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synth_fc_3545_rep25 | No function call | Travel itinerary | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_German | 1 | Swiss German is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy bordering Switzerland. Occasionally, the Alemannic dialects spoken in other countries are grouped together with Swiss German as well, especially the dialects of Liechtenstein and Austrian Vorarlberg, which are closely associated to Switzerland's. Linguistically, Alemannic is divided into Low, High and Highest Alemannic, varieties all of which are spoken both inside and outside Switzerland. The only exception within German-speaking Switzerland is the municipality of Samnaun, where a Bavarian dialect is spoken. The reason Swiss German dialects constitute a special group is their almost unrestricted use as a spoken language in practically all situations of daily life, whereas the use of the Alemannic dialects in other countries is restricted or even endangered. The dialects that comprise Swiss German must not be confused with Swiss Standard German, the variety of Standard German used in Switzerland. Swiss Standard German is fully understandable to all speakers of Standard German, while many people in Germany – especially in the north – do not understand Swiss German. An interview with a Swiss German speaker, when shown on television in Germany, will require subtitles. Although Swiss German is the native language in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, Swiss school students are taught Swiss Standard German from the age of six. They are thus capable of understanding, writing and speaking Standard German, with varying abilities. |
synth_fc_2722_rep12 | Positive | Music | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_You_Experienced | 1 | Are You Experienced is the debut studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, released in May 1967. The album was an immediate critical and commercial success, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time. It features Jimi Hendrix's innovative approach to songwriting and electric guitar playing, which soon established a new direction in psychedelic and rock music as a whole. After struggling to earn a living on the R&B circuit as a backing guitarist, Hendrix signed a management and production contract in 1966 with former Animals bassist Chas Chandler and ex-Animals manager Michael Jeffery. Chandler brought Hendrix to London and recruited members for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, a band designed to showcase the guitarist's talents. In late October, after having been rejected by Decca Records, the Experience signed with Track, a new label formed by the Who's managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. Are You Experienced and its preceding singles were recorded over a five-month period from late October 1966 through early April 1967. The album was completed in 16 recording sessions at three London locations: De Lane Lea Studios, CBS Studios, and Olympic Studios. Released in the UK on May 12, 1967, Are You Experienced spent 33 weeks on the British charts, peaking at number two. The album was issued in the US on August 23 by Reprise Records, where it reached number five on the US Billboard Top LPs chart, remaining on the chart for 106 weeks, 76 of those in the Top 40. The album also spent 70 weeks on the US Billboard Hot R&B LPs chart, where it peaked at number 10. The US version contained some of Hendrix's best known songs, including the Experience's first three singles, which, though omitted from the British edition of the LP, were top ten hits in the UK: "Purple Haze", "Hey Joe", and "The Wind Cries Mary". Hendrix was unhappy with the cover artwork for the UK edition, and solicited photographer Karl Ferris to create a more "psychedelic" cover for the US release. In the decades since its release, Are You Experienced has continued to receive acclaim. It was voted number 63 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums in 2000. Rolling Stone ranked Are You Experienced 30th on its 2020 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2010, the magazine placed four songs from the US version of the album on their list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time": "Purple Haze" (17), "Foxy Lady" (153), "Hey Joe" (201), and "The Wind Cries Mary" (379). In 2005, the album was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Writer and archivist Reuben Jackson of the Smithsonian Institution wrote: "it's still a landmark recording because it is of the rock, R&B, blues ... musical tradition. It altered the syntax of the music ... in a way I compare to James Joyce's Ulysses." |
synth_fc_403_rep21 | No function call | Carbon footprint | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oran | 10 | Economy and infrastructure
Oran has become a major trading centre for the wider area, serving Arzew, the area's oil/gas port as well as Sonatrach, the country's biggest oil and gas company. Sonelgaz has built a new congress centre in Oran and in 2010 the 16th International Conference & Exhibition on Liquefied Natural Gas was held in the city of Oran, which attracted around 3,000 visitors and major companies from around the world.
To accommodate all visitors, new hotels are currently being constructed and floating hotels will be used in the future. With a growth in urbanization, water quality and management is being harmed in Oran; this change in water quality is affecting marine life and the state of beaches in this tourism driven city.
The city and region participates in the R20 Regions of Climate Action, with goals focused on reduced waste valorization and energy efficiency. |
synth_fc_3565_rep12 | Positive | Travel itinerary | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Oz | 10 | Theme park attractions
The Wizard of Oz has a presence at the Disney Parks and Resorts. The film had its own scene at The Great Movie Ride at Disney Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World Resort, and is also represented in miniature at Disneyland and at Disneyland Paris as part of the Storybook Land Canal Boats attraction in Fantasyland. The Great Movie Ride was shut down in 2017.
On 20 July 2022, it was announced that Warner Bros. Movie World would be adding a new precinct based on the 1939 film The Wizard Of Oz. It is to feature 2 coasters manufactured by Vekoma and will open in 2024. |
synth_fc_1975_rep30 | Positive | History | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro_Harlem_Brundtland | 6 | International career
In 1983, Brundtland was invited by then United Nations Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar to establish and chair the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), widely referred to as the Brundtland Commission. She developed the broad political concept of sustainable development in the course of extensive public hearings, that were distinguished by their inclusiveness. The commission, which published its report, Our Common Future, in April 1987, provided the momentum for the 1992 Earth Summit / UNCED, which was headed by Maurice Strong, who had been a prominent member of the commission. The Brundtland Commission also provided momentum for Agenda 21.
During her third ministry, the Norwegian government in 1993 took the initiative to sponsor secret peace talks between the Government of Israel led by Yitzchak Rabin – like Brundtland, leader of a Labour Party – and the PLO led by Yasser Arafat. This culminated with the signing of the Oslo Accords. For several years afterwards, Norway continued to have a high-profile involvement in promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace, though increasingly displaced by the United States from its role as the mediator.
After the end of her term as PM, Brundtland was then elected Director-General of the World Health Organization in May 1998. In this capacity, Brundtland adopted a far-reaching approach to public health, establishing a Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, chaired by Jeffrey Sachs, and addressing violence as a major public health issue. Brundtland spearheaded the movement, now worldwide, to achieve the abolition of cigarette smoking by education, persuasion, and increased taxation. Under her leadership, the World Health Organization was one of the first major employers to make quitting smoking a condition of employment.Under Brundtland's leadership, the World Health Organization was criticized for increased drug-company influence on the agency.
Brundtland was recognized in 2003 by Scientific American as their 'Policy Leader of the Year' for coordinating a rapid worldwide response to stem outbreaks of SARS. Brundtland was succeeded on 21 July 2003 by Jong-Wook Lee. In 1994, Brundtland was awarded the Charlemagne Prize of the city of Aachen.
In 2006 Brundtland was a member of the Panel of Eminent Persons who reviewed the work of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). In May 2007, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon named Brundtland, as well as Ricardo Lagos (the former president of Chile), and Han Seung-soo (the former foreign minister of South Korea), to serve as UN Special Envoys for Climate Change.
Brundtland's hallmark political activities have been chronicled by her husband, Arne Olav Brundtland, in his two bestsellers, Married to Gro (ISBN 82-516-1647-6) and Still married to Gro (ISBN 82-05-30726-1).
In 2007, Brundtland was working for Pepsi as a consultant.
Brundtland is a member of the Council of Women World Leaders, an international network of current and former women presidents and prime ministers whose mission is to mobilize collective action on issues of critical importance to women and equitable development.
Brundtland is also a member of the Club of Madrid, an independent organization of former leaders of democratic states, which works to strengthen democratic governance and leadership.
Brundtland is a founding member of The Elders, a group of world leaders originally convened by Nelson Mandela, Graça Machel and Desmond Tutu in order to tackle some of the world's toughest problems. Mandela announced the launch of the group on 18 July 2007 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Brundtland has been active in The Elders' work, participating in a broad range of the group's initiatives. She has travelled with Elders delegations to Cyprus, the Korean Peninsula, Ethiopia, India and the Middle East. Brundtland has also been involved in The Elders' initiative on child marriage, including the founding of Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage. She was appointed Deputy Chair of the group in 2013 and was succeeded in this role by Ban Ki-moon and Graça Machel in 2018.
Brundtland attended the Bilderberg meetings in 1982 and 1983. Her husband attended in 1991.
In 2019, Brundtland served as co-chair with the WHO Global Preparedness Monitoring Board. |
synth_fc_1255_rep24 | No function call | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh | 14 | Economy
Edinburgh has the strongest economy of any city in the United Kingdom outside London and the highest percentage of professionals in the UK with 43% of the population holding a degree-level or professional qualification. According to the Centre for International Competitiveness, it is the most competitive large city in the United Kingdom. It also has the highest gross value added per employee of any city in the UK outside London, measuring £57,594 in 2010. It was named European Best Large City of the Future for Foreign Direct Investment and Best Large City for Foreign Direct Investment Strategy in the Financial Times magazine in 2012.
As the centre of Scotland's government and legal system, the public sector plays a central role in Edinburgh's economy. Many departments of the Scottish Government are in the city, including the headquarters of the government at St Andrew's House, the official residence of the First Minister at Bute House and Scottish Government offices at Victoria Quay. Other major sectors across the city include administrative and support services, the education sector, public administration and defence, the health and social care sector, scientific and technical services, and construction and manufacturing. When the £1.3bn Edinburgh & South East Scotland City Region Deal was signed in 2018, the region's Gross Value Added (GVA) contribution to the Scottish economy was cited as £33bn, or 33% of the country's output. The City Region Deal funds a range of "Data Driven Innovation" hubs which are using data to innovate in the region, recognising the region's strengths in technology and data science, the growing importance of the data economy, and the need to tackle the digital skills gap, as a route to social and economic prosperity.
Tourism is also an important element in the city's economy. As a World Heritage Site, tourists visit historical sites such as Edinburgh Castle, the Palace of Holyroodhouse and the Old and New Towns. Their numbers are augmented in August each year during the Edinburgh Festivals, which attracts 4.4 million visitors, and generates over £100M for the local economy. In March 2010, unemployment in Edinburgh was comparatively low at 3.6%, and it remains consistently below the Scottish average of 4.5%. In 2022 Edinburgh was the second most visited city in the United Kingdom, behind London, by overseas visitors. |
synth_fc_624_rep11 | Positive | Currency | API setting | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_ruble | 1 | The ruble or rouble is the currency of the Russian Federation. The ruble is subdivided into 100 kopecks. It is used in Russia as well as in the parts of Ukraine under Russian military occupation and in Russian-occupied parts of Georgia. The ruble was the currency of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union. In 1992, the currency imagery underwent a redesign as a result of the fall of the Soviet Union. The first Russian ruble replaced the Soviet ruble in September 1993 at par. On 1 January 1998, preceding the Russian financial crisis, the ruble was redenominated with the new code "RUB" and was exchanged at the rate of 1 RUB = 1,000 RUR. |
synth_fc_1826_rep23 | Positive | History | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropatene | 3 | History
In 331 BC, during the Battle of Gaugamela between the Achaemenid ruler Darius III and Alexander the Great, Medes, Albans, Sakasens, Cadusians fought alongside the army of the Achaemenid Great King in the army of Atropates. After this war, which resulted in the victory of Alexander the Great and the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, Atropates expressed his loyalty to Alexander. In 328-327 BC, Alexander appointed him governor of Media. Following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, the Macedonian's conquests were divided amongst the diadochi at the Partition of Babylon. The former Achaemenid satrapy of Media was divided into two states: The greater (southern) part – Media Magna was assigned to Peithon, one of Alexander's bodyguards.
The smaller (northern) region, which had been the sub-satrapy of Matiene, became Media Atropatene under Atropates, the former Achaemenid governor of all Media, who had by then become father-in-law of Perdiccas, regent of Alexander's designated successor. Shortly thereafter, Atropates refused to pay allegiance to Seleucus, and made Media Atropatene an independent kingdom. In 223 BCE, Antiochus III came to power in the Seleucid Empire, one of the Hellenistic states that had emerged following the death of Alexander. Antiochus attacked Atropatene, resulting in a victory.
Consequently, the king of Atropatene, Artabazanes, accepted the ascendency of Seleucids and became dependent on it; on the other hand, interior independence was preserved. At the same time, the Roman Empire came into sight in the Mediterranean basin and was trying to spread its power in the East, and in 190 B.C., its army met and defeated the Seleucids' army in the battle of Magnesia. Parthia and Atropatene subsequently considered Rome a threat to their independence and allied themselves in the struggle against Rome.
After the battle between Rome and the Parthians in 38 BC, the Romans won and the Roman general Antony attacked Fraaspa (36 BC), one of the central cities of Atropatene. The city was surrounded by strong defenses. After a long blockade, Antony receded, losing approximately thirty-five thousand soldiers. In the face of Parthian attempts to annex Atropatene, Atropatene began to draw closer to Rome, thus, Ariobarzan II, who came to power in Atropatene in 20 BC, lived in Rome for about ten years. The dynasty Atropates founded would rule the kingdom for several centuries, first independently, then as vassals of the Arsacids (who called it 'Aturpatakan'). It was later supplanted by a line of the Arsacids.
During the late Parthian era, the empire was declining, resulting in the weakening of hold over western Iran. The Iranologist Touraj Daryaee argues that the reign of the Parthian monarch Vologases V (r. 191–208) was "the turning point in Arsacid history, in that the dynasty lost much of its prestige." The people of Atropatene (both nobility and peasantry) allied themselves with the Persian Sasanian prince Ardashir I (r. 224–242) during his wars against Vologases V's son and second successor Artabanus IV (r. 216–224). In 226, Atropatene submitted with little resistance to Ardashir I after he had defeated and killed Artabanus IV at the Battle of Hormozdgan. Ardashir I and his son and heir Shapur I (r. 240–270) are depicted in a rock relief near Salmas, possibly a testimonial to the Sasanian conquest of Atropatene. The nobility of Atropatene most likely allied themselves the Sasanians due to a desire for a strong state capable of maintaining order. The priesthood, who may have felt alienated by the easy-going Arsacids, probably also supported the Sasanian family, due to its association with Zoroastrianism. |
synth_fc_1461_rep2 | Positive | Geography | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunming | 24 | Yunnan University
Yunnan University (云南大学), located in Kunming, is one of the largest and the most prestigious universities in China and is the only university in Yunnan province which has been developed into a "National Key University". It was founded in 1922, as "University of the Eastern Land". Its name has been changed six times subsequently. The institution has 17 schools on the local campus and 3 independent schools located in other cities. It claims the largest and best law school in Yunnan province. |
synth_fc_2776_rep10 | Positive | Physics & Chemistry | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_of_a_function | 24 | Limits at infinity
Let f: S → R {\displaystyle f:S\to \mathbb {R} } be a function defined on S ⊆ R. {\displaystyle S\subseteq \mathbb {R}.} The limit of f as x approaches infinity is L, denoted
lim x → ∞ f (x) = L, {\displaystyle \lim _{x\to \infty }f(x)=L,}
means that:
(∀ ε > 0) (∃ c > 0) (∀ x ∈ S) (x > c ⟹ | f (x) − L | < ε). {\displaystyle (\forall \varepsilon >0)\,(\exists c>0)\,(\forall x\in S)\,(x>c\implies |f(x)-L|<\varepsilon).}
Similarly, the limit of f as x approaches minus infinity is L, denoted
lim x → − ∞ f (x) = L, {\displaystyle \lim _{x\to -\infty }f(x)=L,}
means that:
(∀ ε > 0) (∃ c > 0) (∀ x ∈ S) (x < − c ⟹ | f (x) − L | < ε). {\displaystyle (\forall \varepsilon >0)\,(\exists c>0)\,(\forall x\in S)\,(x<-c\implies |f(x)-L|<\varepsilon).}
For example, lim x → ∞ (− 3 sin x x + 4) = 4 {\displaystyle \lim _{x\to \infty }\left(-{\frac {3\sin x}{x}}+4\right)=4} because for every ε > 0, we can take c = 3/ ε such that for all real x, if x > c, then | f (x) − 4 | < ε.
Another example is that lim x → − ∞ e x = 0 {\displaystyle \lim _{x\to -\infty }e^{x}=0} because for every ε > 0, we can take c = max{1, −ln(ε)} such that for all real x, if x < − c, then | f (x) − 0 | < ε. |
synth_fc_2560_rep20 | Positive | Museum | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folklore | 16 | Context of material lore
For material folk artifacts, it becomes more fruitful to return to the terminology of Alan Dundes: text and context. Here the text designates the physical artifact itself, the single item made by an individual for a specific purpose. The context is then unmasked by observation and questions concerning both its production and its usage. Why was it made, how was it made, who will use it, how will they use it, where did the raw materials come from, who designed it, etc. These questions are limited only by the skill of the interviewer.
In his study of southeastern Kentucky chair makers, Michael Owen Jones describes production of a chair within the context of the life of the craftsman. For Henry Glassie in his study of Folk Housing in Middle Virginia, the investigation concerns the historical pattern he finds repeated in the dwellings of this region: the house is planted in the landscape just as the landscape completes itself with the house. The artisan in his roadside stand or shop in the nearby town wants to make and display products which appeal to customers. There is "a craftsperson's eagerness to produce 'satisfactory items' due to a close personal contact with the customer and expectations to serve the customer again." Here the role of consumer "... is the basic force responsible for the continuity and discontinuity of behavior."
In material culture the context becomes the cultural environment in which the object is made (chair), used (house), and sold (wares). None of these artisans is "anonymous" folk; they are individuals making a living with the tools and skills learned within and valued in the context of their community. |
synth_fc_383_rep24 | Positive | Carbon footprint | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor | 1 | The net capacity factor is the unitless ratio of actual electrical energy output over a given period of time to the theoretical maximum electrical energy output over that period. The theoretical maximum energy output of a given installation is defined as that due to its continuous operation at full nameplate capacity over the relevant period. The capacity factor can be calculated for any electricity producing installation, such as a fuel consuming power plant or one using renewable energy, such as wind, the sun or hydro-electric installations. The average capacity factor can also be defined for any class of such installations, and can be used to compare different types of electricity production. The actual energy output during that period and the capacity factor vary greatly depending on a range of factors. The capacity factor can never exceed the availability factor, or uptime during the period. Uptime can be reduced due to, for example, reliability issues and maintenance, scheduled or unscheduled. Other factors include the design of the installation, its location, the type of electricity production and with it either the fuel being used or, for renewable energy, the local weather conditions. Additionally, the capacity factor can be subject to regulatory constraints and market forces, potentially affecting both its fuel purchase and its electricity sale. The capacity factor is often computed over a timescale of a year, averaging out most temporal fluctuations. However, it can also be computed for a month to gain insight into seasonal fluctuations. Alternatively, it can be computed over the lifetime of the power source, both while operational and after decommissioning. A capacity factor can also be expressed and converted to full load hours. |
synth_fc_3503_rep21 | Positive | Travel itinerary | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cusco | 17 | Economy
Economic activity in Cuzco includes agriculture, especially maize and native tubers. The local industry is related to extractive activities and to food and beverage products, such as beer, carbonated waters, coffee, chocolates, among others. However, the relevant economic activity of its inhabitants is the reception of tourism, with increasingly better infrastructure and services. It is the second city in this country that has and maintains full employment. |
synth_fc_3751_rep29 | Positive | Weather & Air quality | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(fruit) | 15 | Harvest
Canopy-shaking mechanical harvesters are being used increasingly in Florida to harvest oranges. Current canopy shaker machines use a series of six-to-seven-foot-long tines to shake the tree canopy at a relatively constant stroke and frequency. Oranges are picked once they are pale orange. |
synth_fc_133_rep13 | Positive | Biology | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold | 1 | Slime mold or slime mould is an informal name given to a polyphyletic assemblage of unrelated eukaryotic organisms in the Stramenopiles, Rhizaria, Discoba, Amoebozoa and Holomycota clades. Most are microscopic; those in the Myxogastria form larger plasmodial slime molds visible to the naked eye. The slime mold life cycle includes a free-living single-celled stage and the formation of spores. Spores are often produced in macroscopic multicellular or multinucleate fruiting bodies that may be formed through aggregation or fusion; aggregation is driven by chemical signals called acrasins. Slime molds contribute to the decomposition of dead vegetation; some are parasitic.
