source
stringlengths
1
149
text
stringlengths
18
204k
Air navigation
The basic principles of air navigation are identical to general navigation, which includes the process of planning, recording, and controlling the movement of a craft from one place to another.Successful air navigation involves piloting an aircraft from place to place without getting lost, not breaking the laws applying to aircraft, or endangering the safety of those on board or on the ground. Air navigation differs from the navigation of surface craft in several ways; Aircraft travel at relatively high speeds, leaving less time to calculate their position en route. Aircraft normally cannot stop in mid-air to ascertain their position at leisure. Aircraft are safety-limited by the amount of fuel they can carry; a surface vehicle can usually get lost, run out of fuel, then simply await rescue. There is no in-flight rescue for most aircraft. Additionally, collisions with obstructions are usually fatal. Therefore, constant awareness of position is critical for aircraft pilots.
N-slit interferometric equation
Quantum mechanics was first applied to optics, and interference in particular, by Paul Dirac. Richard Feynman, in his Lectures on Physics, uses Dirac's notation to describe thought experiments on double-slit interference of electrons. Feynman's approach was extended to N-slit interferometers for either single-photon illumination, or narrow-linewidth laser illumination, that is, illumination by indistinguishable photons, by Frank Duarte. The N-slit interferometer was first applied in the generation and measurement of complex interference patterns.In this article the generalized N-slit interferometric equation, derived via Dirac's notation, is described. Although originally derived to reproduce and predict N-slit interferograms, this equation also has applications to other areas of optics.
Palmer-Bowlus Flume
The Palmer-Bowlus flume, is a class of flumes commonly used to measure the flow of wastewater in sewer pipes and conduits. The Palmer-Bowlus flume has a u-shaped cross-section and was designed to be inserted into, or in line with, pipes and u-channels found in sanitary sewer applications.As a long-throated flume, the point of measurement of the Palmer-Bowlus flume is anywhere upstream of the throat ramp greater than D/2 (D=flume size). Montana flume has a single, specified point of measurement in the contracting section at which the level is measured. Unlike most other flumes used for open channel flow measurement, the Palmer-Bowlus flume can be calibrated by theoretical analysis.
Rectal dilator
A rectal or anal dilator is a medical device similar to a speculum designed to open and relax the internal/external anal sphincter and rectum in order to facilitate medical inspection or relieve constipation. One early version of a rectal dilator was Dr. Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators, invented in 1892.Rectal dilators are also used as sex toys.
Playoff beard
A playoff beard is the superstitious practice of male athletes not shaving their beards during the playoffs. Playoff beards were introduced by ice hockey players participating in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and are now a tradition in many sports leagues. Many fans of professional sports teams also grow playoff beards. The player stops shaving when his team enters the playoffs and does not shave until his team is eliminated or wins the Stanley Cup (or equivalent championship).
Vidalia (software)
Vidalia is a discontinued cross-platform GUI for controlling Tor, built using Qt. The name comes from the Vidalia onion since Tor uses onion routing. It allows the user to start, stop or view the status of Tor, view, filter or search log messages, monitor bandwidth usage, and configure some aspects of Tor. Vidalia also makes it easier to contribute to the Tor network by optionally helping the user set up a Tor relay.
Value-added theory
Value-added theory (also known as social strain theory) is a sociological theory, first proposed by Neil Smelser in 1962, which posits that certain conditions are needed for the development of a social movement.
Minor loop feedback
Minor loop feedback is a classical method used to design stable robust linear feedback control systems using feedback loops around sub-systems within the overall feedback loop. The method is sometimes called minor loop synthesis in college textbooks, some government documents.The method is suitable for design by graphical methods and was used before digital computers became available. In World War 2 this method was used to design Gun laying control systems. It is still used now, but not always referred to by name. It is often discussed within the context of Bode plot methods. Minor loop feedback can be used to stabilize opamps.
Searchmedica
SearchMedica was a series of free medical search engines built by doctors for doctors and other medical professionals, with localized versions for the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Spain.
Cable Internet access
In telecommunications, cable Internet access, shortened to cable Internet, is a form of broadband Internet access which uses the same infrastructure as cable television. Like digital subscriber line and fiber to the premises services, cable Internet access provides network edge connectivity (last mile access) from the Internet service provider to an end user. It is integrated into the cable television infrastructure analogously to DSL which uses the existing telephone network. Cable TV networks and telecommunications networks are the two predominant forms of residential Internet access. Recently, both have seen increased competition from fiber deployments, wireless, and mobile networks.
Alligator leather
Leather is created when an animal skin or hide is chemically treated in a process called tanning to preserve them for long term use as material for clothing, handbags, footwear, furniture, sports equipment and tools. Alligator leather is also commonly used to create similar items as mentioned above. Alligator leather is not only used due to its durable skin, but also its natural enamel sheen, which is aesthetically pleasing for consumers buying expensive products.
Apple Pie ABC
Apple Pie ABC is an old and enduring English alphabet rhyme for children which has gone through several variations since the 17th century.
Epley maneuver
The Epley maneuver or repositioning maneuver is a maneuver used by medical professionals to treat one common cause of vertigo, benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) of the posterior or anterior canals of the ear. The maneuver works by allowing free-floating particles, displaced otoconia, from the affected semicircular canal to be relocated by using gravity, back into the utricle, where they can no longer stimulate the cupula, therefore relieving the patient of bothersome vertigo. The maneuver was developed by the physician, John M. Epley, and was first described in 1980.A version of the maneuver called the "modified" Epley does not include vibrations of the mastoid process originally indicated by Epley, as the vibration procedures have been proven ineffective. The modified procedure has become that now described generally as the Epley maneuver.
Biodistribution
Biodistribution is a method of tracking where compounds of interest travel in an experimental animal or human subject. For example, in the development of new compounds for PET (positron emission tomography) scanning, a radioactive isotope is chemically joined with a peptide (subunit of a protein). This particular class of isotopes emits positrons (which are antimatter particles, equal in mass to the electron, but with a positive charge). When ejected from the nucleus, positrons encounter an electron, and undergo annihilation which produces two gamma rays travelling in opposite directions. These gamma rays can be measured, and when compared to a standard, quantified.
