title: Social mobility

text: In the United States, links between minority underperformance in schools have been made with a lacking in the cultural resources of cultural capital, social capital and economic capital, yet inconsistencies persist even when these variables are accounted for. "Once admitted to institutions of higher education, African Americans and Latinos continued to underperform relative to their white and Asian counterparts, earning lower grades, progressing at a slower rate and dropping out at higher rates. More disturbing was the fact that these differentials persisted even after controlling for obvious factors such as SAT scores and family socioeconomic status".


title: Social mobility

text: The theory of capital deficiency is among the most recognized explanations for minority underperformance academically—that for whatever reason they simply lack the resources to find academic success. One of the largest factors for this, aside from the social, economic, and cultural capital mentioned earlier, is human capital. This form of capital, identified by social scientists only in recent years, has to do with the education and life preparation of children. "Human capital refers to the skills, abilities and knowledge possessed by specific individuals". This allows college-educated parents who have large amounts of human capital to invest in their children in certain ways to maximize future success—from reading to them at night to possessing a better understanding of the school system which causes them to be less deferential to teachers and school authorities. Research also shows that well-educated black parents are less able to transmit human capital to their children when compared to their white counterparts, due to a legacy of racism and discrimination.


title: Social mobility

text: The term "social gradient" in health refers to the idea that the inequalities in health are connected to the social status a person has. Two ideas concerning the relationship between health and social mobility are the social causation hypothesis and the health selection hypothesis. These hypotheses explore whether health dictates social mobility or whether social mobility dictates quality of health. The social causation hypothesis states that social factors (individual behavior and the environmental circumstances) determine an individual's health. Conversely, the health selection hypothesis states that health determines what social stratum an individual will be in.


title: Social mobility

text: There has been a lot of research investigating the relationship between socioeconomic status and health and which has the greater influence on the other. A recent study has found that the social causation hypothesis is more empirically supported than the health selection hypothesis. Empirical analysis shows no support for the health selection hypothesis. Another study found support for either hypotheses depends on which lens the relationship between SES and health is being looked through. The health selection hypothesis is supported when people looking at SES and health through labor market lens. One possible reason for this is health dictates an individual's productivity and to a certain extent if the individual is employed. While, the social causation hypothesis is supported when looking at health and socioeconomic status relationship through an education and income lenses.


title: Social mobility

text: The systems of stratification that govern societies hinder or allow social mobility. Education can be a tool used by individuals to move from one stratum to another in stratified societies. Higher education policies have worked to establish and reinforce stratification. Greater gaps in education quality and investment in students among elite and standard universities account for the lower upward social mobility of the middle class and/or low class. Conversely, the upper class is known to be self-reproducing since they have the necessary resources and money to afford, and get into, an elite university. This class is self-reproducing because these same students can then give the same opportunities to their children. Another example of this is high and middle socioeconomic status parents are able to send their children to an early education program, enhancing their chances at academic success in the later years.


title: Social mobility

text: Mixed housing is the idea that people of different socioeconomic statuses can live in one area. There is not a lot of research on the effects of mixed housing. However, the general consensus is that mixed housing will allow individuals of low socioeconomic status to acquire the necessary resources and social connections to move up the social ladder. Other possible effects mixed housing can bring are positive behavioral changes and improved sanitation and safer living conditions for the low socioeconomic status residents. This is because higher socioeconomic status individuals are more likely to demand higher quality residencies, schools, and infrastructure. This type of housing is funded by profit, nonprofit and public organizations.


title: Social mobility

text: The existing research on mixed housing, however, shows that mixed housing does not promote or facilitate upward social mobility. Instead of developing complex relationships among each other, mixed housing residents of different socioeconomic statuses tend to engage in casual conversations and keep to themselves. If noticed and unaddressed for a long period of time, this can lead to the gentrification of a community.


title: Social mobility

text: Outside of mixed housing, individuals with a low socioeconomic status consider relationships to be more salient than the type of neighborhood they live to their prospects of moving up the social ladder. This is because their income is often not enough to cover their monthly expenses including rent. The strong relationships they have with others offers the support system they need in order for them to meet their monthly expenses. At times, low income families might decide to double up in a single residency to lessen the financial burden on each family. However, this type of support system, that low socioeconomic status individuals have, is still not enough to promote upward relative mobility.


title: Social mobility

text: Economic and social mobility are two separate entities. Economic mobility is used primarily by economists to evaluate income mobility. Conversely, social mobility is used by sociologists to evaluate primarily class mobility. How strongly economic and social mobility are related depends on the strength of the intergenerational relationship between class and income of parents and kids, and "the covariance between parents' and children's class position".


title: Social mobility

text: Additionally, economic and social mobility can also be thought of as following the Great Gatsby curve. This curve demonstrates that high levels of economic inequality fosters low rates of relative social mobility. The culprit behind this model is the Economic Despair idea, which states that as the gap between the bottom and middle of income distribution increases those who are at the bottom are less likely to invest in their human capital as they lose faith in their ability to experience upward mobility. An example of this is seen in education, particularly in high school drop-outs. Low income status students who no longer see value in investing in their education, after continuously performing poorly academically, drop out to join the work force.


title: Social mobility

text: Race as an influencer on social mobility stems from colonial times. There has been discussion as to whether race can still hinder an individual's chances at upward mobility or whether class has a greater influence. A study performed on the Brazilian population found that racial inequality was only present for those who did not belong to the high-class status. Meaning race affects an individual's chances at upward mobility if they do not begin at the upper-class population. Another theory concerning race and mobility is, as time progresses, racial inequality will be replaced by class inequality. However, other research has found that minorities, particularly African Americans, are still being policed and observed more at their jobs than their white counterparts. The constant policing has often led to the frequent firing of African Americans. In this case, African Americans experience racial inequality that stunts their upward social mobility.


title: Social mobility

text: Women, in comparison to men, experience less social mobility. One possible reason for this is the poor quality or lack of education that females receive. In countries like India it is common for educated women not use their education to move up the social ladder due to cultural and traditional customs. They are expected to become homemakers and leave the bread winning to the men. Additionally, women around the world are denied an education as their families may find it more economically beneficial to invest in the education and wellbeing of their males instead of their females. In the parent's eyes the son will be the one who provides for them in their old age while the daughter will move away with her husband. The son will bring an income while the daughter might require a dowry to get married. Moreover, when women do enter the workforce, they are highly unlikely to earn the same pay as their male counterparts. Furthermore, women can even differ in pay among each other due to race. To combat these gender disparities, the UN has made it one of their goals on the Millennium Development Goals reduce gender inequality. This goal is accused of being too broad and having no action plan.


title: Social mobility

text: While it is generally accepted that some level of mobility in society is desirable, there is no consensus agreement upon "how much" social mobility is good for or bad for a society. There is no international benchmark of social mobility, though one can compare measures of mobility across regions or countries or within a given area over time. While cross-cultural studies comparing differing types of economies are possible, comparing economies of similar type usually yields more comparable data. Such comparisons typically look at intergenerational mobility, examining the extent to which children born into different families have different life chances and outcomes.


title: Social mobility

text: In a study for which the results were first published in 2009, conduct an exhaustive analysis of social mobility in developed countries. In addition to other correlations with negative social outcomes for societies having high inequality, they found a relationship between high social inequality and low social mobility. Of the eight countries studied—Canada, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, the UK and the US, the US had both the highest economic inequality and lowest economic mobility. In this and other studies, in fact, the USA has very low mobility at the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, with mobility increasing slightly as one goes up the ladder. At the top rung of the ladder, however, mobility again decreases.


title: Social mobility

text: One study comparing social mobility between developed countries found that the four countries with the lowest "intergenerational income elasticity", i.e. the highest social mobility, were Denmark, Norway, Finland and Canada with less than 20% of advantages of having a high income parent passed on to their children.


title: Social mobility

text: Studies have also found "a clear negative relationship" between income inequality and intergenerational mobility. Countries with low levels of inequality such as Denmark, Norway and Finland had some of the greatest mobility, while the two countries with the high level of inequality—Chile and Brazil—had some of the lowest mobility.


title: Social mobility

text: In Britain, much debate on social mobility has been generated by comparisons of the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS) and the 1970 Birth Cohort Study BCS70, which compare intergenerational mobility in earnings between the 1958 and the 1970 UK cohorts, and claim that intergenerational mobility decreased substantially in this 12-year period. These findings have been controversial, partly due to conflicting findings on social class mobility using the same datasets, and partly due to questions regarding the analytical sample and the treatment of missing data. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has famously said that trends in social mobility "are not as we would have liked".


title: Social mobility

text: Along with the aforementioned "Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults?" study, "The Economist" also stated that "evidence from social scientists suggests that American society is much 'stickier' than most Americans assume. Some researchers claim that social mobility is actually declining." A German study corroborates these results. In spite of this low mobility Americans have had the highest belief in meritocracy among middle- and high-income countries. A study of social mobility among the French corporate class has found that class continues to influence who reaches the top in France, with those from the upper-middle classes tending to dominate, despite a longstanding emphasis on meritocracy.