Most slime molds are terrestrial and free-living, typically in damp shady habitats such as in or on the surface of rotting wood. Some myxogastrians and protostelians are aquatic or semi-aquatic. The phytomyxea are parasitic, living inside their plant hosts. Geographically, slime molds are cosmopolitan in distribution. A small number of species occur in regions as dry as the Atacama Desert and as cold as the Arctic; they are abundant in the tropics, especially in rainforests.
Slime molds have a variety of behaviors otherwise seen in animals with brains. Species such as Physarum polycephalum have been used to simulate traffic networks. Some species have traditionally been eaten in countries such as Ecuador. |
synth_fc_378_rep14 | Positive | Book | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Krantz | 1 | Judith Krantz was an American magazine writer, fashion editor, and novelist. Her first novel Scruples (1978) was a New York Times best-seller and was translated into 50 languages. Scruples, which describes the glamorous and affluent world of high fashion in Beverly Hills, California, helped define a new sub-genre of the romance novel - the bonkbuster or "sex-and-shopping" novel. She also became a "celebrity author" through her extensive touring and promotion. Her later books included Princess Daisy (1980), Mistral's Daughter (1982) Till We Meet Again (1988), Dazzle (1990), and Spring Collection (1996). Her autobiography, Sex and Shopping: The Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl, was published in 2000. |
synth_fc_1024_rep15 | Positive | Finance | Database search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock | 13 | Art market
In 1973, Number 11, 1952 (also known as Blue Poles) was purchased by the Australian Gough Whitlam government for the National Gallery of Australia for US$2 million (A$1.3 million at the time of payment). This was the highest price ever paid for a modern painting and the painting is now one of the most popular exhibits. The artwork contains only a fleeting reference to the real world and Blue Poles has become the flagship of autonomous art. Blue Poles was a centerpiece of the Museum of Modern Art 's 1998 retrospective in New York, the first time the painting had been shown in America since its purchase.
In November 2006, Pollock's No. 5, 1948 became the world's most expensive painting, when it was sold privately to an undisclosed buyer for the sum of US$140 million. Another artist record was established in 2004, when No. 12 (1949), a medium-sized drip painting that had been shown in the United States Pavilion at the 1950 Venice Biennale, fetched US$11.7 million at Christie's, New York. In 2012, Number 28, 1951, one of the artist's combinations of drip and brushwork in shades of silvery gray with red, yellow, and shots of blue and white, also sold at Christie's, New York, for US$20.5 million—US$23 million with fees—within its estimated range of US$20 million to US$30 million.
In 2013, Pollock's Number 19 (1948) was sold by Christie's for a reported US$58,363,750 during an auction that ultimately reached US$495 million total sales in one night, which Christie's reports as a record to date as the most expensive auction of contemporary art.
In February 2016, Bloomberg News reported that Kenneth C. Griffin had purchased Jackson Pollock's 1948 painting Number 17A for US$200 million, from David Geffen.
In 2023, an unknown Pollock painting was reportedly discovered in Bulgaria after international police agencies were able to track down a group of international art smugglers. The painting is reportedly worth up to 50 million euros. |
synth_fc_3642_rep20 | Positive | Video game | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm | 56 | Shotguns
A shotgun is a long gun that has a predominantly smoothbore barrel—meaning it lacks rifling—designed to fire a number of shot pellets in each discharge. These shot pellet sizes commonly range between 2 mm #9 birdshot and 8.4 mm #00 (double-aught) buckshot, and produce a cluster of impact points with considerably less range and accuracy, since shot spreads during flight. Shotguns are also capable of firing single solid projectiles called slugs, or specialty (often " less lethal ") munitions such as bean bags or tear gas to function as a riot gun or breaching rounds to function as a door breaching shotgun. Shotgun munitions, regardless of type, are packed into shotgun shells (cartridges designed specifically for shotguns) that are loaded into the shotgun for use; these shells are commonly loose and manually loaded one-by-one, though some shotguns accept magazines.
Shotguns share many qualities with rifles, such as both being descendants of early long guns such as the musket; both having bolt-action, lever-action, break-action, pump-action, semi-automatic, and automatic variants; and both being popular with militaries, police, and civilians for largely the same reasons. However, unlike rifles, shotguns are less favored in combat roles due to their low accuracy and limited effectiveness in modern warfare, with combat shotguns often only used for breaching or close-quarters combat and sometimes limited to underbarrel attachments such as the M26 Modular Accessory Shotgun System. Shotguns are still popular with civilians for the suitability of their shot spread in hunting, clay pigeon shooting, and home defense.
Double-barreled shotguns are break-action shotguns with two parallel barrels (horizontal side-by-side or vertical over-under), allowing two single shots that can be loaded and fired in quick succession.
Examples of shotguns include the Winchester Model 1897, Browning Auto-5, Ithaca 37, Remington Model 870, Mossberg 500, Benelli M4, Franchi SPAS-12, Atchisson AA-12, and Knight's Armament Company Masterkey. |
synth_fc_2406_rep20 | Positive | Movie | Generation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Gabin | 3 | Comeback
Gabin's career seemed headed for oblivion until the 1954 film Touchez pas au grisbi (Don't Touch the Loot), directed by Jacques Becker, earned him critical acclaim. The film was very profitable internationally. He then worked once again with Renoir in French Cancan, with María Félix and Françoise Arnoul. Gabin played Georges Simenon 's detective Jules Maigret in three films in 1958, 1959 and 1963. Over the next 20 years, he made almost 50 more films, most of them very successful commercially and critically, including many for Gafer Films, his production partnership with fellow actor Fernandel. His co-stars included such leading figures of postwar cinema as Brigitte Bardot (En cas de malheur), Alain Delon (Le Clan des Siciliens, Mélodie en sous-sol and Deux hommes dans la ville), Jean-Paul Belmondo (Un singe en hiver) and Louis de Funès (Le Tatoué). |
synth_fc_418_rep15 | Positive | Color | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireworks | 48 | Diadem
A type of chrysanthemum or peony, with a center cluster of non-moving stars, normally of a contrasting color or effect. |
synth_fc_2515_rep20 | Positive | Movie | API setting | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Bu%C3%B1uel | 8 | 1931–1937: Spain
Spain in the early 1930s was a time of political and social turbulence. Due to both a surge in anti-clerical sentiment and a longrunning desire for retribution for the corruption and malfeasance of the extreme right and their supporters in the church, Anarchists and Radical Socialists sacked monarchist headquarters in Madrid and proceeded to burn down or otherwise wreck more than a dozen churches in the capital. Similar revolutionary acts occurred in many other cities in southern and eastern Spain, in most cases with the acquiescence and occasionally with the assistance of the official Republican authorities.
Buñuel's future wife, Jeanne Rucar, recalled that during that period, "he got very excited about politics and the ideas that were everywhere in pre-Civil War Spain". In the first flush of his enthusiasm, Buñuel joined the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) in 1931, though later in life he denied becoming a Communist.
In 1932, Buñuel was invited to serve as film documentarian for the celebrated Mission Dakar-Djibouti, the first large-scale French anthropological field expedition, which, led by Marcel Griaule, unearthed some 3,500 African artifacts for the new Musée de l'Homme. Although he declined, the project piqued his interest in ethnography. After reading the academic study, Las Jurdes: étude de géographie humaine (1927) by Maurice Legendre, he decided to make a film focused on peasant life in Las Hurdes, perhaps the poorest comarca in Extremadura, one of Spain's poorest regions. The film, called Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan (1933), was financed on a budget of 20,000 pesetas donated by a working-class anarchist friend named Ramón Acín, who had won the money in a lottery. In the film, Buñuel matches scenes of deplorable social conditions with narration that resembles travelogue commentary delivered by a detached-sounding announcer, while the soundtrack thunders inappropriate music by Brahms.
"Though the material is organized with masterly skill, the very conception of 'art' here seems irrelevant. It is the most profoundly disturbing film I have ever seen."
Award-winning film director Tony Richardson on Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan
Las Hurdes was banned by the Second Spanish Republic and then by the Francoist dictatorship. It is a film which continues to perplex viewers and resists easy categorization by film historians. Las Hurdes has been called one of the first examples of mockumentary, and has been labeled a "surrealist documentary", a term defined by critic Mercè Ibarz as "A multi-layered and unnerving use of sound, the juxtaposition of narrative forms already learnt from the written press, travelogues and new pedagogic methods, as well as a subversive use of photographed and filmed documents understood as a basis for contemporary propaganda for the masses". Catherine Russell has stated that in Las Hurdes, Buñuel was able to reconcile his political philosophy with his surrealist aesthetic, with surrealism becoming "a means of awakening a marxist materialism in danger of becoming a stale orthodoxy".
After Las Hurdes in 1933, Buñuel worked in Paris in the dubbing department of Paramount Pictures, but following his marriage in 1934, he switched to Warner Brothers because they operated dubbing studios in Madrid. A friend, Ricardo Urgoiti, who owned the commercial film company Filmófono, invited Buñuel to produce films for a mass audience. He accepted the offer, viewing it as an "experiment" as he knew the film industry in Spain was still far behind the technical level of Hollywood or Paris. According to film historian Manuel Rotellar 's interviews with members of the cast and crew of the Filmófono studios, Buñuel's only condition was that his involvement with these pictures be completely anonymous, apparently for fear of damaging his reputation as a surrealist. Rotellar insists, however, "the truth is that it was Luis Buñuel who directed the Filmófono productions". José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, the titular director of two of the films created during Buñuel's years as "executive producer" at Filmófono, recounted that it was Buñuel who "explained to me every morning what he wanted...We looked at the takes together and it was Buñuel who chose the shots, and in editing, I wasn't even allowed to be present." Of the 18 films produced by Buñuel during his years at Filmófono, the four that are believed by critical consensus to have been directed by him are:
During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), Buñuel placed himself at the disposal of the Republican government. The minister for foreign affairs sent him first to Geneva (September 1936) and then to Paris for two years (1936–38), with official responsibility for cataloging Republican propaganda films. Besides the cataloguing, Buñuel took left-wing tracts to Spain, did some occasional spying, acted as a bodyguard, and supervised the making of a documentary, entitled España 1936 in France and España leal, ¡en armas! in Spain, that covered the elections, the parades, the riots, and the war. In August 1936, Federico García Lorca was shot and killed by Nationalist militia. According to his son, Juan Luis, Buñuel rarely talked about Lorca but mourned the poet's untimely death throughout his life.
Buñuel essentially functioned as the coordinator of film propaganda for the Republic, which meant that he was in a position to examine all film shot in the country and decide what sequences could be developed and distributed abroad. The Spanish Ambassador suggested that Buñuel revisit Hollywood where he could give technical advice on films being made there about the Spanish Civil War, so in 1938, he and his family traveled to the United States using funds obtained from his old patrons, the Noailles. Almost immediately upon his arrival in America, however, the war ended and the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America discontinued making films on the Spanish conflict. According to Buñuel's wife, returning to Spain was impossible since the Fascists had seized power, so Buñuel decided to stay in the U.S. indefinitely, stating that he was "immensely attracted by the American naturalness and sociability". |
synth_fc_397_rep21 | No function call | Carbon footprint | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean | 40 | Threats from human activities
Human activities affect marine life and marine habitats through many negative influences, such as marine pollution (including marine debris and microplastics) overfishing, ocean acidification and other effects of climate change on oceans. |
synth_fc_3826_rep18 | No function call | Weather & Air quality | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine | 8 | Efficiency
Conservation of mass requires that the mass of air entering and exiting a turbine must be equal. Likewise, the conservation of energy requires the energy given to the turbine from incoming wind to be equal to that of the combination of the energy in the outgoing wind and the energy converted to electrical energy. Since outgoing wind will still possess some kinetic energy, there must be a maximum proportion of the input energy that is available to be converted to electrical energy. Accordingly, Betz's law gives the maximal achievable extraction of wind power by a wind turbine, known as Betz's coefficient, as 16 ⁄ 27 (59.3%) of the rate at which the kinetic energy of the air arrives at the turbine.
The maximum theoretical power output of a wind machine is thus 16 ⁄ 27 times the rate at which kinetic energy of the air arrives at the effective disk area of the machine. If the effective area of the disk is A, and the wind velocity v, the maximum theoretical power output P is:
where ρ is the air density.
Wind-to-rotor efficiency (including rotor blade friction and drag) are among the factors affecting the final price of wind power. Further inefficiencies, such as gearbox, generator, and converter losses, reduce the power delivered by a wind turbine. To protect components from undue wear, extracted power is held constant above the rated operating speed as theoretical power increases as the cube of wind speed, further reducing theoretical efficiency. In 2001, commercial utility-connected turbines delivered 75% to 80% of the Betz limit of power extractable from the wind, at rated operating speed.
Efficiency can decrease slightly over time, one of the main reasons being dust and insect carcasses on the blades, which alter the aerodynamic profile and essentially reduce the lift to drag ratio of the airfoil. Analysis of 3128 wind turbines older than 10 years in Denmark showed that half of the turbines had no decrease, while the other half saw a production decrease of 1.2% per year.
In general, more stable and constant weather conditions (most notably wind speed) result in an average of 15% greater efficiency than that of a wind turbine in unstable weather conditions, thus allowing up to a 7% increase in wind speed under stable conditions. This is due to a faster recovery wake and greater flow entrainment that occur in conditions of higher atmospheric stability. However, wind turbine wakes have been found to recover faster under unstable atmospheric conditions as opposed to a stable environment.
Different materials have varying effects on the efficiency of wind turbines. In an Ege University experiment, three wind turbines, each with three blades with a diameter of one meter, were constructed with blades made of different materials: A glass and glass/carbon epoxy, glass/carbon, and glass/polyester. When tested, the results showed that the materials with higher overall masses had a greater friction moment and thus a lower power coefficient.
The air velocity is the major contributor to the turbine efficiency. This is the reason for the importance of choosing the right location. The wind velocity will be high near the shore because of the temperature difference between the land and the ocean. Another option is to place turbines on mountain ridges. The higher the wind turbine will be, the higher the wind velocity on average. A windbreak can also increase the wind velocity near the turbine. |
synth_fc_3697_rep9 | Positive | Visual Art | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_(photography) | 1 | A flash is a device used in photography that produces a brief burst of light at a color temperature of about 5,500 K to help illuminate a scene. A major purpose of a flash is to illuminate a dark scene. Other uses are capturing quickly moving objects or changing the quality of light. Flash refers either to the flash of light itself or to the electronic flash unit discharging the light. Most current flash units are electronic, having evolved from single-use flashbulbs and flammable powders. Modern cameras often activate flash units automatically. Flash units are commonly built directly into a camera. Some cameras allow separate flash units to be mounted via a standardized accessory mount bracket. In professional studio equipment, flashes may be large, standalone units, or studio strobes, powered by special battery packs or connected to mains power. They are either synchronized with the camera using a flash synchronization cable or radio signal, or are light-triggered, meaning that only one flash unit needs to be synchronized with the camera, and in turn triggers the other units, called slaves. |
synth_fc_2522_rep19 | Positive | Museum | Feature search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oda_Nobunaga | 22 | Portraits and statues
The most famous portrait of Oda Nobunaga is Shihon-tyakusyoku Oda Nobunaga-zō (紙本著色織田信長像, lit. ' Portrait of Oda Nobunaga in color on paper ') (Kamishimo style) by Kanō Motohide, a National Important Cultural Property, owned by Chōkō-ji in Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture. Another important cultural property is Kenpon-tyakusyoku Oda Nobunaga-zō (絹本著色織田信長像, lit. ' Portrait of Oda Nobunaga in color on silk ') (Sokutai style) in the collection of the Kobe City Museum.
There are also two other portraits, one in kamishimo and the other in sokutai, painted by Kanō Eitoku, one of the leading painters of the Azuchi–Momoyama period. A 2011 survey revealed that the kamishimo used for the memorial service had been redrawn from the original painting. The picture on the front is sober, but the first picture on the back remained in coloring is a gorgeous design with different colors on the left and right of the kosode, and an extra sword. Both ends of the mustache, which were sloppily lowered in the front painting, were raised on the reverse side, giving the face a dignified appearance. It is speculated that Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who came to power after Nobunaga's death, ordered the redrawing to make Nobunaga look weak.
The wooden statue of Lord Oda Nobunaga, owned by Sōken-in of Daitoku-ji, is a seated statue of Nobunaga wearing ceremonial clothes and a sword, approximately 115 cm tall. It is said that this is one of the two wooden statues carved out of fragrant wood (agarwood) for the first anniversary of Nobunaga's death, and the other was placed in the coffin in place of Nobunaga's body, which could not be found. The ashes of the burned wooden statue were buried in place of Nobunaga's body in the Bodaiji built at Daitoku-ji. |
synth_fc_879_rep8 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lucia | 7 | Education
Most primary and secondary schools in Saint Lucia are operated by the government. Education is free and compulsory for children aged five to fifteen. This includes seven years of primary school and three to five years of secondary school. In the last two years of secondary school, students are allowed to choose the subjects that they would like to do, in preparation for regional CSEC examinations. In 2020, public spending on education was at 3.6%.
Tertiary educational facilities on the island are normally private institutions. These include Monroe College and International American University. However, there are still a few public institutions, including the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College and the University of the West Indies. |
synth_fc_238_rep5 | No function call | Biomass | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Ocean | 26 | Water characteristics
Surface water temperatures, which vary with latitude, current systems, and season and reflect the latitudinal distribution of solar energy, range from below −2 °C (28 °F) to over 30 °C (86 °F). Maximum temperatures occur north of the equator, and minimum values are found in the polar regions. In the middle latitudes, the area of maximum temperature variations, values may vary by 7–8 °C (13–14 °F).
From October to June the surface is usually covered with sea ice in the Labrador Sea, Denmark Strait, and Baltic Sea.
The Coriolis effect circulates North Atlantic water in a clockwise direction, whereas South Atlantic water circulates counter-clockwise. The south tides in the Atlantic Ocean are semi-diurnal; that is, two high tides occur every 24 lunar hours. In latitudes above 40° North some east–west oscillation, known as the North Atlantic oscillation, occurs. |
synth_fc_551_rep10 | Positive | Corporate Management | Database search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport | 29 | Modern management
Railroad management designed complex systems that could handle far more complicated simultaneous relationships than those common in other industries at the time. Civil engineers became the senior management of railroads. The leading American innovators were the Western Railroad of Massachusetts and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the 1840s, the Erie Railroad in the 1850s, and the Pennsylvania Railroad in the 1860s. |
synth_fc_408_rep11 | Positive | Carbon footprint | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leather | 8 | Disposal
Leather biodegrades slowly—taking 25 to 40 years to decompose. However, vinyl and petrochemical-derived materials take 500 or more years to decompose. |
synth_fc_947_rep1 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknote | 3 | Advantages and disadvantages
Prior to the introduction of banknotes, precious or semiprecious metals minted into coins to certify their substance were widely used as a medium of exchange. The value that people attributed to coins was originally based upon the value of the metal unless they were token issues or had been debased. Banknotes were originally a claim for the coins held by the bank, but due to the ease with which they could be transferred and the confidence that people had in the capacity of the bank to settle the notes in coin if presented, they became a popular means of exchange in their own right. They now make up a very small proportion of the "money" that people think that they have, as demand deposit bank accounts and electronic payments have negated much of the need to carry notes and coins.
Banknotes have a natural advantage over coins in that they are lighter to carry; but they are also less durable than coins. Banknotes issued by commercial banks had counterparty risk, meaning that the bank may not be able to make payment when the note was presented. Notes issued by central banks had a theoretical risk when they were backed by gold and silver. Both banknotes and coins are subject to inflation. The durability of coins means that even if metal coins melt in a fire or are submerged under the sea for hundreds of years, they still have some value when they are recovered. Gold coins salvaged from shipwrecks retain almost all of their original appearance, but silver coins slowly corrode.
