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1,027,576 | In spite of all this and the introduction of more recent Pacifics, in the middle of the 1950s Gresley types continued to have a quasi-monopoly of East Coast Main Line express passenger services, and as the Sixties approached they went through yet another series of improvements comparable to those of the 1920s. The most significant of these was the fitting of the French double Kylchap exhaust system, which was entirely due to the persistence from 1956 of P. N. Townend, Assistant District Motive Power Superintendent at King's Cross locomotive shed. These modifications greatly reduced exhaust back pressure, making the locomotives more economical and free-running, and also kept the firetubes clean, reducing turn-around time, so much so that they were able to fit into the more intensive diesel locomotive workings. The Kylchap arrangement was already being universally applied to the A4 streamlined Pacifics, though with the non-streamlined A3 locomotives, the soft exhaust would cause the smoke and steam to drift into the driver's forward vision. The solution came in the form of narrow German-style smoke deflectors, which somewhat changed the appearance of the A3 locomotives in their latter days. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2534748 | 1,027,042 |
1,370,701 | At the time, the Hall Institute was in the early stages of rapid expansion. The new director of the Institute, Charles Kellaway, wanted to increase the activities of the organisation to not only support hospital operations but have separate research groups in physiology, microbiology and biochemistry that would also do independent studies. He also hoped to raise the standards to make the Institute comparable to the world-class operations in Europe and America. Kellaway took a liking to Burnet and saw him as the best young talent in the Institute with the ability to help raise it to world leading standards. However, he thought that Burnet would need experience working in a laboratory in England before he could lead his own research group on bacteriology in Australia. Burnet left Australia for England in 1925 and served as ship's surgeon during his journey in exchange for a free fare. On arrival, he took a paid position assisting the curator of the National Collection of Type Cultures at the Lister Institute in London. Burnet prepared or maintained bacteria cultures for other researchers in the morning and was free to do his own experiments in the afternoon. During the latter half of 1926, he experimented to see if Salmonella typhimurium was affected by bacteriophage. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=417493 | 1,369,945 |
1,447,677 | Limitations in anticancer therapy occur mainly due to two reasons; because of the patient's organism, or because of the specific genetic alterations in the tumor cells. From the patient, therapy is limited by poor absorption of a drug which can lead to low concentration of the active agent in the blood and small amount delivery to the tumor. Low serum level of a drug can be also caused by rapid metabolism and excretion associated with affinity to intestinal or/and liver cytochrome P450. Another reason is the instability and degradation of the drugs in gastro-intestinal environment. Serious problem is also variability between patients what causes different bioavailability after administration equal dose of a drug and different tolerance to effect of chemotherapy agents. The second problem is particularly important in treatment elderly people. Their body is weaker and need to apply lower doses, often below therapeutic level. Another problem with anticancer agents is their limited aqueous solubility what substantially reduces absorption of a drug. Problems with delivery of drags to the tumor occur also when active agent has high molecular weight which limits tissue penetration or the tumor has large volume prevent for penetration. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33071344 | 1,446,861 |
1,910,182 | Tubular systems are the most widely used commercial culture systems. They are usually made of polypropylene acrylic or polyvinylchloride pipes which have small internal diameters and an air pump that generates bubbles to mix and agitate the culture. They usually use artificial light but some models use natural light. The major disadvantages of this type of system, varying among individual systems, are high space requirements, cleaning, low efficiency, low gas transfer, and hydrodynamic stress. Several other problems also occur, including growth of the algae on the tube wall leading to blockage of light, high oxygen concentration inhibition of growth, and limits on the length of the tube in single run. Coiled systems were developed mainly to improve space utilization. The main advantages are: 1) large ratio of culture volume to surface area and optimized light penetration depth; 2) easy control over temperature and contaminants; 3) easy spatial distribution of fresh air and CO; 4) better CO transfer through the culture; and 5) automated sensor providing cell concentration reads. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31334548 | 1,909,084 |
1,541,648 | "V. paradoxus" is involved in cycling numerous inorganic elements including arsenic, sulfur, manganese and rare earth elements in a range of soil, freshwater and geological environments. In the case of arsenic, "V. paradoxus" is believed to oxidize As (III) to As (V) as a detoxification mechanism. "V. paradoxus" has been found in a range of rocky environments including carbonate caves, mine spoil and deep marine sediments, but the role of this organism within these environments is largely unstudied. The species is also tolerant of a large number of heavy metals including cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, silver, zinc at mM concentrations. Despite this, very little is known about the physiological adaptions "V. paradoxus" uses to support this tolerance. The sequenced genome of the endophytic strain "V. paradoxus" S110 provides some clues to the organism's metal tolerance by identifying key molecular machinery in processing metals such as the arsenic reductase complex ArsRBC, metal transporting P1-type ATPases and a chemiosmotic antiporter efflux system similar to CzcCBA of "Cupriavidus metallidurans". "Cupriavidus" species, including "C. metallidurans", are well characterised in the field of microbe-metal interactions, and are found within the same order (Burkholderiales) as "V. paradoxus". Both the species "C. necator and C. metallidurans" (when not distinguished as separate species) were originally classified in the genera "Alcaligenes" along with "V. paradoxus" ("Alcaligenes eutrophus" and "Alicaligenes paradoxus"). This relationship with other heavy metal resistant species may help to partially explain the evolutionary history of "V. paradoxus"'s metal tolerance. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=39546431 | 1,540,775 |
139,901 | With the advent of cheap microcomputers it became possible to have a computer dedicated to controlling the spectrometer, collecting the data, doing the Fourier transform and presenting the spectrum. This provided the impetus for the development of FTIR spectrometers for the rock-salt region. The problems of manufacturing ultra-high precision optical and mechanical components had to be solved. A wide range of instruments are now available commercially. Although instrument design has become more sophisticated, the basic principles remain the same. Nowadays, the moving mirror of the interferometer moves at a constant velocity, and sampling of the interferogram is triggered by finding zero-crossings in the fringes of a secondary interferometer lit by a helium–neon laser. In modern FTIR systems the constant mirror velocity is not strictly required, as long as the laser fringes and the original interferogram are recorded simultaneously with higher sampling rate and then re-interpolated on a constant grid, as pioneered by James W. Brault. This confers very high wavenumber accuracy on the resulting infrared spectrum and avoids wavenumber calibration errors. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19762116 | 139,844 |
667,245 | The military director of the NRO, Brigadier General John L. Martin Jr., suggested that MOL launches be made from Cape Kennedy, as launches from the West Coast implied a polar orbit, which in turn would lead to the assumption that the objective of the mission was reconnaissance. This was considered, but there were practical issues. MOL needed to be flown in a polar orbit, but a launch due south from Cape Kennedy would overfly southern Florida, which raised safety concerns. The TIROS weather satellites had performed a "dog leg" maneuver, flying east and then south to avoid southern Florida. This required special State Department approval, as it meant overflying Cuba. The loss of an MOL with a classified payload over Cuba would be not only a danger to life and property, but a serious security concern as well. Moreover, the dog leg maneuver would reduce the orbital payload by , reducing the equipment that could be carried or the duration of the mission or both. The cost of construction of a Titan III facility, including the purchase of the land, was estimated to be US$31 million (equivalent to $ million in ), and the required supporting ground equipment would cost another US$79 million (equivalent to $ million in ). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=615373 | 666,897 |
1,920,084 | After initially studying painting, Sugiura became an assistant to the manga artist Suihō Tagawa. He soon began drawing his own manga in 1933 and came to fame after World War II with a series of comedic manga for children based on stories like those of Sasuke Sarutobi, Jiraiya, and "Journey to the West". Sugiura closely followed popular culture and thus his manga were also influenced by such contemporary fads as Godzilla, pro wrestling, and American science fiction films. The philosophy of his manga "is of "yukai", pleasure and amusement, pursuing the path as far from seriousness as possible. . . . The praxis of "yukai" is essentially the body in free motion, and Sugiura’s characters are defined by an excess of movement." The result was a visual style that was often surreal and absurd. A craftsman, Sugiura could not keep up with the mass production of manga that the shift to weekly magazines brought at the end of the 1950s, and his subsequent manga became more and more surreal, if not avant-garde, as they came to be directed at an older audience. He enjoyed a second boom in popularity from the 1970s on. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25886264 | 1,918,982 |
210,285 | Avanti Corporation (styled as "Avant!) was founded when several former Cadence Design Systems employees bought the startup ArcSys, which was previously merged with Integrated Silicon Solutions (ISS), gaining Avanti its design rule checking and layout versus schematic tool Hercules (including 3D silicon structure modeling), then bought Compass Design Automation, which had fully integrated IC design flow and ASIC libraries, especially its place and route tool, which Avanti reworked to create Saturn and Apollo II; and it also bought TMA (Technology Modeling Associates) which brought their pioneering TCAD and Proteus optical proximity correction tools. This was, by far, Synopsys' most significant and controversial acquisition. At the time Avanti was the #4 company in the EDA industry, and was struggling with a major lawsuit from Cadence for software theft. Avanti was merged into Synopsys on June 6, 2002 during the litigation. Synopsys paid Cadence about $265 million more to end all litigation. Soon after the settlement, the California Supreme Court upheld the lower court's earlier decision. Synopsys then paid an additional $26.1 million to Silvaco to settle two of three Silvaco's suits against Meta-Software, earlier purchased by Avanti, and its president. The lawsuits were filed in 1995 and inherited by Avanti. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=424893 | 210,178 |
965,056 | In 1945, Britain and Canada made an early call for an international discussion on controlling atomic power. At the time, the US had yet to formulate a cohesive policy or strategy on nuclear weapons. Taking advantage of this was Vannevar Bush, who had initiated and administered the Manhattan Project, but nevertheless had a long-term policy goal of banning on nuclear weapons production. As a first step in this direction, Bush proposed an international agency dedicated to nuclear control. Bush unsuccessfully argued in 1952 that the US pursue a test ban agreement with the Soviet Union before testing its first thermonuclear weapon, but his interest in international controls was echoed in the 1946 Acheson–Lilienthal Report, which had been commissioned by President Harry S. Truman to help construct US nuclear weapons policy. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had led Los Alamos National Laboratory during the Manhattan Project, exerted significant influence over the report, particularly in its recommendation of an international body that would control production of and research on the world's supply of uranium and thorium. A version of the Acheson-Lilienthal plan was presented to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission as the Baruch Plan in June 1946. The Baruch Plan proposed that an International Atomic Development Authority would control all research on and material and equipment involved in the production of atomic energy. Though Dwight D. Eisenhower, then the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, was not a significant figure in the Truman administration on nuclear questions, he did support Truman's nuclear control policy, including the Baruch Plan's provision for an international control agency, provided that the control system was accompanied by "a system of free and complete inspection." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30592 | 964,547 |
224,614 | Based on A. R. Luria's (1966) seminal work on the modularization of brain function, and supported by decades of neuroimaging research, the PASS Theory of Intelligence (Planning/Attention/Simultaneous/Successive) proposes that cognition is organized in three systems and four processes. The first process is the Planning, which involves executive functions responsible for controlling and organizing behavior, selecting and constructing strategies, and monitoring performance. The second is the Attention process, which is responsible for maintaining arousal levels and alertness, and ensuring focus on relevant stimuli. The next two are called Simultaneous and Successive processing and they involve encoding, transforming, and retaining information. Simultaneous processing is engaged when the relationship between items and their integration into whole units of information is required. Examples of this include recognizing figures, such as a triangle within a circle vs. a circle within a triangle, or the difference between 'he had a shower before breakfast' and 'he had breakfast before a shower.' Successive processing is required for organizing separate items in a sequence such as remembering a sequence of words or actions exactly in the order in which they had just been presented. These four processes are functions of four areas of the brain. Planning is broadly located in the front part of our brains, the frontal lobe. Attention and arousal are combined functions of the frontal lobe and the lower parts of the cortex, although the parietal lobes are also involved in attention as well. Simultaneous processing and Successive processing occur in the posterior region or the back of the brain. Simultaneous processing is broadly associated with the occipital and the parietal lobes while Successive processing is broadly associated with the frontal-temporal lobes. The PASS theory is heavily indebted to both Luria (1966, 1973), and studies in cognitive psychology involved in promoting a better look at intelligence. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=168191 | 224,500 |
1,424,343 | In October 2021, Sheng stepped down from teaching an undergraduate class, where he says he had intended to show how Giuseppe Verdi adapted William Shakespeare's play "Othello" into his opera "Otello." On September 10, 2021, he showed the class John Dexter's "Othello", where Laurence Olivier played Othello in blackface. Sheng allegedly failed to give students any warning that the film contained blackface. Evan Chambers, a fellow professor of composition, said "To show the film now, especially without substantial framing, content advisory and a focus on its inherent racism is in itself a racist act, regardless of the professor's intentions", and David Gier, dean of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, said that Sheng's actions "do not align with our School's commitment to anti-racist action, diversity, equity and inclusion". But according to Robert Soave of "Reason", the university had violated the principle of academic freedom and showing the movie was neither a racist act nor approval of racism. Soave said that the "broader university community" owed Sheng an apology for slandering him, and compared the treatment Sheng received to his earlier experience of surviving the Cultural Revolution. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3488583 | 1,423,541 |
