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House church

A house church or home church is a label used to describe a group of Christians who regularly gather for worship in private homes. The group may be part of a larger Christian body, such as a parish, but some have been independent groups that see the house church as the primary form of Christian community.

Sometimes these groups meet because the membership is small, and a home is the most appropriate place to assemble until such time as the group has sufficient funds to rent a regular place to meet (as in the beginning phase of the British New Church Movement). Sometimes this meeting style is advantageous because the group is a member of a Christian congregation which is otherwise banned from meeting as is the case in China and Iran.[citation needed]

Some recent Christian writers have supported the view that the Christian Church should meet in houses, and have based the operation of their communities around multiple small home meetings. Other Christian groups choose to meet in houses when they are in the early phases of church growth because a house is the most affordable option for the small group to meet until the number of people attending the group is sufficient to warrant moving to a commercial location such as a church building. House church organizations claim that this approach is preferable to public meetings in dedicated buildings because it is a more effective way of building community and personal relationships, and it helps the group to engage in outreach more naturally. Some believe small churches were a deliberate apostolic pattern in the first century, and they were intended by Christ.

Origins
In the early church, Christian fellowship, prayer, and service took place mainly in private homes, as described in the book of Acts of the Apostles. The Latin term often used is domus ecclesiae. Several passages in the New Testament specifically mention churches meeting in houses. The first house church is recorded in Acts 1:13, where the disciples of Jesus met together in the "Upper Room" of a house, traditionally believed to be where the Cenacle is today. "The churches of Asia greet you, especially Aquila and Prisca greet you much in the Lord, along with the church that is in their house." I Corinthians 16:19. The church meeting in the house of Priscilla and Aquila is again mentioned in Romans 16:3, 5. The church that meets in the house of Nymphas is also cited in the Bible: "Greet the brethren in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the church which is in her house." Colossians 4:15. There is another reference to the church meeting in Philemon's home ("To Philemon our dear friend and fellow worker—also to Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier—and to the church that meets in your home:…." Philemon 1:2), but scholars recognize this as simply the meeting place of the Corinthian church—not a separately-meeting house church.

For the first 300 years of Early Christianity, until Constantine legalized Christianity and churches moved into larger buildings, Christians typically met in homes, if only because intermittent persecution (before the Edict of Milan in 313) did not allow the erection of public church buildings. Clement of Alexandria, an early church father, wrote of worshipping in a house. The Dura-Europos church, a private house in Dura-Europos in Syria, was excavated in the 1930s and was found to have been used as a Christian meeting place in AD 232, with one small room serving as a baptistry creating the current style church seen today.

History
During the 20th and 21st centuries, the complexity of obtaining government authorizations, in some countries of the world which apply sharia or communism, government authorizations for worship are complex for Evangelical Christians. Because of persecution of Christians, Evangelical house churches are the only option for many Christians to live their faith in community. For example, there is the Evangelical house churches in China movement. The meetings thus take place in private houses, in secret and in "illegality".

In China

In the People's Republic of China (PRC), house churches or family churches are Protestant assemblies that operate independently from the state-sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and China Christian Council (CCC), and came into existence due to the change in religious policy after the end of the Cultural Revolution in the early 1980s. The TSPM was set up after the Communist Party established the PRC in 1949, for Protestants to declare their patriotism and support of the new government. However, by the time of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), all public religious practice came to an end; the government of the People's Republic of China officially espouses state atheism, and has conducted antireligious campaigns to this end. Many churches, temples and mosques were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, which also criminalized the possession of religious texts. Due to the changes in religious policy after the end of the Cultural Revolution, in 1980, the TSPM was reinstated and the China Christian Council was formed. Protestant congregations that wished to worship publicly registered with the TSPM, but those that did not were eventually termed house churches.

Revivals
Recent developments in the house church movement in North America and the United Kingdom are often seen as a return to a New Testament church restorationist paradigm, a restoration of God's eternal purpose, and the natural expression of Christ on Earth, urging Christians to reject hierarchy and rank, and return to practices described and encouraged in Scripture. According to some proponents, many churchgoers are turning to house churches because traditional churches fail to meet their relational needs and are not representative of the structure exhibited throughout the Acts of the Apostles and Epistles of the New Testament.

Some authors who are often associated with "house church" by others (examples are Jon Zens, Watchman Nee, T. Austin-Sparks, Milt Rodriguez, Wolfgang Simson, Frank Viola and others) consider the term "house church" to be a misnomer, asserting that the main issue for Christians who gather together is not the location of the meeting, but whether or not Jesus Christ is the functional head of the gathering and face-to-face community is occurring. Other names which may be used to describe these kinds of churches simple church, "relational church," "primitive church," "body life," "organic church" or "biblical church.". Some authors don't believe "house church" or "organic church" are "movements," and they distinguish between a house church/simple church and an organic expression of the church.

House churches can adopt an organic church philosophy, which is not necessarily a particular method, technique or movement, but rather a particular church expression that the group takes on when the organization is functioning according to the pattern of a living organism. The church represented in the New Testament is based on this principle, and both traditional & contemporary versions of "Westernized" Christianity has reversed this order.

The origins of the modern house church movement in North America and the UK are varied. Some have viewed it as a development and logical extension of the Plymouth Brethren movement, both in doctrine and practice. Many individuals and assemblies have adopted new approaches to worship and governance, while others recognize a relationship to the Anabaptists, the Free Christians, the Quakers, the Amish, the Hutterites, the Mennonites, the Moravians, the Methodists, the much earlier conventicles movement, the Waldenses or the Priscillianists. Another perspective sees the house church movement as a re-emergence of the move of the Holy Spirit during the Jesus Movement of the 1970s in the USA or the worldwide Charismatic Renewal of the late 1960s and 1970s. Others believe that the House Church movement was pioneered by the Reverend Ernest Southcott in the 1950s, when he was Vicar of St Wilfred's Church in Halton, Leeds, in England. Southcott believed that if people would not come to church, the church must go to the people, and his book The Parish Comes Alive spread this idea widely among Anglicans.

Limited financial resources can encourage church leaders to rethink the pattern of ministry and look for ways to forward the outreach of the church with unpaid members.

Simple church
The simple church is an Evangelical Christian movement that reinterprets the nature and practice of church. A simple church may meet anywhere with or without trained leaders, formal liturgy, programs or structures. To facilitate relationship, discipleship (spiritual formation), multiplication, mobility, and member ownership, a simple church is usually a small group of no more than 20-25 persons. Most Church "programs" privately meet during some days of the week and discuss troubles that they are having with their faith, and personal life. Church "programs" are virtually nonexistent and small group participation is essential. The process of moving from worship to small group, small group to mission work, and mission work to worship is a primary focus.

Authors Tony and Felicity Dale, founders of House2House Ministries, have promoted the term "simple church" in their book "Simply Church". The term is often used interchangeably with other terms like organic church, essential church, primitive church, bodylife, relational church, and micro-church.

In the early twenty-first century a number of established Christian denominations and mission organizations have officially supported efforts to develop house church networks.

Origins and influences
The simple church movement is part of the broader house church movement. Simple church has also been influenced by overseas missions and the growth of church planting movements. Church planting movements are spontaneously growing church multiplication efforts.

The missional Movement has also influenced simple church.

Values
As in any decentralized, spontaneous movement, a variety of values are expressed in simple church. Due to the influence of some key groups and Acts 2:42-47, three overarching values have emerged in many circles. Adherents Paul Kaak (who began ministry in one of the largest and most systematized mega-churches in America) and Neil Cole originally articulated these values using the letters DNA. According to him:
 * D – Divine Truth: Truth is the foundation for everything.
 * N – Nurturing Relationships : Healthy relationships are what make up a family. Love for one another is to be a constant pursuit of the family of God.
 * A – Apostolic Mission : Apostolic means, simply, "sent".

These values have since been promoted by House2House Ministries and DAWN North America, and have been adopted by various groups such as New York's MetroSoul

Practices
Adherents of George Barna and Frank Viola's book Pagan Christianity point out a number of reforms that organic churches often advocate.
 * The belief that modern clergy is a vestige of Roman pagan religion that was absent from the early church and is largely at odds with the true priesthood of all believers. The movement sees the institution of the clergy at odds with passages like Matthew 20, Matthew 23, 3rd John, and the message in Revelation regarding the deeds of the Nicolaitans (Greek-literally those who triumph over the people). 1 Corinthians 12-14 paints a picture of an every-member functioning church meeting entirely at odds with the modern religious service which is performed by professionals for an audience. However, some believe this view does not take into account the Jewish and synagogue based nature of the ekklesia, which explains the talk of elders and deacons found in the New Testament. In reply, many simple churches do recognize elders and deacons according to the biblical standards laid out in Timothy and Titus but believe these people emerge over time as their character becomes descriptive of these roles. In an environment where people are free to express their gifts, such people can emerge. Also, being an elder or deacon does not mean this person dominates the meeting. 3 John rebukes Diotrephes the elder who had to be first and was dominating.  The simple church largely believes the idea that an elder or deacon is not a license for some to minister and others to be passive.
 * Valuing the Lord's Supper occurring as a regular, recurring full meal celebration rather than a short religious ritual. The early integration of the home based ritual into the public synagogue-like meeting functioned to reduce the symbolic nature of the act to a private moment, replacing its symbolism of fellowship and dedication to the Lord. This was complete by the time of Constantine, when home based agape feasts were banned. However, this history does not in itself devalue the need for the larger synagogue-like meeting for prayer, ministry of the word and singing. Simple church adherents also enjoy occasional and even monthly larger gatherings that do this very thing, though they emphasize the smaller meeting of the ekklesia as the environment for spiritual growth.
 * Organic churches tend to place less emphasis on the building or meeting place. To this end, Neil Cole, an adherent of simple church, states that "buildings, budgets, and big shots," tend to do more to contain Christianity than allow it to spread. However, this statement against larger sized churches does nothing to substantiate its claim.