Other costs of using bearer money include:
The different advantages and disadvantages of coins and banknotes imply that there may be an ongoing role for both forms of bearer money, each being used where its advantages outweigh its disadvantages. |
synth_fc_1787_rep13 | Positive | Health | Database search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake | 24 | Bite
Snakes do not ordinarily prey on humans. Unless startled or injured, most snakes prefer to avoid contact and will not attack humans. With the exception of large constrictors, nonvenomous snakes are not a threat to humans. The bite of a nonvenomous snake is usually harmless; their teeth are not adapted for tearing or inflicting a deep puncture wound, but rather grabbing and holding. Although the possibility of infection and tissue damage is present in the bite of a nonvenomous snake, venomous snakes present far greater hazard to humans. The World Health Organization (WHO) lists snakebite under the "other neglected conditions" category.
Documented deaths resulting from snake bites are uncommon. Nonfatal bites from venomous snakes may result in the need for amputation of a limb or part thereof. Of the roughly 725 species of venomous snakes worldwide, only 250 are able to kill a human with one bite. Australia averages only one fatal snake bite per year. In India, 250,000 snakebites are recorded in a single year, with as many as 50,000 recorded initial deaths. The WHO estimates that on the order of 100,000 people die each year as a result of snake bites, and around three times as many amputations and other permanent disabilities are caused by snakebites annually.
The health of people is seriously threatened by snakebites, especially in areas where there is a great diversity of snakes and little access to medical care such as the Amazon Rainforest region in South America. Snakebite is classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as "other neglected conditions". Although there aren't many recorded snakebite deaths, the bites can cause serious complications and permanent impairments. The most successful treatment for snakebites is still antivenom, which is made from snake venom. However, access to antivenom differs greatly by location, with rural areas frequently experiencing difficulties with both cost and availability. Clinical studies, serum preparation, and venom extraction are among the intricate procedures involved in the manufacturing of antivenom. The development of alternative treatments and increased accessibility and affordability of antivenom are essential for reducing the global impact of snake bites on human populations. |
synth_fc_3342_rep1 | Positive | Store & Facility | Proximal search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemstone | 27 | Bleaching
Another treatment method that is commonly used to treat gemstones is bleaching. This method uses a chemical in order to reduce the colour of the gem. After bleaching, a combination treatment can be done by dying the gemstone once the unwanted colours are removed. Hydrogen peroxide is the most commonly used product used to alter gemstones and have notably been used to treat jade and pearls. The treatment of bleaching can also be followed by impregnation, which allows the gemstone's durability to be increased. |
synth_fc_41_rep15 | Positive | Architecture | Generation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic_function | 8 | Graph of the univariate function
Regardless of the format, the graph of a univariate quadratic function f (x) = a x 2 + b x + c {\displaystyle f(x)=ax^{2}+bx+c} is a parabola (as shown at the right). Equivalently, this is the graph of the bivariate quadratic equation y = a x 2 + b x + c {\displaystyle y=ax^{2}+bx+c}.
The coefficient a controls the degree of curvature of the graph; a larger magnitude of a gives the graph a more closed (sharply curved) appearance.
The coefficients b and a together control the location of the axis of symmetry of the parabola (also the x -coordinate of the vertex and the h parameter in the vertex form) which is at
The coefficient c controls the height of the parabola; more specifically, it is the height of the parabola where it intercepts the y -axis. |
synth_fc_2732_rep28 | Positive | Physics & Chemistry | Database update | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace_transform | 30 | Table of selected Laplace transforms
The following table provides Laplace transforms for many common functions of a single variable. For definitions and explanations, see the Explanatory Notes at the end of the table.
Because the Laplace transform is a linear operator,
Using this linearity, and various trigonometric, hyperbolic, and complex number (etc.) properties and/or identities, some Laplace transforms can be obtained from others more quickly than by using the definition directly.
The unilateral Laplace transform takes as input a function whose time domain is the non-negative reals, which is why all of the time domain functions in the table below are multiples of the Heaviside step function, u (t).
The entries of the table that involve a time delay τ are required to be causal (meaning that τ > 0). A causal system is a system where the impulse response h (t) is zero for all time t prior to t = 0. In general, the region of convergence for causal systems is not the same as that of anticausal systems. |
synth_fc_1884_rep28 | Positive | History | Ranking | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_(United_States) | 1 | The Mid-Atlantic is a region of the United States located in the overlap between the Northeastern and Southeastern states of the United States. Its exact definition differs upon source, but the region typically includes Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia with other sources including or excluding other states or areas in the Northeast and Southeast. The region has its origin in the Middle Colonies of the 18th century when its states were among the Thirteen Colonies of pre-revolutionary British America. As of the 2020 census, the region had a population of 60,783,913, representing slightly over 18% of the nation's population. The Mid-Atlantic region played an instrumental and historic role in the nation's founding and the development of the nation. Each of the seven states were members of the Thirteen Colonies that sent delegates to the Second Continental Congress, which assembled in Philadelphia and unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, and formalized the Continental Army under George Washington's command during the American Revolutionary War. Following independence, the states again gathered in Philadelphia at the Constitutional Convention, in 1788, where they ratified the United States Constitution, which remains the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in force in the world. The Mid-Atlantic region was settled during the colonial era between the early 17th century and the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War in 1783 by European Americans of primarily Dutch, German, Swedish, English, and other Western European ethnicities. Religious pluralism and freedoms existed in the original Thirteen Colonies and were particularly prevalent in Province of Pennsylvania and the geographic region that ultimately broke from Pennsylvania to form the Delaware Colony. Among the 13 colonies, the Province of Maryland was the only colony with a substantial Catholic population. Following the American Revolutionary War, the Mid-Atlantic region hosted each of the historic capitals of the United States. The nation's capital was constructed in Washington, D.C. in the late 18th century, and relocated there from Philadelphia in 1800. In the early part of the 19th century, New York and Pennsylvania overtook Virginia as the nation's two most populous states, and the Mid-Atlantic region overtook New England as the most important trading and industrial center in the nation. During this period, large numbers of German, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish, and other immigrants arrived in the region's coastal cities, including Baltimore, Newark, New York City, Philadelphia, and interior cities such as Pittsburgh, and Rochester, Albany, and Buffalo, with their skyscrapers and subways, which emerged as icons of modernity and American economic and cultural power in the 20th century. In the late 19th century, the region played a vital and historic role in the development of American culture, commerce, trade, and industry sectors. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner labeled it "typically American." The Northeast Corridor and Interstate 95 in the region link an almost contiguous urban sprawl, which includes large and small cities and their respective suburbs and forms the Northeast megalopolis, one of the world's most important concentrations of finance, media, communications, education, medicine, and technology. The Mid-Atlantic is a relatively affluent region of the nation; nearly half of the nation's 100 highest-income counties based on median household income are located in the Mid-Atlantic, and 33 of the nation's top 100 counties based on per capita income are in the region. Most of the Mid-Atlantic states rank among the 15 highest-income states in the nation by both median household income and per capita income. The region is home to eight of the top 25 ranked universities in the nation: Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, Columbia University and NYU in New York City, Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia according to U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges Ranking. |
synth_fc_3763_rep5 | Positive | Weather & Air quality | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combustion | 17 | Temperature
Assuming perfect combustion conditions, such as complete combustion under adiabatic conditions (i.e., no heat loss or gain), the adiabatic combustion temperature can be determined. The formula that yields this temperature is based on the first law of thermodynamics and takes note of the fact that the heat of combustion is used entirely for heating the fuel, the combustion air or oxygen, and the combustion product gases (commonly referred to as the flue gas).
In the case of fossil fuels burnt in air, the combustion temperature depends on all of the following:
The adiabatic combustion temperature (also known as the adiabatic flame temperature) increases for higher heating values and inlet air and fuel temperatures and for stoichiometric air ratios approaching one.
Most commonly, the adiabatic combustion temperatures for coals are around 2,200 °C (3,992 °F) (for inlet air and fuel at ambient temperatures and for λ = 1.0 {\displaystyle \lambda =1.0}), around 2,150 °C (3,902 °F) for oil and 2,000 °C (3,632 °F) for natural gas.
In industrial fired heaters, power station steam generators, and large gas-fired turbines, the more common way of expressing the usage of more than the stoichiometric combustion air is percent excess combustion air. For example, excess combustion air of 15 percent means that 15 percent more than the required stoichiometric air is being used. |
synth_fc_1447_rep26 | Positive | Geography | Database search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beirut | 29 | Prehistory
Beirut was settled over 5,000 years ago, and there is evidence that the surrounding area had already been inhabited for tens of thousands of years prior to this. Several prehistoric archaeological sites have been discovered within the urban area of Beirut, revealing flint tools from sequential periods dating from the Middle Palaeolithic and Upper Paleolithic through the Neolithic to the Bronze Age.
Beirut I (Minet el-Hosn) was listed as "the town of Beirut" (French: Beyrouth ville) by Louis Burkhalter and said to be on the beach near the Orient and Bassoul hotels on the Avenue des Français in central Beirut. The site was discovered by Lortet in 1894 and discussed by Godefroy Zumoffen in 1900. The flint industry from the site was described as Mousterian and is held by the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon.
Beirut II (Umm el-Khatib) was suggested by Burkhalter to have been south of Tarik el Jedideh, where P.E. Gigues discovered a Copper Age flint industry at around 100 metres (328 feet) above sea level. The site had been built on and destroyed by 1948.
Beirut III (Furn esh-Shebbak), listed as Plateau Tabet, was suggested to have been located on the left bank of the Beirut River. Burkhalter suggested that it was west of the Damascus road, although this determination has been criticized by Lorraine Copeland. P. E. Gigues discovered a series of Neolithic flint tools on the surface along with the remains of a structure suggested to be a hut circle. Auguste Bergy discussed polished axes that were also found at this site, which has now completely disappeared as a result of construction and urbanization of the area.
Beirut IV (Furn esh-Shebbak, river banks) was also on the left bank of the river and on either side of the road leading eastwards from the Furn esh Shebbak police station towards the river that marked the city limits. The area was covered in red sand that represented Quaternary river terraces. The site was found by Jesuit Father Dillenseger and published by fellow Jesuits Godefroy Zumoffen, Raoul Describes and Auguste Bergy. Collections from the site were made by Bergy, Describes and another Jesuit, Paul Bovier-Lapierre. Many Middle Paleolithic flint tools were found on the surface and in side gullies that drain into the river. They included around 50 varied bifaces accredited to the Acheulean period, some with a lustrous sheen, now held at the Museum of Lebanese Prehistory. Henri Fleisch also found an Emireh point amongst material from the site, which has now disappeared beneath buildings.
Beirut V (Nahr Beirut, Beirut River) was discovered by Dillenseger and said to be in an orchard of mulberry trees on the left bank of the river, near the river mouth, and to be close to the railway station and bridge to Tripoli. Levallois flints and bones and similar surface material were found amongst brecciated deposits. The area has now been built on.
Beirut VI (Patriarchate) was a site discovered while building on the property of the Lebanese Evangelical School for Girls in the Patriarchate area of Beirut. It was notable for the discovery of a finely styled Canaanean blade javelin suggested to date to the early or middle Neolithic periods of Byblos and which is held in the school library.
Beirut VII, the Rivoli Cinema and Byblos Cinema sites near the Bourj in the Rue el Arz area, are two sites discovered by Lorraine Copeland, Peter Wescombe, and Marina Hayek in 1964 and examined by Diana Kirkbride and Roger Saidah. One site was behind the parking lot of the Byblos Cinema and showed collapsed walls, pits, floors, charcoal, pottery and flints. The other, overlooking a cliff west of the Rivoli Cinema, was composed of three layers resting on limestone bedrock. Fragments of blades and broad flakes were recovered from the first layer of black soil, above which some Bronze Age pottery was recovered in a layer of grey soil. Pieces of Roman pottery and mosaics were found in the upper layer. Middle Bronze Age tombs were found in this area, and the ancient tell of Beirut is thought to be in the Bourj area. |
synth_fc_992_rep15 | Positive | Finance | API setting | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_T._Washington | 15 | Wealthy friends and benefactors
State and local governments historically underfunded black schools, although they were ostensibly providing "separate but equal" segregated facilities. White philanthropists strongly supported education financially. Washington encouraged them and directed millions of their money to projects all across the South that Washington thought best reflected his self-help philosophy. Washington associated with the richest and most powerful businessmen and politicians of the era, as well as many other educational leaders, such as William Rainey Harper, president of the University of Chicago. He was seen as a spokesperson for African Americans and became a conduit for funding educational programs.
His contacts included such diverse and well known entrepreneurs and philanthropists as Andrew Carnegie, William Howard Taft, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Huttleston Rogers, George Eastman, Julius Rosenwald, Robert Curtis Ogden, Collis Potter Huntington and William Henry Baldwin Jr. The latter donated large sums of money to agencies such as the Jeanes and Slater Funds. As a result, countless small rural schools were established through Washington's efforts, under programs that continued many years after his death. Along with rich white men, the black communities helped their communities directly by donating time, money and labor to schools to match the funds required. |
synth_fc_406_rep11 | Negative | Carbon footprint | Guide | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution | 2 | Agricultural production and food security
According to a 2012 review in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the existing academic literature, the Green Revolution "contributed to widespread poverty reduction, averted hunger for millions of people, and avoided the conversion of thousands of hectares of land into agricultural cultivation." |
synth_fc_1604_rep17 | Positive | Geography | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yunnan | 46 | Nanzhao period
Yunnan was settled by several local tribes, clans, and cultures before the 8th century. Around Lake Erhai, namely, the Dali area, there emerged six zhao: Mengzi (蒙巂), Yuexi (越析), Langqiong (浪穹), Dengdan (邆赕), Shilling (施浪), and Mengshe (蒙舍). Zhao (诏) was an indigenous non-Chinese language term meaning "king" or "kingdom." Among the six regimes Mengshe was located south of the other five; therefore given the new, larger context, it was called Nanzhao (Southern Kingdom).
By the 730s Nanzhao had succeeded in bringing the Erhai Lake–area under its authority. In 738, the western Yunnan was united by Piluoge, the fourth king of Nanzhao, who was confirmed by the imperial court of the Tang dynasty as king of Yunnan. Ruling from Dali, the thirteen kings of Nanzhao ruled over more than two centuries and played a vital role in the dynamic relationship between the Tang dynasty and the Tibetan Empire as a buffer state.
By the 750s, Nanzhao had conquered Yunnan and became a potential rival to Tang China. The following period saw several conflicts between Tang China and Nanzhao. In 750, Nanzhao attacked and captured Yaozhou, the largest Tang settlement in Yunnan. In 751, Xianyu Zhongtong (鮮于仲通), the regional commander of Jiannan (present-day Sichuan), led a Tang campaign against Nanzhao. The king of Nanzhao, Geluofeng, regarded the previous incident as a personal affair and wrote to Xianyu to seek peace. However, Xianyu Zhongtong detained the Nanzhao envoys and turned down the appeal. Confronted with Tang armies, Nanzhao immediately turned its allegiance to the Tibetan Empire. The Tubo and Nanzhao agreed to be "fraternal states"; Geluofeng was given the titles zanpuzhong ("younger brother"). The Nanzhao-Tubo alliance ensured a disastrous defeat for Xianyu's expedition, with the Tang general's army of 80,000 men being reduced to a quarter of its original size.
Tang China did not give up after one failure. In 753, another expedition was prepared, but this was also defeated by Nanzhao. In 754, the Tang organized an army of more than 100,000 troops that advanced to the Dali plain, resulting in only another slaughter. By the end of the eighth century, Tang was no longer a major threat to Nanzhao.
Nanzhao's expansion lasted for several decades. In 829, Nanzhao suddenly plundered Sichuan and entered Chengdu. When it retreated, hundreds of Sichuan people, including skilled artisans, were taken to Yunnan. In 832, the Nanzhao army captured the capital of the Pyu kingdom in modern upper Burma. Nanzhao also attacked the Khmer peoples of Zhenla. Generally speaking, Nanzhao was then the most powerful kingdom in mainland Southeast Asia, and played an extremely active role in multistate interactions.In 859, Nanzhao captured Bozhou, and this event exacerbated the Nanzhao-Tang clashes. When the Tang governor of Annam took Bozhou back in the following year, Nanzhao, with the help of native peoples, occupied Hanoi as the Tang army moved to Bozhou. When the Tang forces returned, Nanzhao troops retreated from Hanoi but attacked and plundered Yongzhou. In the winter of 862, Nanzhao, allying with local groups, led an army of over 50,000 men to invade Annam again. It is reported that the Tang forces lost over 150,000 soldiers (either killed or captured byNanzhao) in the two Annam battles. The autumn of 866 saw Tang victory in Hanoi and soon all of the Nanzhao forces were driven away. But Tang China had lost its ability to attack Nanzhao.
While Nanzhao was being defeated in Annam, it still occasionally attacked Sichuan. In 869, Shilong (世隆), the eighth king and the first empire of Nanzhao, invaded Sichuan. In 874, Nanzhao attacked Sichuan again.
In 902, Zheng Maisi, the Qingpingguan (清平官,"Prime Minister") of Nanzhao, murdered the infant king of Nanzhao, and established a new kingdom called Dachanghe. Nanzhao, a once-powerful empire, disappeared. In 928, Yang Ganzhen (楊干貞) usurped the Dachanghe king and established Zhao Shanzheng, a qingpingguan as emperor of Datianxing (大天興). In 929, Yang Qianzhen abolished Zhao Shanzheng and established himself as Emperor of Dayining (大義寧). |
synth_fc_2158_rep4 | Negative | Law | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogamy | 12 | International
Western European societies established monogamy as their marital norm. Monogamous marriage is normative and is legally enforced in most developed countries. Laws prohibiting polygyny were adopted in Japan (1880), China (1953), India (1955) and Nepal (1963). Polyandry is illegal in most countries.
The women's rights movements seek to make monogamy the only legal form of marriage. The United Nations General Assembly in 1979 adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Article 16 of which requires nations to give women and men equal rights in marriage. Polygamy is viewed as inconsistent with the Article as it gives men the right of multiple wives, but not to women. The United Nations has established the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to monitor the progress of nations implementing the convention. |
synth_fc_2556_rep26 | Positive | Museum | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_language | 24 | History
When the Romans arrived in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BC, they brought with them the Latin language, from which all Romance languages are descended. The language was spread by Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous Celtic civilizations established long before the Roman arrivals. For that reason, the language has kept a relevant substratum of much older, Atlantic European Megalithic Culture and Celtic culture, part of the Hispano-Celtic group of ancient languages. In Latin, the Portuguese language is known as lusitana or (latina) lusitanica, after the Lusitanians, a pre-Celtic tribe that lived in the territory of present-day Portugal and Spain that adopted the Latin language as Roman settlers moved in. This is also the origin of the luso- prefix, seen in terms like " Lusophone ".
Between AD 409 and AD 711, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Germanic peoples of the Migration Period. The occupiers, mainly Suebi, Visigoths and Buri who originally spoke Germanic languages, quickly adopted late Roman culture and the Vulgar Latin dialects of the peninsula and over the next 300 years totally integrated into the local populations. Some Germanic words from that period are part of the Portuguese lexicon, together with place names, surnames, and first names. With the Umayyad conquest beginning in 711, Arabic became the administrative and common language in the conquered regions, but most of the remaining Christian population continued to speak a form of Romance called Mozarabic which introduced a few hundred words from Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Berber. Like other Neo-Latin and European languages, Portuguese has adopted a significant number of loanwords from Greek, mainly in technical and scientific terminology. These borrowings occurred via Latin, and later during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Portuguese evolved from the medieval language, known today by linguists as Galician-Portuguese, Old Portuguese or Old Galician, of the northwestern medieval Kingdom of Galicia of which the County of Portugal was part.