173,144 | The United Kingdom continued their ongoing rapid test development programme using the Innova rapid test, with increasing urgency as COVID-19 cases increased across Europe. On 6 November 2020, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, started city-wide screening of Liverpool as part of the accelerated technology evaluation. Further expansion of rapid tests pilots were also launched for many sectors where testing had not been previously available. These included students at Universities who had been particularly hit by outbreaks. This initially started at Durham University, who had the infrastructure and expertise to manage the rapid test programme, but was expanded to the majority of UK universities and enabled the national evacuation-style plan to get students safely home for Christmas. Rapid tests were also implemented within the National Health Service (NHS) for staff to reduce possible transmission to patients, local authorities and care homes to enable visits to visit residents. On 18 November 2020, Wales completed the first whole borough testing at Merthyr Tydfil. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=67708405 | 173,053 |
199,971 | The contributions that Galileo made to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus; his discovery, in 1609, of Jupiter's four largest moons (subsequently given the collective name of the "Galilean moons"); and the observation and analysis of sunspots. Galileo also pursued applied science and technology, inventing, among other instruments, a military compass. His discovery of the Jovian moons was published in 1610 and enabled him to obtain the position of mathematician and philosopher to the Medici court. As such, he was expected to engage in debates with philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition and received a large audience for his own publications such as the "Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences" (published abroad following his arrest for the publication of "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems") and "The Assayer". Galileo's interest in experimenting with and formulating mathematical descriptions of motion established experimentation as an integral part of natural philosophy. This tradition, combining with the non-mathematical emphasis on the collection of "experimental histories" by philosophical reformists such as William Gilbert and Francis Bacon, drew a significant following in the years leading up to and following Galileo's death, including Evangelista Torricelli and the participants in the Accademia del Cimento in Italy; Marin Mersenne and Blaise Pascal in France; Christiaan Huygens in the Netherlands; and Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle in England. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13758 | 199,868 |
913,139 | In spite of the agreement, the large project cost combined with the ending of similar projects at other labs resulted in critical comments by scientists at other labs, Sandia National Laboratories in particular. In May 1997, Sandia fusion scientist Rick Spielman publicly stated that NIF had "virtually no internal peer review on the technical issues" and that "Livermore essentially picked the panel to review themselves". A retired Sandia manager, Bob Puerifoy, was even more blunt than Spielman: "NIF is worthless ... it can't be used to maintain the stockpile, period". Ray Kidder, one of the original developers of the ICF concept at LLNL, was also highly critical. He stated in 1997 that its primary purpose was to "recruit and maintain a staff of theorists and experimentalists" and that while some of the experimental data would prove useful for weapons design, differences in the experimental setup limit their relevance. "Some of the physics is the same; but the details, 'wherein the devil lies,' are quite different. It would therefore also be wrong to assume that NIF will be able to support for the long term a staff of weapons designers and engineers with detailed design competence comparable to that of those now working at the weapons design laboratories." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=337301 | 912,660 |
1,758,177 | The women's 10,000 m was held on June 7. Defending outdoor 5000 m and 2016 cross country champion Karissa Schweizer of the University of Missouri was favored by some to take the title in her first attempt at the distance at the championships, but she also faced the previous year's 10,000 m champion Charlotte Taylor from the University of San Francisco. A brisk pace set in part by Taylor put the athletes in reach of the NCAA meet record, and soon Schweizer, Taylor, Notre Dame's Anna Rohrer, University of Kansas junior Sharon Lokedi from Kenya, and former NCAA 3000m steeplechase runner-up Alice Wright, from the University of New Mexico, led the race at times alternating the lead. In the end, Lokedi pulled strongly away from the field in the final lap to win in a new championship record time of 32:09.20, followed by University of Louisville freshman Dorcas Wasike, who moved up the field in the final stages to take second. Lokedi had qualified for six NCAA track championship events before and never finished worse than sixth, but had never won an individual NCAA title before the race. Thanks to the fast pace, all of the first six athletes broke the old NCAA meet record, which had been set by Sylvia Mosqueda in 1988. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=57596294 | 1,757,184 |
2,138,896 | In terms of direct contribution to the UK economy, air transport is an £11.4 billion industry, a figure which represents 1.1 per cent of the country's economy. It employs 186,000 people (full-time equivalents), and indirectly supports an additional 334,000 jobs, although the inclusion of indirect employment as an economic benefit of air transport is disputed. In terms of productivity the aviation industry in 2004 was the third most productive, after the oil/gas extraction and utilities sectors, exceeding the national average by a factor of two and a half. The industry is also very capital intensive, accounting for up to 3.5 per cent of total UK business investment in the period 2000 to 2004. Air transport was directly responsible for £3.6 billion in tax and national insurance contributions in 2004/5, which includes £0.9 billion raised in Air Passenger Duty (APD), a figure set to double after APD rates were doubled in February 2007. Because of the global nature of the industry, article 15 of the Chicago Convention effectively prevents the imposition of fuel duty on aviation, and the industry does not pay Value Added Tax (VAT). Environmental groups argue that these, along with duty-free sales, are iniquitous tax concessions valued at £9 billion annually. Despite generating £6.9 billion in exports in 2004, representing 3 per cent of all UK exports and 7 per cent of the total export of services, the patronage in the UK of air transport services provided by overseas airlines resulted in a £3.3 billion balance of payments deficit attributable to the industry. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14120583 | 2,137,666 |
362,910 | On 13 January 1994, NASA formally announced a completion of its repairs on the main mirror of the Hubble Space Telescope allowing for sharper images and, consequently, more accurate analyses of its observations. Briefly after the repairs were made, Wendy Freedman's 1994 Key Project analyzed the recession velocity of M100 from the core of the Virgo cluster, offering a Hubble constant measurement of 80±17 km s Mpc (Mega Parsec). Later the same year, Adam Riess et al utilized an empirical method of visual band light shape curves to more finely estimate the luminosity of Type Ia supernova. This further minimized the systemic measurement errors of the Hubble constant to 67±7 km s Mpc. Reiss's measurements on the recession velocity of the nearby Virgo cluster more closely agree with subsequent and independent analyses of Cepheid variable calibrations of 1a supernovae, which estimates a Hubble Constant of 73±7km s Mpc. Within the next decade, in 2003, David Spergel's analysis of the Cosmic microwave background during the first year observations of the "Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe" satellite (WMAP) further agreed with the estimated expansion rates for local galaxies, 72±5 km s Mpc. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5985207 | 362,720 |
974,725 | The history of linear electric motors can be traced back at least as far as the 1840s, to the work of Charles Wheatstone at King's College London, but Wheatstone's model was too inefficient to be practical. A feasible linear induction motor is described in the (1905 - inventor Alfred Zehden of Frankfurt-am-Main), for driving trains or lifts. The German engineer Hermann Kemper built a working model in 1935. In the late 1940s, Dr. Eric Laithwaite of Manchester University, later Professor of Heavy Electrical Engineering at Imperial College in London developed the first full-size working model. In a single sided version the magnetic repulsion forces the conductor away from the stator, levitating it, and carrying it along in the direction of the moving magnetic field. He called the later versions of it magnetic river. The technologies would later be applied, in the 1984, Air-Rail Link shuttle, between Birmingham's airport and an adjacent train station. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=44495 | 974,214 |
356,180 | The bomb would naturally contain a large kinetic energy because it moves at orbital velocities, around in orbit and at impact. As the rod reenters Earth's atmosphere it would lose most of the velocity, but the remaining energy would cause considerable damage. Some systems are quoted as having the yield of a small tactical nuclear bomb. These designs are envisioned as a bunker buster. As the name suggests, the 'bunker buster' is powerful enough to destroy a nuclear bunker. With 6–8 satellites on a given orbit, a target could be hit within 12–15 minutes from any given time, less than half the time taken by an ICBM and without the launch warning. Such a system could also be equipped with sensors to detect incoming anti-ballistic missile-type threats and relatively light protective measures to use against them (e.g. Hit-To-Kill Missiles or megawatt-class chemical laser). The time between deorbit and impact would only be a few minutes, and depending on the orbits and positions in the orbits, the system would have a worldwide range. There would be no need to deploy missiles, aircraft or other vehicles. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2999725 | 355,997 |
838,410 | Media companies put media convergence back to their agenda after the dot-com bubble burst. In 1994, Knight Ridder promulgated the concept of portable magazines, newspaper, and books: "Within news corporations it became increasingly obvious that an editorial model based on mere replication in the Internet of contents that had previously been written for print newspapers, radio, or television was no longer sufficient." The rise of digital communication in the late 20th century has made it possible for media organizations (or individuals) to deliver text, audio, and video material over the same wired, wireless, or fiber-optic connections. At the same time, it inspired some media organizations to explore multimedia delivery of information. This digital convergence of news media, in particular, was called "Mediamorphosis" by researcher Roger Fidler in his 1997 book by that name. Today, we are surrounded by a multi-level convergent media world where all modes of communication and information are continually reforming to adapt to the enduring demands of technologies, "changing the way we create, consume, learn and interact with each other". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=206586 | 837,961 |
1,744,993 | Salinization and alkalization have been linked through the study of arid regions across North America and have negatively effected 37% and 90% of freshwater drainage areas, respectively. Their interaction is best noted by the levels of rising pH in streams and rivers measured in 232 USGS sites in 2018. Among these sites, 66% have shown a significant escalation of pH, the most commonly affected area being heavily populated cities in the east and mid-west. Along with the usual salinization offenders of agricultural runoff and road ice, lime and concrete quickly weather down to contribute base ions and salts into water streams. Noticeable signs of FSS include infrastructure deterioration, lowered biodiversity, and the increased mobilization of pollutants within an aquatic system. In conjunction with photosynthetic organisms, basic levels of pH can enter a positive feedback loop via the deficiency of dissolved carbons in the water in relation to the amount of dissolved carbon dioxide, thus further exacerbating FSS. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63996171 | 1,744,009 |
923,540 | While mainstream theories assert that consciousness emerges as the complexity of the computations performed by cerebral neurons increases, Orch OR posits that consciousness is based on non-computable quantum processing performed by qubits formed collectively on cellular microtubules, a process significantly amplified in the neurons. The qubits are based on oscillating dipoles forming superposed resonance rings in helical pathways throughout lattices of microtubules. The oscillations are either electric, due to charge separation from London forces, or magnetic, due to electron spin—and possibly also due to nuclear spins (that can remain isolated for longer periods) that occur in gigahertz, megahertz and kilohertz frequency ranges. Orchestration refers to the hypothetical process by which connective proteins, such as microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs), influence or orchestrate qubit state reduction by modifying the spacetime-separation of their superimposed states. The latter is based on Penrose's objective-collapse theory for interpreting quantum mechanics, which postulates the existence of an objective threshold governing the collapse of quantum-states, related to the difference of the spacetime curvature of these states in the universe's fine-scale structure. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=712245 | 923,054 |
361,305 | The term "anthropocene" is informally used in scientific contexts. The Geological Society of America entitled its 2011 annual meeting: "Archean to Anthropocene: The past is the key to the future". The new epoch has no agreed start-date, but one proposal, based on atmospheric evidence, is to fix the start with the Industrial Revolution c. 1780, with the invention of the steam engine. Other scientists link the new term to earlier events, such as the rise of agriculture and the Neolithic Revolution (around 12,000 years BP). Evidence of relative human impact – such as the growing human influence on land use, ecosystems, biodiversity, and species extinction – is substantial; scientists think that human impact has significantly changed (or halted) the growth of biodiversity. Those arguing for earlier dates posit that the proposed Anthropocene may have begun as early as 14,000–15,000 years BP, based on geologic evidence; this has led other scientists to suggest that "the onset of the Anthropocene should be extended back many thousand years"; this would make the Anthropocene essentially synonymous with the current term, "Holocene". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=374390 | 361,116 |
1,816,601 | in an environment where the short training time could be utilized effectively, lack of own spaces for boat service, gymnastics, athletics and weapons exercises and the need for adequate facilities for teaching operation, were some of the reasons why the old Naval Academy at Skeppsholmen was no longer sufficient. Näsby matched almost the requests. With a location in the vicinity of Stockholm, whereby teachers could expect specially trained officers, the property offered sufficient land areas as well as opportunities for the organization of a marina in the Näsby Bay in direct connection with the lake, so that the cadet ships could anchor off the bay. In a year's time, in 1942, all the required conversion and new construction projects were completed, and on 11 January 1943 the Naval Academy took Näsby in possession. It was then located here until 1987. During this period, a number of buildings within the castle grounds were added. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9468354 | 1,815,567 |
146,470 | Farmers have widely adopted GM technology (see figure). Between 1996 and 2013, the total surface area of land cultivated with GM crops increased by a factor of 100, from to 1,750,000 km (432 million acres). 10% of the world's arable land was planted with GM crops in 2010. As of 2011, 11 different transgenic crops were grown commercially on 395 million acres (160 million hectares) in 29 countries such as the US, Brazil, Argentina, India, Canada, China, Paraguay, Pakistan, South Africa, Uruguay, Bolivia, Australia, Philippines, Myanmar, Burkina Faso, Mexico and Spain. One of the key reasons for this widespread adoption is the perceived economic benefit the technology brings to farmers. For example, the system of planting glyphosate-resistant seed and then applying glyphosate once plants emerged provided farmers with the opportunity to dramatically increase the yield from a given plot of land, since this allowed them to plant rows closer together. Without it, farmers had to plant rows far enough apart to control post-emergent weeds with mechanical tillage. Likewise, using Bt seeds means that farmers do not have to purchase insecticides, and then invest time, fuel, and equipment in applying them. However critics have disputed whether yields are higher and whether chemical use is less, with GM crops. See Genetically modified food controversies article for information. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2291204 | 146,412 |
