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synth_fc_245_rep3 | Positive | Biomass | Feature search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event | 27 | Methanogens
A hypothesis published in 2014 posits that a genus of anaerobic methanogenic archaea known as Methanosarcina was responsible for the event. Three lines of evidence suggest that these microbes acquired a new metabolic pathway via gene transfer at about that time, enabling them to efficiently metabolize acetate into methane. That would have led to their exponential reproduction, allowing them to rapidly consume vast deposits of organic carbon that had accumulated in marine sediment. The result would have been a sharp buildup of methane and carbon dioxide in the oceans and atmosphere, in a manner that may be consistent with the C/ C isotopic record. Massive volcanism facilitated this process by releasing large amounts of nickel, a scarce metal which is a cofactor for enzymes involved in producing methane. Chemostratigraphic analysis of Permian-Triassic boundary sediments in Chaotian demonstrates a methanogenic burst could be responsible for some percentage of the carbon isotopic fluctuations. On the other hand, in the canonical Meishan sections, the nickel concentration increases somewhat after the δ C concentrations have begun to fall. |
synth_fc_3432_rep17 | Positive | Time | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity | 39 | Communal worship
Services of worship typically follow a pattern or form known as liturgy. Justin Martyr described 2nd-century Christian liturgy in his First Apology (c. 150) to Emperor Antoninus Pius, and his description remains relevant to the basic structure of Christian liturgical worship:
And Sundays, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need.
Thus, as Justin described, Christians assemble for communal worship typically on Sunday, the day of the resurrection, though other liturgical practices often occur outside this setting. Scripture readings are drawn from the Old and New Testaments, but especially the gospels. Instruction is given based on these readings, in the form of a sermon or homily. There are a variety of congregational prayers, including thanksgiving, confession, and intercession, which occur throughout the service and take a variety of forms including recited, responsive, silent, or sung. Psalms, hymns, worship songs, and other church music may be sung. Services can be varied for special events like significant feast days.
Nearly all forms of worship incorporate the Eucharist, which consists of a meal. It is reenacted in accordance with Jesus' instruction at the Last Supper that his followers do in remembrance of him as when he gave his disciples bread, saying, "This is my body", and gave them wine saying, "This is my blood". In the early church, Christians and those yet to complete initiation would separate for the Eucharistic part of the service. Some denominations such as Confessional Lutheran churches continue to practice ' closed communion '. They offer communion to those who are already united in that denomination or sometimes individual church. Catholics further restrict participation to their members who are not in a state of mortal sin. Many other churches, such as Anglican Communion and the Methodist Churches (such as the Free Methodist Church and United Methodist Church), practice ' open communion ' since they view communion as a means to unity, rather than an end, and invite all believing Christians to participate. |
synth_fc_3463_rep24 | Positive | Time | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitzer_Space_Telescope | 1 | The Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), was an infrared space telescope launched in 2003, that was deactivated when operations ended on 30 January 2020. Spitzer was the third space telescope dedicated to infrared astronomy, following IRAS (1983) and ISO (1995–1998). It was the first spacecraft to use an Earth-trailing orbit, later used by the Kepler planet-finder. The planned mission period was to be 2.5 years with a pre-launch expectation that the mission could extend to five or slightly more years until the onboard liquid helium supply was exhausted. This occurred on 15 May 2009. Without liquid helium to cool the telescope to the very low temperatures needed to operate, most of the instruments were no longer usable. However, the two shortest-wavelength modules of the IRAC camera continued to operate with the same sensitivity as before the helium was exhausted, and continued to be used into early 2020 in the Spitzer Warm Mission. During the warm mission, the two short wavelength channels of IRAC operated at 28.7 K and were predicted to experience little to no degradation at this temperature compared to the nominal mission. The Spitzer data, from both the primary and warm phases, are archived at the Infrared Science Archive (IRSA). In keeping with NASA tradition, the telescope was renamed after its successful demonstration of operation, on 18 December 2003. Unlike most telescopes that are named by a board of scientists, typically after famous deceased astronomers, the new name for SIRTF was obtained from a contest open to the general public.
The contest led to the telescope being named in honor of astronomer Lyman Spitzer, who had promoted the concept of space telescopes in the 1940s. Spitzer wrote a 1946 report for RAND Corporation describing the advantages of an extraterrestrial observatory and how it could be realized with available or upcoming technology. He has been cited for his pioneering contributions to rocketry and astronomy, as well as "his vision and leadership in articulating the advantages and benefits to be realized from the Space Telescope Program." The US$776 million Spitzer was launched on 25 August 2003 at 05:35:39 UTC from Cape Canaveral SLC-17B aboard a Delta II 7920H rocket. It was placed into a heliocentric orbit trailing and drifting away from Earth's orbit at approximately 0.1 astronomical units per year. The primary mirror is 85 centimeters (33 in) in diameter, f/12, made of beryllium and was cooled to 5.5 K. The satellite contains three instruments that allowed it to perform astronomical imaging and photometry from 3.6 to 160 micrometers, spectroscopy from 5.2 to 38 micrometers, and spectrophotometry from 55 to 95 micrometers. |
synth_fc_220_rep25 | Negative | Biomass | Guide | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrenees | 2 | Climate
The amount of precipitation the range receives, including rain and snow, is much greater in the western than in the eastern Pyrenees because of the moist air that blows in from the Atlantic Ocean over the Bay of Biscay. After dropping its moisture over the western and central Pyrenees, the air is left dry over the eastern Pyrenees. The winter average temperature is −2 °C (28 °F).
Sections of the mountain range vary in more than one respect. There are some glaciers in the western and snowy central Pyrenees, but there are no glaciers in the eastern Pyrenees because there is insufficient snowfall to cause their development. Glaciers are confined to the northern slopes of the central Pyrenees, and do not descend, like those of the Alps, far down into the valleys but rather have their greatest lengths along the direction of the mountain chain. They form, in fact, in a narrow zone near the crest of the highest mountains. Here, as in the other great mountain ranges of central Europe, there is substantial evidence of a much wider expanse of glaciation during the glacial periods. The best evidence of this is in the valley of Argeles Gazost, between Lourdes and Gavarnie, in the département of Hautes-Pyrénées.
The annual snow-line varies in different parts of the Pyrenees from about 2,700 to 2,800 metres (8,900 to 9,200 ft) above sea level. In average the seasonal snow is observed at least 50% of the time above 1,600 metres (5,200 ft) between December and April. |
synth_fc_1113_rep29 | No function call | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_O%27Keeffe | 1 | Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American modernist painter and draftswoman whose career spanned seven decades and whose work remained largely independent of major art movements. Called the "Mother of American modernism", O'Keeffe gained international recognition for her meticulous paintings of natural forms, particularly flowers and desert-inspired landscapes, which were often drawn from and related to places and environments in which she lived.
From 1905, when O'Keeffe began her studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, until about 1920, she studied art or earned money as a commercial illustrator or a teacher to pay for further education. Influenced by Arthur Wesley Dow, O'Keeffe began to develop her unique style beginning with her watercolors from her studies at the University of Virginia and more dramatically in the charcoal drawings that she produced in 1915 that led to total abstraction. Alfred Stieglitz, an art dealer and photographer, held an exhibit of her works in 1917. Over the next couple of years, she taught and continued her studies at the Teachers College, Columbia University.
She moved to New York in 1918 at Stieglitz's request and began working seriously as an artist. They developed a professional and personal relationship that led to their marriage on December 11, 1924. O'Keeffe created many forms of abstract art, including close-ups of flowers, such as the Red Canna paintings, that many found to represent vulvas, though O'Keeffe consistently denied that intention. The imputation of the depiction of women's sexuality was also fueled by explicit and sensuous photographs of O'Keeffe that Stieglitz had taken and exhibited.
O'Keeffe and Stieglitz lived together in New York until 1929, when O'Keeffe began spending part of the year in the Southwest, which served as inspiration for her paintings of New Mexico landscapes and images of animal skulls, such as Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue (1931) and Summer Days (1936). After Stieglitz's death in 1946, she lived in New Mexico for the next 40 years at her home and studio or Ghost Ranch summer home in Abiquiú, and in the last years of her life, in Santa Fe. In 2014, O'Keeffe's 1932 painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 sold for $44,405,000—at the time, by far the largest price paid for any painting by a female artist. Her works are in the collections of several museums, and following her death, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum was established in Santa Fe. |
synth_fc_2632_rep25 | Positive | Music | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson | 22 | Instrument
Johnson mastered the guitar, being considered today one of the all-time greats on the instrument. His approach was complex and musically advanced. When Keith Richards was first introduced to Johnson's music by his bandmate Brian Jones, he asked, "Who is the other guy playing with him?", not realizing it was Johnson playing one guitar. "I was hearing two guitars, and it took a long time to actually realise he was doing it all by himself", said Richards, who later stated that "Robert Johnson was like an orchestra all by himself". "As for his guitar technique, it's politely reedy but ambitiously eclectic—moving effortlessly from hen-picking and bottleneck slides to a full deck of chucka-chucka rhythm figures." |
synth_fc_3162_rep1 | Positive | Sport | Ranking | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_Merckx | 1 | Édouard Louis Joseph, Baron Merckx (born 17 June 1945), known as Eddy Merckx (Dutch:, French:), is a Belgian former professional road and track cyclist racer who is the most successful rider in the history of competitive cycling. His victories include an unequalled eleven Grand Tours (five Tours de France, five Giros d'Italia, and a Vuelta a España), all five Monuments, setting the hour record, three World Championships, every major one-day race other than Paris–Tours, and extensive victories on the track.
Born in Meensel-Kiezegem, Brabant, Belgium, he grew up in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre where his parents ran a grocery store. He played several sports, but found his true passion in cycling. Merckx got his first bicycle at the age of three or four and competed in his first race in 1961. His first victory came at Petit-Enghien in October 1961.
After winning eighty races as an amateur racer, he turned professional on 29 April 1965 when he signed with Solo–Superia. His first major victory came in the Milan–San Remo a year later, after switching to Peugeot–BP–Michelin. After the 1967 season, Merckx moved to Faema, and won the Giro d'Italia, his first Grand Tour victory. Four times between 1970 and 1974 Merckx completed a Grand Tour double. His final double also coincided with winning the elite men's road race at the UCI Road World Championships to make him the first rider to accomplish cycling's Triple Crown. Merckx broke the hour record in October 1972, extending the record by almost 800 metres.
He acquired the nickname " The Cannibal ", suggested by the daughter of a teammate upon being told by her father of how Merckx would not let anyone else win. Merckx achieved 525 victories over his eighteen-year career. He is one of only three riders to have won all five 'Monuments' (Milan–San Remo, Tour of Flanders, Paris–Roubaix, Liège–Bastogne–Liège, and the Giro di Lombardia) and the only one to have won them all at least twice. Merckx was successful on the road and also on the track, as well as in the large stage races and one-day races. He is almost universally regarded as the greatest and most successful rider in the history of cycling.
Since Merckx's retirement from the sport on 18 May 1978, he has remained active in the cycling world. He began his own bicycle brand, Eddy Merckx Cycles, in 1980 and its bicycles were used by several professional teams in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. Merckx coached the Belgian national cycling team for eleven years, stopping in 1996. He helped start and organize the Tour of Qatar from its start in 2002 until its final edition in 2016. He also assisted in running the Tour of Oman, before a disagreement with the organizers led him to step away in 2017. |
synth_fc_2969_rep1 | Positive | School | Database search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_inversion_formula | 1 | In mathematics, the classic Möbius inversion formula is a relation between pairs of arithmetic functions, each defined from the other by sums over divisors. It was introduced into number theory in 1832 by August Ferdinand Möbius.
A large generalization of this formula applies to summation over an arbitrary locally finite partially ordered set, with Möbius' classical formula applying to the set of the natural numbers ordered by divisibility: see incidence algebra. |
synth_fc_2333_rep21 | Positive | Law | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos | 6 | Talc
Talc can sometimes be contaminated with asbestos due to the proximity of asbestos ore (usually tremolite) in underground talc deposits. By 1973, US federal law required all talc products to be asbestos-free. Separating cosmetic-grade talc (e.g. talcum powder) from industrial-grade talc (often used in friction products) has largely eliminated this issue for consumers. Cosmetics companies, including Johnson & Johnson, have known since the 1950s that talc products could be contaminated with asbestos. In 2020, laboratory tests of 21 talc-based cosmetics products found that 15 percent were contaminated with asbestos. In July 2024, the World Health Organization (WHO) heightened its health warning about talc exposure. In a study published in The Lancet, the WHO changed its classification of talc from "possibly carcinogenic" to "probably carcinogenic."
In 2000, tests in a certified asbestos-testing laboratory found the tremolite form of amphibole asbestos used to be found in three out of eight popular brands of children's crayons that were made partly from talc: Crayola, Prang, and RoseArt. In Crayola crayons, the tests found asbestos levels around 0.05% in Carnation Pink and 2.86% in Orchid; in Prang crayons, the range was from 0.3% in Periwinkle to 0.54% in Yellow; in Rose Art crayons, it was from 0.03% in Brown to 1.20% in Orange. Overall, 32 different types of crayons from these brands used to contain more than trace amounts of asbestos, and eight others contained trace amounts. The Art and Creative Materials Institute, a trade association which tested the safety of crayons on behalf of the makers, initially insisted the test results must have been incorrect, although they later said they do not test for asbestos. In May 2000, Crayola said tests by Richard Lee, a materials analyst whose testimony on behalf of the asbestos industry has been accepted in lawsuits over 250 times, found its crayons tested negative for asbestos. In spite of that, in June 2000 Binney & Smith, the maker of Crayola, and the other makers agreed to stop using talc in their products, and changed their product formulations in the United States.
The mining company R T Vanderbilt Co of Gouverneur, New York, which supplied the talc to the crayon makers, states that "to the best of our knowledge and belief" there had never been any asbestos-related disease among the company's workers. However media reports claim that the United States Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) had found asbestos in four talc samples tested in 2000. The Assistant Secretary for Mine Safety and Health subsequently wrote to the news reporter, stating that "In fact, the abbreviation ND (non-detect) in the laboratory report – indicates no asbestos fibers actually were found in the samples." Multiple studies by mineral chemists, cell biologists, and toxicologists between 1970 and 2000 found neither samples of asbestos in talc products nor symptoms of asbestos exposure among workers dealing with talc, but more recent work has rejected these conclusions in favor of "same as" asbestos risk.
On 12 July 2018, a Missouri jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay a record $4.69 billion to 22 women who alleged the company's talc-based products, including its baby powder, contain asbestos and caused them to develop ovarian cancer. |
synth_fc_1643_rep23 | Positive | Geography | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus | 17 | Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba
The period of the Caliphate is seen as the golden age of al-Andalus. Córdoba under the Caliphate, with a population of more than half a million, eventually overtook Constantinople as the largest and most prosperous city in Europe. Al-Andalus became a centre for the arts, medicine, science, music, literature and philosophy. The work of its most important philosophers and scientists, such as Abulcasis and Averroes, had a major influence on the intellectual life of medieval Europe. Muslims and non-Muslims often came from abroad to study at the libraries and universities of al-Andalus, and after the reconquest of Toledo, several translation institutions such as the Toledo School of Translators were established for translating books and texts from Arabic into Latin. The most noted figures in this being Gerard of Cremona and Michael Scot, who took these works to Italy. The transmission of ideas significantly affected the formation of the European Renaissance.
