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1,216,004 | The original "thrifty gene" hypothesis argued that famines were common and severe enough to select for thrifty gene in the 2.5 million years of human paleolithic history. This assumption is contradicted by some anthropological evidence. Many of the populations that later developed high rates of obesity and diabetes appeared to have no discernible history of famine or starvation (for example, Pacific Islanders whose "tropical-equatorial islands had luxuriant vegetation all year round and were surrounded by lukewarm waters full of fish."). However, this implies that the period after which humans migrated out of Africa would have provided sufficient time to reverse any pre-existing famine-adapted alleles, for which there is little to no evidence. One criticism of the 'thrifty gene' idea is that it predicts that modern hunter gatherers should get fat in the periods between famines. Data on the body mass index of hunter-gatherer and subsistence agriculturalists show that between famines they do not deposit large fat stores. However, genes that promote only limited fat deposition in the context of pre-industrialized lifestyles and diets may promote excessive fat deposition and obesity when caloric intake is increased and expenditure is decreased beyond the range of the environments these genes evolved in (a gene x environment interaction). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6687077 | 1,215,352 |
52,910 | Such as SmartLoader, SpeciMinder, ADAM, Tug Eskorta, and MT 400 with Motivity are designed for people-friendly workspaces. They navigate by recognizing natural features. 3D scanners or other means of sensing the environment in two or three dimensions help to eliminate cumulative errors in dead-reckoning calculations of the AGV's current position. Some AGVs can create maps of their environment using scanning lasers with simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and use those maps to navigate in real time with other path planning and obstacle avoidance algorithms. They are able to operate in complex environments and perform non-repetitive and non-sequential tasks such as transporting photomasks in a semiconductor lab, specimens in hospitals and goods in warehouses. For dynamic areas, such as warehouses full of pallets, AGVs require additional strategies using three-dimensional sensors such as time-of-flight or stereovision cameras. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25781 | 52,890 |
575,306 | In September, 1956, the General Physics Laboratory of the Aeronautical Research Laboratories (ARL) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, commenced an intense program to coordinate research into gravitational and unified field theories with the hiring of Joshua N. Goldberg. Creation by ARL of Goldberg's program may have been coincidental to Talbert's disclosures of commitments to gravity control propulsion research. The precise rationale for creating the program and justifying its budgets and personnel may never be determined. Neither Goldberg nor the Air Force's Deputy for Scientific and Technical Information, Walter Blados, were able to locate the founding documents. Roy Kerr, a former ARL scientist, stated the antigravity propulsion purpose of ARL was "rubbish" and that "The only real use that the USAF made of us was when some crackpot sent them a proposal for antigravity or for converting rotary motion inside a spaceship to a translational driving system." The December 30, 1957 issue of Product Engineering closed its report with the following statement: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19256144 | 575,012 |
363,420 | Auburn University's sports teams are known as the Tigers, and they participate in Division I-A of the NCAA and in the Western Division of the 14-member Southeastern Conference (SEC). "War Eagle" is the battle cry and greeting used by the Auburn Family (students, alumni, and fans). Auburn has won a total of 21 intercollegiate national championships (including 17 NCAA Championships), which includes two football (1957, 2010), eight men's swimming and diving (1997, 1999, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009), five women's swimming and diving (2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007), five equestrian (2008, 2011,2013, 2016, 2018), and one women's outdoor track and field (2006) title. Auburn has also won a total of 70 Southeastern Conference championships, including 51 men's titles and 19 women's titles. Auburn's colors of orange and blue were chosen by Dr. George Petrie, Auburn's first football coach, based on those of his alma mater, the University of Virginia. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=327945 | 363,230 |
1,342,050 | The soil-borne fungal pathogen "Athelia rolfsii" is a basidiomycete that typically exists only as mycelium and sclerotia (anamorph: "Sclerotium rolfsii", or asexual state). It causes the disease Southern Blight and typically overwinters as sclerotia. The sclerotia is a survival structure composed of a hard rind and cortex containing hyphae and is typically considered the primary inoculum. The pathogen has a very large host range, affecting over 500 plant species (including tomato, onion, snapbean and pea) in the United States of America. The fungus attacks the host crown and stem tissues at the soil line by producing a number of compounds such as oxalic acid, in addition to enzymes that are pectinolytic and cellulolytic. These compounds effectively kill plant tissue and allow the fungus to enter other areas of the plant. After gaining entry, the pathogen uses the plant tissues to produce mycelium (often forming mycelial mats), as well as additional sclerotia. Sclerotia formation occurs when conditions are especially warm and humid, primarily in the summer months in the United States of America. Susceptible plants exhibit stem lesions near the soil line, and thus often wilt and eventually die. Infection caused by Southern Blight is not considered systemic. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11063303 | 1,341,316 |
51,113 | At hatching, a typical salamander larva has eyes without lids, teeth in both upper and lower jaws, three pairs of feathery external gills, and a long tail with dorsal and ventral fins. The forelimbs may be partially developed and the hind limbs are rudimentary in pond-living species but may be rather more developed in species that reproduce in moving water. Pond-type larvae often have a pair of balancers, rod-like structures on either side of the head that may prevent the gills from becoming clogged up with sediment. Both of these are able to breed. Some have larvae that never fully develop into the adult form, a condition known as neoteny. Neoteny occurs when the animal's growth rate is very low and is usually linked to adverse conditions such as low water temperatures that may change the response of the tissues to the hormone thyroxine. as well as lack of food. There are fifteen species of obligate neotenic salamanders, including species of "Necturus", "Proteus" and "Amphiuma", and many examples of facultative ones, such as the northwestern salamander ("Ambystoma gracile") and the tiger salamander ("A. tigrinum") that adopt this strategy under appropriate environmental circumstances. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=621 | 51,093 |
1,128,390 | The army of the First Crusade that arrived in Asia Minor in 1097 were a type of armed pilgrimage. A prior expedition, the People's Crusade, made up of peasants and low-ranking knights arrived in Asia Minor in August 1096, but were decisively defeated by Seljuk forces a month later in October. The later force called the Prince's Crusade, which succeeded in taking Jerusalem and started the Crusader states, was representative of European armies. Crusader armies contained heavy cavalry, infantry and ranged troops such as archers or crossbowmen. The original leadership was generally made up of high-ranking knights from modern-day France and Belgium. Later on, other Western European monarchs participated such as Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor from the Holy Roman Empire and Richard I of England in the Third Crusade of 1189–1192. The long distance to the Middle East and the difficulty in crossing often hostile territory resulted in the Crusader forces being relatively outnumbered by the surrounding pre-existing nations. There were regular calls for reinforcements from the Crusader states attempting to alleviate this problem. Several calls resulted in new Crusades. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17416992 | 1,127,812 |
2,060,238 | Jules Jamin, son of Anthony Peter Jamin, was born in 1818 in Termes, France. He began his education at a small school in Vouziers, a small village located in northeast France. After some time there, he was sent to the College at Reims by his father, Antoine-Pierre. In his first year at the College at Reims Jules won nine awards. In 1838 he won the science competition award with honors, and in October of the same year he was accepted on first selection to enter École normale supérieure where he obtained a degree in physical sciences, mathematics and natural sciences. In 1841, he graduated first in the competition of comprehensive physical sciences. He obtained his first position at the college of Caen, where he succeeded Paul Desains. After two years, he joined the College Bourbon (today's Lycée Condorcet) as a substitute teacher, then in 1844, he joined the College Louis-le-Grand as a teacher. While in Caen, he began research in support of his thesis on the reflection of light on the surface of metals, for which in 1847 he received a doctorate in Physics with his thesis on light reflection on metallic surfaces. From 1844–1854, Jamin studied and confirmed the conclusions of Macedonio Melloni concerning energy absorption alongside fellow physicists L. Courtépée and . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7075468 | 2,059,051 |
253,066 | It is stated that "the reactive forces of incendiaries were probably not applied to the propulsion of projectiles prior to the 13th century". A turning point in rocket technology emerged with a short manuscript entitled "Liber Ignium ad Comburendos Hostes" (abbreviated as "The Book of Fires"). The manuscript is composed of recipes for creating incendiary weapons from the mid-eighth to the end of the thirteenth centuries—two of which are rockets. The first recipe calls for one part of colophonium and sulfur added to six parts of saltpeter (potassium nitrate) dissolved in laurel oil, then inserted into hollow wood and lit to "fly away suddenly to whatever place you wish and burn up everything". The second recipe combines one pound of sulfur, two pounds of charcoal, and six pounds of saltpeter—all finely powdered on a marble slab. This powder mixture is packed firmly into a long and narrow case. The introduction of saltpeter into pyrotechnic mixtures connected the shift from hurled Greek fire into self-propelled rocketry. . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=262135 | 252,933 |
1,111,940 | This research was expanded upon and led to the creation of a product called MEDIC (microfluidic electrochemical detector for in vivo continuous monitoring) developed by faculty at the University of California at Santa Barbara. MEDIC is an instrument that can continuously determine the concentrations of different molecules in the blood. The blood doesn't have to be mixed with anything prior to testing to create a 'serum' as the first device did. MEDIC can detect a wide variety of drug molecules and biomarkers. In trials, early models of the device failed after about half an hour because the proteins in whole blood clung to the sensors and clogged the components. This problem was solved via a second chamber that allowed a liquid buffer to flow over the sensors with the blood, without mixing or disturbing the blood, so the results remained unchanged. The device is still in clinical trials and actual implementation in medicine is likely years away, however in the interim, its creators estimate that it could also be used in the pharmaceutical industry to allow for better testing in Phase 3 clinical trials. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10449471 | 1,111,374 |
635,792 | The United States Aircraft Reactor Experiment (ARE) was a 2.5 MW thermal-spectrum nuclear reactor experiment designed to attain a high power density and high output temperature for use as an engine in a nuclear-powered bomber aircraft. The advantage of a nuclear-powered aircraft over a conventionally-powered aircraft is that it could remain airborne orders of magnitude longer and provide an effective nuclear strategic deterrent to a nuclear-armed Soviet adversary. The ARE was the first molten salt reactor (MSR) to be built and operated. It used the molten fluoride salt NaF-ZrF-UF (53-41-6 mol%) as fuel, was moderated by a hexagonal-configuration beryllium oxide (BeO), and had a peak temperature of 860 °C. A redundant liquid sodium coolant system was used to cool the moderator and reflector materials. A secondary helium gas coolant loop was circulated around the primary coolant to transfer heat to a water radiator where heat output was dumped to atmosphere. Reactivity control rods were installed and it was found that the control rods did not determine the output power of the ARE; rather, the power demand did, which affected the outlet and inlet temperatures because of the negative temperature coefficient of reactivity. The ARE was operated at power for 221 hours up to a peak of 2.5 MW. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3459152 | 635,453 |
2,123,490 | Delivered on 14 April 2015 to the ISS by SpaceX CRS-6. The research was sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) and Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research. The primary objective of the research was to monitor the effects of the space environment on the musculoskeletal and neurological systems of mice as model organisms of human health and disease. In addition to the primary research focus other organ systems, including whole blood, brain, heart, lungs, kidney/adrenal glands, liver, spleen, and small intestines, were also studied for molecular and morphological changes as a function of duration of spaceflight exposure. The study included 40 mice, 20 that were flown to the ISS and 20 as controls that remained on Earth. The study lasted 37 days. The Bone Densitometer Validation experiment was used in support of RR-2. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=58816065 | 2,122,270 |
706,934 | This GFCS was an intermediate-range, anti-aircraft gun fire-control system. It was designed for use against high-speed subsonic aircraft. It could also be used against surface targets. It was a dual ballistic system. This means that it was capable of simultaneously producing gun orders for two different gun types (e.g.: 5"/38cal and 3"/50cal) against the same target. Its Mark 35 Radar was capable of automatic tracking in bearing, elevation, and range that was as accurate as any optical tracking. The whole system could be controlled from the below decks Plotting Room with or without the director being manned. This allowed for rapid target acquisition when a target was first detected and designated by the ship's air-search radar, and not yet visible from on deck. Its target solution time was less than 2 seconds after Mark 35 radar "Lock on". It was designed toward the end of World War II, apparently in response to Japanese kamikaze aircraft attacks. It was conceived by Ivan Getting, mentioned near the end of his Oral history, and its linkage computer was designed by Antonín Svoboda. Its gun director was not shaped like a box, and it had no optical rangefinder. The system was manned by crew of four. On the left side of the director, was the Cockpit where the Control Officer stood behind the sitting Director Operator (Also called Director Pointer). Below decks in Plot, was the Mark 4 Radar Console where the Radar Operator and Radar Tracker sat. The director's movement in bearing was unlimited because it had slip-rings in its pedestal. (The Mark 37 gun director had a cable connection to the hull, and occasionally had to be "unwound".) Fig. 26E8 on this Web page shows the director in considerable detail. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21169396 | 706,565 |