Dog leukocyte antigen
The dog leukocyte antigen (DLA) is a part of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) in dogs, encoding genes in the MHC. The DLA and MHC system are interchangeable terms in canines. The MHC plays a critical role in the immune response system and consists of three regions: class I, class II and class III. DLA genes belong to the first two classes, which are involved in the regulation of antigens in the immune system. The class II genes are highly polymorphic, with many different alleles/haplotypes that have been linked to diseases, allergies, and autoimmune conditions such as diabetes, polyarthritus, and hypothyroidism in canines.
Robust optimization
Robust optimization is a field of mathematical optimization theory that deals with optimization problems in which a certain measure of robustness is sought against uncertainty that can be represented as deterministic variability in the value of the parameters of the problem itself and/or its solution. It is related to, but often distinguished from, probabilistic optimization methods such as chance-constrained optimization.
Siemens Milltronics Process Instruments
Siemens AG (German pronunciation: [ˈziːməns] (listen) or [-mɛns]) is a German multinational technology conglomerate. Its operations encompass automation and digitalization in the process and manufacturing industries, intelligent infrastructure for buildings and distributed energy systems, rail transport solutions, as well as health technology and digital healthcare services. Siemens is the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe, and holds the position of global market leader in industrial automation and industrial software.The origins of the conglomerate can be traced back to 1847 to the Telegraphen Bau-Anstalt von Siemens & Halske established in Berlin by Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske. In 1966, the present-day corporation emerged from the merger of three companies: Siemens & Halske, Siemens-Schuckert, and Siemens-Reiniger-Werke. Today headquartered in Munich and Berlin, Siemens and its subsidiaries employ approximately 311,000 people worldwide and reported a global revenue of around €72 billion in 2022. The company is a component of the DAX and Euro Stoxx 50 stock market indices.As of 2023, the principal divisions of Siemens are Digital Industries, Smart Infrastructure, Mobility, Healthineers, and Financial Services, with Siemens Healthineers and Siemens Mobility operating as independent entities. Major business divisions that were once part of Siemens before being spun off include semiconductor manufacturer Infineon Technologies (1999), Siemens Mobile (2005), Gigaset Communications (2008), the photonics business Osram (2013), and Siemens Energy (2020).
DES Action USA
DES Action USA is a national consumer advocacy group, whose mission is to educate and raise awareness about diethylstilbestrol (DES) in the public and medical and legal professions, support the DES-exposed population, and advocate for consumer vigilance and rights.
Hamiltonian optics
Hamiltonian optics and Lagrangian optics are two formulations of geometrical optics which share much of the mathematical formalism with Hamiltonian mechanics and Lagrangian mechanics.
Sims' vaginal speculum
In gynaecology, Sims' vaginal speculum is a double-bladed surgical instrument used for examining the vagina and cervix. It was developed by J. Marion Sims out of pewter spoon, but nowadays it is manufactured out of stainless steel or plastic. The plastic speculum is disposable, but the stainless steel one is not. Therefore, the stainless steel speculum should be sterilized before each use. Sims' speculum is inserted into the vagina to retract posterior vaginal wall. It gives more exposure of the vaginal walls than Cusco's Speculum and therefore is preferred for gynaecological surgeries. It is possible to slide the instrument around the vaginal wall to enable better visualization. The groove in the middle of Sims' speculum allows free flow of secretions and blood to the outside, thereby keeping the area dry. Sims' speculum is available in various sizes, and the size appropriate to the vaginal dimensions of the woman is chosen for use. The disadvantage of Sims' speculum is that it is not self-retaining. The examiner might want to use an anterior wall retractor in addition to Sims' speculum for better visualization of the cervix.
Automatic basis function construction
In machine learning, automatic basis function construction (or basis discovery) is the mathematical method of looking for a set of task-independent basis functions that map the state space to a lower-dimensional embedding, while still representing the value function accurately. Automatic basis construction is independent of prior knowledge of the domain, which allows it to perform well where expert-constructed basis functions are difficult or impossible to create.
Occupational hearing loss
Occupational hearing loss (OHL) is hearing loss that occurs as a result of occupational hazards, such as excessive noise and ototoxic chemicals. Noise is a common workplace hazard, and recognized as the risk factor for noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus but it is not the only risk factor that can result in a work-related hearing loss. Also, noise-induced hearing loss can result from exposures that are not restricted to the occupational setting.
Alioth (Debian)
Alioth was a FusionForge system run by the Debian project for development of free software and free documentation, especially software or documentation to do with Debian.Most of the projects hosted by Alioth were packaging existing software in the Debian format. However, there were some notable non-Debian projects hosted, like SANE project.
Nuclear power plant
A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a generator that produces electricity. As of August 2023, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported there were 412 nuclear power reactors in operation in 31 countries around the world, and 57 nuclear power reactors under construction.Nuclear plants are very often used for base load since their operations, maintenance, and fuel costs are at the lower end of the spectrum of costs. However, building a nuclear power plant often spans five to ten years, which can accrue to significant financial costs, depending on how the initial investments are financed.Nuclear power plants have a carbon footprint comparable to that of renewable energy such as solar farms and wind farms, and much lower than fossil fuels such as natural gas and coal. Despite some spectacular catastrophes, nuclear power plants are among the safest mode of electricity generation, comparable to solar and wind power plants.
Fibular collateral ligament
The lateral collateral ligament (LCL, long external lateral ligament or fibular collateral ligament) is an extrinsic ligament of the knee located on the lateral side of the knee. Its superior attachment is at the lateral epicondyle of the femur (superoposterior to the popliteal groove); its inferior attachment is at the at the lateral aspect of the head of fibula (anterior to the apex). The LCL is not fused with the joint capsule. Inferiorly, the LCL splits the tendon of insertion of the biceps femoris muscle.
Alkb homolog 3, alpha-ketoglutaratedependent dioxygenase
AlkB homolog 3, alpha-ketoglutaratedependent dioxygenase is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ALKBH3 gene.
Lindsay M. De Biase
Lindsay M. De Biase is an American neuroscientist and glial biologist as well as an assistant professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. De Biase explores the diversity of microglia that exist within the basal ganglia circuitry to one day target regional or circuit-specific microglia in disease. De Biase's graduate work highlighted the existence and roles of neuron-OPC synapses in development and her postdoctoral work was critical in showing that microglia are not homogenous within the brain parenchyma.
Hammar experiment
The Hammar experiment was an experiment designed and conducted by Gustaf Wilhelm Hammar (1935) to test the aether drag hypothesis. Its negative result refuted some specific aether drag models, and confirmed special relativity.
