Sepsis | Understanding and definition of the Sepsis

Sepsis is a potentially deadly medical condition that is characterized by a whole-body inflammatory state (called a systemic inflammatory response syndrome or SIRS) and the presence of a known or suspected infection. The body may develop this inflammatory response by the immune system to microbes in the blood, urine, lungs, skin, or other tissues. A lay term for sepsis is blood poisoning, more aptly applied to septicemia, below. Severe sepsis is the systemic inflammatory response, plus infection, plus the presence of organ dysfunction.


Septicemia (also septicaemia or septicæmia ) is a related medical term referring to the presence of pathogenic organisms in the bloodstream, leading to sepsis. The term has not been sharply defined. It has been inconsistently used in the past by medical professionals, for example as a synonym of bacteremia, causing some confusion.


Severe sepsis is usually treated in the intensive care unit with intravenous fluids and antibiotics. If fluid replacement is insufficient to maintain blood pressure, specific vasopressor medications can be used. Mechanical ventilation and dialysis may be needed to support the function of the lungs and kidneys, respectively. To guide therapy, a central venous catheter and an arterial catheter may be placed; measurement of other hemodynamic variables (such as cardiac output, or mixed venous oxygen saturation) may also be used. Sepsis patients require preventive measures for deep vein thrombosis, stress ulcers and pressure ulcers, unless other conditions prevent this. Some patients might benefit from tight control of blood sugar levels with insulin (targeting stress hyperglycemia), low-dose corticosteroids or activated drotrecogin alfa (recombinant protein C).


Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome or SIRS is evidence of the body's ongoing inflammatory response. When SIRS is suspected or known to be caused by an infection, this is sepsis. Severe sepsis occurs when sepsis leads to organ dysfunction, such as trouble breathing, coagulation or other blood abnormalities, decreased urine production, or altered mental status. If the organ dysfunction of severe sepsis is low blood pressure (hypotension), or insufficient blood flow (hypoperfusion) to one or more organs (causing, for example, lactic acidosis), this is septic shock.


Sepsis can lead to multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) (formerly known as multiple organ failure), and death. Organ dysfunction results from local changes in blood flow, from sepsis-induced hypotension (< 90 mmHg or a reduction of ≥ 40 mmHg from baseline) and from diffuse intravascular coagulation, among other things.


Sepsis can be defined as the body's response to an infection. An infection is caused by microorganisms or bacteria invading the body and can be limited to a particular body region or can be widespread in the bloodstream. Sepsis is acquired quickest with infections developed in surgery and physical contact with someone with sepsis.


Bacteremia is the presence of viable bacteria in the bloodstream. Likewise, the terms viremia and fungemia simply refer to viruses and fungi in the bloodstream. These terms say nothing about the consequences this has on the body. For example, bacteria can be introduced into the bloodstream during toothbrushing. This form of bacteremia almost never causes problems in normal individuals. However, bacteremia associated with certain dental procedures can cause bacterial infection of the heart valves (known as endocarditis) in high-risk patients. Conversely, a systemic inflammatory response syndrome can occur in patients without the presence of infection, for example in those with burns, polytrauma, or the initial state in pancreatitis and chemical pneumonitis.


In addition to symptoms related to the provoking infection, sepsis is characterized by presence of acute inflammation present throughout the entire body, and is, therefore, frequently associated with fever and elevated white blood cell count (leukocytosis) or low white blood cell count and lower-than-average temperature, and vomiting. The modern concept of sepsis is that the host's immune response to the infection causes most of the symptoms of sepsis, resulting in hemodynamic consequences and damage to organs. This host response has been termed systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) and is characterized by an elevated heart rate (above 90 beats per minute), high respiratory rate (above 20 breaths per minute or a partial pressure of carbon dioxide in the blood of less than 32), abnormal white blood cell count (above 12,000, lower than 4,000, or greater than 10% band forms) and elevated or lowered body temperature, i.e. under 36 °C (97 °F) or over 38 °C (100 °F). Sepsis is differentiated from SIRS by the presence of a known or suspected pathogen. For example SIRS and a positive blood culture for a pathogen indicates the presence of sepsis. However, in many cases of sepsis no specific pathogen is identified.


This immunological response causes widespread activation of acute-phase proteins, affecting the complement system and the coagulation pathways, which then cause damage to the vasculature as well as to the organs. Various neuroendocrine counter-regulatory systems are then activated as well, often compounding the problem. Even with immediate and aggressive treatment, this may progress to multiple organ dysfunction syndrome and eventually death.


In common clinical usage, sepsis specifically refers to the presence of a bacterial blood stream infection (BSI), such as meningitis, pneumonia, pyelonephritis, or gastroenteritis. in the setting of fever. Criteria with regards to hemodynamic compromise or respiratory failure are not useful clinically because these symptoms often do not arise in neonates until death is imminent and unpreventable.


The therapy of sepsis rests on antibiotics, surgical drainage of infected fluid collections, fluid replacement and appropriate support for organ dysfunction. This may include hemodialysis in kidney failure, mechanical ventilation in pulmonary dysfunction, transfusion of blood products, and drug and fluid therapy for circulatory failure. Ensuring adequate nutrition—preferably by enteral feeding, but if necessary by parenteral nutrition—is important during prolonged illness.


A problem in the adequate management of septic patients has been the delay in administering therapy after sepsis has been recognized. Published studies have demonstrated that for every hour delay in the administration of appropriate antibiotic therapy there is an associated 7% rise in mortality. A large international collaboration was established to educate people about sepsis and to improve patient outcomes with sepsis, entitled the "Surviving Sepsis Campaign". The Campaign has published an evidence-based review of management strategies for severe sepsis, with the aim to publish a complete set of guidelines in subsequent years.


Early goal directed therapy (EGDT), developed at Henry Ford Hospital by Emaneul Rivers, MD, is a systematic approach to resuscitation that has been validated in the treatment of severe sepsis and septic shock. It is meant to be started in the Emergency Department. The theory is that a step-wise approach should be used, having the patient meet physiologic goals, to optimize cardiac preload, afterload, and contractility, thus optimizing oxygen delivery to the tissues. A recent meta-analysis showed that EGDT provides a benefit on mortality in patients with sepsis. As of December 2008 some controversy around its uses remained, and a number of trials were in progress in an attempt to resolve this.


In EGDT, fluids are administered until the central venous pressure (CVP), as measured by a central venous catheter, reaches 8–12 cm of water (or 10–15 cm of water in mechanically ventilated patients). Rapid administration of several liters of isotonic crystalloid solution is usually required to achieve this. If the mean arterial pressure is less than 65 mmHg or greater than 90 mmHg, vasopressors or vasodilators are given as needed to reach the goal. Once these goals are met, the mixed venous oxygen saturation (SvO2), i.e., the oxygen saturation of venous blood as it returns to the heart as measured at the vena cava, is optimized. If the SvO2 is less than 70%, blood is given to reach a hemoglobin of 10 g/dl and then inotropes are added until the SvO2 is optimized. Elective intubation may be performed to reduce oxygen demand if the SvO2 remains low despite optimization of hemodynamics. Urine output is also monitored, with a minimum goal of 0.5 ml/kg/h. In the original trial, mortality was cut from 46.5% in the control group to 30.5% in the intervention group. The Surviving Sepsis Campaign guidelines recommend EGDT for the initial resuscitation of the septic patient with a level B strength of evidence (single randomized control trial).


During critical illness, a state of adrenal insufficiency and tissue resistance (the word 'relative' resistance should be avoided) to corticosteroids may occur. This has been termed critical illness–related corticosteroid insufficiency. Treatment with corticosteroids might be most beneficial in those with septic shock and early severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), whereas its role in other patients such as those with pancreatitis or severe pneumonia is unclear. These recommendations stem from studies showing benefits from low dose hydrocortisone treatment for septic shock patients and methylprednisolone in ARDS patients. However, the exact way of determining corticosteroid insufficiency remains problematic. It should be suspected in those poorly responding to resuscitation with fluids and vasopressors. ACTH stimulation testing is not recommended to confirm the diagnosis. The method of cessation of glucocorticoid drugs is variable, and it is unclear whether they should be weaned or simply stopped abruptly.


Recombinant activated protein C (drotrecogin alpha) in a 2011 Cochrane review was found not to decrease mortality and thus was not recommended for use. Other reviews however comment that it may be effective in those with very severe disease.


Note that, in neonates, sepsis is difficult to diagnose clinically. They may be relatively asymptomatic until hemodynamic and respiratory collapse is imminent, so, if there is even a remote suspicion of sepsis, they are frequently treated with antibiotics empirically until cultures are sufficiently proven to be negative.


Prognosis can be estimated with the Mortality in Emergency Department Sepsis (MEDS) score. Approximately 20–35% of patients with severe sepsis and 40–60% of patients with septic shock die within 30 days. Others die within the ensuing 6 months. Late deaths often result from poorly controlled infection, immunosuppression, complications of intensive care, failure of multiple organs, or the patient's underlying disease.


Prognostic stratification systems such as APACHE II indicate that factoring in the patient's age, underlying condition, and various physiologic variables can yield estimates of the risk of dying of severe sepsis. Of the individual covariates, the severity of underlying disease most strongly influences the risk of death. Septic shock is also a strong predictor of short- and long-term mortality. Case-fatality rates are similar for culture-positive and culture-negative severe sepsis.


Some patients may experience severe long-term cognitive decline following an episode of severe sepsis, but the absence of baseline neuropsychological data in most sepsis patients makes the incidence of this difficult to quantify or to study. A preliminary study of nine patients with septic shock showed abnormalities in seven patients by MRI.


PD-1 was found to be up-regulated on monocytes/macrophages during sepsis in human and mice. This up-regulation was related to the up-regulation of IL-10 levels in the blood. Interestingly, Said et al. showed that activated monocytes, which is the case in sepsis, express high levels of PD-1 and that triggering monocytes-expressed PD-1 by its ligand PD-L1 induces IL-10 production which inhibits CD4 T-cell function.


A study reported in Science (journal) showed that SphK1 is highly elevated in inflammatory cells from patients with sepsis and inhibition of the molecular pathway reduced the proinflammatory response triggered by bacterial products in the human cells. Moreover, the study also showed the mortality rate of mice with experimental sepsis was reduced when treated with a SphK1 blocker. Similarly, inhibition of the p38 MAPK signaling transduction pathway may help to block enhanced procoagulatory activities during septicemia.


