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1,826,105 | Soil forms from parent rocks through physical disintegration of rocks and by chemical alteration of the rock fragments. The types of soil minerals can reveal if the environment was cool or warm, wet or dry, or whether the water was fresh or salty. Because CRISM is able to detect many minerals in the soil or regolith, the instrument is being used to help decipher ancient Martian environments. CRISM has found a characteristic layering pattern of aluminum-rich clays overlying iron- and magnesium-rich clays in many areas scattered through Mars' highlands. Surrounding Mawrth Vallis, these "layered clays" cover hundreds of thousands of square kilometers. Similar layering occurs near the Isidis basin, in the Noachian plains surrounding Valles Marineris, and in Noachian plains surrounding the Tharsis plateau. The global distribution of layered clays suggests a global process. Layered clays are late Noachian in age, dating from the same time as water-carved valley networks. The layered clay composition is similar to what is expected for soil formation on Earth - a weathered upper layer leached of soluble iron and magnesium, leaving an insoluble aluminum-rich residue, with a lower layer that still retains its iron and magnesium. Some researchers have suggested that the Martian clay "layer cake" was created by soil-forming processes, including rainfall, at the time that valley networks formed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5565460 | 1,825,066 |
182,882 | Ralph Nelson Elliott (1871–1948), an American accountant, developed a model for the underlying social principles of financial markets by studying their price movements, and developed a set of analytical tools in the 1930s. He proposed that market prices unfold in specific patterns, which practitioners today call "Elliott waves", or simply "waves". Elliott published his theory of market behavior in the book "The Wave Principle" in 1938, summarized it in a series of articles in "Financial World" magazine in 1939, and covered it most comprehensively in his final major work, "Nature's Laws: The Secret of the Universe" in 1946. Elliott stated that "because man is subject to rhythmical procedure, calculations having to do with his activities can be projected far into the future with a justification and certainty heretofore unattainable." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=289430 | 182,786 |
364,817 | The "Astute"-class programme began in February 1986 when the Ministry of Defence (MOD) launched a number of studies intended to determine the capabilities and requirements for the replacement of its "Swiftsure" and "Trafalgar"-class fleet submarines. These studies, called project SSN20, were conducted during the Cold War, when the Royal Navy maintained a strong emphasis on anti-submarine warfare to counter increasingly more capable Soviet submarines. To match this growing threat, the studies concluded that project SSN20 should be a revolutionary design, with significantly enhanced nuclear propulsion and firepower, and a more sophisticated "integrated sonar suite" and combat systems. Similarly, the United States Navy, which was facing the same threats, went on to design and build the . The estimated costs of project SSN20, although great, were not considered a "constraint". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=186252 | 364,626 |
905,176 | Isaac, with his non-military role and backstory, was meant to appeal to players as an average person who was not trained for combat or survival. His armour and weapon design followed the principle of him being an untrained engineer; the armour is a work suit for conditions compared by staff to an oil rig in space, while the weapons are mining tools. Isaac's name made reference to two science fiction authors, Isaac Azimov and Arthur C. Clarke. The design of the ship environments deliberately moved away from traditional science fiction, which they saw as being overly clean and lacking function. The large number of familiar environments and designs, in addition to making the "Ishimura" a believable living environment, increased the horror elements, as they would be familiar to players. To achieve the realistic feel, they emulated Gothic architecture, which fit their vision both practically and aesthetically. The lighting was based on light from the strong lamps used in dentistry. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13381784 | 904,700 |
461,163 | Vanna was a feminist, socialist, pacifist, and vegetarian with an active intellectual life, reading books mostly on history, current events, and biography. She was born to Italian immigrant parents in Philadelphia in 1893. She dropped out of high school because her family could not afford to buy her a coat, so she was essentially self-educated. At 29, she married fruit-and-produce merchant Robert Venturi Sr. Her only child, Robert Jr. was born in 1925. Possibly because of her liberal views she perceived herself as an "outsider" and became a Quaker. Robert Jr. said, "I never went to public school: pledging allegiance to the flag — 'coercive patriotism' my mother called it — was anathema to her." The family made summer trips to Arden, Delaware, and Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, two communities organized by architect Will Price, who was inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement and the then-radical economics of Henry George. In Rose Valley, the family attended plays by George Bernard Shaw at the Hedgerow Theater. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29383863 | 460,937 |
868,840 | Perhaps the most obvious structural characteristic of bacteria is (with some exceptions) their small size. For example, "Escherichia coli" cells, an "average" sized bacterium, are about 2 µm (micrometres) long and 0.5 µm in diameter, with a cell volume of 0.6–0.7 μm. This corresponds to a wet mass of about 1 picogram (pg), assuming that the cell consists mostly of water. The dry mass of a single cell can be estimated as 23% of the wet mass, amounting to 0.2 pg. About half of the dry mass of a bacterial cell consists of carbon, and also about half of it can be attributed to proteins. Therefore, a typical fully grown 1-liter culture of "Escherichia coli" (at an optical density of 1.0, corresponding to c. 10 cells/ml) yields about 1 g wet cell mass. Small size is extremely important because it allows for a large surface area-to-volume ratio which allows for rapid uptake and intracellular distribution of nutrients and excretion of wastes. At low surface area-to-volume ratios the diffusion of nutrients and waste products across the bacterial cell membrane limits the rate at which microbial metabolism can occur, making the cell less evolutionarily fit. The reason for the existence of large cells is unknown, although it is speculated that the increased cell volume is used primarily for storage of excess nutrients. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4209093 | 868,380 |
500,546 | A goal of community-based efforts is to eliminate microfilariae from the blood of infected individuals in order to prevent transmission to the mosquito. This is primarily accomplished through the use of drugs. The treatment for "B. malayi" infection is the same as for Bancroftian filariasis. Diethylcarbamazine has been used in mass treatment programs as an effective microfilaricidal drug in several locations, including India. While diethylcarbamazine tends to cause adverse reactions like immediate fever and weakness, it is not known to cause any long-term adverse drug effects. It has been shown to kill both adult worms and microfilariae. In Malaysia, diethylcarbamazine dosages (6 mg/kg weekly for 6 weeks; 6 mg/kg daily for 9 days) reduced microfilariae by 80% for 18–24 months after treatment in the absence of mosquito control. Microfilariae numbers slowly return many months after treatment, thus requiring multiple drug doses over time in order to achieve long-term control. However, it is not known how many years of mass drug administration is required to eliminate transmission. there have been any confirmed cases of diethylcarbamazine resistance as of 2007. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1539801 | 500,289 |
552,398 | The first hyperbolic system to be developed was the British Gee system, developed during World War II. Gee used a series of transmitters sending out precisely timed signals, with the signals leaving the stations at fixed delays. An aircraft using Gee, RAF Bomber Command's heavy bombers, examined the time of arrival on an oscilloscope at the navigator's station. If the signal from two stations arrived at the same time, the aircraft must be an equal distance from both transmitters, allowing the navigator to determine a line of position on his chart of all the positions at that distance from both stations. More typically, the signal from one station would be received earlier than the other. The "difference" in timing between the two signals would reveal them to be along a curve of possible locations. By making similar measurements with other stations, additional lines of position can be produced, leading to a fix. Gee was accurate to about 165 yards (150 m) at short ranges, and up to a mile (1.6 km) at longer ranges over Germany. Gee remained in use long after World War II, and equipped RAF aircraft as late as the 1960s (approx freq was by then 68 MHz). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=153095 | 552,109 |
457,491 | Participatory design has many applications in development and changes to the built environment. It has particular currency to planners and architects, in relation to placemaking and community regeneration projects. It potentially offers a far more democratic approach to the design process as it involves more than one stakeholder. By incorporating a variety of views there is greater opportunity for successful outcomes. Many universities and major institutions are beginning to recognise its importance. The UN, Global studio involved students from Columbia University, University of Sydney and Sapienza University of Rome to provide design solutions for Vancouver's downtown eastside, which suffered from drug- and alcohol-related problems. The process allowed cross-discipline participation from planners, architects and industrial designers, which focused on collaboration and the sharing of ideas and stories, as opposed to rigid and singular design outcomes. (Kuiper, 2007, p. 52) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=966255 | 457,268 |
780,268 | Further to the east, the canyon system runs into Coprates Chasma, which is very similar to Ius and Tithonium chasmata. Coprates differs from Ius in the eastern end which contains alluvial deposits and eolian material and like Ius, has layered deposits, although the deposits in the Coprates Chasma are much more well defined. These deposits pre-date the Valles Marineris system, suggesting erosion and sedimentary processes later cut by the Valles Marineris system. Newer data from Mars Global Surveyor suggest that the origin of this layering is either just a succession of landslides, one over another, volcanic in origin, or it may be the bottom of a basin of either liquid or solid water ice suggesting that the peripheral canyons of the Valles Marineris system could have been at one time isolated lakes formed from erosional collapse. Another possible source of the layered deposits could be wind-blown, but the diversity of the layers suggests that this material is not dominant. Note that only the upper layers are thin, while the bottom layers are very big, suggesting that the lower layers were composed of mass wasted rock and the upper layers come from another source. Some of this layering may have been transferred to the floor by landslides in which the layers are kept semi-intact, yet the layered section looks highly deformed with thickening and thinning beds that have multitudes of folds in them as seen in MOC image #8405. This complex terrain could also be just eroded sediment from an ancient Martian lake-bed and appear complex because all that we have is an aerial view like a geologic map and not enough elevation data to see if the beds are horizontal. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=91176 | 779,851 |
1,151,405 | Consider a scientific research group working on environmental observation and forecasting, such as the CORIE System1. They may be monitoring a coastal ecosystem through weather stations, shore- and buoy-mounted sensors and remote imagery. In addition they could be running atmospheric and fluid-dynamics models that simulate past, current and near future conditions. The computations may require importing data and model outputs from other groups, such as river flows and ocean circulation forecasts. The observations and simulations are the inputs to programs that generate a wide range of data products, for use within the group and by others: comparison plots between observed and simulated data, images of surface-temperature distributions, animations of salt-water intrusion into an estuary. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26705941 | 1,150,798 |