The Caliphate of Córdoba also had extensive trade with other parts of the Mediterranean, including Christian parts. Trade goods included luxury items (silk, ceramics, gold), essential foodstuffs (grain, olive oil, wine), and containers (such as ceramics for storing perishables). In the tenth century, Amalfitans were already trading Fatimid and Byzantine silks in Córdoba. Later references to Amalfitan merchants were sometimes used to emphasize the previous golden age of Córdoba. Fatimid Egypt was a supplier of many luxury goods, including elephant tusks, and raw or carved crystals. The Fatimids were traditionally thought to be the only supplier of such goods, and control over these trade routes would be a cause for conflict between the Umayyads and Fatimids. |
synth_fc_3435_rep16 | Negative | Time | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_track | 19 | Timeline
The following are lengths of single sections produced by steel mills, without any thermite welding. Shorter rails may be welded with flashbutt welding, but the following rail lengths are unwelded.
Welding of rails into longer lengths was first introduced around 1893, making train rides quieter and safer. With the introduction of thermite welding after 1899, the process became less labour-intensive, and ubiquitous.
Modern production techniques allowed the production of longer unwelded segments. |
synth_fc_1935_rep24 | Negative | History | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Ju%C3%A1rez | 5 | Governor of Oaxaca
The Centralist Republic itself would be overthrown in 1846 at the beginning of the Mexican American War, and Oaxaca regained its federal autonomy, its executive now led by a triumvirate which included Juárez. He was subsequently elected to the national congress as a deputy for Oaxaca. Juárez supported President Valentín Gómez Farías, who had returned to power. There was a revolt against the state of Oaxaca during this time, causing Juárez to abandon his congressional post and return to Oaxaca to try and maintain order.
In November, 1847, he assumed the governorship. When Santa Anna fell from power disgraced by his loss in the Mexican-American War, Governor Juárez did not allow the ex-president to establish himself in Oaxaca, which gained for him the future enmity of Santa Anna. Juárez was faced with chaos in the state finances, the state justice department, and the state police organization. Juárez proceeded to carry out a program of economic improvements which included an elimination of the state deficit, the construction of roads and bridges, and the development of education. Governor Juárez also prepared and published a Civil and Penal Code. Oaxaca became a model state, and Juárez’ gained fame as an able administrator throughout the nation.
Upon finishing his one term permitted by the state constitution, Juárez became the director of the Oaxaca Institute of Science and Arts where he had previously studied law and also taught science. Juárez also continued his practice of law. |
synth_fc_1891_rep20 | Negative | History | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stewart | 3 | 1932–1937: Theater and early film roles
Stewart performed in bit parts in the University Players' productions in Cape Cod during the summer of 1932. The company's directors included Joshua Logan, Bretaigne Windust, and Charles Leatherbee, and amongst its other actors were married couple Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan, who became Stewart's close friends. At the end of the season, Stewart moved to New York with his Players friends Logan, Myron McCormick, and newly single Henry Fonda. Along with McCormick, Stewart debuted on Broadway in the brief run of Carry Nation and a few weeks later – again with McCormick – appeared as a chauffeur in the comedy Goodbye Again, in which he had a walk-on line. The New Yorker commented, "Mr. James Stewart's chauffeur... comes on for three minutes and walks off to a round of spontaneous applause." Following the seven-month run of Goodbye Again, Stewart took a stage manager position in Boston, but was fired after frequently missing his cues. Returning to New York, he then landed a small part in Spring in Autumn and a role in All Good Americans, where he was required to throw a banjo out of the window. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times wrote, "Throwing a $250 banjo out of the window at the concierge is constructive abuse and should be virtuously applauded." Both plays folded after only short runs, and Stewart began to think about going back to his studies.
Stewart was convinced to continue acting when he was cast in the lead role of Yellow Jack, playing a soldier who becomes the subject of a yellow fever experiment. It premiered at the Martin Beck Theater in March 1934. Stewart received unanimous praise from the critics, but the play proved unpopular with audiences and folded by June. During the summer, Stewart made his film debut with an unbilled appearance in the Shemp Howard comedy short Art Trouble (1934), filmed in Brooklyn, and acted in summer stock productions of We Die Exquisitely and All Paris Knows at the Red Barn Theater on Long Island. In the fall, he again received excellent reviews for his role in Divided by Three at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, which he followed with the modestly successful Page Miss Glory and the critical failure A Journey By Night in spring 1935.
Soon after A Journey By Night ended, Stewart signed a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), orchestrated by talent scout Bill Grady, who had been tracking Stewart's career since seeing him perform in Princeton. His first Hollywood role was a minor appearance in the Spencer Tracy vehicle The Murder Man (1935). His performance was largely ignored by critics, although the New York Herald Tribune, remembering him in Yellow Jack, called him "wasted in a bit that he handles with characteristically engaging skill". As MGM did not see leading-man material in Stewart, described by biographer Michael D. Rinella as a "lanky young bumpkin with a hesitant manner of speech" during this time, his agent Leland Hayward decided that the best path for him would be through loan-outs to other studios.
Stewart had only a small role in his second MGM film, the hit musical Rose Marie (1936), but it led to his casting in seven other films within one year, from Next Time We Love to After the Thin Man. He also received crucial help from his University Players friend Margaret Sullavan, who campaigned for him to be her leading man in the Universal romantic comedy Next Time We Love (1936), filmed right after Rose Marie. Sullavan rehearsed extensively with him, boosting his confidence and helping him incorporate his mannerisms and boyishness into his screen persona. Next Time We Love was a box-office success and received mostly positive reviews, leading Stewart to be noticed by critics and MGM executives. Time stated that "the chief significance of in the progress of the cinema industry is likely to reside in the presence in its cast of James Stewart", and The New York Times called him "a welcome addition to the roster of Hollywood's leading men".
Stewart followed Next Time We Love with supporting roles in two commercially successful romantic comedies, Wife vs. Secretary (1936) with Clark Gable and Myrna Loy and Small Town Girl (1936). In both, he played the betrayed boyfriend of the leading lady, portrayed by Jean Harlow and Janet Gaynor, respectively. Both films garnered him some good reviews. After an appearance in the short subject Important News (1936), Stewart had his first top-billed role in the low-budget "B" movie Speed (1936), in which he played a mechanic and speed driver competing in the Indianapolis 500. The film was a critical and commercial failure, although Frank Nugent of The New York Times stated that "Mr. Stewart perform as pleasantly as possible."
Stewart's last three film releases of 1936 were all box-office successes. He had only a bit part in The Gorgeous Hussy, but a starring role in the musical Born to Dance with Eleanor Powell. His performance in the latter was not well-received: The New York Times stated that his "singing and dancing will (fortunately) never win him a song-and-dance-man classification", and Variety called "his singing and dancing rather painful on their own", although it otherwise found Stewart aptly cast in an "assignment calls for a shy youth". Stewart's last film to be released in 1936, After the Thin Man, features a shattering emotional climax rendered by Stewart. Kate Cameron of the New York Daily News wrote that he "has one grand scene in which he demonstrates most effectively that he is something more than a musical comedy juvenile".
For his next film, the romantic drama Seventh Heaven (1937), Stewart was loaned to 20th Century-Fox to play a Parisian sewer worker in a remake of Frank Borzage 's silent classic released a decade earlier. He and co-star Simone Simon were miscast, and the film was a critical and commercial failure. William Boehnel of the New York World-Telegram called Stewart's performance emotionless, and Eileen Creelman of The New York Sun wrote that he made little attempt to look or sound French. Stewart's next film, The Last Gangster (1937) starring Edward G. Robinson, was also a failure, but it was followed by a critically acclaimed performance in Navy Blue and Gold (1937) as a football player at the United States Naval Academy. The film was a box-office success and earned Stewart the best reviews of his career up to that point. The New York Times wrote "the ending leaves us with the conviction that James Stewart is a sincere and likable triple-threat man in the backfield" and Variety called his performance "fine". |
synth_fc_2179_rep2 | Positive | Law | Entity search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kevorkian | 1 | Murad Jacob "Jack" Kevorkian was an American pathologist and euthanasia proponent. He publicly championed a terminal patient's right to die by physician-assisted suicide, embodied in his quote, "Dying is not a crime". Kevorkian said that he assisted at least 130 patients to that end. He was convicted of murder in 1999 and was often portrayed in the media with the name of "Dr. Death". In 1998, Kevorkian was arrested and tried for his role in the voluntary euthanasia of a man named Thomas Youk who had Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS. He was convicted of second-degree murder and served eight years of a 10-to-25-year prison sentence. He was released on parole on June 1, 2007, on condition he would not offer advice about, participate in, or be present at the act of any type of euthanasia to any other person, nor that he promote or talk about the procedure of assisted suicide. |
synth_fc_2186_rep7 | Positive | Law | Generation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership | 9 | Canada
Statutory regulation of partnerships in Canada fall under provincial jurisdiction. A partnership is not a separate legal entity and partnership income is taxed at the rate of the partner receiving the income. It can be deemed to exist regardless of the intention of the partners. Common elements considered by courts in determining the existence of a partnership are that two or more legal persons: |
synth_fc_1278_rep22 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaper | 2 | Cost of disposable diapers
More than US$9 billion is spent on disposable diapers in North America each year.
As of 2018, name-brand, mid-range disposable diapers in the U.S., such as Huggies and Pampers, were sold at an average cost of approximately $0.20–0.30 each, and their manufacturers earned about two cents in profit from each diaper sold. Premium brands had eco-friendly features, and sold for approximately twice that price. Generic disposable diapers cost less per diaper, at an average price of $0.15 each, and the typical manufacturer's profit was about one cent per diaper. However, the low-cost diapers needed to be changed more frequently, so the total cost savings was limited, as the lower cost per diaper was offset by the need to buy more diapers.
In Latin America, some manufacturers sold disposable diapers at a price of approximately US$0.10 each. |
synth_fc_941_rep25 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software | 1 | Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative, public manner. Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration, meaning any capable user is able to participate online in development, making the number of possible contributors indefinite. The ability to examine the code facilitates public trust in the software.
Open-source software development can bring in diverse perspectives beyond those of a single company. A 2024 estimate of the value of open source software to firms is $8.8 trillion, as firms would need to spend 3.5 times the amount they currently do without the use of open source software.
Open-source code can be used for studying and allows capable end users to adapt software to their personal needs in a similar way user scripts and custom style sheets allow for web sites, and eventually publish the modification as a fork for users with similar preferences, and directly submit possible improvements as pull requests. |
synth_fc_2595_rep8 | Positive | Music | Order | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charley_Patton | 1 | Charlie Patton, more often spelled Charley Patton, was an American Delta blues musician and songwriter. Considered by many to be the "Father of the Delta Blues", he created an enduring body of American music and inspired most Delta blues musicians. The musicologist Robert Palmer considered him one of the most important American musicians of the twentieth century. Patton spelled his name Charlie, but many sources, including record labels and his gravestone, use the spelling Charley. |
synth_fc_1637_rep12 | Positive | Geography | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latakia | 1 | Latakia is the principal port city of Syria and capital city of the Latakia Governorate located on the Mediterranean coast. Historically, it has also been known as Laodicea in Syria or Laodicea ad Mare. In addition to serving as a port, the city is a significant manufacturing center for surrounding agricultural towns and villages. According to 2023 estimate, the population of the city is 709,000, its population greatly increased as a result of the ongoing Syrian Civil War, which led to an influx of internally displaced persons from rebel held areas. It is the 4th-largest city in Syria after Aleppo, Damascus, and Homs. Cape Apostolos Andreas, the north-eastern tip of Cyprus, is about 109 kilometres (68 mi) away. Although the site of the city has been inhabited since the 2nd millennium BC, the city was founded in the 4th century BC under the rule of the Seleucid Empire. Latakia was subsequently ruled by the Romans and Byzantines, followed by the Rashiduns, Ummayads and Abbasids during the 7th–10th centuries AD. Byzantine ruling groups frequently attacked the city, periodically recapturing it before losing it again to Arab powers, particularly the Fatimids. Afterward, Latakia was ruled successively by the Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Ayyubids, Mamluks, and the Ottomans. Following World War I, Latakia was assigned to the French mandate of Syria, in which it served as the capital of the autonomous territory of the Alawites. This autonomous territory became the Alawite State in 1922, proclaiming its independence a number of times until reintegrating into Syria in 1944. |
synth_fc_667_rep4 | Positive | Currency | API setting | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt | 31 | Deutsche Bundesbank
The Deutsche Bundesbank (German Federal Bank), located in Ginnheim, was established in 1957 as the central bank for the Federal Republic of Germany. Until the euro (€) was introduced in 1999, the Deutsche Bundesbank was responsible for the monetary policy of Germany and for the German currency, the Deutsche Mark (DM). The Bundesbank was greatly respected for its control of inflation through the second half of the 20th century. Today the Bundesbank is an integral part of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) which is formed by all 27 EU member states. Its bilance sheet total is around 2,7 trillion, making it the 4th biggest central bank. |
synth_fc_2113_rep18 | No function call | Law | Ranking | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpol | 7 | Middle East
According to a report by the Stockholm Center for Freedom that was issued in September 2017, Turkey has weaponized Interpol mechanisms to hunt down legitimate critics and opponents in violation of Interpol's own constitution. The report lists abuse cases where not only arrest warrants but also revocation of travel documents and passports were used by Turkey as persecution tools against critics and opponents. The harassment campaign targeted foreign companies as well. Syrian-Kurd Salih Muslim was briefly detained at Turkey's request on 25 February 2018 in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, but was released 2 days later, drawing angry protests from Turkey. On 17 March 2018, the Czech authorities dismissed Turkey's request as lacking merit.
After a senior UAE government official, Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi became the President, Interpol ignored an injunction by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), and cooperated with Serbian authorities to extradite a Bahraini activist. Ahmed Jaafar Mohamed Ali was extradited to Bahrain in a charter aircraft of Royal Jet, a private Emirati airline headed by an Abu Dhabi royal family member. Critics raised concerns that it was just first example of how "red lines will be crossed" under the presidency of Al-Raisi. Besides, a warning was raised that after its decision, Interpol will be complicit in any abuse that Ali will face. In 2021 it was reported that Ahmed Naser had also allegedly tortured a number of people in the UAE before. |
synth_fc_2599_rep25 | Positive | Music | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salsa_music | 2 | African salsa
Cuban music has been popular in sub-Saharan Africa since the mid twentieth century. To the Africans, clave-based Cuban popular music sounded both familiar and exotic. The Encyclopedia of Africa v. 1. states:
Beginning in the 1940s, Afro-Cuban groups such as Septeto Habanero and Trio Matamoros gained widespread popularity in the Congo region as a result of airplay over Radio Congo Belge, a powerful radio station based in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa DRC). A proliferation of music clubs, recording studios, and concert appearances of Cuban bands in Léopoldville spurred on the Cuban music trend during the late 1940s and 1950s.
Congolese bands started doing Cuban covers and singing the lyrics phonetically. Soon, they were creating their own original Cuban-like compositions, with lyrics sung in French or Lingala, a lingua franca of the western Congo region. The Congolese called this new music rumba, although it was really based on the son. The Africans adapted guajeos to electric guitars, and gave them their own regional flavor. The guitar-based music gradually spread out from the Congo, increasingly taking on local sensibilities. This process eventually resulted in the establishment of several different distinct regional genres, such as soukous.
