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293,968 | In 2012, a McClatchy investigation found that the NRO was possibly breaching ethical and legal boundaries by encouraging its polygraph examiners to extract personal and private information from DoD personnel during polygraph tests that were limited to counterintelligence issues. Allegations of abusive polygraph practices were brought forward by former NRO polygraph examiners. In 2014, an inspector general's report concluded that NRO failed to report felony admissions of child sexual abuse to law enforcement authorities. NRO obtained these criminal admissions during polygraph testing but never forwarded the information to police. NRO's failure to act in the public interest by reporting child sexual predators was first made public in 2012 by former NRO polygraph examiners. On August 30, 2019, Donald Trump tweeted an image of “the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran”. The image almost certainly came from a satellite known as USA 224, according to Marco Langbroek, a satellite tracker based in the Netherlands. The satellite was launched by the National Reconnaissance Office in 2011. On January 31, 2020, Rocket Lab successfully launched a NROL-151 payload for the NRO. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=377048 | 293,809 |
888,367 | The American College of Prosthodontists (ACP) ensures standards are maintained in the field. Becoming a prosthodontist requires an additional three years of postgraduate specialty training after obtaining a dental degree. Recently, the ADA's Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA) passed the updated educational standards for all prosthodontics programs in the United States that now mandates surgical placement of dental implants (subcrestal prosthodontics) at an in-depth competency level (on par with other surgical dental specialties) Training consists of rigorous clinical and didactic preparation in the basic sciences, head and neck anatomy, biomedical sciences, biomaterial sciences, implant surgery, function of occlusion (bite), TMJ, and treatment planning and experience treating full-mouth reconstruction cases, and esthetics. Due to this extensive training, prosthodontists are required to treat complex cases, full-mouth rehabilitation, TMJ-related disorders, congenital disorders, and sleep apnea by planning and fabricating various prostheses. There are only 3,200 prosthodontists in comparison to 170,000 general dentists in the United States. Prosthodontists have been consistently ranked at 6th or 7th positions by Forbes among America's most competitive and highest salaried jobs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1356602 | 887,899 |
898,796 | Kuznets' views and scientific methodology were highly influenced by methodological settings received by him in Kharkiv and fully shared by Mitchell for the statistical, inductive construction of hypotheses in economics and its empirical testing. Kuznets treated a priori and speculative conceptions with deep skepticism. At the same time, Kuznets tended to analyze economy in connection with the wider context of historical situation, demographic, and social processes, a method that was peculiar to the Kharkiv academics at the beginning of the 20th century. Kuznets was influenced by the work of such leading theorists as Joseph A. Schumpeter (who probed the relationship between technological change and business cycles), A. C. Pigou (who identified circumstances under which markets failed to maximize economic welfare), and Vilfredo Pareto (who propounded a law governing the distribution of income among households). Kuznets was closely familiar with the economics of Russia and Ukraine of the early 20th century. In the 1920s, he reviewed and translated the papers of Kondratiev, Slutsky, Pervushin, Weinstein. who were then little known in the West. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=276820 | 898,321 |
1,382,607 | Phylactolaemate colonies reproduce sexually, and each member is a simultaneous hermaphrodite that functions as both male and female. They also reproduce asexually by a method that is unique among bryozoans and enables a colony's lineage to survive the variable and uncertain conditions of freshwater environments. Among the classes of the bryozoans, the phylactoaemata have the most aberrant spermatozoon. Throughout summer and autumn they produce disc-shaped statoblasts, masses of cells that function as "survival pods" rather like the gemmules of sponges. Statoblasts form on the funiculus (cord) connected to the parent's gut, which nourishes them. As they grow, statoblasts develop protective bivalve-like shells made of chitin. When they mature, some types stick to the parent colony, some fall to the bottom, some contain air spaces that enable them to float, and some remain in the parent's cystid (outer casing) to re-build the colony if it dies. Statoblasts can remain dormant for considerable periods, and while dormant can survive harsh conditions such as freezing and desiccation. They can be transported across long distances by animals, floating vegetation, currents and winds. When conditions improve, the valves of the shell separate and the cells inside develop into a zooid that tries to form a new colony. A study estimated that one group of colonies in a patch produced 800,000 statoblasts. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22865328 | 1,381,842 |
863,549 | The Praxe is a body of ritual and custom founded upon ancient traditions and it is a controversial part of Coimbra's academic life to which no university student is indifferent. Part of the attraction of Coimbra's academic life, aside from its recognized excellence is that it is more "Praxe", having unique rituals that set it apart from other institutions and give its students a special sense of participation in academic rituals that developed hundreds of years ago. Though these rituals are seen as crude and violent by some, they remain an important reference in the academic experience of the students for others. The rules of the "Praxe" are contained in a book (The Code of Academic Praxe, by a committee of older students of the AAC – Associação Académica de Coimbra), which prescribes appropriate student behavior for activities like drafting, evaluation, groups or bands and the Burning of the Ribbons rituals. Even inside the AAC, Coimbra's student organisation, there are "anti-Praxe" groups and people who advocate for more thorough reforms in traditional rituals. The Freshman (1st yr.) period (the lowest category in the "Praxe" hierarchy) is, for many students, a time of good and lasting memories of never to be repeated events. One of the most visible and distinctive traditions is the use of the academic costume of the University of Coimbra, a black suit and cape worn on special occasions by the students, which was adopted by other Portuguese universities and is actually used by students of almost all higher education institutions in the city and across the country. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=715164 | 863,089 |
1,965,108 | Patz and his research team focus on the cusp of climate change and health. Patz served as Principal Investigator for an EPA STAR grant in 1996 entitled, “Integrated Assessment of the Public Health Effects of Climate Change for the US and US territories”, one of the first federal grants awarded on this subject. This project led to over 20 peer-reviewed research papers. Scientific discoveries under his team leadership on this and subsequent projects include: the impact of climate change on increased risk for asthma; the relationship between heat wave mortality and latitude, and identifying populations most vulnerable to heat-related morbidity; the association of Hantavirus outbreaks with El Niño in the Southwestern US; the relationship between waterborne disease outbreaks across the US and heavy rainfall events; the link between South American cholera outbreaks and childhood diarrheal diseases to El Niño; altered mosquito-borne malaria and dengue fever risks from projected climate change; and increased malaria risk from combined land use and local climatic change in the Amazon Basin. His team’s recent research has targeted and substantially contributed to a new area of climate change and health assessment: health “co-benefits” of greenhouse gas mitigation policies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50954852 | 1,963,979 |
545,834 | Fleming enrolled for a BSc degree at University College London, graduated in 1870, and studied under the mathematician Augustus de Morgan and the physicist George Carey Foster. He became a student of chemistry at the Royal College of Science in South Kensington in London (now Imperial College). There he first studied Alessandro Volta's battery, which became the subject of his first scientific paper. This was the first paper to be read to the new Physical Society of London (now the Institute of Physics) and appears on page one of volume one of their Proceedings. Financial problems again forced him to work for a living and in the summer of 1874 he became science master at Cheltenham College, a public school, earning £400 per year. (He later also taught at Rossall School.) His own scientific research continued and he corresponded with James Clerk Maxwell at Cambridge University. After saving £400, and securing a grant of £50 a year, in October 1877 at the age of 27, he once again enrolled as a student, this time at Cambridge. He was among the "two or perhaps three University students who attended Maxwell's last Course". Maxwell's lectures, he admitted, were difficult to follow. Maxwell, he said, often appeared obscure and had "a paradoxical and allusive way of speaking". On occasions Fleming was the only student at those lectures. Fleming again graduated, this time with a First Class Honours degree in chemistry and physics. He then obtained a DSc from London and served one year at Cambridge University as a demonstrator of mechanical engineering before being appointed as the first Professor of Physics and Mathematics at University College Nottingham, but he left after less than a year. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16291 | 545,548 |
29,540 | Due to the proliferation in alchemical literature of pseudepigrapha and anonymous works, it is difficult to know which of the alchemists were actually women. As the sixteenth century went on, scientific culture flourished and people began collecting "secrets". During this period "secrets" referred to experiments, and the most coveted ones were not those which were bizarre, but the ones which had been proven to yield the desired outcome. Some women known for their interest in alchemy were Catherine de' Medici, the Queen of France, and Marie de' Medici, the following Queen of France, who carried out experiments in her personal laboratory. Also, Isabella d'Este, the Marchioness of Mantua, made perfumes herself to serve as gifts. In this period, the only book of secrets ascribed to a woman was ('The Secrets of Signora Isabella Cortese'). This book contained information on how to turn base metals into gold, medicine, and cosmetics. However, it is rumored that a man, Girolamo Ruscelli, was the real author and only used a female voice to attract female readers. This contributed to a bigger problem in which male authors would credit prominent noblewomen for beauty products with the purpose of appealing to a female audience. For example, in ("Gallant Recipe-Book"), the distillation of lemons and roses was attributed to Elisabetta Gonzaga, the duchess of Urbino. In the same book, Isabella d'Aragona, the daughter of Alfonso II of Naples, is accredited for recipes involving alum and mercury. Ippolita Maria Sforza is even referred to in an anonymous manuscript about a hand lotion created with rose powder and crushed bones. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=573 | 29,530 |
1,374,225 | All the applications cited above have employed technology in which the basic physical understanding and performance of the thermionic converter were essentially the same as those achieved before 1970. During the period from 1973 to 1983, however, significant research on advanced low-temperature thermionic converter technology for fossil-fueled industrial and commercial electric power production was conducted in the US, and continued until 1995 for possible space reactor and naval reactor applications. That research has shown that substantial improvements in converter performance can be obtained now at lower operating temperatures by addition of oxygen to the caesium vapor, by suppression of electron reflection at the electrode surfaces, and by hybrid mode operation. Similarly, improvements via use of oxygen-containing electrodes have been demonstrated in Russia along with design studies of systems employing the advanced thermionic converter performance. Recent studies have shown that excited Cs-atoms in thermionic converters form clusters of Cs-Rydberg matter which yield a decrease of collector emitting work function from 1.5 eV to 1.0 – 0.7 eV. Due to long-lived nature of Rydberg matter this low work function remains low for a long time which essentially increases the low-temperature converter’s efficiency. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1252913 | 1,373,467 |
255,685 | Notable Filipino scientists have been contributors in the field of social science in the country. Raul V. Fabella was an academic, economist and scientist that graduated in Seminario Mayor-Recoletos (Bachelor of Philosophy; 1970); the University of the Philippines School of Economics (Master of Arts; 1975); and Yale University (Doctor of Philosophy; 1982). He had written articles in both theoretical and applied fields: political economy and rent-seeking; the theory of teams; regulation; international economics; and mathematical economics and was associated with the concepts of "Olson ratio", in rent-seeking, egalitarian Nash bargaining solutions and debt-adjusted real effective exchange rate. Teodoro Agoncillo, a 20th-century Filipino historian, and received the national scientist award for his contributions in the field of history. He graduated from the University of the Philippines (Bachelor of Philosophy; 1934) and finished his Master of Arts degree in the same university in 1935. He also wrote books regarding the Philippine History like "History of the Filipino People". Encarnación Alzona, a pioneering Filipino historian, educator and suffragist, became the first Filipina to obtain a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.). She got her degree in history and a master's degree from the University of the Philippines and later, in 1920, obtained another master's degree in history from Radcliffe College, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1923. She was an advocate of women suffrage in the Philippines and authored the book "The Filipino Woman: Her Social, Economic and Political Status (1565-1933)". that stated a stable account for women despite their lack in political and social rights. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9629399 | 255,551 |
303,803 | Eventually new SEAD-dedicated aircraft were introduced, the Air Force's EF-105F/F-105G Thunderchief and Navy's A-6B Intruder, which mounted more sophisticated detection equipment and carried the AGM-45 Shrike and AGM-78 Standard anti-radiation missiles (ARMs). These fighter-bombers became very adept at tracking down and destroying ground-based air defense weapons, such that it became common for a vast majority of NVA SAM operators to turn off their radars whenever an F-105G was spotted. While this prevented the SAM from physically being destroyed, it essentially accomplished the same mission of suppressing air defenses around the target. Electronic warfare aircraft were also used to suppress air defenses by jamming NVA radars, with first the EB-66 Destroyer joined later by the EA-6B Prowler. By the end of Rolling Thunder these changes had caused a significant degradation in the effectiveness of SAMs: only one SA-2 missile out of every forty-eight fired resulted in a hit. In spite of these changes, SEAD remained a primarily tactical function throughout Rolling Thunder, with American leadership either unaware or unappreciative of North Vietnam's IADS. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=573491 | 303,641 |
515,785 | The most pressing threat for many species, particularly the smaller ones, comes from species introduced to their colonies. Procellariids overwhelmingly breed on islands away from land predators such as mammals, and for the most part have lost the defensive adaptations needed to deal with them (with the exception of the oil-spitting fulmarine petrels). The introduction of mammal predators such as feral cats, rats, mongooses and mice can have disastrous results for ecologically naïve seabirds. These predators can either directly attack and kill breeding adults, or, more commonly, attack eggs and chicks. Burrowing species that leave their young unattended at a very early stage are particularly vulnerable to attack. Studies on grey-faced petrels breeding on New Zealand's Whale Island (Moutohora) have shown that a population under heavy pressure from Norway rats will produce virtually no young during a breeding season, whereas if the rats are controlled (through the use of poison), breeding success is much higher. That study highlighted the role that non-predatory introduced species can play in harming seabirds; introduced rabbits on the island caused little damage to the petrels, other than damaging their burrows, but they acted as a food source for the rats during the non-breeding season, which allowed rat numbers to be higher than they otherwise would be, resulting in more predators for the petrels to contend with. Interactions with introduced species can be quite complex. Gould's petrels breed only on two islands, Cabbage Tree Island and Boondelbah Island off Port Stephens (New South Wales). Introduced rabbits destroyed the forest understory on Cabbage Tree Island; this both increased the vulnerability of the petrels to natural predators and left them vulnerable to the sticky fruits of the birdlime tree ("Pisonia umbellifera"), a native plant. In the natural state these fruits lodge in the understory of the forest, but with the understory removed the fruits fall to the ground where the petrels move about, sticking to their feathers and making flight impossible. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=224443 | 515,516 |