It is in Latin administrative documents of the 9th century that written Galician-Portuguese words and phrases are first recorded. This phase is known as Proto-Portuguese, which lasted from the 9th century until the 12th-century independence of the County of Portugal from the Kingdom of León, which had by then assumed reign over Galicia.
In the first part of the Galician-Portuguese period (from the 12th to the 14th century), the language was increasingly used for documents and other written forms. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours in France. The Occitan digraphs lh and nh, used in its classical orthography, were adopted by the orthography of Portuguese, presumably by Gerald of Braga, a monk from Moissac, who became bishop of Braga in Portugal in 1047, playing a major role in modernizing written Portuguese using classical Occitan norms. Portugal became an independent kingdom in 1139, under King Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, King Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, which later moved to Coimbra) and decreed for Portuguese, then simply called the "common language", to be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.
In the second period of Old Portuguese, in the 15th and 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. By the mid-16th century, Portuguese had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities. The Portuguese expanded across South America, across Africa to the Pacific Ocean, taking their language with them.
Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people and by its association with Roman Catholic missionary efforts, which led to the formation of creole languages such as that called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.
The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans the period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek because of the Renaissance (learned words borrowed from Latin also came from Renaissance Latin, the form of Latin during that time), which greatly enriched the lexicon. Most literate Portuguese speakers were also literate in Latin; and thus they easily adopted Latin words into their writing, and eventually speech, in Portuguese.
Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet and gracious language", while the Brazilian poet Olavo Bilac described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela ("the last flower of Latium, naïve and beautiful"). Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after Luís Vaz de Camões, one of the greatest literary figures in the Portuguese language and author of the Portuguese epic poem The Lusiads.
In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese language speakers in the world. The museum is the first of its kind in the world. In 2015 the museum was partially destroyed in a fire, but restored and reopened in 2020. |
synth_fc_3101_rep3 | Positive | Sport | Ranking | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luge | 16 | Training
The sport of luge requires an athlete to balance mental and physical fitness. Physically, a luger must have strong neck, upper body, abdominal, and thigh muscles. Athletes also use wind tunnels to train. Strength training is essential to withstand the extreme G-forces of tight turns at high speeds. Since lugers have very little protection other than a visor and helmet, they must be able to endure the physical pounding administered by the track when mistakes are made. |
synth_fc_3700_rep28 | Positive | Visual Art | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Midsummer_Night%27s_Dream | 19 | The Victorian stage
In 1840, Madame Vestris at Covent Garden returned the play to the stage with a relatively full text, adding musical sequences and balletic dances. Vestris took the role of Oberon, and for the next seventy years, Oberon and Puck would always be played by women.
After the success of Madame Vestris' production, 19th-century theatre continued to stage the Dream as a spectacle, often with a cast numbering nearly one hundred. Detailed sets were created for the palace and the forest, and the fairies were portrayed as gossamer-winged ballerinas. The overture by Felix Mendelssohn was always used throughout this period. Augustin Daly 's production opened in 1895 in London and ran for 21 performances. |
synth_fc_1932_rep13 | Positive | History | Feature search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu | 42 | Modern era
In 1911, Chengdu's branch of the Railway Protection Movement helped trigger the Wuchang Uprising, which led to the Xinhai Revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty.
During World War II, the capital city of China was forced to move inland from Nanjing to Wuhan in 1937 and from Wuhan to Chengdu, then from Chengdu to Chongqing in 1938, as the Kuomintang (KMT) government under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek ultimately retreated to Sichuan to escape from the invading Japanese forces. They brought with them into Sichuan business people, workers, and academics who founded many of the industries and cultural institutions which continue to make Chengdu an important cultural and commercial production center.
Chengdu became a military center for the KMT to regroup in the War of Resistance. Chengdu was beyond the reach of the Imperial Japanese ground forces and escort fighter planes. However, the Japanese frequently flew in the then-highly advanced twin-engine long-ranged G3M "Nell" medium bombers to conduct massive aerial bombardments of both civilian and military targets in Chongqing and Chengdu. The massed formation of the G3M bombers provided heavy firepower against Chinese fighter planes assigned to the defense of Chongqing and Chengdu, which continued to cause problems for the Japanese attacks.
Slow and vulnerable obsolescent Chinese fighter aircraft burning low-grade fuel were still sufficiently dangerous in the hands of capable pilots against the Japanese schnellbomber - terror bombing raiders; on 4 November 1939 for instance, Capt. Cen Zeliu (Wade-Giles: Shen Tse-Liu) led his 17th Fighter Squadron, 5th Fighter Group of seven cannon-equipped Dewoitine D.510 fighters in a level head-on attack against an incoming coming raid of 72 IJANF G3M bombers (Capt. Cen chose this tactic knowing that the operation of the Hispano-Suiza HS.404 20mm autocannon in his D.510 is likely to fail under the g-loads of a high-deflection diving attack), with Capt. Cen pummeling the lead G3M of the IJN's 13th Kōkūtai's CO Captain Kikushi Okuda with cannon fire, sending the G3M crashing down in flames over Chengdu, along with three other G3M bombers destroyed in the Chengdu raid that day. With the death of Captain Okuda in the air battle over Chengdu, the IJN Kaigun-daisa (海軍大佐) became the highest-ranking IJN Air officer to be killed-in-action in the War of Resistance/World War II thus far.
In mid-late 1940, unknown to the Americans and European allies, the Imperial Japanese appeared in the skies over Chongqing and Chengdu with the world's most advanced fighter plane at the time: the A6M "Zero" fighter that dominated the skies over China against the increasingly obsolete Russian-made Polikarpov I-15/I-153s and I-16s that were the principal fighter planes of the Chinese Nationalist Air Force. This would later prove to be a rude awakening for the Allied forces in the Pacific War following the attack on Pearl Harbor. One of the first American ace fighter pilots of the war and original volunteer fighter pilot for the Chinese Nationalist Air Force, Major Huang Xinrui (nicknamed "Buffalo" by his comrades) died as a result of battling the Zero fighters along with his squadronmates Cen Zeliu and Lin Heng (younger brother of renowned architect Lin Huiyin) defending Chengdu on 14 March 1941.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941, the United States began setting up stations at airbases in China. In 1944, the American XX Bomber Command launched Operation Matterhorn, an ambitious plan to base B-29 Superfortresses in Chengdu and strategically bomb the Japanese Home Islands. The operating base was located in Xinjin Airport in the southwestern part of the Chengdu metropolitan area. Because the operation required a massive airlift of fuel and supplies over the Himalayas, it was not a significant military success, but it did earn Chengdu the distinction of launching the first serious retaliation against the Japanese homeland.
During the Chinese Civil War, Chengdu was the last city on the Chinese mainland to be held by the Kuomintang. President Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo directed the defense of the city from Chengdu Central Military Academy until 1949, when Communist forces took the city on 27 December. The People's Liberation Army took the city without any resistance after a deal was negotiated between the People's Liberation Army and the commander of the KMT Army guarding the city. On 10 December the remnants of the Nationalist Chinese government evacuated to Taiwan.
The Chengdu Tianfu District Great City is a sustainable planned city that will be outside of Central Chengdu, and is expected to be completely built later in the decade. The city is also planned to be self-sustaining, with every residence being a two-minute walk from a park. |
synth_fc_1470_rep4 | Positive | Geography | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw | 11 | Warsaw Mermaid
The mermaid (syrenka) is Warsaw's symbol and can be found on statues throughout the city and on the city's coat of arms. This imagery has been in use since at least the mid-14th century. The oldest existing armed seal of Warsaw is from the year 1390, consisting of a round seal bordered with the Latin inscription Sigilium Civitatis Varsoviensis (Seal of the city of Warsaw). City records as far back as 1609 document the use of a crude form of a sea monster with a female upper body and holding a sword in its claws. In 1653 the poet Zygmunt Laukowski asks the question:
Warsaw of strong walls; why was the emblem Mermaid with sharp sword, given you by the kings?
The Mermaid Statue stands in the very centre of Old Town Square, surrounded by a fountain. Due to vandalism, the original statue had been moved to the grounds of the Museum of Warsaw – the statue in the square is a copy.This is not the only mermaid in Warsaw. Another is located on the bank of the Vistula River near Świętokrzyski Bridge and another on Karowa Street.
The origin of the legendary figure is not fully known. The best-known legend, by Artur Oppman, is that long ago two of Triton 's daughters set out on a journey through the depths of the oceans and seas. One of them decided to stay on the coast of Denmark and can be seen sitting at the entrance to the port of Copenhagen. The second mermaid reached the mouth of the Vistula River and plunged into its waters. She stopped to rest on a sandy beach by the village of Warszowa, where fishermen came to admire her beauty and listen to her beautiful voice. A greedy merchant also heard her songs; he followed the fishermen and captured the mermaid.
Another legend says that a mermaid once swam to Warsaw from the Baltic Sea for the love of the Griffin, the ancient defender of the city, who was killed in a struggle against the Swedish invasions of the 17th century. The mermaid, wishing to avenge his death, took the position of defender of Warsaw, becoming the symbol of the city.
Every member of the Queen's Royal Hussars of the UK's light cavalry wears the Maid of Warsaw, the crest of the City of Warsaw, on the left sleeve of his No. 2 (Service) Dress. Members of 651 Squadron Army Air Corps of the United Kingdom also wear the Maid of Warsaw on the left sleeve of their No. 2 (Service) Dress. |
synth_fc_1907_rep24 | Positive | History | Document search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nok_culture | 16 | Settlements and architecture
In the central region of Nigeria, Nok archaeological sites are determined to be settlement sites, on the basis of archaeological evidence discovered at the surface level of the sites, and determined to be of the Nok culture, on the basis of the type of archaeological evidence discovered, specifically, Nok terracotta remnants and Nok pottery. Nok settlement sites have been found in flat plains, on hilltops, and on the slopes and summits of mountains. There appears to have been a preference for specific topographic features like elevations and gentle slopes, possibly because they provided favourable drainage during the rainy season. In a preliminary study published in 2005, Rupp et al. stated that the foundation of a wall had been carved out of the underlying granite at the settlement site of Kochio, and that a ' megalithic stone fence' had been erected around a central area in the settlement. However in a subsequent study published in 2016 the authors concluded that these were in fact misinterpreted natural geological features, and that there was no evidence for any stone architecture at Nok sites, apart from the rare exception of the circular stone foundation of a hut discovered in Puntun Dutse. The archaeological evidence indicates that Nok houses were built primarily of organic materials like wood, plant stalks, grasses, and animal hides, which decomposed without leaving visible traces in the soil. Typical Nok settlements were either hamlets or single compounds, similar in size to modern farmsteads found in the same area. There is no indication of agglomerations of people above village level, thus "no evidence that would warrant the existence of communities of a size that would be necessary to develop social stratification, which is regarded as one of the attributes of social complexity." Numerous excavations and prospections have indicated that no towns or any kind of urban environments existed in the Nok culture, and no evidence has been found for special buildings or areas occupied by high-ranking community members. The lack of substantial stratigraphies or evidence of mound formation processes further indicates that Nok sites had brief occupation episodes. In sum, the evidence indicates that Nok culture communities were small-scaled and organised in locally autonomous groups. According to Rupp et al. (2016):
"Rather than attributes of social complexity like signs of inequality, hierarchy, nucleation of settlement systems, communal and public monuments, or alternative African versions of complexity discussed in recent years, it has become apparent that the Nok Culture, no matter which concept is followed, developed complexity only in terms of ritual." |
synth_fc_3735_rep9 | Positive | Weather & Air quality | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Balkhash | 6 | Climate
The climate of the lake area is continental. The average mean temperature is about 24 °C with 30 °C (86 °F) highs in July and the average mean temperature is −14 °C in January. Average precipitation is 131 mm per year and the relative humidity is about 60%. Wind, dry climate and high summer temperatures result in high evaporation rate – 950 mm in cold and up to 1200 mm in dry years. Wind has average speed of 4.5–4.8 m/s and blows mainly southward in the western part and to the south-west in the eastern part. The wind induces waves up to 2–3.5 m in height and steady clockwise currents in the western part.
There are 110–130 sunny days per year with the average irradiance of 15.9 MJ/m per day. Water temperature at the surface of the lake varies from 0 °C in December to 28 °C in July. The average annual temperature is 10 °C in the western and 9 °C in the eastern parts of the lake. The lake freezes every year between November and early April, and the melting is delayed by some 10–15 days in the eastern part. |
synth_fc_723_rep27 | Positive | DNA sequence | Analysis | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA | 20 | In translation
Messenger RNA (mRNA) carries information about a protein sequence to the ribosomes, the protein synthesis factories in the cell. It is coded so that every three nucleotides (a codon) corresponds to one amino acid. In eukaryotic cells, once precursor mRNA (pre-mRNA) has been transcribed from DNA, it is processed to mature mRNA. This removes its introns —non-coding sections of the pre-mRNA. The mRNA is then exported from the nucleus to the cytoplasm, where it is bound to ribosomes and translated into its corresponding protein form with the help of tRNA. In prokaryotic cells, which do not have nucleus and cytoplasm compartments, mRNA can bind to ribosomes while it is being transcribed from DNA. After a certain amount of time, the message degrades into its component nucleotides with the assistance of ribonucleases.
Transfer RNA (tRNA) is a small RNA chain of about 80 nucleotides that transfers a specific amino acid to a growing polypeptide chain at the ribosomal site of protein synthesis during translation. It has sites for amino acid attachment and an anticodon region for codon recognition that binds to a specific sequence on the messenger RNA chain through hydrogen bonding.
Ribosomal RNA (rRNA) is the catalytic component of the ribosomes. The rRNA is the component of the ribosome that hosts translation. Eukaryotic ribosomes contain four different rRNA molecules: 18S, 5.8S, 28S and 5S rRNA. Three of the rRNA molecules are synthesized in the nucleolus, and one is synthesized elsewhere. In the cytoplasm, ribosomal RNA and protein combine to form a nucleoprotein called a ribosome. The ribosome binds mRNA and carries out protein synthesis. Several ribosomes may be attached to a single mRNA at any time. Nearly all the RNA found in a typical eukaryotic cell is rRNA.
Transfer-messenger RNA (tmRNA) is found in many bacteria and plastids. It tags proteins encoded by mRNAs that lack stop codons for degradation and prevents the ribosome from stalling. |
synth_fc_1261_rep19 | Positive | Finance | Database search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgt._Pepper%27s_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band | 16 | Commercial performance
Sgt. Pepper topped the Record Retailer albums chart (now the UK Albums Chart) for 23 consecutive weeks from 10 June, with a further four weeks at number one in the period through to February 1968. The record sold 250,000 copies in the UK during its first seven days on sale there. The album held the number one position on the Billboard Top LPs chart in the US for 15 weeks, from 1 July to 13 October 1967, and remained in the top 200 for 113 consecutive weeks. It also topped charts in many other countries.
With 2.5 million copies sold within three months of its release, Sgt. Pepper ' s initial commercial success exceeded that of all previous Beatles albums. In the UK, it was the best-selling album of 1967 and of the decade. According to figures published in 2009 by former Capitol executive David Kronemyer, further to estimates he gave in MuseWire magazine, the album had sold 2,360,423 copies in the US by 31 December 1967 and 3,372,581 copies by the end of the decade. |
synth_fc_1333_rep27 | Negative | Food | Recommendation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap | 4 | Ancient Middle East
It is uncertain as to who was the first to invent soap. The earliest recorded evidence of the production of soap-like materials dates back to around 2800 BC in ancient Babylon. A formula for making soap was written on a Sumerian clay tablet around 2500 BC; the soap was produced by heating a mixture of oil and wood ash, the earliest recorded chemical reaction, and used for washing woolen clothing.
The Ebers papyrus (Egypt, 1550 BC) indicates the ancient Egyptians used soap as a medicine and combined animal fats or vegetable oils with a soda ash substance called trona to create their soaps. Egyptian documents mention a similar substance was used in the preparation of wool for weaving.
In the reign of Nabonidus (556–539 BC), a recipe for soap consisted of uhulu, cypress and sesame "for washing the stones for the servant girls".
In the Southern Levant, the ashes from barilla plants, such as species of Salsola, saltwort (Seidlitzia rosmarinus) and Anabasis, were used in soap production, known as potash. Traditionally, olive oil was used instead of animal lard throughout the Levant, which was boiled in a copper cauldron for several days. As the boiling progresses, alkali ashes and smaller quantities of quicklime are added and constantly stirred. In the case of lard, it required constant stirring while kept lukewarm until it began to trace. Once it began to thicken, the brew was poured into a mold and left to cool and harden for two weeks. After hardening, it was cut into smaller cakes. Aromatic herbs were often added to the rendered soap to impart their fragrance, such as yarrow leaves, lavender, germander, etc. |
synth_fc_2615_rep27 | Positive | Music | Ranking | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selena | 2 | Artistry
Selena possessed a soprano vocal range. During her lifetime, she expressed her love and admiration for Gloria Estefan, who she credited with opening the door for female artists of hispanic descent. Selena's other major influences include Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, as well as rock bands such as AC/DC and Kiss.
In an April 1995 interview with Billboard magazine, Behar said he saw Selena as a "cross between Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston in style, feel, and vocal range". Although Selena did not write most of her songs, she incorporated R&B, Latin pop, technopop, country and western, and disco into her Tejano music repertoire. Mario Tarradell of The Dallas Morning News said that during her music career, Selena "merges Tejano's infectious cumbia rhythm with street-savvy R&B, old-school soul, dancehall reggae, sizzling salsa, and trippy, loopy funk". Selena's recordings expressed "love and pain, as well as strength and passion", according to Charles Tatum.
She also recorded independently driven, female-empowerment-themed compositions; "Si La Quieres", "¿Qué Creías?", "Ya Ves" and "Ya No", which centered around inappropriate relationships and recovery from domestic violence. Peter Watrous of The New York Times said Selena's voice "sometimes quivered", and that she "roughed it up a bit". He continued, "t its best, it had a coolness, a type of unadorned passion". Ilan Stavans called her music "cursi-melodramatic, cheesy, overemotional, not too far from Juan Gabriel and a relative of Iglesias". Richard Corliss of Time magazine said her songs "are perky, cheerful rather than soulful", and that earlier recordings, "with their tinny, Tijuana Brass charts, and keyboards that evoke calliopes are ideal for the fairground or merry-go-round". Corliss calls Selena's singing an "expert mimicry of everything from Édith Piaf's melodramatic contralto to the coloratura riffs of Mariah Carey. But the sounds are still lightly Hispanic."
Newsweek magazine called Selena's English-language recordings "a blend of urban pop and Latin warmth". According to Texas Monthly, Selena's brother modernized her music into a more "funk and hip hop" sound. Selena's use of emotive range during her musical career has been praised by critics as being her trademark. A.B. wrote increasingly cumbia-influenced songs for Ven Conmigo (1990); Ramiro Burr of Billboard said Selena and her band had "evolved a rhythmic style that demonstrated its increasing prowess for catchy cumbias such as 'Baila Esta Cumbia' and the title track". Italian essayist Gaetano Prampolini wrote that "Selena's voice projected a sonorous warmth and joyfulness" during his review of Selena's cumbia recordings. In his review of the remix album Enamorada de Ti (2012), Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote that Selena's songs were "rooted in the '90s and sound that way". |
synth_fc_3310_rep20 | Positive | Sport | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_metres | 12 | Para world records men
Updated August 2024 |
synth_fc_1041_rep4 | No function call | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan | 8 | Economy
Henan has seen rapid development in its economy over the past two decades, and its economy has expanded at an even faster rate than the national average of 10%. This rapid growth has transformed Henan from one of the poorest provinces to one that matches other central provinces.