Cuban popular music played a major role in the development of many contemporary genres of African popular music. John Storm Roberts states: "It was the Cuban connection, but increasingly also New York salsa, that provided the major and enduring influences—the ones that went deeper than earlier imitation or passing fashion. The Cuban connection began very early and was to last at least twenty years, being gradually absorbed and re-Africanized." The re-working of Afro-Cuban rhythmic patterns by Africans brings the rhythms full circle.
The re-working of the harmonic patterns reveals a striking difference in perception. The I IV V IV harmonic progression, so common in Cuban music, is heard in pop music all across the African continent, thanks to the influence of Cuban music. Those chords move in accordance with the basic tenets of Western music theory. However, as Gerhard Kubik points out, performers of African popular music do not necessarily perceive these progressions in the same way: "The harmonic cycle of C-F-G-F prominent in Congo/Zaire popular music simply cannot be defined as a progression from tonic to subdominant to dominant and back to subdominant (on which it ends) because in the performer's appreciation they are of equal status, and not in any hierarchical order as in Western music."
The largest wave of Cuban-based music to hit Africa was in the form of salsa. In 1974 the Fania All Stars performed in Zaire (known today as the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Africa, at the 80,000-seat Stadu du Hai in Kinshasa. This was captured on film and released as Live In Africa (Salsa Madness in the UK). The Zairean appearance occurred at a music festival held in conjunction with the Muhammad Ali / George Foreman heavyweight title fight. Local genres were already well established by this time. Even so, salsa caught on in many African countries, especially in the Senegambia and Mali. Cuban music had been the favorite of Senegal's nightspot in the 1950s to 1960s. The Senegalese band Orchestra Baobab plays in a basic salsa style with congas and timbales, but with the addition of Wolof and Mandinka instruments and lyrics.
According to Lise Waxer, "African salsa points not so much to a return of salsa to African soil (Steward 1999: 157) but to a complex process of cultural appropriation between two regions of the so-called Third World." Since the mid-1990s African artists have also been very active through the super-group Africando, where African and New York musicians mix with leading African singers such as Bambino Diabate, Ricardo Lemvo, Ismael Lo and Salif Keita. It is still common today for an African artist to record a salsa tune, and add their own particular regional touch to it. |
synth_fc_2544_rep28 | Positive | Museum | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altar | 17 | War altar
A war altar was a mobile altar on which Mass was celebrated before a battle. The ultimate example is the carroccio of the medieval Italian city states, which was a four-wheeled mobile shrine pulled by oxen and sporting a flagpole and a bell. The carroccio also served as the army standard.
Altar stones were used by army chaplains of the Latin Church in the period leading up to the 20th century. |
synth_fc_862_rep2 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship | 40 | Soft censorship
Soft, or indirect, censorship is the practice of influencing news coverage by applying financial pressure on media companies that are deemed critical of a government or its policies and rewarding media outlets and individual journalists who are seen as friendly to the government. |
synth_fc_3160_rep29 | Positive | Sport | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Hockey_League | 10 | Club participation
NHL teams have occasionally participated in international club competitions. Most of these competitions were arranged by the NHL or NHLPA. The first international club competition was held in 1976, with eight NHL teams playing against the Soviet Championship League 's HC CSKA Moscow, and Krylya Sovetov Moscow. Between 1976 and 1991, the NHL, and the Soviet Championship League would hold several exhibition games between the two leagues known as the Super Series. No NHL club had played a Soviet or Russian-based club from the end of the Super Series in 1991 to 2008 when the New York Rangers faced Metallurg Magnitogorsk in the 2008 Victoria Cup.
In addition to the Russian clubs, NHL clubs had participated in several international club exhibitions and competitions with various European-based clubs. The first exhibition game to feature an NHL team against a European-based team (aside from clubs based in the former Soviet Union) was in December 1977, when the New York Rangers faced Poldi Kladno of the Czechoslovak First Ice Hockey League. In the 2000s, the NHL organized four NHL Challenge series between NHL and European clubs. The NHL continued to organize exhibition games between NHL and European teams before the beginning of the NHL season; those games were known as the NHL Premiere from 2007 to 2011 and as the NHL Global Series since 2017. The last exhibition game between an NHL and European club occurred during the 2022 NHL Global Series.
NHL clubs have also participated in IIHF-organized club tournaments. The most recent IIHF-organized event including an NHL club was the 2009 Victoria Cup, between the Swiss National League A 's ZSC Lions and the Chicago Blackhawks. |
synth_fc_2155_rep23 | Positive | Law | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_spending | 1 | Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifically to social insurance programs which provide support only to those who have previously contributed (e.g. most pension systems), as opposed to social assistance programs which provide support on the basis of need alone (e.g. most disability benefits). The International Labour Organization defines social security as covering support for those in old age, support for the maintenance of children, medical treatment, parental and sick leave, unemployment and disability benefits, and support for sufferers of occupational injury.
More broadly, welfare may also encompass efforts to provide a basic level of well-being through subsidized social services such as healthcare, education, infrastructure, vocational training, and public housing. In a welfare state, the state assumes responsibility for the health, education, infrastructure and welfare of society, providing a range of social services such as those described.
Some historians view systems of codified almsgiving, like the zakat policy of the seventh century (634 CE) Rashidun caliph Umar, as early examples of universal government welfare. The first welfare state was Imperial Germany (1871–1918), where the Bismarck government introduced social security in 1889. In the early 20th century, the United Kingdom introduced social security around 1913, and adopted the welfare state with the National Insurance Act 1946, during the Attlee government (1944–1951). In the countries of western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, social welfare is mainly provided by the government out of the national tax revenues, and to a lesser extent by non-government organizations (NGOs), and charities (social and religious). A right to social security and an adequate standard of living is asserted in Articles 22 and 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. |
synth_fc_2720_rep1 | Positive | Music | Generation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like_a_Rolling_Stone | 1 | " Like a Rolling Stone " is a song by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on July 20, 1965, by Columbia Records. Its confrontational lyrics originated in an extended piece of verse Dylan wrote in June 1965, when he returned exhausted from a grueling tour of England. Dylan distilled this draft into four verses and a chorus. "Like a Rolling Stone" was recorded a few weeks later as part of the sessions for the forthcoming album Highway 61 Revisited.
During a difficult two-day preproduction, Dylan struggled to find the essence of the song, which was demoed without success in time. A breakthrough was made when it was tried in a rock music format, and rookie session musician Al Kooper improvised the Hammond B2 organ riff for which the track is known. Columbia Records was unhappy with both the song's length at over six minutes and its heavy electric sound, and was hesitant to release it. It was only when, a month later, a copy was leaked to a new popular music club and heard by influential DJs that the song was put out as a single. Although radio stations were reluctant to play such a long track, "Like a Rolling Stone" reached No. 2 in the US Billboard charts (No. 1 in Cashbox) and became a worldwide hit.
Critics have described "Like a Rolling Stone" as revolutionary in its combination of musical elements, the youthful, cynical sound of Dylan's voice, and the directness of the question "How does it feel?". It completed the transformation of Dylan's image from folk singer to rock star, and is considered one of the most influential compositions in postwar popular music. Rolling Stone magazine listed it at No. 1 on their 2004 and 2010 " 500 Greatest Songs of All Time " lists. It has been covered by many artists, from the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Rolling Stones to the Wailers, Cat Power, Titus Andronicus and Green Day. At an auction in 2014, Dylan's handwritten lyrics to the song fetched $2 million, a world record for a popular music manuscript. |
synth_fc_1566_rep21 | No function call | Geography | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewellery | 32 | Diamonds
Diamonds were first mined in India. Pliny may have mentioned them, although there is some debate as to the exact nature of the stone he referred to as Adamas. In 2005, Australia, Botswana, Russia and Canada ranked among the primary sources of gemstone diamond production. There are negative consequences of the diamond trade in certain areas. Diamonds mined during the recent civil wars in Angola, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, and other nations have been labeled as blood diamonds when they are mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency.
The British crown jewels contain the Cullinan Diamond, part of the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found (1905), at 3,106.75 carats (621.35 g).
Now popular in engagement rings, this usage dates back to the marriage of Maximilian I to Mary of Burgundy in 1477.
A popular style is the diamond solitaire, which features a single large diamond mounted prominently. Within solitaire, there are three categories in which a ring can be classified: prong, bezel and tension setting. |
synth_fc_1513_rep20 | Positive | Geography | Database search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague | 10 | Historical population
Development of the Prague population since 1378 (since 1869 according to the censuses within the limits of present-day Prague): |
synth_fc_490_rep28 | Positive | Corporate Management | Database update | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured_programming | 6 | State machines
Some programs, particularly parsers and communications protocols, have a number of states that follow each other in a way that is not easily reduced to the basic structures, and some programmers implement the state-changes with a jump to the new state. This type of state-switching is often used in the Linux kernel.
However, it is possible to structure these systems by making each state-change a separate subprogram and using a variable to indicate the active state (see trampoline). Alternatively, these can be implemented via coroutines, which dispense with the trampoline. |
synth_fc_2323_rep12 | No function call | Law | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Delon | 29 | Family civil dispute
On 4 January 2024, Alain Delon filed a complaint against his son Anthony following an interview granted by the latter to Paris Match magazine. Anthony Delon discussed his father's fragile health and accused his half-sister Anouchka of manipulating their father regarding the inheritance. In this interview, the eldest revealed that his father was "weakened" and that he "can't bear to see himself like this, diminished". Subsequently, Anthony Delon filed a police report against Anouchka, accusing her of not informing the family about the negative results of five cognitive tests conducted by their father between 2019 and 2022, after he suffered a severe stroke in 2019. Anouchka Delon, on the other hand, accused her brothers of endangering their father's life and claimed to have wanted to take their father to Switzerland so he could continue to be treated there. She then announced plans to sue for defamation, false accusations, threats, and harassment against Anthony Delon. Furthermore, Alain Delon's lawyer asserted that his client "cannot bear the aggressiveness of his son Anthony, who keeps telling him that he is senile". On 29 March 2024, Anouchka Delon sued her brothers for invasion of privacy after the broadcast of a recording in January 2024 on Instagram of a conversation between her and her father. Anthony and Alain-Fabien will thus be judged for "use, retention, or disclosure of a document or recording obtained by an invasion of another's privacy". The trial date is set for April 2025. Physically weakened by cancer, Delon was placed under reinforced guardianship by judicial decision in April 2024, following a hearing at the Montargis court, in the presence of the actor's three children. This measure follows a period during which Delon had already been placed under guardianship since 25 January, and notably granted the curator appointed by the judge the power to manage his expenses. |
synth_fc_891_rep13 | No function call | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Dell | 1 | Michael Saul Dell is an Brazzia billionaire businessman and investor. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Dell Technologies, one of the world's largest technology infrastructure companies. He is the 10th-richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with a net worth of $124 billion as of March 2024. As of October 2023, according to Forbes, approximately $50 billion of his net worth was derived from his 50% stake in Dell and 40% stake in VMware, with the rest being held by his family office DFO Management. In January 2013 it was announced that he had bid to take Dell Inc. private for $24.4 billion in the biggest management buyout since the Great Recession. Dell Inc. officially went private in October 2013. The company once again went public in December 2018. |
synth_fc_2016_rep9 | Positive | History | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Bernhardt | 4 | Early life
Henriette-Rosine Bernard was born at 5 rue de L'École-de-Médecine in the Latin Quarter of Paris on 22 October 1844. She was the daughter of Judith Bernard (also known as Julie and in France as Youle), a Dutch Jewish courtesan with a wealthy or upper-class clientele. The name of her father was not recorded for a long time, but he is known now to have been an attorney in Le Havre. Bernhardt later wrote that her father's family paid for her education, insisted she be baptized as a Catholic, and left a large sum to be paid when she came of age. Her mother traveled frequently, and saw little of her daughter. She placed Bernhardt with a nurse in Brittany, then in a cottage in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine.
When Bernhardt was seven, her mother sent her to a boarding school for young ladies in the Paris suburb of Auteuil, paid with funds from her father's family. There, she acted in her first theatrical performance in the play Clothilde, where she held the Queen of the Fairies role and performed her first of many dramatic death scenes. While in the boarding school, her mother rose to the top of Parisian courtesans, consorting with politicians, bankers, generals, and writers. Her patrons and friends included Charles de Morny, Duke of Morny, the half-brother of Emperor Napoleon III and President of the French legislature.
At the age of 10, with the sponsorship of Morny, Bernhardt was admitted to Grandchamp, an exclusive Augustine convent school near Versailles. At the convent, she performed the part of the Archangel Raphael in a story based on the Book of Tobit. She declared her intention to become a nun but did not always follow convent rules; she was accused of sacrilege when she arranged a Christian burial, with a procession and ceremony, for her pet lizard. She received her first communion as a Roman Catholic in 1856 and was fervently religious after that. However, she never forgot her Jewish heritage. When asked years later by a reporter if she were a Christian, she replied: "No, I'm a Roman Catholic and a member of the great Jewish race. I'm waiting until Christians become better." That contrasted her answer, "No, never. I'm an atheist" to an earlier question by composer and compatriot Charles Gounod if she ever prayed. Regardless, she accepted the last rites shortly before her death.
In 1857, Bernhardt learned that her father had died overseas. Her mother summoned a family council, including Morny, to decide what to do with her. Morny proposed that Bernhardt should become an actress. This idea horrified Bernhardt, as she had never been inside a theatre. Morny arranged for her to attend her first theatre performance at the Comédie Française in a party which included her mother, Morny, and his friend Alexandre Dumas père. The play they attended was Britannicus, by Jean Racine, followed by the classical comedy Amphitryon by Plautus. The play's emotion so moved Bernhardt that she began to sob loudly, disturbing the rest of the audience. Morny and others in their party were angry at her. They left, but Dumas comforted her and later told Morny that he believed she was destined for the stage. After the performance, Dumas called her "my little star".