475,505 | Cardiovascular diseases are often caused by changes in structure and function of small blood vessels. For instance, self-reported rates of hypertension suggest that the rate is increasing, says a 2003 report from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. A microfluidic platform simulating the biological response of an artery could not only enable organ-based screens to occur more frequently throughout a drug development trial, but also yield a comprehensive understanding of the underlying mechanisms behind pathologic changes in small arteries and develop better treatment strategies. Axel Gunther from the University of Toronto argues that such MEMS-based devices could potentially help in the assessment of a patient's microvascular status in a clinical setting (personalized medicine). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33980770 | 475,268 |
2,018,117 | Phillips's pay was in arrears again by 1692, causing him significant financial difficulties. He was sent in August with a squadron to reconnoitre the Channel Islands and St Malo, the latter being the main base for French privateers. He returned to England and presented his report in October. He was then appointed, in 1693, to the post of chief engineer to the train of brass ordnance for sea service. In November he was assigned to a naval squadron under Commodore John Benbow, which was equipped with bomb vessels and fireships and was ordered to destroy St Malo. Phillips directed the bomb vessels during the opening three-day-long bombardment, before taking charge of a 300-ton galliot loaded with explosives. He brought it inshore on 19 November, intending to use it to reduce the town to ashes. The ship ran aground and exploded before it could reach the harbour, but the blast succeeded in damaging hundreds of houses and bringing down the port's sea wall. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16263583 | 2,016,954 |
234,889 | The Biblical concept of Eretz Israel, and its re-establishment as a state in the modern era, was a basic tenet of the original Zionist program. This program however, saw little success until the British commitment to "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" in the Balfour Declaration. Chaim Weizmann, as leader of the Zionist delegation, at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference presented a Zionist Statement on 3 February. Among other things, he presented a plan for development together with a map of the proposed homeland. The statement noted the Jewish historical connection with "Palestine". It also declared the Zionists' proposed borders and resources "essential for the necessary economic foundation of the country" including "the control of its rivers and their headwaters". These borders included present day Israel and the occupied territories, western Jordan, southwestern Syria and southern Lebanon "in the vicinity south of Sidon". The subsequent British occupation and British acceptance of the July 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, advanced the Zionist cause. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33610767 | 234,770 |
1,297,457 | Specially designed machines bombard the suspect explosives with neutrons and read the resulting gamma radiation decay signatures to determine the chemical composition of the sample. The earliest developed forms of Neutron Activation Analysis use low-energy neutrons to determine the ratios of nitrogen, chlorine, and hydrogen in the chemical species in question and are an effective means of identifying most conventional explosives. Unfortunately, the much smaller thermal Neutron cross sections of carbon and oxygen limit the ability of this technique to identify their abundances in the unknown species, and it is partly for this reason that terror organizations have favored nitrogen absent explosives such as TATP in the construction of IEDs. Modifications to the experimental protocol can allow for easier identification of carbon and oxygen-based species, (e.g. the use of inelastic scattering from fast neutrons to produce detectable gamma rays, as opposed to simple absorption occurring with the thermal neutrons), but these modifications require equipment that is prohibitively more complex and expensive, preventing their widespread implementation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3620303 | 1,296,745 |
1,605,172 | At the beginning of the 20th century, the entire Russian industry was in a deep crisis, the consequences of which affected the factories of the Urals until 1909. In 1909, the Ural iron and steel plants smelted 34.7 million tons of iron, which is 30.9% less than in 1900. During the crisis years, the share of finished iron increased, new markets were searched for, syndicates and associations were created to fight the competition of factories in Southern Russia. To a lesser extent, the crisis affected the copper smelting industry, thanks to continued demand and an increase in customs duties on copper imports. In the first decade of the 20th century, small technically backward factories with worn-out equipment, which had become unprofitable, were closed. Of the 111 metallurgical plants operating in the Urals in 1900, 35 plants were shut down by 1913. In conditions of tough competition, factories were forced to modernize: blast furnaces with a lightweight casing were erected, hot blast was introduced everywhere, steam engines and ore preparation for smelting, furnaces and puddling furnaces were replaced by open-hearth furnaces, more powerful rolling mills were built, and factories received electricity. In the mountainous districts, the optimization and reorganization of capacities were carried out: the final processing was concentrated, as a rule, at the main plant of the district, the rest of the factories provided supplies of iron. During the Russo-Japanese War, the Izhevsk, Perm, and Zlatoust arms factories sharply increased the production of guns, rifles, and shells. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=66141214 | 1,604,269 |
527,991 | The smaller .172 bullet typically has a much lower ballistic coefficient than other typical varmint calibers, such as that of the .223 Remington. Because of this, the .172 bullet loses velocity slightly sooner and is more sensitive to wind; but by no means does this render the cartridge useless. The advantages of this cartridge are low recoil, flat trajectory, and minimal entrance wounds. The tiny entrance wound and usual lack of exit wound on coyote-sized animals make it an ideal round for fur bearing animals from which the hunter intends to collect a pelt. A significant disadvantage is the rapid rate at which such a small-caliber rifle barrel can accumulate gilding metal fouling, which is very detrimental to accuracy and may also eventually result in increasing pressures caused by the fouling's constriction of the bore. Many .17 Remington shooters have reported optimum accuracy when the bore is cleaned after every 10 - 20 shots, though more modern metallurgy used in both barrels and bullets has largely mitigated the fouling issue. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1061687 | 527,718 |
1,345,963 | Much of the reasoning behind Antoine Lavoisier being named the "father of modern chemistry" and the start of the chemical revolution lay in his ability to mathematize the field, pushing chemistry to use the experimental methods utilized in other "more exact sciences." Lavoisier changed the field of chemistry by keeping meticulous balance sheets in his research, attempting to show that through the transformation of chemical species the total amount of substance was conserved. Lavoisier used instrumentation for thermometric and barometric measurements in his experiments, and collaborated with Pierre Simon de Laplace in the invention of the calorimeter, an instrument for measuring heat changes in a reaction. In attempting to dismantle phlogiston theory and implement his own theory of combustion, Lavoisier utilized multiple apparatuses. These included a red-hot iron gun barrel which was designed to have water run through it and decompose, and an alteration of the apparatus which implemented a pneumatic trough at one end, a thermometer, and a barometer. The precision of his measurements was a requirement in convincing opposition of his theories about water as a compound, with instrumentation designed by himself implemented in his research. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3543408 | 1,345,222 |
10,432 | Classic Maya social organization was based on the ritual authority of the ruler, rather than central control of trade and food distribution. This model of rulership was poorly structured to respond to changes, because the ruler's actions were limited by tradition to such activities as construction, ritual, and warfare. This only served to exacerbate systemic problems. By the 9th and 10th centuries, this resulted in collapse of this system of rulership. In the northern Yucatán, individual rule was replaced by a ruling council formed from elite lineages. In the southern Yucatán and central Petén, kingdoms declined; in western Petén and some other areas, the changes were catastrophic and resulted in the rapid depopulation of cities. Within a couple of generations, large swathes of the central Maya area were all but abandoned. Both the capitals and their secondary centres were generally abandoned within a period of 50 to 100 years. One by one, cities stopped sculpting dated monuments; the last Long Count date was inscribed at Toniná in 909. Stelae were no longer raised, and squatters moved into abandoned royal palaces. Mesoamerican trade routes shifted and bypassed Petén. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18449273 | 10,427 |
952,421 | These corrections are an attempt to salvage the BET theory which is restricted to type II isotherm. Even with this type, use of the data is restricted to 0.05 to 0.35 of formula_37, routinely discarding 70% of the data. Even this restriction has to be modified depending upon conditions. The problems with the BET theory are multiple and reviewed by Sing. A serious problem is that there is no relationship between the BET and the calorimetric measurements in experiments. It violates the Gibbs' phase rules. It is extremely unlikely that it measure correctly the surface area, formerly great advantage of the theory. It is based upon chemical equilibrium, which assumes localized chemical bond (this approach has been abandoned by the modern theories. See chapter 4, χ/ESW and Chapter 7, DFT or better NLDFT) in total contradiction to what is known about physical adsorption, which is based upon non-local intermolecular attractions. Two extreme problems is that in certain cases BET leads to anomalies and the C constant can be negative, implying an imaginary energy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2065886 | 951,916 |
689,085 | From 2005 to 2012, Johns Hopkins SAIS dedicated a substantive theme for each academic year in order to encourage its students, faculty, academic programs, policy centers, and alumni to examine the role of the particular theme within international affairs. These specific themes provided opportunities for the school to review scholarship and exchange views through special lectures, conferences, and guest speakers. The school hosted public events during the following themes of Energy (2005–06), China (2006–07), Elections and Foreign Policy (2007–08), Year of Water (2008–09), Religion (2009–10), Demography (2010–11), and Agriculture (2011–12) and enhanced its fundraising with high-profile public events such as the lecture delivered by then–vice president of BP, Nick Butler, during the Year of Energy in 2005. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=918222 | 688,723 |
1,304,804 | The scientific sensor array on DECam is an array of 62 2048×4096 pixel back-illuminated CCDs totaling 520 megapixels; an additional 12 2048×2048 pixel CCDs (50 Mpx) are used for guiding the telescope, monitoring focus, and alignment. The full DECam focal plane contains 570 megapixels. The CCDs for DECam use high resistivity silicon manufactured by Dalsa and LBNL with 15×15 micron pixels. By comparison, the OmniVision Technologies back-illuminated CCD that was used in the iPhone 4 has a 1.75×1.75 micron pixel with 5 megapixels. The larger pixels allow DECam to collect more light per pixel, improving low light sensitivity which is desirable for an astronomical instrument. DECam's CCDs also have a 250-micron crystal depth; this is significantly larger than most consumer CCDs. The additional crystal depth increases the path length travelled by entering photons. This, in turn, increases the probability of interaction and allows the CCDs to have an increased sensitivity to lower energy photons, extending the wavelength range to 1050 nm. Scientifically this is important because it allows one to look for objects at a higher redshift, increasing statistical power in the studies mentioned above. When placed in the telescope's focal plane each pixel has a width of 0.263″ on the sky, resulting in a total field of view of 3 square degrees. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9075104 | 1,304,088 |
706,576 | A cyst of the genus "Azotobacter" is the resting form of a vegetative cell; however, whereas usual vegetative cells are reproductive, the cyst of "Azotobacter" does not serve this purpose and is necessary for surviving adverse environmental factors. Following the resumption of optimal environmental conditions, which include a certain value of pH, temperature, and source of carbon, the cysts germinate, and the newly formed vegetative cells multiply by a simple division. During the germination, the cysts sustain damage and release a large vegetative cell. Microscopically, the first manifestation of spore germination is the gradual decrease in light refractive by cysts, which is detected with phase contrast microscopy. Germination of cysts takes about 4–6 h. During germination, the central body grows and captures the granules of volutin, which were located in the intima (the innermost layer). Then, the exine bursts and the vegetative cell is freed from the exine, which has a characteristic horseshoe shape. This process is accompanied by metabolic changes. Immediately after being supplied with a carbon source, the cysts begin to absorb oxygen and emit carbon dioxide; the rate of this process gradually increases and saturates after four hours. The synthesis of proteins and RNA occurs in parallel, but it intensifies only after five hours after the addition of the carbon source. The synthesis of DNA and nitrogen fixation are initiated 5 hours after the addition of glucose to a nitrogen-free nutrient medium. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1560158 | 706,207 |
898,604 | Atiyah was born on 22 April 1929 in Hampstead, London, England, the son of Jean (née Levens) and Edward Atiyah. His mother was Scottish and his father was a Lebanese Orthodox Christian. He had two brothers, Patrick (deceased) and Joe, and a sister, Selma (deceased). Atiyah went to primary school at the Diocesan school in Khartoum, Sudan (1934–1941), and to secondary school at Victoria College in Cairo and Alexandria (1941–1945); the school was also attended by European nobility displaced by the Second World War and some future leaders of Arab nations. He returned to England and Manchester Grammar School for his HSC studies (1945–1947) and did his national service with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (1947–1949). His undergraduate and postgraduate studies took place at Trinity College, Cambridge (1949–1955). He was a doctoral student of William V. D. Hodge and was awarded a doctorate in 1955 for a thesis entitled "Some Applications of Topological Methods in Algebraic Geometry". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20698 | 898,129 |
93,869 | The most powerful atomic bomb ever made, the Tsar Bomba, was tested by the Soviets on October 30, 1961. It was 50 megatons, or equal to 50 million tons of regular explosives. A complex and worrisome situation developed in 1962, in what is called the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet Union placed medium-range ballistic missiles from the United States, possibly as a direct response to American Jupiter missiles placed in Turkey. After intense negotiations, the Soviets ended up removing the missiles from Cuba and decided to institute a massive weapons-building program of their own. In exchange, the United States dismantled its launch sites in Turkey, although this was done secretly and not publicly revealed for over two decades. First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev did not even reveal this part of the agreement when he came under fire by political opponents for mishandling the crisis. Communication delays during the crisis led to the establishment of the Moscow–Washington hotline to allow reliable, direct communications between the two nuclear powers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36880 | 93,828 |