Henan is the 5th-largest provincial economy of China, the second largest in South Central China after Guangdong, the largest in Central China and the largest among inland provinces, with a nominal GDP of 5.88 trillion RMB (US$926 billion) as of 2021, ahead of the GDP of Turkey of 815 billion. If it were a country, it would be the 18th-largest economy as well as the 14th most populous as of 2021. However, per capita GDP is low compared to other eastern and central provinces.
Henan is a semi-industrialized economy with an underdeveloped service sector. Agriculture has traditionally been a pillar of its economy, with the nation's highest wheat and sesame output and second highest rice output, earning its reputation as the breadbasket of China. Henan is also an important producer of beef, cotton, maize, pork, animal oil, and corn.
Although Henan's industry has traditionally been based on light textiles and food processing, recent developments have diversified the industry sector to metallurgy, petrol, cement, chemical industry, machinery and electronics.
Mining-related industries are a major part of Henan's economy. Henan has the second largest molybdenum reserves in the world. Coal, aluminum, alkaline metals and tungsten are also present in large amounts in western Henan. Henan houses some of the biggest limestone reserves in China estimated over 24 billion tons. Export and processing of these materials is one of the main sources of revenues.
Henan has planned its economy around the provincial capital of Zhengzhou, and it is hoped that the province may become an important transportation and manufacturing hub in the years to come.
In July 2021, extreme flooding inflicted an estimated US$12.7 billion of economic damage in Henan. |
synth_fc_2496_rep20 | Positive | Movie | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonin_Artaud | 5 | The Cenci (1935)
In 1935, Artaud staged an original adaptation of Percy Bysshe Shelley 's The Cenci at the Théâtre des Folies-Wagram in Paris. The drama was Artaud's first and only chance to stage a production following his manifestos for a Theatre of Cruelty. It had a set designed by Balthus and employed innovative sound effects—including the first theatrical use of the electronic instrument the Ondes Martenot. It was, however, a commercial failure.
While Shelley's version of The Cenci conveyed the motivations and anguish of the Cenci's daughter Beatrice with her father through monologues, Artaud's adaptation emphasized the play's cruelty and violence, in particular "its themes of incest, revenge and familial murder". Artaud was concerned with conveying the menacing nature of the Cenci's presence and the reverberations of their incest relationship though physical discordance, as if an invisible "force-field" surrounded them.
Artaud's opening stage directions demonstrate his approach. He describes the opening scene as "suggestive of extreme atmospheric turbulence, with wind-blown drapes, waves of suddenly amplified sound, and crowds of figures engaged in "furious orgy", accompanied by "a chorus of church bells", as well as the presence of numerous large mannequins.
Scholar Jane Goodall writes of The Cenci,
The predominance of action over reflection accelerates the development of events...the monologues...are cut in favor of sudden, jarring transitions...so that a spasmodic effect is created. Extreme fluctuations in pace, pitch, and tone heighten sensory awareness intensify... the here and now of performance.
Scholar Adrian Curtin has argued for the importance of the "sonic aspects of the production, which did not merely support the action but motivated it obliquely". |
synth_fc_431_rep27 | Positive | Color | Entity search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Bosch | 6 | Painting materials
Bosch painted his works mostly on oak panels using oil as a medium. Bosch's palette was rather limited and contained the usual pigments of his time. He mostly used azurite for blue skies and distant landscapes, green copper-based glazes and paints consisting of malachite or verdigris for foliage and foreground landscapes, and lead-tin-yellow, ochres and red lake (carmine or madder lake) for his figures. |
synth_fc_3563_rep16 | Positive | Travel itinerary | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown | 8 | Geography
Freetown borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Western Area Rural District. Freetown municipality is politically divided into three regions: East End, Central and West End of Freetown. The wards in the East End of Freetown (East I, East II, and East III) contain the city's largest population centre and generally the poorest part of the city. The Queen Elizabeth II Quay is located within East End.
The two central wards (Central I and Central II) make up Central Freetown, which includes Downtown Freetown and the central business district (Central II). Most of the tallest and most important national government building and foreign embassies are based in Central Freetown.
Sierra Leone's House of Parliament and the State House, the principal workplace of the president of Sierra Leone, are on Tower Hill in central Freetown. The National Stadium, the home stadium of the Sierra Leone national football team (popularly known as the Leone Stars) is in the Brookfield neighborhood.
The three westernmost wards (West I, West II, and West III) of the city constitute the West End of Freetown. These wards are relatively affluent. Most of the city's luxury hotels, a number of casinos, and Lumley Beach are in the west end of the city. The West End neighbourhood of Hill Station is home to the State Lodge, the official residence of the president of Sierra Leone. |
synth_fc_1708_rep25 | Positive | Health | Database search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diarrhea | 23 | Health effects
Diarrheal disease may have a negative impact on both physical fitness and mental development. "Early childhood malnutrition resulting from any cause reduces physical fitness and work productivity in adults," and diarrhea is a primary cause of childhood malnutrition. Further, evidence suggests that diarrheal disease has significant impacts on mental development and health; it has been shown that, even when controlling for helminth infection and early breastfeeding, children who had experienced severe diarrhea had significantly lower scores on a series of tests of intelligence.
Diarrhea can cause electrolyte imbalances, kidney impairment, dehydration, and defective immune system responses. When oral drugs are administered, the efficiency of the drug is to produce a therapeutic effect and the lack of this effect may be due to the medication travelling too quickly through the digestive system, limiting the time that it can be absorbed. Clinicians try to treat the diarrheas by reducing the dosage of medication, changing the dosing schedule, discontinuation of the drug, and rehydration. The interventions to control the diarrhea are not often effective. Diarrhea can have a profound effect on the quality of life because fecal incontinence is one of the leading factors for placing older adults in long term care facilities (nursing homes). |
synth_fc_461_rep7 | Positive | Corporate Management | Database removal | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_American | 8 | History
Scientific American was founded by inventor and publisher Rufus Porter in 1845 as a four-page weekly newspaper. The first issue of the large-format New York City newspaper was released on August 28, 1845.
Throughout its early years, much emphasis was placed on reports of what was going on at the U.S. Patent Office. It also reported on a broad range of inventions including perpetual motion machines, an 1860 device for buoying vessels by Abraham Lincoln, and the universal joint which now can be found in nearly every automobile manufactured. Current issues include a "this date in history" section, featuring excerpts from articles originally published 50, 100, and 150 years earlier. Topics include humorous incidents, wrong-headed theories, and noteworthy advances in the history of science and technology. It started as a weekly publication in August 1845 before turning into a monthly in November 1921.
Porter sold the publication to Alfred Ely Beach, son of media magnate Moses Yale Beach, and Orson Desaix Munn, a mere ten months after founding it. Editors and co-owners from the Yale family included Frederick C. Beach and his son, Stanley Yale Beach, and from the Munn family, Charles Allen Munn and his nephew, Orson Desaix Munn II. Until 1948, it remained owned by the families under Munn & Company. Under Orson Munn's grandson, Orson Desaix Munn III, it had evolved into something of a "workbench" publication, similar to the 20th-century incarnation of Popular Science.
In the years after World War II, the magazine fell into decline. In 1948, three partners who were planning on starting a new popular science magazine, to be called The Sciences, purchased the assets of the old Scientific American instead and put its name on the designs they had created for their new magazine. Thus the partners — publisher Gerard Piel, editor Dennis Flanagan, and general manager Donald H. Miller Jr. essentially created a new magazine. Miller retired in 1979, Flanagan and Piel in 1984, when Gerard Piel's son Jonathan became president and editor; circulation had grown fifteen-fold since 1948. In 1986, it was sold to the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group of Germany, which has owned it until the Springer-Nature merger. In the fall of 2008, Scientific American was put under the control of Holtzbrinck's Nature Publishing Group division.
Donald Miller died in December 1998, Gerard Piel in September 2004 and Dennis Flanagan in January 2005. Mariette DiChristina became editor-in-chief after John Rennie stepped down in June 2009, and stepped down herself in September 2019. In April 2020, Laura Helmuth assumed the role of editor-in-chief.
The magazine is the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States.
In 2009 the publisher notified collegiate libraries that yearly subscription prices for the magazine would increase by nearly 500% for print and 50% for online access to $1,500 yearly.
In 2013, Danielle N. Lee, a female scientist who blogged at Scientific American, was called a "whore" in an email by an editor at the science website Biology Online after refusing to write professional content without compensation. When Lee, outraged about the email, wrote a rebuttal on her Scientific American blog, the editor-in-chief of Scientific American, Mariette DiChristina, removed the post. DiChristina cited legal reasons for removing the blog. The editor at Biology Online was fired after the incident.
The controversy widened in the ensuing days. The magazine's blog editor, Bora Zivkovic, was the subject of allegations of sexual harassment by another blogger, Monica Byrne. Although the alleged incident had occurred about a year earlier, editor Mariette DiChristina informed readers that the incident had been investigated and resolved to Byrne's satisfaction. However, the incident involving Lee had prompted Byrne to reveal the identity of Zivkovic, following the latter's support of Lee. Zivkovic admitted the incident with Byrne had taken place. He apologized to Byrne, and referred to the incident as "singular", stating that his behavior was not "engaged in before or since".
Zivkovic resigned from the board of Science Online, the popular science blogging conference that he co-founded with Anton Zuiker. Following Zivkovic's admission, several female bloggers, including other bloggers for the magazine, wrote their own accounts, alleging additional incidents of sexual harassment, although none of these accounts were independently investigated. A day after these new revelations, Zivkovic resigned from his position at Scientific American.
Offices of the Scientific American have included 37 Park Row in Manhattan and the Woolworth Building in 1915 when it was just finished two years earlier in 1913. The Woolworth Building was at the time one of the first skyscrapers in the city and the tallest one in the world. |
synth_fc_3514_rep23 | Positive | Travel itinerary | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alboran_Sea | 1 | The Alboran Sea is the westernmost portion of the Mediterranean Sea, lying between the Iberian Peninsula and the north of Africa. The Strait of Gibraltar, which lies at the west end of the Alboran Sea, connects the Mediterranean with the Atlantic Ocean. |
synth_fc_677_rep25 | Positive | Currency | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro | 29 | Exchange rate risk
One of the advantages of the adoption of a common currency is the reduction of the risk associated with changes in currency exchange rates. It has been found that the introduction of the euro created "significant reductions in market risk exposures for nonfinancial firms both in and outside Europe". These reductions in market risk "were concentrated in firms domiciled in the eurozone and in non-euro firms with a high fraction of foreign sales or assets in Europe". |
synth_fc_1342_rep24 | Positive | Food | Order | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel | 17 | Judaism
According to Jewish tradition, camel meat and milk are not kosher. Camels possess only one of the two kosher criteria; although they chew their cud, they do not have cloven hooves: "But these you shall not eat among those that bring up the cud and those that have a cloven hoof: the camel, because it brings up its cud, but does not have a cloven hoof; it is unclean for you."
The Palestinian Muslim Makhamara clan in Yatta, who claim descent from Jews, reportedly avoid eating camel meat, a practice cited as evidence of their Jewish origins. |
synth_fc_1312_rep19 | Positive | Food | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven | 7 | Safety benefits and features
All microwave ovens use a timer to switch off the oven at the end of the cooking time.
Microwave ovens heat food without getting hot themselves. Taking a pot off a stove, unless it is an induction cooktop, leaves a potentially dangerous heating element or trivet that remains hot for some time. Likewise, when taking a casserole out of a conventional oven, one's arms are exposed to the very hot walls of the oven. A microwave oven does not pose this problem.
Food and cookware taken out of a microwave oven are rarely much hotter than 100 °C (212 °F). Cookware used in a microwave oven is often much cooler than the food because the cookware is transparent to microwaves; the microwaves heat the food directly and the cookware is indirectly heated by the food. Food and cookware from a conventional oven, on the other hand, are the same temperature as the rest of the oven; a typical cooking temperature is 180 °C (356 °F). That means that conventional stoves and ovens can cause more serious burns.
The lower temperature of cooking (the boiling point of water) is a significant safety benefit compared with baking in the oven or frying, because it eliminates the formation of tars and char, which are carcinogenic. Microwave radiation also penetrates deeper than direct heat, so that the food is heated by its own internal water content. In contrast, direct heat can burn the surface while the inside is still cold. Pre-heating the food in a microwave oven before putting it into the grill or pan reduces the time needed to heat up the food and reduces the formation of carcinogenic char. Unlike frying and baking, microwaving does not produce acrylamide in potatoes, however unlike deep-frying at high-temperatures, it is of only limited effectiveness in reducing glycoalkaloid (i.e., solanine) levels. Acrylamide has been found in other microwaved products like popcorn. |
synth_fc_1720_rep21 | Negative | Health | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Walton | 6 | Personal life
Walton married Helen Robson on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1943. They had four children: Samuel Robson (Rob) born in 1944, John Thomas (1946–2005), James Carr (Jim) born in 1948, and Alice Louise born in 1949.
Walton supported various charitable causes. He and Helen were active in 1st Presbyterian Church in Bentonville; Sam served as an Elder and a Sunday School teacher, teaching high school age students. The family made substantial contributions to the congregation. Walton worked the concept of “service leadership” into the corporate structure of Walmart based on the concept of Christ being a servant leader and emphasized the importance of serving others based in Christianity.
Walton was diagnosed and treated for Hairy cell leukemia. |
synth_fc_1907_rep22 | Positive | History | Document search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gediminas | 4 | Incorporation of Ruthenian lands
"Gediminas, by the grace of God, the King of Lithuanians and Ruthenians, the ruler and duke of Semigallia."
— Gediminas's titles mentioned in his 26 May 1323 letter, which was sent to the Germanian cities.
While on his guard against his northern foes, Gediminas from 1316 to 1340 was aggrandizing himself at the expense of the numerous Ruthenian principalities in the south and east. Gediminas conquered a long series of cities across Belarus and northern Ukraine as well, but the various stages of these battles are impossible to follow. Especially from 1325 to 1340, sources about Eastern campaigns being few and conflicting, and the date of every salient event exceedingly doubtful. One of his most important territorial accretions, the principality of Halych-Volynia, was obtained by the marriage of his son Lubart with the daughter of the Galician prince.
From about 23 km (14 mi) south west of Kiev, Gediminas defeated Stanislav of Kiev and his allies in the Battle on the Irpin River. He then besieged and conquered Kiev sending Stanislav, the last descendant of the Rurik Dynasty to ever rule Kiev, into exile first in Bryansk and then in Ryazan. Theodor, brother of Gediminas, and Algimantas, son of Mindaugas from the Olshanski family, were installed in Kiev. After these conquests, Lithuania stretched very close to the Black Sea.
While exploiting Ruthenian weakness in the wake of the Mongol invasion, Gediminas avoided war with the Golden Horde, a great regional power at the time, while expanding Lithuania's border almost towards the Black Sea. He also secured an alliance with the nascent Grand Duchy of Moscow by marrying his daughter, Anastasia, to the grand duke Simeon. However, Gediminas offsetted the influence of Muscovy in northern Russia, and assisted the republic of Pskov, which acknowledged his overlordship, to break away from Great Novgorod. |
synth_fc_1592_rep14 | Positive | Geography | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belo_Horizonte | 17 | Surrounding cities and metropolitan area
The term "Grande BH" ("Greater Belo Horizonte") denotes any of various definitions for the metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte. The legally defined Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte consists of 34 municipalities in total, and a population of around six million inhabitants (as of 2021, according to Brazil's National Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE)).
The intense process of urbanization that is taking place in the metropolitan region has made some of the political boundaries between municipalities in the region obsolete.
The city is now composed of a relatively contiguous urban area, centred on Belo Horizonte, which extends out into municipalities such as Contagem, Betim, Nova Lima, Raposos, Ribeirão das Neves, Ibirité, Santa Luzia and Sabará, among others.
The municipality is bounded to the north by Vespasiano, to the north east by Santa Luzia, by Sabará to the east, by Nova Lima to the southeast, Brumadinho to the south and Ribeirão das Neves, Contagem and Ibirité to the west.
According to the current geographic classification by IBGE, the municipality belongs to the Immediate Geographic Region of Belo Horizonte, in the Intermediate Geographic Region of Belo Horizonte. |
synth_fc_276_rep10 | Positive | Biomass | Database update | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird-of-paradise | 4 | Description
Birds-of-paradise are closely related to the corvids. Birds-of-paradise range in size from the king bird-of-paradise at 50 g (1.8 oz) and 15 cm (5.9 in) to the curl-crested manucode at 44 cm (17 in) and 430 g (15 oz). The male black sicklebill, with its long tail, is the longest species at 110 cm (43 in). In most species, the tails of the males are larger and longer than those of the females, the differences ranging from slight to extreme. The wings are rounded and in some species structurally modified on the males in order to make sound. There is considerable variation in the family with regard to bill shape. Bills may be long and decurved, as in the sicklebills and riflebirds, or small and slim like the Astrapias. As with body size, bill size varies between the sexes, although species where the females have larger bills than the males are more common, particularly in the insect-eating species.
Plumage variation between the sexes is closely related to the breeding system. The manucodes and paradise-crow, which are socially monogamous, are sexually monomorphic. So are the two species of Paradigalla, which are polygamous. All these species have generally black plumage with varying amounts of green and blue iridescence. The female plumage of the dimorphic species is typically drab to blend in with their habitat, unlike the bright attractive colours found on the males. Younger males of these species have female-like plumage, and sexual maturity takes a long time, with the full adult plumage not being obtained for up to seven years. This affords the younger males protection from predators of more subdued colours and also reduces hostility from adult males. |
synth_fc_251_rep29 | Positive | Biomass | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotechnology | 22 | Top-down approaches
These seek to create smaller devices by using larger ones to direct their assembly. |
synth_fc_1304_rep4 | No function call | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Mellon | 13 | Harding administration
Following Harding's victory in the 1920 presidential election, Harding considered various candidates for Secretary of the Treasury, including Frank Lowden, John W. Weeks, Charles Dawes, and, at the urging of Senator Knox, Andrew Mellon. By 1920, Mellon was little-known outside of banking circles, but his potential appointment to the cabinet received strong support from bankers and Pennsylvania Republican leaders like Knox, Senator Boies Penrose, and Governor Sproul. Mellon was reluctant to enter public life due to concerns about privacy and a belief that his ownership of various businesses, including Old Overholt distillery, would be a political liability. But Mellon also wanted to retire from active participation in business, and he saw a cabinet position as a prestigious capstone to his career.
Mellon agreed to accept appointment as Secretary of the Treasury in February 1921, and his nomination was quickly confirmed by the United States Senate. Though Mellon's supporters believed that he was highly qualified to address the economic issues facing the country, critics of the Harding administration saw the Mellon appointment as a sign that Harding would "reseat the power of special privileged interests, the powers of avarice and greed, the powers that seek self-aggrandizement at the expense of the general public". Harding paired the nomination of Mellon with that of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who was distrusted by many of the same Senate Republicans who favored Mellon's candidacy. Before joining the cabinet, Mellon sold his banking stock to his brother, Richard, but he continued to hold his non-banking stock. Through Richard and other business associates, Mellon continued to be involved with the major decisions of the Mellon business empire during his time in public service, and he occasionally lobbied congressmen on behalf of his businesses. His fortune continued to grow, and at one point in the 1920s he paid more in federal income tax than any other individual save John Rockefeller and Henry Ford.
As Treasury Secretary, Mellon focused on balancing the budget and paying off World War I debts in the midst of the Depression of 1920–21; he was largely unconcerned with international affairs and economic matters such as the unemployment rate. To Mellon's chagrin, his department was charged with enforcing Prohibition; he did not believe in teetotaling himself and viewed the law as unenforceable. Aside from balancing the budget, Mellon's top priority was an overhaul of the federal tax code. The income tax had become a major part of the federal government's revenue system with the passage of the Revenue Act of 1913, and federal taxation on income had increased during World War I to provide funding for the war effort. According to M. Susan Murnane, major reforms to the federal income tax in the aftermath of World War I were "inevitable", but the exact nature of the tax system in the 1920s was debated by conservatives and progressives within the Republican Party. Unlike the progressives in his party, Mellon rejected the redistributive nature of the taxation system that had been left in place by the Wilson administration. Owing in part to the high debts left over from the war, Mellon did not join with some conservatives in the party, who favored the virtual abolition of the income tax in favor of high tariff rates, excise taxes, a national sales tax, or some combination thereof.