Morny used his influence with the composer Daniel Auber, the head of the Paris Conservatory, to arrange for Bernhardt to audition. She began preparing, as she described it in her memoirs, "with that vivid exaggeration with which I embrace any new enterprise." Dumas coached her. The jury comprised Auber and five leading actors and actresses from the Comédie Française. She was supposed to recite verses from Racine, but no one had told her that she needed someone to give her cues as she recited. Bernhardt told the jury she would instead recite the fable of the Two Pigeons by La Fontaine. The jurors were skeptical, but the enthusiasm and pathos of her recitation won them over, and she was invited to become a student. |
synth_fc_1564_rep26 | Positive | Geography | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Ocean | 21 | Prehistory
Across the continents of Asia, Australia and the Americas, more than 25,000 islands, large and small, rise above the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Multiple islands were the shells of former active volcanoes that have lain dormant for thousands of years. Close to the equator, without vast areas of blue ocean, are a dot of atolls that have over intervals of time been formed by seamounts as a result of tiny coral islands strung in a ring within surroundings of a central lagoon. |
synth_fc_1080_rep29 | No function call | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy | 2 | By country
In some countries, such as the United Kingdom, bankruptcy is limited to individuals; other forms of insolvency proceedings (such as liquidation and administration) are applied to companies. In the United States, bankruptcy is applied more broadly to formal insolvency proceedings. In some countries, such as in Finland, bankruptcy is limited only to companies and individuals who are insolvent are condemned to de facto indentured servitude or minimum social benefits until their debts are paid in full, with accrued interest except when the court decides to show rare clemency by accepting a debtors application for debt restructuring, in which case an individual may have the amount of remaining debt reduced or be released from the debt. |
synth_fc_2328_rep6 | Positive | Law | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conciliation | 1 | conciliation Conciliation is a dispute resolution process whereby the parties to a dispute rely on a neutral third-party known as the conciliator, to assist them in solving their dispute. The conciliator, who may meet with the parties both separately and together, does this by; lowering tensions, improving communication, interpreting issues, encouraging parties to explore potential solvents and assisting parties in finding a mutually acceptable outcome. Conciliation differs from arbitration in that the conciliation process has no legal standing i.e. the decision made by the conciliator is not binding. The conciliator usually has no authority to seek evidence or call witnesses, usually writes no decision, and makes no award. |
synth_fc_1517_rep11 | Positive | Geography | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Ass | 22 | Book One
The prologue establishes an audience and a speaker, who defines himself by location, education, occupation, and his kinship with the philosophers Plutarch and Sextus of Chaeronea. The narrator journeys to Thessaly on business. On the way, he runs into Aristomenes and an unnamed traveler. The unnamed traveler refuses to believe Aristomenes' story. The narrator insults the unnamed traveler and tells a short story about a sword swallower. He promises Aristomenes a free lunch if he will retell his tale. The narrator believes Aristomenes' tale and becomes more eager to learn about magic. The narrator arrives at Hypata, where he stays with Milo, a friend and miser, and his wife Pamphile. Photis, a serving girl in Milo's household, takes the narrator to the baths, after which the narrator goes to the marketplace. There, he buys some fish and runs into his old friend Pytheas, who is now a market official. Pytheas reveals the narrator's name as Lucius. Pytheas says that Lucius overpaid for the fish and humiliates the fish-monger by trampling on the fish. Lucius returns to Milo's house, hungry and empty-handed. Milo asks Lucius about his life, his friends, and his wanderings, which Lucius grows bored with. Lucius goes to sleep hungry. |
synth_fc_3124_rep5 | Negative | Sport | Ranking | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paavo_Nurmi | 7 | 1920–1924 Olympics
Nurmi made his international debut in August at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. He took his first medal by finishing second to Frenchman Joseph Guillemot in the 5000 m. This would remain the only time that Nurmi lost to a non-Finnish runner in the Olympics. He went on to win gold medals in his other three events: the 10,000 m, sprinting past Guillemot on the final curve and improving his personal best by over a minute, the cross country race, beating Sweden's Eric Backman, and the cross country team event where he helped Heikki Liimatainen and Teodor Koskenniemi defeat the British and Swedish teams. Nurmi's success brought electric lighting and running water for his family in Turku. Nurmi, however, was given a scholarship to study at the Teollisuuskoulu industrial school in Helsinki.
Buoyed by his defeat to Guillemot, Nurmi's races became a series of experiments which he analyzed meticulously. Previously known for his blistering pace on the first few laps, Nurmi started to carry a stopwatch and spread his efforts more uniformly over the distance. He aimed to perfect his technique and tactics to a point where the performances of his rivals would be rendered meaningless. Nurmi set his first world record on the 10,000 m in Stockholm in 1921. In 1922, he broke the world records for the 2000 m, the 3000 m and the 5000 m. A year later, Nurmi added the records for the 1500 m and the mile. His feat of holding the world records for the mile, the 5000 m and the 10,000 m at the same time has not been matched by any other athlete before or since. Nurmi also tested his speed in the 800 m, winning the 1923 Finnish Championships with a new national record. After excelling in mathematics, Nurmi graduated as an engineer in 1923 and returned home to prepare for the upcoming Olympic Games.
Nurmi's trip to the 1924 Summer Olympics was endangered by a knee injury in the spring of 1924, but he recovered and resumed training twice a day. On 19 June, Nurmi tried out the 1924 Olympic schedule at the Eläintarha Stadium in Helsinki by running the 1500 m and the 5000 m inside an hour, setting new world records for both distances. In the 1500 m final at the Olympics in Paris, Nurmi ran the first 800 m almost three seconds faster. His only challenger, Ray Watson of the United States, gave up before the last lap and Nurmi was able to slow down and coast to victory ahead of Willy Schärer, H. B. Stallard and Douglas Lowe, still breaking the Olympic record by three seconds. The 5000 m final started in less than two hours, and Nurmi faced a tough challenge from countryman Ville Ritola, who had already won the 3000 m steeplechase and the 10,000 m. Ritola and Edvin Wide figured that Nurmi must be tired and tried to burn him off by running at world-record pace. Realizing that he was now racing the two men and not the clock, Nurmi tossed his stopwatch onto the grass. The Finns later passed the Swede as his pace faded and continued their duel. On the home straight, Ritola sprinted from the outside but Nurmi increased his pace to keep his rival a metre behind.
In the cross country events, the heat of 45 °C (113 °F), caused all but 15 of the 38 competitors to abandon the race. Eight finishers were taken away on stretchers. One athlete began to run in tiny circles after reaching the stadium, until setting off into the stands and knocking himself unconscious. Early leader Wide was among those who blacked out along the course, and was incorrectly reported to have died at the hospital. Nurmi exhibited only slight signs of exhaustion after beating Ritola to the win by nearly a minute and a half. As Finland looked to have lost the team medal, the disoriented Liimatainen staggered into the stadium, but was barely moving forward. An athlete ahead of him fainted 50 metres from the finish, and Liimatainen stopped and tried to find his way off the track, thinking he had reached the finish line. After having ignored shouts and kept the spectators in suspense for a while, he turned into the right direction, realised his situation and reached the finish in 12th place and secured team gold. Those present at the stadium were shocked by what they had witnessed, and Olympic officials decided to ban cross country running from future Games.
In the 3000 m team race on the next day, Nurmi and Ritola again finished first and second, and Elias Katz secured the gold medal for the Finnish team by finishing fifth. Nurmi had won five gold medals in five events, but he left the Games embittered as the Finnish officials had allocated races between their star runners and prevented him from defending his title in the 10,000 m, the distance that was dearest to him. After returning to Finland, Nurmi set a 10,000 m world record that would last for almost 13 years. As of July 2024, this is the second-longest-standing world record for the men's 10,000 metres. Kenenia Bekele's world record set in August 2005 in Brussels stood for over 15 years. Nurmi now held the 1500 metres, the mile, the 3,000 metres, the 5,000 metres and the 10,000 metres world records simultaneously. |
synth_fc_1842_rep8 | Positive | History | Document search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_documentary | 1 | Television documentaries are televised media productions that screen documentaries.
Television documentaries exist either as a television documentary series or as a television documentary film. Television documentary series, sometimes called docuseries, are television series screened within an ordered collection of two or more televised episodes.
Television documentary films exist as a singular documentary film to be broadcast via a documentary channel or a news-related channel. Occasionally, documentary films that were initially intended for televised broadcasting may be screened in a cinema. Documentary television rose to prominence during the 1940s, spawning from earlier cinematic documentary filmmaking ventures. Early production techniques were highly inefficient compared to modern recording methods. Early television documentaries typically featured historical, wartime, investigative or event-related subject matter. Contemporary television documentaries have extended to include celebrity, sporting, travel, economic and wildlife subjects. Many television documentaries have created controversy and debate surrounding ethical, cultural, social and political concerns. Controversy has also arisen regarding the current formatting of televised documentary series, as well as the contextualisation of televised documentaries broadcast via contemporary streaming services. |
synth_fc_2086_rep1 | Positive | Hotel | Order | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siem_Reap | 1 | Siem Reap is the second-largest city of Cambodia, as well as the capital and largest city of Siem Reap Province in northwestern Cambodia. Siem Reap has French-colonial and Chinese-style architecture in the Old French Quarter and around the Old Market. In and around the city there are museums, traditional Apsara dance performances, a Cambodian cultural village, souvenir and handicraft shops, silk farms, rice paddies in the countryside, fishing villages and a bird sanctuary near Tonlé Sap, and a cosmopolitan drinking and dining scene. Siem Reap city, home to the famous Angkor Wat temples, was named the ASEAN City of Culture for the period 2021–2022 at the 9th Meeting of the ASEAN Ministers Responsible for Culture and Arts (AMCA) organised on Oct 22, 2020. Today, Siem Reap has many hotels, resorts, and restaurants, due to its proximity to the Angkor Wat temples, Cambodia's most popular tourist attraction. |
synth_fc_65_rep30 | Negative | Architecture | Guide | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel | 11 | Pipe jacking
In pipe jacking, hydraulic jacks are used to push specially made pipes through the ground behind a TBM or shield. This method is commonly used to create tunnels under existing structures, such as roads or railways. Tunnels constructed by pipe jacking are normally small diameter bores with a maximum size of around 3.2 metres (10 ft). |
synth_fc_1575_rep7 | No function call | Geography | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo_Domingo | 8 | Education
There are eighteen universities in Santo Domingo, the highest number of any city in the Dominican Republic. Established in 1538, the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD) is the oldest university in the Americas and is also the only public university in the city. Santo Domingo holds the nation's highest percentage of residents with a higher education degree.
Other universities include: |
synth_fc_2071_rep9 | Positive | Hotel | Order | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet | 7 | Sanitary compliance
Ultraviolet helps detect organic material deposits that remain on surfaces where periodic cleaning and sanitizing may have failed. It is used in the hotel industry, manufacturing, and other industries where levels of cleanliness or contamination are inspected.
Perennial news features for many television news organizations involve an investigative reporter using a similar device to reveal unsanitary conditions in hotels, public toilets, hand rails, and such. |
synth_fc_1056_rep1 | Positive | Finance | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Brown | 4 | Early films
Brown began his acting career before the 1964 season, playing a buffalo soldier in a Western action film called Rio Conchos. The film premiered at Cleveland's Hippodrome theater on October 23, with Brown and many of his teammates in attendance. The reaction was lukewarm. Brown, one reviewer said, was a serviceable actor, but the movie's overcooked plotting and implausibility amounted to "a vigorous melodrama for the unsqueamish."
In early 1966, Brown was shooting his second film in London. MGM 's The Dirty Dozen cast Brown as Robert Jefferson, one of 12 convicts sent to France during World War II to assassinate German officers meeting at a castle near Rennes in Brittany before the D-Day invasion. Production delays due to bad weather meant he missed at least the first part of training camp on the campus of Hiram College, which annoyed Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell, who threatened to fine Brown $1,500 (equivalent to $14,100 in 2023) for every week of camp he missed. Brown, who had previously said that 1966 would be his last season, the final year of a three-year contract, announced his retirement, instead. |
synth_fc_2334_rep18 | No function call | Law | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzodiazepine | 18 | History
The first benzodiazepine, chlordiazepoxide (Librium), was synthesized in 1955 by Leo Sternbach while working at Hoffmann–La Roche on the development of tranquilizers. The pharmacological properties of the compounds prepared initially were disappointing, and Sternbach abandoned the project. Two years later, in April 1957, co-worker Earl Reeder noticed a "nicely crystalline" compound left over from the discontinued project while spring-cleaning in the lab. This compound, later named chlordiazepoxide, had not been tested in 1955 because of Sternbach's focus on other issues. Expecting pharmacology results to be negative, and hoping to publish the chemistry-related findings, researchers submitted it for a standard battery of animal tests. The compound showed very strong sedative, anticonvulsant, and muscle relaxant effects. These impressive clinical findings led to its speedy introduction throughout the world in 1960 under the brand name Librium. Following chlordiazepoxide, diazepam marketed by Hoffmann–La Roche under the brand name Valium in 1963, and for a while the two were the most commercially successful drugs. The introduction of benzodiazepines led to a decrease in the prescription of barbiturates, and by the 1970s they had largely replaced the older drugs for sedative and hypnotic uses.
The new group of drugs was initially greeted with optimism by the medical profession, but gradually concerns arose; in particular, the risk of dependence became evident in the 1980s. Benzodiazepines have a unique history in that they were responsible for the largest-ever class-action lawsuit against drug manufacturers in the United Kingdom, involving 14,000 patients and 1,800 law firms that alleged the manufacturers knew of the dependence potential but intentionally withheld this information from doctors. At the same time, 117 general practitioners and 50 health authorities were sued by patients to recover damages for the harmful effects of dependence and withdrawal. This led some doctors to require a signed consent form from their patients and to recommend that all patients be adequately warned of the risks of dependence and withdrawal before starting treatment with benzodiazepines. The court case against the drug manufacturers never reached a verdict; legal aid had been withdrawn and there were allegations that the consultant psychiatrists, the expert witnesses, had a conflict of interest. The court case fell through, at a cost of £30 million, and led to more cautious funding through legal aid for future cases. This made future class action lawsuits less likely to succeed, due to the high cost from financing a smaller number of cases, and increasing charges for losing the case for each person involved.
Although antidepressants with anxiolytic properties have been introduced, and there is increasing awareness of the adverse effects of benzodiazepines, prescriptions for short-term anxiety relief have not significantly dropped. For treatment of insomnia, benzodiazepines are now less popular than nonbenzodiazepines, which include zolpidem, zaleplon and eszopiclone. Nonbenzodiazepines are molecularly distinct, but nonetheless, they work on the same benzodiazepine receptors and produce similar sedative effects.
Benzodiazepines have been detected in plant specimens and brain samples of animals not exposed to synthetic sources, including a human brain from the 1940s. However, it is unclear whether these compounds are biosynthesized by microbes or by plants and animals themselves. A microbial biosynthetic pathway has been proposed. |
synth_fc_2476_rep11 | Negative | Movie | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Qing | 7 | Filmography
Note: This table only lists films from the 1930s. It does not include later documentaries. |
synth_fc_3651_rep28 | Positive | Video game | Database search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi | 25 | Impasse
The game reaches an Impasse or Deadlock (持将棋 jishōgi) if both kings have advanced into their respective promotion zones – a situation known as 相入玉 (ai-nyū gyoku "double entering kings") – and neither player can hope to mate the other or to gain any further material. An Impasse can result in either a win or a draw. If an Impasse happens, the winner is decided as follows: each player agrees to an Impasse, then each rook or bishop, promoted or not, scores 5 points for the owning player, and all other pieces except kings score 1 point each. A player scoring fewer than 24 points loses. (Note that in the start position, both players have 27 points each.) If neither player has fewer than 24, the game is no contest – a draw. In professional shogi, an Impasse result is always a draw since a player that cannot obtain the 24 points will simply resign. Jishōgi is considered an outcome in its own right rather than no contest, but there is no practical difference. As an Impasse needs to be agreed on for the rule to be invoked, a player may refuse to do so and attempt to win the game in future moves. If that happens, there is no official rule about the verdict of the game.
However, in amateur shogi, there are different practices most of which force a win resolution to the Impasse in order to avoid a draw result.
The first draw by Impasse occurred in 1731 in a bishop handicap game between the seventh Lifetime Meijin, Sōkan Itō II, and his brother, Sōkei Ōhashi. |
synth_fc_362_rep5 | Positive | Book | Entity search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhvacharya | 1 | Reality is twofold: independent and dependent things. The Lord Vishnu is the only independent thing.
Madhvacharya (IAST: Madhvācārya; pronounced; 1199–1278 CE or 1238–1317 CE), also known as Purna Prajna (IAST: Pūrṇa-Prajña) and Ānanda Tīrtha, was an Indian philosopher, theologian and the chief proponent of the Dvaita (dualism) school of Vedanta. Madhva called his philosophy Tattvavāda meaning "arguments from a realist viewpoint".
