doc_id int32 18 2.25M | text stringlengths 245 2.96k | source stringlengths 38 44 | __index_level_0__ int64 18 2.25M |
|---|---|---|---|
1,473,291 | The cultural continuity on the Ob continued in the first millennium BC, as the Iron Age began in Siberia; the local ceramic style continues there even in this period. A much larger break occurred in the central Asian steppe: the sedentary, predominantly pastoralist society of the late Bronze Age is replaced by the mobile horse nomads which would continue to dominate this region until modern times. The mobility, which the new cultural form enabled, unleashed a powerful dynamic, since henceforth the people of Central Asia were able to move across the steppe in great numbers. The neighbouring sedentary cultures were not unaffected by this development. Ancient China was threatened by the Xiongnu and their neighbours, the ancient states of modern Iran were opposed by the Massagetae and Sakas, and the Roman empire eventually was confronted by the Huns. The social changes are clearly indicated in the archaeological finds. Settlements are no longer found, members of the new elite were buried in richly furnished kurgans and completely new forms of art developed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14836781 | 1,472,460 |
1,991,038 | The Egyptians used to have a whole list of Gods who were worshipped during this period of time. These Gods were always represented in the form of humans or animals or as animal-headed humans. Some of these gods were specific to certain places or cities for example while others were more general and were worshipped on a larger scale. From early periods of the Egyptian kingdom solar gods such as Re had played a very important role in Egyptian state religion. This is mainly because the idea of the sun as a distant yet universal power was close enough to the prevailing ideas of the supreme power of the king both inside Egypt and beyond its borders. In the New Kingdom, the prominence and power of solar gods increased again. One of the most popular ones was the Aten, the visible sun-disk which can be seen traversing the sky each day. Akhenaten raised the Aten to the position of 'sole god', and it was represented as a disk with rays of light terminating in hands which reach out to the royal family, it was usually perceived as if it was offering the hieroglyphic sign for life. Akhenaten and his family are usually displayed while worshipping the Aten or even indulging in everyday activities beneath the disk that represents Aten. Art and test during this period always stressed on the idea of the tie between the king and the God. The king represents the link between the god and ordinary people. As a result, ordinary people had to focus on worshipping Akhenaten and the royal family instead of the Aten. And with worshipping the king they are getting closer to the god Aten. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=44625317 | 1,989,895 |
495,951 | Microbes are ideally suited for biochemical and genetics studies and have made huge contributions to these fields of science such as the demonstration that DNA is the genetic material, that the gene has a simple linear structure, that the genetic code is a triplet code, and that gene expression is regulated by specific genetic processes. Jacques Monod and François Jacob used "Escherichia coli", a type of bacteria, in order to develop the operon model of gene expression, which lay down the basis of gene expression and regulation. Furthermore, the hereditary processes of single-celled eukaryotic microorganisms are similar to those in multi-cellular organisms allowing researchers to gather information on this process as well. Another bacterium which has greatly contributed to the field of genetics is "Thermus aquaticus", which is a bacterium that tolerates high temperatures. From this microbe scientists isolated the enzyme Taq polymerase, which is now used in the powerful experimental technique, Polymerase chain reaction(PCR). Additionally the development of recombinant DNA technology through the use of bacteria has led to the birth of modern genetic engineering and biotechnology. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5762008 | 495,695 |
604,331 | Despite the emphasis in the press on speed, the Air Service also established a number of altitude, distance, and endurance records. The Packard-Le Peré LUSAC-11 biplane set world altitude records over McCook Field of on February 27, 1920, by Maj. Rudolph W. Schroeder; and on September 28, 1921, by Lt. John A. Macready. A distance record was set by Capt. St. Clair Streett leading a flight of four DH-4s from Mitchel Field, New York to Nome, Alaska and back, a distance of 8,690 miles (14,000 km), between July 15 and October 20, 1920. Flying across the northern United States and southern Canada in 15 legs, the flight reached Nome on August 23 in 56 hours of flying time, but was prohibited by the U.S. State Department from completing the first flight to Asia across the Bering Strait. The first nonstop endurance flight across the U.S., made in 26 hours and 50 minutes at an average speed of 98.76 mph, was made May 2–3, 1923, from Roosevelt Field, New York, to Rockwell Field in a Fokker T-2 transport monoplane by Macready and Lt. Oakley G. Kelly. The feat was followed in August by a flight in which a DH-4 stayed aloft for more than 37 hours by means of aerial refueling. The Fokker T-2 is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=662917 | 604,021 |
875,105 | In the Far East the Soviet Union had been subject of a BW attack in 1939 during the battles of Khalkin Gol (Nomonhan) by Japan's Unit 731 under Shirō Ishii. Further attacks were initiated against the Soviet Union by Unit 100 in the summer of 1942, and at a later unspecified date, again by Unit 731. On the 9 August 1945, the Soviet Union launched its invasion of Japanese-controlled Manchuria. Two major Japanese offensive BW installations at Pingfang and Changchun were overrun by the Red Army. However, General Otozō Yamada, Commander of the Kwantung Army had already ordered the destruction and evacuation of these facilities. The NKVD now switched its focus to apprehending any personnel associated with Units 100 and 731 and began a process of filtration of the 560,000-760,000 Japanese prisoners of war. In December 1949, the military figures identified by the Soviets as participating in the Japanese BW programme were put on trial in Khabarovsk. The defendants were found guilty and sentenced to terms ranging from two to twenty-five years in Soviet labour correction camps. However, the officers, doctors and other personnel from Unit 731 were in fact transferred to the comparative comfort of the NKVD special prison camp No. 48 - a tsarist-era red-brick manor house located in Cherntsy (Ivanovo region). The leniency with which the Japanese BW specialists were treated - the longest sentence any served was seven years - has led a number of scholars to conclude that some sort of deal was struck between the Soviet authorities and the Unit 731 personnel held captive in the USSR. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11564525 | 874,643 |
1,591,694 | Consulting & Advisory. Since leaving the British Army, Stankovic has worked in over eighty countries on five continents as a risk management consultant, and has specialised in business intelligence and new market entry in the Russian Federation. He has been honoured three times by the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles for his work with CBS TV and advised the BBC on developing proactive protection measures for BBC teams in Iraq. His expertise in psychological operations and mediation in cross-cultural environments have led to the development of innovative approaches in the fields of mediation and negotiation using agile and iterative processes for Conflict Resolution and Alternative Dispute Resolution. He uses his expertise both in security and Health & Safety consulting in the creative and media industries with a focus on hostile environments. He is the Principle High Risk Advisor at 1st Option Safety Group as well as being an Accredited Mediator with, and Member of, the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, specialising in the use of archetypal application in the mediation process. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13845488 | 1,590,798 |
307,951 | LSD was evidently in limited recreational use in Australia in the early 1960s, but is believed to have been initially restricted to those with connections to the scientific and the medical communities. LSD overdose was suggested as a possible cause of the January 2, 1962 deaths of CSIRO scientists Dr. Gilbert Bogle and his lover Dr. Margaret Chandler, but is very unlikely as there are no known cases of a LSD fatal overdose and other more likely causes of death have been suggested. Large quantities of LSD began to appear in Australia around 1968, and soon permeated the music scene and youth culture in general, especially in the capital cities. The major source of supply during this period is believed to have been American servicemen visiting Australia (mainly Sydney) from Vietnam on 'rest and recreation' (R&R) leave, although the growing connections between American and Australian organized crime in the late 1960s may also have facilitated its importation. Recreational LSD use among young people was on a par with that in other countries in Australia by the early 1970s and continued until late in the decade. LSD is not believed to have been manufactured locally in a significant quantity (if at all) and most if not all supplies were sourced from overseas. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1119225 | 307,786 |
512,537 | FIA race director Charlie Whiting did not stop the race and abort the first start to allow those who were involved in the accident to return to the pit lane and get into their spare cars. Whiting decided to deploy the safety car at the first lap's conclusion to enable marshals to remove strands of carbon fibre on the circuit and extricate the cars in the gravel trap. Gislimberti suffered from head and chest injuries and was given a heart massage before he was tended to by doctors Sid Watkins and Gary Hartstein. Watkins and Harstein had not been made aware of Gislimberti's condition because of inaccurate initial reports and were not told to drive to the accident scene until race control received notice of Gislimberti's injuries. Gislimberti was later transported in cardiocirculatory arrest to San Gerardo Hospital by ambulance since travel by helicopter would have taken longer. Salo became the fifth driver to pit on lap eight; his mechanics fitted a new engine cover and sidepods to repair handling problems. The safety car period was extended primarily due to the wait for Harstein and Watkins in the medical car to return to their position at the pit lane exit after administering aid to Gislimberti and to instruct marshals to not leave the stricken vehicles at the back of the gravel trap but move them to a safer area. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1123405 | 512,271 |
1,415,692 | The winning novel is selected by a panel of science fiction experts, intended to be "small enough to discuss among its members all of the nominated novels". Among members of the panel have been Gregory Benford, Paul A. Carter, James Gunn, Elizabeth Anne Hull, Christopher McKitterick, Farah Mendlesohn, Pamela Sargent, and Tom Shippey. In 2008 Mendlesohn was replaced with Paul Kincaid, in 2009 Carter left the panel while Paul Di Filippo and Sheila Finch joined, and Lisa Yaszek replaced Di Filippo in 2016. Nominations are submitted by publishers and jurors, and are collated by the panel into a list of finalists to be voted on. The minimum eligible length that a work may be is not formally defined by the center. The winner is selected by May of each year, and is presented at the Campbell Conference awards banquet in June at the University of Kansas in Lawrence as part of the centerpiece of the conference along with the Sturgeon Award. The award has been given at the conference since 1979; prior to then it was awarded at various locations around the world, starting at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1973. Winners are always invited to attend the ceremony. The Center for the Study of Science Fiction maintains a trophy which records all of the winners on engraved plaques affixed to the sides, and since 2004 winners have received a smaller personalized trophy as well. In 2019, the Center for the Study of Science Fiction announced plans to rename both the conference and the award, but did not announce any names. Both the conference and the award were cancelled in 2020, 2021, and 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and organizational changes at the Center for the Study of Science Fiction. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=192402 | 1,414,895 |
228,632 | In September 1944, Wu was contacted by the Manhattan District Engineer, Colonel Kenneth Nichols. Wu was frustrated with her lack of professorships and volunteered to help out in the project. In the beginning, Wu was assigned to check the radiation effect of the reactor by building her own instruments; later, however, she was contacted for a much bigger role. The newly commissioned B Reactor, the first practical nuclear reactor ever built, which was located at the Hanford Site had run into an unexpected problem, starting up and shutting down at regular intervals. John Archibald Wheeler and partner Enrico Fermi suspected that a fission product, Xe-135, with a half-life of 9.4 hours, was the culprit, and might be a neutron poison or absorber. Segrè then remembered the 1940 PhD thesis that Wu had done for him at Berkeley on the radioactive isotopes of Xe and told Fermi to "ask Ms. Wu". The paper on the subject was still unpublished, but after Fermi contacted Wu, Segrè visited her dorm room together with Nichols and collected the typewritten draft prepared for the "Physical Review". The suspicions of Fermi and Wheeler came true, Wu's paper unknowingly verified that Xe-135 was indeed the culprit for the B Reactor; it turned out to have an unexpectedly large neutron absorption cross-section. Wu, wary of her publication giving information to other nations on the arms race of the war, waited for a few months before November 1944, when she and Segrè submitted a complete study on these results, which was published months before the bombs were used the next year. Wu also used her findings in radioactive uranium separation to build the standard model for producing enriched uranium to fuel the atomic bombs at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee facility as well as build innovative Geiger counters. Wu, like most involved physicists in their later years, distanced herself from the Manhattan Project due to its destructive outcome and recommended to the Taiwanese president Chiang Kai-shek in 1962 to never build nuclear weapons. However, she was pleased to know that her family was safe in China. Years later, Wu in a rare occasion opened up on her involvement in building the bomb,Do you think that people are so stupid and self-destructive? No. I have confidence in humankind. I believe we will one day live together peacefully. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=252131 | 228,515 |
798,414 | Despite the pioneering work of some designers, video games are still considered biased towards men. A 2013 survey by the International Game Developers Association revealed only 22% of game designers are women, although this is substantially higher than figures in previous decades. Working to bring inclusion to the world of open source project development, Coraline Ada Ehmke drafted the Contributor Covenant in 2014. By 2018, over 40,000 software projects have started using the Contributor Covenant, including TensorFlow, Vue and Linux. In 2014, Danielle George, professor at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester spoke at the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on the subject of "how to hack your home", describing simple experiments involving computer hardware and demonstrating a giant game of Tetris by remote controlling lights in an office building. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2279544 | 797,989 |
1,333,312 | The initial contact from DDT is on vegetation and soil. From here, the DDT can travel many routes; for instance, when plants and vegetation are exposed to the chemical to protect from insects, the plants may absorb it. Then these plants may either be consumed by humans or other animals. These consumers ingest the chemical and begin metabolizing the toxicant, accumulating more through ingestion, and posing health risks to the organism, their offspring, and any predators. Alternatively the ingestion of the contaminated plant by insects may lead to tolerance by the organism. Another route is the chemical travelling through the soil and ending up in ground water and in human water supply. In the case that the soil is near a moving water system, the chemical could end up in large freshwater systems or the ocean, where fish are at high risk from the toxicological effects of DDT. Lastly, the most common transport route is the evaporation of DDT into the atmosphere followed by condensation and eventually precipitation where it is released into environments anywhere on earth. Due to the long-range transport of DDT, the presence of this harmful toxicant will continue as long as it is still used anywhere and until the current contamination eventually degrades. Even after its complete discontinued use, it will still remain in the environment for many more years after because of DDT's persistent attributes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36650542 | 1,332,583 |