229,143 | Similar ideas have been used in feed-forward neural networks for unsupervised pre-training to structure a neural network, making it first learn generally useful feature detectors. Then the network is trained further by supervised backpropagation to classify labeled data. The deep belief network model by Hinton et al. (2006) involves learning the distribution of a high level representation using successive layers of binary or real-valued latent variables. It uses a restricted Boltzmann machine to model each new layer of higher level features. Each new layer guarantees an increase on the lower-bound of the log likelihood of the data, thus improving the model, if trained properly. Once sufficiently many layers have been learned the deep architecture may be used as a generative model by reproducing the data when sampling down the model (an "ancestral pass") from the top level feature activations. Hinton reports that his models are effective feature extractors over high-dimensional, structured data. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=43502368 | 229,026 |
800,095 | Depending on the type of model, different econometric and statistical methods can be used to estimate utility functions. These utility functions indicate the perceived value of the feature and how sensitive consumer perceptions and preferences are to changes in product features. The actual estimation procedure will depend on the design of the task and profiles for respondents and the measurement scale used to indicate preferences (interval-scaled, ranking, or discrete choice). For estimating the utilities for each attribute level using ratings-based full profile tasks, linear regression may be appropriate, for choice based tasks, maximum likelihood estimation usually with logistic regression is typically used. The original utility estimation methods were monotonic analysis of variance or linear programming techniques, but contemporary marketing research practice has shifted towards choice-based models using multinomial logit, mixed versions of this model, and other refinements. Bayesian estimators are also very popular. Hierarchical Bayesian procedures are nowadays relatively popular as well. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=296457 | 799,669 |
1,605,179 | After the October Revolution, in November 1917, the Ural Factory Meeting was reorganized under the leadership of the Bolsheviks. Its powers were extended by the decree of the Supreme Economic Council of the Republic to the Vyatka, Orenburg, Perm and Ufa provinces, and a number of adjacent districts. The Ural Mining Board and the Yekaterinburg Bureau of the Council of the Congress of Mining Industrialists of the Urals were liquidated. In November - December 1917, the boards of Ural joint-stock companies suspended the transfer of money to factories where Soviet control was introduced, which led to delays in the payment of wages and the accumulation of debts for the supply of raw materials and food. There were pockets of famine and epidemics of diseases, the situation of workers-prisoners of war was especially difficult. In December 1917, the Council of People's Commissars began the nationalization of the mountain districts of the Urals, earlier than other enterprises of the country. By July 1918, more than 4,340 enterprises (25 out of 34 mountain districts of the Urals) had been nationalized. In 1918, in addition to the factory committees established earlier, business councils were established to manage the factories, whose activities were coordinated by the regional board of the nationalized enterprises of the Urals. Such actions led to a certain dual power in the management of enterprises in the industry, and since March 1918, factory committees have been merged with trade unions. Since 1918, systematic training of engineers and workers for the metallurgical industry began in educational institutions of the Urals. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=66141214 | 1,604,276 |
844,097 | Dentistry was an important field, as an independent profession it dated from the early 3rd millennium BC, although it may never have been prominent. The Egyptian diet was high in abrasives from sand left over from grinding grain and bits of rocks in which the way bread was prepared, and so the condition of their teeth was poor. Archaeologists have noted a steady decrease in severity and incidence of worn teeth throughout 4000 BC to 1000 AD, probably due to improved grain grinding techniques. All Egyptian remains have sets of teeth in quite poor states. Dental disease could even be fatal, such as for Djedmaatesankh, a musician from Thebes, who died around the age of thirty five from extensive dental disease and a large infected cyst. If an individual's teeth escaped being worn down, cavities were rare, due to the rarity of sweeteners. Dental treatment was ineffective and the best sufferers could hope for was the quick loss of an infected tooth. The Instruction of Ankhsheshonq contains the maxim "There is no tooth that rots yet stays in place". No records document the hastening of this process and no tools suited for the extraction of teeth have been found, though some remains show sign of forced tooth removal. Replacement teeth have been found, although it is not clear whether they are just post-mortem cosmetics. Extreme pain might have been medicated with opium. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2584146 | 843,647 |
263,939 | The Roman Empire developed an intensive and sophisticated agriculture, expanded upon existing iron working technology, created laws providing for individual ownership, advanced stone masonry technology, advanced road-building (exceeded only in the 19th century), military engineering, civil engineering, spinning and weaving and several different machines like the Gallic reaper that helped to increase productivity in many sectors of the Roman economy. Roman engineers were the first to build monumental arches, amphitheatres, aqueducts, public baths, true arch bridges, harbours, reservoirs and dams, vaults and domes on a very large scale across their Empire. Notable Roman inventions include the book (Codex), glass blowing and concrete. Because Rome was located on a volcanic peninsula, with sand which contained suitable crystalline grains, the concrete which the Romans formulated was especially durable. Some of their buildings have lasted 2000 years, to the present day. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=803661 | 263,796 |
351,633 | By 1951, the 180/200 W generator set designated MP1002CA (known as the "Bungalow set") was ready for production and an initial batch of 250 was planned, but soon it became clear that they could not be made at a competitive price. Additionally, the advent of transistor radios and their much lower power requirements meant that the original reason for the set was disappearing. Approximately 150 of these sets were eventually produced. Some found their way into university and college engineering departments around the world, giving generations of students a valuable introduction to the Stirling engine; a letter dated March 1961 from Research and Control Instruments Ltd. London WC1 to North Devon Technical College, offering "remaining stocks... to institutions such as yourselves... at a special price of £75 net". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=186919 | 351,450 |
1,862,448 | Delays in the project led to competitive evaluation against a proposal for a much larger machine, eventually called the Superconducting Supercollider, a proton-proton system aimed at 20,000+20,000 GeV; while developments in Europe at CERN, including discovery of the W and Z bosons, appeared to make ISABELLE redundant. In July, 1983, the U.S. Department of Energy cancelled the ISABELLE project after spending more than US$200 million on it. Cancellation of ISABELLE accelerated the United States fall from dominance in high energy physics and proved a harbinger for the much more costly cancellation of the Superconducting Supercollider in October, 1993. After years of planning and development, parts of the tunnel, experimental hall and magnet infrastructure built for ISABELLE were salvaged and reused by the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a US$617 million joint project of the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation which was approved in 1991 and began operation in 2000. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=483004 | 1,861,379 |
120,772 | In 1941, Blackett moved from the RAE to the Navy, after first working with RAF Coastal Command, in 1941 and then early in 1942 to the Admiralty. Blackett's team at Coastal Command's Operational Research Section (CC-ORS) included two future Nobel prize winners and many other people who went on to be pre-eminent in their fields. They undertook a number of crucial analyses that aided the war effort. Britain introduced the convoy system to reduce shipping losses, but while the principle of using warships to accompany merchant ships was generally accepted, it was unclear whether it was better for convoys to be small or large. Convoys travel at the speed of the slowest member, so small convoys can travel faster. It was also argued that small convoys would be harder for German U-boats to detect. On the other hand, large convoys could deploy more warships against an attacker. Blackett's staff showed that the losses suffered by convoys depended largely on the number of escort vessels present, rather than the size of the convoy. Their conclusion was that a few large convoys are more defensible than many small ones. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=43476 | 120,723 |
1,466,193 | The minimum formal criteria included: being a citizen of an ESA member (or associate member) state under the age of 50; being between 150 and 190cm tall (with possible exception under the parastronaut category); a "normal weight" BMI range; fluency in English and another language; a master's degree in the Natural Sciences, Medicine, Engineering, Mathematics/Computer Sciences (plus three years of professional experience), or accreditation as an experimental test pilot; a "hearing capacity of 25 dB or better per ear"; and a current class 2 pilot's medical certificate. Upon selection, recruits would then receive training in "...the essentials of being an astronaut, survival skills and the Russian language, before moving on to robotics, navigation, maintenance and spacewalks", and then receiving mission-specific training. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=66777640 | 1,465,370 |
4,972 | The game's protagonists are Kratos (now voiced by Christopher Judge) and his young son Atreus (Sunny Suljic). Kratos is a warrior originally from Sparta who became the Greek God of War and is a son of Zeus. After ending up in ancient Scandinavia following his war against Olympus, he met his second wife, Laufey (addressed as Faye), who died from an unknown cause shortly before the start of the game. She bore their son, Atreus, who at the start of the game does not know about Kratos's past or his divine nature but can hear other beings' thoughts. The main antagonist is the Æsir god Baldur (Jeremy Davies), the half-brother of Thor, whose sons Modi and Magni (Nolan North and Troy Baker, respectively) assist him. Baldur's parents are Odin, the Allfather and King of the Æsir, and the Vanir goddess Freya (Danielle Bisutti), the former Queen of the Valkyries. Freya tried leaving Odin, after he began corrupting her Vanir magic. He in turn stripped her of her Valkyrie wings, banished her to Midgard, and cast a spell on her that prevented her from causing harm to others and from leaving the realm. She then hid her identity under an alias, the Witch of the Woods. To protect her son from a prophecy that foretold his death, Freya cast a spell of immortality on Baldur, which also prevented him from feeling pain or pleasure. The effects of the spell caused Baldur to greatly resent his mother. The only thing capable of harming him was mistletoe, a fact which Freya kept secret. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50810460 | 4,970 |
996,068 | The Pejsa model can predict a projectile within a given flight regime (for example the supersonic flight regime) with only two velocity measurements, a distance between said velocity measurements, and a slope or deceleration constant factor. The model allows the drag curve to change slopes (true/calibrate) or curvature at three different points. Down range velocity measurement data can be provided around key inflection points allowing for more accurate calculations of the projectile retardation rate, very similar to a Mach vs CD table. The Pejsa model allows the slope factor to be tuned to account for subtle differences in the retardation rate of different bullet shapes and sizes. It ranges from 0.1 (flat-nose bullets) to 0.9 (very-low-drag bullets). If this slope or deceleration constant factor is unknown a default value of 0.5 is used. With the help of test firing measurements the slope constant for a particular bullet/rifle system/shooter combination can be determined. These test firings should preferably be executed at 60% and for extreme long range ballistic predictions also at 80% to 90% of the supersonic range of the projectiles of interest, staying away from erratic transonic effects. With this the Pejsa model can easily be tuned. A practical downside of the Pejsa model is that accurate projectile specific down range velocity measurements to provide these better predictions can not be easily performed by the vast majority of shooting enthusiasts. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=584911 | 995,551 |
