title: Ligue 2

text: Ligue 2 (, League 2), also known as Ligue 2 BKT due to sponsorship by Balkrishna Industries, is a French professional football league. The league serves as the second division of French football and is one of two divisions making up the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP), the other being Ligue 1, the country's top football division. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with both Ligue 1 and the third division Championnat National. Seasons run from August to May, with teams playing 38 games each, totalling 380 games in the season. Most games are played on Fridays and Mondays, with a few games played during weekday and weekend evenings. Play is regularly suspended the last weekend before Christmas for two weeks before returning in the second week of January.


title: Ligue 2

text: Ligue 2 was founded a year after the creation of the first division in 1933 under the name "Division 2" and has served as the second division of French football ever since. The name lasted until 2002 before switching to its current name. Since the league is a part of the LFP, it allows clubs who are on the brink of professionalism to become so. However, if a club suffers relegation to the Championnat National, its professional status can be revoked temporarily until they return to Ligue 2.


title: Ligue 2

text: The second division of French football was established in 1933, one year after the creation of the all-professional first division. The inaugural season of the competition consisted of the six clubs who were relegated following the 1932–33 National season, as well as many of the clubs who opposed the creation of the first division the previous season. Clubs such as Strasbourg, RC Roubaix, and Amiens SC all played in the second division's debut season despite having prior grievances with the subjective criteria needed to become professional and play in the first division. The first year of the second division consisted of twenty-three clubs and were divided into two groups ("Nord" and "Sud"). Fourteen of the clubs were inserted into the "Nord" section, while the remaining nine were placed in "Sud". Following the season, the winner of each group faced each other to determine which club would earn promotion. On 20 May 1934, the winner of the "Nord" group, Red Star Saint-Ouen, faced Olympique Alès, the winner of the "Sud" group. Red Star were crowned the league's inaugural champions following a 3–2 victory. Despite losing, Alès was also promoted to the first division and they were followed by Strasbourg and Mulhouse, who each won a pool championship, after the first division agreed to expand its teams to 16.


title: Ligue 2

text: Due to several clubs merging, folding, or losing their professional status, the federation turned the second division into a 16-team league and adopted the single-table method for the 1934–35 season. Due to the unpredictable nature of French football clubs, the following season, the league increased to 19 clubs and, two years later, increased its allotment to 25 teams with the clubs being divided into four groups. Because of World War II, football was suspended by the French government and the Ligue de Football Professionnel. Following the end of the war, the second division developed stability. Due to the increase in amateur clubs, the league intertwined professional and amateur clubs and allowed the latter to become professional if they met certain benchmarks. In 2002, the league changed its name from "Division 2" to "Ligue 2".


title: Ligue 2

text: In November 2014, the presidents of Caen and Nîmes were amongst several arrested on suspicion of match fixing. The arrests followed a 1–1 draw between Caen and Nîmes in May 2014, a result very beneficial for each club.


title: Ligue 2

text: There are 20 clubs in Ligue 2. During the course of a season, usually from August to May, each club plays the others twice, once at their home stadium and once at that of their opponents, for a total of 38 games. Teams receive three points for a win and one point for a draw. No points are awarded for a loss. Teams are ranked by total points, then goal difference, and then goals scored. At the end of each season, the club with the most points is crowned champion and promoted to Ligue 1. If points are equal, the goal difference and then goals scored determine the winner. If still equal, teams are deemed to occupy the same position. If there is a tie for the championship or for relegation, a play-off match at a neutral venue decides rank. The second-place finisher are also promoted to the first division. The fourth and fifth-place finishers play a one leg fixture at the fourth-place finisher's stadium, the winner of this fixture faces the third-place finisher at the third-place finisher's stadium, the winner of this fixture plays the 18th-placed team in Ligue 1 for the right to play in Ligue 1 the following season. The three lowest placed teams are relegated to the Championnat National and the top three teams from National are promoted in their place. While a decision was originally made that during the 2015–16 season only the best two teams would be promoted to Ligue 1 and the last two teams would be relegated to the National, that decision was later overturned by an appeal to the Conseil d'État and the French Football Federation.


title: Ligue 2

text: In December 2021, the majority of LFP member clubs, including Championnat National club leaders, voted to contract Ligue 2 from 20 to 18 clubs for the 2024–25 season. This will happen one year after Ligue 1 itself drops from 20 to 18 teams for the 2023-24 season. The plan is for Ligue 2 to relegate four clubs to, and promote two from, National at the end of 2023–24.


title: Rockstar North

text: Rockstar North Limited (formerly DMA Design Limited) is a British video game development company and a studio of Rockstar Games based in Edinburgh. The company was founded as DMA Design in Dundee in 1987 by David Jones, soon hiring former classmates Mike Dailly, Russell Kay, and Steve Hammond. During its early years, DMA Design was backed by its publisher Psygnosis, primarily focusing on Amiga, Atari ST and Commodore 64 games. During this time, they created successful shooters such as "Menace", and "Blood Money", but soon turned to platform games after the release of "Lemmings" in 1991, which was an international success and led to several sequels and spin-offs. After developing "Unirally" for Nintendo, DMA Design was set to become one of their main second-party developers, but this partnership ended after Nintendo's disapproval of "Body Harvest".


title: Rockstar North

text: In 1997, DMA released "Grand Theft Auto", which was a huge success; the game sparked a successful series. The company was soon acquired by Gremlin Interactive. Following the release of "Grand Theft Auto 2", Gremlin was acquired by Infogrames. After the Infogrames acquisition, the DMA Design assets were sold to Take-Two Interactive. In 2001, after the release of "Grand Theft Auto III", DMA Design was ultimately renamed Rockstar North and became part of the Rockstar Games label. After the shift, the company worked on new titles, including "Manhunt", provided support to other Rockstar games such as "Red Dead Redemption" and "Max Payne 3", and continued the "Grand Theft Auto" franchise with "Grand Theft Auto IV" (2008) and "Grand Theft Auto V" (2013). Both games are considered to be among the best video games made, and "Grand Theft Auto V" became the second-best-selling game of all time. Leslie Benzies headed the studio since the Take-Two acquisition until his departure in 2016.


title: Rockstar North

text: In 1984, David Jones, Russell Kay, Steve Hammond and Mike Dailly often met at the Kingsway Amateur Computer Club (KACC) in Dundee. While Jones used an Amiga 1000, the others used Sinclair Spectrum or Commodore 64. They developed numerous small games while attending the KACC: Jones and Kay developed "Moonshadow" (eventually renamed "Zone Trooper"), Daily developed "Freek Out", and Jones and Dailly collaborated on "The Game With No Name". When later attending the Dundee Institute of Technology, Jones began development on a game tentatively titled "CopperCon1", working under the temporary name "Acme Software", alongside Kay, Hammond and Dailly. To publish the game, Jones first approached Hewson Consultants, where Andrew Braybrook played and recommended the game. When Jones was informed that Hewson wanted the game to be the "Amiga version of "Zynaps"", he realised that sales would be limited, and refused to sign the contract, instead signing a deal with publisher Psygnosis. The game was renamed "Draconia", with Tony Smith working on graphics and Jones designing levels.


title: Rockstar North

text: By 1987, Jones wanted to incorporate the company but found that the name "Acme" was already taken by a design company. As he had to choose another, he considered to use "Visual Voyage" and "Alias Smith and Jones", but ultimately decided to go with "DMA Design". The "DMA" was taken from Amiga programming manuals, where it stood for direct memory access, though the "DMA" in the company's name had no meaning. DMA Design was formally founded by Jones that same year. "Draconia" was renamed "Menace", and it was published in 1988 for Amiga, and in 1989 for Atari ST, Commodore 64 and MS-DOS. The game sold 20,000 copies, reportedly generating around , allowing the company to develop more games. This was followed by "Blood Money", a side-scrolling shooter which began development in January 1989. The game was in development for five months, and was released for Amiga and Atari ST in May 1989. The game was ported to MS-DOS by Tim Ansell of Creative Assembly in 1989, and to Commodore 64 by Dailly in 1990. The company was also assigned to porting "Ballistix" to MS-DOS and Commodore 64. Jones began developing the side-scrolling shooter "Walker" in 1989, following the release of "Blood Money".


title: Rockstar North

text: Also in 1989, Dailly became DMA Design's first employee. In early 1990, Jones scrapped "Walker" and began development on a new game called "Gore!"; this was soon scrapped. By the end of the year, Jones hired Ian Dunlop and Niall Glancey to continue working on "Walker"; Glancey redesigned the game, and it was released for Amiga in 1993. In 1990, Jones hired Tony Colgan to develop "Cutiepoo", and assist with "Gore!" before its cancellation. By the end of the year, Jones was irritated by the lack of progress on "Cutiepoo", cancelling the game and firing Colgan as a result. In June 1990, DMA was commissioned by Psygnosis to port "Shadow of the Beast" to the TurboGrafx-16 and Commodore 64; Dailly developed the former, while Richard Swinfen and Steve Hammond worked on the latter. Psygnosis teamed with Ocean Software to publish "Shadow of the Beast" for Commodore 64 Games System; Swinfen and Hammond adapted accordingly. Swinfen, who was subcontracted for his work on the game, found it unfair that Jones was getting paid for the game, despite not working on it; the two never worked again. DMA also released "Hired Guns" for Amiga and MS-DOS in 1993, designed by Hammond and Scott Johnston.