1,203,908 | Wheels are of the normal road racing type fitted with knobby tires (a variety of tread designs in both tubular and clincher types are available), although deeper rim profiles may be preferred for their advantages in thick mud. There are slight geometry differences between road and cyclocross bicycles; cyclo-cross bikes tend to have slightly higher handlebars for a more upright position as aerodynamics have little importance in a cross race. A second set of brake levers on the tops, called "top mount" or "interrupter" brake levers, are favored by some competitors. These are also commonly called "cross levers" due to their popularity in the sport. The top tubes of cyclocross bike frames typically have an ovalized or flattened bottom profile to provide greater comfort when riders need to shoulder and carry their bikes. In general, with a change of tires and gearing a cyclo-cross bike can double as a perfectly adequate road racing machine. However, most cyclo-cross racers prefer clipless mountain bike pedals for their easy dual-sided entry and mud-shedding abilities. Additionally, mountain biking shoes provide better traction while running than typical road style shoes thanks to flexibility in the sole and pronounced tread patterns, and may even be fitted with two screw-threaded studs of the same type traditionally used on soccer boots. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=857305 | 1,203,263 |
570,109 | SARAS had its maiden flight on 29 May 2004. The aircraft took off at 08:15 and flew for about 25 minutes. SARAS is the first civilian aircraft designed and developed in India. Two prototypes have been built and flown (176 flights) by ASTE (IAF) flight crew. The third prototype aircraft (production standard) is under production at CSIR-NAL. Features include composite wing VERITy (Vacuum Enhanced Resin Infusion Technology), empennage, rear pressure bulkhead, front fuselage top skin, and control surfaces. The aircraft will be equipped with an all-glass cockpit including EICAS and 3-axis autopilot (limited authority). It will be powered by 2x1200 SHP turboprop PT6A-67A engines (Pratt & Whitney) driving 5-blade MT-Propellers. SARAS is capable of flying up to 30,000ft (cabin altitude 8,000ft) and is capable of operation from short runways. Certification is in progress by CEMILAC and is to be completed by 2013. SARAS has been designed for many roles including executive transport, light package carrier, remote sensing, air ambulance, etc. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1088844 | 569,819 |
636,734 | Most radio control systems traditionally on low-VHF-band frequencies before the 21st century have traditionally used crystals to set the operating channel in the receiver and transmitter. It is important that each aircraft uses a different channel, otherwise interference could result. For example, if a person is flying an aircraft on channel 35 (used for 72.490 MHz in North America), and someone else turns their radio on the same channel, the aircraft's control will be compromised and the result is almost always a crash. Since multiple RC frequency use began in the RC hobbies in the mid-20th century, so-called "frequency pins" have been used to ensure that only one modeler was using a particular frequency at any one time, for "traditional" style, crystal-controlled RC system use . The common, spring-loaded two-piece wood clothespin marked in some manner with text and/or color-coding for the designated frequency it references, usually with an added piece of thin plywood or plastic on the clothespin to place the text or color-code upon for greater visibility is the usual basis for these. Usually, the model club itself will possess some sort of "transmitter impound" facility at their modeling site for secure storage of the modelers' transmitters when not in active use while visiting the facility, and usually provides some sort of fixed "frequency control board" nearby to the impound area. The "frequency control board" at a modeling club's facility is used in one of two ways: either the club provides sets of frequency pins itself, already clipped onto the control board for the modeler to take the appropriate pin for their modeling activity (clipped onto their transmitter's antenna, in a so-called "subtractive" method) while their transmitter is in use away from the impound area, or with the modeler required to provide them for their own transmitter(s), and places them on a club facility's existing frequency board (the "additive" method) whenever they are using their RC transmitter. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1466438 | 636,395 |
566,937 | The whistling of the Seraphites was a long-discussed element of the game; production began in early 2018 in preparation for an upcoming demonstration. The team originally referenced whistled languages such as Sfryria and Silbo Gomero but found that they were more sophisticated than necessary. They also worked with a professional whistler but found the result too "birdlike". Dialogue supervisor Maged Khalil and UI artist Maria Capel recorded around an hour of sample whistles, which dialogue coordinator Grayson Stone organized into 14 groups dependent on duration, trill, intensity, and tone. After some iteration, the team decided on 26 categories, each representing lines the Seraphites use to communicate. Actors Stevie Mack and Lisa Marie provided the final whistles in three styles, each in a different level of quality. The team wanted the subtitles to represent the nuance of the whistles without giving away their exact meaning, and consulted accessibility specialist Morgan Baker to create them. The team discussed adding additional communication methods, such as knocking on trees or rattling, but it would have required additional animation, art, and sound design work. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=64504979 | 566,647 |
284,466 | MOP drew the attention of the United States Congress, where the program was ridiculed and canceled one year after its start. SETI advocates continued without government funding, and in 1995 the nonprofit SETI Institute of Mountain View, California resurrected the MOP program under the name of Project "Phoenix", backed by private sources of funding. Project Phoenix, under the direction of Jill Tarter, is a continuation of the targeted search program from MOP and studies roughly 1,000 nearby Sun-like stars. From 1995 through March 2004, Phoenix conducted observations at the Parkes radio telescope in Australia, the radio telescope of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, and the radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The project observed the equivalent of 800 stars over the available channels in the frequency range from 1200 to 3000 MHz. The search was sensitive enough to pick up transmitters with 1 GW EIRP to a distance of about 200 light-years. According to Prof. Tarter, in 2012 it costs around "$2 million per year to keep SETI research going at the SETI Institute" and approximately 10 times that to support "all kinds of SETI activity around the world". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28153 | 284,312 |
1,159,312 | An early debate among the scientists was whether the fissile material for an atomic bomb should be uranium-235 or plutonium. Tube Alloys had performed much of the pioneering research on gaseous diffusion for uranium enrichment, and Oliphant's team in Berkeley were well-acquainted with the electromagnetic process. The staff that had remained in Britain strongly favoured uranium-235; but the scientists that had worked in the United States argued for plutonium on the basis of its greater efficiency as an explosive, despite the fact that they had neither the expertise in the design of nuclear reactors to produce it, nor the requisite knowledge of plutonium chemistry or metallurgy to extract it. However, the Montreal Laboratory had designed and was building pilot reactors, and had carried out some work on separating plutonium from uranium. The Manhattan Project had pursued both avenues, and the scientists who had worked at Los Alamos were aware of work there with composite cores that used both; but there were concerns that Britain might not have the money, resources or skilled manpower for this. In the end, it came down to economics; a reactor could be built more cheaply than a separation plant that produced an equivalent quantity of enriched uranium, and made more efficient use of uranium fuel. A reactor and separation plant capable of producing enough plutonium for fifteen bombs per year was costed at around £20 million. The facility was approved by the Gen 75 committee on 18 December 1945 "with the highest urgency and importance". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=52573493 | 1,158,697 |
1,082,149 | The Department of Plant Biology began as a desert laboratory in 1903 to study plants in their natural habitats. Over time the research evolved to the study of photosynthesis. Presently, using molecular genetics and related methods, these biologists study the genes responsible for plant responses to light and the genetic controls over various growth and developmental processes including those that enable plants to survive disease and environmental stress. Additionally, the department is a developer of bioinformatics. It developed the Arabidopsis Information Resource, an online-integrated database that supplies biological information on the most widely used model plant, "Arabidopsis thaliana". The department uses advanced genetic and genomic methods to study the biochemical and physiological basis of the regulation of photosynthesis and has pioneered methods that use genetic sequencing to systematically characterize unstudied genes. It examines life in extreme environments by studying communities of photosynthetic microbes that live in hot springs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14383299 | 1,081,593 |
493,872 | The heart is the first organ formed during mammalian development. A properly sized and functional heart is vital throughout the entire lifespan. Loss of cardiomyocytes because of injury or diseases leads to heart failure, which is a major cause of human morbidity and mortality. Unfortunately, regenerative potential of the adult heart is limited. The Hippo pathway is a recently identified signaling cascade that plays an evolutionarily conserved role in organ size control by inhibiting cell proliferation, promoting apoptosis, regulating fates of stem/progenitor cells, and in some circumstances, limiting cell size. Research indicates a key role of this pathway in regulation of cardiomyocyte proliferation and heart size. Inactivation of the Hippo pathway or activation of its downstream effector, the Yes-associated protein transcription coactivator, improves cardiac regeneration. Several known upstream signals of the Hippo pathway such as mechanical stress, G-protein-coupled receptor signaling, and oxidative stress are known to play critical roles in cardiac physiology. In addition, Yes-associated protein has been shown to regulate cardiomyocyte fate through multiple transcriptional mechanisms. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22108748 | 493,617 |
353,677 | From the second year onwards, the students take courses offered by their departments that are known as "depth" courses. In addition to these, the students take inter-disciplinary courses known as "breadth" courses. Separate courses from the humanities and social sciences (HSS) department, and management and information technology are also required. At the end of the third year for the BTech and fourth year for the dual degree, students undertake industrial training for a minimum period of eight working weeks as part of the undergraduate curriculum. In the final year of their studies, most of the students are offered jobs in industries and other organisations through the Training and Placement section of the institute commonly known as Career Development Centre or CDC. Some students opt out of this facility in favour of higher studies or by applying to recruiting organisations directly. In addition to the major degree as part of the undergraduate education, students can take courses from other departments, and by demonstrating knowledge of a discipline based on objectives set by the department, earn a minor in that department. To stay up-to-date with the latest academic and industry standards, IIT Kharagpur revamps its academic curriculum periodically. In August 2017, an Undergraduate Council(UG Council) was constituted by the institute under the Dean of Undergraduate Studies(Dean UGS) as its chairman and with one student representative from each department to be elected/nominated for an annual term, to assist in the process of curriculum update, assimilate student feedback on different academic policies, and forward suggestions and proposals to the institute senate. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=294901 | 353,494 |
1,657,987 | Miniscopes are head-mounted, miniature microscopes that allow imaging of large populations of neural activity in freely-behaving mice and rats. This is possible due to their small size, as they are light enough for a mouse or rat to easily carry without interfering greatly with behavior. Researchers couple miniscopes with implanted gradient-refractive-index (GRIN) lenses or cortical windows that enable deep and superficial brain imaging. This method is ideal for monitoring the activity of hundreds of genetically- and spatially-defined cells within a single animal. As compared to fiber photometry, miniscopes allow imaging with high cellular resolution, detecting changes in calcium within individual neurons and non-neuronal cells. Additionally, this method enables repeated imaging over time to analyze the transition from 'healthy' to pathological states or changes over the course of behavior. However, this method of imaging has low sensitivity and high noise, producing lower resolution imaging compared to other multi-photon methods like two-photon. These miniature microscopes are limited in their ability to detect far-red-shifted indicators that would be necessary for combination of optogenetics and calcium imaging here, as is discussed above. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=68824274 | 1,657,054 |
313,155 | In the United Kingdom application of Chobham armour was delayed by the failure of several advanced tank projects: first that of a joint German-British main battle tank; then the purely British MBT-80 programme. A first directive to prepare Chobham armour technology for application in 1975 was already given in 1969. It was determined by a study of a possible Chobham-armour protected MICV that a completely new design using only Chobham armour for the most vulnerable front and side sectors (thus without an underlying steel main armour) could be 10% lighter for the same level of protection against KE-ammunition, but to limit costs it was decided to base the first design on the conventional Chieftain. The prototype, FV 4211 or the "Aluminium Chieftain", was fitted with a welded aluminium add-on armour, in essence a box on the front hull and front and side turret to contain the ceramic modules, of which box the fifty millimetre thick inner wall due to its relative softness could serve as their backing plate. The extra weight of the aluminium was limited to less than two tonnes and it was shown that it was not overly susceptible to cracking, as first feared. Ten test vehicles were ordered but only the original one had been built when the project was cancelled in favour of the more advanced programmes. However, the Iranian government ordered 1,225 vehicles of an upgraded Chieftain type, the "Shir-2" (FV 4030/3), using the same technology of adding Chobham armour to the main cast armour, bringing total weight to 62 metric tonnes. When this order was cancelled in February 1979 because of the Iranian Revolution, the British government, under pressure to modernise its tank fleet to maintain a qualitative superiority relative to the Soviet tank forces, decided to use the sudden surplus production capacity to procure a number of vehicles very close in design to the Shir-2, called the Challenger 1. On 12 April 1983 the first British tank protected by Chobham armour was delivered to the Royal Hussars. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=200127 | 312,987 |
974,776 | In October 2015, the MPEG and VCEG formed the Joint Video Exploration Team (JVET) to evaluate available compression technologies and study the requirements for a next-generation video compression standard. The new standard has about 50% better compression rate for the same perceptual quality, with support for lossless and subjectively lossless compression. It supports resolutions ranging from very low resolution up to 4K and 16K as well as 360° videos. VVC supports YCbCr 4:4:4, 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 with 8–10 bits per component, BT.2100 wide color gamut and high dynamic range (HDR) of more than 16 stops (with peak brightness of 1000, 4000 and 10000 nits), auxiliary channels (for depth, transparency, etc.), variable and fractional frame rates from 0 to 120 Hz, scalable video coding for temporal (frame rate), spatial (resolution), SNR, color gamut and dynamic range differences, stereo/multiview coding, panoramic formats, and still picture coding. Work on high bit depth support (12 and 16 bits per component) started in October 2020 and is ongoing. Encoding complexity of several times (up to ten times) that of HEVC is expected, depending on the quality of the encoding algorithm (which is outside the scope of the standard). The decoding complexity is about twice that of HEVC. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=57686906 | 974,265 |