Medical research is focused on combating nitric oxide. Attempts to inhibit its production paradoxically led to a worsening of the organ damage and in an increased lethality, both in animal models and in a clinical trial in sepsis patients. In a study published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, nitrite treatment, in sharp contrast with the worsening effect of inhibiting NO-synthesis, significantly attenuates hypothermia, mitochondrial damage, oxidative stress and dysfunction, tissue infarction, and mortality in mice
Source URL: https://newsotokan.blogspot.com/2011/06/
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Pancreatitis | Understanding and definition of the Pancreatitis | Causes and Medication of Pancreatitis

Pancreatitis is the inflammation of the pancreas. It occurs when the enzymes that digest food are activated in the pancreas instead of the small intestine. Pancreatitis may be acute or chronic. Acute pancreatitis is very sudden and lasts for a few days while chronic pancreatitis occurs over many years. Chronic pancreatitis has multiple causes, painful symptoms, and many simple ways to be cured.


Severe upper abdominal pain, with radiation through to the back, is the hallmark of pancreatitis. Nausea and vomiting (emesis) are prominent symptoms. Findings on the physical exam will vary according to the severity of the pancreatitis and whether or not it is associated with significant internal bleeding. The blood pressure may be high (when pain is prominent) or low (if internal bleeding or dehydration has occurred). Typically, both the heart and respiratory rates are elevated. Abdominal tenderness is usually found but may be less severe than expected given the patient's degree of abdominal pain. Bowel sounds may be reduced as a reflection of the reflex bowel paralysis (i.e., ileus) that may accompany any abdominal catastrophe. Many symptoms of pancreatitis are extremely painful and/or uncomfortable. Symptoms include pain in the upper abdomen which can spread to the upper back, nausea, vomiting, fever, and jaundice. In some serious cases, chronic pancreatitis can cause diabetes. Unexplained weight loss may also occur because the body does not have enough pancreatic enzymes to digest food, so nutrients are not absorbed normally.


Causes


Some of the causes of acute pancreatitis can be remembered by the mnemonic "I GET SMASHED"::
1. Idiopathic;
2. Gallstones;
3. Ethanol;
4. Trauma;
5. Steroids;
6. Mumps;
7. Autoimmune;
8. Scorpion sting;
9. Hypercalcaemia, hypertriglyceridaemia, hypothermia;
10. ERCP (endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography);
11. Drugs (e.g., azathioprine, diuretics);
Most common causes: gallstones and alcohol


The most common cause of acute pancreatitis is the presence of gallstones—small, pebble-like substances made of hardened bile—that cause inflammation in the pancreas as they pass through the common bile duct.


Excessive alcohol use is the most common cause of chronic pancreatitis, and can also be a contributing factor in acute pancreatitis. There are many causes of chronic pancreatitis. The most common cause is overconsumption of alcohol. Chronic pancreatitis can form from just one attack of acute pancreatitis. Chronic pancreatitis can result if certain medications continue to be taken, alcohol intake continues to be high, and eating habits do not change.


Other causes


Less common causes include,
1. Pancreatic cancer
2. Vasculitis (i.e., inflammation of the small blood vessels within the pancreas), and
3. Autoimmune pancreatitis
4. Pancreas divisum, a common congenital malformation of the pancreas may underlie some cases of recurrent pancreatitis
5. Porphyrias (particularly acute intermittent porphyria and erythropoietic protoporphyria)
Pregnancy can also cause pancreatitis, but in some cases the development of pancreatitis is probably just a reflection of the hypertriglyceridemia which often occurs in pregnant women. Pancreatitis is less common in paediatric population.


Rarely, calculi can form or become lodged in the pancreas or its ducts forming pancreatic duct stones. Treatment varies but is of course aimed at removal of the offending stone or stones. This can be accomplished endoscopically, surgically, or even by the use of ESWL.


Type 2 diabetes subjects have 2.8-fold higher risk for pancreatitis compared to nondiabetic subjects. People with diabetes should promptly seek medical care if they experience unexplained severe abdominal pain with or without nausea and vomiting.


Medications


Many medications have been reported to cause pancreatitis. Some of the more common ones include the AIDS drugs DDI and pentamidine, diuretics such as furosemide and hydrochlorothiazide, the anticonvulsants divalproex sodium and valproic acid, the chemotherapeutic agents L-asparaginase and azathioprine, and estrogen. As is the case with pregnancy-associated pancreatitis, estrogen may lead to the disorder because of its effect of raising blood triglyceride levels.


Pancreatitis caused by statins first started appearing in the medical literature as early as 1990. All statins currently in use reportedly can cause pancreatitis, a not surprising observation when one considers that all statins are reductase inhibitors and can be expected to have similar side effect profiles. Both chronic and acute pancreatitis are curable. Fasting is often needed for a few days or sometimes even weeks to heal the pancreas. Intravenous (IV) fluids are used to maintain nutrition while fasting. Sometimes a surgery to drain the abdomen is needed. People with chronic pancreatitis often take pills with enzymes to help them digest their food. The change of daily living habits is also necessary to avoid immediate danger. Pancreatitis can be either acute or chronic. Pancreatitis' most common cause is high alcohol intake. It has many unpleasant symptoms, and it can be cured in multiple ways. Acute and chronic pancreatitis have similar symptoms.


Genetics


Hereditary pancreatitis may be due to a genetic abnormality that renders trypsinogen active within the pancreas, which in turn leads to digestion of the pancreas from the inside.


Pancreatic diseases are notoriously complex disorders resulting from the interaction of multiple genetic, environmental, and metabolic factors.


Three candidates for genetic testing are currently under investigation:
1. Trypsinogen mutations (Trypsin 1)
2. Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator Gene (CFTR) mutations
3. SPINK1 which codes for PSTI - a specific trypsin inhibitor.
The diagnostic criteria for pancreatitis are "two of the following three features: 1) abdominal pain characteristic of acute pancreatitis, 2) serum amylase and/or lipase ≥3 times the upper limit of normal, and 3) characteristic findings of acute pancreatitis on CT scan."


Most frequently, measurement is made of amylase and/or lipase, and often one or both, are elevated in cases of pancreatitis. Two practice guidelines state:


It is usually not necessary to measure both serum amylase and lipase. Serum lipase may be preferable because it remains normal in some nonpancreatic conditions that increase serum amylase including macroamylasemia, parotitis, and some carcinomas. In general, serum lipase is thought to be more sensitive and specific than serum amylase in the diagnosis of acute pancreatitis".


Although amylase is widely available and provides acceptable accuracy of diagnosis, where lipase is available it is preferred for the diagnosis of acute pancreatitis (recommendation grade A)".


Most, but not all individual studies support the superiority of the lipase. In one large study, no patients with pancreatitis who had an elevated amylase with a normal lipase were found. Another study found that the amylase could add diagnostic value to the lipase but only if the results of the two tests were combined with a discriminant function equation. Previously, the Phadebas Amylase Test was the dominating test method but it is no longer registered as an IVD.


Conditions other than pancreatitis may lead to increases in these enzymes, and those conditions may also cause pain that resembles that of pancreatitis. These conditions include cholecystitis, perforated ulcer, bowel infarction (i.e., dead bowel as a result of poor blood supply), and even diabetic ketoacidosis).


The treatment of pancreatitis is supportive. It will depend on the severity of the pancreatitis itself. Still, general principles apply and include:


1. Provision of pain relief. The preferred analgesic is morphine for acute pancreatitis. In the past, pain relief was provided preferentially with meperidine (Demerol), but it is now not thought to be superior to any narcotic analgesic. Indeed, given meperidine's generally poor analgesic charactersitics and its high potential for toxicity, it should not be used for the treatment of the pain of pancreatitis.
2. Provision of adequate replacement fluids and salts (intravenously).
3. Limitation of oral intake (with dietary fat restriction the most important point). Though NG tube feeding was once the preferred method to avoid pancreatic stimulation and possible infection complications caused by bowel flora, recent studies have suggested quicker recovery with fewer complications if oral feeding is resumed as soon as possible.
4. Monitoring and assessment for, and treatment of, the various complications listed above.
5. ERCP in the case of gallstone pancreatitis.


When necrotizing pancreatitis ensues, and the patient shows signs of infection, it is imperative to start antibiotics such as Imipenem and other drugs that have ability to penetrate the pancreas. Fluoroquinolone with metronidazole is another treatment option.


Acute (early) complications of pancreatitis include:
1. shock
2. Hypocalcemia (low blood calcium)
3. High blood glucose
4. Dehydration, and kidney failure (resulting from inadequate blood volume which, in turn, may result from a combination of fluid loss from vomiting, internal bleeding, or oozing of fluid from the circulation into the abdominal cavity in response to the pancreas inflammation, a phenomenon known as third spacing).
5. Respiratory complications are frequent and are major contributors to the mortality of pancreatitis. Some degree of pleural effusion is almost ubiquitous in pancreatitis. Some or all of the lungs may collapse (atelectasis) as a result of the shallow breathing which occurs because of the abdominal pain. Pneumonitis may occur as a result of pancreatic enzymes directly damaging the lung or simply as a final common pathway response to any major insult to the body (i.e., ARDS or acute respiratory distress syndrome).
Likewise, systemic inflammatory response syndrome(SIRS) may ensue.
1. Infection of the inflamed pancreatic bed can occur at any time during the course of the disease. In fact, in cases of severe hemorrhagic pancreatitis, antibiotics should be given prophylactically.
2. pancreatic acitis due to necrotised pancreatic ducts leak,or through necrotic tissue.
Pancreatic abscess is a late complication of acute necrotizing pancreatitis, occurring more than four weeks after the initial attack. A pancreatic abscess is a collection of pus resulting from tissue necrosis, liquefaction, and infection. It is estimated that approximately 3% of the patients suffering from acute pancreatitis will develop an abscess.