title: Social mobility

text: Thomas Piketty (2014) finds that wealth-income ratios, today, seem to be returning to very high levels in low economic growth countries, similar to what he calls the "classic patrimonial" wealth-based societies of the 19th century wherein a minority lives off its wealth while the rest of the population works for subsistence living.


title: Social mobility

text: Social mobility can also be influenced by differences that exist within education. The contribution of education to social mobility often gets neglected in social mobility research although it really has the potential to transform the relationship between origins and destinations. Recognizing the disparities between strictly location and its educational opportunities highlights how patterns of educational mobility are influencing the capacity for individuals to experience social mobility. There is some debate regarding how important educational attainment is for social mobility. A substantial literature argues that there is a direct effect of social origins (DESO) which cannot be explained by educational attainment. However, other evidence suggests that, using a sufficiently fine-grained measure of educational attainment, taking on board such factors as university status and field of study, education fully mediates the link between social origins and access to top class jobs.


title: Social mobility

text: The patterns of educational mobility that exist between inner-city schools versus schools in the suburbs is transparent. Graduation rates supply a rich context to these patterns. In the 2013–14 school year, Detroit Public Schools observed a graduation rate of 71% whereas Grosse Pointe High School (Detroit suburb) observed an average graduation rate of 94%. A similar phenomena was observed in Los Angeles, California as well as in New York City. Los Angeles Senior High School (inner city) observed a graduation rate of 58% and San Marino High School (suburb) observed a graduation rate of 96%. New York City Geographic District Number Two (inner city) observed a graduation rate of 69% and Westchester School District (suburb) observed a graduation rate of 85%. These patterns were observed across the country when assessing the differences between inner city graduation rates and suburban graduation rates.


title: Social mobility

text: Social status attainment and therefore social mobility in adulthood are of interest to psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, economists, epidemiologists and many more. The reason behind the interest is because it indicates access to material goods, educational opportunities, healthy environments, and economic growth.


title: Social mobility

text: Researchers did a study that encompassed a wide range of data of individuals in lifetime (in childhood and during mid-adulthood). Most of the Scottish children which were born in 1921 participated in the Scottish Mental Survey 1932, which was conducted under the auspices of the Scottish Council for Research in Education (SCRE) and obtained the data of psychometric intelligence of Scottish pupils. The number of children who took the mental ability test (based on the Moray House tests) was 87,498. They were between age 10 and 11. The tests covered general, spatial and numerical reasoning.


title: Social mobility

text: At midlife period, a subset of the subjects participated in one of the studies, which were large health studies of adults and were carried out in Scotland in the 1960s and 1970s. The particular study they took part in was the collaborative study of 6022 men and 1006 women, conducted between 1970 and 1973 in Scotland. Participants completed a questionnaire (participant's address, father's occupation, the participant's own first regular occupation, the age of finishing full-time education, number of siblings, and if the participant was a regular car driver) and attended a physical examination (measurement of height). Social class was coded according to the Registrar General's Classification for the participant's occupation at the time of screening, his first occupation and his father's occupation. Researchers separated into six social classes were used.


title: Social mobility

text: A correlation and structural equation model analysis was conducted. In the structural equation models, social status in the 1970s was the main outcome variable. The main contributors to education (and first social class) were father's social class and IQ at age 11, which was also found in a Scandinavian study. This effect was direct and also mediated via education and the participant's first job.


title: Social mobility

text: Participants at midlife did not necessarily end up in the same social class as their fathers. There was social mobility in the sample: 45% of men were upwardly mobile, 14% were downward mobile and 41% were socially stable. IQ at age 11 had a graded relationship with participant's social class. The same effect was seen for father's occupation. Men at midlife social class I and II (the highest, more professional) also had the highest IQ at age 11. Height at midlife, years of education and childhood IQ were significantly positively related to upward social mobility, while number of siblings had no significant effect. For each standard deviation increase in IQ score at the age 11, the chances of upward social mobility increases by 69% (with a 95% confidence). After controlling the effect of independent variables, only IQ at age 11 was significantly inversely related to downward movement in social mobility. More years of education increase the chance that a father's son will surpass his social class, whereas low IQ makes a father's son prone to falling behind his father's social class.


title: Social mobility

text: Higher IQ at age 11 was also significantly related to higher social class at midlife, higher likelihood car driving at midlife, higher first social class, higher father's social class, fewer siblings, higher age of education, being taller and living in a less deprived neighbourhood at midlife. IQ was significantly more strongly related to the social class in midlife than the social class of the first job.


title: Social mobility

text: Finally, height, education and IQ at age 11 were predictors of upward social mobility and only IQ at age 11 and height were significant predictors of downward social mobility. Number of siblings was not significant in either of the models.


title: Social mobility

text: Another research looked into the pivotal role of education in association between ability and social class attainment through three generations (fathers, participants and offspring) using the SMS1932 (Lothian Birth Cohort 1921) educational data, childhood ability and late life intellectual function data. It was proposed that social class of origin acts as a ballast restraining otherwise meritocratic social class movement, and that education is the primary means through which social class movement is both restrained and facilitated—therefore acting in a pivotal role.


title: Social mobility

text: It was found that social class of origin predicts educational attainment in both the participant's and offspring generations. Father's social class and participant's social class held the same importance in predicting offspring educational attainment—effect across two generations. Educational attainment mediated the association of social class attainments across generations (father's and participants social class, participant's and offspring's social class). There was no direct link between social classes across generations, but in each generation educational attainment was a predictor of social class, which is consistent with other studies. Also, participant's childhood ability moderately predicted their educational and social class attainment (.31 and .38). Participant's educational attainment was strongly linked with the odds of moving downward or upward on the social class ladder. For each SD increase in education, the odds of moving upward on the social class spectrum were 2.58 times greater (the downward ones were .26 times greater). Offspring's educational attainment was also strongly linked with the odds of moving upward or downward on the social class ladder. For each SD increase in education, the odds of moving upward were 3.54 times greater (the downward ones were .40 times greater). In conclusion, education is very important, because it is the fundamental mechanism functioning both to hold individuals in their social class of origin and to make it possible for their movement upward or downward on the social class ladder.


title: Social mobility

text: In the Cohort 1936 it was found that regarding whole generations (not individuals) the social mobility between father's and participant's generation is: 50.7% of the participant generation have moved upward in relation to their fathers, 22.1% had moved downwards, and 27.2% had remained stable in their social class. There was a lack of social mobility in the offspring generation as a whole. However, there was definitely individual offspring movement on the social class ladder: 31.4% had higher social class attainment than their participant parents (grandparents), 33.7% moved downward, and 33.9% stayed stable. Participant's childhood mental ability was linked to social class in all three generations. A very important pattern has also been confirmed: average years of education increased with social class and IQ.


title: Social mobility

text: There were some great contributors to social class attainment and social class mobility in the twentieth century: Both social class attainment and social mobility are influenced by pre-existing levels of mental ability, which was in consistence with other studies. So, the role of individual level mental ability in pursuit of educational attainment—professional positions require specific educational credentials. Furthermore, educational attainment contributes to social class attainment through the contribution of mental ability to educational attainment. Even further, mental ability can contribute to social class attainment independent of actual educational attainment, as in when the educational attainment is prevented, individuals with higher mental ability manage to make use of the mental ability to work their way up on the social ladder. This study made clear that intergenerational transmission of educational attainment is one of the key ways in which social class was maintained within family, and there was also evidence that education attainment was increasing over time. Finally, the results suggest that social mobility (moving upward and downward) has increased in recent years in Britain. Which according to one researcher is important because an overall mobility of about 22% is needed to keep the distribution of intelligence relatively constant from one generation to the other within each occupational category.


title: Social mobility

text: Researchers looked into the effects elitist and non-elitist education systems have on social mobility. Education policies are often critiqued based on their impact on a single generation, but it is important to look at education policies and the effects they have on social mobility. In the research, elitist schools are defined as schools that focus on providing its best students with the tools to succeed, whereas an egalitarian school is one that predicates itself on giving equal opportunity to all its students to achieve academic success.


title: Social mobility

text: When private education supplements were not considered, it was found that the greatest amount of social mobility was derived from a system with the least elitist public education system. It was also discovered that the system with the most elitist policies produced the greatest amount of utilitarian welfare. Logically, social mobility decreases with more elitist education systems and utilitarian welfare decreases with less elitist public education policies.


title: Social mobility

text: When private education supplements are introduced, it becomes clear that some elitist policies promote some social mobility and that an egalitarian system is the most successful at creating the maximum amount of welfare. These discoveries were justified from the reasoning that elitist education systems discourage skilled workers from supplementing their children's educations with private expenditures.


title: Social mobility

text: The authors of the report showed that they can challenge conventional beliefs that elitist and regressive educational policy is the ideal system. This is explained as the researchers found that education has multiple benefits. It brings more productivity and has a value, which was a new thought for education. This shows that the arguments for the regressive model should not be without qualifications. Furthermore, in the elitist system, the effect of earnings distribution on growth is negatively impacted due to the polarizing social class structure with individuals at the top with all the capital and individuals at the bottom with nothing.