1,380,327 | "Nepenthes rafflesiana" is very popular in cultivation; it is a lowland "Nepenthes" (enjoying hot, humid conditions most of the time, as found in tropical jungle lowlands) but can be grown as an intermediate, with cooler nights and less humidity. It is a comparatively hardy "Nepenthes" that is commonly recommended as a "first plant" to new "Nepenthes" growers. The plant should be grown in shaded conditions, diffuse sunlight, or in a large grow chamber under artificial lights. Watering and misting should be performed frequently, and preferably with distilled water, to avoid mineral build-up that is not only unsightly but that may damage the delicate roots of "Nepenthes" (and most other carnivorous plants). Standing water is inadvisable. A wet, well-draining potting medium is a necessity. Methods of feeding are varied – some growers feed freeze-dried bloodworms or Koi pellets (both available in the fish section of most pet stores); others prefer orchid mixes. No carnivorous plant should ever be fed mammalian meat – this will result not only in an unpleasant smell but also the probable rotting of the pitcher and potential death of the plant. The digestive enzymes present have not evolved to handle large prey items, and the rotting material gives opportunistic bacteria and fungi a chance to take hold. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3788564 | 1,379,565 |
1,206,755 | In continuous wave (CW) radio transmission, also called radiotelegraphy, or wireless telegraphy (W/T) or on-off keying and designated by the International Telecommunication Union as emission type A1A, information is transmitted by pulses of unmodulated radio carrier wave which spell out text messages in Morse code. The different length pulses of carrier, called "dots" and "dashes" or "dits" and "dahs", are produced by the operator switching the transmitter on and off rapidly using a switch called a telegraph key. The first type of transmission was generated using a spark, since the spark fired at around 1000 times a second (when the telegraph key was pressed). The resulting damped waves (ITU Class B) could be received on a basic crystal set employing a diode detector and an ear phone as a spark rate tone. It was only with the introduction of tube transmitters that were able to create streams of continuous radio frequency carrier, that a BFO was required. The alternative was to modulate the carrier with an audio tone around 800 Hz and key the modulated carrier to permit use of the basic diode detector in the receiver, a method used for medium frequency (MF) marine communications up to 2000 (emission type A2A). Radio transmission using tubes started to replace spark transmitters at sea from 1920 onwards but were not totally eliminated before 1950. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=509950 | 1,206,110 |
158,423 | Smart grid technologies emerged from earlier attempts at using electronic control, metering, and monitoring. In the 1980s, automatic meter reading was used for monitoring loads from large customers and evolved into the Advanced Metering Infrastructure of the 1990s, whose meters could store how electricity was used at different times of the day. Smart meters add continuous communications so that monitoring can be done in real-time, and can be used as a gateway to demand response-aware devices and "smart sockets" in the home. Early forms of such demand side management technologies were dynamic demand aware devices that passively sensed the load on the grid by monitoring changes in the power supply frequency. Devices such as industrial and domestic air conditioners, refrigerators, and heaters adjusted their duty cycle to avoid activation during times the grid was suffering a peak condition. Beginning in 2000, Italy's Telegestore Project was the first to network large numbers (27 million) of homes using smart meters connected via low bandwidth power line communication. Some experiments used the term broadband over power lines (BPL), while others used wireless technologies such as mesh networking promoted for more reliable connections to disparate devices in the home as well as supporting metering of other utilities such as gas and water. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13201685 | 158,342 |
303,814 | Suppression of the Iraqi IADS played a prominent role in Operation Instant Thunder, the preliminary air campaign plan against Iraq which served as the basis for Operation Desert Storm's air campaign. In its initial limited form, Instant Thunder called for three dedicated SEAD squadrons which would significantly degrade the IADS enough to allow decimating strikes against Iraq's military and political leadership and other strategic targets. This role for SEAD was further expanded as the mission grew in scope, involving a larger number of aircraft to completely destroy the air defenses protecting southern Iraq and Kuwait. Planning for this mission was helped when the CIA contacted the French engineer responsible for designing the Kari IADS and passed along information about its vulnerabilities and limitations. In its final form, Phase II of the Desert Storm air campaign sought to decimate the southern Iraqi IADS within two days of the start of hostilities. F-4G Wild Weasels and other aircraft capable of carrying HARM missiles would destroy air defense sites themselves, electronic warfare aircraft would disrupt radars and other systems, and additional targets would be struck in order to support this mission, such as temporarily knocking out Iraq's electrical infrastructure. In addition to traditional SEAD systems the Persian Gulf War would also see the use of unconventional assets in knocking out Iraq's air defenses, in particular cruise missiles and F-117A Nighthawks, which would be used to attack sensitive targets. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=573491 | 303,652 |
1,060,680 | At the behest of the Paris Observatory under le Verrier, Marie Alfred Cornu repeated Fizeau's 1848 toothed wheel measurement in a series of experiments in 1872–76. The goal was to obtain a value for the speed of light accurate to one part in a thousand. Cornu's equipment allowed him to monitor high orders of extinction, up to the 21st order. Instead of estimating the intensity minimum of the light being blocked by the adjacent teeth, a relatively inaccurate procedure, Cornu made pairs of observations on either side of the intensity minima, averaging the values obtained with the wheel spun clockwise and counterclockwise. An electric circuit recorded the wheel rotations on a chronograph chart, which enabled precise rate comparisons against the observatory clock. A telegraph key arrangement allowed Cornu to mark the precise moments when he judged that extinction had been entered on this same chart or exited. His final experiment was run over a path nearly three times as long as that used by Fizeau, and yielded a figure of 300400 km/s that is within 0.2% of the modern value. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=148819 | 1,060,128 |
841,855 | It is this distinctive growth form that is so valued in the open-grown American elms of street plantings, lawns, and parks; along most narrower streets, elms planted on opposite sides arch and blend together into a leafy canopy over the pavement. However, elms can assume many different sizes and forms depending on the location and climate zone. In 1926 the Klehm Nurseries of Arlington Heights, Illinois, wrote: "American Elms grown in the regular way from seedlings show extreme variability, growing up into trees of all shapes, some of them being very slow in growth while others are moderately rapid in development. The shapes run all the way from the true open excurrent growth to globular, or flat-topped, or pendant. As regards foliage, the leaves are from small to medium large, some shedding early and others late. This condition makes it difficult for the landscape architect to choose just the right trees to obtain the effect desired." The classic vase-shaped elm was mainly the result of selective breeding of a few cultivars and is much less likely to occur in the wild. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=74223 | 841,405 |
1,064,398 | In June 2000, work began on the fitting of flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) equipment at the station. FLS Miljo installed the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries wet limestone systems, while Arup Energy and Mowlem took up a design–build partnership to undertake the civil works and construction of infrastructure. The work was completed in October 2003, and had a total cost of £100 million. As part of the new FGD retrofit two new chimneys high were constructed to the north of the existing chimneys, numbers 1 and 2. In January 2003 when the new chimney 2 was erected alongside the old chimney 2 the wind direction changed and began blowing from the north hitting the new chimney 2 first, at a speed of 11.83 m/s (26.47 mph). This created a vortex and caused the old chimney 2 to start oscillating to a magnitude of at its height of and an angle of 600 seconds (0.166 degrees). The old chimneys were later demolished and used as built up ground to form the security gatehouse and parking area at the power station entrance. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19273099 | 1,063,844 |
1,076,869 | Potential applicants apply to the Knight-Hennessy scholars program and also apply separately to a graduate degree program at one of Stanford's seven schools. The inaugural class of 51 scholars from 21 countries, pursuing degrees in 31 academic departments at all seven of Stanford's schools, was announced on February 15, 2018. Chosen from 3,601 applicants, the inaugural cohort was 57% female, majority nonwhite, and 23% first-generation US citizens. They earned undergraduate degrees at 38 different schools, and 63% hold non-US passports, from countries including Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Egypt, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Myanmar, New Zealand, Nigeria, Romania, South Korea, Syria, Tajikistan, and the United Kingdom. The inaugural cohort arrived at Stanford in the fall of 2018, with up to 100 scholarships awarded annually in subsequent years. In 2019, a class of 75 scholars is anticipated. Students will receive funding for up to three years toward a master's degree. Scholars pursuing doctorates or medical degrees can receive additional funding beyond the three years from their departments. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=51335252 | 1,076,314 |
237,456 | In 387 BC, the Gauls invaded Italy, inflicted a crushing defeat on the Roman Republican army, and sacked Rome. After this defeat, the Romans undertook a comprehensive reform of their army and changed the basic tactical formation from the Greek-style phalanx armed with the "hasta" spear and the "clipeus" round shield to a more flexible three-line formation. The "hastati" stood in the first line, the "principes" in the second line and the "triarii" in the third line. While the "triarii" were still armed with "hastae", the "hastati" and the "principes" were rearmed with short swords and heavy javelins. Each soldier from the "hastati" and "principes" lines carried two javelins. This heavy javelin, known as a "pilum" (plural "pila"), was about two metres long overall, consisting of an iron shank, about 7 mm in diameter and 60 cm long, with pyramidal head, secured to a wooden shaft. The iron shank was either socketed or, more usually, widened to a flat tang. A "pilum" usually weighed between , with the versions produced during the empire being somewhat lighter. Pictorial evidence suggests that some versions of the weapon were weighted with a lead ball at the base of the shank in order to increase penetrative power, but no archaeological specimens have been found. Recent experiments have shown "pila" to have a range of about 30 metres, although the effective range is only 15 to 20 metres. "Pila" were sometimes referred to as "javelins", but the archaic term for the javelin was ""verutum"". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8700358 | 237,337 |
1,543,716 | Many domains contain multiple displays, and require more than a simple discrete yes/no response time measurement. A critical question for these situations may be "How much time will operators spend looking at X relative to Y?" or "What is the likelihood that the operator will completely miss seeing a critical event?" Visual sampling is the primary means of obtaining information from the world. An early model in this domain is Sender's (1964, 1983) based upon operators monitoring of multiple dials, each with different rates of change. Operators try, as best as they can, to reconstruct the original set of dials based on discrete sampling. This relies on the mathematical Nyquist theorem stating that a signal at W Hz can be reconstructed by sampling every 1/W seconds. This was combined with a measure of the information generation rate for each signal, to predict the optimal sampling rate and dwell time for each dial. Human limitations prevent human performance from matching optimal performance, but the predictive power of the model influenced future work in this area, such as Sheridan's (1970) extension of the model with considerations of access cost and information sample value. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47152350 | 1,542,843 |
436,485 | In 1934, the School began offering graduate-level and professional programs in engineering. During World War II, Harvard participated in the V-12 Navy College Training Program to provide training for commissioned officers. In 1942, the undergraduate Department of Engineering Sciences changed to the Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Physics to reflect an increased emphasis on applied physics. Harvard President James Bryant Conant created what was known as "Conant's Arsenal," a research hub for defense-related engineering projects including radar jamming, night vision, aerial photography, sonar, explosives, napalm, and atomic bomb research. One notable project from this era was the Harvard Mark I computer; one of the first programs to run on the Mark I was initiated on March 29, 1944, by John von Neumann, who worked on the Manhattan Project at the time, and needed to determine whether implosion was a viable choice to detonate the atomic bomb that would be used a year later. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10306321 | 436,271 |
103,234 | The first prototype (44-83020) was nicknamed "Lulu-Belle" (also known as "the Green Hornet" because of its paint scheme). Powered by the replacement Halford H1 taken from the prototype de Havilland Vampire jet fighter, it first flew on 8 January 1944, with Lockheed test pilot Milo Burcham at the controls. Following this flight, Johnson said, "It was a magnificent demonstration, our plane was a success – such a complete success that it had overcome the temporary advantage the Germans had gained from years of preliminary development on jet planes." The donated British jet engine and program data had no doubt proved invaluable. In test flights, the XP-80 eventually reached a top speed of at , making it the first turbojet-powered USAAF aircraft to exceed 500 mph in level flight, following the August 1944 record flight of by a special high-speed variant of the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. Contemporary pilots, when transitioning to pioneering jets like the Shooting Star, were unused to flying at high speed without a loud reciprocating engine and had to learn to rely on the airspeed indicator. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=78035 | 103,189 |
1,916,549 | So far, only the structure of human PLC has been elucidated using single-particle electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM). The structural organization consists of tapasin, calreticulin, ERp57, and MHC-I molecules that are centered around TAP, bearing a pseudo-symmetric orientation. PLC size is 150 Å by 150 Å with a total height of 240 Å across the ER membrane. Two opposing tapasin molecules shape the central domain in the PLC. In this model, residue E225 of the N-terminal immunoglobulin-like domain of one molecule and R60, which is located in the short helical motif of the seven-stranded N-terminal β-barrel of the second molecule, in salt-bridge distance. These residues are conserved among jawed vertebrates, but missing in avian PLC. This is consistent with the existence of a single copy of tapasin in avian PLC and the absence of an N-terminal transmembrane domain (TMD0) in avian TAP1. The ER-luminal domains of the opposing tapasin molecules are tilted 30° towards each other, positioning the two membrane entry points of the transmembrane helices 60 Å apart. The resulting domain twist excludes binding of calreticulin or calnexin to the glycan of the dimeric tapasin scaffold and explains why only mature tapasin can assemble into the PLC. Another structural feature is that ERp57 in its typical U-shaped conformation is complexed to tapasin via the catalytically active a and a′ domains. The unexpected orientation of tapasin enables the C-terminal extension of the a′ domain of the trans ERp57 to interact with the C-terminal immunoglobulin-like domain of the cis tapasin, potentially adding to the stability of the PLC. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=59204782 | 1,915,450 |
1,931,861 | In March 1951, squadron operators in Japan began picking up voice communications in Russian between ground controllers and Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 fighters. By April, the squadron had established a mobile van in central Korea, which passed information on MiGs to the Fifth Air Force tactical air control center, which passed it on to American North American F-86 Sabres, disguising the information to make it appear that it was coming from radar ground stations, even though the radio intercept van could provide warning of Soviet aircraft movements well beyond the range of American radars. Separate stations were established for intercepting enemy morse code signals dealing with both enemy and friendly traffic. After September 1951, these operations were consolidated in Seoul. The information provided by squadron operators has been credited as the major factor in the increased kill ratio of Sabre pilots over the MiG-15 in Korea starting in mid-1951, especially in view of analysis that indicated that by the fall of 1952 90% of MiG pilots in Korea were Russians. In January 1951, the squadron moved to Misawa Air Base, Japan, where one of the first Elephant Cage high frequency direction finding antenna assemblies was located. The squadron was inactivated in May 1955, and its mission, personnel and equipment transferred to the 6921st Radio Squadron, Mobile. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24994604 | 1,930,753 |
