title: Tom Daley

text: In the British Gas Diving Championships held in Sheffield in June 2012, which were also the Olympic trials, Daley and Waterfield won the 10m synchro platform title with a new British record score of 475.77, more than 140 points ahead of silver medallists Daniel Goodfellow and Ross Haslam on 333.72. In the individual 10m championship, Daley regained the title for the first time since 2009 with a score of 547.60, ahead of Peter Waterfield on 452.80 and James Denny on 390.20.


title: Tom Daley

text: In Britain Daley had long been considered one of the "poster boys" of the 2012 Summer Olympics, (literally – an 80-foot tall banner depicting him adorned the John Lewis department store in Cardiff, while a 40-foot tall banner of his female equivalent, heptathlete Jessica Ennis, was on the Sheffield branch of the store chain.)


title: Tom Daley

text: It was hoped that the 10m men's synchronized platform event, on the first Monday of the Games, would provide Daley and Waterfield with an opportunity to supply Team GB's first medal of the Games. However, while the pairing was leading the competition after three dives, a poor reverse 3 1/2 somersaults with tuck in the fourth round put them out of contention and they ended the competition in fourth place on 454.65 points, behind the Chinese pairing of Cao Yuan and Zhang Yanquan on 486.78 points, the Mexican pairing of Iván García and Germán Sánchez on 468.90 points, and the US pairing of David Boudia and Nick McCrory on 463.47 points.


title: Tom Daley

text: Following this disappointment, there was controversy when Daley was the subject of some abusive Twitter messages, which resulted in the police arresting a 17-year-old boy in Weymouth, Dorset, and a 28-year-old professional footballer for publishing offensive messages.


title: Tom Daley

text: Returning to the Aquatics Centre on the final Friday of the Games for the 10m men's platform event, Daley initially gave his fans cause for concern with a poor performance in the preliminary round where he was ranked 15th of the 18 qualifying divers for the semi-final with 448.45 points (the eventual gold medal winner, David Boudia, ranked 18th). A much better performance in the semi-finals the next morning left Daley in fourth position on 521.10 points, behind Qiu Bo on 563.55, Lin Yue on 541.80, and Boudia on 531.15. The final round began in dramatic form when Daley's star status almost led to his undoing – a large number of camera flashes while he was diving distracted him and he only scored 75 points; a protest to the referee resulted in him being allowed to retake the dive, when he scored 91.80. By the beginning of the final round of dives in an enthralling contest, Daley was in the lead over Qiu Bo and David Boudia by 0.15 points, but Daley's final dive had a degree of difficulty of only 3.3 while his rivals both had 3.6 dives, and Daley won the bronze medal with 556.95 points while Boudia won gold with 568.65 points and Qiu Bo won silver with 566.85 points.


title: Tom Daley

text: At the 19th FINA World Junior Diving Championships, held in October 2012 in Adelaide, Australia, Daley led a strong British team and rather unexpectedly won the Boys "A" 3m synchronized springboard competition together with Jack Laugher, who had won the individual 3m competition, they had had little practice together. Daley and Laugher scored 338.85 points, over 30 points ahead of Ilia Kuzmin and Maxim Popkov.


title: Tom Daley

text: In the 10m individual platform event, Daley won the competition with a score of 663.95, ahead of Yang Jian on 611.95 and Chen Aisen on 597.20, scoring five 10's and two 9.5's on his fifth dive.


title: Tom Daley

text: In January 2013, Daley was involved in the ITV celebrity diving show "Splash!", where he was an expert adviser to the celebrity contestants. While the show got a largely negative critical response, it nevertheless got the largest ratings on each of the five Saturday nights it was broadcast, and was renewed for a second season in 2014. Daley was warned by British Swimming chief executive David Sparkes that taking part in the series would risk damaging his chances of winning an Olympic gold medal in the future.


title: Tom Daley

text: At the British Gas Diving Championships held at his home pool in Plymouth on 8–10 February, Daley only competed in the individual 10-metre platform event, which he won with 501.00 points, ahead of James Denny on 374.90 points and Daniel Goodfellow on 340.25 points. Daley did not compete in the 10m synchro platform event, as his partner Peter Waterfield had lost his funding following this Olympiad, and his future synchro partner had yet to be determined.


title: Tom Daley

text: Daley's participation in competitive diving in 2013 was seriously restricted by an injury in May. In April he won the 10m competition at the Edinburgh leg of the Diving World Series, but while subsequently training for the Diving Grand Prix event at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Daley injured his elbow and was forced to withdraw from the Fort Lauderdale competition and the subsequent DWS event in Mexico. In training for the 2013 World Championships, in Barcelona, Daley suffered a torn triceps for the third time, and only competed following intense medical attention and painkilling injections; he finished the individual 10m competition in 6th place.


title: Tom Daley

text: At the beginning of 2014 Daley moved his training base from the Life Centre in Plymouth to the London Aquatics Centre at the Olympic Park in east London, with a new coach, Jane Figueiredo.


title: Tom Daley

text: In January 2014 Daley was involved in the second series of "Splash!". Ratings were not as good as the first season, and the show was cancelled.


title: Tom Daley

text: In the FINA Diving World Series, Daley came third in the 10m platform competition at the Beijing round, scoring 525.05 points, behind China's Cao Yuan on 579.45 and Qiu Bo on 534.05 points.


title: Tom Daley

text: At the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Daley won a silver medal in the men's synchronized 10m platform with diving partner James Denny and gold in the men's 10m platform, with 516.55 points, retaining his title from the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in 2010.


title: Tom Daley

text: In August 2014 at the European Championships in Berlin, the Daley/Denny partnership finished fourth in the 10m platform synchro competition, in only their second competition, while Daley won the silver medal in the 10m platform competition, with 535.45 points, behind Russia's Viktor Minibaev who had 586.10 points.


title: Tom Daley

text: For the 2015 season, Daley dropped the "demon dive" (backward 2.5 somersault with 2.5 twists, piked) which he had experienced difficulty with for several years, and replaced it with a forward 3.5 somersaults with one twist, which he called his "firework" dive and displayed for the first time at the British championships in Plymouth in February.


title: Tom Daley

text: At the British championships held in his old home pool in Plymouth, Daley won the individual 10m platform title for the fifth time, with 493.70 points, ahead of 14-year-old Matthew Dixon on 427.15, and Matty Lee on 413.20.


title: Tom Daley

text: In the season's opening meet of the FINA Diving World Series, in Beijing, Daley conceded that the new dive still needed "work to be done" on it, as he failed to qualify for the final round. Overall, throughout the years' DWS meets, in the 10m platform competition Daley won the silver medal in the Dubai, Windsor, Ontario, and Mérida, Mexico legs, and gold in London, whilst with Alicia Blagg he won bronze in the mixed synchronized 3m springboard at Windsor and at Mérida.


title: Tom Daley

text: At the World Championships held in Kazan, Russia, Daley won the gold medal with Rebecca Gallantree in the inaugural team event competition (Daley diving twice from the 10m platform and once from the 3m springboard, Gallantree diving once from the platform and twice from the springboard). In the individual 10m platform event he later won the bronze medal with 537.95 points, behind Qiu Bo on 587.00 and David Boudia on 560.20, having recovered from being in ninth place after the second round.


title: Tom Daley

text: For the 2016 season Daley was paired with Daniel Goodfellow for the 10m men's platform synchro competition, with a view to competing in the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics in this sport.


title: Tom Daley

text: At the British National Diving Cup, the British Championships, held in January, Daley won a gold in the individual 10m platform competition with 545.80 points, ahead of Matty Lee on 461.00 and Dan Goodfellow on 419.35 points. In the synchronized 10m platform competition, Daley and Goodfellow won the competition, but they were the only entrants in the competition after Lee and James Denny withdrew following a power cut at the venue.


title: Tom Daley

text: Daley and Goodfellow got bronze at the 2016 FINA Diving World Cup, earning them a spot in the 10m synchro competition at the Olympic Games.


title: Tom Daley

text: At the 2016 FINA Diving World Series, which consisted of four competitions, Daley earned six medals. In the synchro event, he and Goodfellow medalled at each of the four competitions, earning two silver and two bronze medals. In the individual event, Daley earned a silver and a bronze medal.


title: Tom Daley

text: At the 2016 Summer Olympics, Daley and Goodfellow won a bronze medal in the synchronized 10m platform. In the individual 10m platform, Daley placed first in the preliminaries (with an Olympic record score of 571.85 points, which was later broken by Chen Aisen in the finals). However, he had difficulties the next day, placing 18th in the semi-finals and failing to qualify for the finals.


title: Tom Daley

text: In the 2017 FINA World Series, Daley took home 1 bronze medal in Beijing (10m Platform), 3 bronze medals in Kazan (10m Platform, 10m Synchro, and 3m Mixed), and one silver medal in Guangzhou (10m Platform). On 22 July 2017 he won the gold medal in the 10m platform event at the FINA World Championships held in Budapest.


title: Tom Daley

text: In the 2018 FINA Diving World Series, Daley won 1 silver medal and 1 bronze medal in Beijing (3m Mixed and 10m Synchro), 1 silver medal in Fuji (3m Mixed), 1 silver medal in Montreal (3m Mixed), and 1 silver medal in Kazan (3m Mixed).


title: Tom Daley

text: At the 2018 Commonwealth Games held at the Gold Coast, Australia, Daley and Goodfellow won gold on the men's synchronized 10-metres platform.


title: Tom Daley

text: Daley partnered with Matty Lee starting in October 2018 in the men's synchronized 10-metres platform. At the 2019 World Aquatics Championships held in Gwangju, South Korea, Daley and Lee finished in the bronze position in the 10m synchro.