title: Social mobility

text: Education is very important in determining the outcome of one's future. It is almost impossible to achieve upward mobility without education. Education is frequently seen as a strong driver of social mobility. The quality of one's education varies depending on the social class that they are in. The higher the family income the better opportunities one is given to get a good education. The inequality in education makes it harder for low-income families to achieve social mobility. Research has indicated that inequality is connected to the deficiency of social mobility. In a period of growing inequality and low social mobility, fixing the quality of and access to education has the possibility to increase equality of opportunity for all Americans.


title: Social mobility

text: "One significant consequence of growing income inequality is that, by historical standards, high-income households are spending much more on their children's education than low-income households." With the lack of total income, low-income families can't afford to spend money on their children's education. Research has shown that over the past few years, families with high income has increased their spending on their children's education. High income families were paying $3,500 per year and now it has increased up to nearly $9,000, which is seven times more than what low income families pay for their kids' education. The increase in money spent on education has caused an increase in college graduation rates for the families with high income. The increase in graduation rates is causing an even bigger gap between high income children and low-income children. Given the significance of a college degree in today's labor market, rising differences in college completion signify rising differences in outcomes in the future.


title: Social mobility

text: Family income is one of the most important factors in determining the mental ability (intelligence) of their children. With such bad education that urban schools are offering, parents of high income are moving out of these areas to give their children a better opportunity to succeed. As urban school systems worsen, high income families move to rich suburbs because that is where they feel better education is; if they do stay in the city, they put their children to private schools. Low income families do not have a choice but to settle for the bad education because they cannot afford to relocate to rich suburbs. The more money and time parents invest in their child plays a huge role in determining their success in school. Research has shown that higher mobility levels are perceived for locations where there are better schools.


title: Euglena

text: Euglena is a genus of single cell flagellate eukaryotes. It is the best known and most widely studied member of the class Euglenoidea, a diverse group containing some 54 genera and at least 200 species. Species of "Euglena" are found in fresh water and salt water. They are often abundant in quiet inland waters where they may bloom in numbers sufficient to color the surface of ponds and ditches green ("E. viridis") or red ("E. sanguinea").


title: Euglena

text: Most species of "Euglena" have photosynthesizing chloroplasts within the body of the cell, which enable them to feed by autotrophy, like plants. However, they can also take nourishment heterotrophically, like animals. Since "Euglena" have features of both animals and plants, early taxonomists, working within the Linnaean two-kingdom system of biological classification, found them difficult to classify. It was the question of where to put such "unclassifiable" creatures that prompted Ernst Haeckel to add a third living kingdom (a fourth kingdom "in toto") to the "Animale", "Vegetabile" (and "Lapideum" meaning "Mineral") of Linnaeus: the Kingdom Protista.


title: Euglena

text: When feeding as a heterotroph, "Euglena" takes in nutrients by osmotrophy, and can survive without light on a diet of organic matter, such as beef extract, peptone, acetate, ethanol or carbohydrates. When there is sufficient sunlight for it to feed by phototrophy, it uses chloroplasts containing the pigments chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b to produce sugars by photosynthesis. "Euglena's" chloroplasts are surrounded by three membranes, while those of plants and the green algae (among which earlier taxonomists often placed "Euglena") have only two membranes. This fact has been taken as morphological evidence that "Euglena's" chloroplasts evolved from a eukaryotic green alga. Thus, the similarities between "Euglena" and plants would have arisen not because of kinship but because of a secondary endosymbiosis. Molecular phylogenetic analysis has lent support to this hypothesis, and it is now generally accepted.


title: Euglena

text: "Euglena" chloroplasts contain pyrenoids, used in the synthesis of paramylon, a form of starch energy storage enabling "Euglena" to survive periods of light deprivation. The presence of pyrenoids is used as an identifying feature of the genus, separating it from other euglenoids, such as "Lepocinclis" and "Phacus".


title: Euglena

text: "Euglena" have two flagella rooted in basal bodies located in a small reservoir at the front of the cell. Typically, one flagellum is very short, and does not protrude from the cell, while the other is long enough to be seen with light microscopy. In some species, such as "Euglena mutabilis", both flagella are "non-emergent"--entirely confined to the interior of the cell's reservoir--and consequently cannot be seen in the light microscope. In species that possess a long, emergent flagellum, it may be used to help the organism swim. The surface of the flagellum is coated with about 30,000 extremely fine filaments called mastigonemes.


title: Euglena

text: Like other euglenoids, "Euglena" possess a red eyespot, an organelle composed of carotenoid pigment granules. The red spot itself is not thought to be photosensitive. Rather, it filters the sunlight that falls on a light-detecting structure at the base of the flagellum (a swelling, known as the paraflagellar body), allowing only certain wavelengths of light to reach it. As the cell rotates with respect to the light source, the eyespot partially blocks the source, permitting the "Euglena" to find the light and move toward it (a process known as phototaxis).


title: Euglena

text: "Euglena" lacks a cell wall. Instead, it has a pellicle made up of a protein layer supported by a substructure of microtubules, arranged in strips spiraling around the cell. The action of these pellicle strips sliding over one another, known as metaboly, gives "Euglena" its exceptional flexibility and contractility. The mechanism of this euglenoid movement is not understood, but its molecular basis may be similar to that of amoeboid movement.


title: Euglena

text: In low moisture conditions, or when food is scarce, "Euglena" forms a protective wall around itself and lies dormant as a resting cyst until environmental conditions improve.


title: Euglena

text: "Euglena" reproduce asexually through binary fission, a form of cell division. Reproduction begins with the mitosis of the cell nucleus, followed by the division of the cell itself. "Euglena" divide longitudinally, beginning at the front end of the cell, with the duplication of flagellar processes, gullet and stigma. Presently, a cleavage forms in the anterior, and a V-shaped bifurcation gradually moves toward the posterior, until the two halves are entirely separated.


title: Euglena

text: In 1674, in a letter to the Royal Society, the Dutch pioneer of microscopy Antoni van Leeuwenhoek wrote that he had collected water samples from an inland lake, in which he found "animalcules" that were "green in the middle, and before and behind white." Clifford Dobell regards it as "almost certain" that these were "Euglena viridis", whose "peculiar arrangement of chromatophores...gives the flagellate this appearance at low magnification."


title: Euglena

text: Twenty-two years later, John Harris published a brief series of "Microscopical Observations" reporting that he had examined "a small Drop of the Green Surface of some Puddle-Water" and found it to be "altogether composed of Animals of several Shapes and Magnitudes." Among them, were "oval creatures whose middle part was of a Grass Green, but each end Clear and Transparent," which "would contract and dilate themselves, tumble over and over many times together, and then shoot away like Fish."


title: Euglena

text: In 1786, O.F. Müller gave a more complete description of the organism, which he named "Cercaria viridis", noting its distinctive color and changeable body shape. Müller also provided a series of illustrations, accurately depicting the undulating, contractile movements (metaboly) of "Euglena"'s body.


title: Euglena

text: In 1830, C. G. Ehrenberg renamed Müller's "Cercaria" "Euglena viridis", and placed it, in keeping with the short-lived system of classification he invented, among the Polygastrica in the family Astasiaea: multi-stomached creatures with no alimentary canal, variable body shape but no pseudopods or lorica. By making use of the newly invented achromatic microscope, Ehrenberg was able to see "Euglena"'s eyespot, which he correctly identified as a "rudimentary eye" (although he reasoned, wrongly, that this meant the creature also had a nervous system). This feature was incorporated into Ehrenberg's name for the new genus, constructed from the Greek roots "eu-" (well, good) and glēnē (eyeball, socket of joint).


title: Euglena

text: Ehrenberg did not notice "Euglena"s flagella, however. The first to publish a record of this feature was Félix Dujardin, who added "filament flagelliforme" to the descriptive criteria of the genus in 1841. Subsequently, the class Flagellata (Cohn, 1853) was created for creatures, like "Euglena", possessing one or more flagella. While "Flagellata" has fallen from use as a taxon, the notion of using flagella as a phylogenetic criterion remains vigorous.


title: Euglena

text: In 1881, Georg Klebs made a primary taxonomic distinction between green and colorless flagellate organisms, separating photosynthetic from heterotrophic euglenoids. The latter (largely colorless, shape-changing uniflagellates) were divided among the Astasiaceae and the Peranemaceae, while flexible green euglenoids were generally assigned to the genus "Euglena".


title: Euglena

text: As early as 1935, it was recognized that this was an artificial grouping, however convenient. In 1948, Pringsheim affirmed that the distinction between green and colorless flagellates had no taxonomic justification, although he acknowledged its practical appeal. He proposed something of a compromise, placing colorless, saprotrophic euglenoids in the genus "Astasia", while allowing some colorless euglenoids to share a genus with their photosynthesizing cousins, provided they had structural features that proved common ancestry. Among the green euglenoids themselves, Pringsheim recognized the close kinship of some species of "Phacus" and "Lepocinclis" with some species of "Euglena".