Madhvacharya was born at Pajaka near Udupi on the west coast of Karnataka state in 13th-century India. As a teenager, he became a Sanyasi (monk) joining Brahma-sampradaya guru Achyutapreksha, of the Ekadandi order. Madhva studied the classics of Hindu philosophy, and wrote commentaries on the Principal Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma Sutras (Prasthanatrayi), and is credited with thirty seven works in Sanskrit. His writing style was of extreme brevity and condensed expression. His greatest work is considered to be the Anuvyakhyana, a philosophical supplement to his bhasya on the Brahma Sutras composed with a poetic structure. In some of his works, he proclaimed himself to be an avatar of Vayu, the son of god Vishnu.
Madhvacharya was a critic of Adi Shankara 's Advaita Vedanta and Ramanuja 's Vishishtadvaita Vedanta teachings. He toured India several times, visiting places such as Badrinath, Bengal, Varanasi, Dwaraka, Goa and Kanyakumari, engaging in philosophical debates and visiting Hindu centres of learning. Madhva established the Krishna Mutt at Udupi with a murti secured from Dwarka Gujarat in 1285 CE.
Madhvacharya's teachings are built on the premise that there is a fundamental difference between Atman (individual soul, self) and the Brahman (ultimate reality, God Vishnu), these are two different unchanging realities, with individual soul dependent on Brahman, never identical. His school's theistic dualism teachings disagreed with the monist teachings of the other two most influential schools of Vedanta based on Advaita's nondualism and Vishishtadvaita's qualified nondualism. Liberation, asserted Madhva, is achievable only through the grace of God. The Dvaita school founded by Madhva influenced Vaishnavism, the Bhakti movement in medieval India, and has been one of the three influential Vedānta philosophies, along with Advaita Vedanta and Vishishtadvaita Vedanta. Madhva's historical influence in Hinduism, state Kulandran and Kraemer: "has been salutary, but not extensive.“ |
synth_fc_528_rep17 | Positive | Corporate Management | Database update | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steffi_Graf | 22 | Equipment and endorsements
Early in her career, Graf wore Dunlop apparel, before signing an endorsement contract with Adidas in 1985. She had an Adidas sneakers line known as the St. Graf Pro line. Early in her career, Graf used the Dunlop Maxpower Pro and Maxpower Kevlar racquets and then played with the Max 200G racquet from 1984 to 1993 before switching to Wilson from 1994 to 1999. She first used the Wilson Pro Staff 7.0 lite, then switched to the Pro Staff 7.5 in 1996 and to the Pro Staff 7.1 in 1998. Graf's racquets were strung at 29 kilograms (64 pounds), significantly above the 50–60 pound range recommended by Wilson. In 2006, she signed an endorsement deal with Head. In 2010, Graf and Agassi collaborated with Head and developed the new line of Star Series tennis racquets.
Graf has signed many endorsement deals throughout the years including a ten-year endorsement deal with car manufacturer Opel in 1985, and Rexona from 1994 to 1998. Other companies she has endorsed include Barilla, Apollinaris, Citibank, Danone and Teekanne. She has appeared in many advertisements and television commercials with Andre Agassi including Canon Inc. and Longines in 2008 (Agassi became Longines ambassador in 2007). In 2015, she was appointed as the brand ambassador of Kerala tourism, for promoting Ayurveda in North America and Europe. |
synth_fc_3836_rep22 | Positive | Weather & Air quality | Document search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq | 33 | History
Iraq largely coincides with the ancient region of Mesopotamia, often referred to as the cradle of civilization. The history of Mesopotamia extends back to the Lower Paleolithic period, with significant developments continuing through the establishment of the Caliphate in the late 7th century AD, after which the region became known as Iraq. Within its borders lies the ancient land of Sumer, which emerged between 6000 and 5000 BC during the Neolithic Ubaid period. Sumer is recognized as the world's earliest civilization, marking the beginning of urban development, written language, and monumental architecture. Iraq's territory also includes the heartlands of the Akkadian, Neo-Sumerian, Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian, and Neo-Babylonian empires, which dominated Mesopotamia and much of the Ancient Near East during the Bronze and Iron Ages.
Iraq was a center of innovation in antiquity, producing early written languages, literary works, and significant advancements in astronomy, mathematics, law, and philosophy. This era of indigenous rule ended in 539 BC when the Neo-Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great, who declared himself the " King of Babylon." The city of Babylon, the ancient seat of Babylonian power, became one of the key capitals of the Achaemenid Empire.
In the following centuries, the regions constituting modern Iraq came under the control of several empires, including the Greeks, Parthians, and Romans, establishing new centers like Seleucia and Ctesiphon. By the 3rd century AD, the region fell under Persian control through the Sasanian Empire, during which time Arab tribes from South Arabia migrated into Lower Mesopotamia, leading to the formation of the Sassanid-aligned Lakhmid kingdom. The Arabic name al-ʿIrāq likely originated during this period. The Sasanian Empire was eventually conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate in the 7th century, bringing Iraq under Islamic rule after the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah in 636. The city of Kufa, founded shortly thereafter, became a central hub for the Rashidun dynasty until their overthrow by the Umayyads in 661.
With the rise of the Abbasid Caliphate in the mid-8th century, Iraq became the center of Islamic rule, with Baghdad, founded in 762, serving as the capital. Baghdad flourished during the Islamic Golden Age, becoming a global center for culture, science, and intellectualism. However, the city's prosperity declined following the Buwayhid and Seljuq invasions in the 10th century and suffered further with the Mongol invasion of 1258. Iraq later came under the control of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, remaining under Ottoman rule until the end of World War I, after which Mandatory Iraq was established by the British Empire. Iraq gained independence in 1932 as the Kingdom of Iraq, which became a republic in 1958. The modern era has seen Iraq facing challenges, including the rule of Saddam Hussein, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and subsequent efforts to rebuild the country amidst sectarian violence and the rise of the Islamic State.
In October 2022, Abdul Latif Rashid was elected president after winning the parliamentary election. In 2022, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, became Prime Minister. The electrical grid faces systemic pressures due to climate change, fuel shortages, and an increase in demand. Corruption remains endemic throughout Iraqi governance while the United States-endorsed sectarian political system has driven increased levels of violent terrorism and sectarian conflicts. Climate change is driving wide-scale droughts while water reserves are rapidly depleting. The country has been in a prolonged drought since 2020 and experienced its second-driest season in the past four decades in 2021. Water flows in the Tigris and Euphrates are down 30-40%. Half the country's farmland is at risk of desertification. Nearly 40% of Iraq "has been overtaken by blowing desert sands that claim tens of thousands of acres of arable land every year." |
synth_fc_2220_rep9 | Positive | Law | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lucas | 15 | George Lucas Educational Foundation
In 1991, The George Lucas Educational Foundation was founded as a nonprofit operating foundation to celebrate and encourage innovation in schools. The foundation's content is available under the brand Edutopia, in an award-winning web site, social media and via documentary films. Lucas, through his foundation, was one of the leading proponents of the E-rate program in the universal service fund, which was enacted as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. On June 24, 2008, Lucas testified before the United States House of Representatives subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet as the head of his Foundation to advocate for a free wireless broadband educational network. |
synth_fc_2787_rep7 | Positive | Physics & Chemistry | Database creation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophysics | 17 | Mineral physics
The physical properties of minerals must be understood to infer the composition of the Earth's interior from seismology, the geothermal gradient and other sources of information. Mineral physicists study the elastic properties of minerals; their high-pressure phase diagrams, melting points and equations of state at high pressure; and the rheological properties of rocks, or their ability to flow. Deformation of rocks by creep make flow possible, although over short times the rocks are brittle. The viscosity of rocks is affected by temperature and pressure, and in turn, determines the rates at which tectonic plates move.
Water is a very complex substance and its unique properties are essential for life. Its physical properties shape the hydrosphere and are an essential part of the water cycle and climate. Its thermodynamic properties determine evaporation and the thermal gradient in the atmosphere. The many types of precipitation involve a complex mixture of processes such as coalescence, supercooling and supersaturation. Some precipitated water becomes groundwater, and groundwater flow includes phenomena such as percolation, while the conductivity of water makes electrical and electromagnetic methods useful for tracking groundwater flow. Physical properties of water such as salinity have a large effect on its motion in the oceans.
The many phases of ice form the cryosphere and come in forms like ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice, freshwater ice, snow, and frozen ground (or permafrost). |
synth_fc_3578_rep7 | No function call | Travel itinerary | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tbilisi | 26 | Twin towns and sister cities
Tbilisi is twinned with: |
synth_fc_1111_rep8 | Positive | Finance | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Trudeau | 34 | Taxation
In 1969, Trudeau's first finance minister, Edgar Benson, introduced a white paper on tax reform which included tax deductions for child care and advocated shifting the tax burden from the poor to the wealthy. Measures to fulfill the latter proposal included a capital gains tax, which was severely criticized by corporate Canada and the business community (notably Israel Asper). The bill was debated in Parliament for over a year, with its more radical proposals being removed in parliamentary committee. The reforms managed to be passed through the use of closure, with the capital gains tax (that had an inclusion rate of 50 percent) coming into effect on January 1, 1972, as prescribed by the 1971 budget. Also implemented in 1972 was the child care expense deduction which allowed for a deduction of up to $500 per child. As Benson had now become a political liability, Trudeau replaced him with John Turner (who was seen as a " Business Liberal ") in 1972.
In 1973, Trudeau's government fully indexed the person income tax system (both the exemptions and the brackets) to match inflation. The indexation was made effective in 1974; during that year, inflation had jumped from six percent to double digits. The government also implemented three personal income tax cuts from 1973 to 1975. |
synth_fc_1310_rep3 | Negative | Food | Guide | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish | 29 | Economic
Throughout history, humans have used fish as a food source for dietary protein. Historically and today, most fish harvested for human consumption has come by means of catching wild fish. However, fish farming, which has been practiced since about 3,500 BCE in ancient China, is becoming increasingly important in many nations. Overall, about one-sixth of the world's protein is estimated to be provided by fish. Fishing is accordingly a large global business which provides income for millions of people. The Environmental Defense Fund has a guide on which fish are safe to eat, given the state of pollution in today's world, and which fish are obtained in a sustainable way. As of 2020, over 65 million tonnes (Mt) of marine fish and 10 Mt of freshwater fish were captured, while some 50 Mt of fish, mainly freshwater, were farmed. Of the marine species captured in 2020, anchoveta represented 4.9 Mt, Alaska pollock 3.5 Mt, skipjack tuna 2.8 Mt, and Atlantic herring and yellowfin tuna 1.6 Mt each; eight more species had catches over 1 Mt. |
synth_fc_1871_rep6 | Positive | History | Entity search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal | 5 | Origin
According to Otto Neugebauer, the origins of sexagesimal are not as simple, consistent, or singular in time as they are often portrayed. Throughout their many centuries of use, which continues today for specialized topics such as time, angles, and astronomical coordinate systems, sexagesimal notations have always contained a strong undercurrent of decimal notation, such as in how sexagesimal digits are written. Their use has also always included (and continues to include) inconsistencies in where and how various bases are to represent numbers even within a single text.
The most powerful driver for rigorous, fully self-consistent use of sexagesimal has always been its mathematical advantages for writing and calculating fractions. In ancient texts this shows up in the fact that sexagesimal is used most uniformly and consistently in mathematical tables of data. Another practical factor that helped expand the use of sexagesimal in the past even if less consistently than in mathematical tables, was its decided advantages to merchants and buyers for making everyday financial transactions easier when they involved bargaining for and dividing up larger quantities of goods. In the late 3rd millennium BC, Sumerian/Akkadian units of weight included the kakkaru (talent, approximately 30 kg) divided into 60 manû (mina), which was further subdivided into 60 šiqlu (shekel); the descendants of these units persisted for millennia, though the Greeks later coerced this relationship into the more base-10 compatible ratio of a shekel being one 50th of a mina.
Apart from mathematical tables, the inconsistencies in how numbers were represented within most texts extended all the way down to the most basic cuneiform symbols used to represent numeric quantities. For example, the cuneiform symbol for 1 was an ellipse made by applying the rounded end of the stylus at an angle to the clay, while the sexagesimal symbol for 60 was a larger oval or "big 1". But within the same texts in which these symbols were used, the number 10 was represented as a circle made by applying the round end of the style perpendicular to the clay, and a larger circle or "big 10" was used to represent 100. Such multi-base numeric quantity symbols could be mixed with each other and with abbreviations, even within a single number. The details and even the magnitudes implied (since zero was not used consistently) were idiomatic to the particular time periods, cultures, and quantities or concepts being represented. While such context-dependent representations of numeric quantities are easy to critique in retrospect, in modern times we still have dozens of regularly used examples of topic-dependent base mixing, including the recent innovation of adding decimal fractions to sexagesimal astronomical coordinates. |
synth_fc_804_rep12 | Positive | Evolution modeling | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_galaxy | 11 | Standard rulers
Some work has been done attempting to use radio galaxies as standard rulers to determine cosmological parameters. This method is fraught with difficulty because a radio galaxy's size depends on both its age and its environment. When a model of the radio source is used, though, methods based on radio galaxies can give good agreement with other cosmological observations. |
synth_fc_859_rep8 | Positive | Finance | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debit_card | 59 | Venezuela
There has been a lack of cash due to the Venezuelan economic crisis and thus the demand for and use of debit cards has increased greatly in recent years. One reason why a noticeable percentage of businesses have closed is a lack of payment terminals. The most used brands are Maestro (debit card) and Visa Electron. |
synth_fc_850_rep5 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-added_tax | 18 | Japan
VAT was implemented in Japan in 1989. Tax authorities debated VAT in the 1960s and 1970s but decided against it at the time.
The standard rate is 10%. Food, beverages, newspaper subscriptions with certain criteria and other necessities qualify for a rate of 8%. Transactions including land sales or lease, securities sales and the provision of public services are exempt. |
synth_fc_349_rep3 | Positive | Board game | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game) | 42 | Gambling games
Monopoly -themed slot machines and lotteries have been produced by WMS Gaming in conjunction with International Game Technology for land-based casinos. WagerWorks, who have the online rights to Monopoly, have created online Monopoly themed games.
London's Gamesys Group have also developed Monopoly -themed gambling games. The British quiz machine brand itbox also supports a Monopoly trivia and chance game.
There was also a live, online version of Monopoly. Six painted taxis drive around London picking up passengers. When the taxis reach their final destination, the region of London that they are in is displayed on the online board. This version takes far longer to play than board-game Monopoly, with one game lasting 24 hours. Results and position are sent to players via e-mail at the conclusion of the game. |
synth_fc_1917_rep23 | Positive | History | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Paton | 1 | Alan Stewart Paton was a South African writer and anti-apartheid activist. His works include the novels Cry, the Beloved Country (1948), Too Late the Phalarope (1953), and the short story The Waste Land. |
synth_fc_3749_rep16 | Positive | Weather & Air quality | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam | 7 | Economics
Construction of a hydroelectric plant requires a long lead time for site studies, hydrological studies, and environmental impact assessments, and are large-scale projects in comparison to carbon-based power generation. The number of sites that can be economically developed for hydroelectric production is limited; new sites tend to be far from population centers and usually require extensive power transmission lines. Hydroelectric generation can be vulnerable to major changes in the climate, including variations in rainfall, ground and surface water levels, and glacial melt, causing additional expenditure for the extra capacity to ensure sufficient power is available in low-water years.
