiana, Iowa, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Mississippi.

In April 2020, DraftKings completed a reverse merger valued at $3.3 billion that made it a publicly traded company. The merger involved Diamond Eagle Acquisition Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company that went public in May 2019, as well as SBTech Global Ltd., a Europe-based company providing technology solutions for sports betting businesses. The combined company keeps both DraftKings' name and its executive management. On April 24, 2020, the company's shares started trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol "DKNG". Hindenburg Research later published a report alleging that SBTech, which accounted for around 25% of DraftKing's revenue at the SPAC consummation, has ties to organized crime in Bulgaria and illegal gambling around the world.

In September 2020, retired NBA player Michael Jordan became an investor and board advisor at DraftKings.

References

External links

Browser-based game websites
Fantasy sports websites
Daily fantasy sports
Companies based in Boston
2012 establishments in Massachusetts
American companies established in 2012
Internet properties established in 2012
Sports apps
Sports betting
Companies listed on the Nasdaq
Special-purpose acquisition companies

DraftKings


Pretty. Odd. is the second music album from the rock band Panic at the Disco. It was released on March 25, 2008.

Production and marketing
Panic at the Disco began creating their new album after their first album, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out. While on tour for about two years, they had no new songs to perform. In January 2007 the band went into "hibernation" in a cabin (just outside the strip), as they began writing new songs for the next six months hoping for a second album to be released during fall 2007. On July 7, 2007 they played the song "It's True Love" live during their first performance since going into writing. Later that night however, the band decided that they did not like the music had written and scrapped all the songs they had written (which was about 3/4 of an album, as they were almost done recording).

A month later Panic announced two newly written songs, the first named "Middle of Summer" (later changed to "When the Day Met the Night"), and "Nine in the Afternoon". In December, a part of "Nine in the Afternoon" was played on an episode of the television show Heroes. Panic then began viral marketing, building puzzles on their official website. For about two weeks the puzzle gave snippets from an unknown song, along with the caption "YOU DONT HAVE TO WORRY...". On January 1, 2008, the snippets finally were revealed to be part of a new song entitled "We're So Starving". A rough version of this song was then released for listening on their official MySpace page, but was later pulled with the release of "Nine in the Afternoon". A review from NME magazine was published on the internet with descriptions of each song. These reviews show the big different direction that Panic have taken with their new album.

The band announced the title of the new album, Pretty. Odd., through their website on January 9, and dropped the "!" from their band name at the same time. The band explained by saying "We've just traded the exclamation point for a few periods."   They announced the next day that they would be headlining the Honda Civic Tour in support of the album. The band then began a second puzzle on January 17, challenging fans to find puzzle pieces scattered throughout Panic-related websites, in order to reveal the album cover. The cover was officially revealed on January 22. Four days later, a new scavenger hunt was hidden on the official site, showing the tracklist of the album and offering a prize to the first three people who could find all 15 song titles for the new album. This was completed later that day.

On January 28 the winners were revealed. That very same day, the band posted the final version of "Nine in the Afternoon" on their MySpace page. The band also revealed on their official site they were releasing a Deluxe Edition of Pretty. Odd. along with a version with a different artwork.

iTunes made the Deluxe Edition and Standard Edition of the album available for pre-order on January 29, 2008.

Track listing
"We're So Starving"
"Nine in the Afternoon"
"She's a Handsome Woman"
"Do You Know What I'm Seeing?"
"That Green Gentlemen (Things Have Changed)"
"I Have Friends in Holy Spaces"
"Northern Downpour"
"When the Day Met the Night"
"Pas de Cheval"
"The Piano Knows Something I Don't Know"
"Sushi in a Tuxedo in the Clams Casino" ("Behind the Sea" on iTunes and Fueled by Ramen's website)
"Folkin' Around"
"'Snooze Me, Ms. Britches" ("She Had the World" on iTunes and Fueled by Ramen's website)
"From a Mountain in the Middle of the Cabins"
"Mad as Rabbits"

Bonus tracks
"Nine in the Afternoon" (Radio mix) (Deluxe Edition bonus track)
"Nine in the Afternoon" (Alternate version) (Deluxe Edition bonus track)
"Do You Know What I'm Seeing?" (Alternate version) (iTunes Pre-order bonus track)
 "Behind the Sea" (Alternate version) (Deluxe Edition bonus track)
The deluxe iTunes version of "Pretty. Odd." also includes music videos for "Nine in the Afternoon" and "Mad as Rabbits".

