title: Sheboygan, Wisconsin

text: Interstate 43 is the primary north-south transportation route into Sheboygan, and forms the west boundary of the city. U.S. Route 141 was the primary north-south route into Sheboygan before Interstate 43 was built, and its former route is a major north-south route through the center of the city that is referred to as Calumet Drive coming into the city from the north, and South Business Drive/Sauk Trail Road from the south; between Superior and Georgia Avenues, the highway is known as 14th Street. Four-lane Highway 23 is the primary west route into the city, and leads into the city up to North 25th Street as a freeway. Other state highways in the city include Highway 42, Highway 28, which both run mostly along the former inner-city routing of U.S. 141. Secondary county highways include County Trunk Highway DL (CTH-DL) and the decommissioned CTH-LS to the north; CTH-J, CTH-O, CTH-PP, and CTH-EE to the west; and CTH-KK to the south.


title: Sheboygan, Wisconsin

text: For addressing purposes, the city's north-south zero point is Pennsylvania Avenue (increasing from 500 past that line in both directions), while west addressing zeroes out at the extreme eastern point of Superior Avenue at Lake Michigan (Sheboygan and Sheboygan County have no east addresses, and the little land existing northeast of that point stretches out the six '100 blocks' northward with xx50-xx90 numbers not otherwise used in most other addresses in Sheboygan).


title: Sheboygan, Wisconsin

text: Shoreline Metro provides public bus transit throughout the city, as well as in Kohler and Sheboygan Falls. All routes depart from the Metro Center, more commonly known as the "Transfer Point" located in the downtown.


title: Sheboygan, Wisconsin

text: Jefferson Lines and Indian Trails serve Sheboygan at the Metro Center, providing transportation to Milwaukee (and an Amtrak Thruway connection to the Milwaukee Intermodal Station) and Green Bay.


title: Sheboygan, Wisconsin

text: Historically the city was connected to Milwaukee, Chicago and Green Bay via the Milwaukee Interurban Lines, the Chicago & North Western Railroad and the Milwaukee Road. These railroads' passenger services were abandoned during the mid-20th century but in 2008 the Wisconsin Department of Transportation proposed to reestablish passenger service to Milwaukee and Green Bay via Fond du Lac and the cities along Lake Winnebago's west shore, though political complications in the 2010s have since mothballed rail expansion in Wisconsin.


title: Sheboygan, Wisconsin

text: Sheboygan is served by the county-owned non-commercial Sheboygan County Memorial Airport (KSBM) three miles northwest of the city.


title: Sheboygan, Wisconsin

text: Sheboygan is bounded on the east by Lake Michigan. The city has no active port in the 21st century. Blue Harbor Resort is located on a peninsula between the lake and the Sheboygan River's last bend. This site was formerly used as the headquarters of the C. Reiss Coal Company (now a Koch Industries division). It was their base of operations for ships to load and unload coal for delivery along the peninsula.


title: Sheboygan, Wisconsin

text: The Sheboygan River passes through the city, but dams in Sheboygan Falls prevent navigation upriver. Tall-masted boats are confined to the river downstream of the Pennsylvania Avenue bridge. Commercial charter fishing boats dock near the mouth of the river.


title: Sheboygan, Wisconsin

text: In July 2022, Aurora Health Care opened a modern replacement for Aurora Sheboygan Memorial Medical Center on Union Avenue east of I-43 on Kohler village land north of the Acuity Insurance campus otherwise inaccessible from Kohler proper itself without going through Sheboygan.


title: Sheboygan, Wisconsin

text: Sheboygan has student exchanges with Esslingen and has had student exchanges with Tsubame in the past.


title: Live oak

text: Live oak or evergreen oak is any of a number of oaks in several different sections of the genus "Quercus" that share the characteristic of evergreen foliage. These oaks are not more closely related to each other than they are to other oaks.


title: Live oak

text: The name "live oak" comes from the fact that evergreen oaks remain green and "live" throughout winter, when other oaks are dormant and leafless. The name is used mainly in North America, where evergreen oaks are widespread in warmer areas along the Atlantic coast from southeast Virginia to Florida, west along the Gulf Coast to Louisiana and Mexico, and across the southwest to California.


title: Live oak

text: Evergreen oak species are also common in parts of southern Europe and south Asia, and are included in this list for the sake of completeness. These species, although not having "live" in their common names in their countries of origin, are colloquially called live oaks when cultivated in North America.


title: Live oak

text: When the term live oak is used in a specific rather than general sense, it most commonly refers to the group of species under Quercus ser. Virentes, which includes the southern live oak ("Quercus virginiana"), the first species so named, and an icon of the Old South.


title: Live oak

text: According to the Live Oak Society the oldest southern live oak is believed to be the Seven Sisters Oak located in Mandeville, Louisiana with an estimated age of 500–1,000 years.


title: Live oak

text: Live oak was widely used in early American butt shipbuilding. Because of the trees' short height and low-hanging branches, lumber from live oaks was used in curved parts of the frame, such as knee braces (single-piece, L-shaped braces that spring inward from the side and support the deck), in which the grain runs perpendicular to structural stress, making for exceptional strength. Live oaks were not generally used for planking because the curved and often convoluted shape of the tree did not lend itself to being milled to planking of any length. Red oak and white oak were generally used for planking on vessels, because those trees grow straight and tall, with straight trunks long enough for planks.


title: Live oak

text: Loggers had cut down most of the live oak trees in southern Europe by the latter half of the 19th century. Live oak timber from the United States was similarly sought and exported until metal-hulled commercial vessels became the norm in the early part of the 20th century. Live oak lumber is rarely used for furniture, because it warps and twists while drying.


title: Live oak

text: The wood of live oaks continues to be used occasionally in shipbuilding—and in tool handles for its strength, energy absorption, and density, although modern composites are often substituted with good effect. Dry Southern live oak lumber has a specific gravity of 0.88, among the highest of North American hardwoods.


title: Elizabeth Spriggs

text: Spriggs' roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company included Nurse in "Romeo and Juliet", Gertrude in "Hamlet" and Beatrice in "Much Ado About Nothing". In 1978, she won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress for Arnold Wesker's "Love Letters on Blue Paper". She received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress for the 1995 film "Sense and Sensibility". Her other films included "Richard's Things" (1980), "Impromptu" (1991), "Paradise Road" (1997) and "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (2001).


title: Elizabeth Spriggs

text: Born in Buxton, Derbyshire, in 1929, Spriggs had an unhappy childhood, later stating that she "grew up entirely without affection". She studied at the Royal College of Music and taught speech and drama in Coventry. Her first marriage at 21 was a disaster and, in what she called "the most painful decision of my life", left her husband and young daughter to pursue her acting dream. "The desire to act was like a weight within me", she later said, "and I knew if I didn't do anything about it, it would destroy me". She wrote to a repertory company in Stockport, Cheshire, asking for a job and was taken on. She worked with many companies, including in Birmingham and Bristol, before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 1962.


title: Elizabeth Spriggs

text: Spriggs was a regular performer with the RSC under Peter Hall until 1976, playing many important Shakespearean roles, including Nurse in "Romeo and Juliet", an acclaimed Gertrude in "Hamlet" opposite David Warner, Calpurnia in "Julius Caesar", Mistress Ford in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and a witty Beatrice in "Much Ado About Nothing". She also featured in RSC productions of Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance", Shaw's "Major Barbara" and Dion Boucicault's comedy "London Assurance", playing Lady Gay Spanker alongside Donald Sinden.


title: Elizabeth Spriggs

text: In 1976, she moved with Hall from the RSC to the National Theatre when the company's own theatre opened. In the first season she played the eccentric medium Madame Arcati in "Blithe Spirit". Among her many other plays for the National were "Volpone" with Paul Scofield, "The Country Wife" and "Macbeth" with Albert Finney. In 1978, Spriggs won the Society of West End Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actress for Arnold Wesker's "Love Letters on Blue Paper", playing the wife of a dying trade union leader who recalls their early life together (a part she first played on BBC television in 1976).


title: Elizabeth Spriggs

text: Her later stage work included a West End revival of J. B. Priestley's "When We Are Married" in 1986, and "Arsenic and Old Lace" at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1991.


title: Elizabeth Spriggs

text: Spriggs did not work regularly on television until the mid-1970s. She was in Frederic Raphael's "The Glittering Prizes" (1976), starred as Eleanor Pressett in the BBC drama "We, the Accused" (1980), played Connie, the head of a battling South London family in the thirteen-part drama "Fox" (1980), was Martha in "Tales Of The Unexpected" (1980) and was the formidable Nan in the ITV comedy series "Shine on Harvey Moon" (1982–85). She appeared in three plays by Alan Bennett: "Afternoon Off" (1979), "Intensive Care" (1982) and "Our Winnie" (1982). She played Calpurnia and Mistress Quickly for the BBC's Shakespeare series, appeared in "Doctor Who" in the 1987 Sylvester McCoy serial "Paradise Towers" and was the title witch in a children's series called "Simon and the Witch" (1987).


title: Elizabeth Spriggs

text: In 1990, she gave a memorable performance as one of the God-fearing gossips in the BBC adaptation of Jeanette Winterson's "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" and in 1992, was in television versions of Kingsley Amis's "The Old Devils" and Angus Wilson's "Anglo-Saxon Attitudes". In 1994, she played the midwife Mrs Gamp in the BBC's adaptation of Charles Dickens's "Martin Chuzzlewit" and was Mrs Cadwallader in "Middlemarch" by George Eliot. She continued to work on television, in series like "Heartbeat", "Midsomer Murders" (playing a murder victim in the pilot episode of the series in 1997 and returning in 2006 as the character's identical twin sister) and "Poirot".


title: Elizabeth Spriggs

text: She was the subject of "This Is Your Life" in 1998, when she was surprised by Michael Aspel at Shepperton Studios.