title: Rockstar North

text: DMA's major breakthrough came with 1991's "Lemmings", a dynamic puzzle game originally released for Amiga in February 1991. The game ultimately sold over 15 million copies, and received numerous ports to different consoles. The game led to numerous sequels by DMA: "Oh No! More Lemmings" (1991), "" (1993), and "All New World of Lemmings" (1994), as well as two "Christmas Lemmings" (1993–94). It also spawned various "Lemmings" games by other developers, such as "3D Lemmings" (1995) and "Lemmings Revolution" (2000). Revenues from Lemmings allowed the company to expand, adding their own motion capture studio and a division called DMA Music, consisting of the team's in-house musicians.


title: Rockstar North

text: Following Sony's acquisition of Psygnosis in 1993, DMA signed with Nintendo to publish "Unirally" in 1994. DMA then spent six months studying development for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, but they cancelled all their plans for the console when the success of "Unirally" led Nintendo to offer to publish an original DMA game for the upcoming Ultra 64 console (later renamed Nintendo 64). In response, DMA created "Body Harvest", an action-adventure third-person shooter. Originally intended as a launch game for Nintendo 64 in 1996, "Body Harvest" received numerous delays following Nintendo's various issues with the content. Nintendo ultimately scrapped the game, which was later published by Midway Games and Gremlin Interactive in September 1998.


title: Rockstar North

text: Around 1995, DMA Design was developing "Kid Kirby", an entry in the "Kirby" series for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System intended to utilise the Super NES Mouse; the game's slow development and the poor sales of the Super NES Mouse eventually led to the project's cancellation. DMA Design began developing a new game, "Race'n'Chase", in April 1995. The development team consisted of mostly inexperienced members, who struggled with the task until producer and creative director Gary Penn joined the project. Originally scheduled for release in late 1996, the game was ultimately released as "Grand Theft Auto" in November 1997 for Microsoft Windows, following many development issues. The game was a critical and commercial success, and ultimately spawned a successful series. Following the release of "Grand Theft Auto", DMA was bought by British publisher Gremlin Interactive for in 1997. DMA completed "Space Station Silicon Valley" in 1998, and both "Tanktics" and "Wild Metal Country" in 1999, before Gremlin was acquired by French company Infogrames for ().


title: Rockstar North

text: Game development at DMA Design generally involved taking risks and being unique. When an idea was pitched within the company, the question "What's different about it?" was asked; the team wished to make unique and innovative games, rather than mimicking the trend. By doing this, they found that they were taking risks in the business, witnessing the market reactions and seeking respect from players. The company also strongly valued the development of the games, as opposed to business and marketing. "It doesn't matter if we were owned by somebody or if we were as we are, we'd still just write games", said Jones.


title: Rockstar North

text: Jones has expressed his distaste of linear gameplay. "I just love games that are pretty open-ended; you can try things, you can go wherever you want", he said. He claims that this distaste is reflected in the games by DMA Design, including the options available to players in "Lemmings" and the open world of "Grand Theft Auto". DMA Design had a fairly open office space for the developers. "There was this fantastic 'try it out and see' attitude," said developer Gary Timmons. Following his departure from the studio, Kay said that the team members "know each other pretty well and understand each other's strengths and weaknesses".


title: Rockstar North

text: BMG Interactive, publisher of "Grand Theft Auto", were bought by Take-Two Interactive in March 1998 for 1.85 million company shares, around 16% of their common stock, and some staff, including Sam and Dan Houser, were carried across to Rockstar Games, which was formed as a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive in December 1998. During the changes in management, DMA Design lost many employees, including Kay, Hammond and Dailly. Several games were also scrapped during this time, including Nintendo 64 ports of "Grand Theft Auto" and "Wild Metal Country", a 64DD port of "Unreal" (1998), and a game known as "Attack!". On 29 September 1999, Take-Two Interactive announced that they had acquired DMA Design from Infogrames for . Sam Houser, who became Rockstar Games' executive producer, said that "the ability to align Rockstar with a development house [...] that is clearly approaching video-game development in a new and exciting manner, makes this a perfect match".


title: Rockstar North

text: Following the acquisition, it was announced that DMA Design would continue developing "Grand Theft Auto" games, including "GTA3D" and "Grand Theft Auto: Online Crime World"; the former was compared to the gameplay of "Quake", while the latter was set to have worldwide servers allowing players to compete with others in local cities. The company received various staffing changes following the acquisition: Jones left the company and founded Realtime Worlds, while DMA Design was headed by Leslie Benzies and Andrew Semple, among others. The studio had about 25 employees at the time of the changeover. Under new management from Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive, DMA Design developed "Grand Theft Auto III", which was released for PlayStation 2 in October 2001. In March 2002, DMA Design became Rockstar Studios, being integrated into Rockstar Games, and renamed to Rockstar North in May 2002.


title: Rockstar North

text: "" was released in October 2002 for PlayStation 2 after nine months of development. The game retained the engine and core gameplay of "GTA III" while adding a number of refinements and a roster of top Hollywood voice talent. In 2003, the company released a PC port of "Vice City", as well as a two-pack of both "Grand Theft Auto III" and "Vice City" for Microsoft's Xbox console, ported by Rockstar Vienna. The developer's next release, also for PlayStation 2, was "Manhunt" in November 2003, after the studio refocused post "Vice City". The game was released amidst a media frenzy surrounding some of the game's violent content.


title: Rockstar North

text: "" followed for PlayStation 2 in October 2004 and became the highest-selling PlayStation 2 game ever, with 17.33 million copies sold. It went on to sell 27.5 million copies total after ports to Xbox and PC were released in 2005. Following in 2005 and 2006 respectively, "" and "" were two new instalments for PlayStation Portable, both developed by Rockstar Leeds under supervision from Rockstar North. Both games subsequently received ports to the PlayStation 2. After was released, and due to growing staff numbers, the company moved from their Leith offices to a new location at Calton Square. Starting from an original team of around twenty-five, the studio now has over 360 staff.


title: Rockstar North

text: "Grand Theft Auto IV" was released on 29 April 2008, after around four years of development, for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, marking the debut of the developer's wildly popular "Grand Theft Auto" franchise on the seventh-generation of video game consoles. "GTA IV" was another huge financial and critical success, breaking sales records amongst all types of entertainment media. Rockstar North continued work on "GTA IV" in the form of two pieces of downloadable episodic content. The first of these, "", was released on 17 February 2009, with the second, "", released on 29 October 2009. Rockstar Games later released a disc-based version of both episodes, "," for Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.


title: Rockstar North

text: On 2 June 2009, at Sony's E3 conference, it was announced that "Agent" was being developed by Rockstar North for PlayStation 3. This was later confirmed in an interview with Ben Feder, President of Take-Two Interactive. It was announced that the game would be set in the world of the late 1970s. According to Rockstar North, it would "take players on a paranoid journey into the world of counter-intelligence, espionage, and political assassinations". The "Agent" trademark was abandoned in November 2018, and the game's website was deactivated by October 2021.


title: Rockstar North

text: On 17 September 2013, the studio released "Grand Theft Auto V" on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, which became one of the most critically acclaimed games ever. The game was a return to the fictional city of Los Santos, last seen in "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas". The game also introduced multiple playable characters for the first time in the series, allowing players to switch between Franklin, Michael and Trevor. It quickly became the studio's most commercially successful release, as well as one of the highest-grossing video games of all time, surpassing the total gross of "Grand Theft Auto IV" within its first week and breaking the one-day gross record for video games.


title: Rockstar North

text: At the end of the year, Rockstar North agreed to take over rental of the Barclay House on Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, which had been opened in 1999 as headquarters of "The Scotsman" newspaper group. After alteration work, Rockstar North moved into this building in 2014.


title: Rockstar North

text: Following the release of "Grand Theft Auto V", studio president and producer Leslie Benzies went on sabbatical on 1 September 2014, and left the company in January 2016; art directors Aaron Garbut and Rob Nelson took over Benzies' responsibilities at Rockstar North. Nelson later became co-studio head alongside Andrew Semple.


title: Rockstar North

text: On 12 April 2016, Benzies sued Rockstar Games' parent company Take-Two Interactive for in unpaid royalties, and for being dismissed without warning during his sabbatical, amongst several other accusations towards the president of Rockstar Games. In a document revealed by his attorney, Benzies claimed not only that Rockstar Games had not paid the due royalties but also that he was drawn into a scheme inserted into a so-called "2009 Royalty Plan" where Benzies would earn evenly split profits between the three called "Rockstar North Principals" (Sam Houser, Dan Houser and Benzies), a coalition created for the three by Dan and Sam Houser to try to separate from Take-Two Interactive, using the company's funds to do so. When Benzies was due his split, he never received any money, given the Houser brothers had unknowingly allocated in profit-sharing payments to themselves, with another in profits still unaccounted for.


title: Rockstar North

text: In 2014, Benzies was reportedly encouraged to take a sabbatical pause by the Houser brothers, in order to "recharge batteries", given how hard he had worked for the company during all the years it has existed. Benzies also accused the Houser brothers of being unable to work without his presence, by revealing e-mails during the "Red Dead Redemption" development troubles that showed Houser urgently asking for Benzies' help because he could not manage any big projects without him (in the case of "Red Dead Redemption", having trouble finishing the project, whilst Benzies was not even allocated to work on the game), constantly pestering the ex-developer via e-mails asking for help, saying that nothing was the same without him, treating him like an extraordinarily necessary asset for the company, having him working on projects he wasn't even a part of. Sam Houser was also accused of orchestrating and encouraging "a company culture involving strip clubs, personal photography of employees in sexually compromising positions, and other conduct grossly in violation of standard workplace norms." On the evening of 12 April 2016, Take-Two counter-claimed Benzies' lawsuit, saying the accusations were "downright bizarre".