According to the Balthazar and Ranson's radiographic staging criteria, patients with a normal pancreas, an enlargement that is focal or diffuse, mild peripancreatic inflammations or a single collection of fluid (pseudocyst) have less than a 2% chance of developing an abscess. However, the probability of developing an abscess increases to nearly 60% in patients with more than two pseudocysts and gas within the pancreas.
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Jurisprudence | Understanding and definition of the Jurisprudence

Jurisprudence is the theory and philosophy of law. Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal theorists (including legal philosophers and social theorists of law), hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions. Modern jurisprudence began in the 18th century and was focused on the first principles of the natural law, civil law, and the law of nations. General jurisprudence can be broken into categories both by the type of question scholars seek to answer and by the theories of jurisprudence, or schools of thought, regarding how those questions are best to be answered. Contemporary philosophy of law, which deals with general jurisprudence, addresses problems in two rough groups:


1. Problems internal to law and legal systems as such.
2. Problems of law as a particular social institution as it relates to the larger political and social situation in which it exists.
Answers to these questions come from four primary schools of thought in general jurisprudence:
1. Natural law is the idea that there are rational objective limits to the power of legislative rulers. The foundations of law are accessible through human reason and it is from these laws of nature that human created laws gain whatever force they have.
2. Legal Positivism, by contrast to natural law, holds that there is no necessary connection between law and morality and that the force of law comes from some basic social facts although positivists differ on what those facts are.
3. Legal Realism is a third theory of jurisprudence which argues that the real world practice of law is what determines what law is; the law has the force that it does because of what legislators, judges, and executives do with it. Similar approaches have been developed in many different ways in Sociology of law.
4. Critical Legal Studies is a younger theory of jurisprudence that has developed since the 1970s which is primarily a negative thesis that the law is largely contradictory and can be best analyzed as an expression of the policy goals of the dominant social group.
Also of note is the work of the contemporary Philosopher of Law Ronald Dworkin who has advocated a constructivist theory of jurisprudence that can be characterized as a middle path between natural law theories and positivist theories of general jurisprudence.


The English term is based on the Latin word jurisprudentia: juris is the genitive form of jus meaning "law", and prudentia means "knowledge". The word is first attested in English in 1628, at a time when the word prudence had the now obsolete meaning of "knowledge of or skill in a matter". The word may have come via the French jurisprudence, which is attested earlier.


Jurisprudence already had this meaning in Ancient Rome even if at its origins the discipline was a (periti) in the jus of mos maiorum (traditional law), a body of oral laws and customs verbally transmitted "by father to son". Praetors established a workable body of laws by judging whether or not singular cases were capable of being prosecuted either by the edicta, the annual pronunciation of prosecutable offense, or in extraordinary situations, additions made to the edicta. An iudex then would judge a remedy according to the facts of the case.


Their sentences were supposed to be simple interpretations of the traditional customs, but effectively it was an activity that, apart from formally reconsidering for each case what precisely was traditionally in the legal habits, soon turned also to a more equitable interpretation, coherently adapting the law to the newer social instances. The law was then implemented with new evolutive Institutiones (legal concepts), while remaining in the traditional scheme. Praetors were replaced in 3rd century BC by a laical body of prudentes. Admission to this body was conditional upon proof of competence or experience.


In ancient Indian vedic society, the law or Dharma, as followed by Hindus was interpreted by use of "Manu Smrti" - a set of poems which defined sin and the remedies. They were said to be written between 200 BC - 200 AD. In fact, these were not codes of law but norms related to social obligations and ritual requirements of the era.


Under the Roman Empire, schools of law were created, and the activity constantly became more academic. In the age from the early Roman Empire to the 3rd century, a relevant literature was produced by some notable groups including the Proculians and Sabinians. The scientific depth of the studies was unprecedented in ancient times.


After the 3rd century, Juris prudentia became a more bureaucratic activity, with few notable authors. It was during the Eastern Roman Empire (5th century) that legal studies were once again undertaken in depth, and it is from this cultural movement that Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis was born.


Natural law theory asserts that there are laws that are immanent in nature, to which enacted laws should correspond as closely as possible. This view is frequently summarised by the maxim an unjust law is not a true law , lex iniusta non est lex, in which 'unjust' is defined as contrary to natural law. Natural law is closely associated with morality and, in historically influential versions, with the intentions of God. To oversimplify its concepts somewhat, natural law theory attempts to identify a moral compass to guide the lawmaking power of the state and to promote 'the good'. Notions of an objective moral order, external to human legal systems, underlie natural law. What is right or wrong can vary according to the interests one is focused upon. Natural law is sometimes identified with the maxim that "an unjust law is no law at all", but as John Finnis, the most important of modern natural lawyers has argued, this maxim is a poor guide to the classical Thomist position.


Aristotle is often said to be the father of natural law. Like his philosophical forefathers, Socrates and Plato, Aristotle posited the existence of natural justice or natural right (dikaion physikon, δικαίον φυσικόν, Latin ius naturale). His association with natural law is due largely to the interpretation given to him by Thomas Aquinas. This was based on Aquinas' conflation of natural law and natural right, the latter of which Aristotle posits in Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics (= Book IV of the Eudemian Ethics). Aquinas's influence was such as to affect a number of early translations of these passages, though more recent translations render them more literally.


Aristotle's theory of justice is bound up in his idea of the golden mean. Indeed his treatment of what he calls "political justice" derives from his discussion of "the just" as a moral virtue derived as the mean between opposing vices, just like every other virtue he describes. His longest discussion of his theory of justice occurs in Nicomachean Ethics and begins by asking what sort of mean a just act is. He argues that the term "justice" actually refers to two different but related ideas: general justice and particular justice. When a person's actions are completely virtuous in all matters in relation to others, Aristotle calls her "just" in the sense of "general justice;" as such this idea of justice is more or less coextensive with virtue. "Particular" or "Partial justice", by contrast, is the part of "general justice" or the individual virtue that is concerned with treating others equitably. Aristotle moves from this unqualified discussion of justice to a qualified view of political justice, by which he means something close to the subject of modern jurisprudence. Of political justice, Aristotle argues that it is partly derived from nature and partly a matter of convention. This can be taken as a statement that is similar to the views of modern natural law theorists. But it must also be remembered that Aristotle is describing a view of morality, not a system of law, and therefore his remarks as to nature here are about the grounding of the morality enacted as law not the laws themselves. The passage here is silent as to that question.


The best evidence of Aristotle's having thought there was a natural law comes from the Rhetoric, where Aristotle notes that, aside from the "particular" laws that each people has set up for itself, there is a "common" law that is according to nature. The context of this remark, however, suggests only that Aristotle advised that it could be rhetorically advantageous to appeal to such a law, especially when the "particular" law of ones' own city was adverse to the case being made, not that there actually was such a law; Aristotle, moreover, considered two of the three candidates for a universally valid, natural law suggested in this passage to be wrong. Aristotle's theoretical paternity of the natural law tradition is consequently disputed.


Saint Thomas Aquinas [Thomas of Aquin, or Aquino] (c. 1225 – 7 March 1274) was a philosopher and theologian in the scholastic tradition, known as "Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Universalis". He is the foremost classical proponent of natural theology, and the father of the Thomistic school of philosophy, for a long time the primary philosophical approach of the Roman Catholic Church. The work for which he is best-known is the Summa Theologica. One of the thirty-three Doctors of the Church, he is considered by many Catholics to be the Church's greatest theologian. Consequently, many institutions of learning have been named after him.


Aquinas distinguished four kinds of law: eternal, natural, human and divine. Eternal law refers to divine reason, known only to God, God's plan for the universe; man needs this, without which he would totally lack direction. Natural law is the human "participation" in the eternal law in rational creatures and is discovered by reason. Divine law is revealed in the scriptures and is Gods positive law for mankind. Human law is supported by reason and enacted for the common good. Natural law, of course, is based on "first principles":


. . . this is the first precept of the law, that good is to be done and promoted, and evil is to be avoided. All other precepts of the natural law are based on this . . .


The desires to live and to procreate are counted by Aquinas among those basic (natural) human values on which all other human values are based.


In his treatise Leviathan, (1651), Hobbes expresses a view of natural law as a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or takes away the means of preserving the same; and to omit that by which he thinks it may best be preserved. Hobbes was a social contractarian and believed that the law gained peoples' tacit consent. He believed that society was formed from a state of nature to protect people from the state of war between mankind that exists otherwise. Life is, without an ordered society, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". It is commonly commented that Hobbes' views about the core of human nature were influenced by his times. The English Civil War and the Cromwellian dictatorship had taken place, and he felt absolute authority vested in a monarch, whose subjects obeyed the law, was the basis of a civilized society.


Writing after World War II, Lon L. Fuller notably emphasised that the law must meet certain formal requirements (such as being impartial and publicly knowable). To the extent that an institutional system of social control falls short of these requirements, Fuller argues, we are less inclined to recognise it as a system of law, or to give it our respect. Thus, law has an internal morality that goes beyond the social rules by which valid laws are made.


Sophisticated positivist and natural law theories sometimes resemble each other more than the above descriptions might suggest, and they may concede certain points to the other "side". Identifying a particular theorist as a positivist or a natural law theorist sometimes involves matters of emphasis and degree, and the particular influences on the theorist's work. In particular, the older natural lawyers, such as Aquinas and John Locke made no distinction between analytic and normative jurisprudence. But modern natural lawyers, such as John Finnis claim to be positivists, while still arguing that law is a basically moral creature.


Analytic, or 'clarificatory', jurisprudence means the use of a neutral point of view and descriptive language when referring to the aspects of legal systems. This was a philosophical development that rejected natural law's fusing of what law is and what it ought to be. David Hume famously argued in A Treatise of Human Nature that people invariably slip between describing that the world is a certain way to saying therefore we ought to conclude on a particular course of action. But as a matter of pure logic, one cannot conclude that we ought to do something merely because something is the case. So analysing and clarifying the way the world is must be treated as a strictly separate question to normative and evaluative ought questions.


The most important questions of analytic jurisprudence are: "What are laws?"; "What is the law?"; "What is the relationship between law and power/sociology?"; and "What is the relationship between law and morality?" Legal positivism is the dominant theory, although there are a growing number of critics, who offer their own interpretations.


Positivism simply means that law is something that is "posited": laws are validly made in accordance with socially accepted rules. The positivist view on law can be seen to cover two broad principles: Firstly, that laws may seek to enforce justice, morality, or any other normative end, but their success or failure in doing so does not determine their validity. Provided a law is properly formed, in accordance with the rules recognized in the society concerned, it is a valid law, regardless of whether it is just by some other standard. Secondly, that law is nothing more than a set of rules to provide order and governance of society. No legal positivist, however, argues that it follows that the law is therefore to be obeyed, no matter what. This is seen as a separate question entirely.
1. What the law is - is determined by historical social practice (resulting in rules)
2. What the law ought to be" - is determined by moral considerations.
One of the earliest legal positivists was Jeremy Bentham. Bentham was an early and staunch supporter of the utilitarian concept (along with Hume), an avid prison reformer, advocate for democracy, and strongly atheist. Bentham's views about law and jurisprudence were popularized by his student, John Austin. Austin was the first chair of law at the new University of London from 1829. Austin's utilitarian answer to "what is law?" was that law is "commands, backed by threat of sanctions, from a sovereign, to whom people have a habit of obedience". Contemporary legal positivists have long abandoned this view, and have criticised its oversimplification, H. L. A. Hart particularly.