Related pages
 Panic at the Disco

References

Pop punk albums
2008 albums
Panic! at the Disco albums

Pretty. Odd.


Conversazione in Sicilia () is a novel by the Italian author Elio Vittorini. It originally appeared in serial form in the literary magazine Letteratura in 1938–1939, and was first published in book form under the title Nome e Lagrime in 1941. The story concerns Silvestro Ferrauto and his return to Sicily after a long absence. Major themes of the work are detachment, poverty, exploitation and marital fidelity and respect.

Conversazione in Sicilia literally translates to English as Conversation in Sicily; English translations have appeared under that title and a variety of other titles, including In Sicily and Conversations in Sicily. The first US edition contains a foreword by Ernest Hemingway, reprinted in several later editions.

Plot summary
Silvestro Ferrauto is a Sicilian working as a typesetter in Milan, who beset by strange feelings of hopelessness, decides to visit Sicily after receiving a letter from his father which reveals that the father has abandoned Ferrauto's mother. Ferrauto has not visited Sicily since leaving at the age of 15 and ends up on the train to Sicily apparently without conscious thought. Ferrauto then has various conversations with a number of Sicilians on the way to, and in, Sicily. His return to Sicily and his new understanding of his mother from an adult point of view seems to calm his hopelessness. In a drunken state he seems to have a conversation with his dead brother, or at the age, he was when he was alive. The novel closes with his father sobbing in the kitchen whilst the mother scrubs his feet.

Characters
 Silvestro Ferrauto - the protagonist
 The Father - appears in the end while the mother is washing his feet
 The Wife - never appears in person
 Sicilian orange pickers - first conversation is with a Sicilian labourer
 "With Mustache" - a Sicilian policeman on the train, a state functionary
 "Without Mustache" - a Sicilian policeman on the train, a state functionary
 The Big Lombard - a Sicilian on the train
 Concezione Ferrauto - the mother
 Grandpa - the father of the mother, deceased
 Calogero - the Knife Grinder
 Ezechiele - the saddlemaker
 Porfirio - the draper
 Colombo - the vintner
 Liborio - the brother, deceased

Literary significance and criticism
The novel is usually interpreted by critics as either a criticism of fascist Italy, disguised by the use of allegoric figures and by the adoption of a non-realistic style, or as the chronicle of a dream-like voyage. Themes revolving around social injustice, which will be central in Vittorini's future work, are already present.

The protagonist and author share many of the same experiences - growing up in a railway family, travelling widely by rail around Sicily and Italy, working in northern Italy as a typesetter, and illness.

Adaptation
The novel serves as the basis for Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's film Sicilia!.

Footnotes

Conversations in Sicily, Elio Vittorini, translated by Alane Salierno Mason

1938 novels
20th-century Italian novels
Novels set in Sicily
Novels first published in serial form
Canongate Books books

Conversations in Sicily


Michael A. Lebowitz (November 27, 1937 – April 19, 2023) was a Marxist economist and Professor Emeritus of Economics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.

Early life
He was born in Newark, New Jersey, on 27 November 1937 to Louis Lebowitz (machinist) and Dora Lebowitz (bookkeeper). Ten years later, his family moved to Passaic, New Jersey, where he completed public school in 1955. He studied economics and marketing at the New York University School of Commerce at night while working days at Federal Pioneer Electric (FPE) as a statistical clerk and then market research analyst. Graduating cum laude with a BS in 1960, he went on to do graduate work in economics (with an emphasis upon economic history) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, earning a master's degree in 1964.

Career
In 1965, without completing his doctoral thesis, he took a job to teach economics and economic history at the new university in British Columbia, Canada, Simon Fraser University, where he specialized in teaching Marxist Economics and Comparative Economic Systems until his retirement in 2000 as Professor Emeritus.

Work
Lebowitz worked at FPE during the day at a time when the electrical products industry was engaged in price fixing and allocation of market shares while at night at NYU he was taught all about how prices were determined by competition in the free market. As a result of this disparity, he began to study Thorsten Veblen and Karl Marx, critics of mainstream theory, and to collaborate with Labor Research Associates, contributing several articles (as "an economist friend") in Economic Notes.