1,370,616 | In order to obtain maximum military benefits, the Red Army's chief-of-staff Marshal Mikhail Tukhacheskii merged GIRD with the GDL to study both fuel types. The new group was called Reactive Scientific Research Institute (RNII). When the two institutes combined, they brought together two of the most exceptional and successful engineers in the history of Soviet rocketry. Korolev teamed up with propulsion engineer Valentin Glushko, and together they excelled in the rocket industry, pushing the Soviet Union ahead of the United States in the space race. Before merging, the GDL had conducted liquid fuel tests and used nitric acid, while the GIRD had been using liquid oxygen. A brilliant, though often confrontational Sergei Korolev, headed the GIRD when it merged into RNII, and he was originally RNII's deputy director. Korolev's boss was a hard-nosed man from the GDL by the name of Kleimenov. Bitter in-fighting slowed the pace and quality of the research at RNII, but despite internal dissention, Korolev began to produce designs of missiles with liquid fueled engines. By 1932, RNII was using liquid oxygen with kerosene as a coolant as well as nitric acid and a hydrocarbon. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=49664317 | 1,369,860 |
269,682 | In 1940, U.S. Admiral William Halsey recommended construction of naval auxiliaries for pilot training. In early 1941 the British asked the U.S. to build on their behalf six carriers of an improved "Audacity" design, but the U.S. had already begun their own escort carrier. On 1 February 1941, the United States Chief of Naval Operations gave priority to construction of naval auxiliaries for aircraft transport. U.S. ships built to meet these needs were initially referred to as auxiliary aircraft escort vessels (AVG) in February 1942 and then auxiliary aircraft carrier (ACV) on 5 August 1942. The first U.S. example of the type was . Operation Torch and North Atlantic anti-submarine warfare proved these ships capable aircraft carriers for ship formations moving at the speed of trade or amphibious invasion convoys. U.S. classification revision to escort aircraft carrier (CVE) on 15 July 1943 reflected upgraded status from auxiliary to combatant. They were informally known as "Jeep carriers" or "baby flattops". It was quickly found that the escort carriers had better performance than light carriers, which tended to pitch badly in moderate to high seas. The was designed to incorporate the best features of American CVLs on a more stable hull with a less expensive propulsion system. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9932 | 269,535 |
326,619 | In France, the metre was adopted as an exclusive measure in 1801 under the Consulate. This continued under the First French Empire until 1812, when Napoleon decreed the introduction of the non-decimal "mesures usuelles", which remained in use in France up to 1840 in the reign of Louis Philippe. Meanwhile, the metre was adopted by the Republic of Geneva. After the joining of the canton of Geneva to Switzerland in 1815, Guillaume Henri Dufour published the first official Swiss map, for which the metre was adopted as the unit of length. Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, a Swiss–French binational officer, was present when a baseline was measured near Zürich for the Dufour map, which would win the gold medal for a national map at the Exposition Universelle of 1855. Among the scientific instruments calibrated on the metre that were displayed at the Exposition Universelle, was Brunner's apparatus, a geodetic instrument devised for measuring the central baseline of Spain, whose designer, Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero would represent Spain at the International Statistical Institute. In 1885, in addition to the Exposition Universelle and the second Statistical Congress held in Paris, an International Association for Obtaining a Uniform Decimal System of Measures, Weights, and Coins was created there. Copies of the Spanish standard were made for Egypt, France and Germany. These standards were compared to each other and with the Borda apparatus, which was the main reference for measuring all geodetic bases in France. In 1869, Napoleon III convened the International Metre Commission, which was to meet in Paris in 1870. The Franco-Prussian War broke out, the Second French Empire collapsed, but the metre survived. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18947 | 326,445 |
1,361,609 | "The Guardian" reports questions have been raised over how long Russian officials waited to request help. The first exposure of the accident came when the wife of a crewman called a radio station 24 hours later, and the wife of commander Milashevsky claims they were actually stranded Wednesday. "Kommersant" reports that the head of the Navy Vladimir Kuroyedov, may be relieved over this, the Kursk, and other accidents. Another nuclear submarine, the , being towed to the junkyard, sank in 2003 when the pontoon broke loose, with the loss of nine lives. BBC also reports that in July, an ICBM test firing witnessed by Putin failed to launch twice; then exploded soon after launch the next day. Although officials claimed the "AS-28" crew had food and water for five days, they were actually desperately short of water. There were also alternating stories about whether the submarine was caught on an aerial or fishing nets; nets and cables were visible on TV footage of the ROV in action. Russian prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the affair, and their Navy plans to buy two of the £700,000 to £3 million Scorpio ROVs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2384834 | 1,360,856 |
2,017,781 | Lallit Anand was born in Delhi, India on June 29, 1948. He completed his undergraduate studies in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 1970. He went on to earn his doctorate degree from Brown University in 1975. That year he started work as a Research Scientist at the United States Steel Corporation's Mechanical Sciences Division of the Fundamental Research Laboratory, and was later promoted to Senior Research Scientist. He served in that position until 1981. He joined the faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982, and has worked there for over thirty six years. From 2008 to 2013, he served as the Head of the Area for Mechanics. He currently holds the title of Warren and Towneley Rohsenow Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Professor Anand has mentored over 25 Ph.D. students during his years as an educator at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was elected as a member to the National Academy of Engineering in 2018 for contributions to the development of plasticity for engineering technology: theory, experiment, and computation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=59610816 | 2,016,618 |
1,029,028 | Two weeks after the Dutch race was the French Grand Prix at the brand-new Paul Ricard circuit near Marseille in the south of France. This circuit, in stark comparison to the rudimentary facilities of Zandvoort, was one of the most modern racing circuits in the world, with a smooth surface and state-of-the-art facilities not seen before in Formula One. It also had a long 1.1 mile straight, typical of French circuits. In the two previous years, the event had held at the twisty Charade public road circuit near Clermont-Ferrand; this was a very different type of circuit to Paul Ricard. Stewart took pole ahead of Regazzoni, Ickx and Graham Hill in a Brabham. At the start Stewart went into the lead with Regazzoni chasing. Ickx was in trouble with his engine and dropped quickly back to retire while there was a battle for third place between Rodriguez and Beltoise. On the 19th lap Peterson's Alfa Romeo engine blew up and Regazzoni spun off on the oil. Hill had a similar accident but was able to get going and pit for repairs. This left Rodriguez in second place. By then, Cevert had moved into third later the ignition in Rodriguez's BRM failed. So Cevert found himself promoted to second place behind Stewart, giving Tyrrell a 1-2 finish. Third place went to Fittipaldi who had come through the field after starting from 17th. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1140090 | 1,028,494 |
96,051 | Physical exercise is important for maintaining physical fitness and can contribute to maintaining a healthy weight, regulating the digestive system, building and maintaining healthy bone density, muscle strength, and joint mobility, promoting physiological well-being, reducing surgical risks, and strengthening the immune system. Some studies indicate that exercise may increase life expectancy and the overall quality of life. People who participate in moderate to high levels of physical exercise have a lower mortality rate compared to individuals who by comparison are not physically active. Moderate levels of exercise have been correlated with preventing aging by reducing inflammatory potential. The majority of the benefits from exercise are achieved with around 3500 metabolic equivalent (MET) minutes per week, with diminishing returns at higher levels of activity. For example, climbing stairs 10 minutes, vacuuming 15 minutes, gardening 20 minutes, running 20 minutes, and walking or bicycling for transportation 25 minutes on a daily basis would "together" achieve about 3000 MET minutes a week. A lack of physical activity causes approximately 6% of the burden of disease from coronary heart disease, 7% of type 2 diabetes, 10% of breast cancer and 10% of colon cancer worldwide. Overall, physical inactivity causes 9% of premature mortality worldwide. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=189037 | 96,010 |
1,946,256 | Manian then founded various other companies Digital Optics Corporation, an optical instrumentation and systems development company, which developed the first three-color laser, film reader/writer system. These techniques allowed filmmakers to insert or merge special effects into movies using computerized digital imaging. Working with David DiFrancesco and Tom Noggle, he created a technology that was transferred in 1983 to Industrial Light and Magic. It has been used in the production of numerous movies including "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" and "Return of the Jedi." In February 1999, Manian was awarded an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Technical Award for this advance in technology. The same technology was then further developed to write the CAT scan and MRI images used in medical diagnosis directly onto film. This required a special film developed by Kodak for optimum results. Manian sold Digital Optics in 1984 for $7.5 million to the Matrix Corporation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4566372 | 1,945,144 |
1,651,628 | As late as the 1840s, and despite Friedrich Wöhler's synthesis of urea in 1828, some chemists still believed in the doctrine of vitalism, according to which a special life-force was necessary to create "organic" (i.e., in its original meaning, biologically derived) compounds. Kolbe promoted the idea that organic compounds could be derived from substances clearly sourced from outside this "organic" context, directly or indirectly, by substitution processes. (Hence, while by modern definitions, he was converting one organic molecule to another, by the parlance of his era, he was converting "inorganic"—"anorganisch"—substances into "organic" ones only thought accessible through vital processes.) He validated his theory by converting carbon disulfide (CS) to acetic acid () in several steps (1843–45). Kolbe also introduced a modified idea of structural radicals, so contributing to the development of structural theory. A dramatic success came when his theoretical prediction of the existence of secondary and tertiary alcohols was confirmed by the synthesis of the first of these classes of organic molecules. Kolbe was the first person to use the word synthesis in its present-day meaning, and contributed a number of new chemical reactions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1825 | 1,650,696 |
1,656,951 | Prognostic refers to predicting the likely outcome or course of a disease. Classifying a biological phenotype or medical condition based on a specific gene signature or multiple gene signatures, can serve as a prognostic biomarker for the associated phenotype or condition. This concept termed prognostic gene signature, serves to offer insight into the overall outcome of the condition regardless of therapeutic intervention. Several studies have been conducted with focus on identifying prognostic gene signatures with the hopes of improving the diagnostic methods and therapeutic courses adopted in a clinical settings. It is important to note that prognostic gene signatures are not a target of therapy; they offer additional information to consider when discussing details such as duration or dosage or drug sensitivity etc. in therapeutic intervention. The criteria a gene signature must meet to be deemed a prognostic marker include demonstration of its association with the outcomes of the condition, reproducibility and validation of its association in an independent group of patients and lastly, the prognostic value must demonstrate independence from other standard factors in a multivariate analysis. The applications of these prognostic signatures include prognostic assays for breast cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, leukaemia and are continually being developed for other types of cancers and disorders as well. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23520833 | 1,656,018 |
779,650 | In 2000, Joy gained notoriety with the publication of his article in "Wired" magazine, "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us", in which he declared, in what some have described as a "neo-Luddite" position, that he was convinced that growing advances in genetic engineering and nanotechnology would bring risks to humanity. He argued that intelligent robots would replace humanity, at the very least in intellectual and social dominance, in the relatively near future. He supports and promotes the idea of abandonment of GNR (genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics) technologies, instead of going into an arms race between negative uses of the technology and defense against those negative uses (good nano-machines patrolling and defending against Grey goo "bad" nano-machines). This stance of broad relinquishment was criticized by technologists such as technological-singularity thinker Ray Kurzweil, who instead advocates fine-grained relinquishment and ethical guidelines. Joy was also criticized by "The American Spectator", which characterized Joy's essay as a (possibly unwitting) rationale for statism. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3965 | 779,233 |
891,643 | Although piebaldism may visually appear to be partial albinism, it is a fundamentally different condition. The vision problems associated with albinism are not usually present as eye pigmentation is normal. Piebaldism differs from albinism in that the affected cells maintain the ability to produce pigment but have that specific function turned off. In albinism the cells lack the ability to produce pigment altogether. Human piebaldism has been observed to be associated with a very wide range and varying degrees of endocrine disorders, and is occasionally found together with heterochromia of the irises, congenital deafness, or incomplete gastrointestinal tract development, possibly all with the common cause of premature cutting off of human fetal growth hormone during gestation. Piebaldism is a kind of neurocristopathy, involving defects of various neural crest cell lineages that include melanocytes, but also involving many other tissues derived from the neural crest. Oncogenic factors, including mistranscription, are hypothesized to be related to the degree of phenotypic variation among affected individuals. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5070047 | 891,174 |