Mellon instead advocated the retention of a progressive income tax that would serve as an important, but not primary, source of revenue for the federal government. His so-called "scientific taxation" was designed to maximize federal revenue while minimizing the impact on business and industry. The central tenet of Mellon's tax plan was a reduction of the surtax, a progressive tax that affected only high-income earners. Mellon argued that such a reduction would minimize tax avoidance and would not affect federal revenue because it would lead to greater economic growth. He hoped that tax reform would encourage high earners to move their savings from tax-exempt state and municipal bonds to taxable, higher yield industrial stocks. Though much of the tax plan that he proposed had been developed by former Wilson administration officials Russell Cornell Leffingwell and Seymour Parker Gilbert, the press generally referred to it as the "Mellon Plan".
The Revenue Act of 1918 had set a top marginal income tax rate of 73% and a corporate tax of approximately 10%. Due in part to the size of the U.S. public debt, which had grown from $1 billion before the war to $24 billion in 1921, the provisions of the Revenue Act of 1918 remained in place when Harding took office. In 1921, the Treasury Department and the House Ways and Means Committee jointly prepared a bill setting the top marginal rate at the level advocated by Mellon, but opposition in the Senate from progressives like Senator Robert M. La Follette limited the size of the tax cuts. In November 1921, Congress passed and Harding signed the Revenue Act of 1921, which raised personal tax exemptions and lowered the top marginal tax rate to 58%. Because it differed from his original proposals, Mellon was displeased by the bill. He also strongly disapproved of a "Bonus Bill" passed by Congress that would provide for additional compensation to veterans of World War I, partly because he feared it would interfere with his plans to reduce debt and taxes. With Mellon's support, Harding vetoed the bill, and Congress failed to override the veto. |
synth_fc_173_rep28 | No function call | Biology | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(fruit) | 4 | Taste
The taste of oranges is determined mainly by the ratio of sugars to acids, whereas orange aroma derives from volatile organic compounds, including alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, terpenes, and esters. Bitter limonoid compounds, such as limonin, decrease gradually during development, whereas volatile aroma compounds tend to peak in mid– to late–season development. Taste quality tends to improve later in harvests when there is a higher sugar/acid ratio with less bitterness. As a citrus fruit, the orange is acidic, with pH levels ranging from 2.9 to 4.0. Taste and aroma vary according to genetic background, environmental conditions during development, ripeness at harvest, postharvest conditions, and storage duration. |
synth_fc_1647_rep16 | Positive | Geography | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan | 16 | Industrial zones
Major industrial zones in Wuhan include in chronological order:
Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone is a national level industrial zone incorporated in 1993. Its current zone size is about 10–25 square km and it plans to expand to 25–50 square km. Industries encouraged in Wuhan Economic and Technological Development Zone include Auto-mobile Production/Assembly, Biotechnology/Pharmaceuticals, Chemicals Production and Processing, Food/Beverage Processing, Heavy Industry, and Telecommunications Equipment.
Wuhan Export Processing Zone was established in 2000. It is located in Wuhan Economic and Technology Development Zone, planned to cover 2.7 square kilometers (1.0 square mile) of land. The first 0.7-square-kilometer (0.3-square-mile) area has already been created.
Wuhan Donghu New Technology Development Zone is a national level high-tech development zone. Optical-electronics, telecommunications, and equipment manufacturing are the core industries of Wuhan East Lake High-Tech Development Zone (ELHTZ) while software outsourcing and electronics are also encouraged. ELHTZ is China's largest production center for optoelectronic products with key players like Yangtze Optical Fiber and Cable, (the largest fiber-optical cable maker in China), and Fiberhome Telecommunications. Wuhan Donghu New Technology Development Zone also represents the development center for China's laser industry with key players such as HG Tech and Chutian Laser being based in the zone.
Wuhan Optical Valley (Guanggu) Software Park is located in Wuhan Donghu New Technology Development Zone. Wuhan Optics Valley Software Park is jointly developed by East Lake High-Tech Development Zone and Dalian Software Park Co., Ltd. The planned area is 0.67 square kilometers (0.26 square miles) with total floor area of 6,000,000 square meters (65,000,000 square feet). The zone is 8.5 km (5.28 mi) away from the 316 National Highway and is 46.7 km (29.02 mi) away from the Wuhan Tianhe Airport.
Biolake is an industrial base established in 2008 in the Optics Valley of China. Located in East Lake New Technology Development Zone of Wuhan, Biolake covers 15 km (5.8 sq mi), and has six parks including Bio-innovation Park, Bio-pharma Park, Bio-agriculture Park, Bio-manufacturing Park, Medical Device Park and Medical Health Park, to accommodate both research activities and living. |
synth_fc_3585_rep5 | Positive | Travel itinerary | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho | 22 | In the New Testament
The Christian Gospels state that Jesus of Nazareth passed through Jericho where he healed blind beggars (Matthew 20:29), and inspired a local chief tax collector named Zacchaeus to repent of his dishonest practices (Luke 19:1–10). The road between Jerusalem and Jericho is the setting for the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
John Wesley, in his New Testament Notes on this section of Luke's Gospel, claimed that "about twelve thousand priests and Levites dwelt there, who all attended the service of the temple ".
Smith 's Bible Names Dictionary suggests that "Jericho was once more 'a city of palms' when our Lord visited it. Here he restored sight to the blind (Matthew 20:30; Mark 10:46; Luke 18:35). Here the descendant of Rahab did not disdain the hospitality of Zacchaeus the publican. Finally, between Jerusalem and Jericho was laid the scene of his story of the good Samaritan." |
synth_fc_3797_rep13 | No function call | Weather & Air quality | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderstorm | 17 | Tornadoes and waterspouts
A tornado is a violent, rotating column of air in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud (otherwise known as a thundercloud) or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. Tornadoes come in many sizes but are typically in the form of a visible condensation funnel, whose narrow end touches the earth and is often encircled by a cloud of debris and dust. Most tornadoes have wind speeds between 40 and 110 mph (64 and 177 km/h), are approximately 75 metres (246 ft) across, and travel several kilometers (a few miles) before dissipating. Some attain wind speeds of more than 300 mph (480 km/h), stretch more than 1,600 metres (1 mi) across, and stay on the ground for more than 100 kilometres (dozens of miles).
The Fujita scale and the Enhanced Fujita Scale rate tornadoes by damage caused. An EF0 tornado, the weakest category, damages trees but does not cause significant damage to structures. An EF5 tornado, the strongest category, rips buildings off their foundations and can deform large skyscrapers. The similar TORRO scale ranges from a T0 for extremely weak tornadoes to T11 for the most powerful known tornadoes. Doppler radar data, photogrammetry, and ground swirl patterns (cycloidal marks) may also be analyzed to determine intensity and award a rating.
Waterspouts have similar characteristics as tornadoes, characterized by a spiraling funnel-shaped wind current that form over bodies of water, connecting to large cumulonimbus clouds. Waterspouts are generally classified as forms of tornadoes, or more specifically, non- supercelled tornadoes that develop over large bodies of water. These spiralling columns of air frequently develop within tropical areas close to the equator, but are less common within areas of high latitude. |
synth_fc_714_rep11 | Positive | DNA sequence | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_cycle | 8 | Cytokinesis phase (separation of all cell components)
Mitosis is immediately followed by cytokinesis, which divides the nuclei, cytoplasm, organelles and cell membrane into two cells containing roughly equal shares of these cellular components. Cytokinesis occurs differently in plant and animal cells. While the cell membrane forms a groove that gradually deepens to separate the cytoplasm in animal cells, a cell plate is formed to separate it in plant cells. The position of the cell plate is determined by the position of a preprophase band of microtubules and actin filaments. Mitosis and cytokinesis together define the division of the parent cell into two daughter cells, genetically identical to each other and to their parent cell. This accounts for approximately 10% of the cell cycle.
Because cytokinesis usually occurs in conjunction with mitosis, "mitosis" is often used interchangeably with "M phase". However, there are many cells where mitosis and cytokinesis occur separately, forming single cells with multiple nuclei in a process called endoreplication. This occurs most notably among the fungi and slime molds, but is found in various groups. Even in animals, cytokinesis and mitosis may occur independently, for instance during certain stages of fruit fly embryonic development. Errors in mitosis can result in cell death through apoptosis or cause mutations that may lead to cancer. |
synth_fc_3241_rep28 | Negative | Sport | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alistair_Brownlee | 1 | Alistair Edward Brownlee MBE is an English triathlete. He is the only athlete to hold two Olympic titles in the individual triathlon event, winning gold medals in the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games. He is also a four-time World Champion in triathlon being Triathlon World Champion twice and World Team Champion twice, a four-time European Champion, and the 2014 Commonwealth champion. Brownlee is the only athlete, male or female, to have completed a grand slam of Olympic, World, continental and Commonwealth championships. Brownlee is also a one-time world champion in aquathlon. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest male Triathletes ever. His brother Jonathan Brownlee is also a decorated triathlete. Along with long-time Spanish rivals Mario Mola and Javier Gómez, and Frenchman Vincent Luis, the Brownlee brothers were considered the dominant male Olympic distance triathletes of the 2010s, and the Brownlees were particularly dominant in the Olympic triathlon races themselves, having won three gold, one silver and one bronze medal between them. Brownlee was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to sport. |
synth_fc_1466_rep29 | Positive | Geography | Database search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_Japan | 24 | World War I
Japan entered World War I on the side of the Allies in 1914, seizing the opportunity of Germany's distraction with the European War to expand its sphere of influence in China and the Pacific. Japan declared war on Germany on August 23, 1914. Japanese and allied British Empire forces soon moved to occupy Tsingtao fortress, the German East Asia Squadron base, German-leased territories in China's Shandong Province as well as the Marianas, Caroline, and Marshall Islands in the Pacific, which were part of German New Guinea. The swift invasion in the German territory of the Kiautschou Bay concession and the Siege of Tsingtao proved successful. The German colonial troops surrendered on November 7, 1914, and Japan gained the German holdings. In 1920, the League of Nations established the South Seas Mandate under Japanese administration to replace German New Guinea.
With its Western allies, notably the United Kingdom, heavily involved in the war in Europe, Japan dispatched a Naval fleet to the Mediterranean Sea to aid Allied shipping. Japan sought further to consolidate its position in China by presenting the Twenty-One Demands to China in January 1915. In the face of slow negotiations with the Chinese government, widespread anti-Japanese sentiment in China, and international condemnation, Japan withdrew the final group of demands, and treaties were signed in May 1915. The Anglo-Japanese Alliance was renewed and expanded in scope twice, in 1905 and 1911, before its demise in 1921. It was officially terminated in 1923. |
synth_fc_3533_rep24 | Positive | Travel itinerary | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maputo | 5 | Culture
Maputo is a melting pot of several cultures. The Bantu and Portuguese cultures dominate, but the influence of Arab, Indian, and Chinese cultures is also felt. |
synth_fc_2520_rep14 | Positive | Museum | Ranking | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emiliano_Zapata | 4 | In popular culture
Zapata has been depicted in movies, comics, books, music, and clothing. For example, there was the stage musical Zapata (1980), written by Harry Nilsson and Perry Botkin, with a libretto by Allan Katz, which ran for 16 weeks at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut. A movie called Zapata: El sueño de un héroe (Zapata: A Hero's Dream) was produced in 2004, starring Mexican actors Alejandro Fernandez, Jaime Camil, and Lucero. There is also a sub-genre of the Spaghetti Western called the Zapata Western, which features stories set during the Mexican Revolution.
Marlon Brando played Emiliano Zapata in the award-winning movie based on his life, Viva Zapata! in 1952. The film co-starred Anthony Quinn, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in the role of Zapata's brother. The director was Elia Kazan and the writer was John Steinbeck.
Emiliano Zapata is a major character in The Friends of Pancho Villa (1996), by James Carlos Blake
Emiliano Zapata is referenced in the songs " Calm Like a Bomb " by American rock band Rage Against the Machine from their album " The Battle of Los Angeles." and "Zapata's Blood" from their album " The Battle of Mexico City ". Zapata is also referenced in the song "Veracruz" by Warren Zevon which is about the Mexican revolution and the invasion of Veracruz.
In the 2011 Mexican TV series El Encanto del Aguila Zapata is played by the Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta.
In December 2019, an arts show commemorating the 100 year anniversary of his death was held at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. The show featured 141 works. A painting called La Revolución depicted Zapata as intentionally effeminate, riding an erect horse, nude except for high heels and a pink hat. According to the artist, he created the painting to combat machismo. The painting caused protests from the farmer's union and admirers of Zapata. His grandson Jorge Zapata González threatened to sue if the painting was not removed. There was a clash between supporters of the painting and detractors at the museum. A compromise was reached with some of Zapata's family, a label was placed next to the painting outlining their disagreement with the painting. |
synth_fc_612_rep8 | Positive | Currency | API setting | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_contract | 1 | In finance, a futures contract is a standardized legal contract to buy or sell something at a predetermined price for delivery at a specified time in the future, between parties not yet known to each other. The asset transacted is usually a commodity or financial instrument. The predetermined price of the contract is known as the forward price or delivery price. The specified time in the future when delivery and payment occur is known as the delivery date. Because it derives its value from the value of the underlying asset, a futures contract is a derivative. Contracts are traded at futures exchanges, which act as a marketplace between buyers and sellers. The buyer of a contract is said to be the long position holder and the selling party is said to be the short position holder. As both parties risk their counter-party reneging if the price goes against them, the contract may involve both parties lodging as security a margin of the value of the contract with a mutually trusted third party. For example, in gold futures trading, the margin varies between 2% and 20% depending on the volatility of the spot market. A stock future is a cash-settled futures contract on the value of a particular stock market index. Stock futures are one of the high risk trading instruments in the market. Stock market index futures are also used as indicators to determine market sentiment. The first futures contracts were negotiated for agricultural commodities, and later futures contracts were negotiated for natural resources such as oil. Financial futures were introduced in 1972, and in recent decades, currency futures, interest rate futures, stock market index futures, and cryptocurrency inverse futures and perpetual futures have played an increasingly large role in the overall futures markets. Even organ futures have been proposed to increase the supply of transplant organs. The original use of futures contracts mitigates the risk of price or exchange rate movements by allowing parties to fix prices or rates in advance for future transactions. This could be advantageous when a party expects to receive payment in foreign currency in the future and wishes to guard against an unfavorable movement of the currency in the interval before payment is received. However, futures contracts also offer opportunities for speculation in that a trader who predicts that the price of an asset will move in a particular direction can contract to buy or sell it in the future at a price which will yield a profit. In particular, if the speculator is able to profit, then the underlying commodity that the speculator traded would have been saved during a time of surplus and sold during a time of need, offering the consumers of the commodity a more favorable distribution of commodity over time. |
synth_fc_523_rep2 | Positive | Corporate Management | Database creation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database | 30 | Security
Database security deals with all various aspects of protecting the database content, its owners, and its users. It ranges from protection from intentional unauthorized database uses to unintentional database accesses by unauthorized entities (e.g., a person or a computer program).
Database access control deals with controlling who (a person or a certain computer program) are allowed to access what information in the database. The information may comprise specific database objects (e.g., record types, specific records, data structures), certain computations over certain objects (e.g., query types, or specific queries), or using specific access paths to the former (e.g., using specific indexes or other data structures to access information). Database access controls are set by special authorized (by the database owner) personnel that uses dedicated protected security DBMS interfaces.
This may be managed directly on an individual basis, or by the assignment of individuals and privileges to groups, or (in the most elaborate models) through the assignment of individuals and groups to roles which are then granted entitlements. Data security prevents unauthorized users from viewing or updating the database. Using passwords, users are allowed access to the entire database or subsets of it called "subschemas". For example, an employee database can contain all the data about an individual employee, but one group of users may be authorized to view only payroll data, while others are allowed access to only work history and medical data. If the DBMS provides a way to interactively enter and update the database, as well as interrogate it, this capability allows for managing personal databases.
Data security in general deals with protecting specific chunks of data, both physically (i.e., from corruption, or destruction, or removal; e.g., see physical security), or the interpretation of them, or parts of them to meaningful information (e.g., by looking at the strings of bits that they comprise, concluding specific valid credit-card numbers; e.g., see data encryption).
Change and access logging records who accessed which attributes, what was changed, and when it was changed. Logging services allow for a forensic database audit later by keeping a record of access occurrences and changes. Sometimes application-level code is used to record changes rather than leaving this in the database. Monitoring can be set up to attempt to detect security breaches. Therefore, organizations must take database security seriously because of the many benefits it provides. Organizations will be safeguarded from security breaches and hacking activities like firewall intrusion, virus spread, and ransom ware. This helps in protecting the company's essential information, which cannot be shared with outsiders at any cause. |
synth_fc_1808_rep28 | No function call | Health | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_space | 39 | Metrics valued in structures other than the real numbers
The requirement that the metric take values in [ 0, ∞) {\displaystyle [0,\infty)} can be relaxed to consider metrics with values in other structures, including:
These generalizations still induce a uniform structure on the space. |
synth_fc_3541_rep14 | Negative | Travel itinerary | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuringia | 1 | Thuringia, officially the Free State of Thuringia, is one of Germany's 16 states — with 2.1 million people its 12th-largest by population and with 16,171 square kilometers its 11th-largest in area. Erfurt is the capital and largest city. Other cities include Jena, Gera and Weimar. Thuringia is bordered by Bavaria, Hesse, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony. It has been known as "the green heart of Germany" from the late 19th century due to its broad, dense forest. Most of Thuringia is in the Saale drainage basin, a left-bank tributary of the Elbe. Thuringia is home to the Rennsteig, Germany's best-known hiking trail. Its winter resort of Oberhof makes it a well-equipped winter sports destination – half of Germany's 136 Winter Olympic gold medals had been won by Thuringian athletes as of 2014. Thuringia was favoured by or was the birthplace of three key intellectuals and leaders in the arts: Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Schiller. The state has the University of Jena, the Ilmenau University of Technology, the University of Erfurt, and the Bauhaus University of Weimar. The Frankish Duchy of Thuringia was established around 631 AD by King Dagobert I. The modern state was established in 1920 by the Weimar Republic through a merger of the Ernestine duchies, save for Saxe-Coburg. After World War II, Thuringia came under the Soviet occupation zone in Allied-occupied Germany, and its borders were reformed, to become contiguous. Thuringia became part of the German Democratic Republic in 1949, but was dissolved in 1952 during administrative reforms, and divided into the Districts of Erfurt, Suhl and Gera. Thuringia was re-established in 1990 following German reunification, slightly re-drawn, and became one of the new states of the Federal Republic of Germany. |
synth_fc_3639_rep19 | Negative | Video game | Guide | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jun_Maeda | 1 | Jun Maeda is a Japanese writer and composer. He is a co-founder of the visual novel brand Key under Visual Arts. He is considered a pioneer of nakige visual novels, and has mainly contributed as a scenario writer, lyricist, and musical composer for the games the company produces. After graduating with a degree in psychology from Chukyo University, Maeda contributed to the scripts and scores of games released under the Tactics brand of Nexton: Moon and One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e. He has contributed both to writing music and scripts to most games released under the Key brand, notably writing the majority of Air and Clannad. He also served as a screenwriter and composer for several anime series produced by P.A. Works, such as Angel Beats! and Charlotte. |
synth_fc_2321_rep14 | Positive | Law | Entity search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codification_(law) | 1 | In law, codification is the process of collecting and restating the law of a jurisdiction in certain areas, usually by subject, forming a legal code, i.e. a codex (book) of law. Codification is one of the defining features of civil law jurisdictions. In common law systems, such as that of English law, codification is the process of converting and consolidating judge-made law or uncodified statutes enacted by the legislature into statute law. |
synth_fc_2549_rep23 | Negative | Museum | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Westminster | 2 | Culture and tourism
The exterior of the Palace of Westminster — especially the Elizabeth Tower which houses the bell known as Big Ben, and its setting on the bank of the River Thames —is recognised worldwide, and is one of the most visited tourist attractions in London. Tsar Nicholas I called it "a dream in stone". The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) classifies the Palace of Westminster, along with neighbouring Westminster Abbey and St Margaret's, as a World Heritage Site. It is also a Grade I listed building.