title: Tom Daley

text: At the 2021 FINA Diving World Cup, which was held in Japan as an official test event for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Daley won his first World Cup gold with Matty Lee in synchronized 10m platform. He also won gold in the individual 10m platform. At the European Championships held in Budapest, Daley and Lee also won gold in synchronized 10m platform, and a silver in the individual 10m platform.


title: Tom Daley

text: On 26 July, Daley and Lee won the 2020 Olympic gold medal in the Men's synchronized 10 m platform diving event.


title: Tom Daley

text: On 7 August, Tom Daley qualified for the final of Men's individual 10m platform diving, improving on his performance in the individual event at Rio 2016. He went on to win bronze in the finals.


title: Tom Daley

text: Daley created a YouTube channel on 23 August 2010. His channel covers various topics such as vlogs, exercise and food. As of September 2021, Daley has over 1,200,000 subscribers with over 130 million views. On 2 December 2013, Daley released a YouTube video announcing that he had been in a relationship with a man since early that year. He said: "I've never been happier." Daley said that it had been a tough decision to speak out about his private life. He said: "I'd never felt the feeling of love, it happened so quickly, I was completely overwhelmed by it to the point I can't get him out of my head all the time." His husband is American Oscar-winning film screenwriter, director and producer Dustin Lance Black.


title: Tom Daley

text: In the video, he did not use the words "gay" or "bisexual". He said "Of course I still fancy girls." When asked about his sexual orientation in a July 2015 interview with "The Guardian", Daley said: "I don't put a particular label on any of it because right now I'm in a relationship with a guy, but I still have sexual feelings towards girls." When asked about his coming to terms with his same-sex attraction and his relationship with Black, he said: "I'd been in relationships with girls where I'd had sexual feelings, but it became so much more intense when I met Lance." In a 2018 interview with "PinkNews", Daley labelled himself as "queer", stating "I am not 100 percent straight; I am not 100 percent gay." Three years later, during a press conference after winning his first Olympic gold medal in Tokyo, he referred to himself as a "gay man".


title: Tom Daley

text: Daley and Black met at an industry event, with Daley later saying that it was "a real love-at-first-sight thing". He announced their engagement on 1 October 2015. Daley and Black married at Bovey Castle in Devon on 6 May 2017. On 14 February 2018, Daley announced via Instagram that he and Black were expecting their first child through surrogacy. Their son was born in June. The family lives in London. Daley and Black do not share pictures with their son's face online or on social media accounts.


title: Tom Daley

text: Daley likes to knit and crochet, hobbies he took up after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown began. During the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Daley unveiled an Olympic-themed knitted cardigan he had made. Television coverage of diving events frequently showed Daley knitting, in the stands, while he watched other athletes compete. He maintains a separate Instagram account dedicated to his knitting and crochet projects.


title: Tom Daley

text: In August 2014, Daley was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to "The Guardian" opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.


title: Tom Daley

text: In a statement made on the eve of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2018, Daley called on Commonwealth countries to repeal their anti-gay laws. In response, the-then UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told BBC Radio 1's "Newsbeat" that he would raise concerns about gay rights with leaders of countries where homosexuality is illegal. There have been repeated calls from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights for governments to safeguard the rights of their vulnerable LGBT minorities. Prime Minister Theresa May said she "deeply regretted" Britain's historical legacy of anti-gay laws across the British Commonwealth.


title: Tom Daley

text: In October 2021, Daley said he would make it his "mission" to campaign for countries where homosexuality is punishable by death to be banned from the next Olympics, "to make it so that the countries [where it's] punishable by death for LGBT people are not allowed to compete at the Olympic Games."


title: Tom Daley

text: In 2015, Daley became a patron of the LGBT+ charity Switchboard and collaborated with YouTuber Calum McSwiggan to relaunch the charity under its new name.


title: Tom Daley

text: On 30 September 2018, he was the guest on BBC Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs". His favourite choice was "How Long Will I Love You" by Ellie Goulding. His book choice was "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" by J. K. Rowling and his luxury item was an oven.


title: Tom Daley

text: Daley was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to diving, LGBTQ+ rights and charity.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The Los Angeles Times (abbreviated as LA Times) is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, Currently published by the California Times newspaper holding company, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States. The publication has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prize. Its owner is Patrick Soon-Shiong.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In the 19th century, the paper developed a reputation for civic boosterism and opposition to labor unions, the latter of which led to the bombing of its headquarters in 1910. The paper's profile grew substantially in the 1960s under publisher Otis Chandler, who adopted a more national focus. In recent decades the paper's readership has declined, and it has been beset by a series of ownership changes, staff reductions, and other controversies. In January 2018, the paper's staff voted to unionize and finalized their first union contract on October 16, 2019. The paper moved out of its historic downtown headquarters to a facility in El Segundo, near Los Angeles International Airport in July 2018.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The "Times" was first published on December 4, 1881, as the "Los Angeles Daily Times", under the direction of Nathan Cole Jr. and Thomas Gardiner. It was first printed at the "Mirror" printing plant, owned by Jesse Yarnell and T. J. Caystile. Unable to pay the printing bill, Cole and Gardiner turned the paper over to the Mirror Company. In the meantime, S. J. Mathes had joined the firm, and it was at his insistence that the "Times" continued publication. In July 1882, Harrison Gray Otis moved from Santa Barbara to become the paper's editor. Otis made the "Times" a financial success.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: Historian Kevin Starr wrote that Otis was a businessman "capable of manipulating the entire apparatus of politics and public opinion for his own enrichment". Otis's editorial policy was based on civic boosterism, extolling the virtues of Los Angeles and promoting its growth. Toward those ends, the paper supported efforts to expand the city's water supply by acquiring the rights to the water supply of the distant Owens Valley.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The efforts of the "Times" to fight local unions led to the bombing of its headquarters on October 1, 1910, killing twenty-one people. Two union leaders, James and Joseph McNamara, were charged. The American Federation of Labor hired noted trial attorney Clarence Darrow to represent the brothers, who eventually pleaded guilty.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: Otis fastened a bronze eagle on top of a high frieze of the new "Times" headquarters building designed by Gordon Kaufmann, proclaiming anew the credo written by his wife, Eliza: "Stand Fast, Stand Firm, Stand Sure, Stand True".


title: Los Angeles Times

text: After Otis's death in 1917, his son-in-law, Harry Chandler, took control as publisher of the "Times". Harry Chandler was succeeded in 1944 by his son, Norman Chandler, who ran the paper during the rapid growth of post-war Los Angeles. Norman's wife, Dorothy Buffum Chandler, became active in civic affairs and led the effort to build the Los Angeles Music Center, whose main concert hall was named the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in her honor. Family members are buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery near Paramount Studios. The site also includes a memorial to the Times Building bombing victims.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In 1935, the newspaper moved to a new, landmark Art Deco building, the Los Angeles Times Building, to which the newspaper would add other facilities until taking up the entire city block between Spring, Broadway, First and Second streets, which came to be known as Times Mirror Square and would house the paper until 2018. Harry Chandler, then the president and general manager of Times-Mirror Co., declared the Los Angeles Times Building a "monument to the progress of our city and Southern California".


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The fourth generation of family publishers, Otis Chandler, held that position from 1960 to 1980. Otis Chandler sought legitimacy and recognition for his family's paper, often forgotten in the power centers of the Northeastern United States due to its geographic and cultural distance. He sought to remake the paper in the model of the nation's most respected newspapers, such as "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post". Believing that the newsroom was "the heartbeat of the business", Otis Chandler increased the size and pay of the reporting staff and expanded its national and international reporting. In 1962, the paper joined with "The Washington Post" to form the Los Angeles Times–Washington Post News Service to syndicate articles from both papers for other news organizations. He also toned down the unyielding conservatism that had characterized the paper over the years, adopting a much more centrist editorial stance.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: Writing in 2013 about the pattern of newspaper ownership by founding families, "Times" reporter Michael Hiltzik said that:


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The first generations bought or founded their local paper for profits and also social and political influence (which often brought more profits). Their children enjoyed both profits and influence, but as the families grew larger, the later generations found that only one or two branches got the power, and everyone else got a share of the money. Eventually the coupon-clipping branches realized that they could make more money investing in something other than newspapers. Under their pressure the companies went public, or split apart, or disappeared. That's the pattern followed over more than a century by the "Los Angeles Times" under the Chandler family.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The paper's early history and subsequent transformation was chronicled in an unauthorized history, "Thinking Big" (1977, ), and was one of four organizations profiled by David Halberstam in "The Powers That Be" (1979, ; 2000 reprint ). It has also been the whole or partial subject of nearly thirty dissertations in communications or social science in the past four decades.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The "Los Angeles Times" was beset in the first decade of the 21st century by a change in ownership, a bankruptcy, a rapid succession of editors, reductions in staff, decreases in paid circulation, the need to increase its Web presence, and a series of controversies.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The newspaper moved to a new headquarters building in El Segundo, near Los Angeles International Airport, in July 2018.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In 2000, Times Mirror Company, publisher of the "Los Angeles Times", was purchased by the Tribune Company of Chicago, Illinois, placing the paper in co-ownership with the then WB-affiliated (now CW-affiliated) KTLA, which Tribune acquired in 1985.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: On April 2, 2007, the Tribune Company announced its acceptance of real estate entrepreneur Sam Zell's offer to buy the "Chicago Tribune", the "Los Angeles Times", and all other company assets. Zell announced that he would sell the Chicago Cubs baseball club. He put up for sale the company's 25 percent interest in Comcast SportsNet Chicago. Until shareholder approval was received, Los Angeles billionaires Ron Burkle and Eli Broad had the right to submit a higher bid, in which case Zell would have received a $25 million buyout fee.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In December 2008, the Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy protection. The bankruptcy was a result of declining advertising revenue and a debt load of $12.9 billion, much of it incurred when the paper was taken private by Zell.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: On February 7, 2018, Tribune Publishing (formerly Tronc Inc.), agreed to sell the "Los Angeles Times" along with other southern California properties ("The San Diego Union-Tribune", "Hoy") to billionaire biotech investor Patrick Soon-Shiong. This purchase by Soon-Shiong through his Nant Capital investment fund was for $500 million, as well as the assumption of $90 million in pension liabilities. The sale to Soon-Shiong closed on June 16, 2018.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In 2000, John Carroll, former editor of the "Baltimore Sun", was brought in to restore the luster of the newspaper. During his reign at the "Times", he eliminated more than 200 jobs, but despite an operating profit margin of 20 percent, the Tribune executives were unsatisfied with returns, and by 2005 Carroll had left the newspaper. His successor, Dean Baquet, refused to impose the additional cutbacks mandated by the Tribune Company.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: Baquet was the first African-American to hold this type of editorial position at a top-tier daily. During Baquet and Carroll's time at the paper, it won 13 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other paper except "The New York Times". However, Baquet was removed from the editorship for not meeting the demands of the Tribune Group—as was publisher Jeffrey Johnson—and was replaced by James O'Shea of the "Chicago Tribune". O'Shea himself left in January 2008 after a budget dispute with publisher David Hiller.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The paper's content and design style were overhauled several times in attempts to increase circulation. In 2000, a major change reorganized the news sections (related news was put closer together) and changed the "Local" section to the "California" section with more extensive coverage. Another major change in 2005 saw the Sunday "Opinion" section retitled the Sunday "Current" section, with a radical change in its presentation and featured columnists. There were regular cross-promotions with Tribune-owned television station KTLA to bring evening-news viewers into the "Times" fold.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The paper reported on July 3, 2008, that it planned to cut 250 jobs by Labor Day and reduce the number of published pages by 15 percent. That included about 17 percent of the news staff, as part of the newly private media company's mandate to reduce costs. "We've tried to get ahead of all the change that's occurring in the business and get to an organization and size that will be sustainable", Hiller said. In January 2009, the "Times" eliminated the separate California/Metro section, folding it into the front section of the newspaper. The "Times" also announced seventy job cuts in news and editorial or a 10 percent cut in payroll.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In September 2015, Austin Beutner, the publisher and chief executive, was replaced by Timothy E. Ryan. On October 5, 2015, the Poynter Institute reported that "At least 50' editorial positions will be culled from the "Los Angeles Times"" through a buyout. On this subject, the "Los Angeles Times" reported with foresight: "For the 'funemployed,' unemployment is welcome." Nancy Cleeland, who took O'Shea's buyout offer, did so because of "frustration with the paper's coverage of working people and organized labor" (the beat that earned her Pulitzer). She speculated that the paper's revenue shortfall could be reversed by expanding coverage of economic justice topics, which she believed were increasingly relevant to Southern California; she cited the paper's attempted hiring of a "celebrity justice reporter" as an example of the wrong approach.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: On August 21, 2017, Ross Levinsohn, then aged 54, was named publisher and CEO, replacing Davan Maharaj, who had been both publisher and editor. On June 16, 2018, the same day the sale to Patrick Soon-Shiong closed, Norman Pearlstine was named executive editor.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: On May 3, 2021, the newspaper announced that it had selected Kevin Merida to be the new executive editor. Merida is a senior vice president at ESPN and leads The Undefeated, a site focused on sports, race, and culture. Previously, he was the first Black managing editor at The Washington Post.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The "Times" has suffered continued decline in distribution. Reasons offered for the circulation drop included a price increase and a rise in the proportion of readers preferring to read the online version instead of the print version. Editor Jim O'Shea, in an internal memo announcing a May 2007, mostly voluntary, reduction in force, characterized the decrease in circulation as an "industry-wide problem" which the paper had to counter by "growing rapidly on-line", "break[ing] news on the Web and explain[ing] and analyz[ing] it in our newspaper."


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The "Times" closed its San Fernando Valley printing plant in early 2006, leaving press operations to the Olympic plant and to Orange County. Also that year the paper announced its circulation had fallen to 851,532, down 5.4 percent from 2005. The "Times"s loss of circulation was the largest of the top ten newspapers in the U.S. Some observers believed that the drop was due to the retirement of circulation director Bert Tiffany. Still, others thought the decline was a side effect of a succession of short-lived editors who were appointed by publisher Mark Willes after publisher Otis Chandler relinquished day-to-day control in 1995. Willes, the former president of General Mills, was criticized for his lack of understanding of the newspaper business, and was derisively referred to by reporters and editors as "The Cereal Killer".


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The "Times"s reported daily circulation in October 2010 was 600,449, down from a peak of 1,225,189 daily and 1,514,096 Sunday in April 1990.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In December 2006, a team of "Times" reporters delivered management with a critique of the paper's online news efforts known as the Spring Street Project. The report, which condemned the "Times" as a "web-stupid" organization, was followed by a shakeup in management of the paper's website, "www.latimes.com", and a rebuke of print staffers who were described as treating "change as a threat."


title: Los Angeles Times

text: On July 10, 2007, "Times" launched a local Metromix site targeting live entertainment for young adults. A free weekly tabloid print edition of Metromix Los Angeles followed in February 2008; the publication was the newspaper's first stand-alone print weekly. In 2009, the "Times" shut down Metromix and replaced it with "Brand X", a blog site and free weekly tabloid targeting young, social networking readers. "Brand X" launched in March 2009; the "Brand X" tabloid ceased publication in June 2011 and the website was shut down the following month.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In May 2018, the "Times" blocked access to its online edition from most of Europe because of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: It was revealed in 1999 that a revenue-sharing arrangement was in place between the "Times" and Staples Center in the preparation of a 168-page magazine about the opening of the sports arena. The magazine's editors and writers were not informed of the agreement, which breached the Chinese wall that traditionally has separated advertising from journalistic functions at American newspapers. Publisher Mark Willes also had not prevented advertisers from pressuring reporters in other sections of the newspaper to write stories favorable to their point of view.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: Michael Kinsley was hired as the Opinion and Editorial (op-ed) Editor in April 2004 to help improve the quality of the opinion pieces. His role was controversial, for he forced writers to take a more decisive stance on issues. In 2005, he created a Wikitorial, the first Wiki by a major news organization. Although it failed, readers could combine forces to produce their own editorial pieces. It was shut down after being besieged with inappropriate material. He resigned later that year.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The "Times" drew fire for a last-minute story before the 2003 California recall election alleging that gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger groped scores of women during his movie career. Columnist Jill Stewart wrote on the "American Reporter" website that the "Times" did not do a story on allegations that former Governor Gray Davis had verbally and physically abused women in his office, and that the Schwarzenegger story relied on a number of anonymous sources. Further, she said, four of the six alleged victims were not named. She also said that in the case of the Davis allegations, the "Times" decided against printing the Davis story because of its reliance on anonymous sources. The American Society of Newspaper Editors said that the "Times" lost more than 10,000 subscribers because of the negative publicity surrounding the Schwarzenegger article.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: On November 12, 2005, new op-ed editor Andrés Martinez announced the dismissal of liberal op-ed columnist Robert Scheer and conservative editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The "Times" also came under controversy for its decision to drop the weekday edition of the "Garfield" comic strip in 2005, in favor of a hipper comic strip "Brevity", while retaining it in the Sunday edition. "Garfield" was dropped altogether shortly thereafter.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: Following the Republican Party's defeat in the 2006 mid-term elections, an Opinion piece by Joshua Muravchik, a leading neoconservative and a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, published on November 19, 2006, was titled 'Bomb Iran'. The article shocked some readers, with its hawkish comments in support of more unilateral action by the United States, this time against Iran.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: On March 22, 2007, editorial page editor Andrés Martinez resigned following an alleged scandal centering on his girlfriend's professional relationship with a Hollywood producer who had been asked to guest-edit a section in the newspaper. In an open letter written upon leaving the paper, Martinez criticized the publication for allowing the Chinese wall between the news and editorial departments to be weakened, accusing news staffers of lobbying the opinion desk.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In November 2017, Walt Disney Studios blacklisted the "Times" from attending press screenings of its films, in retaliation for September 2017 reportage by the paper on Disney's political influence in the Anaheim area. The company considered the coverage to be "biased and inaccurate". As a sign of condemnation and solidarity, a number of major publications and writers, including "The New York Times", "Boston Globe" critic Ty Burr, "Washington Post" blogger Alyssa Rosenberg, and the websites "The A.V. Club" and "Flavorwire", announced that they would boycott press screenings of future Disney films. The National Society of Film Critics, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, New York Film Critics Circle, and Boston Society of Film Critics jointly announced that Disney's films would be ineligible for their respective year-end awards unless the decision was reversed, condemning the decision as being "antithetical to the principles of a free press and [setting] a dangerous precedent in a time of already heightened hostility towards journalists". On November 7, 2017, Disney reversed its decision, stating that the company "had productive discussions with the newly installed leadership at the "Los Angeles Times" regarding our specific concerns".


