source stringlengths 31 227 | text stringlengths 9 2k |
|---|---|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AM-Franc | The "flag ticket" franc () was a currency issued by the United States for use in Allied-occupied France in the wake of the Battle of Normandy. With the swift take-over of sovereignty by General Charles de Gaulle, who considered the US occupation franc as "counterfeit money", the currency rapidly faded out of use in favour of the pre-war French franc.
Gallery
See also
Franc CFA
External links
Dubious Liberators: Allied Plans to Occupy France, 1942-1944, by Ted Rall (archived from the original).
Currencies of France
Currency symbols
Modern obsolete currencies |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential%20extension | In mathematics, specifically module theory, given a ring R and an R-module M with a submodule N, the module M is said to be an essential extension of N (or N is said to be an essential submodule or large submodule of M) if for every submodule H of M,
implies that
As a special case, an essential left ideal of R is a left ideal that is essential as a submodule of the left module RR. The left ideal has non-zero intersection with any non-zero left ideal of R. Analogously, an essential right ideal is exactly an essential submodule of the right R module RR.
The usual notations for essential extensions include the following two expressions:
, and
The dual notion of an essential submodule is that of superfluous submodule (or small submodule). A submodule N is superfluous if for any other submodule H,
implies that .
The usual notations for superfluous submodules include:
, and
Properties
Here are some of the elementary properties of essential extensions, given in the notation introduced above. Let M be a module, and K, N and H be submodules of M with K N
Clearly M is an essential submodule of M, and the zero submodule of a nonzero module is never essential.
if and only if and
if and only if and
Using Zorn's Lemma it is possible to prove another useful fact:
For any submodule N of M, there exists a submodule C such that
.
Furthermore, a module with no proper essential extension (that is, if the module is essential in another module, then it is equal to that module) is an injective module. It is then possible to prove that every module M has a maximal essential extension E(M), called the injective hull of M. The injective hull is necessarily an injective module, and is unique up to isomorphism. The injective hull is also minimal in the sense that any other injective module containing M contains a copy of E(M).
Many properties dualize to superfluous submodules, but not everything. Again let M be a module, and K, N and H be submodules of M with K N.
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%20Radio%20Company | is a Japanese company specialising in the field of wireless electronics for the communications industry.
History
Established in 1915, the company has produced a wide variety of products including marine electronics, measuring equipment for telecommunication, radio broadcasting equipment, and amateur radio equipment, including the JST-145dx/JST-245dx HF transceivers, which were the last amateur radio transceivers produced by JRC, ending in 2002. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pore%20space%20in%20soil | The pore space of soil contains the liquid and gas phases of soil, i.e., everything but the solid phase that contains mainly minerals of varying sizes as well as organic compounds.
In order to understand porosity better a series of equations have not been used to express the quantitative interactions between the three phases of soil.
Macropores or fractures play a major role in infiltration rates in many soils as well as preferential flow patterns, hydraulic conductivity and evapotranspiration. Cracks are also very influential in gas exchange, influencing respiration within soils. Modeling cracks therefore helps understand how these processes work and what the effects of changes in soil cracking such as compaction, can have on these processes.
The pore space of soil may contain the habitat of plants (rhizosphere) and microorganisms.
Background
Bulk density
The bulk density of soil depends greatly on the mineral make up of soil and the degree of compaction. The density of quartz is around 2.65 g/cm3 but the bulk density of a soil may be less than half that density.
Most soils have a bulk density between 1.0 and 1.6 g/cm3 but organic soil and some friable clay may have a bulk density well below 1 g/cm3.
Core samples are taken by driving a metal core into the earth at the desired depth and soil horizon.
The samples are then oven dried and weighed.
Bulk density = (mass of oven dry soil)/volume
The bulk density of soil is inversely related to the porosity of the same soil. The more pore space in a soil the lower the value for bulk density.
Porosity
or
Porosity is a measure of the total pore space in the soil. This is measured as a volume or percent. The amount of porosity in a soil depends on the minerals that make up the soil and the amount of sorting that occurs within the soil structure. For example, a sandy soil will have larger porosity than silty sand, because the silt will fill in the gaps between the sand particles.
Pore space relations
Hydrauli |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video%20resume | Video résumé or video resume is a recording promoting a job seeker.
History
Video resumes, sometimes called Visumé or Video CV, were first introduced in the 1980s for use and distribution via VHS tape, but the idea never took off beyond the video taping of interviews. However, with the modern capabilities of transmitting streaming video via the internet, video resumes have taken on new popularity. It is way for job seekers to showcase their abilities beyond the capabilities of a traditional paper résumé. The video resume allows prospective employers to see and hear applicants, and get a feel for how applicants present themselves.
Benefits
Demonstrates Communication Skills
Video resumes allow job seekers to showcase their verbal communication skills, an aspect often overlooked in traditional resumes. This medium provides an opportunity to articulate thoughts clearly, display confidence, and convey information effectively.
Personalises the Application
Unlike traditional resumes, which are limited to text and static formats, video resumes offer a dynamic platform for candidates to present themselves. This personal touch can provide employers with a more comprehensive and memorable impression of the applicant, potentially setting them apart from other candidates.
Showcases Creativity and Presentation Skills
Through video resumes, candidates have the chance to exhibit creativity in their approach to self-presentation. This creativity can be a valuable asset, especially in industries where innovative thinking or presentation skills are highly valued, such as marketing, design, or the arts.
Highlights Non-Verbal Cues
A video resume allows employers to observe non-verbal cues such as body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. These elements can provide additional insights into a candidate's demeanour, confidence level, and overall personality, which may not be readily apparent from a traditional resume.
Saves Time for Both Parties
Video resumes can st |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Routing%20protocol | A routing protocol specifies how routers communicate with each other to distribute information that enables them to select paths between nodes on a computer network. Routers perform the traffic directing functions on the Internet; data packets are forwarded through the networks of the internet from router to router until they reach their destination computer. Routing algorithms determine the specific choice of route. Each router has a prior knowledge only of networks attached to it directly. A routing protocol shares this information first among immediate neighbors, and then throughout the network. This way, routers gain knowledge of the topology of the network. The ability of routing protocols to dynamically adjust to changing conditions such as disabled connections and components and route data around obstructions is what gives the Internet its fault tolerance and high availability.
The specific characteristics of routing protocols include the manner in which they avoid routing loops, the manner in which they select preferred routes, using information about hop costs, the time they require to reach routing convergence, their scalability, and other factors such as relay multiplexing and cloud access framework parameters. Certain additional characteristics such as multilayer interfacing may also be employed as a means of distributing uncompromised networking gateways to authorized ports. This has the added benefit of preventing issues with routing protocol loops.
Many routing protocols are defined in technical standards documents called RFCs.
Types
Although there are many types of routing protocols, three major classes are in widespread use on IP networks:
Interior gateway protocols type 1, link-state routing protocols, such as OSPF and IS-IS
Interior gateway protocols type 2, distance-vector routing protocols, such as Routing Information Protocol, RIPv2, IGRP.
Exterior gateway protocols are routing protocols used on the Internet for exchanging routing info |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMUcam | A CMUcam is a low cost computer vision device intended for robotics research. CMUcams consist of a small video camera and a microcontroller with a serial interface. While other digital cameras typically use a much higher bandwidth connector, the CMUcam's lightweight interface allows it to be accessed by microcontrollers. More importantly, the on-board microprocessor supports simple image processing and color blob tracking, making rudimentary computer vision capable in systems that would previously have far too little power to do such a thing. It has been used in past years by the high-school FIRST Robotics Competition as a way of letting participants' robots track field elements and navigate autonomously. The CMUcam also has an extremely small form factor. For these reasons, it is relatively popular for making small, mobile robots.
The original design was originally made by Carnegie Mellon University, who has licensed it to various manufacturers.
Current Version
Pixy2 is the latest in the line of CMUcam sensors. It adds line tracking capability and an onboard light source to the previous CMUcam5, aka original Pixy. These sensors are produced in collaboration with Charmed Labs in Austin, TX.
External links
Robotics hardware
Image sensor technology in computer vision
Lua (programming language)-scriptable hardware |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella%20%28song%29 | "Umbrella" is a song by Barbadian singer Rihanna, released worldwide on March 29, 2007, through Def Jam Recordings as the lead single and opening track from her third studio album, Good Girl Gone Bad (2007). Its featured artist, American rapper Jay-Z, co-wrote the song with its producers Tricky Stewart and Kuk Harrell, with additional writing contributions coming from The-Dream.
"Umbrella" was a global success, topping the charts in 17 countries such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, the Republic of Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the UK, where the song's chart performance coincided with the prolonged rain and flooding, it was one of the most played songs on radio in the 2000s decade. It managed to stay atop the UK Singles Chart for 10 consecutive weeks, the longest run at number one for any single of that decade, and is also one of the few songs to top the chart for at least 10 weeks. As one of the highest digital debuts in the United States at the time, it remained atop of the US Billboard Hot 100 for seven consecutive weeks.
The single's accompanying music video, directed by Chris Applebaum and featuring Rihanna's nude body covered in silver paint, earned her a Video of the Year at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards and Most Watched Video on MuchMusic.com at MuchMusic Video Awards. "Umbrella" has been covered by several notable performers across various musical genres, including All Time Low, the Baseballs, Train, Manic Street Preachers, McFly, Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, OneRepublic, Taylor Swift, and Vanilla Sky. Rihanna performed the song at the 2007 MTV Movie Awards and at the 2008 BRIT Awards, and also included it as the closing number of the Good Girl Gone Bad Tour (2008), the Last Girl on Earth (2010), and the Loud Tour (2011) as well as in the Diamonds World Tour (2013), and the Anti World Tour (2016). "Umbrella" is also a playable song in the 2012 video game Just Dance 4.
Background and development
Amer |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxalosuccinic%20acid | Oxalosuccinic acid is a substrate of the citric acid cycle. It is acted upon by isocitrate dehydrogenase. Salts and esters of oxalosuccinic acid are known as oxalosuccinates.
Oxalosuccinic acid/oxalosuccinate is an unstable 6-carbon intermediate in the tricarboxylic acid cycle. It's a keto acid, formed during the oxidative decarboxylation of isocitrate to alpha-ketoglutarate, which is catalyzed by the enzyme isocitrate dehydrogenase. Isocitrate is first oxidized by coenzyme NAD+ to form oxalosuccinic acid/oxalosuccinate. Oxalosuccinic acid is both an alpha-keto and a beta-keto acid (an unstable compound) and it is the beta-ketoic property that allows the loss of carbon dioxide in the enzymatic reaction in conversion to the five-carbon molecule 2-oxoglutarate. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeophyte | An archaeophyte is a plant species which is non-native to a geographical region, but which was an introduced species in "ancient" times, rather than being a modern introduction. Those arriving after are called neophytes.
The cut-off date is usually the beginning of the early modern period (turn of the 15th or 16th century). In Britain, archaeophytes are considered to be those species first introduced prior to the year 1492, when Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World and the Columbian Exchange began.
Background
Archaeophytes include numerous weed species the seeds of which have been found in archaeological excavations - to which they had been brought by people (anthropochory), animals (zoochory) or the wind (anemochory).
In some cases, introduced species, whether archaeophytes or neophytes, may have been native species before the ice ages, which extirpated vast numbers of plant species. Central European archaeophytes almost all come from the Mediterranean region and the neighboring areas of Western Asia, as they were introduced into Central Europe with the beginning of agriculture and increasingly since Roman times. They therefore include many familiar plants such as cultivated apples, pears, plums, cereals such as wheat and barley as well as flowers and medicinal plants such as poppy, cornflower, real chamomile and corn.
Australia's collision with the Eurasian Plate led to additional South-east Asian plants entering the Australian flora like the Lepidium and Chenopodioideae. Moreover, Aboriginal Australian and New Guinean contact prior to rising sea levels that isolated Australia from New Guinea in the early Holocene may explain the presence of New Guinea domesticates such as taro (Colocasia esculenta) and bananas (Musa acuminata) in northern Australia. Assisted migrations may also be the reason why some rainforest plants from New Guinea entered northern Australia more than 10,000 years ago.
Examples
Archaeophytes are often cultivated species, transpor |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental%20matrix%20%28linear%20differential%20equation%29 | In mathematics, a fundamental matrix of a system of n homogeneous linear ordinary differential equations
is a matrix-valued function whose columns are linearly independent solutions of the system.
Then every solution to the system can be written as , for some constant vector (written as a column vector of height ).
One can show that a matrix-valued function is a fundamental matrix of if and only if and is a non-singular matrix for all
Control theory
The fundamental matrix is used to express the state-transition matrix, an essential component in the solution of a system of linear ordinary differential equations.
See also
Linear differential equation
Liouville's formula
Systems of ordinary differential equations |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative%20Wave%20Blaster | The Wave Blaster was an add-on MIDI-synthesizer for Creative Sound Blaster 16 and Sound Blaster AWE32 family of PC soundcards. It was a sample-based synthesis General MIDI compliant synthesizer. For General MIDI scores, the Wave Blaster's wavetable-engine produced more realistic instrumental music than the SB16's onboard Yamaha-OPL3.
The Wave Blaster attached to a SB16 through a 26-pin expansion-header, eliminating the need for extra cabling between the SB16 and the Wave Blaster. The SB16 emulated an MPU-401 UART, giving existing MIDI-software the option to send MIDI-sequences directly to the attached Wave Blaster, instead of driving an external MIDI-device. The Wave Blaster's analog stereo-output fed into a dedicated line-in on the SB16, where the onboard-mixer allowed equalization, mixing, and volume adjustment.
The Wave Blaster port was adopted by other sound card manufacturers who produced both daughterboards and soundcards with the expansion-header: Diamond, Ensoniq, Guillemot, Oberheim, Orchid, Roland, TerraTec, Turtle Beach, and Yamaha. The header also appeared on devices such as the Korg NX5R MIDI sound module, the Oberheim MC-1000/MC-2000 keyboards, and the TerraTec Axon AX-100 Guitar-to-MIDI converter.
Since 2000, Wave Blaster-capable sound cards for computers are becoming rare. In 2005, Terratec released a new Wave Blaster daughterboard called the Wave XTable with 16mb of on-board sample memory comprising 500 instruments and 10 drum kits. In 2014, a new compatible card called Dreamblaster S1 was produced by the Belgian company Serdaco. In 2015 that same company released a high end card named Dreamblaster X1, comparable to Yamaha and Roland cards. In 2016 DreamBlaster X2 was released, a board with both waveblaster interface and USB interface.
WaveBlaster II
Creative released the Waveblaster II (CT1910) shortly after the original Waveblaster. Waveblaster II used a newer E-mu EMU8000 synthesis-engine (which later appeared in the AWE32).
By the ti |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wound%20tumor%20virus | Wound tumor virus is an invertebrate and plant virus found in the United States of America belonging to the genus Phytoreovirus and the family Reoviridae. It is a type III virus under the Baltimore classification system; that is it has a double-stranded RNA genome. This genome is approximately 25,000 base pairs long and organised into twelve segments. All the viral replication occurs in the cytoplasm. The virus is 22% RNA by weight, the other 78% being structural proteins.
Structurally, the virus is constructed from 7 different structural proteins. The capsid has icosahedral symmetry, is non-enveloped and around 70 nm in diameter. There is an inner-shell with a diameter of around 50 nm.
More than 50 species of plants are potential hosts for Wound tumor virus. It was first reported in Melilotus officinalis. The virus causes tumors to form on the plant at the stem and roots – with the root tumors being more severe.
The virus is spread by an insect vector – the leaf hopper family, notably 'Agallia constricta'. Since viral replication occurs relatively independently of cellular processes, the virus also replicates in the insect vector.
External links
NCBI database entry for wound tumor virus
Viral plant pathogens and diseases
Phytoreoviruses |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan%20%28drawing%29 | Plans are a set of drawings or two-dimensional diagrams used to describe a place or object, or to communicate building or fabrication instructions. Usually plans are drawn or printed on paper, but they can take the form of a digital file.
Plans are used in a range of fields: architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, industrial engineering to systems engineering.
The term "plan" may casually be used to refer to a single view, sheet, or drawing in a set of plans. More specifically a plan view is an orthographic projection looking down on the object, such as in a floor plan.
Overview
Plans are often for technical purposes such as architecture, engineering, or planning. Their purpose in these disciplines is to accurately and unambiguously capture all the geometric features of a site, building, product or component. Plans can also be for presentation or orientation purposes, and are often less detailed versions of the former. The end goal of plans is either to portray an existing place or object, or to convey enough information to allow a builder or manufacturer to realize a design.
The process of producing plans, and the skill of producing them, is often referred to as technical drawing. A working drawing is a type of technical drawing, which is part of the documentation needed to build an engineering product or architecture. Typically in architecture these could include civil drawings, architectural drawings, structural drawings, mechanical drawings, electrical drawings, and plumbing drawings. In engineering, these drawings show all necessary data to manufacture a given object, such as dimensions and angles.
Plan features
Format
Plans are often prepared in a "set". The set includes all the information required for the purpose of the set, and may exclude views or projections which are unnecessary. A set of plans can be on standard office-sized paper or on large sheets. It can be stapled, folded or rolled as |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphyses | Paraphyses are erect sterile filament-like support structures occurring among the reproductive apparatuses of fungi, ferns, bryophytes and some thallophytes. The singular form of the word is paraphysis.