Media and popular attention
In the early twenty–first century the growth of the movement had increased news media coverage during the early 2000's. However, the house church movement saw a resurgence following the Covid-19 epidemic, after Christian believers were forced to meet in more intimate, home-like settings, and after the traditional Westernized church model seemed to fail to meet members' needs during and after the epidemic:

Many books have been written on the simple church movement, especially by insiders (see House Church, Further Reading). In the early twenty-first century, books began to appear by those studying the movement from a more objective view, including George Barna's Revolution. Barna says that "revolutionary" expressions such as simple church will soon account for one third of American spirituality.

Visibility of the movement also increased due to national and regional gatherings of various kinds. Among which include the Church Without Walls International in Broken Arrow, OK, USA, and various other locations throughout the US.

Criticism
How the simple church movement relates to constructing a theology and ecclesiology is the subject of much debate, especially with critics of the movement.

Several prominent voices have serious concerns about simple church. For example, J. Lee Grady (Charisma Online Editor) says such a movement wants to "reinvent the church without its biblical structure and New Testament order – and without the necessary people who are anointed and appointed by God to lead it. To follow this defective thesis to its logical conclusion would require us to fire all pastors, close all seminaries and Bible colleges, padlock our sanctuaries and send everybody home..." Grady and other critics worry that the simple church movement could encourage people to leave more traditional forms of church, which could lead to further collapse or decline of Christendom.

title: House church


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Nicaraguan Revolution

The Nicaraguan Revolution (Revolución Nicaragüense or Revolución Popular Sandinista) encompassed the rising opposition to the Somoza dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, the campaign led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) to oust the dictatorship in 1978–79, the subsequent efforts of the FSLN to govern Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, and the Contra War, which was waged between the FSLN-led government of Nicaragua and the United States–backed Contras from 1981 to 1990. The revolution marked a significant period in the history of Nicaragua and revealed the country as one of the major proxy war battlegrounds of the Cold War, attracting much international attention.

The initial overthrow of the Somoza dictatorial regime in 1978–79 was a dirty affair, and the Contra War of the 1980s took the lives of tens of thousands of Nicaraguans and was the subject of fierce international debate. Because of the political turmoil, failing economy, and decreasing government influence, during the 1980s both the FSLN (a leftist collection of political parties) and the Contras (a rightist collection of counter-revolutionary groups) received large amounts of aid from the Cold War superpowers (respectively, the Soviet Union and the United States).

A peace process started with the Sapoá Accords in 1988 and the Contra War ended after the signing of the Tela Accord in 1989 and the demobilization of the FSLN and Contra armies. A second election in 1990 resulted in the election of a majority of anti-Sandinista parties and the FSLN handing over power.

Background
Following the United States occupation of Nicaragua in 1912 during the Banana Wars, the Somoza family political dynasty came to power, and would rule Nicaragua from 1937 until their ouster in 1979 during the Nicaraguan Revolution. The Somoza dynasty consisted of Anastasio Somoza García, his eldest son Luis Somoza Debayle, and finally Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The era of Somoza family rule was characterized by economic development albeit with rising inequality and political corruption, strong US support for the government and its military, as well as a reliance on US-based multinational corporations.

Rise of the FSLN
In 1961 Carlos Fonseca Amador, Silvio Mayorga, and Tomás Borge Martínez formed the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) with other student activists at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua (UNAN) in Managua. For the founding members of the FSLN, this was not their first experience with political activism. Amador, first General Secretary of the organization, had worked with others on a newspaper "broadly critical" of the Somoza reign titled Segovia.

Consisting of approximately 20 members during the 1960s, with the help of students, the organization gathered support from peasants and anti-Somoza elements within Nicaraguan society, as well as from the communist Cuban government, and the socialist Panamanian government of Omar Torrijos, and the social democratic Venezuelan government of Carlos Andrés Pérez.

By the 1970s the coalition of students, farmers, businesses, churches, and a small percentage of Marxists was strong enough to launch a military effort against the regime of longtime dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The FSLN focused on guerrilla tactics almost immediately, inspired by the campaigns of Fidel Castro and Ché Guevara. Penetrating the Northern coast of Nicaragua, the Río Coco/Bocay-Raití campaign was largely a failure: "when guerrillas did encounter the National Guard, they had to retreat...with heavy losses." Further operations included a devastating loss near the city of Matagalpa, during which Mayorga was killed, which led Fonseca to a "prolonged period of reflection, self-criticism and ideological debate." During this time, the FSLN reduced attacks, instead focusing on solidifying the organization as a whole.

Fonseca died in combat in November of 1976. After his death, the FSLN split into three factions which fought separately: Tendencia GPP (Guerra Popular Prolongada) (English: Prolonged People's War), which followed Maoist ideas; Tendencia Proletaria (English: proletarian), which followed Marxist-Leninist ideas; and Tendencia Tercerista (English: third), which pursued politically Left-wing nationalism, compromise with the liberal opposition, and liberation theology.

Overthrow of the Somoza regime
In the 1970s, the FSLN began a campaign of kidnappings, which led to national recognition of the group in the Nicaraguan media and solidification of the group as a force in opposition to the Somoza Regime. The Somoza Regime, which included the Nicaraguan National Guard, a force highly trained by the U.S. military, declared a state of siege, and proceeded to use torture, extrajudicial killings, intimidation and censorship of the press in order to combat the FSLN attacks. This led to international condemnation of the regime and in 1978 the administration of U.S. president Jimmy Carter cut off aid to the Somoza regime due to its human rights violations. In response, Somoza lifted the state of siege in order to continue receiving aid.

Other opposition parties and movements also started a process of consolidation. In 1974, the Unión Democrática Liberal (UDEL; English: Union for Democratic Liberation) was founded by Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, editor of the Managua newspaper La Prensa. The alliance included two anti-Somoza liberal parties as well as some conservatives and even the Nicaraguan Socialist Party.

On 10 January 1978 Cardenal was murdered by suspected elements of the Somoza regime, and riots broke out in the capital city, Managua, targeting the Somoza regime. Following the riots, a general strike on 23–24 January called for the end of the Somoza regime and was, according to the U.S. State Department staff at the U.S. Embassy, successful at shutting down around 80% of businesses in not only Managua but also the provincial capitals of León, Granada, Chinandega, and Matagalpa.

In the words of William Dewy, an employee of Citi Bank who witnessed the riots in Managua:

"Our offices at the time were directly across the street from La Prensa and in the fighting that followed part of our branch was burned, but not intentionally. They were going after the Somoza-owned bank. In the turmoil they torched the [Somoza] bank and our building also burnt down. It was clear [to the U.S. business community] that the Chamorro assassination had changed things dramatically and permanently for the worse. — Interview with Morris H. Morley, 17 October 1987"

On 22 August 1978 the FSLN staged a massive kidnapping operation. Led by Éden Pastora, the Sandinistan forces captured the National Palace while the legislature was in session, taking 2,000 hostages. Pastora demanded money, the release of Sandinistan prisoners, and "a means of publicizing the Sandinista cause." After two days, the government agreed to pay $500,000 and to release certain prisoners, marking a major victory for the FSLN. Revolts against the state and guerrilla warfare continued as the Sandinistas received material support from Venezuela and Panama. Further support would stem from Cuba in the form of "arms and military advising."

In early 1979 the Organization of American States supervised negotiations between the FSLN and the government. However, these broke down when it became clear that the Somoza regime had no intention of allowing democratic elections to take place.

By June 1979, following a successful urban offensive, the FSLN militarily controlled all of the country except the capital. On 17 July President Somoza resigned, and on 19 July the FSLN entered Managua, giving full control of the government to the revolutionary movements. Somoza fled to Miami; his Nationalist Liberal Party became practically decapitated, and many of its functionaries as well as business figures overtly compromised with somocismo chose the exile. The Catholic church and the professional sectors generally approved of the new reality.

Sandinista government
Immediately following the fall of the Somoza regime, Nicaragua was largely in ruins. The country had suffered both war and, earlier, natural disaster in the devastating 1972 Nicaragua earthquake. In 1979, approximately 600,000 Nicaraguans were homeless and 150,000 were either refugees or in exile, out of a total population of just 2.8 million.

In response to these issues, a state of emergency was declared. President Carter sent US$99 million in aid. Land and businesses of the Somoza regime were expropriated, the old courts were abolished, and workers were organized into Civil Defense Committees. The new regime also declared that "elections are unnecessary", which led to criticism from the Catholic Church, among others.

Economic reforms
The Revolution ended the burden the Somocista regime had imposed upon the Nicaraguan economy and which had seriously deformed the country, creating a big and modern center, Managua, where Somoza's power had emanated to all corners of the territory. Somoza had developed an almost semifeudalist rural economy with few productive goods, such as cotton, sugar and other tropical agricultural products. All sectors of the economy of Nicaragua were determined, in great part if not entirely, by the Somozas or the officials and others surrounding the regime, whether by directly owning agricultural brands and trusts, or actively putting them into local or foreign hands. It is famously stated that Somoza himself owned 1/5 of all profitable land in Nicaragua. While this is not correct, Somoza or his adepts did own or give away banks, ports, communications, services and massive amounts of land.

The Nicaraguan Revolution brought immense restructuring and reforms to all three sectors of the economy, directing it towards a mixed economy system. The biggest economic impact was on the primary sector, agriculture, in the form of the Agrarian Reform, which was not proposed as something that could be planned in advance from the beginning of the Revolution but as a process that would develop pragmatically along with the other changes (economic, political, etc.) that would arise during the Revolution period.

