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130,705 | Tactics improved as Soviet aircrews became used to the Il-2's strengths. Instead of a low horizontal straight approach at altitude, the target was usually kept to the pilot's left and a turn and shallow dive of 30 degrees was used, using an echeloned assault by four to twelve aircraft at a time. Although the Il-2's RS-82 and RS-132 rockets could destroy armored vehicles with a single hit, they were so inaccurate that experienced Il-2 pilots mainly used the cannon. Another potent weapon of the Il-2s was the PTAB shaped charge bomblets ("protivotankovaya aviabomba", "anti-tank aviation bomb"). They were designated PTAB-2.5-1.5, as they had a total weight of , and an explosive charge of . Up to 192 were carried in four external dispensers (cluster bombs) or up to 220 in the inner wing panels' internal ventral weapon bays. The HEAT charge could easily penetrate the relatively thin upper armor of all heavy German tanks. PTABs were first used on a large scale in the Battle of Kursk. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=183726 | 130,653 |
5,984 | Before takeoff, a primary alignment brought the ANS's inertial components to a high degree of accuracy. In flight, the ANS, which sat behind the reconnaissance systems officer's (RSO's), position, tracked stars through a circular quartz glass window on the upper fuselage. Its "blue light" source star tracker, which could see stars during both day and night, would continuously track a variety of stars as the aircraft's changing position brought them into view. The system's digital computer ephemeris contained data on a list of stars used for celestial navigation: the list first included 56 stars and was later expanded to 61. The ANS could supply altitude and position to flight controls and other systems, including the mission data recorder, automatic navigation to preset destination points, automatic pointing and control of cameras and sensors, and optical or SLR sighting of fixed points loaded into the ANS before takeoff. According to Richard Graham, a former SR-71 pilot, the navigation system was good enough to limit drift to off the direction of travel at Mach 3. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=55245 | 5,981 |
1,779,603 | The best example of the distinction between acuity and hyperacuity comes from vision, for example when observing stars on a night sky. The first stage is the optical imaging of the outside world on the retina. Light impinges on the mosaic of receptor sense cells, rods and cones, which covers the retinal surface without gaps or overlap, just like the detecting pixels in the film plane of digital cameras. Each receptor accepts all the light reaching it but acts as a unit, representing a single location in visual space. This compartmentalization sets a limit to the decision whether an image came from a single or a double star (resolution). For a percept of separately articulated stars to emerge, the images of the two must be wide enough apart to leave at least one intervening pixel relatively unstimulated between them. This defines the resolution limit and the basis of visual acuity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31923406 | 1,778,600 |
338,314 | During the twentieth century, several sauropods were assigned to Brachiosauridae, including "Astrodon", "Bothriospondylus", "Pelorosaurus", "Pleurocoelus", and "Ultrasauros". These assignments were often based on broad similarities rather than unambiguous synapomorphies, shared new traits, and most of these genera are currently regarded as dubious. In 1969, in a study by R.F. Kingham, "B. altithorax", "B. brancai" and "B. atalaiensis", along with many species now assigned to other genera, were placed in the genus "Astrodon", creating an "Astrodon altithorax". Kingham's views of brachiosaurid taxonomy have not been accepted by many other authors. Since the 1990s, computer-based cladistic analyses allow for postulating detailed hypotheses on the relationships between species, by calculating those trees that require the fewest evolutionary changes and thus are the most likely to be correct. Such cladistic analyses have cast doubt on the validity of the Brachiosauridae. In 1993, Leonardo Salgado suggested that they were an unnatural group into which all kinds of unrelated sauropods had been combined. In 1997, he published an analysis in which species traditionally considered brachiosaurids were subsequent offshoots of the stem of a larger grouping, the Titanosauriformes, and not a separate branch of their own. This study also pointed out that "B. altithorax" and "B. brancai" did not have any synapomorphies, so that there was no evidence to assume they were particularly closely related. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20598015 | 338,134 |
2,163,541 | In their first game at the Duluth Arena the Badgers faced Northern Michigan, the first time the two teams played one another. Both squads played a scoreless first period before Ed Lebler opened the scoring three minutes into the second. Two more Badgers scored before the Wildcats could get their first goal of the game but Marc Behrend made sure that was all they could earn, turning away their 25 other shots en route to a 5-1 win. In the final Wisconsin was set against #1 overall seed Minnesota who possessed the top offense in the nation boasting both the NCAA scoring champion Aaron Broten and the first Hobey Baker Award winner Neal Broten. The Golden Gophers had taken three out of four contests against the Badgers that season, out-pacing Johnson's team 27 goals to 14. None of that seemed to affect Wisconsin in the slightest as it was the Badgers who opened the scoring half way through the first period and never looked back. Wisconsin got the game's first four goals and by the time Minnesota had found the back of the net it was too late. The 'Back Door' Badgers fired 42 shots on goal, not letting up even with a 5-1 lead after two periods. Marc Behrend turned aside 30 of 33 shots in the contest and finished the tournament with a .932 save percentage in the Frozen Four, earning Tournament MOP honors. Despite the spectacular Frozen Four John Newbery was the only Badger other than Behrend to make the All-Tournament Team but the Wisconsin faithful were too overjoyed from the unexpected championship to mind. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=58098318 | 2,162,305 |
1,027,411 | In 1705, three years after returning from her expedition, she published "Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium". "Metamorphosis" first was published at her own expense. Merian had returned from Suriname with sketches and notes. As the word spread among scholars in Amsterdam, visitors came to view her paintings of exotic insects and plants. She noted "Now that I had returned to Holland and several nature-lovers had seen my drawings, they pressured me eagerly to have them printed. They were of the opinion that this was the first and most unusual work ever painted in America." With the assistance of her daughters Johanna and Dorothea, Merian put together a series of plates. She did not make the printing plates herself this time, but hired three printmakers to do the engraving. She supervised the work closely. To pay for this work she advertised for subscribers, who were willing to give her money in advance for a hand-painted deluxe edition of the "Metamorphosis". Twelve subscribers paid in advance to receive the expensive hand-painted edition, while a less expensive printed edition in black and white was also published. After her death the book was reprinted in 1719, 1726 and 1730, finding a larger audience. It was published in German, Dutch, Latin and French. Merian contemplated publishing the book in English, so that she could present it to the queen of England. She mused "It is reasonable for a woman to make such a gift to a person of the same sex". But nothing came of the plan. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3101059 | 1,026,877 |
989,227 | The notion that races were separate and came together by hybridism, rather than being variations from a common stock, was cast into doubt with the publication of Darwin's "Origin of Species" in 1859, which Agassiz opposed till his death. Yet the influence of polygenism persisted for many years. For example, the Hamitic Hypothesis, which argued that certain African populations were the descendants of a proto-white invasion in the ancient past, was influenced by polygenism and continued to hold sway in linguistics and anthropology until the 1950s. Darwin did not address man's origin directly at this stage, and the argument continued for a number of years, with the creation of the Anthropological Society of London in 1863 in the shadow of the American Civil War, in opposition to the abolitionist Ethnological Society. The Anthropologicals had the Confederate agent Henry Hotze permanently on their council. The two societies did not heal their differences until they merged in 1871 to form the Anthropological Institute. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2076198 | 988,711 |
869,936 | The next year Louis Blériot flew the Blériot VII, a tractor monoplane with full three-axis control using the horizontal tail surfaces as combined elevators and ailerons. Its immediate descendant, the Blériot VIII, was the very first airframe to bring together the recognizable elements of the modern aircraft flight control system in April 1908. Where Horatio Phillips and Traian Vuia had failed, Blériot's was the first practical tractor monoplane and marked the start of a trend in French aviation. By 1909, he had developed this configuration to the point where the Blériot XI was able to cross the English Channel, among other refinements using the tail surfaces only as elevators and using wing warping for lateral control. Another design that appeared in 1907 was the Voisin biplane. This lacked any provision for lateral control, and could only make shallow turns using only rudder control, but was flown with increasing success during the year by Henri Farman, and on 13 January 1908 he won the 50,000 francs Deutsch de la Meurthe-Archdeacon "Grand Prix de l'Aviation" for being the first aviator to complete an officially observed 1 kilometre closed circuit flight, including taking off and landing under the aircraft's own power. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1607990 | 869,476 |
345,893 | The university arose around mutual aid societies (known as "universitates scholarium") of foreign students called "nations" (as they were grouped by nationality) for protection against city laws which imposed collective punishment on foreigners for the crimes and debts of their countrymen. These students then hired scholars from the city's pre-existing lay and ecclesiastical schools to teach them subjects such as liberal arts, notarial law, theology, and "ars dictaminis" (scrivenery). The lectures were given in informal schools called "scholae". In time the various "universitates scholarium" decided to form a larger association, or "Studium"—thus, the university. The "Studium" grew to have a strong position of collective bargaining with the city, since by then it derived significant revenue through visiting foreign students, who would depart if they were not well treated. The foreign students in Bologna received greater rights, and collective punishment was ended. There was also collective bargaining with the scholars who served as professors at the university. By the initiation or threat of a student strike, the students could enforce their demands as to the content of courses and the pay professors would receive. University professors were hired, fired, and had their pay determined by an elected council of two representatives from every student "nation" which governed the institution, with the most important decisions requiring a majority vote from all the students to ratify. The professors could also be fined if they failed to finish classes on time, or complete course material by the end of the semester. A student committee, the "Denouncers of Professors", kept tabs on them and reported any misbehavior. Professors themselves were not powerless, however, forming "collegia doctorum" (professors’ committees) in each faculty, and securing the rights to set examination fees and degree requirements. Eventually, the city ended this arrangement, paying professors from tax revenues and making it a chartered public university. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=263329 | 345,712 |
1,307,319 | Analogue calculating machines seek solutions to equations by translating them into physical phenomena. Numbers are represented by physical magnitudes such as may be done with certain rotational axes, potentials, electrical or electromagnetic states, and so on. A mathematical process is thereby transformed by these machines into an operative process of certain physical magnitudes which leads to a physical result corresponding with the sought mathematical solution. The mathematical problem therefore is solved by a physical model of itself. From the mid 19th century, various such mechanical devices were known, including integrators, multipliers, and so on ; it is against this background that Torres's work is defined. He began with a presentation in 1893 at the Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of the Memory on algebraic machines. In his time, this was considered an extraordinary success for Spanish scientific production. In 1895 the machines were presented at a congress in Bordeaux. Later on, in 1900, la Memoria would present the calculating machines at the Paris Academy of Sciences. These machines examined mathematical and physical analogies that underlay analogue calculation or continuous quantities, and how to establish mechanically the relationships between them, expressed in mathematical formulae. The study included complex variables and used the logarithmic scale. From a practical standpoint, it showed that mechanisms such as turning disks could be used endlessly with precision, so that variables' variations were limited in both directions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=182044 | 1,306,603 |
1,670,814 | In-session focus exercises in an atmosphere of "felt safety" help patients confront the feared stimuli and modify the Pavlovian fear driving the refractory emotional state. Learning appropriate non-avoidant ways to deal with the fear stimuli also decreases Skinnerian avoidance behavior and prepares the way for mood change. In the beginning of therapy, it should be remembered that the chronic mood associated with trauma or psychological insults may involve stimulus events that remain tacit knowledge (out of awareness) for patients (i.e., the pain, fear and anxiety are clearly observable but the actual precipitating and maintaining stimuli may not be clearly understood or recognized by the patient). Material derived from the Significant Other History (SOH) often illustrates the tacit knowledge dimension of the patient's avoidance patterns. In summary, another way to describe what's going on in the beginning of therapy is to say that patients are avoiding others (including the therapist) and not responding to the interpersonal environment. Interpersonal avoidance always dictates that the patient's primary focus remains on himself or herself (i.e., patients stay "in their heads"). In such a psychosocial functioning state, these individuals remain helpless and hopeless and continue to respond to themselves in a solitary and never-ending circle of pain, fear, anxiety (and depression); hence, they are unable to connect with their interpersonal world in any informing way. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6093501 | 1,669,874 |
1,414,914 | The formation of calcium carbonate as a byproduct of microbial activity is an additional method for "engineering" the self-healing ability of concrete. It holds the potential for active and long-lasting crack repair while also being a potentially ecologically beneficial technique. Calcium carbonate (CaCO), often known as limestone, has an effective bonding capability and is compatible with current concrete formulations. As a result of the carbonation of existing calcium hydroxide (portlandite) minerals, calcium carbonate may be included in the concrete mix design or chemically created inside the concrete matrix. Limestone generated inside the matrix of concrete may result in the densification of the matrix by pore filling and can help to self-heal crack, reducing its (water) permeability and resulting in the recovery of lost strength. If circumstances are favorable, most bacteria can precipitate CaCO from the solution. However, the carbonatogenesity of bacteria following distinct metabolic routes for the precipitation of bacterial CaCO varies. Additionally, many extrinsic variables influence the precipitation efficiency and cause the same bacterial strain to produce varying amounts of carbonate. It is probable that in a wet-dry environment, healing happens more quickly. In addition, the regulation of crack width is crucial for achieving quicker and more effective healing through biological activity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=69140980 | 1,414,117 |