1,770,851 | During Lutkin's 33-year tenure, a new music building opened, the "Beehive" practice facility was constructed, and the first honorary doctor of music degree was awarded in 1915 to Frederick Stock, conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Lutkin was succeeded in 1928 by Carl Beecher, who had earned the school's first bachelor's degree. Music education professor John W. Beattie was appointed the school's third dean in 1936. During his administration the graduate program was expanded and Lutkin Hall constructed in 1941. George Howerton, assumed the deanship in 1951. Under his leadership the school established an opera program, began a series of guest artist master classes, and increased the music library's holdings. He was succeeded in 1971 by Thomas Miller, whose tenure brought sweeping revisions to the undergraduate curriculum as well as the opening of Pick-Staiger Concert Hall in 1975 and Regenstein Hall of Music in 1977. Bernard J. Dobroski became the school's sixth dean in 1990. His term featured an emphasis on faculty and student recruitment, expansion of course offerings for nonmajors, and community engagement programs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4174423 | 1,769,854 |
1,672,157 | In March 1878, Wilhelm Hack of Freiburg published a paper describing the use of non-surgical orotracheal intubation in the removal of vocal cord polyps. In November of that year, he published another study, this time on the use of orotracheal intubation to secure the airway of a patient with acute glottic edema, progressively introducing sizes 3 through 11 of "Schrotter's graduated triangular vulcanite bougies" into the larynx. In 1880, the Scottish surgeon William Macewen (1848–1924) reported on his use of orotracheal intubation as an alternative to tracheotomy to allow a patient with glottic edema to breathe, as well as in the setting of general anesthesia with chloroform. All previous observations of the glottis and larynx (including those of García, Hack and Macewen) had been performed under indirect vision (using mirrors) until 23 April 1895, when Alfred Kirstein (1863–1922) of Germany first described direct visualization of the vocal cords. Kirstein performed the first direct laryngoscopy in Berlin, using an esophagoscope he had modified for this purpose; he called this device an "autoscope". The death in 1888 of Emperor Frederick III may have motivated Kirstein to develop the autoscope. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28862297 | 1,671,215 |
261,330 | The cell cycle is a sequence of activities in which cell organelles are duplicated and subsequently separated into daughter cells with precision. There are major events that happen during a cell cycle. The processes that happen in the cell cycle include cell development, replication and segregation of chromosomes. The cell cycle checkpoints are surveillance systems that keep track of the cell cycle's integrity, accuracy, and chronology. Each checkpoint serves as an alternative cell cycle endpoint, wherein the cell's parameters are examined and only when desirable characteristics are fulfilled does the cell cycle advance through the distinct steps.The cell cycle's goal is to precisely copy each organism's DNA and afterwards equally split the cell and its components between the two new cells. Four main stages occur in the eukaryotes. In G1, the cell is usually active and continues to grow rapidly, while in G2, the cell growth continues while protein molecules become ready for separation. These are not dormant times; they are when cells gain mass, integrate growth factor receptors, establish a replicated genome, and prepare for chromosome segregation. DNA replication is restricted to a separate Synthesis in eukaryotes, which is also known as the S-phase. During mitosis, which is also known as the M-phase, the segregation of the chromosomes occur. DNA, like every other molecule, is capable of undergoing a wide range of chemical reactions. Modifications in DNA's sequence, on the other hand, have a considerably bigger impact than modifications in other cellular constituents like RNAs or proteins because DNA acts as a permanent copy of the cell genome. When erroneous nucleotides are incorporated during DNA replication, mutations can occur. The majority of DNA damage is fixed by removing the defective bases and then re-synthesizing the excised area. On the other hand, some DNA lesions can be mended by reversing the damage, which may be a more effective method of coping with common types of DNA damage. Only a few forms of DNA damage are mended in this fashion, including pyrimidine dimers caused by ultraviolet (UV) light changed by the insertion of methyl or ethyl groups at the purine ring's O6 position. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6339 | 261,193 |
324,538 | Literature published in 2004 suggests that, along with previously established pollution mitigation, a more circular supply chain would help mitigate some of the pollution at the extraction point. This means recycling and reusing REEs that are already in use or reaching the end of their life cycle. A study published in 2014 suggests a method to recycle REEs from waste nickel-metal hydride batteries, demonstrating a recovery rate of 95.16%. Rare-earth elements could also be recovered from industrial wastes with practical potential to reduce environmental and health impacts from mining, waste-generation and imports if known and experimental processes are scaled up. A study suggests that "fulfillment of the circular economy approach could reduce up to 200 times the impact in the climate change category and up to 70 times the cost due to the REE mining." In most of the reported studies reviewed by a scientific review, "secondary waste is subjected to chemical and or bioleaching followed by solvent extraction processes for clean separation of REEs." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=145440 | 324,365 |
1,672,802 | In 2007, chromosome 1p13.3 was identified as a promising locus through a genome-wide approach in patients with coronary artery disease. Subsequently, accumulating evidence suggests that the "SORT1" gene at the 1p13 locus is an important risk factor for coronary artery disease, which is attributed to lipid metabolism disorders. Several single nucleotide polymorphisms of the SORT1 gene have a genetic association between serum blood lipid levels and the pathogenesis of cardiometabolic syndrome, including obesity, hypertension, and coronary artery disease. As the role of sortilin in lipid metabolism and the development of atherosclerosis has been established, a recent study further reported that increased release of soluble sortilin from platelets, measured as circulating sortilin, may be associated with in vivo platelet activation. This observation also indicates that sortilin has a potential application as a clinical biomarker for diagnosis and prognosis. Additionally, a multi-locus genetic risk score study, based on a combination of 27 loci including the "SORT1" gene, identified individuals at increased risk for both incident and recurrent coronary artery disease events, as well as an enhanced clinical benefit from statin therapy. The study was based on a community cohort study (the Malmo Diet and Cancer study) and four additional randomized controlled trials of primary prevention cohorts (JUPITER and ASCOT) and secondary prevention cohorts (CARE and PROVE IT-TIMI 22). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14343235 | 1,671,860 |
1,635,963 | Mary Agnes Chase (1869–1963) was an American botanist who specialized in agrostology, the study of grasses. Although lacking formal education past elementary school, Chase was able to rise through the ranks as a botanist at the United States Department of Agriculture, beginning as an illustrator under the tutelage of Albert Spear Hitchcock and eventually becoming a senior botanist, overseeing the USDA's Systematic Agrostology department. Chase conducted fieldwork abroad in Europe and South America and published several books, including the "First Book of Grasses: The Structure of Grasses Explained for Beginners", which was later translated into Spanish and Portuguese. Additionally, Chase was recognized for her work as an agrostologist with numerous awards, including a Certificate of Merit issued by the Botanical Society of America in 1956. Chase was also an active suffragist and took part in demonstrations organized by the Silent Sentinels, a group established by members of the National Woman's Party. Although Chase's participation in this movement was not always well received by her peers in the scientific community, she nevertheless remained committed to the cause of women's suffrage. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31328401 | 1,635,038 |
1,397,479 | Italy has administered a comprehensive range of feed-in tariffs and incentives for renewable energy producers. The rationale for a feed-in tariff (FIT) in the power sector is that incentives spur the development of production capacity, technology and economies of scale in emerging renewable energy sources. As a technology develops its costs should fall as it becomes more competitive with other energy sources. Thus it should be possible to reduce the incentive support as the costs of installation fall. If support is withdrawn too quickly the new technology may not have a chance to establish itself as a viable option or if support is withdrawn too slowly costs may rise. Eventually the new energy sources may reach grid parity in which case they should be competitive options without any further support, or in the best case scenario a highly cost effective, secure and environmentally friendly option. The outcome of the final renewable energy mix in Italy has been influenced by the administration and design of the incentive schemes. In designing feed-in tariff and incentive schemes a wide range of factors and objectives are taken into account. Schemes can be designed to be limited by total cost or capacity installation quotas for each type of energy source. The level of incentive is specified and incentives may be changed at intervals in response to changes in market conditions and changing technology costs. A higher incentive will yield a quicker pace of installation but be more costly. The real value of the incentive may change as the costs of installing new capacity rises or falls. Different types of renewable energy sources may receive greater or fewer incentives depending on the desired energy mix outcome. Incentives may be different for smaller or larger producers and for urban and countryside locations, for newer or more developed types of renewable energy. In Italy the main incentive schemes are as follows: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=32847002 | 1,396,706 |
909,887 | The goal of the merger was for the government to ultimately spend less money maintaining a new building than an old one. It was estimated that the new facility would cost about $172 million less to manage each year. The original 2005 estimate of the cost of shutting down WRAMC, and shifting it across town to Bethesda, and other locations, was "just under $900 million" according to Brian Lepore of the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The "payback period"—i.e., the point after which the full amount of the investment will have been recouped and at which savings actually commence—was to have started in 2011. But the relocation cost unexpectedly rose by 245% between the original 2005 projection and the 2011 opening. Instead of under $900 million, it turned out to be about triple that at $2.7 billion. Thus the payback period is expected to begin about seven years late, around 2018. One reason costs skyrocketed was that construction costs went up, partly due to a huge amount of building materials being sent to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. According to Todd Harrison, a defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, in 2005, "when they made their initial estimates of what it would cost … they did their best estimate. … A lot of things have changed since then. Construction costs have gone up." The GAO agrees that the WRNMMC project tripled in price mostly because of a rise in construction costs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8167907 | 909,408 |
1,506,994 | In 1977 Casey attacked the Race Relations Act 1976 for removing the requirement of "mischievous intent" in inciting racial hatred. He claimed that the requirement was a safeguard of freedom of speech and that the racial issue was a political issue with the "possibilities and limitations of rational discussion" much like "all other political issues". In 1978 Casey attacked the ideology of anti-racism as a liberal myth that was inspired by the liberal tradition, a tradition that had culminated in Robert Nozick's "minimal state" unconnected to language, community and history. He further claimed that the anti-racialist ideology did not reflect the real world as it ignored the power of nationalism. Casey gave the cases of Ireland, Israel and African decolonisation as contemporary examples of nationalism and argued that the countries of Europe became more nationalist with more democratisation. Above all, Casey attacked liberalism for its inadequate explanation of the citizen's loyalty to the state because it ignored patriotism and the "continuity of institutions, shared experience, language, custom and kinship" in favour of a "rootless individualism". An article by Casey in "The Salisbury Review" titled 'One Nation: The Politics of Race' discussed the repatriation of Commonwealth immigrants. In 2011 Leo Robson of "The Observer" noted that "Casey long ago renounced the kind of ideas communicated in his lecture 'One Nation: The Politics of Race'." Writing in "The Spectator" Casey disavowed the article, describing it as "crazy and inhumane". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4383531 | 1,506,148 |
48,523 | The new understanding of benzene, and hence of all aromatic compounds, proved to be so important for both pure and applied chemistry that in 1890 the German Chemical Society organized an elaborate appreciation in Kekulé's honor, celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of his first benzene paper. Here Kekulé spoke of the creation of the theory. He said that he had discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule after having a reverie or day-dream of a snake biting its own tail (this is a common symbol in many ancient cultures known as the Ouroboros or endless knot). This vision, he said, came to him after years of studying the nature of carbon-carbon bonds. This was seven years after he had solved the problem of how carbon atoms could bond to up to four other atoms at the same time. Curiously, a similar, humorous depiction of benzene had appeared in 1886 in a pamphlet entitled "Berichte der Durstigen Chemischen Gesellschaft" (Journal of the Thirsty Chemical Society), a parody of the "Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft", only the parody had monkeys seizing each other in a circle, rather than snakes as in Kekulé's anecdote. Some historians have suggested that the parody was a lampoon of the snake anecdote, possibly already well known through oral transmission even if it had not yet appeared in print. Kekulé's 1890 speech in which this anecdote appeared has been translated into English. If the anecdote is the memory of a real event, circumstances mentioned in the story suggest that it must have happened early in 1862. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18582186 | 48,503 |
327,714 | Charles Darwin's grandfather Erasmus Darwin outlined a hypothesis of transmutation of species in the 1790s, and French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck published a more developed theory in 1809. Both envisaged that spontaneous generation produced simple forms of life that progressively developed greater complexity, adapting to the environment by inheriting changes in adults caused by use or disuse. This process was later called Lamarckism. Lamarck thought there was an inherent progressive tendency driving organisms continuously towards greater complexity, in parallel but separate lineages with no extinction. Geoffroy contended that embryonic development recapitulated transformations of organisms in past eras when the environment acted on embryos, and that animal structures were determined by a constant plan as demonstrated by homologies. Georges Cuvier strongly disputed such ideas, holding that unrelated, fixed species showed similarities that reflected a design for functional needs. His palæontological work in the 1790s had established the reality of extinction, which he explained by local catastrophes, followed by repopulation of the affected areas by other species. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29932 | 327,540 |
1,355,092 | Renault began selling the Elect'Road, a plug-in series hybrid version of their popular Kangoo, in Europe. It was sold alongside Renault's "Electri'cite" electric-drive Kangoo battery electric van. The Elect'Road had a 150 km range using a nickel-cadmium battery pack and a 500 cc, 16 kW liquid-cooled gasoline "range-extender" engine. It powered two high voltage/high output/low volume alternators, each of which supplied up to 5.5 kW at 132V at 5000 rpm. The operating speed of the internal combustion engine (and therefore the output delivered by the generators) varied according to demand. The fuel tank had a capacity of 10 litres and was housed within the right rear wheel arch. The range extender function was activated by a switch on the dashboard. The onboard 3.5 kW charger could charge a depleted battery pack to 95% SOC in about four hours from 220 volts. Passenger compartment heat was powered by the battery pack as well as an auxiliary coolant circuit that was heated by the range extender engine. Renault sold about 500, primarily in France, Norway and the UK, for about 25,000 euros each and redesigned the Elect'road in 2007. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11443610 | 1,354,344 |