Timber hitch
The timber hitch is a knot used to attach a single length of rope to a cylindrical object. Secure while tension is maintained, it is easily untied even after heavy loading.The timber hitch is a very old knot. It is first known to have been mentioned in a nautical source c. 1625 and illustrated in 1762.
Numbered-node cycle network
The numbered-node cycle network (Dutch: fietsknooppuntennetwerk; German: Knotenpunktbezogene Wegweisung/Knotenpunktsystem für Radwanderern [formal] and Radeln nach Zahlen ["bike-by-numbers", informal]) is a wayfinding system. It spans the Netherlands, Belgium, parts of France and Germany, and parts of Croatia, and is expanding rapidly, as of 2017. Each intersection or node is given a number, and the numbers are signposted, so the cyclist always knows which way to go to get to the next node.
Mangler Transformation
Mangler transformation, also known as Mangler-Stepanov transformation (Stepanov 1947, Mangler 1948, Schlichting 1955), reduces the axisymmetric boundary layer equations to the plane boundary layer equations.
Pacinian corpuscle
The Pacinian corpuscle, lamellar corpuscle or Vater-Pacini corpuscle is one of the four major types of mechanoreceptors (specialized nerve ending with adventitious tissue for mechanical sensation) found in mammalian skin. This type of mechanoreceptor is found in both hairy, and hairless skin, viscera, joints, and attached to periosteum of bone, primarily responsible for sensitivity to vibration. Few of them are also sensitive to quasi-static or low frequency pressure stimulus. Most of them respond only to sudden disturbances and are especially sensitive to vibration of few hundreds of Hz. The vibrational role may be used for detecting surface texture, e.g., rough vs. smooth. Most of the Pacinian corpuscles act as rapidly adapting mechanoreceptors. Groups of corpuscles respond to pressure changes, e.g. on grasping or releasing an object.
Glycosuria
Glycosuria is the excretion of glucose into the urine. Ordinarily, urine contains no glucose because the kidneys are able to reabsorb all of the filtered glucose from the tubular fluid back into the bloodstream. Glycosuria is nearly always caused by elevated blood glucose levels, most commonly due to untreated diabetes mellitus. Rarely, glycosuria is due to an intrinsic problem with glucose reabsorption within the kidneys (such as Fanconi syndrome), producing a condition termed renal glycosuria. Glycosuria leads to excessive water loss into the urine with resultant dehydration, a process called osmotic diuresis.
Waelz process
The Waelz process is a method of recovering zinc and other relatively low boiling point metals from metallurgical waste (typically EAF flue dust) and other recycled materials using a rotary kiln (waelz kiln). The zinc enriched product is referred to as waelz oxide, and the reduced zinc by product as waelz slag.
Magnitude (astronomy)
In astronomy, magnitude is measure of the brightness of an object, usually in a defined passband. An imprecise but systematic determination of the magnitude of objects was introduced in ancient times by Hipparchus.
Texas Journal of Science
The Texas Journal of Science is a peer reviewed academic journal covering all areas of basic and applied sciences, as well as science education. It is published by the Texas Academy of Science. The journal is abstracted and indexed in BIOSIS Previews and The Zoological Record and was in previous years also covered by Scopus. It obtained its last impact factor of 0.113 in 2010, but its listing in the Journal Citation Reports has since been discontinued.
Acute radiation syndrome
Acute radiation syndrome (ARS), also known as radiation sickness or radiation poisoning, is a collection of health effects that are caused by being exposed to high amounts of ionizing radiation in a short period of time. Symptoms can start within an hour of exposure, and can last for several months. Early symptoms are usually nausea, vomiting and loss of appetite. In the following hours or weeks, initial symptoms may appear to improve, before the development of additional symptoms, after which either recovery or death follow.ARS involves a total dose of greater than 0.7 Gy (70 rad), that generally occurs from a source outside the body, delivered within a few minutes. Sources of such radiation can occur accidentally or intentionally. They may involve nuclear reactors, cyclotrons, certain devices used in cancer therapy, nuclear weapons, or radiological weapons. It is generally divided into three types: bone marrow, gastrointestinal, and neurovascular syndrome, with bone marrow syndrome occurring at 0.7 to 10 Gy, and neurovascular syndrome occurring at doses that exceed 50 Gy. The cells that are most affected are generally those that are rapidly dividing. At high doses, this causes DNA damage that may be irreparable. Diagnosis is based on a history of exposure and symptoms. Repeated complete blood counts (CBCs) can indicate the severity of exposure.Treatment of ARS is generally supportive care. This may include blood transfusions, antibiotics, colony-stimulating factors, or stem cell transplant. Radioactive material remaining on the skin or in the stomach should be removed. If radioiodine was inhaled or ingested, potassium iodide is recommended. Complications such as leukemia and other cancers among those who survive are managed as usual. Short term outcomes depend on the dose exposure.ARS is generally rare. A single event can affect a large number of people, as happened in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster. ARS differs from chronic radiation syndrome, which occurs following prolonged exposures to relatively low doses of radiation.
Taltirelin
Taltirelin (marketed under the tradename Ceredist) is a thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) analog, which mimics the physiological actions of TRH, but with a much longer half-life and duration of effects, and little development of tolerance following prolonged dosing. It has nootropic, neuroprotective and analgesic effects.Taltirelin is primarily being researched for the treatment of spinocerebellar ataxia; limited research has also been carried out with regard to other neurodegenerative disorders, e.g., spinal muscular atrophy.
Estrogen and neurodegenerative diseases
Neurodegenerative diseases can disrupt the normal human homeostasis and result in abnormal estrogen levels. For example, neurodegenerative diseases can cause different physiological effects in males and females. In particular, estrogen studies have revealed complex interactions with neurodegenerative diseases. Estrogen was initially proposed to be a possible treatment for certain types of neurodegenerative diseases but a plethora of harmful side effects such as increased susceptibility to breast cancer and coronary heart disease overshadowed any beneficial outcomes. On the other hand, Estrogen Replacement Therapy has shown some positive effects with postmenopausal women. Estrogen and estrogen-like molecules form a large family of potentially beneficial alternatives that can have dramatic effects on human homeostasis and disease. Subsequently, large-scale efforts were initiated to screen for useful estrogen family molecules. Furthermore, scientists discovered new ways to synthesize estrogen-like compounds that can avoid many side effects.