title: Rockstar North

text: On 29 March 2018, Benzies' litigation against Rockstar and Take-Two suffered a significant setback when the companies succeeded in dismissing 12 out of 18 of his claims, though the court did rule that Benzies "remains entitled to receive certain royalties" as part of his compensation. Sometime in 2018, Take-Two levied a legal warning against Benzies' new company Royal Circus Games, citing the similarity of its acronym (RCG) to Rockstar Games (RSG) as infringement of intellectual property; due to this, Benzies later renamed his company Build a Rocket Boy Games in October 2018. Take-Two had also decried their employment of Rockstar North staff as a deceptive tactic to create an affiliation between them. On 7 February 2019, Benzies' litigation with Take-Two had officially come to an end. All parties involved in the case successfully executed a confidential settlement, with each agreeing to bear its own costs and expenses, including, without limitation, attorney's fees.


title: Rockstar North

text: TaxWatch UK, a UK-based investigative think tank, reported in July 2019 that Rockstar North had not paid any corporation tax between 2009 and 2018. Meanwhile, the studio received in tax credits through the UK government's video games tax relief (VGTR) scheme, 19% of the scheme's entire payout since its establishment in 2014. In a statement released in January 2020, Rockstar Games stated that VGTR significantly supported the company's investments in the country. The company did not address the reported non-paying of corporation tax.


title: Freaky (film)

text: Freaky is a 2020 American comedy slasher film directed by Christopher Landon, from a screenplay by Michael Kennedy and Landon, and starring Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Katie Finneran, Celeste O'Connor, and Alan Ruck. A twist on "Freaky Friday", the film centers on a teenage girl who unintentionally switches bodies with a middle-aged male serial killer. Jason Blum serves as a producer under his Blumhouse Productions banner.


title: Freaky (film)

text: "Freaky" premiered at Beyond Fest on October 8, 2020, and was theatrically released in the United States on November 13, 2020, and internationally on July 2, 2021, by Universal Pictures. The film received positive reviews from critics, who praised Vaughn and Newton's performances, as well as the blend of horror and comedy.


title: Freaky (film)

text: After four teenagers discuss urban legends of a serial killer known as the Blissfield Butcher, the Butcher breaks into the mansion they are in and promptly murders the group of teenagers before leaving with an ancient dagger known as La Dola.


title: Freaky (film)

text: The next day, bullied high school student Millie Kessler attends the Blissfield Valley High School homecoming football game, where she performs as the school mascot. As Millie waits for a ride home near the now-empty school, the Butcher attacks her. He stabs Millie in the shoulder with La Dola, causing an identical wound to instantly appear on his shoulder. Millie's older sister Char, a police officer, arrives and scares off the Butcher. The police collect La Dola as evidence and initiate a manhunt for the Butcher.


title: Freaky (film)

text: The following morning, the Butcher and Millie discover that they have switched bodies, and they both make their way to Blissfield Valley High School. At school, the Butcher, now posing as Millie, kills Millie's chief tormentor Ryler by locking her in a cryotherapy tank in the girl's locker room. He realizes his innocent appearance grants him immunity from suspicion and fatally slices woodshop teacher Mr. Bernardi, another one of Millie's tormentors, in half with a table saw. Millie, now in the Butcher's body, finds her best friends Nyla and Josh and proves her identity to them by performing the school mascot's dance routine and answering a series of personal questions. Nyla and Josh research La Dola and discover that Millie must stab the Butcher with the dagger by midnight or else the body switch will be permanent.


title: Freaky (film)

text: Later that afternoon, with the school's official homecoming cancelled, the Butcher suggests a new dance be held at an old mill that is actually his hiding place. The Butcher subsequently lures Millie's crush Booker into a monster mini golf course to kill him, but Millie, Nyla, and Josh arrive just in time to save him. Millie knocks both the Butcher and Booker unconscious, and she and her friends bring the two to Josh's house. After tying the Butcher to a chair, Millie and Nyla try to explain the situation to Booker, who remains unconvinced until Millie recites a love poem she anonymously wrote to him weeks earlier. Josh watches over the Butcher while Millie, Nyla, and Booker drive to the police station to obtain La Dola. Nyla tricks Char, the last officer in the station, into leaving so she can steal the dagger. Waiting outside in the car, Booker reveals that he has always liked Millie, and Millie divulges how she enjoys the newfound strength and confidence she feels while in the Butcher's body, and they kiss.


title: Freaky (film)

text: The Butcher eventually escapes Josh's house, and Char catches Nyla stealing La Dola. Still in the car, Millie sees the Butcher enter the police station and runs in after him, but Char tries to detain her, unaware of the situation. Millie overpowers Char and locks her in a jail cell while the Butcher escapes in a police car. At the Blissfield Valley High Homecoming dance out at the Butcher's mill, the Butcher kills three jocks who attempt to rape him, thinking he is Millie, as well as a fourth who attempted to assault Josh. As midnight approaches, Millie finds the Butcher and both Nyla and Josh hold him down while Booker staves off the police. Millie stabs the Butcher with La Dola and they switch back to their own bodies just in time, before the police shoot down the Butcher. Later, Millie and Booker reunite and they kiss again.


title: Freaky (film)

text: After faking his death in an ambulance, the Butcher follows Millie home and attacks her, mocking her physical weakness and anxiety. Millie, Char, and their mother struggle to overpower the Butcher, but Millie finally kills him by impaling him with a broken table leg.


title: Freaky (film)

text: Screenwriter Michael Kennedy began working on the script, then-titled "Killer Body", after watching the film "Happy Death Day", and being impressed with the film's ability to cross "Groundhog Day" with a slasher film. Kennedy began working with Christopher Landon shortly after presenting him an early draft of the script over lunch. In early August 2019, the film was officially announced with Landon directing and Jason Blum serving as a producer under his Blumhouse Productions banner. Specific plot details were not revealed, but the story was described as following a violent figure wreaking havoc in a small town.


title: Freaky (film)

text: Production was expected to begin in October in Atlanta, Georgia, and there was some speculation the film could be a reboot of "Scream". However, Landon later debunked those rumors, stating that the project was to be an original story, taking inspiration from Mary Rodgers's "Freaky Friday".


title: Freaky (film)

text: "Freaky" is another high-concept comedy horror film directed by Landon after "Happy Death Day" (2017) and "Happy Death Day 2U" (2019). It has been compared to various teen slasher movies, including "Scream" (1996) and "Cherry Falls" (2000).


title: Freaky (film)

text: Later in August, it was announced that Kathryn Newton and Vince Vaughn had joined the cast of the film, with the screenplay being written by Landon and Michael Kennedy. In October 2019, Uriah Shelton, Alan Ruck, Katie Finneran, Celeste O'Connor and Misha Osherovich joined the cast of the film.


title: Freaky (film)

text: Principal photography lasted for 35 days, under the original title "Freaky Friday the 13th". It began on October 21, 2019, and was completed on December 12, 2019.


title: Freaky (film)

text: "Freaky" had its world premiere at Beyond Fest on October 8, 2020. It was theatrically released in the United States on November 13, 2020, by Universal Pictures. The studio spent an estimated $8million promoting the film.


title: Freaky (film)

text: The film was made available via video on demand on December 4, 2020, by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. "Freaky" was released on HBO on July 27, 2021, and on HBO Max the following day, July 28, 2021.


title: Freaky (film)

text: "Freaky" grossed $9million in the United States and Canada, and $7.2million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $16.2million.


title: Freaky (film)

text: The film made $1.45million from 2,472 theaters on its first day, including $200,000 from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $3.7million, topping the box office. In its second weekend, the film made $1.8million, remaining in first place. It made $799,770 in its third weekend (including $966,470 over the four-day American Thanksgiving weekend) and was dethroned the following weekend by newcomer "".


title: Freaky (film)

text: The film became available via video-on-demand on December 3, in its fourth weekend, and was the top-rented film on FandangoNow, fourth on Google Play, and sixth on Apple TV. It also made $474,610 from 1,502 theaters over that weekend.


title: Freaky (film)

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critics consensus reads, "An entertaining slasher with a gender-bending, body-swapping twist, this horror-comedy juggles genres with "Freaky" fun results." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 67 out of 100 based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of B− on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported 77% of audience members gave the film a positive score, with 54% saying they would definitely recommend it.


title: Freaky (film)

text: Ryan Larson, of "Consequence of Sound", gave the film an A−, saying that "with an incredible supporting cast and two engaging leads, "Freaky" is an out and out blast that finds Landon inching closer and closer to slasher masters like Wes Craven and John Carpenter." Peter Travers, reviewing the film for ABC News, wrote: "Not every joke or jolt hits the mark. But thanks to Landon's clever twists and go-for-broke performances from Vaughn and Newton, you'd be hard pressed to find a better way to party on the scariest date on the calendar than with this "Freaky" Friday the 13th."