736,172 | A 2004 doctoral dissertation by Don Brady examined NFL Players' knowledge of concussions, studying both active and retired National Football League Players' knowledge of concussions. Brady's findings concluded: that many NFL players lacked accurate and essential knowledge pertaining to various aspects of a concussion; that the preponderance of credible experimental and clinical evidence pertaining to the adverse effects of concussion indicates that the brain is injured as a result of a concussion; that the altered cell functioning and cell death along with subtle to more visible neurological, neurocognitive, psychological, and other medical problems reflect a diverse range of lifelong negative consequences of a concussion / brain injury; and that sports team health-care personnel need to focus primarily on the athletes' health and well-being, and not minimize an injury or primarily concentrate on the players' capacity to perform on the field. This expanded focus of health care is necessary in order to avoid any real or perceived conflicts of interest emerging in the concussion research, concussion management and related return to play decision-making process. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36082813 | 735,785 |
470,644 | This degree of diversity makes defining synapomorphy (derived common characteristics) for the group extremely difficult, the order being defined on the basis of molecular affinity rather than morphology. However, some characteristics that are prevalent (common traits) represent potential or putative synapomorphies based on ancestral states. These include flowers that are usually radially symmetric and petals that are free. The gynoecium (female reproductive part) generally consists of two carpels (ovary, style and stigma) that are free, at least toward the apex (partially fused bicarpellate gynoecium) and possess a hypanthium (cup shaped basal floral tube). In the androecium (male reproductive part), the stamen anthers are generally basifixed (attached at its base to the filament), sometimes dorsifixed (attached at centre) ("see Figure 2"). Other commonly occurring features are fruit that is generally follicular (formed from a single carpel), seeds with abundant endosperm surrounding the embryo and leaves with glandular teeth at their margins (glandular dentate, "see image"). Within the Saxifragales, while the families of the woody clade are primarily woody, the primarily herbaceous families of Crassulaceae and Saxifragaceae exhibit woody features as a secondary transition. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26987 | 470,408 |
364,590 | The Gatling gun, patented in 1861 by Richard Jordan Gatling, was the first to offer controlled, sequential fire with mechanical loading. The design's key features were machine loading of prepared cartridges and a hand-operated crank for sequential high-speed firing. It first saw very limited action in the American Civil War; it was subsequently improved and used in the Franco-Prussian war and North-West Rebellion. Many were sold to other armies in the late 19th century and continued to be used into the early 20th century until they were gradually supplanted by Maxim guns. Early multi-barrel guns were approximately the size and weight of contemporary artillery pieces, and were often perceived as a replacement for cannon firing grapeshot or canister shot. The large wheels required to move these guns around required a high firing position, which increased the vulnerability of their crews. Sustained firing of gunpowder cartridges generated a cloud of smoke, making concealment impossible until smokeless powder became available in the late 19th century. Gatling guns were targeted by artillery they could not reach, and their crews were targeted by snipers they could not see. The Gatling gun was used most successfully to expand European colonial empires, since against poorly equipped indigenous armies it did not face such threats. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19690 | 364,399 |
1,789,832 | Current research on antibiotic synergy and potential therapies is moving in three primary directions. Some research is devoted to finding combinations of extant antibiotics which when combined exhibit synergy. A classic example of this effect is the interaction between β-lactams, which damage the bacteria cell membrane, and aminoglycosides, which inhibit protein synthesis. The damage dealt to the cell wall by β-lactams allows more aminoglycoside molecules to be taken up into the cell than would otherwise be possible, enhancing cell damage. In some cases, antibacterial combinations restore potency to ineffective drugs. Other research has been devoted to finding antibiotic resistance breakers (ARB's) which enhance an antibiotic's potency. This effect is mediated through direct antibacterial activity of the ARB, targeting and destroying mechanisms of bacterial resistance thereby allowing the antibiotic to function properly, interacting with the host to trigger defensive mechanisms, or some combination thereof. The third direction of research involves combining traditional antibiotics with unconventional bactericides such as silver nano particles. Silver nano particles have strong non-specific interactions with bacterial cells that result in cell wall deformation and the generation of damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the presence of cellular components. These effects are thought to weaken bacterial cells, making them more susceptible to assault from conventional antibiotics. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46489321 | 1,788,826 |
1,169,792 | One of the effects of this extensive network of schools was the growth of the "democratic myth" in the 19th century, which created the widespread belief that many a "lad of pairts" had been able to rise up through the system to take high office and that literacy was much more widespread in Scotland than in neighbouring states, particularly England. Historians now accept that very few boys were able to pursue this route to social advancement and that literacy was not noticeably higher than comparable nations, as the education in the parish schools was basic, short and attendance was not compulsory. However, Scotland did reap the intellectual benefits of a highly developed university system. Scottish thinkers began questioning assumptions previously taken for granted; and with Scotland's traditional connections to France, then in the throes of the Enlightenment, the Scots began developing a uniquely practical branch of humanism. Major thinkers produced by this system included Francis Hutcheson, who held the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1729 to 1746, who helped develop Utilitarianism and consequentialist thinking. Some modern attitudes towards the relationship between science and religion were developed by his proteges David Hume and Adam Smith. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18943753 | 1,169,173 |
1,322,663 | When evaluating land spreading as a drilling waste management option, several items should be considered. These include area-wide topographical and geological features; current and likely future activities around the disposal site; hydrogeologic data (location, size, and direction of flow for existing surface water bodies and fresh or usable aquifers); natural or existing drainage patterns; nearby environmentally sensitive features such as wetlands, urban areas, historical or archeological sites, and protected habitats; the presence of endangered species; and potential air quality impacts. In addition, historical rainfall distribution data should be reviewed to establish moisture requirements for land spreading and predict net evaporation rates. Devices needed to control water flow into, onto, or from facility systems should be identified. Wastes should be characterized during the evaluation; drilling wastes with high levels of hydrocarbons and salts may not be appropriate for land spreading. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5124364 | 1,321,937 |
135,476 | Although the sequence of the human genome has been completely determined by DNA sequencing, it is not yet fully understood. Most, but not all, genes have been identified by a combination of high throughput experimental and bioinformatics approaches, yet much work still needs to be done to further elucidate the biological functions of their protein and RNA products (in particular, annotation of the complete CHM13v2.0 sequence is still ongoing). And yet, overlapping genes are quite common, in some cases allowing two protein coding genes from each strand to reuse base pairs twice (for example, genes DCDC2 and KAAG1). Recent results suggest that most of the vast quantities of noncoding DNA within the genome have associated biochemical activities, including regulation of gene expression, organization of chromosome architecture, and signals controlling epigenetic inheritance. There are also a significant number of retroviruses in human DNA, at least 3 of which have been proven to possess an important function (i.e., HIV-like HERV-K, HERV-W, and HERV-FRD play a role in placenta formation by inducing cell-cell fusion). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42888 | 135,421 |
348,563 | With assistance from firearms engineers at Fabrique Nationale de Herstal, Belgium, the Model 1919 was completely re-engineered into the .30 caliber M2/AN (Army-Navy) aircraft machine gun (not to be confused with the .50 caliber M2/AN or the 20mm AN/M2, the two other primary US aircraft weapons of WWII). The .30 in M2/AN Browning was widely adopted as both a fixed (offensive) and flexible (defensive) weapon on aircraft. Aircraft machine guns required light weight, firepower, and reliability, and achieving all three goals proved a difficult challenge, with the mandate for a closed bolt firing cycle to enable the gun to be safely and properly synchronized for fixed-mount, forward-aimed guns firing through a spinning propeller, a necessity on many single-engined fighter aircraft designs through to nearly the end of World War II. The receiver walls and operating components of the M2 were made thinner and lighter, and with air cooling provided by the speed of the aircraft, designers were able to reduce the barrel's weight and profile. As a result, the M2 weighed two-thirds that of the 1919A4, and the lightened mechanism gave it a rate of fire approaching 1,200 rpm (some variants could achieve 1,500 rpm), a necessity for engaging fast-moving aircraft. The M2's feed mechanism had to lift its own loaded belt out of the ammunition box and feed it into the gun, equivalent to a weight of 11 lb (5 kg). In Ordnance circles, the .30 M2/AN Browning had the reputation of being the most difficult-to-repair weapon in the entire US small arms inventory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30863956 | 348,381 |
1,258,501 | Over time, the approach to cerebral palsy management has shifted away from narrow attempts to fix individual physical problems such as spasticity in a particular limb to making such treatments part of a larger goal of maximizing the person's independence and community engagement. Much of childhood therapy is aimed at improving gait and walking. Approximately 60% of people with CP are able to walk independently or with aids at adulthood. However, the evidence base for the effectiveness of intervention programs reflecting the philosophy of independence has not yet caught up: effective interventions for body structures and functions have a strong evidence base, but evidence is lacking for effective interventions targeted toward participation, environment, or personal factors. There is also no good evidence to show that an intervention that is effective at the body-specific level will result in an improvement at the activity level, or vice versa. Although such cross-over benefit might happen, not enough high-quality studies have been done to demonstrate it. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27399297 | 1,257,814 |
4,000 | After the success of their first game "Kinetica" (2001), Santa Monica Studio began development of the original "God of War" in 2002, and unveiled it two years later at SCEA Santa Monica Gamers' Day 2004. Game director and creator David Jaffe said that although the idea for "God of War" was his own, the concept owed a debt to Capcom because he had played "Onimusha" and said "let's do that with Greek mythology". He was inspired in part by the 1981 feature film, "Clash of the Titans", saying, "the real high concept for me was ... merging it with "Heavy Metal" magazine". He said he liked both "the kids stuff ... with Greek mythology" and the idea of adding more adult themes such as sex and violence. He was also inspired by the 1981 film "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Although the game is based on Greek mythology, the development team gave themselves "lots of freedom" to modify the myths, and Jaffe said they took the "coolest aspects of the subject" and created art and story using those elements. Director of visual development and lead concept artist, Charlie Wen, drew inspiration from these films as well as more contemporary films such as "Gladiator" (2000) for tonal inspiration to lead the visual design of Kratos, other characters, and the world of "God of War".<ref name="IGN6/10/04"></ref> The gameplay of the "Strider" arcade franchise was also a vital influence on "God of War", and the developers described the gameplay "as merging the action of "Devil May Cry" with the puzzle-solving of "Ico"" and noted that players would be able to "sunder enemies with a single move, such as by ripping them in half". The game uses Santa Monica's Kinetica engine, which they developed for "Kinetica". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16282491 | 4,000 |
1,652,492 | Ole Skovsmose describes a classroom in Denmark in which students learned about the use of algorithms for distribution of welfare support to families by attempting to create their own algorithms. The class worked in groups, where each group came up with a family profile to serve under the supervision of the instructor. Groups then were given a budget for welfare distributions to families and had to come up with how to distribute the money among all the families in their "town" made up of all the created family profiles. The task led them to develop ways of categorizing people in families by age, and families type, by income amount and type, by labor and employment, by possible productivity to society, and more. Some groups distributed the money without building a distribution algorithm, using trial and error and attempting to balance the distribution by more intuitive means. Others built algorithms, working backwards, attempting to break down the distribution using percentages. Many groups were surprised to find that their algorithms did not function comprehensively, and did not fully distribute the amount they were budgeted, and that the outcomes by group were vastly different. Perhaps more importantly, students gained an awareness of the choices and decision making that goes into how policies such as welfare for families are complex and human-created, not simply existing structures. This project is an example of the way in which critical mathematics pedagogy can reveal the role that humans play in mathematizing the world. It is different from Tate's example because it does not explicitly include an action component. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=52098442 | 1,651,560 |
840,748 | Between 1880 and 1957, courts in Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio, and California rejected expert testimony for bloodspatter analysis, generally holding that it added nothing to the jurors' own evaluations of bloodstains submitted as evidence. In 1957, the California Supreme Court became the first American court to accept expert testimony examining bloodstains, accepting as evidence the testimony of Paul L. Kirk, a professor of biochemistry and criminalistics. He would also testify in the Sam Sheppard case in 1966, when the wife of an osteopathic physician was beaten to death in her home, interpreting bloodspatter evidence as proof that the murderer was left-handed (Sheppard was right-handed). However, bloodstain pattern analysis would not begin to enter wide use until it was promoted by Herbert Leon MacDonell. MacDonell researched bloodstains with a grant from the United States Department of Justice, and which also published his research in the book "Flight Characteristics and Stain Patterns of Human Blood" (1971). MacDonell testified in court on multiple occasions as an expert of bloodstain analysis, and the legal precedent set by these cases led to its widespread use in American courts, although as early as 1980 some judges expressed strong doubts about its reliability, and it was not always accepted as evidence, especially in states with no prior rulings that relied on such evidence. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2782331 | 840,298 |
112,549 | The discovery of microwave cosmic background radiation announced in 1965 finally brought an effective end to the remaining scientific uncertainty over the expanding universe. It was a chance result from work by two teams less than 60 miles apart. In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were trying to detect radio wave echoes with a supersensitive antenna. The antenna persistently detected a low, steady, mysterious noise in the microwave region that was evenly spread over the sky, and was present day and night. After testing, they became certain that the signal did not come from the Earth, the Sun, or our galaxy, but from outside our own galaxy, but could not explain it. At the same time another team, Robert H. Dicke, Jim Peebles, and David Wilkinson, were attempting to detect low level noise which might be left over from the Big Bang and could prove whether the Big Bang theory was correct. The two teams realized that the detected noise was in fact radiation left over from the Big Bang, and that this was strong evidence that the theory was correct. Since then, a great deal of other evidence has strengthened and confirmed this conclusion, and refined the estimated age of the universe to its current figure. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=847879 | 112,504 |