In certain fungi, they are part of the fertile spore-bearing layer. More specifically, paraphyses are sterile filamentous hyphal end cells composing part of the hymenium of Ascomycota and Basidiomycota interspersed among either the asci or basidia respectively, and not sufficiently differentiated to be called cystidia, which are specialized, swollen, often protruding cells. The tips of paraphyses may contain the pigments which colour the hymenium.
In ferns and mosses, they are filament-like structures that are found on sporangia. They are found between clusters of archegonia and antheridia. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsen%27s%20theorem | In mathematics, Tsen's theorem states that a function field K of an algebraic curve over an algebraically closed field is quasi-algebraically closed (i.e., C1). This implies that the Brauer group of any such field vanishes, and more generally that all the Galois cohomology groups H i(K, K*) vanish for i ≥ 1. This result is used to calculate the étale cohomology groups of an algebraic curve.
The theorem was published by Chiungtze C. Tsen in 1933.
See also
Tsen rank |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducci%20sequence | A Ducci sequence is a sequence of n-tuples of integers, sometimes known as "the Diffy game", because it is based on sequences.
Given an n-tuple of integers , the next n-tuple in the sequence is formed by taking the absolute differences of neighbouring integers:
Another way of describing this is as follows. Arrange n integers in a circle and make a new circle by taking the difference between neighbours, ignoring any minus signs; then repeat the operation. Ducci sequences are named after Enrico Ducci (1864 - 1940), the Italian mathematician who discovered this in the 1930s.
Ducci sequences are also known as the Ducci map or the n-number game. Open problems in the study of these maps still remain.
Properties
From the second n-tuple onwards, it is clear that every integer in each n-tuple in a Ducci sequence is greater than or equal to 0 and is less than or equal to the difference between the maximum and minimum members of the first n-tuple. As there are only a finite number of possible n-tuples with these constraints, the sequence of n-tuples must sooner or later repeat itself. Every Ducci sequence therefore eventually becomes periodic.
If n is a power of 2 every Ducci sequence eventually reaches the n-tuple (0,0,...,0) in a finite number of steps.
If n is not a power of two, a Ducci sequence will either eventually reach an n-tuple of zeros or will settle into a periodic loop of 'binary' n-tuples; that is, n-tuples of form , is a constant, and .
An obvious generalisation of Ducci sequences is to allow the members of the n-tuples to be any real numbers rather than just integers. For example,
this 4-tuple converges to (0, 0, 0, 0) in four iterations:
The properties presented here do not always hold for these generalisations. For example, a Ducci sequence starting with the n-tuple (1, q, q2, q3) where q is the (irrational) positive root of the cubic does not reach (0,0,0,0) in a finite number of steps, although in the limit it converges to (0,0,0,0).
Examples
D |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein%20domain | In molecular biology, a protein domain is a region of a protein's polypeptide chain that is self-stabilizing and that folds independently from the rest. Each domain forms a compact folded three-dimensional structure. Many proteins consist of several domains, and a domain may appear in a variety of different proteins. Molecular evolution uses domains as building blocks and these may be recombined in different arrangements to create proteins with different functions. In general, domains vary in length from between about 50 amino acids up to 250 amino acids in length. The shortest domains, such as zinc fingers, are stabilized by metal ions or disulfide bridges. Domains often form functional units, such as the calcium-binding EF hand domain of calmodulin. Because they are independently stable, domains can be "swapped" by genetic engineering between one protein and another to make chimeric proteins.
Background
The concept of the domain was first proposed in 1973 by Wetlaufer after X-ray
crystallographic studies of hen lysozyme and papain
and by limited proteolysis studies of immunoglobulins. Wetlaufer defined domains as stable units of protein structure that could fold autonomously. In the past domains have been described as units of:
compact structure
function and evolution
folding.
Each definition is valid and will often overlap, i.e. a compact structural domain that is found amongst diverse proteins is likely to fold independently within its structural environment. Nature often brings several domains together to form multidomain and multifunctional proteins with a vast number of possibilities. In a multidomain protein, each domain may fulfill its own function independently, or in a concerted manner with its neighbours. Domains can either serve as modules for building up large assemblies such as virus particles or muscle fibres, or can provide specific catalytic or binding sites as found in enzymes or regulatory proteins.
Example: Pyruvate kinase
An appropriate |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic%20loading | Dynamic loading is a mechanism by which a computer program can, at run time, load a library (or other binary) into memory, retrieve the addresses of functions and variables contained in the library, execute those functions or access those variables, and unload the library from memory. It is one of the 3 mechanisms by which a computer program can use some other software; the other two are static linking and dynamic linking. Unlike static linking and dynamic linking, dynamic loading allows a computer program to start up in the absence of these libraries, to discover available libraries, and to potentially gain additional functionality.
History
Dynamic loading was a common technique for IBM's operating systems for System/360 such as OS/360, particularly for I/O subroutines, and for COBOL and PL/I runtime libraries, and continues to be used in IBM's operating systems for z/Architecture, such as z/OS. As far as the application programmer is concerned, the loading is largely transparent, since it is mostly handled by the operating system (or its I/O subsystem). The main advantages are:
Fixes (patches) to the subsystems fixed all programs at once, without the need to relink them
Libraries could be protected from unauthorized modification
IBM's strategic transaction processing system, CICS (1970s onwards) uses dynamic loading extensively both for its kernel and for normal application program loading. Corrections to application programs could be made offline and new copies of changed programs loaded dynamically without needing to restart CICS (which can, and frequently does, run 24/7).
Shared libraries were added to Unix in the 1980s, but initially without the ability to let a program load additional libraries after startup.
Uses
Dynamic loading is most frequently used in implementing software plugins. For example, the Apache Web Server's *.dso "dynamic shared object" plugin files are libraries which are loaded at runtime with dynamic loading. Dynamic loading is also |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung%20Laung%20Liu | Chung Laung Liu (; 1934 – 7 November 2020), also known as David Liu or C. L. Liu, was a Taiwanese computer scientist. Born in Guangzhou, he spent his childhood in Macau. He received his B.Sc. degree in Taiwan, master's degree and doctorate in United States.
Biography
Liu received his B.Sc. degree (1956) at the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, and his S.M. and E.E. degrees (1960), and his Sc. D. degree (1962) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1962–1972) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1972–1998), where he was Associate Provost from 1995 to 1998. He then retired from UIUC and served as President and Professor of Computer Science at the National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Hsinchu, Taiwan from February 1998 to February 2002. He was the William Mong Honorary Chair Professor at National Tsing Hua University. He was a Visiting Professor at City University of Hong Kong, and at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, and Li K. T. Honorary Chair Professor at National Central University. Since 2007 he was Li Kuo-Ting Forum Professor at National Cheng Kung University.
He was the author and co-author of seven books and monographs, and over 180 technical papers. His research interests included computer-aided design of VLSI circuits, real-time systems, computer-aided instruction, combinatorial optimization, and discrete mathematics.
He received the IEEE Millennium Medal, and the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Golden Jubilee Medal in 2000. He also received the IEEE Computer Society, Real Time Systems Technical Committee 1999 Technical Achievement Award (inaugural winner) for his contributions in the area of real time scheduling, and the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society 1998 Technical Achievement Award for his contributions in the area of computer aided design of VLSI circuits. He received an Outstanding Talents Foundation Award in 1998. He was the recipient of the 1994 I |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local%20storm%20report | A Local Storm Report (LSR) is transmitted by the National Weather Service (NWS) when it receives significant information from storm spotters, such as amateur radio operators, storm chasers, law enforcement officials, civil defense (now emergency management) personnel, firefighters, EMTs or public citizens, about severe weather conditions in their warning responsibility area (County Warning Area or CWA). Those reports are received by local National Weather Service offices (WFOs), and they can be used to issue Severe Thunderstorm Warnings, Tornado Warnings, and other weather warnings/bulletins, in addition to the LSR.
The Storm Prediction Center, working with the NWS WFOs, collects these reports for its own database, and it also works with the National Climatic Data Center, which eventually stores the reports in the official record, which is called Storm Data.
Example
The following is an example of a stand-alone LSR that has one individual report from a SKYWARN spotter:
NWUS53 KGID 172339
LSRGID
PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HASTINGS NE
639 PM CDT THU JUN 17 2010
..TIME... ...EVENT... ...CITY LOCATION... ...LAT.LON...
..DATE... ....MAG.... ..COUNTY LOCATION..ST.. ...SOURCE....
..REMARKS..
0636 PM HAIL 2 SSW KIRWIN 39.64N 99.14W
06/17/2010 E0.75 INCH PHILLIPS KS TRAINED SPOTTER
DIME SIZE HAIL AT SCOUT RESERVATION
&&
$$
Summary LSRs, which can have an extensive listing of individual reports, are also often issued by NWS WFOs after a weather event has ended in order to inform the public and news media outlets of the breadth of severe weather across a WFO's CWA.
See also
Severe weather terminology |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel%20mass%20fraction | In combustion physics, fuel mass fraction is the ratio of fuel mass flow to the total mass flow of a fuel mixture. If an air flow is fuel free, the fuel mass fraction is zero; in pure fuel without trapped gases, the ratio is unity. As fuel is burned in a combustion process, the fuel mass fraction is reduced. The definition reads as
where
is the mass of the fuel in the mixture
is the total mass of the mixture |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucogenic%20amino%20acid | A glucogenic amino acid (or glucoplastic amino acid) is an amino acid that can be converted into glucose through gluconeogenesis. This is in contrast to the ketogenic amino acids, which are converted into ketone bodies.
The production of glucose from glucogenic amino acids involves these amino acids being converted to alpha keto acids and then to glucose, with both processes occurring in the liver. This mechanism predominates during catabolysis, rising as fasting and starvation increase in severity.
In humans, the glucogenic amino acids are:
Alanine
Arginine
Asparagine
Aspartic acid
Cysteine
Glutamic acid
Glutamine
Glycine
Histidine
Methionine
Proline
Serine
Valine
Amino acids that are both glucogenic and ketogenic (mnemonic "PITTT"):
Phenylalanine
Isoleucine
Threonine
Tryptophan
Tyrosine
Only leucine and lysine are not glucogenic (they are only ketogenic).
See also
Glycolysis
Ketogenic amino acid
List of standard amino acids
Metabolism |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic%20amino%20acid | A ketogenic amino acid is an amino acid that can be degraded directly into acetyl-CoA, which is the precursor of ketone bodies and myelin, particularly during early childhood, when the developing brain requires high rates of myelin synthesis. This is in contrast to the glucogenic amino acids, which are converted into glucose. Ketogenic amino acids are unable to be converted to glucose as both carbon atoms in the ketone body are ultimately degraded to carbon dioxide in the citric acid cycle.
In humans, two amino acids – leucine and lysine – are exclusively ketogenic. Five more are both ketogenic and glucogenic: phenylalanine, isoleucine, threonine, tryptophan and tyrosine. The remaining thirteen are exclusively glucogenic.
Studies
Ketogenic amino acids serve important roles in the human body, leading to the study of ketogenic amino acid rich (KAAR) diets as possible treatment for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and diabetes. Dietary studies of fatty liver disease in mice show that decreasing the intake of ketogenic amino acids lysine and threonine may induce hepatic steatosis, a major cause of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Leucine in particular has been shown to serve an important role in the metabolic pathway for insulin via activation of the rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) and protein S6 kinase 1 (S6K1) for which over-activation leads to insulin resistance. Further studies illustrate that ketogenic amino acid rich diets may aid in decreasing obesity and insulin resistance, but their usage remains disputed. Ketone bodies, specifically β-hydroxybutyrate (βHB) whose levels are increased while on a ketogenic diet, aid in the renewal of myelin for demyelinated axons. This renewal of myelin is important for individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS). MS is a condition which the immune system will attack the myelin sheath that insulates the nerves. Ketogenic diets are being explored as a possible remedy for this condition as the ketone bodies aid in the regen |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host%20factor | Host factor (sometimes known as risk factor) is a medical term referring to the traits of an individual person or animal that affect susceptibility to disease, especially in comparison to other individuals. The term arose in the context of infectious disease research, in contrast to "organism factors", such as the virulence and infectivity of a microbe. Host factors that may vary in a population and affect disease susceptibility can be innate or acquired.
Some examples:
general health
psychological characteristics and attitude
nutritional state
social ties
previous exposure to the organism or related antigens
haplotype or other specific genetic differences of immune function
substance abuse
race
The term is now used in oncology and many other medical contexts related to individual differences of disease vulnerability.
See also
Vulnerability index
Epidemiology
Immunology |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math%20Country | Math Country is an instructional television program produced by Kentucky Educational Television, in the late 1970s.
The show taught elementary math concepts and featured actor Ray Walston as a ghost named Lionel Hardway who inhabits the family farm, now lived in and ran by his descendants, helping them with various math problems, and sometimes getting involved in side stories involving the living members of the Hardway family.
Episodes were roughly 15 minutes in length (design for use during limited classroom time) and were broadcast on educational and public television channels during the school year.
Each broadcast was usually followed by a short called "Math Country Plus", which usually dealt with how a girl in school figured out how to solve problems on her own, using her own creativity and intellect, played by two actors who interacted with the girl on a fantasy set to represent the inside of the girl's head. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal%20of%20Vacuum%20Science%20and%20Technology | The Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published in two parts, A and B, by the American Institute of Physics on behalf of the American Vacuum Society. It was established in 1964 and the editor-in-chief is Eray Aydil (University of Minnesota).
History
1964–1982 Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology
1983–present Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A: Vacuum, Surfaces, and Films
1983–1990 Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B: Microelectronics Processing and Phenomena
1991–present Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B: Microelectronics and Nanometer Structures
Part A
Part A covers applied surface science, electronic materials and processing, fusion technology, plasma technology, surface science, thin films, vacuum metallurgy, and vacuum technology. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2015 impact factor of 1.724.
Part B
Part B covers vacuum and plasma processing of various materials, their structural characterization, microlithography, and the physics and chemistry of submicrometer and nanometer structures and devices. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2014 impact factor of 1.398. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor%20product%20of%20quadratic%20forms | In mathematics, the tensor product of quadratic forms is most easily understood when one views the quadratic forms as quadratic spaces. If R is a commutative ring where 2 is invertible (that is, R has characteristic ), and if and are two quadratic spaces over R, then their tensor product is the quadratic space whose underlying R-module is the tensor product of R-modules and whose quadratic form is the quadratic form associated to the tensor product of the bilinear forms associated to and .
In particular, the form satisfies
(which does uniquely characterize it however). It follows from this that if the quadratic forms are diagonalizable (which is always possible if 2 is invertible in R), i.e.,
then the tensor product has diagonalization
Quadratic forms
Tensors |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier%20integral%20operator | In mathematical analysis, Fourier integral operators have become an important tool in the theory of partial differential equations. The class of Fourier integral operators contains differential operators as well as classical integral operators as special cases.
A Fourier integral operator is given by:
where denotes the Fourier transform of , is a standard symbol which is compactly supported in and is real valued and homogeneous of degree in . It is also necessary to require that on the support of a. Under these conditions, if a is of order zero, it is possible to show that defines a bounded operator from to .
Examples
One motivation for the study of Fourier integral operators is the solution operator for the initial value problem for the wave operator. Indeed, consider the following problem:
and
The solution to this problem is given by
These need to be interpreted as oscillatory integrals since they do not in general converge. This formally looks like a sum of two Fourier integral operators, however the coefficients in each of the integrals are not smooth at the origin, and so not standard symbols. If we cut out this singularity with a cutoff function, then the so obtained operators still provide solutions to the initial value problem modulo smooth functions. Thus, if we are only interested in the propagation of singularities of the initial data, it is sufficient to consider such operators. In fact, if we allow the sound speed c in the wave equation to vary with position we can still find a Fourier integral operator that provides a solution modulo smooth functions, and Fourier integral operators thus provide a useful tool for studying the propagation of singularities of solutions to variable speed wave equations, and more generally for other hyperbolic equations.
See also
Microlocal analysis
Fourier transform
Pseudodifferential operator
Oscillatory integral operator
Symplectic category
Notes |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm%20engineering | Algorithm engineering focuses on the design, analysis, implementation, optimization, profiling and experimental evaluation of computer algorithms, bridging the gap between algorithm theory and practical applications of algorithms in software engineering.
It is a general methodology for algorithmic research.
Origins
In 1995, a report from an NSF-sponsored workshop "with the purpose of assessing the current goals and directions of the Theory of Computing (TOC) community" identified the slow speed of adoption of theoretical insights by practitioners as an important issue and suggested measures to
reduce the uncertainty by practitioners whether a certain theoretical breakthrough will translate into practical gains in their field of work, and
tackle the lack of ready-to-use algorithm libraries, which provide stable, bug-free and well-tested implementations for algorithmic problems and expose an easy-to-use interface for library consumers.
But also, promising algorithmic approaches have been neglected due to difficulties in mathematical analysis.
The term "algorithm engineering" was first used with specificity in 1997, with the first Workshop on Algorithm Engineering (WAE97), organized by Giuseppe F. Italiano.