Economic reforms overall needed to rescue out of limbo the inefficient and helpless Nicaraguan economy. As a Third World country, Nicaragua had, and has, an agriculture-based economy, undeveloped and susceptible to the flow of market prices for its agricultural goods, such as coffee and cotton. The Revolution faced a rural economy well behind in technology and, at the same time, devastated by the guerrilla warfare and the soon to come civil war against the Contras.

Article 1 of the Agrarian Reform Law says that property is guaranteed if it laboured efficiently and that there could be different forms of property:
 * state property (with the confiscated land from somocistas)
 * cooperative property (part of confiscated land, but without individual certificates of ownership, to be laboured efficiently)
 * communal property (in response to reinvindication from people and communities from Miskito regions in the Atlantic)
 * individual property (as long as this is efficiently exploited and integrated to national plans of development)

The principles that presided Agrarian Reform were the same ones for the Revolution: pluralism, national unity and economic democracy.

The Nicaraguan Agrarian Reform developed into four phases:
 * 1) phase (1979): confiscation of property owned by Somocistas and its adepts
 * 2) phase (1981): Agrarian Reform Law of 19 July 1981
 * 3) phase (1984–85): massive cession of land individually, responding to demands from peasantry
 * 4) phase (1986): Agrarian Reform Law of 1986, or "reform to the 1981 Law"

In 1985, the Agrarian Reform distributed 235000 acre of land to the peasantry. This represented about 75 percent of all land distributed to peasants since 1980. According to Project, the agrarian reform had the twofold purpose of increasing the support for the government among the campesinos, and guaranteeing ample food delivery into the cities. During 1985, ceremonies were held throughout the countryside in which Daniel Ortega would give each peasant a title to the land and a rifle to defend it.

Cultural Revolution
The Nicaraguan Revolution brought many cultural improvements and developments. Undoubtedly, the most important was the planning and execution of the Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign (Cruzada Nacional de Alfabetización). The literacy campaign used secondary school students, university students as well as teachers as volunteer teachers. Within five months they reduced the overall illiteracy rate from 50.3% to 12.9%. As a result, in September 1980, UNESCO awarded Nicaragua with the "Nadezhda K. Krupskaya" award for their successful literacy campaign. This was followed by the literacy campaigns of 1982, 1986, 1987, 1995 and 2000, all of which were also awarded by UNESCO. The Revolution also founded a Ministry of Culture, one of only three in Latin America at the time, and established a new editorial brand, called Editorial Nueva Nicaragua and, based on it, started to print cheap editions of basic books rarely seen by Nicaraguans at all. It also founded an Instituto de Estudios del Sandinismo (Institute for Studies of Sandinismo) where it printed all of the work and papers of Augusto C. Sandino and those that cemented the ideologies of FSLN as well, such as Carlos Fonseca, Ricardo Morales Avilés and others. The key large scale programs of the Sandinistas received international recognition for their gains in literacy, health care, education, childcare, unions, and land reform.

Human rights controversies
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative American think tank with close ties to the Reagan administration, charged the Sandinista government with numerous human rights violations, including censorship of the press and repression of the country's Miskito and Jewish populations. It charged that the government censored the independent newspaper La Prensa, though French journalist Viktor Dedaj, who lived in Managua in the 1980s, contended that La Prensa was generally sold freely and that the majority of radio stations were anti-Sandinista. The Heritage Foundation also claimed that the Sandinistas instituted a "spy on your neighbor" system that encouraged citizens to report any activity deemed counter-revolutionary, with those reported facing harassment from security representatives, including the destruction of property.

The Heritage Foundation also criticized the government for its treatment of the Miskito people, stating that over 15,000 Miskitos were forced to relocate, their villages were destroyed, and their killers were promoted rather than punished. The Los Angeles Times also noted that "...the Miskitos began to actively oppose the Sandinistas in 1982 when authorities killed more than a dozen Indians, burned villages, forcibly recruited young men into the army and tried to relocate others. Thousands of Miskitos poured across the Coco into Honduras, and many took up U.S.-supplied arms to oppose the Nicaraguan government."

The United Nations, the Organization of American States and Pax Christi disputed the Foundation's allegations of anti-Semitism. According to them, individual Nicaraguan Jews had their property expropriated due to their connections with the Somoza regime, but not because they were Jewish. They cited the fact that there were prominent Sandinistas officials of Jewish descent. In contrast to these organizations, the Anti-Defamation League supported the Reagan administration's allegations of Sandinista anti-semitism. It worked closely with Nicaraguan Jewish exiles to reclaim a synagogue that had been firebombed by Sandinista militants in 1978 and expropriated by the Sandinista government in 1979.

Amnesty International also noted numerous human rights violations by the Sandinista government. Among what they found: they contended that civilians "disappeared" after their arrest, that "civil and political rights" were suspended, due process was denied detainees, torture of detainees, and "reports of the killing by government forces of those suspected of supporting the contras".

The Sandinistas were also accused of mass executions. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights investigated abuses by Sandinista forces, including an execution of 35 to 40 Miskitos in December 1981, and an execution of 75 people in November 1984.

Contra War
Although the Carter Administration had attempted to work with FSLN in 1979 and 1980, the more right-wing Reagan Administration supported a strong anti-communist strategy for dealing with Latin America, and attempted to isolate the Sandinista regime economically and politically. As early as 1980–1981, anti-Sandinista forces known as Contras began forming along Nicaragua's border with Honduras. Many of the initial Contras were former members of the Somoza regime's National Guard unit and many were still loyal to Somoza, who was living in exile in Honduras.

In addition to Contra unit, which continued to be loyal to Somoza, the FSLN also began to face opposition from members of the ethnic minority groups that inhabited Nicaragua's remote Mosquito Coast region along the Caribbean Sea. These groups were demanding a larger share of self-determination and/or autonomy, but the FSLN refused to grant this and began using forced relocations and armed force in response to these grievances.

Upon taking office in January 1981, Ronald Reagan cancelled U.S. economic aid to Nicaragua, and on 6 August 1981 he signed National Security Decision Directive number 7, which authorized the production and shipment of arms to the region but not their deployment. On 17 November 1981, President Reagan signed National Security Directive 17, authorizing covert support to anti-Sandinista forces.

An armed conflict soon arose, adding to the destabilization of the region which had been unfolding through the Central American civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala. The Contras, heavily backed by the CIA, secretly opened a "second front" on Nicaragua's Atlantic coast and Costa Rican border. With the civil war opening up cracks in the national revolutionary project, the FSLN's military budget grew to more than half of the annual budget. The Servicio Militar Patriótico (Patriotic Military Service), a compulsory draft, was also established.

By 1982, Contra forces had begun carrying out assassinations of members of the Nicaraguan government, and by 1983 the Contras had launched a major offensive and the CIA was helping them to plant mines in Nicaragua's harbors to prevent foreign weapons shipments from arriving. The 1987 Iran–Contra affair placed the Reagan Administration again at the center of secret support for the Contras.

1984 general election
The 1984 Nicaraguan general election took place on 4 November. Of the 1,551,597 citizens registered in July, 1,170,142 voted (75.4%). The null votes were 6% of the total. International observers declared the elections free and fair, despite the Reagan administration denouncing it as a "Soviet style sham". The national averages of valid votes for president were:
 * Daniel Ortega, Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) – 67.0%
 * Clemente Guido, Democratic Conservative Party (PCD) – 14.0%
 * Virgilio Godoy, Independent Liberal Party (PLI) – 9.6%
 * Mauricio Diaz, Popular Social Christian Party (PPSC) – 5.6%
 * Allan Zambrana, Nicaraguan Communist Party (PCdeN) – 1.5%
 * Domingo Sánchez Sancho, Nicaraguan Socialist Party (PSN) – 1.3%
 * Isidro Téllez, Marxist–Leninist Popular Action Movement (MAP-ML) – 1.0%

Esquipulas Peace Agreement
The Esquipulas Peace Agreement was an initiative in the mid-1980s to settle the military conflicts that had plagued Central America for many years, and in some cases (notably Guatemala) for decades. It built upon groundwork laid by the Contadora Group from 1983 to 1985. The agreement was named for Esquipulas, Guatemala, where the initial meetings took place. The US Congress lobbying efforts were helped by one of Capitol Hill's top lobbyists, William C. Chasey.

In May 1986, a summit meeting, Esquipulas I, took place, attended by the five Central American presidents. On 15 February 1987, Costa Rican President Óscar Arias submitted a Peace Plan which evolved from this meeting. During 1986 and 1987, the Esquipulas Process was established, in which the Central American heads of state agreed on economic cooperation and a framework for peaceful conflict resolution. The Esquipulas II Accord emerged from this and was signed in Guatemala City by the five presidents on 7 August 1987.

Esquipulas II defined a number of measures to promote national reconciliation, an end to hostilities, democratization, free elections, the termination of all assistance to irregular forces, negotiations on arms controls, and assistance to refugees. It also laid the ground for international verification procedures and provided a timetable for implementation.

The Sapoá Accords at March 23, 1988 represented the beginning of peace process in Nicaragua. The name of the accords comes from Sapoá, a Nicaraguan town near the border with Costa Rica. Sandinismo in 1988 had reached economical end point since Cold War (1985–1991) was coming to an end as Soviet Union was near the peak of Era of Stagnation limiting its support to Sandinistas. This in turn limited Sandinista government options to continue the conflict to favourable end and forcing them to negotiation for peace. The Accords was mediated by João Clemente Baena Soares at the time as Secretary General of the Organization of American States and then Archbishop of Managua Miguel Obando y Bravo Since Nicaraguan conflict was one of the proxy war between Soviet Union and United States, peace process management relied also on then Soviet ambassador Vaino Väljas mediation depending on the recent US-Soviet agreements since US did not have any Ambassador assigned to Nicaragua from July 1, 1987 till May 4, 1988.