1,356,738 | In 2007, National University of Singapore physicist Antonio Castro Neto hypothesized that pressing two misaligned graphene sheets together might yield new electrical properties, and separately proposed that graphene might offer a route to superconductivity, but he did not combine the two ideas. In 2010 researchers from Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María in Chile found that for a certain angle close to 1 degree the band of the electronic structure of twisted bilayer graphene became completely flat, and because of that theoretical property, they suggested that collective behavior might be possible. In 2011 Allan MacDonald (of University of Texas at Austin) and Rafi Bistritzer using a simple theoretical model found that for the previously found "magic angle" the amount of energy a free electron would require to tunnel between two graphene sheets radically changes. In 2017, the research group of Efthimios Kaxiras at Harvard University used detailed quantum mechanics calculations to reduce uncertainty in the twist angle between two graphene layers that can induce extraordinary behavior of electrons in this two-dimensional system. In 2018, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, an experimentalist at MIT, found that the magic angle resulted in the unusual electrical properties the UT Austin scientists had predicted. At 1.1 degrees rotation at sufficiently low temperatures, electrons move from one layer to the other, creating a lattice and the phenomenon of superconductivity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60654187 | 1,355,988 |
1,708,405 | In 1970, Ken Freeman demonstrated the first 'string machine' which was essentially combo-organ like in size and how it generated tones. It had simple controls though centered around creating an ensemble effect where vibrato is happening at slightly different rates on different notes like in a real orchestra. Freeman used six discrete LFOs (low frequency oscillator circuits) to modulate atypically hit together note combinations (diminished fifth combinations like C and F). It had two 'ranks' of 12 oscillators plus a single oscillator driving a chip that develops the top octave of notes in the version that hit market in 1974. In November 1974 the British patent 1,509,530 lists an electronic digital musical arranger by Nicholas Kenneth Kirk. This patent was sold to Waddington's House of Games as Compute-a-Tune. This product was marketed in the early 1980s and sold a few thousand or so in the £15 range. The ARP Solina String Ensemble and Crumar Stringman used a much less expensive approach using digitally clocked chips called BBDs. Only a few hundred were made. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=56945879 | 1,707,447 |
1,668,466 | Immune dysregulation can also be caused by toxins. For example, in environmental workers, increased exposure to pesticides (such as DDT, organophosphate, amides, phthalamides, etc.) disrupts immune system responses. The resulting damage depends on the individual's age, dose and time of toxin exposure. At a young age and in adolescents, there are significant negative effects even with a lower dose of toxins. However, the ability to break down toxic substances and the resulting impact on the organism is also related to the metabolism and genetic equipment of the individual. Toxins can act directly on the cellular component of immunity, or by their metabolites, or they can promote reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the body, or by depletion of antioxidants or oxidative stress. The most common clinical manifestations are immunosuppression, hypersensitivity, autoimmune diseases, but also support for the Th2 response and the development of allergies, or support for chronic inflammation. Conventional toxins and irritants in the environment, such as saliva enzymes of blood-feeding parasites, insect poisons, or irritants in plants, can also cause allergic reactions. These substances can disrupt cell membranes, activate cell receptors, aggregate or degrade certain proteins, or disrupt the mucosal surface layer. The immune system often responds to these substances with reactions that lead to the removal of an irritant substance from the body, such as itching, coughing, sneezing, or vomiting. Combining the action of several toxins at the same time can increase the negative effects, but in some cases the effects of the toxins can cancel each other out. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6865131 | 1,667,526 |
1,044,104 | The origins and evolutionary relationships between the three main groups of amphibians are hotly debated. A molecular phylogeny based on rDNA analysis dating from 2005 suggests that salamanders and caecilians are more closely related to each other than they are to frogs, and the divergence of the three groups took place in the Paleozoic or early Mesozoic before the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea and soon after their divergence from the lobe-finned fishes. This would help account for the relative scarcity of amphibian fossils from the period before the groups split. Another molecular phylogenetic analysis conducted about the same time concluded the lissamphibians first appeared about 330 million years ago and that the temnospondyl-origin hypothesis is more credible than other theories. The neobatrachians seemed to have originated in Africa/India, the salamanders in East Asia and the caecilians in tropical Pangaea. Other researchers, while agreeing with the main thrust of this study, questioned the choice of calibration points used to synchronise the data. They proposed that the date of lissamphibian diversification be put in the Permian, rather less than 300 million years ago, a date in better agreement with the palaeontological data. A further study in 2011 using both extinct and living taxa sampled for morphological, as well as molecular data, came to the conclusion that the Lissamphibia are monophyletic and should be nested within the Lepospondyli rather than within the Temnospondyli. The study postulated the Lissamphibia originated no earlier than the late Carboniferous, some 290 to 305 million years ago. The split between Anura and Caudata was estimated as taking place 292 million years ago, rather later than most molecular studies suggest, with the caecilians splitting off 239 million years ago. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23444071 | 1,043,560 |
1,962,334 | for anything more than a conic Bézier segment. Searching for a single form, the group worked together, learning about knots, multiple knots, and how nicely Bézier segments, especially the conics, could be imbedded into a B-spline curve with multiple knots. Looking back, it seemed so simple: It is easy to verify that the equation for P(t) is valid for the B-spline basis functions as well as for Bernstein basis functions. By the end of 1980, the staff knew we had a way to present all the required curve forms using a single representation, now known as the NURBS form. But this new representation could easily have died at this point. The staff were already 12 to 18 months down a development path. They had completed a large number of algorithms using the old curve forms. They now had to convince managers and the other technical groups, such as the database and graphics groups, that they should be allowed to start over using a single representation for all curves. The NURBS surface form did not present a problem since they had not yet developed any surface algorithms. A Review of this new TIGER curve form was held on 13th February, 1981. The review was successful and the staff were allowed to start over using the new curve form. It was at this time that the NURBS acronym was first used by the other side of the TIGER project, i.e., the TIGER software development groups of Boeing Computer Services. Management was very eager to promote the use of these new curve and surface forms. They had a limited understanding of mathematics, but they were very aware of the need to communicate geometric data between systems. Hence, Boeing very quickly prepared to propose NURBS to the August '81 IGES meetings. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37607697 | 1,961,206 |
1,804,140 | Atypical lipomatous tumors (ALTs) are a type of well-differentiated liposarcoma. The term ALT is often applied to tumors located in surgically accessible locations such as the skin, oral cavity, or eye socket whereas the term well-differentiated liposarcomas is applied to tumors in less surgically accessible, deep, and centrally-located, soft tissues such as the retroperitoneum. Here, the two terms are used interchangeably. Unlike less well-differentiated liposarcomas which are malignant, ALTs, while sometimes locally invasive and recurring after surgical removal, do not metastasize and rarely progress to less differentiated and potentially metastasizing forms. They are therefore commonly regarded as benign or premalignant tumors. The neoplastic cells in ALT contain one or more ring-shaped sSMCs or one giant marker chromosome (i.e. a chromosome enlarged by having a duplication of parts of its own or one or more other chromosomes) that contain extra copies of chromosome 12's q arm at bands 13 through 15. This stretch of chromosome 12 includes the "MDM2" proto-oncogene (a potentially tumor-causing gene) located at band 15 and "CDK4" (a gene associated with the development of various tumors) located at band 14.1. The presence of these two genes is a highly sensitive and specific indicator that a lipomatous tumor is an ALT rather than another type of lipomatous tumor. The sSMCs and giant marker chromosomes involved in ALT may contain sequences from other chromosomes; furthermore, the ring sSMCs frequently break, reseal, transform into a rod-shape, and develop gains and/or losses in their genetic material. These factors may help promote the survival and growth of the sSMC-bearing neoplastic cells in ATMs. As a result of these complicating factors, the specific genetic material in the sSCMs and giant marker chromosomes responsible for the development of ALTs have not been established. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2018913 | 1,803,125 |
1,536,863 | The subject of overreactions has also been important in behavioral finance. In his 2006 PhD thesis, Duran examined 130,000 data points of daily prices for closed-end funds in terms of their deviation from the net asset value (NAV). Funds exhibiting a large deviation from NAV were likely to behave in the opposite direction of the subsequent day. Even more interesting was the statistical observation that a large deviation in the opposite direction preceded such large deviations. These precursors may suggest that an underlying cause of these large moves—in the absence of significant change in valuation—may be due to the positioning of traders in advance of anticipated news. For example, suppose many traders are anticipating positive news and buy the stock. If the positive news does not materialize they are inclined to sell in large numbers, thereby suppressing the price significantly below the previous levels. This interpretation is inconsistent with EMH but is consistent with asset flow differential equations (AFDE) that incorporate behavioral concepts with the finiteness of assets. Research continues on efforts to optimize the parameters of the asset flow equations in order to forecast near term prices (see Duran and Caginalp ). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14246632 | 1,535,995 |
57,381 | On 23 December 2004, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz approved a program budget decision that ended the procurement of C-130J for the Air Force and completed the remaining KC-130J order for the Marine Corps in 2006, which would save US$5 billion in the Pentagon budget. Deficiencies with the C-130J that were cited to support the decision included being unable to drop heavy equipment, the inability to perform combat search-and-rescue missions, cold-weather performance issues, the risk of paratroopers hitting the fuselage when jumping out of the aircraft, major cost increases, and inadequate radar to fly into hurricanes. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reversed this decision on May 10, 2005, after members of Congress stated that the canceling the pre-existing orders of 62 total Air Force aircraft over the following 5 years would result in about US$2 billion in termination costs to the government, which would have exceeded the cost of buying the aircraft. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16172717 | 57,357 |
1,275,244 | Footdrumming is used widely as a predator warning or defensive action. It is used primarily by fossorial or semi-fossorial rodents, but has also been recorded for spotted skunks ("Spilogale putorius"), deer (e.g. white-tailed deer "Odocoileus virginianus"), marsupials (e.g. tammar wallabies "Macropus eugenii"), rabbits (e.g. European rabbits "Oryctolagus cuniculus") and elephant shrews (Macroscelididae). Banner-tailed kangaroo rats ("Dipodomys spectabilis") footdrum in the presence of snakes as a form of individual defense and parental care. Several studies have indicated intentional use of ground vibrations as a means of intra-specific communication during courtship among the Cape mole-rat ("Georychus capensis"). Footdrumming has been reported to be involved in male-male competition where the dominant male indicates its resource holding potential by drumming, thus minimising physical contact with potential rivals. The Asian elephant ("Elephas maximus") uses seismic communication in herd or group maintenance and many social insects use seismic vibrations to coordinate the behaviour of group members, for example in cooperative foraging. Other insects use vibrational communication to search for and attract mates, like North American treehoppers, "Enchenopa binotata". Males of this species use their abdomen to send vibrations through their host plant's stem. Females perceive these signals and respond to them to initiate a duet. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28544210 | 1,274,552 |
264,746 | Initial data from the WHI in 2002 suggested mortality to be lower when HRT was begun earlier, between age 50 to 59, but higher when begun after age 60. In older patients, there was an apparent increased incidence of breast cancer, heart attacks, venous thrombosis, and stroke, although a reduced incidence of colorectal cancer and bone fracture. At the time, The WHI recommended that women with non-surgical menopause take the lowest feasible dose of HRT for the shortest possible time to minimize associated risks. Some of the WHI findings were again found in a larger national study done in the United Kingdom, known as the Million Women Study (MWS). As a result of these findings, the number of women taking HRT dropped precipitously. In 2012, the United States Preventive Task Force (USPSTF) concluded that the harmful effects of combined estrogen and progestin therapy likely exceeded their chronic disease prevention benefits. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19526030 | 264,603 |
36,917 | In Europe, lead production began to increase in the 11th and 12th centuries, when it was again used for roofing and piping. Starting in the 13th century, lead was used to create stained glass. In the European and Arabian traditions of alchemy, lead (symbol ♄ in the European tradition) was considered an impure base metal which, by the separation, purification and balancing of its constituent essences, could be transformed to pure and incorruptible gold. During the period, lead was used increasingly for adulterating wine. The use of such wine was forbidden for use in Christian rites by a papal bull in 1498, but it continued to be imbibed and resulted in mass poisonings up to the late 18th century. Lead was a key material in parts of the printing press, and lead dust was commonly inhaled by print workers, causing lead poisoning. Lead also became the chief material for making bullets for firearms: it was cheap, less damaging to iron gun barrels, had a higher density (which allowed for better retention of velocity), and its lower melting point made the production of bullets easier as they could be made using a wood fire. Lead, in the form of Venetian ceruse, was extensively used in cosmetics by Western European aristocracy as whitened faces were regarded as a sign of modesty. This practice later expanded to white wigs and eyeliners, and only faded out with the French Revolution in the late 18th century. A similar fashion appeared in Japan in the 18th century with the emergence of the geishas, a practice that continued long into the 20th century. The white faces of women "came to represent their feminine virtue as Japanese women", with lead commonly used in the whitener. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17747 | 36,905 |
2,215,925 | Normally, the Atlantic Hockey champion received a 4th seed for the NCAA tournament. Air Force, with its 26 wins and top-15 ranking, was afforded a 3rd seed, becoming just the second entry from its conference to be given that high of a ranking. They opened the tournament against Western Michigan, who they had already played during the season, and took over the game for the first 44 minutes. The Falcons outshout the Broncos 25–13 entering the third and had a 3–1 lead. Phil Boje netted a power play marker just before the 4-minute mark and it appeared that the Falcons were going to fly to an easy victory. Western Michigan, however, fought back hard and scored twice in the next 75 seconds to cut the lead to 1. Tyler Ledford gave the team a 2-goal cushion less than 90 seconds later but WMU continued to attack. After pulling their goalie, Western Michigan made the score 5–4 with just under 2 minutes to play and all the momentum in their favor. The pressure was eased, however, when Wade Allison took a major penalty at 18:47. Air Force was able to hold off the Broncos and advance to the regional final. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=70000301 | 2,214,665 |