Difference from algorithm theory
Algorithm engineering does not intend to replace or compete with algorithm theory, but tries to enrich, refine and reinforce its formal approaches with experimental algorithmics (also called empirical algorithmics).
This way it can provide new insights into the efficiency and performance of algorithms in cases where
the algorithm at hand is less amenable to algorithm theoretic analysis,
formal analysis pessimistically suggests bounds which are unlikely to appear on inputs of practical interest,
the algorithm relies on the intricacies of modern hardware architectures like data locality, branch prediction, instruction stalls, instruction latencies which the machine model used in Algorithm Theory is unable to capture in t |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical%20system%20design | Graphical system design (GSD) is a modern approach to designing measurement and control systems that integrates system design software with COTS hardware to dramatically simplify development. This approach combines user interfaces, models of computation, math and analysis, Input/output signals, technology abstractions, and various deployment target. It allows domain experts, or non- implementation experts, to access to design capabilities where they would traditionally need to outsource a system design expert.
This approach to system design is a super-set of electronic system-level (ESL) design. Graphical system design expands on the EDA-based ESL definition to include other types of embedded system design including industrial machines and medical devices. Many of these expanded applications can be defined as "the long tail" applications.
System-level design
Graphical system design is an approach to designing an entire system, using more intuitive graphical software and off-the-shelf (non-custom) hardware devices to refine the design, create initial prototypes and even use for the few run of deployments. The approach may involve Algorithm engineering. The approach can prove successful when designers need to get something to market quickly (medical video: ) or with a team of non-embedded experts like Boston Engineering to create a mechatronics-based machine.
"Graphical system design is a complementary but encompassing platform-based approach that includes embedded and electronic system design, implementation, and verification tools. ESL and graphical system design are really part of the same movement--higher abstraction and more design automation looking to solve the real engineering challenges that designers are facing today--addressing design flaws that are introduced at the specification stage to ensure they're detected well before validation for on-time product delivery."
Tools
Graphical system design relies on open connectivity. For example, tools that can |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiungtze%20C.%20Tsen | Chiungtze C. Tsen (; Chang-Du Gan: [tsɛn˦˨ tɕjuŋ˨˩˧ tsɹ̩˦˨], April 2, 1898 – October 1, 1940), given name Chiung (), was a Chinese mathematician born in Nanchang, Jiangxi. He is known for his work in algebra. He was one of Emmy Noether's students at the University of Göttingen.
One of his research interests was quasi-algebraic closure. In that area he proved a fundamental result which is now called Tsen's theorem.
Biography
Tsen was born in a poor fisherman's family in Xinjian Country, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. His father Tschu-Wun Tsen ( Zeng Zuwen) had two sons and several daughters, and Tsen was the eldest son. His uncle Lei Heng (), who was a jinshi and a member of the Hanlin Academy, persuaded Tsen's father to send Tsen to school. Due to poverty, Tsen had to take leaves from school intermittently to work. After leaving primary school, he worked in a coal mine while self-studying.
In 1917, he passed the entrance examination and was admitted to Jiangxi Provincial First Normal College in Nanchang. He was subsidised by Lei Heng's son Tsebu S. Lee ( Lei Zibu, given name 宣 Xuan), who was studying in Japan on government scholarship. After graduation in 1920, Tsen taught in primary school for two years. In 1922, Tsen entered National Wuchang Senior Normal College, later National Wuchang University, to study undergraduate mathematics, and he graduated in 1926. After graduation, he worked as teacher in high schools for two years to perform the mandatory teaching service of his degree.
In 1927, when Kuomintang split with the Chinese Communist Party, Tsen and some teachers and students protested against the breakup and called for alliance. Several of them including Tsen were beaten up and were sent to hospital. Guo Moruo, then serving as director of the political department of the National Revolutionary Army, visited them in the hospital.
In 1928, Tsen passed the Jiangxi provincial government scholarship examination for studying in Europe and America. He went to Ber |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola%20J.%20May | Lola J. May (October 29, 1923 – March 13, 2007) was a mathematics educator, consultant, author, producer of audio-visual materials, an early proponent of the new math educational process, and a household name among mathematics.
Life
Her father was a salesman and her mother was a homemaker. Her father taught her mathematics every night using a movable blackboard and a collection of coins. She found her early schooling boring and too strict, and she did not initially consider becoming a teacher.
A native of Kenosha, Wisconsin and a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1945, where she received her B.S. in mathematics and science. After teaching high school for three years, she studied and achieved her master's degree in mathematics at Northwestern University in 1950 and her doctorate in mathematics education from there in 1964. She taught mathematics at New Trier Township High School in the Chicago area until 1960, and was a mathematics consultant at the Winnetka, Illinois public schools until 1998. Her summers were often spent teaching at the university level, but she taught mathematics to all grades over the course of her career.
She promised herself to make her students laugh and ask questions. She did not want her students to be bored by or scared of mathematics. She succeeded; her students cheered when they figured out the answers to math problems and lamented when class time with Dr. May was over.
May explained, "The big thing I have going for me is my enthusiasm. There are people who are brighter than I am. There are people who may be better teachers-although I'm pretty good at teaching-and there are certainly people who are better writers. But I have enthusiasm." This enthusiasm was not unnoticed; teachers in the same hallway as her described how loud she was.
May died on March 13, 2007, in Evanston, Illinois, at the age of 83.
Contributions
Her authored works include her autobiography "Lola May Who?", the book "Teaching Math |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneser%27s%20theorem%20%28differential%20equations%29 | In mathematics, the Kneser theorem can refer to two distinct theorems in the field of ordinary differential equations:
the first one, named after Adolf Kneser, provides criteria to decide whether a differential equation is oscillating or not;
the other one, named after Hellmuth Kneser, is about the topology of the set of all solutions of an initial value problem with continuous right hand side.
Statement of the theorem due to A. Kneser
Consider an ordinary linear homogeneous differential equation of the form
with
continuous.
We say this equation is oscillating if it has a solution y with infinitely many zeros, and non-oscillating otherwise.
The theorem states that the equation is non-oscillating if
and oscillating if
Example
To illustrate the theorem consider
where is real and non-zero. According to the theorem, solutions will be oscillating or not depending on whether is positive (non-oscillating) or negative (oscillating) because
To find the solutions for this choice of , and verify the theorem for this example, substitute the 'Ansatz'
which gives
This means that (for non-zero ) the general solution is
where and are arbitrary constants.
It is not hard to see that for positive the solutions do not oscillate while for negative the identity
shows that they do.
The general result follows from this example by the Sturm–Picone comparison theorem.
Extensions
There are many extensions to this result, such as the Gesztesy–Ünal criterion.
Statement of the theorem due to H. Kneser
While Peano's existence theorem guarantees the existence of solutions of certain initial values problems with continuous right hand side, H. Kneser's theorem deals with the topology of the set of those solutions. Precisely, H. Kneser's theorem states the following:
Let be a continuous function on the region , and such that for all .
Given a real number satisfying , define the set as the set of points for which there is a solution of such that and . |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solenoid%20%28DNA%29 | The solenoid structure of chromatin is a model for the structure of the 30 nm fibre. It is a secondary chromatin structure which helps to package eukaryotic DNA into the nucleus.
Background
Chromatin was first discovered by Walther Flemming by using aniline dyes to stain it. In 1974, it was first proposed by Roger Kornberg that chromatin was based on a repeating unit of a histone octamer and around 200 base pairs of DNA.
The solenoid model was first proposed by John Finch and Aaron Klug in 1976. They used electron microscopy images and X-ray diffraction patterns to determine their model of the structure. This was the first model to be proposed for the structure of the 30 nm fibre.
Structure
DNA in the nucleus is wrapped around nucleosomes, which are histone octamers formed of core histone proteins; two histone H2A-H2B dimers, two histone H3 proteins, and two histone H4 proteins. The primary chromatin structure, the least-packed form, is the 11 nm, or “beads on a string” form, where DNA is wrapped around nucleosomes at relatively regular intervals, as Roger Kornberg proposed.
Histone H1 protein binds to the site where DNA enters and exits the nucleosome, wrapping 147 base pairs around the histone core and stabilising the nucleosome, this structure is a chromatosome. In the solenoid structure, the nucleosomes fold up and are stacked, forming a helix. They are connected by bent linker DNA which positions sequential nucleosomes adjacent to one another in the helix. The nucleosomes are positioned with the histone H1 proteins facing toward the centre where they form a polymer. Finch and Klug determined that the helical structure had only one-start point because they mostly observed small pitch angles of 11 nm, which is about the same diameter as a nucleosome. There are approximately 6 nucleosomes in each turn of the helix. Finch and Klug actually observed a wide range of nucleosomes per turn but they put this down to flattening.
Finch and Klug's electron microscopy |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference-map%20algorithm | The difference-map algorithm is a search algorithm for general constraint satisfaction problems. It is a meta-algorithm in the sense that it is built from more basic algorithms that perform projections onto constraint sets. From a mathematical perspective, the difference-map algorithm is a dynamical system based on a mapping of Euclidean space. Solutions are encoded as fixed points of the mapping.
Although originally conceived as a general method for solving the phase problem, the difference-map algorithm has been used for the boolean satisfiability problem, protein structure prediction, Ramsey numbers, diophantine equations, and Sudoku, as well as sphere- and disk-packing problems. Since these applications include NP-complete problems, the scope of the difference map is that of an incomplete algorithm. Whereas incomplete algorithms can efficiently verify solutions (once a candidate is found), they cannot prove that a solution does not exist.
The difference-map algorithm is a generalization of two iterative methods: Fienup's Hybrid input output (HIO) algorithm for phase retrieval and the Douglas-Rachford algorithm for convex optimization. Iterative methods, in general, have a long history in phase retrieval and convex optimization. The use of this style of algorithm for hard, non-convex problems is a more recent development.
Algorithm
The problem to be solved must first be formulated as a set intersection problem in Euclidean space: find an in the intersection of sets and . Another prerequisite is an implementation of the projections and that, given an arbitrary input point , return a point in the constraint set or that is nearest to . One iteration of the algorithm is given by the mapping:
The real parameter should not be equal to 0 but can have either sign; optimal values depend on the application and are determined through experimentation. As a first guess, the choice (or ) is recommended because it reduces the number of projection computations per i |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network%20delay | Network delay is a design and performance characteristic of a telecommunications network. It specifies the latency for a bit of data to travel across the network from one communication endpoint to another. It is typically measured in multiples or fractions of a second. Delay may differ slightly, depending on the location of the specific pair of communicating endpoints. Engineers usually report both the maximum and average delay, and they divide the delay into several parts:
Processing delay time it takes a router to process the packet header
Queuing delay time the packet spends in routing queues
Transmission delay time it takes to push the packet's bits onto the link
Propagation delay time for a signal to propagate through the media
A certain minimum level of delay is experienced by signals due to the time it takes to transmit a packet serially through a link. This delay is extended by more variable levels of delay due to network congestion. IP network delays can range from a few milliseconds to several hundred milliseconds.
See also
Age of Information
End-to-end delay
Lag (video games)
Latency (engineering)
Minimum-Pairs Protocol
Round-trip delay |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby%20Bio | Baby Bio is the brand name for a range of house plant and, more recently, outdoor plant care products created by Pan Britannica Industries Ltd (PBI) and marketed by Bayer.
History
The most popular and first Baby Bio product was a house plant feed, or fertilizer, which is a dark brown concentrate that must be diluted with water before use. Coming in a bottle styled after an old fashioned perfume bottle, it contains Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium, ensuring that the plant receives the necessary macronutrients. Baby Bio is a very popular house plant feed in the UK and can be used all year round, even on Bonsai plants, with the text on the bottle promising greener leaves and vibrant colours. Part of the popularity of the brand in the UK arose from the major success of Dr Hessayon's series of Expert books, which also came from PBI starting in 1958.
As well as concentrate bottles of Baby Bio, it has now been produced in ready dilute spray and 1 litre bottles that contain pesticides too, 'Roota', a rooting hormone and fungicide solution designed to be used on the roots of plant cuttings, and leaf wipes for cleaning house plant leaves. An orchid feed is available which comes in the same bottle as the original Baby Bio except the liquid and design has a pink theme. The concentrated liquid fertilizer is exactly half of what can be found in the traditional bottle.
Baby Bio is also often used in biology experimentation when studying algal growth. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALMS1 | Alstrom syndrome 1 also known as ALMS1 is a protein which in humans is encoded by the ALMS1 gene.
Molecular biology
The gene is located on the short arm of chromosome 2 (2p13.2) on the plus (Watson) strand. It is 224,161 bases in length organised into 23 exons. The encoded protein has 4,167 amino acids and molecular weight of 460,937 Da. Three isoforms are known. The protein itself has a large tandem-repeat domain comprising 34 imperfect repetitions of 47 amino acids. Mutations associated with disease are usually found in exons 8, 10 and 16.
The gene is expressed in fetal tissues including the aorta, brain, eye, kidney, liver, lung, olfactory bulb, pancreas, skeletal muscle, spleen and testis. The protein is found in the cytoplasm, centrosome, cell projections and cilium basal body. During mitosis it localizes to both spindle poles.
Function
Knockdown of Alms1 by short interfering RNA in mouse inner medullary collecting duct cells caused defective ciliogenesis. Cilia were stunted and treated cells lacked the ability to increase calcium influx in response to mechanical stimuli.
Disease association
Mutations in the ALMS1 gene have been found to be causative for Alström syndrome with a total of 81 disease-causing mutations.
Multiple mutations are known: the current (2007) total is 79. These include both nonsense and frameshift mutations. Most of the mutations have been found in exons 8,10 and 16.
Discovery
The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, USA with the University of Southampton, UK identified ALMS1 as the single gene responsible for Alström syndrome.
See also
Alms1, centrosome and basal body associated protein |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibrin | Nibrin, also known as NBN or NBS1, is a protein which in humans is encoded by the NBN gene.
Function
Nibrin is a protein associated with the repair of double strand breaks (DSBs) which pose serious damage to a genome. It is a 754 amino acid protein identified as a member of the NBS1/hMre11/RAD50(N/M/R, more commonly referred to as MRN) double strand DNA break repair complex. This complex recognizes DNA damage and rapidly relocates to DSB sites and forms nuclear foci. It also has a role in regulation of N/M/R (MRN) protein complex activity which includes end-processing of both physiological and mutagenic DNA double strand breaks (DSBs).
Cellular response to DSBs
Cellular response is performed by damage sensors, effectors of lesion repair and signal transduction. The central role is carried out by ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) by activating the DSB signaling cascade, phosphorylating downstream substrates such as histone H2AX and NBS1. NBS1 relocates to DSB sites by interaction of FHA/BRCT domains with phosphorylated histone H2AX. Once it interacts with nibrin c-terminal hMre11-binding domain, hMre11 and hRad50 relocate from the cytoplasm to the nucleus then to sites of DSBs. They finally relocate to N/M/R where they form the foci at the site of damage.
Double strand breaks (DSBs)
DSBs occur during V(D)J recombination during early B and T cell development. This is at the point when the cells of the immune system are developing and the DSBs affect the development of lymphoid cells. DSBs also occur in immunoglobulin class switch in mature B cells. More frequently, however, DSBs are caused by mutagenic agents like radiomimetic chemicals and ionizing radiation(IR).
DSB mutations
As mentioned, DSBs cause extreme damage to DNA. Mutations that cause defective repair of DSBs tend to accumulate un-repaired DSBs. One such mutation is associated with Nijmegen breakage syndrome (NBS), a radiation hyper-sensitive disease. It is a rare inherited autosomal |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple%20Certificate%20Enrollment%20Protocol | Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP) is described by the informational . Older versions of this protocol became a de facto industrial standard for pragmatic provisioning of digital certificates mostly for network equipment.
The protocol has been designed to make the request and issuing of digital certificates as simple as possible for any standard network user. These processes have usually required intensive input from network administrators, and so have not been suited to large-scale deployments.
Popularity
The Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol still is the most popular and widely available certificate enrollment protocol, being used by numerous manufacturers of network equipment and software who are developing simplified means of handling certificates for large-scale implementation to everyday users. It is used for example by the Cisco IOS operating system (even if Cisco is now pushing the slightly more featured EST) and iPhones to enroll in enterprises PKI. Most PKI software (specifically RA implementations) supports it, including the Network Device Enrollment Service (NDES) of Active Directory Certificate Service and Intune.
Criticism
Legacy versions of SCEP, which still are employed in the vast majority of implementations, are limited to enrolling certificates for RSA keys only.
Due to the use of the self-signed PKCS#10 format for Certificate Signing Requests (CSR), certificates can be enrolled only for keys that support signing. A limitation shared by other enrollment protocols based on PKCS#10 CSRs, e.g., EST and ACME, or even the web-based enrollment workflow of most PKI software where the requester starts by generating a key pair and a CSR in PKCS#10 format. The CRMF format, as used by CMP and CMS, is more flexible here, supporting also keys that are usable for encryption or key agreement only. However this distinction is mostly theoretical since in practice all algorithms commonly used with certificates support signing. For example AC |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel%20i750 | The Intel i750 is a two-chip graphics processing unit composed of the 82750PB pixel processor and 82750DB display processor. The i750 chip was used in video capture/compression cards such as the Intel Smart Video Recorder and Creative Labs Video Blaster RT300. These cards were needed to allow Video for Windows to record footage from a video camera.