182,619 | In 2014, E. Pahlke, J. S. Hyde, and C. M. Allison published a meta-analysis in "Psychological Bulletin" comparing achievement and attitudes in single-sex versus coeducational schools that included 1.6 million students in grades K-12. The study concluded that "there is little evidence of an advantage of SS schooling for girls or boys for any of the outcomes." In a 2015 review of this study, however Cornelius Riordan observed that the authors "employ a 0.2 effect-size threshold in drawing these conclusions about there being no advantage to single-sex schooling. Despite the above conclusion, the research found that, in a separate analysis of just the best studies (well controlled) conducted in America, the effect size in mathematics was 0.14 for both boys and girls. The verbal performance was 0.22 for girls and 0.13 for boys... Educational research has shown that a standard effect size of 0.10 on gains from sophomore to senior year of high school is equivalent to one full year of learning by the average public school student in the United States." Thus, he says, that "Applying this standard, a difference of 0.10 (or greater) between students in single-sex and in coeducational schools would be substantially important." The analysis of the 21 other countries yielded much smaller effects, such as a 0.10 effect on mathematics for girls and a 0.06 effect for boys and science (0.06 for girls and 0.04 for boys). Most of the international effects, then, would fall within Riordan's stricter criterion for statistical significance. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1515358 | 182,523 |
532,670 | Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Mexico have pursued development of antisera. Brazil began development of an equine hyperimmune serum, obtained by inoculating horses with recombinant SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, in mid-2020. A consortium of Instituto Vital Brazil, UFRJ, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation and the D'Or Institute for Research and Education in Rio de Janeiro began preclinical trials in May 2020, while Instituto Butantan in São Paulo completed animal testing in September. In December 2020, Argentina granted emergency authorization to CoviFab, a locally developed formulation of equine hyperimmune serum, for use in cases of moderate to severe COVID-19, based on the initial results of a single phase 2/3 trial which suggested reductions in mortality, ICU admission, and mechanical ventilation requirements in patients who received the serum. This was harshly criticized by the Argentine Intensive Care Society, which stated that the trial failed to achieve its primary or secondary endpoints and did not demonstrate any statistically significant differences between the serum and placebo groups. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63435931 | 532,391 |
2,056,298 | The final was, as expected, led by the Kenyan team. With multiple Olympic and returning World Champion Ezekiel Kemboi, they were at the front with the rest of the field strung out behind them. For the first four laps, Conseslus Kipruto did the majority of the leading, with the rest of the Kenyans, then both Ugandans behind. Occasionally Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad would pass one of the Ugandan athletes. With three laps to go, things began to shake up. Paul Kipsiele Koech moved into the lead and at about the same time Noureddine Smaïl moved from the middle of the pack along the outside into third place. As the pace quickened, the Ugandans disappeared, replaced by the two Frenchmen and Evan Jager as contenders behind the Kenyan gauntlet. Over the next half lap, the pace quickened, Smai'l disappeared and Matthew Hughes of Canada emerged. Going into the last lap, Conseslus Kipruto and Koech were in the lead with Kemboi behind them followed by Mekhissi and Jager. Menkhissi moved along the outside, with about 200 meters to go, passed Kemboi, then Koech and was even with Kipruto. But behind him, Kemboi moved into a different gear. Taking the barrier at the end of the straight in full hurdle stride, in the next 50 meters before the water jump, Kemboi went around the outside and took the lead. Mekhissi was next over the water jump with Kipruto scrambling to make up ground. In full sprint, Kipruto went around Mekhissi but didn't negotiate the last barrier as well as Kemboi. Regaining his balance he again sprinted making up significant ground on his more experienced teammate, but it was not enough to get gold. Make that three straight for Kemboi, along with two Olympic gold medals unbeaten in the World Championships since he finished second to a different Kipruto in 2007. In all, three golds, three silvers and nothing worse in the World Championships since 2003. Mekhissi repeats his bronze medal. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40101588 | 2,055,114 |
1,313,884 | The work is also known for being the subject of the most salient of A. E. Housman's scholarly endeavours; his annotated edition he considered his magnum opus, and when the fifth and final volume was published in 1930, 27 years after the first, he remarked he would now "do nothing forever and ever." He nonetheless also thought that it was an obscure pursuit; to an American correspondent he wrote, "I do not send you a copy, as it would shock you very much; it is so dull that few professed scholars can read it, probably not one in the whole United States." It remains a source of bafflement to many that Housman should have elected to abandon (as they thought) a poet like Propertius in favour of Manilius. For example, the critic Edmund Wilson pondered the countless hours Housman devoted to Manilius and concluded, "Certainly it is the spectacle of a mind of remarkable penetration and vigor, of uncommon sensibility and intensity, condemning itself to duties which prevent it from rising to its full height." This is, however, to misunderstand the technical task of editing a classical text. In the same vein, Harry Eyres interpreted it as "what you could see as an act of self-punishment" that so many years were devoted to "a minor Roman versifier whose long didactic poem on astrology must rank as one of the most obscure in the entire annals of poetry". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=52940 | 1,313,164 |
1,032,632 | As of June 2009, he is 72–19 (79.12%) in ZvZ, and considering that ZvZ is thought to be one of the most volatile and luck based matchups, this is a feat. In July 2008, he was defeated in the Arena MSL 2008 Finals 0–3 by his teammate Park Ji-Su (ForGG), but he was able to defeat his rival Flash 3–0 in the TG Sambo Intel Classic finals. He has won his second OSL title against Fantasy in the Batoo OSL 2009. In the Summer 2009 StarCraft season, he was the only player to make the quarterfinals of every Starleague: GOMTV Avertec Classic, OSL, and MSL. He also carried his team through the Shinhan Bank 08-09 Proleague and brought them a second-place finish. On 22 August 2009 he won the Bacchus OSL (his third OSL title) and won the Golden Mouse. Jaedong was ranked first in the February 2010 KeSPA rankings. Jaedong has also been a very popular person outside of StarCraft having done commercials for various Korean companies and attending several international competitions such as the World Cyber Games two years in a row (2008–2009) and is the WCG champion for 2009, after beating his fellow Korean, Stork in the finals. In 2012, Jaedong left Team 8 and joined North American based organisation Evil Geniuses on a one-year contract, in order to compete in the first SC2 Proleague season. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5673170 | 1,032,096 |
314,921 | In 2007, President Fogel signs on to the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment. The American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) is a high-visibility effort to address global climate disruption undertaken by a network of colleges and universities that have made institutional commitments to eliminate net greenhouse gas emissions from specified campus operations, and to promote the research and educational efforts of higher education to equip society to re-stabilize the earth's climate. Its mission is to accelerate progress towards climate neutrality and sustainability by empowering the higher education sector to educate students, create solutions, and provide leadership by example for the rest of society. In 2008, UVM dissolved the Environmental Council and established the Office of Sustainability. The Office of Sustainability aims to foster sustainable development and promote environmental responsibility at the University of Vermont by strategically bridging the academic activities of teaching, research, and outreach with the operations of the university. The sustainability office reports jointly to the Provost and to the Vice President for Finance & Administration, who supervises the director. There are two full-time staff and four Graduate Fellows, plus an Academic Advisor and a team of supporters. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=287800 | 314,752 |
1,832,745 | There was really no place for scientists in the Indian caste system. Thus while there were/are castes for the learned brahmins, the warriors kshatriyas, the traders vaishyas and the menial workers shudras, maybe even the bureaucrats (the kayasths) there was/is hardly any formal place in the social hierarchy for a people who discover new knowledge or invent new devices based on the recently discovered knowledge, even though scientific temper has always been in India, in the form of logic, reasoning and method of acquiring knowledge. Its therefore no wonder that some Indians quickly learned to value science, especially those belonging to the privileged Brahmin caste during the British colonial rule that lasted over two centuries. Some Indians did succeed to achieve notable success and fame, examples include Satyendra Nath Bose, Meghnad Saha, Jagdish Chandra Bose and C. V. Raman even though they belonged to different castes. The science communication had begun with publication of a scientific journal, Asiatick Researches in 1788. Thereafter, the science communication in India has evolved in many facets. Following this, there has been a continuing development in the formation of scientific institutions and publication of scientific literature. Subsequently, scientific publications also started appearing in Indian languages by the end of eighteenth century. The publication of ancient scientific literature and textbooks at mass scale started in the beginning of nineteenth century. The scientific and technical terms, however, had been a great difficulty for a long time for popular science writing. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12082329 | 1,831,697 |
37,072 | Most of the current ideas on the workings of the Teller–Ulam design came into public awareness after the Department of Energy (DOE) attempted to censor a magazine article by U.S. antiweapons activist Howard Morland in 1979 on the "secret of the hydrogen bomb". In 1978, Morland had decided that discovering and exposing this "last remaining secret" would focus attention onto the arms race and allow citizens to feel empowered to question official statements on the importance of nuclear weapons and nuclear secrecy. Most of Morland's ideas about how the weapon worked were compiled from highly accessible sources—the drawings that most inspired his approach came from none other than the "Encyclopedia Americana". Morland also interviewed (often informally) many former Los Alamos scientists (including Teller and Ulam, though neither gave him any useful information), and used a variety of interpersonal strategies to encourage informative responses from them (i.e., asking questions such as "Do they still use spark plugs?" even if he was not aware what the latter term specifically referred to). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2269463 | 37,060 |
1,285,677 | In 1971, the FMB was replaced by the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC). ADMARC was given the new power to assist any public or private organization with capital, credit or other resources in any projects relating to the economic development of Malawi. Its objectives were to increase the volume of exportable economic crops and improve their quality, to promote the consumption of Malawian agricultural produce abroad and to support smallholder farmers. It took over the FMB monopolies over maize, tobacco and cotton, and its powers to fix prices, operate markets and supply credit. Smallholders supported ADMARC's high operating costs and much of its profits came from underpaying them, but it only re-invested 5% of funds in smallholder farms. Transferring resources away from smallholders to the state led to corruption and abuse of office. ADMARC subsidised tobacco estates and other businesses, and by the mid-1980s, it diverted two-thirds of its income into these estates. The main beneficiaries of this strategy were the political elite who controlled the tobacco estates food and ADMARC employees. In 1979, when tobacco prices collapsed, it was threatened by liquidity problems, and by 1985, it was insolvent. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14543243 | 1,284,977 |
411,843 | At the age of 19, in 1862, Koch entered the University of Göttingen to study natural science. He took up mathematics, physics and botany. He was appointed assistant in the university's Pathological Museum. After three semesters, he decided to change his area of study to medicine, as he aspired to be a physician. During his fifth semester at the medical school, Jacob Henle, an anatomist who had published a theory of contagion in 1840, asked him to participate in his research project on uterine nerve structure. This research won him a research prize from the university and enabled him to briefly study under Rudolf Virchow, who was at the time considered as "Germany's most renowned physician." In his sixth semester, Koch began to research at the Physiological Institute, where he studied the secretion of succinic acid, which is a signaling molecule that is also involved in the metabolism of the mitochondria. This would eventually form the basis of his dissertation. In January 1866, he graduated from the medical school, earning honours of the highest distinction, "maxima cum laude". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13722 | 411,641 |
255,852 | A light reconnaissance tank, the Ausf. L was the only Panzer II design with the "Schachtellaufwerk" overlapping/interleaved road wheels and "slack track" configuration to enter series production, with 100 being built from September 1943 to January 1944 in addition to the conversion of the four Ausf. M tanks. Originally given the experimental designation VK 1303, it was adopted under the alternate name "Panzerspähwagen" II and given the popular name "Luchs" ("Lynx"). The "Luchs" was larger than the Ausf. G in most dimensions (length 4.63 m; height 2.21 m; width 2.48 m). It was equipped with a six speed transmission (plus reverse), and could reach a speed of with a range of . The FuG12 and FuG "Spr a" radios were installed, while 330 rounds of 20 mm and 2,250 rounds of 7.92 mm ammunition were carried. Total vehicle weight was 11.8 tonnes. It had 30 mm of armour on the front of the hull and 20 mm of armour on the sides and back and the same on the turret. It accommodated four crew members, the commander (gunner), driver, loader and the radio operator. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=216033 | 255,718 |
558,587 | The outdoor atmosphere harbors diverse microbial assemblages composed of bacteria, fungi and viruses whose functioning remains largely unexplored. While the occasional presence of human pathogens or opportunists can cause potential hazard, in general the vast majority of airborne microbes originate from natural environments like soil or plants, with large spatial and temporal variations of biomass and biodiversity. Once ripped off and aerosolized from surfaces by mechanical disturbances such as those generated by wind, raindrop impacts or water bubbling, microbial cells are transported upward by turbulent fluxes. They remain aloft for an average of ~3 days, a time long enough for being transported across oceans and continents until being finally deposited, eventually helped by water condensation and precipitation processes; microbial aerosols themselves can contribute to form clouds and trigger precipitation by serving as cloud condensation nuclei and ice nuclei. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1676889 | 558,298 |