1,482,847 | Making altitude (elevation) measurements of the Sun is simple and direct, requiring the user to align the image of the Sun through the front pinhole (aperture), centered onto the rear back plate which operates more like a mask and not a viewing pass hole for sighting the Sun with the naked eye. Much in the same manner as performing eyepiece projection with a telescope, one fashioned with a front and rear aperture (front lens and rear eyepiece) along with a projection screen behind the eyepiece, or more rudimentary, the projecting of the Sun's image upon a small screen plate such as that done with a mariner's back staff. The rear, or second aperture (pass hole) works as a blacken attenuator so that any reflecting, annulus-shaped sunlight off the metal aperture is not too bright, the Sun's image (light) passing through the second hole and similar in task though void of a fixed image plane, to that of an iris (diaphragm) in a camera lens to reduce the light intensity. For relative to human physiology, focusing on a bright spot of light such as a pinpoint image of the Sun for any extended period or repetitively over a short duration of time adversely effects momentarily, a person's visual acuity, thus making it more challenging to focus one's eyes to read the angular scale. It is typical to orientate the instrument such that the operator faces looking slightly down upon the scale, the Sun at the user's left, with the right hand placed in such a way that the rays of sunlight pass through the two perforated sighting plates, forming a bright illuminated spot on the observer's finger (see photo), the finger functioning as a projection screen. At the moment an optical alignment with the Sun is established, the angular value of the device is read by the operator at the point where the graduated scale is bisected by the hanging plumb line. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20747100 | 1,482,011 |
2,081,923 | HEL initially had three directorates to govern its research and responsibilities. Teams in the Behavioral Research Directorate managed basic human factors research that studied systems from a soldier’s point of view. Researchers focused on factors such as vision, hearing, endurance, stress, strength, height, and weight, and recorded their findings in a large data bank that other Defense agencies could access. The Systems Performance and Concepts Directorate maintained research teams that performed tests on various weapons and equipment. Taking into account everything from noise levels produced by a gun to the ease with which an operator could reach a vehicle’s brake pedal, researchers in this directorate evaluated the man-machine interface for gaps in safety and efficiency. Finally, teams in the Human Engineering Applications Directorate worked directly with military installations to ensure that all projects took human factors engineering into account during the design process. In addition to aiding the design and development of military technologies, HEL researchers also conducted troubleshooting to identify human engineering problems whenever soldiers in the fielded reported issues with operating or maintaining a piece of equipment. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=70607475 | 2,080,723 |
882,384 | Sputtered atoms ejected from the target have a wide energy distribution, typically up to tens of eV (100,000 K). The sputtered ions (typically only a small fraction of the ejected particles are ionized — on the order of 1 percent) can ballistically fly from the target in straight lines and impact energetically on the substrates or vacuum chamber (causing resputtering). Alternatively, at higher gas pressures, the ions collide with the gas atoms that act as a moderator and move diffusively, reaching the substrates or vacuum chamber wall and condensing after undergoing a random walk. The entire range from high-energy ballistic impact to low-energy thermalized motion is accessible by changing the background gas pressure. The sputtering gas is often an inert gas such as argon. For efficient momentum transfer, the atomic weight of the sputtering gas should be close to the atomic weight of the target, so for sputtering light elements neon is preferable, while for heavy elements krypton or xenon are used. Reactive gases can also be used to sputter compounds. The compound can be formed on the target surface, in-flight or on the substrate depending on the process parameters. The availability of many parameters that control sputter deposition make it a complex process, but also allow experts a large degree of control over the growth and microstructure of the film. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9084531 | 881,920 |
161,033 | Traditionally, it was often assumed that actual human reasoning should follow the rules described in normative theories. On this view, any discrepancy is a form of irrationality that should be avoided. However, this usually ignores the human limitations of the mind. Given these limitations, various discrepancies may be necessary (and in this sense "rational") to get the most useful results. For example, the ideal rational norms of decision theory demand that the agent should always choose the option with the highest expected value. However, calculating the expected value of each option may take a very long time in complex situations and may not be worth the trouble. This is reflected in the fact that actual reasoners often settle for an option that is good enough without making certain that it is really the best option available. A further difficulty in this regard is Hume's law, which states that one cannot deduce what ought to be based on what is. So just because a certain heuristic or cognitive bias is present in a specific case, it should not be inferred that it should be present. One approach to these problems is to hold that descriptive and normative theories talk about different types of rationality. This way, there is no contradiction between the two and both can be correct in their own field. Similar problems are discussed in so-called naturalized epistemology. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=61032 | 160,948 |
1,610,841 | In 1942 Hicks took a job at the Western Electric Company, designing and testing quartz crystal oscillators in Kearny, New Jersey. She was the first woman to be employed by Western Electric as an engineer, and she spent three years working there. Upon the death of her father, she joined the Bloomfield, New Jersey based Newark Controls Company, a metalworking firm that her father had founded. Hicks served as chief engineer and then as vice president in charge of engineering, before purchasing control of the company from her uncle in 1955. Hicks designed and patented a gas density switch later used in the U.S. space program, including the moon landing, and was a pioneer in the field of sensors that detected when devices were reaching structural limits. Hicks authored several technical papers on the gas density switch. While at Newark Controls Hicks pursued a master's degree in physics, which she received in 1949 from the Stevens Institute of Technology. While pursuing a master's degree from the Stevens Institute of Technology, Hicks completed some graduate electrical engineering courses at Columbia University. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2821381 | 1,609,936 |
503,294 | In 2018 Thai researchers and the Health Ministry called for an outright ban on the use of the agricultural chemicals paraquat, glyphosate ("Roundup"), and chlorpyrifos. Paraquat and glyphosate are widely used herbicides. Chlorpyrifos is a pesticide. All are known to hazardous to humans and the ecosystem. The ban is opposed by agricultural interests, the Agriculture Ministry and the Industry Ministry who claim that a paraquat ban alone would lead to 40 billion baht in losses for the agricultural sector. Paraquat, whose use is banned by 47 to 53 nations (sources vary), is permitted for agricultural use in Thailand. It is sold under various trade names: Crisquat, Cyclone, Dextrone, Gramoxone Extra, Herbaxone, Ortho Weed and Spot Killer, and Sweep. Thailand imported 30,441 tonnes of paraquat in 2015, 31,525 tonnes in 2016, and 44,501 tonnes in 2017. In 2011 and 2012, researchers in Nan Province found paraquat contamination in all vegetables and fish sampled. In Lampang and Lamphun Provinces in 2017, tap water in 21 communities was found to be contaminated with paraquat. Vegetable samples from the area were also contaminated. In May 2018 the National Hazardous Substance Committee (NHSC) voted 18–6 in favor of allowing the continued use of the three toxic chemicals, albeit with tighter controls. The committee said there were insufficient studies confirming they were health hazards. About 17 countries limit the use of all three chemicals. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3467679 | 503,036 |
973,456 | While LEGO had been interested in mass-producing the programmable brick concept for a while, they had to wait until enough people owned personal computers and the components required to produce the intelligent brick went down in price. Development of what would later be known as LEGO Mindstorms started in 1996 as the first product of the newly created home-learning division of LEGO Education (LEGO Dacta). The product's name of "Mindstorms" was intended to express the user experience of the product, it is named after Papert's book Mindstorms, as the user experience was similar to the educational constructivism concepts described in his book. The LEGO home education team used the insights that MIT researchers discovered from testing the 3rd Generation Logo Brick ("Red Brick") in schools as the basis for the development of the mass-produced programmable brick. The physical programmable brick was re-engineered from the ground up, as the experimental programmable bricks were not designed for robustness or cost-effective manufacturing. The programming language of the product was developed with help from members of the MIT Media lab. LEGO decided to use a Visual programming language for Mindstorms, inspired by the LOGOBlocks language previously used with programmable brick experiments, in order to make the product accessible to children who might be unfamiliar with programming. While the technology that Mindstorms was based on was aimed towards "all children", the chosen target demographic of LEGO Mindstorms was intentionally narrow, in order to garner positive press by outselling expectations. The decision was made to aim the product towards 10 to 14-year-old boys, partially because it was LEGO's bread-and-butter demographic, and partially based on market research (not substantiated by the findings of the MIT Media Lab) which concluded that this demographic would be most attracted to computerized toys. This choice of target demographic directly informed the color of the RCX brick (which was made yellow and black to resemble construction equipment) and the sample uses for the Mindstorms kit (such as making autonomous robots). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=198856 | 972,946 |
488,665 | The level of achievement in Hellenistic astronomy and engineering is impressively shown by the Antikythera mechanism (150-100 BC). The astronomer Aristarchus of Samos was the first known person to propose a heliocentric model of the solar system, while the geographer Eratosthenes accurately calculated the circumference of the Earth. Hipparchus (c. 190 – c. 120 BC) produced the first systematic star catalog. In medicine, Herophilos (335 - 280 BC) was the first to base his conclusions on dissection of the human body and to describe the nervous system. Hippocrates (c. 460 BC – c. 370 BC) and his followers were first to describe many diseases and medical conditions. Galen (129 – c. 200 AD) performed many audacious operations—including brain and eye surgeries— that were not tried again for almost two millennia. The mathematician Euclid laid down the foundations of mathematical rigour and introduced the concepts of definition, axiom, theorem and proof still in use today in his "Elements", considered the most influential textbook ever written. Archimedes, considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, is credited with using the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, and gave a remarkably accurate approximation of pi. He is also known in physics for laying the foundations of hydrostatics and the explanation of the principle of the lever. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1673699 | 488,415 |
187,436 | In 2007, "Te Kaha" began undergoing a series of major upgrades as part of the four-stage Platform Systems Upgrade (PSU), planning for which started in 2004. The four areas of modification under the PSU were improved stability and compartment configuration changes, overhaul of the propulsion system, installation of a new Integrated Platform Management System (IPMS), and upgrades to onboard environmental control. The stability upgrades were to accommodate predicted increases in displacement as updated equipment was installed on the ships. As part of the modification, the ships' quarterdecks were partially enclosed, creating space for a gymnasium and improved laundry facilities. Propulsion changes are primarily focused on replacing the TB83 diesel engines with the TB93, providing an additional and higher speeds during diesel-only sailing. The IPMS replacement is prompted by the perceived obsolescence of the current system by 2013; as of 2009, tendering for the new system was underway. The environmental control upgrade is intended to improve personnel comfort during deployments to South East Asia, the Middle East, or similar climates, and will use more environmentally friendly products. Each stage of the upgrade is organised to occur simultaneously with ship maintenance dockings, with the first two upgrades being installed during each ship's major maintenance docking in 2009 and 2010 respectively, then the other two upgrades during the next docking in the 2011–2012 period. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=897679 | 187,339 |
1,506,494 | The next step led to the central nervous system. It was taken by Marthe Vogt, a refugee from Germany who at that time worked with John Henry Gaddum in the Institute of Pharmacology of the University of Edinburgh. ″The presence of noradrenaline and adrenaline in the brain has been demonstrated by von Euler (1946) and Holtz (1950). These substances were supposed, undoubtedly correctly, to occur in the cerebral vasomotor <= vasoconstrictor> nerves. The present work is concerned with the question whether these sympathomimetic amines, besides their role as transmitters at vasomotor endings, play a part in the function of the central nervous tissue itself. In this paper, these amines will be referred to as "sympathin", since they were found invariably to occur together, with noradrenaline representing the major component, as is characteristic for the transmitter of the peripheral sympathetic system.″ Vogt created a detailed map of noradrenaline in the dog brain. Its uneven distribution, not reflecting the distribution of vasomotor nerves, and its persistence after removal of the superior cervical ganglia made it ″tempting to assign to the cerebral "sympathin" a transmitter role like that which we assign to the "sympathin" found in the sympathetic ganglia and their postganglionic fibers.″ Her assignment was confirmed, the finishing touch being the visualization of the noradrenaline as well as adrenaline and () dopamine pathways in the central nervous system by Annica Dahlström and with the formaldehyde fluorescence method developed by Nils-Åke Hillarp (1916–1965) and Bengt Falck (born 1927) in Sweden and by immunochemistry techniques. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38791208 | 1,505,648 |
944,594 | "Vibrio vulnificus" wound infections have a mortality rate around 25%. In people in whom the infection worsens into sepsis, typically following ingestion, the mortality rate rises to 50%. The majority of these people die within the first 48 hours of infection. The optimal treatment is not known, but in one retrospective study of 93 people in Taiwan, use of a third-generation cephalosporin and a tetracycline (e.g., ceftriaxone and doxycycline, respectively) was associated with an improved outcome. Prospective clinical trials are needed to confirm this finding, but "in vitro" data support the suggestion that this combination is synergistic against "V. vulnificus". Likewise, the American Medical Association and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend treating the person with a quinolone or intravenous doxycycline with ceftazidime. The first successful documented treatment of fulminant "V. vulnificus" sepsis was in 1995. Treatment was ceftazidime and intravenous (IV) ciprofloxacin and IV doxycycline, which proved successful. Prevention of secondary infections from respiratory failure and acute renal failure is crucial. Key to the diagnosis and treatment were the early recognition of bullae in an immunocompromised person with liver cirrhosis and oyster ingestion within the previous 48 hours, and the request by the physician for STAT Gram staining and blood cultures for "V. vulnificus". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=550621 | 944,092 |
417,007 | After working for NASA for twenty-one years, she took an early retirement opportunity in 1979 in part to allow her to care for her elderly mother, although she continued on as a consultant for another year in order to complete the selection of STScI. Roman was interested in learning computer programming, and so audited a course on FORTRAN at Montgomery College that garnered her a job as a consultant for ORI, Inc. from 1980 to 1988. In that role, she was able to support research in geodesy and the development of astronomical catalogs, two of her former research areas. This led to her becoming the head of the Astronomical Data Center at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in 1995. She continued her work until 1997 for contractors who supported the Goddard Space Flight Center. Roman then spent three years teaching advanced junior high and high school students and K-12 science teachers, including those in underserved districts, and then spent ten years recording astronomical textbooks for Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic. In a 2017 interview, Roman said: “I like to talk to children about the advantages of going into science and particularly to tell the girls, by showing them my life, that they can be scientists and succeed.” | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4370870 | 416,804 |