title: Los Angeles Times

text: Through 2014 the "Times" had won 41 Pulitzer Prizes, including four in editorial cartooning, and one each in spot news reporting for the 1965 Watts Riots and the 1992 Los Angeles riots.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In the 19th century, the chief competition to the "Times" was the "Los Angeles Herald," followed by the smaller "Los Angeles Tribune." In December 1903, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst began publishing the "Los Angeles Examiner" as a direct morning competitor to the "Times." In the 20th century, the "Los Angeles Express" was an afternoon competitor, as was Manchester Boddy's Los Angeles "Daily News", a Democratic newspaper.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: By the mid-1940s, the "Times" was the leading newspaper in terms of circulation in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. In 1948, it launched the "Los Angeles Mirror", an afternoon tabloid, to compete with both the "Daily News" and the merged "Herald-Express". In 1954, the "Mirror" absorbed the "Daily News". The combined paper, the "Mirror-News", ceased publication in 1962, when the Hearst afternoon "Herald-Express" and the morning "Los Angeles Examiner" merged to become the "Herald-Examiner". The "Herald-Examiner" published its last number in 1989. In 2014, the "Los Angeles Register", published by Freedom Communications, then-parent company of the "Orange County Register" was launched as a daily newspaper to compete with the "Times". By late September of the same year, the "Los Angeles Register" was folded.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: For 69 years, from 1885 until 1954, the "Times" issued on New Year's Day a special annual Midwinter Number or Midwinter Edition that extolled the virtues of Southern California. At first, it was called the "Trade Number", and in 1886 it featured a special press run of "extra scope and proportions"; that is, "a twenty-four-page paper, and we hope to make it the finest exponent of this [Southern California] country that ever existed." Two years later, the edition had grown to "forty-eight handsome pages (9×15 inches), [which] stitched for convenience and better preservation", was "equivalent to a 150-page book." The last use of the phrase "Trade Number" was in 1895, when the edition had grown to thirty-six pages split among three separate sections.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The Midwinter Number drew acclamations from other newspapers, including this one from "The Kansas City Star" in 1923:


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In 1948 the Midwinter Edition, as it was then called, had grown to "7 big picture magazines in beautiful rotogravure reproduction." The last mention of the Midwinter Edition was in a "Times" advertisement on January 10, 1954.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: Between 1891 and 1895, the "Times" also issued a similar Midsummer Number, the first one with the theme "The Land and Its Fruits". Because of its issue date in September, the edition was in 1891 called the Midsummer Harvest Number.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In 1903, the Pacific Wireless Telegraph Company established a radiotelegraph link between the California mainland and Santa Catalina Island. In the summer of that year, the "Times" made use of this link to establish a local daily paper, based in Avalon, called "The Wireless", which featured local news plus excerpts which had been transmitted via Morse code from the parent paper. However, this effort apparently survived for only a little more than one year.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In the 1990s, the "Times" published various editions catering to far-flung areas. Editions included those from the San Fernando Valley, Ventura County, Inland Empire, Orange County, San Diego County & a "National Edition" that was distributed to Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Bay Area. The National Edition was closed in December 2004.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: Some of these editions were succeeded by "Our Times", a group of community supplements included in editions of the regular Los Angeles Metro newspaper.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: A subsidiary, Times Community Newspapers, publishes the "Daily Pilot" of Newport Beach and Costa Mesa. From 2011 to 2013, the "Times" had published the "Pasadena Sun". It also had published the "Glendale News-Press" and "Burbank Leader" from 1993 to 2020, and the "La Cañada Valley Sun" from 2005 to 2020.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: On April 30, 2020, Charlie Plowman, publisher of Outlook Newspapers, announced he would acquire the "Glendale News-Press",


title: Los Angeles Times

text: "Burbank Leader" and "La Cañada Valley Sun" from Times Community Newspapers. Plowman acquired the "South Pasadena Review" and "San Marino Tribune"


title: Los Angeles Times

text: One of the "Times" features was "Column One", a feature that appeared daily on the front page to the left-hand side. Established in September 1968, it was a place for the weird and the interesting; in the "How Far Can a Piano Fly?" (a compilation of Column One stories) introduction, Patt Morrison wrote that the column's purpose was to elicit a "Gee, that's interesting, I didn't know that" type of reaction.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The "Times" also embarked on a number of investigative journalism pieces. A series in December 2004 on the King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles led to a Pulitzer Prize and a more thorough coverage of the hospital's troubled history. Lopez wrote a five-part series on the civic and humanitarian disgrace of Los Angeles' Skid Row, which became the focus of a 2009 motion picture, "The Soloist." It also won 62 awards at the SND awards.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: From 1967 to 1972, the "Times" produced a Sunday supplement called "West" magazine. "West" was recognized for its art design, which was directed by Mike Salisbury (who later became art director of "Rolling Stone" magazine). From 2000 to 2012, the "Times" published the "Los Angeles Times Magazine", which started as a weekly and then became a monthly supplement. The magazine focused on stories and photos of people, places, style, and other cultural affairs occurring in Los Angeles and its surrounding cities and communities. Since 2014, "The California Sunday Magazine" has been included in the Sunday "L.A. Times" edition.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In 1996, the "Times" started the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, in association with the University of California, Los Angeles. It has panel discussions, exhibits, and stages during two days at the end of April each year. In 2011, the Festival of Books was moved to the University of Southern California.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: Since 1980, the "Times" has awarded annual book prizes. The categories are now biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction, history, mystery/thriller, poetry, science and technology, and young adult fiction. In addition, the Robert Kirsch Award is presented annually to a living author with a substantial connection to the American West whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition".


title: Los Angeles Times

text: From 1957 to 1987, the "Times" sponsored the Los Angeles Times Grand Prix that was held over at the Riverside International Raceway in Moreno Valley, California.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The Times Mirror Corporation has also owned a number of book publishers over the years, including New American Library and C.V. Mosby, as well as Harry N. Abrams, Matthew Bender, and Jeppesen.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In 1960, Times Mirror of Los Angeles bought the book publisher New American Library, known for publishing affordable paperback reprints of classics and other scholarly works. The NAL continued to operate autonomously from New York and within the Mirror Company. In 1983, Odyssey Partners and Ira J. Hechler bought NAL from the Times Mirror Company for over $50 million.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: In 1967, Times Mirror acquired C.V. Mosby Company, a professional publisher and merged it over the years with several other professional publishers including Resource Application, Inc., Year Book Medical Publishers, Wolfe Publishing Ltd., PSG Publishing Company, B.C. Decker, Inc., among others. Eventually in 1998 Mosby was sold to Harcourt Brace & Company to form the Elsevier Health Sciences group.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: The Times-Mirror Company was a founding owner of television station KTTV in Los Angeles, which opened in January 1949. It became that station's sole owner in 1951, after re-acquiring the minority shares it had sold to CBS in 1948. Times-Mirror also purchased a former motion picture studio, Nassour Studios, in Hollywood in 1950, which was then used to consolidate KTTV's operations. Later to be known as Metromedia Square, the studio was sold along with KTTV to Metromedia in 1963.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: After a seven-year hiatus from the medium, the firm reactivated Times-Mirror Broadcasting Company with its 1970 purchase of the "Dallas Times Herald" and its radio and television stations, KRLD-AM-FM-TV in Dallas. The Federal Communications Commission granted an exemption of its cross-ownership policy and allowed Times-Mirror to retain the newspaper and the television outlet, which was renamed KDFW-TV.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: Times-Mirror Broadcasting later acquired KTBC-TV in Austin, Texas in 1973; and in 1980 purchased a group of stations owned by Newhouse Newspapers: WAPI-TV (now WVTM-TV) in Birmingham, Alabama; KTVI in St. Louis; WSYR-TV (now WSTM-TV) in Syracuse, New York and its satellite station WSYE-TV (now WETM-TV) in Elmira, New York; and WTPA-TV (now WHTM-TV) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The company also entered the field of cable television, servicing the Phoenix and San Diego areas, amongst others. They were originally titled Times-Mirror Cable, and were later renamed to Dimension Cable Television. Similarly, they also attempted to enter the pay-TV market, with the Spotlight movie network; it wasn't successful and was quickly shut down. The cable systems were sold in the mid-1990s to Cox Communications.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: Times-Mirror also pared its station group down, selling off the Syracuse, Elmira and Harrisburg properties in 1986. The remaining four outlets were packaged to a new upstart holding company, Argyle Television, in 1993. These stations were acquired by New World Communications shortly thereafter and became key components in a sweeping shift of network-station affiliations which occurred between 1994 and 1995.


title: Los Angeles Times

text: On January 19, 2018, employees of the news department voted 248–44 in a National Labor Relations Board election to be represented by the NewsGuild-CWA. The vote came despite aggressive opposition from the paper's management team, reversing more than a century of anti-union sentiment at one of the biggest newspapers in the country.


title: Space Needle

text: The Space Needle is an observation tower in Seattle, Washington, United States. Considered to be an icon of the city, it has been designated a Seattle landmark. Located in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood, it was built in the Seattle Center for the 1962 World's Fair, which drew over 2.3 million visitors.


title: Space Needle

text: The Space Needle was once the tallest structure west of the Mississippi River, standing at . The tower is wide, weighs , and is built to withstand winds of up to and earthquakes of up to 9.0 magnitude, as strong as the 1700 Cascadia earthquake.


title: Space Needle

text: The Space Needle features an observation deck above ground, providing views of the downtown Seattle skyline, the Olympic and Cascade Mountains, Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, Elliott Bay, and various islands in Puget Sound. Visitors can reach the top of the Space Needle by elevators, which take 41 seconds. On April 19, 1999, the city's Landmarks Preservation Board designated the tower a historic landmark.


title: Space Needle

text: The architecture of the Space Needle is the result of a compromise between the designs of two people, Edward E. Carlson and John Graham, Jr. The two leading ideas for the World Fair involved businessman Edward E. Carlson's sketch (on a napkin) of a giant balloon tethered to the ground (the gently sloping base) and architect John Graham's concept of a flying saucer (the halo that houses the restaurant and observation deck). Victor Steinbrueck introduced the hourglass profile of the tower. The Space Needle was built to withstand wind speeds of , double the requirements in the building code of 1962. The 6.8 Nisqually earthquake jolted the Needle enough in 2001 for water to slosh out of the toilets in the restrooms. The Space Needle will not sustain serious structural damage during earthquakes of magnitudes below 9.1. Also made to withstand Category 5 hurricane-force winds, the Space Needle sways only per of wind speed.