title: Freaky (film)

text: Heather Wixon, of "Daily Dead", gave the film 4.5 out of 5, saying that ""Freaky" is easily one of the best supernatural slashers to come along in this era of modern horror, that perfectly blends together horror, humor, and heart seamlessly." Writing for "The Globe and Mail", Barry Hertz gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, and stated, "Landon is not aiming to break new ground here – only to use well-trod territory for his own gag- and gross-out-happy ends. This is candy-coloured mayhem, bright and snappy and enjoyably wince-inducing in its desire to disgust. And just as Vaughn can easily play both male murderer and winsome teen girl, so, too, can the charming Newton ace her required flips." "His Name is Death" editor Albert Nowicki considered the movie to be an effective slasher but also praised its "well-directed slapstick" and Vaughn's comedic performance. He believed the film celebrates its queerness and noted: "Written by two openly gay screenwriters, "Freaky" doesn't stigmatize its characters for their otherness—it erects a monument to it."


title: Gridiron football

text: Gridiron football, also known as North American football or, in North America, simply football, is a family of football team sports primarily played in the United States and Canada. American football, which uses 11 players, is the form played in the United States and the best known form of gridiron football worldwide, while Canadian football, which uses 12 players, predominates in Canada. Other derivative varieties include arena football, flag football and amateur games such as touch and street football. Football is played at professional, collegiate, high school, semi-professional, and amateur levels.


title: Gridiron football

text: These sports originated in the 19th century out of older games related to modern rugby football, more specifically rugby union football. American and Canadian football developed alongside (but independently from) each other and were originally more distinct before Canadian teams adopted features of the American game and vice versa. Both varieties are distinguished from other football sports by their use of hard plastic helmets and shoulder pads, the forward pass, the system of downs, a number of unique rules and positions, measurement in customary units of yards (even in Canada, which largely metricated in the 1970s), and a distinctive brown leather ball in the shape of a prolate spheroid with pointed ends.


title: Gridiron football

text: The international governing body for the sport is the International Federation of American Football (IFAF); although the organization plays all of its international competitions under American rules, it uses a definition of the game that is broad enough that it includes Canadian football under its umbrella, and Football Canada (the governing body for Canadian football) is an IFAF member.


title: Gridiron football

text: The sport is typically known as simply "football" in the countries where it originated, regardless of the specific variety. Various sources use the term "North American football" when discussing the American and Canadian games together, but this term is quite rare.


title: Gridiron football

text: The two sports are also sometimes known as "gridiron football." The name originated with the sport's once-characteristic playing field: the original American football and Canadian football fields were marked by a series of parallel lines along both the width and length of the field, which produced a checkerboard pattern resembling a cross-hatched cooking gridiron. The ball would be snapped in the grid in which it was downed on the previous play. By 1920, the grid system was abandoned in favor of the system of yard lines and hash marks used today. This is still called a gridiron, so the pattern changed, but the name did not.


title: Gridiron football

text: The International Federation of American Football (IFAF), uses "American football" inclusive of Canadian football and other varieties.


title: Gridiron football

text: The sport developed from informal games played in North America during the 19th century. Early games had a variety of local rules and were generally similar to modern rugby union and soccer. The earliest recorded instance of gridiron football occurred at University of Toronto's University College in November 1861.


title: Gridiron football

text: Later in the 1860s, teams from universities were playing each other, leading to more standardized rules and the creation of college football. While several American schools adopted rules based on the soccer rules of the English Football Association, Harvard University held to its traditional "carrying game". Meanwhile, McGill University in Montreal used rules based on rugby union. In 1874, Harvard and McGill organized two games using each other's rules. Harvard took a liking to McGill's rugby-style rules, and subsequently played several other U.S. colleges over the next several years using these rules.


title: Gridiron football

text: American football teams and organizations subsequently adopted new rules which distinguished the game from rugby. Many of these early innovations were the work of Walter Camp, including the sport's line of scrimmage and the system of downs. Another consequential change was the adoption of the forward pass in 1906, which allowed the quarterback to throw the ball forward over the line of scrimmage to a receiver. Canadian football remained akin to rugby for decades, though a progressive faction of players, chiefly based in the western provinces, demanded changes to the game based on the innovations in American football. Over the years, the sport adopted more Americanized rules, though it retained some of its historical features, including a field, 12-player teams, and three downs instead of four. Around the same time Camp devised the rules for American football, the Canadian game would develop in the same way (but separately) from the American game; the Burnside rules were instrumental in establishing many of the rules for the modern game.


title: Gridiron football

text: This is a minimal description of the game in general, with elements common to all or almost all variants of the game. For more specific rules, see each code's individual articles.


title: Gridiron football

text: Prior to the start of a game, a coin toss determines which team will decide if they want to kick off the ball to their opponent, or receive the ball from their opponent. Each team lines up on opposite halves of the field, with a minimum ten yards of space between them for the kickoff. The team receiving the ball can make a fair catch (which stops the play immediately), catch the ball and run it back until the ball carrier is tackled, or, if the ball is kicked out of bounds, let the ball go dead on its own (the last case usually happens when the ball is kicked all the way into or through the opponent's end zone, resulting in a touchback and the ball being brought several yards out of the end zone to begin play). A kicking team can, under special circumstances, attempt to recover its own kick, but the rules of the game make it very difficult to do so reliably, and so this tactic is usually only used as a surprise or desperation maneuver.


title: Gridiron football

text: At this point, play from scrimmage begins. The team in possession of the ball is on "offense" and the opponent is on "defense". The offense is given a set amount of time (up to forty seconds, depending on the governing body), during which the teams can set up a play in a huddle and freely substitute players to set into a formation, in which the offense must remain perfectly still for at least one second (the formation requirement does not apply to Canadian football). At least half of the players (seven in standard American and Canadian football, four in standard indoor ball) on the offense must line up on the line of scrimmage in this formation, including the snapper, who handles the ball before play commences; the rest can (and almost always do) line up behind the line. Neither the offense nor the defense can cross the line of scrimmage before the play commences. Once the formation is set, the snapper snaps the ball to one of the players behind him. (A snapper must snap the ball within 20 to 25 seconds of the official setting the ball back into position after the previous play, and a play clock is kept to enforce the measure.) Once the ball is snapped, the play has commenced, and the offense's goal is to continue advancing the ball toward their opponent's end zone. This can be done either by running with the ball or by a rule unique to football known as the "forward pass". In a forward pass, a player from behind the line of scrimmage throws the ball to an eligible receiver (another back or one player on each end of the line), who must catch the ball before it touches the ground. The play stops when a player with the ball touches any part of his body other than hand or foot to the ground, runs out of the boundaries of the field, is obstructed from making further forward progress, or a forward pass hits the ground without being caught (in the last case, the ball returns to the spot it was snapped). To stop play, players on defense are allowed to tackle the ball carrier at any time the ball is in play, provided they do not grab the face mask of the helmet or make helmet-to-helmet contact when doing so. At any time, the player with the ball can attempt a backward, or lateral, pass to any other player in order to keep the ball in play; this is generally rare. Any player on defense can, at any time, attempt to intercept a forward pass in flight, at which point the team gains possession; they can also gain possession by recovering a fumble or stripping the ball away from the ball carrier (a "forced fumble"). A typical play can last between five and twenty seconds.


title: Gridiron football

text: If any illegal action happens during the play, then the results of the previous play are erased and a penalty is assessed, forcing the offending team to surrender between five and fifteen yards of field to the opponent. Whether this yardage is measured from the original spot of the ball before the play, the spot of the illegal action, or the end of the play depends on the individual foul. The most common penalties include "false start" (when an offensive player jumps to begin the play before the ball is snapped, a five-yard penalty), "holding" (the grabbing of a player other than the ball carrier to obstruct their progress; a ten-yard penalty against offensive players and a five-yard penalty against defensive ones), and "pass interference" (when either a receiver or the defending player pushes or blocks the other to prevent them from catching the pass). A team on offense cannot score points as the direct result of a penalty; a defensive foul committed in the team's own end zone, if the penalty is assessed from the spot of the foul, places the ball at the one-yard line. In contrast, a defensive team can score points as a direct result of a penalty; if the offense commits a foul under the same scenario, the defensive team receives two points and a free kick. In all other circumstances (except for the open-ended and extremely rare unfair act clause), a penalty cannot exceed more than half the distance to the end zone. If the penalty would be less advantageous than the result of the actual play, then the team not committing the penalty can decline it.


title: Gridiron football

text: In order to keep play moving, the offense must make a certain amount of progress (10 yards in most leagues) within a certain number of plays (3 in Canada, 4 in the United States), called downs. If the offense does indeed make this progress, a "first down" is achieved, and the team gets 3 or 4 more plays to achieve another 10 yards. If not, the offense loses possession to their opponent at the spot where the ball is. More commonly, however, the team on offense will, if they have a minimal chance of gaining a first down and have only one play left to do it ("fourth down" in the U.S., "third down" in Canada), attempt a "scrimmage kick". There are two types of scrimmage kick: a punt is when the ball is released from the punter's hand and kicked downfield as close to the opponent's end zone as possible without entering it; the kicking team loses possession of the ball after the kick and the receiving team can attempt to advance the ball or call a fair catch. The other scrimmage kick is a field goal attempt. This must be attempted by place kick or (more rarely) drop kick, and if the kicked ball passes through the goal set at the edge of the opponent's end zone, the team scores three points. (Four-point field goals have been offered in a few variations of the game under special rules, but the NFL, college and high school football only offer three-point field goals.) In Canada, any kick that goes into the end zone and is not returned, whether it be a punt or a missed field goal, is awarded one single point.