1,884,068 | In 2012, Wild continued to extend his description of the exposome and its entailments. He includes internal bodily processes such as metabolism, hormones, microflora and oxidative stress, external exposures such as radiation, infectious agents and diet, and additionally social, economic and psychological exposures. Increased ease of genotyping and studying polymorphisms saw a major shift to gene-disease related studies in the 1990s and more recently new study designs allow researchers to follow increasing sample sizes. However, also in 2012, Wild went on to describe the realistic tools and methods one could use to effectively develop the exposome. This included biomarker omics (e.g. genomics, transcriptomics and immunomics), sensor technologies (e.g. using mobile phones to measure physical activity, stress, sleep rhythms) and imaging (for diets, social interactions). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4906070 | 1,882,987 |
1,840,302 | The survival of passage tombs is variable and dependent upon many factors. The excavation of two later Neolithic passage graves at Balnuaran of Clava demonstrated that their architecture was inherently unstable and would have likely collapsed within decades of their construction. Earlier examples, including the Orkney-Cromarty format, appear to generally have been more robust. Passage tombs could also be reused in later times, including the Iron Age and early Medieval, and their Neolithic content was sometimes removed. Some were destroyed when new structures were built upon them. Most have required consolidation, reconstruction or strengthening to allow public access. In the Boyne Valley, Newgrange and Knowth have undergone significant excavation and restoration. In Orkney, the roof of the chamber within Maeshowe has been restored following damage caused by Vikings in the twelfth century. In some cases, recent building work has significantly altered their appearance, a critical factor that has to be taken into account when observing and interpreting optical phenomena within their passages and chambers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=49823773 | 1,839,250 |
1,011,483 | In the 1970s, the management of information largely concerned matters closer to what would now be called data management: punched cards, magnetic tapes and other record-keeping media, involving a life cycle of such formats requiring origination, distribution, backup, maintenance and disposal. At this time the huge potential of information technology began to be recognised: for example a single chip storing a whole book, or electronic mail moving messages instantly around the world, remarkable ideas at the time. With the proliferation of information technology and the extending reach of information systems in the 1980s and 1990s, information management took on a new form. Progressive businesses such as British Petroleum transformed the vocabulary of what was then "IT management", so that “systems analysts” became “business analysts”, “monopoly supply” became a mixture of “insourcing” and “outsourcing”, and the large IT function was transformed into “lean teams” that began to allow some agility in the processes that harness information for business benefit. The scope of senior management interest in information at British Petroleum extended from the creation of value through improved business processes, based upon the effective management of information, permitting the implementation of appropriate information systems (or “applications”) that were operated on IT infrastructure that was outsourced. In this way, information management was no longer a simple job that could be performed by anyone who had nothing else to do, it became highly strategic and a matter for senior management attention. An understanding of the technologies involved, an ability to manage information systems projects and business change well, and a willingness to align technology and business strategies all became necessary. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=464877 | 1,010,962 |
227,890 | The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), operated by Southern California Edison (SCE) is approximately 100 km (60 mi) south of Los Angeles, 6.5 km (4 mi) south of San Clemente, CA. It is located between I-5 and the Pacific Ocean, within the boundary of the Camp Pendleton military reserve. The site originally comprised three nuclear power plants. Unit 1 commenced operation in 1968, and shut down in 1992. Units 2 and 3 permanently ceased operations in June 2013. Dismantlement of Unit 1 is essentially complete. The turbine building was removed and the licensee completed reactor pressure vessel internal segmentation and cutup; however, the licensee was unable to make arrangements for shipping the reactor pressure vessel to a disposal facility because of the size and weight of the vessel and shipping package. The licensee is making plans to ship the vessel offsite during the decommissioning activities for Units 2 and 3 because the radioactivity has decayed to a level that allows it to be treated as low level waste. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1780952 | 227,773 |
520,271 | On January 10, 2022, Uchimura officially announced his retirement from the sport of gymnastics. He had been plagued with various stubborn injuries ever since his withdrawal from the 2017 World Championships due to an ankle injury sustained after an awkward vault landing during qualification rounds of the men's individual all-around competition. Although Uchimura would retire without an eponymous skill to his name, he had often said that this was never a primary goal for him in his career to acquire any. Additionally, Uchimura had also successfully competed some of the most difficult skills soon after they had been originated, such as the H (0.8)-rated Bretschneider or double-twisting Kovac on the horizontal bar in 2015, which Uchimura had remained one of the very few who had ever been able to consistently and regularly performed it at a level comparable to or more often above its originator, German Andreas Bretschneider, up through his last competition at home towards the end of 2021. In the end, there is now little doubt by many people associated to the sport that Uchimura has retired as the greatest gymnast of all time, male or female. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18787707 | 520,000 |
1,190,391 | Born in Norwich, Connecticut, the son of Eliza ("née" Coit) and mill owner William Charles Gilman, a descendant of Edward Gilman, one of the first settlers of Exeter, New Hampshire, of Thomas Dudley, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and one of the founders of Harvard College, and of Thomas Adgate, one of the founders of Norwich in 1659. Daniel Coit Gilman graduated from Yale College in 1852 with a degree in geography. At Yale he was a classmate of Andrew Dickson White, who would later serve as first president of Cornell University. The two were members of the Skull and Bones secret society, and traveled to Europe together after graduation and remained lifelong friends. Gilman was also a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. Gilman would later co-found the Russell Trust Association, the foundation behind Skull and Bones. After serving as attaché of the United States legation at St. Petersburg, Russia from 1853 to 1855, he returned to Yale and was active in planning and raising funds for the founding of Sheffield Scientific School. Gilman contemplated going into the ministry, and even took out a license to preach, but later settled on a career in education. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=384781 | 1,189,757 |
665,509 | The first 100 years or so of college education in the American Colonies were dominated in New England by the Puritan theology of William Ames and "the sixteenth-century logical methods of Petrus Ramus." Then in 1714, a donation of 800 books from England, collected by Colonial Agent Jeremiah Dummer, arrived at Yale. They contained what became known as "The New Learning", including "the works of Locke, Descartes, Newton, Boyle, and Shakespeare", and other Enlightenment era authors not known to the tutors and graduates of Puritan Yale and Harvard colleges. They were first opened and studied by an eighteen-year-old graduate student from Guilford, Connecticut, the young American Samuel Johnson, who had also just found and read Lord Francis Bacon's "Advancement of Learning." Johnson wrote in his "Autobiography", "All this was like a flood of day to his low state of mind" and that "he found himself like one at once emerging out of the glimmer of twilight into the full sunshine of open day." He now considered what he had learned at Yale "nothing but the scholastic cobwebs of a few little English and Dutch systems that would hardly now be taken up in the street." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22943476 | 665,162 |
1,372,624 | He is said to have been born at the end of Thutmose III's reign, in the town of Athribis (modern Banha in the north of Cairo). His father was Hapu, and his mother Itu. Though little about Amenhotep's early life is known prior to his entering civil service, it is believed that he learned to read and write at the local library and scriptorium. He was a priest and a Scribe of Recruits (organizing the labour and supplying the manpower for the Pharaoh's projects, both civilian and military). He was also an architect and supervised several building projects, among them Amenhotep III's mortuary temple at western Thebes, of which only two statues remain nowadays, known as the Colossi of Memnon, and the creation of the quarry of El-Gabal el-Ahmar, nearby Heliopolis, from which the blocks used to create the Colossi were probably taken. Other plans, such as the portico of the Temple of Karnak, completed under Ramesses II, and those for the Luxor Temple are also attributed to Amenhotep. He may also have been the architect of the Temple of Soleb in Nubia. Amenhotep is noted to have participated in Amenhotep III's first Sed festival, in the 30th year of the king's rule. After this, he is believed to have retired from civil service and become the steward of Princess Sitamun's properties (similar to an asset manager today), and received honours such as the designation of Fan-bearer on the Right Side of the King, among other things. According to some reliefs in the tomb of Ramose, he may have died in the 31st year of Amenhotep III, which would correspond to either 1360 BC or 1357 BC, depending on the chronology used. His death has also been dated to the 35th year of the king. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6975055 | 1,371,867 |
2,015,534 | As with other members of the Field Elm group, the taxonomy of Plot Elm has been a matter of contention, several authorities, notably Professor Clive A. Stace in "New Flora of the British Isles" (2010), recognizing it as a species in its own right. It is as "U. plotii" that the specimens held by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and Wakehurst Place are listed. R. H. Richens, however, contended (1983) that it is simply one of the more distinctive clones of the polymorphous "Ulmus minor", conjecturing that it arose as an "U. minor" sport and that its incidence in the English Midlands may have been linked to its use as a distinctive marker along Drovers' roads. After Richens had challenged the species hypothesis, the tree was the subject of a study at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh by Dr Max Coleman (2000), which showed that trees a perfect fit with the 'type' material of Plot elm were of a single clone (genetically identical to each other). Arguing in a 2002 paper that there was no clear distinction between species and subspecies, and suggesting that known or suspected clones of "U. minor", once cultivated and named, should be treated as cultivars, Coleman preferred the designation "U. minor" 'Plotii' to "U. minor" var. "plotii", a form used in late 20th-century publications. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5961044 | 2,014,374 |
1,323,448 | Droplet-based microfluidic devices coupled to HPLC have high detection sensitivity, use low volumes of reagents, have short analysis times, and minimal cross-contamination of analytes, which make them efficient in many aspects. However, there are still problems associated with microscale chromatography such as dispersion of separated bands, diffusion, and “dead volume” in channels after separation. One way to bypass these issues is the use of droplets to compartmentalize separation bands, which combats diffusion and the loss of separated analytes. In early attempts to integrate chromatography with droplet microfluidics, the lower flow rates and pressures required for 2-D capillary LC provided less of an obstacle to overcome in combining these technologies and made it possible to couple multiple 2-D separation techniques into one device (i.e. HPLC x LC, LC x LC, and HPLC x HPLC). HPLC autosamplers feeding into microfluidic devices have taken advantage of the dispersion occurring between separation and droplet formation to feed gradient pulses of analytes into microfluidic devices where the production of thousands of pico-liter droplets captures unique analyte concentrations. Similar approaches have used the withdrawal capabilities of a syringe pump to align the relatively high flow rates necessary for HPLC with the lower flow rates of the continuous medium common in microfluidic devices. The development of nano-LC, or nano-UPLC, has provided another opportunity for coupling with microfluidic devices such that large droplet libraries can be formed with multiple dimensions of information being stored in each droplet. Instead of identifying peaks and storing them as a single sample, as seen in standard LC, these droplet libraries allow for the specific concentration of the analyte to be retained along with its identity. Moreover, the ability to perform high frequency fractionation immediately from the eluent of a nano-LC column has greatly increases peak resolution and improved the overall separation quality when compared to continuous flow nano-LC devices. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=54022162 | 1,322,722 |
1,772,024 | Of interest from the days of the Viking Orbiters are piles of material surrounding cliffs. These deposits of rock debris are called lobate debris aprons (LDAs). These features have a convex topography and a gentle slope from cliffs or escarpments; this suggests flow away from the steep source cliff. In addition, lobate debris aprons can show surface lineations just as rock glaciers on the Earth. Recently, research with the Shallow Radar on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has provided strong evidence that the LDAs in Hellas Planitia and in mid northern latitudes are glaciers that are covered with a thin layer of rocks. Radar from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter gave a strong reflection from the top and base of LDAs, meaning that pure water ice made up the bulk of the formation (between the two reflections). Based on the experiments of the Phoenix lander and the studies of the Mars Odyssey from orbit, frozen water is now known to exist at just under the surface of Mars in the far north and south (high latitudes). The discovery of water ice in LDAs demonstrates that water is found at even lower latitudes. Future colonists on Mars will be able to tap into these ice deposits, instead of having to travel to much higher latitudes. Another major advantage of LDAs over other sources of Martian water is that they can easily detected and mapped from orbit. Lobate debris aprons are shown below from the Phlegra Montes, which are at a latitude of 38.2 degrees north. The Phoenix lander set down at about 68 degrees north latitude, so the discovery of water ice in LDAs greatly expands the range of easily available on Mars. It is far easier to land a spaceship near the equator of Mars, so the closer water is available to the equator the better it will be for future colonists. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=32939362 | 1,771,027 |
334,314 | The student-run newspaper "The Daily Tar Heel" is ranked highly by "The Princeton Review", and received the 2004–5 National Pacemaker Award from the Associated Collegiate Press. Founded in 1977, WXYC 89.3 FM is UNC-Chapel Hill's student radio station that broadcasts 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Programming is left up to student DJs. WXYC typically plays little heard music from a wide range of genres and eras. On November 7, 1994, WXYC became the first radio station in the world to broadcast its signal over the internet. A student-run television station, STV, airs on the campus cable and throughout the Chapel Hill Spectrum system. Founded in 1948 as successor to the "Carolina Magazine", the "Carolina Quarterly", edited by graduate students, has published the works of numerous authors, including Wendell Berry, Raymond Carver, Don DeLillo, Annie Dillard, Joyce Carol Oates, and John Edgar Wideman. Works appearing in the "Quarterly" have been anthologized in "Best American Short Stories" and "New Stories from the South" and have won the Pushcart and O. Henry Prizes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=89510 | 334,136 |