Email forwarding
Email forwarding generically refers to the operation of re-sending a previously delivered email to an email address to one or more different email addresses. The term forwarding, used for mail since long before electronic communications, has no specific technical meaning, but it implies that the email has been moved "forward" to a new destination. Email forwarding can also redirect mail going to a certain address and send it to one or more other addresses. Vice versa, email items going to several different addresses can converge via forwarding to end up in a single address in-box.Email users and administrators of email systems use the same term when speaking of both server-based and client-based forwarding.
FAM221A
Family with sequence similarity 221 member A is a protein in humans that is encoded by the FAM221A gene. FAM221A is a gene that is not yet well understood by the scientific community. However, it appears that this gene may have a role in Parkinson's disease and prostate cancer.
Intel ADX
Intel ADX (Multi-Precision Add-Carry Instruction Extensions) is Intel's arbitrary-precision arithmetic extension to the x86 instruction set architecture (ISA). Intel ADX was first supported in the Broadwell microarchitecture.The instruction set extension contains just two new instructions, though MULX from BMI2 is also considered as a part of the large integer arithmetic support.Both instructions are more efficient variants of the existing ADC instruction, with the difference that each of the two new instructions affects only one flag, where ADC as a signed addition may set both overflow and carry flags, and as an old-style x86 instruction also reset the rest of the CPU flags. Having two versions affecting different flags means that two chains of additions with carry can be calculated in parallel.AMD added support in their processors for these instructions starting with Ryzen.
Small-conductance mechanosensitive channel
Small conductance mechanosensitive ion channels (MscS) provide protection against hypo-osmotic shock in bacteria, responding both to stretching of the cell membrane and to membrane depolarization. In eukaryotes, they fulfill a multitude of important functions in addition to osmoregulation. They are present in the membranes of organisms from the three domains of life: bacteria, archaea, fungi and plants.
Flail chest
Flail chest is a life-threatening medical condition that occurs when a segment of the rib cage breaks due to trauma and becomes detached from the rest of the chest wall. Two of the symptoms of flail chest are chest pain and shortness of breath.It occurs when multiple adjacent ribs are broken in multiple places, separating a segment, so a part of the chest wall moves independently. The number of ribs that must be broken varies by differing definitions: some sources say at least two adjacent ribs are broken in at least two places, some require three or more ribs in two or more places. The flail segment moves in the opposite direction to the rest of the chest wall: because of the ambient pressure in comparison to the pressure inside the lungs, it goes in while the rest of the chest is moving out, and vice versa. This so-called "paradoxical breathing" is painful and increases the work involved in breathing.
Uvular consonant
Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and the symbol for the voiced fricative is used instead. Uvular affricates can certainly be made but are rare: they occur in some southern High-German dialects, as well as in a few African and Native American languages. (Ejective uvular affricates occur as realizations of uvular stops in Lillooet, Kazakh, or as allophonic realizations of the ejective uvular fricative in Georgian.) Uvular consonants are typically incompatible with advanced tongue root, and they often cause retraction of neighboring vowels.
Philosophy of space and time
Philosophy of space and time is the branch of philosophy concerned with the issues surrounding the ontology and epistemology of space and time. While such ideas have been central to philosophy from its inception, the philosophy of space and time was both an inspiration for and a central aspect of early analytic philosophy. The subject focuses on a number of basic issues, including whether time and space exist independently of the mind, whether they exist independently of one another, what accounts for time's apparently unidirectional flow, whether times other than the present moment exist, and questions about the nature of identity (particularly the nature of identity over time).
Chopart's fracture–dislocation
Chopart's fracture–dislocation is a dislocation of the mid-tarsal (talonavicular and calcaneocuboid) joints of the foot, often with associated fractures of the calcaneus, cuboid and navicular.
Stress distribution in soil
Stress distribution in soil is a function of the type of soil, the relative rigidity of the soil and the footing, and the depth of foundation at level of contact between footing and soil.The estimation of vertical stresses at any point in a soil mass due to external loading is essential to the prediction of settlements of buildings, bridges and pressure.
L1TD1P1
LINE-1 type transposase domain containing 1 pseudogene 1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the L1TD1P1 gene.
Chink in one's armor
The idiom "chink in one's armor" refers to an area of vulnerability. It has traditionally been used to refer to a weak spot in a figurative suit of armor. The standard meaning is similar to that of Achilles' heel.Grammarist provides a sample usage by The Daily Telegraph that they find acceptable: "Such hype was anathema for the modest professional fighter, who has 22 victories under his belt, and not a perceptible chink in his armour."
In vitro spermatogenesis
In vitro spermatogenesis is the process of creating male gametes (spermatozoa) outside of the body in a culture system. The process could be useful for fertility preservation, infertility treatment and may further develop the understanding of spermatogenesis at the cellular and molecular level. Spermatogenesis is a highly complex process and artificially rebuilding it in vitro is challenging. These include creating a similar microenvironment to that of the testis as well as supporting endocrine and paracrine signalling, and ensuring survival of the somatic and germ cells from spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) to mature spermatozoa.Different methods of culturing can be used in the process such as isolated cell cultures, fragment cultures and 3D cultures
National Institute for Environmental eScience
The National Institute for Environmental eScience (NIEeS) was a collaboration between Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the University of Cambridge. It was established in July 2002 and in addition to its main role of promoting and supporting the use of e-Science and grid technologies within the field of environmental research, its purpose was to: Train scientists in environmental eScience Demonstrate environmental eScience Help develop the environmental eScience community Aid collaborations between scientists and industriesIt was intended as a national resource to be "owned by the whole community". The website remains available; however, the contract for the project ended in August 2008.
Topographic map
In modern mapping, a topographic map or topographic sheet is a type of map characterized by large-scale detail and quantitative representation of relief features, usually using contour lines (connecting points of equal elevation), but historically using a variety of methods. Traditional definitions require a topographic map to show both natural and artificial features. A topographic survey is typically based upon a systematic observation and published as a map series, made up of two or more map sheets that combine to form the whole map. A topographic map series uses a common specification that includes the range of cartographic symbols employed, as well as a standard geodetic framework that defines the map projection, coordinate system, ellipsoid and geodetic datum. Official topographic maps also adopt a national grid referencing system.