1,886,145 | After graduating high school, Jackson attended Purdue University to play under head coach, Matt Painter, along with All-Conference players in E'Twaun Moore, Robbie Hummel, and JaJuan Johnson. In his freshman season, Jackson used his speed and ball handling skills to become the team's starting point guard, where he started in 30 of the 36 games in which he appeared, while setting a school freshman record with most games played in a season. His 30 starts were two less than Russell Cross's 32 starts in 1981. Leading Purdue in assists with 3.4 a game, his 118 on the season is second most by a freshman behind Bruce Parkinson's 147 mark in 1973. On January 27, 2009, Lewis ran into a hard pick made by Wisconsin's Joe Crabbenhoft early in the game, where he sustained a concussion, forcing him to sit out a game. He scored in double figures seven times (3-4), while averaging 5.9 points per game and handing off 3.4 assists a game to lead the Boilers on the season. After leading the boilers to an 11–7 record in Big Ten play and to a 27–10 overall record and a Sweet Sixteen appearance, Lewis was named to the "Big Ten All-Freshman Team", along with the likes of future NBA player Byron Mullens. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24028668 | 1,885,063 |
546,518 | Although it is studied less frequently than female choice, sexual selection influenced by male-male intrasexual competition does exist in certain species of "Hyla". Males of "H. versicolor" produce conspicuous advertisement calls in large groups at territories known to females. This behavior, known as lekking, is common in many species of "Hyla". In order to broadcast a clear acoustic communication to a female, males require distinct calling spaces within their respective leks. When males infringe upon the calling space of one another, aggressive interactions may occur. Males of "H. versicolor" may choose to lower costs of aggressive encounters by first assessing one another's resource holding potential. In simple terms, the resource holding potential (RHP) of an individual is its ability to win a fight. RHP can be based on a number of factors, including mass, size, weaponry, etc. In "H. versicolor", the question of what determines an individual's RHP still stands. Aggressive interactions of this species are hard to observe within natural environments, because they occur briefly and infrequently. Research has suggested that RHP in this species is not based on body size, however these findings were not based on in situ observations, but instead on the findings of a manipulated experiment. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1611031 | 546,232 |
305,222 | Immediately after the Second World War, a period known as the Cold War began. It represented a period of conflict, tension and competition between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. Throughout the period, the rivalry between the two superpowers was played out in multiple arenas: military coalitions; ideology, psychology, and espionage; military, industrial, and technological developments, including the space race; costly defence spending; a massive conventional and nuclear arms race; and many proxy wars. The term "Cold War" was introduced in 1947 by Americans Bernard Baruch and Walter Lippmann to describe emerging tensions between the two former wartime allies. There never was a direct military engagement between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, but there was a half-century of military buildup, and political battles for support around the world, including significant involvement of allied and satellite nations. Although the U.S. and the Soviet Union had been allied against Nazi Germany, the two sides differed on how to reconstruct the postwar world even before the end of World War II. Over the following decades, the Cold War spread outside Europe to every region of the world, as the U.S. sought the "containment" of communism and forged numerous alliances to this end, particularly in Western Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47246185 | 305,059 |
617,272 | The Agena launched perfectly for the second time, after problems had occurred with the targets for Gemini 6 and 9. Gemini 10 followed 100 minutes later and entered a orbit. They were behind the Agena. Two anomalous events occurred during the launch. At liftoff, a propellant fill umbilical became snared with its release lanyard. It ripped out of the LC-19 service tower and remained attached to the second stage during ascent. Tracking camera footage also showed that the first stage oxidizer tank dome ruptured after staging and released a cloud of nitrogen tetroxide. The telemetry package on the first stage had been disabled at staging, so visual evidence was the only data available. Film review of the Titan II ICBM launches found at least seven other instances of post-staging tank ruptures, most likely caused by flying debris, second stage engine exhaust, or structural bending. NASA finally decided that this phenomenon did not pose any safety risk to the astronauts and took no corrective action. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11982 | 616,958 |
1,652,939 | During the early years, Notre Dame faced many hardships. Fires were relatively common and often disastrous. In 1849 the Manual Labor School was completely destroyed. In 1855, the original log cabins (the one built by Fr. Badin and the one built by Fr. Sorin in 1843), which were then being used as stables, burned and the farm equipment and storehouse were destroyed. In the 19th century a stream drained excess water from Saint Mary's Lake into the Saint Joseph River. A farmer who owned the adjoining property built a dam to power a mill, and this backed up water onto the land around and between the Notre Dame lakes and created a swampland, perfect for breeding flies and mosquitoes. Rev. Sorin became convinced that the swamp was the source of malaria, cholera and typhus outbreaks that afflicted the college. In 1855, following another two disease fatalities, Sorin convinced the farmer to sell him the land with the dammed stream, but the farmer hastily left town before completing the transaction. Enraged, Sorin sent a half-dozen of his strongest religious brothers to demolish the dam by hand. The farmer quickly sealed the deal under the original agreed-upon terms. The marsh was drained, the land dried up, and the diseases disappeared. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33791684 | 1,652,007 |
408,246 | Beginning in early February 2020, doctors in China have increasingly been using ECMO as an adjunct support for patients presenting with acute viral pneumonia associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) when, with ventilation alone, the blood oxygenation levels still remain too low to sustain the patient. The initial reports indicate that it is assisting in restoring patients' blood oxygen saturation and reducing fatalities among the approximately 3% of severe cases where it has been utilized. For critically ill patients, the mortality rate reduces from around 59–71% with conventional therapy to approximately 46% with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. A March 2021 "Los Angeles Times" cover story illustrated the efficacy of ECMO in an extremely challenging COVID patient. In February 2021, three pregnant Israeli women who had "very serious" cases of COVID-19 were given ECMO treatment and it seemed this treatment option would continue. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=444349 | 408,045 |
1,863,901 | The lifetime risk of developing diabetes for students born since the year 2000 in the United States is estimated to be 27% to 52%. Many students need to learn about diabetes for their personal care, or for the care of relatives, or desire to learn about diabetes to develop a career in healthcare. Most teenagers are adept at learning through web-based computer tools. Against this background, 21 students entering the 8th and 9th grades (aged 12 to 14 years old) enrolled in a Biotechnology Summer Camp in June 2006 — organized independently by the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia (USA) — focusing on diabetes mellitus. Lectures on pathophysiology and clinical aspects of diabetes were followed by simulated cases using the AIDA on-line diabetes software simulator. Two cases demonstrated glycemic effects and pharmacokinetics of insulin administration, diet, and exercise in insulin-dependent type 1 diabetes mellitus and non-insulin-dependent type 2 diabetes mellitus. Students filled out standardized evaluations at the end of the session to assess receptiveness to this type of learning; opinions on the utility, information, and ease of use; and perceived risks of using the on-line simulator to understand diabetes. All students were receptive to this simulator-based educational approach. The majority found AIDA on-line useful (17/21 [81%]), educational (21/21 [100%]), worthy of wider distribution (20/21 [95%]), and would recommend the program to others with diabetes or wanting to learn about diabetes (18/21 [86%]). A minority (2/21 [9.5%]) found the program 'risky' regarding the information given to the students. Positive comments included the ability to visualize concepts being taught in earlier lectures, and recognized the rigors required to manage diabetes. Fewer negative comments reflected frustration with the web-based user interface, the course materials, or difficulty in achieving good simulated glycemic control. The study authors concluded that: "Teaching pathophysiology of diabetes and pharmacology of insulin to middle school students is enhanced with the AIDA on-line diabetes simulator. Future versions of this program, and development of similar programs, could be useful in teaching adolescents who have diabetes, and might help stimulate interested students to learn more about the care of people with diabetes". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8121243 | 1,862,829 |
1,202,790 | The large diversity of "Symbiodinium" revealed by genetic analyses is distributed non-randomly and appears to comprise several guilds with distinct ecological habits. Of the many "Symbiodinium" characterized genetically, most are host-specific, mutualistic, and dominate their host. Others may represent compatible symbionts that remain as low-abundance background populations because of competitive inferiority under the prevailing external environmental conditions (e.g. high light vs. low light). Some may also comprise opportunistic species that may proliferate during periods of physiological stress and displace the normal resident symbiont and remain abundant in the host's tissues for months to years before being replaced by the original symbiont. There are also those that rapidly infect and establish populations in host juveniles until being replaced by symbionts that normally associate with host adult colonies. Finally, there appears to be another group of "Symbiodinium" that are incapable of establishing endosymbiosis yet exist in environments around the animal or associate closely with other substrates (i.e. macro-algal surfaces, sediment surface) "Symbiodinium" from functional groups 2, 3, and 4 are known to exist because they culture easily, however species with these life histories are difficult to study because of their low abundance in the environment. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11375187 | 1,202,147 |
61,945 | Traditionally, saber-toothed cats have been artistically restored with external features similar to those of extant felids, by artists such as Charles R. Knight in collaboration with various paleontologists in the early 20th century. In 1969, paleontologist G. J. Miller instead proposed that "Smilodon" would have looked very different from a typical cat and similar to a bulldog, with a lower lip line (to allow its mouth to open wide without tearing the facial tissues), a more retracted nose and lower-placed ears. Paleoartist Mauricio Antón and coauthors disputed this in 1998 and maintained that the facial features of "Smilodon" were overall not very different from those of other cats. Antón noted that modern animals like the hippopotamus are able to open their mouths extremely wide without tearing tissue due to a folded orbicularis oris muscle, and such a muscle arrangement exists in modern large felids. Antón stated that extant phylogenetic bracketing (where the features of the closest extant relatives of a fossil taxon are used as reference) is the most reliable way of restoring the life-appearance of prehistoric animals, and the cat-like "Smilodon" restorations by Knight are therefore still accurate. A 2022 study by Antón and colleagues concluded that the upper canines of "Smilodon" would have been visible when the mouth was closed, while those of "Homotherium" would have not, after examining fossils and extant big cats. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=169071 | 61,920 |
1,702,486 | Indeed, the origin of language, understood as the human capacity of complex symbolic communication, and the origin of complex culture is often thought to stem from the same evolutionary process in early man. Evolutionary anthropologist Robin I. Dunbar has proposed that language evolved as early humans began to live in large communities which required the use of complex communication to maintain social coherence. Language and culture then both emerged as a means of using symbols to construct social identity and maintain coherence within a social group too large to rely exclusively on pre-human ways of building community such as for example grooming. Since language and culture are both in essence symbolic systems, twentieth century cultural theorists have applied the methods of analyzing language developed in the science of linguistics to also analyze culture. Particularly the structural theory of Ferdinand de Saussure which describes symbolic systems as consisting of signs (a pairing of a particular form with a particular meaning) has come to be applied widely in the study of culture. But also post-structuralist theories that nonetheless still rely on the parallel between language and culture as systems of symbolic communication, have been applied in the field of semiotics. The parallel between language and culture can then be understood as analog to the parallel between a linguistic sign, consisting for example of the sound <nowiki>[kau]</nowiki> and the meaning "cow", and a cultural sign, consisting for example of the cultural form of "wearing a crown" and the cultural meaning of "being king". In this way it can be argued that culture is itself a kind of language. Another parallel between cultural and linguistic systems is that they are both systems of practice, that is, they are a set of special ways of doing things that is constructed and perpetuated through social interactions. Children, for example, acquire language in the same way as they acquire the basic cultural norms of the society they grow up in – through interaction with older members of their cultural group. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=41831802 | 1,701,531 |
1,765,161 | Liquid chromatography as we know it today really got its start in 1969, when the first modern HPLC was designed and marketed as a nucleic acid analyzer. Columns throughout the 1970s were unreliable, pump flow rates were inconsistent, and many biologically active compounds escaped detection by UV and fluorescence detectors. Focus on purification methods in the '70s morphed into faster analyses in the 1980s, when computerized controls were integrated into HPLC equipment. Higher degrees of computerization then led to emphasis on more precise, faster, automated equipment in the 1990s. Atypical of many technologies of the '60s and '70s, the emphasis in improvements was not on “bigger and better,” but on “smaller and better”. At the same time the HPLC user-interface was improving, it was critical to be able to isolate hundreds of peptides or biomarkers from ever decreasing sample sizes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22131699 | 1,764,168 |