956,254 | To support the war effort, Haldane volunteered for and joined the British Army, and was commissioned a temporary second lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion of the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) on 15 August 1914. He was assigned as the trench mortar officer, to lead his team for hand-bombing the enemy trenches, the experience of which he remarked "enjoyable." In his article in 1932 he described how "he enjoyed the opportunity of killing people and regarded this as a respectable relic of primitive man." He was promoted to temporary lieutenant on 18 February 1915 and to temporary captain on 18 October. While serving in France, he was wounded by an artillery fire for which he was sent back to Scotland. There he served as instructor of grenades for the Black Watch recruits. In 1916, he joined the war in Mesopotamia (Iraq) where an enemy bomb severely wounded him. He was relieved from war fronts and was sent to India and stayed there for the rest of the war. He returned to England in 1919 and relinquished his commission on 1 April 1920, retaining his rank of captain. For his ferocity and aggressiveness in battles, his commander Douglas Haig described him as the "bravest and dirtiest officer in my Army." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=62417 | 955,749 |
870,451 | The file format used by Draw was documented and extensible, and a range of tools emerged to manipulate Draw files for such purposes as distorting or transforming images or objects within images. Amongst them was the Draw+ (or DrawPlus) application which defined other object types and also added other editing features, such as support for multiple levels or layers in documents. DrawPlus became available in 1991 and was released "at nominal cost" via public domain and shareware channels. The author of DrawPlus, Jonathan Marten, subsequently developed an application called Vector, released by an educational software publisher, 4Mation, in early 1992. Described as "effectively an enhanced Draw", the program improved on Draw's text handling by allowing editing of imported text, continued DrawPlus's support for layers and object libraries, provided efficient handling of replicated or repeated objects, and introduced masks that acted as "windows" onto other objects. Priced at £100, even for site-wide usage, the software was considered "ideal... for technical drawing, to graphic design and even limited desktop publishing". A version of Draw was also developed for Microsoft Windows by Oak Solutions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63145 | 869,991 |
1,006,786 | In 1927, Harry Ricardo published a study on the concept of the sleeve valve engine. In it, he wrote that traditional poppet valve engines would be unlikely to produce much more than 1,500 hp (1,100 kW), a figure that many companies were eyeing for next generation engines. To pass this limit, the sleeve valve would have to be used, to increase volumetric efficiency, as well as to decrease the engine's sensitivity to detonation, which was prevalent with the poor quality fuels in use at the time. Halford had worked for Ricardo 1919-1922 at their London office and Halford's 1923 office was in Ladbroke Grove, North Kensington, only a few miles from Ricardo, while Halford's 1929 office was even closer (700 yards), and while in 1927 Ricardo started work with Bristol Engines on a line of sleeve-valve designs, Halford started work with Napier, using the Dagger as the basis. The layout of the H-block, with its inherent balance and the Sabre's relatively short stroke, allowed it to run at a higher rate of rotation, to deliver more power from a smaller displacement, provided that good volumetric efficiency could be maintained (with better breathing), which sleeve valves could do. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=158783 | 1,006,267 |
1,252,352 | Baxandall was born in Cardiff, the only son of David Baxandall, a curator who was at one time director of the National Gallery of Scotland. He went to Manchester Grammar School and studied English at Downing College, Cambridge, where he was taught by F. R. Leavis. In 1955 he departed for the Continent. He spent a year at Pavia University (1955–56), then taught at an international school in St. Gallen in Switzerland (1956–57), and finally went to Munich to hear the art historian Hans Sedlmayr and where he worked with Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich on the court of Urbino at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte. On his return to London in 1958 he began a long association with the Warburg Institute, initially working in the photographic collection, where he met Kay Simon, whom he married in 1963. From 1959 to 1961 he was a junior fellow, working on his never-completed PhD, "Restraint in Renaissance behaviour", under Ernst Gombrich. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4639290 | 1,251,674 |
1,896,042 | On 25 March 1944, the 231st AAF BU became the base operating unit, and in 1946 the post-war Alamogordo AAF was "manned by a skeleton crew merely as a plane refueling station, [for] emergency landings, etc" (the USACE property division "acquired...exclusive use of all private lands and interests within the Alamogordo Bombing Range until 1967".) In March 1947, the 1st Experimental Guided Missiles Group of Florida began Republic-Ford JB-2 testing at the Alamogordo range, and the Special Weapons Field Test Unit was inactivated when Wendover transferred to Strategic Air Command. Equipment and 1,200 personnel of the Test Unit moved to a new Alamogordo AAF unit organized 16 March 1947 (4145th Army Air Forces Base Unit), and the move continued until September 1947 for R&D of pilotless aircraft, guided missiles, and other programs. The Balloon Branch at Alamogordo AAF began in 1947 after an Air Materiel Command awarded a contract to New York University (NYU) to develop and fly high-altitude balloons. The 4145th was redesignated an Air Force Base Unit on 27 September 1947 during the month the USAF was created, and in late 1947 the former USAAF bombing range and the White Sands Proving Ground merged to become the New Mexico Joint Guided Missile Test Range. The former USAAF air base was designated Holloman Air Force Base on 14 January 1948, and the 2754th Air Force Base was its host unit after being established from the 4145th AFBU on 15 August 1948 (the 2754th AFB unit's "Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron" were established by 15 December 1948). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2467431 | 1,894,958 |
1,135,365 | Described by the New York City Ballet as "an eight-minute display of ballet bravura and technique," "Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux" opens with an expectant, lyrical "entrée", as the dancers discover each other on stage, join hands, and take an opening pose. This leads into a softly romantic "grand adage" of balances, turns, and lifts that swells to an ardent climax before subsiding to a gentle closing, ending in a famous pose: an exaggerated "fish dive" with the ballerina cradled at her hips between her partner's arms, her hands held in his, her legs neatly crossed at the ankles, and her face very close to the floor. In the original performances by Verdy and Ludlow, she would turn her head at the last count of the music and look quizzically up at him as if to say, "Hello—what am I doing down here?" The ebullient male variation that follows, which was originally much longer, varies from performer to performer, although the sequence of steps is much the same, featuring big jumps and "double tours en l'air". The choreography for the ballerina's variation is, however, rigorously maintained, with a darting attack and flashing footwork expressing the sparkling melodic line. The air-flung coda builds dramatically with the music in high lifts, dazzling turns, and breathtaking leaps, as the ballerina flies across the stage into the waiting arms of her partner. Finally, she is carried offstage, high overhead, with one leg extended in front, her arms and head flung back in rapturous abandon. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14528918 | 1,134,772 |
207,783 | The first Class-D amplifier was invented by British scientist Alec Reeves in the 1950s and was first called by that name in 1955. The first commercial product was a kit module called the X-10 released by Sinclair Radionics in 1964. However, it had an output power of only 2.5 watts. The Sinclair X-20 in 1966 produced 20 watts, but suffered from the inconsistencies and limitations of the germanium-based BJT (bipolar junction transistor) transistors available at the time. As a result, these early class-D amplifiers were impractical and unsuccessful. Practical class-D amplifiers were later enabled by the development of silicon-based MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor) technology. In 1978, Sony introduced the TA-N88, the first class-D unit to employ power MOSFETs and a switched-mode power supply. There were subsequently rapid developments in VDMOS (vertical DMOS) technology between 1979 and 1985. The availability of low-cost, fast-switching MOSFETs led to Class-D amplifiers becoming successful in the mid-1980s. The first class-D amplifier based integrated circuit was released by Tripath in 1996, and it saw widespread use. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2166803 | 207,676 |
1,721,427 | "T. bifasciatum" do not have distinct territories and their populations roam freely. Also, the females usually do not leave their original spawning spots. The males are known be taken away or leave. A plausible reason for why the females stay could be that they are most accustomed to those areas, and also because the predator threat is constant. Most of the literature on mating systems of the blue-headed wrasse was described in small patches of concentrated reef habitats. In a large, linear barrier reef in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, very large aggregations of group-matings form daily in a single area near the foreside of the reef. Tagging studies have shown that fish are generally faithful to particular feeding schools that are assorted throughout the forereef, and that they tend to migrate to spawning grounds over 1.5 kilometers away. There is no mating that appears to happen in other upcurrent areas of the forereef. Despite large differences in the times that are spent on the migration, there are no significant differences in the fecundity or frequency of spawning among females that live at different distances from the mating aggregation. The higher growth rate corresponded to a higher general feeding rate in the location, suggesting that food intake may outweigh the costs of the long migration. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2357704 | 1,720,457 |
1,518,564 | Of all the state-based RPS programs in place today, no two are the same. Each has been designed taking into account state-specific policy objectives (e.g. economic growth, diversity of energy supply, environmental concerns), local resource endowment, political considerations, and the capacity to expand renewable energy production. At the most basic level, this gives rise to differing RPS targets and years (e.g. Arizona's 15% by 2025 and Colorado's 30% by 2020). Other factors in program design include resource eligibility, in-state requirements, new build requirements, technology favoritism, lobbying by industry associations and non-profits, groups cost caps, program coverage (IOUs versus Cooperatives and Municipal utilities), cost recovery by utilities, penalties for non-compliance, rules regarding REC creation and trading, and additional non-binding goals. Since RPS programs create a mandate to purchase renewable energy, they create a lucrative captive market of buyers for renewable energy producers who are eligible in a particular state's RPS program to issue RECs. A state may choose to promote new investment in renewable energy generation capacity by not making eligible existing renewable energy such as hydroelectric plants or geothermal energy to qualify under an RPS program. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9238407 | 1,517,706 |
316,423 | The major militaries of today are largely set up to fight the "last war" (previous war) and hence have huge armoured and conventionally configured infantry formations backed up by air-forces and navies designed to support or prepare for these forces. Many are today deployed against guerrilla-style opponents where their strengths cannot be used to effect. The mass formations of industrial warfare are often seen as much less effective than the unconventional forces that modern militaries may also possess. The new opponents operate at a local level, whereas industrial armed forces work at a much higher "theatre" level. The nervous system of these new opponents is largely political rather than military-hierarchical and adapted to the local supporting populace who hide them. The centre provides the political idea and driving logic, perhaps with overall direction and some funding. Local groups decide their own plans, raise much of their own funding and may be more or less aligned to the centre's aims. Defeat of guerilla forces (when revealed) does not disable this type of organisation, many modern attack strategies will tend to increase the power of the group they intend to weaken. A new more political strategy is perhaps more appropriate here – with military backing. Such a strategy has been illustrated in the war against the IRA, though an adoption and codification are unclear. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=91515 | 316,254 |
914,362 | The earliest recorded systems of weights and measures originate in the 3rd or 4th millennium BC. Even the very earliest civilizations needed measurement for purposes of agriculture, construction and trade. Early standard units might only have applied to a single community or small region, with every area developing its own standards for lengths, areas, volumes and masses. Often such systems were closely tied to one field of use, so that volume measures used, for example, for dry grains were unrelated to those for liquids, with neither bearing any particular relationship to units of length used for measuring cloth or land. With development of manufacturing technologies, and the growing importance of trade between communities and ultimately across the Earth, standardized weights and measures became critical. Starting in the 18th century, modernized, simplified and uniform systems of weights and measures were developed, with the fundamental units defined by ever more precise methods in the science of metrology. The discovery and application of electricity was one factor motivating the development of standardized internationally applicable units. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2752651 | 913,883 |
29,736 | Under UC President William Wallace Campbell, enrollment at the Southern Branch expanded so rapidly that by the mid-1920s the institution was outgrowing the 25 acre Vermont Avenue location. The Regents searched for a new location and announced their selection of the so-called "Beverly Site"—just west of Beverly Hills—on March 21, 1925, edging out the panoramic hills of the still-empty Palos Verdes Peninsula. After the athletic teams entered the Pacific Coast conference in 1926, the Southern Branch student council adopted the nickname "Bruins", a name offered by the student council at UC Berkeley. In 1927, the Regents renamed the Southern Branch the University of California at Los Angeles (the word "at" was officially replaced by a comma in 1958, in line with other UC campuses). In the same year, the state broke ground in Westwood on land sold for $1 million, less than one-third its value, by real estate developers Edwin and Harold Janss, for whom the Janss Steps are named. The campus in Westwood opened to students in 1929. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37765 | 29,726 |
895,540 | The code position assigned to Null was in fact used only for the idle state of teleprinters. During long periods of idle time, the impulse rate was not synchronized between both devices (which could even be powered off or not permanently interconnected on commuted phone lines). To start a message it was first necessary to calibrate the impulse rate, a sequence of regularly timed "mark" pulses (1), by a group of five pulses, which could also be detected by simple passive electronic devices to turn on the teleprinter. This sequence of pulses generated a series of Erasure/Delete characters while also initializing the state of the receiver to the Letters shift mode. However, the first pulse could be lost, so this power on procedure could then be terminated by a single Null immediately followed by an Erasure/Delete character. To preserve the synchronization between devices, the Null code could not be used arbitrarily in the middle of messages (this was an improvement to the initial Baudot system where spaces were not explicitly differentiated, so it was difficult to maintain the pulse counters for repeating spaces on teleprinters). But it was then possible to resynchronize devices at any time by sending a Null in the middle of a message (immediately followed by an Erasure/Delete/LS control if followed by a letter, or by a FS control if followed by a figure). Sending Null controls also did not cause the paper band to advance to the next row (as nothing was punched), so this saved precious lengths of punchable paper band. On the other hand, the Erasure/Delete/LS control code was always punched and always shifted to the (initial) letters mode. According to some sources, the Null code point was reserved for country-internal usage only. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4748 | 895,069 |