title: Euglena

text: The idea of classifying the euglenoids by their manner of nourishment was finally abandoned in the 1950s, when A. Hollande published a major revision of the phylum, grouping organisms by shared structural features, such as the number and type of flagella. If any doubt remained, it was dispelled in 1994, when genetic analysis of the non-photosynthesizing euglenoid "Astasia longa" confirmed that this organism retains sequences of DNA inherited from an ancestor that must have had functioning chloroplasts.


title: Euglena

text: In 1997, a morphological and molecular study of the Euglenozoa put "Euglena gracilis" in close kinship with the species "Khawkinea quartana", with "Peranema trichophorum" basal to both. Two years later, a molecular analysis showed that "E. gracilis" was, in fact, more closely related to "Astasia longa" than to certain other species recognized as "Euglena". In 2015, Dr Ellis O'Neill and Professor Rob Field have sequenced the transcriptome of "Euglena gracilis", which provides information about all of the genes that the organism is actively using. They found that "Euglena gracilis" has a whole host of new, unclassified genes which can make new forms of carbohydrates and natural products.


title: Euglena

text: The venerable "Euglena viridis" was found to be genetically closer to "Khawkinea quartana" than to the other species of "Euglena" studied.


title: Euglena

text: Recognizing the polyphyletic nature of the genus "Euglena," Marin et al. (2003) have revised it to include certain members traditionally placed in "Astasia" and "Khawkinea".


title: Euglena

text: The taste of powdered euglena is described as dried sardine flakes, and contains minerals, vitamins and docosahexaenoic, an omega-3 acid. The powder is used as ingredient in other foods. Kemin Industries sells a euglena nutraceutical supplement ingredient featuring dried "Euglena gracilis" with high levels of beta glucan.