141,473 | In a "Point of Inquiry" interview, Tyson discussed their goal of capturing the "spirit of the original "Cosmos"", which he describes as "uplifting themes that called people to action". Druyan describes the themes of wonder and skepticism they are infusing into the scripts, in an interview with "Skepticality", "In order for it to qualify on our show it has to touch you. It still has to be rigorously good science—no cutting corners on that. But then, it also has to be that equal part skepticism and wonder both." In a "Big Picture Science" interview, Tyson credits the success of the original series for the proliferation of science programming, "The task for the next generation of "Cosmos" is a little bit different because I don't need to teach you textbook science. There's a lot of textbook science in the original "Cosmos", but that's not what you remember most. What most people who remember the original series remember most is the effort to present science in a way that has meaning to you that can influence your conduct as a citizen of the nation and of the world—especially of the world." Tyson states that the new series will contain both new material and updated versions of topics in the original series, but primarily, will service the "needs of today's population". "We want to make a program that is not simply a sequel to the first, but issues forth from the times in which we are making it, so that it matters to those who is this emergent 21st century audience." Tyson considered that recent successes of science-oriented shows like "The Big Bang Theory" and "", along with films like "Gravity", showed that "science has become mainstream" and expects "Cosmos" "will land on hugely fertile ground". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=35777337 | 141,415 |
755,780 | The IOTV is designed to take the weight of the vest off the shoulders and move it to the lower torso. The vest is also equipped with a mesh inner cover that is designed to improve airflow inside of the armor. There is also a back pad in the lower back area of the vest, which is designed to defeat fragmentation impacts to the lower back/kidney areas. However, the back pad does not provide significant ballistic protection. The vest can withstand a direct impact from a 7.62 millimeter (both NATO and ex-Soviet types) on the front or rear if using the older SAPI plates (NIJ standard III). Use of the new E-SAPI plates increase protection to armor-piercing versions of the aforementioned rounds in addition to .30-06 Springfield M2 armor-piercing rounds (NIJ standard IV). The IOTV provides, without the ballistic ceramic plates inserted, protection from small caliber rounds (i.e. 9mm) and fragmentation. The soft kevlar panels have been tested to stop 9 mm 124 grain full metal jacket bullets at 1,400 ft/s (426 m/s) with minimal deformation and has a V-50 of roughly 1,525 ft/s (465 m/s). This means that the bullet has to be traveling faster than 1,525 ft/s for it to have more than a 50% chance of breaking through the soft armor panel. These specifications are similar to the NIJ standard level III-A certification, however, military standards do not require their vests to be NIJ certified as this is primarily a law enforcement standard. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13640325 | 755,377 |
1,947,124 | Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is an autoimmune disease characterized by system wide excessive collagen deposits. It causes the patient’s skin and connective tissues to tighten and harden due to the uncontrolled accumulation of extracellular matrix proteins on the joints and various internal organ system which can lead to premature death in patients. Fli1 is a transcription factor that negatively regulates collagen production such that the higher the Fli gene expression, the less collagen is produced. In SSc patients, hypermethylation of CpG islands in the Fli1 promoter region is observed, inhibiting transcription of the Fli gene and increasing collagen production beyond normal levels causing collagen build-up and an overproduction of fibrous connective tissue. This causes joint damage, scarring, and thickening of the skin. Patients with SSc are also observed to have decreased levels of DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs) in their CD4+ T cells which play an important role in the immune system. This reduced methylation is associated with immune dysfunction and the progression of SSc and its inflammatory effects, however more research is needed to further understand this implication. Patients with systemic sclerosis also display hypomethylation of the collagen genes COL23A1 and COL4A2. This overexpression of these collagen genes leads an overproduction of collagen characteristic to tissue fibrosis. The TGF-β signaling pathway and Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway also play an important role in this disease. The TGF-β signaling pathway is responsible for several cellular responses from cell differentiation and migration in developing cells to regulating homeostasis within an immune response in the body. The TGF-β signaling pathway is involved in that activation of fibroblast which precedes fibrosis. The gene, ITGA9 which codes for alpha integrin 9 and is involved in this pathway, is hypomethylated in those with this condition leading to overexpression of integrins which leads to fibrosis as wells as provides positive feedback to this pathway further encouraging fibroblast activation. An Integrin is a type of receptor that is a transmembrane receptor meaning it is able to communicate from cell to cell and help the cell attach and adhere to nearby cells. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=70058191 | 1,946,011 |
351,144 | On 21 June 2018, the "world's smallest computer" was announced by the University of Michigan. The device is a " wireless and batteryless sensor system with integrated Cortex-M0+ processor and optical communication for cellular temperature measurement." It "measures just to a side—dwarfed by a grain of rice. [...] In addition to the RAM and photovoltaics, the new computing devices have processors and wireless transmitters and receivers. Because they are too small to have conventional radio antennae, they receive and transmit data with visible light. A base station provides light for power and programming, and it receives the data." The device is th the size of IBM's previously claimed world-record-sized computer from months back in March 2018, which is "smaller than a grain of salt", has a million transistors, costs less than to manufacture, and, combined with blockchain technology, is intended for logistics and "crypto-anchors"—digital fingerprint applications. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21017 | 350,961 |
619,036 | This section bears the title of Townsend Hoopes' best-known book. In 2004, of a seminar that brought a group of Muslim students to the US, he observed "A vital point here is that the realities of modernity (technical, social, political) are inexorable. They cannot be wished away, which means that traditional societies are faced with a crucial choice: to adjust, to adapt or to risk steady decline and perhaps ultimate disappearance. Given this daunting paradigm, the genuine enthusiasm for America shown by our 21 Muslim guests was a heartening sign. They seemed impressed with the depth of our national commitment to human freedom and individual opportunity, and the stability of our institutions, both governmental and private. Several declared that exposure to America had reinforced their determination to work for social change in their own countries. Two Pakistani women, both law students, said they planned to devote their lives to fighting for broader women's rights at home. One young man said it was his ambition to become his country's prime minister. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14355446 | 618,722 |
1,780,570 | The Zags then travelled to play San Francisco at War Memorial Gymnasium, which is a place where they had not won for three consecutive years. Gonzaga's defense forced San Francisco to stay on the perimeter for a majority of their shots, as the Bulldogs limited the Dons to 36.8% from the field. Olynyk led the team with 26 points and nine rebounds, while Harris added 17 points and 13 rebounds to lead the team to a 71–61 victory. A rebounding advantage of 45–22 and defensive field goal percentage of 30.2% helped Gonzaga rout Santa Clara 85–42 on February 20. The Zags shot 56.2% from the field and converted on 7 of 17 three-pointers. Harris led the team with 17 points and nine rebounds, while Olynyk scored 15. Three days later, the team beat San Diego at home 81–50. The team's defense held the Toreros to 35.7% shooting and 2-for-14 beyond the arc. Gonzaga came into the second half making its first six of seven shots to push the lead to 54–30 with 14 minutes left. After San Diego scored, transfer Drew Barham's three-pointer started a 13–0 Zags run that pushed the lead to 67–32. Pangos led the team with 18 points, while Olynyk contributed 14 points, nine rebounds, and three blocks. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36171940 | 1,779,566 |
86,887 | In contrast to the complex, failure-prone fuselage-mounted main gear legs of the earlier Fw 159, one of the main features of the Fw 190 was its wide-tracked, inwards-retracting landing gear. They were designed to withstand a sink rate of , double the strength factor usually required. Hydraulic wheel brakes were used. The wide-track undercarriage produced better ground handling characteristics, and the Fw 190 suffered fewer ground accidents than the Bf 109. (The Bf 109's narrow-track, outwards-retracting landing gear hinged on its wing root structure to help lower weight, but this led to inherent weakness and many failures and ground loops.) The Fw 190's retractable tail gear used a cable, anchored to the "elbow" at the midpoint of the starboard maingear's transverse retraction arms, which ran aftwards within the fuselage to the vertical fin to operate the tailwheel retraction function. The tailwheel's retraction mechanical design possessed a set of pulleys to guide the aforementioned cable to the top of the tailwheel's oleo strut, pulling it upwards along a diagonal track within the fin, into the lower fuselage; this mechanism was accessible through a prominently visible triangular-shaped hinged panel, on the left side in the fin's side sheetmetal covering. On some versions of the Fw 190 an extended tailwheel oleo strut could be fitted for larger-sized loads (such as bombs or even a torpedo) beneath the fuselage. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=241214 | 86,852 |
843,051 | After the overthrow of the Yuan Dynasty, China became suspicious of Mongol-favored knowledge. The court turned away from math and physics in favor of botany and pharmacology. Imperial examinations included little mathematics, and what little they included ignored recent developments. Martzloff writes:At the end of the 16th century, Chinese autochthonous mathematics known by the Chinese themselves amounted to almost nothing, little more than calculation on the abacus, whilst in the 17th and 18th centuries nothing could be paralleled with the revolutionary progress in the theatre of European science. Moreover, at this same period, no one could report what had taken place in the more distant past, since the Chinese themselves only had a fragmentary knowledge of that. One should not forget that, in China itself, autochthonous mathematics was not rediscovered on a large scale prior to the last quarter of the 18th century.Correspondingly, scholars paid less attention to mathematics; pre-eminent mathematicians such as Gu Yingxiang and Tang Shunzhi appear to have been ignorant of the "Tian yuan shu" (Increase multiply) method. Without oral interlocutors to explicate them, the texts rapidly became incomprehensible; worse yet, most problems could be solved with more elementary methods. To the average scholar, then, "tianyuan" seemed numerology. When Wu Jing collated all the mathematical works of previous dynasties into "The Annotations of Calculations in the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art", he omitted "Tian yuan shu" and the increase multiply method. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1524543 | 842,601 |
70,059 | On May 24, 2018, two workers were killed, another seriously injured, and 14 others hospitalized by hydrogen sulfide inhalation at a Norske Skog paper mill in Albury, New South Wales. An investigation by SafeWork NSW found that the gas was released from a tank used to hold process water. The workers were exposed at the end of a 3-day maintenance period. Hydrogen sulfide had built up in an upstream tank, which had been left stagnant and untreated with biocide during the maintenance period. These conditions allowed sulfate-reducing bacteria to grow in the upstream tank, as the water contained small quantities of wood pulp and fiber. The high rate of pumping from this tank into the tank involved in the incident caused hydrogen sulfide gas to escape from various openings around its top when pumping was resumed at the end of the maintenance period. The area above it was sufficiently enclosed for the gas to pool there, despite not being identified as a confined space by Norske Skog. One of the workers who was killed was exposed while investigating an apparent fluid leak in the tank, while the other who was killed and the worker who was badly injured were attempting to rescue the first after he collapsed on top of it. In a resulting criminal case, Norske Skog was accused of failing to ensure the health and safety of its workforce at the plant to a reasonably practicable extent. It plead guilty, and was fined AU$1,012,500 and ordered to fund the production of an anonymized educational video about the incident. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=154738 | 70,032 |
696,485 | Pulmonary function testing in patients with LAM may be normal or may reveal obstructive, restrictive or mixed patterns. Obstructive physiology is the most common abnormality. Quality-controlled lung function data were collected prospectively by the NHLBI Registry, a 5-year study of patients with LAM in centers around the United States. Spirometry revealed obstructive changes in about 57% of patients and normal results in 34%. Restriction, defined as a total lung capacity less than the lower limit of normal, was seen in 11%. Hyperinflation was present in about 6%. The average residual volume was 125% of predicted when measured by plethysmography, but was only 103% of predicted determined with gas dilution methods, suggesting significant air trapping in noncommunicating airspaces. Approximately 25% of patients with obstructive physiology may demonstrate bronchodilator responsiveness but may be less in more severe obstruction. The obstructive physiologic defect in LAM is primarily attributable to airflow obstruction. The earliest change in initial pulmonary function testing in various case series was abnormal gas transfer, as assessed by the diffusing capacity for carbon monoxide (DLCO), described in 82% to 97% of patients. It is not unusual for DLCO to be reduced out of proportion to forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1). Reduction in DLCO and increase in residual volume are generally considered to be LAM's earliest physiologic manifestations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1721174 | 696,121 |
13,241 | Wind tunnel testing had revealed lateral instability, requiring the addition of 5° dihedral to the wings. To avoid redesigning the titanium central section of the aircraft, McDonnell engineers angled up only the outer portions of the wings by 12°, which averaged to the required 5° over the entire wingspan. The wings also received the distinctive "dogtooth" for improved control at high angles of attack. The all-moving tailplane was given 23° of anhedral to improve control at high angles of attack, while still keeping the tailplane clear of the engine exhaust. In addition, air intakes were equipped with one fixed ramp and one variable geometry ramp with angle scheduled to give maximum pressure recovery between Mach 1.4 and Mach 2.2. Airflow matching between the inlet and engine was achieved by bypassing the engine as secondary air into the exhaust nozzle. All-weather intercept capability was achieved with the AN/APQ-50 radar. To meet requirements for carrier operations, the landing gear was designed to withstand landings with a maximum sink rate of , while the nose strut could extend by to increase angle of attack on the catapult portion of a takeoff. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11759 | 13,236 |
366,377 | Originally 300 F.1s were ordered, but the total produced was reduced to 20 aircraft as the follow-on orders had been converted to the more advanced models. Some of the last major refinements to the Meteor's early design were trialled using this first production batch, and what was to become the long-term design of the engine nacelles was introduced upon "EE211". The original nacelles had been discovered by the RAE to suffer from compressibility buffeting at higher speeds, causing increased drag; the re-designed longer nacelles eliminated this and provided an increase in the Meteor's maximum speed. The lengthened nacelles were introduced on the final fifteen Meteor IIIs. "EE215" was the first Meteor to be fitted with guns; "EE215" was also used in engine reheat trials, the addition of reheat increasing top speed from 420 mph to 460 mph. and was later converted into the first two-seat Meteor. Due to the radical differences between jet-powered aircraft and those that it replaced, a special "Tactical Flight" or "T-Flight" unit was established to prepare the Meteor for squadron service, led by Group Captain Hugh Joseph Wilson. The Tactical Flight was formed at Farnborough in May 1944, the first Meteors arriving the following month, upon which both tactical applications and limitations were extensively explored. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42702 | 366,185 |