UNO
Nicaraguan historian and social investigator Roberto J. Cajina describes UNO as follows:

"Since the very moment of inception, under the political guidance and technical and financial support from the government of the U.S., the existence of UNO was marked by grave structural deformations, derived from its own nature. In its conformation concurred the most diverse currents of the Nicaraguan political and ideological range: from the liberal-conservative -traditionally anticommunist and pro-U.S., to Marxist-Leninists from moscovian lineage, openly declared supporters of class struggle and enemies of capitalism in its superior development stage".

In the 1990 Nicaraguan general election, the UNO Coalition included: (exact transcription and translation of the names of these political parties needed)
 * 3 Liberal factions: PLI, PLC and PALI
 * 3 Conservative: ANC, PNC and APC
 * 3 Social-Christians: PPSC, PDCN and PAN
 * 2 Social democrats: PSD and MDN
 * 2 Communists: PSN (pro-Moscow) and PC de Nicaragua (pro-Albania)
 * 1 Central American Unionist: PIAC

title: Nicaraguan Revolution


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Pro Evolution Soccer 4

Pro Evolution Soccer 4 (known as World Soccer: Winning Eleven 8 in Japan and World Soccer: Winning Eleven 8 International in North America) is the fourth installment of Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer football simulation video game series. It's the first game of the series to appear on the original Xbox, with online gameplay. The cover features Arsenal striker Thierry Henry, AS Roma forward Francesco Totti, and world-renowned Italian referee Pierluigi Collina. It was the first game in the series to feature licensed leagues.

Winning Eleven 8: Liveware Evolution marked the first game in the PES series to feature online play for the PlayStation 2, while Winning Eleven 8/Pro Evolution Soccer 4 does not feature it. Within online play, statistics and league points are stored on the server for each game played. PES 4 was succeeded by Pro Evolution Soccer 5, which was released in 2005.

Features

 * Expanded Master League teams containing up to 72 teams. More elements added to the development and retirement of master league players. Winning a game in Master League will raise the abilities of your playersok
 * Three fully licensed leagues (Serie A, Eredivisie and Liga Española).
 * For the first time, Referees will be seen on pitch during the game. There is also an animated linesman seen after a player is given offside. The referee will not issue a yellow card for the first 'average' tackle, but if a player continues to commit 'average' fouls, a card will be given
 * Wear and tear including dirt will be visible on the player's uniforms according to the pitch conditions.
 * Improved edit mode allowing changes to be made to league names and the ability to put text on the kits.

Reception
In Japan, the PS2 version sold 1million copies on its first day of release, and eventually sold 1.11million units. In Europe, the PS2 version shipped 1.5million units on its first day of release, setting a launch sales record. It was a hit in Italy, where more than 400,000 units were sold for over €16 million or US$,000,000 2004 by November 2004. The PlayStation 2 version of Pro Evolution Soccer 4 received a "Double Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 600,000 copies in the United Kingdom.

The game received "universal acclaim" on all platforms in all regions except the U.S. PC version, which received "favorable" reviews according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.

The Sydney Morning Herald gave the PS2 version all five stars, stating that "There are myriad ways to score, yet goals are always well-earned." The Times also gave the same version all five stars, stating, "The intuitive control system and [the] fluidity of the movement are of the highest standard and this year’s model includes a bag of new dribbling tricks, which are worth practising in the training mode. Even the referees have received an upgrade." BBC Sport gave the game 95% and said, "Greater emphasis has been placed on one-touch play, and while goals are not all that easy to come by - creating chances requires quick thinking and accurate distribution - when you do manage to make the net bulge, it's all the more satisfying." However, Maxim gave the game a score of eight out of ten and said, "Although it's dogged by Commodore 64-quality music and selective licensing agreements... this new edition more than compensates with killer graphics, new tricks, and an improved dribbling system." Detroit Free Press gave the Xbox version three stars out of four and said that it "really isn't a leap above Winning Eleven 7. Though the variety of play modes is huge, the well-animated visuals could use some polish, the audio sounds rather bland and the number of licensed teams and players is a bit wimpy."

Winning Eleven 8 was a finalist for PC Gamer US's "Best Sports Game 2005" award, which ultimately went to Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06.

title: Pro Evolution Soccer 4


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Evolution of sexual reproduction

Evolution of sexual reproduction describes how sexually reproducing animals, plants, fungi and protists could have evolved from a common ancestor that was a single-celled eukaryotic species. Sexual reproduction is widespread in eukaryotes, though a few eukaryotic species have secondarily lost the ability to reproduce sexually, such as Bdelloidea, and some plants and animals routinely reproduce asexually (by apomixis and parthenogenesis) without entirely having lost sex. The evolution of sexual reproduction contains two related yet distinct themes: its origin and its maintenance. Bacteria and Archaea (prokaryotes) have processes that can transfer DNA from one cell to another (conjugation, transformation, and transduction ), but it is unclear if these processes are evolutionarily related to sexual reproduction in Eukaryotes. In eukaryotes, true sexual reproduction by meiosis and cell fusion is thought to have arisen in the last eukaryotic common ancestor, possibly via several processes of varying success, and then to have persisted.

Since hypotheses for the origin of sex are difficult to verify experimentally (outside of evolutionary computation), most current work has focused on the persistence of sexual reproduction over evolutionary time. The maintenance of sexual reproduction (specifically, of its dioecious form) by natural selection in a highly competitive world has long been one of the major mysteries of biology, since both other known mechanisms of reproduction – asexual reproduction and hermaphroditism – possess apparent advantages over it. Asexual reproduction can proceed by budding, fission, or spore formation and does not involve the union of gametes, which accordingly results in a much faster rate of reproduction compared to sexual reproduction, where 50% of offspring are males and unable to produce offspring themselves. In hermaphroditic reproduction, each of the two parent organisms required for the formation of a zygote can provide either the male or the female gamete, which leads to advantages in both size and genetic variance of a population.

Sexual reproduction therefore must offer significant fitness advantages because, despite the two-fold cost of sex (see below), it dominates among multicellular forms of life, implying that the fitness of offspring produced by sexual processes outweighs the costs. Sexual reproduction derives from recombination, where parent genotypes are reorganized and shared with the offspring. This stands in contrast to single-parent asexual replication, where the offspring is always identical to the parents (barring mutation). Recombination supplies two fault-tolerance mechanisms at the molecular level: recombinational DNA repair (promoted during meiosis because homologous chromosomes pair at that time) and complementation (also known as heterosis, hybrid vigor or masking of mutations).

Historical perspective
Reproduction, including modes of sexual reproduction, features in the writings of Aristotle; modern philosophical-scientific thinking on the problem dates from at least Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) in the 18th century. August Weismann picked up the thread in 1885, arguing that sex serves to generate genetic variation, as detailed in the majority of the explanations below. On the other hand, Charles Darwin (1809–1882) concluded that the effect of hybrid vigor (complementation) "is amply sufficient to account for the … genesis of the two sexes". This is consistent with the repair and complementation hypothesis, described below. Since the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 20th century, numerous biologists including W. D. Hamilton, Alexey Kondrashov, George C. Williams, Harris Bernstein, Carol Bernstein, Michael M. Cox, Frederic A. Hopf and Richard E. Michod – have suggested competing explanations for how a vast array of different living species maintain sexual reproduction.

Advantages of sex and sexual reproduction
The concept of sex includes two fundamental phenomena: the sexual process (fusion of genetic information of two individuals) and sexual differentiation (separation of this information into two parts). Depending on the presence or absence of these phenomena, all of the existing forms of reproduction can be classified as asexual, hermaphrodite or dioecious. The sexual process and sexual differentiation are different phenomena, and, in essence, are diametrically opposed. The first creates (increases) diversity of genotypes, and the second decreases it by half.

Reproductive advantages of the asexual forms are in quantity of the progeny, and the advantages of the hermaphrodite forms are in maximal diversity. Transition from the hermaphrodite to dioecious state leads to a loss of at least half of the diversity. So, the primary challenge is to explain the advantages given by sexual differentiation, i.e. the benefits of two separate sexes compared to hermaphrodites rather than to explain benefits of sexual forms (hermaphrodite + dioecious) over asexual ones. It has already been understood that since sexual reproduction is not associated with any clear reproductive advantages over asexual reproduction, there should be some important advantages in evolution.

Advantages due to genetic variation
For the advantage due to genetic variation, there are three possible reasons this might happen. First, sexual reproduction can combine the effects of two beneficial mutations in the same individual (i.e. sex aids in the spread of advantageous traits) without the mutations having to have occurred one after another in a single line of descendants. Second, sex acts to bring together currently deleterious mutations to create severely unfit individuals that are then eliminated from the population (i.e. sex aids in the removal of deleterious genes). However, in organisms containing only one set of chromosomes, deleterious mutations would be eliminated immediately, and therefore removal of harmful mutations is an unlikely benefit for sexual reproduction. Lastly, sex creates new gene combinations that may be more fit than previously existing ones, or may simply lead to reduced competition among relatives.

For the advantage due to DNA repair, there is an immediate large benefit of removing DNA damage by recombinational DNA repair during meiosis (assuming the initial mutation rate is higher than optimal ), since this removal allows greater survival of progeny with undamaged DNA. The advantage of complementation to each sexual partner is avoidance of the bad effects of their deleterious recessive genes in progeny by the masking effect of normal dominant genes contributed by the other partner.

The classes of hypotheses based on the creation of variation are further broken down below. Any number of these hypotheses may be true in any given species (they are not mutually exclusive), and different hypotheses may apply in different species. However, a research framework based on creation of variation has yet to be found that allows one to determine whether the reason for sex is universal for all sexual species, and, if not, which mechanisms are acting in each species.

On the other hand, the maintenance of sex based on DNA repair and complementation applies widely to all sexual species.

Protection from major genetic mutation
In contrast to the view that sex promotes genetic variation, Heng, and Gorelick and Heng reviewed evidence that sex actually acts as a constraint on genetic variation. They consider that sex acts as a coarse filter, weeding out major genetic changes, such as chromosomal rearrangements, but permitting minor variation, such as changes at the nucleotide or gene level (that are often neutral) to pass through the sexual sieve.