title: Euglena

text: The lipid content of "Euglena" (mainly wax esters) is seen as a promising feedstock for production of biodiesel and jet fuel. Under the aegis of Itochu, a start-up company called Euglena Co., Ltd. has completed a refinery plant in Yokohama in 2018, with a production capacity of 125 kiloliters of bio jet fuel and biodiesel per year.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, first published in 2012, is a book by economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. The book applies insights from institutional economics, development economics and economic history to understand why nations develop differently, with some succeeding in the accumulation of power and prosperity and others failing, via a wide range of historical case studies.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: The authors also maintain a website (with a blog inactive since 2014) about the ongoing discussion of the book.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: The book is the result of a synthesis of many years of research by Daron Acemoglu on the theory of economic growth and James Robinson on the economies of Africa and Latin America, as well as research by many other authors. It contains an interpretation of the history of various countries, both extinct and modern, from the standpoint of a new institutional school. The central idea of many of the authors' works is the defining role of institutions in the achievement of a high level of welfare by countries. An earlier book by the authors, "The Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy," is devoted to the same, but it did not contain a large number of various historical examples.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: The authors enter into an indirect polemical dispute with the authors of other theories explaining global inequality: the authors of the interpretations of the geographical theory Jeffrey Sachs and Jared Diamond, representatives of the theory of ignorance of the elites Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Martin Lipset and his modernization theory, as well as with various types of cultural theories: the theory of David Landes about the special cultural structure of the inhabitants of Northern Europe, the theory of David Fischer about the positive influence of British culture, with the theory of Max Weber about the influence of Protestant ethic on economic development. They most harshly criticized geographical theory as "unable to explain not only global inequality in general", but also the fact that many countries have been in stagnation for a long time, and then at a certain point in time began a rapid economic growth, although their geographical position did not change.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Simon Johnson co-authored many of Acemoglu and Robinson's works, but did not participate in the work on the book. For example, in a 2002 article, they showed through statistical analysis that institutional factors dominate culture and geography in determining the GDP per capita of different countries. And in the 2001 article they showed how mortality among European settlers in the colonies influenced the establishment of institutions and the future development of these territories.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Beginning with a description of Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, the authors question the reasons for the dramatic difference in living standards on either side of the wall separating the two cities. The book focuses on how some countries have managed to achieve high levels of prosperity, while others have consistently failed. Countries that have managed to achieve a high level of well-being have demonstrated stable high rates of economic growth for a long time: this state of the economy is called "sustainable development". It is accompanied by a constant change and improvement of technologies — a process called "scientific and technological progress". In search of the reasons why in some countries we observe this phenomenon, while others seem to have frozen in time, the authors come to the conclusion that for scientific and technological progress it is necessary to protect the property rights of wide strata of society and the ability to receive income from their enterprises and innovations (including from patents for inventions). But as soon as a citizen receives a patent, he immediately becomes interested in that no one else patented a more perfect version of his invention, so that he can receive income from his patent forever. Therefore, for sustainable development, a mechanism is needed that does not allow him to do this, because together with the patent he receives a substantial wealth. The authors come to the conclusion that such a mechanism is pluralistic political institutions that allow wide sections of society to participate in governing the country. In this example, the inventor of the previous patent loses, but everyone else wins. With pluralistic political institutions, a decision is made that is beneficial to the majority, which means that the inventor of the previous one will not be able to prevent a patent for a new invention and, thus, there will be a continuous improvement of technologies. The interpretation of economic growth as a constant change of goods and technologies was first proposed by Joseph Schumpeter, who called this process "creative destruction". In the form of an economic model, this concept was implemented by Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt in the Aghion–Howitt model, where the incentive for the development of new products is the monopoly profit from their production, which ends after the invention of a better product. Since only pluralistic political institutions can guarantee that the owners of existing monopolies, using their economic power, will not be able to block the introduction of new technologies, they, according to the authors, are a necessary condition for the country's transition to sustainable development. Another prerequisite is a sufficient level of centralization of power in the country, because in the absence of this, political pluralism can turn into chaos. The theoretical basis of the authors' work is presented in a joint article with Simon Johnson, and the authors also note the great influence of Douglass North's work on their views.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: The authors support their position by analyzing the economic development of many modern and already disappeared countries and societies: the USA; medieval England and the British Empire; France; the Venetian Republic; the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire; Austria-Hungary; Russian Empire, USSR and modern Russia; Spain and its many former colonies: Argentina, Venezuela, Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico and Peru; Brazil; colonial period of the Caribbean region; Maya civilization; Natufian culture; the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey; Japan; North Korea and South Korea; the Ming and Qing empires, and modern China; the sultanates of Tidore, Ternate and Bakan, the island state of Ambon and other communities on the territory of modern Indonesia, and the consequences of the impact of the Dutch East India Company on them; Australia; Somalia and Afghanistan; the kingdoms of Aksum and modern Ethiopia; South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana; the kingdoms of the Congo and Cuba, and the modern Democratic Republic of the Congo; the states of Oyo, Dahomey and Ashanti, and modern Ghana; Sierra Leone; modern Egypt and Uzbekistan. Reviewers unanimously note the wealth of historical examples in the book.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: The decisive role for the development of countries, according to the authors, is played by institutions — a set of formal and informal rules and mechanisms for coercing individuals to comply with these rules that exist in society. Acemoglu and Robinson divide institutions into two large groups: and economic. The first regulate the distribution of powers between the various authorities in the country and the procedure for the formation of these bodies, and the second regulate the property relations of citizens. The concept of Acemoglu and Robinson consists in opposing two archetypes: the so-called. “extractive” (“extracting”, “squeezing”) and “inclusive” (“including”, “uniting”) economic and political institutions, which in both cases reinforce and support each other.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: "Inclusive economic institutions" protect the property rights of wide sections of society (not just the elite), they do not allow unjustified alienation of property, and they allow all citizens to participate in economic relations in order to make a profit. Under the conditions of such institutions, workers are interested in increasing labour productivity. The first examples of such institutions are, for example, the "commenda" in the Venetian Republic and patents for inventions. The long-term existence of such economic institutions, according to the authors, is impossible without "inclusive political institutions" that allow wide sections of society to participate in governing the country and make decisions that are beneficial to the majority. These institutions that are the foundation of all modern liberal democracies. In the absence of such institutions, when political power is usurped by a small stratum of society, sooner or later it will use this power to gain economic power to attack the property rights of others, and, therefore, to destroy inclusive economic institutions.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: "Extractive economic institutions" exclude large segments of the population from the distribution of income from their own activities. They prevent everyone except the elite from benefiting from participation in economic relations, who, on the contrary, are allowed to even alienate the property of those who do not belong to the elite. Examples include slavery, serfdom, and encomienda. In the context of such institutions, workers have no incentive to increase labour productivity, since all or almost all of the additional income will be withdrawn by the elite. Such economic institutions are accompanied by "extractive political institutions" that exclude large sections of the population from governing the country and concentrate all political power in the hands of a narrow stratum of society (for example, the nobility). Examples are absolute monarchies and various types of dictatorial and totalitarian regimes, as well as authoritarian regimes with external elements of democracy (constitution and elections), which are so widespread in the modern world, where power is supported by power structures: the army, the police, and dependent courts. The very fact that there are elections in a country does not mean that its institutions cannot be classified as extractive: competition can be dishonest, candidates' opportunities and their access to the media are unequal, and voting is conducted with numerous violations, and in this case the elections are just a spectacle, the ending of which is known in advance.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: In fifteen chapters, Acemoglu and Robinson try to examine which factors are responsible for the political and economic success or failure of states. They argue that the existing explanations about the emergence of prosperity and poverty, e.g. geography, climate, culture, religion, race, or the ignorance of political leaders are either insufficient or defective in explaining it.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Acemoglu and Robinson support their thesis by comparing country case studies. They identify countries that are similar in many of the above-mentioned factors, but because of different political and institutional choices become more or less prosperous. The most incisive example is Korea, which was divided into North Korea and South Korea in 1953. Both countries’ economies have diverged completely, with South Korea becoming one of the richest countries in Asia while North Korea remains among the poorest. Further examples include the border cities Nogales (Sonora, Mexico) and Nogales (Arizona, USA). By referencing border cities, the authors analyze the impact of the institutional environment on the prosperity of people from the same geographical area and same culture.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Acemoglu and Robinson's major thesis is that economic prosperity depends above all on the inclusiveness of economic and political institutions. Institutions are "inclusive" when many people have a say in political decision-making, as opposed to cases where a small group of people control political institutions and are unwilling to change. They argue that a functioning democratic and pluralistic state guarantees the rule of law. The authors also argue that inclusive institutions promote economic prosperity because they provide an incentive structure that allows talents and creative ideas to be rewarded.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: In contrast, the authors describe "extractive" institutions as ones that permit the elite to rule over and exploit others, extracting wealth from those who are not in the elite. Nations with a history of extractive institutions have not prospered, they argue, because entrepreneurs and citizens have less incentive to invest and innovate. One reason is that ruling elites are afraid of creative destruction—a term coined by Joseph Schumpeter—the ongoing process of annihilating old and bad institutions while generating new and good ones. Creative destruction would fabricate new groups which compete for power against ruling elites, who would lose their exclusive access to a country's economic and financial resources.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: in which Parliament's authority over the Crown was established in Great Britain after the Glorious Revolution in 1688, as being critical for the Industrial Revolution. The book also tries to explain the recent economic boom in China using its framework. China's recent past does not contradict the book's argument: despite China's authoritarian regime, the economic growth in China is due to the increasingly inclusive economic policy by Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China's Opening up policy after the Cultural Revolution.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: According to Acemoglu and Robinson's framework, economic growth will change the economic resource distribution and thus affect political institutions. Therefore, despite the current rapid growth, if China does not improve political balance, China is expected to collapse like the Soviet Union did in the early 1990s.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: The book is based on two major theories: the first theory explains the drivers of democratic and dictatorial regimes, while the second one goes a step further and explains how democratic regimes promote economic growth while dictatorial regimes prevent it.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Acemoglu and Robinson's theory on what drives democracy is rooted in their prior game theoretic work. This paper models mathematical reasons for oscillations between non-democracy and democracy based on the history of democratization of Western Europe and Latin America. The paper emphasizes the roles of the threat of revolution and social unrest in leading to democratization and of the desires of the elites to limit economic redistribution in causing switches to nondemocratic regimes.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: A number of assumptions underlie their game theoretic model, and allow for the authors' simplified model of society. First, Acemoglu and Robinson assume that society is simply divided between a small rich class and a large poor class. Second, they assume that regimes must be either democratic or nondemocratic; there is nothing in between. Third, people's preferences in society are defined only by monetary redistribution from the rich ruling class. The more monetary benefits they get, the more they prefer the ruling class. Fourth, people care not only about redistribution today but also redistribution in the future. Therefore, people would not only want more redistribution today but also they want to see a guarantee for more or stable redistribution in the future. Fifth, the economic output of a country fluctuates year by year, which means revolution is less costly for the ruling class during economic downturn. Finally and most importantly, each individual in the society tries to maximize their own utility.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: In their model, a country starts as a nondemocratic society in which a small rich group controls most of the wealth and rules the poor majority. As the ruling class, the rich receive taxation from the economy's output and they decide on the taxation rate as the only means of extraction. The poor majority can either take what is offered to them by the rich after they tax the output (the economy's output after tax divided by the population size), or they can choose to revolutionize against the ruling class, which comes with a certain cost. In a revolution, the poor's ultimate payoff is the benefit of the revolution minus the cost of the revolution. Under that circumstance, the payoff of the rich ruling class is split between, when the poor revolutionizes, the punishment for the ruling class and when the poor acquiesces, the taxation income.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: That is, the authors describe a two-stage sequential game (diagrammed below) in which the rich first decide on the taxation rate and the level of redistribution and then the poor decide whether revolution is the optimal choice. Because of the potential loss of economic benefits by revolution, knowing what the poor majority would prefer, the rich have an incentive to propose a taxation rate that does not provoke revolution, while at the same time not costing the rich too many benefits.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Thus, democratization refers to the situation where the rich willingly increase monetary redistribution and thus franchise to the poor in order to avoid revolution.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Based on the analysis above, it is not hard to conclude that the threat of revolution constantly incentivizes the rich to democratize. The theory also resonates with a paper by Clark, Golder and Golder in which the government decides between predate and not to predate citizens based on the payoff while the citizen has the option to exit (migrate to other countries), remain loyal and voice their concerns at a cost (protest). Similarly, this game also provides insights into how variables like exit payoff, cost of voicing and value of loyalty change state's behavior as to whether or not to predate.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Given that the factors leading to democratic vs. dictatorial regimes, the second part of the story in "Why Nations Fail" explains why inclusive political institutions give rise to economic growth.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: This argument was previously and more formally presented in another paper by Acemoglu and Robinson, "Institutions as the Fundamental Cause for Long-Run Growth". With this theory, Acemoglu and Robinson try to explain the different level of economic development of all countries with one single framework.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Political institutions (such as a constitution) determine the "de jure" (or written) distribution of political power, while the distribution of economic resources determines the "de facto" (or actual) distribution of political power. Both "de jure" and "de facto" political power distribution affect the economic institutions in how production is carried out, as well as how the political institutions will be shaped in the next period. Economic institutions also determine the distribution of resources for the next period. This framework is thus time dependent—institutions today determine economic growth tomorrow and institutions tomorrow.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: For example, in the case of democratization of Europe, especially in England before the Glorious Revolution, political institutions were dominated by the monarch. However, profits from increasing international trade extended "de facto" political power beyond the monarch to commercially engaged nobles and a new rising merchant class. Because these nobles and the merchant class contributed to a significant portion of the economic output as well as the tax income for the monarch, the interaction of the two political powers gave rise to political institutions that increasingly favored the merchant class, plus economic institutions that protected the interests of the merchant class. This cycle gradually empowered the merchant class until it was powerful enough to take down the monarchy system in England and guarantee efficient economic institutions.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: In another paper with Simon Johnson at Massachusetts Institute of Technology called "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation", the authors use a natural experiment in history to show that different institutions result in different levels of economic growth. The paper examines institutional choices during the colonial period of several nations in relation to the same nations' economic development today. It found that in countries where the disease environment meant that it was hard for colonizers to survive (high mortality rate), they tended to set up extractive regimes, which resulted in poor economic growth today. In places where it was easier for colonizers to survive (low mortality rates), however, they tended to settle down and duplicate institutions from their country of origin, as we have seen in the colonial success of Australia and United States. Thus, the mortality rate among colonial settlers several hundred years ago has determined the economic growth of today's post-colonial nations by setting institutions on very different paths.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: The theory of interaction between political and economic institutions is further reinforced by Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson in "The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth", which covers the economic rise of Europe after 1500. The paper finds that the Transatlantic trade after the year 1500 increased profits from trade and thus created a merchant class that was in a position to challenge monarchical power. By conducting regression analysis on the interaction variable between institution type and the Atlantic trade, the paper also demonstrates a significant interaction between the Atlantic Trade and the political institution: the presence of an absolutist monarch power hampers the effect of the Atlantic Trade on economic rise. It explains why Spain, despite the same access to the Atlantic Trade fell behind England in economic development.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Acemoglu and Robinson have explained that their theory is largely inspired by the work of Douglass North, an American economist, and Barry R. Weingast, an American political scientist. In North and Weingast's paper in 1989, "Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England", they conclude that historical winners shape institutions to protect their own interests. In the case of the Glorious Revolution, the winning merchant class established property rights laws and limited the power of the monarch, which essentially promoted economic growth. Later on, North, Wallis and Weingast call this law and order "open access", in their 2009 paper "Violence and the Rise of Open-Access Orders." With open access, equality and diversity in thought—societies are more able to flourish and prosper.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: The critical reviews below are notable responses either directly or indirectly addressed towards the book, the authors, or the arguments made by the book. The section below is arranged in alphabetical order of the respondent's first name.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Indian economist Arvind Subramanian points out the potential problem of reverse causality in Acemoglu and Robinson's theory in his publication in "The American Interest". "Why Nations Fail" takes political institutions as causes and economic performance as results for granted. However, according to Modernization theory, causation can also go the other way around—improvement of political institutions can also be a result of economic modernization. The book thus fails to explain why this alternative perspective does not work; however, a 2001 paper by Acemoglu and Johnson with frequent collaborator Simon Johnson introduced a two-stage regression test using colonial settler disease mortality as an instrument attempted to answer this question and is included in the book's works cited.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Subramanian also points out the limitation of the book to explain the recent economic development in China and India. Under an authoritarian regime (theoretically extractive political institution), China has achieved rapid economic development while democratic India (theoretically inclusive political institution) has lagged much behind. According to Surbramanian, one can say that China and India are outliers or that it is still too early to decide (that is, China might collapse and India might catch up according to the book's prediction). However, it is still unsatisfying that the theory is unable to explain the situation of 1/3 of the world's population, and it is unlikely that China or India will change drastically in the near future, according to the prediction.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Acemoglu and Robinson counter that their theory distinguishes between political and economic institutions and that it is not political institutions that contribute to growth directly but economic institutions shaped by the political institutions. In the case of China, even though the political institutions on a higher level are far from inclusive, the incentive to reform Chinese economy does come from political institutions; in 1978 from Deng Xiaoping's opening up policy at the end of the internal political feud during the Cultural Revolution. This exactly fits into the theory that the change in political institutions has shaped economic institutions and thus has influenced economic performance. This economic growth is further expected to shape the political institutions in China in the future. One can only say that China is an outlier to the theory when in the future China becomes as wealthy as U.S. or Germany but still remains an authoritarian regime.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Regarding the case of India, the authors deny an equivalence between inclusive political institutions and electoral democracy. Electoral democracy is the de jure system adopted by a country while political institutions refer to the de facto structure and quality of the political system of a certain country. For example, India's political system has long been dominated by the Congress Party; the provision of public goods is preyed upon by political patrimonialism; various members of Lok Sabha (the Indian legislature) face criminal charges, and caste-based inequality still exists. The quality of democracy is very poor and thus the political institutions are flawed in India, which explains why economic institutions are equally poor and economic growth is stymied.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: David R. Henderson wrote a generally positive review in "Regulation" but criticized the authors for inconsistency when talking about a central government's role in promoting development. In some parts of the book, the authors attribute the failure of the states like Afghanistan, Haiti and Nepal to the lack of a strong central government that imposes rule and order. However, in other parts of the book, the authors seem to embrace weak government for growth, as in the example of Somalia after losing its central government. In addition, Henderson asserts the authors have made two errors in the book about the United States. First, the authors falsely accuse "monopolists" like Rockefeller of being the extractive power. But in fact Rockefeller did not raise the price of oil but lowered the price to gain market share rather than to extract from the economy. Second, he says the authors are oblivious of the mainstream scholarship on American economic history between the American Civil War and civil rights movements in America. Rather than diverging from the rich North, the South was actually converging.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: In his article in "The American Interest", Francis Fukuyama criticized Acemoglu and Robinson's approach and argument for being very similar to a book by North, Wallis and Weingast in 2009, "Violence and Social Orders". Fukuyama approves of the books' central conclusion, which is that the failure of economies are often due to institutions beneficial to elites to the detriment of others, instead of the leaders' ignorance on policy matters. However, Fukuyama contended that the bifurcation of states into being "inclusive" or "extractive" oversimplifies the problem. This approach, he argues, lumps different institutions such as property rights, courts, electoral democracy, an impersonal state, and access to education, thereby failing to unpack their individual effect and makes flawed comparisons between societies across centuries. A modern state and the rule of law, Fukuyama writes, are demonstrably beneficial to economic growth, but popular democracy in poor countries can foster clientelism, corruption and hinder development. Fukuyama also points out that historical facts (on Rome and the Glorious Revolution) used to support the argument was flawed. Finally, Fukuyama specifically pointed out that the argument by Acemoglu and Robinson does not apply to the case of modern China, as China has "extractive" institutions but still flourishes economically.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: In response to Fukuyama's comments, Acemoglu and Robinson replied on their blog. First, they agreed that their work is inspired by North et al.'s work but explained that they build on and complement each other's work. Second, with reference to the criticism of oversimplification, they countered by describing the oversimplification as an approach to decompose complex political institutions; it is necessary avoid focusing too narrowly on a single aspect of institutions. Last, on China, they attribute the rapid economic growth in China to the some (but yet limited) level of inclusiveness, as was also seen in the example of fast growth in the Soviet Union until the 1970s, but predicted that China will not reach per capita income comparable to those of Spain or Portugal with its current extractive institutions.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: In Jared Diamond's book review on "The New York Review of Books", he points out the narrow focus of the book's theory only on institutions, ignoring other factors like geography. One major issue of the authors' argument is endogeneity: if good political institutions explain economic growth, then what explains good political institutions in the first place? That is why Diamond lands on his own theory of geographical causes for developmental differences. He looks at tropical (central Africa and South America) vs. temperate areas (North and South Africa and North America) and believes that the differences of wealth of nations are caused by the weather conditions: for example, in tropical areas, diseases are more likely to develop and agricultural productivity is lower. Diamond's second criticism is that Acemoglu and Robinson seem to only focus on small events in history like the Glorious Revolution in Britain as the critical juncture for political inclusion, while ignoring the prosperity in Western Europe.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: In response to Diamond's criticism, the authors reply that the arguments in the book do take geographical factors into account but that geography does not explain the different level of development. Acemoglu and Robinson simply take geography as an original factor a country is endowed with; how it affects a country's development still depends on institutions. They mention their theory of Reversal of Fortune: that once-poor countries (like the U.S., Australia, and Canada) have become rich despite poor natural endowments. They refute the theory of "resource curse"; what matters is the institutions that shape how a country uses its natural resources in historical processes.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Diamond rebutted Acemoglu and Robinson's response, reinforcing his claim of the book's errors. Diamond insists geographical factors dominate why countries are rich and poor today. For example, he mentions that the tropical diseases in Zambia keep male workers sick for a large portion of their lifetime, thus reducing their labor productivity significantly. He reinforces his point that geography determines local plantations and gave rise to ancient agrarian practices. Agricultural practice further shapes a sedentary lifestyle as well as social interaction, both of which shape social institutions that result in different economic performances across countries.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: According to Jeffrey Sachs, an American economist, the major problem of "Why Nations Fail" is that it focuses too narrowly on domestic political institutions and ignores other factors, such as technological progress and geopolitics. For example, geography plays an important role in shaping institutions, and weak governments in West Africa may be seen as a consequence of the unnavigable rivers in the region. Sachs also questions Acemoglu and Robinson's assumption that authoritarian regimes cannot motivate economic growth. Several examples in Asia, including Singapore and South Korea, easily refute Acemoglu and Robinson's arguments that democratic political institutions are prerequisites for economic growth. Moreover, Acemoglu and Robinson overlook macroeconomic factors like technological progress (e.g. industrialization and information technology).