Hans Kelsen is considered one of the preeminent jurists of the 20th century and has been highly influential in Europe and Latin America, although less so in common-law countries. His Pure Theory of Law aims to describe law as binding norms while at the same time refusing, itself, to evaluate those norms. That is, 'legal science' is to be separated from 'legal politics'. Central to the Pure Theory of Law is the notion of a 'basic norm (Grundnorm)' - a hypothetical norm, presupposed by the jurist, from which in a hierarchy all 'lower' norms in a legal system, beginning with constitutional law, are understood to derive their authority or 'bindingness'. In this way, Kelsen contends, the bindingness of legal norms, their specifically 'legal' character, can be understood without tracing it ultimately to some suprahuman source such as God, personified Nature or - of great importance in his time - a personified State or Nation.


In the Anglophone world, the pivotal writer was H. L. A. Hart, who argued that the law should be understood as a system of social rules. Hart rejected Kelsen's views that sanctions were essential to law and that a normative social phenomenon, like law, can not be grounded in non-normative social facts. Hart revived analytical jurisprudence as an important theoretical debate in the twentieth century through his book The Concept of Law. As the professor of jurisprudence at Oxford University, Hart argued that law is a 'system of rules'.


Rules, said Hart, are divided into primary rules (rules of conduct) and secondary rules (rules addressed to officials to administer primary rules). Secondary rules are divided into rules of adjudication (to resolve legal disputes), rules of change (allowing laws to be varied) and the rule of recognition (allowing laws to be identified as valid). The "rule of recognition", a customary practice of the officials (especially judges) that identifies certain acts and decisions as sources of law. A pivotal book on Hart was written by Neil MacCormick in 1981 (second edition due in 2007), which further refined and offered some important criticisms that led MacCormick to develop his own theory (the best example of which is his recently published Institutions of Law, 2007). Other important critiques have included that of Ronald Dworkin, John Finnis, and Joseph Raz.


In recent years, debates about the nature of law have become increasingly fine-grained. One important debate is within legal positivism. One school is sometimes called exclusive legal positivism, and it is associated with the view that the legal validity of a norm can never depend on its moral correctness. A second school is labeled inclusive legal positivism, a major proponent of which is Wil Waluchow, and it is associated with the view that moral considerations may determine the legal validity of a norm, but that it is not necessary that this is the case.


Some philosophers used to contend that positivism was the theory that there is "no necessary connection" between law and morality; but influential contemporary positivists, including Joseph Raz, John Gardner, and Leslie Green, reject that view. As Raz points out, it is a necessary truth that there are vices that a legal system cannot possibly have (for example, it cannot commit rape or murder).


Joseph Raz defends the positivist outlook, but criticised Hart's "soft social thesis" approach in The Authority of Law. Raz argues that law is authority, identifiable purely through social sources, without reference to moral reasoning. Any categorisation of rules beyond their role as authoritative is best left to sociology, rather than jurisprudence.


In his book Law's Empire Dworkin attacked Hart and the positivists for their refusal to treat law as a moral issue. Dworkin argues that law is an 'interpretive' concept, that requires judges to find the best fitting and most just solution to a legal dispute, given their constitutional traditions. According to him, law is not entirely based on social facts, but includes the morally best justification for the institutional facts and practices that we intuitively regard as legal. It follows on Dworkin's view that one cannot know whether a society has a legal system in force, or what any of its laws are, until one knows some moral truths about the justifications for the practices in that society. It is consistent with Dworkin's view—in contrast with the views of legal positivists or legal realists—that *no one* in a society may know what its laws are (because no one may know the best justification for its practices.)


Interpretation, according to Dworkin's law as integrity theory, has two dimensions. To count as an interpretation, the reading of a text must meet the criterion of fit. But of those interpretations that fit, Dworkin maintains that the correct interpretation is the one that puts the political practices of the community in their best light, or makes of them the best that they can be. But many writers have doubted whether there is a single best justification for the complex practices of any given community, and others have doubted whether, even if there are, they should be counted as part of the law of that community.


Legal realism was a view popular with some Scandinavian and American writers. Skeptical in tone, it held that the law should be understood and determined by the actual practices of courts, law offices, and police stations, rather than as the rules and doctrines set forth in statutes or learned treatises. It had some affinities with the sociology of law. The essential tenet of legal realism is that all law is made by human beings and, thus, is subject to human foibles, frailties and imperfections.


It has become quite common today to identify Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., as the main precursor of American Legal Realism (other influences include Roscoe Pound, Karl Llewellyn and Justice Benjamin Cardozo). Karl Llewellyn, another founder of the U.S. legal realism movement, similarly believed that the law is little more than putty in the hands of a judge who is able to shape the outcome of a case based on personal biases. The chief inspiration for Scandinavian legal realism many consider to be the works of Axel Hägerström. Despite its decline in facial popularity, realists continue to influence a wide spectrum of jurisprudential schools today, including critical legal studies (scholars such as Duncan Kennedy and Roberto Unger), feminist legal theory, critical race theory, sociology of law and law and economics.


Historical jurisprudence came to prominence during the German debate over the proposed codification of German law. In his book On the Vocation of Our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence, Friedrich Carl von Savigny argued that Germany did not have a legal language that would support codification because the traditions, customs and beliefs of the German people did not include a belief in a code. The Historicists believe that the law originates with society.


In addition to the question, "What is law?", legal philosophy is also concerned with normative, or "evaluative" theories of law. What is the goal or purpose of law? What moral or political theories provide a foundation for the law? What is the proper function of law? What sorts of acts should be subject to punishment, and what sorts of punishment should be permitted? What is justice? What rights do we have? Is there a duty to obey the law? What value has the rule of law? Some of the different schools and leading thinkers are as follows.


Aretaic moral theories such as contemporary virtue ethics emphasize the role of character in morality. Virtue jurisprudence is the view that the laws should promote the development of virtuous characters by citizens. Historically, this approach is associated mainly with Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas later. Contemporary virtue jurisprudence is inspired by philosophical work on virtue ethics.


Deontology is "the theory of duty or moral obligation." The philosopher Immanuel Kant formulated one influential deontological theory of law. He argued that any rule we follow must be universalisable: we must be willing to will everyone to follow that rule. A contemporary deontological approach can be found in the work of the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin.


Utilitarianism is the view that the laws should be crafted so as to produce the best consequences for the greatest number of people possible. Historically, utilitarian thinking about law is associated with the great philosopher, Jeremy Bentham. John Stuart Mill was a pupil of Bentham's and was the torch bearer for utilitarian philosophy through the late nineteenth century. In contemporary legal theory, the utilitarian approach is frequently championed by scholars who work in the law and economics tradition. Also see Lysander Spooner.


John Rawls was an American philosopher, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard University and author of A Theory of Justice (1971), Political Liberalism, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, and The Law of Peoples. He is widely considered one of the most important English-language political philosophers of the 20th century. His theory of justice uses a device called the original position to ask us which principles of justice we would choose to regulate the basic institutions of our society if we were behind a 'veil of ignorance.' Imagine we do not know who we are - our race, sex, wealth status, class, or any distinguishing feature - so that we would not be biased in our own favour. Rawls argues from this 'original position' that we would choose exactly the same political liberties for everyone, like freedom of speech, the right to vote and so on. Also, we would choose a system where there is only inequality because that produces incentives enough for the economic well-being of all society, especially the poorest. This is Rawls's famous 'difference principle'. Justice is fairness, in the sense that the fairness of the original position of choice guarantees the fairness of the principles chosen in that position.


There are many other normative approaches to the philosophy of law, including critical legal studies and libertarian theories of law.
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Wachovia | History and definition Wachovia | Wachovia logo

Wachovia

Wachovia (known as Wachovia Bank, a division of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.) is a diversified financial services company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Before its acquisition by Wells Fargo, Wachovia was the fourth-largest bank holding company in the United States based on total assets. The purchase of Wachovia by Wells Fargo and Company was completed on December 31, 2008. Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia after a government-forced sale to avoid a failure of Wachovia.




Starting in 2009, the Wachovia brand is being absorbed into the Wells Fargo brand in a process that was initially estimated to last three years. In July 2009, Wachovia Securities became Wells Fargo Advisors. The merger of Wells Fargo and Wachovia bank charters was completed on March 20, 2010.




As an independent company, Wachovia provided a broad range of banking, asset management, wealth management, and corporate and investment banking products and services. The company was organized into four divisions: General Bank (retail, small business, and commercial customers), Wealth Management (high net worth, personal trust, and insurance business), Capital Management (asset management, retirement, and retail brokerage services), and Corporate and Investment Bank (capital markets, investment banking, and financial advisory).




At its height, it was one of the largest providers of financial services in the United States, operating financial centers in 21 states and Washington, D.C., with locations from Connecticut to Florida and west to California. Wachovia provides global services through more than 40 offices around the world.




It served retail brokerage clients under the name Wachovia Securities nationwide as well as in six Latin American countries, and investment banking clients in selected industries nationwide. In 2009, Wachovia Securities was the first Wachovia business to be converted to the Wells Fargo brand, when the business became Wells Fargo Advisors. Wachovia also operated Calibre, its wealth management services to ultra-high net worth families with net worth exceeding $25 million. In 2010, Calibre was renamed Wells Fargo Family Wealth.




The company's corporate and institutional capital markets and investment banking groups operated under the Wachovia Securities brand, while its asset management group operated under the Evergreen Investments brand until 2010, when the Evergreen fund family merged with Wells Fargo Advantage Funds, and institutional and high net worth products merged with Wells Capital Management and its affiliates.




Wachovia (pronounced /wɑːˈkoʊviə/ wah-koh-vee-ə) has its origins in the Latin form of the Austrian name Wachau. When Moravian settlers arrived in Bethabara, North Carolina, in 1753, they gave this name to the land they acquired, because it resembled the Wachau valley along the Danube River. The area formerly known as Wachovia now makes up most of Forsyth County, and the largest city is now Winston-Salem.