title: Elizabeth Spriggs

text: Her early film appearances included "Work Is a Four-Letter Word" (1968) and "Three into Two Won't Go" (1969), both directed by Peter Hall. Her later character roles included Mrs Jennings in Emma Thompson's Oscar-winning adaptation of "Sense and Sensibility" (1995), a role for which she was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (losing out to co-star Kate Winslet) and the Fat Lady in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (2001). Her final film was "Is Anybody There?" (2008) with Michael Caine, released shortly after her death.


title: Elizabeth Spriggs

text: Spriggs's first two marriages, to Kenneth Spriggs and a fellow RSC actor, Marshall Jones, were dissolved. In 1977, she married her third husband, Murray Manson, a mini-cab driver and musician whom she had met while performing in "London Assurance". She had a daughter, Wendy, from her first marriage.


title: Elizabeth Spriggs

text: Spriggs died on 2 July 2008 aged 78. Her funeral service and interment took place at Saint Mary the Virgin's Churchyard in Thame, Oxfordshire. It was attended by family and friends, including, Sinéad Cusack, James Ellis and Lesley Sharp. Her funeral was also attended by Jeremy Irons, Robert Hardy, and Peter Vaughan, who all paid tribute to their friend and fellow actor.


title: Gasification

text: Gasification is a process that converts biomass- or fossil fuel-based carbonaceous materials into gases, including as the largest fractions: nitrogen (N), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen (H), and carbon dioxide (). This is achieved by reacting the feedstock material at high temperatures (typically >700 °C), without combustion, via controlling the amount of oxygen and/or steam present in the reaction. The resulting gas mixture is called syngas (from synthesis gas) or producer gas and is itself a fuel due to the flammability of the H and CO of which the gas is largely composed. Power can be derived from the subsequent combustion of the resultant gas, and is considered to be a source of renewable energy if the gasified compounds were obtained from biomass feedstock.


title: Gasification

text: An advantage of gasification is that syngas can be more efficient than direct combustion of the original feedstock material because it can be combusted at higher temperatures so that the thermodynamic upper limit to the efficiency defined by Carnot's rule is higher. Syngas may also be used as the hydrogen source in fuel cells, however the syngas produced by most gasification systems requires additional processing and reforming to remove the contaminants and other gases such as CO and to be suitable for low-temperature fuel cell use, but high-temperature solid oxide fuel cells are capable of directly accepting mixtures of <chem>H2,CO,CO2</chem> steam, and methane.


title: Gasification

text: Syngas is most commonly burned directly in gas engines, used to produce methanol and hydrogen, or converted via the Fischer–Tropsch process into synthetic fuel. For some materials gasification can be an alternative to landfilling and incineration, resulting in lowered emissions of atmospheric pollutants such as methane and particulates. Some gasification processes aim at refining out corrosive ash elements such as chloride and potassium, allowing clean gas production from otherwise problematic feedstock material. Gasification of fossil fuels is currently widely used on industrial scales to generate electricity. Gasification can generate lower amounts of some pollutants as SO and than combustion.


title: Gasification

text: Energy has been produced at industrial scale via gasification since the early 19th century. Initially coal and peat were gasified to produce town gas for lighting and cooking, with the first public street lighting installed in Pall


title: Gasification

text: Mall, London on January 28, 1807, spreading shortly to supply commercial gas lighting to most industrialized cities until the end of the 19th century when it was replaced with electrical lighting. Gasification and syngas continued to be used in blast furnaces and more significantly in the production of synthetic chemicals where it has been in use since the 1920s. The thousands of sites left toxic residue. Some sites have been remediated, while others are still polluted.


title: Gasification

text: During both world wars, especially the World War II, the need for fuel produced by gasification reemerged due to the shortage of petroleum. Wood gas generators, called Gasogene or Gazogène, were used to power motor vehicles in Europe. By 1945 there were trucks, buses and agricultural machines that were powered by gasification. It is estimated that there were close to 9,000,000 vehicles running on producer gas all over the world.


title: Gasification

text: In essence, a limited amount of oxygen or air is introduced into the reactor to allow some of the organic material to be "burned" to produce carbon dioxide and energy, which drives a second reaction that converts further organic material to hydrogen and additional carbon dioxide. Further reactions occur when the formed carbon monoxide and residual water from the organic material react to form methane and excess carbon dioxide (formula_5). This third reaction occurs more abundantly in reactors that increase the residence time of the reactive gases and organic materials, as well as heat and pressure. Catalysts are used in more sophisticated reactors to improve reaction rates, thus moving the system closer to the reaction equilibrium for a fixed residence time.


title: Gasification

text: Several types of gasifiers are currently available for commercial use: counter-current fixed bed, co-current fixed bed, fluidized bed, entrained flow, plasma, and free radical.


title: Gasification

text: A fixed bed of carbonaceous fuel (e.g. coal or biomass) through which the "gasification agent" (steam, oxygen and/or air) flows in counter-current configuration. The ash is either removed in the dry condition or as a slag. The slagging gasifiers have a lower ratio of steam to carbon, achieving temperatures higher than the ash fusion temperature. The nature of the gasifier means that the fuel must have high mechanical strength and must ideally be non-caking so that it will form a permeable bed, although recent developments have reduced these restrictions to some extent. The throughput for this type of gasifier is relatively low. Thermal efficiency is high as the temperatures in the gas exit are relatively low. However, this means that tar and methane production is significant at typical operation temperatures, so product gas must be extensively cleaned before use. The tar can be recycled to the reactor.


title: Gasification

text: In the gasification of fine, undensified biomass such as rice hulls, it is necessary to blow air into the reactor by means of a fan. This creates very high gasification temperature, as high as 1000 C. Above the gasification zone, a bed of fine and hot char is formed, and as the gas is blow forced through this bed, most complex hydrocarbons are broken down into simple components of hydrogen and carbon monoxide.


title: Gasification

text: Similar to the counter-current type, but the gasification agent gas flows in co-current configuration with the fuel (downwards, hence the name "down draft gasifier"). Heat needs to be added to the upper part of the bed, either by combusting small amounts of the fuel or from external heat sources. The produced gas leaves the gasifier at a high temperature, and most of this heat is often transferred to the gasification agent added in the top of the bed, resulting in an energy efficiency on level with the counter-current type. Since all tars must pass through a hot bed of char in this configuration, tar levels are much lower than the counter-current type.


title: Gasification

text: The fuel is fluidized in oxygen and steam or air. The ash is removed dry or as heavy agglomerates that defluidize. The temperatures are relatively low in dry ash gasifiers, so the fuel must be highly reactive; low-grade coals are particularly suitable. The agglomerating gasifiers have slightly higher temperatures, and are suitable for higher rank coals. Fuel throughput is higher than for the fixed bed, but not as high as for the entrained flow gasifier. The conversion efficiency can be rather low due to elutriation of carbonaceous material. Recycle or subsequent combustion of solids can be used to increase conversion. Fluidized bed gasifiers are most useful for fuels that form highly corrosive ash that would damage the walls of slagging gasifiers. Biomass fuels generally contain high levels of corrosive ash.


title: Gasification

text: Fluidized bed gasifiers uses inert bed material at a fluidized state which enhance the heat and biomass distribution inside a gasifier. At a fluidized state, the superficial fluid velocity is greater than the minimum fluidization velocity required to lift the bed material against the weight of the bed. Fluidized bed gasifiers are divided into Bubbling Fluidized Bed (BFB), Circulating Fluidized Bed (CFB) and Dual Fluidized Bed (DFB) gasifiers.


title: Gasification

text: A dry pulverized solid, an atomized liquid fuel or a fuel slurry is gasified with oxygen (much less frequent: air) in co-current flow. The gasification reactions take place in a dense cloud of very fine particles. Most coals are suitable for this type of gasifier because of the high operating temperatures and because the coal particles are well separated from one another.


title: Gasification

text: The high temperatures and pressures also mean that a higher throughput can be achieved, however thermal efficiency is somewhat lower as the gas must be cooled before it can be cleaned with existing technology. The high temperatures also mean that tar and methane are not present in the product gas; however the oxygen requirement is higher than for the other types of gasifiers. All entrained flow gasifiers remove the major part of the ash as a slag as the operating temperature is well above the ash fusion temperature.


title: Gasification

text: A smaller fraction of the ash is produced either as a very fine dry fly ash or as a black colored fly ash slurry. Some fuels, in particular certain types of biomasses, can form slag that is corrosive for ceramic inner walls that serve to protect the gasifier outer wall. However some entrained flow type of gasifiers do not possess a ceramic inner wall but have an inner water or steam cooled wall covered with partially solidified slag. These types of gasifiers do not suffer from corrosive slags.


title: Gasification

text: Some fuels have ashes with very high ash fusion temperatures. In this case mostly limestone is mixed with the fuel prior to gasification. Addition of a little limestone will usually suffice for the lowering the fusion temperatures. The fuel particles must be much smaller than for other types of gasifiers. This means the fuel must be pulverized, which requires somewhat more energy than for the other types of gasifiers. By far the most energy consumption related to entrained flow gasification is not the milling of the fuel but the production of oxygen used for the gasification.


title: Gasification

text: In a plasma gasifier a high-voltage current is fed to a torch, creating a high-temperature arc. The inorganic residue is retrieved as a glass like substance.


title: Gasification

text: There are a large number of different feedstock types for use in a gasifier, each with different characteristics, including size, shape, bulk density, moisture content, energy content, chemical composition, ash fusion characteristics, and homogeneity of all these properties. Coal and petroleum coke are used as primary feedstocks for many large gasification plants worldwide. Additionally, a variety of biomass and waste-derived feedstocks can be gasified, with wood pellets and chips, waste wood, plastics and aluminium, Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), Refuse-derived fuel (RDF), agricultural and industrial wastes, sewage sludge, switch grass, discarded seed corn, corn stover and other crop residues all being used.