742,347 | The effects of atmospheric stratification cause the radio path to bend downward in a typical situation so a major distance is possible as the earth equivalent curvature increases from 6370 km to about 8500 km (a 4/3 equivalent radius effect). Rare events of temperature, humidity and pressure profile versus height, may produce large deviations and distortion of the propagation and affect transmission quality. High-intensity rain and snow making rain fade must also be considered as an impairment factor, especially at frequencies above 10 GHz. All previous factors, collectively known as path loss, make it necessary to compute suitable power margins, in order to maintain the link operative for a high percentage of time, like the standard 99.99% or 99.999% used in 'carrier class' services of most telecommunication operators. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5540651 | 741,955 |
1,304,423 | The origin of the term "neuroethics" has occupied some writers. Rees and Rose (as cited in "References" on page 9) claim "neuroethics" is a neologism that emerged only at the beginning of the 21st century, largely through the oral and written communications of ethicists and philosophers. According to Racine (2010), the term was coined by the Harvard physician Anneliese A. Pontius in 1973 in a paper entitled "Neuro-ethics of 'walking' in the newborn" for the "Perceptual and Motor Skills". The author reproposed the term in 1993 in her paper for "Psychological Report", often wrongly mentioned as the first title containing the word "neuroethics". Before 1993, the American neurologist Ronald Cranford has used the term (see Cranford 1989). Illes (2003) records uses, from the scientific literature, from 1989 and 1991. Writer William Safire is widely credited with giving the word its current meaning in 2002, defining it as "the examination of what is right and wrong, good and bad about the treatment of, perfection of, or unwelcome invasion of and worrisome manipulation of the human brain". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=703002 | 1,303,707 |
251,813 | In 1864, Wallace published a paper, "The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from the Theory of 'Natural Selection, applying the theory to humankind. Darwin had not yet publicly addressed the subject, although Thomas Huxley had in "Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature". Wallace explained the apparent stability of the human stock by pointing to the vast gap in cranial capacities between humans and the great apes. Unlike some other Darwinists, including Darwin himself, he did not "regard modern primitives as almost filling the gap between man and ape". He saw the evolution of humans in two stages: achieving a bipedal posture that freed the hands to carry out the dictates of the brain, and the "recognition of the human brain as a totally new factor in the history of life". Wallace seems to have been the first evolutionist to see that the human brain effectively made further specialisation of the body unnecessary. Wallace wrote the paper for the Anthropological Society of London to address the debate between the supporters of monogenism, the belief that all human races shared a common ancestor and were one species, and the supporters of polygenism, who held that different races had separate origins and were different species. Wallace's anthropological observations of Native Americans in the Amazon, and especially his time living among the Dayak people of Borneo, had convinced him that human beings were a single species with a common ancestor. He still felt that natural selection might have continued to act on mental faculties after the development of the different races; and he did not dispute the nearly universal view among European anthropologists of the time that Europeans were intellectually superior to other races. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1494 | 251,680 |
1,253,839 | Modern Japan's foreign policy was shaped at the outset by its need to reconcile its Asian identity with its desire for status and security in an international order dominated by the West. The principal foreign policy goals of the Meiji period (1868–1912) were to protect the integrity and independence of the nation against Western domination and to win equality of status with the leading nations of the West by reversing the unequal treaties. Because fear of Western military power was the chief concern of the Meiji leaders, their highest priority was building up the basic requirements for national defense, under the slogan "wealth and arms" (""). They saw that a modern military establishment required national conscription drawing manpower from an adequately educated population, a trained officer corps, a sophisticated chain of command, and strategy and tactics adapted to contemporary conditions. Finally, it required modern arms together with the factories to make them, sufficient wealth to purchase them, and a transportation system to deliver them. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2998679 | 1,253,159 |
65,366 | In possible contrast with other transhumanist organizations, WTA officials considered that social forces could undermine their futurist visions and needed to be addressed. A particular concern is the equal access to human enhancement technologies across classes and borders. In 2006, a political struggle within the transhumanist movement between the libertarian right and the liberal left resulted in a more centre-leftward positioning of the WTA under its former executive director James Hughes. In 2006, the board of directors of the Extropy Institute ceased operations of the organization, stating that its mission was "essentially completed". This left the World Transhumanist Association as the leading international transhumanist organization. In 2008, as part of a rebranding effort, the WTA changed its name to "Humanity+". In 2012, the transhumanist Longevity Party had been initiated as an international union of people who promote the development of scientific and technological means to significant life extension, that for now has more than 30 national organisations throughout the world. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30299 | 65,341 |
579,478 | The conceptual foundation for DNA nanotechnology was first laid out by Nadrian Seeman in the early 1980s. A number of natural branched DNA structures were known at the time, including the DNA replication fork and the mobile Holliday junction, but Seeman's insight was that immobile nucleic acid junctions could be created by properly designing the strand sequences to remove symmetry in the assembled molecule, and that these immobile junctions could in principle be combined into rigid crystalline lattices. The first theoretical paper proposing this scheme was published in 1982, and the first experimental demonstration of an immobile DNA junction was published the following year. Seeman developed the more rigid double-crossover (DX) motif, suitable for forming two-dimensional lattices, demonstrated in 1998 by him and Erik Winfree. In 2006, Paul Rothemund first demonstrated the DNA origami technique for easily and robustly creating folded DNA structures of arbitrary shape. This method allowed the creation of much larger structures than were previously possible, and which are less technically demanding to design and synthesize. The synthesis of a three-dimensional lattice was finally published by Seeman in 2009, nearly thirty years after he had set out to achieve it. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4613341 | 579,181 |
2,196,863 | George Herbert Allen (August 16, 1923, Kusnacht, Switzerland – May 9, 2011, McKinleyville, California) was an American ichthyologist and fisheries scientist. His father was a US consul and they family moved to Calgary with his father's posting in 1927 and George remained there until he went to the University of Wyoming as an undergraduate where he graduated before entering the military during the Second World War. After the war he completed his master's and doctorate degrees at the University of Washington in 1956, where he met his wife, Beverly Robinson. He started a position at the Humboldt State University an association which was to last over 30 years, ending his career as a professor of fisheries. At HSU he played an important part in setting up the university's oceanography program and its graduate program in fisheries. He was awarded the President's Distinguished Service Award by the Humboldt State University and had a lab and part of the Arcata Wastewater Treatment Plant and Wildlife Sanctuary was named in his honor. Allen was nicknamed "Fishy" by the Arcata, California, city hall workers he co-operated with in the creation of its pioneering artificial marsh wastewater treatment facility. The toadfish genus "Allenbatrachus" was named in his honor by one of his former students, David W. Greenfield, for Allen's introduction of Greenfield to ichthyology. He was survived by his wife, Beverley, and their three daughters. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=57917771 | 2,195,612 |
181,041 | Prototypes were field tested between 26 April and 12 May 1942; the evaluation commission's report was largely favorable, but still proposed some minor improvements mostly aimed at strengthening the gun's structure. By July, Shpagin had finished his own improved model (PPSh-2), and it was pitted in field trials against the PPS, which was found superior in most respects: accuracy, reliability, maneuverability. (This was apparently a large scale contest, in which 20 designs participated. On July 28, 1942, GAU head N.D. Yakovlev and his aide Ivan Novikov presented Sudayev's gun to the State Defense Committee for approval. The firearm was accepted into service as the PPS-42 (Russian: Пистолет-пулемёт Судаева—ППС or "Pistolet Pulemyot Sudayeva" model of 1942). The weapon was put into small-scale production during the Siege of Leningrad; mass production did not commence until early 1943 at the Sestroretsk Arsenal (over 45,000 weapons were produced before being replaced by the improved PPS-43). The factory in charge for the pilot production starting in December 1942 was the Sestroretsk Tool Factory (Russian: .) The first series guns were presented for personal inspection to Andrei Zhdanov and Leonid Govorov in the same month. The full-scale production began in 1943, and the official count of PPS-42 guns produced was 46,572. Most were used during the military trials by the soldiers of the Leningrad Front. The military trials officially took place between January and April 1943. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30863752 | 180,947 |
107,274 | An intrinsic contributor to the antibiotic resistant nature of "M. tuberculosis" is its unique cell wall. Saturated with long-chain fatty acids or mycolic acids, the mycobacterial cell presents a robust, relatively insoluble barrier. This has led to its synthesis being the target of many antibiotics - such as Isoniazid. However, resistance has emerged to the majority of them. A novel, promising therapeutic target is mycobacterial membrane protein large 3 (MmpL3). The mycobacterial membrane protein large (MmpL) proteins are transmembrane proteins which play a key role in the synthesis of the cell wall and the transport of the associated lipids. Of these, MmpL3 is essential; knock-out of which has been shown to be bactericidal. Due to its essential nature, MmpL3 inhibitors show promise as alternative therapeutic measures in the age of antibiotic resistance. Inhibition of MmpL3 function showed an inability to transport trehalose monomycolate - an essential cell wall lipid - across the plasma membrane. The recently reported structure of MmpL3 revealed resistance-conferring mutations to associate primarily with the transmembrane domain. Although resistance to pre-clinical MmpL3 inhibitors has been detected, analysis of the widespread mutational landscape revealed a low level of environmental resistance. This suggests that MmpL3 inhibitors currently undergoing clinical trials would face little resistance if made available. Additionally, the ability of many MmpL3 inhibitors to work synergistically with other antitubercular drugs presents a ray of hope in combatting the TB crisis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=392019 | 107,229 |
703,459 | Consistent discretizations approach developed by Jorge Pullin and Rodolfo Gambini have no constraints. These are lattice approximation techniques for quantum gravity. In the canonical approach if one discretizes the constraints and equations of motion, the resulting discrete equations are inconsistent: they cannot be solved simultaneously. To address this problem one uses a technique based on discretizing the action of the theory and working with the discrete equations of motion. These are automatically guaranteed to be consistent. Most of the hard conceptual questions of quantum gravity are related to the presence of constraints in the theory. Consistent discretized theories are free of these conceptual problems and can be straightforwardly quantized, providing a solution to the problem of time. It is a bit more subtle than this. Although without constraints and having "general evolution", the latter is only in terms of a discrete parameter that isn't physically accessible. The way out is addressed in a way similar to the Page–Wooters approach. The idea is to pick one of the physical variables to be a clock and asks relational questions. These ideas, where the clock is also quantum mechanical, have actually led to a new interpretation of quantum mechanics — the Montevideo interpretation of quantum mechanics. This new interpretation solves the problems of the use of environmental decoherence as a solution to the problem of measurement in quantum mechanics by invoking fundamental limitations, due to the quantum mechanical nature of clocks, in the process of measurement in quantum mechanics. These limitations are very natural in the context of generally covariant theories as quantum gravity where the clock must be taken as one of the degrees of freedom of the system itself. They have also put forward this fundamental decoherence as a way to resolve the black hole information paradox. In certain circumstances, a matter field is used to de-parametrize the theory and introduce a physical Hamiltonian. This generates physical time evolution, not a constraint. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42598658 | 703,091 |
109,054 | Most emission analysis use average emissions rates across regions instead of marginal generation at different times of the day. The former approach does not take into account the generation mix within interconnected electricity markets and shifting load profiles throughout the day. An analysis by three economist affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), published in November 2014, developed a methodology to estimate marginal emissions of electricity demand that vary by location and time of day across the United States. The study used emissions and consumption data for 2007 through 2009, and used the specifications for the Chevrolet Volt (all-electric range of ). The analysis found that marginal emission rates are more than three times as large in the Upper Midwest compared to the Western U.S., and within regions, rates for some hours of the day are more than twice those for others. Applying the results of the marginal analysis to plug-in electric vehicles, the NBER researchers found that the emissions of charging PEVs vary by region and hours of the day. In some regions, such as the Western U.S. and Texas, emissions per mile from driving PEVs are less than those from driving a hybrid car. However, in other regions, such as the Upper Midwest, charging during the recommended hours of midnight to 4 a.m. implies that PEVs generate more emissions per mile than the average car currently on the road. The results show a fundamental tension between electricity load management and environmental goals as the hours when electricity is the least expensive to produce tend to be the hours with the greatest emissions. This occurs because coal-fired units, which have higher emission rates, are most commonly used to meet base-level and off-peak electricity demand; while natural gas units, which have relatively low emissions rates, are often brought online to meet peak demand. This pattern of fuel shifting explains why emission rates tend to be higher at night and lower during periods of peak demand in the morning and evening. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1611987 | 109,009 |
1,456,087 | In 2013, Lautenschlager performed digital reconstructions for the cranial musculature in "Erlikosaurus" and found a relatively weak bite force compared to other theropods. As a whole, the adductor musculature of the jaws—which primarily function to close the jaws—generates a total force of 374 and 570 N but only a small portion is actually used when biting because the bite force starts to decline as the more the distance of the bite point is to the jaw joint. Lautenschlager found the lowest force at the snout tip with 43–65 N, and the highest at the last maxillar tooth region, with 90–134 N. Factors like the presence of a large gut to process vegetation and the lack of damage patterns on the teeth suggest that "Erlikosaurus" used only the tip of the snout and the premaxillary region to reach for soft foliage or fruits, and the lesser bite force for "Erlikosaurus" better served in leaf-stripping and plant-cropping feeding mechanism, rather than active mastication. In this study, Lautenschlager also suggested that "Erlikosaurus" may have been able to process mainly thin branches and plant matter based on "Stegosaurus". Moreover, the comparably narrow width of the snout could indicate selective feeding in this therizinosaurid. Lastly, the branch‐stripping behaviour of "Erlikosaurus" may have been compensated by the postcranial musculature. During the same year, Lautenschlager and team made digital models of the skull of "Erlikosaurus" to test the function the rhamphotheca (keratinous beak), finding that this structure in the jaws acted as a stress-mitigating structure. They concluded that keratinous beaks are beneficial to enhance the stability of the skull making it less susceptible to bending and/or deformation during feeding. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4613539 | 1,455,267 |