title: Space Needle

text: For decades, the hovering disk of the Space Needle was home to two restaurants above the ground: the Space Needle Restaurant, which was originally named Eye of the Needle, and Emerald Suite. These were closed in 2000 to make way for SkyCity, a larger restaurant that features Pacific Northwest cuisine. In 1993, the elevators were replaced with new computerized versions. The new elevators descend at a rate of .


title: Space Needle

text: On December 31, 1999, a powerful beam of light was unveiled for the first time. Called the Legacy Light or Skybeam, it is powered by lamps that total 85 million candela shining skyward from the top of the Space Needle to honor national holidays and special occasions in Seattle. The concept of this beam was derived from the official 1962 World's Fair poster, which depicted such a light source although none was incorporated into the original design. It is somewhat controversial because of the light pollution it creates. Originally planned to be turned on 75 nights per year, it has generally been used fewer than a dozen times per year. It did remain lit for eleven days in a row from September 11, 2001, to September 22, 2001, in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks.


title: Space Needle

text: A 1962 Seattle World's Fair poster showed a grand spiral entryway leading to the elevator that was ultimately omitted from final building plans. The main stairwell has 848 steps from the basement to the top of the observation deck.


title: Space Needle

text: At approximately , the Space Needle was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River at the time it was built by Howard S. Wright Construction Co., but is now dwarfed by other structures along the Seattle skyline, among them the Columbia Center, at . Unlike many other similar structures, such as the CN Tower in Toronto, the Space Needle is not used for broadcasting purposes.


title: Space Needle

text: Edward E. Carlson, chairman of the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle, had an idea for erecting a tower with a restaurant at the World's Fair. Carlson was president of a hotel company and was not recognized in art or design, but he was inspired by a recent visit to the Stuttgart Tower of Germany. Local architect John Graham soon became involved as a result of his success in designing Northgate Mall. Graham's first move was to alter the restaurant's original design to a revolving restaurant, similar to his previous design of the La Ronde tower restaurant at the Ala Moana Shopping Center in Hawaii.


title: Space Needle

text: The proposed Space Needle had no pre-selected site. Since it was not financed by the city, land had to be purchased within the fairgrounds. The investors had been unable to find suitable land and the search for a site was nearly dead when, in 1961, they discovered a lot, , containing switching equipment for the fire and police alarm systems. The land, which originally had the neighborhood's fire station until 1921, was sold by the city for $75,000. At this point, only one year remained before the World's Fair would begin. The Needle was privately financed and built by the Pentagram Corporation, consisting of Bagley Wright, contractor Howard S. Wright, architect John Graham, Ned Skinner, and Norton Clapp. In 1977 Bagley, Skinner and Clapp sold their interest to Howard Wright who now controls it under the name of Space Needle Corporation.


title: Space Needle

text: The earthquake stability of the Space Needle was ensured when a hole was dug deep and across, and 467 concrete trucks took one full day to fill it. The foundation weighs (including of reinforcing steel), the same as the above-ground structure. The structure is bolted to the foundation with 72 bolts, each one long.


title: Space Needle

text: With time an issue, the construction team worked around the clock. The domed top, housing the top five levels (including the restaurants and observation deck), was perfectly balanced so that the restaurant could rotate with the help of one tiny electric motor, originally , later replaced with a motor. With paint colors named Orbital Olive for the body, Astronaut White for the legs, Re-entry Red for the saucer, and Galaxy Gold for the roof, the Space Needle was finished in less than one year. It was completed in April 1962 at a cost of $4.5 million. The last elevator car was installed the day before the Fair opened on April 21. During the course of the Fair nearly 20,000 people a day rode the elevators to the Observation Deck. Upon completion, the Space Needle was the tallest building in the western United States, replacing the Smith Tower in downtown Seattle as the tallest building west of the Mississippi since 1914.


title: Space Needle

text: The revolving restaurant was operated by Western International Hotels, of which Carlson was President, under a 20-year contract from April 1, 1962, to April 1, 1982.


title: Space Needle

text: An imitation carillon (using recordings of bells, rather than live bells) was installed in the Space Needle, and played several times a day during the World's Fair. The instrument, built by the Schulmerich Bells Company of Hatfield, Pennsylvania under the name "Carillon Americana", recreated the sounds of 538 bells and was the largest in the world, until eclipsed by a 732 bell instrument at the 1964 New York World's Fair. The operator's console was located in the base of the Space Needle, completely enclosed in glass to allow observation of the musician playing the instrument. It was also capable of being played from a roll, like a player piano. The forty-four stentors (speakers) of the carillon were located underneath the Needle's disc at the level, and were audible over the entire fairgrounds and up to away. The carillon was disassembled after the fair's close.


title: Space Needle

text: The Carillon Americana was featured on a 12-track LP record called "Bells On High-Fi" (catalog number AR-8, produced by Americana Records, of Sellersville, Pennsylvania). These studio recordings were performed by noted carillonneur John Klein (1915-1981).


title: Space Needle

text: A radio broadcast studio was built on the observation level of the Space Needle in 1963. It was used for morning broadcasts by Radio KING and its sister TV station KING-TV from July 1963 to May 1966, and KIRO Radio from 1966 to 1974. Disc jockey Bobby Wooten of country music station KAYO-AM lived in an apartment built adjacent to the Space Needle's broadcast studio for six months in 1974, which required a permit variance from the city government.


title: Space Needle

text: On March 27, 1964, the restaurant atop the Space Needle stopped rotating as a result of the 9.2 earthquake in Alaska.


title: Space Needle

text: In 1974, author Stephen Cosgrove's children's book "Wheedle on the Needle" imagined a furry creature called the Wheedle who lived on top of the Space Needle and caused its light to flash. Its closing quatrain is: "There's a Wheedle on the Needle / I know just what you're thinking / But if you look up late at night / You'll see his red nose blinking." The Wheedle has since become a fixture of Seattle. It became the mascot of the Seattle SuperSonics National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise, who played in nearby KeyArena (now Climate Pledge Arena). The SuperSonics moved to Oklahoma City on July 3, 2008.


title: Space Needle

text: In 1982, the SkyLine level was added at the height of . While this level had been part of the original plans for the Space Needle, it was not built until this time. Today, the SkyLine Banquet Facility can accommodate groups of 20–360 people.


title: Space Needle

text: Renovations were completed in 2000 at a cost ($21 million) approximately the same in inflated dollars as the original construction price. Renovations between 1999 and 2000 included the SkyCity restaurant, SpaceBase retail store, Skybeam installation, Observation Deck overhaul, lighting additions and repainting.


title: Space Needle

text: On New Year's Eve, the Space Needle hosts a fireworks show at midnight; Alberto Navarro, a fireworks artist from Bellevue, is the lead architect of the show, which is viewed by thousands from the Seattle Center grounds, and televised by KING-TV. In 2000, public celebrations were canceled because of perceived terror threats against the structure after investigations into the foiled millennium bombing plots, but the fireworks show was still held. The 2020 fireworks display was canceled and replaced by a light show due to high winds, while the 2021 display was canceled and replaced by a broadcast-only augmented reality show due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The fireworks display returned for 2022, but the Seattle Center grounds were closed to the public due to state proof of vaccination rules, and the television broadcast included augmented reality effects.


title: Space Needle

text: In 2002, a real estate consultant in Bellevue proposed the construction of five smaller replicas of the Space Needle around the city to promote tourism, though official plans to build the proposed structures have not yet materialized.


title: Space Needle

text: On May 19, 2007, the Space Needle welcomed its 45 millionth visitor, Greg Novoa from California, who received a free trip for two to Paris.


title: Space Needle

text: In May 2008, the Space Needle received its first professional deep cleaning since the opening of the 1962 World's Fair. The monument was pressure washed by Kärcher with water at a pressure of almost and a temperature of approximately . The cleaning was only done at night so that the Space Needle could stay open to the public. No detergents were used in consideration of the Seattle Center and the nearby Experience Music Project.


title: Space Needle

text: As part of the celebration of its 50th anniversary in April 2012, the Needle was painted "Galaxy Gold", which is more of an orangish color in practice. This is the same color used when the needle was originally constructed for the 1962 World's Fair. This temporary makeover, intended to last through the summer, is not the Needle's first: it had the University of Washington (UW) Huskies football team logo painted after the team won the 1992 Rose Bowl. When the game show "Wheel of Fortune" taped episodes in Seattle in 1995, it was painted to resemble the titular wheel as part of an intro sequence with Vanna White, It was painted crimson after Washington State won the Apple Cup, was painted red, white, and blue for Memorial Day in 2003, and has been seen with the Seattle SuperSonics and Seattle Mariners colors and logos.


title: Space Needle

text: A renovation of the top of the Space Needle began in the summer of 2017, to add an all-glass floor to the restaurant, and replace the observation platform windows with floor-to-ceiling glass panels to more closely match the 1962 original concept sketches, as well as upgrades and updates to the internal systems. Called the Century Project, the work was scheduled to finish by June 2018, at a cost of $100 million in private funds provided by the Wright family, who own the Space Needle. The designer is Olson Kundig Architects and the general contractor is Hoffman Construction Company. The rotating restaurant's motor was replaced, the elevator capacity was increased by adding elevators, or double-stacking them, and the energy efficiency of the building was improved with the aim of achieving LEED Gold Certification. The temporary scaffold's , platform under the top structure was assembled on the ground, and then lifted by cables from the ground to the underside of the structure, controlled by 12 operators standing on the platform as it was raised. The platform was made by Safway Services, a company specializing in unique construction scaffolding. One-sixth of the observation deck was closed at a time, so that the Space Needle was never completely shut down to the public.