title: Gasification

text: A major challenge for waste gasification technologies is to reach an acceptable (positive) gross electric efficiency. The high efficiency of converting syngas to electric power is counteracted by significant power consumption in the waste preprocessing, the consumption of large amounts of pure oxygen (which is often used as gasification agent), and gas cleaning. Another challenge becoming apparent when implementing the processes in real life is to obtain long service intervals in the plants, so that it is not necessary to close down the plant every few months for cleaning the reactor.


title: Gasification

text: Environmental advocates have called gasification "incineration in disguise" and argue that the technology is still dangerous to air quality and public health. "Since 2003 numerous proposals for waste treatment facilities hoping to use... gasification technologies failed to receive final approval to operate when the claims of project proponents did not withstand public and governmental scrutiny of key claims," according to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. One facility which operated from 2009–2011 in Ottawa had 29 "emissions incidents" and 13 "spills" over those three years. It was also only able to operate roughly 25% of the time.


title: Gasification

text: Several waste gasification processes have been proposed, but few have yet been built and tested, and only a handful have been implemented as plants processing real waste, and most of the time in combination with fossil fuels.


title: Gasification

text: One plant (in Chiba, Japan using the Thermoselect process) has been processing industrial waste with natural gas and purified oxygen since year 2000, but has not yet documented positive net energy production from the process.


title: Gasification

text: In 2007 Ze-gen erected a waste gasification demonstration facility in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The facility was designed to demonstrate gasification of specific non-MSW waste streams using "liquid metal gasification". This facility came after widespread public opposition shelved plans for a similar plant in Attleboro, Massachusetts. Today Ze-gen appears to be defunct, and the company website was taken down in 2014.


title: Gasification

text: Also in the US, in 2011 a plasma system delivered by PyroGenesis Canada Inc. was tested to gasify municipal solid waste, hazardous waste and biomedical waste at the Hurlburt Field Florida Special Operations Command Air Force base. The plant, which cost $7.4 million to construct, was closed and sold at a government liquidation auction in May 2013. The opening bid was $25. The winning bid was sealed.


title: Gasification

text: Syngas can be used for heat production and for generation of mechanical and electrical power. Like other gaseous fuels, producer gas gives greater control over power levels when compared to solid fuels, leading to more efficient and cleaner operation.


title: Gasification

text: Gasifiers offer a flexible option for thermal applications, as they can be retrofitted into existing gas fueled devices such as ovens, furnaces, boilers, etc., where syngas may replace fossil fuels. Heating values of syngas are generally around 4–10 MJ/m.


title: Gasification

text: Currently Industrial-scale gasification is primarily used to produce electricity from fossil fuels such as coal, where the syngas is burned in a gas turbine. Gasification is also used industrially in the production of electricity, ammonia and liquid fuels (oil) using Integrated Gasification Combined Cycles (IGCC), with the possibility of producing methane and hydrogen for fuel cells. IGCC is also a more efficient method of CO capture as compared to conventional technologies. IGCC demonstration plants have been operating since the early 1970s and some of the plants constructed in the 1990s are now entering commercial service.


title: Gasification

text: In small business and building applications, where the wood source is sustainable, 250–1000 kWe and new zero carbon biomass gasification plants have been installed in Europe that produce tar free syngas from wood and burn it in reciprocating engines connected to a generator with heat recovery. This type of plant is often referred to as a wood biomass CHP unit but is a plant with seven different processes: biomass processing, fuel delivery, gasification, gas cleaning, waste disposal, electricity generation and heat recovery.


title: Gasification

text: Diesel engines can be operated on dual fuel mode using producer gas. Diesel substitution of over 80% at high loads and 70–80% under normal load variations can easily be achieved. Spark ignition engines and solid oxide fuel cells can operate on 100% gasification gas. Mechanical energy from the engines may be used for e.g. driving water pumps for irrigation or for coupling with an alternator for electrical power generation.


title: Gasification

text: While small scale gasifiers have existed for well over 100 years, there have been few sources to obtain a ready-to-use machine. Small scale devices are typically DIY projects. However, currently in the United States, several companies offer gasifiers to operate small engines.


title: Gasification

text: In principle, gasification can proceed from just about any organic material, including biomass and plastic waste. The resulting syngas can be combusted. Alternatively, if the syngas is clean enough, it may be used for power production in gas engines, gas turbines or even fuel cells, or converted efficiently to dimethyl ether (DME) by methanol dehydration, methane via the Sabatier reaction, or diesel-like synthetic fuel via the Fischer–Tropsch process. In many gasification processes most of the inorganic components of the input material, such as metals and minerals, are retained in the ash. In some gasification processes (slagging gasification) this ash has the form of a glassy solid with low leaching properties, but the net power production in slagging gasification is low (sometimes negative) and costs are higher.


title: Gasification

text: Regardless of the final fuel form, gasification itself and subsequent processing neither directly emits nor traps greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Power consumption in the gasification and syngas conversion processes may be significant though, and may indirectly cause CO emissions; in slagging and plasma gasification, the electricity consumption may even exceed any power production from the syngas.


title: Gasification

text: Combustion of syngas or derived fuels emits exactly the same amount of carbon dioxide as would have been emitted from direct combustion of the initial fuel. Biomass gasification and combustion could play a significant role in a renewable energy economy, because biomass production removes the same amount of CO from the atmosphere as is emitted from gasification and combustion. While other biofuel technologies such as biogas and biodiesel are carbon neutral, gasification in principle may run on a wider variety of input materials and can be used to produce a wider variety of output fuels.


title: Gasification

text: There are at present a few industrial scale biomass gasification plants. Since 2008 in Svenljunga, Sweden, a biomass gasification plant generates up to 14 MW, supplying industries and citizens of Svenljunga with process steam and district heating, respectively. The gasifier uses biomass fuels such as CCA or creosote impregnated waste wood and other kinds of recycled wood to produces syngas that is combusted on site. In 2011 a similar gasifier, using the same kinds of fuels, is being installed at Munkfors Energy's CHP plant. The CHP plant will generate 2 MW (electricity) and 8 MW (district heating).


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) was a selection system that created four or five bowl game match-ups involving eight or ten of the top ranked teams in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of American college football, including an opportunity for the top two teams to compete in the BCS National Championship Game. The system was in place for the 1998 through 2013 seasons and in 2014 was replaced by the College Football Playoff.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The BCS relied on a combination of polls and computer selection methods to determine relative team rankings, and to narrow the field to two teams to play in the BCS National Championship Game held after the other college bowl games (the game rotated among four existing bowl games from the 1998 to 2005 season, and was a separate game from the 2006 to 2013 seasons). The American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) was contractually bound to vote the winner of this game as the BCS National Champion and the contract signed by each conference required them to recognize the winner of the BCS National Championship game as the official and only champion. The BCS was created to end split championships and for the champion to win the title on the field between the two teams selected by the BCS.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The system also selected match-ups for four other prestigious BCS bowl games: the Rose Bowl Game, Fiesta Bowl, Sugar Bowl and Orange Bowl. The ten teams selected included the conference champion from each of the six Automatic Qualifying conferences plus four others (two others prior to the 2006 season). The BCS was created by formal agreement by those six conferences (the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big East, now the American Athletic Conference (The American), Big Ten Conference (Big Ten), Big 12 Conference (Big 12), Pac-10, now the Pac-12 Conference (Pac-12), and Southeastern Conference (SEC) conferences) and the three FBS independent schools, and evolved to allow other conferences to participate to a lesser degree. For the 1998 through 2005 seasons eight teams competed in four BCS bowls.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: It had been in place since the 1998 season. The BCS replaced the Bowl Alliance, in place from 1995 to 1997, which had followed the Bowl Coalition, in place from 1992 to 1994. Prior to the Bowl Coalition's creation in 1992, the AP Poll's number one and two teams had met in a bowl game only 8 times in 56 seasons. The AP's top two teams met 13 out of the 16 seasons when the BCS was in place.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: In the 2014 season, the BCS was discontinued and replaced by the College Football Playoff, which organizes a four-team playoff and national championship game.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) is the only NCAA-sponsored sport without an officially organized NCAA tournament to determine its champion. Instead, the postseason has historically consisted of individual bowl games.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The bowl system began in 1902 with the first ever East–West game in Pasadena, California, held at Tournament Park on New Year's Day in conjunction with the Tournament of Roses parade. This game was an exhibition game pitting a highly rated team from the west coast against a team from east of the Mississippi River. This was an ideal time for a postseason game, as fans could take off work or school during this holiday period to travel to the game. In the first game, the University of Michigan Wolverines represented the east and easily defeated the west's representative Stanford by a score of 49–0. Due to the lopsided victory the game did not resume until 1916.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The game was renamed the Rose Bowl in the 1920s when play shifted to the Rose Bowl stadium, built by the city of Pasadena in conjunction with the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association. By the 1930s, the Cotton Bowl Classic, Orange Bowl, and the Sugar Bowl were also held on January 1 to showcase teams from other regions of the country.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: By the 1940s, college football conferences began signing contracts that tied their championship team to a particular bowl. In 1947, the Big Ten Conference and the Pacific Coast Conference, a forerunner of today's Pac-12 Conference, agreed to commit their champions to play in the Rose Bowl every year, an agreement that continued under the BCS. This system raised the possibility that the two top-ranked teams in the final poll would not play each other in a bowl game, even in situations when there was a clear-cut top two. Indeed, since the AP began releasing its final poll after the bowl games in 1968, the two top-ranked teams in the final regular-season AP Poll had only played each other in a bowl six times until special bowl arrangements began in 1992. Under these circumstances, it was not uncommon to have the Coaches Poll crown a different national champion than the AP Poll, resulting in a split championship. This situation arose a total of ten different seasons before BCS was formed (1954, 1957, 1965, 1970, 1973, 1974, 1978, 1990, 1991, 1997).