2,069,840 | A non-radioactive assay method has been developed by the company Dia-Sorin. In this technique 3'-azido-2',3'-deoxythymidine (Zidovudine, AZT) is first phosphorylated to AZT 5'-monophosphate (AZTMP) by the TK1 in the sample. AZTMP is measured in an immunoassay with anti-AZTMP antibodies and AZTMP-labeled peroxidase. The assay runs in a closed system on the laboratory robot from DiaSorin. The DiviTum assay from Biovica International uses another thymidine analogue, bromodeoxyuridine, as substrate to the enzyme. The product of the reaction is further phosphorylated to tri-phosphate and incorporated in DNA-strings of polythymidine. The polythymidine binds to strings of polyadenine coupled to the bottom of the wells in microtiter plates. There it is detected with an ELISA technique: The wells are filled with a solution of a monoclonal antibody to bromo-deoxyuridine. The monoclonal antibody has been bound (conjugated) to the enzyme alkaline phosphatase. After the unbound antibody-conjugate has been washed away, a solution of a substrate to the alkaline phosphatase, para-nitrophenylphosphate, is added. The product of the reaction, para-nitrophenol, is yellow at alkaline pH and can be measured by photometry. This method has been evaluated against the previous radioactive technique. It is considerably more sensitive than the previous enzymatic methods and may be, therefore, more suitable for use with solid tumors where lower elevations of TK1 are found in body fluids. Comparisons of the methods have been published. In the study by Nisman et al., while the Divitum was on the whole more sensitive than the Liaison method, the authors suggested that the Liaison method may have been more sensitive for the TK1 forms found in normal subjects. A continuous and homogeneous fluorescent method based on quenching technology has recently been published. This technique utilizes natural thymidine as substrate and can also determine deoxycytidine kinase simultaneously with TK1. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=49547293 | 2,068,649 |
1,931,253 | Sir Philip Cohen (born 22 July 1945) is a British researcher, academic and Royal Medal winner based at the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit, School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee. During the 1990s he was the world's third most cited professor (and the second most cited in the fields of biology and biochemistry) and has been described by Professor Garry Taylor of the University of St Andrews as "one of the world’s top scientists". and by Professor Sir Peter Downes as "arguably the UK's leading biochemist and an iconic figure in UK science". As of 2008 he has written over 470 peer-reviewed papers and given over 250 invited lectures in 33 countries, and has been repeatedly linked to a move of biotechnology companies to Dundee and the economic regeneration that came with it, to the point where 15% of the local economy is derived from biotech companies and their employees. His work has also seen Dundee attracting some of the world's best scientists, with over 1% of the world's most cited scientists residing in Dundee and fundraising of more than £35 million over the last 10 years to help attract them. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11354163 | 1,930,145 |
1,823,389 | His paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, and his murals can be seen in the Denver Museum of Natural History, the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts, and Whaleworld, a museum in Albany, Western Australia. He is the author of more than 100 magazine articles, which have appeared in "National Geographic", "Natural History", "Audubon", "Curator", "National Wildlife", "Geo", "Australian Geographic", and "Reader's Digest". He has written 23 books, including "The Book of Sharks," "The Book of Whales", "Dolphins and Porpoises", "Men and Whales", "Great White Shark" (with John McCosker), "Encyclopedia of the Sea", "Aquagenesis: The Origin and Evolution of Life in the Sea", "Deep Atlantic", "Monsters of the Sea", "Imagining Atlantis", "The Search for the Giant Squid", "Tiger Bone & Rhino Horn", "No Turning Back: The Life and Death of Animal Species", "Sea Dragons: Predators of Prehistoric Seas", "Tuna", "The Empty Ocean", and "Swordfish: A Biography of the Ocean Gladiator". "On Thin Ice" looks into the changing world of polar bears and highlights their problems caused by global warming and disappearing Arctic ice. In 2011 the University Press of Kansas published "The Great Sperm Whale: A Natural History of the Ocean's Most Magnificent and Mysterious Creature". Richard Ellis curated a show on sharks in art for the Fort Lauderdale Art Museum, from May 2012 to January 2013. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2011946 | 1,822,351 |
1,519,066 | The 325th began operations with Fifteenth Air Force in December 1943, and primarily engaged in bomber escort operations. It received a second DUC for a mission on 30 January 1944 when the group flew more than 300 miles at very low altitude to surprise the enemy fighters that were defending German airfields near Villaorba, Italy; by severely damaging the enemy's force, the 325th enabled heavy bombers to strike vital targets in the area without encountering serious opposition. The group converted to North American P-51 Mustang aircraft in May 1944 and provided the fighter escort on the first shuttle bombing mission from Italy to Russia in early June 1944, and became the first American group to score a victory while flying from a Russian base. It escorted heavy bombers during long-range missions to attack the Messerschmitt factory at Regensburg, the Daimler-Benz tank factory at Berlin, oil refineries at Vienna, and other targets, such as airfields, marshalling yards, and communications targets in Italy, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia. It also covered operations of reconnaissance aircraft and strafed such targets as trains, vehicles, and airfields. The group continued combat operations until May 1945. The group moved back to the U.S. and was inactivated after V-E Day. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23172593 | 1,518,208 |
491,491 | Maunsell's replacement Oliver Bulleid believed that there was little need to improve draughting on this series. However, reports of poor steaming with No. 792 "Sir Hervis de Revel" gave him an opportunity to trial a Lemaître multiple-jet blastpipe and wide-diameter chimney on a Maunsell Arthur in 1940. This did not enhance performance to the extent of No. 755 "The Red Knight". Under British Railways ownership, the locomotive was re-fitted with the Maunsell chimney in March 1952 with no further problems reported. In another wartime experiment, Bulleid fitted No. 783 "Sir Gillemere" with three thin "stovepipe" chimneys in November 1940. These were set in a triangular formation to reduce visibility of exhaust from the air in response to attacks made by low-flying aircraft on Southern Railway trains. The "stovepipes" were reduced to two, producing a fierce exhaust blast that dislodged soot inside tunnels and under bridges. The experiment was discontinued in February 1941 and the locomotive re-fitted with a Maunsell King Arthur chimney. The last experiment was with spark-arresting equipment in response to lineside fires caused by poor quality coal. Nos. 784 "Sir Nerovens" and 788 "Sir Urre of the Mount" were fitted with new wide-diameter chimneys in late 1947. Test-trains showed mixed results and the trials were stopped in 1951 after improvements in coal quality and the fitting of internal smokebox spark-arrestors. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1326400 | 491,237 |
1,662,793 | The counter measure to radio navigation was jamming. R. V. Jones was the MI6 science advisor and TRE staff worked closely with him, in countering the Luftwaffe's navigational beam technology to hamper the enemy's ability to do pinpoint night bombing raids in what has become known as the "battle of the beams". Robert Cockburn of the TRE was responsible for the development of the Jostle IV radio jammer - the most powerful jammer device used over Europe. At 2 kW output it could block all VHF transmissions over 32-48 MHz. However, enclosed in its own pressurised container, (to prevent arcing of the high voltages inside), it was large and at 600 lb took up the entirety of the bomb bay of the Boeing Fortresses used by No. 100 Group RAF. Due to the high transmitter power, test flights had to be carried out in the vicinity of Iceland, otherwise the jamming would have blanked out all frequencies in the specified range, over a large area, as well as giving the Germans warning of the impending arrival of a jamming system. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1444212 | 1,661,858 |
62,221 | The practice, which began in the prehistoric era, has been used as a way of expressing culture for civilizations on all seven continents. For this reason, architecture is considered to be a form of art. Texts on architecture have been written since ancient times. The earliest surviving text on architectural theories is the 1st century AD treatise "De architectura" by the Roman architect Vitruvius, according to whom a good building embodies , and (durability, utility, and beauty). Centuries later, Leon Battista Alberti developed his ideas further, seeing beauty as an objective quality of buildings to be found in their proportions. Giorgio Vasari wrote "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects" and put forward the idea of style in the Western arts in the 16th century. In the 19th century, Louis Sullivan declared that "form follows function". "Function" began to replace the classical "utility" and was understood to include not only practical but also aesthetic, psychological and cultural dimensions. The idea of sustainable architecture was introduced in the late 20th century. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21296224 | 62,196 |
348,265 | The cell was first discovered by Robert Hooke in 1665, which can be found to be described in his book "Micrographia". In this book, he gave 60 'observations' in detail of various objects under a coarse, compound microscope. One observation was from very thin slices of bottle cork. Hooke discovered a multitude of tiny pores that he named "cells". This came from the Latin word "Cella", meaning ‘a small room’ like monks lived in and also "Cellulae", which meant the six sided cell of a honeycomb. However, Hooke did not know their real structure or function. What Hooke had thought were cells, were actually empty cell walls of plant tissues. With microscopes during this time having a low magnification, Hooke was unable to see that there were other internal components to the cells he was observing. Therefore, he did not think the "cellulae" were alive. His cell observations gave no indication of the nucleus and other organelles found in most living cells. In "Micrographia", Hooke also observed mould, bluish in color, found on leather. After studying it under his microscope, he was unable to observe "seeds" that would have indicated how the mould was multiplying in quantity. This led to Hooke suggesting that spontaneous generation, from either natural or artificial heat, was the cause. Since this was an old Aristotelian theory still accepted at the time, others did not reject it and was not disproved until Leeuwenhoek later discovered that generation was achieved otherwise. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=102858 | 348,083 |
239,774 | Moog developed a prototype with two VCOs and a VCA. As the VCOs themselves could output voltage, one could be used to modulate the output of another, creating effects such as vibrato and tremolo. According to Moog, when Deutsch saw this, he "went through the roof" and immediately began making music with the prototype, attracting the interest of passersby: "They would stand there, they'd listen and they'd shake their heads ... What is this weird shit coming out of the basement?"In 1964, Moog and Deutsch demonstrated the synthesizer at the electronic music studio at the University of Toronto. After the presentation impressed the composers, Moog was invited by the Audio Engineering Society to present at their annual convention in New York that October. Though he had not planned to sell synthesizers there, some customers placed orders at the show. The choreographer Alwin Nikolais became the first person to purchase a commercially made Moog synthesizer. Moog constructed synthesizers to order. The first order for a complete Moog synthesizer, for which Moog had to design a keyboard and cabinet, came from the composer Eric Siday. With no Moog books and no way to save or share settings, early users had to learn how to use the synthesizer themselves, by word of mouth, or from seminars held by Moog and Deutsch. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1871226 | 239,654 |
355,881 | Such work was presented by Raffaele Di Giacomo, Bruno Maresca, and others, at the Materials Research Society's spring conference on 3 April 2013. The cyborg obtained was inexpensive, light and had unique mechanical properties. It could also be shaped in the desired forms. Cells combined with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) co-precipitated as a specific aggregate of cells and nanotubes that formed a viscous material. Likewise, dried cells still acted as a stable matrix for the MWCNT network. When observed by optical microscopy, the material resembled an artificial "tissue" composed of highly packed cells. The effect of cell drying was manifested by their "ghost cell" appearance. A rather specific physical interaction between MWCNTs and cells was observed by electron microscopy, suggesting that the cell wall (the outermost part of fungal and plant cells) may play a major active role in establishing a carbon nanotube's network and its stabilization. This novel material can be used in a wide range of electronic applications, from heating to sensing. For instance, using "Candida albicans" cells, a species of yeast that often lives inside the human gastrointestinal tract, cyborg tissue materials with temperature sensing properties have been reported. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20756967 | 355,698 |
559,721 | An early example of science emanating from the official institutions into the public realm was the British coffeehouse. With the establishment of coffeehouses, a new public forum for political, philosophical and scientific discourse was created. In the mid-16th century, coffeehouses popped up around Oxford, where the academic community began to capitalize on the unregulated conversation that the coffeehouse allowed. The new social space began to be used by some scholars as a place to discuss science and experiments outside of the laboratory of the official institution. Coffeehouse patrons were only required to purchase a dish of coffee to participate, leaving the opportunity for many, regardless of financial means, to benefit from the conversation. Education was a central theme and some patrons began offering lessons and lectures to others. The chemist Peter Staehl provided chemistry lessons at Tilliard’s coffeehouse in the early 1660s. As coffeehouses developed in London, customers heard lectures on scientific subjects, such as astronomy and mathematics, for an exceedingly low price. Notable Coffeehouse enthusiasts included John Aubrey, Robert Hooke, James Brydges, and Samuel Pepys. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17912788 | 559,432 |
265,414 | Early studies include Project Daedalus, performed by the British Interplanetary Society in 1973–1978, and Project Longshot, a student project sponsored by NASA and the US Naval Academy, completed in 1988. Another fairly detailed vehicle system, "Discovery II", designed and optimized for crewed Solar System exploration, based on the DHe reaction but using hydrogen as reaction mass, has been described by a team from NASA's Glenn Research Center. It achieves characteristic velocities of >300 km/s with an acceleration of ~1.7•10 "g", with a ship initial mass of ~1700 metric tons, and payload fraction above 10%. Although these are still far short of the requirements for interstellar travel on human timescales, the study seems to represent a reasonable benchmark towards what may be approachable within several decades, which is not impossibly beyond the current state-of-the-art. Based on the concept's 2.2% burnup fraction it could achieve a pure fusion product exhaust velocity of ~3,000 km/s. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14843 | 265,271 |
590,180 | With IBM was under significant pressure by the consent decree and the legal situation tilting in favor of repair, other manufacturers across industries took different turns and to interfere with unauthorized repairs electronically. Apple, which rose quickly to become one of the largest computer manufacturers, sold the first computers with circuit board descriptions, easy to swap components and clear repair instructions. Driven by technological advancements all kinds of products such as cars, lawn mowers, even coffee machines, had more and more electronic components by design, much harder to replace than mechanical components. While in the fifties electronics in a car were limited to simple circuits to start engines and to power simple components such as air conditioning or central locking, the sixties saw an increasing amount of complex semiconductors to be used in cars starting with engine controls such as fuel ignition. As part of this process of mixing electronic components with mechanics, the share of electronic components in the total bill of material for a car rose from 5% in the 1970s to over 22% in 2000. While previously car repair was a process of analysing and substituting mechanical components, the increasing hybridization of cars brought the need of special tools that could often only be accessed by manufacturer authorized repair services. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=68312817 | 589,878 |