Although there is no casual access to the interior of the palace, there are several ways to gain admittance. UK residents may obtain tickets from an MP for a place in the viewing ("strangers") gallery of the House of Commons, or from a Lord for a seat in the gallery of the House of Lords. It is also possible for both UK residents and overseas visitors to queue for admission to them at any time of the day or night when either House is in session, but capacity is limited and there is no guarantee of admission. Either House may exclude "strangers" if it desires to sit in private. Members of the public can also queue for a seat in a committee session, where admission is free and places cannot be booked, or they may visit the Parliamentary Archives for research purposes. Booking an appointment is necessary in the latter case, along with a proof of identity.
Free guided tours of the palace are held throughout the parliamentary session for UK residents, who can apply through their MP or a member of the House of Lords. The tours last about 75 minutes and include the state rooms, the chambers of the two Houses and Westminster Hall. Paid-for tours are available to both UK and overseas visitors during the summer recess and Saturdays throughout the year. Tours of the Elizabeth Tower were suspended until 2021 while the tower underwent refurbishment.
Architectural historian Dan Cruickshank selected the palace as one of his five choices for the 2006 BBC television documentary series Britain's Best Buildings.
The nearest London Underground station is Westminster, on the District, Circle and Jubilee lines.
In 2015, Parliament organised a year-long programme of events called " Parliament in the Making " to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta on 15 June, and the 750th anniversary of the first representative parliament on 20 January. Events were coordinated with Parliament Week. The BBC held events throughout the year including a "Democracy Day" on 20 January consisting of live discussions and debate in partnership with the Speaker's Office of the House of Commons, including broadcasts from inside the Palace of Westminster. |
synth_fc_2091_rep1 | Positive | Hotel | Order | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housekeeping | 1 | Housekeeping is the management and routine support activities of running and maintaining an organized physical institution occupied or used by people, like a house, ship, hospital or factory, such as cleaning, tidying/organizing, cooking, shopping, and bill payment. These tasks may be performed by members of the household, or by persons hired for the purpose. This is a more broad role than a cleaner, who is focused only on the cleaning aspect. The term is also used to refer to the money allocated for such use. By extension, it may also refer to an office or a corporation, as well as the maintenance of computer storage systems. The basic concept can be divided into domestic housekeeping, for private households, and institutional housekeeping for commercial and other institutions providing shelter or lodging, such as hotels, resorts, inns, boarding houses, dormitories, hospitals and prisons. There are related concepts in industry known as workplace housekeeping and Industrial housekeeping, which are part of occupational health and safety processes. A housekeeper is a person employed to manage a household and the domestic staff. According to the 1861 Victorian era Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, the housekeeper is second in command in the house and "except in large establishments, where there is a house steward, the housekeeper must consider herself as the immediate representative of her mistress". |
synth_fc_3229_rep30 | Positive | Sport | Ranking | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red | 23 | In sports
The first known team sport to feature red uniforms was chariot racing during the late Roman Empire. The earliest races were between two chariots, one driver wearing red, the other white. Later, the number of teams was increased to four, including drivers in light green and sky blue. Twenty-five races were run in a day, with a total of one hundred chariots participating.
Today many sports teams throughout the world feature red on their uniforms. Along with blue, red is the most commonly used non-white color in sports. Numerous national sports teams wear red, often through association with their national flags. A few of these teams feature the color as part of their nickname such as Spain (with their association football (soccer) national team nicknamed La Furia Roja or "The Red Fury") and Belgium (whose football team bears the nickname Rode Duivels or "Red Devils").
In club association football (soccer), red is a commonly used color throughout the world. Among European notable club teams most often playing at home in red shirts include Bayern Munich, Benfica, Liverpool, Manchester United and Roma. Furthermore, many prominent teams play in partially red color schemes, involving different-colored sleeves or stripes. A number of teams' nicknames feature the color. A red penalty card is issued to a player who commits a serious infraction: the player is immediately disqualified from further play and his team must continue with one fewer player for the game's duration.
Rosso Corsa is the red international motor racing color of cars entered by teams from Italy. Since the 1920s Italian race cars of Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Lancia, and later Ferrari and Abarth have been painted with a color known as rosso corsa ("racing red"). National colors were mostly replaced in Formula One by commercial sponsor liveries in 1968, but unlike most other teams, Ferrari always kept the traditional red, although the shade of the color varies. Ducati traditionally run red factory bikes in motorcycle World Championship racing.
The color is commonly used for professional sports teams in Canada and the United States with eleven Major League Baseball teams, eleven National Hockey League teams, seven National Football League teams and eleven National Basketball Association teams prominently featuring some shade of the color. The color is also featured in the league logos of Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. In the National Football League, a red flag is thrown by the head coach to challenge a referee's decision during the game. During the 1950s when red was strongly associated with communism in the United States, the modern Cincinnati Reds team was known as the "Redlegs" and the term was used on baseball cards. After the red scare faded, the team was known as the "Reds" again.
In boxing, red is often the color used on a fighter's gloves. George Foreman wore the same red trunks he used during his loss to Muhammad Ali when he defeated Michael Moorer 20 years later to regain the title he lost. Boxers named or nicknamed "red" include Red Burman, Ernie "Red" Lopez, and his brother Danny "Little Red" Lopez. |
synth_fc_477_rep10 | Positive | Corporate Management | Database removal | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Stock_Exchange | 19 | NASDAQ bids
In December 2005, the LSE rejected a £1.6 billion takeover offer from Macquarie Bank. It described the offer as "derisory", a sentiment echoed by shareholders in the Exchange. Shortly after Macquarie withdrew its offer, the LSE received an unsolicited approach from NASDAQ valuing the company at £2.4 billion. This too it rejected. NASDAQ later pulled its bid, and less than two weeks later on 11 April 2006, struck a deal with LSE's largest shareholder, Ameriprise Financial 's Threadneedle Asset Management unit, to acquire all of that firm's stake, consisting of 35.4 million shares, at £11.75 per share. NASDAQ also purchased 2.69 million additional shares, resulting in a total stake of 15%. While the seller of those shares was undisclosed, it occurred simultaneously with a sale by Scottish Widows of 2.69 million shares. The move was seen as an effort to force LSE to the negotiating table, as well as to limit the Exchange's strategic flexibility.
Subsequent purchases increased NASDAQ's stake to 25.1%, holding off competing bids for several months. United Kingdom financial rules required that NASDAQ wait for a period of time before renewing its effort. On 20 November 2006, within a month or two of the expiration of this period, NASDAQ increased its stake to 28.75% and launched a hostile offer at the minimum permitted bid of £12.43 per share, which was the highest NASDAQ had paid on the open market for its existing shares. The LSE immediately rejected this bid, stating that it "substantially undervalues" the company.
NASDAQ revised its offer (characterized as an "unsolicited" bid, rather than a "hostile takeover attempt") on 12 December 2006, indicating that it would be able to complete the deal with 50% (plus one share) of LSE's stock, rather than the 90% it had been seeking. The U.S. exchange did not, however, raise its bid. Many hedge funds had accumulated large positions within the LSE, and many managers of those funds, as well as Furse, indicated that the bid was still not satisfactory. NASDAQ's bid was made more difficult because it had described its offer as "final", which, under British bidding rules, restricted their ability to raise its offer except under certain circumstances.
In the end, NASDAQ's offer was roundly rejected by LSE shareholders. Having received acceptances of only 0.41% of rest of the register by the deadline on 10 February 2007, Nasdaq's offer duly lapsed.
On 20 August 2007, NASDAQ announced that it was abandoning its plan to take over the LSE and subsequently look for options to divest its 31% (61.3 million shares) shareholding in the company in light of its failed takeover attempt. In September 2007, NASDAQ agreed to sell the majority of its shares to Borse Dubai, leaving the United Arab Emirates -based exchange with 28% of the LSE. |
synth_fc_1889_rep3 | Positive | History | Entity search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quang_Trung | 13 | The fall of Tây Sơn dynasty
However, Nguyễn Quang Toản (now crowned the Emperor Cảnh Thịnh) did not continue his father's policies. The identity card system was abolished, and the capital remained in Phú Xuân. High ministers and generals struggled for power, which led to the decline of his empire.
Tây Sơn dynasty was overthrown by Nguyễn Ánh in 1802 after a ten years long war. Quang Trung's sons: Nguyễn Quang Toản, Nguyễn Quang Thùy, Nguyễn Quang Duy (阮光維), Nguyễn Quang Thiệu (阮光紹) and Nguyễn Quang Bàn (阮光盤), were captured alive. Nguyễn Quang Thùy committed suicide; the others were executed by having their bodies dismembered by having five elephants pull the limbs and head (五象分屍). The tombs of Nguyễn Nhạc and Nguyễn Huệ were razed to the ground, their remains were dug out and crushed into ashes. The skulls of Nguyễn Nhạc, Nguyễn Huệ and Huệ's wife, were locked up in prison in perpetuity. It was said that Nguyễn Huệ had desecrated the tombs of Nguyễn lords before, Nguyễn Ánh did that to "revenge for the ancestors".
Tây Sơn dynasty was regarded as an illegal regime during Nguyễn dynasty; it was mentioned as Nguỵ Tây (僞西 "False Tây"), or Tây tặc (西賊 "Bandit Tây") in Nguyễn official records to highlight the supposed illegitimacy of the dynasty. |
synth_fc_1028_rep19 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muammar_Gaddafi | 13 | Economic and social reform
The RCC's early economic policy has been characterized as being state capitalist in orientation. Many initiatives were established to aid entrepreneurs and develop a Libyan bourgeoisie. Seeking to expand the cultivatable acreage in Libya, in September 1969 the government launched a "Green Revolution" to increase agricultural productivity so that Libya could rely less on imported food. The hope was to make Libya self-sufficient in food production. All land that had either been expropriated from Italian settlers or which was not in use was repossessed and redistributed. Irrigation systems were established along the northern coastline and around various inland oases. Production costs often surpassed the value of the produce and thus Libyan agricultural production remained in deficit, relying heavily on state subsidies.
With crude oil as the country's primary export, Gaddafi sought to improve Libya's oil sector. In October 1969, he proclaimed the current trade terms unfair, benefiting foreign corporations more than the Libyan state, and threatened to decrease production. In December Jalloud successfully increased the price of Libyan oil. In 1970, other OPEC states followed suit, leading to a global increase in the price of crude oil. The RCC followed with the Tripoli Agreement of 20 March 1971, in which they secured income tax, back-payments and better pricing from the oil corporations; these measures brought Libya an estimated $1 billion in additional revenues in its first year.
Increasing state control over the oil sector, the RCC began a program of nationalization, starting with the expropriation of British Petroleum 's share of the British Petroleum-N.B. Hunt Sahir Field in December 1971. In September 1973, it was announced that all foreign oil producers active in Libya were to see 51 per cent of their operation nationalized, including the stake of Nelson Bunker Hunt, son of H.L. Hunt, who had played a key role in the discovery of oil in Libya. Among the companies that were partially nationalized was Armand Hammer 's Occidental Petroleum. For Gaddafi, this was an essential step towards socialism. It proved an economic success; while gross domestic product had been $3.8 billion in 1969, it had risen to $13.7 billion in 1974, and $24.5 billion in 1979. In turn, the Libyans' standard of life greatly improved over the first decade of Gaddafi's administration, and by 1979 the average per-capita income was at $8,170, up from $40 in 1951; this was above the average of many industrialized countries like Italy and the UK. In 1969, the government also declared that all foreign owned banks must either close down or convert to joint-stock operations.
The RCC implemented measures for social reform, adopting sharia as a basis. The consumption of alcohol was prohibited, night clubs and Christian churches were shut down, traditional Libyan dress was encouraged, and Arabic was decreed as the only language permitted in official communications and on road signs. The RCC doubled the minimum wage, introduced statutory price controls, and implemented compulsory rent reductions of between 30 and 40 per cent. Gaddafi also wanted to combat the strict social restrictions that had been imposed on women by the previous regime, establishing the Revolutionary Women's Formation to encourage reform. In 1970, a law was introduced affirming equality of the sexes and insisting on wage parity. In 1971, Gaddafi sponsored the creation of a Libyan General Women's Federation. In 1972, a law was passed criminalizing the marriage of any females under the age of sixteen and ensuring that a woman's consent was a necessary prerequisite for a marriage. Gaddafi's regime opened up a wide range of educational and employment opportunities for women, although these primarily benefited a minority in the urban middle-classes.
From 1969 to 1973, it used oil money to fund social welfare programs, which led to housebuilding projects and improved healthcare and education. House building became a major social priority, designed to eliminate homelessness and to replace the shanty towns created by Libya's growing urbanization. The health sector was also expanded; by 1978, Libya had 50 per cent more hospitals than it had in 1968, while the number of doctors had increased from 700 to over 3000 in that decade. Malaria was eradicated, and trachoma and tuberculosis greatly curtailed. Compulsory education was expanded from 6 to 9 years, while adult literacy programs and free university education were introduced. Beida University was founded, while Tripoli University and Benghazi University were expanded. In doing so, the government helped to integrate the poorer strata of Libyan society into the education system. Through these measures, the RCC greatly expanded the public sector, providing employment for thousands. These early social programs proved popular within Libya. This popularity was partly due to Gaddafi's personal charisma, youth and underdog status as a Bedouin, as well as his rhetoric emphasizing his role as the successor to the anti-Italian fighter Omar Mukhtar.
To combat the country's strong regional and tribal divisions, the RCC promoted the idea of a unified pan-Libyan identity. In doing so, they tried discrediting tribal leaders as agents of the old regime, and in August 1971 a Sabha military court tried many of them for counter-revolutionary activity. Long-standing administrative boundaries were re-drawn, crossing tribal boundaries, while pro-revolutionary modernizers replaced traditional leaders, yet the communities they served often rejected them. Realizing the failures of the modernizers, Gaddafi created the Arab Socialist Union (ASU) in June 1971, a mass mobilization vanguard party of which he was president. The ASU recognized the RCC as its "Supreme Leading Authority", and was designed to further revolutionary enthusiasm throughout the country. It remained heavily bureaucratic and failed to mobilize mass support in the way Gaddafi had envisioned. |
synth_fc_384_rep27 | Positive | Carbon footprint | Calculation | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_chemistry | 8 | The nuclear fuel cycle
This is the chemistry associated with any part of the nuclear fuel cycle, including nuclear reprocessing. The fuel cycle includes all the operations involved in producing fuel, from mining, ore processing and enrichment to fuel production (Front-end of the cycle). It also includes the 'in-pile' behavior (use of the fuel in a reactor) before the back end of the cycle. The back end includes the management of the used nuclear fuel in either a spent fuel pool or dry storage, before it is disposed of into an underground waste store or reprocessed. |
synth_fc_757_rep18 | Positive | DNA sequence | Entity search | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecan | 6 | Genetics
Pecan is a 32-chromosome species (1N = 16) that readily hybridizes with other 32-chromosome members of the Carya genus, such as Carya ovata, Carya laciniosa, Carya cordiformis and has been reported to hybridize with 64-chromosome species such as Carya tomentosa. Most such hybrids are unproductive. Hybrids are referred to as " hicans " to indicate their hybrid origin. Recent efforts at NMSU to complete a pecan genome showed that DNA introgressed from C. Aquatica (water hickory), C. Myristiciformis (nutmeg hickory), and C. Cordiformis (bitternut hickory) is present in commercial pecan varieties grown today. |
synth_fc_3881_rep27 | Negative | Writing, Editing & Translation | Generation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knitting | 21 | Wrap and turn
Just before the work is turned, the working yarn is passed around the next unknitted stitch, forming a “wrap.” Later, this “wrap” is picked up and knitted into a stitch, concealing it from view. |
synth_fc_1156_rep5 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Willis | 1 | Walter Bruce Willis is a retired American actor. He achieved fame with a leading role on the comedy-drama series Moonlighting (1985–1989) and has appeared in over a hundred films, gaining recognition as an action hero for his portrayal of John McClane in the Die Hard franchise (1988–2013). Willis's other credits include The Last Boy Scout (1991), Pulp Fiction (1994), 12 Monkeys (1995), The Fifth Element (1997), Armageddon (1998), The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable, The Whole Nine Yards, Tears of the Sun (2003), Sin City (2005), The Expendables, Red, Looper (2012) and Glass (2019). In the last few years of his career, he starred in many low-budget direct-to-video films, which were poorly received. Willis retired from acting in 2022 due to aphasia. He was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in 2023. As a singer, Willis released his debut album, The Return of Bruno, in 1987, followed by two more albums in 1989 and 2001. He made his Broadway debut in the stage adaptation of Misery in 2015. Willis has received various accolades throughout his career, including a Golden Globe Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and two People's Choice Awards. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006. Films featuring Willis have grossed between US$2.64 billion and US$3.05 billion at North American box offices, making him in 2010 the eighth-highest-grossing leading actor. |
synth_fc_946_rep5 | Negative | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition | 4 | Equilibrium in perfect competition
Equilibrium in perfect competition is the point where market demands will be equal to market supply. A firm's price will be determined at this point. In the short run, equilibrium will be affected by demand. In the long run, both demand and supply of a product will affect the equilibrium in perfect competition. A firm will receive only normal profit in the long run at the equilibrium point.
As it is well known, requirements for firm's cost-curve under perfect competition is for the slope to move upwards after a certain amount is produced. This amount is small enough to leave a sufficiently large number of firms in the field (for any given total outputs in the industry) for the conditions of perfect competition to be preserved. For the short-run, the supply of some factors are assumed to be fixed and as the price of the other factors are given, costs per unit must necessarily rise after a certain point. From a theoretical point of view, given the assumptions that there will be a tendency for continuous growth in size for firms, long-period static equilibrium alongside perfect competition may be incompatible. |
synth_fc_919_rep12 | Positive | Finance | Database search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek | 19 | Rule
Having gained control of China, Chiang's party remained surrounded by defeated warlords who remained relatively autonomous within their own regions. On 10 October 1928, Chiang was named director of the State Council, the equivalent to President of the country, in addition to his other titles. As with his predecessor Sun Yat-sen, the Western media dubbed him "generalissimo".
According to Sun Yat-sen's plans, the KMT was to rebuild China in three steps: military rule, political tutelage, and constitutional rule. The ultimate goal of the KMT revolution was democracy, which was not considered to be feasible in China's fragmented state. Since the KMT had completed the first step of revolution through seizure of power in 1928, Chiang's rule thus began a period of what his party considered to be "political tutelage" in Sun Yat-sen's name. During this so-called Republican Era, many features of a modern, functional Chinese state emerged and developed.
From 1928 to 1937, known as the Nanjing decade, various aspects of foreign imperialism, concessions and privileges in China were moderated by diplomacy. The government acted to modernize the legal and penal systems and attempted to stabilize prices, amortize debts, reform the banking and currency systems, build railroads and highways, improve public health facilities, legislate against traffic in narcotics, and augment industrial and agricultural production. Efforts were made to improve education standards, and the national academy of sciences, Academia Sinica, was founded. In an effort to unify Chinese society, the New Life Movement was launched to encourage Confucian moral values and personal discipline. Guoyu ("national language") was promoted as the official language, and the establishment of communications facilities (including radio) was used to encourage a sense of Chinese nationalism in a way that had not been possible when the nation lacked an effective central government. Under that context, the Chinese Rural Reconstruction Movement was implemented by some social activists who graduated as professors of the United States with tangible but limited progress in modernizing the tax, infrastructural, economic, cultural, and educational equipment and the mechanisms of rural regions. The social activists actively co-ordinated with the local governments in the towns and villages since the early 1930s. However, the policy was subsequently neglected and canceled by Chiang's government because of rampant wars and the lack of resources after the Japanese War and the civil war.