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: For example, in 1991, the University of Miami Hurricanes and the University of Washington Huskies both finished the regular season undefeated and were considered the strongest teams in the nation. Since the Huskies were locked into the Rose Bowl as the Pac-10 Conference champion against Big Ten champion Michigan, they could not play then-independent Miami, who played in the Orange Bowl. Both teams won their bowl games convincingly and shared the national championship, Miami winning the Associated Press poll and Washington earning the top spot in the Coaches Poll. A split national championship has happened on several occasions since then as well (1997, 2003). (See: NCAA Division I FBS National Football Championship for a compilation of past "national champions" since 1869.)


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: Other teams have won the national championship despite playing presumably weaker schedules than other championship contenders. The BYU Cougars ended the 1984 season as the only undefeated and untied team in the nation, and the nine-time defending champions of the Western Athletic Conference. The Cougars opened the season with a 20–14 victory over No. 3 Pittsburgh, and won the Holiday Bowl against a 6–5 Michigan team that had been ranked as high as No. 2 that season. As the No. 4 ranked team at the end of the regular season, Washington was offered a slot against BYU in the Holiday Bowl; Washington declined, preferring instead to play in the more lucrative Orange Bowl where they beat No. 2 Oklahoma to complete a Pac-10 sweep of New Year's Day bowls (with USC winning the Rose Bowl and UCLA winning the Fiesta Bowl). Washington (11–1) was voted No. 2 following the bowl season with their only blemish a late season loss at Pac-10 champ USC. Coupled with winning its last 11 games in 1983, BYU finished the 1984 season with a 24-game winning streak. Several coaches and reporters claimed that BYU had not played a legitimate schedule and should not be recognized as national champion. Not only was Pittsburgh the only ranked team the Cougars faced all season, but at the time BYU played in the mid-major WAC. Nonetheless, BYU was a near-unanimous choice as national champion in final polls.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: To address these problems, five conferences, six bowl games, and leading independent Notre Dame joined forces to create the Bowl Coalition, which was intended to force a "de facto" "national championship game" between the top two teams. By entirely excluding all the other conferences, the Bowl Coalition also made it impossible for a non-Bowl Coalition team to win a national championship. This system was in place from the 1992 season through the 1994 season. While traditional tie-ins between conferences and bowls remained, a team would be released to play in another bowl if it was necessary to force a championship game.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: However, this system did not include the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions, as both were obligated to play in the Rose Bowl. The Coalition made several attempts to get the Tournament of Roses Association, which operates the Rose Bowl, to release the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions if necessary to force a championship game. However, those negotiations came to nothing, in part because the Tournament of Roses Association feared jeopardizing its long-standing contract with ABC if one or both teams were needed to force a title game. In 1994 —the last year of the Bowl Coalition— undefeated Penn State, from the Big Ten, played Oregon in the Rose Bowl while undefeated Nebraska played Miami in the Orange Bowl. In a system that paired top-ranked teams, Penn State would have played Nebraska for the national championship.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The Bowl Coalition was restructured into the Bowl Alliance for the 1995 season, involving five conferences (reduced to four for the 1996 season) and three bowls (Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange). The championship game rotated among these three bowls. It still did not, however, include the Pac-10 or Big Ten champions, the Rose Bowl, or any non-Bowl Alliance teams.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: After a protracted round of negotiations, the Bowl Alliance was reformed into the Bowl Championship Series for the 1998 season; former Southeastern Conference commissioner Roy Kramer is considered to be the "father" of the BCS. The Tournament of Roses Association agreed to release the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions if it was necessary to force a national championship game. In return, the Rose Bowl was added to the yearly national championship rotation, and the game was able to keep its coveted exclusive TV time slot on the afternoon of New Year's Day. However, beginning with the 2006 season, the BCS National Championship Game became a separate event played at the same site as a host bowl a week following New Year's Day. The new Bowl Championship Series not only included the Big Ten and the Pac-10 conferences but also teams from mid-major conferences, based on performance.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: No mid-major team, however, or team from any conference outside of the six aligned conferences (with the exception of independent Notre Dame, who played Alabama for the 2012 title), had ever played in the BCS Championship Game, causing increasing controversy. This controversy had become even more intense in light of the 4–1 record that mid-major teams had against teams from the six automatic qualifying conferences in the BCS Bowl games they "had" been allowed to play in. The performances and perfect record of Texas Christian in the 2010 season and Boise State in the season prior to that also fueled the controversy surrounding the perceived inequalities that the BCS seemed to perpetuate (see BCS Controversies below or in this more detailed separate article). However, little headway was made to institute an alternative system like a playoffs tournament, given the entrenched vested economic interests in the various bowls, until after the 2011 season, which saw LSU and Alabama, both members of the SEC West division, play each other in the 2012 BCS Championship game, where Alabama defeated LSU in a shutout win. Thereafter, acknowledging the many game, polling, and other related controversies, fans' complaints, and declining game viewership, among other factors, the major conferences decided to institute the College Football Playoff, which began after the 2014 regular season.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: As a legal entity, the holding company "BCS Properties, LLC" continues to control the College Football Playoff.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The College Football Playoff replaced the BCS as the system used to determine the FBS college football champion beginning in the 2014 season. The four-team playoffs consist of two semifinal games, with the winners advancing to the College Football Championship Game. The game is hosted by a different city each year, with locations selected by bids, akin to the Super Bowl or the Final Four. AT&T Stadium hosted the first title game in 2015. The system is contracted to be in place through at least the 2025–2026 season per a contract with ESPN, which owns the rights to broadcast all games. Unlike the BCS, the system does not use polls or computer rankings to select participants. A 13-member committee chooses and seeds the teams for the two playoff games and four other top-tier bowl games, using a balloting procedure similar to the NCAA basketball tournament selection process.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: In the BCS format, four regular bowl games and the National Championship Game were considered "BCS bowl games." The four bowl games were the Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena, California, the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona, and the Orange Bowl in Miami Gardens, Florida.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: In the first eight seasons of the BCS contract, the championship game was rotated among the four bowls, with each bowl game hosting the national championship once every four years. Starting with the 2007 BCS, the National Championship Games became a separate game played on January 8 at the site of the BCS bowl game that served as the final game on January 1, or January 2 if January 1 was a Sunday.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The University of Oklahoma and Ohio State University are the only schools to appear in all five BCS Bowls. Oklahoma played in the 2007, 2008, and 2011 Fiesta Bowl, the 2004 (national championship) and 2014 Sugar Bowl, the 2001 and 2005 Orange Bowl (both of which were national championships), the 2003 Rose Bowl, and the 2009 BCS National Championship Game. Oklahoma's record was 4–5 with a 1–3 record in National Title games. Ohio State played in the 2003 (national championship), 2004, 2006, and 2009 Fiesta Bowl, the 1999 and 2011 Sugar Bowl*, the 2014 Orange Bowl, the 2010 Rose Bowl, and the 2007 and 2008 BCS National Championship Game. Ohio State's record was 6*-4, with a 1–2 record in National Title Games. The University of Miami appeared in every BCS bowl except for the standalone National Championship Game, although Miami did appear in the national championship when that designation was assigned to the original four bowls in rotation. Miami played in the 2001 Sugar Bowl, 2002 Rose Bowl (national championship), 2003 Fiesta Bowl (national championship), and 2004 Orange Bowl.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: Initially, ABC held the rights to all four original BCS games, picking up the Fiesta and Orange Bowls from their former homes at CBS, and continuing their lengthy relationships with the Rose and Sugar Bowls. This relationship continued through the bowl games of January 2006.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: From the 2006–07 season through the 2009–10 season, Fox Sports held the rights to the BCS games with the exception of the Rose Bowl, as the Tournament of Roses Association elected to continue its association with ABC. Under the terms of the contract, Fox aired three of the four BCS National Championship Games that were played during the time. The only exception was the 2010 contest, which aired on ABC as per its contracts with the Rose Bowl and Tournament of Roses Association.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: After the January 2010 bowl games, the contract to air the BCS moved exclusively to ESPN. The network carried the BCS until its dissolution following the 2013–14 season; after that, the four former BCS bowls became part of the College Football Playoff, while ESPN retained their coverage of the contests.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: After the automatic berths were granted, the remaining berths, known as "at-large" berths, were filled from a pool of FBS teams who were ranked in the top 14 and had at least nine wins. The actual teams chosen for the at-large berths were determined by the individual bowl committees. Teams from both AQ and non-AQ conferences were eligible for at-large berths.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: If there were not enough teams eligible for at-large selection to fill the BCS bowl games, then the remaining at-large teams would have been any FBS teams that were bowl-eligible, had won at least nine regular-season games, and were among the top 18 teams in the final BCS standings. If there were still not enough teams, the pool for potential at-larges continued to increase by four teams until enough teams were available.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: All AQ conferences except the Big East/The American had contracts for their champions to participate in specific BCS bowl games. Unless their champion was involved in the BCS National Championship game, the conference tie-ins were:


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: If the Pac-10/Pac-12 or Big Ten champion was picked for the BCS National Championship Game, then the Rose Bowl was required to choose the highest-ranked school from a non-AQ conference if there was a non-AQ school ranked at least #4 in the final BCS standings. This was the case in 2010, when the #2 Oregon Ducks made it to the national championship, permitting the #3 TCU Horned Frogs to attend, and win, the 2011 Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowl was permitted to override this provision if it had been used within the previous four seasons.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: As agreed by all 11 conferences, the results of the 2004–07 regular seasons were evaluated to determine which conferences earned automatic qualification for the BCS games that concluded 2008–11 seasons. Three criteria were used: Rank of the highest-ranked team, rank of all conference teams, and number of teams in the top 25. The six conferences which met that standard were the AQ conferences. The 2008–11 seasons were used to determine if another conference achieved automatic qualification, or a conference that had AQ status lost it, for the BCS games that concluded the 2012 and 2013 seasons.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: For the portions of the ranking that were determined by polls and computer-generated rankings, the BCS used a series of Borda counts to arrive at its overall rankings. This was an example of using a voting system to generate a complete ordered list of winners from both human and computer-constructed votes. Obtaining a fair ranking system was a difficult mathematical problem and numerous algorithms were proposed for ranking college football teams in particular. One example was the "random-walker rankings" studied by applied mathematicians Thomas Callaghan, Peter Mucha, and Mason Porter that employed the science of networks.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The BCS formula calculated the top 25 teams in poll format. After combining a number of factors, a final point total was created and the teams that received the 25 lowest scores were ranked in descending order. The factors were:


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: Margin of victory was a key component in the decision of the computer rankings to determine the BCS standings.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: Before the 1999–2000 season, five more computer rankings were added to the system: Claire Sharpe, Richard Dunkel, Kenneth Massey, Herman Matthews/"Scripps Howard", and David Rothman. The lowest ranking was dropped and the remainder averaged.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: Beginning in 2001, The Peter Wolfe and Wes Colley/"Atlanta Journal-Constitution" computer rankings were used in place of the "NYT" and Dunkel rankings. The change was made because the BCS wanted computer rankings that did not depend heavily on margin of victory. The highest and lowest rankings were discarded, and the remainder averaged. A team's poll average, computer average, strength of schedule points, and losses were added to create a subtotal.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: Also in 2001, a quality win component was added. If a team beat a team which was in the top 15 in the BCS standings, a range of 1.5 to .1 points was subtracted from their total. Beating the No. 1 ranked team resulted in a subtraction of 1.5-point, beating the No. 2 team resulted in a deduction of 1.4 points, and so on. Beating the No. 15 ranked team would have resulted in a deduction of .1 points. A team would only be awarded for a quality win once if it beat a Top 10 team more than once (such as in the regular season and a conference championship game), and quality wins were determined using a team's current subtotal, not the ranking when the game was played. The subtotal ranks were used to determine quality win deductions to create a team's final score.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The BCS continued to purge ranking systems which included margin of victory, causing the removal of the Matthews and Rothman ratings before the 2002 season. Sagarin provided a BCS-specific formula that did not include margin of victory, and "The New York Times" index returned in a form without margin of victory considerations. In addition, a new computer ranking, the Wesley Colley Matrix, was added. The lowest ranking was dropped and the remaining six averaged. Also in 2002, the quality win component was modified such that the deduction for beating the No. 1 team in the BCS would be 1.0, declining by 0.1 increments until beating the 10th ranked team at 0.1. Teams on probation were not included in the BCS standings, but quality win points were given to teams who beat teams on probation as if they were ranked accordingly in the BCS.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: In response to the controversy created by the voters in the AP poll naming USC as the No. 1 ranked team at the end of 2003, when the BCS system had selected LSU and Oklahoma to play for the title, the formula was rewritten. Supporters of USC and the media in general criticized the fact that polls were not weighted more heavily than computer rankings and this criticism led to the new three part formula.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: All three components – The Harris Interactive Poll, the USA Today Coaches Poll, and the computer rankings – were added together and averaged for a team's ranking in the BCS standings. The team with the highest average ranked first in the BCS standings.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: This system placed twice as much emphasis on polls than computer rankings (since there were two polls and an average of six computer rankings) and made it highly unlikely that the top team in both polls would be denied a place in the title game, as it happened in the 2003–04 season.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The BCS formula for the 2005–06 season was the same as 2004–05, except that the Harris Interactive College Football Poll replaced the AP poll. The Harris Interactive College Football Poll's maximum point value was 2,825 and for the Coaches' Poll, it was 1,550. The Harris Interactive College Football Poll was created expressly to replace the AP Poll after the Associated Press refused the use of its poll as a component of the BCS formula following the 2004 season. Before the 2006–07 season, the maximum point value of the Harris Poll was increased to 2,850 and the USA Today/Coaches' Poll was increased to 1,575.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: In the week of April 20, 2009, Bowl Championship Series commissioners met for its annual spring meetings in Pasadena, California in conjunction with the Rose Bowl's staging the 2010 BCS title game. The commissioners considered a proposal from the Mountain West Conference, which would have established an eight-team playoff and provided better accesses to the four BCS bowl games for the five conferences that did not have automatic bids. The proposal also included a motion to replace the BCS rankings with a selection and a motion to change the automatic qualifier criteria to better reflect inter-conference performance. The BCS rejected the proposal in June 2009, citing a "lack of overall support" among the member conferences.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: In June 2012, the BCS conference commissioners made the announcement that "we have developed a consensus behind a four-team, seeded playoff." This took effect in 2014, as the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee in Washington, D.C. gave its expected final approval a few days later.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The games are listed in chronological order, the rankings reflecting the final BCS standings, and the win–loss data was prior to the BCS Bowls.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: ‡ Though winning the BCS National Championship, the LSU Tigers were not consensus national champions. The USC Trojans ended the regular season ranked No. 3 in the final BCS standings, with three Coaches Poll voting coaches defecting from their agreement with the BCS to vote its designated game winner as champion, instead voting for USC. USC was voted No. 1 in the Associated Press poll, and the AP awarded USC their National Championship. The 2003 Season therefore ended with split champions which is what the BCS was organized to prevent. Because of this split championship, significant changes were made to the BCS formula for the 2004–05 season.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: + "Denotes BCS National Championship Game prior to the 2006 season"<nowiki>*</nowiki> "Win(s) vacated"


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: <nowiki>*</nowiki> "USC's victory in the 2005 Orange Bowl was vacated"<nowiki>*</nowiki> "Ohio State's victory in the 2011 Sugar Bowl was vacated"


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The primary criticism of the BCS centered around the validity of the annual BCS national championship pairings and its designated "National Champions". Many critics focused on the BCS methodology itself, which employed subjective voting assessments, while others noted the ability for undefeated teams to finish seasons without an opportunity to play in the "national championship" game. In fact, in the last 6 seasons of Division I FBS football, there had been more undefeated non-BCS champions than undefeated BCS champions. Other criticisms involved discrepancies in the allocation of monetary resources from BCS games, as well as the determination of non-championship BCS game participants, which did not have to comply with the BCS rankings themselves. In the 2010–2011 bowl season, for example, the six automatic-qualifier (AQ) conferences were given $145.2 million in revenue from the BCS while the five non-AQ conferences received only $24.7 million.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: A recent survey conducted at the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute found that 63% of individuals interested in college football preferred a playoff system to the BCS, while only 26% favored the status quo. President Barack Obama had been vocal about his opposition to the BCS. During an appearance on Monday Night Football during the 2008 presidential campaign season, ESPN's Chris Berman asked Obama to name one thing about sports he would like to change. Obama responded that he did not like using computer rankings to determine bowl games, and he supported having a college football playoffs for the top eight teams. When Steve Kroft asked then-President-elect Obama about the subject during an interview on 60 Minutes, Obama reiterated his support of eight-team playoffs; although he has said it is not a legislative priority.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: Longtime college football announcer Brent Musburger also voiced his support for playoffs in college football in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times. "My dream scenario – and it's not going to happen – would be to take eight conference champions, and only conference champions, and play the quarterfinals of a tournament on campuses in mid-December", Musburger said. "The four losers would remain bowl-eligible. The four winners would advance to semifinals on New Year's Day with exclusive TV windows. Then, like now, one week later, there would be the national championship game."