Lexical approach
The lexical approach is a method of teaching foreign languages described by Michael Lewis in the early 1990s. The basic concept on which this approach rests is the idea that an important part of learning a language consists of being able to understand and produce lexical phrases as chunks. Students are taught to be able to perceive patterns of language (grammar) as well as have meaningful set uses of words at their disposal when they are taught in this way. In 2000, Norbert Schmitt, an American linguist and a Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, contributed to a learning theory supporting the lexical approach he stated that "the mind stores and processes these [lexical] chunks as individual wholes." The short-term capacity of the brain is much more limited than long-term and so it is much more efficient for our brain to pull up a lexical chunk as if it were one piece of information as opposed to pulling up each word as separate pieces of information.The lexical method concentrates on teaching fixed terms that are common in conversations since, according to Lewis, they make up a bigger portion of speech than original words and sentences. Vocabulary is prized over grammar per se in this approach. The teaching of chunks and set phrases has become common in English as a foreign or second language, though this is not necessarily primarily due to the Lexical Approach. This is because anywhere from 55-80% of native speakers' speech are derived from prefabricated phrases. Fluency could be considered unachievable if one did not learn prefabricated chunks or expressions.
Hawk/goose effect
In ethology and cognitive ethology, the hawk/goose effect refers to a behavior observed in some young birds when another bird flies above them: if the flying bird is a goose, the young birds show no reaction, but if the flying bird is a hawk, the young birds either become more agitated or cower to reduce the danger. The observation that short-necked and long-tailed birds flying overhead caused alarm was noted by Oskar Heinroth. Friedrich Goethe conducted experiments with silhouettes to examine alarm reactions in 1937 and a more systematic study was conducted in the same year by Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen which is considered one of the classic experiments of ethology.
Dynamic topic model
Within statistics, Dynamic topic models' are generative models that can be used to analyze the evolution of (unobserved) topics of a collection of documents over time. This family of models was proposed by David Blei and John Lafferty and is an extension to Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) that can handle sequential documents.In LDA, both the order the words appear in a document and the order the documents appear in the corpus are oblivious to the model. Whereas words are still assumed to be exchangeable, in a dynamic topic model the order of the documents plays a fundamental role. More precisely, the documents are grouped by time slice (e.g.: years) and it is assumed that the documents of each group come from a set of topics that evolved from the set of the previous slice.
Beer chemistry
The chemical compounds in beer give it a distinctive taste, smell and appearance. The majority of compounds in beer come from the metabolic activities of plants and yeast and so are covered by the fields of biochemistry and organic chemistry. The main exception is that beer contains over 90% water and the mineral ions in the water (hardness) can have a significant effect upon the taste.
The Nuttall Encyclopædia
The Nuttall Encyclopædia: Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge is a late 19th-century encyclopedia, edited by Rev. James Wood, first published in London in 1900 by Frederick Warne & Co Ltd. Editions were recorded for 1920, 1930, 1938 and 1956 and was still being sold in 1966. Editors included G. Elgie Christ and A. L. Hayden for 1930, Lawrence Hawkins Dawson for 1938 and C. M. Prior for 1956.
Nakamachi, Setagaya
Nakamachi (中町) is a district of Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan.
Humble pie
To eat humble pie, in common usage, is to face humiliation and subsequently apologize for a serious mistake. Humble pie, or umble pie, is also a term for a variety of pastries based on medieval meat pies.
Uranium
Uranium is a chemical element with symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium radioactively decays by emitting an alpha particle. The half-life of this decay varies between 159,200 and 4.5 billion years for different isotopes, making them useful for dating the age of the Earth. The most common isotopes in natural uranium are uranium-238 (which has 146 neutrons and accounts for over 99% of uranium on Earth) and uranium-235 (which has 143 neutrons). Uranium has the highest atomic weight of the primordially occurring elements. Its density is about 70% higher than that of lead, and slightly lower than that of gold or tungsten. It occurs naturally in low concentrations of a few parts per million in soil, rock and water, and is commercially extracted from uranium-bearing minerals such as uraninite.Many contemporary uses of uranium exploit its unique nuclear properties. Uranium-235 is the only naturally occurring fissile isotope, which makes it widely used in nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. However, because of the extreme lowness of concentrations of uranium-235 in naturally occurring uranium (which is, overwhelmingly, mostly uranium-238), uranium needs to undergo enrichment so that enough uranium-235 is present. Uranium-238 is fissionable by fast neutrons, and is fertile, meaning it can be transmuted to fissile plutonium-239 in a nuclear reactor. Another fissile isotope, uranium-233, can be produced from natural thorium and is studied for future industrial use in nuclear technology. Uranium-238 has a small probability for spontaneous fission or even induced fission with fast neutrons; uranium-235, and to a lesser degree uranium-233, have a much higher fission cross-section for slow neutrons. In sufficient concentration, these isotopes maintain a sustained nuclear chain reaction. This generates the heat in nuclear power reactors, and produces the fissile material for nuclear weapons. Depleted uranium (238U) is used in kinetic energy penetrators and armor plating.The 1789 discovery of uranium in the mineral pitchblende is credited to Martin Heinrich Klaproth, who named the new element after the recently discovered planet Uranus. Eugène-Melchior Péligot was the first person to isolate the metal and its radioactive properties were discovered in 1896 by Henri Becquerel. Research by Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, Enrico Fermi and others, such as J. Robert Oppenheimer starting in 1934 led to its use as a fuel in the nuclear power industry and in Little Boy, the first nuclear weapon used in war. An ensuing arms race during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union produced tens of thousands of nuclear weapons that used uranium metal and uranium-derived plutonium-239. Dismantling of these weapons and related nuclear facilities is carried out within various nuclear disarmament programs and costs billions of dollars. Weapon-grade uranium obtained from nuclear weapons is diluted with uranium-238 and reused as fuel for nuclear reactors. The development and deployment of these nuclear reactors continue on a global base as they are powerful sources of CO2-free energy. Spent nuclear fuel forms radioactive waste, which mostly consists of uranium-238 and poses significant health threat and environmental impact.
Regional Playback Control
RPC-1 and RPC-2 are designations applied to firmware for DVD drives. Older DVD drives use RPC-1 firmware, which allows DVDs from any region to play. Newer drives use RPC-2 firmware, which enforces DVD region coding at the hardware level. See DVD region code#Computer DVD drives for further information. Some RPC-2 drives can be converted to RPC-1 with the same features as before by using alternative firmware on the drive, or on some drives by setting a secret flag in the drive's EEPROM.