1,796,520 | Abbot began his astrophysics research focusing on solar radiation before proceeding to chart cyclic patterns found in solar variations. With this research he hoped to track solar constant in order to make weather pattern predictions. He believed that the sun was a variable star which effected the weather on Earth, which was criticized by many contemporaries. In 1953, he discovered a connection between solar variations and planetary climate. This discovery allowed general climate patterns to be predicted 50 years in advance. He did field work at the Smithsonian Institution Shelter, which was built during his tenure as director at SAO, Lick Observatory, and Mount Wilson Observatory. At Lick, he worked with W.W. Campbell. To fight critics, Abbot would utilize balloons with pyrheliometers installed on them for measurements. He was the first scientist in America to do so, with the balloons reaching upwards of 25 kilometers. One balloon returned data that allowed Abbot to determine the solar constant at the highest point of the Earth's atmosphere. Later in his research career, he turned his focus on solar energy use. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=337070 | 1,795,511 |
487,092 | Bans on TBT on boats less than 25 metres long first started in the 1980s. In 1990, the Marine Environment Protection Committee adopted Resolution MEPC 46(30), which recommended that the Government eliminate the use of TBT-containing antifouling paints on smaller vessels. This resolution was intended to be a temporary restriction until the International Maritime Organization could implement a ban of TBT anti-fouling agents for ships. Several countries followed and in 1997, Japan banned the production of TBT-based anti-fouling paints. The IMO began to use an Assembly resolution in 1999 that essentially wanted the MPEC to fix the severe environmental effects of the anti-fouling systems. This led to a worldwide ban on organotin compound applications on ships starting in 2003. In 2008, organotin compounds acting as biocide like TBT compounds were banned entirely in anti-fouling paint and included in the Rotterdam Convention and have been banned by the International Convention on the Control of Harmful Anti-fouling Systems on Ships of the International Maritime Organization. It states that ships cannot bear organotin compounds on their hulls or external parts or surfaces, unless there is a coating that forms a barrier so that organotin compounds cannot leach out to reduce exposure by allowing recovery to occur. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4042604 | 486,842 |
153,689 | The Smolin–Susskind debate refers to the series of intense postings in 2004 between Lee Smolin and Susskind, concerning Smolin's argument that the "anthropic principle cannot yield any falsifiable predictions, and therefore cannot be a part of science." It began on July 26, 2004, with Smolin's publication of "Scientific alternatives to the anthropic principle." Smolin e-mailed Susskind asking for a comment. Having not had the chance to read the paper, Susskind requested a summarization of his arguments. Smolin obliged, and on July 28, 2004, Susskind responded, saying that the logic Smolin followed "can lead to ridiculous conclusions." The next day, Smolin responded, saying that "If a large body of our colleagues feels comfortable believing a theory that cannot be proved wrong, then the progress of science could get stuck, leading to a situation in which false, but unfalsifiable theories dominate the attention of our field." This was followed by another paper by Susskind which made a few comments about Smolin's theory of "cosmic natural selection." The Smolin–Susskind debate finally ended with each of them agreeing to write a final letter which would be posted on the edge.org website, with three conditions attached: (1) No more than one letter each; (2) Neither sees the other's letter in advance; (3) No changes after the fact. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=644448 | 153,619 |
1,238,892 | Keeping with the spirit of past games, Howard promised to continue with the spirit of "big-world, do-anything"-style games, feeling that a certain size and number of choices were needed to make role-playing feel "meaningful"; but now there was to be greater emphasis on keeping the game focused. Pete Hines saw the developments between games as less an issue of design focus and more as a "natural side effect of improving and refining how the game works". If smart decisions were made, ease of play would naturally follow. "Oblivion" would include fewer NPCs and quests than "Morrowind", and mindless filler, which Howard felt the team had been guilty of in the past, would be avoided. In exchange, Producer Gavin Carter later explained, there would be a greater focus on length and depth in the quests, adding more "alternate paths", more characters "to connect with, who actually have personalities". Carter cast negative aspersions on aspects of gameplay too far removed from the game's central plot. Carter said such material was not needed, preferring instead that the focus be on the plot, on "fighting these demon lords", and that further material is "tertiary" and "takes away". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12164267 | 1,238,225 |
941,674 | Because high temperatures can significantly reduce life span or cause permanent damage to components, and the heat output of components can sometimes exceed the computer's cooling capacity, manufacturers often take additional precautions to ensure that temperatures remain within safe limits. A computer with thermal sensors integrated in the CPU, motherboard, chipset, or GPU can shut itself down when high temperatures are detected to prevent permanent damage, although this may not completely guarantee long-term safe operation. Before an overheating component reaches this point, it may be "throttled" until temperatures fall below a safe point using dynamic frequency scaling technology. Throttling reduces the operating frequency and voltage of an integrated circuit or disables non-essential features of the chip to reduce heat output, often at the cost of slightly or significantly reduced performance. For desktop and notebook computers, throttling is often controlled at the BIOS level. Throttling is also commonly used to manage temperatures in smartphones and tablets, where components are packed tightly together with little to no active cooling, and with additional heat transferred from the hand of the user. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=798370 | 941,172 |
1,187,054 | Since U.S. regulators in 2004 discovered that "P. ramorum" had spread nationwide to a number of hosts, proactive inspections of agricultural shipments have been shown to help reduce the risk of infestations of sudden oak death. Moreover, the USDA's APHIS specifically plans to stop the spread of SOD by continuing their public outreach program and by passing regulations on the transfer of agricultural products that might be a disease vector for "P. ramorum". Indeed, in Oregon and California, the USDA has successfully regulated the stock of potential host plants at nurseries to "starve" the disease of potential plant hosts. Furthermore, when managing it in nurseries, it is important to consider that nursery personnel are often required to visit sites in the field such as greenhouses, fields, and other nurseries. Therefore, a number of biosecurity measures must be taken to ensure that SOD is not unintentionally transferred to one's nursery, including driving vehicles only on paved, concrete, or gravel areas at inspection sites in order avoid contact with soil organic matter that could pose as a potential disease vector. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=589513 | 1,186,423 |
634,132 | Distribution of the Asian citrus psyllid that is a vector of the citrus greening disease, is primarily in tropical and subtropical Asia. It has been reported in all citrus-growing regions in Asia except mainland Japan. The disease has affected crops in China, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Pakistan, Thailand, the Ryukyu Islands, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan. Areas outside Asia have also reported the disease: Réunion, Mauritius, Brazil, Paraguay, and Florida in the U.S. since 2005, and in several municipalities in Mexico since 2009 On March 30, 2012, citrus greening disease was confirmed in a single citrus tree in Hacienda Heights, Los Angeles County, California. The first report of HLB in Texas occurred on January 13, 2012, from a Valencia sweet orange tree in a commercial orchard in San Juan, Texas. Prospects are bleak for the ubiquitous backyard citrus orchards of California as residential growers are unlikely to consistently use the pesticides which provide effective control in commercial orchards. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1386802 | 633,794 |
528,984 | The fine-scale interactions between marine bacteria and both dissolved and particulate organic matter underpin marine biogeochemistry, thereby supporting productivity and influencing carbon storage and sequestration in the planet's oceans. It has been historically very difficult to characterize marine environments on the microscales that are most relevant to individual bacteria. Rather, research efforts have typically sampled much larger volumes of water and made comparisons from one sampling site to another. However, at the length scales relevant to individual microbes, the ocean is an intricate and dynamic landscape of nutrient patches, at times too small to be mixed by turbulence. The capacity for microbes to actively navigate these structured environments using chemotaxis can strongly influence their nutrient uptake. Although some work has examined time-dependent chemical profiles, past investigations of chemotaxis using "E. coli" and other model organisms have routinely examined steady chemical gradients strong enough to elicit a discernible chemotactic response. However, the typical chemical gradients wild marine bacteria encounter are often very weak, ephemeral in nature, and with low background concentrations. Shallow gradients are relevant for marine bacteria because, in general, gradients become weaker as one moves away from the source. Yet, detecting such gradients at distance has tremendous value, because they point toward nutrient sources. Shallow gradients are important precisely because they can be used to navigate to regions in the vicinity of sources where gradients become steep, concentrations are high, and bacteria can acquire resources at a high rate. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17575156 | 528,710 |
138,686 | SAH is often associated with a poor outcome. The death rate (mortality) for SAH is between 40 and 50 percent, but trends for survival are improving. Of those that survive hospitalization, more than a quarter have significant restrictions in their lifestyle, and less than a fifth have no residual symptoms whatsoever. Delay in diagnosis of minor SAH (mistaking the sudden headache for migraine) contributes to poor outcome. Factors found on admission that are associated with poorer outcome include poorer neurological grade; systolic hypertension; a previous diagnosis of heart attack or SAH; liver disease; more blood and larger aneurysm on the initial CT scan; location of an aneurysm in the posterior circulation; and higher age. Factors that carry a worse prognosis during the hospital stay include occurrence of delayed ischemia resulting from vasospasm, development of intracerebral hematoma, or intraventricular hemorrhage (bleeding into the ventricles of the brain) and presence of fever on the eighth day of admission. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=718521 | 138,630 |
149,362 | In order to scale up the perovskite layer while maintaining high efficiency, various techniques have been developed to coat the perovskite film more uniformly. For example, some physical approaches are developed to promote supersaturation through rapid solvent removal, thus getting more nucleations and reducing grain growth time and solute migration. Heating, gas flow, vacuum, and anti-solvent can all assist solvent removal. And chemical additives, such as chloride additives, Lewis base additives, surfactant additive, and surface modification, can influence the crystal growth to control the film morphology. For example, a recent report of surfactant additive, such as L-α-phosphatidylcholine (LP), demonstrated the suppression of solution flow by surfactants to eliminate gaps between islands and meanwhile the surface wetting improvement of perovskite ink on the hydrophobic substrate to ensure a full coverage. Besides, LP can also passivate charge traps to further enhance the device performance, which can be used in blade coating to get a high-throughput of PSCs with minimal efficiency loss. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=43845714 | 149,301 |