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: In 2008, a lawsuit was threatened due to the exclusion of teams from the non-automatic qualifying conferences in the BCS system. Following Utah's win over Alabama in the 2009 Sugar Bowl, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff announced an inquiry into whether the BCS system violates federal antitrust laws. In 2009, senior Utah senator Orrin Hatch announced that he was exploring the possibility of a lawsuit against the BCS as an anti-competitive trust under the Sherman Antitrust Act. On November 27, 2009, the "Fort Worth Star-Telegram" ran a story that said that Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), ranking member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, announced that he would hold antitrust hearings on the BCS, again based on the Sherman Antitrust Act and its provisions outlawing non-competitive trusts, beginning in May 2010. Meanwhile, various organizations, including the BCS, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby the federal government both in support and in opposition to a college football playoffs system.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: According to CBSSports.com wire reports and information obtained by the Associated Press, Senator Orrin Hatch received a letter from the Justice Department concerning the possibility of a legal review of the BCS. The letter, received on January 29, 2010, stated that the Obama administration would explore options to establish a college football playoffs including (a) an antitrust lawsuit against the BCS, (b) legal action under Federal Trade Commission consumer protection laws, (c) encouragement of the NCAA to take control of the college football postseason, (d) the establishment of an agency to review the costs and benefits of adopting a playoff system, and (e) continued legislation in favor of a playoff system. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote, "The administration shares your belief that the lack of a college football national championship playoff ...raises important questions affecting millions..." BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock responded to the letter that the BCS complied with all laws and was supported by the participating Division I universities.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: In April 2011, Utah attorney general Mark Shurtleff announced he would file an antitrust lawsuit against the BCS for, "serious antitrust violations that are harming taxpayer-funded institutions to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars." The announcement followed the April 12, 2011 delivery of a letter to the US Department of Justice signed by 21 "high-profile" economists and antitrust experts asking for an investigation into the BCS' anticompetitive practices.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The BCS bowls had been accused of promoting the BCS system because they and their executive officers greatly benefited financially from the system. Bowl executives, such as John Junker of the Fiesta Bowl, were often paid unusually high salaries for employees of non-profit organizations. To promote support for their bowls and the BCS system, these highly paid executives allegedly gave lavish gifts to politicians, collegiate sports executives, and university athletic directors.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: In response, a pro-playoff organization, called Playoff PAC, in September 2010 filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service. The complaint alleged that the top BCS bowls, with the exception of the Rose Bowl, routinely abused favorable tax status by using charitable donations to give gifts and compensation to college athletic officials. In one example detailed in the complaint, the Orange Bowl treated its executive staff and invited college athletic directors to a four-day Royal Caribbean cruise in which no business meetings were held.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: There were several occasions where a team's victory in a BCS bowl game was subsequently vacated by NCAA sanctions.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: While there was substantial criticism aimed at the BCS system from coaches, media, and fans alike, there was is also support for the system. Tim Cowlishaw of "The Dallas Morning News" cited several advantages that the BCS has over a playoff system. Under the BCS, a single defeat was extremely detrimental to a team's prospects for a national championship, although critics pointed out regularly that history shows non-AQ conference teams were hurt far more than AQ conference teams when they lost a game. Supporters contended that this created a substantial incentive for teams to do their best to win every game. Under a proposed playoffs system, front-running teams could be in a position of safety at the end of the regular season and could pull or greatly reduce their use of top players in order to protect them from injuries or give them recovery time (this happens frequently in the NFL). This may have been less likely to happen under the BCS system where a team in the running for a No. 1 or No. 2 ranking at the end of the year would likely have been punished in the polls for a loss, potentially eliminating them from contention.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: While the BCS routinely involved controversy about which two teams are the top teams, in rare instances there was a clear-cut top two; the BCS ensured these top two would play each other for the championship. For example, USC and Texas in 2005 were the only undefeated teams; both teams were only tested a couple of times all season and mauled every other opponent they faced by large margins. Had this scenario occurred before the inception of the BCS, the teams would have been unable to play each other due to contractual obligations with the major bowls and there would have been dual national champions. Under the BCS system however, these two teams got to play for the championship.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The NCAA, the governing organization of most collegiate sports, had no official process for determining its FBS (Div. 1-A) champion. Instead, FBS champions were chosen by what the NCAA called in its official list of champions "selecting organizations".


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: "...[wa]s managed by the commissioners of the 11 NCAA Division I-A conferences, the director of athletics at the University of Notre Dame, and representatives of the bowl organizations.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: "...[wa]s a five-game arrangement for post-season college football that [wa]s designed to match the two top-rated teams in a national championship game and to create exciting and competitive match-ups between eight other highly regarded teams in four other games".


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The term "BCS Buster" referred to any team not from an AQ conference (other than Notre Dame) that managed to earn a spot in a BCS bowl game. These teams were often referred to as non-AQ when discussed outside of the post-season structure. Three teams had been BCS Busters twice: the University of Utah, Boise State University, and Texas Christian University. As of the 2013 season, two of those teams had joined Conferences with an automatic bid to a BCS Bowl (Utah to the Pac-12 Conference and Texas Christian to the Big 12 Conference).


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The record of non-Automatic Qualifying conference teams in BCS Bowls was one primary statistic used by those who challenged the assumption that BCS AQ conference teams were inherently superior to non-AQ teams, as non-AQ teams had only lost two BCS Bowl games to a BCS AQ team (Hawaii lost the 2008 Sugar Bowl 41–10 to the University of Georgia and Northern Illinois lost the 2013 Orange Bowl to Florida State University) while winning four. Boise State defeated TCU 17–10 in the highly controversial 2010 Fiesta Bowl which was the only BCS Bowl pitting two non-AQ teams against each other rather than against a team from a BCS AQ Conference, making the complete record 5–3. This pairing was cited by critics as the BCS' attempt to prevent a loss (or potentially even two losses) to AQ teams in the same year, and as TCU defeated Wisconsin 21–19 in the 2011 Rose Bowl the next year those fears seemed to have been at least partly justified. The experience and results of the non-AQ teams in BCS bowl games had been cited as a strong objective example of a much closer parity between the AQ and non-AQ teams than most AQ teams and fans would have admitted.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: With the exception of Notre Dame, it was generally extremely difficult for a non-AQ conference team to reach a BCS bowl, while it was much easier for an AQ conference team (see rules above) to do so due to the inherent bias built into the rules of the BCS system which guaranteed a spot to the winner of each of the AQ Conferences. All AQ Conference teams had to do was simply win their respective conference title and they were automatically invited to a BCS Bowl. This made becoming a BCS Buster very noteworthy. Despite the fact that there had been a number of eligible non-AQ conference teams, only eight teams (from only five schools – Utah, TCU, Boise State, Hawaii, and Northern Illinois) had succeeded in becoming BCS Busters. No team from a non-AQ conference had ever been in the BCS Championship, while a team from the SEC had been in—and won—the Championship game every year from 2006 to 2012. This consistent selection of one conference's teams (despite their success) had been one area of intense criticism of the BCS system and its exclusionary tendencies.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The University of Utah became the first BCS Buster in 2004 after an undefeated season, despite stricter limits in place before the addition of a 5th bowl in 2006 made BCS Busters more commonplace. The Utes played in the 2005 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, and beat their opponent, the Pittsburgh Panthers, 35–7. Utah also became the first non-AQ program to make a second BCS appearance. During the 2008 season, the Utes finished their regular season schedule undefeated (8–0 in the Mountain West Conference and 12–0 overall) and earned a berth in the Sugar Bowl against Alabama, winning 31–17. The Utes finished 2nd in the AP Poll and received 16 first place votes. In the 2011 season, the Utes began competing as members of the Pac-12 Conference, one of the six conferences with an automatic BCS tie in.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: In 2006, Boise State became the second BCS Buster after a 12–0 regular season and subsequent Fiesta Bowl berth against the Oklahoma Sooners. The Broncos won 43–42 in overtime in what many fans, pundits, and others consider to be one of the best Bowl games in history.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: In 2007, Hawaii also finished the regular season at 12–0, but were defeated by the Georgia Bulldogs 41–10 in the Sugar Bowl. This was the first loss by a BCS Buster.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The 2009 season was the first in which two teams from non–AQ conferences earned BCS bowl berths. TCU, which finished the regular season 12–0 as champions of the Mountain West, earned the automatic BCS berth with a No. 4 finish in the final BCS rankings. Two slots behind the Horned Frogs were WAC champions Boise State, which finished at 13–0 for its second consecutive unbeaten regular season and fourth in six years. Boise State became the first and (so far) only BCS Buster to reach a BCS bowl game with an at-large selection. The Broncos defeated the Frogs 17–10 in the 2010 Fiesta Bowl, which marked the first BCS matchup between non-AQ schools, and the first time in BCS history that two unbeaten teams met in a BCS game other than the title match. This pairing created considerable controversy as the AQ conferences and the selection committees were accused of cowardice, pairing the two BCS Busters against each other so that the risk of AQ conference teams losing was eliminated.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: In 2010, TCU was the only non–AQ conference team to get a BCS bowl berth. Boise State was ranked in the top five for most of the season, but a late-season overtime loss to Nevada knocked the Broncos out of serious contention for a BCS bowl bid, despite their continuing eligibility. TCU would defeat Wisconsin 21–19 in the 2011 Rose Bowl, once again calling into question the claim of AQ conference superiority. There was a movement to lobby those voting in the AP poll, which is not bound to vote for the BCS Championship winner as the Coaches Poll is, to vote TCU first and split the National Championship. While TCU got a few first place votes, this effort did not change the outcome of the AP poll, and TCU ended up in the No. 2 spot in all of the final major polls. As Utah had already done, TCU soon joined a conference with an automatic BCS tie, namely the Big 12 Conference (home of several other former members of the Southwest Conference, which TCU competed in for over 70 years) beginning with the 2012 season.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: In 2012, Northern Illinois (NIU) became the first BCS Buster with a regular-season loss. NIU was also the first BCS Buster to qualify automatically with a ranking between 13 and 16 (and higher ranked than at least one AQ-Conference Champion); NIU was ranked higher than two AQ-Conference Champions (Big Ten and Big East). They were selected for the 2013 Orange Bowl, where they were defeated by the Florida State Seminoles, 31–10. NIU is the first BCS Buster team from a conference other than the Mountain West or Western Athletic Conferences to play in a BCS Bowl game.