Legacy Wachovia Corporation began on June 16, 1879 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina as the Wachovia National Bank. The bank was opened by William Lemly. In 1911, the bank merged with Wachovia Loan and Trust Company, which had been founded on June 15, 1893. Wachovia grew to become one of the largest banks in the Southeast partly on the strength of its accounts from the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which was also headquartered in Winston-Salem. On December 12, 1986, Wachovia purchased First Atlanta. Founded as Atlanta National Bank on September 14, 1865, and later renamed to First National Bank of Atlanta, this institution was the oldest national bank in Atlanta. This purchase made Wachovia one of the few companies with dual headquarters: one in Winston-Salem and one in Atlanta. In 1998, Wachovia acquired two Virginia-based banks, Jefferson National Bank and Central Fidelity Bank. In 1997, Wachovia acquired both 1st United Bancorp and American Bankshares Inc, giving its first entry into Florida. In 2000, Wachovia made its final purchase, which was Republic Security Bank.




On April 16, 2001, Charlotte-based First Union Corporation announced it would merge with Winston-Salem based Wachovia Corporation. As an important part of the deal, First Union would shed its name and assumed the Wachovia identity and stock ticker (NYSE: WB).




This merger was viewed with great surprise by the financial press and security analysts. While Wachovia had been viewed as an acquisition candidate after running into problems with earnings and credit quality in 2000, the suitor shocked analysts as many speculated that Wachovia would be sold to SunTrust.




The deal met with skepticism and criticism. Analysts, remembering the problems with the CoreStates acquisition, were concerned about First Union's ability to merge with another large company. Winston-Salem's citizens and politicians suffered a blow to their civic pride because Wachovia's corporate headquarters would move to Charlotte, a larger city than Winston-Salem. The city of Winston-Salem was concerned both by job losses and the loss of stature from losing a major corporate headquarters. First Union was concerned by the potential deposit attrition and customer loss in the city. First Union responded to these concerns by placing the wealth management and Carolinas-region headquarters in Winston-Salem.




On May 14, 2001, Atlanta-based SunTrust announced a rival takeover bid for Wachovia, the first hostile takeover attempt in the banking sector in many years. In its effort to make the deal appeal to investors, SunTrust argued that it would provide a smoother transition than First Union and offered a higher cash price for Wachovia stock than First Union.




Wachovia's board of directors rejected SunTrust's offer and supported the merger with First Union. SunTrust continued its hostile takeover attempt, leading to a bitter battle over the summer between SunTrust and First Union. Both banks increased their offers for Wachovia, took out newspaper ads, mailed letters to shareholders, and initiated court battles to challenge each other's takeover bids. On August 3, 2001, Wachovia shareholders approved the First Union deal, rejecting SunTrust's attempts to elect a new board of directors for Wachovia and ending SunTrust's hostile takeover attempt.




Another problem concerned each bank's credit card division. In April 2001, Wachovia agreed to sell its $8 billion credit card portfolio to Bank One. The cards, which would have still been branded as Wachovia, would have been issued through Bank One's First USA division. First Union had sold its credit card portfolio to MBNA in August 2000. After entering into negotiations, the new Wachovia agreed to buy back its portfolio from Bank One in September 2001 and resell it to MBNA. Wachovia paid Bank One a $350 million termination fee.




On September 4, 2001, First Union and Wachovia officially merged to form the new Wachovia Corporation, though First Union was the surviving entity. In order to prevent a repeat of the CoreStates problems, the new Wachovia took its time phasing-in the conversion of legacy Wachovia computer systems to First Union systems. The company first began converting systems in the southeast United States (where both banks had branches), before moving to the Northeast, where First Union branches only had to change their signs to reflect the new company name and logo. This process ended on August 18, 2003, almost 2 years after the merger took place.




In comparison to the CoreStates purchase, the merger of First Union and Wachovia was billed as a success by analysts. The company's deliberate pace of conversion seems to have prevented any large-scale customer attrition. In fact, every year since the merger, Wachovia has been ranked number one in customer satisfaction among major banks by the University of Michigan's annual American Customer Satisfaction Index.




When Wachovia and First Union merged, Charlotte, North Carolina's One, Two, and Three First Union buildings became One, Two, and Three Wachovia Center (respectively), and the 55-story First Union Financial Center in downtown Miami became the Wachovia Financial Center. The merger also affected the names of the indoor professional sports arenas in Philadelphia and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Formerly known as the First Union Center and the First Union Spectrum (both Philadelphia) and First Union Arena (Wilkes-Barre), they were renamed the Wachovia Center (now known as Wells Fargo Center), Wachovia Spectrum, and Wachovia Arena at Casey Plaza (now known as Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza), respectively.




Wachovia Securities and the Prudential Securities Division of Prudential Financial, Inc. combined to form Wachovia Securities LLC on July 1, 2003. Wachovia owns 62% of this entity, while Prudential Financial owns the remaining 38%. At the time, the new firm had client assets of $532.1 billion, making it the nation's third largest full service retail brokerage firm based on assets.




Michael Serricchio, a broker for Prudential Securities, was called to active duty in the Air Force reserve in September 2001. At the time, he was handling about 250 accounts with assets totaling $15 million and earning $80000 a year. He was not offered his old position back after his military stint was over, instead being given a job to make cold calls for a $2,000-a-month advance on his commissions. Wachovia also shuffled all of Serricchio's clients away, leaving him with just 4. He sued Wachovia, who had purchased Prudential Securities. A jury found that Wachovia had breached the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act by intentionally making Serricchio an offer that they knew that he would reject.




Wachovia agreed to purchase Golden West Financial for a little under $25.5 billion on May 7, 2006. This acquisition gave Wachovia an additional 285-branch network spanning 10 states. Wachovia greatly raised its profile in California, where Golden West held $32 billion in deposits and operated 123 branches.




Golden West, which operated branches under the name World Savings Bank, was the second largest savings and loan in the United States. The business was a small savings and loan in the San Francisco Bay area when it was purchased in 1963 for $4 million by Herbert and Marion Sandler. Golden West specialized in option ARMs loans, marketed under the name "Pick-A-Pay." These loans gave the borrower a choice of payment plans, including the option to defer paying a part of the interest owed, which was then added onto the balance of the loan. In 2006, Golden West Financial was named the "Most Admired Company" in the mortgage services business by Fortune magazine. By the time Wachovia announced its acquisition, Golden West had over $125 billion in assets and 11,600 employees. By October 2, 2006 Wachovia had closed the acquisition of Golden West Financial Corporation. The Sandlers agreed to remain on the board at Wachovia.




While Wachovia Chairman and CEO G. Kennedy "Ken" Thompson had described Golden West as a "crown jewel", investors did not react positively to the deal at the time. Analysts have since said that Wachovia purchased Golden West at the peak of the US housing boom. Wachovia Mortgage's mortgage-related problems led to Wachovia suffering writedowns and losses that far exceeded the price paid in the acquisition, ending up in the fire-sale of Wachovia to Wells Fargo.




Though Citigroup was providing the liquidity that allowed Wachovia to continue to operate, Wells Fargo and Wachovia announced on October 3, 2008 they had agreed to merge in an all-stock transaction requiring no FDIC involvement, apparently nullifying the Citigroup deal. Wells Fargo announced it had agreed to acquire all of Wachovia for $15.1 billion in stock. Wachovia preferred the Wells Fargo deal, as it would be worth more than the Citigroup deal and kept all of its businesses intact. Also, there is far less overlap between the banks, as Wells Fargo is dominant in the West and Midwest compared to the redundant footprint of Wachovia and Citibank along the East Coast and South. Both companies' boards unanimously approved the merger on the night of October 2.




Citigroup explored their legal options and demanded that Wachovia and Wells Fargo cease discussions, claiming that Wells Fargo engaged in "tortious interference" with an exclusivity agreement between Citigroup and Wachovia. That agreement states in part that until October 6, 2008 "Wachovia shall not, and shall not permit any of its subsidiaries or any of its or their respective officers, directors, take any action to facilitate or encourage the submission of any Acquisition Proposal."




Citigroup convinced Judge Charles E. Ramos of the New York State Supreme Court to grant a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the Wells Fargo deal. This ruling was later overturned by Judge James M. McGuire of the New York State Court of Appeals, partly because he believed Ramos did not have the right to rule on the case in Connecticut.




On October 9, 2008, Citigroup abandoned their attempt to purchase Wachovia's banking assets, allowing the Wachovia-Wells Fargo merger to go through. However, Citigroup pursued $60 billion in claims, $20 billion in compensatory and $40 billion in punitive damages, against Wachovia and Wells Fargo for alleged violations of the exclusivity agreement. Wells Fargo settled this dispute with Citigroup Inc. for $100 Million on November 19, 2010. Citigroup may have been pressured by regulators to back out of the deal; Bair endorsed Wells Fargo's bid because it removed the FDIC from the picture. Geithner was furious, claiming that the FDIC's reversal would undermine the government's ability to quickly rescue failing banks. However, Geithner's colleagues at the Fed were not willing to take responsibility for selling Wachovia.




The Federal Reserve unanimously approved the merger with Wells Fargo on October 12, 2008. The merger is, however, contingent on certain conditions, that the Federal Reserve has yet to announce.




The combined company will be headquartered in San Francisco, home to Wells Fargo. However, Charlotte will be the headquarters for the combined company's East Coast banking operations, and Wachovia Securities will remain in St. Louis. Three members of the Wachovia board will join the Wells Fargo board. It will be the largest bank branch network in the United States.




In filings unsealed two days before the merger approval in a New York federal court, Citigroup argued that its own deal was better for U.S taxpayers and Wachovia shareholders. They said that they had exposed themselves to "substantial economic risk" by stating their intent to rescue Wachovia after less than 72 hours of due diligence. Citigroup had obtained an exclusive agreement in order to protect itself. Wachovia suffered a $23.9 billion loss in the third quarter.




In September 2008, the Internal Revenue Service issued a notice providing tax breaks to companies that acquire troubled banks. According to analysts, these tax breaks were worth billions of dollars to Wells Fargo. Vice Chairman Bill Thomas of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission indicated that these tax breaks may have been a factor in Wells Fargo's decision to purchase Wachovia.




Wells Fargo's purchase of Wachovia closed on December 31, 2008.

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University of Iowa | History and definition of the University of Iowa | University of Iowa Logo

The University of Iowa (also known as UI, or simply Iowa) is a public flagship state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa. The University of Iowa is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees. UI is categorized as RU/VH Research University (very high research activity) in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The university is a group member of the prestigious Association of American Universities, the Big Ten Conference, Committee on Institutional Cooperation, and the Universities Research Association.