1,119,831 | The observatory burned down in a fire that started between midnight and 1:00 AM on August 30, 1856 in a cooper's shop located at 49 West 43rd Street. The fire spread rapidly and attracted spectators from around the city, with flames that were visible for miles around. Though the fire destroyed more than twelve buildings and several families were left homeless, there were no known injuries or fatalities related to the incident. The Hydeville Marble Works, which owned the observatory, suffered a loss of $100,000 on merchandise and structures, of which $17,500 was covered by four different insurance companies. "The New York Times" described the fire as "one of the most destructive conflagrations that has occurred in the City for a long time..." with property valued at a total of $150,000 destroyed, most of which was accounted for by the tower itself. "The Times" described the tower as a "conspicuous landmark, by which the traveler could ascertain his whereabouts" and that it would be "greatly missed" despite the fact that as an investment it was "a stupendous failure" that never paid a return on the $150,000 in capital stock raised to erect the structure. Spectators feared that the tower would topple on and crush the north side of the Crystal Palace, but the observatory burned down on its base into a "mass of smouldering cinders". Fire companies from Williamsburg and elsewhere in Brooklyn were ferried across the East River to assist in extinguishing the blaze. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22849273 | 1,119,258 |
2,184,465 | RCBR technology is an entirely water biological treatment system, able to make more compact and efficient the biology of any wastewaters treatment plant. For the depuration of urban wastewaters it is placed downline of primary treatments (screening, oil separation, degritting, primary settling) and upline of water physical or chemical disinfection tertiary treatments (ultraviolets, ozone). This system offers the chance to realize into restrained spaces a huge surface of cohesion for the bacteria colonies, which are active for the depuration; this aspect makes it particularly suitable also for the nitrogen removal from wastewaters, in nitro-denitro configuration. Matching a series of more modules, some of them totally submerged by the wastewaters (in anoxic conditions) operate as denitrification stadium. Others, only partially submerged into the wastewaters, in presence of oxygen, operate the carbon removal and, at the same time, the ammonium nitrification. The system simplicity and the efficiency demonstrated in the tearing down also high elevations of suspended solid and organic carbon, make it usable as a pre-treatment, upline of drinkable systems of superficial and underground polluted waters (rivers, drains, stratum, ponds and temporary puddles of rain water). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47066950 | 2,183,217 |
356,570 | John Snow is famous for his investigations into the causes of the 19th-century cholera epidemics, and is also known as the father of (modern) epidemiology. He began with noticing the significantly higher death rates in two areas supplied by Southwark Company. His identification of the Broad Street pump as the cause of the Soho epidemic is considered the classic example of epidemiology. Snow used chlorine in an attempt to clean the water and removed the handle; this ended the outbreak. This has been perceived as a major event in the history of public health and regarded as the founding event of the science of epidemiology, having helped shape public health policies around the world. However, Snow's research and preventive measures to avoid further outbreaks were not fully accepted or put into practice until after his death due to the prevailing Miasma Theory of the time, a model of disease in which poor air quality was blamed for illness. This was used to rationalize high rates of infection in impoverished areas instead of addressing the underlying issues of poor nutrition and sanitation, and was proven false by his work. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=66997 | 356,385 |
1,076,086 | A second, more complete specimen, UMNH VP 16420, was discovered from the Tropic Shale Formation (dating to the early Turonian stage) of southern Utah in 2000 by Merle Graffam, a resident of Big Water, Utah. The area around Big Water had been subject to several expeditions by teams from the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA), and was known for its abundance of marine reptile fossils, especially plesiosaurs. During part of the late Cretaceous period, the region had been submerged under a shallow sea, the Western Interior Seaway, and preserves extensive marine deposits. Graffam's initial discovery (a large, isolated toe bone) came as a surprise to colleagues, as it clearly belonged to a land-dwelling dinosaur, rather than a plesiosaur. However, the location of the bone at the time would have been nearly 100 kilometers from the Cretaceous shoreline. An excavation of the area by an MNA crew revealed more of the skeleton, and the scientists found that it was a therizinosaur, and the first example of that group to be found in the Americas. All previous therizinosaur fossils had come from China and Mongolia. Between both species, "N. graffami" is the most complete but lacks the skull. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1861279 | 1,075,531 |
1,346,824 | Electronic questionnaires can also be created in the Form Designer module. Individual questions can be placed anywhere on a page and each form may contain multiple pages. The user is given a high degree of control over the form's appearance and function. The user defines both the question's prompt and the format of the data that is to be collected. Data types include numbers, text strings, dates, times, and Boolean. Users can also create drop-down lists, code tables, and comment legal fields. One of the more powerful features of Form Designer is the ability to program intelligence into a form through a feature called "check code". Check code allows for certain events to occur depending on what action a data entry person has taken. For example, if the data entry person types "Male" into a question on gender, any questions relating to pregnancy might then be hidden or disabled. Skip patterns, message boxes, and math operations are also available. Relational database modeling is supported, as users may link their form to any number of other forms in their database. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6244450 | 1,346,083 |
772,254 | While the time before World War II was filled with issues regarding price, the post-war era had increasing oil imports partly due to the price support established between the 1920s and '30s. The artificially high domestic prices caused a surge of imports from lower priced foreign producers. In 1955, a clause was added to the Reciprocal Trade Act Amendments, which gave the president the power to limit imports of a specific commodity, if that particular commodity was harmful to the nation's security. This clause allowed President Eisenhower to enact oil import quotas in 1959, which ultimately allowed international oil prices to decline. These import quotas restricted international oil companies from the US market, and allowed them to form the OPEC. During the 1970s, President Nixon put many phases of price controls into place. After many new regulations altering the original price control system, President Carter eventually began removing these controls in 1979. During his administration, in response to an energy crisis and hostile Iranian and Soviet Union relations, President Carter announced the Carter Doctrine, which declared that any interference with the nation's interests in the Persian Gulf would be considered an attack on its vital interests. Ronald Reagan later expanded this doctrine. Since the 1990s, the oil market has been free of most regulations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19086358 | 771,840 |
246,354 | The most direct method for measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations for periods before instrumental sampling is to measure bubbles of air (fluid or gas inclusions) trapped in the Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets. The most widely accepted of such studies come from a variety of Antarctic cores and indicate that atmospheric concentrations were about 260–280 ppmv immediately before industrial emissions began and did not vary much from this level during the preceding 10,000 years. The longest ice core record comes from East Antarctica, where ice has been sampled to an age of 800,000 years. During this time, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has varied between 180 and 210 ppm during ice ages, increasing to 280–300 ppm during warmer interglacials. The beginning of human agriculture during the current Holocene epoch may have been strongly connected to the atmospheric increase after the last ice age ended, a fertilization effect raising plant biomass growth and reducing stomatal conductance requirements for intake, consequently reducing transpiration water losses and increasing water usage efficiency. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11251601 | 246,227 |
2,009,382 | Before its opening, L.J. Henderson was doing some research on the physiology of daily work, which Mayo was interested in academically. Mayo was discouraged by his current academic path, and wrote to Donham that there wasn't a “competent investigation of the physiological changes induced in the human organism by the conditions of . . . daily work” at his current organisation. Donham's interest in the human side of business operations led him to encourage Mayo to initiate the laboratory for study of the sociological and psychological impacts in the work place. Henderson and Mayo were pushed together by similar ideals on the nature of exercise physiology itself, as their approach was holistic rather than systems- or organ-oriented. Henderson had just moved from the Medical School to the Business School in 1926, and was in the process of reorganising his academic work from blood chemistry to human physiology. Henderson also involved a colleague from the Medical School, Arlie Bock, the clinical investigator at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and David Bruce Dill, who was a research fellow working with Bock at the time. Each individual added to the interdisciplinary culture of the laboratory, examining the broad nature of 'fatigue'. The interdisciplinary backgrounds of all the founding members meant that the laboratory focused on more than just ‘fatigue’ as a physiological phenomena – they also studied the psychological and sociological effects by which workers are subject to in the industry. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60811216 | 2,008,230 |
1,202,951 | Ranger 7 reached the Moon on July 31. The F-channel began its one-minute warm-up 18 minutes before impact. The first image was taken at 13:08:45 UT at an altitude of 2110 km. Transmission of 4,308 photographs of excellent quality occurred over the final 17 minutes of flight. The final image taken before impact has a resolution of 0.5 meters. The spacecraft encountered the lunar surface in direct motion along a hyperbolic trajectory, with an incoming asymptotic direction at an angle of -5.57 degrees from the lunar equator. The orbit plane was inclined 26.84 degrees to the lunar equator. After 68.6 hours of flight, Ranger 7 impacted in an area between "Mare Nubium" and "Oceanus Procellarum" (subsequently named "Mare Cognitum") at . (The impact site is listed as 10.63 S, 20.66 W in the initial report "Ranger 7 Photographs of the Moon".) Impact occurred at 13:25:48.82 UT at a velocity of 2.62 km/s. The spacecraft performance was excellent and the success of the mission finally brought a turnaround in NASA's fortunes after the endless string of lunar probe failures since 1958. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=623993 | 1,202,307 |
1,069,407 | The scientists had various assignments. Schmitt, the only geologist in the group, spent most of his time on lunar landing site selection. By 1967, it looked as if many fewer missions would be flown than originally planned, and the astronauts were risking their careers. Provision was made to allow the pilot astronauts to keep their pilot skills honed, but there was no such concession for the scientists. Gibson became the first of the six scientists to be named to a crew when he was selected as a member of the support crew for Apollo 12 in April 1969, but the announcement of prime and backups crews for Apollo 13 and Apollo 14 in August 1969 was the last straw for many. The prime and backup crews included eight members of the 1966 group of pilots, and Apollo 14 would be commanded by old Mercury Seven astronaut Alan Shepard. Michel resigned to return to teaching at Rice in September, and there were resignations by NASA scientists Donald U. Wise, Elbert A. King Jr, Wilmot N. Hess and Eugene Shoemaker. All had their reasons for leaving, but all were highly critical of NASA. The calls for more participation by scientists did not go unheeded, and NASA Deputy Administrator George Mueller wrote to the director of the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), Robert R. Gilruth, in September 1969, and asked him to give the matter his personal attention. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3144242 | 1,068,853 |
243,430 | World War II (1939–1945) devastated the country's economy, but the high levels of economic growth that followed from 1950 to 1980 have been called the Greek economic miracle. From 2000 Greece saw high levels of GDP growth above the Eurozone average, peaking at 5.8% in 2003 and 5.7% in 2006. The subsequent Great Recession and Greek government-debt crisis, a central focus of the wider European debt crisis, plunged the economy into a sharp downturn, with real GDP growth rates of −0.3% in 2008, −4.3% in 2009, −5.5% in 2010, −10.1% in 2011, −7.1% in 2012 and −2.5% in 2013. In 2011, the country's public debt reached €356 billion (172% of nominal GDP). After negotiating the biggest debt restructuring in history with the private sector, a loss of 100 billions for bonds private investors, Greece reduced its sovereign debt burden to €280 billion (137% of GDP) in the first quarter of 2012. Greece achieved a real GDP growth rate of 0.5% in 2014—after 6 years of economic decline—but contracted by 0.2% in 2015 and by 0.5% in 2016. The country returned to modest growth rates of 1.1% in 2017, 1.7% in 2018 and 1.8% in 2019. GDP contracted by 9% in 2020 during the global recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the economy rebounded by 8.3% in 2021. On 20 August 2022, Greece formally exited the EU's "enhanced surveillance framework", which had been in place since the conclusion of the third bailout package exactly four years earlier. According to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the event heralded "greater national leeway in our economic choices" and marked the end of a "12-year cycle that brought pain to citizens". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12113 | 243,303 |
1,570,366 | This particular species is of special scientific interest because a patented strain, called "C-Fern", was developed as a scientific aid and teaching tool in biology in 1995. The use of "C-Fern" is facilitated by the fact that it grows readily in a cell-culture dish on agar media, reaching sexual maturity within 2–3 weeks of spore inoculation, with motile sperm cells being visible at this time. Over the course of about 6 weeks germination, sex determination and development of gametophytes, fertilization, embryogenesis, organogenesis, and sporophyte growth can all be observed, allowing an incredibly comprehensive study of the life cycle of homosporous ferns in a relatively short time period. In addition, due to the small size of the plant many specimens can be observed growing simultaneously, allowing for larger sample sizes in research studies. Following the culture of "C-Fern" in dishes it can be transplanted to a dirt substrate, where it can be further allowed to grow and future generations can be used for subsequent studies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25805284 | 1,569,478 |
977,525 | Heisenberg formulated an early version of the uncertainty principle in 1927, analyzing a thought experiment where one attempts to measure an electron's position and momentum simultaneously. However, Heisenberg did not give precise mathematical definitions of what the "uncertainty" in these measurements meant, a step that would be taken soon after by Earle Hesse Kennard, Wolfgang Pauli, and Hermann Weyl. Starting around 1927, Paul Dirac began the process of unifying quantum mechanics with special relativity by proposing the Dirac equation for the electron. The Dirac equation achieves the relativistic description of the wavefunction of an electron that Schrödinger failed to obtain. It predicts electron spin and led Dirac to predict the existence of the positron. He also pioneered the use of operator theory, including the influential bra–ket notation, as described in his famous 1930 textbook. During the same period, Hungarian polymath John von Neumann formulated the rigorous mathematical basis for quantum mechanics as the theory of linear operators on Hilbert spaces, as described in his likewise famous 1932 textbook. These, like many other works from the founding period, still stand, and remain widely used. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9067941 | 977,014 |