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: BCS Busters were 5–3 in BCS bowls, and 4–2 in BCS bowls against opponents from AQ conferences. Utah and TCU joined AQ conferences after their repeated appearances as BCS Busters; Boise State, Hawaii, and NIU had not (as of January 2014).


title: Bowl Championship Series

text: The following table shows all 18 teams that were eligible to become BCS Busters, including the eight that succeeded. (The entries are ordered by year and sorted according to the BCS Rank within each year.)


title: The Belnord

text: The Belnord is an apartment building at Broadway and 86th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is a New York City Landmark and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.


title: The Belnord

text: The Belnord was designed in 1908 by the architectural firm of Hiss and Weekes and finished construction in 1909. The architect boasted to "The New York Times" that it was "largest apartment house in this country, if not in the world."


title: The Belnord

text: It is 13 stories tall and features Italian Renaissance style decorative elements. One of a handful of full-block apartment buildings in New York, it features two massive, two-story grand archways that provide entrance to an inner courtyard (one of the largest in the city) with landscaped gardens. Notable residents have included the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, actor Zero Mostel and jazz impresario Art D'Lugoff.


title: The Belnord

text: The building was acquired by Extell Development Company in 1994 for $15 million. For the next 20 years, Extell fought to deregulate the building and remove its rent-stabilized status. In March 2015, the residential portion of the building was sold to the HFZ Capital Group for $575 million. HFZ hired architect Robert A. M. Stern to renovate 95 of the building's apartments, which would be sold as condos for a total value of over $1.35 billion.


title: The Belnord

text: The Belnord was used for exterior shots as the fictional Arconia Building in the comedic murder mystery series "Only Murders in the Building".


title: Boo, Bitch

text: Boo, Bitch is an American comedy miniseries created by Tim Schauer, Kuba Soltysiak, Erin Ehrlich and Lauren Iungerich that premiered on Netflix on July 8, 2022. The series stars Lana Condor, Zoe Colletti, Mason Versaw, Aparna Brielle, and Tenzing Norgay Trainor.


title: Boo, Bitch

text: On February 5, 2021, Netflix gave production a limited series order consisting of eight episodes. The series is created by Tim Schauer, Kuba Soltysiak, Erin Ehrlich, Lauren Iungerich. Ehrlich and Iungerich are also are expected to executive produce alongside Lana Condor, Jonathon Komack Martin, Blake Goza, and Jamie Dooner. The series premiered on July 8, 2022.


title: Boo, Bitch

text: Upon the limited series order announcement, Condor was also cast to star. On August 27, 2021, Zoe Colletti, Mason Versaw, and Aparna Brielle joined the cast as series regulars while Tenzing Norgay Trainor and Jason Genao were cast in recurring capacities. On June 13, 2022, it was reported that Jami Alix, Madison Thompson, and Reid Miller joined the cast in undisclosed capacities.


title: Boo, Bitch

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 56% approval rating with an average rating of 5.6/10, based on 18 critic reviews. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 49 out of 100 based on 8 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Boo, Bitch

text: The series was praised for the cast's acting skills, however the script was heavily criticized for trying to be too similar to the 2004 film 'Mean Girls' and the 2019 film 'Booksmart.'


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: The 1996 NBA playoffs was the postseason tournament of the National Basketball Association's 1995–96 season. The tournament concluded with the Eastern Conference champion Chicago Bulls defeating the Western Conference champion Seattle SuperSonics 4 games to 2. Michael Jordan was named NBA Finals MVP for a then record fourth time.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: By winning their fourth title, the Bulls capped what many consider to be the greatest season in NBA history, as they finished a record 72–10 in the regular season, eclipsing the 1972 Los Angeles Lakers record of 69–13, helped by the addition of another future Hall of Famer to the Bulls, Dennis Rodman. It was also redemption for Jordan after his first return to the playoffs in 1995 and the Bulls' disappointing second-round loss to the Orlando Magic, a team that would be swept in the NBA Finals. With him leading the way, the Bulls swept the defending Eastern Conference champion Magic in the Eastern Conference Finals, winning the four games by an average of 17 points en route to a combined record of 87–13 in regular season and postseason play. As for the Magic, it ended a three-year run of dominance for the team, as Shaquille O'Neal went on to sign with the Lakers the following season. The Magic did not have another 50-win season, division title and first round playoff series victory until 2008, followed the season afterward by an Eastern Conference championship and the franchise's second NBA Finals appearance in 2009 to which they lost to the Lakers.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: The SuperSonics were only the tenth team in NBA history to win 64 games during the regular season, but their feat went largely unnoticed due to Chicago's record 72 wins. They made their first trip to the NBA Finals since 1979, and vindicated them as well after their stunning first-round loss to the Denver Nuggets in 1994, when they had become the first #1 seed to lose to an eighth-seed.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: This was the Sacramento Kings' first playoff appearance since 1986, but would be Mitch Richmond's only one as a King (he previously appeared twice in the playoffs for the Golden State Warriors in 1989 and 1991). The Kings did not make it back until 1999, which began their eight-year string of playoff appearances. Richmond would be traded to the Wizards in 1998 and would later win his first and only championship with the Lakers in 2002 (he would retire shortly thereafter).


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: As for the two-time defending NBA champion Houston Rockets, their quest for a 3-peat was thwarted by Seattle. The Sonics swept the Rockets 4-0 in the Western Conference Semifinals. The Sonics were also the last team to defeat the Rockets in the playoffs before their two-year title run, in the 1993 Western Conference Semifinals (Seattle won 4–3). Also noted during their two-year title run, Houston never had to face Seattle in the playoffs as the Sonics were eliminated in the first round by both the Nuggets and the Lakers respectively.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: After the Lakers' first round loss to Houston, Magic Johnson retired for good after a brief in-season comeback.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: Though the Utah Jazz fell in 7 to the SuperSonics in the Western Conference Finals (their third appearance in 5 years), in retrospect it kickstarted their own Finals run, which they ultimately accomplished in 1997 and 1998, but lost both times to the Bulls.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: The Seattle SuperSonics clinched the best record in the Western Conference, and had home court advantage throughout the Western Conference playoffs.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: The Chicago Bulls clinched the best record in the NBA, and earned home court advantage throughout the entire playoffs.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: This was the second playoff meeting between these two teams, with the Bulls winning the first meeting.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: This was the fourth playoff meeting between these two teams, with the Pacers winning two of the first three meetings.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: This was the third playoff meeting between these two teams, with the Knicks winning the first two meetings.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: This was the third playoff meeting between these two teams, with the Suns winning the first two meetings.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: This was the fourth playoff meeting between these two teams, with the Trail Blazers winning two of the first three meetings.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: This was the fifth playoff meeting between these two teams, with each team winning two series apiece.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: This was the seventh playoff meeting between these two teams, with the Bulls winning five of the first six meetings.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: This was the fifth playoff meeting between these two teams, with the SuperSonics winning the first four meetings.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: This was the second playoff meeting between these two teams, with the Jazz winning the first meeting.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: This was the second playoff meeting between these two teams, with the Magic winning the first meeting.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: The SuperSonics led the series 3-1 after an 88–86 victory at the Delta Center in Game 4. However, the Jazz shocked the Sonics in Seattle in Game 5 98-95 and would handily win Game 6 118-83, Seattle's worst playoff loss in team history. Game 7 was a close affair and the Sonics pulled away late to win 90-86 and advance to their first NBA Finals since 1979. This is the most recent conference final played entirely outside of Texas and California.


title: 1996 NBA playoffs

text: This was the third playoff meeting between these two teams, with each team winning one series apiece.


title: The Champions

text: The Champions is a British espionage thriller/science fiction/occult detective fiction adventure television series. It was produced by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment production company, and consists of 30 episodes broadcast in the UK on ITV during 1968–1969. The series was broadcast in the US on NBC, starting in summer 1968.


title: The Champions

text: Agents Craig Stirling, Sharron Macready and Richard Barrett work for a United Nations law enforcement organization called 'Nemesis', based in Geneva. Barrett is a codebreaker, Stirling a pilot, and Macready a recently widowed scientist and doctor.


title: The Champions

text: In the pilot episode, the team is escaping by air from a spying mission in China. Their stolen plane, damaged by gunfire during the getaway, crashes in the Himalayas. They are rescued by an advanced civilization living secretly in the mountains of Tibet, who save their lives, granting them enhanced abilities, including extrasensory powers to communicate with one another over distances (telepathy) and to foresee events (precognition), enhanced versions of the ordinary five senses, and intellectual and physical abilities reaching the fullest extent of human capabilities.


title: The Champions

text: Many stories feature unusual villains, such as fascist regimes from unspecified South American countries, Nazis (a common theme of ITC 1960s and 1970s TV, in part owing to both the writers and the domestic audience having been of the war generation) or the Chinese. The villains' schemes often threaten world peace; Nemesis' brief is international, so the agents deal with threats transcending national interests. The main characters have to learn the use of their new powers as they go along, keeping what they discover secret from friend and foe alike. Each episode begins with a close-up shot of a map, showing the region in which the story is to take place, followed by a teaser sometimes prefaced by stock footage; this is followed by the title sequence. Immediately following that is a post-title vignette, in which one or more of the Champions demonstrates exceptional mental or physical abilities, often astonishing or humiliating others. In one example Stirling participates in a sharpshooting contest. In another, Macready's car is blocked in, two laughing passing drunks try to lift it out but she goes round to the other side and pulls it out of the parking space one-handed. Paradoxically, the narration during these often-public demonstrations usually mentions the need to keep the powers a secret. The narration involved in these particular scenes is spoken by American-born actor David Bauer, who also appeared as a foreign-accented villain in the episode "The Experiment".


title: The Champions

text: The only other series regular is the Champions' boss, Tremayne. He does not know that his agents have special abilities, although he does ask innocent questions about just how on their missions they managed to carry out certain tasks about which their reports were vague.


title: The Champions

text: "The Champions" was created by Dennis Spooner and its episodes were written by individuals who had worked on other British spy series, including "The Avengers" and "Danger Man". An unfilmed script originally intended for "Danger Man" was used for one episode.


title: The Champions

text: The series was produced by Monty Berman, who had co-produced "The Saint", "Gideon's Way" and numerous B movies of the 1950s. Berman used many of the same writers, directors and crew on other ITC series, including "Department S", "Jason King", "Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)" and "The Adventurer".


title: The Champions

text: Owing to budget constraints, many sets were reused: three episodes were set on a submarine and three in the Arctic. Stock footage was often used. As with other ITC productions, much of the exterior action took place in and around the studio lot – in the case of "The Champions", around Associated British Studios in Elstree, England. For at least one episode, "Desert Journey", foreign filming did take place, but with a second unit, and extras standing in for the main cast.


title: The Champions

text: The theme music of the series was written by Tony Hatch, with Albert Elms and Edwin Astley supplying incidental music.


title: The Champions

text: The series had three repeat runs in the UK across the ITV regions up to 1976, with additional repeats in September–October 1984 and May–August 1985. It was also regularly repeated on ITV's digital channel ITV4 until January 2011 (making "The Saint" the remaining ITC property to premiere on ITV4).