1,695,302 | The original goal for paper-based microfluidics (μPAD) was to make low-cost and user-friendly point-of-care (POC) devices that can be operated without the assistance of medical personnel or any other qualified specialist in resource-limited and rural areas. To achieve this goal, μPAD should fit the “Affordable, Sensitive, Specific, User-friendly, Rapid and robust, Equipment-free, Deliver” criteria, provided by the World Health Organization (WHO), which are the requirements for diagnostic testing for resource-constrained settings. However, in POC’s official “Guide to aid the selection of diagnostic tests<nowiki>"</nowiki>, it is stated that these criteria are generic and can be modified according to test application. The main problem of paper-based microfluidic diagnostics is that research in this field is directed on providing new concepts and ideas rather than on improving user acceptance and as a result, most μPAD devices are still unable to be interpreted by non-professional users. However, POC is not the only application of paper-based microfluidics for diagnostics. Recently, a paper was employed in the production of more complicated microfluidic analytical devices, called lab-on-a-chip (LOC) devices, which are also used in diagnostics. Using paper to make LOC devices instead of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and glass can decrease cost and size while increasing portability. This allows LOC devices to become more accessible in resource-limited conditions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=56210030 | 1,694,350 |
999,312 | Ocean acidification is the direct consequence of elevated concentrations of hydrogen ions and carbonate saturation from significant absorption of carbon dioxide (CO) by the world's oceans. The pre-industrial state of the ocean's carbonate chemistry has been notably stable, including the balance of its pH. Following the industrial revolution, anthropogenic emissions of burning fossil fuels, cement production, and changes in land use, have increased the oceans uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 30%. In the ocean, the absorption capacity of this greenhouse gas is 59 times higher than in the atmosphere; the ocean acts as the largest carbon sink on the planet, playing a significant role in climate regulation. In addition to carbon fluxes, the natural process of carbon sequestration from the atmosphere into the deep ocean is facilitated by two systems, the biological pump and the solubility pump. The solubility pump is a physico-chemical process that transfers CO at the air-sea interface. Based on Henry's Law, the amount of dissolved CO in an aqueous solution is directly proportional to the partial pressure of CO in the atmosphere. To maintain equilibrium, a state of high atmospheric partial pressure of CO leads to an increased oceanic exchange of this gas by molecular diffusion. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=529019 | 998,794 |
1,021,295 | Climate reconstructions generally support the hypothesis that the AMOC is already weaker now than it was in the early 20th century. For instance, a 2010 statistical analysis found an ongoing weakening of the AMOC since the late 1930s, with an abrupt shift of a North Atlantic overturning cell around 1970. Climate scientists Michael Mann of Penn State and Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research suggested that the observed cold pattern during years of temperature records is a sign that the Atlantic Ocean's Meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) may be weakening. They published their findings in 2015, and concluded that the AMOC circulation was slowing throughout the 20th century, and that the weakness it demonstrated after 1975 was unprecedented over the last millennium. They suggested that even though the AMOC had experienced partial recovery after 1975, future Greenland ice sheet melt would be likely to weaken it further still. Another 2015 study suggested that the AMOC has weakened by 15-20% in 200 years. In 2018, another reconstruction suggested a weakening of around 15% since the mid-twentieth century. However, all these findings were challenged by 2022 research which indicated that between 1900 and 2019, a climate change-induced trend did not begin to emerge until 1980, and it is still faint relative to the circulation's natural variability. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5097491 | 1,020,766 |
1,170,563 | Lacking the proper methods and necessary safety precautions, informal e-waste recycling is directly responsible for worsening the health of many in China. Since the pollutants that are released during the process travel, the effects on health are widespread. Firstly, those who reside around informal sites experience second-hand exposure to the hazardous e-waste remnants through inhalation, digestion, and skin contact. The workers who directly handle breaking down electronics, often women and children, experience the most harm. Informal workshops are usually not well-ventilated and workers wear little-to-no protective equipment, resulting in direct exposure to toxic substances that can cause severe developmental problems and have been linked to increased chances of cancer. Studies on informal e-waste workers in China showed extremely high levels of hazardous materials in their systems - the highest concentration in humans ever recorded. There is rising concern for the health of children who are exposed, as their potential health risk is measured to be 8 times higher than that of adult e-waste workers due to their smaller size and higher ingestion rate. Scientists are continuing to perform more research on the long-term effects of handling e-waste, focusing especially on pregnant women and children. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29127790 | 1,169,944 |
2,100,341 | Hannah's tenure could not have started better, as the Lynx bolted out to an early 9–0–0 record and jumped from 14th in the rankings (LU–B began 2015–16 exactly where it closed 2014–15) all the way up to eighth - in position to receive an invitation to the ACHA National Tournament - by the end of October. The schedule stiffened from that point, but the squad acquitted itself well. In what could be characterized as the first truly pivotal series in program history, pitting teams battling for league titles and nationals bids against each other, the Lynx battled to a pair of come-from-ahead home ties with tenth-ranked Minnesota on November 7 and 8. Fuller and Stivers scored in each end of the series. A number of tight non-conference results followed to further bolster LU–B's ranking: 2–1 and 3–1 losses to No. 3 Adrian, a 3–2 loss to subsequent No. 3 Miami (in stark contrast to the first games in team history), and a 4–2 victory over No. 4 Grand Valley State on January 24, behind two Dietmeier goals and 47 Bidois saves. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=54162731 | 2,099,131 |
432,746 | Today's system of dual education in Germany functions by cooperation between small and medium companies. Cooperation is regulated by law and employers and trade unions are responsible for creating new training regulations. Since certificates are standardized across all industries, the dual education system ensures that apprentices receive the same training regardless of region or company. Employers trust the certificates since they provide evidence of an individual's knowledge. There is also a shared responsibility between the government, employers and trade unions which helps in responding to digital landscapes or changing job markets which impact how effective future employees may be in the future job market. Dual education was designed to make it easier for employers seeking new employees by allowing them to test potential candidates as apprentices and create a smoother flow for the hiring process. Good schools are a critical factor to this system as they better prepare candidates for changing job conditions. The dual education system is not perfect and flaws do exist. Although creating specialization through early vocational training and apprenticeships programs can have its advantages, disadvantages also exist. As change accelerates in many industries, the skills of an individual apprentice become obsolete faster. Apprentices can excel early on in the job market but a lack of general skills and lifetime learning in new jobs cause them to do worse later on. Nonetheless, the dual education system is still very effective in stifling unemployment especially among the youth. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3899523 | 432,533 |
1,177,970 | Mangrove forests, along with the animal species they shelter, represent globally significant sources of biodiversity and provide humanity with valuable ecosystem services. They are used by mammals, reptiles and migratory birds as feeding and breeding grounds, and provide crucial habitats for fish and crustacean species of commercial importance. The Atlantic goliath grouper for instance, which is currently listed as critically endangered due to overfishing, utilizes mangroves as a nursery for the first 5–6 years of life. The roots of the mangrove physically buffer shorelines from the erosive impacts of ocean waves and storms. Additionally, they protect riparian zones by absorbing floodwaters and slowing down the flow of sediment-loaded river water. This allows sediments to drop to the bottom where they are held in place, thus containing potentially toxic waste products and improving the quality of water and sanitation in coastal communities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36309813 | 1,177,347 |
1,926,378 | Hardy was self-taught in Greek and Latin. He paid his way through university by earning scholarships, and won the Governor General's Academic Medal in Classics and English. He earned a Master of Arts at the University of Toronto, and then a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. He educated about the Classics and world events by radio, and gave 250 talks on CBC Radio. He was critical of progressive education in Alberta, arguing it did not prepare students for university and lacked emphasis on the three Rs. He authored eight novels, six other books, and over 200 short stories published in "Maclean's" and "The Saturday Evening Post". His books told the history of Canada and the Greco-Roman world, and his novels included the fictionalized life and times of Julius Caesar and Ancient Rome. He wrote four plays produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, was a judge in literary contests, and taught at creative writing workshops. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=39683375 | 1,925,274 |
225,370 | In certain outdoor environments, animals such as horses, pigs, cattle, and sheep experience hypercalcemia commonly. In southern Brazil and Mattewara India, approximately 17 percent of sheep are affected, with 60 percent of these cases being fatal. Many cases are also documented in Argentina, Papua New Guinea, Jamaica, Hawaii, and Bavaria. These cases of hypercalcemeia are usually caused by ingesting "Trisetum flavescens" before it has dried out. Once "Trisetum flavescens" is dried out, the toxicity of it is diminished. Other plants causing hypercalcemia are "Cestrum diurnum", "Nierembergia veitchii", "Solanum esuriale", "Solanum torvum", and "Solanum malacoxylon". These plants contain calcitriol or similar substances that cause rises in calcium ion levels. Hypercalcemia is most common in grazing lands at altitudes above 1500 meters where growth of plants like "Trisetum flavescens" is favorable. Even if small amounts are ingested over long periods of time, the prolonged high levels of calcium ions have large negative effects on the animals. The issues these animals experience are muscle weakness, and calcification of blood vessels, heart valves, liver, kidneys, and other soft tissues, which eventually can lead to death. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=512274 | 225,254 |
1,458,580 | As part of a humanitarian aid project in Malawi in 2019/20, medicines were delivered by Wingcopter to remote areas that were partially cut off from the outside world by a flood. Wingcopter has also been active with UNICEF and DHL in delivering vaccines and other medications in Vanuatu and some African nations. Along with UNICEF and African Drone & Data Academy (ADDA), it aims to use Wingcopter drones to improve health supply chains during COVID-19 and to open up new long-term opportunities for Africa's youth. It was announced as one of the winners of the German government’s €24 million COVID-19 hackathon to combat corona-related repercussions in Africa. As a part of this project, Wingcopter envisions setting up a locally operated delivery drone network in Malawi to support the local healthcare system. In parallel, the partners will also build local capacity through two distinct training programs for 160 Malawian youths. After proving the concept’s viability and successful implementation in Malawi, Wingcopter and UNICEF plan to adapt the concept and scale to Rwanda. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63477455 | 1,457,760 |
801,686 | For the special case of deuterium isotope effects, we will argue that the first three terms can be treated as equal to or well approximated by unity. The first factor S (containing the σ) is the ratio of the symmetry numbers for the various species. This will be a rational number (a ratio of integers) that depends on the number of molecular and bond rotations leading to the permutation of identical atoms or groups in the reactants and the transition state. For systems of low symmetry, all σ (reactant and transition state) will be unity; thus S can often be neglected. The MMI factor (containing the "M" and "I") refers to the ratio of the molecular masses and the moments of inertia. Since hydrogen and deuterium tend to be much lighter compared to most reactants and transition states, there is little difference in the molecular masses and moments of inertia between H and D containing molecules, so the MMI factor is usually also approximated as unity. The EXC factor (containing the product of vibrational partition functions) corrects for the kinetic isotope effect caused by the reactions of vibrationally excited molecules. The fraction of molecules with enough energy to have excited state A–H/D bond vibrations is generally small for reactions at or near room temperature (bonds to hydrogen usually vibrate at 1000 cm or higher, so exp(-"u") = exp(-"hν"/"k""T") < 0.01 at 298 K, resulting in negligible contributions from the 1–exp(-"u") factors). Hence, for hydrogen/deuterium kinetic isotope effects, the observed values are typically dominated by the last factor, ZPE (an exponential function of vibrational zero-point energy differences), consisting of contributions from the zero-point energy differences for each of the vibrational modes of the reactants and transition state, which can be represented as follows: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1106771 | 801,258 |
1,553,383 | Much of the theory of classical non-equilibrium thermodynamics is concerned with the spatially continuous motion of fluids, but fluids can also move with spatial discontinuities. Helmholtz (1868) wrote about how in a flowing fluid, there can arise a zero fluid pressure, which sees the fluid broken asunder. This arises from the momentum of the fluid flow, showing a different kind of dynamical structure from that of the conduction of heat or electricity. Thus for example: water from a nozzle can form a shower of droplets (Rayleigh 1878, and in section 357 et seq. of Rayleigh (1896/1926)<ref name="Rayleigh 1896/1926">Strutt, J.W. (Baron Rayleigh) (1896/1926). Section 357 et seq. "The Theory of Sound", Macmillan, London, reprinted by Dover, New York, 1945.</ref>); waves on the surface of the sea break discontinuously when they reach the shore (Thom 1975). Helmholtz pointed out that the sounds of organ pipes must arise from such discontinuity of flow, occasioned by the passage of air past a sharp-edged obstacle; otherwise the oscillatory character of the sound wave would be damped away to nothing. The definition of the rate of entropy production of such a flow is not covered by the usual theory of classical non-equilibrium thermodynamics. There are many other commonly observed discontinuities of fluid flow that also lie beyond the scope of the classical theory of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, such as: bubbles in boiling liquids and in effervescent drinks; also protected towers of deep tropical convection (Riehl, Malkus 1958), also called penetrative convection (Lindzen 1977). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24622609 | 1,552,502 |