Despite being a conservative, Chiang supported modernization policies such as scientific advancement, universal education, and women's rights. The Kuomintang supported women's suffrage and education and the abolition of polygamy and foot binding. Under Chiang's leadership, the Republic of China government also enacted a women's quota in the parliament, with reserved seats for women. During the Nanjing Decade, average Chinese citizens received education that they had been denied by the dynasties. That increased the literacy rate across China and also promoted the ideals of Tridemism of democracy, republicanism, science, constitutionalism, and Chinese nationalism based on the Dang Guo of the KMT.
Any successes that the Nationalists achieved, however, were met with constant political and military upheavals. Many of the urban areas were now under the control of the KMT, but much of the countryside remained under the influence of weakened-but-undefeated warlords, landlords, and Communists. Chiang often resolved issues of warlord obstinacy through military action, but such action was costly in terms of men and material. The Central Plains War alone nearly bankrupted the Nationalist government and caused almost 250,000 casualties on both sides. In 1931, Hu Hanmin, an old supporter of Chiang, publicly voiced a popular concern that Chiang's position as both premier and president flew in the face of the democratic ideals of the Nationalist government. Chiang had Hu put under house arrest, but Hu was released after national condemnation. Hu then left Nanjing and supported a rival government in Canton. The split resulted in a military conflict between Hu's Guangdong government and Chiang's Nationalist government.
Throughout his rule, complete eradication of the Communists remained Chiang's dream. After he had assembled his forces in Jiangxi, Chiang led his armies against the newly established Chinese Soviet Republic. With help from foreign military advisers such as Max Bauer and Alexander von Falkenhausen, Chiang's Fifth Campaign finally surrounded the Chinese Red Army in 1934. The Communists, tipped off that a Nationalist offensive was imminent, retreated in the Long March during which Mao rose from a mere military official to the most influential leader of the Chinese Communist Party.
Some academics and historians have classified Chiang's rule as fascist. The New Life Movement, initiated by Chiang, was based upon Confucianism mixed with Christianity, nationalism, and authoritarianism that have some similarities to fascism. Frederic Wakeman argued that the New Life Movement was "Confucian fascism." Chiang also sponsored the creation of the Blue Shirts Society, in conscious imitation of the Blackshirts in the Italian Fascist Party and the Sturmabteilung of the Nazi Party. Its ideology was to expel foreign (Japanese and Western) imperialists from China and to crush communism. Close ties with Nazi Germany also gave the Nationalist government access to German military and economic assistance during the mid-1930s. In a 1935 speech, Chiang stated that "fascism is what China now most needs" and described fascism as the stimulant for a declining society. Mao once derogatorily compared Chiang to Adolf Hitler, referring to him as the "Führer of China." Sino-German relations rapidly deteriorated as Germany grew closer to Japan and almost completely broke down when Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China in 1937, which Germany failed to mediate. However, China did not declare war on Germany, Italy, or even Japan until after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
Chinese Communists and many conservative anti-communist writers have argued that Chiang was pro-capitalist based on the alliance thesis (the alliance between Chiang and the capitalists to purge the communist and the leftist elements in Shanghai, as well as in the resulting civil war). However, Chiang also antagonized the capitalists of Shanghai by often attacking them and confiscating their capital and assets for government use even while he denounced and fought against communists. Critics have called that " bureaucratic capitalism." Historian Parks M. Coble argues that the phrase "bureaucratic capitalism" is too simplistic to adequately characterize this phenomenon. Instead, he says, the regime weakened all social forces so that the government could pursue policies without being responsible nor responsive to any outside political groups. By defeating any potential challenge to its power, government officials could amass sizable fortunes. With that motive, Chiang cracked down pro-communist worker and peasant organizations, as well as rich Shanghai capitalists. Chiang also continued the anti-capitalist rhetoric of Sun Yat-sen and directed the Kuomintang media to attack the capitalists and capitalism openly. He supported government-controlled industries instead. Coble says that the rhetoric had no impact on governmental policy and that its use was to prevent the capitalists from claiming legitimacy within the party or society and to control them and their wealth.
Authority within the Nationalist government ultimately lay with Chiang. All major policy changes on military, diplomatic, or economic issues required his approval. According to historian Odd Arne Westad, "no other leader within the had the authority to force through even the simplest decisions. The practical power of high-ranking officials like ministers or the head of the Executive Yuan was more closely tied to their relationship with Chiang than with the formal authority of their position. Chiang created multiple layers of power in his administration which he sometimes played off against each other to prevent individuals or cliques from gathering power that could oppose his authority.
Contrary to the critique that Chiang was highly corrupt, he was not involved in corruption himself. However his wife, Soong Mei-ling, ignored her family's involvement in corruption. The Soong family embezzled $20 million in the course of the 1930s and the 1940s when the Nationalist government's revenues were less than $30 million per year. The Soong family's eldest son, T.V. Soong, was the Chinese premier and finance minister, and the eldest daughter, Soong Ai-ling, was the wife of Kung Hsiang-hsi, the wealthiest man in China. The second daughter, Soong Ching-ling, was the wife of Sun Yat-sen, China's founding father. The youngest daughter, Soong Mei-ling, married Chiang in 1927, and following the marriage, both families became intimately connected, which created the "Soong dynasty" and the "Four Families." However, Soong was also credited for her campaign for women's rights in China, including her attempts to improve the education, culture, and social benefits of Chinese women. Critics have said that the "Four Families" monopolized the regime and looted it. The US sent considerable aid to the Nationalist government but soon realized the widespread corruption. Military supplies that were sent appeared on the black market. Significant sums of money that had been transmitted through T. V. Soong, China's finance minister, soon disappeared. President Truman famously referred to the Nationalist leaders, "They're thieves, every damn one of them." He also said, "They stole $750 million out of the billions that we sent to Chiang. They stole it, and it's invested in real estate down in São Paolo and some right here in New York." Soong Mei-ling and Soong Ai-ling lived luxurious lifestyles and held millions in property, clothes, art, and jewelry. Soong Ai-ling and Soong Mei-ling were also the two richest women in China. Despite living a luxurious life for almost her entire life, Soong Mei-ling left only a $120,000 inheritance, and the reason is that according to her niece, that she donated most of her wealth when she was still alive. Chiang, requiring support, tolerated corruption with people in his inner circles, as well as high-ranking nationalist officials, but not of lower-ranking officers. In 1934, he ordered seven military officers who embezzled state property to be shot. In another case, several division commanders pleaded with Chiang to pardon a criminal officer, but as soon as the division commanders had left, Chiang ordered him shot. The deputy editor and chief reporter at the Central Daily News, Lu Keng, made headline international news by exposing the corruption of two senior officials, Kong Xiangxi (H. H. Kung) and T. V. Soong. Chiang then ordered a thorough investigation of the Central Daily News to find the source. However, Lu, risked execution by refusing to comply and protecting his journalists. Chiang wanting to avoid an international response and so jailed Lu instead. Chiang realized the widespread problems that corruption was creating and so he undertook several anti-corruption campaigns before and after World War II with varying success. Before the war, both campaigns, the Nanjing Decade Cleanup of 1927–1930 and the Wartime Reform Movement of 1944–1947, failed. After the World War II and the Civil War, both campaigns, the Kuomintang Reconstruction of 1950–1952 and the Governmental Rejuvenation of 1969–1973, succeeded.
Chiang, who viewed all of the foreign great powers with suspicion, wrote in a letter that they "all have it in their minds to promote the interests of their own respective countries at the cost of other nations" and saw it as hypocritical for any of them to condemn one another's foreign policy. He used diplomatic persuasion on the United States, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union to regain lost Chinese territories, as he viewed all foreign powers as imperialists that were attempting to exploit China. |
synth_fc_1257_rep12 | Positive | Finance | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry | 14 | Rise of digital online distribution
In the first decade of the 2000s, digitally downloaded and streamed music became more popular than buying physical recordings (e.g. CDs, records and tapes). This gave consumers almost "friction-less" access to a wider variety of music than ever before, across multiple devices. At the same time, consumers spent less money on recorded music (both physically and digitally distributed) than they had in the 1990s. Total "music-business" revenues in the U.S. dropped by half, from a high of $14.6 billion in 1999 to $6.3 billion in 2009, according to Forrester Research. Worldwide revenues for CDs, vinyl, cassettes and digital downloads fell from $36.9 billion in 2000 to $15.9 billion in 2010 according to IFPI. The Economist and The New York Times reported that the downward trend was expected to continue for the foreseeable future. This dramatic decline in revenue has caused large-scale layoffs inside the industry, driven some more venerable retailers (such as Tower Records) out of business and forced record companies, record producers, studios, recording engineers and musicians to seek new business models.
In response to the rise of widespread illegal file sharing of digital music-recordings, the record industry took aggressive legal action. In 2001 it succeeded in shutting down the popular music-website Napster, and threatened legal action against thousands of individuals who participated in sharing music-song sound-files. However, this failed to slow the decline in music-recording revenue and proved a public-relations disaster for the music industry. Some academic studies have even suggested that downloads did not cause the decline in sales of recordings. The 2008 British Music Rights survey showed that 80% of people in Britain wanted a legal peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing service, however only half of the respondents thought that the music's creators should be paid. The survey was consistent with the results of earlier research conducted in the United States, upon which the Open Music Model was based.
Legal digital downloads became widely available with the debut of the Apple iTunes Store in 2003. The popularity of music distribution over the Internet has increased, and by 2011 digital music sales topped physical sales of music. In 2008, Atlantic Records reports that digital sales have surpassed physical sales. However, as The Economist reported, "paid digital downloads grew rapidly, but did not begin to make up for the loss of revenue from CDs".
After 2010, Internet-based services such as Deezer, Pandora, Spotify, and Apple's iTunes Radio began to offer subscription-based " pay to stream " services over the Internet. With streaming services, the user pays a subscription to a company for the right to listen to songs and other media from a library. Whereas with legal digital download services, the purchaser owns a digital copy of the song (which they can keep on their computer or on a digital media player), with streaming services, the user never downloads the song file or owns the song file. The subscriber can only listen to the song for as long as they continue to pay the streaming subscription. Once the user stops paying the subscription, they cannot listen to audio from the company's repositories anymore. Streaming services began to have a serious impact on the industry in 2014.
Spotify, together with the music-streaming industry in general, faces some criticism from artists claiming they are not being fairly compensated for their work as downloaded-music sales decline and music-streaming increases. Unlike physical or download sales, which pay a fixed price per song or album, Spotify pays artists based on their "market share" (the number of streams for their songs as a proportion of total songs streamed on the service). Spotify distributes approximately 70% to rights-holders, who will then pay artists based on their agreements. The variable, and (some say) inadequate nature of this compensation, has led to criticism. Spotify reports paying on average US$0.006 to US$0.008 per stream. In response to concerns, Spotify claims that they are benefiting the music business by migrating "them away from piracy and less monetized platforms and allowing them to generate far greater royalties than before" by encouraging users to use their paid service.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) revealed in its 2015 earnings report that streaming services were responsible for 34.3 percent of the year's U.S. recorded-music-industry revenue, growing 29 percent from the previous year and becoming the largest source of income, pulling in around $2.4 billion. US streaming revenue grew 57 percent to $1.6 billion in the first half of 2016 and accounted for almost half of industry sales. This contrasts with the $14.6 billion in revenue that was received in 1999 by the U.S. music industry from the sale of CDs.
The turmoil in the recorded-music industry in the 2000s altered the twentieth-century balance between artists, record companies, promoters, retail music-stores and consumers. As of 2010, big-box stores such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy sell more records than music-only CD stores, which have ceased to function as a major player in the music industry. Music-performing artists now rely on live performance and merchandise sales (T-shirts, sweatshirts, etc.) for the majority of their income, which in turn has made them more dependent – like pre-20th-century musicians – on patrons, now exemplified by music promoters such as Live Nation (which dominates tour promotion and owns or manages a large number of music venues). In order to benefit from all of an artist's income streams, record companies increasingly rely on the " 360 deal ", a new business-relationship pioneered by Robbie Williams and EMI in 2007. At the other extreme, record companies can offer a simple manufacturing- and distribution-deal, which gives a higher percentage to the artist, but does not cover the expenses of marketing and promotion.
Companies like Kickstarter help independent musicians produce their albums through fans funding bands they want to listen to. Many newer artists no longer see a record deal as an integral part of their business plan at all. Inexpensive recording-hardware and -software make it possible to record reasonable-quality music on a laptop in a bedroom and to distribute it over the Internet to a worldwide audience. This, in turn, has caused problems for recording studios, record producers and audio engineers: the Los Angeles Times reports that as many as half of the recording facilities in that city have failed. Changes in the music industry have given consumers access to a wider variety of music than ever before, at a price that gradually approaches zero. However, consumer spending on music-related software and hardware increased dramatically over the last decade, providing a valuable new income-stream for technology companies such as Apple Inc. and Pandora Radio. |
synth_fc_3643_rep3 | Positive | Video game | Feature search | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s | 1 | The 1980s was the decade that began on January 1, 1980, and ended on December 31, 1989. The decade saw a dominance of conservatism and free market economics, and a socioeconomic change due to advances in technology and a worldwide move away from planned economies and towards laissez-faire capitalism compared to the 1970s. As economic deconstruction increased in the developed world, multiple multinational corporations associated with the manufacturing industry relocated into Thailand, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. Japan and West Germany saw large economic growth during this decade. The AIDS epidemic became recognized in the 1980s and has since killed an estimated 40.4 million people. Global warming theory began to spread within the scientific and political community in the 1980s. The United Kingdom and the United States moved closer to supply-side economic policies, beginning a trend towards global instability of international trade that would pick up more steam in the following decade as the fall of the USSR made right-wing economic policy more powerful. The final decade of the Cold War opened with the US-Soviet confrontation continuing largely without any interruption. Superpower tensions escalated rapidly as President Reagan scrapped the policy of détente and adopted a new, much more aggressive stance on the Soviet Union. The world came perilously close to nuclear war for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, but the second half of the decade saw a dramatic easing of superpower tensions and ultimately the total collapse of Soviet communism. Developing countries across the world faced economic and social difficulties as they suffered from multiple debt crises in the 1980s, requiring many of these countries to apply for financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Ethiopia witnessed widespread famine in the mid-1980s during the corrupt rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam, resulting in the country having to depend on foreign aid to provide food to its population and worldwide efforts to address and raise money to help Ethiopians, such as the Live Aid concert in 1985. Major civil discontent and violence occurred, including the Angolan Civil War, the Ethiopian Civil War, the Moro conflict, the Salvadoran Civil War, the Ugandan Bush War, the insurgency in Laos, the Iran–Iraq War, the Soviet–Afghan War, the 1982 Lebanon War, the Falklands War, the Second Sudanese Civil War, the Lord's Resistance Army insurgency, and the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. Islamism became a powerful political force in the 1980s and many jihadist organizations, including Al Qaeda, were set up. By 1986, nationalism was making a comeback in the Eastern Bloc, and the desire for democracy in socialist states, combined with economic recession, resulted in Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika, which reduced Communist Party power, legalized dissent and sanctioned limited forms of capitalism such as joint ventures with companies from capitalist countries. After tension for most of the decade, by 1988 relations between the communist and capitalist blocs had improved significantly and the Soviet Union was increasingly unwilling to defend its governments in satellite states. 1989 brought the overthrow and attempted overthrow of a number of governments led by communist parties, such as in Hungary, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in China, the Czechoslovak "Velvet Revolution", Erich Honecker's East German regime, Poland's Soviet-backed government, and the violent overthrow of the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime in Romania. Destruction of the 155-km Berlin Wall, at the end of the decade, signaled a seismic geopolitical shift. The Cold War ended in the early 1990s with the successful Reunification of Germany and the USSR's demise after the August Coup of 1991. The 1980s was an era of tremendous population growth around the world, surpassing the 1970s and 1990s, and arguably being the largest in human history. During the 1980s, the world population grew from 4.4 to 5.3 billion people. There were approximately 1.33 billion births and 480 million deaths. Population growth was particularly rapid in a number of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian countries during this decade, with rates of natural increase close to or exceeding 4% annually. The 1980s saw the advent of the ongoing practice of sex-selective abortion in China and India as ultrasound technology permitted parents to selectively abort baby girls. The 1980s saw great advances in genetic and digital technology. After years of animal experimentation since 1985, the first genetic modification of 10 adult human beings took place in May 1989, a gene tagging experiment which led to the first true gene therapy implementation in September 1990. The first "designer babies", a pair of female twins, were created in a laboratory in late 1989 and born in July 1990 after being sex-selected via the controversial assisted reproductive technology procedure preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Gestational surrogacy was first performed in 1985 with the first birth in 1986, making it possible for a woman to become a biological mother without experiencing pregnancy for the first time in history. The global internet took shape in academia by the second half of the 1980s, as well as many other computer networks of both academic and commercial use such as USENET, Fidonet, and the Bulletin Board System. By 1989, the Internet and the networks linked to it were a global system with extensive transoceanic satellite links and nodes in most developed countries. Based on earlier work, from 1980 onwards Tim Berners-Lee formalized the concept of the World Wide Web by 1989. Television viewing became commonplace in the Third World, with the number of TV sets in China and India increasing by 15 and 10 times respectively. The Atari Video Computer System console became widespread in the first part of the decade, often simply called "Atari". 1980 Atari VCS port of Space Invaders was the first killer app. The video game crash of 1983 ended the system's popularity and decimated the industry until the Nintendo Entertainment System re-established the console market in North America. The hand-held Game Boy launched in 1989. Super Mario Bros. and Tetris were the decade's best selling games. Pac-Man was the highest grossing arcade game. Home computers became commonplace. The 1981 IBM PC led to a large market for IBM PC compatibles. The 1984 release of the Macintosh popularized the WIMP style of interaction. |
synth_fc_566_rep20 | Positive | Corporate Management | Database update | Multi | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Say | 1 | Jean-Baptiste Say was a liberal French economist and businessman who argued in favor of competition, free trade and lifting restraints on business. He is best known for Say's law—also known as the law of markets—which he popularized, although scholars disagree as to whether it was Say who first articulated the theory. Moreover, he was one of the first economists to study entrepreneurship and conceptualized entrepreneurs as organizers and leaders of the economy. He was also closely involved in the development of the École spéciale de commerce et d'industrie, historically the first business school to be established. |
synth_fc_1757_rep26 | Positive | Health | Calculation | Single | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder | 40 | Manic episodes
Also known as a manic episode, mania is a distinct period of at least one week of elevated or irritable mood, which can range from euphoria to delirium. The core symptom of mania involves an increase in energy of psychomotor activity. Mania can also present with increased self-esteem or grandiosity, racing thoughts, pressured speech that is difficult to interrupt, decreased need for sleep, disinhibited social behavior, increased goal-oriented activities and impaired judgement, which can lead to exhibition of behaviors characterized as impulsive or high-risk, such as hypersexuality or excessive spending. To fit the definition of a manic episode, these behaviors must impair the individual's ability to socialize or work. If untreated, a manic episode usually lasts three to six months.
In severe manic episodes, a person can experience psychotic symptoms, where thought content is affected along with mood. They may feel unstoppable, persecuted, or as if they have a special relationship with God, a great mission to accomplish, or other grandiose or delusional ideas. This may lead to violent behavior and, sometimes, hospitalization in an inpatient psychiatric hospital. The severity of manic symptoms can be measured by rating scales such as the Young Mania Rating Scale, though questions remain about the reliability of these scales.
The onset of a manic or depressive episode is often foreshadowed by sleep disturbance. Manic individuals often have a history of substance use disorder developed over years as a form of "self-medication". |
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