799,367 | A 2016 study on 600 Cypriot males asserts that "genome-wide studies indicate that the genetic affinity of Cyprus is nearest to current populations of the Levant". Analyses of Cypriot haplogroup data are consistent with two stages of prehistoric settlement. E-V13 and E-M34 are widespread, and PCA suggests sourcing them to the Balkans and Levant/Anatolia, respectively. Contrasting haplogroups in the PCA were used as surrogates of parental populations. Admixture analyses suggested that the majority of G2a-P15 and R1b-M269 components were contributed by Anatolia and Levant sources, respectively, while Greece/Balkans supplied the majority of E-V13 and J2a-M67. Haplotype-based expansion times were at historical levels suggestive of recent demography. On the other hand, more recent Principal Component Analyses based on autosomal DNA, have placed Cypriots clearly separate from Levantine and Middle Eastern groups, either at the easternmost flank of the Southern European cluster, or in an intermediate position between Southern Europeans and northern Levantines. In a study by Harvard geneticist Iosif Lazarides and colleagues investigating the genetic origins of the Minoans and Mycenaeans, Cypriots were found to be the second least differentiated population from Bronze Age Mycenaeans based on FST index and also genetically differentiated from Levantines. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16696142 | 798,942 |
2,151,675 | All faculty and staff are teachers, from the President to the Janitor, regardless of their particular duties, and must be willing to work in close contact and cooperate with the parents to protect the rights of both parent and student. The faculty and staff, because of their commitment as Catholic lay apostles, will be leading the students in all areas of education, not solely in their own expertise St. Bonaventure once said, "A real teacher is he who knows how to enrich the mind with thoughts, to illumine it, and instill virtues in the disciple’s heart." At all times, the school fosters a genuine sense of wonder and love of learning in the souls of your students. If the children feel that their lessons are mere occupation or busywork, they will be disheartened and our purpose of making them lifelong learners will be in vain. If however their lessons emphasize the beauty and mystery of the world around them, they will become enthusiastic just like St. Albert. The school encourages interest in the world as an understanding of the grand scheme of God’s love. This means that we ask ourselves, "Why is this lesson worth learning?" and try to find an answer. The school tries to question what is known and to reach a better understanding. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46770166 | 2,150,444 |
1,312,284 | The binary-compatible Z80 later added prefix-codes to escape from this 1-byte limit and allow for a more powerful instruction set. The same basic idea was employed for the Intel 8086, although, to allow for more radical extensions, "binary"-compatibility with the 8080 was not attempted here. It maintained some degree of non-orthogonality for the sake of high code density at the time. The 32-bit extension of this architecture that was introduced with the 80386, was somewhat more orthogonal despite keeping all the 8086 instructions and their extended counterparts. However, the "encoding-strategy" used still shows many traces from the 8008 and 8080 (and Z80). For instance, single-byte encodings remain for certain frequent operations such as push and pop of registers and constants; and the primary accumulator, the EAX register, employs shorter encodings than the other registers on certain types of operations. Observations like this are sometimes exploited for code optimization in both compilers and hand written code. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1282411 | 1,311,565 |
1,416,364 | Typically, medical imaging is used to form a "virtual patient" for a computer-aided design procedure. A CT scan is often the primary image set for treatment planning while magnetic resonance imaging provides excellent secondary image set for soft tissue contouring. Positron emission tomography is less commonly used and reserved for cases where specific uptake studies can enhance planning target volume delineation. Modern treatment planning systems provide tools for multimodality image matching, also known as image coregistration or fusion. Treatment simulations are used to plan the geometric, radiological, and dosimetric aspects of the therapy using radiation transport simulations and optimization. For intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), this process involves selecting the appropriate beam type (which may include photons, electrons and protons), energy (e.g. 6, 18 megaelectronvolt (MeV) photons) and physical arrangements. In brachytherapy planning involves selecting the appropriate catheter positions and source dwell times | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9809527 | 1,415,566 |
1,897,097 | SVP project drifter deployments began in 1979; the design continued to develop until reaching its current form in 1992. Each drifter consists of a spherical surface buoy tethered to a weighted nylon drogue that allows it to track the horizontal motion of water at a depth of 15 meters. If the drogue breaks off, the wind pushes the surface buoy through the water, creating erroneous current observations. A tether strain gauge has been added to monitor tension of the buoy-drogue connection to resolve this issue. The original drifters are heavy, bulky (40 cm diameter), and expensive relative to the newer "mini" drifters that are smaller, (30.5 cm diameter) cheaper, and lighter because the hull contains fewer batteries. The surface float contains alkaline batteries, a satellite transmitter, a thermistor for sub-skin sea surface temperature, and sometimes other instruments that measure pressure, wind speed and direction, or salinity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=41282668 | 1,896,013 |
295,825 | Light propulsion requires enormous power: a laser with a gigawatt of power (approximately the output of a large nuclear plant) would provide only a few newtons of thrust. The spaceship will compensate for the low thrust by having a mass of only a few grams. The camera, computer, communications laser, a nuclear power source, and the solar sail must be miniaturized to fit within a mass limit. All components must be engineered to endure extreme acceleration, cold, vacuum, and protons. The spacecraft will have to survive collisions with space dust; Starshot expects each square centimeter of frontal cross-section to collide at high speed with about a thousand particles of size at least 0.1 μm. Focusing a set of lasers totaling one hundred gigawatts onto the solar sail will be difficult due to atmospheric turbulence, so there is the suggestion to use space-based laser infrastructure. According to "The Economist", at least a dozen off-the-shelf technologies will need to improve by orders of magnitude. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50147624 | 295,665 |
1,563,828 | The break up of Pangea occurs during the Kimmerian tectonic phase for most of the Mesozoic, until the early-mid Cretaceous, this marks the start of creating the present position of our continents today. During the Jurassic, rifting activity reaches its maximum and North America starts to move apart from Eurasia following that event in the Cretaceous the southern part of North America starts to open up the Atlantic Ocean with the separation of South America and Africa. At the end of the Mesozoic the North Sea reached its final position where it lies in present day. Throughout the Cretaceous rifting eventually slowed down and came to a halt which later created the North Sea failed rift system because the regional stresses had shifted on to North America. The Jurassic is probably the most important geological time for hydrocarbon exploration in the North Sea. Many accumulations are in Jurassic reservoir, the Kimmeridge clay is considered the most important source rock and structures formed during rifting form excellent traps. In the first place rifting was responsible for the deposition of organic rich source rock due to anoxic conditions in the deep isolated rift basins. Possibly the most important phase to create structures and traps for the natural resources we try to collect today. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45343728 | 1,562,941 |
5,275 | The Dunning–Kruger effect has been studied across a wide range of tasks. The initial study focused on logical reasoning, grammar skills, and social abilities, such as emotional intelligence and judging which jokes are funny. While many studies are conducted in laboratories, others take place in real-world settings. The latter include assessing the knowledge hunters have of firearms and safety or laboratory technicians' knowledge of medical lab procedures. More recent studies have also engaged in large-scale attempts to collect the relevant data online. Various studies focus on students—for example, to self-assess their performance just after completing an exam. In some cases, these studies gather and compare data from many different countries. Other fields of research include business, politics, medicine, driving skills, aviation, spatial memory, literacy, debating skills, and chess. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2288777 | 5,272 |
1,898,832 | The OB mode is observed when a material is subjected to powerful laser pulses. It manifests a power threshold in the range of MW for the majority of dielectric materials, which depends on the duration and on the wavelength of the laser pulse. Optical breakdown is related to the dielectric breakdown phenomenon which was studied and modeled successfully towards the end of the 1950s. One describes the effect as a strong local ionization of the medium, where the plasma reaches densities beyond the critical value (between 10 and 10 electrons/cm³). Once the plasma critical density is achieved, energy is very efficiently absorbed from the light pulse, and the local plasma temperature increases dramatically. An explosive Coulombian expansion follows, and forms a very powerful and damaging shockwave through the material that develops on ns timescale. In liquids, it produces cavitation bubbles. If the rate of plasma formation is relatively slow, in the nanosecond time regime (for nanosecond excitation laser pulses), energy is transferred from the plasma to the lattice, and thermal damages can occur. In the femtosecond time regime (for femtosecond excitation laser pulses) the plasma expansion happens on a timescale smaller than the rate of energy transfer to the lattice, and thermal damages are reduced or eliminated. This is the basis of cold laser machining using high-power sub-ps laser sources. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11904733 | 1,897,748 |
797,043 | The evolution of the RTI follows four main stages. In the first stage, the perturbation amplitudes are small when compared to their wavelengths, the equations of motion can be linearized, resulting in exponential instability growth. In the early portion of this stage, a sinusoidal initial perturbation retains its sinusoidal shape. However, after the end of this first stage, when non-linear effects begin to appear, one observes the beginnings of the formation of the ubiquitous mushroom-shaped spikes (fluid structures of heavy fluid growing into light fluid) and bubbles (fluid structures of light fluid growing into heavy fluid). The growth of the mushroom structures continues in the second stage and can be modeled using buoyancy drag models, resulting in a growth rate that is approximately constant in time. At this point, nonlinear terms in the equations of motion can no longer be ignored. The spikes and bubbles then begin to interact with one another in the third stage. Bubble merging takes place, where the nonlinear interaction of mode coupling acts to combine smaller spikes and bubbles to produce larger ones. Also, bubble competition takes places, where spikes and bubbles of smaller wavelength that have become saturated are enveloped by larger ones that have not yet saturated. This eventually develops into a region of turbulent mixing, which is the fourth and final stage in the evolution. It is generally assumed that the mixing region that finally develops is self-similar and turbulent, provided that the Reynolds number is sufficiently large. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1749848 | 796,618 |
1,798,157 | The first International Bowl featured the MAC's Western Michigan University Broncos and the University of Cincinnati Bearcats from the Big East Conference. The game was played on January 6, 2007, at Toronto, Ontario's Rogers Centre (formerly known as SkyDome) making it the first game played outside the United States since Notre Dame and Navy played their annual game in Dublin in 1996 and the first postseason game outside the U.S. since the Bacardi Bowl in Havana, Cuba back in 1937. The game's scoring came in three separate blocks, as Cincinnati jumped out to a 24–0 lead by the second quarter before WMU stormed back with 24 straight points of their own to tie the game. Immediately following WMU's tying touchdown in the 4th quarter, Cincinnati came back with a 12-play, 81-yard drive ending with a 33-yard field goal that provided the winning margin with 6:11 remaining in the game. The win by Cincinnati closed out a perfect bowl season for the Big East conference which went 5–0. Each school received a check for $750,000 (in US dollars) for their conferences to divide. New head coach Brian Kelly made his debut for the Bearcats, and five assistant coaches from Kelly's former job at Central Michigan followed him there. All five assistants had been on the CMU sidelines at the Motor City Bowl 11 days earlier, but without Kelly. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5754477 | 1,797,148 |
934,629 | Similarly, in “Music and the Negotiation of Orthodox Jewish Gender Roles in Partnership ‘Minyanim’”, a study of gender dynamics within Orthodox Jewish culture as disrupted by minyanim partner dance, Dr. Gordon Dale documents how partnership minyanim dance may actively reinterpret Orthodox Jewish religious law in establishing a new context for women's performance. The grounding of a new female music performance tradition in religion is particularly noteworthy considering the ways in which women are often excluded from religious music, both in the Orthodox Jewish consideration of female singing as inappropriate or weaponized sexual behavior that conflicts with expectations of modesty, and across diverse cultural spheres, as shown in Hagedorn’s example of the batá drum. In this instance, feminine musical expression becomes a highly political issue, with right-wing Orthodox men insisting it was impossible for a man to hear a woman singing without experiencing it as a sexual act, and male partnership minyan participants concluding instead that certain considerations of modesty were not applicable in the context of their prayer. Therefore, a woman’s singing voice could also be considered a sound of gender liberation against Orthodox power structures. Dale explains that while religious women's music initiatives from other cultures such as Indonesian women chanting from the Qur’an as described by Anne Rasmussen, this type of partnership mynamin requires Orthodoxy to actually create a new religious space in which “men and women can express their religious and feminist values side by side”. Though restrictions on the availability of female roles in worship mean that minyamin must focus more on gender-based partnership than on explicit equality, partnership minyamin still forge a unique musical prayer space in Jewish culture that listens to and encourages women’s voices. He describes one interaction with an older woman who was personally uncomfortable leading religious worship, but greatly appreciated observing other women in that role. Simply singing alongside women in an unrestrained manner served as a comfortable and fulfilling way for her to practice feminism. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=80077 | 934,135 |
1,520,629 | Plaman hold the mining rights and plan to turn all of the fossil-containing diatomite into an additive for incorporating into the food of intensively farmed animals such as ducks and pigs. Initial seed funding of about US$20 million (NZ$28 million) was raised through Goldman Sachs New Zealand Holdings, the Auckland branch of New York stock-exchange listed investment bank in August 2018. The financial viability of these plans is reported to hinge on the purchase of an adjoining farm, which the OIO must rule on. No timetable has been set for the decision. The proposal would involve building a new $36.8m processing plant at Milton to crush the diatomite before shipping offshore from Port Chalmers or Bluff. It is estimated by the company that the trucking and processing would create 100 jobs over 27 years. Plaman has discussed with local councils applying to New Zealand's Provincial Growth Fund for help with the costs of building the processing plant, although no application has been made. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60729340 | 1,519,768 |