1,718,132 | To understand the exposures that affect shifting malaria transmission rates we can look to "The Epidemiologic Triad", a model that explains the relationship between exposure, transmission, and causation of infectious diseases. With regards to malaria transmission rates in the African Highlands, factors and exposures resulting from drastic environmental changes like warmer climates, shifts in weather patterns, and increases in human impact such as deforestation, provide appropriate conditions for malaria transmission between carrier and host. Because of this, vectors will adapt, thrive, and multiply at a fast pace. An increase in the number of vectors that carry parasites, microbes, and pathogens that cause disease will become a health hazard for the human population. Specifically, malaria is caused by the "Plasmodium falciparum" and "Plasmodium vivax" parasites which are carried by the vector "Anopheles" mosquito. Even though the "Plasmodium vivax" parasite can survive in lower temperatures, the "Plasmodium falciparum" parasite will only survive and replicate in the mosquito when climate temperatures are above 20℃. Increases in humidity and rain also contribute to the replication and survival of this infectious agent., Increasing global temperatures combined with changes in land cover because of extreme deforestation will create ideal habitats for mosquitoes to survive in the African Highlands. If deforestation continues at its current rate, more land will be available for mosquito breeding grounds, and the population of mosquitos will rapidly increase. The increase in mosquitoes will thus increase the opportunity for both "Plasmodium falciparum" and "Plasmodium vivax" parasites to proliferate. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63453251 | 1,717,162 |
788,007 | This species is known as a saprotroph and plays an important role in the early colonization of substrata in soil. Nonetheless, it can also behave as a parasite of plant tissues causing a rot of vegetables and fruits. Like other species of "Rhizopus", "R. stolonifer" grows rapidly and spreads by means of the stolons. The stolons provide an aerial structure for the growth of the mycelium and the occupation of large areas. They can climb vertically as well as horizontally. Sporangiophores of "R. stolonifer" can be up to 2.5 mm long and about 20 μm in diameter. The spores are shaped differently depending on the available nutrients. They can be ovate, polygonal or angular. The optimal temperature for growth varies between 25 and 30 °C. The thermal death point, which is defined as the lowest temperature that can kill all cells in ten minutes, is 60 °C. "Rhizopus stolonifer" can grow in acidic environments with a pH of as low as 2.2. The pH range can vary from 2.2 to 9.6. Ultraviolet irradiation can delay spore germination. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=55223022 | 787,583 |
411,533 | General Motors' (GM) first ECUs had a small application of hybrid digital ECUs as a pilot program in 1979, but by 1980, all active programs were using microprocessor based systems. Due to the large ramp up of volume of ECUs that were produced to meet the Clean Air Act requirements for 1981, only one ECU model could be built for the 1981 model year. The high volume ECU that was installed in GM vehicles from the first high volume year, 1981, onward was a modern microprocessor based system. GM moved rapidly to replace carburation with fuel injection as the preferred method of fuel delivery for vehicles it manufactured. This process first saw fruition in 1980 with fuel injected Cadillac engines, followed by the Pontiac 2.5L I4 "Iron Duke" and the Chevrolet 5.7L V8 L83 "Cross-Fire" engine powering the Chevrolet Corvette in 1982. The 1990 Cadillac Brougham powered by the Oldsmobile 5.0L V8 LV2 engine was the last carbureted passenger car manufactured for sale in the North American market (a 1992 Volkswagen Beetle model powered by a carbureted engine was available for purchase in Mexico but not offered for sale in the United States or Canada) and by 1991 GM was the last of the major US and Japanese automakers to abandon carburetion and manufacture all of its passenger cars exclusively with fuel injected engines. In 1988 Delco (GM's electronics division), had produced more than 28,000 ECUs per day, making it the world's largest producer of on-board digital control computers at the time. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2528024 | 411,331 |
217,706 | The low cost ($200/ton) and high cycle rate (2,000X) of synthetic zeolites such as Linde 13X with water adsorbate has garnered much academic and commercial interest recently for use for thermal energy storage (TES), specifically of low-grade solar and waste heat. Several pilot projects have been funded in the EU from 2000 to the present (2020). The basic concept is to store solar thermal energy as chemical latent energy in the zeolite. Typically, hot dry air from flat plate solar collectors is made to flow through a bed of zeolite such that any water adsorbate present is driven off. Storage can be diurnal, weekly, monthly, or even seasonal depending on the volume of the zeolite and the area of the solar thermal panels. When heat is called for during the night, or sunless hours, or winter, humidified air flows through the zeolite. As the humidity is adsorbed by the zeolite, heat is released to the air and subsequently to the building space. This form of TES, with specific use of zeolites, was first taught by Guerra in 1978. Advantages over molten salts and other high temperature TES include that (1) the temperature required is only the stagnation temperature typical of a solar flat plate thermal collector, and (2) as long as the zeolite is kept dry, the energy is stored indefinitely. Because of the low temperature, and because the energy is stored as latent heat of adsorption, thus eliminating the insulation requirements of a molten salt storage system, costs are significantly lower. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2465250 | 217,598 |
1,243,473 | During the second five-year plan (1956–60) in India, a number of industrial projects were contemplated. To ensure enough supply of trained personnel to meet the demand for these projects, a decision was taken to start the Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs), at the rate of one per each major state, which can churn out graduates with good engineering merit. Thus, seventeen RECs were established from 1959 onwards in each of the major states. Each college was a joint and cooperative enterprise of the central government and the concerned state government. Today, all these institutes now offer degree courses at various bachelors, masters and doctorate levels in various branches of engineering and technology. The entire non-recurring expenditure and expenditure for post-graduate courses during the REC times were borne by the central government. As regards in the REC system the entire recurring expenditure on undergraduate courses, the same was shared by the central government and the state government on 50:50 basis. However, after becoming National Institutes of Technology (NITs) the entire funding is managed by the center now. REC system served well but as time passed some state governments showed lack of responsibility to take them in right direction. Following the long-standing demand for more Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) the then Minister of Human Resource Development Murli Manohar Joshi decided to upgrade the RECs to NITs. In 2003, all RECs were upgraded to NITs and central government took control to run these Institutes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5492473 | 1,242,800 |
1,668,867 | In 1913, John G. FitzGerald took up a new role as part-time Associate Professor of Hygiene at the University of Toronto. After becoming one of the youngest graduates of the University of Toronto Medical School in 1903, he had spent a decade pursuing further study across North America and Europe, learning how to make antitoxins and observing novel approaches to public health education, research, and biological manufacture. Around that time, calls had mounted for a "Pasteur Institute" in Toronto following a rabies outbreak in southwestern Ontario, since the only closest-available source of life-saving treatment was in New York. FitzGerald worked with William Fenton to prepare the rabies vaccine. Following the success, they soon moved to tackle the lack of access to the diphtheria antitoxin with a commitment from Ontario's Chief Medical Officer that the Ontario Board of Health would buy the antitoxin at cost and ultimately distribute it for free. The initial work done with a stable of horses in Fenton's backyard proved successful, and in 1914 FitzGerald presented a plan to the Board of Governors of the University of Toronto which included dedicating any proceeds to the improvement of public health and education. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=61019378 | 1,667,927 |
981,447 | There have been several reports of corpses in the Body Worlds exhibit being prepared and shown without consent. In January 2004, the German news magazine "Der Spiegel" made a report based on internal emails and records, as well as statements from von Hagens, that his company had acquired corpses from executed Chinese prisoners. In response to the article, von Hagens said that he has told his Chinese employees not to accept bodies that were executed, and returned seven cadavers to China that had head injuries, including at least two with bullet holes in the skull. In 2004, von Hagens obtained an injunction against "Der Spiegel" for making the claims. Paul Harris, director of North Carolina's State Board of Funeral Services, has stated, "Somebody at some level of government ought to be able to look at a death certificate, a statement from an embalmer, donation documents... That's a reasonable standard to apply." Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) said, "These displays do have important educational benefits, but using bodies against a person's will is unacceptable". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=151107 | 980,935 |
214 | In 1918, Einstein was one of the founding members of the German Democratic Party, a liberal party. Later in his life, Einstein's political view was in favor of socialism and critical of capitalism, which he detailed in his essays such as "Why Socialism?" His opinions on the Bolsheviks also changed with time. In 1925, he criticized them for not having a 'well-regulated system of government' and called their rule a 'regime of terror and a tragedy in human history'. He later adopted a more moderated view, criticizing their methods but praising them, which is shown by his 1929 remark on Vladimir Lenin: "In Lenin I honor a man, who in total sacrifice of his own person has committed his entire energy to realizing social justice. I do not find his methods advisable. One thing is certain, however: men like him are the guardians and renewers of mankind's conscience." Einstein offered and was called on to give judgments and opinions on matters often unrelated to theoretical physics or mathematics. He strongly advocated the idea of a democratic global government that would check the power of nation-states in the framework of a world federation. He wrote "I advocate world government because I am convinced that there is no other possible way of eliminating the most terrible danger in which man has ever found himself." The FBI created a secret dossier on Einstein in 1932, and by the time of his death his FBI file was 1,427 pages long. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=736 | 214 |
362,905 | According to inflation theory, during the inflationary epoch about 10 of a second after the Big Bang, the universe suddenly expanded, and its volume increased by a factor of at least 10 (an expansion of distance by a factor of at least 10 in each of the three dimensions). This would be equivalent to expanding an object 1 nanometer (10 m, about half the width of a molecule of DNA) in length to one approximately 10.6 light years (about 10 m or 62 trillion miles) long. A much slower and gradual expansion of space continued after this, until at around 9.8 billion years after the Big Bang (4 billion years ago) it began to gradually expand more quickly, and is still doing so. Physicists have postulated the existence of dark energy, appearing as a cosmological constant in the simplest gravitational models, as a way to explain this late-time acceleration. According to the simplest extrapolation of the currently favored cosmological model, the Lambda-CDM model, this acceleration becomes more dominant into the future. In June 2016, NASA and ESA scientists reported that the universe was found to be expanding 5% to 9% faster than thought earlier, based on studies using the Hubble Space Telescope. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5985207 | 362,715 |
308,067 | Repairs were completed by March 1941, and in June "Lützow" steamed to Norway. While en route, she was torpedoed by a British bomber, necessitating significant repairs that lasted until May 1942. She returned to Norway to join the forces arrayed against Allied shipping to the Soviet Union. She ran aground during a planned attack on convoy PQ 17, which necessitated another return to Germany for repairs. She next saw action at the Battle of the Barents Sea with the heavy cruiser , which ended with a failure to destroy the convoy JW 51B. Engine problems forced a series of repairs culminating in a complete overhaul at the end of 1943, after which the ship remained in the Baltic. Sunk in the Kaiserfahrt in April 1945 by Royal Air Force (RAF) bombers, "Lützow" was used as a gun battery to support German troops fighting the Soviet Army until 4 May 1945, when she was disabled by her crew. Raised by the Soviet Navy in 1947, she was reportedly broken up for scrap over the next two years, according to Western works that did not have access to Soviet documents at the time. The historian Hans Georg Prager examined the former Soviet archives in the early 2000s, and discovered that "Lützow" actually had been sunk in weapons tests in July 1947. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3010318 | 307,902 |
742,738 | Rao has received 38 honorary doctoral degrees from universities in 19 countries around the world and numerous awards and medals for his contributions to statistics and science. He is a member of eight National Academies in India, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Italy. Rao was awarded the United States National Medal of Science, that nation's highest award for lifetime achievement in fields of scientific research, in June 2002. He was given the India Science Award in 2010, the highest honor conferred by the government of India in a scientific domain. In 2013, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Miodrag Lovric (Editor) and Shlomo Sawilowsky, for their contribution to the International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science. He was most recently honoured with his 38th honorary doctorate by the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, on 26 July 2014 for "his contributions to the foundations of modern statistics through the introduction of concepts such as Cramér–Rao inequality, Rao–Blackwellization, Rao distance, Rao measure, and for introducing the idea of orthogonal arrays for the industry to design high-quality products." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1418009 | 742,344 |
907,763 | The universities developed in the large cities of Europe during this period, and rival clerical orders within the Church began to battle for political and intellectual control over these centers of educational life. The two main orders founded in this period were the Franciscans and the Dominicans. The Franciscans were founded by Francis of Assisi in 1209. Their leader in the middle of the century was Bonaventure, a traditionalist who defended the theology of Augustine and the philosophy of Plato, incorporating only a little of Aristotle in with the more neoplatonist elements. Following Anselm, Bonaventure supposed that reason can discover truth only when philosophy is illuminated by religious faith. Other important Franciscan writers were Duns Scotus, Peter Auriol, and William of Ockham.By contrast, the Dominican order, founded by St Dominic in 1215 placed more emphasis on the use of reason and made extensive use of the new Aristotelian sources derived from the East, and Moorish Spain. The great representatives of Dominican thinking in this period were Albertus Magnus and (especially) Thomas Aquinas, whose artful synthesis of Greek rationalism and Christian doctrine eventually came to define Catholic philosophy. Aquinas placed more emphasis on reason and argumentation, and was one of the first to use the new translation of Aristotle's metaphysical and epistemological writing. This was a significant departure from the Neoplatonic and Augustinian thinking that had dominated much of early Scholasticism. Aquinas showed how it was possible to incorporate much of the philosophy of Aristotle without falling into the "errors" of the Commentator Averroes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26571896 | 907,285 |
330,846 | When the first "Sonic the Hedgehog" title was released in 1991, Sega of America developed an origin for Sonic the Hedgehog and Dr. Robotnik which diverged from the back-stories created in Japan by Sonic Team. In this back-story, set on the planet Mobius, Dr. Ivo Robotnik was originally a benevolent scientist named Dr. Ovi Kintobor ("Ivo Robotnik" with each name spelled backwards; also, "ovi" is the Latin prefix meaning "egg"), a friend to Sonic who helped to develop the hedgehog's super-speed. Kintobor was transformed into Robotnik by a laboratory accident involving the Chaos Emeralds and a rotten egg, becoming his own evil opposite, who frequently used egg-related puns in his dialogue. This story was first featured in a 14-page promotional comic book published by Sega in the United States, written by Francis Mao, that was designed to promote the game, but would go on to greater fame in the United Kingdom, where it would be used by the vast majority of local publications, including the guidebook "Stay Sonic", a series of novels from Virgin Books, and Fleetway Publications' "Sonic the Comic", which was published from 1993 until 2002. In "Sonic the Comic", Dr. Robotnik was dictator of planet Mobius for most of the comic's first 100 issues, while Sonic also had access to an AI computer program based on the personality of Dr. Kintobor. Initially, Robotnik's appearance in "Sonic the Comic" matched that of the video games, but from issue #22 onwards the comic adopted his design from the "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" cartoon series. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16350481 | 330,669 |