title: Space Needle

text: The space reopened in August 2018 as the Loupe, an indoor observation deck with a revolving glass floor. It takes 45 minutes for the observation deck to do a full rotation. Two sets of stairs called the Oculus Stairs were added to connect the two new additional levels. They were named after the glass oculus at the base of the stairs where the Space Needle elevators can be seen ascending and descending. A café, wine bar, more restrooms, and an additional accessibility elevator to the top observation deck were also added.


title: Space Needle

text: Six parachutists have leaped from the tower since its opening, in a sport known as BASE jumping. This activity is legal only with prior authorization. Four of them were part of an authorized promotion in 1996, and one of the jumpers got injured and broke a bone in her back while attempting the stunt. The other two jumped illegally and were arrested.


title: Space Needle

text: Paul D. Baker was the first person to jump from the Space Needle, committing suicide on March 4, 1974. Mary Lucille Wolf also jumped from the tower that year, on May 25. Following the two 1974 suicides, netting beneath and improved fencing around the observation deck were installed. In spite of the barrier additions, however, another suicide by Dixie Reeder occurred on July 5, 1978.


title: Space Needle

text: As a symbol of the Pacific Northwest, the Space Needle has made numerous appearances in films, TV shows, and other works of fiction. The Space Needle is often used in establishing shots as an economical means to tell the audience the setting is Seattle. Examples include the TV shows "Frasier", "Grey's Anatomy", "Dark Angel", "Bill Nye the Science Guy", and films "It Happened at the World's Fair" (1962) and "The Parallax View" (1974) where it was used as a filming location, and "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993), "Chronicle" (2012). In the 1999 film "" made an absurdist visual gag conflating another icon of Seattle, Starbucks, with the tower, showing the coffee chains's name written across the Space Needle's saucer placing the villain Doctor Evil's base of operations there after his henchman Number 2 shifted the organization's resources toward the coffee company. As a visual symbol of Seattle, the Space Needle has been incorporated into the logos of NBA, WNBA, MLS, and NHL professional sports teams.


title: Space Needle

text: The Space Needle has been involved in practical jokes, especially those on April Fools' Day. In 1989, KING-TV's "Almost Live!" reported that the Space Needle had collapsed, causing panicked people to call emergency services and forcing the station to apologize afterwards; the incident was compared to the 1938 radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds", which caused panic among some listeners. In 2015, public radio station "KPLU 88.5 FM" reported in the news story "Proposed Development To 'Assimilate' Seattle's Landmark Space Needle?" that a permit application "(Notice of Proposed Land Use Action)" had been submitted "to construct a 666 unit cube to assimilate" the landmark.


title: Space Needle

text: Other TV appearances include The History Channel's "Life After People", in which the tower collapses after 200 years because of corrosion. The tower was also destroyed in the TV miniseries "10.5" when a 7.9 earthquake hits Seattle. The miniseries mistakenly portrays the Needle as crumbling concrete, though the structure is actually made of steel and designed to withstand up to a 9.0 earthquake.


title: Epidemiology

text: Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population.


title: Epidemiology

text: It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidence-based practice by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive healthcare. Epidemiologists help with study design, collection, and statistical analysis of data, amend interpretation and dissemination of results (including peer review and occasional systematic review). Epidemiology has helped develop methodology used in clinical research, public health studies, and, to a lesser extent, basic research in the biological sciences.


title: Epidemiology

text: Major areas of epidemiological study include disease causation, transmission, outbreak investigation, disease surveillance, environmental epidemiology, forensic epidemiology, occupational epidemiology, screening, biomonitoring, and comparisons of treatment effects such as in clinical trials. Epidemiologists rely on other scientific disciplines like biology to better understand disease processes, statistics to make efficient use of the data and draw appropriate conclusions, social sciences to better understand proximate and distal causes, and engineering for exposure assessment.


title: Epidemiology

text: "Epidemiology", literally meaning "the study of what is upon the people", is derived , suggesting that it applies only to human populations. However, the term is widely used in studies of zoological populations (veterinary epidemiology), although the term "epizoology" is available, and it has also been applied to studies of plant populations (botanical or plant disease epidemiology).


title: Epidemiology

text: The distinction between "epidemic" and "endemic" was first drawn by Hippocrates, to distinguish between diseases that are "visited upon" a population (epidemic) from those that "reside within" a population (endemic). The term "epidemiology" appears to have first been used to describe the study of epidemics in 1802 by the Spanish physician Villalba in "Epidemiología Española". Epidemiologists also study the interaction of diseases in a population, a condition known as a syndemic.


title: Epidemiology

text: The term epidemiology is now widely applied to cover the description and causation of not only epidemic, infectious disease, but of disease in general, including related conditions. Some examples of topics examined through epidemiology include as high blood pressure, mental illness and obesity. Therefore, this epidemiology is based upon how the pattern of the disease causes change in the function of human beings.


title: Epidemiology

text: The Greek physician Hippocrates, known as the father of medicine, sought a logic to sickness; he is the first person known to have examined the relationships between the occurrence of disease and environmental influences. Hippocrates believed sickness of the human body to be caused by an imbalance of the four humors (black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm). The cure to the sickness was to remove or add the humor in question to balance the body. This belief led to the application of bloodletting and dieting in medicine. He coined the terms "endemic" (for diseases usually found in some places but not in others) and "epidemic" (for diseases that are seen at some times but not others).


title: Epidemiology

text: In the middle of the 16th century, a doctor from Verona named Girolamo Fracastoro was the first to propose a theory that these very small, unseeable, particles that cause disease were alive. They were considered to be able to spread by air, multiply by themselves and to be destroyable by fire. In this way he refuted Galen's miasma theory (poison gas in sick people). In 1543 he wrote a book "De contagione et contagiosis morbis", in which he was the first to promote personal and environmental hygiene to prevent disease. The development of a sufficiently powerful microscope by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in 1675 provided visual evidence of living particles consistent with a germ theory of disease.


title: Epidemiology

text: During the Ming Dynasty, Wu Youke (1582–1652) developed the idea that some diseases were caused by transmissible agents, which he called "Li Qi" (戾气 or pestilential factors) when he observed various epidemics rage around him between 1641 and 1644. His book "Wen Yi Lun" (瘟疫论，Treatise on Pestilence/Treatise of Epidemic Diseases) can be regarded as the main etiological work that brought forward the concept. His concepts were still being considered in analysing SARS outbreak by WHO in 2004 in the context of traditional Chinese medicine.


title: Epidemiology

text: Another pioneer, Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689), was the first to distinguish the fevers of Londoners in the later 1600s. His theories on cures of fevers met with much resistance from traditional physicians at the time. He was not able to find the initial cause of the smallpox fever he researched and treated.


title: Epidemiology

text: John Graunt, a haberdasher and amateur statistician, published "Natural and Political Observations ... upon the Bills of Mortality" in 1662. In it, he analysed the mortality rolls in London before the Great Plague, presented one of the first life tables, and reported time trends for many diseases, new and old. He provided statistical evidence for many theories on disease, and also refuted some widespread ideas on them.


title: Epidemiology

text: John Snow is famous for his investigations into the causes of the 19th-century cholera epidemics, and is also known as the father of (modern) epidemiology. He began with noticing the significantly higher death rates in two areas supplied by Southwark Company. His identification of the Broad Street pump as the cause of the Soho epidemic is considered the classic example of epidemiology. Snow used chlorine in an attempt to clean the water and removed the handle; this ended the outbreak. This has been perceived as a major event in the history of public health and regarded as the founding event of the science of epidemiology, having helped shape public health policies around the world. However, Snow's research and preventive measures to avoid further outbreaks were not fully accepted or put into practice until after his death due to the prevailing Miasma Theory of the time, a model of disease in which poor air quality was blamed for illness. This was used to rationalize high rates of infection in impoverished areas instead of addressing the underlying issues of poor nutrition and sanitation, and was proven false by his work.


title: Epidemiology

text: Other pioneers include Danish physician Peter Anton Schleisner, who in 1849 related his work on the prevention of the epidemic of neonatal tetanus on the Vestmanna Islands in Iceland. Another important pioneer was Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis, who in 1847 brought down infant mortality at a Vienna hospital by instituting a disinfection procedure. His findings were published in 1850, but his work was ill-received by his colleagues, who discontinued the procedure. Disinfection did not become widely practiced until British surgeon Joseph Lister 'discovered' antiseptics in 1865 in light of the work of Louis Pasteur.


title: Epidemiology

text: In the early 20th century, mathematical methods were introduced into epidemiology by Ronald Ross, Janet Lane-Claypon, Anderson Gray McKendrick, and others. In a parallel development during the 1920s, German-Swiss pathologist Max Askanazy and others founded the International Society for Geographical Pathology to systematically investigate the geographical pathology of cancer and other non-infectious diseases across populations in different regions. After World War II, Richard Doll and other non-pathologists joined the field and advanced methods to study cancer, a disease with patterns and mode of occurrences that could not be suitably studied with the methods developed for epidemics of infectious diseases. Geography pathology eventually combined with infectious disease epidemiology to make the field that is epidemiology today.


title: Epidemiology

text: Another breakthrough was the 1954 publication of the results of a British Doctors Study, led by Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill, which lent very strong statistical support to the link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer.