title: Gridiron football

text: If the team in possession of the ball, at any time, advances (either by carrying or catching) the ball into the opponent's end zone, it is a touchdown, and the team scores six points and a free play known as a try. In a try, a team attempts to score one or two points (rules vary by each league, but under standard rules, a field goal on a try is worth one point while another touchdown is worth two). At the college and professional levels, the defense can also score on a try, but only on the same scale (thus a botched try the defense returns for a touchdown scores only two points and not six). Kickoffs occur after every touchdown and field goal.


title: Gridiron football

text: If a team is in its own end zone and commits a foul, is tackled with the ball, or bats, fumbles, kicks or throws the ball backward out of the field of play through the same end zone, the defense scores a safety, worth two points.


title: Gridiron football

text: After a try, safety or field goal, the team that had possession of the ball goes back to the middle of the field and kicks the ball off to their opponent, and play continues as it did in the beginning of the game.


title: Gridiron football

text: Play continues until halftime. (Each team switches their side of the field with the other halfway through each half, at the end of a quarter.) After the halftime break, a new kickoff occurs. Whichever team has more points at the end of the game is declared the winner; in the event of a tie, each league has its own rules for overtime to break the tie. Because of the nature of the game, pure sudden-death overtimes have been abolished at all levels of the game as of 2012.


title: Gridiron football

text: At all adult levels of the game, a game is 60 timed minutes in length, split into four 15-minute quarters. (High school football uses 12-minute quarters, and the general rule is that the younger the players, the shorter the quarters typically are.) Because of the halftime, quarter breaks, time-outs, the minute warnings (two minutes before the end of a half in the NFL, three minutes in Canadian football), and frequent stoppages of the game clock (the clock stops, for example, after every incomplete pass and any time a ball goes out of bounds), the actual time it takes for a football game to be completed is typically over three hours in the NFL and slightly under three hours in the CFL.


title: Gridiron football

text: According to 2017 study on brains of deceased gridiron football players, 99% of tested brains of NFL players, 88% of CFL players, 64% of semi-professional players, 91% of college football players, and 21% of high school football players had various stages of CTE.


title: Human Genome Project

text: The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both a physical and a functional standpoint. It started in 1990 and was completed in 2003. It remains the world's largest collaborative biological project. Planning started after the idea was picked up in 1984 by the US government, the project formally launched in 1990, and was declared essentially complete on April 14, 2003, but included only about 85% of the genome. Level "complete genome" was achieved in May 2021, with a remaining only 0.3% bases covered by potential issues. The final gapless assembly was finished in January 2022.


title: Human Genome Project

text: Funding came from the United States government through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as numerous other groups from around the world. A parallel project was conducted outside the government by the Celera Corporation, or Celera Genomics, which was formally launched in 1998. Most of the government-sponsored sequencing was performed in twenty universities and research centres in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, and China, working in the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium (IHGSC).


title: Human Genome Project

text: The Human Genome Project originally aimed to map the complete set of nucleotides contained in a human haploid reference genome, of which there are more than three billion. The "genome" of any given individual is unique; mapping the "human genome" involved sequencing samples collected from a small number of individuals and then assembling the sequenced fragments to get a complete sequence for each of 24 human chromosomes (22 autosomes and 2 sex chromosomes). Therefore, the finished human genome is a mosaic, not representing any one individual. Much of the project's utility comes from the fact that the vast majority of the human genome is the same in all humans.


title: Human Genome Project

text: The Human Genome Project was a 15 year-long publicly funded project initiated in 1990 with the objective of determining the DNA sequence of the entire euchromatic human genome within 13 years.


title: Human Genome Project

text: In May 1985, Robert and Sinsheimer organized a workshop at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to discuss the feasibility of building a systematic reference genome using gene sequencing technologies. In March 1986, the Santa Fe Workshop was organized by Charles DeLisi and David Smith of the Department of Energy's Office of Health and Environmental Research (OHER). At the same time Renato Dulbecco, President of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, first proposed the concept of whole genome sequencing in an essay in "Science". The published work, titled "A Turning Point in Cancer Research: Sequencing the Human Genome", was shortened from the original proposal of using the sequence to understand the genetic basis of breast cancer. James Watson, one of the discoverers of the double helix shape of DNA in the 1970s, followed two months later with a workshop held at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Thus the idea for obtaining a reference sequence had three independent origins: Sinsheimer, Dulbecco and DeLisi. Ultimately it was the actions by DeLisi that launched the project.


title: Human Genome Project

text: The fact that the Santa Fe Workshop was motivated and supported by a federal agency opened a path, albeit a difficult and tortuous one, for converting the idea into public policy in the United States. In a memo to the Assistant Secretary for Energy Research Alvin Trivelpiece, then-Director of the OHER Charles DeLisi outlined a broad plan for the project. This started a long and complex chain of events which led to approved reprogramming of funds that enabled the OHER to launch the project in 1986, and to recommend the first line item for the HGP, which was in President Reagan's 1988 budget submission, and ultimately approved by Congress. Of particular importance in congressional approval was the advocacy of New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici, whom DeLisi had befriended. Domenici chaired the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, as well as the Budget Committee, both of which were key in the DOE budget process. Congress added a comparable amount to the NIH budget, thereby beginning official funding by both agencies.


title: Human Genome Project

text: Trivelpiece sought and obtained the approval of DeLisi's proposal by Deputy Secretary William Flynn Martin. This chart was used by Trivelpiece in the spring of 1986 to brief Martin and Under Secretary Joseph Salgado regarding his intention to reprogram $4 million to initiate the project with the approval of John S. Herrington. This reprogramming was followed by a line item budget of $16 million in the Reagan administration's 1987 budget submission to Congress. It subsequently passed both Houses. The project was planned to be completed within 15 years.


title: Human Genome Project

text: In 1990, the two major funding agencies, DOE and the National Institutes of Health, developed a memorandum of understanding in order to coordinate plans and set the clock for the initiation of the Project to 1990. At that time, David Galas was Director of the renamed "Office of Biological and Environmental Research" in the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science and James Watson headed the NIH Genome Program. In 1993, Aristides Patrinos succeeded Galas and Francis Collins succeeded Watson, assuming the role of overall Project Head as Director of the NIH National Center for Human Genome Research (which would later become the National Human Genome Research Institute). A working draft of the genome was announced in 2000 and the papers describing it were published in February 2001. A more complete draft was published in 2003, and genome "finishing" work continued for more than a decade after that.


title: Human Genome Project

text: The $3 billion project was formally founded in 1990 by the US Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health, and was expected to take 15 years. In addition to the United States, the international consortium comprised geneticists in the United Kingdom, France, Australia, China, and myriad other spontaneous relationships. The project ended up costing less than expected, at about $2.7 billion (equivalent to about $5 billion in 2021).


title: Human Genome Project

text: Two technologies enabled the project: gene mapping and DNA sequencing. The gene mapping technique of restriction fragment-length polymorphism (RFLP) arose from the search for the location of the breast cancer gene by Dr. Mark Skolnick of the University of Utah, which began in 1974. Seeing a linkage marker for the gene, collaboration with David Botstein, Ray White and Ron Davies conceived of a way to construct a genetic linkage map of the human genome. This enabled scientists to launch the larger human genome effort.


title: Human Genome Project

text: Because of widespread international cooperation and advances in the field of genomics (especially in sequence analysis), as well as parallel advances in computing technology, a 'rough draft' of the genome was finished in 2000 (announced jointly by U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on June 26, 2000). This first available rough draft assembly of the genome was completed by the Genome Bioinformatics Group at the University of California, Santa Cruz, primarily led by then-graduate student Jim Kent and his advisor David Haussler. Ongoing sequencing led to the announcement of the essentially complete genome on April 14, 2003, two years earlier than planned. In May 2006, another milestone was passed on the way to completion of the project when the sequence of the very last chromosome was published in "Nature".


title: Human Genome Project

text: The various institutions, companies, and laboratories which participated in the Human Genome Project are listed below, according to the NIH:


title: Human Genome Project

text: Additionally, beginning in 2000 and continuing for three years in Russia, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFFI; ) provided a grant of about 500 thousand rubles to fund genome mapping of Russians (three groups: Vologda-Vyatka (), Ilmen-Belozersk (), and Valdai ()) by the Laboratory of Human Population Genetics of the of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences (). Although the top Russian geneticist in 2004 was (), the research was headed by Doctor of Biological Sciences () at the Laboratory of Human Population Genetics in Moscow. Since 2004, is the scientific supervisor of the Medical Genetics Center in Moscow.


title: Human Genome Project

text: Notably, the project was not able to sequence all of the DNA found in human cells; rather, the aim was to sequence only "euchromatic" regions of the nuclear genome, which make up 92.1% of the human genome. The remaining 7.9% exists in scattered "heterochromatic" regions such as those found in centromeres and telomeres. These regions by their nature are generally more difficult to sequence and so were not included as part of the project's original plans.


title: Human Genome Project

text: The Human Genome Project (HGP) was declared complete in April 2003. An initial rough draft of the human genome was available in June 2000 and by February 2001 a working draft had been completed and published followed by the final sequencing mapping of the human genome on April 14, 2003. Although this was reported to cover 99% of the euchromatic human genome with 99.99% accuracy, a major quality assessment of the human genome sequence was published on May 27, 2004, indicating over 92% of sampling exceeded 99.99% accuracy which was within the intended goal.