1,615,356 | Initially, the primary benefit seen to be offered by radar imaging was its capability for operating at night and also for imaging through clouds or other atmospheric obstructions which absorbed or scattered waves not only in the visible spectrum but also in the nearby infra-red and ultraviolet. But radar also offered the benefit of a received signal that was already an electrical time-function one, ready for immediate radio re-transmission. So that project became a means for a trial of real-time image-data transmission as well as a trial of orbiting SAR. Since the theory and the state of the art for such transmission were well understood, it was realized that existing means for this part of Quill's mission would be inadequate for showing the level of detail needed to evaluate military threats even if the best imagery proved to be as good as expected. Still, not only were their lessons to be learned from trying, but also any success in such transmission was a hedge against failure to recover the on-board film, a problem that had plagued many of the early photo-intelligence satellites. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27644336 | 1,614,450 |
691,111 | In response to these public concerns, scientists, industry, and governments increasingly linked the power of recombinant DNA to the immensely practical functions that biotechnology promised. One of the key scientific figures that attempted to highlight the promising aspects of genetic engineering was Joshua Lederberg, a Stanford professor and Nobel laureate. While in the 1960s "genetic engineering" described eugenics and work involving the manipulation of the human genome, Lederberg stressed research that would involve microbes instead. Lederberg emphasized the importance of focusing on curing living people. Lederberg's 1963 paper, "Biological Future of Man" suggested that, while molecular biology might one day make it possible to change the human genotype, "what we have overlooked is euphenics, the engineering of human development." Lederberg constructed the word "euphenics" to emphasize changing the phenotype after conception rather than the genotype which would affect future generations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6012335 | 690,748 |
383,051 | According to the National Cancer Institute, prognosis is defined as the likely outcome of a disease OR, the chance of recovery or a recurrence. This is an extremely difficult question when it comes to pheochromcytoma, and the answer depends on the patients genetic status, presence of metastatic disease, and the location of their primary tumor. An article about prognosis published in 2000 reported a 91% 5-year survival rate in their patient population; however, it is important to note that over 86% of their patients had sporadic tumors (no known genetic mutation), which commonly have low malignant potential. In 2019, a consortium of almost twenty European medical centers looked at the prognosis of malignant pheochromocytoma and the data starkly varies from the report of sporadic, single tumors, with a median survival of 6.7 years. Overall survival improved if the patient had (1) disease of the head and neck compared to abdomen, (2) less than 40 years of age, (3) and if their biochemistry was less than five times the upper reference limit of normal. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=277088 | 382,856 |
1,602,576 | Speculation about higher oxidation states for mercury had existed since the 1970s, and theoretical calculations in the 1990s predicted that it should be stable in the gas phase, with a square-planar geometry consistent with a formal d configuration. However, experimental proof remained elusive until 2007, when HgF was first prepared using solid neon and argon for matrix isolation at a temperature of 4 K. The compound was detected using infrared spectroscopy. Analysis of density functional theory and coupled cluster calculations showed that the d orbitals are involved in bonding. This has led to the suggestion that mercury should be considered a transition metal after all (the group 12 metals are sometimes not included as transition metals because they do not have oxidation states beyond +2). However, that conclusion has been challenged by W. B. Jensen with the argument that HgF only exists under highly atypical non-equilibrium conditions and should best be considered as an exception. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14212068 | 1,601,675 |
1,679,117 | IMAGE (Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration, Explorer 78 or MIDEX-1) is a NASA Medium Explorer mission that studied the global response of the Earth's magnetosphere to changes in the solar wind. It was believed lost but as of August 2018 might be recoverable. It was launched 25 March 2000, at 20:34:43.929 UTC, by a Delta II launch vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a two-year mission. Almost six years later, it unexpectedly ceased operations in December 2005 during its extended mission and was declared lost. The spacecraft was part of NASA's Sun-Earth Connections Program, and its data has been used in over 400 research articles published in peer-reviewed journals. It had special cameras that provided various breakthroughs in understanding the dynamics of plasma around the Earth. The principal investigator was Jim Burch of the Southwest Research Institute. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1090498 | 1,678,174 |
297,485 | The two main risks GDM imposes on the baby are growth abnormalities and chemical imbalances after birth, which may require admission to a neonatal intensive care unit. Infants born to mothers with GDM are at risk of being both large for gestational age (macrosomic) in unmanaged GDM, and small for gestational age and Intrauterine growth retardation in managed GDM. Macrosomia in turn increases the risk of instrumental deliveries (e.g. forceps, ventouse and caesarean section) or problems during vaginal delivery (such as shoulder dystocia). Macrosomia may affect 12% of normal women compared to 20% of women with GDM. However, the evidence for each of these complications is not equally strong; in the Hyperglycemia and Adverse Pregnancy Outcome (HAPO) study for example, there was an increased risk for babies to be large but not small for gestational age in women with uncontrolled GDM. In a recent birth cohot study of 5150 deliveries, a research group active at the University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Hospital, Finland demonstrated that the mother's GDM is an independent factor that increases the risk of fetal hypoxia, during labour. The study was published in the "Acta Diabetologica" in June 2021. Another finding was that GDM increased the susceptibility of the fetus to intrapartum hypoxia, regardless of the size of the fetus. The risk of hypoxia and the resulting risk of poor condition in newborn infants was nearly 7-fold in the fetuses of mothers with GDM compared to the fetuses of non-diabetic mothers. Furthermore, according to the findings, the risk of needing to perform resuscitation on the newborn after birth was 10-fold. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=697890 | 297,325 |
643,980 | The first working prototype on an online retrieval system developed in 1963 by Doug Engelbart and Charles Bourne at the Stanford Research Institute proved the feasibility of these theoretical assumptions, although it was heavily constrained by memory issues: no more than 10,000 words of a few documents could be indexed. The early scientific computing infrastructures were focused on more specific research areas, such as MEDLINE for medicine, NASA/RECON for space engineering or OCLC Worldcat for library search: "most of the earliest online retrieval system provided access to a bibliographic database and the rest used a file containing another sort of information—encyclopedia articles, inventory data, or chemical compounds." Exclusive focus on text analysis proved limitative as the digitized collections expanded: a query could yield a large number results and it was difficult to evaluate the relevancy and the accuracy of the results. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1223245 | 643,640 |
722,520 | Weka supports several standard data mining tasks, more specifically, data preprocessing, clustering, classification, regression, visualization, and feature selection. Input to Weka is expected to be formatted according the Attribute-Relational File Format and with the filename bearing the extension. All of Weka's techniques are predicated on the assumption that the data is available as one flat file or relation, where each data point is described by a fixed number of attributes (normally, numeric or nominal attributes, but some other attribute types are also supported). Weka provides access to SQL databases using Java Database Connectivity and can process the result returned by a database query. Weka provides access to deep learning with Deeplearning4j. It is not capable of multi-relational data mining, but there is separate software for converting a collection of linked database tables into a single table that is suitable for processing using Weka. Another important area that is currently not covered by the algorithms included in the Weka distribution is sequence modeling. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3829034 | 722,140 |
1,885,809 | Lolines are produced by several grass–endophyte symbioses involving epichloae species, often along with other bioactive metabolites including ergot alkaloids and indole diterpenoids, and the unusual pyrrolopyrazine alkaloid, peramine, which is not found in other biological communities or organisms. The lolines are produced at levels, however, that can exceed 10 mg/g grass tissue (ranging from 2–20,000 μg/g), exceeding the concentrations of the other endophyte alkaloids by >1000-fold. Lolines produced in the grasses "Lolium pratense" (syn. "Festuca pratensis", meadow fescue) and tall fescue infected by "N. uncinatum" and "N. coenophialum" (see Fig. 3), respectively, exhibit variable concentrations in grass tissues. Higher loline concentrations (100–1000 μg/g) are present in the seeds and in younger leaf tissues, and the lolines display seasonal changes in concentration levels throughout the plant. The periodical appearance of tissues with high loline concentrations, such as flowering stems and seeds, contributes to this seasonal variation. Loline concentrations often increase in grass tissues regrown after defoliation and clipping of plants, suggesting an inducible defense response mechanism, involving both symbiotic partners. However, this increase appears to be due to higher loline levels in younger leaves compared to older leaves, but loline increases resembling inducible plant defenses have also been reported. Variation of loline concentration with the developmental stage of specific grass tissues suggests regulation of "in planta" loline distributions, providing greater protection of newly grown or embryonic tissues against attacks by insects. Surprisingly, exogenous application of the plant signaling compound, methyl jasmonate—which commonly signals predation by insects—decreases expression of the genes for the lolines. The factors that control loline production vary also among endophyte-infected grass tissues: whereas plant-supplied amino acids that are loline precursors limit accumulation of lolines in many grass tissues, their production in tissues that bear external mycelial growth for fungal reproduction (stromata) is regulated by the expression of loline genes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22802306 | 1,884,727 |
180,163 | This species spread across continents because of human-mediated processes. They became established in North America as the result of introductions into the United States in an attempt to control the spread of aphids. In the last three decades, this insect has spread throughout the US and Canada, and has been a prominent factor in controlling aphid populations. The first introductions into the US took place as far back as 1916. The species repeatedly failed to establish in the wild after successfully controlling aphid populations, but an established population of beetles was observed in the wild near New Orleans, Louisiana, in about 1988. In the following years, it quickly spread to other states, being occasionally observed in the Midwest within five to seven years and becoming common in the region by about 2000. The species was also established in the Northwest by 1991, and the Northeast by 1994, aided by additional introductions from the native range, rather than just reaching there from the Southeast. Reportedly, it has heavily fed on soybean aphids (which recently appeared in the US after coming from China), supposedly saving farmers vast sums of money in 2001. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=531218 | 180,069 |
1,836,765 | As soon as gullies were discovered, researchers began to image many gullies over and over, looking for possible changes. By 2006, some changes were found. Later, with further analysis it was determined that the changes could have occurred by dry granular flows rather than being driven by flowing water. With continued observations many more changes were found in Gasa Crater and others. Channels widened by 0.5 to 1 m; meter sized boulders moved; and hundreds of cubic meters of material moved. It was calculated that gullies could be formed under present conditions with as little as 1 event in 50–500 years. So, although today there is little liquid water, present geological/climatic processes could still form gullies. Large amounts of water or great changes in climate are not needed. However, some gullies in the past may have been aided by weather changes that involved larger amounts of water, perhaps from melted snow. With more repeated observations, more and more changes have been found; since the changes occur in the winter and spring, experts are tending to suspect that gullies were formed from carbon dioxide ice (dry ice). Recent studies describe using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on MRO to examine gullies at 356 sites, starting in 2006. Thirty-eight of the sites showed active gully formation. Before-and-after images demonstrated the timing of this activity coincided with seasonal carbon dioxide frost and temperatures that would not have allowed for liquid water. When dry ice frost changes to a gas, it may lubricate dry material to flow especially on steep slopes. In some years frost, perhaps as thick as 1 meter, triggers avalanches. This frost contains mostly dry ice, but also has tiny amounts of water ice. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29209294 | 1,835,716 |
410,475 | In the 1960s, American aerospace engineer Gary Flandro of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory conceived of a mission, known as the Planetary Grand Tour, that would exploit a rare alignment of the outer planets of the Solar System. This mission would ultimately be accomplished in the late 1970s by the two Voyager probes, but in order to prepare for it, NASA decided in 1964 to experiment with launching a pair of probes to the outer Solar System. An advocacy group named the Outer Space Panel and chaired by American space scientist James A. Van Allen, worked out the scientific rationale for exploring the outer planets. NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center put together a proposal for a pair of "Galactic Jupiter Probes" that would pass through the asteroid belt and visit Jupiter. These were to be launched in 1972 and 1973 during favorable windows that occurred only a few weeks every 13 months. Launch during other time intervals would have been more costly in terms of propellant requirements. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38198 | 410,273 |