Although Intel had made earlier chips targeting graphics (e.g., 82786 graphics coprocessor), this could be considered as Intel's first attempt to break into the video controller marketplace. The effort was a failure and led to Intel leaving the market for some time. The Indeo video compressor was originally built to work with the i750, but was later ported to other systems as well.
Technical Details
82750PA
82750PA Pixel Processor which has the performance of 12.5 MIPS and it has features of video/graphic instruction that perform operations in parallel and that brings together motion video, stills and graphics into a single video frame.
82750DA
82750DA Display Processor which supplies resolution modes and pixel formats supporting up to 1024 pixels in horizontal resolution and 585 pixels in vertical resolution. It also supports up to 16.8 million of colors.
82750PB
The 82750PB pixel processor is packaged in a 132-pin PQFP running at 25 MHz. It contains 57 instruction set, eight entries 64 bit vector registers (same MM0~MM7 register naming as used on the x86, the only difference being that i750 has dedicated registers while the x86 MMX CPU does not. However, the i750 lacks general purpose integer registers unlike its x86 counterpart), a 64-bit ALU, a 512×48-bit instruction RAM, a 512×16-bit data RAM, two internal 16-bit buses, a wide instruction word processor, a variable length sequence decoder, a pixel interpolator and an interface supporting a 4 GB linear address space. These features make it capable of text, 2D and 3D graphics, video compression, and real-time video decompression and video effects. It can su |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Membrane%20analogy | The elastic membrane analogy, also known as the soap-film analogy, was first published by pioneering aerodynamicist Ludwig Prandtl in 1903.
It describes the stress distribution on a long bar in torsion. The cross section of the bar is constant along its length, and need not be circular. The differential equation that governs the stress distribution on the bar in torsion is of the same form as the equation governing the shape of a membrane under differential pressure. Therefore, in order to discover the stress distribution on the bar, all one has to do is cut the shape of the cross section out of a piece of wood, cover it with a soap film, and apply a differential pressure across it. Then the slope of the soap film at any area of the cross section is directly proportional to the stress in the bar at the same point on its cross section.
Application to thin-walled, open cross sections
While the membrane analogy allows the stress distribution on any cross section to be determined experimentally, it also allows the stress distribution on thin-walled, open cross sections to be determined by the same theoretical approach that describes the behavior of rectangular sections. Using the membrane analogy, any thin-walled cross section can be "stretched out" into a rectangle without affecting the stress distribution under torsion. The maximum shear stress, therefore, occurs at the edge of the midpoint of the stretched cross section, and is equal to , where T is the torque applied, b is the length of the stretched cross section, and t is the thickness of the cross section.
It can be shown that the differential equation for the deflection surface of a homogeneous membrane, subjected to uniform lateral pressure and with uniform surface tension and with the same outline as that of the cross section of a bar under torsion, has the same form as that governing the stress distribution over the cross section of a bar under torsion.
This analogy was originally proposed by Ludwig |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.%20A.%20Stradling | Richard Anthony "Tony" Stradling (1937-2002), was a notable English semiconductor physicist, latterly professor of physics at Imperial College London.
Biography
Tony Stradling was born in Solihull, Warwickshire. He received his early education at Solihull School.
He took a First in physics from Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1955, followed by his DPhil studies in the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford. He was appointed University Lecturer at Oxford and Fellow of Christ Church in 1968. In 1978 he took up the Chair of Natural Philosophy at St Andrews University. He remained in Scotland until 1984, when he moved back to England as Professor of Physics at Imperial College. He held this position until his retirement shortly before his death.
His early work was on the cyclotron resonance of semiconductors moving to magnetophonon resonance. He and his team of students used this effect to investigate a wide range of phenomena in the II-VI, III-V and elemental semiconductors. He pioneered the use of infra-red gas lasers combined with high magnetic fields to carry out cyclotron resonance and impurity spectroscopy measurements. Hydrostatic pressure was another tool for investigating band structure and impurity states in semiconductors that he exploited, particularly at St Andrews. He also investigated the spin and giant magnetoresistance properties of the narrow gap III-V compounds.
One of the legacies of Stradling’s research is his measurement of the effective masses and band parameters of many semiconductor materials, which continue to remain useful for semiconductor technologists. For example, his team's measurements of the effective masses of carriers in the III-V compounds are used to design lasers and fast transistors. These devices are used in electronics, optoelectronics and data storage.
Tony’s appointment to a Chair of Physics at Imperial College London rapidly established Imperial as a leading international centre in semiconductor physics. His international renown wa |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nico%20Habermann | Arie Nicolaas Habermann (26 June 1932 – 8 August 1993), often known as Nico Habermann, was a noted Dutch computer scientist.
Habermann was born in Groningen, Netherlands, and earned his B.S. in mathematics and physics and M.S. in mathematics from the Free University of Amsterdam in 1953 and 1958. After working as a mathematics teacher, in 1967 he received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the Eindhoven University of Technology under advisor Edsger Dijkstra.
In 1968, Habermann was invited to join the department of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University as a visiting research scientist. In 1969 he was appointed an associate professor, and was made full professor in 1974, acting department head in 1979, and department head from 1980 to 1988, after which he was named Dean of the new School of Computer Science (established under Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon). He also cofounded Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute (SEI) in 1985.
Habermann's research included programming languages, operating systems, and development of large software systems. He was known for his work on inter-process communication, process synchronization and deadlock avoidance, and software verification, but particularly for the programming languages ALGOL 60, BLISS, Pascal, and Ada. He also contributed to new operating systems such as Edsger Dijkstra's THE multiprogramming system, the Family of Operating Systems (FAMOS) at Carnegie Mellon, Berlin's Dynamically Adaptable System (DAS), and Unix.
Habermann served as visiting professor at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (1973) and the Technical University of Berlin (1976), and as adjunct professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (1986–1993).
In 1994, the Computing Research Association began giving the A. Nico Habermann Award to people for work that increases the involvement of underrepresented communities in computer research. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCEND | ASCEND is an open source, mathematical modelling chemical process modelling system developed at Carnegie Mellon University since late 1978. ASCEND is an acronym which stands for Advanced System for Computations in Engineering Design. Its main uses have been in the field of chemical process modelling although its capabilities are general.
ASCEND includes nonlinear algebraic solvers, differential/algebraic equation solvers, nonlinear optimization and modelling of multi-region 'conditional models'. Its matrix operations are supported by an efficient sparse matrix solver called mtx.
ASCEND differs from earlier modelling systems because it separates the solving strategy from model building. So domain experts (people writing the models) and computational engineers (people writing the solver code) can work separately in developing ASCEND. Together with a number of other early modelling tools, its architecture helped to inspire newer languages such as Modelica. It was recognised for its flexible use of variables and parameters, which it always treats as solvable, if desired
The software remains as an active open-source software project, and has been part of the Google Summer of Code programme in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 (under the Python Software Foundation) and has been accepted for the 2015 programme as well.
See also
Art Westerberg
AMPL
APMonitor
EMSO
JModelica.org
Modelica
List of chemical process simulators |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random%20regular%20graph | A random r-regular graph is a graph selected from , which denotes the probability space of all r-regular graphs on vertices, where and is even. It is therefore a particular kind of random graph, but the regularity restriction significantly alters the properties that will hold, since most graphs are not regular.
Properties of random regular graphs
As with more general random graphs, it is possible to prove that certain properties of random –regular graphs hold asymptotically almost surely. In particular, for , a random r-regular graph of large size is asymptotically almost surely r-connected. In other words, although –regular graphs with connectivity less than exist, the probability of selecting such a graph tends to 0 as increases.
If is a positive constant, and is the least integer satisfying
then, asymptotically almost surely, a random r-regular graph has diameter at most d. There is also a (more complex) lower bound on the diameter of r-regular graphs, so that almost all r-regular graphs (of the same size) have almost the same diameter.
The distribution of the number of short cycles is also known: for fixed , let be the number of cycles of lengths up to . Then the are asymptotically independent Poisson random variables with means
Algorithms for random regular graphs
It is non-trivial to implement the random selection of r-regular graphs efficiently and in an unbiased way, since most graphs are not regular. The pairing model (also configuration model) is a method which takes nr points, and partitions them into n buckets with r points in each of them. Taking a random matching of the nr points, and then contracting the r points in each bucket into a single vertex, yields an r-regular graph or multigraph. If this object has no multiple edges or loops (i.e. it is a graph), then it is the required result. If not, a restart is required.
A refinement of this method was developed by Brendan McKay and Nicholas Wormald. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft%20SenseCam | Microsoft's SenseCam is a lifelogging camera with fisheye lens and trigger sensors, such as accelerometers, heat sensing, and audio, invented by Lyndsay Williams, patent granted in 2009. Usually worn around the neck, Sensecam is used for the MyLifeBits project, a lifetime storage database. Early developers were James Srinivasan and Trevor Taylor.
Earlier work on neck-worn sensor cameras with fisheye lenses was done by Steve Mann, and published in 2001.
Microsoft Sensecam as well as Mann's earlier sensor cameras, and subsequent similar products like Autographer, Glogger and the Narrative Clip, are all examples of Wearable Computing.
Wearable neck-worn cameras contribute to an easier way of collecting and indexing one's daily experiences by unobtrusively taking photographs whenever the internal sensor is triggered by a change in temperature, movement, or lighting. The Sensecam is also equipped with an accelerometer, which is used to trigger images and can also stabilise images so as to reduce blurriness. The camera is usually worn around the neck via a lanyard.
The photos represent almost every experience of its wearer's day. They are taken via a wide-angle lens in order to capture an image that is likely to contain most of what the wearer can see. The SenseCam uses a flash memory which has the means to store upwards of 2,000 photos per day as .jpg files, though more recent models with larger and faster memory cards mean a wearer typically stores up to 4,000 images per day. These files can then be uploaded and automatically viewed as a daily movie, which can be easily reviewed and indexed using a custom viewer application running on a PC. It is possible to replay the images from a single day in as little as a few minutes. An alternative way of viewing images is to have a day's worth of data automatically segmented into 'events' and to use an event-based browser which can view each event (of 50, 100 or more individual SenseCam images) using a keyframe chosen as a r |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallasaurus | Dallasaurus ("Dallas lizard") is a basal mosasauroid from the Upper Cretaceous of North America. Along with Russellosaurus, Dallasaurus is one of the two oldest mosasauroid taxa currently known from North America. It is also one of the smallest known mosasaurine, measuring up to in length and in body mass.
Specimens
The genus is based upon two partial skeletons recovered from the Arcadia Park Shale (lower Middle Turonian), approximately 15 meters above its contact with the older Kamp Ranch Limestone in Dallas County in north-central Texas.
The holotype specimen (TMM 43209-1, Texas Memorial Museum, University of Texas at Austin) consists of an incomplete and disarticulated skull, along with considerable portions of the postcranial skeleton, making up about 80 percent of the animal. The second referred specimen (DMNH 8121-8125, 8143-8149, and 8161-8180, Dallas Museum of Natural History) lacks any skull material and consists entirely of disarticulated postcranial remains. The strata containing these fossils were temporarily exposed during excavations for a housing development, and both sites have now been reburied by construction. The two specimens were discovered about 100 meters from one another; the first was found by an amateur collector, Van Turner, for whom the type species (Dallasaurus turneri) was named. The genus is named for Dallas County, where both specimens were found.
Anatomy
Polcyn and Bell diagnose Dallasaurus as follows: "Small, plesiopedal mosasauroid possessing the following autapomorphies: posterior maxillary teeth strongly recurved posteriorly, slightly inflated at the crown and bearing only posterior carinae that is slightly offset laterally; atlas neural arch mediolaterally compressed but not flattened at its base, condylar surfaces irregularly figure-eight shaped; cervical vertebra synapophyses protrude below the level of the ventral edge of the centrum; short, wide fossa excavated immediately below the ventral rim of the cotyle of at leas |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great%20Green%20Wall%20%28China%29 | The Great Green Wall, officially known as the Three-North Shelter Forest Program (), also known as the Three-North Shelterbelt Program, is a series of human-planted windbreaking forest strips (shelterbelts) in China, designed to hold back the expansion of the Gobi Desert, and provide timber to the local population. The program started in 1978, and is planned to be completed around 2050, at which point it will be long.
The project's name indicates that it is to be carried out in all three of the northern regions: the North, the Northeast and the Northwest. This project has historical precedences dating back to before the Common Era. However, in premodern periods, government sponsored afforestation projects along the historical frontier regions were mostly for military fortification.
Effects of the Gobi Desert
China has seen of grassland overtaken every year by the Gobi Desert. Each year, dust storms blow off as much as of topsoil, and the storms are increasing in severity each year. These storms also have serious agricultural effects for other nearby countries, such as Japan, North Korea, and South Korea. The Green Wall project was begun in 1978, with the proposed end result of raising northern China's forest cover from 5 to 15 percent, thereby reducing desertification.
Methodology and planning
The fourth phase of the project, started in 2003, has two parts: the use of aerial seeding to cover wide swathes of land where the soil is less arid, and the offering of cash incentives to farmers to plant trees and shrubs in areas that are more arid. A $1.2 billion oversight system (including mapping and surveillance databases) is also to be implemented. The "wall" will have a belt with sand-tolerant vegetation arranged in checkerboard patterns to stabilize the sand dunes. A gravel platform will be next to the vegetation to hold down sand and encourage a soil crust to form. The trees should also serve as a windbreak from dust storms.
Individual efforts
As the Chi |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leukocidin | A leukocidin is a type of cytotoxin created by some types of bacteria (Staphylococcus). It is a type of pore-forming toxin. The model for pore formation is step-wise. First, the cytotoxin’s “S” subunit recognizes specific protein-containing receptors, or an integrin on the host cell’s surface. The S subunit then recruits a second, “F” subunit, and the two subunits dimerize on the surface of the host’s cell. After dimerization, oligomerization occurs. Finally, the oligomers, consisting of alternating S and F subunits, undergo a significant structural change and form a beta-barrel, that pierces through the host cell’s lipid bilayer.
Leukocidins get their names by killing ("-cide") leukocytes. Leukocidins target phagocytes, natural killer cells, dendritic cells, and T lymphocytes and therefore targets both, innate and adaptive immune responses. Leukocidins fall into the category of bacterial invasin. Invasins are enzymatic secretions that help bacteria invade the host tissue to which they are attached. Although similar to exotoxins, invasins are different in two respects: they work through much less specific mechanisms than exotoxins, and their actions are generally more localized.
One type is Panton-Valentine leukocidin. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.%20C.%20T.%20Lee | R. C. T. Lee (Lee Chia-Tung ; born 1939 in Shanghai, China), also known as Richard C. T. Lee, received his B.Sc. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering of National Taiwan University and Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from University of California, Berkeley.
He worked for NCR from 1963 to 1964 after he got his M.S. degree. After getting his Ph.D. degree, he joined National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, in 1967 and later worked in Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C., in 1974.
He returned to Taiwan in 1975 and started his teaching career in National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. In this university, he had been the chairperson of Department of Computer Science and Department of Electrical Engineering. In 1984, after he became the dean of College of Engineering and in 1988, he was appointed as the provost. In 1994, he was the acting president of National Tsing Hua University. From 1994 to 1999, he was the president of Providence University in Shalu, Taiwan and in 1999, he was the president of National Chi Nan University, Puli, Taiwan. He is now a professor of Chi Nan University under the joint appointment of four departments: the Department of Computer Science, the Department of Information Management, the Department of Communication and the Department of Medical Science.
Lee has published roughly 80 papers, all in prestigious academic journals. He has been editors for ten journals. In 1989, he became an IEEE fellow. He received the Distinguished Research Awards from the National Science Council, Republic of China, five times and the Ministry of Education Engineering Academic Achievement Award in 1989. He is a Micronix Chair Professor. Professor Lee and R.C.Chang coauthored the book “Symbolic Logic and Mechanical Theorem Proving” which was published by Academic Press in 1973. This book was translated into Japanese, Russian and Italian. In 2005, McGraw-Hill published his “Introd |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAT5 | Signal transducer and activator of transcription 5 (STAT5) refers to two highly related proteins, STAT5A and STAT5B, which are part of the seven-membered STAT family of proteins. Though STAT5A and STAT5B are encoded by separate genes, the proteins are 90% identical at the amino acid level. STAT5 proteins are involved in cytosolic signalling and in mediating the expression of specific genes. Aberrant STAT5 activity has been shown to be closely connected to a wide range of human cancers, and silencing this aberrant activity is an area of active research in medicinal chemistry.