Novel genotypes

Sex could be a method by which novel genotypes are created. Because sex combines genes from two individuals, sexually reproducing populations can more easily combine advantageous genes than can asexual populations. If, in a sexual population, two different advantageous alleles arise at different loci on a chromosome in different members of the population, a chromosome containing the two advantageous alleles can be produced within a few generations by recombination. However, should the same two alleles arise in different members of an asexual population, the only way that one chromosome can develop the other allele is to independently gain the same mutation, which would take much longer. Several studies have addressed counterarguments, and the question of whether this model is sufficiently robust to explain the predominance of sexual versus asexual reproduction remains.

Ronald Fisher suggested that sex might facilitate the spread of advantageous genes by allowing them to better escape their genetic surroundings, if they should arise on a chromosome with deleterious genes.

Supporters of these theories respond to the balance argument that the individuals produced by sexual and asexual reproduction may differ in other respects too – which may influence the persistence of sexuality. For example, in the heterogamous water fleas of the genus Cladocera, sexual offspring form eggs which are better able to survive the winter versus those the fleas produce asexually.

Increased resistance to parasites
One of the most widely discussed theories to explain the persistence of sex is that it is maintained to assist sexual individuals in resisting parasites, also known as the Red Queen Hypothesis.

When an environment changes, previously neutral or deleterious alleles can become favourable. If the environment changed sufficiently rapidly (i.e. between generations), these changes in the environment can make sex advantageous for the individual. Such rapid changes in environment are caused by the co-evolution between hosts and parasites.

Imagine, for example that there is one gene in parasites with two alleles p and P conferring two types of parasitic ability, and one gene in hosts with two alleles h and H, conferring two types of parasite resistance, such that parasites with allele p can attach themselves to hosts with the allele h, and P to H. Such a situation will lead to cyclic changes in allele frequency – as p increases in frequency, h will be disfavoured.

In reality, there will be several genes involved in the relationship between hosts and parasites. In an asexual population of hosts, offspring will only have the different parasitic resistance if a mutation arises. In a sexual population of hosts, however, offspring will have a new combination of parasitic resistance alleles.

In other words, like Lewis Carroll's Red Queen, sexual hosts are continually "running" (adapting) to "stay in one place" (resist parasites).

Evidence for this explanation for the evolution of sex is provided by comparison of the rate of molecular evolution of genes for kinases and immunoglobulins in the immune system with genes coding other proteins. The genes coding for immune system proteins evolve considerably faster.

Further evidence for the Red Queen hypothesis was provided by observing long-term dynamics and parasite coevolution in a "mixed" (sexual and asexual) population of snails (Potamopyrgus antipodarum). The number of sexuals, the number asexuals, and the rates of parasite infection for both were monitored. It was found that clones that were plentiful at the beginning of the study became more susceptible to parasites over time. As parasite infections increased, the once plentiful clones dwindled dramatically in number. Some clonal types disappeared entirely. Meanwhile, sexual snail populations remained much more stable over time.

However, Hanley et al. studied mite infestations of a parthenogenetic gecko species and its two related sexual ancestral species. Contrary to expectation based on the Red Queen hypothesis, they found that the prevalence, abundance and mean intensity of mites in sexual geckos was significantly higher than in asexuals sharing the same habitat.

In 2011, researchers used the microscopic roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as a host and the pathogenic bacteria Serratia marcescens to generate a host-parasite coevolutionary system in a controlled environment, allowing them to conduct more than 70 evolution experiments testing the Red Queen Hypothesis. They genetically manipulated the mating system of C. elegans, causing populations to mate either sexually, by self-fertilization, or a mixture of both within the same population. Then they exposed those populations to the S. marcescens parasite. It was found that the self-fertilizing populations of C. elegans were rapidly driven extinct by the coevolving parasites while sex allowed populations to keep pace with their parasites, a result consistent with the Red Queen Hypothesis. In natural populations of C. elegans, self-fertilization is the predominant mode of reproduction, but infrequent out-crossing events occur at a rate of about 1%.

Critics of the Red Queen hypothesis question whether the constantly changing environment of hosts and parasites is sufficiently common to explain the evolution of sex. In particular, Otto and Nuismer presented results showing that species interactions (e.g. host vs parasite interactions) typically select against sex. They concluded that, although the Red Queen hypothesis favors sex under certain circumstances, it alone does not account for the ubiquity of sex. Otto and Gerstein further stated that "it seems doubtful to us that strong selection per gene is sufficiently commonplace for the Red Queen hypothesis to explain the ubiquity of sex". Parker reviewed numerous genetic studies on plant disease resistance and failed to uncover a single example consistent with the assumptions of the Red Queen hypothesis.

Disadvantages of sex and sexual reproduction
The paradox of the existence of sexual reproduction is that though it is ubiquitous in multicellular organisms, there are ostensibly many inherent disadvantages to reproducing sexually when weighed against the relative advantages of alternative forms of reproduction, such as asexual reproduction. Thus, because sexual reproduction abounds in complex multicellular life, there must be some significant benefit(s) to sex and sexual reproduction that compensates for these fundamental disadvantages.

Population expansion cost of sex
Among the most limiting disadvantages to the evolution of sexual reproduction by natural selection is that an asexual population can grow much more rapidly than a sexual one with each generation.

For example, assume that the entire population of some theoretical species has 100 total organisms consisting of two sexes (i.e. males and females), with 50:50 male-to-female representation, and that only the females of this species can bear offspring. If all capable members of this population procreated once, a total of 50 offspring would be produced (the F1 generation). Contrast this outcome with an asexual species, in which each and every member of an equally sized 100-organism population is capable of bearing young. If all capable members of this asexual population procreated once, a total of 100 offspring would be produced – twice as many as produced by the sexual population in a single generation.

This idea is sometimes referred to as the two-fold cost of sexual reproduction. It was first described mathematically by John Maynard Smith. In his manuscript, Smith further speculated on the impact of an asexual mutant arising in a sexual population, which suppresses meiosis and allows eggs to develop into offspring genetically identical to the mother by mitotic division. The mutant-asexual lineage would double its representation in the population each generation, all else being equal.

Technically the problem above is not one of sexual reproduction but of having a subset of organisms incapable of bearing offspring. Indeed, some multicellular organisms (isogamous) engage in sexual reproduction but all members of the species are capable of bearing offspring. The two-fold reproductive disadvantage assumes that males contribute only genes to their offspring and sexual females spend half their reproductive potential on sons. Thus, in this formulation, the principal cost of sex is that males and females must successfully copulate, which almost always involves expending energy to come together through time and space. Asexual organisms need not expend the energy necessary to find a mate.

Selfish cytoplasmic genes
Sexual reproduction implies that chromosomes and alleles segregate and recombine in every generation, but not all genes are transmitted together to the offspring. There is a chance of spreading mutants that cause unfair transmission at the expense of their non-mutant colleagues. These mutations are referred to as "selfish" because they promote their own spread at the cost of alternative alleles or of the host organism; they include nuclear meiotic drivers and selfish cytoplasmic genes. Meiotic drivers are genes that distort meiosis to produce gametes containing themselves more than the 50% of the time expected by chance. A selfish cytoplasmic gene is a gene located in an organelle, plasmid or intracellular parasite that modifies reproduction to cause its own increase at the expense of the cell or organism that carries it.

Genetic heritability cost of sex
A sexually reproducing organism only passes on ~50% of its own genetic material to each L2 offspring. This is a consequence of the fact that gametes from sexually reproducing species are haploid. Again, however, this is not applicable to all sexual organisms. There are numerous species which are sexual but do not have a genetic-loss problem because they do not produce males or females. Yeast, for example, are isogamous sexual organisms which have two mating types which fuse and recombine their haploid genomes. Both sexes reproduce during the haploid and diploid stages of their life cycle and have a 100% chance of passing their genes into their offspring.

Some species avoid the 50% cost of sexual reproduction, although they have "sex" (in the sense of genetic recombination). In these species (e.g., bacteria, ciliates, dinoflagellates and diatoms), "sex" and reproduction occur separately.

DNA repair and complementation
As discussed in the earlier part of this article, sexual reproduction is conventionally explained as an adaptation for producing genetic variation through allelic recombination. As acknowledged above, however, serious problems with this explanation have led many biologists to conclude that the benefit of sex is a major unsolved problem in evolutionary biology.

An alternative "informational" approach to this problem has led to the view that the two fundamental aspects of sex, genetic recombination and outcrossing, are adaptive responses to the two major sources of "noise" in transmitting genetic information. Genetic noise can occur as either physical damage to the genome (e.g. chemically altered bases of DNA or breaks in the chromosome) or replication errors (mutations). This alternative view is referred to as the repair and complementation hypothesis, to distinguish it from the traditional variation hypothesis.

The repair and complementation hypothesis assumes that genetic recombination is fundamentally a DNA repair process, and that when it occurs during meiosis it is an adaptation for repairing the genomic DNA which is passed on to progeny. Recombinational repair is the only repair process known which can accurately remove double-strand damages in DNA, and such damages are both common in nature and ordinarily lethal if not repaired. For instance, double-strand breaks in DNA occur about 50 times per cell cycle in human cells (see naturally occurring DNA damage). Recombinational repair is prevalent from the simplest viruses to the most complex multicellular eukaryotes. It is effective against many different types of genomic damage, and in particular is highly efficient at overcoming double-strand damages. Studies of the mechanism of meiotic recombination indicate that meiosis is an adaptation for repairing DNA. These considerations form the basis for the first part of the repair and complementation hypothesis.