2,016,519 | Held in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, the 1982 Women's Final Four Basketball Tournament was the first sponsored by the NCAA. Featuring host Elizabethtown College, Clark College (Massachusetts), Pomona College and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the tournament was played in a classic field house over a three-day period. In the first game of the National Semi-Final Elizabethtown took control right from the tip-off against Clark and easily cruised to a 71–51 victory. In the second game of the Final Four Pomona took the lead early in the game, but UNC Greensboro battled back to tie the game at 56 with six minutes to play. UNC Greensboro then went on a run and pulled away for a 77–66 win. Elizabethtown and UNC Greensboro turned the championship game into an epic battle of lead changes and shifts in momentum. Last second heroics by UNC Greensboro sent the game into overtime, but Elizabethtown came up with the final stop in overtime to win 67–66 in overtime. Television coverage was provided by a fledgling ESPN while exclusive radio coverage was provided by KSPC Radio - Pomona College's tiny KSPC sports broadcasting group with Geoff Willis (Pomona '83) and James Timmerman (Pomona '82) providing the play by play and color. ESPN was so embryonic that the game was broadcast multiple times during the following two weeks and ESPN hired the KSPC Radio staff to help with background and color research about the players and the teams. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=538065 | 2,015,357 |
1,370,746 | Burnet continued to travel and speak, but in the early 1980s, he and his wife became increasingly hampered by illness. Having surmised his illness two years earlier, in November 1984 he underwent surgery for colorectal cancer. He made plans to resume scientific meetings, but was then taken ill again, with significant pain in his thorax and legs. Secondary lesions were found in June 1985 and declared to be inoperable and terminal. A supporter of euthanasia, Burnet was unfazed by his imminent death, and he died on 31 August at his son's home at Port Fairy after two months' of illness. He was given a state funeral by the government of Australia; many of his distinguished colleagues from the Hall Institute such as Nossal and Fenner were pall-bearers, and he was buried near his paternal grandparents after a private family service at Tower Hill cemetery in Koroit, near Port Fairy. Following his death he was honoured by the House of Representatives; Prime Minister Bob Hawke took the highly unusual step of moving a condolence motion, an honour typically reserved for parliamentarians. Lady Hazel Burnet died in 1990. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=417493 | 1,369,990 |
165,822 | After studying in the B/L program of Lycée Henri-IV's Classes préparatoires, Duflo began her undergraduate studies at École normale supérieure in Paris, planning to study history, her interest since childhood. In her second year, she began considering a career in the civil service or politics. She spent ten months in Moscow starting in 1993. She taught French and worked on a history thesis that described how the Soviet Union "had used the big construction sites, like the Stalingrad tractor factory, for propaganda, and how propaganda requirements changed the actual shape of the projects." In Moscow, she also worked as a research assistant for a French economist connected to the Central Bank of Russia and, separately, for Jeffrey Sachs, an American economist, who was advising the Russian Minister of Finance. The experiences at these research posts led her to conclude that "economics had potential as a lever of action in the world" and she could satisfy academic ambitions while doing "things that mattered". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16736191 | 165,737 |
379,112 | Although typically applied to printed, published, broadcast, and reproduced materials in contemporary times, all words, letters, symbols, and numbers written alongside the earliest naturalistic drawings by humans may be called typography. The word, "typography", is derived from the Greek words τύπος "typos" "form" or "impression" and γράφειν "graphein" "to write", traces its origins to the first punches and dies used to make seals and currency in ancient times, which ties the concept to printing. The uneven spacing of the impressions on brick stamps found in the Mesopotamian cities of Uruk and Larsa, dating from the second millennium B.C., may be evidence of type, wherein the reuse of identical characters was applied to create cuneiform text. Babylonian cylinder seals were used to create an impression on a surface by rolling the seal on wet clay. Typography was also implemented in the Phaistos Disc, an enigmatic Minoan printed item from Crete, which dates to between 1850 and 1600 B.C. It has been proposed that Roman lead pipe inscriptions were created with movable type printing, but German typographer Herbert Brekle recently dismissed this view. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31217 | 378,917 |
215,802 | The 13th-century Dominican scholar Albert the Great posited that, as erosion was known to occur, there must be some process whereby new mountains and other land-forms were thrust up, or else there would eventually be no land; he suggested that marine fossils in mountainsides must once have been at the sea-floor. Orogeny was used by Amanz Gressly (1840) and Jules Thurmann (1854) as "orogenic" in terms of the creation of mountain elevations, as the term "mountain building" was still used to describe the processes. Elie de Beaumont (1852) used the evocative "Jaws of a Vise" theory to explain orogeny, but was more concerned with the height rather than the implicit structures created by and contained in orogenic belts. His theory essentially held that mountains were created by the squeezing of certain rocks. Eduard Suess (1875) recognised the importance of horizontal movement of rocks. The concept of a "precursor geosyncline" or initial downward warping of the solid earth (Hall, 1859) prompted James Dwight Dana (1873) to include the concept of "compression" in the theories surrounding mountain-building. With hindsight, we can discount Dana's conjecture that this contraction was due to the cooling of the Earth (aka the cooling Earth theory). The cooling Earth theory was the chief paradigm for most geologists until the 1960s. It was, in the context of orogeny, fiercely contested by proponents of vertical movements in the crust, or convection within the asthenosphere or mantle. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=53879 | 215,694 |
524,498 | Whewell built on Lubbock's work to develop an understanding of tidal patterns around the world that could be used to generate predictions for many locations without the need for long series of tidal observations at each port. This required extensive new observations, initially obtained through an informal network, and later through formal projects enabled by Beaufort at the Admiralty. In the first of these, in June 1834, every Coast Guard station in the United Kingdom recorded the tides every fifteen minutes for two weeks. The second, in June 1835, was an international collaboration, involving Admiralty Surveyors, other Royal Navy and British observers, as well as those from the United States, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands. Islands, such as the Channel Islands, were particularly interesting, adding important detail of the progress of the tides through the ocean. The Admiralty also provided the resources for data analysis, and J.F. Dessiou, an expert calculator on the Admiralty staff, was in charge of the calculations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=205488 | 524,226 |
1,153,731 | The silsesquioxane core in these hybrid materials provides an increased glass transition temperature, improved mechanical properties, higher use temperature, and lower flammability. These desirable properties combined with the ability to readily functionalize a silsesquioxane with multiple antimicrobial groups allows for robust biocides with higher charge densities while maintaining a compact molecular structure. The organic functionalities provide high compatibility with polymers allowing for easy incorporation into many mediums. Of particular interest are silicone paints and coatings used in hospitals. Typical biocidal ammonium functionalized polymers are incompatible, but silsesquioxanes closely mimic the silicone structure. A silicone-based paint combined with QAS-functionalized silsesquioxanes could be used to paint medical and sanitary devices, biomedical devices, exam equipment, medical storage rooms, hospital rooms, clinics, doctor offices, etc. to prevent the formation and spread of bacteria. For example, the Q-POSS developed was combined with polydimethylsiloxane and catalysis to form a crosslinked network. The researchers found that coatings based on bromide and chloride had the best antimicrobial efficacy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18503727 | 1,153,121 |
1,512,727 | Garcia's research integrates approaches in structural biology, biochemistry and protein engineering to understand how cell surface receptors sense environmental cues through the engagement of extracellular ligands, and transduce signals. The overarching theme of the laboratory is to elucidate the structural and mechanistic basis of receptor activation in systems relevant to human disease, and to exploit this information to design and engineer new molecules with therapeutic properties. Thus there is a close integration of basic science discovery with translation. Garcia's laboratory at Stanford has published numerous scientific articles describing the molecular structure and signaling mechanisms of proteins important for immunity, neurobiology and development. According to data from Google Scholar, Garcia's publication record yields an h-factor of 77 as of October 2018. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=52035641 | 1,511,876 |
7,298 | The ISS is equipped with about 100 IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad and HP ZBook 15 laptop computers. The laptops have run Windows 95, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 10 and Linux operating systems. Each computer is a commercial off-the-shelf purchase which is then modified for safety and operation including updates to connectors, cooling and power to accommodate the station's 28V DC power system and weightless environment. Heat generated by the laptops does not rise but stagnates around the laptop, so additional forced ventilation is required. Portable Computer System (PCS) laptops connect to the Primary Command & Control computer (C&C MDM) as remote terminals via a USB to 1553 adapter. Station Support Computer (SSC) laptops aboard the ISS are connected to the station's wireless LAN via Wi-Fi and ethernet, which connects to the ground via K band. While originally this provided speeds of 10 Mbit/s download and 3 Mbit/s upload from the station, NASA upgraded the system in late August 2019 and increased the speeds to 600 Mbit/s. Laptop hard drives occasionally fail and must be replaced. Other computer hardware failures include instances in 2001, 2007 and 2017; some of these failures have required EVAs to replace computer modules in externally mounted devices. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15043 | 7,295 |
108,272 | The United States maintains intelligence facilities in Australia, and regularly rotates military forces to the country for training purposes. The intelligence facilities comprise the Pine Gap satellite tracking station near Alice Springs and Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt near Exmouth, Western Australia. Pine Gap is jointly operated by Australian and United States personnel and Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt has been an exclusively Australian-operated facility since 1999. In early 2007 the Australian Government approved the construction of a new US communications installation at the Defence Signals Directorate Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station facility near Geraldton, Western Australia, to provide a ground station for the US-led Wideband Global System which Australia is partly funding. The United States Military also frequently uses Australian exercise areas and these facilities have been upgraded to support joint Australian-United States training. As well as these facilities, between 200 and 300 US Military personnel are posted to Australia to liaise with the ADF. In November 2011, the Australian and American Governments announced plans to base on rotational basis a United States Marine Corps Marine Air-Ground Task Force in the Northern Territory for training and exercise purposes and also plans to increase rotations of United States Air Force (USAF) aircraft through northern Australia. As part of this agreement, the Marine Rotational Force – Darwin has been deployed to Australia for six months each year since 2012. It is planned for this force to eventually comprise around 2,500 personnel with supporting aircraft and equipment. The expanded rotations of USAF units to Australia began in early 2017. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=67538 | 108,227 |
1,313,688 | Colony hybridization begins with a desire to extract a segment of DNA containing a specific gene, such as a gene that conveys antibiotic resistance. A specific piece of DNA is removed from its respective cell culture and inserted into a bacterial plasmid via a process known as recombination. These bacterial plasmids are cultured on a nutrient agar plate, leading to the formation of bacterial colonies, some of which ideally continue to contain the gene of interest. A nitrocellulose filter is then washed three times with distilled water, placed in between absorbent sheets, and heated at high temperatures to kill bacteria or other microorganism. This filter, which has a pore size of .45 μm, undergoes these processes to ensure that there is no contamination during the transfer, thus allowing for accuracy in results. The bacterial colonies are then symmetrically replicated onto the nitrocellulose filter by direct contact. At this point, the cells on the filter membrane are lysed in order to open up the plasmids for easier access and their DNA is denatured, which allows it to bind to the filter. These DNA clusters are then hybridized to a desired radioactively-labelled RNA or DNA probe and screened by autoradiography. The RNA (or DNA) probe was selected specifically beforehand based on the DNA carrying the desired gene, since the probe must contain the complementary strand that will allow it to bind accurately to the correct genetic material. Through use of the radioactive probe, the clusters that exhibit the desired gene are identified to be used in further research. Frequently, they are then matched up to the corresponding (living) bacterial colonies, which have not undergone the cell lysis procedure, which may also be isolated for further growth and experimentation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=55750470 | 1,312,968 |
666,023 | GEODSS tracks objects in deep space, or from about 3,000 mi (4,800 km) out to beyond geosynchronous altitudes. GEODSS requires nighttime and clear weather tracking because of the inherent limitations of an optical system. Each site has three telescopes. The telescopes have a 40-inch (1.02 m) aperture and a two-degree field of view. The telescopes are able to "see" objects 10,000 times dimmer than the human eye can detect. This sensitivity, and sky background during daytime that masks satellites reflected light, dictates that the system operate at night. As with any ground-based optical system, cloud cover and local weather conditions directly influence its effectiveness. GEODSS system can track objects as small as a basketball more than 20,000 miles (30,000 km) in space or a chair at , and is a vital part of USSPACECOM's Space Surveillance Network. Distant Molniya orbiting satellites are often detected in elliptical orbits that surpass the Moon and back (245,000 miles out). Each GEODSS site tracks approximately 3,000 objects per night out of 9,900 object that are regularly tracked and accounted for. Objects crossing the International Space Station (ISS) orbit within will cause the ISS to adjust their orbit to avoid collision. The oldest object tracked is Object #4 (Vanguard 1) launched in 1958. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1430643 | 665,675 |
1,564,943 | In 1970, Haskins Laboratories moved to New Haven, Connecticut, and entered into affiliation agreements with Yale University and the University of Connecticut; Haskins remains fully independent of both Yale and UConn, administratively and financially. The lab's original location in New Haven, at 270 Crown Street (from 1970 to 2005), was leased from Yale University. Isabelle Liberman, Donald Shankweiler, and Alvin Liberman teamed up with Ignatius Mattingly to study the relationship between speech perception and reading, a topic implicit in Haskins Laboratories' research program since its inception. They developed the concept of phonemic awareness, the knowledge that would-be readers must be aware of the phonemic structure of their language in order to be able to read. Leonard Katz related the work to contemporary cognitive theory and provided expertise in experimental design and data analysis. Under the broad rubric of the "alphabetic principle", this is the core of the lab's present program of reading pedagogy. Patrick Nye joined Haskins Laboratories to lead a team working on the reading machine for the blind. The project culminated when the addition of an optical character recognizer allowed investigators to assemble the first automatic text-to-speech reading machine. By the end of the decade this technology had advanced to the point where commercial concerns assumed the task of designing and manufacturing reading machines for the blind . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6202324 | 1,564,056 |