title: Why Nations Fail

text: In response to Sachs' critique, Acemoglu and Robinson replied on their book blog with twelve specific points. First, on the role of geography, Acemoglu and Robinson agree that geography is crucial in shaping institutions but do not recognize a deterministic role of geography in economic performance. Second, on the positive role authoritarian governments can play in economic growth, especially in the case of China, the fast economic growth could be part of the catch-up effect. However, it does not mean that authoritarian governments are better than democratic governments in promoting economic growth. It is still way too early, according to Acemoglu and Robinson, to draw a definite conclusion solely based on the example of China. Last, on industrialization, they argue that industrialization is contingent upon institutions. Based on Acemoglu and Robinson's response, Sachs wrote a rebuttal on his personal website.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Development economist Paul Collier from the University of Oxford reviewed the book for "The Guardian". Collier's review summarizes two essential elements for growth from the book: first, a centralized state and second, inclusive political and economic institutions. Based on the case of China, a centralized state can draw a country out from poverty but without inclusive institutions, such growth is not sustainable, as argued by Acemoglu and Robinson. Such process is not natural, but only happens when the elites are willing to cede power to the majority under certain circumstances.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Peter Forbes reviewed the book for "The Independent": "This book, by two U.S. economists, comes garlanded with praise by its obvious forebears – Jared Diamond, Ian Morris, Niall Ferguson, Charles C. Mann – and succeeds in making great sense of the history of the modern era, from the voyages of discovery to the present day." Besides singing high praises for the book, Forbes links the message of the book and contemporary politics in developed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom. Though the two countries are by far some of the most inclusive economies in the world, various parts of them are, by nature, extractive—for instance, the existence of a shadow banking system, of conglomerate manufacturers, and so on. He warns against extractive practices under the guise of an inclusive economy.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: Warren Bass reviewed the book for the "Washington Post", writing: "It's bracing, garrulous, wildly ambitious and ultimately hopeful. It may, in fact, be a bit of a masterpiece." Despite his applause, Bass also points out several imperfections of the book. First of all, the definition of extractive and inclusive institution is vague in a way that cannot be utilized in policymaking. Second, though Acemoglu and Robinson are ambitious in covering cases of all nations across history, this attempt is subjected to scrutiny of regional experts and historians. For example, their accusation of Ottoman Empire as "highly absolutist" might not be correct, given the level of tolerance and diversity inside the Empire as compared to its European counterparts.