565,878 | During July, suspected cases were being flagged and reported in Mumbai, in Delhi, Chennai, and elsewhere. In Pakistan, at least 24 children were said to have Kawasaki-like symptoms in Lahore, where 8 cases fulfilling WHO criteria were prospectively identified by 30 June. In Kazakhstan, 14 cases were confirmed by 20 August (among 2,357 children known to have been infected). Cases have been recorded in Israel, including one of a child who presented with severe central nervous system involvement and complement deficiency. In Turkey, four children with a Kawasaki-like disease probably associated with COVID-19 are reported to have been admitted to the children's hospital of Hacettepe University in Ankara between 13 April and 11 July. In Algeria, a first case was recorded in June. In Egypt, on 10 July the authorities denied rumours of the existence of cases of Kawasaki-like disease in the country. In South Africa, the first 23 affected children were treated in Cape Town – the initial epicentre of the national COVID-19 epidemic – between 4 June and 24 July. In Ecuador, the Ministry of Health announced on 19 July the presence of 46 probable cases. In Costa Rica, a national public health organization announced towards the end of August that three children had been diagnosed with MIS-C. Cases of MIS-C had also been recorded in many other Latin American countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Uruguay, and Venezuela, as well as in Puerto Rico. News of a first confirmed case of PIMS-TS in Australia emerged (from Victoria) on 4 September, along with news of other suspected cases under review. In South Korea, news of two confirmed cases broke on 5 October (and the existence of a case dating back to the end of April was reported in November). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63895130 | 565,588 |
275,530 | Factors that contribute to pollinator decline include habitat destruction, pesticide, parasitism/diseases, and climate change. The more destructive forms of human disturbances are land use changes such as fragmentation, selective logging, and the conversion to secondary forest habitat. Defaunation of frugivores is also an important driver. These alterations are especially harmful due to the sensitivity of the pollination process of plants. Research on tropical palms found that defaunation has caused a decline in seed dispersal, which causes a decrease in genetic variability in this species. Habitat destruction such as fragmentation and selective logging remove areas that are most optimal for the different types of pollinators, which removes pollinators food resources, nesting sites, and leads to isolation of populations. The effect of pesticides on pollinators has been debated because it is difficult to determine that a single pesticide is the cause as opposed to a mixture or other threats. Whether exposure alone causes damage, or if the duration and potency are also factors is unknown. However, insecticides have negative effects, as in the case of neonicotinoids that harm bee colonies. Many researchers believe it is the synergistic effects of these factors which are ultimately detrimental to pollinator populations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=233609 | 275,381 |
1,123,219 | In 2004, palaeontologist Sankar Chatterjee and engineer R. Jack Templin said that smaller pterosaurs may have been able to skim-feed. They doubted that this was possible for larger ones, due to their lesser manoeuvrability and flying capability while resisting water. Chatterjee and Templin noted that skimmers have blunter beaks than pterosaurs like "Thalassodromeus", to direct water from the jaw while skimming. In 2007, biophysicist Stuart Humphries and colleagues questioned whether any pterosaurs would have commonly fed by skimming and said that such conclusions had been based on anatomical comparisons rather than biomechanical data. The drag experienced by bird bills and pterosaur jaws was hydrodynamically and aerodynamically tested by creating model bills of the black skimmer, "Thalassodromeus", and the (presumably) non-skimming "Tupuxuara" and towing them along a water-filled trough at varying speeds. The researchers found that skimming used more energy for skimmers than previously thought, and would have been impossible for a pterosaur weighing more than due to the metabolic power required. They found that even smaller pterosaurs, like "Rhamphorhynchus", were not adapted for skimming. The aluminium rigging of the "Thalassodromeus" model was destroyed during the experiment, due to the high and unstable forces exerted on it while skimming at high speed, casting further doubt on this feeding method. The authors used the jaw tip of "T. oberlii" to model the performance of "Thalassodromeus", since it was assigned to "T. sethi" at the time. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5382243 | 1,122,645 |
1,274,617 | In all organisms displaying cell constancy, nuclei division by mitosis in mature cells is not achieved. Embryonic cells are able to undergo mitosis, however, this function is lost when cells become differentiated. There is no evidence showing that this ability is ever regained, even after injury which normally functions to trigger mitosis and cell regeneration. In 1927, a scientist named Jurczik observed that upon removing the arms of the rotifer Stephanoceros, they were unable to regenerate and grow back. Jurczik attributed this to the failure of the cells to mitotically divide. A study of "Hydatina senta" and Acanthocephala in 1922 by histologist Harley J. Van Cleave at the University of Illinois revealed physiological and morphological corrections of nucleus-cytoplasm intracellular protein interactions. Some of the nuclei studied showed abnormal and elongate shapes. Van Cleave concluded that the change in shape and form of the nuclei is attributed to morphological readjustments of nuclear surface proteins to make up for changes in physiology leading to a phase of senescence. This nuclear surface change has been proposed to be caused by mechanical division or fragmentation of the vitellaria's original cells by microscopic mechanisms yet to be discovered. This state of senescence is presumed to be a readjustment stage on the organism's way back to its absolute constancy state or before cell death. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13857654 | 1,273,925 |
934,543 | In seeking to analyze such a wide scope of musical genres, repertories, and styles, some scholars have favored an all-encompassing "objective" approach, while others argue for "native" or "subjective" methodologies tailored to the musical subject. Those in favor of "objective" analytical methods hold that certain perceptual or cognitive universals or laws exist in music, making it possible to construct an analytical framework or set of categories applicable across cultures. Proponents of "native" analysis argue that all analytical approaches inherently incorporate value judgments and that, to understand music it is crucial to construct an analysis within cultural context. This debate is well exemplified by a series of articles between Mieczyslaw Kolinski and Marcia Herndon in the mid-1970s; these authors differed strongly on the style, nature, implementation, and advantages of analytical and synthetic models including their own. Herndon, backing "native categories" and inductive thinking, distinguishes between analysis and synthesis as two different methods for examining music. By her definition, analysis seeks to break down parts of a known whole according to a definite plan, whereas synthesis starts with small elements and combines them into one entity by tailoring the process to the musical material. Herndon also debated on the subjectivity and objectivity necessary for a proper analysis of a musical system. Kolinski, among those scholars critiqued by Herndon's push for a synthetic approach, defended the benefits of analysis, arguing in response for the acknowledgment of musical facts and laws. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=80077 | 934,051 |
871,121 | The Sahara of North Africa is the largest hot desert in the world. Flowlines can be traced from erg to erg, demonstrating very long transport downwind. Satellite observations show yardangs aligned with the sandflow lines. All flowlines arise in the desert itself, and show indications of clockwise circulation roughly like high pressure cells. The greatest deflation occurs in dried lake beds where trade winds form a low-level jet between the Tibesti Mountains and the Ennedi Plateau. The flowlines eventually reach the, sea creating great plume of Saharan dust extending thousands of kilometers into the Atlantic Ocean. This creates a steady rain of silt into the ocean. It is estimated that 260 million tons of sediments are transported through this system each year, but the amount was much greater during the Last Glacial Maximum, based on deep-sea cores. Mineral dust of 0.1–1 microns in size is a good shortwave radiation scatterer and has a cooling effect on climate. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=643020 | 870,661 |
231,819 | In 1956, the German informatician Karl Steinbuch and engineer Helmut Gröttrup coined the word "Informatik" when they developed the "Informatik-Anlage" for the Quelle mail-order management, one of the earliest commercial applications of data processing. In April 1957, Steinbuch published a paper called "Informatik: Automatische Informationsverarbeitung" ("Informatics: Automatic Information Processing"). The morphology—"informat"-ion + -"ics"—uses "the accepted form for names of sciences, as conics, mathematics, linguistics, optics, or matters of practice, as economics, politics, tactics", and so, linguistically, the meaning extends easily to encompass both the science of information and the practice of information processing. The German word "Informatik" is usually translated to English as "computer science" by universities or "computer science & engineering" by technical universities (German equivalents for institutes of technology). Depending on the context, informatics is also translated into "computing", "scientific computing" or "information and computer technology". The French term "informatique" was coined in 1962 by Philippe Dreyfus. In the same month was also proposed independently by Walter F. Bauer (1924–2015) and associates who co-founded software company "Informatics Inc." The term for the new discipline quickly spread throughout Europe, but it did not catch on in the United States. Over the years, many different definitions of informatics have been developed, most of them claim that the essence of informatics is one of these concepts: information processing, algorithms, computation, information, algorithmic processes, computational processes or computational systems. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23997153 | 231,700 |
666,806 | In 1953 the Braggs moved into the elegant flat for the Resident Professor in the Royal Institution in London, the position his father had occupied when he died. In 1934 and 1961 Lawrence had delivered the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture and since 1938 he had been Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Institution, delivering an annual lecture. His father's successors had weakened the Institution, so Bragg had to rebuild it. He bolstered finances by enlisting corporate sponsors, the traditional Friday Evening Discourses were followed by a dinner party for the speaker and carefully selected possible patrons, more than 120 of them each year. "Two of these Discourses in 1965 gave him particular pleasure. On 7 May, Lady Bragg, who had been a member of the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce (1951–55) and was Chairman of the National Marriage Guidance Council, lectured on 'Changing patterns in marriage and divorce'; and on 15 November, Bragg listened with evident pride to the Discourse on 'Oscillations and noise in jet engines' given by his engineer-son Stephen, who was then Chief Scientist at Rolls Royce Ltd and later became Vice-Chancellor of Brunel University." He also introduced a programme of highly regarded Schools' Lectures, enlivened by the elaborate demonstrations that were a hallmark of the Institution. He gave three of these lectures on "electricity". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=303544 | 666,458 |
2,116,561 | Previously the Navy Board had relied upon timber as the major building material, which resulted in high maintenance costs and was also a fire risk. The docks Dummer designed were stronger with more secure foundations and stepped sides that allowed shorter timbers to be used for shoring and made it much easier for shipwrights to reach the underside of the vessel. These innovations also allowed rapid erection of staging and greater workforce mobility. He discarded the earlier three-sectioned hinged gate, which was labour-intensive in operation, and replaced it with the simpler and more mobile two-sectioned gate. He wished to ensure that naval dockyards were efficient working units that maximised available space, as evidenced by the simplicity of his design layout for Plymouth. He introduced a centralised storage area and a logical positioning of buildings, and his double rope-house combined the previously separate tasks of spinning and laying while allowing the upper floor to be used for the repair of sails. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24510735 | 2,115,344 |
781,320 | Each launch site had three parts, separated by at least 1,000 yards (914 m). One part (designated C) of about six acres (24,000 m) contained the IFC (Integrated Fire Control) radar systems to detect incoming targets (acquisition and target tracking) and direct the missiles (missile tracking), along with the computer systems to plot and direct the intercept. The second part (designated L), around forty acres (160,000 m), held 1–3 underground missile magazines each serving a group of four launch assemblies and included a safety zone. The site had a crew of 109 officers and men who ran the site continuously. One launcher would be on 15 minutes alert, two on 30 minutes and one on two hour alert. The third part was the administrative area (designated A), which was usually co-located with the IFC and contained the battery headquarters, barracks, mess, recreation hall, and motor pool. The actual configuration of the Nike sites differed depending on geography. Whenever possible the sites were placed on existing military bases or National Guard armories; otherwise land had to be purchased. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=225739 | 780,902 |
535,205 | The Iraqi military quickly proved no match for coalition military power, and with their defeat the bulk of Australian forces were withdrawn. While Australia did not initially take part in the post-war occupation of Iraq, an Australian Army light armoured battlegroup—designated the Al Muthanna Task Group and including 40 ASLAV light armoured vehicles and infantry—was later deployed to Southern Iraq in April 2005 as part of Operation Catalyst. The role of this force was to protect the Japanese engineer contingent in the region and support the training of New Iraqi Army units. The AMTG later became the Overwatch Battle Group (West) (OBG(W)), following the hand back of Al Muthanna province to Iraqi control. Force levels peaked at 1,400 personnel in May 2007 including the OBG(W) in Southern Iraq, the Security Detachment in Baghdad and the Australian Army Training Team—Iraq. A RAN frigate was based in the North Persian Gulf, while RAAF assets included C-130H Hercules and AP-3C elements. Following the election of a new Labor government under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd the bulk of these forces were withdrawn by mid-2009, while RAAF and RAN operations were redirected to other parts of the Middle East Area of Operations as part of Operation Slipper. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1323516 | 534,926 |
135,613 | There is a general consensus among historians that the roots of the industrial engineering profession date back to the Industrial Revolution. The technologies that helped mechanize traditional manual operations in the textile industry including the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, and perhaps most importantly the steam engine generated economies of scale that made mass production in centralized locations attractive for the first time. The concept of the production system had its genesis in the factories created by these innovations. It has also been suggested that perhaps Leonardo da Vinci was the first industrial engineer because there is evidence that he applied science to the analysis of human work by examining the rate at which a man could shovel dirt around the year 1500. Others also state that the industrial engineering profession grew from Charles Babbage’s study of factory operations and specifically his work on the manufacture of straight pins in 1832 . However, it has been generally argued that these early efforts, while valuable, were merely observational and did not attempt to engineer the jobs studied or increase overall output. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23535218 | 135,558 |