The University is home to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, nationally recognized as one of America's best hospitals. According to U.S. News and Reports, three specialty departments were recognized as being in the top ten across the country. They are Otolaryngology (4th), Ophthalmology and visual sciences (6th) and Orthopaedics and rehabilitation (9th). It is one of the largest university-owned teaching hospitals in the nation. Iowa was the first American institution of higher learning to accept creative work for academic credit, and developed the Master of Fine Arts degree.


The University of Iowa was originally named The State University of Iowa, and this remains the institution's official legal name. The State University of Iowa was founded February 25, 1847 as Iowa's first public institution of higher learning, only 59 days after Iowa became a state.


The first faculty offered instruction at the university in March 1855 to students in the Old Mechanics Building, situated where Seashore Hall is now. In September 1855, there were 124 students, of whom forty-one were women. The 1856–57 catalogue listed nine departments offering Ancient Language, Modern Language, Intellectual philosophy, Moral Philosophy, History, Natural History, Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Chemistry. The first President was Amos Dean.


The original campus was composed of the Iowa Old Capitol Building and the 10 acres (40,000 m2) (4.046 hectares) of land on which it stood. Following the placing of the cornerstone July 4, 1840, the building housed the Fifth Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Iowa (December 5, 1842) and then became the first capitol of the State of Iowa (December 28, 1846). Until that date it had been the third capitol of the Territory of Iowa. When the capitol of Iowa was moved to Des Moines in 1857, Old Capitol became the first permanent "home" of the University.


United States to admit men and women on an equal basis. Additionally, the university was the world's first university to accept creative work in theater, writing, music, and art on an equal basis with academic research.


The university was one of the first institutions in America to grant a law degree to a woman (Mary B. Hickey Wilkinson, 1873), to grant a law degree to an African American (G. Alexander Clark, 1879), and to put an African American on a varsity athletic squad (Frank Holbrook, 1895). The university offered its first doctoral degree in 1898.


The university was the first state-university to officially recognize the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Allied Union (1970).


Iowa established the first law school west of the Mississippi River, and was also the first to use television in education (1932) and pioneered the field of standardized testing. Additionally, Iowa was the first Big Ten institution to promote an African American to an administrative vice president’s position (Dr. Phillip Hubbard, promoted in 1966).


On November 1, 1991, five employees of the university were killed and one student was critically injured when Gang Lu, a former physics graduate student, went on a shooting rampage before committing suicide. Officials received letters written by Lu that discussed his grievances and plans; apparently Lu was set off because he felt that his dissertation should have been received more eagerly.


On April 13, 2006, a tornado struck the university and adjacent Iowa City, causing extensive damage throughout the campus and town. The tornado was the most intense and destructive of 5 tornadoes that touched down in Johnson County, Iowa that evening; it was given the rank of F2 on the Fujita Scale. “Damage on the campus was limited to a parking garage for university vehicles and some downed trees.” Several Iowa City homes and businesses received extensive damage. Despite the wreckage, injuries were relatively light in the area, although one person in a neighboring county was killed.


On June 8, 2008, the Army Corps of Engineers warned that flooding on the Iowa River and overflow from the Coralville Reservoir would cause major and potentially record flooding. Such an event could have serious implications and bring widespread damage to campus buildings. After flood waters breached the reservoir spillway more than 20 major campus buildings were damaged. Several weeks after the flood waters receded university officials placed a preliminary estimate on flood damage at $231.75 million. Later, the UI Vice President estimated that damages would cost about $743 million.


In November 2008, responding to a proposal from the UI Writing University committee, UNESCO designated Iowa City the world's third City of Literature, making it part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.


On April 18, 2011, anthropology and women's studies professor Ellen Lewin responded to a campus-wide email from the University of Iowa College Republicans with the controversial response of "F*** YOU REPUBLICANS!" The eventual response drew nationwide attention.


The University of Iowa's main campus, located in Iowa City, was originally designed by architect D. Elwood Cook. The campus is roughly bordered by Park Road and U.S. Highway 6 to the north and Dubuque and Gilbert Streets to the east. The Iowa River flows through the campus, dividing it into west and east sides.


Of architectural note is the Pentacrest at the center of The University of Iowa campus. The Pentacrest comprises five major campus buildings: Old Capitol, Schaeffer Hall, MacLean Hall, Macbride Hall, and Jessup Hall. The Old Capitol was once the primary government building for the state of Iowa, but it is now a museum of Iowa history.


Also on the eastern side of campus are five residence halls (Burge, Daum, Stanley, Currier, and Mayflower), the Iowa Memorial Union, the Pappajohn Business Building, Seamans Center for the Engineering Arts and Sciences, the Lindquist Center (home of the College of Education), Phillips Hall (the foreign language building), Van Allen Hall (home to physics and astronomy), the English-Philosophy Building, and the buildings for biology, chemistry, geology & environmental sciences, psychology, communications, and journalism. The Main Library can also be found on the east side.


The Colleges of Law, Medicine, Nursing, Dentistry, Pharmacy, and Public Health are on the western side of the Iowa River, along with the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, the Theatre Building, and Voxman Music Building. Additionally, five residence halls (Hillcrest, Slater, Reinow, Quadrangle, and Parklawn), Kinnick Stadium, and Carver-Hawkeye Arena are located on the west campus.


The Oakdale Campus, which is home to some of the university's research facilities and the driving simulator, is located north of Interstate 80 in adjacent Coralville.


The flood of 2008 had a major impact on a number of campus buildings, forcing many building to temporarily close. The Iowa Memorial Union was closed for a period of time, and the ground floor of this building is still closed as it undergoes renovation. The arts campus, which includes Hancher, Voxman, Clapp Recital Hall, and the Theatre Building, was hit especially hard. The theatre building has since reopened, but the music facilities have not. Music classes were for a short time held in temporary trailers, and now music classrooms are spread throughout campus. Recently, a University task force suggested to state regents that Hancher be rebuilt near its current site on the West bank of the Iowa River and Voxman and Clapp be built nearer to the main campus on South Clinton Street.


University of Iowa in rankings
1. One of the top ten international universities in the U.S. according to the Asian Correspondent, April 1, 2010
2. 26th best public university in the nation — U.S. News & World Report, 2008 edition
3. 66th best university in the nation, tied with University of Connecticut and Purdue University – U.S. News & World Report, 2009 edition
4. The best university in the state of Iowa – U.S. News & World Report, 2008 edition
5. 21 graduate programs ranked among the top 10 such programs in the country — U.S. News & World Report, 2008 edition.
6. One of only two public universities in the Midwest listed as "best buys" — Fiske Guide to Colleges, 2008
7. One of the top 50 public universities in the country when it comes to offering academic excellence at an affordable price — Kiplinger's Personal Finance, 2006
8. 188th best university in the world according to the 2010 QS World University Rankings.
9. "A picturesque campus, a thriving social scene, and the excitement of Big Ten athletic teams" — Insider’s Guide to the Colleges, 2007
10. University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics ranked as one of “America’s Best Hospitals” for the 20th year in a row (since rankings began in 1990 – U.S. News & World Report, 2009.
11. Iowa's 1,700-acre (6.9 km2) campus sits in one of the nation’s most livable cities and in the third-most-educated metropolitan area in America — Market Guide’s 2006 Better Living Index, USA Today.
12. The University of Iowa Law Library is ranked #1 in the nation by the National Jurist.
13. The University of Iowa's graduate program in Speech-Language Pathology has been ranked #1 in the country by U.S. News & World Report (2010 Edition).
14. The College of Nursing ranks in the top fifteen for all six categories used to rank nursing schools by U.S. News & World Report. Iowa places first in the nation in both nursing service administration and gerontological/geriatric nursing graduate programs. Iowa is ranked better than 12th in all other categories.
15. The University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business was named by Business Week as one of the top fifty business schools in the nation.
16. The Tippie School of Management's full-time MBA program is in the top 3% of MBA programs in the U.S. The program is ranked in many categories by several different organizations including: 20th overall and the 4th fastest payback (U.S.) by Forbes; 20th for public universities and 40th overall (U.S.) by U.S. News; 64th overall (world), 32nd overall (U.S.), 9th in finance, 1st for employment percentage (11th in the world), 3rd for value, 15th for placement success (19th in the world) and 17th for aims achieved by Financial Times; 37th (North America) and 15th (U.S.) by The Economist; .
17. The University of Iowa's Carver College of Medicine has been ranked #7 in the country for primary care and #31 in the country for research by U.S. News & World Report.
18. The University of Iowa's College of Law has been ranked #26 in the country by U.S. News & World Report (2010 Edition), and has attained an average USNWR ranking of #21 in the last 20 years.
19. The University of Iowa's College of Pharmacy has been ranked #16 in the country by U.S. News & World Report (2008 Edition).
20. The University of Iowa School of Art & Art History's Fine Arts program has been ranked #21 in the country by U.S. News & World Report (2008 Edition).
21. The University of Iowa's College of Education is the nation's first permanent college-level department of education (1872)
Campus museums
1. University of Iowa Museum of Art
2. Museum of Natural History
3. Old Capitol Museum
4. Medical Museum
5. Athletic Hall of Fame and Museum
6.  Project Art (University Hospitals and Clinics)
Much of the student night-life in Iowa City is centered around the pedestrian mall ("ped mall"), which contains numerous restaurants, local shops/boutiques, and over thirty bars. A popular university event that draws both students and also a vast number of residents from the entire midwest is home football games. A related activity that many students engage in is tailgating, which many students begin promptly as the sun rises. The University of Iowa is well known for its party and social scene: it was given the rank of 10th-best party school in the United States by Playboy magazine in 2010, and has appeared on similar top ten lists of several other publications. In addition, there are hundreds of student organizations, including groups focused on politics, sports, games, lifestyles, dance, song, and theater, and a variety of other activities. The University also tries to sponsor events that give students an alternative to the typical drinking scene. In 2004 the University established an annual $25,000 contract with the newly reopened Iowa City Englert Theatre to host concerts and performances for as many as 40 nights a year.


Students also participate in a variety of student media organizations. Students edit and manage The Daily Iowan newspaper (often called the DI), which is printed every Monday through Friday while classes are in session. An early editor of the DI was noted pollster George Gallup. Daily Iowan TV, KRUI radio, Student Video Productions, Off Deadline magazine and Earthwords magazine are other examples of student-run media.
Source URL: https://newsotokan.blogspot.com/2011/06/
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University of Tennessee | History and definition of the University of Tennessee | University of Tennessee Logo

The University of Tennessee, sometimes called the University of Tennessee, Knoxville is a public land-grant university headquartered at Knoxville. Founded in 1794, it is the flagship institution of the statewide University of Tennessee system with nine undergraduate colleges and eleven graduate colleges and hosts almost 28,000 students from all 50 states and more than 100 foreign countries. In its 2011 ranking of universities, U.S. News & World Report ranked UTK among the best national universities and public institutions of higher learning at 104th of all national universities. Its ties to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, established under UT President Andrew Holt and continued under the UT-Battelle partnership, have positioned the University as co-manager and allow for considerable research opportunities for faculty and students enjoyed by few other institutions of comparable standing.