Once completed, if it is well designed and maintained, a hydroelectric power source is usually comparatively cheap and reliable. It has no fuel and low escape risk, and as an clean energy source it is cheaper than both nuclear and wind power. It is more easily regulated to store water as needed and generate high power levels on demand compared to wind power. |
synth_fc_1551_rep19 | Positive | Geography | API setting | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas | 1 | The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed in Tordesillas, Spain, on 7 June 1494, and ratified in Setúbal, Portugal, divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Crown of Castile, along a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, off the west coast of Africa. That line of demarcation was about halfway between Cape Verde (already Portuguese) and the islands visited by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage (claimed for Castile and León), named in the treaty as Cipangu and Antillia (Cuba and Hispaniola).
The lands to the east would belong to Portugal and the lands to the west to Castile, modifying an earlier bull by Pope Alexander VI. The treaty was signed by Spain on 2 July 1494, and by Portugal on 5 September 1494. The other side of the world was divided a few decades later by the Treaty of Zaragoza, signed on 22 April 1529, which specified the antimeridian to the line of demarcation specified in the Treaty of Tordesillas. Portugal and Spain largely respected the treaties, while the indigenous peoples of the Americas did not acknowledge them.
The treaty was included by UNESCO in 2007 in its Memory of the World Programme. Originals of both treaties are kept at the General Archive of the Indies in Spain and at the Torre do Tombo National Archive in Portugal. |
synth_fc_1809_rep7 | Positive | Health | API setting | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinary_least_squares | 5 | Projection
For mathematicians, OLS is an approximate solution to an overdetermined system of linear equations Xβ ≈ y, where β is the unknown. Assuming the system cannot be solved exactly (the number of equations n is much larger than the number of unknowns p), we are looking for a solution that could provide the smallest discrepancy between the right- and left- hand sides. In other words, we are looking for the solution that satisfies
where ‖ · ‖ is the standard L norm in the n -dimensional Euclidean space R. The predicted quantity Xβ is just a certain linear combination of the vectors of regressors. Thus, the residual vector y − Xβ will have the smallest length when y is projected orthogonally onto the linear subspace spanned by the columns of X. The OLS estimator β ^ {\displaystyle {\hat {\beta }}} in this case can be interpreted as the coefficients of vector decomposition of y = Py along the basis of X.
In other words, the gradient equations at the minimum can be written as:
A geometrical interpretation of these equations is that the vector of residuals, y − X β ^ {\displaystyle \mathbf {y} -X{\hat {\boldsymbol {\beta }}}} is orthogonal to the column space of X, since the dot product (y − X β ^) ⋅ X v {\displaystyle (\mathbf {y} -\mathbf {X} {\hat {\boldsymbol {\beta }}})\cdot \mathbf {X} \mathbf {v} } is equal to zero for any conformal vector, v. This means that y − X β ^ {\displaystyle \mathbf {y} -\mathbf {X} {\boldsymbol {\hat {\beta }}}} is the shortest of all possible vectors y − X β {\displaystyle \mathbf {y} -\mathbf {X} {\boldsymbol {\beta }}}, that is, the variance of the residuals is the minimum possible. This is illustrated at the right.
Introducing γ ^ {\displaystyle {\hat {\boldsymbol {\gamma }}}} and a matrix K with the assumption that a matrix {\displaystyle } is non-singular and K X = 0 (cf. Orthogonal projections), the residual vector should satisfy the following equation:
The equation and solution of linear least squares are thus described as follows:
Another way of looking at it is to consider the regression line to be a weighted average of the lines passing through the combination of any two points in the dataset. Although this way of calculation is more computationally expensive, it provides a better intuition on OLS. |
synth_fc_1799_rep6 | Negative | Health | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_oral_contraceptive_pill | 49 | Weight
A 2016 systematic review found low quality evidence that studies of combination hormonal contraceptives showed no large difference in weight when compared with placebo or no intervention groups. The evidence was not strong enough to be certain that contraceptive methods do not cause some weight change, but no major effect was found. This review also found "that women did not stop using the pill or patch because of weight change". |
synth_fc_2533_rep26 | Positive | Museum | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borobudur | 24 | The law of karma (Karmavibhanga)
The 160 hidden panels do not form a continuous story, but each panel provides one complete illustration of cause and effect. There are depictions of blameworthy activities, from gossip to murder, with their corresponding punishments. There are also praiseworthy activities, that include charity and pilgrimage to sanctuaries, and their subsequent rewards. The pains of hell and the pleasure of heaven are also illustrated. There are scenes of daily life, complete with the full panorama of saṃsāra (the endless cycle of birth and death). The encasement base of the Borobudur temple was disassembled to reveal the hidden foot, and the reliefs were photographed by Casijan Chepas between 1890 and 1891. It is these photographs that are displayed in Borobudur Museum (Karmawibhangga Museum), located just several hundred meters north of the temple. During the restoration, the foot encasement was reinstalled, covering the Karmavibhanga reliefs. Today, only the southeast corner of the hidden foot is revealed and visible for visitors. |
synth_fc_48_rep27 | Negative | Architecture | Recommendation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_vector | 8 | In Cartesian space
In the Cartesian coordinate system, a bound vector can be represented by identifying the coordinates of its initial and terminal point. For instance, the points A = (1, 0, 0) and B = (0, 1, 0) in space determine the bound vector A B → {\displaystyle {\overrightarrow {AB}}} pointing from the point x = 1 on the x -axis to the point y = 1 on the y -axis.
In Cartesian coordinates, a free vector may be thought of in terms of a corresponding bound vector, in this sense, whose initial point has the coordinates of the origin O = (0, 0, 0). It is then determined by the coordinates of that bound vector's terminal point. Thus the free vector represented by (1, 0, 0) is a vector of unit length—pointing along the direction of the positive x -axis.
This coordinate representation of free vectors allows their algebraic features to be expressed in a convenient numerical fashion. For example, the sum of the two (free) vectors (1, 2, 3) and (−2, 0, 4) is the (free) vector (1, 2, 3) + (− 2, 0, 4) = (1 − 2, 2 + 0, 3 + 4) = (− 1, 2, 7). {\displaystyle (1,2,3)+(-2,0,4)=(1-2,2+0,3+4)=(-1,2,7)\,.} |
synth_fc_1578_rep1 | Positive | Geography | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiking | 16 | United Kingdom
Thomas West, a Scottish priest, popularized the idea of walking for pleasure in his guide to the Lake District of 1778. In the introduction he wrote that he aimed
to encourage the taste of visiting the lakes by furnishing the traveller with a Guide; and for that purpose, the writer has here collected and laid before him, all the select stations and points of view, noticed by those authors who have last made the tour of the lakes, verified by his own repeated observations.
To this end he included various 'stations' or viewpoints around the lakes, from which tourists would be encouraged to enjoy the views in terms of their aesthetic qualities. Published in 1778 the book was a major success.
Another famous early exponent of walking for pleasure was the English poet William Wordsworth. In 1790 he embarked on an extended tour of France, Switzerland, and Germany, a journey subsequently recorded in his long autobiographical poem The Prelude (1850). His famous poem Tintern Abbey was inspired by a visit to the Wye Valley made during a walking tour of Wales in 1798 with his sister Dorothy Wordsworth. Wordsworth's friend Coleridge was another keen walker and in the autumn of 1799, he and Wordsworth undertook a three-week tour of the Lake District. John Keats, who belonged to the next generation of Romantic poets began, in June 1818, a walking tour of Scotland, Ireland, and the Lake District with his friend Charles Armitage Brown.
More and more people undertook walking tours through the 19th century, of which the most famous is probably Robert Louis Stevenson 's journey through the Cévennes in France with a donkey, recorded in his Travels with a Donkey (1879). Stevenson also published in 1876 his famous essay "Walking Tours". The subgenre of travel writing produced many classics in the subsequent 20th century. An early American example of a book that describes an extended walking tour is naturalist John Muir 's A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916), a posthumously published account of a long botanizing walk, undertaken in 1867.
Due to industrialisation in England, people began to migrate to the cities where living standards were often cramped and unsanitary. They would escape the confines of the city by rambling about in the countryside. However, the land in England, particularly around the urban areas of Manchester and Sheffield, was privately owned and trespass was illegal. Rambling clubs soon sprang up in the north and began politically campaigning for the legal ' right to roam '. One of the first such clubs was 'Sunday Tramps' founded by Leslie White in 1879. The first national grouping, the Federation of Rambling Clubs, was formed in London in 1905 and was heavily patronized by the peerage.
Access to Mountains bills, that would have legislated the public's 'right to roam' across some private land, were periodically presented to Parliament from 1884 to 1932 without success. Finally, in 1932, the Rambler's Right Movement organized a mass trespass on Kinder Scout in Derbyshire. Despite attempts on the part of the police to prevent the trespass from going ahead, it was successfully achieved due to massive publicity. However, the Mountain Access Bill that was passed in 1939 was opposed by many walkers' organizations, including The Ramblers, who felt that it did not sufficiently protect their rights, and it was eventually repealed.
The effort to improve access led after World War II to the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, and in 1951 to the creation of the first national park in the UK, the Peak District National Park. The establishment of this and similar national parks helped to improve access for all outdoors enthusiasts. The Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 considerably extended the right to roam in England and Wales. |
synth_fc_2429_rep1 | Positive | Movie | Entity search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Kurosawa | 3 | Childhood and youth (1910–1935)
Kurosawa was born on March 23, 1910, in Ōimachi in the Ōmori district of Tokyo. His father Isamu (1864–1948), a member of a samurai family from Akita Prefecture, worked as the director of the Army's Physical Education Institute's lower secondary school, while his mother Shima (1870–1952) came from a merchant's family living in Osaka. Akira was the eighth and youngest child of the moderately wealthy family, with two of his siblings already grown up at the time of his birth and one deceased, leaving Kurosawa to grow up with three sisters and a brother.
In addition to promoting physical exercise, Isamu Kurosawa was open to Western traditions and considered theatre and motion pictures to have educational merit. He encouraged his children to watch films; young Akira viewed his first movies at the age of six. An important formative influence was his elementary school teacher Mr. Tachikawa, whose progressive educational practices ignited in his young pupil first a love of drawing and then an interest in education in general. During this time, Akira also studied calligraphy and Kendo swordsmanship.
Another major childhood influence was Heigo Kurosawa (1906-1933), Akira's older brother by four years. In the aftermath of the Great Kantō earthquake and the subsequent Kantō Massacre of 1923, Heigo took the thirteen-year-old Akira to view the devastation. When Akira wanted to look away from the corpses of humans and animals scattered everywhere, Heigo forbade him to do so, encouraging Akira instead to face his fears by confronting them directly. Some commentators have suggested that this incident would influence Kurosawa's later artistic career, as the director was seldom hesitant to confront unpleasant truths in his work.
Heigo was academically gifted, but soon after failing to secure a place in Tokyo's foremost high school, he began to detach himself from the rest of the family, preferring to concentrate on his interest in foreign literature. In the late 1920s, Heigo became a benshi (silent film narrator) for Tokyo theaters showing foreign films and quickly made a name for himself. Akira, who at this point planned to become a painter, moved in with him, and the two brothers became inseparable. With Heigo's guidance, Akira devoured not only films but also theater and circus performances, while exhibiting his paintings and working for the left-wing Proletarian Artists' League. However, he was never able to make a living with his art, and, as he began to perceive most of the proletarian movement as "putting unfulfilled political ideals directly onto the canvas", he lost his enthusiasm for painting.
With the increasing production of talking pictures in the early 1930s, film narrators like Heigo began to lose work, and Akira moved back in with his parents. In July 1933, Heigo died by suicide. Kurosawa has commented on the lasting sense of loss he felt at his brother's death and the chapter of Something Like an Autobiography that describes it—written nearly half a century after the event—is titled, "A Story I Don't Want to Tell". Only four months later, Kurosawa's eldest brother also died, leaving Akira, at age 23, the only one of the Kurosawa brothers still living, together with his three surviving sisters. |
synth_fc_3730_rep12 | Positive | Weather & Air quality | Database search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microclimate | 1 | A microclimate is a local set of atmospheric conditions that differ from those in the surrounding areas, often slightly but sometimes substantially. The term may refer to areas as small as a few square meters or smaller or as large as many square kilometers. Because climate is statistical, which implies spatial and temporal variation of the mean values of the describing parameters, microclimates are identified as statistically distinct conditions which occur and/or persist within a region. Microclimates can be found in most places but are most pronounced in topographically dynamic zones such as mountainous areas, islands, and coastal areas. Microclimates exist, for example, near bodies of water which may cool the local atmosphere, or in heavy urban areas where brick, concrete, and asphalt absorb the sun's energy, heat up, and re-radiate that heat to the ambient air: the resulting urban heat island (UHI) is a kind of microclimate that is additionally driven by relative paucity of vegetation. |
synth_fc_526_rep4 | No function call | Corporate Management | Database update | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wyler | 5 | 1950–1959: Established director
In 1951, Wyler produced and directed Kirk Douglas and Eleanor Parker in Detective Story, portraying a day in the lives of the various people in a detective squad. Lee Grant and Joseph Wiseman made their screen debuts in the film, which was nominated for four Academy Awards, including one for Grant. Critic Bosley Crowther lauded the film, describing it as "a brisk, absorbing film by producer-director William Wyler, with the help of a fine, responsive cast."
Carrie was released in 1952 starring Jennifer Jones in the title role and Laurence Olivier as Hurstwood. Eddie Albert played Charles Drouet. Carrie received two Academy Award nominations: Costume Design (Edith Head), and Best Art Direction (Hal Pereira, Roland Anderson, Emile Kuri). Wyler was reluctant to cast Jennifer Jones, and the filming was subsequently plagued by a variety of troubles. Jones had not revealed that she was pregnant; Wyler was mourning the death of his year-old son; Olivier had a painful leg ailment, and he developed a dislike for Jones. Hollywood was reeling under the effects of McCarthyism, and the studio was afraid to distribute a film that could be attacked as immoral. Ultimately, the ending was changed and the film was cut to make it more positive in tone.
During the immediate postwar period, Wyler directed a handful of critically acclaimed and influential films. Roman Holiday (1953) introduced Audrey Hepburn to U.S. audiences in her first starring role, winning her an Academy Award for Best Actress. Wyler said of Hepburn years later, when describing truly great actresses, "In that league there's only ever been Garbo, and the other Hepburn, and maybe Bergman. It's a rare quality, but boy, do you know when you've found it." The film was an instant hit, also winning for Best Costume Design (Edith Head), and Best Writing (Dalton Trumbo). Hepburn would eventually do three movies with Wyler, who her son said was one of the most important directors in her career.
Friendly Persuasion (1956) was awarded the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the Cannes Film Festival. And in 1959, Wyler directed Ben-Hur, which won 11 Oscars, a feat unequaled until Titanic in 1997 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003. He had also assisted in the production of the 1925 version.
Wyler and its star, Charlton Heston, both knew what the film meant for MGM, which had massive investments in its outcome, with the film's budget having gone from $7 million to $15 million, and the fact that MGM was already in dire financial straits. They were aware that if it failed at the box office, MGM might go bankrupt.
The film, like many epics, was difficult to make. When Heston was asked which scene he enjoyed doing most, he said "I didn't enjoy any of it. It was hard work." Part of the reason for that was the financial stress placed on making the film a success. With a cast of fifteen thousand extras, a leading star, and shot on 70mm film with stereophonic tracks, it was the most expensive film ever made at that time. The nine-minute chariot race, for example, took six months to film.