title: Human Genome Project

text: In March 2009, the Genome Reference Consortium (GRC) released a more accurate version of the human genome, but that still left more than 300 gaps, while 160 such gaps remained in 2015.


title: Human Genome Project

text: Though in May 2020, the GRC reported 79 "unresolved" gaps, accounting for as much as 5% of the human genome, months later, the application of new long-range sequencing techniques and a hydatidiform mole-derived cell line in which both copies of each chromosome are identical led to the first telomere-to-telomere, truly complete sequence of a human chromosome, the X chromosome. Similarly, an end-to-end complete sequence of human autosomal chromosome 8 followed several months later.


title: Human Genome Project

text: In 2021, it was reported that the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) consortium had filled in all of the gaps except five in repetitive regions of ribosomal DNA. Months later, those gaps had also been closed. The full sequence did not contain the Y chromosome, which causes the embryo to become male, being absent in the cell line that served as the source for the DNA analyzed. About 0.3% of the full sequence proved difficult to check for quality, and thus might have contained errors, which were being targeted for confirmation. In 2022 the complete non-Y chromosome sequence was formally published, providing a view of much of the 8% of the genome left out by the HGP.


title: Human Genome Project

text: The sequencing of the human genome holds benefits for many fields, from molecular medicine to human evolution. The Human Genome Project, through its sequencing of the DNA, can help researchers understand diseases including: genotyping of specific viruses to direct appropriate treatment; identification of mutations linked to different forms of cancer; the design of medication and more accurate prediction of their effects; advancement in forensic applied sciences; biofuels and other energy applications; agriculture, animal husbandry, bioprocessing; risk assessment; bioarcheology, anthropology and evolution. Another proposed benefit is the commercial development of genomics research related to DNA-based products, a multibillion-dollar industry.


title: Human Genome Project

text: The sequence of the DNA is stored in databases available to anyone on the Internet. The U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information (and sister organizations in Europe and Japan) house the gene sequence in a database known as GenBank, along with sequences of known and hypothetical genes and proteins. Other organizations, such as the UCSC Genome Browser at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Ensembl present additional data and annotation and powerful tools for visualizing and searching it. Computer programs have been developed to analyze the data because the data itself is difficult to interpret without such programs. Generally speaking, advances in genome sequencing technology have followed Moore's Law, a concept from computer science which states that integrated circuits can increase in complexity at an exponential rate. This means that the speeds at which whole genomes can be sequenced can increase at a similar rate, as was seen during the development of the Human Genome Project.


title: Human Genome Project

text: The process of identifying the boundaries between genes and other features in a raw DNA sequence is called genome annotation and is in the domain of bioinformatics. While expert biologists make the best annotators, their work proceeds slowly, and computer programs are increasingly used to meet the high-throughput demands of genome sequencing projects. Beginning in 2008, a new technology known as RNA-seq was introduced that allowed scientists to directly sequence the messenger RNA in cells. This replaced previous methods of annotation, which relied on the inherent properties of the DNA sequence, with direct measurement, which was much more accurate. Today, annotation of the human genome and other genomes relies primarily on deep sequencing of the transcripts in every human tissue using RNA-seq. These experiments have revealed that over 90% of genes contain at least one and usually several alternative splice variants, in which the exons are combined in different ways to produce 2 or more gene products from the same locus.


title: Human Genome Project

text: The genome published by the HGP does not represent the sequence of every individual's genome. It is the combined mosaic of a small number of anonymous donors, of African, European and east Asian ancestry. The HGP genome is a scaffold for future work in identifying differences among individuals. Subsequent projects sequenced the genomes of multiple distinct ethnic groups, though as of 2019 there is still only one "reference genome".


title: Human Genome Project

text: The human genome has approximately 3.1 billion base pairs. The Human Genome Project was started in 1990 with the goal of sequencing and identifying all base pairs in the human genetic instruction set, finding the genetic roots of disease and then developing treatments. It is considered a megaproject.


title: Human Genome Project

text: The genome was broken into smaller pieces; approximately 150,000 base pairs in length. These pieces were then ligated into a type of vector known as "bacterial artificial chromosomes", or BACs, which are derived from bacterial chromosomes which have been genetically engineered. The vectors containing the genes can be inserted into bacteria where they are copied by the bacterial DNA replication machinery. Each of these pieces was then sequenced separately as a small "shotgun" project and then assembled. The larger, 150,000 base pairs go together to create chromosomes. This is known as the "hierarchical shotgun" approach, because the genome is first broken into relatively large chunks, which are then mapped to chromosomes before being selected for sequencing.


title: Human Genome Project

text: Funding came from the US government through the National Institutes of Health in the United States, and a UK charity organization, the Wellcome Trust, as well as numerous other groups from around the world. The funding supported a number of large sequencing centers including those at Whitehead Institute, the Wellcome Sanger Institute (then called The Sanger Centre) based at the Wellcome Genome Campus, Washington University in St. Louis, and Baylor College of Medicine.


title: Human Genome Project

text: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) served as an important channel for the involvement of developing countries in the Human Genome Project.


title: Human Genome Project

text: In 1998, a similar, privately funded quest was launched by the American researcher Craig Venter, and his firm Celera Genomics. Venter was a scientist at the NIH during the early 1990s when the project was initiated. The $300M Celera effort was intended to proceed at a faster pace and at a fraction of the cost of the roughly $3 billion publicly funded project. The Celera approach was able to proceed at a much more rapid rate and at a lower cost, than the public project. While it made use of publicly available maps at GeneBank, those were of low quality and only slowed down the project.


title: Human Genome Project

text: Celera used a technique called whole genome shotgun sequencing, employing pairwise end sequencing, which had been used to sequence bacterial genomes of up to six million base pairs in length, but not for anything nearly as large as the three billion base pair human genome.


title: Human Genome Project

text: Celera initially announced that it would seek patent protection on "only 200–300" genes, but later amended this to seeking "intellectual property protection" on "fully-characterized important structures" amounting to 100–300 targets. The firm eventually filed preliminary ("place-holder") patent applications on 6,500 whole or partial genes.


title: Human Genome Project

text: Celera also promised to publish their findings in accordance with the terms of the 1996 "Bermuda Statement", by releasing new data annually (the HGP released its new data daily), although, unlike the publicly funded project, they would not permit free redistribution or scientific use of the data. The publicly funded competitors were compelled to release the first draft of the human genome before Celera for this reason. On July 7, 2000, the UCSC Genome Bioinformatics Group released a first working draft on the web. The scientific community downloaded about 500 GB of information from the UCSC genome server in the first 24 hours of free and unrestricted access.


title: Human Genome Project

text: In March 2000, President Clinton, along with Prime Minister Tony Blair in a dual statement, urged that all researchers who wished to research the sequence should have "unencumbered access" to the genome sequence. The statement sent Celera's stock plummeting and dragged down the biotechnology-heavy Nasdaq. The biotechnology sector lost about $50 billion in market capitalization in two days.


title: Human Genome Project

text: Although the working draft was announced in June 2000, it was not until February 2001 that Celera and the HGP scientists published details of their drafts. Special issues of "Nature" (which published the publicly funded project's scientific paper) described the methods used to produce the draft sequence and offered analysis of the sequence. These drafts covered about 83% of the genome (90% of the euchromatic regions with 150,000 gaps and the order and orientation of many segments not yet established). In February 2001, at the time of the joint publications, press releases announced that the project had been completed by both groups. Improved drafts were announced in 2003 and 2005, filling in to approximately 92% of the sequence currently.


title: Human Genome Project

text: In the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium (IHGSC) public-sector HGP, researchers collected blood (female) or sperm (male) samples from a large number of donors. Only a few of many collected samples were processed as DNA resources. Thus the donor identities were protected so neither donors nor scientists could know whose DNA was sequenced. DNA clones taken from many different libraries were used in the overall project, with most of those libraries being created by Dr. Pieter J. de Jong. Much of the sequence (>70%) of the reference genome produced by the public HGP came from a single anonymous male donor from Buffalo, New York, (code name RP11; the "RP" refers to Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center).


title: Human Genome Project

text: HGP scientists used white blood cells from the blood of two male and two female donors (randomly selected from 20 of each) – each donor yielding a separate DNA library. One of these libraries (RP11) was used considerably more than others, because of quality considerations. One minor technical issue is that male samples contain just over half as much DNA from the sex chromosomes (one X chromosome and one Y chromosome) compared to female samples (which contain two X chromosomes). The other 22 chromosomes (the autosomes) are the same for both sexes.


title: Human Genome Project

text: Although the main sequencing phase of the HGP has been completed, studies of DNA variation continued in the International HapMap Project, whose goal was to identify patterns of single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) groups (called haplotypes, or "haps"). The DNA samples for the HapMap came from a total of 270 individuals; Yoruba people in Ibadan, Nigeria; Japanese people in Tokyo; Han Chinese in Beijing; and the French Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain (CEPH) resource, which consisted of residents of the United States having ancestry from Western and Northern Europe.


title: Human Genome Project

text: In the Celera Genomics private-sector project, DNA from five different individuals were used for sequencing. The lead scientist of Celera Genomics at that time, Craig Venter, later acknowledged (in a public letter to the journal "Science") that his DNA was one of 21 samples in the pool, five of which were selected for use.


title: Human Genome Project

text: With the sequence in hand, the next step was to identify the genetic variants that increase the risk for common diseases like cancer and diabetes.