1,014,017 | The neurobiological effects of physical exercise are numerous and involve a wide range of interrelated effects on brain structure, brain function, and cognition. A large body of research in humans has demonstrated that consistent aerobic exercise (e.g., 30 minutes every day) induces persistent improvements in certain cognitive functions, healthy alterations in gene expression in the brain, and beneficial forms of neuroplasticity and behavioral plasticity; some of these long-term effects include: increased neuron growth, increased neurological activity (e.g., and BDNF signaling), improved stress coping, enhanced cognitive control of behavior, improved declarative, spatial, and working memory, and structural and functional improvements in brain structures and pathways associated with cognitive control and memory. The effects of exercise on cognition have important implications for improving academic performance in children and college students, improving adult productivity, preserving cognitive function in old age, preventing or treating certain neurological disorders, and improving overall quality of life. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=34760961 | 1,013,496 |
246,414 | During the late 1950s, aerial refuelling had become so prevalent amongst the bombers operated by the U.S. Air Force's Strategic Air Command that many, such as the Convair B-58 Hustler, would operate largely or entirely out of bases in the continental United States while maintaining strategic reach. This practice was promoted to address security concerns as well as diplomatic objections from some overseas nations that did not want foreign nuclear weapon being kept on their soil. In one early demonstration of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress's global reach, performed between 16 and 18 January 1957, three B-52Bs made a non-stop flight around the world during "Operation Power Flite", during which 24,325 miles (21,145 nmi, 39,165 km) was covered in 45 hours 19 minutes (536.8 smph) with multiple in-flight refuelings being performed from KC-97s. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=237949 | 246,287 |
1,586,826 | Edgerton's claims, once very generally hailed, have not fared well. Regarding the skewed distributions in the Rigveda, Edgerton neglected to test his observations against controls, namely forms not susceptible to his theory but sharing other properties with the "test" forms such as part of speech, metrical configuration, and so on. The first scholar to look at controls was Franklin Eugene Horowitz (, but whose work actually dates from ten years earlier). Horowitz noted that for example all 65 occurrences of Vedic "suvīra-" "well-heroed" do occur in line-initial position or follow a heavy syllable (as if in accord with Edgerton's converse), but exactly the same thing is true of e.g. "supatrá-" "having beautiful wings" (which can have nothing to do with Edgerton's law). And indeed such skewing in distribution is pervasive in Vedic vocabulary: "śatam" "100", and dozens of other forms with no bearing on Edgerton's law, have exactly the same strong preference for not following a word ending with a short vowel that e.g. "śiras" "head" does, presumably by reason of beginning with a single consonant followed by a light syllable. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5500144 | 1,585,932 |
161,748 | "De novo" identification of transposons involves three steps: 1) find all repeats within the genome, 2) build a consensus of each family of sequences, and 3) classify these repeats. There are three groups of algorithms for the first step. One group is referred to as the k-mer approach, where a k-mer is a sequence of length k. In this approach, the genome is scanned for overrepresented k-mers; that is, k-mers that occur more often than is likely based on probability alone. The length k is determined by the type of transposon being searched for. The k-mer approach also allows mismatches, the number of which is determined by the analyst. Some k-mer approach programs use the k-mer as a base, and extend both ends of each repeated k-mer until there is no more similarity between them, indicating the ends of the repeats. Another group of algorithms employs a method called sequence self-comparison. Sequence self-comparison programs use databases such as AB-BLAST to conduct an initial sequence alignment. As these programs find groups of elements that partially overlap, they are useful for finding highly diverged transposons, or transposons with only a small region copied into other parts of the genome. Another group of algorithms follows the periodicity approach. These algorithms perform a Fourier transformation on the sequence data, identifying periodicities, regions that are repeated periodically, and are able to use peaks in the resultant spectrum to find candidate repetitive elements. This method works best for tandem repeats, but can be used for dispersed repeats as well. However, it is a slow process, making it an unlikely choice for genome-scale analysis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30651 | 161,663 |
1,370,735 | Following his resignation from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Burnet was offered an office at the University of Melbourne in the School of Microbiology. While at the university, he wrote 13 books on a variety of topics including immunology, ageing and cancer, and human biology. He also wrote an autobiography entitled "Changing Patterns: An Atypical Autobiography", which was released in 1968. In all, he wrote a further 16 books after his retirement from the Hall Institute. He was known for his ability to write quickly, often without a final draft, and his ability to convey a message to readers from a wide spectrum of backgrounds, but he was himself sceptical that his opinions had much influence. In 1969 he published "Cellular Immunology", considered his magnum opus on immunity, which attempted to show how various phenomena could be predicted by the clonal selection theory. The following year, he wrote "Immunological Surveillance", which expounded his established opinion that mammals could immunise themselves through their ability to detect foreign patterns in the body. He continued to maintain an intense and focused work schedule, often shunning others to keep up a heavy writing load. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=417493 | 1,369,979 |
417,896 | In July 1940, Britain had offered to give the United States access to its scientific research, and the Tizard Mission's John Cockcroft briefed American scientists on British developments. He discovered that the American project was smaller than the British, and not as far advanced. As part of the scientific exchange, the Maud Committee's findings were conveyed to the United States. Oliphant, one of the Maud Committee's members, flew to the United States in late August 1941, and discovered that vital information had not reached key American physicists. He met the Uranium Committee, and visited Berkeley, California, where he spoke persuasively to Ernest O. Lawrence, who was sufficiently impressed to commence his own research into uranium at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. Lawrence in turn spoke to James B. Conant, Arthur H. Compton and George B. Pegram. Oliphant's mission was a success; key American physicists became aware of the potential power of an atomic bomb. Armed with British data, Vannevar Bush, the director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), briefed Roosevelt and Vice President Henry A. Wallace in a meeting at the White House on 9 October 1941. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=41957579 | 417,692 |
491,739 | Bass attended Hampden-Sydney College before transferring his junior year to the University of Virginia for his undergraduate degree in psychology, which he received in 1951, and was a scholar at the US Army Medical Research Laboratory from 1953 to 1954, where he studied psychophysiology. He received his master's from the University of Kentucky in 1956. He completed his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1961. His research career began as an archaeologist, excavating Native American grave sites in the Midwestern United States during the latter 1950s and 1960s. He mentions in "Death's Acre" that this activity earned him the informal title "Indian grave-robber number one" from an Indian activist, though no clashes with Native Americans ever occurred. He worked briefly at the universities of Kansas and Nebraska during this time. He was hired by the University of Tennessee in 1971 to head their anthropology department, which was in the process of being split from the history department at the time. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2035054 | 491,485 |
79,607 | The British polemicist Thomas Gordon "incorporated Cicero into the radical ideological tradition that travelled from the mother country to the colonies in the course of the eighteenth century and decisively shaped early American political culture." Cicero's description of the immutable, eternal, and universal natural law was quoted by Burlamaqui and later by the American revolutionary legal scholar James Wilson. Cicero became John Adams's "foremost model of public service, republican virtue, and forensic eloquence." Adams wrote of Cicero that "as all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united in the same character, his authority should have great weight." Thomas Jefferson "first encountered Cicero as a schoolboy while learning Latin, and continued to read his letters and discourses throughout his life. He admired him as a patriot, valued his opinions as a moral philosopher, and there is little doubt that he looked upon Cicero's life, with his love of study and aristocratic country life, as a model for his own." Jefferson described Cicero as "the father of eloquence and philosophy." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22063 | 79,574 |
1,299,112 | Bulls can be treated in different ways. Various imidazoles have been used, but none are both safe and effective in treatment. Ipronidazole is probably most effective but, due to its low pH, frequently causes sterile abscesses at injection sites. Bulls can also remain carriers for life and can easily be susceptible to reinfection even after successful treatment. However bulls can sometimes remain carriers for life once they become infected. Cows can be treated by being left alone for around three months to allow them time to shed the vaginal and uterine lining that is affected. Semen can also be treated successfully with dimetridazole and then used for artificial insemination. Commercially available vaccines (TrichGuard, Tricovac) cannot prevent infection, but confer disease attenuation and some level of protection against complications. In a placebo-controlled trial of TrichGuard with forty prophylactically vaccinated, "T. foetus"-infected beef heifers, 95% of the heifers in the active treatment group conceived, as opposed to 70% in the placebo group. 50% in the TrichGuard-group gave birth to a live calf, compared to 20% in the placebo group. The most effective control method for eliminating the infection in a herd or an individual remains by culling the animal(s) and replacing them with virgin animals after positive test results. Cows can remain in the herd if given enough time to shed the infection or can be culled like bulls to allow faster turnover and assure the herd is clear of the infection. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7186623 | 1,298,398 |
703,064 | One can recall from only one region at a time (a bottleneck). A bottleneck in a person's cognitive navigational system could be an issue. For instance, if there were a need for a sudden detour on a long road trip. Lack of experience in a locale, or simply sheer size, can disorient one's mental layout, especially in a large and unfamiliar place with many overwhelming stimuli. In these environments, people are still able to orient themselves, and find their way around using landmarks. This ability to "prioritize objects and regions in complex scenes for selection (and) recognition" was labeled by Chun and Jiang in 1998. Landmarks give people guidance by activating "learned associations between the global context and target locations." Mallot and Gillner (2000) showed that subjects learned an association between a specific landmark and the direction of a turn, thereby furthering the relationship between associations and landmarks. Shelton and McNamara (2001) succinctly summed up why landmarks, as markers, are so helpful: "location...cannot be described without making reference to the orientation of the observer." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=858937 | 702,696 |