In some lines of descent from the earliest organisms, the diploid stage of the sexual cycle, which was at first transient, became the predominant stage, because it allowed complementation — the masking of deleterious recessive mutations (i.e. hybrid vigor or heterosis). Outcrossing, the second fundamental aspect of sex, is maintained by the advantage of masking mutations and the disadvantage of inbreeding (mating with a close relative) which allows expression of recessive mutations (commonly observed as inbreeding depression). This is in accord with Charles Darwin, who concluded that the adaptive advantage of sex is hybrid vigor; or as he put it, "the offspring of two individuals, especially if their progenitors have been subjected to very different conditions, have a great advantage in height, weight, constitutional vigor and fertility over the self fertilised offspring from either one of the same parents."

However, outcrossing may be abandoned in favor of parthenogenesis or selfing (which retain the advantage of meiotic recombinational repair) under conditions in which the costs of mating are very high. For instance, costs of mating are high when individuals are rare in a geographic area, such as when there has been a forest fire and the individuals entering the burned area are the initial ones to arrive. At such times mates are hard to find, and this favors parthenogenic species.

In the view of the repair and complementation hypothesis, the removal of DNA damage by recombinational repair produces a new, less deleterious form of informational noise, allelic recombination, as a by-product. This lesser informational noise generates genetic variation, viewed by some as the major effect of sex, as discussed in the earlier parts of this article.

Deleterious mutation clearance
Mutations can have many different effects upon an organism. It is generally believed that the majority of non-neutral mutations are deleterious, which means that they will cause a decrease in the organism's overall fitness. If a mutation has a deleterious effect, it will then usually be removed from the population by the process of natural selection. Sexual reproduction is believed to be more efficient than asexual reproduction in removing those mutations from the genome.

There are two main hypotheses which explain how sex may act to remove deleterious genes from the genome.

Evading harmful mutation build-up
While DNA is able to recombine to modify alleles, DNA is also susceptible to mutations within the sequence that can affect an organism in a negative manner. Asexual organisms do not have the ability to recombine their genetic information to form new and differing alleles. Once a mutation occurs in the DNA or other genetic carrying sequence, there is no way for the mutation to be removed from the population until another mutation occurs that ultimately deletes the primary mutation. This is rare among organisms.

Hermann Joseph Muller introduced the idea that mutations build up in asexual reproducing organisms. Muller described this occurrence by comparing the mutations that accumulate as a ratchet. Each mutation that arises in asexually reproducing organisms turns the ratchet once. The ratchet is unable to be rotated backwards, only forwards. The next mutation that occurs turns the ratchet once more. Additional mutations in a population continually turn the ratchet and the mutations, mostly deleterious, continually accumulate without recombination. These mutations are passed onto the next generation because the offspring are exact genetic clones of their parents. The genetic load of organisms and their populations will increase due to the addition of multiple deleterious mutations and decrease the overall reproductive success and fitness.

For sexually reproducing populations, studies have shown that single-celled bottlenecks are beneficial for resisting mutation build-up. Passaging a population through a single-celled bottleneck involves the fertilization event occurring with haploid sets of DNA, forming one fertilized cell. For example, humans undergo a single-celled bottleneck in that the haploid sperm fertilizes the haploid egg, forming the diploid zygote, which is unicellular. This passage through a single cell is beneficial in that it lowers the chance of mutations from being passed on through multiple individuals. Instead, the mutation is only passed onto one individual. Further studies using Dictyostelium discoideum suggest that this unicellular initial stage is important for resisting mutations due to the importance of high relatedness. Highly related individuals are more closely related, and more clonal, whereas less related individuals are less so, increasing the likelihood that an individual in a population of low relatedness may have a detrimental mutation. Highly related populations also tend to thrive better than lowly related because the cost of sacrificing an individual is greatly offset by the benefit gained by its relatives and in turn, its genes, according to kin selection. The studies with D. discoideum showed that conditions of high relatedness resisted mutant individuals more effectively than those of low relatedness, suggesting the importance of high relatedness to resist mutations from proliferating.

Removal of deleterious genes
This hypothesis was proposed by Alexey Kondrashov, and is sometimes known as the deterministic mutation hypothesis. It assumes that the majority of deleterious mutations are only slightly deleterious, and affect the individual such that the introduction of each additional mutation has an increasingly large effect on the fitness of the organism. This relationship between number of mutations and fitness is known as synergistic epistasis.

By way of analogy, think of a car with several minor faults. Each is not sufficient alone to prevent the car from running, but in combination, the faults combine to prevent the car from functioning.

Similarly, an organism may be able to cope with a few defects, but the presence of many mutations could overwhelm its backup mechanisms.

Kondrashov argues that the slightly deleterious nature of mutations means that the population will tend to be composed of individuals with a small number of mutations. Sex will act to recombine these genotypes, creating some individuals with fewer deleterious mutations, and some with more. Because there is a major selective disadvantage to individuals with more mutations, these individuals die out. In essence, sex compartmentalises the deleterious mutations.

There has been much criticism of Kondrashov's theory, since it relies on two key restrictive conditions. The first requires that the rate of deleterious mutation should exceed one per genome per generation in order to provide a substantial advantage for sex. While there is some empirical evidence for it (for example in Drosophila and E. coli ), there is also strong evidence against it. Thus, for instance, for the sexual species Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast) and Neurospora crassa (fungus), the mutation rate per genome per replication are 0.0027 and 0.0030 respectively. For the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, the mutation rate per effective genome per sexual generation is 0.036. Secondly, there should be strong interactions among loci (synergistic epistasis), a mutation-fitness relation for which there is only limited evidence. Conversely, there is also the same amount of evidence that mutations show no epistasis (purely additive model) or antagonistic interactions (each additional mutation has a disproportionally small effect).

Geodakyan's evolutionary theory of sex
Geodakyan suggested that sexual dimorphism provides a partitioning of a species' phenotypes into at least two functional partitions: a female partition that secures beneficial features of the species and a male partition that emerged in species with more variable and unpredictable environments. The male partition is suggested to be an "experimental" part of the species that allows the species to expand their ecological niche, and to have alternative configurations. This theory underlines the higher variability and higher mortality in males, in comparison to females. This functional partitioning also explains the higher susceptibility to disease in males, in comparison to females and therefore includes the idea of "protection against parasites" as another functionality of male sex. Geodakyan's evolutionary theory of sex was developed in Russia in 1960–1980 and was not known to the West till the era of the Internet. Trofimova, who analysed psychological sex differences, hypothesised that the male sex might also provide a "redundancy pruning" function.

Speed of evolution
Ilan Eshel suggested that sex prevents rapid evolution. He suggests that recombination breaks up favourable gene combinations more often than it creates them, and sex is maintained because it ensures selection is longer-term than in asexual populations – so the population is less affected by short-term changes. This explanation is not widely accepted, as its assumptions are very restrictive.

It has recently been shown in experiments with Chlamydomonas algae that sex can remove the speed limit on evolution.

An information theoretic analysis using a simplified but useful model shows that in asexual reproduction, the information gain per generation of a species is limited to 1 bit per generation, while in sexual reproduction, the information gain is bounded by $\sqrt G$, where $$G$$ is the size of the genome in bits.

Libertine bubble theory
The evolution of sex can alternatively be described as a kind of gene exchange that is independent from reproduction. According to the Thierry Lodé's "libertine bubble theory", sex originated from an archaic gene transfer process among prebiotic bubbles. The contact among the pre-biotic bubbles could, through simple food or parasitic reactions, promote the transfer of genetic material from one bubble to another. That interactions between two organisms be in balance appear to be a sufficient condition to make these interactions evolutionarily efficient, i.e. to select bubbles that tolerate these interactions ("libertine" bubbles) through a blind evolutionary process of self-reinforcing gene correlations and compatibility.

The "libertine bubble theory" proposes that meiotic sex evolved in proto-eukaryotes to solve a problem that bacteria did not have, namely a large amount of DNA material, occurring in an archaic step of proto-cell formation and genetic exchanges. So that, rather than providing selective advantages through reproduction, sex could be thought of as a series of separate events which combines step-by-step some very weak benefits of recombination, meiosis, gametogenesis and syngamy. Therefore, current sexual species could be descendants of primitive organisms that practiced more stable exchanges in the long term, while asexual species have emerged, much more recently in evolutionary history, from the conflict of interest resulting from anisogamy.

 Parasites and Muller's ratchet

R. Stephen Howard and Curtis Lively were the first to suggest that the combined effects of parasitism and mutation accumulation can lead to an increased advantage to sex under conditions not otherwise predicted (Nature, 1994). Using computer simulations, they showed that when the two mechanisms act simultaneously the advantage to sex over asexual reproduction is larger than for either factor operating alone.

Origin of sexual reproduction
Many protists reproduce sexually, as do many multicellular plants, animals, and fungi. In the eukaryotic fossil record, sexual reproduction first appeared about 2.0 billion years ago in the Proterozoic Eon, although a later date, 1.2 billion years ago, has also been presented. Nonetheless, all sexually reproducing eukaryotic organisms likely derive from a single-celled common ancestor. It is probable that the evolution of sex was an integral part of the evolution of the first eukaryotic cell. There are a few species which have secondarily lost this feature, such as Bdelloidea and some parthenocarpic plants.

Diploidy
Organisms need to replicate their genetic material in an efficient and reliable manner. The necessity to repair genetic damage is one of the leading theories explaining the origin of sexual reproduction. Diploid individuals can repair a damaged section of their DNA via homologous recombination, since there are two copies of the gene in the cell and if one copy is damaged, the other copy is unlikely to be damaged at the same site.

A harmful damage in a haploid individual, on the other hand, is more likely to become fixed (i.e. permanent), since any DNA repair mechanism would have no source from which to recover the original undamaged sequence. The most primitive form of sex may have been one organism with damaged DNA replicating an undamaged strand from a similar organism in order to repair itself.