2,007,329 | Researchers in the Netherlands have succeeded in building nanoreactors that can perform one-pot multistep reactions - the next step towards artificial cell-like devices in addition for applications involving the screening and diagnosis of a disease or illness. A biochemical nanoreactor is created simply by unwrapping a biological virus through scientific methods, eliminating its harmful contents, and re-assembling its protein coat around a single molecule of enzyme. The kinetic isotope effect is trapped in a single molecule within a membrane-based nanoreactor. This is a phenomenon that has been found by researchers in the United Kingdom during experiments done in September 2010. The kinetic isotope effect, where the rate of a reaction is influenced by the presence of an isotopic atom in solution, is an important principle for elucidating reaction mechanisms. This recent finding could open up new methods to study chemical reactions. They may even aid in the process of creating new (and even more powerful) nanoreactors. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33599550 | 2,006,178 |
1,573,134 | Patch-seq integrative dataset allows for a comprehensive characterization of cell types, particularly in neurons. Neuroscientists have applied this technique to a variety of experiments and protocols to discover new cell subtypes based on correlations between transcriptomic data and neuronal morpho-electric properties. Applying machine learning to patch-seq data it is then possible to study transcriptomic data and link it to their respective morpho-electric properties. Having a confirmed ground truth for robust cell type classification allows researchers to look at the function of specific neuron types and subtypes in complex processes such as behavior, language and the underlying processes in neurological and psychiatric diseases. Comparison of proteomics with transcriptomics has shown that transcriptional data does not necessarily translate into the same protein expression and likewise having the ability to look at the ground truth of a neuron's phenotype from classical classification methods combined with transcriptomic data is important for neuroscience. Patch-seq experiments have been found which support transcriptomic results but others have found cases where morphology of similar transcriptomically defined cell types in different brain regions did not match up. The technique is particularly well suited for neuroscience but in general any tissue where it is of interest to simultaneous know electrophysiology, morphology, and transcriptomics would find use for patch-seq. For instance patch-seq has also been applied to non-neuronal tissues such as pancreatic islets for studying diabetes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=66692692 | 1,572,245 |
1,864,123 | The school promotes scientific research and subject construction by strengthening the teacher team. It has more than 1100 staffs now, including 600 doctors and masters. The school has established a scientific team. It devotes to scientific research and has achieved many scientific payoffs. It obtains 33 patents authorized by government and also takes nearly 100 transverse subjects. CIT teachers have published 57 monographs and 3,800 papers over the past five years. Around 600 published papers were included in SCI (Science Citation Index), EI (Engineering Index), CPCI (Conference Proceedings Citation Index) retrieval papers. Currently CIT teachers are taking charge of more than 500 research projects at national, provincial or city levels, such as the National Natural Science Fund and Agriculture Technology. CIT employs more than 50 foreign teachers (from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Denmark, Finland) and holds the reception of foreign visitors to promote international academic exchanges. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33158136 | 1,863,051 |
1,217,287 | Without proper phosphorylation of hPER2 in the instance of a mutation in the CK1 binding site, less "Per2" mRNA is transcribed and the period is shortened to less than 24 hours. Individuals with a shortened period due to this phosphorylation disruption entrain to a 24h light-dark cycle, which may lead to a phase advance, causing earlier sleep and wake patterns. However, a 22h period does not necessitate a phase shift, but a shift can be predicted depending on the time the subject is exposed to the stimulus, visualized on a Phase Response Curve (PRC). This is consistent with studies of the role of CK1ɛ (a unique member of the CK1 family) in the TTFL in mammals and more studies have been conducted looking at specific regions of the Per2 transcript. In 2005, Fu's and Ptáček's labs reported discovery of a mutation in CKIδ (a functionally redundant form of CK1ɛ in the phosphorylation process of PER2) also causing FASPS. An A-to-G missense mutation resulted in a threonine-to-alanine alteration in the protein. This mutation prevented the proper phosphorylation of PER2. The evidence for both a mutation in the binding domain of PER2 and a mutation in CKIδ as causes of FASPS is strengthened by the lack of the FASPS phenotype in wild type individuals and by the observed change in the circadian phenotype of these mutant individuals in vitro and an absence of said mutations in all tested control subjects. Fruit flies and mice engineered to carry the human mutation also demonstrated abnormal circadian phenotypes, although the mutant flies had a long circadian period while the mutant mice had a shorter period. The genetic differences between flies and mammals that account for this difference circadian phenotypes are not known. Most recently, Ptáček and Fu reported additional studies of the human "Per2" S662G mutation and generation of mice carrying the human mutation. These mice had a circadian period almost 2 hours shorter than wild-type animals under constant darkness. Genetic dosage studies of CKIδ on the "Per2" S662G mutation revealed that depending on the binding site on "Per2" that CK1δ interacts with, CK1δ may lead to hypo- or hyperphosphorylation of the "Per2" gene. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=231017 | 1,216,634 |
985,549 | Thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) are used extensively on the surface of superalloy in both commercial and military gas turbine engines to increase component life and engine performance. A coating of about 1-200 µm can reduce the temperature at the superalloy surface by up to 200K. TBCs are really a system of coatings consisting of a bond coat, a thermally grown oxide (TGO), and a thermally insulating ceramic top coat. In most applications, the bond coat is either a MCrAlY (where M=Ni or NiCo) or a Pt modified aluminide coating. A dense bond coat is required to provide protection of the superalloy substrate from oxidation and hot corrosion attack and to form an adherent, slow growing TGO on its surface. The TGO is formed by oxidation of the aluminum that is contained in the bond coat. The current (first generation) thermal insulation layer is composed of 7wt % yttria-stabilized zirconia (7YSZ) with a typical thickness of 100–300 µm. Yttria stabilized zirconia is used due to its low thermal conductivity (2.6W/mK for fully dense material), relatively high coefficient of thermal expansion, and good high temperature stability. The electron beam directed vapor deposition (EB-DVD) process used to apply the TBC to turbine airfoils produces a columnar microstructure with several levels of porosity. The porosity between the columns is critical to providing strain tolerance (via a very low in-plane modulus), as it would otherwise spall on thermal cycling due to thermal expansion mismatch with the superalloy substrate. The porosity within the columns reduces the thermal conductivity of the coating. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2025632 | 985,035 |
1,119,509 | Research using ADPKD mouse models showed that mild food restriction strongly improved disease progression. The mechanism was shown to involve the metabolic state of ketosis, and beneficial effects could be produced by time-restricted feeding, acute fasting, a ketogenic diet, or by supplementation with the ketone beta-hydroxybutyrate in mouse, rat and cat models of ADPKD. A ketogenic diet regimen not only halted further disease progression but led to partial reversal of renal cystic disease in a rat model. The metabolic state of ketosis may be beneficial in ADPKD because renal cyst cells in ADPKD have a metabolic defect similar to the Warburg effect in cancer that makes them highly dependent on glucose, and unable to metabolize fatty acids and ketones. Consistent with this, serum glucose levels positively correlate with faster disease progression in ADPKD patients. Also, individuals with ADPKD and type 2 diabetes have significantly larger total kidney volume (TKV) than those with ADPKD alone, and overweight or obesity associate with faster progression in early-stage ADPKD. A retrospective case series study showed that ADPKD disease symptoms - including pain, hypertension and renal function - improved among 131 patients who implemented ketogenic diets for an average duration of 6 months. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24595 | 1,118,936 |
143,737 | Initiating a nuclear explosive device above, on, or slightly beneath, the surface of a threatening celestial body is a potential deflection option, with the optimal detonation height dependent upon the composition and size of the object. It does not require the entire NEO to be vaporized to mitigate an impact threat. In the case of an inbound threat from a "rubble pile," the stand off, or detonation height above the surface configuration, has been put forth as a means to prevent the potential fracturing of the rubble pile. The energetic neutrons and soft X-rays released by the detonation, which do not appreciably penetrate matter, are converted into heat upon encountering the object's surface matter, ablatively vaporizing all line of sight exposed surface areas of the object to a shallow depth, turning the surface material it heats up into ejecta, and, analogous to the ejecta from a chemical rocket engine exhaust, changing the velocity, or "nudging", the object off course by the reaction, following Newton's third law, with ejecta going one way and the object being propelled in the other. Depending on the energy of the explosive device, the resulting rocket exhaust effect, created by the high velocity of the asteroid's vaporized mass ejecta, coupled with the object's small reduction in mass, would produce enough of a change in the object's orbit to make it miss the Earth. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=174069 | 143,679 |
480,960 | Today, St. Louis Children's Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri has a "Center for Cerebral Palsy Spasticity" that is the only internationally known clinic in the world to have conducted concentrated first-hand clinical research on SDR over an extended period. Its chief neurosurgeon in the field, Doctor T.S. Park (who was initially trained by Dr. Peacock), has performed thousands of SDR surgeries, some of them on adults, and is the originator of the L1-laminectomy modification to the SDR surgery in 1991, which sections the first dorsal root and enables the removal of significantly less spine-bone than in surgeries performed before 1991, as well as inherent release of the hip flexor muscles specifically as a result of that particular sectioning — prior to that, total hip flexor release was not necessarily possible. That L1-laminectomy modification has since become the standard method, and SLCH has become internationally known as a major provider of the SDR surgery to those in need of it. It is this clinic's opinion that patients with spastic diplegia or quadriplegia should have spasticity reduced first through SDR before undergoing muscle release or tendon release procedures, and other surgeons today share this view. A major qualifier in the cases taken on at SLCH, however, is that all of its adults have had only "mild" cases of spastic diplegia. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8417113 | 480,716 |
2,109,896 | He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, the son of Timothy Paine and Sarah Chandler. He was educated at Harvard College, then studied medicine with Doctor Edward Augustus Holyoke and set up practice in Worcester in 1771. In 1773, he married Lois Orne. In 1774, he signed a protest against the activities of the pre-revolutionary committees of correspondence. He was censured for his protest and, later that year, travelled to England to continue his medical studies. Paine received an M.D. from Marischal College in Scotland. He returned to North America and served as apothecary for the British forces. In 1782, he was sent to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Paine was granted land near Passamaquoddy Bay in New Brunswick. He first settled on Letete Island (later Frye's Island) but later moved to Saint John. He served on the city council in 1785 and was elected to the legislative assembly later that year. He returned to Massachusetts to settle his financial affairs there and decided to remain there, despite having been proscribed in the Massachusetts Banishment Act of 1778. He settled first at Salem and then Worcester. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1791. In 1812, he became an American citizen. Paine became an honorary member of the Massachusetts Medical Society and was a founding member of the American Antiquarian Society. He died at Worcester at the age of 82. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15361772 | 2,108,682 |
687,281 | Along with his colleague Wei Pu in the Bureau of Astronomy, Shen Kuo planned to plot out the exact coordinates of planetary and lunar movements by recording their astronomical observations three times a night for a continuum of five years. The Song astronomers of Shen's day still retained the lunar theory and coordinates of the earlier Yi Xing, which after 350 years had devolved into a state of considerable error. Shen criticized earlier Chinese astronomers for failing to describe celestial movement in spatial terms, yet he did not attempt to provide any reasoning for the motive power of the planets or other celestial movements. Shen and Wei began astronomical observations for the Moon and planets by plotting their locations three times a night for what should have been five successive years. The officials and astronomers at court were deeply opposed Wei and Shen's work, offended by their insistence that the coordinates of the renowned Yi Xing were inaccurate. They also slandered Wei Pu, out of resentment that a commoner had expertise exceeding theirs. When Wei and Shen made a public demonstration using the gnomon to prove the doubtful wrong, the other ministers reluctantly agreed to correct the lunar and solar errors. Despite this success, they eventually dismissed Wei and Shen's tables of planetary motions. Therefore, only the worst and most obvious planetary errors were corrected, and many inaccuracies remained. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1102000 | 686,924 |
1,174,807 | Geoarchaeology is a multi-disciplinary approach which uses the techniques and subject matter of geography, geology, geophysics and other Earth sciences to examine topics which inform archaeological knowledge and thought. Geoarchaeologists study the natural physical processes that affect archaeological sites such as geomorphology, the formation of sites through geological processes and the effects on buried sites and artifacts post-deposition. Geoarchaeologists' work frequently involves studying soil and sediments as well as other geographical concepts to contribute an archaeological study. Geoarchaeologists may also use computer cartography, geographic information systems (GIS) and digital elevation models (DEM) in combination with disciplines from human and social sciences and earth sciences. Geoarchaeology is important to society because it informs archaeologists about the geomorphology of the soil, sediment, and rocks on the buried sites and artifacts they are researching. By doing this, scientists are able to locate ancient cities and artifacts and estimate by the quality of soil how "prehistoric" they really are. Geoarchaeology is considered a sub-field of environmental archaeology because soil can be altered by human behavior, which archaeologists are then able to study and reconstruct past landscapes and conditions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1149904 | 1,174,185 |