1,166,787 | Microscopic parasites, like viruses, protozoans that cause malaria, and others, cannot replicate on their own and rely on a host to continue their life cycles. They replicate by invading the hosts' cells and usurping the cellular machinery to replicate themselves. Eventually, unchecked replication causes the cells to burst, killing the cells and releasing the infectious organisms into the bloodstream where they can infect other cells. As cells die and toxic products of invasive organism replication accumulate, disease symptoms appear. Because this process involves specific proteins produced by the infectious organism as well as the host cell, even a very small change in a critical protein may render infection difficult or impossible. Such changes might arise by a process of mutation in the gene that codes for the protein. If the change is in the gamete, that is, the sperm or egg that join to form a zygote that grows into a human being, the protective mutation will be inherited. Since lethal diseases kill many persons who lack protective mutations, in time, many persons in regions where lethal diseases are endemic come to inherit protective mutations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973826 | 1,166,169 |
1,220,085 | Concerning the anniversary edition, Yudell and Desalle thought it strange that nothing worth adding had happened in 25 years: the book remained a primary text, and Wilson's failure to develop it weakened the edition's impact. The early chapters still seemed a "lucid and engaging" introduction to population biology, but much of the rest seemed after 25 years to lack "methodological breadth", given that it did not cover the new fields that had emerged; while barely mentioning the growing importance of phylogenetic systematics seemed "curious". They pointed out that comparing human and "animal" social evolution "is tantamount to making homology" claims, but Wilson had said nothing about the need for a methodology to test behavioural homology. The reviewers were also troubled by Wilson's attitude to the debate, remaining "contemptuous of his anti-sociobiological opposition" and "opprobrium towards Marxism" (especially Gould and Lewontin). Yudell and Desalle noted the irony that Wilson despised Marxism but advocated an "aggressive paradigm ... seeking to blaze an historical path towards the future" (as Marxism did). They argued that by demonising his opponents in this way, Wilson created support for Sociobiology "not necessarily sustainable by his data and methodologies." He was still doing that 25 years on, stated the reviewers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1149054 | 1,219,431 |
722,002 | The combined 76 aircraft tires on the Pelican far exceeds the 32 wheels of the current largest cargo aircraft, the Antonov An-225. The average load per wheel is , or meaningfully larger than the typical maximum design load of for large, long-range aircraft. Pavement loading from the Pelican may be comparatively low, though. Boeing claims that the aircraft's ground flotation characteristic, a measure tied to the ground's ability to keep a vehicle from sinking, at maximum takeoff weight is superior to that of the much-smaller McDonnell-Douglas DC-10, which imposes the most demanding flotation requirements among aircraft of its era. However, according to the designer of the Aerocon Dash 1.6 wingship (a larger, sea-based ground effect vehicle that was investigated by DARPA a few years before the Pelican was proposed), regular Pelican operation at airports with high water tables underground may result in a type of seismic wave that leads to cracks in airport terminal buildings and eventually causes greater damage within months. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1879209 | 721,622 |
585,318 | In the months that followed, some 275 Mk Vb and Vc Spitfires were delivered to the beleaguered island, with the Americans providing help by allowing the USS "Wasp" to be used to fly two lots of Spitfires to the islands. Wooden wedges were used to allow the Spitfires to leave the carrier with partial "takeoff" flap settings. (Once the aircraft had gained altitude, the pilot would open the flaps fully, the wedges would fall out and the flaps could then be closed.) In "Operation Calendar" on 20 April 1942, 47 Spitfires and pilots of 601 and 603 Squadrons flew from "Wasp" to Malta. In "Operation Bowery" on 9 May 1942, another 50 Spitfires flew from "Wasp" and 14 from "Eagle". Sixty of them landed on Malta. One Spitfire with a defective long range fuel tank landed back on the "Wasp", despite lacking a tailhook. In "Operation Style" on 3 June, a further 32 Spitfires flew to Malta from HMS "Eagle", through they were intercepted en route and four were shot down. However, the carriers were thought to be vulnerable to attack from the Luftwaffe while out at sea so in late October through to early November, a total of 12 Spitfire Vcs, equipped with a single huge 170-gallon drop tank, flew direct from Gibraltar, a distance of 1,000 miles. This meant a flight time of more than five hours. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15630676 | 585,018 |
1,809,698 | Structural biology of human proteins – The SGC has so far contributed over 2000 protein structures of human proteins of potential relevance for drug discovery into the public domain since 2003. Structures that constitute complexes with synthetic small molecules is aided by a partnership with the Diamond synchrotron in Oxfordshire. The chemical probe program prioritizes (members of) protein families that are relatively understudied, or which may be currently relevant to human biology and drug discovery. These families include epigenetic signaling, solute transport, protein proteostasis, and protein phosphorylation. The protein family approach is supported by publicly available bioinformatics tools (ChromoHub, UbiHub), family-based protein production and biochemistry, crystallography and structure determination, biophysics, and cell biology (for example target engagement assays). The SGC has (so far) contributed ~120 chemical probes into the public domain over the past decade, and >25,000 samples of these probes have been distributed to the scientific community. The chemical probes conform to the now community-standard quality criteria created by the SGC and its collaborative network. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5567462 | 1,808,677 |
2,090,348 | The start of the cold war changed the context of French policy toward Germany. Further, the U.S. Marshall Plan (the European Recovery Plan) was aimed at reviving the economies of western Europe, including west Germany. To address French concerns, the International Authority for the Ruhr (IAR) was announced at the London Six-Power Conference in June 1948 as part of the plan to establish the Federal Republic of Germany. The IAR would supervise the production, organization, trade and ownership policies of the Ruhr's coal and steel industries, and distribute the industries' products so that Marshall Plan countries would have adequate access to them. The mechanism outlined in the Ruhr Agreement to allocate coal and steel supplies was a council composed of representatives France, the US and the UK (with three votes each), and Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (with one vote each). The Allied Occupation Zones in Germany would have three votes for its representatives, as soon as it formed a government recognized by the Allies. Following the Petersberg Agreement, that role came to be held by West Germany. The Statute for the IAR was signed and came into effect on April 28, 1949. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11662516 | 2,089,145 |
2,017,098 | which is based on Newton–Raphson, but greatly reduces its computational cost by means of a decoupling approximation that is valid in most transmission networks. Many other incremental improvements exist; however, the underlying technique in all of them is still an iterative solver, either of Gauss-Seidel or of Newton type. There are two fundamental problems with all iterative schemes of this type. On the one hand, there is no guarantee that the iteration will always converge to a solution; on the other, since the system has multiple solutions, it is not possible to control which solution will be selected. As the power system approaches the point of voltage collapse, spurious solutions get closer to the correct one, and the iterative scheme may be easily attracted to one of them because of the phenomenon of Newton fractals: when the Newton method is applied to complex functions, the basins of attraction for the various solutions show fractal behavior. As a result, no matter how close the chosen initial point of the iterations (seed) is to the correct solution, there is always some non-zero chance of straying off to a different solution. These fundamental problems of iterative loadflows have been extensively documented. A simple illustration for the two-bus model is provided in Although there exist homotopic continuation techniques that alleviate the problem to some degree, the fractal nature of the basins of attraction precludes a 100% reliable method for all electrical scenarios. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=34346707 | 2,015,936 |
1,706,371 | As an extension of its science context, the term "macroscope" has also been applied in the humanities, as a generic term for any tool permitting an overview of, and insight into "big data" collections in that or related areas. For completeness, it should be mentioned that the concept of a "reverse microscope" is not entirely new: around 80 years earlier, the author Lewis Carroll in the second volume of his novel "Sylvie and Bruno", published in 1893, described a fictional professor who includes in his lecture an instrument that will shrink an elephant to the size of a mouse, that he termed the "megaloscope". The Dutch author Kees Boeke also wrote a 1957 book, "Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps", the first portion of which presents images of aspects of the Earth at ever decreasing scales and parallels the subsequent principle of the hypothetical "macroscope" at a series of zoom levels. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=64208794 | 1,705,413 |
1,551,516 | Beyond that they did much work on the calculation of orbits of comets and asteroids. Galle was called to become director of the observatory in Breslau in 1851. In 1852 Karl Christian Bruhns was added as second assistant to Encke and in 1854 he became first assistant. In 1855 Wilhelm Foerster received a position as second assistant. From 1857 Giovanni Schiaparelli studied at the institution for two years. When Bruhns transferred to Leipzig in 1860, Foerster became his successor as first assistant. In the same year Foerster, together with his co-worker Otto Lesser, discovered the asteroid (62) Erato. After Encke fell ill in 1863, he stood in as his deputy and in 1865, the year Encke died, he became director of the observatory. The observatory at this time was the most important astronomical research and educational institution in Deutschland. In 1873 Viktor Knorre came as Observator; by 1887 he had discovered the asteroids (158) Koronis, (215) Oenone, (238) Hypatia und (271) Penthesilea. From 1884 until the beginning of the 1890s Karl Friedrich Küstner was also employed as Observator; he discovered in this time the polar motion as a result of his measurement activities. From 1866 to 1900 Arthur Auwers compiled, in Berlin, his Fundamentalkatalog, a comprehensive star catalog containing 170 000 stars. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2512514 | 1,550,635 |
1,629,993 | The number of students increased systematically. In response to the growing academic community, the School received two buildings in Katowice, situated in vicinity of ul. 1 Maja and ul. Bogucicka: a classical former town hall of the Zawodzie commune (now the Rector's Office) and a school building, which was adapted to serve as a facility for academic teaching (now the building "A"). The academic year 1946/1947 was inaugurated in the new building, after the rooms have been renovated following the war damage. In the 70’s and 80’s a whole complex of new buildings was erected around the two mentioned buildings, creating the School’s campus. At the same time the status and position of the School were changing. In 1950, Polish government decided to standardize economic education across the country. Like all economic schools, the School in Katowice was nationalized and transformed into the School of Economy. Legal education at the Faculty of Public Administration was discontinued, and the Faculty of Commerce was established in its place. The well-developed and autonomous Central School of Accounting and Finance was transformed in 1950 into the Faculty of Finance and Accounting, which functioned until 1958. In addition, the Faculty of Industrial Organization was renamed the Faculty of Industrial Planning. In the academic year 1952/1953 the School was granted the right to award the academic degree of ‘magister’ to its graduates. In 1950s, the education focused on issues related to central planning, accounting and finance. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2667396 | 1,629,074 |