Activation and function
In order to be functional, STAT5 proteins must first be activated. This activation is carried out by kinases associated with transmembrane receptors:
Ligands binding to these transmembrane receptors on the outside of the cell activate the kinases;
The stimulated kinases add a phosphate group to a specific tyrosine residue on the receptor;
STAT5 then binds to these phosphorylated-tyrosines using their SH2 domain (STAT domains illustrated below);
The bound STAT5 is then phosphorylated by the kinase, the phosphorylation occurring at particular tyrosine residues on the C-terminus of the protein;
Phosphorylation causes STAT5 to dissociate from the receptor;
The phosphorylated STAT5 finally goes on to form either homodimers, STAT5-STAT5, or heterodimers, STAT5-STATX, with other STAT proteins. The SH2 domains of the STAT5 proteins are once again used for this dimerization. STAT5 can also form homo-tetramers, usually in concert with the histone methyltransferase EZH2, and act as a transcriptional repressor.
In the activation pathway illustrated to the left, the ligand involved is a cytokine and the specific kinase taking part in activation is JAK. The dimerized STAT5 represents the active form of the protein, which is ready for translocation into the nucleus.
Once in the nucleus, the dimers bind to STAT5 response elements, inducing transcription of specific sets of |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAT3 | Signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) is a transcription factor which in humans is encoded by the STAT3 gene. It is a member of the STAT protein family.
Function
STAT3 is a member of the STAT protein family. In response to cytokines and growth factors, STAT3 is phosphorylated by receptor-associated Janus kinases (JAK), forms homo- or heterodimers, and translocates to the cell nucleus where it acts as a transcription activator. Specifically, STAT3 becomes activated after phosphorylation of tyrosine 705 in response to such ligands as interferons, epidermal growth factor (EGF), Interleukin (IL-)5 and IL-6. Additionally, activation of STAT3 may occur via phosphorylation of serine 727 by Mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) and through c-src non-receptor tyrosine kinase. STAT3 mediates the expression of a variety of genes in response to cell stimuli, and thus plays a key role in many cellular processes such as cell growth and apoptosis.
STAT3-deficient mouse embryos cannot develop beyond embryonic day 7, when gastrulation begins. It appears that at these early stages of development, STAT3 activation is required for self-renewal of embryonic stem cells (ESCs). Indeed, LIF, which is supplied to murine ESC cultures to maintain their undifferentiated state, can be omitted if STAT3 is activated through some other means.
STAT3 is essential for the differentiation of the TH17 helper T cells, which have been implicated in a variety of autoimmune diseases. During viral infection, mice lacking STAT3 in T-cells display impairment in the ability to generate T-follicular helper (Tfh) cells and fail to maintain antibody based immunity.
STAT3 caused upregulation in E-selectin, a factor in metastasis of cancers.
Hyperactivation of STAT3 occurs in COVID-19 infection and other viral infections.
Clinical significance
Loss-of-function mutations in the STAT3 gene result in Hyperimmunoglobulin E syndrome, associated with recurrent infections as well as disor |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAT1 | Signal transducer and activator of transcription 1 (STAT1) is a transcription factor which in humans is encoded by the STAT1 gene. It is a member of the STAT protein family.
Function
All STAT molecules are phosphorylated by receptor associated kinases, that causes activation, dimerization by forming homo- or heterodimers and finally translocate to nucleus to work as transcription factors. Specifically STAT1 can be activated by several ligands such as Interferon alpha (IFNα), Interferon gamma (IFNγ), Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF), Platelet Derived Growth Factor (PDGF), Interleukin 6 (IL-6), or IL-27.
Type I interferons (IFN-α, IFN-ß) bind to receptors, cause signaling via kinases, phosphorylate and activate the Jak kinases TYK2 and JAK1 and also STAT1 and STAT2. STAT molecules form dimers and bind to ISGF3G/IRF-9, which is Interferon stimulated gene factor 3 complex with Interferon regulatory Factor 9. This allows STAT1 to enter the nucleus. STAT1 has a key role in many gene expressions that cause survival of the cell, viability or pathogen response. There are two possible transcripts (due to alternative splicing) that encode 2 isoforms of STAT1. STAT1α, the full-length version of the protein, is the main active isoform, responsible for most of the known functions of STAT1. STAT1ß, which lacks a portion of the C-terminus of the protein, is less-studied, but has variously been reported to negatively regulate activation of STAT1 or to mediate IFN-γ-dependent anti-tumor and anti-infection activities.
STAT1 is involved in upregulating genes due to a signal by either type I, type II, or type III interferons. In response to IFN-γ stimulation, STAT1 forms homodimers or heterodimers with STAT3 that bind to the GAS (Interferon-Gamma-Activated Sequence) promoter element; in response to either IFN-α or IFN-β stimulation, STAT1 forms a heterodimer with STAT2 that can bind the ISRE (Interferon-Stimulated Response Element) promoter element. In either case, binding of the pro |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetruminantia | The Cetruminantia are a clade made up of the Cetancodontamorpha (or Whippomorpha) and their closest living relatives, the Ruminantia.
Cetruminantia's placement within Artiodactyla can be represented in the following cladogram:
Classification
Order Artiodactyla (even-toed ungulates)
Tylopoda (camelids)
Artiofabula (ruminants, pigs, peccaries, whales, and dolphins)
Suina (pigs and peccaries)
Cetruminantia (ruminants, whales, and dolphins)
Suborder Ruminantia (antelope, buffalo, cattle, goats, sheep, deer, giraffes, and chevrotains)
Family Antilocapridae (pronghorn)
Family Bovidae, 135 species (antelope, bison, buffalo, cattle, goats, and sheep)
Family Cervidae, 55~94 species (deer, elk, and moose)
Family Giraffidae, 2 species (giraffes, okapis)
Family Moschidae, 4~7 species (musk deer)
Family Tragulidae, 6~10 species (chevrotains, or mouse deer)
Suborder Whippomorpha (aquatic or semi-aquatic even-toed ungulates)
Infraorder Acodonta
Family Hippopotamidae, 2 species (hippopotamuses)
Infraorder Cetacea (whales, dolphins, and porpoises)
Mysticeti (baleen whales)
Family Balaenidae, 2~4 species (right whales and bowhead whales)
Family Balaenopteridae, 6~9 species (rorquals)
Family Eschrichtiidae, 1 species (gray whale)
Family Neobalaenidae, 1 species (pygmy right whale)
Odontoceti (toothed whales, dolphins, and porpoises)
Superfamily Delphinoidea (dolphins, arctic whales, porpoises, and relatives)
Family Delphinidae, 38 species (dolphins, killer whales, and relatives)
Family Monodontidae, 2 species (beluga and narwhal)
Family Phocoenidae, 6 species (porpoises)
Superfamily Physeteroidea (sperm whales)
Family Kogiidae, 2 species (pygmy and dwarf sperm whales)
Family Physeteridae, 1 species (common sperm whale)
Superfamily Ziphoidea (beaked whales)
Family Ziphidae, 22 species (modern beaked whales)
Superfamily Platanistoidea (river dolphins)
Family Iniidae, 1~3 species (South American river dolphin(s))
Family Lipotidae, 1 species (baiji or Chinese river dolphin)
Family Pla |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music%20stand | A music stand is a pedestal or elevated rack designed to hold sheets of music in position for reading. Most music stands for orchestral, chamber music or solo orchestra-family instruments (violin, oboe, trumpet, etc.) can be raised or lowered to accommodate seated or standing performers, or performers of different heights. Many types of keyboard instruments have a built-in or removable music rack or stand where sheet music can be placed. Music stands enable musicians to read sheet music or scores while playing an instrument or conducting, as the stand leaves the hands free. For choirs, singers typically hold their music in a folder, and singers performing solo recitals or opera performances typically memorize the lyrics and melodies. Some singers use stands, such as lounge singers and wedding vocalists who have a repertoire of hundreds of songs, which makes remembering all of the verses difficult.
There is evidence of music stands from China as early as 200 BC. They did not appear in Europe until much later, as most musicians played from memory or improvised. In the 16th century, playing music with a group in one's home became popular, and music was printed for amateurs' use. This music was typically laid down on a table or other flat surface in front of the instrumentalists.
Beginning in the 17th century, some amateur musicians used table-top music stands, which were the first kind of music stand in Europe.
A few are still used today.
It is not until the 17th century that floor-standing music stands were developed in the West. Such music stands were common by 1730, at least in France.
Types
There are various types of music stand for different purposes and intended users. Folding stands collapse, which makes them easily portable. Folding stands are typically used by amateur musicians to practice and at rehearsals and performances. Professional musicians are more likely to limit their use of folding stands to rehearsals held outside of normal performance venu |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectoanal%20inhibitory%20reflex | The rectoanal inhibitory reflex (RAIR) (also known as the anal sampling mechanism, anal sampling reflex, rectosphincteric reflex, or anorectal sampling reflex) is a reflex characterized by a transient involuntary relaxation of the internal anal sphincter in response to distention of the rectum. The RAIR provides the upper anal canal with the ability to discriminate between flatus and fecal material.
The ability of the rectum to discriminate between gaseous, liquid and solid contents is essential to the ability to voluntarily control defecation. The RAIR allows for voluntary flatulation to occur without also eliminating solid waste, irrespective of the presence of fecal material in the anal canal.
Reflex arc
The physiological basis for the RAIR is poorly understood, but it is thought to involve a coordinated response by the internal anal sphincter to rectal distention with recovery of anal pressure from the distal to the proximal sphincter. Mediated by the autonomic nervous system, the afferent limb of this reflex depends upon an intact network of interstitial cells of Cajal in the internal anal sphincter. These cells, which are mediated at least in part by nitric oxide, provide inhibitory innervation of the internal anal sphincter.
Clinical significance
Impairment of this reflex can result in fecal incontinence. The absence of a RAIR is pathognomonic for Hirschsprung's disease.
See also
External anal sphincter
Levator ani |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny%20Krinov | Yevgeny Leonidovich Krinov () (3 March 1906 – 2 January 1984), D.G.S., was a Soviet Russian astronomer and geologist, born in Otyassy () village in the Morshansky District of the Tambov Governorate of the Russian Empire. Krinov was a renowned meteorite researcher; the mineral Krinovite, discovered in 1966, was named after him.
Scientific work
From 1926 through 1930 Yevgeny Krinov worked in the meteor division of the Mineralogy Museum of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. During this period he conducted research into the Tunguska event under the supervision of Leonid Kulik. Krinov took part in the longest expedition to the Tunguska site in the years 1929–1930 as an astronomer. The data that was gathered during this expedition became the basis for his 1949 monograph (in Russian) called The Tunguska Meteorite.
In 1975, Yevgeny Krinov ordered the burning of 1500 negatives from a 1938 expedition by Leonid Kulik to the Tunguska event as part of an effort to dispose of hazardous nitrate film. Positive imprints were preserved for further studies in the Russian city of Tomsk.
Science awards
1961 - Doctor honoris causa awarded by Soviet Academy of Sciences
1971 - Leonard Medal
Legacy
A minor planet, 2887 Krinov, discovered in 1977 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh, is named after him.
Selected bibliography
1947 Spectral Reflective Capacity of Natural Formations
1949 The Tunguska Meteorite (Russian)
1952 Fundamentals of Meteoritics
1959 Sikhote-Alin Iron Meteorite Shower, Vol. I (Russian)
1963 Sikhote-Alin Iron Meteorite Shower, Vol. II (Russian)
1966 Giant Meteorites |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International%20Institute%20of%20Agriculture | The International Institute of Agriculture (IIA) was founded in Rome in 1905 by the King of Italy Victor Emmanuel III with the intent of creating a clearinghouse for collection of agricultural statistics. It was created primarily due to the efforts of David Lubin. In 1930, the IIA published the first world agricultural census. After World War II, both its assets and mandate were handed over to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
History
In 1904 the idea of such an institute came to David Lubin of Sacramento, California, and his project found favor with the king of Italy. The latter gave a building in Rome and an annual income of $60,000. The king called the first congress in 1906, and delegates attended from 40 countries. At the congress, a treaty was formed making the institute a permanent organization and defining its scope and activities.
Government
The government of the IIA was vested in the general assembly of delegates from affiliated countries, meeting every two years, and in a permanent executive committee, on which there was one representative from each country. This permanent committee had direct charge of the IIA. The general officers were the president (also chairman of the permanent committee), the vice president and the secretary general.
The work of the institute was divided among four bureaus:
Bureau of the secretary general had charge of the personnel, financial and other routine business, the building and its equipment, the printing and distribution of publications, the library and general bibliographical work, and, as a more recent service, the preparation and publication of an annual compilation of agricultural legislation in the different countries of the world.
Bureau of general statistics collected, collated and published statistics of production and commerce in agricultural products, both animal and vegetable, throughout the world.
Bureau of agricultural intelligence and plant diseases collected and publis |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large-screen%20television%20technology | Large-screen television technology (colloquially big-screen TV) developed rapidly in the late 1990s and 2000s. Prior to the development of thin-screen technologies, rear-projection television was standard for larger displays, and jumbotron, a non-projection video display technology, was used at stadiums and concerts. Various thin-screen technologies are being developed, but only liquid crystal display (LCD), plasma display (PDP) and Digital Light Processing (DLP) have been publicly released. Recent technologies like organic light-emitting diode (OLED) as well as not-yet-released technologies like surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED) or field emission display (FED) are in development to replace earlier flat-screen technologies in picture quality.
Large-screen technologies have almost completely displaced cathode-ray tubes (CRT) in television sales due to the necessary bulkiness of cathode-ray tubes. The diagonal screen size of a CRT television is limited to about because of size requirements of the cathode-ray tube, which fires three beams of electrons onto the screen to create a viewable image. A large-screen TV requires a longer tube, making a large-screen CRT TV of about unrealistic. Newer large-screen televisions are comparably thinner.
Viewing distances
Before deciding on a particular display technology size, it is very important to determine from what distances it is going to be viewed. As the display size increases so does the ideal viewing distance. Bernard J. Lechner, while working for RCA, studied the best viewing distances for various conditions and derived the so-called Lechner distance.
As a rule of thumb, the viewing distance should be roughly two to three times the screen size for standard definition (SD) displays.
Display specifications
The following are important factors for evaluating television displays:
Display size: the diagonal length of the display.
Display resolution: the number of pixels in each dimension on a display. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural%20community%20vibrancy%20index | The Rural Community Vibrancy Index is a statistical measure designed by the British Government's Countryside Agency (1999–2006) which is meant to measure the potential for, or reality of, community participation in rural settlements.
Assessment includes features such as pubs, village halls, public transport, childcare facilities and schools.
Towns and villages can score a maximum of 14 points on the index. A score of less than four points means that a community has poor community vibrancy, a score of five to eight points is "positive" and a score of nine or above means a community has "extensive" vibrancy.
The index was criticised in the 2007 documentary series The Trap.
External links
Countryside Agency's summary of the index .
Index numbers
Community |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kicker%20magnet | Kicker magnets are dipole magnets used to rapidly switch a particle beam between two paths. Conceptually similar to a railroad switch in function, a kicker magnet must switch on very rapidly, then maintain a stable magnetic field for some minimum time. Switch-off time is also important, but less critical.
An injection kicker magnet merges two beams incoming from different directions. Most commonly, there is a beam circulating in a synchrotron, in the form of a particle train which only partially fills the arc. As soon as the circulating particle train has passed the kicker, it is switched on so that an additional batch of particles may be appended to the train. The magnet must then be switched off in time to not affect the head of the train when it next rounds the synchrotron.
An ejection kicker magnet does the opposite, diverting a circulating beam so it leaves the synchrotron. Almost always, an ejection kicker is used to eject the entire particle train, emptying the synchrotron. This means that it has the entire tail-to-head gap in the synchrotron to function, and the switch-off time is essentially irrelevant. However, it must hold a stable field for longer (one full rotation of the synchrotron), and must generate a stronger magnetic field, as it is used to eject a higher energy beam that has been accelerated in the synchrotron.
The magnets are powered by a high voltage (usually in the range of tens of thousands of volts) source called a power modulator which uses a pulse forming network to produce a short pulse of current (usually in the range of a few nanoseconds to a microsecond and thousands of amperes in amplitude). The current produces a magnetic field in the magnet, which in turn imparts a Lorentz force on the particles as they traverse the magnet's length, causing the beam to deflect into the proper trajectory.
Because a kicker magnet applies a particular lateral impulse to the beam, to achieve a fixed deflection angle the strength of the kick |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked%20poset | In mathematics, a ranked poset is a partially ordered set in which one of the following (non-equivalent) conditions hold: it is
a graded poset, or
a poset with the property that for every element x, all maximal chains among those with x as greatest element have the same finite length, or
a poset in which all maximal chains have the same finite length.
The second definition differs from the first in that it requires all minimal elements to have the same rank; for posets with a least element, however, the two requirements are equivalent. The third definition is even more strict in that it excludes posets with infinite chains and also requires all maximal elements to have the same rank. Richard P. Stanley defines a graded poset of length n as one in which all maximal chains have length n. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico-ITX | In computer design, Pico-ITX is a PC motherboard form factor announced by VIA Technologies in January 2007 and demonstrated later the same year at CeBIT. The formfactor was transferred over to SFF-SIG in 2008. The Pico-ITX form factor specifications call for the board to be , which is half the area of Nano-ITX.
EPIA PX
PX10000G
The first motherboard produced in this form factor is called EPIA PX10000G. It is and 10 layers deep. The operating temperature range is from 0°C to about 50°C. The operating humidity level (relative and non-condensing) can be from 0% to about 95%. It uses a 1 GHz VIA C7-M processor, a VIA VX700 chip set, and is RoHS compliant.