title: Human Genome Project

text: It is anticipated that detailed knowledge of the human genome will provide new avenues for advances in medicine and biotechnology. Clear practical results of the project emerged even before the work was finished. For example, a number of companies, such as Myriad Genetics, started offering easy ways to administer genetic tests that can show predisposition to a variety of illnesses, including breast cancer, hemostasis disorders, cystic fibrosis, liver diseases and many others. Also, the etiologies for cancers, Alzheimer's disease and other areas of clinical interest are considered likely to benefit from genome information and possibly may lead in the long term to significant advances in their management.


title: Human Genome Project

text: There are also many tangible benefits for biologists. For example, a researcher investigating a certain form of cancer may have narrowed down their search to a particular gene. By visiting the human genome database on the World Wide Web, this researcher can examine what other scientists have written about this gene, including (potentially) the three-dimensional structure of its product, its functions, its evolutionary relationships to other human genes, or to genes in mice, yeast, or fruit flies, possible detrimental mutations, interactions with other genes, body tissues in which this gene is activated, and diseases associated with this gene or other datatypes. Further, a deeper understanding of the disease processes at the level of molecular biology may determine new therapeutic procedures. Given the established importance of DNA in molecular biology and its central role in determining the fundamental operation of cellular processes, it is likely that expanded knowledge in this area will facilitate medical advances in numerous areas of clinical interest that may not have been possible without them.


title: Human Genome Project

text: The analysis of similarities between DNA sequences from different organisms is also opening new avenues in the study of evolution. In many cases, evolutionary questions can now be framed in terms of molecular biology; indeed, many major evolutionary milestones (the emergence of the ribosome and organelles, the development of embryos with body plans, the vertebrate immune system) can be related to the molecular level. Many questions about the similarities and differences between humans and their closest relatives (the primates, and indeed the other mammals) are expected to be illuminated by the data in this project.


title: Human Genome Project

text: The project inspired and paved the way for genomic work in other fields, such as agriculture. For example, by studying the genetic composition of "Tritium aestivum", the world's most commonly used bread wheat, great insight has been gained into the ways that domestication has impacted the evolution of the plant. It is being investigated which loci are most susceptible to manipulation, and how this plays out in evolutionary terms. Genetic sequencing has allowed these questions to be addressed for the first time, as specific loci can be compared in wild and domesticated strains of the plant. This will allow for advances in the genetic modification in the future which could yield healthier and disease-resistant wheat crops, among other things.


title: Human Genome Project

text: At the onset of the Human Genome Project, several ethical, legal, and social concerns were raised in regard to how increased knowledge of the human genome could be used to discriminate against people. One of the main concerns of most individuals was the fear that both employers and health insurance companies would refuse to hire individuals or refuse to provide insurance to people because of a health concern indicated by someone's genes. In 1996, the United States passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which protects against the unauthorized and non-consensual release of individually identifiable health information to any entity not actively engaged in the provision of healthcare services to a patient.


title: Human Genome Project

text: Along with identifying all of the approximately 20,000–25,000 genes in the human genome (estimated at between 80,000 and 140,000 at the start of the project), the Human Genome Project also sought to address the ethical, legal, and social issues that were created by the onset of the project. For that, the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) program was founded in 1990. Five percent of the annual budget was allocated to address the ELSI arising from the project. This budget started at approximately $1.57 million in the year 1990, but increased to approximately $18 million in the year 2014.


title: Human Genome Project

text: Whilst the project may offer significant benefits to medicine and scientific research, some authors have emphasized the need to address the potential social consequences of mapping the human genome. Historian of science Hans-Jörg Rheinberger wrote that "the prospect of 'molecularizing' diseases and their possible cure will have a profound impact on what patients expect from medical help, and on a new generation of doctors' perception of illness."


title: Monopoly

text: A monopoly (from Greek and ), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular thing. This contrasts with a monopsony which relates to a single entity's control of a market to purchase a good or service, and with oligopoly and duopoly which consists of a few sellers dominating a market. Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce the good or service, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the possibility of a high monopoly price well above the seller's marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit. The verb "monopolise" or "monopolize" refers to the "process" by which a company gains the ability to raise prices or exclude competitors. In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with a decrease in social surplus. Although monopolies may be big businesses, size is not a characteristic of a monopoly. A small business may still have the power to raise prices in a small industry (or market).


title: Monopoly

text: A monopoly may also have monopsony control of a sector of a market. Likewise, a monopoly should be distinguished from a cartel (a form of oligopoly), in which several providers act together to coordinate services, prices or sale of goods. Monopolies, monopsonies and oligopolies are all situations in which one or a few entities have market power and therefore interact with their customers (monopoly or oligopoly), or suppliers (monopsony) in ways that distort the market.


title: Monopoly

text: Monopolies can be established by a government, form naturally, or form by integration. In many jurisdictions, competition laws restrict monopolies due to government concerns over potential adverse effects. Holding a dominant position or a monopoly in a market is often not illegal in itself, however certain categories of behavior can be considered abusive and therefore incur legal sanctions when business is dominant. A government-granted monopoly or "legal monopoly", by contrast, is sanctioned by the state, often to provide an incentive to invest in a risky venture or enrich a domestic interest group. Patents, copyrights, and trademarks are sometimes used as examples of government-granted monopolies. The government may also reserve the venture for itself, thus forming a government monopoly, for example with a state-owned company.


title: Monopoly

text: Monopolies may be naturally occurring due to limited competition because the industry is resource intensive and requires substantial costs to operate (e.g., certain railroad systems).


title: Monopoly

text: In economics, the idea of monopolies is important in the study of management structures, which directly concerns normative aspects of economic competition, and provides the basis for topics such as industrial organization and economics of regulation. There are four basic types of market structures in traditional economic analysis: perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly and monopoly. A monopoly is a structure in which a single supplier produces and sells a given product or service. If there is a single seller in a certain market and there are no close substitutes for the product, then the market structure is that of a "pure monopoly". Sometimes, there are many sellers in an industry or there exist many close substitutes for the goods being produced, but nevertheless, companies retain some market power. This is termed "monopolistic competition", whereas in an oligopoly, the companies interact strategically.


title: Monopoly

text: In general, the main results from this theory compare the price-fixing methods across market structures, analyze the effect of a certain structure on welfare, and vary technological or demand assumptions in order to assess the consequences for an abstract model of society. Most economic textbooks follow the practice of carefully explaining the "perfect competition" model, mainly because this helps to understand departures from it (the so-called "imperfect competition" models).


title: Monopoly

text: The boundaries of what constitutes a market and what does not are relevant distinctions to make in economic analysis. In a general equilibrium context, a good is a specific concept including geographical and time-related characteristics. Most studies of market structure relax a little their definition of a good, allowing for more flexibility in the identification of substitute goods.


title: Monopoly

text: Monopolies derive their market power from barriers to entry – circumstances that prevent or greatly impede a potential competitor's ability to compete in a market. There are three major types of barriers to entry: economic, legal and deliberate.


title: Monopoly

text: In addition to barriers to entry and competition, barriers to exit may be a source of market power. Barriers to exit are market conditions that make it difficult or expensive for a company to end its involvement with a market. High liquidation costs are a primary barrier to exiting. Market exit and shutdown are sometimes separate events. The decision whether to shut down or operate is not affected by exit barriers. A company will shut down if price falls below minimum average variable costs.


title: Monopoly

text: While monopoly and perfect competition mark the extremes of market structures there is some similarity. The cost functions are the same. Both monopolies and perfectly competitive (PC) companies minimize cost and maximize profit. The shutdown decisions are the same. Both are assumed to have perfectly competitive factors markets. There are distinctions, some of the most important distinctions are as follows:


title: Monopoly

text: The most significant distinction between a PC company and a monopoly is that the monopoly has a downward-sloping demand curve rather than the "perceived" perfectly elastic curve of the PC company. Practically all the variations mentioned above relate to this fact. If there is a downward-sloping demand curve then by necessity there is a distinct marginal revenue curve. The implications of this fact are best made manifest with a linear demand curve. Assume that the inverse demand curve is of the form formula_3. Then the total revenue curve is formula_4 and the marginal revenue curve is thus formula_5. From this several things are evident. First, the marginal revenue curve has the same formula_6-intercept as the inverse demand curve. Second, the slope of the marginal revenue curve is twice that of the inverse demand curve. What is not quite so evident is that the marginal revenue curve is below the inverse demand curve at all points (formula_7). Since all companies maximise profits by equating formula_8 and formula_9 it must be the case that at the profit-maximizing quantity MR and MC are less than price, which further implies that a monopoly produces less quantity at a higher price than if the market were perfectly competitive.


title: Monopoly

text: The fact that a monopoly has a downward-sloping demand curve means that the relationship between total revenue and output for a monopoly is much different than that of competitive companies. Total revenue equals price times quantity. A competitive company has a perfectly elastic demand curve meaning that total revenue is proportional to output. Thus the total revenue curve for a competitive company is a ray with a slope equal to the market price. A competitive company can sell all the output it desires at the market price. For a monopoly to increase sales it must reduce price. Thus the total revenue curve for a monopoly is a parabola that begins at the origin and reaches a maximum value then continuously decreases until total revenue is again zero. Total revenue has its maximum value when the slope of the total revenue function is zero. The slope of the total revenue function is marginal revenue. So the revenue maximizing quantity and price occur when formula_10. For example, assume that the monopoly's demand function is formula_11. The total revenue function would be formula_12 and marginal revenue would be formula_13. Setting marginal revenue equal to zero we have


title: Monopoly

text: So the revenue maximizing quantity for the monopoly is 12.5 units and the revenue-maximizing price is 25.