182,690 | In 1974, Valentin Glushko's design bureau, OKB-1 (later NPO Energiya), proposed a new family of heavy-lift rockets called RLA (). The RLA concept included the use of kerosene and liquid hydrogen as fuel, and liquid oxygen as oxidizer (both new technologies in the Soviet space program), with the shuttle orbiter being one possible payload. By 1975, NPO Energiya had come up with two competing designs for the orbiter vehicle: the MTKVP (), a 34 meter-long lifting body spaceplane launched on top of a stack of kerosene-fueled strap on boosters; and the OS-120 (), a close copy of the US Space Shuttle composed of a delta-winged spaceplane equipped with three liquid hydrogen engines, strapped to a detachable external tank and four liquid fuel boosters (NPO Energiya even considered the use of solid propellant rocket boosters, further imitating the US Shuttle's configuration). A compromise between these two proposals was achieved by NPO Energiya in January 1976 with the OK-92 (), a delta-winged orbiter equipped with two Soloviev D-30 turbofan jet engines for autonomous atmospheric flight, launched to space from a rocket stack made of a core stage with three cryogenic engines, and four kerosene-fueled boosters, each with four engines. By 1978, the OK-92 design was further refined, with its final configuration completed in June 1979. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36716 | 182,594 |
1,815,962 | In the 1980s there was heated debate over whether Library Schools should be a part of major research-oriented universities. The University of Chicago's Graduate Library School was closed in 1989 and its closing was attributed to "the divorce of the School's research activities from what the profession perceived as its needs for training." Shortly thereafter, in 1990, Columbia University's School of Library Service was closed. There were reports of fierce opposition from tenured faculty to sever ties to all library communities and reorient priorities to support newly emerging information communities as well as deemphasize professionally relevant education and practitioner connections. In 1991, coupled with the economic downturn (the University had implemented furloughs as well) there was a call for the iSchool at Maryland to be shut down. It was proposed that the school became a department rather than a self-standing college. There was a public, open meeting where the issue was debated. The school was given support by Representative Steny Hoyer. In addition, past deans, faculty and alumni were on hand to counter the proposal. Former students spoke up in defense of the program, attributing their successes in public service jobs to the college's educational programs. The school was able to avoid being shut down. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13618147 | 1,814,928 |
72,849 | Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. He wrote works on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history and philology. Leibniz also made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in probability theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics and computer science. In addition, he contributed to the field of library science: while serving as overseer of the Wolfenbüttel library in Germany, he devised a cataloging system that would have served as a guide for many of Europe's largest libraries. Leibniz's contributions to this vast array of subjects were scattered in various learned journals, in tens of thousands of letters and in unpublished manuscripts. He wrote in several languages, primarily in Latin, French and German, but also in English, Italian and Dutch. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12281 | 72,822 |
13,238 | In 1953, McDonnell Aircraft began work on revising its F3H Demon naval fighter, seeking expanded capabilities and better performance. The company developed several projects, including a variant powered by a Wright J67 engine, and variants powered by two Wright J65 engines, or two General Electric J79 engines. The J79-powered version promised a top speed of Mach 1.97. On 19 September 1953, McDonnell approached the United States Navy with a proposal for the "Super Demon". Uniquely, the aircraft was to be modular, as it could be fitted with one- or two-seat noses for different missions, with different nose cones to accommodate radar, photo cameras, four 20 mm (.79 in) cannon, or 56 FFAR unguided rockets in addition to the nine hardpoints under the wings and the fuselage. The Navy was sufficiently interested to order a full-scale mock-up of the F3H-G/H, but felt that the upcoming Grumman XF9F-9 and Vought XF8U-1 already satisfied the need for a supersonic fighter. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11759 | 13,233 |
514,096 | The Voskhod 1 mission was the first three-man mission attempted by the USSR. The development for this mission was formally approved on 13 April 1964. This mission used a modified Vostok spacecraft that had been designed for previous manned missions. The modified Vostok spacecraft was renamed Voskhod 1 for the new three-man missions. The Voskhod 1 required many modifications since three cosmonauts had to fit in the capsule that had previously been designed for only one person. Some modifications also had to be made to the 11A57 launch vehicle which was used to launch the Voskhod 1. The first major modification was replacing the one ejection seat with three couches since there were now three cosmonauts. These couches included a suspension system to absorb the shock from launch and landing. Because of space and weight requirements these new seats could not be ejection seats. This resulted in a new parachute mechanism being needed to soft land the entire crew capsule. In addition, the limited space did not allow the cosmonauts to wear pressurized spacesuits and they were only able to wear training suits. This was not a major issue since the crew capsule was pressurized. However, it was less safe because the crew would not survive if the capsule depressurized while in space. In previous missions if the primary retrograde rocket failed the capsule would remain in orbit for 10 days before returning to earth. However, with a crew of three they would not be able to survive for that long. Because of this a backup retrograde rocket was added to deorbit the spacecraft in the event that the primary retrograde rocket failed. In addition to these modifications to Voskhod 1, the third stage of the 11A57 launch vehicle was also changed from the Block Ye to the more powerful Block I. This was done because all the modifications added nearly 600 kilograms of weight to Voskhod 1. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=195218 | 513,830 |
1,898,671 | In May 2020, Vietnam declared that their COVID-19 vaccine was developed after scientists successfully generated the novel coronavirus antigen in the lab. The vaccine has been developed by collaborating scientists at VABIOTECH in Hanoi and the Bristol University, it will be tested further in animals and evaluated for safety and effectiveness before a manufacturing process is embarked on. According to the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, it will take at least 12–18 months to develop vaccine that can work safely on human. During the testing phase, researchers experimented by injecting the mice in many ways and administering multiple antigen doses, with some mice injected with one or two doses of 3-10 micrograms each. After 10 days, 50 mice were in good health and being closely monitored for immune responses. After gaining positive results with immune response and antibody production, the trial vaccine would be developed into a complete and stable version qualified to be used on humans. The research team would also develop commercial production procedures for mass-production, including up to tens of millions of units. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=67288474 | 1,897,587 |
1,529,516 | Ramsay is said to have brought great energy to the talk of improving the college. He embarked on a round of after-dinner parties to promote the college, and in 1883 he was able to build a purpose-built laboratory. In 1884 the college came close to bankruptcy when the treasurer announced that funds would dry up within two months. The college survived, but two professors were given notice of dismissal and their departments were placed on a self-supporting notice. At this time Welsh colleges were able to receive financial support but not English ones, so English colleges therefore decided to lobby the Government for funding. The result was that English colleges would receive a grant of £15000, of which Bristol gained the modest share of £1,200. Ramsay resigned his post in 1887 after being appointed chair of chemistry at University College, London. Although no longer principal, after his resignation he used his influence to lobby the college council to appoint his assistant Morris Travers to the chair of chemistry when the position became vacant. Travers is credited with pushing forward the Charter campaign during the beginning of the 20th century. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1340505 | 1,528,652 |
1,537,329 | Hans Dieter Betz was born and raised in Germany. He received his theological education at Bethel and Mainz in Germany, and at Cambridge in England. Having studied with Herbert Braun, he graduated as Doctor of Theology and "Habilitation" at Mainz (1957, 1966); Dr. h.c. Erlangen. His list of scholarly publications includes New Testament literature, esp. on Paul's letters, as well as on Hellenistic history of religions, writing in English and German. He served also as editor of the lexica "Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart" (4th ed. 1998-2005) and "Religion Past and Present" (2007-2014). He was a Reformed Tradition pastor until he went to the United States in 1963. From 1963 to 1978, he taught at the School of Theology (now Claremont School of Theology) and the Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University) in California. From 1978 on he taught as the Shailer Mathews Professor of New Testament at the University of Chicago Divinity School and in the Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature in the Humanities Division. He is an ordained member of the Presbytery of Chicago, United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Betz is also a past president of the Chicago Society of Biblical Research (1983-1984), the Society of Biblical Literature (1997), and the international Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (1999). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25427364 | 1,536,458 |
502,635 | On 27 December 2010, the Minister for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, during a visit with Rom at the Madras Crocodile Bank, announced the formation of a National Tri-State Chambal Sanctuary Management and Coordination Committee for gharial conservation on 1,600 km of the National Chambal Sanctuary for gharials along the Chambal River in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. The committee will comprise representatives of the states' water resources ministries, state departments of irrigation and power, Wildlife Institute of India, Madras Crocodile Bank Trust, the Gharial Conservation Alliance, Development Alternatives, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Worldwide Fund for Nature, and the divisional forest officers of the three states. The committee will plan strategies for protection of gharials and their habitat. This will involve further research on the species and its ecology and socioeconomic evaluation of dependent riparian communities. Funding for this new initiative will be mobilized as a subscheme of the Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats in the amount of Rs.50 to 80 million (US$1 to 1.7 million) each year for five years. This project has long been advocated by Rom Whitaker. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4181224 | 502,377 |
57,932 | Michael Spence wrote that "Now comes a ... powerful, wave of digital technology that is replacing labor in increasingly complex tasks. This process of labor substitution and disintermediation has been underway for some time in service sectors—think of ATMs, online banking, enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, mobile payment systems, and much more. This revolution is spreading to the production of goods, where robots and 3D printing are displacing labor." In his view, the vast majority of the cost of digital technologies comes at the start, in the design of hardware (e.g. 3D printers) and, more important, in creating the software that enables machines to carry out various tasks. "Once this is achieved, the marginal cost of the hardware is relatively low (and declines as scale rises), and the marginal cost of replicating the software is essentially zero. With a huge potential global market to amortize the upfront fixed costs of design and testing, the incentives to invest [in digital technologies] are compelling." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1305947 | 57,907 |