Meiosis
Sexual reproduction appears to have arisen very early in eukaryotic evolution, implying that the essential features of meiosis were already present in the last eukaryotic common ancestor. In extant organisms, proteins with central functions in meiosis are similar to key proteins in natural transformation in bacteria and DNA transfer in archaea. For example, recA recombinase, that catalyses the key functions of DNA homology search and strand exchange in the bacterial sexual process of transformation, has orthologs in eukaryotes that perform similar functions in meiotic recombination

Natural transformation in bacteria, DNA transfer in archaea, and meiosis in eukaryotic microorganisms are induced by stressful circumstances such as overcrowding, resource depletion, and DNA damaging conditions. This suggests that these sexual processes are adaptations for dealing with stress, particularly stress that causes DNA damage. In bacteria, these stresses induce an altered physiologic state, termed competence, that allows active take-up of DNA from a donor bacterium and the integration of this DNA into the recipient genome (see Natural competence) allowing recombinational repair of the recipients' damaged DNA.

If environmental stresses leading to DNA damage were a persistent challenge to the survival of early microorganisms, then selection would likely have been continuous through the prokaryote to eukaryote transition, and adaptative adjustments would have followed a course in which bacterial transformation or archaeal DNA transfer naturally gave rise to sexual reproduction in eukaryotes.

Virus-like RNA-based origin
Sex might also have been present even earlier, in the hypothesized RNA world that preceded DNA cellular life forms. One proposed origin of sex in the RNA world was based on the type of sexual interaction that is known to occur in extant single-stranded segmented RNA viruses, such as influenza virus, and in extant double-stranded segmented RNA viruses such as reovirus.

Exposure to conditions that cause RNA damage could have led to blockage of replication and death of these early RNA life forms. Sex would have allowed re-assortment of segments between two individuals with damaged RNA, permitting undamaged combinations of RNA segments to come together, thus allowing survival. Such a regeneration phenomenon, known as multiplicity reactivation, occurs in the influenza virus and reovirus.

Parasitic DNA elements
Another theory is that sexual reproduction originated from selfish parasitic genetic elements that exchange genetic material (that is: copies of their own genome) for their transmission and propagation. In some organisms, sexual reproduction has been shown to enhance the spread of parasitic genetic elements (e.g. yeast, filamentous fungi).

Bacterial conjugation is a form of genetic exchange that some sources describe as "sex", but technically is not a form of reproduction, even though it is a form of horizontal gene transfer. However, it does support the "selfish gene" part theory, since the gene itself is propagated through the F-plasmid.

A similar origin of sexual reproduction is proposed to have evolved in ancient haloarchaea as a combination of two independent processes: jumping genes and plasmid swapping.

Partial predation
A third theory is that sex evolved as a form of cannibalism: One primitive organism ate another one, but instead of completely digesting it, some of the eaten organism's DNA was incorporated into the DNA of the eater.

Vaccination-like process
Sex may also be derived from another prokaryotic process. A comprehensive theory called "origin of sex as vaccination" proposes that eukaryan sex-as-syngamy (fusion sex) arose from prokaryan unilateral sex-as-infection, when infected hosts began swapping nuclearised genomes containing coevolved, vertically transmitted symbionts that provided protection against horizontal superinfection by other, more virulent symbionts.

Consequently, sex-as-meiosis (fission sex) would evolve as a host strategy for uncoupling from (and thereby render impotent) the acquired symbiotic/parasitic genes.

Mechanistic origin of sexual reproduction
While theories positing fitness benefits that led to the origin of sex are often problematic, several theories addressing the emergence of the mechanisms of sexual reproduction have been proposed.

Viral eukaryogenesis
The viral eukaryogenesis (VE) theory proposes that eukaryotic cells arose from a combination of a lysogenic virus, an archaean, and a bacterium. This model suggests that the nucleus originated when the lysogenic virus incorporated genetic material from the archaean and the bacterium and took over the role of information storage for the amalgam. The archaeal host transferred much of its functional genome to the virus during the evolution of cytoplasm, but retained the function of gene translation and general metabolism. The bacterium transferred most of its functional genome to the virus as it transitioned into a mitochondrion.

For these transformations to lead to the eukaryotic cell cycle, the VE hypothesis specifies a pox-like virus as the lysogenic virus. A pox-like virus is a likely ancestor because of its fundamental similarities with eukaryotic nuclei. These include a double stranded DNA genome, a linear chromosome with short telomeric repeats, a complex membrane bound capsid, the ability to produce capped mRNA, and the ability to export the capped mRNA across the viral membrane into the cytoplasm. The presence of a lysogenic pox-like virus ancestor explains the development of meiotic division, an essential component of sexual reproduction.

Meiotic division in the VE hypothesis arose because of the evolutionary pressures placed on the lysogenic virus as a result of its inability to enter into the lytic cycle. This selective pressure resulted in the development of processes allowing the viruses to spread horizontally throughout the population. The outcome of this selection was cell-to-cell fusion. (This is distinct from the conjugation methods used by bacterial plasmids under evolutionary pressure, with important consequences.) The possibility of this kind of fusion is supported by the presence of fusion proteins in the envelopes of the pox viruses that allow them to fuse with host membranes. These proteins could have been transferred to the cell membrane during viral reproduction, enabling cell-to-cell fusion between the virus host and an uninfected cell. The theory proposes meiosis originated from the fusion between two cells infected with related but different viruses which recognised each other as uninfected. After the fusion of the two cells, incompatibilities between the two viruses result in a meiotic-like cell division.

The two viruses established in the cell would initiate replication in response to signals from the host cell. A mitosis-like cell cycle would proceed until the viral membranes dissolved, at which point linear chromosomes would be bound together with centromeres. The homologous nature of the two viral centromeres would incite the grouping of both sets into tetrads. It is speculated that this grouping may be the origin of crossing over, characteristic of the first division in modern meiosis. The partitioning apparatus of the mitotic-like cell cycle the cells used to replicate independently would then pull each set of chromosomes to one side of the cell, still bound by centromeres. These centromeres would prevent their replication in subsequent division, resulting in four daughter cells with one copy of one of the two original pox-like viruses. The process resulting from combination of two similar pox viruses within the same host closely mimics meiosis.

Neomuran revolution
An alternative theory, proposed by Thomas Cavalier-Smith, was labeled the Neomuran revolution. The designation "Neomuran revolution" refers to the appearances of the common ancestors of eukaryotes and archaea. Cavalier-Smith proposes that the first neomurans emerged 850 million years ago. Other molecular biologists assume that this group appeared much earlier, but Cavalier-Smith dismisses these claims because they are based on the "theoretically and empirically" unsound model of molecular clocks. Cavalier-Smith's theory of the Neomuran revolution has implications for the evolutionary history of the cellular machinery for recombination and sex. It suggests that this machinery evolved in two distinct bouts separated by a long period of stasis; first the appearance of recombination machinery in a bacterial ancestor which was maintained for 3 Gy(billion years), until the neomuran revolution when the mechanics were adapted to the presence of nucleosomes. The archaeal products of the revolution maintained recombination machinery that was essentially bacterial, whereas the eukaryotic products broke with this bacterial continuity. They introduced cell fusion and ploidy cycles into cell life histories. Cavalier-Smith argues that both bouts of mechanical evolution were motivated by similar selective forces: the need for accurate DNA replication without loss of viability.

Questions
Some questions biologists have attempted to answer include:
 * Why does sexual reproduction exist, if in many organisms it has a 50% cost (fitness disadvantage) in relation to asexual reproduction?
 * Did mating types (types of gametes, according to their compatibility) arise as a result of anisogamy (gamete dimorphism), or did mating types evolve before anisogamy?
 * Why do most sexual organisms use a binary mating system? Grouping itself offers a survival advantage. A binary recognition based system is the most simple and effective method in maintaining species grouping.
 * Why do some organisms have gamete dimorphism?

title: Evolution of sexual reproduction


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Kenny Blank

Kenny Blank (born September 15, 1977), also known as Kenn Michael, is an American actor, composer, director, editor, and producer. He is best known for his role as Michael Peterson in the television series The Parent 'Hood from 1995 to 1997 for which he also composed some music, as well as his appearance in Eddie Murphy's 1992 film, Boomerang.

Early life
Blank was born as Kenneth Michael Benbow Blank in New York City on September 15, 1977, the son of Lola, a dancer for James Brown who later became Blank's manager, and Warren Benbow, a jazz drummer who has worked with Miles Davis and Stevie Wonder. His parents later divorced and Blank was raised by his mother and stepfather, Bob Blank, who owned a music studio.

By the time he was 6 years old, Blank played the piano and made short films. He graduated from Stamford High School in 1995. In the late 1990s, Blank was a student at the University of Southern California, where he studied filmmaking.

Career as performer
Blank began acting at the age of 7. As a child, Blank reviewed the book Jumanji on Reading Rainbow in the episode about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. He also narrated Bill Martin, Jr.'s "Knots on a Counting Rope" with Joseph Ruben Silverbird. His major breakthrough was his role as Tito in the 1991 Joe Pesci film The Super. For his performance as Tito, Blank was nominated for a Young Artist Award in 1992 in the Best Young Actor Co-starring in a Motion Picture category.

In 1991, he starred as Linus Bragg in the movie Carolina Skeletons (or The End of Silence), about an African-American boy in the mid-20th century South who was wrongfully executed at the age of 14. The movie was based on a novel, both of which were based on the true events regarding the arrest, conviction and execution of 14-year-old George Stinney. Blank had a small role in the feature film Boomerang (1992) and appeared in the miniseries Alex Haley's Queen.

He was a series regular on short-lived sitcom Tall Hopes (1993), playing aspiring director Ernest Harris. Although the series received poor reviews, Blank's performance as Ernest was well received. He portrayed teenager Michael Peterson in the sitcom The Parent 'Hood in the mid-1990s, also composing songs for the series. Blank left the series after its third season.