Ben-Hur became a great box office success. Wyler won his third Academy Award for Best Director and Charlton Heston his first and only Academy Award as its star. Heston recalled in his autobiography that at first he had doubts about playing the role. But his agent advised him otherwise: "Don't you know that actors take parts with Wyler without even reading the damn script? I'm telling you, you have to do this picture!"
Kirk Douglas had lobbied Wyler, who directed him in Detective Story in 1951, for the title role, but only after Wyler had already decided on Heston. He offered him instead the role of Messala, which Douglas rejected. Douglas then went on to star in Spartacus (1960).
Ben-Hur cost $15 million to produce but earned $47 million by the end of 1961 and $90 million worldwide. Audiences mobbed movie theaters in the months after it opened. Critic Pauline Kael praised Wyler's achievement:
I admire the artist who can make something good for the art house audience; but I also applaud the commercial heroism of a director who can steer a huge production and keep his sanity and perspective and decent human feelings beautifully intact. |
synth_fc_1265_rep11 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreadsheet | 20 | Remote spreadsheet
Whenever a reference is made to a cell or group of cells that are not located within the current physical spreadsheet file, it is considered as accessing a "remote" spreadsheet. The contents of the referenced cell may be accessed either on the first reference with a manual update or more recently in the case of web-based spreadsheets, as a near real-time value with a specified automatic refresh interval. |
synth_fc_2154_rep23 | Positive | Law | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_law | 1 | Canon law is a set of ordinances and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority for the government of a Christian organization or church and its members. It is the internal ecclesiastical law, or operational policy, governing the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, and the individual national churches within the Anglican Communion. The way that such church law is legislated, interpreted and at times adjudicated varies widely among these four bodies of churches. In all three traditions, a canon was originally a rule adopted by a church council; these canons formed the foundation of canon law. |
synth_fc_2831_rep10 | Positive | Real estate | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland | 16 | Income and poverty
The average weekly income for workplace-based employees in Scotland is £573, and £576 for residence based employees. Scotland has the third highest median gross salary in the United Kingdom at £26,007 and is higher than the overall UK average annual salary of £25,971. With an average of £14.28, Scotland has the third highest median hourly rate (excluding overtime working hours) of any of the countries of the United Kingdom, and like the annual salary, is higher than the average UK figure as a whole. The highest paid industries in Scotland tend of be in the utility electricity, gas and air conditioning sectors, with industries like tourism, accommodation and food and drink tend to be the lowest paid. The top local authority for pay by where people live is East Renfrewshire (£20.87 per hour).
The top local authority for pay based on where people work is East Ayrshire (£16.92 per hour). Scotland's cities commonly have the largest salaries in Scotland for where people work. 2021/2022 date indicates that there were 2.6 million dwellings across Scotland, with 318,369 local authority dwellings. Typical prices for a house in Scotland was £195,391 in August 2022.
Between 2016 and 2020, the Scottish Government estimated that 10% of people in Scotland were in persistent poverty following housing costs, with similar rates of persistent poverty for children (10%), working-age adults (10%) and pensioners (11%). Persistent child poverty rates had seen a relatively sharp drop, however, the accuracy of this was deemed to be questionable due to a number of various factors such as households re-entering the longitudinal sample allowing data gaps to be filled. The Scottish Government introduced the Scottish Child Payment in 2021 for low-income families with children under six years of age in an attempt to reduce child poverty rates, with families receiving a payment of roughly £1,040 per year. As of October 2023, 10% of the Scottish population were estimated to be living in poverty. |
synth_fc_1437_rep25 | Positive | Food | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham | 2 | History
The preserving of pork leg as ham has a long history, with traces of production of cured ham among the Etruscan civilization known in the 6th and 5th century BC.
Cato the Elder wrote about the "salting of hams" in his De agri cultura tome around 160 BC.
There are claims that the Chinese were the first people to mention the production of cured ham. Larousse Gastronomique claims an origin from Gaul. It was certainly well established by the Roman period, as evidenced by an import trade from Gaul mentioned by Marcus Terentius Varro in his writings.
The modern word ham is derived from the Old English ham or hom meaning the hollow or bend of the knee, from a Germanic base where it meant 'crooked'. It began to refer to the cut of pork derived from the hind leg of a pig around the 15th century.
Because of the preservation process, ham is a compound foodstuff or ingredient, being made up of the original meat, as well as the remnants of the preserving agent(s), such as salt, but it is still recognised as a food in its own right. |
synth_fc_895_rep24 | Positive | Finance | Order | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card | 34 | European Union
In comparison interchange fees in Canada average 1.78%, and 1.73% in the US.
These caps are designed to prevent excessive fees and ensure a level playing field for all financial institutions. |
synth_fc_1101_rep19 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession | 1 | In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction that occurs when there is a period of broad decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending. This may be triggered by various events, such as a financial crisis, an external trade shock, an adverse supply shock, the bursting of an economic bubble, or a large-scale anthropogenic or natural disaster. But there is no official definition of a recession, according to the IMF. In the United States, a recession is defined as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the market, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales." The European Union has adopted a similar definition. In the United Kingdom and Canada, a recession is defined as negative economic growth for two consecutive quarters. Governments usually respond to recessions by adopting expansionary macroeconomic policies, such as increasing money supply and decreasing interest rates or increasing government spending and decreasing taxation. |
synth_fc_1129_rep28 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system) | 31 | Others
In addition to lawsuits against Google directly, various proxy wars have been waged against Android indirectly by targeting manufacturers of Android devices, with the effect of discouraging manufacturers from adopting the platform by increasing the costs of bringing an Android device to market. Both Apple and Microsoft have sued several manufacturers for patent infringement, with Apple's legal action against Samsung being a particularly high-profile case. In January 2012, Microsoft said they had signed patent license agreements with eleven Android device manufacturers, whose products account for "70 percent of all Android smartphones" sold in the US and 55% of the worldwide revenue for Android devices. These include Samsung and HTC. Samsung's patent settlement with Microsoft included an agreement to allocate more resources to developing and marketing phones running Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. Microsoft has also tied its own Android software to patent licenses, requiring the bundling of Microsoft Office Mobile and Skype applications on Android devices to subsidize the licensing fees, while at the same time helping to promote its software lines.
Google has publicly expressed its frustration for the current patent landscape in the United States, accusing Apple, Oracle and Microsoft of trying to take down Android through patent litigation, rather than innovating and competing with better products and services. In August 2011, Google purchased Motorola Mobility for US$12.5 billion, which was viewed in part as a defensive measure to protect Android, since Motorola Mobility held more than 17,000 patents. In December 2011, Google bought over a thousand patents from IBM.
Turkey's competition authority investigations about the default search engine in Android, started in 2017, led to a US$17.4 million fine in September 2018 and a fine of 0.05 percent of Google's revenue per day in November 2019 when Google did not meet the requirements. In December 2019, Google stopped issuing licenses for new Android phone models sold in Turkey. |
synth_fc_129_rep21 | Positive | Biology | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance | 7 | Effect size
Effect size is a measure of a study's practical significance. A statistically significant result may have a weak effect. To gauge the research significance of their result, researchers are encouraged to always report an effect size along with p -values. An effect size measure quantifies the strength of an effect, such as the distance between two means in units of standard deviation (cf. Cohen's d), the correlation coefficient between two variables or its square, and other measures. |
synth_fc_344_rep22 | Positive | Board game | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_television | 45 | Immunity
One concept pioneered by, and unique to, reality competition shows is the idea of immunity, in which a contestant can win the right to be exempt the next time contestants are eliminated from the show. Possibly the first instance of immunity in reality TV was on Survivor, which premiered in 1997 in Sweden as Expedition Robinson, before gaining international prominence after the American edition (titled Survivor) premiered in 2000. On that show, there are complex rules around immunity: a player can achieve it by winning challenges (either as a team in the tribal phase or individually in the merged phase), or, in more recent seasons, through finding a hidden totem. They can also pass on their immunity to someone else and in the latter case, they can keep their immunity secret from other players. On most shows, immunity is quite a bit simpler: it is usually achieved by winning a task, often a relatively minor task during the first half of the episode; the announcement of immunity is made publicly and immunity is usually non-transferable. At some point in the season, immunity ceases to be available, and all contestants are susceptible to elimination. Competition shows that have featured immunity include the Apprentice, Big Brother, Biggest Loser, Top Model, Project Runway, Lego Masters, and Top Chef franchises. Immunity may come with additional power as well, such as in Big Brother where the winning contestant usually has influence over deciding who faces an elimination vote later in the week. In one Apprentice episode, a participant chose to waive his earned immunity and was immediately "fired" by Donald Trump for giving up this powerful asset. |
synth_fc_2234_rep28 | Positive | Law | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_III_of_France | 1 | Henry III was King of France from 1574 until his assassination in 1589, as well as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1573 to 1575. As the fourth son of King Henry II of France, he was not expected to inherit the French throne and thus was a good candidate for the vacant throne of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where he was elected monarch in 1573. During his brief rule, he signed the Henrician Articles into law, recognizing the szlachta's right to freely elect their monarch. Aged 22, Henry abandoned Poland–Lithuania upon inheriting the French throne when his brother, Charles IX, died without issue. France was at the time plagued by the Wars of Religion, and Henry's authority was undermined by violent political factions funded by foreign powers: the Catholic League, the Protestant Huguenots and the Malcontents. Henry III was himself a politique, arguing that a strong and centralised yet religiously tolerant monarchy would save France from collapse. After the death of Henry's younger brother Francis, Duke of Anjou, and when it became apparent that Henry would not produce an heir, the Wars of Religion developed into a succession crisis, the War of the Three Henrys. Henry III's closest heir was his distant cousin, King Henry III of Navarre, a Protestant. The Catholic League, led by Henry I, Duke of Guise, sought to exclude Protestants from the succession and championed the Catholic Charles, Cardinal of Bourbon, as Henry III's heir. Henry had the Duke of Guise murdered in 1588 and was in turn assassinated by Jacques Clément, a Catholic fanatic, in 1589. He was succeeded by the King of Navarre who, as Henry IV, assumed the throne of France as the first king of the House of Bourbon and eventually converted to Catholicism. |
synth_fc_1220_rep10 | No function call | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro_Harlem_Brundtland | 8 | Health issues
Brundtland was operated on for uterine cancer in 2002 at Oslo University Hospital, Ullevål. In 2008 it became known that during 2007 she had received two treatments at Ullevål, paid for by Norwegian public expenditures. Since she had previously notified the Norwegian authorities that she had changed residence to France, she was no longer entitled to Norwegian social security benefits. Following media attention surrounding the matter, Brundtland decided to change residence once more, back to Norway, and she also announced that she would be paying for the treatments herself. Brundtland has claimed to suffer from electrical sensitivity which causes headaches when someone uses a mobile phone near her. |
synth_fc_950_rep21 | Positive | Finance | API setting | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_(continent) | 11 | Economy
Australia is the only First World country on the Australia-New Guinea continent, although the economy of Australia is by far the largest and most dominant economy in the region and one of the largest in the world. Australia's per-capita GDP is higher than that of the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and France in terms of purchasing power parity. The Australian Securities Exchange in Sydney is the largest stock exchange in Australia and in the South Pacific. In 2012, Australia was the 12th largest national economy by nominal GDP and the 19th-largest measured by PPP-adjusted GDP. Tourism in Australia is an important component of the Australian economy. In the financial year 2014/15, tourism represented 3.0% of Australia 's GDP contributing A$47.5 billion to the national economy. In 2015, there were 7.4 million visitor arrivals. Mercer Quality of Living Survey ranks Sydney tenth in the world in terms of quality of living, making it one of the most livable cities. It is classified as an Alpha+ World City by GaWC. Melbourne also ranked highly in the world's most liveable city list, and is a leading financial centre in the Asia-Pacific region.
Papua New Guinea is rich in natural resources, which account for two-thirds of their export earnings. Though PNG is filled with resources, the lack of country's development led foreign countries to take over few sites and continued foreign demand for PNG's resources and as a result, the United States constructed an oil company and began to export in 2004 and this was the largest project in PNG's history. Papua New Guinea is classified as a developing economy by the International Monetary Fund. Strong growth in Papua New Guinea's mining and resource sector led to the country becoming the sixth fastest-growing economy in the world in 2011. |
synth_fc_3158_rep8 | Positive | Sport | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snooker | 4 | Scoring
Points in snooker are gained from potting the object balls in the correct sequence. The total number of consecutive points (excluding fouls) that a player amasses during one visit to the table is known as a "break". For example, a player could achieve a break of 15 by first potting a red followed by a black, then another red followed by a pink, before failing to pot the next red. A break of 100 points or more is referred to as a century break; these are recorded over the career of a professional player. A maximum break in snooker (often known as a "147" or a "maximum") is achieved by potting all reds with blacks, then potting all six colours in sequence, yielding 147 points. As of 15 April 2024, there have been 202 officially confirmed maximum breaks achieved in professional competition.
Penalty points are awarded to a player when their opponent commits a foul. This can occur for various reasons, such as sending the cue ball into a pocket or failing to hit the object ball. The latter is a common foul committed when a player fails to escape from a "snooker", where the previous player has left the cue ball positioned such that no legal ball can be struck directly in a straight line without being wholly or partially obstructed by an illegal ball. Fouls incur a minimum of four penalty points unless a higher-value object ball is involved in the foul, up to a maximum of seven penalty points where the black ball is concerned. When a foul is committed, the offending player's turn ends and the referee announces the penalty. All points scored in the break before the foul occurred are awarded to the striker, but no points are scored for any ball pocketed during the foul shot.
If dissatisfied with the position left after a foul, the next player may nominate the opponent who committed the foul to continue playing from where the balls have come to rest. If the referee has also called a "miss"—meaning that the offending player is deemed not to have made their best possible attempt to hit the object ball—the next player has the option of having the balls replaced to their original positions and forcing their opponent to replay the intended shot. If, after a foul, it is not possible to cleanly strike both sides of the object ball directly, the referee may call a free ball, allowing the next player to nominate any other ball in place of the object ball they might normally have played. If a player is awarded a free ball with all fifteen reds still in play, they can potentially make a break exceeding 147, with the highest possible being a 155 break, achieved by nominating the free ball as an extra red, then potting the black as the additional colour after potting the free-ball red, followed by the fifteen reds with blacks, and finally the colours. Jamie Cope was the first player to achieve a verified 155 break during a practice frame in 2005.