In order to study economic institutions such as the corporation, Lebowitz applied to the University of Wisconsin, which had a reputation for Institutional Economics. Finding that description no longer accurate, he focused upon economic history. While in Madison (1960-5), he was active in the Wisconsin Socialist Club, Fair Play for Cuba, Friends of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and joined the editorial board of Studies on the Left, a journal of the New Left. He was invited to co-chair the economics workshop for the 1962 Port Huron meeting of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which produced the Port Huron Statement of SDS. Subsequently, he was active in the Madison chapter of SDS and in antiwar activity.

Upon arriving at Simon Fraser in its first year of operation, he taught introductory economics and economic history but went on to teach the history of economic thought and comparative economic systems. He added a new course, Introduction to Marxist Economics plus periodic Selected Topics in Marxian Economics. Active in university politics, he was President of the Faculty Union (including many junior faculty) and on the University Senate, where he supported the Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology (PSA) department, which the university was determined to purge. After a failed strike of PSA faculty, he served as defense counsel for one of the suspended PSA faculty, who was acquitted.

Outside of the university, he was active in local community organizing and in the "Waffle Caucus'" of the New Democratic Party (NDP), was elected to the party executive in British Columbia and served as Party Policy Chair during the NDP government, 1972–5. Influenced by the Institute for Workers Control in the UK, he introduced party policies focused upon workers' control.

In 1978, he was invited to participate in the Socialism in the World Conference in Cavtat, Yugoslavia and was a regular participant until 1986 and used this opportunity to study self-management. Also, he joined the editorial board in 1980 of Studies in Political Economy. During this period, he used a sabbatical year to study Marx's newly translated Grundrisse and Hegel; this was followed by articles on Marx's theory of needs, the falling rate of profits, crisis theory, one-sided Capital and the first edition (1992) of Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class. In this book, Lebowitz introduced what would become a continuing theme in his work--- the focus upon the simultaneous changing of circumstances and self-change ("revolutionary practice").

In 1994, he participated in the World Solidarity Conference on Cuba in Havana (during the Special Period) and came several years after for the annual North American and Cuban Philosophers and Other Social Scientists meetings. In 1997 he came to Cuba to research the effect of the Special Period on solidaristic institutions, gave several talks at the Faculty of Economics, and met Marta Harnecker. He became a regular participant in the annual Globalization Conferences in Havana and organized international Marx Conferences in Havana in 2003, 2004 and 2006.

The revised edition of Beyond Capital was published in 2003, and it received the Deutscher Memorial Prize in 2004 for the best and most innovative writing in the Marxist tradition. 2003 was also the year Lebowitz and Harnecker (who had been invited by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to be an assistant) arranged to move to Venezuela; in 2004, Lebowitz became an assistant to Nelson Merentes, at that time Minister of the Social Economy of Venezuela. He gave talks there on Yugoslav self-management in 2004 and 2005 at the Workers Table of the International Solidarity Conferences, and one talk from 2005, "El Socialismo no Cae del Cielo", was widely read and published in several editions after President Chavez praised it on his weekly TV show, Alo Presidente. Several of these essays were incorporated in Build it Now: Socialism for the 21st Century, published in 2006.

In 2004, Harnecker and Lebowitz urged Chavez to create a thinktank which could be a home for foreign intellectuals who wanted to come to support the Bolivarian Revolution, and in 2006, Centro Internacional Miranda (CIM) was officially founded with offices and meeting rooms located at the Hotel Anauco, where they lived. At CIM, Lebowitz directed a program on Transformative Practice and Human Development and, with the help of several assistants, organized several conferences and invited speakers on this theme. During this period, he responded to several requests for papers from President Chavez, became an advisor to the Minister of Economic Development and Planning in 2008 and published several books in English (e.g., The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development) and in Spanish in Cuba and Venezuela.

In 2011 Harnecker and Lebowitz returned to Vancouver and proceeded to produce several books, one of which won her the Libertador Prize in 2013 for A World to Build: New Paths Toward Twenty-First Socialism (as published in English in 2015). When the substantial funds associated with this prize became available, they established a program in Cuba on Socialism for the 21st Century. Working with several Cuban intellectuals and with the support of the Venezuelan Embassy, beginning in 2016 the program organized several talks and panels and published a series of short books (including Lebowitz's "What is Socialism for the 21st Century?", later published in English). This venture was cut short when they returned to Vancouver for medical care for her cancer.

Awards
 Received the Deutscher Memorial Prize in 2004 for the best and most innovative writing in the Marxist tradition.
 A winner of the Distinguished Achievement Award of World Political Economy of the 21st Century, issued by the journal World Review of Political Economy.