1,259,152 | The flux method of crystal growth is a method where the components of the desired substance are dissolved in a solvent (flux). The method is particularly suitable for crystals needing to be free from thermal strain. It takes place in a crucible made of highly stable, non-reactive material. For production of oxide crystals, metals such as platinum, tantalum, and niobium are common. Production of metallic crystals generally uses crucibles made from ceramics such as alumina, zirconia, and boron nitride. The crucibles and their contents are often isolated from the air for reaction, either by sealing them in a quartz ampoule or by using a furnace with atmosphere control. A saturated solution is prepared by keeping the constituents of the desired crystal and the flux at a temperature slightly above the saturation temperature long enough to form a complete solution. Then the crucible is cooled in order to allow the desired material to precipitate. Crystal formation can begin by spontaneous nucleation or may be encouraged by the use of a seed. As material precipitates out of the solution, the amount of solute in the flux decreases and the temperature at which the solution is saturated lowers. This process repeats itself as the furnace continues to cool until the solution reaches its melting point or the reaction is stopped artificially. In flux method synthesis, divergent crystal growth kinetics may emerge, with a small number of crystallites growing at the expense of neighbouring ones, resulting in abnormal grain growth. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8472042 | 1,258,465 |
565,317 | Sejong's first assignment to Jang was to build a celestial globe to measure astronomical objects. Books obtained from Arabian and Chinese scholars were not complete in their instructions, for these devices could also be used for military purposes. After two months of study, Jang made a spherical device that could perform with mediocre accuracy. In 1433, a year after his first attempt, Jang made an armillary sphere known as the "honcheonui" (혼천의, 渾天儀). Honcheonui depended on a waterwheel to rotate the internal globe to indicate time. Whether day or night, this allowed the instrument to be updated on the positions of the sun, moon, and the stars. Later celestial globes ("gyupyo" (규표)) could measure time changes according to the seasonal variations. These instruments, along with the sundials and water clocks, were stationed around the Gyeongnghoeru Pavilion in Gyeongbok Palace and put into use by the astronomers. The success of Jang's astronomical machines was marked in 1442 AD when the Korean astronomers compiled their computations on the courses of the seven heavenly objects (five visible planets, the sun, and moon) in "Chiljeongsan" (칠정산), an astronomical calendar that made it possible for scientists to calculate and accurately predict all the major heavenly phenomena, such as solar eclipses and other stellar movements. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4653170 | 565,027 |
932,565 | In 1644, René Descartes proposed that no empty space can exist and that a continuum of matter causes every motion to be curvilinear. Thus, centrifugal force thrusts relatively light matter away from the central vortices of celestial bodies, lowering density locally and thereby creating centripetal pressure. Utilizing aspects of this theory, between 1669 and 1690, Christiaan Huygens designed a mathematical vortex model. In one of his proofs, he shows that the distance elapsed by an object dropped from a spinning wheel will increase proportionally to the square of the wheel's rotation time. In 1671, Robert Hooke speculated that gravitation is the result of bodies emitting waves in the aether. Nicolas Fatio de Duillier (1690) and Georges-Louis Le Sage (1748) proposed a corpuscular model using some sort of screening or shadowing mechanism. In 1784, Le Sage posited that gravity could be a result of the collision of atoms, and in the early 19th century, he expanded Daniel Bernoulli's theory of corpuscular pressure to the universe as a whole. A similar model was later created by Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928), who used electromagnetic radiation instead of corpuscles. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4387043 | 932,073 |
108,859 | Some scientists have asserted that the carbon spherules originated as fungal structures and/or insect fecal pellets, and contained modern contaminants and that the claimed nanodiamonds are actually misidentified graphene and graphene/graphane oxide aggregates. Iridium, magnetic minerals, microspherules, carbon, and nanodiamonds are all subject to differing interpretations as to their nature and origin, and may be explained in many cases by purely terrestrial or non-catastrophic factors. An analysis of a similar Younger Dryas boundary layer in Belgium yielded carbon crystalline structures such as nanodiamonds, but the authors concluded that they also did not show unique evidence for a bolide impact. One group of researchers also reported they were unable to replicate platinum group metals in the boundary layer, despite reporting enhanced Iridium concentrations up to >300% of background in 2 of their samples. Another group was unable to confirm prior claims of magnetic particles and microspherules in 2009, though all subsequent studies successfully replicated them, including multiple independent teams. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11338425 | 108,814 |
240,152 | In the "LA Weekly" op-ed piece "The Kids Aren't All Right: Is over-education killing young artists?", published in 2005, curator Aaron Rose wrote about an observed trend he recognized in Los Angeles's most esteemed art schools and their MFA programs, including CalArts. He uses the example of Supersonic, "a large exhibition ... that features the work of MFA students from esteemed area programs like CalArts, Art Center, UCLA, etc." In his observation of the showcase, he examined, "... the work left me mostly empty and with a few exceptions seemed like nothing more than a rehash of conceptual ideas that were mined years ago." He went on to state that "these institutions are staffed with amazing talents (Mike Kelley and John Baldessari among them). Legions of creative young people flock to our city [Los Angeles] every year to work alongside their heroes and develop their talents with hopes of making it as an artist." He goes on to further state "What happens too often in these situations, though, is that we find young artists simply emulating their instructors, rather than finding and honing their own aesthetics and points of view about the world, society, themselves. In the beginnings of an artist's career, the power in his or her work should lie not in their technique or knowledge of art history or theory or business acumen, but in what one has to say." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=165084 | 240,032 |
691,362 | "Evolution is a controversial topic, so it is necessary to address a few basic questions at the beginning of the book. Many people think that questioning Darwinian evolution must be equivalent to espousing creationism. As commonly understood, creationism involves belief in an earth formed only about ten thousand years ago, an interpretation of the Bible that is still very popular. For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it. I greatly respect the work of my colleagues who study the development and behavior of organisms within an evolutionary framework, and I think that evolutionary biologists have contributed enormously to our understanding of the world. Although Darwin's mechanism – natural selection working on variation – might explain many things, however, I do not believe it explains molecular life. I also do not think it surprising that the new science of the very small might change the way we view the less small." "Darwin's Black Box", pp 5–6. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=186205 | 690,999 |
221,072 | Eosinophils are one form of terminally differentiated granulocytes; they function to neutralize invading microbes, primarily parasites and helminthes but also certain types of fungi and viruses. They also participate in transplant rejection, Graft-versus-host disease, and the killing of tumor cells. In conducting these functions, eosinophils produce and release on demand a range of toxic reactive oxygen species (e.g. hypobromite, hypobromous acid, superoxide, and peroxide) and they also release on demand a preformed armamentarium of cytokines, chemokines, growth factors, lipid mediators (e.g. leukotrienes, prostaglandins, platelet activating factor), and toxic proteins (e.g. metalloproteinases, major basic protein, eosinophil cationic protein, eosinophil peroxidase, and eosinophil-derived neurotoxin). These agents serve to orchestrate robust immune and inflammatory responses that destroy invading microbes, foreign tissue, and malignant cells. When overproduced and over-activated, which occurs in certain cases of hypereosinophilia and to a lesser extent eosinophilia, eosinophils may misdirect their reactive oxygen species and armamentarium of preformed molecules toward normal tissues. This can result in serious damage to such organs as the lung, heart, kidneys, and brain. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=238806 | 220,963 |
1,286,255 | Bayesian epistemology is an important theory in the field of formal epistemology. It has its roots in Thomas Bayes' work in the field of probability theory. It is based on the idea that beliefs are held gradually and that the strengths of the beliefs can be described as subjective probabilities. As such, they are subject to the laws of probability theory, which act as the norms of rationality. These norms can be divided into static constraints, governing the rationality of beliefs at any moment, and dynamic constraints, governing how rational agents should change their beliefs upon receiving new evidence. The most characteristic Bayesian expression of these principles is found in the form of Dutch books, which illustrate irrationality in agents through a series of bets that lead to a loss for the agent no matter which of the probabilistic events occurs. Bayesians have applied these fundamental principles to various epistemological topics but Bayesianism does not cover all topics of traditional epistemology. The problem of confirmation in the philosophy of science, for example, can be approached through the Bayesian "principle of conditionalization" by holding that a piece of evidence confirms a theory if it raises the likelihood that this theory is true. Various proposals have been made to define the concept of coherence in terms of probability, usually in the sense that two propositions cohere if the probability of their conjunction is higher than if they were neutrally related to each other. The Bayesian approach has also been fruitful in the field of social epistemology, for example, concerning the problem of testimony or the problem of group belief. Bayesianism still faces various theoretical objections that have not been fully solved. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3660078 | 1,285,554 |
2,170,714 | The proposed four million years old tectonic aneurysm system in the Saint Elias Mountains in Alaska was formed by glacial erosion on the mountains developed by underthrusting of the Yakutat microplate beneath the North American margin. The aneurysm occurs in the Northern plate corner in which transitions from dextral strike-slip motion to thrust sense motion thereby focusing strain. The interpreted relationship between erosion mountain development has more variations between researchers than Himalayan systems due to the age of the system and constraints regarding field work due to glacier cover. In the St. Elias range collision and underthrusting caused surface uplift forming mountains. The elevation increase climate regime allowed glacier development resulting in extreme glacial erosion potential. Since its inception, glacial erosion transported sediments West into the Pacific Ocean and onto the continental margin. After which, approximately two million years ago, the formation of a décollement caused the locus of strain to propagate south. The shift in strain focus resulted in mountain development farther South which disrupted the climatic system thereby decreasing precipitation in Northern regions of the Saint Elias Mountains. The erosion and exhumation are now concentrated on the southern portion of the mountain range which produces young cooling ages associated with the current tectonic aneurysm center. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33737566 | 2,169,476 |
65,712 | Alternating current systems can use transformers to change voltage from low to high level and back, allowing generation and consumption at low voltages but transmission, possibly over great distances, at high voltage, with savings in the cost of conductors and energy losses. A bipolar open-core power transformer developed by Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs was demonstrated in London in 1881, and attracted the interest of Westinghouse. They also exhibited the invention in Turin in 1884. However these early induction coils with open magnetic circuits are inefficient at transferring power to loads. Until about 1880, the paradigm for AC power transmission from a high voltage supply to a low voltage load was a series circuit. Open-core transformers with a ratio near 1:1 were connected with their primaries in series to allow use of a high voltage for transmission while presenting a low voltage to the lamps. The inherent flaw in this method was that turning off a single lamp (or other electric device) affected the voltage supplied to all others on the same circuit. Many adjustable transformer designs were introduced to compensate for this problematic characteristic of the series circuit, including those employing methods of adjusting the core or bypassing the magnetic flux around part of a coil. The direct current systems did not have these drawbacks, giving it significant advantages over early AC systems. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42986 | 65,687 |
339,486 | In January 2022, it was announced that Airbus had flown its C295 "Flight Test Bed 2 Sky 2" for the first time; development of this upgraded aircraft was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research program and it is intended to test various technologies related future regional multi-mission aircraft. Modifications include a high-efficiency semi-morphing wing, dynamic winglets, a flat panel SATCOM antenna integrated into the upper fuselage, along with innovative flight controls for the primary control surfaces to achieve improved aerodynamics and contribute to a more efficient high-lift system. New materials and technologies were used to reduce the emission of , , and noise alike; Airbus aims for 43% and 70% reductions to be achieved in a typical search-and-rescue mission of 400 nautical miles, as well as 45% less noise during takeoff. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7175494 | 339,306 |
2,116,840 | Defending champion Francesco Panetta took the early lead, shadowed by Tom Hanlon. The ever dangerous Kenyan team scattered toward the rear of the pack, but quickly moved forward as a group to join the train behind Hanlon. The first action happened on the third lap when Hagen Melzer and Graeme Fell, found themselves lying on the track after Fell fell over a barrier. Later in the lap, the Kenyans tired of training Hanlon and moved directly behind Panetta. Finally, the fourth time over the water jump, the entire Kenyan team passed Panetta. Over th next lap, Panetta began to fall back, leaving a 5-man break on the front, with Abdelaziz Sahere and Azzedine Brahmi tagging on behind the Kenyans. Behind the group, Panetta, Brian Diemer and Angelo Carosi were chasing trying to bridge the gap. Of the Kenyans, the order was consistently World 1500m Junior Champion Moses Kiptanui leading Patrick Sang, with Olympic champion Julius Kariuki. On the penultimate lap, the Kenyans appeared to slow, enough for the breakaway group to catch the back temporarily, before the Kenyans again accelerated away. During the acceleration, Kariuki upset the patter by moving up to Kiptanui's shoulder. By the bell, only Brahmi was able to hold on to the back of Sang, the trailing Kenyan as Kariuki spent the next half lap challenging Kiptanui for the lead. Down the backstretch, Brahmi passed Sang before the water jump, but after the water it was again the three Kenyans on the front. As they hit the final straight, Kiptanui held a 2-metre lead over Sang, while Kariuki took the turn wide enough to allow Brahmi to fall in behind Sang, with Kariuki effectively conceding a Kenyan sweep and the bronze medal to him with 80 metres to go. Down the stretch, Sang accelerated enough for Kiptanui to sense his presence, then Kiptanui sped up to take a decisive victory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13819508 | 2,115,623 |
2,118,444 | The experiment was capable of measuring gamma-ray energies falling within the energy interval from 0.045 to 10 MeV. The Ge detector system had an initial energy resolution better than 2.5 keV at 1.33 MeV and a line sensitivity from 1.E-4 to 1.E-5 photons/cm-s, depending on the energy. Key experimental parameters were (1) a geometry factor of 11.1 cm-sr, (2) effective area ~75 cmformula_2 at 100 keV, (3) a field of view of ~30 deg FWHM at 45 keV, and (4) a time resolution of less than 0.1 ms for the germanium detectors and 10 s for the CsI detectors. The gamma-ray spectrometer operated until 1 June 1980, when its cryogen was exhausted. The energy resolution of the Ge detectors was subject to degradation (roughly proportional to energy and time) due to radiation damage. The primary data are available at from the NASA HESARC and at JPL. They include instrument, orbit, and aspect data plus some spacecraft housekeeping information on 1600-bpi binary tapes. Some of this material has subsequently been archived on more modern media. The experiment was proposed, developed, and managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology, under the direction of Dr. Allan S. Jacobson. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14597919 | 2,117,226 |