84,843 | China set about to engineer the aircraft for local production; in doing so, they successfully solved 249 major issues and reproduced eight major technical documents that were not provided by the Soviet Union. One of the major flaws was with the hydraulic systems, which grounded up to 70% of some squadron's aircraft until upgrades were made. Another major modification was to the fuel storage, increasing the aircraft's stability. The MiG-21 carries most of its fuel in the forward fuselage, causing the center of gravity to shift and become unstable after about 45 minutes of operation. The J-7 has redesigned fuel tanks and significantly larger drop tanks in order to maintain a more stable center of gravity, and therefore better Longitudinal static stability. The cockpit was also revised to replace the Soviet ejection seat, which was deemed to be unacceptable. The forward opening canopy was replaced by a standard rear-hinged canopy, which was jettisoned prior to ejection. The re-engineering effort was largely successful, as the Chinese-built J-7 showed only minor differences in design and performance from the original MiG-21. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=377543 | 84,809 |
1,071,651 | Epigenetics is the study of heritable phenotype changes, caused by modification of gene expression and does not entail a change in the genetic code. These epigenetic factors may also be sex-limited. Genomic imprinting for example, silencing of one parental allele by DNA methylation, for which sex-limited imprinting has been proposed to resolve intralocus conflict. Genomic imprinting has been shown to be indistinguishable from non-imprinted systems at the population level in some cases, having equivalent evolutionary models. However, this does not hold for sex-limited models of sex-limited imprinting which behave differently depending on which sex imprinting occurs and the parental sex of imprinted allele. Specifically, this affects whether alleles are imprinted in consecutive generations with different evolutionary trajectories (under the same selection fitnesses) arising purely due to sex-limited epigenetics. The X chromosome for example, has been very prevalent in the field of epigenetics. The X chromosome percentage between males and females is largely due to X chromosome inactivation. In humans, the process of X chromosome inactivation occurs in the beginning stages of development which is one of the main reasons why this topic has been challenging to study. In differentiating between the XX and the XY chromosomes, the amount of X-linked genes compared to XY males are due to the silencing of one of the two chromosomes in XX female. RNA X inactive specific transcript (Xist) regulates this whole process which results in a genome wide silencing. This is also a concept that is poorly understood which makes for great study and prolonged analysis. Indeed, over 20% of X-linked genes are expressed from the inactive X chromosome and they contribute to sexually dimorphic traits. The X chromosome makes a very small percentage of the total human genome and the epigenetics of this chromosome is a major contributor to certain diseases. Thus sex-limited epigenetic traits may have played a pivotal role in the evolution of mammals and other species, particularly as a mechanism to ameliorate intralocus conflict between the sexes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12664042 | 1,071,097 |
1,469,181 | Protein kinase-R is activated by double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), introduced to the cells by a viral infection. PKR can also be activated by the protein PACT or by heparin. PKR contains an N-terminal dsRNA binding domain (dsRBD) and a C-terminal kinase domain, that gives it pro-apoptotic (cell-killing) functions. The dsRBD consists of two tandem copies of a conserved double stranded RNA binding motif, dsRBM1 and dsRBM2. PKR is induced by interferon in a latent state. Binding to dsRNA is believed to activate PKR by inducing dimerization and subsequent auto-phosphorylation reactions. In situations of viral infection, the dsRNA created by viral replication and gene expression binds to the N-terminal domain, activating the protein. Once active, PKR is able to phosphorylate the eukaryotic translation initiation factor eIF2α. This inhibits further cellular mRNA translation, thereby preventing viral protein synthesis. Since ElF2α is involved in common initiation translation via an AUG codon, the alternative non-AUG initiation takes place instead. An example of mRNAs using non-AUG initiation are mRNAs for the heat shock proteins. Active PKR is also able to mediate the activation of the transcription factor NFkB, by phosphorylating its inhibitory subunit, IkB. Activated NFkB up-regulates the expression of Interferon cytokines, which work to spread the antiviral signal locally. Active PKR is also able to activate tumor suppressor PP2A which regulates the cell cycle and the metabolism. Through complex mechanisms, active PKR is also able to induce cellular apoptosis, to prevent further viral spread. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6846786 | 1,468,357 |
465,338 | LONGI Silicon Materials is engaged in the research, manufacture and distribution of monocrystalline ingots. It is the world's largest monocrystalline silicon manufacturer, and has rapidly broken world solar efficiency records three times within five months. "Fast Company" listed Xi'an LONGi Silicon Materials one among "Most Innovative Companies 2013" "for supplying the solar industry with high-quality silicon wafers at low cost". LONGi Solar, a subsidiary of LONGI Green Energy Technology, recently achieved a new industry record with 23.6% conversion efficiency with its P-type monocrystalline PERC (passivated emitter rear cell) solar cells, toward which an increasing number of manufacturers worldwide are migrating. The technique involves taking a silicon wafer, typically 1 to 2 mm thick, and making a multitude of parallel, transverse slices across the wafer, creating a large number of slivers that have a thickness of 50 micrometres and a width equal to the thickness of the original wafer. These slices are rotated 90 degrees, so that the surfaces corresponding to the faces of the original wafer become the edges of the slivers. The result is to convert, for example, a 150 mm diameter, 2 mm-thick wafer having an exposed silicon surface area of about 175 cm per side into about 1000 slivers having dimensions of 100 mm × 2 mm × 0.1 mm, yielding a total exposed silicon surface area of about 2000 cm per side. The electrical doping and contacts that had been on the face of the wafer are now located at the edges of the sliver, rather than at the front and rear as in the case of conventional wafer cells, as a result of this rotation. This results in making the cell sensitive on both sides, from both the front and rear of the cell (a property known as "bifaciality"). Such results need to be certified by a reliable and trusted external agency, and this accomplishment has been analyzed and certified by China's National Center of Supervision and Inspection on Solar Photovoltaic Product Quality (CPVT). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=52638116 | 465,108 |
842,696 | The original design, introduced at the World Fair as the Model 1900, allowed the development of either service or sport versions depending on market response. While small sporting outlets, such as William Evans of London, purchased actions for their rifles, only the Greek Army expressed interest in the design for military use and their specifications may have dictated some of the rifle's characteristics. The Greek Army requested two main versions, one long rifle of 1230 mm (total length of the rifle) and a carbine of 950 mm length for use by cavalry and non-infantry troops, both termed Model 1903. The weight was around 3.75 kg, the magazine capacity was five rounds and was fed by stripper clips, or single rounds. The 6.5×54mm MS cartridge had traits of a hunting round, even though it had a projectile with a rounded point, it was ballistically efficient, improving accuracy at moderate ranges. The rifle was manufactured to a high standard and was made with tight tolerances, raising costs but improving reliability and durability. The 1903 Mannlicher–Schönauer had iron sights similar to those of the Mannlicher M1895, graduated up to 2000 m. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1656479 | 842,246 |
706,034 | Milgram's experiment was conceived in an era when a number of independent threads were converging on the idea that the world is becoming increasingly interconnected. Michael Gurevich had conducted seminal work in his empirical study of the structure of social networks in his MIT doctoral dissertation under Pool. Mathematician Manfred Kochen, an Austrian who had been involved in statist urban design, extrapolated these empirical results in a mathematical manuscript, "Contacts and Influences", concluding that, in an American-sized population without social structure, "it is practically certain that any two individuals can contact one another by means of at least two intermediaries. In a [socially] structured population it is less likely but still seems probable. And perhaps for the whole world's population, probably only one more bridging individual should be needed." They subsequently constructed Monte Carlo simulations based on Gurevich's data, which recognized that both weak and strong acquaintance links are needed to model social structure. The simulations, running on the slower computers of 1973, were limited, but still were able to predict that a more realistic three degrees of separation existed across the U.S. population, a value that foreshadowed the findings of Milgram. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=636799 | 705,665 |
1,529,111 | On April 8, 15, and 22, 2015, a three-part series titled 'Animal Homes' hosted and narrated by Morgan aired on PBS 'NATURE.' 'Animal Homes' examines the various structures, building methods, and social networks utilized by animals in the wild to protect themselves and their young from predators, invaders, and the natural elements. The series' first episode ('The Nest') focuses on what birds build to house their clutches of eggs using only their beaks and feet and the social interactions they confront while incubating and raising their young. Morgan is shown trying his hand at building a structurally sound nest, testing the strength of other avian structures, and presenting the collection of bird's nests owned by the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University. Episode two ('Location Location Location'), examines the importance of choosing an appropriate environment for an animal's home and the strategies employed in maximizing their success. In the episode, Morgan observes the dam and lodge building rituals of beavers, the protective relationship between hummingbird bird nests and their proximity to those of raptors, and takes part in the processing of a mother black bear and her cubs who had been hibernating in the forests of Maryland. Morgan is featured in the third episode ('Animal Cities') observing a colony of nesting puffins in northwest Scotland, scuba diving off of Corsica to inspect the complex social and reproductive strategies of the oscillated wrasse, and excavating the fungal garden of a leaf-cutter ant nest in the rainforest. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=39193813 | 1,528,247 |
70,892 | The amygdala appears to play a role in binge drinking, being damaged by repeated episodes of intoxication and withdrawal. Protein kinase C-epsilon in the amygdala is important for regulating behavioral responses to morphine, ethanol, and controlling anxiety-like behavior. The protein is involved in controlling the function of other proteins and plays a role in development of the ability to consume a large amount of ethanol. The duration of chronic alcohol consumption and abstinence may affect dynamic brain network adaptations. When excessive drinking occurs, the amygdala is affected through behavioral changes and reduces the brain's plasticity. Brain plasticity is how our brain grows and develops; it is also how our neurons can make connections with other neurons. This ultimately increases our neural pathways allowing us to increase our knowledge of the world around us. When our brain plasticity decreases, it makes it difficult for neurons to make connections to other neurons. Often when binge drinking, or alcoholism occurs, our amygdala is affected and leads to behavior damage. These behavioral damages can be lack of control, inability to conduct oneself in a mature manner, aggressive behavior, loss of conduct, anxiety, depression, personality disorders, excessive drug intake, bi-polar disorder, confusion, higher tolerance levels, irritability, and inappropriate sexual behaviors with others and self. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=146000 | 70,865 |
285,598 | Bueckers was cleared to return against St. John's on February 25, 2022. She came off the bench for the first time in her career and scored eight points, playing only 13 minutes due to a minutes restriction, in a 93–38 victory. Bueckers continued to receive limited playing time until the NCAA tournament, and UConn won the Big East tournament despite her scoring only two points in the championship game against Villanova. Her offensive production also declined from before her injury. On March 28, at the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament, Bueckers led her team to a 91–87 double-overtime win over top-seeded NC State, as UConn reached its 14th consecutive Final Four. She scored a game-high 27 points on 10-15 from the field, including 15 points in the two overtime periods (4-5 from the field and 6-6 from the free-throw line), and was named MOP of the Bridgeport Regional. In the Final Four, Bueckers recorded 14 points, five assists and four rebounds in a 63–58 victory against top-seeded Stanford, the defending champions. In a 64–49 loss to top-seeded South Carolina at the national championship game, Bueckers was the only UConn player to score in double digits as she posted 14 points and six rebounds, and was named to the Final Four All-Tournament Team. Bueckers was an AP All-American Honorable Mention selection. As a sophomore, she averaged 14.6 points, four rebounds and 3.9 assists per game. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=61733357 | 285,444 |
1,282,151 | Ionization of charged groups has been neglected in continuum electrostatic models of implicit solvation, as well as in standard molecular mechanics and molecular dynamics. The transfer of an ion from water to a nonpolar medium with dielectric constant of ~3 (lipid bilayer) or 4 to 10 (interior of proteins) costs significant energy, as follows from the Born equation and from experiments. However, since the charged protein residues are ionizable, they simply lose their charges in the nonpolar environment, which costs relatively little at the neutral pH: ~4 to 7 kcal/mol for Asp, Glu, Lys, and Arg amino acid residues, according to the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation, "ΔG = 2.3RT (pH - pK)". The low energetic costs of such ionization effects have indeed been observed for protein mutants with buried ionizable residues. and hydrophobic α-helical peptides in membranes with a single ionizable residue in the middle. However, all electrostatic methods, such as PB, GB, or GBSA assume that ionizable groups remain charged in the nonpolar environments, which leads to grossly overestimated electrostatic energy. In the simplest accessible surface area-based models, this problem was treated using different solvation parameters for charged atoms or Henderson-Hasselbalch equation with some modifications. However even the latter approach does not solve the problem. Charged residues can remain charged even in the nonpolar environment if they are involved in intramolecular ion pairs and H-bonds. Thus, the energetic penalties can be overestimated even using the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation. More rigorous theoretical methods describing such ionization effects have been developed, and there are ongoing efforts to incorporate such methods into the implicit solvation models. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7479239 | 1,281,455 |
1,765,426 | The concept of FAI was first described by Smith-Petersen. However, modern diagnosis and treatment of FAI was pioneered by Ganz in 2003, who initially advocated the use of an open surgical dislocation technique for treatment of intra-articular pathology. This involved the use of the 'trochanteric flip' approach to gain access to the hip joint. This is an extensive approach, needing an often large incision over the side of the hip, with the detachment of the greater trochanter of the femur and its attached musculature to gain access to the joint. By using this approach, the ball of the hip joint can be rotated out of the socket (termed 'surgical dislocation'), giving 360-degree access to the whole joint. This approach, although considered generally safe, carries with it inherent risks, which is the case with all large incision surgery. The risks of infection and blood clots are always present, and Ganz and his colleagues cite complications such as heterotopic ossification (new bone formation around the hip), nerve injuries, failure of the greater trochanter to heal back properly, persistent pain following the formation of scar tissue (adhesions) in the hip joint, and a small risk of damage of the blood supply to the femoral head. The patient usually needs to stay in hospital for a few days, and the post-operative rehabilitation after such extensive surgery can be prolonged. As a result, surgeons have looked to use the arthroscope more extensively in the hip joint in an attempt to avoid the possible pitfalls of large, open surgery. The perceived advantages of this are the avoidance of large scars, decreased blood loss, faster recovery periods and less pain. Hip arthroscopy can be performed as an outpatient procedure (i.e. no need to stay in hospital overnight). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31963181 | 1,764,433 |