It has onboard VGA video, VIA VT6106S 10/100 8P8C Ethernet, UDMA 33/66/100/133 44-pin ATA (1x), and SATA (1x) I/O. DVI and LVDS video-out, USB 2.0, COM, PS/2 Mouse & Keyboard, and HD 5.1 channel audio (supplied by a VIA VT1708A chip) are supported through the usage of I/O pin headers and add-on modules/daughter cards.
It has been demonstrated running Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista. older versions of major Linux distributions, including Fedora Core 6 and Ubuntu 7.10, will also run on it. It is available as a single board, as well as part of a barebones package, the Artigo, a small form factor complete computer.
PX5000
This model is similar to the PX10000G, but uses the 500 MHz VIA Eden ULV CPU.
There are two versions of this model, the PX5000G, which has a fan-assisted heatsink, and the PX5000EG, which has a fanless heatsink.
Add-on modules
(Note: Either the VIA PX-O add-on module or 4 USB 2.0 I/O are supplied in retail packages.)
The VIA PX-O daughtercard supplies access to:
1 RCA-out for S/PDIF usage
4 USB 2.0 ports
1 3.5mm Mic-in, 1 3.5mm line-out, 1 3.5mm line-in
1 buzzer/speaker
1 CN9 connector (function TBC)
1 CN10 connector (function TBC).
The VIA VT1625M daughtercard supplies access to:
1 external TV-out
1 video capture port.
The Serener PXFPIO (also labeled under VIA PX-DIO) is 109m |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiking%20neural%20network | Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are artificial neural networks that more closely mimic natural neural networks. In addition to neuronal and synaptic state, SNNs incorporate the concept of time into their operating model. The idea is that neurons in the SNN do not transmit information at each propagation cycle (as it happens with typical multi-layer perceptron networks), but rather transmit information only when a membrane potential—an intrinsic quality of the neuron related to its membrane electrical charge—reaches a specific value, called the threshold. When the membrane potential reaches the threshold, the neuron fires, and generates a signal that travels to other neurons which, in turn, increase or decrease their potentials in response to this signal. A neuron model that fires at the moment of threshold crossing is also called a spiking neuron model.
The most prominent spiking neuron model is the leaky integrate-and-fire model. In the integrate-and-fire model, the momentary activation level (modeled as a differential equation) is normally considered to be the neuron's state, with incoming spikes pushing this value higher or lower, until the state eventually either decays or—if the firing threshold is reached—the neuron fires. After firing, the state variable is reset to a lower value.
Various decoding methods exist for interpreting the outgoing spike train as a real-value number, relying on either the frequency of spikes (rate-code), the time-to-first-spike after stimulation, or the interval between spikes.
History
Many multi-layer artificial neural networks are fully connected, receiving input from every neuron in the previous layer and signalling every neuron in the subsequent layer. Although these networks have achieved breakthroughs in many fields, they are biologically inaccurate and do not mimic the operation mechanism of neurons in the brain of a living thing.
The biologically inspired Hodgkin–Huxley model of a spiking neuron was proposed in 1952. Th |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percus%E2%80%93Yevick%20approximation | In statistical mechanics the Percus–Yevick approximation is a closure relation to solve the Ornstein–Zernike equation. It is also referred to as the Percus–Yevick equation. It is commonly used in fluid theory to obtain e.g. expressions for the radial distribution function. The approximation is named after Jerome K. Percus and George J. Yevick.
Derivation
The direct correlation function represents the direct correlation between two particles in a system containing N − 2 other particles. It can be represented by
where is the radial distribution function, i.e. (with w(r) the potential of mean force) and is the radial distribution function without the direct interaction between pairs included; i.e. we write . Thus we approximate c(r) by
If we introduce the function into the approximation for c(r) one obtains
This is the essence of the Percus–Yevick approximation for if we substitute this result in the Ornstein–Zernike equation, one obtains the Percus–Yevick equation:
The approximation was defined by Percus and Yevick in 1958.
Hard spheres
For hard spheres, the potential u(r) is either zero or infinite, and therefore the Boltzmann factor is either one or zero, regardless of temperature T. Therefore structure of a hard-spheres fluid is temperature independent. This leaves just two parameters: the hard-core radius R (which can be eliminated by rescaling distances or wavenumbers), and the packing fraction η (which has a maximum value of 0.64 for random close packing).
Under these conditions, the Percus-Yevick equation has an analytical solution, obtained by Wertheim in 1963.
Solution as C code
The static structure factor of the hard-spheres fluid in Percus-Yevick approximation can be computed using the following C function:
double py(double qr, double eta)
{
const double a = pow(1+2*eta, 2)/pow(1-eta, 4);
const double b = -6*eta*pow(1+eta/2, 2)/pow(1-eta, 4);
const double c = eta/2*pow(1+2*eta, 2)/pow(1-eta, 4);
const double A = |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinors%20in%20three%20dimensions | In mathematics, the spinor concept as specialised to three dimensions can be treated by means of the traditional notions of dot product and cross product. This is part of the detailed algebraic discussion of the rotation group SO(3).
Formulation
The association of a spinor with a 2×2 complex Hermitian matrix was formulated by Élie Cartan.
In detail, given a vector x = (x1, x2, x3) of real (or complex) numbers, one can associate the complex matrix
In physics, this is often written as a dot product , where is the vector form of Pauli matrices. Matrices of this form have the following properties, which relate them intrinsically to the geometry of 3-space:
, where denotes the determinant.
, where I is the identity matrix.
where Z is the matrix associated to the cross product .
If is a unit vector, then is the matrix associated with the vector that results from reflecting in the plane orthogonal to .
The last property can be used to simplify rotational operations. It is an elementary fact from linear algebra that any rotation in 3-space factors as a composition of two reflections. (More generally, any orientation-reversing orthogonal transformation is either a reflection or the product of three reflections.) Thus if R is a rotation which decomposes as the reflection in the plane perpendicular to a unit vector followed by the reflection in the plane perpendicular to , then the matrix represents the rotation of the vector through R.
Having effectively encoded all the rotational linear geometry of 3-space into a set of complex 2×2 matrices, it is natural to ask what role, if any, the 2×1 matrices (i.e., the column vectors) play. Provisionally, a spinor is a column vector
with complex entries ξ1 and ξ2.
The space of spinors is evidently acted upon by complex 2×2 matrices. As shown above, the product of two reflections in a pair of unit vectors defines a 2×2 matrix whose action on euclidean vectors is a rotation. So there is an action of rotations o |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin%20representation | In mathematics, the spin representations are particular projective representations of the orthogonal or special orthogonal groups in arbitrary dimension and signature (i.e., including indefinite orthogonal groups). More precisely, they are two equivalent representations of the spin groups, which are double covers of the special orthogonal groups. They are usually studied over the real or complex numbers, but they can be defined over other fields.
Elements of a spin representation are called spinors. They play an important role in the physical description of fermions such as the electron.
The spin representations may be constructed in several ways, but typically the construction involves (perhaps only implicitly) the choice of a maximal isotropic subspace in the vector representation of the group. Over the real numbers, this usually requires using a complexification of the vector representation. For this reason, it is convenient to define the spin representations over the complex numbers first, and derive real representations by introducing real structures.
The properties of the spin representations depend, in a subtle way, on the dimension and signature of the orthogonal group. In particular, spin representations often admit invariant bilinear forms, which can be used to embed the spin groups into classical Lie groups. In low dimensions, these embeddings are surjective and determine special isomorphisms between the spin groups and more familiar Lie groups; this elucidates the properties of spinors in these dimensions.
Set-up
Let be a finite-dimensional real or complex vector space with a nondegenerate quadratic form . The (real or complex) linear maps preserving form the orthogonal group . The identity component of the group is called the special orthogonal group . (For real with an indefinite quadratic form, this terminology is not standard: the special orthogonal group is usually defined to be a subgroup with two components in this case.) Up to group isom |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullseye%21%20%281990%20film%29 | Bullseye! is a 1990 British–American action comedy film starring Michael Caine and Roger Moore. It was directed by Michael Winner. It was released on 2 November 1990, to mixed reviews, and was a box office disappointment. It has since developed a small cult following.
Plot
Moore and Caine play dual roles—a pair of small-time con-men and a pair of inept nuclear physicists who believe they have invented a limitless supply of energy. The con men use their resemblance to the scientists to con their way into the scientists' safe deposit boxes and steal the formula, but in so doing, they become entangled in a shady world of spies and international intrigue. The film includes a number of cameo appearances, including Jenny Seagrove (Winner's partner at the time) playing two different roles, John Cleese, Patsy Kensit, Alexandra Pigg and Nicholas Courtney. The film also features Roger Moore's daughter, Deborah Moore, in a supporting role.
Cast
Michael Caine – Sidney Lipton / Dr Daniel Hicklar
Roger Moore – Gerald Bradley-Smith / Sir John Bavistock
Sally Kirkland – Willie
Lee Patterson – Darrell Hyde
Deborah Moore – Flo Fleming (as Deborah Barrymore)
Mark Burns – Nigel Holden
Derren Nesbitt – Inspector Grosse
Deborah Leng – Francesca
Christopher Adamson – Death's Head
Steffanie Pitt – Donna Dutch
Angus MacKay – Reverend Simkin
Nicholas Courtney – Sir Hugh
Robert McBain – Lawyer
John Woodnutt – Bank Manager
Mildred Shay – Jolene (Tourist Wife)
Helen Horton – Tourist on Coach
Jeff Harding – Agent Merrow
Gordon Honeycombe – TV Announcer
Pamela Armstrong – TV Newsreader
Kiran Shah – Little Boss at Auction
John Cleese – Man on the Beach in Barbados Who Looks Like John Cleese
Jenny Seagrove – Health Club Receptionist / Girl with John Cleese
Patsy Kensit – Sick Lady on Train
Alexandra Pigg – Car Hire Girl
Deborah Bishop – Mr Moore's left eyebrow
Jim Bowen – Himself
Tony Green – Himself
Cliff Lazarenko - Celebrity Dart Thrower
John Scott Martin – Old Jeweller
John Lyons – Train Guar |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdetermined%20system | In mathematics, a system of equations is considered overdetermined if there are more equations than unknowns. An overdetermined system is almost always inconsistent (it has no solution) when constructed with random coefficients. However, an overdetermined system will have solutions in some cases, for example if some equation occurs several times in the system, or if some equations are linear combinations of the others.
The terminology can be described in terms of the concept of constraint counting. Each unknown can be seen as an available degree of freedom. Each equation introduced into the system can be viewed as a constraint that restricts one degree of freedom.
Therefore, the critical case occurs when the number of equations and the number of free variables are equal. For every variable giving a degree of freedom, there exists a corresponding constraint. The overdetermined case occurs when the system has been overconstrained — that is, when the equations outnumber the unknowns. In contrast, the underdetermined case occurs when the system has been underconstrained — that is, when the number of equations is fewer than the number of unknowns. Such systems usually have an infinite number of solutions.
Overdetermined linear systems of equations
An example in two dimensions
Consider the system of 3 equations and 2 unknowns ( and ), which is overdetermined because 3 > 2, and which corresponds to Diagram #1:
There is one solution for each pair of linear equations: for the first and second equations (0.2, −1.4), for the first and third (−2/3, 1/3), and for the second and third (1.5, 2.5). However, there is no solution that satisfies all three simultaneously. Diagrams #2 and 3 show other configurations that are inconsistent because no point is on all of the lines. Systems of this variety are deemed inconsistent.
The only cases where the overdetermined system does in fact have a solution are demonstrated in Diagrams #4, 5, and 6. These exceptions can occur only when |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substrate%20%28materials%20science%29 | Substrate is a term used in materials science and engineering to describe the base material on which processing is conducted. This surface could be used to produce new film or layers of material such as deposited coatings. It could be the base to which paint, adhesives, or adhesive tape is bonded.
A typical substrate might be rigid such as metal, concrete, or glass, onto which a coating might be deposited. Flexible substrates are also used.
With all coating processes, the condition of the surface of the substrate can strongly affect the bond of subsequent layers. This can include cleanliness, smoothness, surface energy, moisture, etc. Some substrates are anisotropic with surface properties being different depending on the direction: examples include wood and paper products.
Coatings
Coating can be by a variety of processes:
Adhesives and Adhesive tapes
Coating and printing processes
Chemical vapor deposition and physical vapor deposition
Conversion coating
Anodizing
Chromate conversion coating
Plasma electrolytic oxidation
Phosphate (coating)
Paint
Enamel (paint)
Powder coating
Industrial coating
Silicate mineral paint
Fusion bonded epoxy coating (FBE coating)
Pickled and oiled, a type of plate steel coating.
Plating
Electroless plating
Electrochemical plating
Polymer coatings, such as Teflon
Sputtered or vacuum deposited materials
Enamel (vitreous)
In optics, glass may be used as a substrate for an optical coating—either an antireflection coating to reduce reflection, or a mirror coating to enhance it.
A substrate may be also an engineered surface where an unintended or natural process occurs, like in:
Fouling
Corrosion
Biofouling
Heterogeneous catalysis
Adsorption
See also
List of coating techniques
Thin film
Wetting |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazhdan%E2%80%93Lusztig%20polynomial | In the mathematical field of representation theory, a Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomial is a member of a family of integral polynomials introduced by . They are indexed by pairs of elements y, w of a Coxeter group W, which can in particular be the Weyl group of a Lie group.
Motivation and history
In the spring of 1978 Kazhdan and Lusztig were studying Springer representations of the Weyl group of an algebraic group on -adic cohomology groups related to conjugacy classes which are unipotent. They found a new construction of these representations over the complex numbers . The representation had two natural bases, and the transition matrix between these two bases is essentially given by the Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomials. The actual Kazhdan–Lusztig construction of their polynomials is more elementary. Kazhdan and Lusztig used this to construct a canonical basis in the Hecke algebra of the Coxeter group and its representations.
In their first paper Kazhdan and Lusztig mentioned that their polynomials were related to the failure of local Poincaré duality for Schubert varieties. In they reinterpreted this in terms of the intersection cohomology of Mark Goresky and Robert MacPherson, and gave another definition of such a basis in terms of the dimensions of certain intersection cohomology groups.
The two bases for the Springer representation reminded Kazhdan and Lusztig of the two bases for the Grothendieck group of certain infinite dimensional representations of semisimple Lie algebras, given by Verma modules and simple modules. This analogy, and the work of Jens Carsten Jantzen and Anthony Joseph relating primitive ideals of enveloping algebras to representations of Weyl groups, led to the Kazhdan–Lusztig conjectures.
Definition
Fix a Coxeter group W with generating set S, and write for the length of an element w (the smallest length of an expression for w as a product of elements of S). The Hecke algebra of W has a basis of elements for over the ring , with multiplica |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauro%20Picone | Mauro Picone (2 May 1885 – 11 April 1977) was an Italian mathematician. He is known for the Picone identity, the Sturm-Picone comparison theorem and being the founder of the Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo, presently named after him, the first applied mathematics institute ever founded. He was also an outstanding teacher of mathematical analysis: some of the best Italian mathematicians were among his pupils.
Work
Research activity
Teaching activity
Notable students:
Luigi Amerio
Renato Caccioppoli
Gianfranco Cimmino
Ennio de Giorgi
Gaetano Fichera
Carlo Miranda
Selected publications
(Review of the whole volume I) (available from the "Edizione Nazionale Mathematica Italiana"), reviewed by .
, (Review of the 2nd part of volume I) (available from the "Edizione Nazionale Mathematica Italiana").
, reviewed by and by .
See also
Renato Caccioppoli
Lamberto Cesari
Ennio de Giorgi
Gaetano Fichera
Picone identity
Antonio Signorini
Sturm-Picone comparison theorem
Notes |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturm%E2%80%93Picone%20comparison%20theorem | In mathematics, in the field of ordinary differential equations, the Sturm–Picone comparison theorem, named after Jacques Charles François Sturm and Mauro Picone, is a classical theorem which provides criteria for the oscillation and non-oscillation of solutions of certain linear differential equations in the real domain.
Let , for be real-valued continuous functions on the interval and let
be two homogeneous linear second order differential equations in self-adjoint form with
and
Let be a non-trivial solution of (1) with successive roots at and and let be a non-trivial solution of (2). Then one of the following properties holds.
There exists an in such that or
there exists a in R such that .
The first part of the conclusion is due to Sturm (1836), while the second (alternative) part of the theorem is due to Picone (1910) whose simple proof was given using his now famous Picone identity. In the special case where both equations are identical one obtains the Sturm separation theorem.
Notes |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleosin | Oleosins are structural proteins found in vascular plant oil bodies and in plant cells. Oil bodies are not considered organelles because they have a single layer membrane and lack the pre-requisite double layer membrane in order to be considered an organelle. They are found in plant parts with high oil content that undergo extreme desiccation as part of their maturation process, and help stabilize the bodies.
Components
Oleosins are proteins of 16 kDa to 24 kDa and are composed of three domains: an N-terminal hydrophilic region of variable length (from 30 to 60 residues); a central hydrophobic domain of about 70 residues and a C-terminal amphipathic region of variable length (from 60 to 100 residues). The central hydrophobic domain is proposed to be made up of beta-strand structure and to interact with the lipids. It is the only domain whose sequence is conserved. Models show oleosins having a hairpin-like hydrophobic shape that is inserted inside the triacylglyceride (TAG), while the hydrophilic parts are left outside oil bodies.