1,886,956 | Klein et al first suggested a water molecule assisted mechanism. A single water molecule possibly held in place by hydrogen bonding with the carboxylate group of the persistent Asp144 residue transfers protons from the GAR-N to the THF-N. The nucleophilic nitrogen on the terminal amino group of GAR attacks the carbonyl carbon of the formyl group on THF pushing negative charge onto the oxygen. Klein suggests that His108 stabilizes the transition state by hydrogen bonding with the negatively charged oxygen and that the reformation of the carbonyl double bond results in breaking the THF-N - formyl bond. Calculations by Qiao et al suggest that the water assisted stepwise proton transfer from Gar-N to THF-N is 80-100 kj/mol more favorable than the concerted transfer suggested by Klein. The mechanism shown is suggested by Qiao et al, whom admittedly did not consider surrounding residues in their calculations. Much of the early active site mapping on GAR TFase was determined with the bacterial enzyme owing to the quantity available from its overexpression in E. coli. Using a bromoacetyl dideazafolate affinity analog James Inglese and colleagues first identified Asp144 as an active site residue likely involved in the formyl transfer mechanism. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24837895 | 1,885,874 |
259,545 | In recent years, a significant effort has been devoted to investigation of various properties of supercritical fluids. This has been an exciting field with a long history since 1822 when Baron Charles Cagniard de la Tour discovered supercritical fluids while conducting experiments involving the discontinuities of the sound in a sealed gun barrel filled with various fluids at high temperature. More recently, supercritical fluids have found application in a variety of fields, ranging from the extraction of floral fragrance from flowers to applications in food science such as creating decaffeinated coffee, functional food ingredients, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, polymers, powders, bio- and functional materials, nano-systems, natural products, biotechnology, fossil and bio-fuels, microelectronics, energy and environment. Much of the excitement and interest of the past decade is due to the enormous progress made in increasing the power of relevant experimental tools. The development of new experimental methods and improvement of existing ones continues to play an important role in this field, with recent research focusing on dynamic properties of fluids. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=762691 | 259,411 |
1,977,060 | Interscan proved to have many advantages over other precision landing systems. It allows a wide selection of channels to avoid interference with other nearby airports; has excellent performance in all weather; and gives freedom to locate antennae anywhere at an airport. Some installations became operational in the 1990s and more were set up subsequently in Europe. NASA has operated a similar system to land Space Shuttles. However, Interscan has not become widely deployed worldwide, largely because the US Federal Aviation Administration has developed the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), which augments the satellite-based Global Positioning System (GPS). Although WAAS is cheaper and conforms to ILS Category I, its accuracy is under 1.0 metre laterally and under 1.5 metres vertically, which is a particular concern at locations that frequently suffer from low visibility. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=610478 | 1,975,922 |
806,709 | Perhaps one of the more innovative solutions is millipede memory, developed by IBM. Millipede is, in essence, a punched card rendered using nanotechnology in order to dramatically increase areal density. Although it was planned to introduce Millipede as early as 2003, unexpected problems in development delayed this until 2005, by which point it was no longer competitive with flash. In theory the technology offers storage densities on the order of 1 Tbit/in² (≈155 Gbit/cm), greater than even the best hard drive technologies currently in use (perpendicular recording offers 636 Gbit/in² (≈98.6 Gbit/cm) as of Dec. 2011), but future heat-assisted magnetic recording and patterned media together could support densities of 10 Tbit/in² (≈1.55 Tbit/cm). However, slow read and write times for memories this large seem to limit this technology to hard drive replacements as opposed to high-speed RAM-like uses, although to a very large degree the same is true of flash as well. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=173874 | 806,280 |
560,718 | Rifamycins were first isolated in 1957 from a fermentation culture of "Streptomyces mediterranei" at the laboratory of Gruppo Lepetit SpA in Milan by two scientist named Piero Sensi and Maria Teresa Timbal, working with the Israeli scientist Pinhas Margalith. Initially, a family of closely related antibiotics was discovered referred to as Rifamycin A, B, C, D, E. The only component of this mixture sufficiently stable to isolate in a pure form was Rifamycin B, which unfortunately was poorly active. However, further studies showed that while Rifamycin B was essentially inactive, it was spontaneously oxidized and hydrolyzed in aqueous solutions to yield the highly active Rifamycin S. Simple reduction of Rifamycin S yielded the hydroquinone form called Rifamycin SV, which became the first member of this class to enter clinical use as an intravenous antibiotic. Further chemical modification of Rifamycin SV yielded an improved analog Rifamide, which was also introduced into clinical practice, but was similarly limited to intravenous use. After an extensive modification program, Rifampin was eventually produced, which is orally available and has become a mainstay of Tuberculosis therapy | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=928130 | 560,429 |
169,284 | As "Homo" migrated into open savannah environments, encounters with natural fires must have become more frequent and significant. It is possible that "H. ergaster" were the earliest humans to master the control of fire, which they may have used for cooking purposes. Cooking renders both meat and plant foods more digestible, which might have been important since the guts of "H. ergaster" were reduced in size compared to those of their ancestors. Though "H. ergaster"/"H. erectus" is frequently assumed to have been the earliest "Homo" to control fire, concrete evidence is somewhat lacking in the fossil record, perhaps partly due to the difficulty for actual evidence of fire usage to be preserved. Two of the earliest sites commonly claimed to preserve evidence of fire usage are FxJj20 at Koobi Fora and GnJi 1/6E near Lake Baringo, both in Kenya and both dated as up to 1.5 million years old. The evidence at FxJj20 consists of burned sediments and heat-altered stone tools, whereas GnJi 1/6E preserves large clasts of baked clay, associated with stone tools and faunal remains. Though it is difficult to exclude a natural origin for the fire residue evidenced, the sites remain strong candidates for early fire use. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=276745 | 169,194 |
310,115 | Some manufacturers commonly design higher joule-rated surge protectors by connecting multiple MOVs in parallel and this can produce a misleading rating. Since individual MOVs have slightly different voltage thresholds and non-linear responses when exposed to the same voltage curve, any given MOV might be more sensitive than others. This can cause one MOV in a group to conduct more (a phenomenon called current hogging), leading to possible overuse and eventual premature failure of that component. However the other MOVs in the group do help a little as they start to conduct as the voltage continues to rise as it does since a MOV does not have a sharp threshold. It may start to short at 270 volts but not reach full short until 450 or more volts. A second MOV might start at 290 volts and another at 320 volts so they all can help clamp the voltage, and at full current there is a series ballast effect that improves current sharing, but stating the actual joule rating as the sum of all the individual MOVs does not accurately reflect the total clamping ability. The first MOV may bear more of the burden and fail earlier. One MOV manufacturer recommends using fewer but bigger MOVs (e.g.60 mm vs 40 mm diameter) if they can fit in the device and to match them and derate them. In some cases it may take four 40 mm MOVs to be equivalent to one 60 mm MOV. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=414738 | 309,948 |
861,216 | An RTU might even be a small process control unit with a small database for PID, Alarming, Filtering, Trending and other functions complemented with some BASIC (programming language) tasks. Modern RTUs typically support the IEC 61131-3 programming standard for programmable logic controllers. Since RTUs may be routinely deployed in pipeline and grid guarding systems, or in other hard-to-reach or extreme environments (for example in the Biosphere 2 project), they are required to operate under harsh conditions, and implement energy-saving measures (such as switching off IO modules when not in use). For example, it communicates via RS485 or wireless communication links in a multi-drop configuration. In this type of configuration it is a remote unit that collects data and performs simple control tasks. It does not have moving parts and uses extremely low power and is often solar powered. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=417976 | 860,757 |
172,517 | ESC is built on top of an anti-lock brake system, and all ESC-equipped vehicles are fitted with traction control. ESC components include a yaw rate sensor, a lateral acceleration sensor, a steering wheel sensor, and an upgraded integrated control unit. In the US, federal regulations have required that ESC be installed as a standard feature on all passenger cars and light trucks as of the 2012 model year. According to NHTSA research, ABS in 2005 cost an estimated US$368; ESC cost a further US$111. The retail price of ESC varies; as a stand-alone option it retails for as little as US$250. ESC was once rarely offered as a sole option, and was generally not available for aftermarket installation. Instead, it was frequently bundled with other features or more expensive trims, so the cost of a package that included ESC was several thousand dollars. Nonetheless, ESC is considered highly cost-effective and may pay for itself in reduced insurance premiums. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=420943 | 172,426 |
969,975 | One of the major challenges to the public acceptance of xeriscaping is the cultural attachment to turf grass lawns. Originally implemented in England, lawns have become in some regions a symbol of prosperity, order, and community. In the United States, turf grasses are so common that it is the single most irrigated nonfood crop by surface area, covering nearly . Despite the high water, fertilizer, and maintenance costs associated with lawns, they have become the social norm in urban and suburban areas, even if they are rarely used for recreational or other purposes. Xeriscaping offers an alternative to the over-use of turf grass lawns, but are not widely accepted because of preconceived notions of what it means to xeriscape. Xeriscaping can include lawn areas but seeks to reduce them to areas that will actually be used, rather than using them as a default landscaping plan. Furthermore, xeriscaping is closely linked to movements and ideologies that advocate for more natural vegetation in residential and urban areas. One form of xeriscaping that has received a lot of attention is the implementation of pocket forests. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18952530 | 969,465 |
1,238,149 | The species was named after the American physician Simon Flexner; the genus Shigella is named after Japanese physician Kiyoshi Shiga, who researched the cause of dysentery. Shiga entered the Tokyo Imperial University School of Medicine in 1892, during which he attended a lecture by Dr. Shibasaburo Kitasato. Shiga was impressed by Dr. Kitasato's intellect and confidence, so after graduating, he went to work for him as a research assistant at Institute for Infectious Diseases. In 1897, Shiga focused his efforts on what the Japanese referred to as a "Sekiri" (dysentery) outbreak. These epidemics were detrimental to the Japanese people and occurred often in the late 19th century. The 1897 "sekiri" epidemic affected >91,000, with a mortality rate of >20%. Shiga studied 32 dysentery patients and used Koch's Postulates to successfully isolate and identify the bacterium causing the disease. He continued to study and characterize the bacterium, identifying its methods of toxin production i.e Shiga Toxin, and worked tirelessly to create a vaccine for the disease. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3041236 | 1,237,484 |