65,868 | One of the most influential early contributions was a 1959 paper titled "What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain": the paper examined the visual responses of neurons in the retina and optic tectum of frogs, and came to the conclusion that some neurons in the tectum of the frog are wired to combine elementary responses in a way that makes them function as "bug perceivers". A few years later David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel discovered cells in the primary visual cortex of monkeys that become active when sharp edges move across specific points in the field of view—a discovery for which they won a Nobel Prize. Follow-up studies in higher-order visual areas found cells that detect binocular disparity, color, movement, and aspects of shape, with areas located at increasing distances from the primary visual cortex showing increasingly complex responses. Other investigations of brain areas unrelated to vision have revealed cells with a wide variety of response correlates, some related to memory, some to abstract types of cognition such as space. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3717 | 65,843 |
569,330 | Emotion recognition is used in society for a variety of reasons. Affectiva, which spun out of MIT, provides artificial intelligence software that makes it more efficient to do tasks previously done manually by people, mainly to gather facial expression and vocal expression information related to specific contexts where viewers have consented to share this information. For example, instead of filling out a lengthy survey about how you feel at each point watching an educational video or advertisement, you can consent to have a camera watch your face and listen to what you say, and note during which parts of the experience you show expressions such as boredom, interest, confusion, or smiling. (Note that this does not imply it is reading your innermost feelings—it only reads what you express outwardly.) Other uses by Affectiva include helping children with autism, helping people who are blind to read facial expressions, helping robots interact more intelligently with people, and monitoring signs of attention while driving in an effort to enhance driver safety. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=48198256 | 569,040 |
1,074,074 | A book published in 1992 described how the operation was carried out at that time. In most cases the procedure started with the medical team taking a number of CT scan X-ray images of the brain of the patient. This step ensured that the exact target, the cingulate cortex was mapped out, so that the surgeon could identify it. Burr holes were then created in the patient's skull using a drill. Lesions at the targeted tissue were made with the help of fine electrodes inserted at the right angle into the subject's brain based on plotting charts and making sure important arteries and blood vessels were intact. The electrode was placed in a probe, or a holder, with only its tip projecting. Upon the correct insertion of the holder into the brain tissue, air was injected and more scan images were taken. Then, after the medical team had made sure they were on the right track, the tip of the electrode was advanced to the plane of the cingulate where it was heated to 75-90 °C. Once the first lesion was created it served as a center around which several other lesions were created. In order to confirm whether lesions are made at the right place, scan images were taken postoperatively and analyzed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46214 | 1,073,520 |
1,408,608 | UCNP-based systems can couple both light-based techniques and current-based techniques. This optical stimulation of semiconductors is then coupled with voltage-based stimulation in order to store information. Other advantages of utilizing UCNPs for flash drives include that all materials employed are photo- and thermally stable. Furthermore, imperfections in the UCNP film will not affect data storage. These advantages yielded an impressive achieved storage limit, making UCNP films a promising material in optical storage. UCNPs can be applied in niche applications for displays and printing. Anti-counterfeiting codes or prints can be fabricated using UCNPs in existing colloidal ink preparations. Flexible, transparent displays have also been fabricated using UCNPs. New security inks which incorporate lanthanide doped upconverting nanoparticles have many advantages. Also, these inks are invisible until subjected to NIR light. Red, green and blue upconverting inks have been achieved. The color produced from some overlapped ink depends on the power density of the NIR excitation, which enables the incorporation of additional security features. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=52499698 | 1,407,817 |
581,971 | Albert Einstein's development of the theory of relativity in 1905 led to the understanding that nuclear reactions could create new elements from smaller precursors with the loss of energy. In his treatise "Stars and Atoms", Arthur Eddington suggested that pressures and temperatures within stars were great enough for hydrogen nuclei to fuse into helium, a process which could produce the massive amounts of energy required to power the Sun. In 1935, Eddington went further and suggested that other elements might also form within stars. Spectral evidence collected after 1945 showed that the distribution of the commonest chemical elements, such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, neon, and iron, was fairly uniform across the galaxy, suggesting that these elements had a common origin. Numerous anomalies in the proportions hinted at an underlying mechanism for creation. For example, lead has a higher atomic weight than gold, but is far more common; besides, hydrogen and helium (elements 1 and 2) are virtually ubiquitous, yet lithium and beryllium (elements 3 and 4) are extremely rare. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17052696 | 581,673 |
495,365 | Early in the morning of 2 October 2000 at the High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility (HELSTF), Lightcraft Technologies, Inc. (LTI) with the help of Franklin B. Mead of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and Leik Myrabo set a new world's altitude record of 233 feet (71 m) for its 4.8 inch (12.2 cm) diameter, , laser-boosted rocket in a flight lasting 12.7 seconds. Although much of the 8:35 am flight was spent hovering at 230+ feet, the Lightcraft earned a world record for the longest ever laser-powered free flight and the greatest "air time" (i.e., launch-to-landing/recovery) from a light-propelled object. This is comparable to Robert Goddard's first test flight of his rocket design. Increasing the laser power to 100 kilowatts will enable flights up to a 30-kilometer altitude. Their goal is to accelerate a one-kilogram microsatellite into low Earth orbit using a custom-built, one megawatt ground-based laser. Such a system would use just about 20 dollars' worth of electricity, placing launch costs per kilogram to many times less than current launch costs (which are measured in thousands of dollars). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37850 | 495,109 |
669 | The F-35 was initially supported by a computerized maintenance management system named Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS). In concept, any F-35 can be serviced at any maintenance facility and all parts can be globally tracked and shared as needed. Due to numerous problems, such as unreliable diagnoses, excessive connectivity requirements, and security vulnerabilities, ALIS is being replaced by the cloud-based Operational Data Integrated Network (ODIN). From September 2020, ODIN base kits (OBKs) were running ALIS software, as well as ODIN software, first at Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Yuma, Arizona, then at Naval Air Station Lemoore, California, in support of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 125 on 16 July 2021, and then Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, in support of the 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron (TES) on 6 August 2021. In 2022, over a dozen more OBK sites will replace the ALIS's Standard Operating Unit unclassified (SOU-U) servers. OBK performance is double that of ALIS. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11812 | 669 |
427,670 | The striking, second part of the motif shows echoes of the so-called Dresden amen. As Clemens Brinkmann states in principle: "Under the influence of Mendelssohn and Wagner, Bruckner used the 'Dresden amen' in his church music and symphonic works". The third, brooding motif in pianissimo is marked by the "tired seconds of the double basses." In a lament, the first oboe swings up and becomes part of a sequencing phase that spirals steadily, eventually leading to the eruption of the fourth motif: a pentatonic trumpet call repeated in this key [E major] seven times [in each measure] without ever being modified " is presented on a tonally aimless chord face resulting from a multiple quintuplet. Michael Adensamer explains this in detail: "One could interpret at least four keys from this layering (E major, B major, C sharp minor and F sharp minor) and still pass the character of this sound. This character lies in the manifold usefulness of the sound. You could extend it up or down until it covered all twelve tones. In this sense it is unlimited, infinite and basically atonal..." On this sound surface, the characteristic trumpet fans are literally staged and counterpointed by a fatefully unfurling horn motif. This motif quotes the expressive beginning of the sentence through the use of the wide-stretched void. The sounds ebb and flow into a mourning chorale by the horns and the Wagner tubas, which Auer and Göllerich, named after Bruckner's "farewell to life". Ernst Décsey also highlights this mourning passage, stating: "Bruckner called this passage [rehearsal mark B] when he played it to the two Helms, returning in 1894 from Berlin." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2052551 | 427,460 |
341,347 | According to Navajo myth, the carcasses of slain monsters were "beaten into the earth", but were impossible to obliterate, and fossils have traditionally been interpreted as their remains. While Navajo people have helped paleontologists locate fossils since the 19th century, traditional beliefs suggest that the ghosts of the monsters remain in their partially buried corpses, and have to be kept there through potent rituals. Likewise, some worry that the bones of their relatives would be dug up along with dinosaur remains, and that removing fossils shows disrespect to the past lives of these beings. In 2005, the historian Adrienne Mayor stated Welles had noted that during the original excavation of "Dilophosaurus", the Navajo Williams disappeared from the excavation after some days, and speculated this was because Williams found the detailed work with fine brushes "beneath his dignity". Mayor instead pointed out that Navajo men do occupy themselves with detailed work, such as jewellery and painting, and that the explanation for Williams' departure may instead have been traditional anxiety as the skeletons emerged and were disturbed. Mayor also pointed to an incident in the 1940s when a Navajo man helped excavate a "Pentaceratops" skeleton as long as he did not have to touch the bones, but left the site when only a few inches of dirt were left covering them. In a 1994 book, Welles said Williams had come back some days later with two Navajo women saying "that's no man's work, that's squaw's work". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=444541 | 341,166 |
700,901 | By the end of 2005, 195 nuclear submarines had been ordered or built in the US (including the NR-1 Deep Submergence Craft and , but none of the later ). The last of the regular attack boats, , was decommissioned in 2001, and , a highly modified "Sturgeon", was decommissioned in 2004. The last of the initial "41 for Freedom" fleet ballistic missile (FBM) submarines, , was decommissioned in 2002. Decommissioning of the boats began in 1995 with . Additionally, a handful of nuclear-powered cruisers have entered the program, and their dismantling is ongoing. The first aircraft carrier due for decommissioning that would enter the SRP is planned to be , which was withdrawn in 2013. Unlike the disposal of other nuclear powered surface ships, all of which have been recycled at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, the Navy is looking at other, commercial or private sector options for "Enterprise" in an effort to reduce both the cost of the work and the time taken to dismantle such a large vessel, as well as negating the difficulty of towing the hulk all the way from Newport News, where it is stored, to Puget Sound. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29091 | 700,536 |
577,805 | The engine used is a Ruston Paxman 12RK3ACT unit, rated to produce up to 3,300 HP (2,460 kW). In comparison to the Class 56, it was able to achieve a 5-6 percent reduction in fuel consumption, in part due to simplification measures such as a lower cylinder count and the use of only a single turbocharger. A significant emphasis on component reduction and reliability was present during the Class 58's design due to the persistent reliability issues suffered by the preceding Class 56. The engine incorporates a silencer to lower noise emissions, which was in part necessitated to meet future noise restriction standards being developed by the European Economic Community; this silencer is directly mounted to the engine rather than the locomotive's body, and projects upwards via a clearance hole in the roof, surrounded by a gutter to collect rain. The arrangement was facilitated by the elimination of the air inlet manifolds, which were incorporated into the crankshaft's center. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2725672 | 577,509 |
300,356 | Several days before the opening of 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference a report was published, sponsored by some of the biggest agricultural companies. The report was produced by Sustainable Markets Initiative an organisation of companies, trying to become climate friendly, established by the king Charles III. According to the report, Regenerative agriculture is already implemented on 15% of all cropland. Despite it the rate of transition is "far too slow" and must be tripled by the year 2030 for preventing the global temperature to pass the threshold of 1.5 degrees above preindustrial level. Agricultural practices must immediately change for not "destroying the planet". One of the authors emphasised that “The interconnection between human health and planetary health is more evident than ever before.” The authors propose a set of measures for accelerating the transition, like creating metrics for measuring how much the farming is sustainable and pay the farmers who will change their farming mode to more sustainable. They want to present their propositions in the summit. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=43674427 | 300,195 |
1,753,964 | In this more general form of the Rasch model for dichotomous data, the "score" on a particular item is defined as the count of the number of threshold locations on the latent trait surpassed by the individual. This does not mean that a measurement process entails making such counts in a literal sense; rather, threshold locations on a latent continuum are usually "inferred" from a matrix of response data through an estimation process such as Conditional Maximum likelihood estimation. In general, the central feature of the measurement process is that individuals are "classified" into one of a set of contiguous, or adjoining, ordered categories. A response format employed in a given experimental context may achieve this in a number of ways. For example, respondents may choose a category they perceive best captures their level of endorsement of a statement (such as 'strongly agree'), judges may classify persons into categories based on well-defined criteria, or a person may categorise a physical stimulus based on perceived similarity to a set of reference stimuli. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2165800 | 1,752,974 |
1,469,144 | Kołakowski discusses the origins, philosophical roots, golden age and breakdown of Marxism, and the various schools of Marxist philosophy. He describes Marxism as "the greatest fantasy of the twentieth century", a dream of a perfect society which became a foundation for "a monstrous edifice of lies, exploitation and oppression." He argues that the Leninist and Stalinist versions of communist ideology are not a distortion or degenerate form of Marxism, but one of its possible interpretations. Despite his rejection of Marxism, his interpretation of Marx is influenced by Lukács. His first volume discusses the intellectual background of Marxism, examining the contributions of Plotinus, Johannes Scotus Eriugena, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa, Jakob Böhme, Angelus Silesius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Ludwig Feuerbach, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Moses Hess, as well as an analysis of the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Though he does not accept that Hegel was an apologist for totalitarianism, he writes of Hegel that, "the practical application of his doctrine means that in any case where the state apparatus and the individual are in conflict, is the former which must prevail." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=34430017 | 1,468,320 |