Books
Lebowitz, Michael A. (2003). Beyond capital: Marx's political economy of the working class (2nd ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lebowitz, Michael A. (2006). Build it now: socialism for the twenty-first century. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Lebowitz, Michael A. (2009). The Path to Human Development: Capitalism Or Socialism?. Bangalore: Books for Change.
Lebowitz, Michael A. (2009). Following Marx: method, critique, and crisis. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
Lebowitz, Michael A. (2010). The socialist alternative: real human development. New York.
Lebowitz, Michael A. (2012). The contradictions of "real socialism": the conductor and the conducted. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Lebowitz, Michael A. (2015). The socialist imperative: from Gotha to now. New York.
Lebowitz, Michael A. (2020). Between capitalism and community. New York.

References

External links

1937 births
2023 deaths
Academic staff of Simon Fraser University
Marxian economists
Marxist theorists
American Marxists
American political writers
Canadian Marxists
Canadian political writers
Economists from New Jersey
New York University Stern School of Business alumni
People from Newark, New Jersey
People from Passaic, New Jersey
University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni
20th-century American economists
20th-century American Jews
20th-century Canadian Jews
20th-century Canadian economists
21st-century American economists
21st-century American Jews
21st-century Canadian Jews
21st-century Canadian economists

Michael A. Lebowitz


Norman N. Green (born June 12, 1934) is a shopping mall developer and owner from Calgary, Alberta. He was an original director and one of the principal investors in Sage Telecom, a private, telecommunications company operating in eleven US states. He was also chairman and sole owner of Stewart, Green Properties Ltd., which owned a group of private companies specializing in the development and management of major shopping centers in Canada and the U.S., owning and operating approximately  of commercial real estate. The former owner of the Minnesota North Stars franchise, he was a member of the National Hockey League Board of Governors from 1979 to 1996, serving on all of its strategic committees.

Career
In 1979, Green joined Harley Hotchkiss, Norman Kwong, Ralph Scurfield, B.J. Seaman, and Doc Seaman in buying the Atlanta Flames of the National Hockey League and moving them to Calgary as the Calgary Flames. His name was etched on the Stanley Cup when the Flames won it in 1989.

At the NHL's request, Green sold his stock in the Flames and bought the Minnesota North Stars in 1990 from George and Gordon Gund. He was the owner of the North Stars who made the decision to move the team to Dallas, Texas in 1993 despite the team making a Cinderella run to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1991. In 1993, he moved the North Stars to Dallas, Texas, citing poor attendance in Minnesota, and the team became rechristened as the Dallas Stars.

Two years later in December 1995, amid financial problems stemming from his business ventures outside of hockey, Green was forced to sell the Dallas Stars to Tom Hicks, with the sale closing in early 1996. When the Stars won the Stanley Cup in 1999, Hicks sent Green a championship ring in honor of his services to the franchise.

Green was chairman of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce in 1977 and renovated the former Oddfellows Temple that would become the Chamber's new home. and of the Hockey Hall of Fame historical building in downtown Toronto in 1997.

Controversy
After relocating the North Stars franchise to Dallas, the team's unauthorized use of copyrighted photography owned by Minnesota photographer Frank Howard sparked a copyright infringement lawsuit that eventually led to a $65,000 settlement funded by Green.

A 1993 Sports Illustrated article stated Green was much reviled in Minnesota following the decision to move the team. Green defended his decision, citing poor attendance during a string of losing seasons and the failure to reach stadium deals in Minneapolis or Saint Paul. A sexual harassment lawsuit had also been filed against Green, and his wife threatened to leave him unless he moved the team to avoid the increasing media pressure.

Other ventures
Green was an original director and one of the principal investors in Sage Telecom, a private, telecommunications company. He was a director of TIMET and the chairman and investor in Mirage Systems, and other smaller enterprises. He has been active in philanthropic and community service activities for over 30 years. Currently, he is a member of the executive committee of the board for the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University and Woodall Rogers Park Foundation, and a board member of the Bank of America advisory board central division.

Personal life
Green was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He lives in Dallas with his wife.

References

1934 births
Living people
Calgary Flames owners
Dallas Stars executives
Minnesota North Stars executives
National Hockey League executives
National Hockey League owners
Ice hockey people from Winnipeg

Norman Green