title: Why Nations Fail

text: In a mixed review of the book in the "Wall Street Journal", William Easterly was generally supportive of the plausibility of the book's thesis but critiqued the book's failure to cite extant statistics-based evidence to support the validity of the historical case studies. For example, in the book's example about Congo, the stated reason Congo is impoverished is that Congo is close to slave trade shipping points. The approach of this historical case study only offers one data point. Moreover, Easterly also points out the danger of ex-post rationalization that the book only attributes different levels of development to institutions in a way a bit too neat. For example, to explain the fall of Venice, it could be the extractive regime during the time or it could also be the shift from Mediterranean trade to Atlantic trade. The historical case studies approach might be biased.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: What's Up, Doc? is a 1972 American romantic screwball comedy film released by Warner Bros., directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring Barbra Streisand, Ryan O'Neal, and Madeline Kahn. It was intended to pay homage to comedy films of the 1930s and 1940s, especially "Bringing Up Baby", and Warner Bros. Bugs Bunny cartoons.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: "What's Up, Doc?" was a success, and became the third-highest grossing film of 1972. It won the Writers Guild of America (WGA) 1973 "Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen" award for Buck Henry, David Newman and Robert Benton. "What's Up, Doc?" was ranked number 61 on the list of the 100 greatest American comedies published by the American Film Institute (AFI), number 68 on the AFI's list of 100 greatest love stories in American cinema, and number 58 on the list of the WGA's 101 Funniest Screenplays published by the Writers Guild of America. The film was very loosely based on the novel "A Glimpse of Tiger" by Herman Raucher.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: Dr. Howard Bannister, a musicologist from the Iowa Conservatory of Music, has travelled to San Francisco to compete for a research grant offered by Frederick Larrabee. Howard is accompanied by his tightly wound, overbearing fiancée Eunice Burns. As the two check into the Hotel Bristol, Howard runs into the charming trouble-magnet Judy Maxwell in the drug store. She never finished college, but nevertheless has amassed a considerable amount of knowledge from all of the academic institutions from which she was expelled. She begins to pursue Howard and lodges herself in the hotel without paying.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: Coincidentally, four parties are staying on the same floor of the Bristol, all carrying identical plaid overnight bags:


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: Over the course of the evening, the bags get switched haphazardly from room to room as the four parties unwittingly take one another's suitcases. Howard ends up with the jewels, Judy with the documents, Mr. Smith with Judy's clothes, and the thieves with the rocks.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: Judy, masquerading as Eunice at the musicologists' banquet, uses her humor, wit and academic knowledge to charm everyone except Howard's competitor, Hugh Simon. Unable to overcome Judy's pretense – and realizing Larrabee's infatuation with her might win him the grant – Howard denies knowing the real Eunice when she tries to enter the banquet. Judy later intrudes into Howard's hotel room. His attempts to hide her presence from Eunice eventually lead to a fire and the destruction of the room.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: The following day, everyone makes their way to a reception in Larrabee's upscale Victorian home, where a fight breaks out involving guns, furnishings, and thrown pies. Howard and Judy take all four bags and flee through San Francisco, first on a delivery bike, and then in a decorated Volkswagen Beetle stolen from a wedding party, pursued by Mr. Smith, Mr. Jones and the jewel thieves, who also have taken Eunice, Larrabee and Hugh Simon hostage. They go through Chinatown disrupting a parade, down Lombard Street, through wet cement, through a panel of glass, and eventually into San Francisco Bay at the ferry landing, after causing several collisions.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: Everyone ends up in a court room, where Judge Maxwell, already on the point of a nervous breakdown, tries to clear up the matter but only succeeds in finding his daughter Judy as the cause of all the trouble. Later, after the bags have been returned to their rightful owners, Howard and Judy find themselves at the airport again. "Mr. Smith" is pursuing "Mr. Jones", who is now back in possession of the government papers, while the thieves plan their escape from the country. Mrs. Van Hoskins pays for the considerable damage and splits the remaining $50 of the reward she had offered among those who helped retrieve her jewels. Eunice appears with Larrabee and Hugh Simon, who won the grant. However, he is exposed by Judy as a plagiarist, thus getting Howard the grant after all. Still, Eunice leaves Howard for Larrabee.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: Howard boards a plane back to Iowa alone, only to find Judy in the seat behind him. He declares his love for her and apologizes for what he said earlier. Judy responds: "Love means never having to say you're sorry" – a reference to the 1970 film "Love Story" also starring Ryan O'Neal – to which Howard replies, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." As the two kiss, the film ends with a scene from the Bugs Bunny cartoon that gave the film its name, screened on the plane.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: The opening and ending scenes were filmed at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) in the South Terminal (now Terminal 1). The opening scene was filmed in the downstairs TWA Baggage Claim area, and the next to last scene was filmed in the upstairs departure area beneath the arrival/departure board and at the flight insurance counter.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: The exterior of the hotel, where Streisand is hanging from a ledge, was shot in Westwood, Los Angeles.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: The San Francisco setting was chosen to allow an elaborate comic spoof of the San Francisco car chase in the hit 1968 film "Bullitt". Bogdanovich claims the rousing chase sequence accounted for one-fourth of the film's $4 million budget. The classic "plate glass" scene, in which O'Neal and Streisand are pedaling on a stolen grocery store delivery bicycle, was filmed at Balboa and 23rd Avenue in the Richmond District. In another scene, their out of control bike goes down Clay Street in Chinatown. The Volkswagen Beetle is stolen from the curb in front of Saint Peter and Paul Church at Washington Square Park, and the Beetle hides on a car carrier on Sacramento St. just west of Van Ness Avenue, in an area where many car dealerships were once located (Van Ness was San Francisco's "Auto Row"). The production did not have permission from the city to drive cars down the concrete steps in Alta Plaza Park in San Francisco; these were badly damaged during filming and still show the scars today. At the end of the car chase, almost everyone ends up foundering in San Francisco Bay—except O'Neal and Streisand, comfortably afloat in their Volkswagen Beetle. During the making of this scene, the actor Sorrell Booke almost drowned in the Bay.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: The final scene on board a TWA Boeing 707 shows O'Neal looking out the righthand window showing the Marina District and the Embarcadero Freeway.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: Although "What's Up, Doc?" is not a musical, it contains some singing and other musical moments. The song "You're the Top" from the musical "Anything Goes" is sung as a solo during the opening credits by Streisand, and as a duet during the closing credits by Streisand and O'Neal. The same Cole Porter musical supplied at least two other tunes played as background music: "Anything Goes" and "I Get a Kick Out of You", heard during the first hotel lobby scene.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: “Funiculì, Funiculà” is whistled by the Streisand character as she crosses the street, following the pizza delivery man, into the Bristol Hotel before the first hotel lobby scene.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: About two-thirds of the way into the film, Howard accompanies Judy at a piano (on a floor of the Hotel Bristol apparently under construction or renovation) as she sings the beginning of "As Time Goes By" (made famous in the film "Casablanca"). The scene includes Streisand imitating Humphrey Bogart with the line, "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, he walks into mine. Play it, Sam."


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: Musical in-jokes appear throughout the film. Over-the-top Muzak-styled elevator music featuring Cole Porter's songs is used throughout the hotel elevator scenes. In the chase scene, a Chinese marching band is inexplicably playing the Mexican tune "La Cucaracha" (although, in certain prints, it sounds more like "Deep in the Heart of Texas") on German glockenspiels. At the American Musicologists' banquet, themes from Thoinot Arbeau's "Orchésographie" can be heard in the background, incongruously played on a Hammond organ and a sitar.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: The Bugs Bunny number—derived from his characteristic tagline—that gives the movie its title appears as well, with the original animation, in the last scene. Instrumental versions of "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone", an old Tin Pan Alley hit which had appeared in Looney Tunes cartoon "One Froggy Evening," are background music during the opening scene in the airport.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: However, as with "Bringing Up Baby", all the music is diegetic—there is no underscoring anywhere in the film.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: As part of a collector's box set of Streisand's films, it was released on DVD in July 2003 and then on Blu-ray in August 2010.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: It is also available to purchase or rent by downloading the digital media formats at iTunes Store and Google Play Store.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: In the United States and Canada, the movie grossed $66,000,000 against a budget of $4 million. It became the 3rd highest grossing film of the year, ranking behind "The Godfather" and "The Poseidon Adventure".


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: As of June 2021, the film held an 89% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 44 reviews, with an average rating of 7.30/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Barbra Streisand was never more likable than in this energetic, often hilarious screwball farce from director Peter Bogdanovich."