One game of snooker is called a "frame", and a snooker match generally consists of a predetermined number of frames. Most matches in current professional tournaments are played as the best of 7, 9, or 11 frames, with finals usually the best of 17 or 19 frames. The World Championship uses a longer format, with matches ranging from the best of 19 frames in the first round to best of 35 for the final, which is played over four sessions of play held over two days. Some early world finals had much longer matches, such as the 1947 World Snooker Championship, which was played over the best of 145 frames. |
synth_fc_2433_rep12 | Positive | Movie | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polly_Adler | 1 | Pearl "Polly" Adler was an American madam and author, best known for her work A House Is Not a Home, which was adapted into a film of the same name. In 2021, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Debby Applegate published a comprehensive account of Adler's life and times entitled Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age with Doubleday. |
synth_fc_95_rep5 | Negative | Biology | Generation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saurischia | 1 | Saurischia is one of the two basic divisions of dinosaurs, classified by their hip structure. Saurischia and Ornithischia were originally called orders by Harry Seeley in 1888 though today most paleontologists classify Saurischia as an unranked clade rather than an order. |
synth_fc_721_rep23 | Positive | DNA sequence | Database search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Venter | 1 | John Craig Venter is an American scientist. He is known for leading one of the first draft sequences of the human genome and led the first team to transfect a cell with a synthetic chromosome. Venter founded Celera Genomics, the Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). He was the co-founder of Human Longevity Inc. and Synthetic Genomics. He was listed on Time magazine's 2007 and 2008 Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. In 2010, the British magazine New Statesman listed Craig Venter at 14th in the list of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010". In 2012, Venter was honored with Dan David Prize for his contribution to genome research. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2013. He is a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival's advisory board. |
synth_fc_224_rep4 | Positive | Biomass | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism | 26 | Parasitoids
Parasitoids are insects which sooner or later kill their hosts, placing their relationship close to predation. Most parasitoids are parasitoid wasps or other hymenopterans; others include dipterans such as phorid flies. They can be divided into two groups, idiobionts and koinobionts, differing in their treatment of their hosts.
Idiobiont parasitoids sting their often-large prey on capture, either killing them outright or paralysing them immediately. The immobilised prey is then carried to a nest, sometimes alongside other prey if it is not large enough to support a parasitoid throughout its development. An egg is laid on top of the prey and the nest is then sealed. The parasitoid develops rapidly through its larval and pupal stages, feeding on the provisions left for it.
Koinobiont parasitoids, which include flies as well as wasps, lay their eggs inside young hosts, usually larvae. These are allowed to go on growing, so the host and parasitoid develop together for an extended period, ending when the parasitoids emerge as adults, leaving the prey dead, eaten from inside. Some koinobionts regulate their host's development, for example preventing it from pupating or making it moult whenever the parasitoid is ready to moult. They may do this by producing hormones that mimic the host's moulting hormones (ecdysteroids), or by regulating the host's endocrine system. |
synth_fc_2468_rep7 | Positive | Movie | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suhasini_Maniratnam | 1 | Suhasini Maniratnam is an Indian actress who primarily works in Tamil and Telugu films. She has worked as an actress in Malayalam and Kannada films. She made her debut in Nenjathai Killathe (1980). Suhasini won National Film Award for Best Actress for her performance in Sindhu Bhairavi (1985). |
synth_fc_2079_rep26 | Positive | Hotel | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dali_City | 1 | Dali City is the county-level seat of the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture in northwestern Yunnan. Dali City is administered through 12 township-level districts, two of which are also commonly referred to as Dali. Xiaguan (下关镇), formerly transliterated as Hsia-kuan, is the modern city centre and usually conflated with Dali City by virtue of being its seat. This town is the destination of most long-distance transportation heading to Dali and is sometimes referred to as Dali New Town (大理新镇) to avoid confusion. Dali Town (大理镇), formerly known as Tali, is another division of Dali City, located 10 km (6.2 mi) north of Xiaguan. This town, commonly referred to as Dali Old Town (大理古城) to distinguish it from the city seat in Xiaguan, is usually the Dali referred to in tourist publications. The old town is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Yunnan, known for its natural scenery, historical and cultural heritage, and vibrant nightlife. |
synth_fc_837_rep18 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery | 21 | United Kingdom
The principal lottery in the United Kingdom is the National Lottery, a state-franchised lottery sanctioned by the Gambling Commission (formerly the National Lottery Commission), and established in 1994. It is operated by Allwyn Entertainment Ltd, who took over from the original operator Camelot Group in 2024. 28% of National Lottery revenue, along with all unclaimed prizes, are distributed as grants to charitable causes. 12% of the revenue from the National Lottery is expected to go to the government, 5% goes to lottery retailers, 5% is retained by the operator for operating costs, and 50% remains for the total prize fund of which 5% is diverted to a Super Draw fund, leaving 45% for normal prizes.
Northern & Shell also operates a commercial lottery known as The Health Lottery, which distributes its revenue to support health-related charities and causes. To comply with the Gambling Act, which forbids other parties from operating a national lottery, The Health Lottery operates as an umbrella corporation representing a group of 51 society lotteries across the United Kingdom with a common drawing and prize pool. Each drawing is held on behalf of one or more of the society lotteries, whose revenues go to support health-related causes in their respective area. The Health Lottery received criticism on launch for only pledging to donate 20.3% of ticket costs to charity, compared to the National Lottery's 28%, and that the lottery's structure was designed to contravene British law regarding lotteries. In the UK, winning the lottery is correlated to expressing more preference for the Conservative Party. Winning larger prizes results in a larger shift in favor of the Conservative Party.
People's Postcode Lottery is a subscription lottery in the UK. The format was introduced by Dutch company Novamedia BV: players pay at minimum £10 monthly to play, and winning postcodes are announced daily. In accordance with restrictions under the Gambling Act 2005, the maximum amount which can be won by a single ticket is £500,000, or 10% of the total draw proceeds. A minimum of 33% of the ticket price from players' subscriptions supports various trusts, which in turn fund local and international charities and community projects. Some £850 million have been donated. People's Postcode Lottery has a number of celebrity ambassadors, including David Attenborough, Judi Dench, Shobna Gulati, Tim Healy, Stephen Jardine, Ellen MacArthur, Aggie MacKenzie, Carey Mulligan, John Stapleton and Emma Thompson. The lottery was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary, The Welsh Valley That Won the Lottery, about the residents of Rhymney who won in May 2022. |
synth_fc_80_rep30 | Positive | Astronomy | Database update | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_calendar | 54 | Chinese New Year
The date of the Chinese New Year accords with the patterns of the lunisolar calendar and hence is variable from year to year.
The invariant between years is that the winter solstice, Dongzhi is required to be in the eleventh month of the year This means that Chinese New Year will be on the second new moon after the previous winter solstice, unless there is a leap month 11 or 12 in the previous year.
This rule is accurate, however there are two other mostly (but not completely) accurate rules that are commonly stated:
It has been found that Chinese New Year moves back by either 10, 11, or 12 days in most years. If it falls on or before 31 January, then it moves forward in the next year by either 18, 19, or 20 days. |
synth_fc_483_rep30 | Positive | Corporate Management | Database calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch | 14 | Wristwatches
The concept of the wristwatch goes back to the production of the very earliest watches in the 16th century. In 1571 Elizabeth I of England received a wristwatch, described as an "armed watch", from Robert Dudley. The oldest surviving wristwatch (then described as a "bracelet watch") is one made in 1806 and given to Joséphine de Beauharnais. From the beginning, wristwatches were almost exclusively worn by women – men used pocket watches up until the early-20th century. In 1810, the watch-maker Abraham-Louis Breguet made a wristwatch for the Queen of Naples. The first Swiss wristwatch was made by the Swiss watch-maker Patek Philippe, in the year 1868 for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary.
Wristwatches were first worn by military men towards the end of the 19th century, having increasingly recognized the importance of synchronizing maneuvers during war without potentially revealing plans to the enemy through signaling. The Garstin Company of London patented a "Watch Wristlet" design in 1893, but probably produced similar designs from the 1880s. Officers in the British Army began using wristwatches during colonial military campaigns in the 1880s, such as during the Anglo-Burma War of 1885. During the First Boer War of 1880–1881 the importance of coordinating troop movements and synchronizing attacks against highly mobile Boer insurgents became paramount, and the use of wristwatches subsequently became widespread among the officer class. The company Mappin & Webb began production of their successful "campaign watch" for soldiers during the campaign in the Sudan in 1898 and accelerated production for the Second Boer War of 1899–1902 a few years later. In continental Europe, Girard-Perregaux and other Swiss watchmakers began supplying German naval officers with wristwatches in about 1880.
Early models were essentially standard pocket-watches fitted to a leather strap, but by the early 20th century, manufacturers began producing purpose-built wristwatches. The Swiss company Dimier Frères & Cie patented a wristwatch design with the now standard wire lugs in 1903. In 1904, Louis Cartier produced a wristwatch to allow his friend Alberto Santos-Dumont to check flight performance in his airship while keeping both hands on the controls as this proved difficult with a pocket watch. Cartier still markets a line of Santos-Dumont watches and sunglasses.
In 1905, Hans Wilsdorf moved to London and set up his own business, Wilsdorf & Davis, with his brother-in-law Alfred Davis, providing quality timepieces at affordable prices; the company became Rolex in 1915. Wilsdorf was an early convert to the wristwatch, and contracted the Swiss firm Aegler to produce a line of wristwatches.
The impact of the First World War of 1914–1918 dramatically shifted public perceptions on the propriety of the man's wristwatch and opened up a mass market in the postwar era. The creeping barrage artillery tactic, developed during the war, required precise synchronization between the artillery gunners and the infantry advancing behind the barrage. Service watches produced during the war were specially designed for the rigors of trench warfare, with luminous dials and unbreakable glass. The War Office began issuing wristwatches to combatants from 1917. By the end of the war, almost all enlisted men wore a wristwatch (or wristlet), and after they were demobilized the fashion soon caught on: the British Horological Journal wrote in 1917 that "the wristlet watch was little used by the sterner sex before the war, but now is seen on the wrist of nearly every man in uniform and of many men in civilian attire." By 1930, the wristwatch vastly exceeded the pocket watch in market share by a decisive ratio of 50:1. |
synth_fc_3694_rep21 | Positive | Visual Art | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire | 4 | Eugène Delacroix
A strong supporter of the Romantic painter Delacroix, Baudelaire called him "a poet in painting". Baudelaire also absorbed much of Delacroix's aesthetic ideas as expressed in his journals. As Baudelaire elaborated in his "Salon of 1846", "As one contemplates his series of pictures, one seems to be attending the celebration of some grievous mystery...This grave and lofty melancholy shines with a dull light.. plaintive and profound like a melody by Weber." Delacroix, though appreciative, kept his distance from Baudelaire, particularly after the scandal of Les Fleurs du mal. In private correspondence, Delacroix stated that Baudelaire "really gets on my nerves" and he expressed his unhappiness with Baudelaire's persistent comments about "melancholy" and "feverishness". |
synth_fc_1902_rep3 | Positive | History | Feature search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_earth_metal | 12 | Calcium
Lime has been used as a material for building since 7000 to 14,000 BCE, and kilns used for lime have been dated to 2,500 BCE in Khafaja, Mesopotamia. Calcium as a material has been known since at least the first century, as the ancient Romans were known to have used calcium oxide by preparing it from lime. Calcium sulfate has been known to be able to set broken bones since the tenth century. Calcium itself, however, was not isolated until 1808, when Humphry Davy, in England, used electrolysis on a mixture of lime and mercuric oxide, after hearing that Jöns Jakob Berzelius had prepared a calcium amalgam from the electrolysis of lime in mercury. |
synth_fc_1912_rep12 | Negative | History | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War | 24 | Treaty of Nanking
On 14 August a Chinese delegation led by the Manchu high court official Keying and Llipu departed Nanking for the British fleet. Negotiations lasted for several weeks as the British delegation insisted the treaty be accepted by the Daoguang Emperor. The court advised the emperor to accept the treaty, and on 21 August the Daoguang Emperor authorised his diplomats to sign the peace treaty with the British. The First Opium war officially ended on 29 August 1842 with the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. The document was signed by officials of the British and Qing empires aboard HMS Cornwallis. |
synth_fc_1577_rep5 | Positive | Geography | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Titanic | 11 | Rescue and departure
Titanic ' s survivors were rescued around 04:00 on 15 April by the RMS Carpathia, which had steamed through the night at high speed and at considerable risk, as the ship had to dodge numerous icebergs en route. Carpathia ' s lights were first spotted around 03:30, which greatly cheered the survivors, though it took several more hours for everyone to be brought aboard. The 30 or more men on collapsible B finally managed to board two other lifeboats, but one survivor died just before the transfer was made. Collapsible A was also in trouble and was now nearly awash; many of those aboard (maybe more than half) had died overnight. The remaining survivors were transferred from A into another lifeboat, leaving behind three bodies in the boat, which was left to drift away. It was recovered a month later by the White Star liner RMS Oceanic with the bodies still aboard.
Those on Carpathia were startled by the scene that greeted them as the sun rose: "fields of ice on which, like points on the landscape, rested innumerable pyramids of ice." Captain Arthur Rostron of Carpathia saw ice all around, including 20 large bergs measuring up to 200 feet (61 m) high and numerous smaller bergs, as well as ice floes and debris from Titanic. It appeared to Carpathia ' s passengers that their ship was in the middle of a vast white plain of ice, studded with icebergs appearing like hills in the distance.
As the lifeboats were brought alongside Carpathia, the survivors came aboard the ship by various means. Some were strong enough to climb up rope ladders; others were hoisted up in slings, and the children were hoisted in mail sacks. The last lifeboat to reach the ship was Lightoller's boat No. 12, with 74 people aboard a boat designed to carry 65. They were all on Carpathia by 09:00. There were some scenes of joy as families and friends were reunited, but in most cases hopes died as loved ones failed to reappear.
At 09:15, two more ships arrived – Mount Temple and Californian, which had finally learned of the disaster when her radio operator returned to duty – but by then there were no more survivors to rescue. Carpathia had been bound for Fiume, Austria-Hungary (now Rijeka, Croatia), but as she had neither the stores nor the medical facilities to cater for the survivors, Rostron ordered that a course be calculated to return to New York, where the survivors could be properly looked after. Carpathia departed the area, leaving the other ships to carry out a final, fruitless two-hour search. |
synth_fc_2749_rep27 | Negative | Physics & Chemistry | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium | 2 | Atomic clocks
Caesium-based atomic clocks use the electromagnetic transitions in the hyperfine structure of caesium-133 atoms as a reference point. The first accurate caesium clock was built by Louis Essen in 1955 at the National Physical Laboratory in the UK. Caesium clocks have improved over the past half-century and are regarded as "the most accurate realization of a unit that mankind has yet achieved." These clocks measure frequency with an error of 2 to 3 parts in 10, which corresponds to an accuracy of 2 nanoseconds per day, or one second in 1.4 million years. The latest versions are more accurate than 1 part in 10, about 1 second in 20 million years. The caesium standard is the primary standard for standards-compliant time and frequency measurements. Caesium clocks regulate the timing of cell phone networks and the Internet. |
synth_fc_314_rep6 | Positive | Board game | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahjong | 70 | Points
Points (terminology of which differs from variation to variation) are obtained by matching the winning hand with different criteria scoring different values. The points obtained may be modified into scores for each player using some (typically exponential) functions. Some criteria may be also in terms of both points and score.
In many variations the dealer receives no scoring bonus and does not maintain their turn by winning or a dead hand.
In classical mahjong all players score points. Points are given for sets and hand composition and winning bonuses, doubled and redoubled for basic patterns. Sometimes a loser may score more points than a winner. Japanese mahjong has a complex scoring system with several stages of scoring, rules and exceptions, evening out scores and bonus points at the end of a match. Korean mahjong has a simple scoring system where only winner scores without any form of doubling.
Some variations give points for concealed hands, in which case no melds are made except by winning on a discard.
In Old Hong Kong mahjong: |
synth_fc_141_rep3 | Positive | Biology | Generation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessel_function | 26 | Numerical approaches
For numerical studies about the zeros of the Bessel function, see Gil, Segura & Temme (2007), Kravanja et al. (1998) and Moler (2004). |
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