1,466,034 | There are about fifty-nine members of the family Heteromyidae divided among six genera. They are all small rodents, the largest being the giant kangaroo rat ("Dipodomys ingens") with a body length of and a tail a little longer than this. In many species the tail is tufted and is mainly used for balance. Other adaptations include partially fused vertebrae in the neck, short fore limbs and much enlarged bullae (bubble-shaped bones in the skull). The skulls vary widely across the group but they are all thin and papery and do not have the robust cranial crests and ridges found on the skulls of members of the family Geomyidae. The skull has other peculiarities. There is an extra hole that penetrates the rostrum, distinctive occluded teeth and the masseter muscle, which moves the lower jaw, is set far forward on the snout, an arrangement found in squirrels, beavers, pocket gophers, heteromyids and a few other groups. The dental formula is teeth in total. In the kangaroo rats, the teeth continue to grow all the time, being worn away as the animal chews. The molars have two-lobed cusps. The upper incisors are grooved and the enamel on the molars is quickly worn away by chewing leaving the dentine exposed. In the kangaroo rats they are unrooted but in the pocket mice they have roots. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1269227 | 1,465,211 |
723,289 | In the period from 1930 to 1933, Milankovitch worked on the problem of numerical secular rotation pole movements. The Earth as a whole he considered as a fluid body, which in the case of short-duration forces behaves as a solid body, but under an influence behaves as an elastic body. Using vector analysis he made a mathematical model of the Earth to create a theory of secular motion of the terrestrial poles. He derived the equation of secular trajectory of a terrestrial pole and also the equation of pole motion along this trajectory. The equations further led to a determination of the 25 most characteristic points with pole trajectories for both hemispheres. This mathematical calculation led Milanković to 16 important points from the past that form parts of early explorations; 8 points triggered future explorations. He drew a map of the path of the poles over the past 300 million years and stated that changes happen in the interval of 5 million years (minimum) to 30 million years (maximum). He found that the secular pole trajectory depends only on the configuration of the terrestrial outer shell and the instantaneous pole position on it, more precisely on geometry of the Earth mass. On this basis he could calculate the secular pole trajectory. Also, based on Milanković's model, the continental blocks sink into their underlying "fluidal" base, and slide around, 'aiming to achieve' isostatic equilibrium. In his conclusion about this problem, he wrote: For an extraterrestrial observer, the displacement of the pole takes place in such a way that the ... Earth's axis maintains its orientation in space, but the Earth's crust is displaced on its substratum. Milankovitch published his paper on the subject entitled "Numerical trajectory of secular changes of pole’s rotation" in Belgrade in 1932. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=150014 | 722,909 |
1,718,047 | Since the start of the war, the Iraq Survey Group had been working to collect and catalog weapons of mass destruction throughout Iraq. In 2005, a collaborative effort with the Central Intelligence Agency Baghdad station and Army HUMINT yielded an Iraqi source in possession of remnant chemical weapon stockpiles and munitions dating to the countries abandoned weapons program. Materials exploitation specialists from the 203rd as well as chemical specialists and ordnance disposal units were assigned the task of assessing and aiding the destruction of recovered weapons. Ultimately, at least 400 Borak rockets designed for use with the Soviet BM-21 Grad were acquired, evaluated, and destroyed. Many of the shells were in poor condition, and some were empty or held nonlethal liquid, but some of the weapons analyzed contained the toxic nerve agent Sarin in far higher concentration than analysts had expected given their age. As they processed the munitions, the 203rd held some shells back from the stockpile slated for destruction for dissection and evaluation, which they conducted with a cast iron bathtub and a drill on the premises of the Iraq Survey Group headquarters at Camp Slayer. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=67447284 | 1,717,077 |
440,529 | Multi-channel SSA (or M-SSA) is a natural extension of SSA to an formula_41-channel time series of vectors or maps with formula_42 data points formula_43. In the meteorological literature, extended EOF (EEOF) analysis is often assumed to be synonymous with M-SSA. The two methods are both extensions of classical principal component analysis (PCA) but they differ in emphasis: EEOF analysis typically utilizes a number formula_41 of spatial channels much greater than the number formula_2 of temporal lags, thus limiting the temporal and spectral information. In M-SSA, on the other hand, one usually chooses formula_46. Often M-SSA is applied to a few leading PCs of the spatial data, with formula_2 chosen large enough to extract detailed temporal and spectral information from the multivariate time series (Ghil et al., 2002). However, Groth and Ghil (2015) have demonstrated possible negative effects of this variance compression on the detection rate of weak signals when the number formula_41 of retained PCs becomes too small. This practice can further affect negatively the judicious reconstruction of the spatio-temporal patterns of such weak signals, and Groth et al. (2016) recommend retaining a maximum number of PCs, i.e., formula_49. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15620003 | 440,315 |
115,005 | Rawls received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1950 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "A Study in the Grounds of Ethical Knowledge: Considered with Reference to Judgments on the Moral Worth of Character". Rawls taught there until 1952 when he received a Fulbright Fellowship to Oxford University (Christ Church), where he was influenced by the liberal political theorist and historian Isaiah Berlin and the legal theorist H. L. A. Hart. After returning to the United States he served first as an assistant and then associate professor at Cornell University. In 1962, he became a full professor of philosophy at Cornell, and soon achieved a tenured position at MIT. That same year, he moved to Harvard University, where he taught for almost forty years and where he trained some of the leading contemporary figures in moral and political philosophy, including Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach, Thomas Nagel, Allan Gibbard, Onora O'Neill, Adrian Piper, Arnold Davidson, Elizabeth S. Anderson, Christine Korsgaard, Susan Neiman, Claudia Card, Rainer Forst, Thomas Pogge, T. M. Scanlon, Barbara Herman, Joshua Cohen, Thomas E. Hill Jr., Gurcharan Das, Andreas Teuber, Samuel Freeman and Paul Weithman. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=123612 | 114,960 |
1,389,489 | Eye movement in reading involves the visual processing of written text. This was described by the French ophthalmologist Louis Émile Javal in the late 19th century. He reported that eyes do not move continuously along a line of text, but make short, rapid movements (saccades) intermingled with short stops (fixations). Javal's observations were characterised by a reliance on naked-eye observation of eye movement in the absence of technology. From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, investigators used early tracking technologies to assist their observation, in a research climate that emphasised the measurement of human behaviour and skill for educational ends. Most basic knowledge about eye movement was obtained during this period. Since the mid-20th century, there have been three major changes: the development of non-invasive eye-movement tracking equipment; the introduction of computer technology to enhance the power of this equipment to pick up, record, and process the huge volume of data that eye movement generates; and the emergence of cognitive psychology as a theoretical and methodological framework within which reading processes are examined. Sereno & Rayner (2003) believed that the best current approach to discover immediate signs of word recognition is through recordings of eye movement and event-related potential. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8128856 | 1,388,718 |
352,268 | Development of the B-47 can be traced back to a requirement expressed by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in 1943 for a reconnaissance bomber that harnessed newly developed jet propulsion. Another key innovation adopted during the development process was the swept wing, drawing upon captured German research. With its engines carried in nacelles underneath the wing, the B-47 represented a major innovation in post-World War II combat jet design, and contributed to the development of modern jet airliners. Suitably impressed, in April 1946, the USAAF ordered two prototypes, designated "XB-47"; on 17 December 1947, the first prototype performed its maiden flight. Facing off competition such as the North American XB-45, Convair XB-46 and Martin XB-48, a formal contract for 10 B-47A bombers was signed on 3 September 1948. This would be soon followed by much larger contracts. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=193885 | 352,085 |
22,134 | Caffeine is a bitter, white crystalline purine, a methylxanthine alkaloid, and is chemically related to the adenine and guanine bases of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA). It is found in the seeds, fruits, nuts, or leaves of a number of plants native to Africa, East Asia and South America, and helps to protect them against herbivores and from competition by preventing the germination of nearby seeds, as well as encouraging consumption by select animals such as honey bees. The best-known source of caffeine is the coffee bean, the seed of the "Coffea" plant. People may drink beverages containing caffeine to relieve or prevent drowsiness and to improve cognitive performance. To make these drinks, caffeine is extracted by steeping the plant product in water, a process called infusion. Caffeine-containing drinks, such as coffee, tea, and cola, are consumed globally in high volumes. In 2020, almost 10 million tonnes of coffee beans were consumed globally. Caffeine is the world's most widely consumed psychoactive drug. Unlike most other psychoactive substances, caffeine remains largely unregulated and legal in nearly all parts of the world. Caffeine is also an outlier as its use is seen as socially acceptable in most cultures and even encouraged in others. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6868 | 22,125 |
2,168,496 | Laboratory phonology is an approach to phonology that emphasizes the synergy between phonological theory and scientific experiments, including laboratory studies of human speech and experiments on the acquisition and productivity of phonological patterns. The central goal of laboratory phonology is "gaining an understanding of the relationship between the cognitive and physical aspects of human speech" through the use of an interdisciplinary approach that promotes scholarly exchange across disciplines, bridging linguistics with psychology, electrical engineering, and computer science, and other fields. Although spoken speech has represented the major area of research, the investigation of sign languages and manual signs as encoding elements is also included in laboratory phonology. Important antecedents of the field include work by Kenneth N. Stevens and Gunnar Fant on the acoustic theory of speech production, Ilse Lehiste's work on prosody and intonation, and Peter Ladefoged's work on typological variation and methods for data capture. Current research in laboratory phonology draws heavily on the theories of metrical phonology and autosegmental phonology which are sought to be tested with help of experimental procedures, in laboratory settings, or through linguistic data collection at field sites, and though evaluation with statistical methods, such as exploratory data analysis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33020048 | 2,167,259 |
1,899,946 | The fixed relationships of the elliptic cam ring are replaced by 4 curved surface (cupped) movable pistons located at the 4 sealing areas, at 12,3,6, and 9 o'clock like the face of a clock. The curvature of each piston rides on a 'hydrodynamic oil bearing' similar to hydroplaning tires in the wet and this virtually eliminates metal-to-metal contact and friction. The first Hydristor achieved almost 95% efficiency overall and the present designs are in the 97+% range. If the 4 pistons are positioned equidistant from the center of rotation, no oil is expressed or accepted by any of the kidney ports. This is called 'neutral'. For a clockwise rotation, if 3 and 9 pistons are moved inward with 6 and 12 moving outward, all moving an equal amount, then a device displacement in proportion to the piston movement is created. If the 6 and 12 pistons were moved in with 3 and 9 moving equally out, then all the oil flows reverse. Since the piston positions are infinitely variable, any possible displacement between zero and + or - maximum displacement can be created. If two such Hydristor units are packaged face-to-face with the 4 port kidney plate between them, an infinitely variable transmission is formed. This transmission can select any ratio in the forward direction and in the reverse direction without the need for any gears. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3223264 | 1,898,860 |
1,369,705 | The analysis of the null space of matrices is implemented in software packages specialized for matrix operations such as Matlab and Octave. Determination of the null space of formula_32 tells us all the possible collections of flux vectors (or linear combinations thereof) that balance fluxes within the biological network. The advantage of this approach becomes evident in biological systems which are described by differential equation systems with many unknowns. The velocities in the differential equations above - formula_33 and formula_34 - are dependent on the reaction rates of the underlying equations. The velocities are generally taken from the Michaelis–Menten kinetic theory, which involves the kinetic parameters of the enzymes catalyzing the reactions and the concentration of the metabolites themselves. Isolating enzymes from living organisms and measuring their kinetic parameters is a difficult task, as is measuring the internal concentrations and diffusion constants of metabolites within an organism. Therefore, the differential equation approach to metabolic modeling is beyond the current scope of science for all but the most studied organisms. FBA avoids this impediment by applying the homeostatic assumption, which is a reasonably approximate description of biological systems. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4101904 | 1,368,949 |
1,000,967 | According to the de Broglie relation, electrons with kinetic energy of have a wavelength of . The experimental outcome was via Bragg's law, which closely matched the predictions. As Davisson and Germer state in their 1928 follow-up paper to their Nobel prize winning paper, "These results, including the failure of the data to satisfy the Bragg formula, are in accord with those previously obtained in our experiments on electron diffraction. The reflection data fail to satisfy the Bragg relation for the same reason that the electron diffraction beams fail to coincide with their Laue beam analogues." However, they add, "The calculated wave-lengths are in excellent agreement with the theoretical values of h/mv as shown in the accompanying table." So although electron energy diffraction does not follow the Bragg law, it did confirm de Broglie's theory that particles behave like waves. However, the experiments did not follow the de Broglie calculations which led to attempts by Carl Eckart, A.L. Patterson, and Fritz Zwicky to make an examination of the possible ways of interpreting the systematic differences between observed and de Broglie calculated electron wavelengths by a contraction factor or index of contraction. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1828131 | 1,000,449 |