title: Epidemiology

text: In the late 20th century, with the advancement of biomedical sciences, a number of molecular markers in blood, other biospecimens and environment were identified as predictors of development or risk of a certain disease. Epidemiology research to examine the relationship between these biomarkers analyzed at the molecular level and disease was broadly named "molecular epidemiology". Specifically, "genetic epidemiology" has been used for epidemiology of germline genetic variation and disease. Genetic variation is typically determined using DNA from peripheral blood leukocytes.


title: Epidemiology

text: Since the 2000s, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been commonly performed to identify genetic risk factors for many diseases and health conditions.


title: Epidemiology

text: While most molecular epidemiology studies are still using conventional disease diagnosis and classification systems, it is increasingly recognized that disease progression represents inherently heterogeneous processes differing from person to person. Conceptually, each individual has a unique disease process different from any other individual ("the unique disease principle"), considering uniqueness of the exposome (a totality of endogenous and exogenous / environmental exposures) and its unique influence on molecular pathologic process in each individual. Studies to examine the relationship between an exposure and molecular pathologic signature of disease (particularly cancer) became increasingly common throughout the 2000s. However, the use of molecular pathology in epidemiology posed unique challenges, including lack of research guidelines and standardized statistical methodologies, and paucity of interdisciplinary experts and training programs. Furthermore, the concept of disease heterogeneity appears to conflict with the long-standing premise in epidemiology that individuals with the same disease name have similar etiologies and disease processes. To resolve these issues and advance population health science in the era of molecular precision medicine, "molecular pathology" and "epidemiology" was integrated to create a new interdisciplinary field of "molecular pathological epidemiology" (MPE), defined as "epidemiology of molecular pathology and heterogeneity of disease". In MPE, investigators analyze the relationships between (A) environmental, dietary, lifestyle and genetic factors; (B) alterations in cellular or extracellular molecules; and (C) evolution and progression of disease. A better understanding of heterogeneity of disease pathogenesis will further contribute to elucidate etiologies of disease. The MPE approach can be applied to not only neoplastic diseases but also non-neoplastic diseases. The concept and paradigm of MPE have become widespread in the 2010s.


title: Epidemiology

text: By 2012, it was recognized that many pathogens' evolution is rapid enough to be highly relevant to epidemiology, and that therefore much could be gained from an interdisciplinary approach to infectious disease integrating epidemiology and molecular evolution to "inform control strategies, or even patient treatment."


title: Epidemiology

text: Modern epidemiological studies can use advanced statistics and machine learning to create predictive models as well as to define treatment effects.


title: Epidemiology

text: Epidemiologists employ a range of study designs from the observational to experimental and generally categorized as descriptive (involving the assessment of data covering time, place, and person), analytic (aiming to further examine known associations or hypothesized relationships), and experimental (a term often equated with clinical or community trials of treatments and other interventions). In observational studies, nature is allowed to "take its course", as epidemiologists observe from the sidelines. Conversely, in experimental studies, the epidemiologist is the one in control of all of the factors entering a certain case study. Epidemiological studies are aimed, where possible, at revealing unbiased relationships between exposures such as alcohol or smoking, biological agents, stress, or chemicals to mortality or morbidity. The identification of causal relationships between these exposures and outcomes is an important aspect of epidemiology. Modern epidemiologists use informatics as a tool.


title: Epidemiology

text: Observational studies have two components, descriptive and analytical. Descriptive observations pertain to the "who, what, where and when of health-related state occurrence". However, analytical observations deal more with the 'how' of a health-related event. Experimental epidemiology contains three case types: randomized controlled trials (often used for a new medicine or drug testing), field trials (conducted on those at a high risk of contracting a disease), and community trials (research on social originating diseases).


title: Epidemiology

text: The term 'epidemiologic triad' is used to describe the intersection of "Host", "Agent", and "Environment" in analyzing an outbreak.


title: Epidemiology

text: Case-series may refer to the qualitative study of the experience of a single patient, or small group of patients with a similar diagnosis, or to a statistical factor with the potential to produce illness with periods when they are unexposed.


title: Epidemiology

text: The former type of study is purely descriptive and cannot be used to make inferences about the general population of patients with that disease. These types of studies, in which an astute clinician identifies an unusual feature of a disease or a patient's history, may lead to a formulation of a new hypothesis. Using the data from the series, analytic studies could be done to investigate possible causal factors. These can include case-control studies or prospective studies. A case-control study would involve matching comparable controls without the disease to the cases in the series. A prospective study would involve following the case series over time to evaluate the disease's natural history.


title: Epidemiology

text: The latter type, more formally described as self-controlled case-series studies, divide individual patient follow-up time into exposed and unexposed periods and use fixed-effects Poisson regression processes to compare the incidence rate of a given outcome between exposed and unexposed periods. This technique has been extensively used in the study of adverse reactions to vaccination and has been shown in some circumstances to provide statistical power comparable to that available in cohort studies.


title: Epidemiology

text: Case-control studies select subjects based on their disease status. It is a retrospective study. A group of individuals that are disease positive (the "case" group) is compared with a group of disease negative individuals (the "control" group). The control group should ideally come from the same population that gave rise to the cases. The case-control study looks back through time at potential exposures that both groups (cases and controls) may have encountered. A 2×2 table is constructed, displaying exposed cases (A), exposed controls (B), unexposed cases (C) and unexposed controls (D). The statistic generated to measure association is the odds ratio (OR), which is the ratio of the odds of exposure in the cases (A/C) to the odds of exposure in the controls (B/D), i.e. OR = (AD/BC).


title: Epidemiology

text: If the OR is significantly greater than 1, then the conclusion is "those with the disease are more likely to have been exposed," whereas if it is close to 1 then the exposure and disease are not likely associated. If the OR is far less than one, then this suggests that the exposure is a protective factor in the causation of the disease.


title: Epidemiology

text: Case-control studies are usually faster and more cost-effective than cohort studies but are sensitive to bias (such as recall bias and selection bias). The main challenge is to identify the appropriate control group; the distribution of exposure among the control group should be representative of the distribution in the population that gave rise to the cases. This can be achieved by drawing a random sample from the original population at risk. This has as a consequence that the control group can contain people with the disease under study when the disease has a high attack rate in a population.


title: Epidemiology

text: A major drawback for case control studies is that, in order to be considered to be statistically significant, the minimum number of cases required at the 95% confidence interval is related to the odds ratio by the equation:


title: Epidemiology

text: As the odds ratio approaches 1, the number of cases required for statistical significance grows towards infinity; rendering case-control studies all but useless for low odds ratios. For instance, for an odds ratio of 1.5 and cases = controls, the table shown above would look like this:


title: Epidemiology

text: Cohort studies select subjects based on their exposure status. The study subjects should be at risk of the outcome under investigation at the beginning of the cohort study; this usually means that they should be disease free when the cohort study starts. The cohort is followed through time to assess their later outcome status. An example of a cohort study would be the investigation of a cohort of smokers and non-smokers over time to estimate the incidence of lung cancer. The same 2×2 table is constructed as with the case control study. However, the point estimate generated is the relative risk (RR), which is the probability of disease for a person in the exposed group, "P" = "A" / ("A" + "B") over the probability of disease for a person in the unexposed group, "P" = "C" / ("C" + "D"), i.e. "RR" = "P" / "P".


title: Epidemiology

text: As with the OR, a RR greater than 1 shows association, where the conclusion can be read "those with the exposure were more likely to develop the disease."


title: Epidemiology

text: Prospective studies have many benefits over case control studies. The RR is a more powerful effect measure than the OR, as the OR is just an estimation of the RR, since true incidence cannot be calculated in a case control study where subjects are selected based on disease status. Temporality can be established in a prospective study, and confounders are more easily controlled for. However, they are more costly, and there is a greater chance of losing subjects to follow-up based on the long time period over which the cohort is followed.


title: Epidemiology

text: Cohort studies also are limited by the same equation for number of cases as for cohort studies, but, if the base incidence rate in the study population is very low, the number of cases required is reduced by .


title: Epidemiology

text: Although epidemiology is sometimes viewed as a collection of statistical tools used to elucidate the associations of exposures to health outcomes, a deeper understanding of this science is that of discovering "causal" relationships.


title: Epidemiology

text: "Correlation does not imply causation" is a common theme for much of the epidemiological literature. For epidemiologists, the key is in the term inference. Correlation, or at least association between two variables, is a necessary but not sufficient criterion for the inference that one variable causes the other. Epidemiologists use gathered data and a broad range of biomedical and psychosocial theories in an iterative way to generate or expand theory, to test hypotheses, and to make educated, informed assertions about which relationships are causal, and about exactly how they are causal.


title: Epidemiology

text: Epidemiologists emphasize that the "one cause – one effect" understanding is a simplistic mis-belief. Most outcomes, whether disease or death, are caused by a chain or web consisting of many component causes. Causes can be distinguished as necessary, sufficient or probabilistic conditions. If a necessary condition can be identified and controlled (e.g., antibodies to a disease agent, energy in an injury), the harmful outcome can be avoided (Robertson, 2015). One tool regularly used to conceptualize the multicausality associated with disease is the causal pie model.


title: Epidemiology

text: In 1965, Austin Bradford Hill proposed a series of considerations to help assess evidence of causation, which have come to be commonly known as the "Bradford Hill criteria". In contrast to the explicit intentions of their author, Hill's considerations are now sometimes taught as a checklist to be implemented for assessing causality. Hill himself said "None of my nine viewpoints can bring indisputable evidence for or against the cause-and-effect hypothesis and none can be required "sine qua non"."