102,970 | A 2017 analysis published in "Green Car Reports" concluded that the best hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles consume "more than three times more electricity per mile than an electric vehicle ... generate more greenhouse gas emissions than other powertrain technologies ... [and have] very high fuel costs. ... Considering all the obstacles and requirements for new infrastructure (estimated to cost as much as $400 billion), fuel-cell vehicles seem likely to be a niche technology at best, with little impact on U.S. oil consumption. The US Department of Energy agrees, for fuel produced by grid electricity via electrolysis, but not for most other pathways for generation. A 2019 video by "Real Engineering" noted that, notwithstanding the introduction of vehicles that run on hydrogen, using hydrogen as a fuel for cars does not help to reduce carbon emissions from transportation. The 95% of hydrogen still produced from fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, and producing hydrogen from water is an energy-consuming process. Storing hydrogen requires more energy either to cool it down to the liquid state or to put it into tanks under high pressure, and delivering the hydrogen to fueling stations requires more energy and may release more carbon. The hydrogen needed to move a FCV a kilometer costs approximately 8 times as much as the electricity needed to move a BEV the same distance. Also in 2019, Katsushi Inoue, the president of Honda Europe, stated, "Our focus is on hybrid and electric vehicles now. Maybe hydrogen fuel cell cars will come, but that’s a technology for the next era." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=188545 | 102,925 |
466,810 | Brain plasticity refers to the brain's ability to change structure and function. This ties into the common phrase, "if you don't use it, you lose it," which is another way of saying, if you don't use it, your brain will devote less somatotopic space for it. One proposed mechanism for the observed age-related plasticity deficits in animals is the result of age-induced alterations in calcium regulation. The changes in our abilities to handle calcium will ultimately influence neuronal firing and the ability to propagate action potentials, which in turn would affect the ability of the brain to alter its structure or function (i.e. its plastic nature). Due to the complexity of the brain, with all of its structures and functions, it is logical to assume that some areas would be more vulnerable to aging than others. Two circuits worth mentioning here are the hippocampal and neocortical circuits. It has been suggested that age-related cognitive decline is due in part not to neuronal death but to synaptic alterations. Evidence in support of this idea from animal work has also suggested that this cognitive deficit is due to functional and biochemical factors such as changes in enzymatic activity, chemical messengers, or gene expression in cortical circuits. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=749745 | 466,577 |
1,747,349 | Dawson's fossil study was corroborated by more comprehensive DNA sequence analyses, which suggested a roughly Lutetian (about 44 Mya, Early/Middle Eocene) divergence date between the ancestors of the Laotian rock rat and the African gundis, which are each other's closest living relatives. Considering the present-day distribution, the fossil record, and Eocene paleogeography, this divergence probably took place in one of three regions. Either the lineages split in Eurasia, somewhere in today's Zagros Mountains or adjacent ranges of the Alpide belt. These at that time formed a rugged and broken coastline with many offshore islands, as they emerged from the shrinking Tethys Sea. Alternatively, the entire Ctenodactyloidea might be of African origin, or the lineage split took place on India as it joined the Asian mainland, with the gundis reaching Africa via the Mascarene Plateau's archipelagos and island continents. Each hypothesis would unite the paleontological, anatomical, and molecular findings into a robust model. Which one is preferred depends on whether the Hystricomorpha were Laurasian or Gondwanan in origin. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4335803 | 1,746,363 |
149,880 | Toxicologists perform many different duties including research in the academic, nonprofit and industrial fields, product safety evaluation, consulting, public service and legal regulation. In order to research and assess the effects of chemicals, toxicologists perform carefully designed studies and experiments. These experiments help identify the specific amount of a chemical that may cause harm and potential risks of being near or using products that contain certain chemicals. Research projects may range from assessing the effects of toxic pollutants on the environment to evaluating how the human immune system responds to chemical compounds within pharmaceutical drugs. While the basic duties of toxicologists are to determine the effects of chemicals on organisms and their surroundings, specific job duties may vary based on industry and employment. For example, forensic toxicologists may look for toxic substances in a crime scene, whereas aquatic toxicologists may analyze the toxicity level of water bodies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30531 | 149,812 |
2,167,027 | America’s entry into World War I caused the downfall of the Austrian conductor’s career in Cincinnati. On November 17, 1917 the Daughters of the American Revolution brought pressure on the public safety director of Pittsburgh to forbid Kunwald’s conducting his orchestra in that city. He was arrested by the United States Marshals Service December 8, 1917 and released from jail the next day. His resignation as conductor was accepted by the board at that time. On January 12, 1918 he was interned under the Alien Enemies Act and imprisoned at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia. He was joined in internment by fellow conductor Karl Muck, who was arrested March 25, 1918. The evidence on which Kunwald was interned was never fully divulged, but conducting Austrian and German Classical music and continued pride in his homeland may have been the reason. He conducted the Star-Spangled Banner before one concert after telling the orchestra and audience (many of whom were fellow immigrants) that his sympathies were with the House of Hapsburg and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This information was noted in a memo dated December 19, 1917 from J. Edgar Hoover to the United States Attorney General. His sentiments led to the revocation of his honorary membership in Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity in May 1919 ("Sinfonia Handbook", Spring 1939, p. 24). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4542793 | 2,165,790 |
275,144 | Differentially methylated regions, which are genomic regions with different methylation statuses among multiple samples (tissues, cells, individuals or others), are regarded as possible functional regions involved in gene transcriptional regulation. The identification of DMRs among multiple tissues (T-DMRs) provides a comprehensive survey of epigenetic differences among human tissues. For example, these methylated regions that are unique to a particular tissue allow individuals to differentiate between tissue type, such as semen and vaginal fluid. Current research conducted by Lee et al., showed DACT1 and USP49 positively identified semen by examining T-DMRs. The use of T-DMRs has proven useful in the identification of various body fluids found at crime scenes. Researchers in the forensic field are currently seeking novel T-DMRs in genes to use as markers in forensic DNA analysis. DMRs between cancer and normal samples (C-DMRs) demonstrate the aberrant methylation in cancers. It is well known that DNA methylation is associated with cell differentiation and proliferation. Many DMRs have been found in the development stages (D-DMRs) and in the reprogrammed progress (R-DMRs). In addition, there are intra-individual DMRs (Intra-DMRs) with longitudinal changes in global DNA methylation along with the increase of age in a given individual. There are also inter-individual DMRs (Inter-DMRs) with different methylation patterns among multiple individuals. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1137227 | 274,996 |
1,704,054 | Structural studies of IDE by Shen et al. have provided insight into the functional mechanisms of the protease. Reminiscent of the previously determined structure of the bacterial protease pitrilysin, the IDE crystal structure reveals defined N and C terminal units that form a proteolytic chamber containing the zinc-binding active site. In addition, it appears that IDE can exist in two conformations: an open conformation, in which substrates can access the active site, and a closed state, in which the active site is contained within the chamber formed by the two concave domains. Targeted mutations that favor the open conformation result in a 40-fold increase in catalytic activity. Based upon this observation, it has been proposed that a possible therapeutic approach to Alzheimer’s might involve shifting the conformational preference of IDE to the open state, and thus increasing Aβ degradation, preventing aggregation, and, ideally, preventing the neuronal loss that leads to disease symptoms. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11229905 | 1,703,098 |
1,987,859 | A whiting event is a phenomenon that occurs when a suspended cloud of fine-grained calcium carbonate precipitates in water bodies, typically during summer months, as a result of photosynthetic microbiological activity or sediment disturbance. The phenomenon gets its name from the white, chalky color it imbues to the water. These events have been shown to occur in temperate waters as well as tropical ones, and they can span for hundreds of meters. They can also occur in both marine and freshwater environments. The origin of whiting events is debated among the scientific community, and it is unclear if there is a single, specific cause. Generally, they are thought to result from either bottom sediment re-suspension or by increased activity of certain microscopic life such as phytoplankton. Because whiting events affect aquatic chemistry, physical properties, and carbon cycling, studying the mechanisms behind them holds scientific relevance in various ways. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=67766374 | 1,986,717 |
1,710,269 | PAs work under the indirect or direct supervision of a board certified anatomical pathologist, who ultimately renders a diagnosis based on the PA's detailed gross examination and/or tissue submission for microscopic evaluation. Requirements to become a pathologists' assistant include graduation from a National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences (NAACLS) accredited education program and successfully passing the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) certification exam, which is not legally required in most states. The credentialing is a certification from the ASCP. Some states such as Nevada and New York require a license. All pathologists' assistants are allied health workers who need to be CLIA 88 compliant to perform these high complexity tasks with indirect/direct supervision. With ongoing changes in health care, a growing elderly population, and a decreasing number of pathology residents, the PA is in high demand due to their high level of training and contribution to the overall efficiency of the pathology laboratory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=35540901 | 1,709,309 |
135,322 | Child development involves the biological, psychological and emotional changes that occur in human beings between birth and the conclusion of adolescence. Childhood is divided into 3 stages of life which include early childhood, middle childhood, and late childhood (preadolescence). Early childhood typically ranges from infancy to the age of 6 years old. During this period, development is significant, as many of life's milestones happen during this time period such as first words, learning to crawl, and learning to walk. There is speculation that middle childhood/preadolescence or ages 6–12 are the most crucial years of a child's life. Adolescence is the stage of life that typically starts around the major onset of puberty, with markers such as menarche and spermarche, typically occurring at 12–13 years of age. It has been defined as ages 10 to 19 by the World Health Organization. In the course of development, the individual human progresses from dependency to increasing autonomy. It is a continuous process with a predictable sequence, yet has a unique course for every child. It does not progress at the same rate and each stage is affected by the preceding developmental experiences. Because genetic factors and events during prenatal life may strongly influence developmental changes, genetics and prenatal development usually form a part of the study of child development. Related terms include developmental psychology, referring to development throughout the lifespan, and pediatrics, the branch of medicine relating to the care of children. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9627698 | 135,267 |
251,031 | There are various explanations why liver dysfunction or portosystemic shunting might lead to encephalopathy. In healthy subjects, nitrogen-containing compounds from the intestine, generated by gut bacteria from food, are transported by the portal vein to the liver, where 80–90% are metabolised through the urea cycle and/or excreted immediately. This process is impaired in all subtypes of hepatic encephalopathy, either because the hepatocytes (liver cells) are incapable of metabolising the waste products or because portal venous blood bypasses the liver through collateral circulation or a medically constructed shunt. Nitrogenous waste products accumulate in the systemic circulation (hence the older term "portosystemic encephalopathy"). The most important waste product is ammonia (NH). This small molecule crosses the blood–brain barrier and is absorbed and metabolised by the astrocytes, a population of cells in the brain that constitutes 30% of the cerebral cortex. Astrocytes use ammonia when synthesising glutamine from glutamate. The increased levels of glutamine lead to an increase in osmotic pressure in the astrocytes, which become swollen. There is increased activity of the inhibitory γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) system and the energy supply to other brain cells is decreased. This can be thought of as an example of brain edema of the "cytotoxic" type. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1105043 | 250,898 |
2,013,721 | Despite the effective treatments (implantable defibrillators, ablation) available for lethal ventricular arrhythmias, the major hurdle remains identification of subjects at risk of sudden death. Michel Haïssaguerre’s team showed the role of subtle phenotypic markers present on the ECG, and demonstrated in collaboration with groups from Bangkok and Tsukuba, that different mechanisms could also lead to a similar phenotype. Further studies have focused on the enigmatic origin of 'sudden unexplained cardiac deaths': those for which no cause is found after a complete autopsy or detailed investigations (surviving patients). This pathology particularly affects young people at rest or during sleep. After identification of reentrant sources, they showed the presence of localized myocardial alteration at the sources, which may be the final damage caused by a number of diseases. This marker may open up new avenues for the early identification of subjects at risk, by electrical or imaging methods, combined with genetic analysis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19007821 | 2,012,562 |
494,740 | The ECAL is constructed from crystals of lead tungstate, PbWO. This is an extremely dense but optically clear material, ideal for stopping high energy particles. Lead tungstate crystal is made primarily of metal and is heavier than stainless steel, but with a touch of oxygen in this crystalline form it is highly transparent and scintillates when electrons and photons pass through it. This means it produces light in proportion to the particle's energy. These high-density crystals produce light in fast, short, well-defined photon bursts that allow for a precise, fast and fairly compact detector. It has a radiation length of χ = 0.89 cm, and has a rapid light yield, with 80% of light yield within one crossing time (25 ns). This is balanced however by a relatively low light yield of 30 photons per MeV of incident energy. The crystals used have a front size of 22 mm × 22 mm and a depth of 230 mm. They are set in a matrix of carbon fibre to keep them optically isolated, and backed by silicon avalanche photodiodes for readout. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=245966 | 494,484 |
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