1,123,552 | Grignard was the son of a sail maker. His character was described as having humble and friendly attitude. After attempting to major in mathematics, Grignard failed his entrance exams before being drafted into the army in 1892. After one year of service, he went back to pursue mathematics at the University of Lyon and finally obtained his degree Licencié ès Sciences Mathématiques in 1894. In December of the same year, he transferred to chemistry and began working with Professors Philippe Barbier (1848–1922) and Louis Bouveault (1864–1909). After working with stereochemistry and enines, Grignard was not impressed with the subject matter and asked Barbier about a new direction for his doctoral research. Barbier advised that Grignard research how a failed Saytzeff reaction, using zinc, was successful, in low yields, after using magnesium. They sought to synthesize alcohols from alkyl halides, aldehydes, ketones, and alkenes. Grignard hypothesized that the aldehyde/ketone prevented the magnesium from reacting with the alkyl halide which resulted in the low yields. He tested his hypothesis by first adding the alkyl halide and magnesium filings to a solution of anhydrous ether and then adding the aldehyde/ketone. This resulted in a drastic increase in the yield of the reaction. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=900383 | 1,122,978 |
572,126 | After 1990, Hacking shifted his focus somewhat from the natural sciences to the human sciences, partly under the influence of the work of Michel Foucault. Foucault was an influence as early as 1975 when Hacking wrote "Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy?" and "The Emergence of Probability". In the latter book, Hacking proposed that the modern schism between subjective or personalistic probability, and the long-run frequency interpretation, emerged in the early modern era as an epistemological "break" involving two incompatible models of uncertainty and chance. As history, the idea of a sharp break has been criticized, but competing 'frequentist' and 'subjective' interpretations of probability still remain today. Foucault's approach to knowledge systems and power is also reflected in Hacking's work on the historical mutability of psychiatric disorders and institutional roles for statistical reasoning in the 19th century. He labels his approach to the human sciences transcendental nominalism (also dynamic nominalism or dialectical realism), a historicised form of nominalism that traces the mutual interactions over time between the phenomena of the human world and our conceptions and classifications of them. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=322956 | 571,833 |
19,596 | The project was originally developed on behalf of the U.S. intelligence community and continues to receive U.S. government funding, and has been criticized as "more resembl[ing] a spook project than a tool designed by a culture that values accountability or transparency". , 80% of The Tor Project's $2M annual budget came from the United States government, with the U.S. State Department, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, and the National Science Foundation as major contributors, aiming "to aid democracy advocates in authoritarian states". Other public sources of funding include DARPA, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and the Government of Sweden. Some have proposed that the government values Tor's commitment to free speech, and uses the darknet to gather intelligence. Tor also receives funding from NGOs including Human Rights Watch, and private sponsors including Reddit and Google. Dingledine said that the United States Department of Defense funds are more similar to a research grant than a procurement contract. Tor executive director Andrew Lewman said that even though it accepts funds from the U.S. federal government, the Tor service did not collaborate with the NSA to reveal identities of users. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20556944 | 19,588 |
646,927 | After Duclaux's death, Roux took his place as head of the institute, and the last research he carried out was the one on syphilis, a dangerous disease because of its immediate effects and the hereditary repercussions that result from it. Despite Fournier’s considerable work, van Swieten’s liquid mercury was still the only known cure, although its results were doubtful and uncertain. The search for a stronger remedy against this disease was made more difficult because most animals are immune to it: it was thus not possible to experiment with possible cures and study their likely side effects. The sexually transmittable "Treponema pallidum" (the syphilis germ), detected by two German biologists, Schaudinn and Hoffmann, affects only the human racewhere it resides in sperm, ulceration, and cancers that it is able to causeand, as it would later be discovered, some anthropoid apes, especially chimpanzees. Both Roux and Metchnikoff, following the discovery that this type of ape can be contaminated with the illness, contributed with their research in creating a vaccine, while Bordet and Wassermann elaborated a solution that was able to expose the germ's presence in human blood. Even though it was not yet a completely reliable solution, it represented progress compared to the previous medicines used against syphilis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=866902 | 646,587 |
713,750 | A commercial beverage containing "L. casei" strain Shirota has been shown to inhibit the "in vivo" growth of "Helicobacter pylori", but when the same beverage was consumed by humans in a small trial, "H. pylori" colonization decreased only slightly, and the trend was not statistically significant. Some "L. casei" strains are considered to be probiotic, and may be effective in alleviation of gastrointestinal pathogenic bacterial diseases. According to World Health Organization, those properties have to be demonstrated on each specific strain—including human clinical studies—to be valid. "L. casei" has been combined with other probiotic strains of bacteria in randomized trials studying its effects in preventing antibiotic-associated diarrhea (AAD) and "Clostridium difficile" infections (CDI), and patients in the trials who were not given the placebo had significantly lower rates of AAD or CDI (depending on the trial) with no adverse effects reported. Additionally, trials have shown significantly shorter recovery times in children suffering from acute diarrhea (primarily caused by rotavirus) when given different "L. casei" treatments when compared to placebo. Studies suggest that lactobacilli are a safe and effective treatment for acute and infectious diarrhea. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2720799 | 713,378 |
930,884 | In 1831 John Herschel (1792–1871) published "A Preliminary Discourse on the study of Natural Philosophy", setting out the principles of science. Measuring and comparing observations was to be used to find generalisations in "empirical laws", which described regularities in phenomena, then natural philosophers were to work towards the higher aim of finding a universal "law of nature" which explained the causes and effects producing such regularities. An explanatory hypothesis was to be found by evaluating true causes (Newton's "vera causae") derived from experience, for example evidence of past climate change could be due to changes in the shape of continents, or to changes in Earth's orbit. Possible causes could be inferred by analogy to known causes of similar phenomena. It was essential to evaluate the importance of a hypothesis; "our next step in the verification of an induction must, therefore, consist in extending its application to cases not originally contemplated; in studiously varying the circumstances under which our causes act, with a view to ascertain whether their effect is general; and in pushing the application of our laws to extreme cases." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3143150 | 930,393 |
549,059 | The modes of action by which antimicrobial peptides kill microbes are varied, and may differ for different bacterial species. Some antimicrobial peptides kill both bacteria and fungi, e.g., psoriasin kills "E. coli" and several filamentous fungi. The cytoplasmic membrane is a frequent target, but peptides may also interfere with DNA and protein synthesis, protein folding, and cell wall synthesis. The initial contact between the peptide and the target organism is electrostatic, as most bacterial surfaces are anionic, or hydrophobic, such as in the antimicrobial peptide Piscidin. Their amino acid composition, amphipathicity, cationic charge and size allow them to attach to and insert into membrane bilayers to form pores by ‘barrel-stave’, ‘carpet’ or ‘toroidal-pore’ mechanisms. Alternately, they may penetrate into the cell to bind intracellular molecules which are crucial to cell living. Intracellular binding models includes inhibition of cell wall synthesis, alteration of the cytoplasmic membrane, activation of autolysin, inhibition of DNA, RNA, and protein synthesis, and inhibition of certain enzymes. However, in many cases, the exact mechanism of killing is not known. One emerging technique for the study of such mechanisms is dual polarisation interferometry. In contrast to many conventional antibiotics these peptides appear to be bactericidal instead of bacteriostatic. In general the antimicrobial activity of these peptides is determined by measuring the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC), which is the lowest concentration of drug that inhibits bacterial growth. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2065768 | 548,771 |
145,373 | More benign refrigerants are currently the subject of research, such as supercritical carbon dioxide, known as R-744. These have similar efficiencies compared to existing CFC- and HFC-based compounds, and have many orders of magnitude lower global warming potential. General industry and governing body push are toward more GWP-friendly refrigerants. In industrial settings ammonia, as well gasses like ethylene, propane, iso-butane and other hydrocarbons are commonly used (and have own R-x customary numbers), depending on required temperatures and pressures. Many of these gases are unfortunately flammable, explosive, or toxic; making their use restricted (i.e. well-controlled environment by qualified personnel, or a very small amount of refrigerant used). HFOs which can be considered to be HFC with some carbon-carbon bonds being double bounds, do show promise of lowering GWP very low to be of no further concern. In the meantime, various blends of existing refrigerants are used to achieve the required properties and efficiency, at a reasonable cost and lower GWP. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4702515 | 145,315 |
213,071 | A DNA microarray (also commonly known as DNA chip or biochip) is a collection of microscopic DNA spots attached to a solid surface. Scientists use DNA microarrays to measure the expression levels of large numbers of genes simultaneously or to genotype multiple regions of a genome. Each DNA spot contains picomoles (10 moles) of a specific DNA sequence, known as "probes" (or "reporters" or "oligos"). These can be a short section of a gene or other DNA element that are used to hybridize a cDNA or cRNA (also called anti-sense RNA) sample (called "target") under high-stringency conditions. Probe-target hybridization is usually detected and quantified by detection of fluorophore-, silver-, or chemiluminescence-labeled targets to determine relative abundance of nucleic acid sequences in the target. The original nucleic acid arrays were macro arrays approximately 9 cm × 12 cm and the first computerized image based analysis was published in 1981. It was invented by Patrick O. Brown. An example of its application is in SNPs arrays for polymorphisms in cardiovascular diseases, cancer, pathogens and GWAS analysis. It is also used for the identification of structural variations and the measurement of gene expression. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=255954 | 212,963 |
732,010 | In April 2021, the first prototype 3D printed house made out of clay, "Tecla", was completed. The low-carbon housing was printed by two large synchronized arms from a mixture of locally sourced soil and water as well as fibers from rice husks and a binder. Such buildings could be highly cheap, well-insulated, stable and weatherproof, climate-adaptable, customizable, get produced rapidly, require only very little easily learnable manual labor, mitigate carbon emissions from concrete, require less energy, reduce homelessness, help enable intentional communities such as autonomous, autark eco-communities, and enable the provision of housing for victims of natural disasters as well as – via knowledge- and technology-transfer to local people – for migrants to Europe near their homes, including as an increasingly relevant political option. It was built in Italy by the architecture studio Mario Cucinella Architects and 3D printing specialists WASP. The building's name is a portmanteau of "technology" and "clay". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38673321 | 731,623 |
1,186,694 | The PSP's main microprocessor is a multifunction device named "Allegrex" that includes a 32-bit MIPS32 R4k-based CPU (Little Endian), a Floating Point Unit, and a Vector Floating Point Unit. Additionally, there is a processor block known as "Media Engine" that contains another 32-bit MIPS32 R4k-base CPU, hardware for multimedia decoding (such as H.264), and a programmable DSP dubbed "Virtual Mobile Engine". The secondary CPU present in the Media Engine is functionally equivalent to the primary CPU save for a lack of a VPU. The MIPS CPU cores are globally clocked between 1 and 333 MHz. During the 2005 GDC, Sony revealed that it had capped the PSP's CPU clock speed at 222 MHz for licensed software. Its reasons for doing so are unknown, but are the subject of some speculation (e.g. to keep power consumption and heating low). Various homebrew tools enable users to operate at 333 MHz, generally leading to a higher frame rate at the expense of battery life. On June 22, 2007, Sony Computer Entertainment confirmed that the firmware version 3.50 does in fact remove this restriction and allows future games to run at the full 333 MHz speed. It does not affect already-released games. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16354585 | 1,186,065 |
817,627 | African cichlids also offer some evidence for sympatric speciation. They show a large amount of diversity in the African Great Lakes. Many studies point to sexual selection as a way of maintaining reproductive isolation. Female choice with regards to male coloration is one of the more studied modes of sexual selection in African cichlids. Female choice is present in cichlids because the female does much of the work in raising the offspring, while the male has little energy input in the offspring. She exerts sensory bias when picking males by choosing those that have colors similar to her or those that are the most colorful. This helps maintain sympatric speciation within the lakes. Cichlids also use acoustic reproductive communication. The male cichlid quivers as a ritualistic display for the female which produces a certain number of pulses and pulse period. Female choice for good genes and sensory bias is one of the deciding factors in this case, selecting for calls that are within her species and that give the best fitness advantage to increase the survivability of the offspring. Male-male competition is a form of intrasexual selection and also has an effect on speciation in African cichlids. Ritualistic fighting among males establishes which males are going to be more successful in mating. This is important in sympatric speciation because species with similar males may be competing for the same females. There may be a fitness advantage for one phenotype that could allow one species to invade another. Studies show this effect in species that are genetically similar, have the capability to interbreed, and show phenotypic color variation. Ecological character displacement is another means for sympatric speciation. Within each lake there are different niches that a species could occupy. For example, different diets and depth of the water could help to maintain isolation between species in the same lake. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=487641 | 817,191 |
249,353 | Established in 1972 as a branch of the main Health Sciences Center campus in Oklahoma City, the OU School of Community Medicine, formerly the College of Medicine–Tulsa, has enabled the university to establish medical residencies and provide for expanded health care capabilities in the state. Between 1972 and 1999, OU's presence in Tulsa had grown but scattered. In 1999, a site formerly owned by BP Amoco was sold to the university for $24 million (even though the property was appraised at $48 million). The site already featured a building with offices, labs, and classrooms. The university purchased this property with the help of a $10 million gift from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. The existing building was renamed the "Schusterman Center". This historic, 60-acre property in the heart of Tulsa features original mid-century architecture surrounded by nearly 1,000 trees. New construction of the Schusterman Library and Schusterman Learning Center at OU-Tulsa has been designed in keeping with the original building style. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=323072 | 249,223 |