title: Epidemiology

text: Epidemiological studies can only go to prove that an agent could have caused, but not that it did cause, an effect in any particular case:


title: Epidemiology

text: In United States law, epidemiology alone cannot prove that a causal association does not exist in general. Conversely, it can be (and is in some circumstances) taken by US courts, in an individual case, to justify an inference that a causal association does exist, based upon a balance of probability.


title: Epidemiology

text: The subdiscipline of forensic epidemiology is directed at the investigation of specific causation of disease or injury in individuals or groups of individuals in instances in which causation is disputed or is unclear, for presentation in legal settings.


title: Epidemiology

text: Epidemiological practice and the results of epidemiological analysis make a significant contribution to emerging population-based health management frameworks.


title: Epidemiology

text: Modern population-based health management is complex, requiring a multiple set of skills (medical, political, technological, mathematical, etc.) of which epidemiological practice and analysis is a core component, that is unified with management science to provide efficient and effective health care and health guidance to a population. This task requires the forward-looking ability of modern risk management approaches that transform health risk factors, incidence, prevalence and mortality statistics (derived from epidemiological analysis) into management metrics that not only guide how a health system responds to current population health issues but also how a health system can be managed to better respond to future potential population health issues.


title: Epidemiology

text: Examples of organizations that use population-based health management that leverage the work and results of epidemiological practice include Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control, Health Canada Tobacco Control Programs, Rick Hansen Foundation, Canadian Tobacco Control Research Initiative.


title: Epidemiology

text: Each of these organizations uses a population-based health management framework called Life at Risk that combines epidemiological quantitative analysis with demographics, health agency operational research and economics to perform:


title: Epidemiology

text: Applied epidemiology is the practice of using epidemiological methods to protect or improve the health of a population. Applied field epidemiology can include investigating communicable and non-communicable disease outbreaks, mortality and morbidity rates, and nutritional status, among other indicators of health, with the purpose of communicating the results to those who can implement appropriate policies or disease control measures.


title: Epidemiology

text: As the surveillance and reporting of diseases and other health factors become increasingly difficult in humanitarian crisis situations, the methodologies used to report the data are compromised. One study found that less than half (42.4%) of nutrition surveys sampled from humanitarian contexts correctly calculated the prevalence of malnutrition and only one-third (35.3%) of the surveys met the criteria for quality. Among the mortality surveys, only 3.2% met the criteria for quality. As nutritional status and mortality rates help indicate the severity of a crisis, the tracking and reporting of these health factors is crucial.


title: Epidemiology

text: Vital registries are usually the most effective ways to collect data, but in humanitarian contexts these registries can be non-existent, unreliable, or inaccessible. As such, mortality is often inaccurately measured using either prospective demographic surveillance or retrospective mortality surveys. Prospective demographic surveillance requires much manpower and is difficult to implement in a spread-out population. Retrospective mortality surveys are prone to selection and reporting biases. Other methods are being developed, but are not common practice yet.


title: Epidemiology

text: Different fields in epidemiology have different levels of validity. One way to assess the validity of findings is the ratio of false-positives (claimed effects that are not correct) to false-negatives (studies which fail to support a true effect). To take the field of genetic epidemiology, candidate-gene studies produced over 100 false-positive findings for each false-negative. By contrast genome-wide association appear close to the reverse, with only one false positive for every 100 or more false-negatives. This ratio has improved over time in genetic epidemiology as the field has adopted stringent criteria. By contrast, other epidemiological fields have not required such rigorous reporting and are much less reliable as a result.


title: Epidemiology

text: Random error is the result of fluctuations around a true value because of sampling variability. Random error is just that: random. It can occur during data collection, coding, transfer, or analysis. Examples of random errors include poorly worded questions, a misunderstanding in interpreting an individual answer from a particular respondent, or a typographical error during coding. Random error affects measurement in a transient, inconsistent manner and it is impossible to correct for random error.


title: Epidemiology

text: Precision in epidemiological variables is a measure of random error. Precision is also inversely related to random error, so that to reduce random error is to increase precision. Confidence intervals are computed to demonstrate the precision of relative risk estimates. The narrower the confidence interval, the more precise the relative risk estimate.


title: Epidemiology

text: There are two basic ways to reduce random error in an epidemiological study. The first is to increase the sample size of the study. In other words, add more subjects to your study. The second is to reduce the variability in measurement in the study. This might be accomplished by using a more precise measuring device or by increasing the number of measurements.


title: Epidemiology

text: Note, that if sample size or number of measurements are increased, or a more precise measuring tool is purchased, the costs of the study are usually increased. There is usually an uneasy balance between the need for adequate precision and the practical issue of study cost.


title: Epidemiology

text: A systematic error or bias occurs when there is a difference between the true value (in the population) and the observed value (in the study) from any cause other than sampling variability. An example of systematic error is if, unknown to you, the pulse oximeter you are using is set incorrectly and adds two points to the true value each time a measurement is taken. The measuring device could be precise but not accurate. Because the error happens in every instance, it is systematic. Conclusions you draw based on that data will still be incorrect. But the error can be reproduced in the future (e.g., by using the same mis-set instrument).


title: Epidemiology

text: A mistake in coding that affects "all" responses for that particular question is another example of a systematic error.


title: Epidemiology

text: The validity of a study is dependent on the degree of systematic error. Validity is usually separated into two components:


title: Epidemiology

text: Selection bias occurs when study subjects are selected or become part of the study as a result of a third, unmeasured variable which is associated with both the exposure and outcome of interest. For instance, it has repeatedly been noted that cigarette smokers and non smokers tend to differ in their study participation rates. (Sackett D cites the example of Seltzer et al., in which 85% of non smokers and 67% of smokers returned mailed questionnaires.) It is important to note that such a difference in response will not lead to bias if it is not also associated with a systematic difference in outcome between the two response groups.


title: Epidemiology

text: Information bias is bias arising from systematic error in the assessment of a variable. An example of this is recall bias. A typical example is again provided by Sackett in his discussion of a study examining the effect of specific exposures on fetal health: "in questioning mothers whose recent pregnancies had ended in fetal death or malformation (cases) and a matched group of mothers whose pregnancies ended normally (controls) it was found that 28% of the former, but only 20% of the latter, reported exposure to drugs which could not be substantiated either in earlier prospective interviews or in other health records". In this example, recall bias probably occurred as a result of women who had had miscarriages having an apparent tendency to better recall and therefore report previous exposures.


title: Epidemiology

text: Confounding has traditionally been defined as bias arising from the co-occurrence or mixing of effects of extraneous factors, referred to as confounders, with the main effect(s) of interest. A more recent definition of confounding invokes the notion of "counterfactual" effects. According to this view, when one observes an outcome of interest, say Y=1 (as opposed to Y=0), in a given population A which is entirely exposed (i.e. exposure "X" = 1 for every unit of the population) the risk of this event will be "R". The counterfactual or unobserved risk "R" corresponds to the risk which would have been observed if these same individuals had been unexposed (i.e. "X" = 0 for every unit of the population). The true effect of exposure therefore is: "R" − "R" (if one is interested in risk differences) or "R"/"R" (if one is interested in relative risk). Since the counterfactual risk "R" is unobservable we approximate it using a second population B and we actually measure the following relations: "R" − "R" or "R"/"R". In this situation, confounding occurs when "R" ≠ "R". (NB: Example assumes binary outcome and exposure variables.)


title: Epidemiology

text: Some epidemiologists prefer to think of confounding separately from common categorizations of bias since, unlike selection and information bias, confounding stems from real causal effects.


title: Epidemiology

text: Few universities have offered epidemiology as a course of study at the undergraduate level. One notable undergraduate program exists at Johns Hopkins University, where students who major in public health can take graduate-level courses, including epidemiology, during their senior year at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.


title: Epidemiology

text: Although epidemiologic research is conducted by individuals from diverse disciplines, including clinically trained professionals such as physicians, formal training is available through Masters or Doctoral programs including Master of Public Health (MPH), Master of Science of Epidemiology (MSc.), Doctor of Public Health (DrPH), Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Doctor of Science (ScD). Many other graduate programs, e.g., Doctor of Social Work (DSW), Doctor of Clinical Practice (DClinP), Doctor of Podiatric Medicine (DPM), Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM), Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP), Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT), or for clinically trained physicians, Doctor of Medicine (MD) or Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (MBBS or MBChB) and Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO), include some training in epidemiologic research or related topics, but this training is generally substantially less than offered in training programs focused on epidemiology or public health. Reflecting the strong historical tie between epidemiology and medicine, formal training programs may be set in either schools of public health and medical schools.


title: Epidemiology

text: As public health/health protection practitioners, epidemiologists work in a number of different settings. Some epidemiologists work 'in the field'; i.e., in the community, commonly in a public health/health protection service, and are often at the forefront of investigating and combating disease outbreaks. Others work for non-profit organizations, universities, hospitals and larger government entities such as state and local health departments, various Ministries of Health, Doctors without Borders, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Health Protection Agency, the World Health Organization (WHO), or the Public Health Agency of Canada. Epidemiologists can also work in for-profit organizations such as pharmaceutical and medical device companies in groups such as market research or clinical development.


title: Epidemiology

text: An April 2020 University of Southern California article noted that "The coronavirus epidemic... thrust epidemiology – the study of the incidence, distribution and control of disease in a population – to the forefront of scientific disciplines across the globe and even made temporary celebrities out of some of its practitioners."


title: Liliʻuokalani

text: Liliʻuokalani (; Lydia Liliʻu Loloku Walania Kamakaʻeha; September 2, 1838 – November 11, 1917) was the only queen regnant and the last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom, ruling from January 29, 1891, until the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom on January 17, 1893. The composer of "Aloha ʻOe" and numerous other works, she wrote her autobiography "Hawaiʻi's Story by Hawaiʻi's Queen" during her imprisonment following the overthrow.