Automatic trip
An automatic trip is an action performed by some system, usually a safety instrumented system, programmable logic controller, or distributed control system, to put an industrial process into a safe state. It is triggered by some parameter going into a pre-determined unsafe state. It is usually preceded by an alarm to give a process operator a chance to correct the condition to prevent the trip, since trips are usually costly because of lost production.
Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome protein
The Wiskott–Aldrich Syndrome protein (WASp) is a 502-amino acid protein expressed in cells of the hematopoietic system that in humans is encoded by the WAS gene. In the inactive state, WASp exists in an autoinhibited conformation with sequences near its C-terminus binding to a region near its N-terminus. Its activation is dependent upon CDC42 and PIP2 acting to disrupt this interaction, causing the WASp protein to 'open'. This exposes a domain near the WASp C-terminus that binds to and activates the Arp2/3 complex. Activated Arp2/3 nucleates new F-actin.
Glass-to-metal seal
Glass-to-metal seals are a type of mechanical seal which joins glass and metal surfaces. They are very important elements in the construction of vacuum tubes, electric discharge tubes, incandescent light bulbs, glass-encapsulated semiconductor diodes, reed switches, glass windows in metal cases, and metal or ceramic packages of electronic components.
Second inversion
The second inversion of a chord is the voicing of a triad, seventh chord, or ninth chord in which the fifth of the chord is the bass note. In this inversion, the bass note and the root of the chord are a fourth apart which traditionally qualifies as a dissonance. There is therefore a tendency for movement and resolution. In notation form, it is referred to with a c following the chord position (For e.g., Ic. Vc or IVc). In figured bass, a second-inversion triad is a 64 chord (as in I64), while a second-inversion seventh chord is a 43 chord.
Leukoencephalopathy with vanishing white matter
Leukoencephalopathy with vanishing white matter (VWM disease) is an autosomal recessive neurological disease. The cause of the disease are mutations in any of the 5 genes encoding subunits of the translation initiation factor eIF2B: EIF2B1, EIF2B2, EIF2B3, EIF2B4, or EIF2B5. The disease belongs to a family of conditions called the Leukodystrophies.
Thioacetone
Thioacetone is an organosulfur compound belonging to the -thione group called thioketones with a chemical formula (CH3)2CS. It is an unstable orange or brown substance that can be isolated only at low temperatures. Above −20 °C (−4 °F), thioacetone readily converts to a polymer and a trimer, trithioacetone. It has an extremely potent, unpleasant odor, and is considered one of the worst-smelling chemicals known to humanity.Thioacetone was first obtained in 1889 by Baumann and Fromm, as a minor impurity in their synthesis of trithioacetone.
Zeeman's comparison theorem
In homological algebra, Zeeman's comparison theorem, introduced by Christopher Zeeman (Zeeman (1957)), gives conditions for a morphism of spectral sequences to be an isomorphism.
Attention
Attention is the concentration of awareness on some phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli. It is a process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective. William James (1890) wrote that "Attention is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence." Attention has also been described as the allocation of limited cognitive processing resources. Attention is manifested by an attentional bottleneck, in terms of the amount of data the brain can process each second; for example, in human vision, only less than 1% of the visual input data (at around one megabyte per second) can enter the bottleneck, leading to inattentional blindness.Attention remains a crucial area of investigation within education, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and neuropsychology. Areas of active investigation involve determining the source of the sensory cues and signals that generate attention, the effects of these sensory cues and signals on the tuning properties of sensory neurons, and the relationship between attention and other behavioral and cognitive processes, which may include working memory and psychological vigilance. A relatively new body of research, which expands upon earlier research within psychopathology, is investigating the diagnostic symptoms associated with traumatic brain injury and its effects on attention. Attention also varies across cultures.The relationships between attention and consciousness are complex enough that they have warranted perennial philosophical exploration. Such exploration is both ancient and continually relevant, as it can have effects in fields ranging from mental health and the study of disorders of consciousness to artificial intelligence and its domains of research.
Strephosymbolia
Strephosymbolia was Samuel Orton's theory of dyslexia which he first published in 1925. The root strepho is Ancient Greek for "twisted" or "reversed" and he used this in preference to the phrase "word blindness", which he thought inaccurate as the difficulty was not that those with strephosymbolia could not see the words but that they had difficulty comprehending them. As he developed his theory, he attributed the difficulty to an imperfect dominance of the hemisphere of the brain which processed the symbols when reading, being confused by a residual but reversed equivalent in the other hemisphere.
Argument from beauty
The argument from beauty (also the aesthetic argument) is an argument for the existence of a realm of immaterial ideas or, most commonly, for the existence of God, that roughly states that the elegance of the laws of physics or the elegant laws of mathematics is evidence of a creator deity who has arranged these things to be beautiful (aesthetically pleasing, or "good") and not ugly. Plato argued there is a transcendent plane of abstract ideas, or universals, which are more perfect than real-world examples of those ideas. Later philosophers connected this plane to the idea of goodness, beauty, and then the Christian God.
Vacuum modulator
Vacuum Modulator is an engine load sensing device that converts engine vacuum into a transmission valve body input. Most vacuum modulators operate with manifold vacuum (below throttle blades) that offer more vacuum at idle, and proportionately changes (rises and falls) with engine load as opposed to operating on engine speed. Vacuum modulators in some transmissions were essential in the proper operation of many automatic transmissions. Broken springs or diaphragms would cause it either to be repaired or replaced. Some were repairable (early units) as later models would need entire replacement. As the throttle blades are open the manifold or engine vacuum drops as ported vacuum (above throttle blades) increases. Many vacuum modulators also allow for tuning via a small blade screw driver that turns the thread to increase or decrease spring pressure against a diaphragm inside.
Kawasaki Versys 650
The Kawasaki Versys 650 (codenamed KLE650) is a middleweight motorcycle. It borrows design elements from dual-sport bikes, standards, adventure tourers and sport bikes; sharing characteristics of all, but not neatly fitting into any of those categories. The name Versys is a portmanteau of the words versatile and system.
Novum
Novum (Latin for new thing) is a term used by science fiction scholar Darko Suvin and others to describe the scientifically plausible innovations used by science fiction narratives.Frequently used science fictional nova include aliens, time travel, the technological singularity, artificial intelligence, and psychic powers.