1,399,259 | But even before ENIAC was operational, BRL had already started to plan for the development of a stored-program computer known as the Electronic Discrete Variable Computer, or EDVAC. In 1944, in the middle of ENIAC's development, Mauchley and Eckert proposed the creation of EDVAC to make up for ENIAC's shortcomings. Unlike its predecessor, the EDVAC was planned to have a central processor and a memory for both data and programs. During this time, John von Neumann became involved in the work on both ENIAC and EDVAC and was among those who supported funding the EDVAC project. In October 1944, the Ordnance Department issued a contract and $105,600 () in funding for the development of this new machine with supervision of the project assigned to BRL. Built as a collaborative effort between BRL, the Moore School, the Institute for Advanced Studies, and the National Bureau of Standards, EDVAC was completed and installed at BRL in 1949. However, it wasn't operational until 1952 due to design issues. By then, BRL had already acquired the Ordnance Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (ORDVAC), which the lab had commissioned the University of Illinois to build. As a result, BRL was the world's largest computer center for a brief time in 1952 with ENIAC, EDVAC, and ORVAC all in its possession. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30865936 | 1,398,484 |
1,659,741 | The techniques and manufacturing processes have changed over the years from those described in the first papers, journal articles and patents that were published. There are a number of techniques available depending on what type of species is required. An ion may be formed which can be an anion thus forming an anionic PUD or a cation may be formed forming a cationic PUD. Also, it is possible to synthesize a non-ionic PUD. This involves using materials that will produce an ethylene oxide backbone, or similar, or a water-soluble chain pendant from the main polymer backbone. Anionic PUDs are by far the most common available commercially. To produce these, initially a polyurethane prepolymer is manufactured in the usual way but instead of just using isocyanate and polyol, a modifier is included in the polymer backbone chain or pendant from the main backbone. This modifier is/was mainly dimethylol propionic acid (DMPA). This molecule contains two Hydroxy group and a carboxylic acid group. The OH groups react with the isocyanate groups to produce an NCO terminated prepolymer but with a pendant COOH group. This is now dispersed under shear in water with a suitable neutralizing agent such as Triethylamine. This reacts with the carboxylic acid forming a salt which is water soluble. Usually, a diamine chain extender is then added to produce a polyurethane dispersed in water with no free NCO groups but with polyurethane and polyurea segments. Dytek A is commonly used as the chain extender. Various papers and patents show that an amine chain extender with more than two functionalities such as a triamine may be used too. There is also a push to have a synthesis strategy that is non-isocyanate based. When blocked isocyanates are used there is no isocyanate (NCO) functionality and hence the water reaction producing carbon dioxide so dispersion is easier. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=58217500 | 1,658,808 |
1,402,367 | Up to the 1980s, most NLP systems were based on complex sets of hand-written rules. Starting in the late 1980s, however, there was a revolution in NLP with the introduction of machine learning algorithms for language processing. This was due both to the steady increase in computational power resulting from Moore's Law and the gradual lessening of the dominance of Chomskyan theories of linguistics (e.g. transformational grammar), whose theoretical underpinnings discouraged the sort of corpus linguistics that underlies the machine-learning approach to language processing. Some of the earliest-used machine learning algorithms, such as decision trees, produced systems of hard if-then rules similar to existing hand-written rules. Increasingly, however, research has focused on statistical models, which make soft, probabilistic decisions based on attaching real-valued weights to the features making up the input data. The cache language models upon which many speech recognition systems now rely are examples of such statistical models. Such models are generally more robust when given unfamiliar input, especially input that contains errors (as is very common for real-world data), and produce more reliable results when integrated into a larger system comprising multiple subtasks. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27837170 | 1,401,580 |
532,227 | In 1955, Easley read a story in a local newspaper about twin sisters who worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) as "computers". She applied for a job the next day, and was hired two weeks later - one of four African Americans out of about 2500 employees. She began her career as computer at the NACA Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory (which became NASA Lewis Research Center, 1958–1999, and subsequently the John H. Glenn Research Center) in Cleveland, Ohio. Later after electronic computers started being used at NASA her title changed to mathematician and computer technician. Even with a degree, at NASA, Easley also had to complete internal specialization courses to be considered a professional. Easley was denied financial aid that other employees received for education, without explanation from the agency. She also noted that she did not feel that her pay was very high when she first started with two years of college. Although she was promised a GS-3 in her interview, her first paycheck was a GS-2, and when she questioned it she was told there were no more GS-3s available. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1551099 | 531,953 |
200,178 | In 1942, actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil received for their "Secret Communications System", an early version of frequency hopping using a piano-roll to switch among 88 frequencies to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam. The U.S. Navy rejected the idea, then seized it as "alien property" in 1942 (Lamarr was Austrian) but filed it away with no record of a working device being produced. Lamarr's and Antheil's idea was rediscovered in the 1950s during patent searches when private companies were independently developing direct-sequence Code Division Multiple Access, a non-frequency-hopping form of spread-spectrum, and has been cited numerous times since. In 1957, engineers at Sylvania Electronic Systems Division adopted the patented concept, combined with the recently invented transistor. In 1962, the US Navy finally utilized the technology during the Cuban Missile Crisis; Lamarr's and Antheil's patent had expired. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46890 | 200,075 |
833,070 | In early 1935, the Luchtvaartafdeling signed a contract for a single prototype of the proposed fighter to be constructed for an evaluation to be performed by the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. This prototype, designated "FD-322", which was powered by a single Bristol Mercury VI-S radial engine which drove a three-blade, two-pitch propeller, performed its maiden flight at Welschap Airfield, Eindhoven, on 27 March 1936. According to aviation author G.H. Kamphuis, the prospects for series production of the new fighter looked doubtful shortly after the first flight was performed due to a high level change in Dutch defence policy; Minister for Foreign Affairs Hendrik Colijn informed the Ministry of War that, in response to the changing international situation, a higher priority would be placed on building up a substantial bomber capability over new fighter aircraft. The change in policy emphasising bombers over fighters was somewhat controversial, in part due to order for new fighters and reconnaissance aircraft being both under consideration at this time, while a requirement for a new training aircraft had also been identified. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2271915 | 832,621 |
139,117 | Since each element in an AESA is a powerful radio receiver, active arrays have many roles besides traditional radar. One use is to dedicate several of the elements to reception of common radar signals, eliminating the need for a separate radar warning receiver. The same basic concept can be used to provide traditional radio support, and with some elements also broadcasting, form a very high bandwidth data link. The F-35 uses this mechanism to send sensor data between aircraft in order to provide a synthetic picture of higher resolution and range than any one radar could generate. In 2007, tests by Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and L-3 Communications enabled the AESA system of a Raptor to act like a WiFi access point, able to transmit data at 548 megabits per second and receive at gigabit speed; this is far faster than the Link 16 system used by US and allied aircraft, which transfers data at just over 1 Mbit/s. To achieve these high data rates requires a highly directional antenna which AESA provides but which precludes reception by other units not within the antennas beamwidth, whereas like most Wi-Fi designs, Link-16 transmits its signal omni-directionally to ensure all units within range can receive the data. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=839259 | 139,061 |
588,943 | Management by exception gives employees the responsibility to make decisions and fulfill their work or projects by themselves. It consists of focus and analysis of statistically relevant anomalies in the data. If an unusual situation or deviation in the recorded data appears, which could cause difficulties for the business and can't be managed by the employee at his level, the employee should pass the decision on to the next higher level. For example, if all products are selling at their expected volumes for the quarter, except one particular product which is underperforming or overperforming at a statistically relevant margin, only the data for that product will be presented to the managers for further investigation and discovery of the root cause. Management by exception can bring forward business errors and oversights, ineffective strategies that need to be improved, changes in competition and business opportunities. Management by exception is intended to reduce the managerial load and enable managers to spend their time more effectively in areas where it will have the most impact. This management concept is widely attributed to Frederick W. Taylor and was first discussed in his work, ""Shop management: A paper read before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers". N.Y: American Society of Mechanical Engineers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20647618 | 588,641 |
1,693,295 | Gauss wrote of the heliotrope's potential as a celestial signaling device in a March 25, 1822, letter to Heinrich Olbers, by which he reveals a belief and interest in finding a method to contact extraterrestrial life: "With 100 separate mirrors, each of 16 square feet, used conjointly, one would be able to send good heliotrope-light to the moon ... This would be a discovery even greater than that of America, if we could get in touch with our neighbors on the moon." Finally, in the October 1826 issue of the "Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal" an unnamed author wrote that in a conversation with Franz von Gruithuisen, Gauss stated words to the effect that "the plan of erecting a geometrical figure on the plains of Siberia corresponded with his opinion, because, according to his view a correspondence with the inhabitants of the moon could only be begun by means of such mathematical contemplations and ideas, which we and they have in common." Crowe concluded in sum that his review of earliest sources failed to confirm the detail of the proposal and Gauss as its author, but that his origination of the idea was not unlikely given the existing evidence. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=34802284 | 1,692,344 |
900,042 | During brain ischemia, the brain cannot perform aerobic metabolism due to the loss of oxygen and substrate. The brain is not able to switch to anaerobic metabolism and, because it does not have any long term energy stored, the levels of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) drop rapidly, approaching zero within 4 minutes. In the absence of biochemical energy, cells begin to lose the ability to maintain electrochemical gradients. Consequently, there is a massive influx of calcium into the cytosol, a massive release of glutamate from synaptic vesicles, lipolysis, calpain activation, and the arrest of protein synthesis. Additionally, removal of metabolic wastes is slowed. The interruption of blood flow to the brain for ten seconds results in the immediate loss of consciousness. The interruption of blood flow for twenty seconds results in the stopping of electrical activity. An area called a penumbra may result, wherein neurons do not receive enough blood to communicate, however do receive sufficient oxygenation to avoid cell death for a short period of time. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4219434 | 899,567 |
1,210,003 | There are many possible transfer effects from working memory training. An increase in working memory capacity could make individuals more likely to take on tasks that have a higher working memory load, such as math and other challenging academics. Holmes et al. reported an improvement in mathematical reasoning, even six months after training was completed. Furthermore, there has been parent reported decreases of inattentive behaviours, hyperactivity, and impulsivity in children with ADHD, in addition to a decrease in motor activity. However the majority of transfer effects are seen in lab-based nontrained tasks that are completed during follow-up and immediately after training is over. A meta-analysis into 30 studies assessing the effects of various Working Memory Training found that WM training has short term reliable effects but the effectiveness in the long term is limited. Another study found that using a demanding action video game could be beneficial to basic processes such as spatial cognition and rapid perception but that using a non-action 3D puzzle game showed improvements that were not transferable from the game itself. Findings from these results vary according to which nontrained tasks the researcher chooses to use. The main general finding in these studies confirms that experimental groups improve on trained tasks in comparison to control groups, and that effects will need retraining to maintain. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23690864 | 1,209,356 |
109,421 | In the 14th century, Jean Buridan rejected the notion that a motion-generating property, which he named "impetus", dissipated spontaneously. Buridan's position was that a moving object would be arrested by the resistance of the air and the weight of the body which would oppose its impetus. Buridan also maintained that impetus increased with speed; thus, his initial idea of impetus was similar in many ways to the modern concept of momentum. Despite the obvious similarities to more modern ideas of inertia, Buridan saw his theory as only a modification to Aristotle's basic philosophy, maintaining many other peripatetic views, including the belief that there was still a fundamental difference between an object in motion and an object at rest. Buridan also believed that impetus could be not only linear but also circular in nature, causing objects (such as celestial bodies) to move in a circle. Buridan's theory was followed up by his pupil Albert of Saxony (1316–1390) and the Oxford Calculators, who performed various experiments which further undermined the Aristotelian model. Their work in turn was elaborated by Nicole Oresme who pioneered the practice of illustrating the laws of motion with graphs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14909 | 109,376 |
1,044,406 | Similar to MRI, MRS uses pulse sequences to acquire signal from several different molecules to generate a spectra instead of an image. In MRS, STEAM (Stimulated Echo Acquisition Method) and PRESS (Point Resolved Spectroscopy) are the two primary pulse sequence techniques used. In terms of advantages, STEAM is best for imaging metabolites with shorter T2 and has lower SAR, while PRESS has higher SNR than STEAM. STEAM and PRESS are most widely used due to their implementation on the major vendors of MR scanners. Beyond STEAM and PRES there are sequences which utilize adiabatic pulses. Adiabatic pulses produce uniform flip angles even when there is extreme B inhomogeneity. Thus, these sequences allow us to achieve excitation that achieves the sought-for B insensitivity and off-resonance in the RF coil and sampled object. Specifically, adiabatic pulses solve the problem of signal dropout that comes from the different B flux patterns that result from the surface transmit coils used and the usage of normal pulses. Adiabatic pulses are also useful for constraints on RF peak power for excitation and lowering tissue heating. Additionally, adiabatic pulses have substantially higher bandwidth, which reduces chemical shift displacement artefact, which is particularly important at high field strengths and when a large range of frequencies are desired to be measured (i.e., measuring both the signals upfield and downfield of water in proton MRS). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14357725 | 1,043,862 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.