Also affiliated with the University are the Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy, the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, and the University of Tennessee Arboretum, which occupies 250 acres (1.0 km2) of nearby Oak Ridge, Tennessee and features hundreds of species of plants indigenous to the region. The University is a direct partner of the University of Tennessee Medical Center, it is one of two Level I trauma center in the East Tennessee region and a self-proclaimed 'teaching hospital' due to its aggressive medical research programs and position as the primary career destination for most medical school graduates of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center at Memphis.


Known for its passionate football tradition, Tennessee's primary economic engine and largest institute of higher learning, the University was nearly destroyed during the Civil War, but rebounded with substantial growth during the Reconstruction era of the United States. The University of Tennessee is the only university in the nation to have three presidential papers editing projects and holds collections of the papers of all three U.S. presidents from Tennessee—Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and Andrew Johnson.


On September 10, 1794, two years before Tennessee became a state and at a meeting of the legislature of the Southwest Territory at Knoxville, the University of Tennessee was chartered as Blount College. The new, all-male, non-sectarian institution struggled for 13 years with a small student body and faculty, and in 1807, the school was rechartered as East Tennessee College as a condition of receiving the proceeds from the settlement devised in the Compact of 1806. When Samuel Carrick, its first president and only faculty member, died in 1809, the school was temporarily closed until 1820, and in 1840 was elevated to East Tennessee University. The school's status as a religiously non-affiliated institution of higher learning was unusual for the period of time in which it was chartered, and the school is generally recognized as the oldest such establishment of its kind west of the Appalachian Divide.


East Tennessee was considered to be a bastion of Union sympathies throughout the American Civil War, although the University and the city of Knoxville were fairly divided for the duration of the conflict. As the threat of armed conflict between Union and Confederate forces loomed over the city of Knoxville, UT was forced to close its doors to students at the onset of the Siege of Knoxville and the campus's main buildings were requisitioned as hospitals and barracks. The school and its grounds suffered severe damage not only from the Battle of Fort Sanders, but also from its unfortunate position between Union artillery based at Fort Sanders, situated immediately to the north of the 40-acre (160,000 m2) campus, and Fort Dickerson to the south, overlooking the school from a bluff rising above the southern bank of the Tennessee River.


Tennessee was a member of the Confederacy in 1862 with the Morrill Act was passed,providing for endowment funds from the sale of federal land to State agricultural colleges. On February 28, 1867, Congress passed a special Act making the State of Tennessee eligible to participate in the Morrill Act of 1862 program. In January 1869, East Tennessee University was designated as Tennessee's recipient of the Land-Grant designation and funds. In accepting the funds, the University would focus upon instructing students in military, agricultural, and mechanical subjects. UT eventually received $396,000 as its endowment under the program. Trustees soon approved the establishment of a medical program under the auspices of the Nashville School of Medicine and added advanced degree programs. East Tennessee University was renamed the University of Tennessee in 1879.


The first African Americans were admitted to the graduate and law schools following a suit filed in federal district court in 1952. The first master's degree was awarded to a black student in 1954, the first Law degree (LlB) in 1956, and the first doctoral degree (Ed.D.) in 1959. Black undergraduates were admitted 1961; the first black faculty member was appointed in 1964. Integration went fairly smoothly; Black students had more difficulty gaining entry to eating establishments and places of entertainment off campus than they did attending class on campus. Overall, Knoxville and the University had fewer racial troubles in the 1950s and 1960s than did other southern universities.


Despite this climate, African-American attorney Rita Sanders Geier filed suit against the state of Tennessee in 1968 alleging that its higher education system remained segregated despite a federal mandate ordering desegregation. She claimed that the opening of a University of Tennessee campus at Nashville, Tennessee would lead to the creation of another predominantly white institution that would strip resources from Tennessee State University, the only state-funded Historically black university. The suit was not settled until 2001, when the Geier Consent Decree resulted in the appropriation of $77 million in state funding to increase diversity among student and faculty populations among all Tennessee institutions of higher learning.


In 1968, the university underwent an administrative reorganization which left the Knoxville campus as the flagship and headquarters of its new "university system," comprising the UT Health Science Center at Memphis, a four-year college at Martin, the formerly private University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (added a year later), the UT Space Institute at Tullahoma, and the Knoxville-based College of Veterinary Medicine, Agriculture Institute, and Public Service Institute. An additional primary campus in Nashville had a brief existence from 1971 to 1979 before it was ordered closed and merged with Tennessee State University.


The University of Tennessee's flagship campus in Knoxville hosts the Institute of Agriculture and the Institute for Public Service. The UT Health Science Center at Memphis and the UT Space Institute at Tullahoma are specialized campuses but are not separate institutions.


The University of Tennessee at Knoxville is the flagship campus of the statewide University of Tennessee system, which is governed by a 26-member board of trustees appointed by the Governor of Tennessee. The campus is headed by a Chancellor who functions as the chief executive officer of the campus, responsible for its daily administration and management. The chancellor reports to the President of the university system and is elected annually by the UT Board of Trustees at the recommendation of the system president. Dr. Jimmy G. Cheek has been Chancellor of the Knoxville campus since February 1, 2009. Dr. Joseph A. DiPietro has been system president since January 1, 2011. Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Susan D. Martin is responsible for the academic administration of the Knoxville campus and reports directly to the Chancellor.


The University of Tennessee Medical Center, administered by University Health Systems and affiliated with the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine, collaborates with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center to attract and train the majority of its medical staff. Many doctors and nurses at UTMC have integrated careers as teachers and healthcare professionals, and the center promotes itself as the area's only academic, or "teaching hospital." Serving on the UTMC Board of Directors are the President of the University of Tennessee, the Chancellor of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and UT President Emeritus Joseph E. Johnson, Ph.D.


The University Medical Center is the primary referral center for Eastern Tennessee, Western North Carolina, and Southeastern Kentucky and along with Johnson City Medical Center, it is one of two Level I trauma centers in the East Tennessee geographic region. Extensive expansion programs were embarked upon the 1990s and 2000s and saw the construction of two sprawling additions to the hospital's campus, a new Cancer Institute and a Heart Lung Vascular Institute. The new UT Medical Center Heart Hospital received its first patient on April 27, 2010. The facility is served by LIFESTAR, a fleet of Bell helicopters providing aeromedical evacuation support within a 150-mile (240 km) radius of Knoxville.


During the 2007-2008 academic calendar year, The University of Tennessee at Knoxville had a total enrollment of 21,132 undergraduate and 5,670 graduate and professional students. UT hosts students from all 50 U.S. states and more than 100 foreign countries, although the majority of undergraduates hail from the American Southeast states of Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia, with more than 14,000 from Tennessee alone. 51% of students are female, 49% are male, and 16% of UT students identify themselves as non-caucasian.


UT offers its students more than 300 degree programs in its eleven colleges of: Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Architecture and Design, Arts and Sciences, Business Administration, Communication and Information, Health, Education, and Human Sciences, Engineering, Law, Nursing, Social Work, and Veterinary Medicine, and offers two intercollegiate programs in Aviation Systems, through the University of Tennessee Space Institute at Tullahoma, and Cooperative and Experimental Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. The University employs 1,550 full-time faculty members, of whom 57% are tenured and 81% claim a Ph.D or other terminal degree in their respective fields. As of the 2007-2008 academic year, 71% of courses taken featured class sizes smaller than 30 students, and students at the Knoxville campus enjoy a 16:1 ratio of faculty-to-students.


The total research endowment of the UT Knoxville campus was $127,983,213 for FY 2006. UT Knoxville boasts several faculty who are among the leading contributors to their fields, including Dr. Harry McSween, generally recognized as one of the world's leading experts in the study of meteorites and a member of the science team for Mars Pathfinder and later a co-investigator for the Mars Odyssey and Mars Exploration Rovers projects. The University also hosts Dr. Barry T. Rouse, an international award-winning Distinguished Professor of Microbiology who has conducted multiple NIH-funded studies on the herpes simplex virus (HSV) and who is a leading researcher in his field. UT's agricultural research programs are considered to be among the most accomplished in the nation, and the School of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources is home to the East Tennessee Clean Fuels Initiative, recognized by the United States Department of Energy as the "best local clean fuels program in America.". UT Knoxville operates the most powerful US academic supercomputer, Kraken, a National Institute for Computational Sciences supercomputer hosted on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory campus.


The university traces its roots to September 10, 1794, two years before Tennessee was admitted to the Union as the 16th state, when Blount College was established by the legislature of the Southwest Territory as one of the first three colleges chartered west of the Appalachian Mountains. At this time, Knoxville was the territorial capital and the area of land occupied by the University was largely farmland bordering a broad stretch of the Tennessee River. In 1807 the school was rechristened East Tennessee College and in 1828 was moved from Gay Street in downtown Knoxville to a 40 acre (160,000 m²) tract known as Barbara Hill, named in honor of Governor Blount's daughter, and was renamed East Tennessee University in 1848. Known to students and alumni today as simply "The Hill," it is only a small part of the Knoxville campus but constitutes a veritable acropolis of expansive and well-preserved red-brick buildings. Construction of the iconic Ayres Hall was completed in 1921 following the Tennessee State Legislature's first $1 million appropriation, and today that structure remains the most widely recognized symbol of the flagship Knoxville campus.


The main Knoxville campus can be divided into three distinct blocks of housing, academic, and athletic structures. Two main avenues of traffic, Volunteer Boulevard and Andy Holt Avenue bisect the campus, intersecting with smaller side streets. The majority of dormitories share a north street face along Andy Holt Avenue, which is broken by the Pedestrian Mall and Walkway between the John C. Hodges Library and the Humanities Plaza complex. The terrain of the campus is mostly hilly in its outlay and the school is bound by the Tennessee River to the South and a section of U.S. Route 70 to the North. Known to Knoxvillians as Cumberland Avenue and to UT students and faculty simply as "The Strip," this roughly half-mile stretch of road is home to many businesses and eateries serving the University population and is a popular entertainment venue throughout the year.