Stainless steel
Stainless steel, also known as inox or corrosion-resistant steel (CRES), is an alloy of iron that is resistant to rusting and corrosion. It contains at least 10.5% chromium and usually nickel, and may also contain other elements, such as carbon, to obtain the desired properties. Stainless steel's resistance to corrosion results from the chromium, which forms a passive film that can protect the material and self-heal in the presence of oxygen.: 3 The alloy's properties, such as luster and resistance to corrosion, are useful in many applications. Stainless steel can be rolled into sheets, plates, bars, wire, and tubing. These can be used in cookware, cutlery, surgical instruments, major appliances, vehicles, construction material in large buildings, industrial equipment (e.g., in paper mills, chemical plants, water treatment), and storage tanks and tankers for chemicals and food products.
Wordfilter
A wordfilter (sometimes referred to as just "filter" or "censor") is a script typically used on Internet forums or chat rooms that automatically scans users' posts or comments as they are submitted and automatically changes or censors particular words or phrases. The most basic wordfilters search only for specific strings of letters, and remove or overwrite them regardless of their context. More advanced wordfilters make some exceptions for context (such as filtering "butt" but not "butter"), and the most advanced wordfilters may use regular expressions.
Failure of electronic components
Electronic components have a wide range of failure modes. These can be classified in various ways, such as by time or cause. Failures can be caused by excess temperature, excess current or voltage, ionizing radiation, mechanical shock, stress or impact, and many other causes. In semiconductor devices, problems in the device package may cause failures due to contamination, mechanical stress of the device, or open or short circuits.
Pavement dwellers
Pavement dwellers refers to informal housing built on the footpaths/pavements of city streets. The structures use the walls or fences which separate properties from the pavement and street outside. Materials include cloth, corrugated iron, cardboard, wood, plastic, and sometimes also bricks or cement.
Extended Boolean model
The Extended Boolean model was described in a Communications of the ACM article appearing in 1983, by Gerard Salton, Edward A. Fox, and Harry Wu. The goal of the Extended Boolean model is to overcome the drawbacks of the Boolean model that has been used in information retrieval. The Boolean model doesn't consider term weights in queries, and the result set of a Boolean query is often either too small or too big. The idea of the extended model is to make use of partial matching and term weights as in the vector space model. It combines the characteristics of the Vector Space Model with the properties of Boolean algebra and ranks the similarity between queries and documents. This way a document may be somewhat relevant if it matches some of the queried terms and will be returned as a result, whereas in the Standard Boolean model it wasn't.Thus, the extended Boolean model can be considered as a generalization of both the Boolean and vector space models; those two are special cases if suitable settings and definitions are employed. Further, research has shown effectiveness improves relative to that for Boolean query processing. Other research has shown that relevance feedback and query expansion can be integrated with extended Boolean query processing.
Cheoptics360
Pepper's ghost is an illusion technique used in the theatre, cinema, amusement parks, museums, television, and concerts. The illusion is performed by reflecting an image of an object off-stage so that it appears to be in front of the audience.It is named after the English scientist John Henry Pepper (1821–1900) who began popularising the effect with a theatre demonstration in 1862. This launched an international vogue for ghost-themed plays which used this novel stage effect during the 1860s and subsequent decades.
Pipobroman
Pipobroman (trade names Vercite, Vercyte) is an anti-cancer drug that probably acts as an alkylating agent. It is marketed in France and Italy.
Code page 770
Code page 770 (also known as CP 770) is a code page used under DOS to write the Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian languages.
CUL5
Cullin-5 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the CUL5 gene.
Plastic.com
Plastic.com (2001–2011) was a general-interest internet forum running under the motto 'Recycling the Web in Real Time'. The website was community-driven, with readers moderating discussions, submitting stories, and participating in their selection.
Tank Connectors
Tank Connectors are a type of tank fitting also known as a tank inlet, tank outlet, or tank nipple. This fitting must be leakage proof, as the water supply (inward and outward) depends on same. Many different varieties of tank connectors exist. Tank connectors are widely made of Plastic (PVC) or brass. They have a flange either on the edge of one side or in the center. They are supplemented with a rubber washer or a plastic washer with one or two hexagonal flange nuts to tighten the connector to the tank wall. Those with two nuts usually require some silicone or other sealant to prevent fluid passing along the threads.
Foster cage
In the mathematical field of graph theory, the Foster cage is a 5-regular undirected graph with 30 vertices and 75 edges. It is one of the four (5,5)-cage graphs, the others being the Meringer graph, the Robertson–Wegner graph, and the Wong graph. Like the unrelated Foster graph, it is named after R. M. Foster. It has chromatic number 4, diameter 3, and is 5-vertex-connected.
Melt sandwich
A melt sandwich is a type of hot sandwich containing a suitable meltable cheese (sometimes grated) and a filling of meat or fish. The sandwich is grilled on the stovetop until the cheese melts (hence the name) and the bread is toasted, or heated in an oven.One common type is the tuna melt, a melt sandwich filled with canned tuna that has been mixed with mayonnaise (tuna salad) and other ingredients such as pickles, tomato, and onion. Other popular choices are ham, roast beef, chicken, turkey, or a ground beef patty (for a patty melt). Both patty melts and tuna melts are staples of the traditional American diner; patty melts were commonly found on menus by the 1940s, and tuna melts by the 1960s.
Fear-potentiated startle
Fear-potentiated startle (FPS) is a reflexive physiological reaction to a presented stimulus, and is an indicator of the fear reaction in an organism. The FPS response can be elicited in the face of any threatening stimulus (e.g., any object, person or situation that would cause someone to experience feelings of fear), but it can also be elicited by a neutral stimulus as a result of fear conditioning, a process that occurs when a benign stimulus comes to evoke fear and anxiety upon being paired with a traumatic or fear-provoking event. The stimulus in question is usually of auditory (e.g., loud noise) or visual (e.g., bright light) nature, and startle response measures include eyeblink rates and pulse/heart rate. The negative impact of heightened FPS in the face of neutral stimuli can be treated pharmacologically, using psychotropic medications that are typically used to reduce anxiety in humans. Recent literature, moreover, has implicated increased FPS responses as a correlate in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other anxiety disorders.