1,949,195 | What skill set is needed to successfully serve in the role of Chief Information Officer in higher education? A review of the literature provides some useful perspectives. Linda Fleit (1999), the former president and founder of the IT Consulting Firm Edutech International from 1985 to 2008 and through this experience, well acquainted with the role CIOs in higher education institutions, indicated seven areas which she felt were requirements for CIOs. These included (as cited in Hawkins, 2004): 1) a clear vision about the role on information technology in higher education; 2) excellent oral and written communication and listening skills; 3) ability to form alliances and relationships with key campus constituents; 4) the ability to work collaboratively and effectively; 5) the ability to make and back hard decisions; 6) the ability to manage resources judiciously, and 7) deep expertise and knowledge in at least one aspect of technology. Cash and Pearlson (2004), representing the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and the Concours Group, respectively, identify leadership, business and technical competencies as essential for CIOs in higher education. Carol A. Cartwright (2002), who served as president of Kent State University from 1991 to 2006 and who is currently serving as president of Bowling Green State University, sought several essential qualifications in a CIO who would be expected to serve as a full-fledged member of her “executive orchestra”: proven leadership skills, strong management skills, and an understanding of the difference between these two. Wayne Brown (2010b), the CIO at Excelsior College who has conducted annual surveys with CIOs and executive management on the role and effectiveness of CIOs since 2003, surveyed 440 CIOs in higher education in 2010 to determine what they considered the top skills needed to be effective in their positions. Brown (2010b) reported that a CIOs’ top five skills in order were: communication skills, leadership, technical knowledge, interpersonal skills and higher education knowledge. The same question posed to members of the management team at higher education institutions revealed that they ranked the same top five skills as important but in a different order: technical knowledge, communication skills, leadership, higher education knowledge, and interpersonal skills. Lastly, Hawkins (2004) identified five skills that he believed were critical to success as a CIO in higher education: strong communication skills, boundary-spanning ability (i.e. the ability to work across the silos that often exist at institutions), leadership ability, management experience, and a strong understanding of the academic environment. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31306690 | 1,948,074 |
6,360 | Landforms visible on Mars strongly suggest that liquid water has existed on the planet's surface. Huge linear swathes of scoured ground, known as outflow channels, cut across the surface in about 25 places. These are thought to be a record of erosion caused by the catastrophic release of water from subsurface aquifers, though some of these structures have been hypothesized to result from the action of glaciers or lava. One of the larger examples, Ma'adim Vallis, is long, much greater than the Grand Canyon, with a width of and a depth of in places. It is thought to have been carved by flowing water early in Mars's history. The youngest of these channels are thought to have formed only a few million years ago. Elsewhere, particularly on the oldest areas of the Martian surface, finer-scale, dendritic networks of valleys are spread across significant proportions of the landscape. Features of these valleys and their distribution strongly imply that they were carved by runoff resulting from precipitation in early Mars history. Subsurface water flow and groundwater sapping may play important subsidiary roles in some networks, but precipitation was probably the root cause of the incision in almost all cases. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14640471 | 6,357 |
1,537,672 | Individual curriculum maps are "developed by individual teachers [and] reflect what they teach in their class or classes. They include essential questions, content, skills, and assessments" (Jacobs & Johnson, 2009, p. 115). More detailed than the consensus map, "allow for individual teacher autonomy" (Hale, 2008, p. 146). In a small school "with only one section of a course or subject, the individual map becomes the consensus map" (Jacobs & Johnson, 2009, p. 65). These maps showcase what takes place in an individual classroom, ideally providing evidence of the students' learning with that teacher. For example, in a Unit applying ELA Standard RL11-12.5, students are expected to learn to "[a]nalyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact." While a teacher may choose to teach this standard using The Crucible by Arthur Miller, theoretically, another teacher may use a series of short stories, or perhaps even a novel. While the standard is the same and would be represented on the consensus map (as would the common assessments), the individual map would show the different content being employed in the classroom, along with the activities and skill work that might be specific to the piece of literature under study. Jacobs & Johnson (2009) suggest that "[i]deally, a school or district is able to focus on individual maps first, and then map the taught curriculum", though they do acknowledge that some schools do the reverse, often under external influences that can rush the process (p. 67). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5311894 | 1,536,800 |
1,668,892 | Typhus is a group of infectious bacterial diseases often spread through lice, fleas, and mites. Typhus fever, spread by the body louse, had ravaged both the military and civilian populations of Eastern Europe throughout WWI and continued to plague the European populace. While no typhus vaccine was available at the beginning of WWII, there had been promising research by the United States Public Health Service and the Harvard School of Public Health. At Connaught Laboratories, James Craigie launched a federally supported research program in July 1940 seeking to build on these findings. Their efforts culminated in a much richer bacterial culture and an improved ether-based purification method which lay the foundations for a large-scale vaccine production program in August 1942, overseen by Drs. Laurella McClelland and Raymond Parker. The operation proved successful, and the vaccine was soon made available to Canadian as well as British and American troops. At peak, one million doses were produced each month at Connaught. Craigie received the United States of America Typhus Commission Medal after the war for his pioneering work. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=61019378 | 1,667,952 |
1,813,879 | The Center for Multidisciplinary Research in Transportation (TechMRT) was established in 1997 to serve as a focal point between Texas Tech and the various transportation research funding organizations and programs. In the area of pavement engineering and construction, the center has conducted research on constructability and material selection for surface treatments, asphalt binder quality assurance and best practices for pavement edge maintenance and repair. TechMRT's research in environmental and right-of-way issues has included projects on developing an integrated roadside management system for TxDOT and addressing fire ant dispersal along Texas highways. In the field of geotechnical engineering, the center also conducts research in the area of expansive solids, pavements and foundations, as well as in the areas of design, construction, and performance of geotechnical systems including earth retention systems, bridge foundations and bridge approaches. TechMRT also conducts research in the area of transportation structures including projects in innovative design and construction methods for off-system bridges, controlling vibration in cable-stayed bridges, rapid bridge replacement and live load testing of a sandwich plate system. The traffic engineering branch of TechMRT was created in 2004 and has conducted research in ways to make highways and intersections safer from aggressive drivers, as well as methods to make roadways safer during weather events. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10673182 | 1,812,845 |
663,863 | The methodology and strong language of the review were questioned. The keywords used for a database search of the scientific literature were [insect*] and [declin*] + [survey], which mostly returned studies finding declines, not increases. Sánchez-Bayo responded that two thirds of the reviewed studies had come from outside the database search. David Wagner wrote that many studies have shown "no significant changes in insect numbers or endangerment", despite a reporting bias against "non-significant findings". According to Wagner, the papers' greatest mistake was to equate "40% "geographic or population declines" from small countries with high human densities and about half or more of their land in agriculture to 'the extinction of 40% of the world's insect species over the next few decades'." He wrote that 40 percent extinction would amount to the loss of around 2.8 million species, while fewer than 100 insect species are known to have become extinct. While it is true that insects are declining, he wrote, the review did not provide evidence to support its conclusion. Other criticism included that the authors attributed the decline to particular threats based on the studies they reviewed, even when those studies had simply suggested threats rather than clearly identifying them. The British ecologist Georgina Mace agreed that the review lacked detailed information needed to assess the situation, but said it might underestimate the rate of insect decline in the tropics. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=59924918 | 663,517 |
863,326 | In 1798, he entered the École Polytechnique in Paris as first in his year, and immediately began to attract the notice of the professors of the school, who left him free to make his own decisions as to what he would study. In his final year of study, less than two years after his entry, he published two memoirs, one on Étienne Bézout's method of elimination, the other on the number of integrals of a finite difference equation and this was so impressive that he was allowed to graduate in 1800 without taking the final examination. The latter of the memoirs was examined by Sylvestre-François Lacroix and Adrien-Marie Legendre, who recommended that it should be published in the "Recueil des savants étrangers," an unprecedented honor for a youth of eighteen. This success at once procured entry for Poisson into scientific circles. Joseph Louis Lagrange, whose lectures on the theory of functions he attended at the École Polytechnique, recognized his talent early on, and became his friend. Meanwhile, Pierre-Simon Laplace, in whose footsteps Poisson followed, regarded him almost as his son. The rest of his career, until his death in Sceaux near Paris, was occupied by the composition and publication of his many works and in fulfilling the duties of the numerous educational positions to which he was successively appointed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=44670 | 862,866 |
1,130,706 | Hypovirulent phenotypes do not appear to correlate with specific genome features and it seems there is not one particular metabolic pathway causing hypovirulence but several. In addition to negative effects, beneficial interactions do also occur. Well described examples are the killer phenotypes in yeasts and "Ustilago". Killer isolates secrete proteins that are toxic to sensitive cells of the same or closely related species while the producing cells themselves are immune. Most of these toxins degrade the cell membrane. There are potentially interesting applications of killer isolates in medicine, food industry, and agriculture. A three-part system involving a mycovirus of an endophytic fungus ("Curvularia protuberata") of the grass "Dichanthelium lanuginosum" has been described, which provides a thermal tolerance to the plant, enabling it to inhabit adverse environmental niches. In medically important fungi, an uncharacterized A78 virus of "A. fumigatus" causes mild hypervirulent effect on pathogenicity when tested on "Galleria mellonella" (Greater wax moth). Furthermore, TmPV1, a dsRNA partitivirus, of "Talaromyces marneffei" (formerly "Penicillium marneffei)" was found to cause hypervirulence phenotype on "T. marneffei" when tested on a mouse model. These could imply mycoviruses may play important roles in the pathogensis of human pathogenic fungi. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8952788 | 1,130,117 |
236,366 | The university grew rapidly in the early 20th century but was involved in an academic freedom controversy in 1915 when Joseph T. Kingsbury recommended that five faculty members be dismissed after a graduation speaker made a speech critical of Utah governor William Spry. One third of the faculty resigned in protest of these dismissals. Some felt that the dismissals were a result of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' influence on the university, while others felt that they reflected a more general pattern of repressing religious and political expression that might be deemed offensive. The controversy was largely resolved when Kingsbury resigned in 1916, but university operations were again interrupted by World War I, and later The Great Depression and World War II. Student enrollment dropped to a low of 3,418 during the last year of World War II, but A. Ray Olpin made substantial additions to campus following the war, and enrollment reached 12,000 by the time he retired in 1964. Growth continued in the following decades as the university developed into a research center for fields such as computer science and medicine. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=32097 | 236,247 |
1,913,789 | After initial transmission, "P. salmonis" is capable of infecting macrophages without inducing apoptosis, which allows it to spread throughout a host’s body while evading the host’s natural immune response. "P. salmonis" infections appear to be systematic. White or yellow lesions or ulcers, ranging from 1mm to 2cm in diameter, are often present in the liver, kidneys, spleen, intestine, and skeletal muscle. Pathological changes have been reported in organs as diverse as the brain, heart, ovaries, and gills. Necrosis in the kidneys causes anemia. Although many fish do not display outward signs of illness even when the disease has progressed to the point of mortality, several indications of infection may be noted. These include external symptoms such as lesions, ulcers, and darkening of the skin; abdominal swelling; and pale gills as a result of anemia. Behavioral symptoms such as lethargy, loss of appetite, respiratory distress, and surface swimming have also been observed. The bacterial load in the brain of infected fish can be up to 100 times higher than the bacterial loads in the liver and kidneys, which may explain certain behavioral changes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40421553 | 1,912,690 |
826,217 | Rights to other standards go for staff, or students, universities are subject to both judicial review and rights in contract law because they are seen as having both an equally "public" and "private" nature. In a leading case of "Clark v University of Lincolnshire and Humberside" a student claimed that she should not have received a third class degree after her computer crashed, she lost an assignment, and was forced to rush a new one. The Court of Appeal held that her application for both breach of contract and judicial review should not be struck out because there could be a good case to hear, so long as it did seek to overturn "issues of academic or pastoral judgment" where "any judgment of the courts would be jejune and inappropriate". However, the shorter time limit of three months in judicial review was more appropriate than six years in contract. Cases which have sought to challenge academic judgment for failing students are typically bound to fail, as grading with a fair process is in the bounds of academic judgment. In "Buckland v Bournemouth University", where the university management interfered with academic assessment of student grades, this founded a right for a professor to claim he was constructively and unfairly dismissed. All access to education must be free from unlawful discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. In the Higher Education Act 2004 sections 11-21 provides for a modern complaints procedure to be followed in universities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=81513 | 825,773 |
1,219,038 | In eukaryotic cells, especially in mammalian cells, thiolases exhibit diversity in intracellular localization related to their metabolic functions as well as in substrate specificity. For example, they contribute to fatty-acid β-oxidation in peroxisomes and mitochondria, ketone body metabolism in mitochondria, and the early steps of mevalonate pathway in peroxisomes and cytoplasm. In addition to biochemical investigations, analyses of genetic disorders have made clear the basis of their functions. Genetic studies have also started to disclose the physiological functions of thiolases in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Thiolase is of central importance in key enzymatic pathways such as fatty-acid, steroid and polyketide synthesis. The detailed understanding of its structural biology is of great medical relevance, for example, for a better understanding of the diseases caused by genetic deficiencies of these enzymes and for the development of new antibiotics. Harnessing the complicated catalytic versatility of the polyketide synthases for the synthesis of biologically and medically relevant natural products is also an important future perspective of the studies of the enzymes of this superfamily. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10940038 | 1,218,384 |