Oleosins have been found on oil bodies of seeds, tapetum cells, and pollen but not fruits. Instead of a stabilizer of oil bodies, oleosins are believed to be involved in water-uptaking of pollen on stigma.
Allergic reactions
Allergic reactions to oleosins from hazelnut, peanut and sesame oils have been confirmed, ranging from contact dermatitis to anaphylactic shock. These oil body associated proteins are at ~14 and ~17 kDa, named, respectively, Ses i 5 and Ses i 4. Commercial-grade peanut oil is highly refined, so the oleosins are removed, but commercial-grade sesame oil is typically an unrefined product with a measurable protein content. In addition to being a food ingredient, sesame oil can be present in drug products, dietary supplements and topically applied cosmetics.
Usage
Oleosins provide an easy way of purifying proteins which have been produced recombinantly in plants. If the protein is made as a fusion protein with oleosi |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruhat%20order | In mathematics, the Bruhat order (also called strong order or strong Bruhat order or Chevalley order or Bruhat–Chevalley order or Chevalley–Bruhat order) is a partial order on the elements of a Coxeter group, that corresponds to the inclusion order on Schubert varieties.
History
The Bruhat order on the Schubert varieties of a flag manifold or a Grassmannian was first studied by , and the analogue for more general semisimple algebraic groups was studied by . started the combinatorial study of the Bruhat order on the Weyl group, and introduced the name "Bruhat order" because of the relation to the Bruhat decomposition introduced by François Bruhat.
The left and right weak Bruhat orderings were studied by .
Definition
If (W, S) is a Coxeter system with generators S, then the Bruhat order is a partial order on the group W. Recall that a reduced word for an element w of W is a minimal length expression of w as a product of elements of S, and the length ℓ(w) of w is the length of a reduced word.
The (strong) Bruhat order is defined by u ≤ v if some substring of some (or every) reduced word for v is a reduced word for u. (Note that here a substring is not necessarily a consecutive substring.)
The weak left (Bruhat) order is defined by u ≤L v if some final substring of some reduced word for v is a reduced word for u.
The weak right (Bruhat) order is defined by u ≤R v if some initial substring of some reduced word for v is a reduced word for u.
For more on the weak orders, see the article weak order of permutations.
Bruhat graph
The Bruhat graph is a directed graph related to the (strong) Bruhat order. The vertex set is the set of elements of the Coxeter group and the edge set consists of directed edges (u, v) whenever u = tv for some reflection t and ℓ(u) < ℓ(v). One may view the graph as an edge-labeled directed graph with edge labels coming from the set of reflections. (One could also define the Bruhat graph using multiplication on the right; as graphs, |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heston%20model | In finance, the Heston model, named after Steven L. Heston, is a mathematical model that describes the evolution of the volatility of an underlying asset. It is a stochastic volatility model: such a model assumes that the volatility of the asset is not constant, nor even deterministic, but follows a random process.
Basic Heston model
The basic Heston model assumes that St, the price of the asset, is determined by a stochastic process,
where , the instantaneous variance, is given by a Feller square-root or CIR process,
and are Wiener processes (i.e., continuous random walks) with correlation ρ.
The model has five parameters:
, the initial variance.
, the long variance, or long-run average variance of the price; as t tends to infinity, the expected value of νt tends to θ.
, the correlation of the two Wiener processes.
, the rate at which νt reverts to θ.
, the volatility of the volatility, or 'vol of vol', which determines the variance of νt.
If the parameters obey the following condition (known as the Feller condition) then the process is strictly positive
Risk-neutral measure
See Risk-neutral measure for the complete article
A fundamental concept in derivatives pricing is the risk-neutral measure; this is explained in further depth in the above article. For our purposes, it is sufficient to note the following:
To price a derivative whose payoff is a function of one or more underlying assets, we evaluate the expected value of its discounted payoff under a risk-neutral measure.
A risk-neutral measure, also known as an equivalent martingale measure, is one which is equivalent to the real-world measure, and which is arbitrage-free: under such a measure, the discounted price of each of the underlying assets is a martingale. See Girsanov's theorem.
In the Black-Scholes and Heston frameworks (where filtrations are generated from a linearly independent set of Wiener processes alone), any equivalent measure can be described in a very loose sense by adding a |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picone%20identity | In the field of ordinary differential equations, the Picone identity, named after Mauro Picone, is a classical result about homogeneous linear second order differential equations. Since its inception in 1910 it has been used with tremendous success in association with an almost immediate proof of the Sturm comparison theorem, a theorem whose proof took up many pages in Sturm's original memoir of 1836. It is also useful in studying the oscillation of such equations and has been generalized to other type of differential equations and difference equations.
The Picone identity is used to prove the Sturm–Picone comparison theorem.
Picone identity
Suppose that u and v are solutions of the two homogeneous linear second order differential equations in self-adjoint form
and
Then, for all x with v(x) ≠ 0, the following identity holds
Proof
Notes |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William%20B.%20Coley%20Award | The William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology is presented annually by the Cancer Research Institute, to scientists who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of basic and tumor immunology and whose work has deepened our understanding of the immune system's response to disease, including cancer.
The first awards were made in 1975 to a group of 16 scientists called the "Founders of Cancer Immunology." In 1993, the award was renamed after William B. Coley, a late-nineteenth century surgeon who made the first attempts at the non-surgical treatment of cancer through stimulation of the immune system. For this reason, Coley has become known as the "Father of Cancer Immunotherapy."
Recipients
Source:
1975: Garry AbelevEdward A. BoyseEdgar J. FoleyRobert A. GoodPeter A. Gorer, FRSLudwik GrossGertrude Henle & Werner HenleRobert J. HuebnerEdmund KleinEva Klein & George KleinDonald L. MortonLloyd J. OldRichmond T. PrehnHans O. Sjögren
1978: Howard B. AndervontEarl L. Green & : Margaret C. GreenWalter E. HestonClarence C. LittleGeorge D. SnellLeonell C. Strong
1979: Yuang-yun ChuZongtang SunZhao-you Tang
1983: Richard K. Gershon
1987: Thierry BoonRolf M. Zinkernagel
1989: Alain TownsendEmil Unanue
1993: Pamela BjorkmanJohn KapplerPhilippa MarrackAlvaro MoralesJack StromingerDon Wiley
1995: Malcolm A. S. MooreTimothy Springer
1996:
1997:
1998: Klas KärreRalph M. Steinman
1999: James E. Darnell, Jr.Ian M. KerrRichard A. Lerner, FRSGreg Winter
2000: Mark M. Davis
2001: Robert D. Schreiber
2002: Lewis LanierDavid H. Raulet
2003: Jules A. HoffmannCharles JanewayBruno LemaitreRuslan Medzhitov
2004: Shimon SakaguchiEthan M. Shevach
2005: For Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor ImmunologyJames P. Allison
2006: For Distinguished Research in Basic ImmunologyShizuo AkiraBruce A. BeutlerFor Distinguished Research in Tumor ImmunologyIan H. FrazerHarald zur Hausen
2007: For Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor ImmunologyJeffrey |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemolysin | Hemolysins or haemolysins are lipids and proteins that cause lysis of red blood cells by disrupting the cell membrane. Although the lytic activity of some microbe-derived hemolysins on red blood cells may be of great importance for nutrient acquisition, many hemolysins produced by pathogens do not cause significant destruction of red blood cells during infection. However, hemolysins are often capable of lysing red blood cells in vitro.
While most hemolysins are protein compounds, some are lipid biosurfactants.
Properties
Many bacteria produce hemolysins that can be detected in the laboratory. It is now believed that many clinically relevant fungi also produce hemolysins. Hemolysins can be identified by their ability to lyse red blood cells in vitro.
Not only are the erythrocytes affected by hemolysins, but there are also some effects among other blood cells, such as leucocytes (white blood cells). Escherichia coli hemolysin is potentially cytotoxic to monocytes, lymphocytes and macrophages, leading them to autolysis and death.
Visualization of hemolysis (UK: haemolysis) of red blood cells in agar plates facilitates the categorization of Streptococcus.
Mechanism
One way hemolysin lyses erythrocytes is by forming pores in phospholipid bilayers. Other hemolysins lyse erythrocytes by hydrolyzing the phospholipids in the bilayer.
Pore formation
Many hemolysins are pore-forming toxins (PFT), which are able to cause the lysis of erythrocytes, leukocytes, and platelets by producing pores on the cytoplasmic membrane.
Hemolysin is normally secreted by the bacteria in a water-soluble way.
These monomers diffuse to the target cells and are attached to them by specific receivers. After this is done, they oligomerize, creating ring-shaped heptamer complexes.
Hemolysins can be secreted by many different kinds of bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli or Vibrio parahemolyticus among other pathogens.
We can take a look at the bacterium Staphyloco |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-glomerular%20basement%20membrane%20antibody | Anti-glomerular basement membrane antibody (anti-GBM Ab) is an antibody which is found in Goodpasture's syndrome but not found in microscopic polyangiitis.
Some sources consider "anti-GBM disease" and "Goodpasture disease" to be synonymous terms describing histological presentation, reserving the term "Goodpasture syndrome" for clinical presentation.
See also
Glomerular basement membrane |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturm%20separation%20theorem | In mathematics, in the field of ordinary differential equations, Sturm separation theorem, named after Jacques Charles François Sturm, describes the location of roots of solutions of homogeneous second order linear differential equations. Basically the theorem states that given two linear independent solutions of such an equation the zeros of the two solutions are alternating.
Sturm separation theorem
If u(x) and v(x) are two non-trivial continuous linearly independent solutions to a homogeneous second order linear differential equation with x0 and x1 being successive roots of u(x), then v(x) has exactly one root in the open interval (x0, x1). It is a special case of the Sturm-Picone comparison theorem.
Proof
Since and are linearly independent it follows that the Wronskian must satisfy for all where the differential equation is defined, say . Without loss of generality, suppose that . Then
So at
and either and are both positive or both negative. Without loss of generality, suppose that they are both positive. Now, at
and since and are successive zeros of it causes . Thus, to keep we must have . We see this by observing that if then would be increasing (away from the -axis), which would never lead to a zero at . So for a zero to occur at at most (i.e., and it turns out, by our result from the Wronskian that ). So somewhere in the interval the sign of changed. By the Intermediate Value Theorem there exists such that .
On the other hand, there can be only one zero in , because otherwise would have two zeros and there would be no zeros of in between, and it was just proved that this is impossible. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track%20Imaging%20Cherenkov%20Experiment | The Track Imaging Cherenkov Experiment (TrICE) is a ground-based cosmic ray telescope located at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, IL. The telescope, which contains a Fresnel lens, eight spherical mirrors, and a camera with 16 multianode photomultiplier tubes, uses the atmospheric Cherenkov imaging technique to detect Cherenkov radiation produced when cosmic rays interact with particles in the Earth's atmosphere.
The telescope is primarily a research and development tool for improving photomultiplier tube cameras and electronic systems for future gamma and cosmic ray telescopes. It is also used to study the energy and composition of cosmic rays in the TeV–PeV range, and the collaboration is currently conducting pioneering work in detecting direct Cherenkov signals from cosmic rays.
The TrICE Collaboration
Argonne National Laboratory
University of Chicago
University of Utah
Cosmic-ray telescopes
Astroparticle physics |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape%20moir%C3%A9 | Shape moiré is one type of moiré patterns demonstrating the phenomenon of moiré magnification. 1D shape moiré is the particular simplified case of 2D shape moiré. One-dimensional patterns may appear when superimposing an opaque layer containing tiny horizontal transparent lines on top of a layer containing a complex shape which is periodically repeating along the vertical axis.
Description
Shape moiré is sometimes referred as band moiré. The opaque layer with transparent lines is called the revealing layer. The layer containing the periodically repeating shapes is called the base layer. The period of shapes in the base layer is denoted as pb. The period of transparent lines in the revealing layer is denoted as pr. The periods of both layers must be sufficiently close. The superimposition image reveals the shapes of the base layer stretched along the vertical axis. The magnified shapes appear periodically along the vertical axis. The dimensions along the horizontal axis are not changed. If the complex shape of the base layer is a sequence of symbols (e.g. a horizontal text) compressed along the vertical axis, then the superimposition of the revealing layer can restore the original proportions of these symbols. The size along the vertical axis, pm, of the magnified optical shape is expressed by the following formula:
Negative values of pm signify mirrored appearance (the magnified shapes will be inverted along the vertical axis) of the stretched shapes.
When the revealing layer is moved along the vertical axis, the magnified shapes move along the vertical axis at a faster speed. The speedup factor is expressed by the following formula:
Negative values of vm / vr signify the movement of optical shapes in reverse direction.
Examples
When pr > pb, the magnified shapes appear normally, but they move in reverse direction compared to the movement of the revealing layer. See the figure below:
When pr < pb, the magnified shapes appear inverted along the vertical axis, b |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large-signal%20model | Large-signal modeling is a common analysis method used in electronic engineering to describe nonlinear devices in terms of the underlying nonlinear equations. In circuits containing nonlinear elements such as transistors, diodes, and vacuum tubes, under "large signal conditions", AC signals have high enough magnitude that nonlinear effects must be considered.
"Large signal" is the opposite of "small signal", which means that the circuit can be reduced to a linearized equivalent circuit around its operating point with sufficient accuracy.
Differences between Small Signal and Large Signal
A small signal model takes a circuit and based on an operating point (bias) and linearizes all the components. Nothing changes because the assumption is that the signal is so small that the operating point (gain, capacitance, etc.) doesn't change.
A large signal model, on the other hand, takes into account the fact that the large signal actually affects the operating point, as well as that elements are non-linear and circuits can be limited by power supply values to avoid variation in operating point. A small signal model ignores simultaneous variations in the gain and supply values.
See also
Diode modelling
Transistor models#Large-signal nonlinear models |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU%20card | A CPU card is a printed circuit board (PCB) that contains the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer. CPU cards are specified by CPU clock frequency and bus type as well as other features and applications built into the card.
CPU cards include Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) cards, modular PC Cards, Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) cards, PCI extensions for instrumentation (PXI) cards and embedded technology extended (ETX) cards. CPU cards are often used to expand the memory, speed, bandwidth or embedded applications of an existing computer system. PC cards are typically used to expand a system's embedded applications. PC cards include modules for audio and video applications, data communications and embedded storage. PXI cards are used for data acquisition and control systems, making them suitable for real-time measurement applications. ETX cards are used in industrial applications to augment a computer system's embedded applications. ETX cards contain all the functionality necessary to run the PC in a compact space.
CPU cards that are used to augment existing computer backplanes typically have ISA or PCI connectors and can be plugged into the backplane without any additional configuration. CPU cards for use in computer backplanes are typically half-sized. The CPU card contains the PC functionality and communicates with the other cards plugged into the backplane through a computer bus. CPU cards may also be called expansion cards or expansion boards, and offer a variety of embedded applications from modems and wireless networking to graphics and video controllers to RAID controllers.
External links
What Is a CPU Card? - wiseGEEK
CPU Cards and Modules Information - Engineering360
Central processing unit
Compatibility cards |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke%20Nosek | Luke Nosek (; born June 1975) is a Polish-American entrepreneur, notable for being a co-founder of PayPal.
Biography
Łukasz Nosek was born in Tarnów, Poland. After emigrating to the US, he earned a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
In the summer of 1995, while still in college, he co-founded SponsorNet New Media, Inc., along with fellow Illinois students Max Levchin and Scott Banister. Nosek then worked for Netscape. In 1998, with Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Ken Howery, Nosek co-founded PayPal, serving as vice president of marketing and strategy, creating the company's "instant transfer" product.
In his first conversation with Thiel, he told Thiel he had just registered to be cryonically suspended, in other words, that he would be subject to low-temperature preservation in case of his legal death in hopes that he might be successfully revived by future medical technology. Thiel himself would later follow Nosek's example.
After PayPal went public and was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002, Nosek left the company to travel and pursue angel investing. In 2005, with Thiel and Ken Howery, he started Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm with over $1 billion under management.
In July 2017, Nosek left Founders Fund to launch Gigafund, an investment fund focused on space exploration.
Nosek was the first institutional investor in Elon Musk's SpaceX, and sits on the company's board. He also sits on the board of ResearchGate. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor%20histocompatibility%20antigen | Minor histocompatibility antigen (also known as MiHA) are peptides presented on the cellular surface of donated organs that are known to give an immunological response in some organ transplants. They cause problems of rejection less frequently than those of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Minor histocompatibility antigens (MiHAs) are diverse, short segments of proteins and are referred to as peptides. These peptides are normally around 9-12 amino acids in length and are bound to both the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I and class II proteins. Peptide sequences can differ among individuals and these differences arise from SNPs in the coding region of genes, gene deletions, frameshift mutations, or insertions. About a third of the characterized MiHAs come from the Y chromosome. Prior to becoming a short peptide sequence, the proteins expressed by these polymorphic or diverse genes need to be digested in the proteasome into shorter peptides. These endogenous or self peptides are then transported into the endoplasmic reticulum with a peptide transporter pump called TAP where they encounter and bind to the MHC class I molecule. This contrasts with MHC class II molecules's antigens which are peptides derived from phagocytosis/endocytosis and molecular degradation of non-self entities' proteins, usually by antigen-presenting cells. MiHA antigens are either ubiquitously expressed in most tissue like skin and intestines or restrictively expressed in the immune cells.