Offset T-intersection
An offset T-intersection is an at-grade road intersection where a conventional four leg intersection is split into two three-leg T-intersections to reduce the number of conflicts and improve traffic flow. Building the offset T-intersections as continuous green T-intersections (also called seagull intersection), there is a single stop on the arterial road, only. A higher volume of through traffic on the cross road, or on unsignalized intersections, a rebuild to a conventional four-leg intersection may be adequate, also when the offset is a few feet only like staggered junctions causing slower traffic for a longer time on the arterial road.Seen as a spur route or access road, offset T-intersections can be seen as an A2 or B2 type partial cloverleaf interchange with no arterial road.
Cyclobutyrol
Cyclobutyrol is a drug used in bile therapy. Cyclobutyrol (CB) is a choleretic agent which also inhibits biliary lipids secretion.
Fukuyama indole synthesis
The Fukuyama indole synthesis is a versatile tin mediated chemical reaction that results in the formation of 2,3-disubstituted indoles. A practical one-pot reaction that can be useful for the creation of disubstituted indoles. Most commonly tributyltin hydride is utilized as the reducing agent, with azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) as a radical initiator. Triethylborane can also be used as a radical initiator. The reaction can begin with either an ortho-isocyanostyrene or a 2-alkenylthioanilide derivative, both forming the indole through Radical cyclization via an α-stannoimidoyl radical. The R group can be a range of both basic and acidic sensitive functional groups such as esters, THP ethers, and β-lactams. In addition the reaction is not stereospecific, in that both the cis and trans isoform can be used to obtain the desired product.
Role-playing
Role-playing or roleplaying is the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role. While the Oxford English Dictionary offers a definition of role-playing as "the changing of one's behaviour to fulfill a social role", in the field of psychology, the term is used more loosely in four senses: To refer to the playing of roles generally such as in a theatre, or educational setting; To refer to taking a role of a character or person and acting it out with a partner taking someone else's role, often involving different genres of practice; To refer to a wide range of games including role-playing video game (RPG), play-by-mail games and more; To refer specifically to role-playing games.
Tau function (integrable systems)
Tau functions are an important ingredient in the modern mathematical theory of integrable systems, and have numerous applications in a variety of other domains. They were originally introduced by Ryogo Hirota in his direct method approach to soliton equations, based on expressing them in an equivalent bilinear form. The term tau function, or τ -function, was first used systematically by Mikio Sato and his students in the specific context of the Kadomtsev–Petviashvili (or KP) equation and related integrable hierarchies. It is a central ingredient in the theory of solitons. In this setting, given any τ -function satisfying a Hirota-type system of bilinear equations (see § Hirota bilinear residue relation for KP tau functions below), the corresponding solutions of the equations of the integrable hierarchy are explicitly expressible in terms of it and its logarithmic derivatives up to a finite order. Tau functions also appear as matrix model partition functions in the spectral theory of random matrices, and may also serve as generating functions, in the sense of combinatorics and enumerative geometry, especially in relation to moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces, and enumeration of branched coverings, or so-called Hurwitz numbers. There are two notions of τ -functions, both introduced by the Sato school. The first is isospectral τ -functions of the Sato–Segal–Wilson type for integrable hierarchies, such as the KP hierarchy, which are parametrized by linear operators satisfying isospectral deformation equations of Lax type. The second is isomonodromic τ -functions.
Neural Impulse Actuator
The Neural Impulse Actuator (NIA) is a brain–computer interface (BCI) device developed by OCZ Technology. BCI devices attempt to move away from the classic input devices like keyboard and mouse and instead read electrical activity from the head, preferably the EEG. The name Neural Impulse Actuator implies that the signals originate from some neuronal activity; however, what is actually captured is a mixture of muscle, skin and nerve activity including sympathetic and parasympathetic components that have to be summarized as biopotentials rather than pure neural signals. As of May 27, 2011, the OCZ website says that the NIA is no longer being manufactured and has been end-of-lifed.On June 1, 2012 a post was made on the official forums, asking about the NIAs future, the reply being, "It [the NIA] was spun out into a different company as a side-effect of OCZ's IPO and that company is BCInet."
Silanization
Silanization is the attachment of an organosilyl group to some chemical species. Almost always, the silanization refers to conversion of a silanol-terminated surface to a alkylsiloxy-terminated surface. This conversion confers hydrophobicity to a previously hydrophilic surface. This process is often used to modify the surface properties of glass, silicon, alumina, quartz, and metal oxide substrates, which all have an abundance of hydroxyl groups. Silanization differs from silylation, which usually refers to attachment of organosilicon groups to molecular substrates.
Prim's algorithm
In computer science, Prim's algorithm (also known as Jarník's algorithm) is a greedy algorithm that finds a minimum spanning tree for a weighted undirected graph. This means it finds a subset of the edges that forms a tree that includes every vertex, where the total weight of all the edges in the tree is minimized. The algorithm operates by building this tree one vertex at a time, from an arbitrary starting vertex, at each step adding the cheapest possible connection from the tree to another vertex.
IPod Touch (2nd generation)
The second-generation iPod Touch (marketed as "the new iPod touch", and colloquially known as the iPod Touch 2G, iPod Touch 2, or iPod 2) is a multi-touch mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-based user interface. The successor to the 1st-generation iPod Touch, it was unveiled and released at Apple's media event on September 9, 2008. It is compatible with up to iOS 4.2.1, which was released on November 22, 2010.
2-Methyl-6-nitrobenzoic anhydride
2-Methyl-6-nitrobenzoic anhydride is an organic acid anhydride also known as the Shiina reagent, having a structure wherein carboxylic acids undergo intermolecular dehydration condensation. It was developed in 2002 by Prof. Isamu Shiina (Tokyo University of Science, Japan). The compound is often abbreviated MNBA.
Hybrizyme
Hybrizyme is a term coined to indicate novel or normally rare gene variants (or alleles) that are associated with hybrid zones, geographic areas where two related taxa (e.g. species or subspecies) meet, mate, and produce hybrid offspring. The hybrizyme phenomenon is widespread and these alleles occur commonly, if not in all hybrid zones. Initially considered to be caused by elevated rates of mutation in hybrids, the most probable hypothesis infers that they are the result of negative (purifying) selection. Namely, in the center of the hybrid zone, negative selection purges alleles against hybrid disadvantage (e.g. hybrid inviability or infertility). Stated differently, any allele that will decrease reproductive isolation is favored and any linked alleles (genetic markers) also increase their frequency by genetic hitchhiking. If the linked alleles used to be rare variants in the parental taxa, they will become more common in the area where the hybrids are formed.