A number of capital improvement project were undertaken in the 1990s and 2000s and resulted in major additions to the campus, including the James A. Haslam II Business Building, the Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy Building, and the Joe Johnson and John Ward Pedestrian Mall that replaced a section of Andy Holt Avenue which had previously separated the central student study hub of John C. Hodges Library from the heavily trafficked Humanities Plaza office and classroom complex. That project was a significant beautification effort which established a central, tree-lined commons area for the Knoxville campus, complete with an amphitheater and a large expanse of open green space with a panoramic vista of The Hill and downtown Knoxville.


The campus is well served by the "T," a fleet of brightly painted orange buses operated by biodiesel fuels, transporting University faculty, students, and staff at no charge. The "T-Link" is an on-call taxi service available after dark to students who are not comfortable traveling alone on campus or through adjoining residential neighborhoods such as the popular Fort Sanders, and is offered at no charge to students who present a valid UT student ID card.


The University of Tennessee Agricultural Campus is directly adjacent to the main Knoxville campus and is home to the largest portion of the University's principle agricultural and natural sciences research infrastructure, but occupies only a fraction of the total lands held by the University for research purposes. The Ag Campus is the site of UT's Plant Biotech Building and associated facilities, the Biosystems Engineering and Environmental Sciences facility, UT's College of Veterinary Medicine and its associated teaching hospital of veterinary medicine, the Pendergrass Library Agricultural and Veterinary Medicine Library, the Tennessee Division of Forestry, UT's new Business Incubator, built in conjunction with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Forestry Products and Resources facility, vast greenhouses and growth chambers, and the administrative offices and multiple classroom halls devoted to UT's College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources. Numerous sites further afield, in both Knox County and Blount County are held by the University and are devoted to multiple endeavors of agricultural and forestry sciences, including the cultivation and research of forestry products and the production of biofuels. The UT Gardens occupy the portion of the Ag Campus bordering the Tennessee River and feature hundreds of species of native plants and constitute a sizable arboretum that is open to University affiliates and the public throughout the year.


The University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, nicknamed the "Body Farm", is located near the University of Tennessee Medical Center on Alcoa Highway (US 129). Founded by Dr. William M. Bass in 1972, the Body Farm endeavors to increase anthropological and forensic knowledge specifically related to the decomposition of the human body and is one of the leading centers for such research in the United States.


On March 16, 2009, the University broke ground on a 188 acres (76 ha) campus in downtown Knoxville which will feature new, world-class facilities devoted to the pursuit of nanotechnology, neutron science, and materials sciences, energy and climate studies, environmental science, and biomedical science.[39] This new hub will dramatically expand the University's research capacity, and operations will be a collaboration between the University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the State of Tennessee, and the private sector. Currently, 16 research and support structures have been designed for the campus, and the master plan allows for the development of more, as well as expansion of existing facilities once they are built. Construction is scheduled to begin on campus infrastructure in August 2009.


The University has implemented a 25-year (2001–2026) campus master plan that will facilitate a sweeping overhaul of campus design. The plan is designed to make the campus more pedestrian-friendly by establishing large areas of open green space and relegating parking facilities to the periphery of the campus, and to increase the aesthetic appeal of the school by establishing uniform building design codes and by physically remodeling, restoring, and expanding existing academic, athletic, and housing facilities. Centrally located, iconic Ayers Hall is currently undergoing a massive upgrade as part of Phase I of the project, with work expected to be completed around 2011. A new university center is planned, along with substantial new facilities for science, the performing arts, and athletics. An expected 3,000 new parking spaces will be developed along with improved mass transit and walking spaces. The plan calls for the removal of many of the roads that bisect the campus, along with the development of two new quads, one each on the main and agricultural campuses. Restoration and renovations of existing campus buildings are expected to be conducted in concert with historical preservationists when appropriate, according to the 2001 Master Plan document.


The Pedestrian Mall and its adjoining, grassy amphitheater is the most popular student gathering point on campus, situated between the John C. Hodges Library and the Humanities Plaza complex of McClung Tower and the Humanities classroom building. Studying, kite-flying, protests, proselytizing, hammock lounging, picnics, sunbathing, frisbee, barbecues and free concerts are common activities that occur throughout the academic year and beyond.


Students and faculty not affiliated with the athletic department enjoy free use of the state-of-the-art Tennessee Recreational Center for Students, known universally on campus as "T-RECS." T-RECS offers an Olympic-sized swimming pool, four indoor basketball courts, more than 80 cardiovascular exercise stations with access to an in-house entertainment center and XM radio, more than 100 strength training centers, multiple banks of free weights, and a Smoothie King. T-RECS patrons may borrow a variety of equipment for outdoor activities such as soccer and tennis for no charge.


The International House is a popular gathering place for visiting international students and delegations and University of Tennessee students who have previously or are currently interested in studying abroad through the Programs Abroad Office. A full kitchen, meeting rooms, and a library provide support for frequent cultural events ranging from salsa dance lessons and nation-themed culture nights to Peace Corps interest meetings.


The Black Cultural Center, or BCC, houses the Office of Minority Student Affairs and offers a student computer lab, free Spanish tutoring, and a textbook loan service for economically disadvantaged students. There is a small but well-stocked library featuring numerous works examining religious and minority issues, and the facility offers free use of its meeting rooms to campus organizations and their affiliates.


The University of Tennessee has over 450 registered student organizations. These groups cater to a variety of interests and provide options for those interested in service, sports, arts, social activities, government, politics, cultural issues, and Greek societies.


The University of Tennessee hosts the Destination Imagination Global Finals, a problem solving competition held annually during the last week of May. The event draws thousands of young students and their families to Knoxville and is a significant event for the campus after the end of each academic year. Numerous religious centers are located along "Church Row," including the University of Tennessee's Christian Student Fellowship, the Knoxville campus' Non-Denominational Protestant Christian group, the Wesley Foundation (a United Methodist student center), Pope John XXIII (a Catholic student center), and the Christian Student Center.


The university operates two radio stations: student-run The Rock (formerly the Torch) (WUTK-FM 90.3 MHz) and National Public Radio affiliate WUOT-FM 91.9 MHz. The university's first radio station was on the AM frequency 850 kHz, a donation from Knoxville radio station WIVK-AM/FM. The Phoenix, a literary art magazine, is published in the fall and spring semesters and showcases student artistic creativity. The Tennessee Journalist (TNJN) is an online news publication of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media and is a collaboration of regular editorial staff and student contributors, many of whom receive classroom credit for their work.


The Daily Beacon


The editorially independent student newspaper of the University publishes 15,000 copies a day, five days a week, and claims a staff of over 100 consisting of an editorial team of 14, more than 60 staff writers, photographers, copyeditors, and others during the Fall and Spring semesters. The paper publishes twice weekly during the summer semester (May through August) and has significantly fewer staff writers at that time.


The publication began as a semi-monthly publication under the name The University Times-Prospectus in 1871. The Orange and White followed in 1906 as a weekly publication and was later published semi-weekly. The Daily Beacon was established 61 years later under the management of alumnus David Hall (1965) and was published four times per week and soon saw publication each day of the academic week. Approximately 180 issues per academic year are published while classes are in session. The newspaper unveiled a drastically improved website and content management system in 2010, marking a significant new emphasis on online distribution. It began publishing on the Kindle shortly thereafter, becoming the first daily student newspaper to do so.


The University of Tennessee has a Residence Hall Association. Created in 1972 as the Inter-Residence Halls Council, the IRHC changed its name to the United Residence Halls Council (URHC) the next year. URHC sponsors many events focusing on various aspects of on-campus living throughout the fall and spring semesters. In addition, URHC serves as an advocacy board for all on-campus residents. Residents can use URHC as a vehicle to promote positive change on campus.


URHC is the second largest student organization on campus with roughly all 7,000 on-campus residents enjoying full membership. Each of the thirteen residence halls has its own RHA hosting smaller scale, more hall specific programs. Each RHA has its own executive board to govern the activities of its residence hall. Each RHA's budget consists of $11 per bed that is allocated from each student's housing activities fee. The URHC holds bimonthly general body meetings that are open to all residents.


The University of Tennessee, Knoxville is also affiliated with the National Association of College and University Residence Halls (NACURH) as well as the South Atlantic Affiliate of College and University Residence Halls (SAACURH). Currently UTK is the host institution of the NACURH Services and Recognition Office (NSRO), a national office that changes host institutions every two years.


Tennessee competes in the Southeastern Conference's Eastern Division, along with Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt, and has longstanding football rivalries with each. The Volunteers won the 1998 NCAA Division I-A National Championship in football, and the team is noted for its 1938, 1940, 1950, 1951 and 1998 National Championship victories. The Volunteers were coached by Phillip Fulmer from 1992 until November 2008, succeeded by Lane Kiffin who left one year later. In January 2010, Derek Dooley was signed as the new head coach. Super Bowl champion Peyton Manning and the late NFL Hall of Fame player Reggie White are among the numerous NFL athletes to begin their careers at the University of Tennessee. The men's basketball program is headed by Cuonzo Martin, and in 2008 the Vols won their first SEC regular season championship in 41 years. In 2010, the men's team advanced to the Elite Eight, or quarterfinal round, in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament for the first time.


The Tennessee Lady Volunteers have won eight NCAA Division I titles (1987, 1989, 1991, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2007, 2008), the most in women's college basketball history and are led by Pat Summitt, the all-time winningest basketball coach in NCAA history. Her 1,000th victory occurred on February 5, 2009, and she boasts a 100 percent graduation rate for all players who finish their career at UT. The main women's basketball rivals for Tennessee within the conference are Georgia, Vanderbilt, and LSU.


UT's best-known athletic facility by far is Neyland Stadium, home to the football team, which seats over 102,000 people and is one of the country's largest facilities of its type. The stadium is currently undergoing a $200 million renovation with construction expected to last into the 2010s. The Volunteers and Lady Vols basketball teams play in Thompson-Boling Arena, the largest arena (by capacity) ever built specifically for basketball in the United States. Both basketball teams currently train at the adjacent Pratt Pavilion, a $20 million facility opened in 2008 which houses two full size gymnasia, one each for the men and women varsity basketball teams, and space for sports medicine, strength training, film study, and recruiting.


The swimming program trains at the Jones Aquatic Center, which is directly adjacent to the Student Aquatic Center. This first-class complex is capable of hosting the Southeastern Conference and NCAA Championships, as well as national and international events. Also included in the new facility is a weight room, training room, and the University of Tennessee Swimming and Diving Hall of Fame.
Source URL: https://newsotokan.blogspot.com/2011/06/
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