title: Monopoly

text: A company with a monopoly does not experience price pressure from competitors, although it may experience pricing pressure from potential competition. If a company increases prices too much, then others may enter the market if they are able to provide the same good, or a substitute, at a lesser price. The idea that monopolies in markets with easy entry need not be regulated against is known as the "revolution in monopoly theory".


title: Monopoly

text: A monopolist can extract only one premium, and getting into complementary markets does not pay. That is, the total profits a monopolist could earn if it sought to leverage its monopoly in one market by monopolizing a complementary market are equal to the extra profits it could earn anyway by charging more for the monopoly product itself. However, the one monopoly profit theorem is not true if customers in the monopoly good are stranded or poorly informed, or if the tied good has high fixed costs.


title: Monopoly

text: A pure monopoly has the same economic rationality of perfectly competitive companies, i.e. to optimise a profit function given some constraints. By the assumptions of increasing marginal costs, exogenous inputs' prices, and control concentrated on a single agent or entrepreneur, the optimal decision is to equate the marginal cost and marginal revenue of production. Nonetheless, a pure monopoly can – unlike a competitive company – alter the market price for its own convenience: a decrease of production results in a higher price. In the economics' jargon, it is said that pure monopolies have "a downward-sloping demand". An important consequence of such behaviour is that typically a monopoly selects a higher price and lesser quantity of output than a price-taking company; again, less is available at a higher price.


title: Monopoly

text: A monopoly chooses that price that maximizes the difference between total revenue and total cost. The basic markup rule (as measured by the Lerner index) can be expressed as


title: Monopoly

text: where formula_18 is the price elasticity of demand the firm faces. The markup rules indicate that the ratio between profit margin and the price is inversely proportional to the price elasticity of demand. The implication of the rule is that the more elastic the demand for the product the less pricing power the monopoly has.


title: Monopoly

text: Market power is the ability to increase the product's price above marginal cost without losing all customers. Perfectly competitive (PC) companies have zero market power when it comes to setting prices. All companies of a PC market are price takers. The price is set by the interaction of demand and supply at the market or aggregate level. Individual companies simply take the price determined by the market and produce that quantity of output that maximizes the company's profits. If a PC company attempted to increase prices above the market level all its customers would abandon the company and purchase at the market price from other companies. A monopoly has considerable although not unlimited market power. A monopoly has the power to set prices or quantities although not both. A monopoly is a price maker. The monopoly is the market and prices are set by the monopolist based on their circumstances and not the interaction of demand and supply. The two primary factors determining monopoly market power are the company's demand curve and its cost structure.


title: Monopoly

text: Market power is the ability to affect the terms and conditions of exchange so that the price of a product is set by a single company (price is not imposed by the market as in perfect competition). Although a monopoly's market power is great it is still limited by the demand side of the market. A monopoly has a negatively sloped demand curve, not a perfectly inelastic curve. Consequently, any price increase will result in the loss of some customers.


title: Monopoly

text: Price discrimination allows a monopolist to increase its profit by charging higher prices for identical goods to those who are willing or able to pay more. For example, most economic textbooks cost more in the United States than in developing countries like Ethiopia. In this case, the publisher is using its government-granted copyright monopoly to price discriminate between the generally wealthier American economics students and the generally poorer Ethiopian economics students. Similarly, most patented medications cost more in the U.S. than in other countries with a (presumed) poorer customer base. Typically, a high general price is listed, and various market segments get varying discounts. This is an example of framing to make the process of charging some people higher prices more socially acceptable. Perfect price discrimination would allow the monopolist to charge each customer the exact maximum amount they would be willing to pay. This would allow the monopolist to extract all the consumer surplus of the market. A domestic example would be the cost of airplane flights in relation to their takeoff time; the closer they are to flight, the higher the plane tickets will cost, discriminating against late planners and often business flyers. While such perfect price discrimination is a theoretical construct, advances in information technology and micromarketing may bring it closer to the realm of possibility.


title: Monopoly

text: Partial price discrimination can cause some customers who are inappropriately pooled with high price customers to be excluded from the market. For example, a poor student in the U.S. might be excluded from purchasing an economics textbook at the U.S. price, which the student may have been able to purchase at the Ethiopian price. Similarly, a wealthy student in Ethiopia may be able to or willing to buy at the U.S. price, though naturally would hide such a fact from the monopolist so as to pay the reduced third world price. These are deadweight losses and decrease a monopolist's profits. Deadweight loss is considered detrimental to society and market participation. As such, monopolists have substantial economic interest in improving their market information and "market segmenting".


title: Monopoly

text: There is important information for one to remember when considering the monopoly model diagram (and its associated conclusions) displayed here. The result that monopoly prices are higher, and production output lesser, than a competitive company follow from a requirement that the monopoly not charge different prices for different customers. That is, the monopoly is restricted from engaging in price discrimination (this is termed first degree price discrimination, such that all customers are charged the same amount). If the monopoly were permitted to charge individualised prices (this is termed third degree price discrimination), the quantity produced, and the price charged to the "marginal" customer, would be identical to that of a competitive company, thus eliminating the deadweight loss; however, all gains from trade (social welfare) would accrue to the monopolist and none to the consumer. In essence, every consumer would be indifferent between going completely without the product or service and being able to purchase it from the monopolist.


title: Monopoly

text: As long as the price elasticity of demand for most customers is less than one in absolute value, it is advantageous for a company to increase its prices: it receives more money for fewer goods. With a price increase, price elasticity tends to increase, and in the optimum case above it will be greater than one for most customers.


title: Monopoly

text: A company maximizes profit by selling where marginal revenue equals marginal cost. A company that does not engage in price discrimination will charge the profit maximizing price, formula_19, to all its customers. In such circumstances there are customers who would be willing to pay a higher price than formula_19 and those who will not pay formula_19 but would buy at a lower price. A price discrimination strategy is to charge less price sensitive buyers a higher price and the more price sensitive buyers a lower price. Thus additional revenue is generated from two sources. The basic problem is to identify customers by their willingness to pay.


title: Monopoly

text: The purpose of price discrimination is to transfer consumer surplus to the producer. Consumer surplus is the difference between the value of a good to a consumer and the price the consumer must pay in the market to purchase it. Price discrimination is not limited to monopolies.


title: Monopoly

text: Market power is a company's ability to increase prices without losing all its customers. Any company that has market power can engage in price discrimination. Perfect competition is the only market form in which price discrimination would be impossible (a perfectly competitive company has a perfectly elastic demand curve and has no market power).


title: Monopoly

text: There are three forms of price discrimination. First degree price discrimination charges each consumer the maximum price the consumer is willing to pay. Second degree price discrimination involves quantity discounts. Third degree price discrimination involves grouping consumers according to willingness to pay as measured by their price elasticities of demand and charging each group a different price. Third degree price discrimination is the most prevalent type.


title: Monopoly

text: There are three conditions that must be present for a company to engage in successful price discrimination. First, the company must have market power. Second, the company must be able to sort customers according to their willingness to pay for the good. Third, the firm must be able to prevent resell.


title: Monopoly

text: A company must have some degree of market power to practice price discrimination. Without market power a company cannot charge more than the market price. Any market structure characterized by a downward sloping demand curve has market power – monopoly, monopolistic competition and oligopoly. The only market structure that has no market power is perfect competition.


title: Monopoly

text: A company wishing to practice price discrimination must be able to prevent middlemen or brokers from acquiring the consumer surplus for themselves. The company accomplishes this by preventing or limiting resale. Many methods are used to prevent resale. For instance, persons are required to show photographic identification and a boarding pass before boarding an airplane. Most travelers assume that this practice is strictly a matter of security. However, a primary purpose in requesting photographic identification is to confirm that the ticket purchaser is the person about to board the airplane and not someone who has repurchased the ticket from a discount buyer.


title: Monopoly

text: The inability to prevent resale is the largest obstacle to successful price discrimination. Companies have however developed numerous methods to prevent resale. For example, universities require that students show identification before entering sporting events. Governments may make it illegal to resell tickets or products. In Boston, Red Sox baseball tickets can only be resold legally to the team.


title: Monopoly

text: The three basic forms of price discrimination are first, second and third degree price discrimination. In "first degree price discrimination" the company charges the maximum price each customer is willing to pay. The maximum price a consumer is willing to pay for a unit of the good is the reservation price. Thus for each unit the seller tries to set the price equal to the consumer's reservation price. Direct information about a consumer's willingness to pay is rarely available. Sellers tend to rely on secondary information such as where a person lives (postal codes); for example, catalog retailers can use mail high-priced catalogs to high-income postal codes. First degree price discrimination most frequently occurs in regard to professional services or in transactions involving direct buyer-seller negotiations. For example, an accountant who has prepared a consumer's tax return has information that can be used to charge customers based on an estimate of their ability to pay.


title: Monopoly

text: In "second degree price discrimination" or quantity discrimination customers are charged different prices based on how much they buy. There is a single price schedule for all consumers but the prices vary depending on the quantity of the good bought. The theory of second degree price discrimination is a consumer is willing to buy only a certain quantity of a good at a given price. Companies know that consumer's willingness to buy decreases as more units are purchased. The task for the seller is to identify these price points and to reduce the price once one is reached in the hope that a reduced price will trigger additional purchases from the consumer. For example, sell in unit blocks rather than individual units.