title: The Champions

text: "The Champions" was broadcast on BBC2 in 1995, at about the time when Gaunt was appearing in the sitcom "Next of Kin", and it had at least three further repeat runs after that.


title: The Champions

text: On 7 March 2021, the series began a rerun on Talking Pictures TV. The episode 'Desert Journey' was not screened in this run.


title: The Champions

text: From 4 May 2021, the series was being repeated on ITV4. It ended on 15 June, with only 27 of the 30 episodes shown (leaving out ‘Desert Journey’, ‘The Gun Runners’ and ‘Autokill’). It was repeated again on ITV4, later in the year, this time showing 29 out of 30 episodes (yet again, leaving out 'Desert Journey').


title: The Champions

text: Episodes of this series were released on DVD in North America by A&E Home Entertainment (under licence from Granada International Media Limited) and in the UK, where the full series has been released twice, with the most recent edition seeing Damon, Bastedo and Gaunt reunite to provide a commentary for several episodes. (Damon's role on US series "General Hospital" meant that Bastedo and Gaunt had to be flown to America for it.)


title: The Champions

text: The series was shown in Italy in the early 1980s in syndication, under the title (Three Aces) and, more recently, in the 1990s on Canal Jimmy (Sky) but an Italian DVD collection has never been released because in that country "The Champions" is an almost forgotten show, remembered only by few loyal fans.


title: The Champions

text: In 2010, Network DVD re-released "The Champions: The Complete Series" as a complete DVD Region 2 box set of all episodes on nine discs (including the rare 'bookends' version of the first episode). (Additionally, it released the music from the series on three CDs.)


title: The Champions

text: In 1983, ITC edited the episodes "The Beginning" and "The Interrogation" into "Legend of the Champions", a feature-length film intended for overseas markets.


title: The Champions

text: ITC had released several such films before (notably with "The Persuaders!"), however in this case the two episodes were not simply joined, but substantially re-edited. "The Interrogation" formed the framing story; its original broadcast form some flashback sequences (mainly from "The Beginning") had been used. These were expanded to contain almost the whole of the earlier episode. Additionally, new credits were filmed, not using any of the original actors but instead their photographs, taken at the time of the original production.


title: The Champions

text: A plot change was the renaming of a character from the original version of "The Beginning" to accommodate a plot device in "The Interrogation". In "The Interrogation", Craig Stirling is ostensibly being quizzed on a character called Julius Retford, who remains unseen. For the film, the opening credits explicitly identify Retford as the character who in "The Beginning" was named Ho Ling (played by Ric Young). This allows the germ warfare theme of "The Beginning" to interlink with the sequences in "The Interrogation". Confusingly, in the end credits Young is credited as playing 'Ho Ling', a name never used in the film version.


title: The Champions

text: This release credited Stuart Damon as the star, with Alexandra Bastedo and William Gaunt receiving co-star credits. This was partly because Damon was a familiar face in U.S. daytime television by this time, and partly because "The Interrogation" is essentially a two-hander between Damon and Colin Blakely, with the rest of the regular cast appearing only briefly.


title: The Champions

text: Note: 'Bookend' sequences were shot for the first episode "The Beginning" showing Richard Barrett (William Gaunt) recording the story on to a tape recorder in Tremayne's office; this was done so that the episode could be shown out of order on repeat runs without causing any continuity problems. Both sequences were included as extras on the Network DVD box set.


title: The Champions

text: In November 2007, it was reported that Guillermo del Toro would produce and write a film adaptation of "The Champions" for United Artists. In 2008, Christopher McQuarrie was signed to co-write and co-produce the film. In 2021, it was announced that Ben Stiller would star in and direct a feature film adaptation with Cate Blanchett co-starring. The film will be produced by New Republic Pictures, ITV Studios America and Dirty Films.


title: The Champions

text: A Champions comic strip ran in City Magazine's Joe 90 Top Secret comic from the first issue (#1, 18 January 1969) until its cancellation with #34 (6 September 1969). They also had a story in the Joe 90 Top Secret Annual 1969.


title: Short People

text: The verses and chorus are lyrically constructed as a prejudiced attack on short people. In contrast, the bridge states that "short people are just the same as you and I." Many listeners thought that the song reflected Newman's sincere beliefs. However, Newman intended the song to be a satire about prejudice more broadly: "The guy in that song is crazy. He was not to be believed." As with many of his songs such as "Rednecks", Newman wrote the song from the point of view of a biased narrator.


title: Short People

text: The song follows a basic musical formula with bass and drums centering on Newman's catchy pop piano line in the key of A major. A small brass section and an electric guitar occasionally rise into the mix and conga drums (played by Los Angeles-based session musician Milt Holland) also feature prominently in the song.


title: Short People

text: Although Newman had never charted a single before, and his preceding album, "Good Old Boys", had been the first to reach the Top 150 on Billboard’s Pop Albums chart, "Short People" soon gained attention as a novelty song. The song consequently became a major hit on radio peaking at No. 2 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 for three weeks; it was kept from reaching No. 1 by Player's "Baby Come Back" and the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive". It became a gold record.


title: Short People

text: Newman would later grow to dislike the song and its success, eventually calling it a "bad break", a "novelty record like The Chipmunks", and said it caused him to receive several threats regarding its misinterpreted message. He said, "I had no idea that there was any sensitivity, I mean, that anyone could believe that anyone was as crazy as that character. To have that kind of animus against short people, and then to sing it and put it all in song and have a philosophy on it." However, it ended up being included on almost every one of his greatest hits albums.


title: Short People

text: In 1978, the State of Maryland delegate Isaiah Dixon attempted to introduce legislation making it illegal to play "Short People" on the radio. He was advised by Attorney General Francis B. Burch that such a law would be a violation of the First Amendment.


title: Uranium ore

text: Uranium ore deposits are economically recoverable concentrations of uranium within the Earth's crust. Uranium is one of the more common elements in the Earth's crust, being 40 times more common than silver and 500 times more common than gold. It can be found almost everywhere in rock, soil, rivers, and oceans. The challenge for commercial uranium extraction is to find those areas where the concentrations are adequate to form an economically viable deposit. The primary use for uranium obtained from mining is in fuel for nuclear reactors.


title: Uranium ore

text: Globally, the distribution of uranium ore deposits is widespread on all continents, with the largest deposits found in Australia, Kazakhstan, and Canada. To date, high-grade deposits are only found in the Athabasca Basin region of Canada.


title: Uranium ore

text: Uranium deposits are generally classified based on host rocks, structural setting, and mineralogy of the deposit. The most widely used classification scheme was developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and subdivides deposits into 15 categories.


title: Uranium ore

text: Uranium is a silvery-gray metallic weakly radioactive chemical element. It has the chemical symbol U and atomic number 92. The most common isotopes in natural uranium are U (99.27%) and U (0.72%). All uranium isotopes present in natural uranium are radioactive and fissionable, and U is fissile (will support a neutron-mediated chain reaction). Uranium, thorium, and one radioactive isotope of potassium () as well as their decay products are the main elements contributing to natural terrestrial radioactivity. Cosmogenic radionuclides are of less importance but unlike the aforementioned primordial radionuclides, which date back to the formation of the planet and have since slowly decayed away, they are replenished at roughly the same rate they decay by the bombardment of earth with cosmic rays.


title: Uranium ore

text: Uranium has the highest atomic weight of the naturally occurring elements and is approximately 70% denser than lead, but not as dense as tungsten, gold, platinum, iridium, or osmium. It is always found combined with other elements. Along with all elements having atomic weights higher than that of iron, it is only naturally formed in supernova explosions.


title: Uranium ore

text: The primary uranium ore mineral is uraninite (UO) (previously known as pitchblende). A range of other uranium minerals can be found in various deposits. These include carnotite, tyuyamunite, torbernite and autunite. The davidite-brannerite-absite type uranium titanates, and the euxenite-fergusonite-samarskite group are other uranium minerals.


title: Uranium ore

text: A large variety of secondary uranium minerals are known, many of which are brilliantly coloured and fluorescent. The most common are gummite (a mixture of minerals), autunite (with calcium), saleeite (magnesium) and torbernite (with copper); and hydrated uranium silicates such as coffinite, uranophane (with calcium) and sklodowskite (magnesium).


title: Uranium ore

text: There are several themes of uranium ore deposit formation, which are caused by geological and chemical features of rocks and the element uranium. The basic themes of uranium ore genesis are host mineralogy, reduction-oxidation potential, and porosity.


title: Uranium ore

text: Uranium is a highly soluble, as well as a radioactive, heavy metal. It can be easily dissolved, transported and precipitated within ground waters by subtle changes in oxidation conditions. Uranium also does not usually form very insoluble mineral species, which is a further factor in the wide variety of geological conditions and places in which uranium mineralization may accumulate.


title: Uranium ore

text: Uranium is an incompatible element within magmas, and as such it tends to become accumulated within highly fractionated and evolved granite melts, particularly alkaline examples. These melts tend to become highly enriched in uranium, thorium and potassium, and may in turn create internal pegmatites or hydrothermal systems into which uranium may dissolve.


title: Uranium ore

text: The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assigns uranium deposits to 15 main categories of deposit types, according to their geological setting and genesis of mineralization, arranged according to their approximate economic significance.


title: Uranium ore

text: The IAEA classification scheme works well, but is far from ideal, as it does not consider that similar processes may form many deposit types, yet in a different geological setting. The following table groups the above deposit types based on their environment of deposition.


title: Uranium ore

text: Unconformity-type uranium deposits host high grades relative to other uranium deposits and include some of the largest and richest deposits known. They occur in close proximity to unconformities between relatively quartz-rich sandstones comprising the basal portion of relatively undeformed sedimentary basins and deformed metamorphic basement rocks. These sedimentary basins are typically of Proterozoic age, however some Phanerozoic examples exist.