1,068,553 | Programs were prepared ahead of time, offline, on paper tape or punched cards. But usually the programmers were allowed to run the programs personally, hands-on, instead of submitting them to operators as was the case with mainframe computers at that time. And the console typewriter allowed entering data and getting output in an interactive fashion, instead of just getting the normal printed output from a blind batch run on a pre-packaged data set. As well, there were four program switches on the console whose state a running program could test and so have its behavior directed by its user. The computer operator could also stop a running program (or it may come to a deliberately programmed stop) then investigate or modify the contents of memory: being decimal-based, this was quite easy; even floating-point numbers could be read at a glance. Execution could then be resumed, from any desired point. Aside from debugging, scientific programming is typically exploratory, by contrast to commercial data processing where the same work is repeated on a regular schedule. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=92577 | 1,067,999 |
1,062,940 | When motivations to go into space are realized, work on mitigating the most serious threats can begin. One of the biggest threats to astronaut safety in space is sudden radiation events from solar flares. The violent solar storm of August 1972, which occurred between the Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 missions, could have produced fatal consequences had astronauts been caught exposed on the lunar surface. The best known protection against radiation in space is shielding; an especially effective shield is water contained in large tanks surrounding the astronauts. Unfortunately water has a mass of 1000 kilograms per cubic meter. A more practical approach would be to construct solar "storm shelters" that spacefarers can retreat to during peak events. For this to work, however, there would need to be a space weather broadcasting system in place to warn astronauts of upcoming storms, much like a tsunami warning system warns coastal inhabitants of impending danger. Perhaps one day a fleet of robotic spacecraft will orbit close to the Sun, monitoring solar activity and sending precious minutes of warning before waves of dangerous particles arrive at inhabited regions of space. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23516569 | 1,062,386 |
323,553 | Once considered for replacement by the "Common Support Aircraft", this concept was abandoned. The latest E-2 version is the "E-2D Advanced Hawkeye", which features an entirely new avionics suite including the new AN/APY-9 radar, radio suite, mission computer, integrated satellite communications, flight management system, improved T56-A-427A engines, a glass cockpit and aerial refueling. The APY-9 radar features an active electronically scanned array (AESA), which adds electronic scanning to the mechanical rotation of the radar in its radome. The E-2D includes provisions for the copilot to act as a "Tactical 4th Operator" (T4O), who can reconfigure his main cockpit display to show radar, IFF, Link 16 (JTIDS)/CEC and access all acquired data. The E-2D's first flight occurred on 3 August 2007. On 8 May 2009, an E-2D used its Cooperative Engagement Capability system to engage an overland cruise missile with a Standard Missile SM-6 fired from another platform in an integrated fire-control system test. These two systems will form the basis of the Naval Integrated Fire Control – Counter Air (NIFC-CA) when fielded in 2015; the USN is investigating adding other systems to the NIFC-CA network in the future. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=56075 | 323,381 |
398,236 | By 1940, automation via cams, such as in screw machines and automatic chuckers, had already been very well developed for decades. Beginning in the 1930s, ideas involving servomechanisms had been in the air, but it was especially during and immediately after World War II that they began to germinate (see also Numerical control > History). These were soon combined with the emerging technology of digital computers. This technological development milieu, spanning from the immediate pre–World War II period into the 1950s, was powered by the military capital expenditures that pursued contemporary advancements in the directing of gun and rocket artillery and in missile guidance—other applications in which humans wished to control the kinematics/dynamics of large machines quickly, precisely, and automatically. Sufficient R&D spending probably would not have happened within the machine tool industry alone; but it was for the latter applications that the will and ability to spend was available. Once the development was underway, it was eagerly applied to machine tool control in one of the many post-WWII instances of technology transfer. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38360943 | 398,040 |
2,162,285 | In 1931, ETSTC joined the Lone Star Conference (LSC) as a founding member, in which it competed in men's basketball, football, tennis, and track. The Lions football team was particularly successful, winning five LSC championships and a share of a sixth between 1933 and 1943. The 1934 team, considered "one of ET's greatest" by Reynolds and "the institution's first truly great team" by Sawyer, finished the season undefeated and untied, conceding a total of only six points against. The football team was well supported by the student body during this period, drawing attendances of up to 10,000 at home as well as road support in Abilene, San Marcos, and (especially) Denton, the home of ETSTC's archrival, North Texas State Teachers College (NTSTC). NTSTC students and alumni also traveled to Commerce to attend football games against ETSTC. The budget for men's athletics grew from $27,050 in 1935–36 to $47,291 in 1940–41, while only $56.80 was spent on women's athletics in 1940–41, which in Reynolds' words "graphically illustrated that...intercollegiate sports was still the exclusive preserve of the male". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=49869717 | 2,161,050 |
143,197 | Several obstacles have been encountered in the development of astatine-based radiopharmaceuticals for cancer treatment. World War II delayed research for close to a decade. Results of early experiments indicated that a cancer-selective carrier would need to be developed and it was not until the 1970s that monoclonal antibodies became available for this purpose. Unlike iodine, astatine shows a tendency to dehalogenate from molecular carriers such as these, particularly at sp carbon sites (less so from sp sites). Given the toxicity of astatine accumulated and retained in the body, this emphasized the need to ensure it remained attached to its host molecule. While astatine carriers that are slowly metabolized can be assessed for their efficacy, more rapidly metabolized carriers remain a significant obstacle to the evaluation of astatine in nuclear medicine. Mitigating the effects of astatine-induced radiolysis of labeling chemistry and carrier molecules is another area requiring further development. A practical application for astatine as a cancer treatment would potentially be suitable for a "staggering" number of patients; production of astatine in the quantities that would be required remains an issue. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=901 | 143,139 |
83,815 | Microwaves travel solely by line-of-sight paths; unlike lower frequency radio waves, they do not travel as ground waves which follow the contour of the Earth, or reflect off the ionosphere (skywaves). Although at the low end of the band they can pass through building walls enough for useful reception, usually rights of way cleared to the first Fresnel zone are required. Therefore, on the surface of the Earth, microwave communication links are limited by the visual horizon to about . Microwaves are absorbed by moisture in the atmosphere, and the attenuation increases with frequency, becoming a significant factor (rain fade) at the high end of the band. Beginning at about 40 GHz, atmospheric gases also begin to absorb microwaves, so above this frequency microwave transmission is limited to a few kilometers. A spectral band structure causes absorption peaks at specific frequencies (see graph at right). Above 100 GHz, the absorption of electromagnetic radiation by Earth's atmosphere is so great that it is in effect opaque, until the atmosphere becomes transparent again in the so-called infrared and optical window frequency ranges. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20097 | 83,781 |
33,100 | The main Scythian weapon was the short composite recurve bow; presently so-called "Scythian type" arrows were not a Scythian invention but had been borrowed during the Scythian period in West Asia from the peoples of Transcaucasia, were made either of reed or of wood, and their arrowheads were typically socketed and had three edges; the combination of arrowheads shape and short recurve bow used by the Scythians constituted the most powerful firing weapon of their time, due to which these were borrowed from the Scythians by ancient West Asian armies in the late 2nd century BC, and soon after by most of the ancient world. When not used, Scythian bows were carried in a combined quiver-bowcase, made of bark or leather and decorated with golden or bronze plaque, called a , of which each could contain up to 300 arrows. The sword, which was a 50 to 70 centimetres short iron dagger, which whose haft was richly decorated, and shaft-hole war axes, which are also considered to be "typically Scythian" weapons, were also adopted by the Scythians from the Transcaucasian populations, and more specifically were derived from Georgian Bronze Age weapons. The Scythians also used long swords during their earlier history, and both the and the Scythian long swords had heart- or similarly "butterfly"- or "kidney"-shaped cross-guards and bar-shaped terminals. The battle-pickaxes, which had bronze sockets and iron blades, were among the many types of war axes used by the Scythians. Other Scythian weapons included spears which were between 1.70 and 2.20 metres in length and had a bay leaf-shaped spearhead and sometimes a ferrule at the bottom, as well as lances, darts, lassoes, and slings. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=55092 | 33,088 |
263,202 | vs. vertical bias changed across slit with dipole illumination. The rotating plane of incidence (azimuthal range within -25° to 25°) is confirmed in the SHARP actinic review microscope at CXRO which mimics the optics for EUV projection lithography systems. The reason for this is a mirror is used to transform straight rectangular fields into arc-shaped fields. In order to preserve a fixed plane of incidence, the reflection from the previous mirror would be from a different angle with the surface for a different slit position; this causes non-uniformity of reflectivity. To preserve uniformity, rotational symmetry with a rotating plane of incidence is used. More generally, so-called "ring-field" systems reduce aberrations by relying on the rotational symmetry of an arc-shaped field derived from an off-axis annulus. This is preferred, as reflective systems must use off-axis paths, which aggravate aberrations. Hence identical die patterns within different halves of the arc-shaped slit would require different OPC. This renders them uninspectable by die-to-die comparison, as they are no longer truly identical dies. For pitches requiring dipole, quadrupole, or hexapole illumination, the rotation also causes mismatch with the same pattern layout at a different slit position, i.e., edge vs. center. Even with annular or circular illumination, the rotational symmetry is destroyed by the angle-dependent multilayer reflectance described above. Although the azimuthal angle range is +/- ~20° (NXE3400 field data indicate 18.2°) on 0.33 NA scanners, at 7 nm design rules (36-40 nm pitch), the tolerance for illumination can be +/-15°, or even less. Annular illumination nonuniformity and asymmetry also significantly impact the imaging. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2154371 | 263,063 |
777,302 | TAM has been widely criticised, despite its frequent use, leading the original proposers to attempt to redefine it several times. Criticisms of TAM as a "theory" include its questionable heuristic value, limited explanatory and predictive power, triviality, and lack of any practical value (). Benbasat and Barki suggest that TAM "has diverted researchers' attention away from other important research issues and has created an illusion of progress in knowledge accumulation. Furthermore, the independent attempts by several researchers to expand TAM in order to adapt it to the constantly changing IT environments has lead to a state of theoretical chaos and confusion" (). In general, TAM focuses on the individual 'user' of a computer, with the concept of 'perceived usefulness', with extension to bring in more and more factors to explain how a user 'perceives' 'usefulness', and ignores the essentially social processes of IS development and implementation, without question where more technology is actually better, and the social consequences of IS use. Lunceford argues that the framework of perceived usefulness and ease of use overlooks other issues, such as cost and structural imperatives that force users into adopting the technology. For a recent analysis and critique of TAM, see Bagozzi (). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=325542 | 776,886 |
310,283 | Despite the manpower and technical limitations imposed upon the German Army by the Treaty of Versailles, several Reichswehr officers established a clandestine General Staff to study World War I and develop future strategies and tactics. One such Reichswehr officer, Hans von Seeckt, became Commander-in-Chief. Seeckt took to heart the lessons learned in the Great War and set about in rewriting the foundation of the German Army. Infantry still remained the heart and soul of any planned offensive, but the tank would become the spearhead of actions that could shatter enemy defenses through speed, force and firepower. Tactics involved the splitting up of enemy formations and counteractions involving pincer movements to surround and ultimately decimate the enemy in whole. By 1926, German Army doctrine was all rewritten to fulfill this vision. Although at first the concept of the tank as a mobile weapon of war met with apathy, German industry was silently encouraged to look into tank design, while quiet cooperation was undertaken with the Soviet Union. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Germans closely co-operated with Russians in the development of armored vehicles, which were tested at Kama tank school, near Kazan in the USSR. There was also minor military cooperation with Sweden, including the extraction of technical data that proved invaluable to early German tank design. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29073044 | 310,115 |
1,414,909 | Microencapsulation (diameter < 1 mm) remains a popular technology for manufacturing autonomous self-healing components for cementitious systems, inspired by the pioneering study of White et al. Microcapsules were directly incorporated into the matrix and upon crack development, and releasing the core in the crack volume. The discharged substance would then react with a distributed catalyst in the matrix to heal the crack. On several occasions, the proof of concept for microcapsule-based healing in concrete has been proven. Recent capsule research has continued to emphasize the usage of adhesive two-component systems necessitating the simultaneous embedding of a catalyst into the matrix for activation and hardening. Wang et al. advised a ratio of 0.5 catalyst to microcapsules, although others have suggested a ratio of 1.3 catalyst to microcapsules to guarantee activation of the encapsulated epoxy. However, the long-term stability of reacted organic healing agents in the extremely alkaline cementitious matrix and their long-term functioning remain uncertain. Emerging research, however, promotes compatibility and bonding with the mineral substrate of the cementitious matrix, moving toward a capsule that may provide such healing products; these include encapsulated bacterial spores and mineral cargos such as colloidal silica and sodium silicate. The former may increase carbonate precipitation, while the latter can convert calcium hydroxide to a more desirable CSH gel. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=69140980 | 1,414,112 |
1,934,835 | A message of congratulation was sent by the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich, Sir H. Spencer Jones. Articles on current celestial objects were written in the local press by the Reverend John Lees, who usually acted as chairman at public lectures given at the Observatory by visiting astronomers The first Curator was J. Grant Bruce FRAS, an instrument-maker from Newport, Fife. This was a part-time post, with a small salary. A full-time caretaker, George Dorward, was also appointed. Hours of opening were fixed, with special arrangements for visiting parties, and for qualified persons at other times. In the winter evenings, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays were for the public, with Tuesdays and Thursdays reserved for private booked parties. During the day and throughout the summer, visitors could view the scenery from the balcony, using two four-inch (102 mm) Turret telescopes by Ross, suitable for terrestrial viewing. These were excellent telescopes, also very suitable for wide-field, low-power astronomical work. Unfortunately these are no longer functioning and only parts of one remain. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9898493 | 1,933,727 |
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