Minor histocompatibility antigens are due to normal proteins that are in themselves polymorphic in a given population. Even when a transplant donor and recipient are identical with respect to their major histocompatibility complex genes, the amino acid differences in minor proteins can cause the grafted tissue to be slowly rejected.
Several of the identified Autosomally and Y chromosome encoded MiHAs
Known minor histocompatibility antigens
The following table lists the known MiHAs |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirschberg%27s%20algorithm | In computer science, Hirschberg's algorithm, named after its inventor, Dan Hirschberg, is a dynamic programming algorithm that finds the optimal sequence alignment between two strings. Optimality is measured with the Levenshtein distance, defined to be the sum of the costs of insertions, replacements, deletions, and null actions needed to change one string into the other. Hirschberg's algorithm is simply described as a more space-efficient version of the Needleman–Wunsch algorithm that uses divide and conquer. Hirschberg's algorithm is commonly used in computational biology to find maximal global alignments of DNA and protein sequences.
Algorithm information
Hirschberg's algorithm is a generally applicable algorithm for optimal sequence alignment. BLAST and FASTA are suboptimal heuristics. If x and y are strings, where length(x) = n and length(y) = m, the Needleman–Wunsch algorithm finds an optimal alignment in O(nm) time, using O(nm) space. Hirschberg's algorithm is a clever modification of the Needleman–Wunsch Algorithm, which still takes O(nm) time, but needs only O(min{n, m}) space and is much faster in practice.
One application of the algorithm is finding sequence alignments of DNA or protein sequences. It is also a space-efficient way to calculate the longest common subsequence between two sets of data such as with the common diff tool.
The Hirschberg algorithm can be derived from the Needleman–Wunsch algorithm by observing that:
one can compute the optimal alignment score by only storing the current and previous row of the Needleman–Wunsch score matrix;
if is the optimal alignment of , and is an arbitrary partition of , there exists a partition of such that .
Algorithm description
denotes the i-th character of , where . denotes a substring of size , ranging from the i-th to the j-th character of . is the reversed version of .
and are sequences to be aligned. Let be a character from , and be a character from . We assume that , and are we |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanofluidics | Nanofluidics is the study of the behavior, manipulation, and control of fluids that are confined to structures of nanometer (typically 1–100 nm) characteristic dimensions (1 nm = 10−9 m). Fluids confined in these structures exhibit physical behaviors not observed in larger structures, such as those of micrometer dimensions and above, because the characteristic physical scaling lengths of the fluid, (e.g. Debye length, hydrodynamic radius) very closely coincide with the dimensions of the nanostructure itself.
When structures approach the size regime corresponding to molecular scaling lengths, new physical constraints are placed on the behavior of the fluid. For example, these physical constraints induce regions of the fluid to exhibit new properties not observed in bulk, e.g. vastly increased viscosity near the pore wall; they may effect changes in thermodynamic properties and may also alter the chemical reactivity of species at the fluid-solid interface. A particularly relevant and useful example is displayed by electrolyte solutions confined in nanopores that contain surface charges, i.e. at electrified interfaces, as shown in the nanocapillary array membrane (NCAM) in the accompanying figure.
All electrified interfaces induce an organized charge distribution near the surface known as the electrical double layer. In pores of nanometer dimensions the electrical double layer may completely span the width of the nanopore, resulting in dramatic changes in the composition of the fluid and the related properties of fluid motion in the structure. For example, the drastically enhanced surface-to-volume ratio of the pore results in a preponderance of counter-ions (i.e. ions charged oppositely to the static wall charges) over co-ions (possessing the same sign as the wall charges), in many cases to the near-complete exclusion of co-ions, such that only one ionic species exists in the pore. This can be used for manipulation of species with selective polarity along the po |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunologic%20adjuvant | In immunology, an adjuvant is a substance that increases or modulates the immune response to a vaccine. The word "adjuvant" comes from the Latin word adiuvare, meaning to help or aid. "An immunologic adjuvant is defined as any substance that acts to accelerate, prolong, or enhance antigen-specific immune responses when used in combination with specific vaccine antigens."
In the early days of vaccine manufacture, significant variations in the efficacy of different batches of the same vaccine were correctly assumed to be caused by contamination of the reaction vessels. However, it was soon found that more scrupulous cleaning actually seemed to reduce the effectiveness of the vaccines, and some contaminants actually enhanced the immune response.
There are many known adjuvants in widespread use, including aluminium salts, oils and virosomes.
Overview
Adjuvants in immunology are often used to modify or augment the effects of a vaccine by stimulating the immune system to respond to the vaccine more vigorously, and thus providing increased immunity to a particular disease. Adjuvants accomplish this task by mimicking specific sets of evolutionarily conserved molecules, so called pathogen-associated molecular patterns, which include liposomes, lipopolysaccharide, molecular cages for antigens, components of bacterial cell walls, and endocytosed nucleic acids such as RNA, double-stranded RNA, single-stranded DNA, and unmethylated CpG dinucleotide-containing DNA. Because immune systems have evolved to recognize these specific antigenic moieties, the presence of an adjuvant in conjunction with the vaccine can greatly increase the innate immune response to the antigen by augmenting the activities of dendritic cells, lymphocytes, and macrophages by mimicking a natural infection.
Types
Inorganic compounds: potassium alum, aluminium hydroxide, aluminium phosphate, calcium phosphate hydroxide
Oils: paraffin oil, propolis (only in preclinical studies). Adjuvant 65 (based on peanut |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhancer%20trap | An enhancer trap is a method in molecular biology. The enhancer trap construct contains a transposable element and a reporter gene. The first is necessary for (random) insertion in the genome, the latter is necessary for identification of the spatial regulation by the enhancer. On top of this, the construct usually includes a genetic marker, e.g., the white gene producing red-colored eyes in Drosophila, or ampicillin resistance in E. coli.
The most common and basic enhancer traps are: P[lacZ] from the bacterium E. coli and P[GAL4] from yeast. There exists a large number of fly stocks containing GAL4 insertions and an equally large number of fly stocks containing an UAS DNA sequence followed by a gene of interest, which permits the expression of a large number of genes with different GAL4 "drivers". Rather than generating transgenic flies with the enhancer linked directly to the gene of interest (which takes about a year when starting without the appropriate DNA construct), one transgenic fly is simply mated (crossed) with another transgenic fly.
See also
Gene trapping
P element |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless%20Application%20Protocol | Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a technical standard for accessing information over a mobile wireless network. A WAP browser is a web browser for mobile devices such as mobile phones that use the protocol. Introduced in 1999, WAP achieved some popularity in the early 2000s, but by the 2010s it had been largely superseded by more modern standards. Almost all modern handset internet browsers now fully support HTML, so they do not need to use WAP markup for web page compatibility, and therefore, most are no longer able to render and display pages written in WML, WAP's markup language.
Before the introduction of WAP, mobile service providers had limited opportunities to offer interactive data services, but needed interactivity to support Internet and Web applications such as email, stock prices, news and sports headlines. The Japanese i-mode system offered another major competing wireless data protocol.
Technical specifications
WAP stack
The WAP standard described a protocol suite or stack allowing the interoperability of WAP equipment and software with different network technologies, such as GSM and IS-95 (also known as CDMA).
The bottom-most protocol in the suite, the Wireless Datagram Protocol (WDP), functions as an adaptation layer that makes every data network look a bit like UDP to the upper layers by providing unreliable transport of data with two 16-bit port numbers (origin and destination). All the upper layers view WDP as one and the same protocol, which has several "technical realizations" on top of other "data bearers" such as SMS, USSD, etc. On native IP bearers such as GPRS, UMTS packet-radio service, or PPP on top of a circuit-switched data connection, WDP is in fact exactly UDP.
WTLS, an optional layer, provides a public-key cryptography-based security mechanism similar to TLS.
WTP provides transaction support (reliable request/response) adapted to the wireless world. WTP supports more effectively than TCP the problem of packet loss, which |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth%20differentiation%20factor | Growth differentiation factors (GDFs) are a subfamily of proteins belonging to the transforming growth factor beta superfamily that have functions predominantly in development.
Types
Several members of this subfamily have been described, and named GDF1 through GDF15.
GDF1 is expressed chiefly in the nervous system and functions in left-right patterning and mesoderm induction during embryonic development.
GDF2 (also known as BMP9) induces and maintains the response embryonic basal forebrain cholinergic neurons (BFCN) have to a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine, and regulates iron metabolism by increasing levels of a protein called hepcidin.
GDF3 is also known as "Vg-related gene 2" (Vgr-2). Expression of GDF3 occurs in ossifying bone during embryonic development and in the thymus, spleen, bone marrow brain, and adipose tissue of adults. It has a dual nature of function; it both inhibits and induces early stages of development in embryos.
GDF5 is expressed in the developing central nervous system, with roles in the development of joints and the skeleton, and increasing the survival of neurones that respond to a neurotransmitter called dopamine.
GDF6 interacts with bone morphogenetic proteins to regulate ectoderm patterning, and controls eye development.
GDF8 is now officially known as myostatin and controls the growth of muscle tissue.
GDF9, like GDF3, lacks one cysteine relative to other members of the TGF-β superfamily. Its gene expression is limited to the ovaries, and it has a role in ovulation.
GDF10 is closely related to BMP3 and has a roles in head formation and, it is presumed, in skeletal morphogenesis. It is also known as BMP-3b.
GDF11 controls anterior-posterior patterning by regulating the expression of Hox genes, and regulates the number of olfactory receptor neurons occurring in the olfactory epithelium, and numbers of retinal ganglionic cells developing in the retina.
GDF15 (also known as TGF-PL, MIC-1, PDF, PLAB, and PTGFB) has a role in re |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geranylgeranylation | Geranylgeranylation is a form of prenylation, which is a post-translational modification of proteins that involves the attachment of one or two 20-carbon lipophilic geranylgeranyl isoprene units from geranylgeranyl diphosphate to one or two cysteine residue(s) at the C-terminus of specific proteins. Prenylation (including geranylgeranylation) is thought to function, at least in part, as a membrane anchor for proteins.
The process of geranylgeranylation can be catalyzed by either geranylgeranyl transferase I (GGTase I) or Rab GGTase (also GGTase II). GGTase I catalyzes the addition of one geranylgeranyl group onto the C-terminal consensus sequence CAAL (somewhat similar to farnesyltransferase reactions), where C=cysteine, A=any aliphatic amino acid, and L=leucine. Rab GGTase adds a total of two geranylgeranyl groups onto two cysteine residues at the C-terminal consensus sequence CXC or XXCC. The source of the geranylgeranyl group is geranylgeranyl diphosphate, which is synthesized by GGPS1 within the isoprenoid biosynthetic pathway.
An example of this can be seen in the lipid anchoring of the Rho GTPase family of signaling molecules and the gamma subunit of heterotrimeric G proteins. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request%E2%80%93response | In computer science, request–response or request–reply is one of the basic methods computers use to communicate with each other in a network, in which the first computer sends a request for some data and the second responds to the request. More specifically, it is a message exchange pattern in which a requestor sends a request message to a replier system, which receives and processes the request, ultimately returning a message in response. It is analogous to a telephone call, in which the caller must wait for the recipient to pick up before anything can be discussed. This is a simple but powerful messaging pattern which allows two applications to have a two-way conversation with one another over a channel; it is especially common in client–server architectures.
For simplicity, this pattern is typically implemented in a purely synchronous fashion, as in web service calls over HTTP, which holds a connection open and waits until the response is delivered or the timeout period expires. However, request–response may also be implemented asynchronously, with a response being returned at some unknown later time. When a synchronous system communicates with an asynchronous system, it is referred to as "sync over async" or "sync/async". This is common in enterprise application integration (EAI) implementations where slow aggregations, time-intensive functions, or human workflow must be performed before a response can be constructed and delivered.
In contrast, one-way computer communication, which is like the push-to-talk or "barge in" feature found on some phones and two-way radios, sends a message without waiting for a response. Sending an email is an example of one-way communication, and another example are fieldbus sensors, such as most CAN bus sensors, which periodically and autonomously send out their data, whether or not any other devices on the bus are listening for it. (Most of these systems use a "listen before talk" or other contention-based protocol so multiple s |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh%20Cross%3A%20Evolution | Seventh Cross: Evolution, known in Japan as simply , is a video game for the Sega Dreamcast video game console. It was released in Japan on December 23, 1998. A sequel titled Ninth Will was announced shortly after the game's North American release, but it was apparently cancelled.
Gameplay
The theme of Seventh Cross is evolution. The player begins with a protist, and through eating and consuming, progresses through two other stages until it becomes an animal. The game begins in a lagoon, where the player's organism must avoid predators while nourishing itself. If the creature dies, it is returned to its lowest form unless it has successfully evolved into its 'origin' stage, in which case the creature regresses to that instead. After death, any parts gained by evolution are kept, but any gathered food is lost.
Seventh Cross contains six stages, each with a boss. The stages take place in different biomes, ranging from the pond to a barren future.
Evolving
The creature gains parts by touching the monolith in each level. Six colors, chosen at the beginning by the player, are mapped to six attributes: offense, defense, psi power, intelligence, dexterity, and healing. By creating patterns with these colors on a 10×10 grid, and possessing the required amount of EVP, the creature may gain a new part it may add to its head, body, legs, or arms. The logic behind what patterns yield what parts, however, remains unclear.
These parts may be "equipped" any time, but each require specific amounts of nutrients found in certain foods, among which are protein and fiber. After a while, the player may add enough parts to the organism to fend off and even kill other creatures, fight the stage's boss creature and advance to the next stage. Each part has different attributes that enhance particular areas like movement speed and attack strength. These parts may be added ala carte; that is, a lynx's head may be placed upon an organism with a crab's body and frog's legs. This may result |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete%20homogeneous%20symmetric%20polynomial | In mathematics, specifically in algebraic combinatorics and commutative algebra, the complete homogeneous symmetric polynomials are a specific kind of symmetric polynomials. Every symmetric polynomial can be expressed as a polynomial expression in complete homogeneous symmetric polynomials.
Definition
The complete homogeneous symmetric polynomial of degree in variables , written for , is the sum of all monomials of total degree in the variables. Formally,
The formula can also be written as:
Indeed, is just the multiplicity of in the sequence .
The first few of these polynomials are
Thus, for each nonnegative integer , there exists exactly one complete homogeneous symmetric polynomial of degree in variables.
Another way of rewriting the definition is to take summation over all sequences , without condition of ordering :
here is the multiplicity of number in the sequence .
For example
The polynomial ring formed by taking all integral linear combinations of products of the complete homogeneous symmetric polynomials is a commutative ring.
Examples
The following lists the basic (as explained below) complete homogeneous symmetric polynomials for the first three positive values of .
For :
For :
For :
Properties
Generating function
The complete homogeneous symmetric polynomials are characterized by the following identity of formal power series in :
(this is called the generating function, or generating series, for the complete homogeneous symmetric polynomials). Here each fraction in the final expression is the usual way to represent the formal geometric series that is a factor in the middle expression. The identity can be justified by considering how the product of those geometric series is formed: each factor in the product is obtained by multiplying together one term chosen from each geometric series, and every monomial in the variables is obtained for exactly one such choice of terms, and comes multiplied by a power of equal to the degree of |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law%20of%20the%20handicap%20of%20a%20head%20start | The law of the handicap of a head start (original Dutch: Wet van de remmende voorsprong), first-mover disadvantage, or dialectics of lead, is a theory that suggests that an initial head start in a given area may result in a handicap in the long term. The term was coined in 1937 by Jan Romein, a Dutch journalist and historian, in his essay "The dialectics of progress" ("De dialectiek van de vooruitgang"), part of the series "The unfinished past" (Het onvoltooid verleden). The mirror image of the law – an initial arrears in a given area may stimulate a development leading to a long-term advantage – is known as the law of the stimulative arrears. This concept contrast with first-mover advantage.
The phenomenon
The law of the handicap of a head start describes a phenomenon that is applicable in numerous settings. The law suggests that making progress in a particular area often creates circumstances in which stimuli are lacking to strive for further progress. This results in the individual or group that started out ahead eventually being overtaken by others. In the terminology of the law, the head start, initially an advantage, subsequently becomes a handicap.
An explanation for why the phenomenon occurs is that when a society dedicates itself to certain standards, and those standards change, it is harder for them to adapt. Conversely, a society that has not committed itself yet will not have this problem. Thus, a society that at one point has a head start over other societies, may, at a later time, be stuck with obsolete technology or ideas that get in the way of further progress. One consequence of this is that what is considered to be the state of the art in a certain field can be seen as "jumping" from place to place, as each leader soon becomes a victim of the handicap.
In common terms, societies, companies, and individuals are often confronted with the decision to either invest now and get a fast return, or put off the investment until a new technology has eme |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.