Blank acted in Silent Story and Delivering Milo. Notable guest appearances on television shows include roles in Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, Moesha, City of Angels, Living Single, and Freaks and Geeks. He also appeared as Jordy in the direct-to-video horror comedy Boltneck.

As a voice actor, Blank provided the voice of the character Darren Patterson on the Nickelodeon animated series As Told by Ginger (2000–06), as well as earning a small role in All Grown Up!, as Sulky Boy's band member J.T. He appears in the Saints Row video game series as one of the selectable voices of the Boss, the main character of the series. He is the only voice who is selectable in all games in the series. Blank provided the English dub voice of Angelino in Mutafukaz. He is also the English dub voice of Philly the Kid in Cannon Busters.

Other careers
Since 1998, Blank has cinematographed, edited and directed a number of short films. He made his directorial debut in 1999 on the theme song for Mystery Men. Blank exhibited an experimental film, Manifested Intent, at the Urbanworld Film Festival. In 2019, Blank directed the television film In Broad Daylight for TV One.

During the 1990s, he also worked as a composer, creating songs on The Montel Williams Show and providing the title theme for The Super. As a teenager, he contributed music to Kodak, Lego and commercials for other companies.

title: Kenny Blank


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Madeleine Astor

Madeleine Talmage Dick (née Force; previously Astor, later Fiermonte; June 19, 1893 – March 27, 1940) was an American socialite and a survivor of the RMS Titanic. She was the second wife and widow of businessman John Jacob Astor IV.

Early life

Madeleine Talmage Force was born on June 19, 1893, in Brooklyn, New York, the younger daughter of William Hurlbut Force (1852–1917) and the former Katherine Arvilla Talmage (1863–1930). Madeleine's elder sister Katherine Emmons Force was a real estate businesswoman and socialite. Through her father, she had French ancestry and was a great-niece of builder Ephraim S. Force (1822 – March 12, 1914). Her mother had Dutch ancestry.

William Force was a member of a well-established business family. He owned the successful shipping firm William H. Force and Co., and his father had been prosperous in the manufacturing industry. In 1889, Force married Katherine Talmage, the granddaughter of former Brooklyn mayor Thomas Talmage. The Forces were part of Brooklyn high society, while William Force was a member of numerous prestigious clubs in the city. He also owned an art collection. Like the Astor family, the Forces were members of the Episcopal Church. Madeleine's maternal grandfather was New York State Assemblyman Tunis V. P. Talmage and her great-grandfather, Thomas G. Talmage, was Mayor of Brooklyn. She is also distantly related to Col. Benjamin Tallmadge, who served directly under George Washington in the American War of Independence.

Madeleine was educated at Miss Ely's School and then for four years at Miss Spence's School, on West 48th Street in Manhattan. According to one report, she was "counted an especially brilliant pupil" at this school. She and her sister were also taken abroad by their mother and toured Europe several times. When she was introduced to New York social life, she was immediately adopted by the Junior League, a clique of debutantes. She appeared in several New York society plays and attracted quite a following. She was known to be a very competent horsewoman and enjoyed yachting. One report said she was bright and good with drawing-room conversation.

Courtship and first marriage

She met Colonel John Jacob "Jack" Astor IV, the only son of businessman William Backhouse Astor, Jr. and socialite Caroline Webster "Lina" Schermerhorn. During their courtship, he took her on automobile drives and yacht trips, and they were often followed by the press. They became engaged in August 1911 and were married on September 9, 1911. There was a considerable amount of opposition to his marriage, not only because of their age difference (29 years apart, with Madeleine being 18 and John being 47) but also because of his recent divorce (November 1909) from his previous wife. After several Episcopal priests refused to celebrate the nuptials, the couple was eventually married by a Congregationalist minister in Beechwood, his Newport mansion. His son William Vincent Astor served as best man.

After their marriage, they had an extended honeymoon. They visited several places locally first, then in January 1912, they sailed from New York on the Olympic, and enjoyed a long Egyptian tour. While returning from this part of their honeymoon, they booked their passage on the Titanic.

Aboard the Titanic

Madeleine Astor, then five months pregnant, boarded the Titanic as a first-class passenger in Cherbourg, France, with her husband; her husband's valet, Victor Robbins; her maid, Rosalie Bidois; and her nurse, Caroline Endres. They also took Kitty, Astor's pet Airedale, and occupied one of the parlour suites. On the night of April 14, 1912, Colonel Astor reported to his wife that the ship had hit an iceberg. He reassured her that the damage did not appear serious, though he helped her strap on her life jacket. While they were waiting on the boat-deck, Mrs. Astor lent Leah Aks, a third-class passenger, her fur shawl to keep her son, Filly, warm. At one point, the Astors retired to the gymnasium and sat on the mechanical horses in their life jackets. Colonel Astor found another life jacket which he reportedly cut with a pen knife to show Madeleine what it was made of. When it was time to board a lifeboat, Madeleine Astor, her maid, and her nurse had to crawl through the first-class promenade window into the tilting lifeboat 4 (which had been lowered down to A deck to take on more passengers). Astor had helped his wife climb through the window and asked if he could accompany her as she was 'in a delicate condition'. The request was denied by Second Officer Charles Lightoller. An account of Madeleine's boarding of the lifeboat was given by Archibald Gracie IV to the US Senate Titanic inquiry. Gracie was a fellow passenger and recalled the events regarding Madeleine Astor in the following terms.

"The only incident I remember in particular at this point is when Mrs Astor was put in the boat. She was lifted up through the window, and her husband helped her on the other side, and when she got in, her husband was on one side of this window and I was on the other side, at the next window. I heard Mr Astor ask the second officer whether he would not be allowed to go aboard this boat to protect his wife. He said, 'No, sir, no man is allowed on this boat or any of the boats until the ladies are off.' Mr Astor then said, 'Well, tell me what is the number of this boat so I may find her afterwards,' or words to that effect. The answer came back, 'No. 4.'"

Astor and his valet died in the sinking; the former's body was recovered on April 22. He was found to be carrying about $2,500 in cash, brought with him from his cabin. His young widow and the other survivors were rescued by the RMS Carpathia around 03:30.

Madeleine Astor gave an account of what she recalled almost immediately after her arrival home through her spokesman Nicholas Biddle, who was a trustee of the Astor estate. The account given by her spokesman is:

"On landing from the Carpathia, the young bride widowed by the Titanic's sinking told members of her family what she could recall of the circumstances of the disaster. Of how Colonel Astor had met his death she had no definite conception.

She recalled she thought that in the confusion as she was about to be put into one of the boats Colonel Astor was standing by her side. After that she had no very clear recollection of the happenings until the boats were well clear of the sinking steamer.

Mrs Astor, it appears, left in one of the last boats which got away from the ship. It was her belief that all the women who wished to go had then been taken off. Her impression was that the boat she left in had room for at least 15 more persons. The men, for some reason (that) she could not and does not now understand, did not seem to be at all anxious to leave the ship. Almost everyone seemed dazed."

Widowhood

After Astor returned home from her ordeal, she was kept in strict retirement. Her first social function was not until the end of May, when she held a luncheon at her mansion on Fifth Avenue for Arthur Rostron, the captain of the Carpathia, and Dr. Frank McGee, the ship's surgeon. She held this event with Marian Thayer, also a survivor of the Titanic. Both wished to thank these men for their assistance when they were aboard the Carpathia.

In his will, John Jacob Astor IV left his wife an outright sum of $100,000, the income from a trust fund of $5 million, and the use of the house on Fifth Avenue. Both of the latter provisions she would lose if she remarried. A fund of $3 million was set aside for his unborn child John Jacob "Jakey" Astor VI, which he would control when he became of age. On August 14, 1912, Astor gave birth to Jakey at her Fifth Avenue mansion. For the next four years, she raised him as part of the Astor family. She did not appear very often in society until the end of 1913, when according to the press, they published her first photograph since the Titanic disaster.

After this, she appeared more often in public and her activities were frequently reported in the press. In 1915 she remodeled her house on Fifth Avenue and this was made a feature article in the New York Sun. Many articles about her eldest son were also published.

Remarriages
Four years after Colonel Astor's death, Madeleine Astor married her childhood friend, banker William Karl Dick (May 28, 1888 – September 5, 1953), on June 22, 1916, in Bar Harbor, Maine, and honeymooned in California. He was a vice president of the Manufacturers Trust Company of New York and a part owner and director of the Brooklyn Times. As stated in Colonel Astor's will, she lost her stipend from his trust fund. They had two sons:
 * William Force Dick (April 11, 1917 – December 4, 1961)
 * John Henry Dick (May 12, 1919 – September 18, 1995) ornithologist, photographer, naturalist, conservationist, author, painter, and bird illustrator

They divorced on July 21, 1933, in Reno, Nevada. Four months later, on November 27, 1933, Astor married Italian actor/boxer Enzo Fiermonte in a civil ceremony in New York City. They honeymooned in Palm Beach, Florida. They eventually moved there. They had no children together and divorced on June 11, 1938, in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Death
Madeleine Dick died of a heart ailment at her mansion in Palm Beach on March 27, 1940, at the age of 46. She was buried in Trinity Church Cemetery in New York City, in a mausoleum with her mother.

Film and TV

 * Charlotte Thiele (Titanic, 1943)
 * Frances Bergen (Titanic, 1953)
 * Beverly Ross (S.O.S. Titanic, 1979 TV movie)
 * Janne Mortil ('Titanic', 1996 miniseries)
 * Charlotte Chatton (Titanic, 1997)
 * Piper Gunnarson (Ghosts of the Abyss, 2003 documentary)
 * Angéla Eke (Titanic, 2012 miniseries)

Books and literature

 * The Second Mrs. Astor, by Shana Abé (2021)

title: Madeleine Astor