1,459,822 | According to 2013 autosomal IBD survey "of recent genealogical ancestry over the past 3,000 years at a continental scale", the speakers of Bosnian language share a very high number of common ancestors dated to the migration period approximately 1,500 years ago with Poland and Romania-Bulgaria cluster among others in Eastern Europe. It is concluded to be caused by the Hunnic and Slavic expansion, which was a "relatively small population that expanded over a large geographic area", particularly "the expansion of the Slavic populations into regions of low population density beginning in the sixth century" and that it is "highly coincident with the modern distribution of Slavic languages". The 2015 IBD analysis found that the South Slavs have lower proximity to Greeks than with East Slavs and West Slavs, and "even patterns of IBD sharing among East-West Slavs–'inter-Slavic' populations (Hungarians, Romanians and Gagauz)–and South Slavs, i.e. across an area of assumed historic movements of people including Slavs". The slight peak of shared IBD segments between South and East-West Slavs suggests a shared "Slavonic-time ancestry". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=55610868 | 1,459,001 |
2,040,292 | The men's and women's pole vault competition were the only events on the opening day. They were conducted simultaneously with two parallel runways down the center of the arena. The women's entrants included eight of the top 20 vaulters in history, most of them peaking in the weeks before the competition. One day after her 35th birthday, Fabiana Murer improved upon the listed Masters W35 world record by clearing 4.60. At 4.70, Eliza McCartney set her indoor New Zealand National Record, but barely a footnote considering she had cleared 4.80 at her outdoor national championships just 12 days earlier. She passed her next jump to that same 4.80 mark. At 4.75, the world record holder (improved earlier this season) Jenn Suhr took only her second attempt of the competition to tie for the lead with Ekaterini Stefanidi, who had jumped clean at 5 heights. Nicole Büchler missed twice at 4.75 and put all her marbles on a final attempt at a personal best 4.80. She made it, setting the Swiss National Record. Sandi Morris also made it on her first attempt and Stefanidi kept her perfect streak going. At 4.85, Stefanidi and Büchler failed while both Americans Morris and Suhr were successful. Having nothing to gain at 4.85 Stefanidi and Büchler took their remaining attempts at 4.90. After everyone else failed at 4.90, Suhr cleared it on only her fourth attempt of the competition which ultimately gave her the gold. With silver confirmed, Morris took her last attempt at 4.95 but after it failed, Suhr packed up her poles. Stefanidi's perfect round until 4.80 gave her the bronze. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=49813023 | 2,039,113 |
886,959 | The technical work, the development of Recommendations, of ITU-T is managed by Study Groups (SGs), such as Study Group 13 for network standards, Study Group 16 for multimedia standards, and Study Group 17 for security standards, which are created by the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA) which is held every four years. As part of the deliberations, WTSA has instructed ITU to hold the Global Standards Symposium, which unlike WTSA is open to public for participation. The people involved in these SGs are experts in telecommunications from all over the world. There are currently 11 SGs. Study groups meet face to face (or virtually under exceptional circumstances) according to a calendar issued by the TSB. SGs are augmented by Focus Groups (FGs), an instrument created by ITU-T, providing a way to quickly react to ICT standardization needs and allowing great flexibility in terms of participation and working methods. The key difference between SGs and FGs is that the latter have greater freedom to organize and finance themselves, and to involve non-members in their work, but they do not have the authority to approve Recommendations. Focus Groups can be created very quickly, are usually short-lived and can choose their own working methods, leadership, financing, and types of deliverables. Current Focus Groups include the ITU-WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health (FG-AI4H) as well as Machine Learning for 5G (which developed Y.3172), Quantum Information Technologies for Networks, and Artificial Intelligence for Assisted and Autonomous Driving. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14744 | 886,495 |
2,065,074 | Exploratory processes are selective processes that operate within individual organisms during their lifetimes. In many animals, the vascular, immune and nervous systems develop by producing a variety of forms, and the most functional solutions are selected for and retained, while others are lost. For example, the ‘shape’ of the circulatory system is constructed according to the oxygen and nutrient needs of tissues, rather than being genetically predetermined. Likewise, the nervous system develops through axonal exploration. Initially muscle fibers are connected to multiple neurons but synaptic competition selects certain connections over others to define the mature pattern of muscle innervation. The shape of a cell is determined by the structure of its cytoskeleton. A major element of the cytoskeleton are microtubules, which can grow in random directions from their origin. Microtubule-associated proteins can aid or inhibit microtubule growth, guide microtubules to specific cellular locations and mediate interactions with other proteins. Therefore, microtubules can be stabilized in new configurations that give rise to new cell shapes (and potentially new behaviors or functions) without changes to the microtubule system itself. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=56284235 | 2,063,883 |
1,554,940 | This intensive immersion program is designed to provide a competitive advantage to gifted and talented undergraduate and graduate students who plan to enter a higher education institution where the language of instruction is English. Many international students have difficulty with English, particularly as it relates to their chosen field of study. And even when they have sufficiently mastered the language, there are still social and cultural differences to deal with. The course of study begins by focusing on both enunciation and pronunciation, followed by public speaking training using specially structured interactive exercises. There are daily short writing assignments which receive both peer and faculty feedback. Each group of about ten students regularly works with a mentor to ensure that only English is being used. Primary instruction is provided by faculty with experience and expertise in ELT. Academic credits earned are eligible for transfer to any accredited US institution or to affiliated partners. Upon completion of the program, students will be well prepared to face the challenges of academic life in whichever university they choose. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9511959 | 1,554,057 |
1,350,151 | On 11 March 1888, Ferraris published his research in a paper to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Turin (two months later Nikola Tesla gained , application filed October 12, 1887. Serial Number 252,132). These alternators operated by creating systems of alternating currents displaced from one another in phase by definite amounts, and depended on rotating magnetic field for their operation. The resulting source of polyphase power soon found widespread acceptance. The invention of the polyphase alternator is key in the history of electrification, as is the power transformer. These inventions enabled power to be transmitted by wires economically over considerable distances. Polyphase power enabled the use of water-power (via hydroelectric generating plants in large dams) in remote places, thereby allowing the mechanical energy of the falling water to be converted to electricity, which then could be fed to an electric motor at any location where mechanical work needed to be done. This versatility sparked the growth of power-transmission network grids on continents around the globe. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1644203 | 1,349,405 |
934,042 | Early instances of forced perspective used in low-budget motion pictures showed objects that were clearly different from their surroundings: often blurred or at a different light level. The principal cause of this was geometric. Light from a point source travels in a spherical wave, decreasing in intensity (or "illuminance") as the inverse square of the distance travelled. This means that a light source must be four times as bright to produce the same illuminance at an object twice as far away. Thus to create the illusion of a distant object being at the same distance as a near object and scaled accordingly, much more light is required. When shooting with forced perspective, it's important to have the aperture stopped down sufficiently to achieve proper DOF (depth of field), so that the foreground object and background are both sharp. Since miniature models would need to be subjected to far greater lighting than the main focus of the camera, the area of action, it is important to ensure that these can withstand the significant amount of heat generated by the incandescent light sources typically used in film and TV production. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=184072 | 933,550 |
675,881 | The volumes of certain quadric surfaces of revolution were calculated by Archimedes. The development of calculus in the seventeenth century provided a more systematic way of computing them. Curvature of general surfaces was first studied by Euler. In 1760 he proved a formula for the curvature of a plane section of a surface and in 1771 he considered surfaces represented in a parametric form. Monge laid down the foundations of their theory in his classical memoir "L'application de l'analyse à la géometrie" which appeared in 1795. The defining contribution to the theory of surfaces was made by Gauss in two remarkable papers written in 1825 and 1827. This marked a new departure from tradition because for the first time Gauss considered the "intrinsic" geometry of a surface, the properties which are determined only by the geodesic distances between points on the surface independently of the particular way in which the surface is located in the ambient Euclidean space. The crowning result, the Theorema Egregium of Gauss, established that the Gaussian curvature is an intrinsic invariant, i.e. invariant under local isometries. This point of view was extended to higher-dimensional spaces by Riemann and led to what is known today as Riemannian geometry. The nineteenth century was the golden age for the theory of surfaces, from both the topological and the differential-geometric point of view, with most leading geometers devoting themselves to their study. Darboux collected many results in his four-volume treatise "Théorie des surfaces" (1887–1896). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15513875 | 675,528 |
814,220 | Agricultural innovation is essential to addressing the potential issues of climate change. This includes better management of soil, water-saving technology, matching crops to environments, introducing different crop varieties, crop rotations, appropriate fertilization use, and supporting community-based adaptation strategies. On a government and global level, research and investments into agricultural productivity and infrastructure must be done to get a better picture of the issues involved and the best methods to address them. Government policies and programs must provide environmentally sensitive government subsidies, educational campaigns and economic incentives as well as funds, insurance and safety nets for vulnerable populations. In addition, providing early warning systems, and accurate weather forecasts to poor or remote areas will allow for better preparation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47512577 | 813,787 |
589,524 | During the Miocene, the atmosphere and climate were relatively stable. If anything, increased gradually from before settling down to concentrations similar to the Holocene. This suggests that it did not have a key role in invoking C evolution. Grasses themselves (the group which would give rise to the most occurrences of C) had probably been around for 60 million years or more, so had had plenty of time to evolve C, which, in any case, is present in a diverse range of groups and thus evolved independently. There is a strong signal of climate change in South Asia; increasing aridity – hence increasing fire frequency and intensity – may have led to an increase in the importance of grasslands. However, this is difficult to reconcile with the North American record. It is possible that the signal is entirely biological, forced by the fire- and grazer- driven acceleration of grass evolution – which, both by increasing weathering and incorporating more carbon into sediments, reduced atmospheric levels. Finally, there is evidence that the onset of C from is a biased signal, which only holds true for North America, from where most samples originate; emerging evidence suggests that grasslands evolved to a dominant state at least 15Ma earlier in South America. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=41468418 | 589,222 |
213,777 | During the Miocene, the atmosphere and climate were relatively stable. If anything, increased gradually from before settling down to concentrations similar to the Holocene. This suggests that it did not have a key role in invoking C evolution. Grasses themselves (the group which would give rise to the most occurrences of C) had probably been around for 60 million years or more, so had had plenty of time to evolve C, which, in any case, is present in a diverse range of groups and thus evolved independently. There is a strong signal of climate change in South Asia; increasing aridity – hence increasing fire frequency and intensity – may have led to an increase in the importance of grasslands. However, this is difficult to reconcile with the North American record. It is possible that the signal is entirely biological, forced by the fire- (and elephant?)- driven acceleration of grass evolution – which, both by increasing weathering and incorporating more carbon into sediments, reduced atmospheric levels. Finally, there is evidence that the onset of C from is a biased signal, which only holds true for North America, from where most samples originate; emerging evidence suggests that grasslands evolved to a dominant state at least 15Ma earlier in South America. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11008314 | 213,669 |
1,864,335 | In 2008 BMW revealed a concept car called "GINA" which featured a fabric body stretched over a movable aluminium wire and carbon fiber frame, capable of flexing in certain areas to reveal details like door openings, or modify aerodynamic properties of the car in real time. The 2016 incarnation of this concept car, the BMW "Vision Next 100", adopted similar capabilities with a more advanced flexible skin capable of expanding as the front wheels turn, reportedly reducing the drag coefficient of the car while cornering. Changes in product form can be used to improve product performance. While such a dynamic car body is yet to be seen on the mainstream market, elements of this transformation can be seen in modern Formula One racing cars. These vehicles have movable rear wing flaps to modify drag for overtaking in certain sections of a race (known as the Drag Reduction System or DRS). Consumer-level cars, like the Audi TT, are also capable of automatically increasing the rear spoiler angle at high speeds to increase traction and safety. This suggests these life-like movements are slowly finding their way into the mainstream. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=59386014 | 1,863,263 |
1,750,907 | Most ASR studies are conducted "in vitro", and have revealed ancestral protein properties that seem to be evolutionarily desirable traits – such as increased thermostability, catalytic activity and catalytic promiscuity. These data have been accredited to artifacts of the ASR algorithms, as well as indicative illustrations of ancient Earth's environment – often, ASR research must be complemented with extensive controls (usually alternate ASR experiments) to mitigate algorithmic error. Not all studied ASR proteins exhibit this so-called 'ancestral superiority'. The nascent field of 'evolutionary biochemistry' has been bolstered by the recent increase in ASR studies using the ancestors as ways to probe organismal fitness within certain cellular contexts – effectively testing ancestral proteins "in vivo". Due to inherent limitations in these sorts of studies – primarily being the lack of suitably ancient genomes to fit these ancestors in to, the small repertoire of well categorised laboratory model systems, and the inability to mimic ancient cellular environments; very few ASR studies "in vivo" have been conducted. Despite the above mentioned obstacles, preliminary insights into this avenue of research from a 2015 paper, have revealed that observed 'ancestral superiority' "in vitro" were not recapitulated "in vivo" of a given protein. ASR presents one of a few mechanisms to study biochemistry of the Precambrian era of life (>541Ma) and is hence often used in 'paleogenetics'; indeed Zuckerandl and Pauling originally intended ASR to be the starting point of a field they termed 'Paleobiochemistry'. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=39867144 | 1,749,921 |
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