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: In his review of "What's Up, Doc?", critic John Simon (upon whom, according to director Bogdanovich, the character of Hugh Simon was based) said that Barbra Streisand "look[ed] like a cross between an aardvark and an albino rat surmounted by a platinum-coated horse bun," and called the film a heavy-handed attempt at nostalgia.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: The film was re-released in the United States in 1973 and earned an additional $3 million in theatrical rentals and in 1975, earning an additional $6 million.


title: What's Up, Doc? (1972 film)

text: The film won the Writers Guild of America 1973 "Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen" award for writers Buck Henry, David Newman and Robert Benton. Madeline Kahn was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress.


title: Monad (philosophy)

text: The term monad () is used in some cosmic philosophy and cosmogony to refer to a most basic or original substance. As originally conceived by the Pythagoreans, the Monad is the Supreme Being, divinity or the totality of all things. In the philosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, there are infinite monads, which are the basic and immaterial elementary particles, or simplest units, that make up the universe.


title: Monad (philosophy)

text: According to Hippolytus, the worldview was inspired by the Pythagoreans, who called the first thing that came into existence the "monad", which begat (bore) the dyad (from the Greek word for two), which begat the numbers, which begat the point, begetting lines or , etc. It meant divinity, the first being, or the totality of all beings, referring in cosmogony (creation theories) variously to source acting alone and/or an indivisible origin and equivalent comparators.


title: Monad (philosophy)

text: Pythagorean and Platonic philosophers like Plotinus and Porphyry condemned Gnosticism (see Neoplatonism and Gnosticism) for its treatment of the monad.


title: Monad (philosophy)

text: In his Latin treaty , Alan of Lille affirms "God is an intelligible sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere." The French philosopher Rabelais ascribed this proposition to Hermes Trismegistus.


title: Monad (philosophy)

text: The symbolism is a free exegesis related to the Christian Trinity. Alan of Lille mentions the Trismegistus' "Book of the Twenty-Four Philosophers" where it says a Monad can uniquely beget another Monad in which more followers of this religion saw the come to being of God the Son from God the Father, both by way of generation or by way of creation. This statement is also shared by the pagan author of the "Asclepius" which sometimes has been identified with Trismegistus.


title: Monad (philosophy)

text: The "Book of the Twenty-Four Philosophers" completes the scheme adding that the ardor of the second Monad to the first Monad would be the Holy Ghost. It closes a physical circle in a logical triangle (with a retroaction).


title: Monad (philosophy)

text: The Euclidean symbolism of the centered sphere also concerns the secular debate on the existence of a center of the universe.


title: Monad (philosophy)

text: The idea of the monad is also reflected in the demiurge, or the belief of one supreme being that brought about the creation of the universe.


title: Monad (philosophy)

text: For the Pythagoreans, the generation of number series was related to objects of geometry as well as cosmogony. According to Diogenes Laërtius, from the monad evolved the dyad; from it numbers; from numbers, points; then lines, two-dimensional entities, three-dimensional entities, bodies, culminating in the four elements earth, water, fire and air, from which the rest of our world is built up.


title: Monad (philosophy)

text: The term monad was adopted from Greek philosophy by modern philosophers Giordano Bruno, Anne Conway, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz ("Monadology"), John Dee, and others.


title: I Want You Back

text: "I Want You Back" is the first national single by the Jackson 5. It was released by Motown on October 6, 1969, and became the first number-one hit for the band on January 31, 1970. It was performed on the band's first television appearances, on October 18, 1969, on Diana Ross's "The Hollywood Palace" and on their milestone performance on December 14, 1969, on "The Ed Sullivan Show".


title: I Want You Back

text: The song, along with a B-side remake of "Who's Lovin' You" by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, was the only single to be released from the Jackson 5's first album, "Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5". It went to number one on the Soul singles chart for four weeks and held the number-one position on the "Billboard" Hot 100 singles chart for the week ending January 31, 1970.


title: I Want You Back

text: Originally considered for Gladys Knight & the Pips and later for Diana Ross, as "I Wanna Be Free", "I Want You Back" explores the theme of a lover who decides that he was too hasty in dropping his partner. An unusual aspect about "I Want You Back" was that its main lead vocal was performed by a tween, Michael Jackson.


title: I Want You Back

text: "I Want You Back" was released on October 6, 1969, and was the first Jackson 5 single to be released by Motown and the first song written and produced by The Corporation, a team comprising Motown chief Berry Gordy, Freddie Perren, Alphonso Mizell, and Deke Richards. It also is the first of four Jackson 5 number-ones released in a row (the others being "ABC" – 1970, "The Love You Save" – 1970, and "I'll Be There" – 1970) and the first Jackson 5 song recorded in Los Angeles, California; the quintet had previously been recording Bobby Taylor-produced remakes of other artists' hits, including "Who's Lovin' You", the B-side to "I Want You Back", at Hitsville U.S.A. in Detroit, Michigan. From late 1969 and on, nearly all of the Jackson 5's recordings were done in Los Angeles when the majority of recordings for other artists on the label were done in Detroit.


title: I Want You Back

text: Although Gladys Knight had been the first to mention the Jacksons to Berry Gordy, and Bobby Taylor brought the Jackson brothers to Motown, Motown credited Diana Ross with discovering them. This was done not only to help promote the Jackson 5, but also to help ease Ross' transition into a solo career, which she began in 1970 soon after the Jackson 5 became a success.


title: I Want You Back

text: The Jackson 5 performed "I Want You Back" during all of their world tours, either as a full song or as a part of the Jackson 5 Medley in concerts (which also included "ABC" and "Mama's Pearl", later on switched with "The Love You Save" in 1973). During their second-ever television appearance (in an episode of "The Hollywood Palace" hosted by Diana Ross & the Supremes), the Jackson 5 performed "I Want You Back" along with Sly & the Family Stone's "Sing a Simple Song", The Delfonics' "Can You Remember", and James Brown's "There Was a Time". They also performed the song on "American Bandstand" and "The Andy Williams Show".


title: I Want You Back

text: Michael Jackson performed the song as part of the "Jackson 5 Medley" (which also included the songs "The Love You Save" and "I'll Be There") during all of his world tours - the Bad World Tour, the Dangerous World Tour and the HIStory World Tour. The song was performed live at the in 2001, in which Jackson reunited with his brothers on stage for the first time since 1984. The song was to be performed at Jackson's This Is It comeback concerts in London, which were cancelled due to his death.


title: I Want You Back

text: The song has sold six million copies worldwide. In 1999, "I Want You Back" was also inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.


title: I Want You Back

text: "I Want You Back" ranks number 104 on "Rolling Stone"'s list of the '500 Greatest Songs of All Time'. It also ranks ninth on "Rolling Stone's" list of the '100 Greatest Pop Songs since 1963'. In 2020, it was ranked number 2 on "Rolling Stone's" list of 'The 100 Greatest Debut Singles of All Time'.


title: I Want You Back

text: In 2006, "Pitchfork" named it the second best song of the 1960s, adding that the chorus contains "possibly the best chord progression in pop music history". A June 2009 article by "The Daily Telegraph" called it "arguably the greatest pop record of all time". Digital Spy called the song "one of the most enduring pop singles of the sixties".


title: I Want You Back

text: According to Acclaimed Music, it is the 45th most celebrated song in popular music history, and the 2nd best song of 1969.


title: I Want You Back

text: The single has been awarded Silver certification on August 22, 2014, by the British Phonographic Industry Association.


title: I Want You Back

text: "I Want You Back" has long been considered one of the most sampled songs in all of hip hop music. The song has been sampled over 60 times since its release by artists including Jay-Z and The Notorious B.I.G.


title: I Want You Back

text: English girl group Cleopatra recorded a cover version of "I Want You Back" for their 1998 debut studio album, "Comin' Atcha!". It was released as the album's third single on August 10, 1998, and received mixed reviews from music critics. "I Want You Back" became the group's third and final top-five hit on the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number four and staying on the chart for 11 weeks, making it their longest-charting single along with "Cleopatra's Theme". It also charted in several other countries, reaching the top 20 in France and New Zealand.


title: I Want You Back

text: British trade paper "Music Week" reviewed the song before its release, calling it "close-to-the-original" and giving it a "side-thumb" rating. British columnist James Masterton wrote that this cover version has "no merit whatsoever" but ultimately called the track "forgivable" due to Cleopatra's talents and worldwide popularity, referring to the single as "nothing short of a superb but faithful rendition of an all time classic song by a group with the voices to carry it off perfectly".


title: I Want You Back

text: A cover of "I Want You Back" by South Korean girl group Twice was released by Warner Music Japan on June 15, 2018, as a digital single.


title: Beautiful (Christina Aguilera song)

text: "Beautiful" is a song recorded by American singer Christina Aguilera for her fourth studio album, "Stripped" (2002). It was released as the album's second single on November 16, 2002. A pop and R&B ballad, "Beautiful" was written and produced by Linda Perry. Lyrically, it discusses inner-beauty, as well as self-esteem and insecurity. Aguilera commented that she put "her heart and her soul" into the track, which she felt represented the theme of "Stripped". The song was later re-recorded in an electronic style, entitled "You Are What You Are (Beautiful)", for her first greatest hits album "" (2008).


title: Beautiful (Christina Aguilera song)

text: "Beautiful" received universal acclaim from music critics, who have ranked it among Aguilera's strongest material. It won the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and was also nominated for Song of the Year at the 2004 ceremony. "Beautiful" was also a commercial success, topping the charts in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Romania, and the United Kingdom. The song peaked at number two on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the United States, where it was certified double platinum for over 2 million units sold.