1,642,492 | Terahertz imaging has advantages over the more expensive and shorter range X-ray scanners. A variety of materials are transparent to terahertz radiation, which allows it to measure the thickness, density, and structural properties of materials that are difficult to detect. Since terahertz is not ionizing radiation, the use of terahertz does not cause damage to living tissue, making terahertz a safe, non-invasive biomedical imaging technique. Moreover, because many materials have a unique spectral signature in the terahertz range, terahertz radiation can be used to identify materials. Terahertz imaging is widely used in the study of semiconductor material properties, biomedical cell imaging, and chemical and biological examination. Terahertz time domain systems (THz-tds) have made significant advances in 2D imaging. THz-tds is able to determine the sample complex dielectric constant, usually 0.1–4 THz, and provides information about the static characteristics of the sample over dozens of frequencies. However, this technology has some limitations. For example, due to the lower power of the beam, the sensor must be more sensitive. Low image acquisition speeds may force a tradeoff between time and resolution. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8908661 | 1,641,565 |
1,793,933 | The Pleistocene saw the sea retreat from the basin as global sea-level fell due to accumulation of ice sheets. The major changes during the Pleistocene epoch have been brought about by several recent ice ages. During glaciation, water was taken from the oceans to form the ice at high latitudes, causing global sea level to drop by about 120 meters, exposing the continental shelves and forming land-bridges between land-masses for animals to migrate. During deglaciation, the melted ice-water returned to the oceans, causing sea level to rise. This process can cause sudden shifts in coastlines and hydration systems resulting in newly submerged lands, emerging lands, collapsed ice dams resulting in salination of lakes, new ice dams creating vast areas of freshwater, and a general alteration in regional weather patterns on a large but temporary scale. It can even cause temporary reglaciation. This type of chaotic pattern of rapidly changing land, ice, saltwater and freshwater has been proposed as the likely model for the Baltic and Scandinavian regions, as well as much of central North America at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum LGM, with the present-day coastlines only being achieved in the last few millennia of prehistory. Also, the effect of elevation on Scandinavia submerged a vast continental plain that had existed under much of what is now the North Sea, connecting the British Isles to Continental Europe. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20303275 | 1,792,924 |
1,876,510 | For larger operations in the remote mountains or desert, a helicopter would fly along ridgetops and ignite hundreds of hectares by dropping DAIDs. The fire would be allowed to trickle slowly down the north facing slopes in the evening until it went out overnight with the dew the following morning or ran into a wet gully. But the 1970s were a relatively wet decade so the gullies were damp and full of soggy tree ferns which would stop most burns. Also, there weren't many people in the bush other than loggers and cattlemen, so it was possible to do this with minimal risk. The first use, anywhere in the world, of DAIDs to backburn a large 49 800 acre fire in north eastern Victoria was undertaken by the Commission in February 1968. In April 1969 the Forests Commission used a CSIRO incendiary machine in a Cessna 337 to carry out fuel reduction burning at Orbost which prompted the purchase their own machine. Later in 1977, the Commission purchased a Canadian designed Premo aerial incendiary machine which dropped incendiaries in small polystyrene “ping pong” balls. The machine was certified for use by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) in April 1978. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=57882206 | 1,875,432 |
84,098 | A process of osmosis through semipermeable membranes was first observed in 1748 by Jean-Antoine Nollet. For the following 200 years, osmosis was only a phenomenon observed in the laboratory. In 1950, the University of California at Los Angeles first investigated desalination of seawater using semipermeable membranes. Researchers from both University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Florida successfully produced fresh water from seawater in the mid-1950s, but the flux was too low to be commercially viable until the discovery at University of California at Los Angeles by Sidney Loeb and Srinivasa Sourirajan at the National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, of techniques for making asymmetric membranes characterized by an effectively thin "skin" layer supported atop a highly porous and much thicker substrate region of the membrane. John Cadotte, of Filmtec corporation, discovered that membranes with particularly high flux and low salt passage could be made by interfacial polymerization of "m"-phenylene diamine and trimesoyl chloride. Cadotte's patent on this process was the subject of litigation and has since expired. Almost all commercial reverse-osmosis membrane is now made by this method. By 2019, there were approximately 16,000 desalination plants operating around the world, producing around of desalinated water for human use. Around half of this capacity was in the Middle East and North Africa region. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18589212 | 84,064 |
399,909 | The main goal of a robotic prosthesis is to provide active actuation during gait to improve the biomechanics of gait, including, among other things, stability, symmetry, or energy expenditure for amputees. There are several powered prosthetic legs currently on the market, including fully powered legs, in which actuators directly drive the joints, and semi-active legs, which use small amounts of energy and a small actuator to change the mechanical properties of the leg but do not inject net positive energy into gait. Specific examples include The emPOWER from BionX, the Proprio Foot from Ossur, and the Elan Foot from Endolite. Various research groups have also experimented with robotic legs over the last decade. Central issues being researched include designing the behavior of the device during stance and swing phases, recognizing the current ambulation task, and various mechanical design problems such as robustness, weight, battery-life/efficiency, and noise-level. However, scientists from Stanford University and Seoul National University has developed artificial nerves system that will help prosthetic limbs feel. This synthetic nerve system enables prosthetic limbs sense braille, feel the sense of touch and respond to the environment. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=72750 | 399,710 |
61,290 | A 2011 study in animal cognition titled "Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus," named after the children's book "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!", examined spatial cognition in pigeons by studying their flight patterns between multiple feeders in a laboratory in relation to the travelling salesman problem. In the first experiment, pigeons were placed in the corner of a lab room and allowed to fly to nearby feeders containing peas. The researchers found that pigeons largely used proximity to determine which feeder they would select next. In the second experiment, the feeders were arranged in such a way that flying to the nearest feeder at every opportunity would be largely inefficient if the pigeons needed to visit every feeder. The results of the second experiment indicate that pigeons, while still favoring proximity-based solutions, "can plan several steps ahead along the route when the differences in travel costs between efficient and less efficient routes based on proximity become larger." These results are consistent with other experiments done with non-primates, which have proven that some non-primates were able to plan complex travel routes. This suggests non-primates may possess a relatively sophisticated spatial cognitive ability. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31248 | 61,265 |
435,373 | During this period, people were fascinated by the new technology of electricity, and many believed it had miraculous curative or "vitalizing" powers. Medical ethics were also looser, and doctors could experiment on their patients. By the turn of the century, application of high voltage, "high frequency" currents to the body had become part of a Victorian era medical field, part legitimate experimental medicine and part quack medicine, called "electrotherapy". Manufacturers produced medical apparatus to generate "Tesla currents", "D'Arsonval currents", and "Oudin currents" for physicians. In electrotherapy, a pointed electrode attached to the high voltage terminal of the coil was held near the patient, and the luminous brush discharges from it (called ""effluves"") were applied to parts of the body to treat a wide variety of medical conditions. In order to apply the electrode directly to the skin, or tissues inside the mouth, anus or vagina, a "vacuum electrode" was used, consisting of a metal electrode sealed inside a partially evacuated glass tube, which produced a dramatic violet glow. The glass wall of the tube and the skin surface formed a capacitor which limited the current to the patient, preventing discomfort. These vacuum electrodes were later manufactured with handheld Tesla coils to make "violet ray" wands, sold to the public as a quack home medical device. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=56714254 | 435,159 |
653,704 | Adult freshwater eels are elongated with tubelike, snake-shaped bodies. They have large, pointed heads and their dorsal fins are usually continuous with their caudal and anal fins, to form a fringe lining the posterior end of their bodies. They have relatively well developed eyes and pectoral fins compared to saltwater eels that they use to navigate and maneuver through river bottoms and shallow water. Unlike most eels, freshwater eels have not lost their scales, and instead have soft, thin, scales that are embedded in the epidermis. Additionally, freshwater eels possess small, granular teeth arranged in bands on the jaws and vomer. Anguillidae do exhibit size-dependent sexual dimorphism. Male anguillids invest more energy into mating with as many females as he can, than they do into growth. Therefore, female anguillids are usually larger, ranging from 1.5 – 3 feet, while male anguillids rarely get larger than 1.5 feet long. Adult anguillidae can vary in color, but normally are brown, olive or olive-yellow, and can be mottled. Coloration matches the floor of rivers and lakes which prevents the eels from being seen by predators while in clear or shallow water. Freshwater eels go through physical changes in their bodies when going to and from the ocean for different stages of life. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2349109 | 653,360 |
1,997,158 | The 1970s witnessed the appointment of a second full-time photography instructor and a move from two dark, sparse and ill-ventilated rooms in the old Central Technical College in George Street to spacious new air-conditioned premises at the Seven Hills campus. The combination of this modern teaching facility, emerging industry support for photographic education and the extensive groundwork undertaken by John McKay, who had travelled through Europe and America gathering information and visiting photographic teaching institutions, culminated with the introduction of Queensland's first full-time, professionally oriented photographic course of study. While previous courses relied entirely on vocational night schooling for employed students, this tradition was broken in 1978 with the development of a two-year, full-time Certificate in Photography which included a provision for specialist training conducted at industrial locations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4600223 | 1,996,015 |
1,445,849 | Ecosystem-based management is an environmental management approach that recognizes the full array of interactions within an ecosystem, including humans, rather than considering single issues, species, or ecosystem services in isolation. It can be applied to studies in the terrestrial and marine environments with challenges being attributed to both. In the marine realm, they are highly challenging to quantify due to highly migratory species as well as rapidly changing environmental and anthropogenic factors that can alter the habitat rather quickly. To be able to manage fisheries efficiently and effectively it has become increasingly more pertinent to understand not only the biological aspects of the species being studied, but also the environmental variables they are experiencing. Population abundance and structure, life history traits, competition with other species, where the stock is in the local food web, tidal fluctuations, salinity patterns and anthropogenic influences are among the variables that must be taken into account to fully understand the implementation of a "ecosystem-based management" approach. Interest in ecosystem-based management in the marine realm has developed more recently, in response to increasing recognition of the declining state of fisheries and ocean ecosystems. However, due to a lack of a clear definition and the diversity involved with the environment, the implementation has been lagging. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19236636 | 1,445,033 |
1,422,850 | The History of The Citadel began in the early 1820s with the formation of a militia and state arsenal in response to an alleged slave revolt in 1822. By 1842 the arsenal grew into an academy, with the Legislature establishing it as the South Carolina Military Academy. Cadets played a key role in the Civil War, by firing upon a federal ship three months before the war began. Many Confederate officers attended the school. Renamed in 1910 as The Citadel, the school's academic reputation grew. After moving the campus near Hampton Park in 1922, the college has grown substantially. Sixteen years after legal segregation ended in public schools, the Citadel saw the graduation of its first Black student, Charles D. Foster. After an equally rocky journey forward, the Citadel graduated its first female Cadet in 1999. The school has produced many military officers, business, and political leaders throughout its history. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=48639384 | 1,422,049 |
1,694,827 | War games held by "Generalmajor" (Major-General) Kurt von Tippelskirch, the chief of army intelligence and Oberst Ulrich Liss of "Fremde Heere West" (FHW, Foreign Armies West), tested the concept of an offensive through the Ardennes. Liss thought that swift reactions could not be expected from the "systematic French or the ponderous English" and used French and British methods, which made no provision for surprise and reacted slowly, when one was sprung. The results of the war games persuaded Halder that the Ardennes scheme could work, even though he and many other commanders still expected it to fail. May wrote that without the reassurance of intelligence analysis and the results of the war games, the possibility of Germany adopting the last version of "Fall Gelb" would have been remote. The French Dyle-Breda variant of the Allied deployment plan, was based on an accurate prediction of the German intentions, until the delays caused by the winter weather and shock of the Mechelen Incident led to the radical revision of "Fall Gelb". The French sought to assure the British that they would act to prevent the "Luftwaffe" using bases in the Netherlands and the Meuse valley and to encourage the Belgian and Dutch governments. The politico-strategic aspects of the plan ossified French thinking and the Phoney War led to demands for Allied offensives in Scandinavia or the Balkans and the plan to start a war with the USSR. Changes to the Dyle-Breda variant might lead to forces being taken from the Western Front. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=51751618 | 1,693,876 |
635,078 | The history of logarithms is the story of a correspondence (in modern terms, a group isomorphism) between multiplication on the positive real numbers and addition on the real number line that was formalized in seventeenth century Europe and was widely used to simplify calculation until the advent of the digital computer. The Napierian logarithms were published first in 1614. E. W. Hobson called it "one of the very greatest scientific discoveries that the world has seen." Henry Briggs introduced common (base 10) logarithms, which were easier to use. Tables of logarithms were published in many forms over four centuries. The idea of logarithms was also used to construct the slide rule, which became ubiquitous in science and engineering until the 1970s. A breakthrough generating the natural logarithm was the result of a search for an expression of area against a rectangular hyperbola, and required the assimilation of a new function into standard mathematics. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8185549 | 634,739 |
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