931,483 | The clearest example of the coordination of muscles into complex movement in the motor cortex comes from the work of Graziano and colleagues on the monkey brain. They used electrical stimulation on a behavioral time scale, such as for half a second instead of the more typical hundredth of a second. They found that this type of stimulation of the monkey motor cortex often evoked complex, meaningful actions. For example, stimulation of one site in the cortex would cause the hand to close, move to the mouth, and the mouth to open. Stimulation of another site would cause the hand to open, rotate until the grip faced outward, and the arm to project out as if the animal were reaching. Different complex movements were evoked from different sites and these movements were mapped in the same orderly manner in all monkeys tested. Computational models showed that the normal movement repertoire of a monkey, if arranged on a sheet such that similar movements are placed near each other, will result in a map that matches the actual map found in the monkey motor cortex. This work suggests that the motor cortex does not truly contain a homunculus-type map of the body. Instead, the deeper principle may be a rendering of the movement repertoire onto the cortical surface. To the extent that the movement repertoire breaks down partly into the actions of separate body parts, the map contains a rough and overlapping body arrangement noted by researchers over the past century. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1188574 | 930,991 |
345,354 | The roots of software synthesis go back as far as the 1950s, when Max Mathews of Bell Labs wrote the MUSIC-N programming language, which was capable of non-real-time sound generation. Reality, by Dave Smith's Seer Systems was an early synthesizer that ran directly on a host computer's CPU. Reality achieved a low latency through tight driver integration, and therefore could run only on Creative Labs soundcards. Syntauri Corporation's Alpha Syntauri was another early software-based synthesizer. It ran on the Apple IIe computer and used a combination of software and the computer's hardware to produce additive synthesis. Some systems use dedicated hardware to reduce the load on the host CPU, as with Symbolic Sound Corporation's Kyma System, and the Creamware/Sonic Core Pulsar/SCOPE systems, which power an entire recording studio's worth of instruments, effect units, and mixers. The ability to construct full MIDI arrangements entirely in computer software allows a composer to render a finalized result directly as an audio file. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19996 | 345,173 |
751,659 | The question of embryology is discussed among a number of patristic authors, largely in terms of theological questions such as whether the fetus has value and/or when it begins to have value. (Although a number of Christian authors continued the classical discussions on the description of the development of the embryo, such as Jacob of Serugh. Passing reference to the embryo also appears in the eighth hymn of Ephrem the Syrian's "Paradise Hymns".) Many patristic treatments of embryology continued in the stream of Greek tradition. The earlier Greek and Roman view that it was not was reversed and all pre-natal infanticide was condemned. Tertullian held that the soul was present from the moment of conception. The Quinisext Council concluded that "we pay no attention to the subtle division as to whether the foetus is formed or unformed". In this time, then, the Roman practice of child exposure came to an end, where unwanted yet birthed children, usually females, were discarded by the parents to die. Other more liberal traditions followed Augustine, who instead viewed that the animation of life began on the 40th day in males and the 80th day in females but not prior. Before the 40th day for men and 80th day for women, the embryo was referred to as the "embryo informatus", and after this period was reached, it was referred to as the "embryo formatus". The notion originating from the Greeks that the male embryo developed faster remained in various authors until it was experimentally disproven by Andreas Ottomar Goelicke in 1723. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=162717 | 751,260 |
1,124,261 | In order for gene editing technologies to make the leap towards safe and widespread use in the clinic, the rate of off-target modification needs to be rendered obsolete. The safety of gene therapy treatment is of utmost concern, especially during clinical trials when off-target modifications can block the further development of a candidate product. Perhaps the most well-known example of modern gene therapy is CAR-T therapy, which is used for the treatment of B-cell lymphoma. To limit the rate of off-target cleavage, the therapy uses a highly specific and finely tuned TALEN, which has proven to have little-to-no background off-target interaction. CAR-T immunotherapy is an "ex vivo" procedure, which means that the patient's immune cells (in this case T-cells) are extracted and edited using designer nucleases. While TALEN system development is expensive and time-consuming, research and engineering modifications have drastically limited their rate of off-target interaction. However, patients receiving the treatment are still monitored frequently and will be for the next 15 years so that off-target effects and immunogenic responses can be analyzed and brought into consideration as new gene therapies are brought to clinical trial. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=56710049 | 1,123,687 |
450,486 | In 1913, Oskar von Miller of the Deutsches Museum commissioned Carl Zeiss Works to design a mechanism that projects an image of celestial bodies onto a dome. This was achieved by Walther Bauersfeld and the invention became known as a planetarium when it debuted in 1923. Its popularity quickly spread, and by 1929, there were fifteen planetariums in Germany, two in Italy, one in Russia, and one in Austria. Max Adler, a former executive with Sears, Roebuck & Co. in Chicago, Illinois, had recently retired to focus on philanthropic endeavors, primarily on behalf of musical and Jewish communities. However, after listening to a friend describe a Munich planetarium, Adler decided that a planetarium would fit in well within the emerging Museum Campus in Chicago. Adler visited the Munich planetarium with his cousin, architect Ernest Grunsfeld Jr., whom Adler commissioned to design the Chicago structure. He also learned about a sale of astronomical instruments and antiques by W. M. Mensing in Amsterdam, which he purchased the following year. The Mensing Collection became the focus of the Astronomical Museum. Adler offered $500,000 in 1928 for the construction of the first planetarium in the Western Hemisphere. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=208446 | 450,267 |
1,780,568 | Two days later, the team would go on to beat San Francisco at home 66–52. Despite shooting 58 percent in the first half and building a lead of 24 at one point, the Bulldogs shot just 8 of 27 in the second half. They were led by Olynyk, who had 13 points, eight rebounds, three assists, three steals, and one assist. The team then travelled to Loyola Marymount on January 31, where they would rout the Lions 88–43. The team shot 13-for-21 from behind the three-point line and shot 54.4% from the field. Gary Bell, Jr. led the team with 15 points, which were entirely three-pointers. The team would face a tougher task when they went to San Diego two days later. The Zags left 36–27 at halftime, but San Diego would go on a run to drop the Gonzaga lead to 51–50. They trailed 57–53 with 7-and-a-half minutes left before outscoring the Toreros 12–6. Stockton would hit a runner in the lane with 55.9 seconds left, but Olynyk would miss the front end of a one-and-one to give San Diego a chance to win the game with eight seconds left. However, Harris would go on to block the last-second shot to secure the 65–63 victory. Harris scored 18 points and eight rebounds, while Olynyk and Bell added 15 and 13, respectively. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36171940 | 1,779,564 |
1,387,374 | Submarines when submerged are shielded by seawater from all ordinary radio signals, and therefore are cut off from communication with military command authorities. VLF radio waves can penetrate 50–75 feet into seawater and have been used since WW II to communicate with submarines, but the submarine must rise close to the surface, making it vulnerable to detection. In 1958, the realization that ELF waves could penetrate deeper into seawater, to normal submarine operating depths led U.S. physicist Nicholas Christofilos to suggest that the U.S. Navy use them to communicate with submarines. The U.S. military researched many different types of antenna for use at ELF frequencies. Cristofilos proposed applying currents to the Earth to create a vertical loop antenna, and it became clear that this was the most practical design. The feasibility of the ground dipole idea was tested in 1962 with a 42 km leased power line in Wyoming, and in 1963 with a 176 km prototype wire antenna extending from West Virginia to North Carolina. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9920139 | 1,386,607 |
767,730 | Modern day control engineering is a relatively new field of study that gained significant attention during the 20th century with the advancement of technology. It can be broadly defined or classified as practical application of control theory. Control engineering plays an essential role in a wide range of control systems, from simple household washing machines to high-performance F-16 fighter aircraft. It seeks to understand physical systems, using mathematical modelling, in terms of inputs, outputs and various components with different behaviors; to use control system design tools to develop controllers for those systems; and to implement controllers in physical systems employing available technology. A system can be mechanical, electrical, fluid, chemical, financial or biological, and its mathematical modelling, analysis and controller design uses control theory in one or many of the time, frequency and complex-s domains, depending on the nature of the design problem. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7011 | 767,318 |
911,932 | One central and often ignored aspect of sustainable architecture is building placement. Although the ideal environmental home or office structure is often envisioned as an isolated place, this kind of placement is usually detrimental to the environment. First, such structures often serve as the unknowing frontlines of suburban sprawl. Second, they usually increase the energy consumption required for transportation and lead to unnecessary auto emissions. Ideally, most building should avoid suburban sprawl in favor of the kind of light urban development articulated by the New Urbanist movement. Careful mixed use zoning can make commercial, residential, and light industrial areas more accessible for those traveling by foot, bicycle, or public transit, as proposed in the Principles of Intelligent Urbanism. The study of permaculture, in its holistic application, can also greatly help in proper building placement that minimizes energy consumption and works with the surroundings rather than against them, especially in rural and forested zones. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2704720 | 911,453 |
1,158,537 | Greene and his colleagues carried out fMRI experiments in order to investigate which regions of the brain were activated in subjects while responding to 'personal dilemmas' such as the footbridge dilemma and 'impersonal dilemmas' such as the switch dilemma. 'Personal dilemmas' were defined as any satisfying three conditions: a) The action in question could reasonably be expected to lead to bodily harm, b) The harm is inflicted in particular persons or members of a particular group and c) The harm is not a result of diverting a previously existing threat onto another party. All other dilemmas were classed as 'impersonal'. It was observed that when responding to personal dilemmas, the subjects displayed increased activity in regions of the brain associated with emotion (the medial Prefrontal cortex, the posterior Cingulate cortex/Precuneus, the posterior Superior temporal sulcus/Inferior parietal lobule and the Amygdala), while when they responded to impersonal dilemmas, they displayed increased activity in regions of the brain associated with working memory (the Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the Parietal lobe). In recent work, Greene has stated that the Amygdala is primarily responsible for the emotional response, whilst the Ventromedial prefrontal cortex is responsible for weighing up the consequentialist response against the emotional response. Thus, three brain regions are primarily implicated in the making of moral judgements. This gives way to what Greene calls the "Central Tension Principle": "Characteristically deontological judgements are preferentially supported by automatic emotional responses, while characteristically consequentialist judgments are preferentially supported by conscious reasoning and allied processes of cognitive control". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42621632 | 1,157,923 |
662,502 | A tricolor roundel was introduced by the US Army Air Service in February 1918 for commonality with the other European Allies, all of whom used similar roundels. American aircraft also used vertically-striped British and French style tricolors on the rudders during World War I, the British and French markings having the blue stripe forward, while American regulations specified that their aircraft have the red stripe forward although some of their aircraft had the colors in the French order. The order of the USAAS roundel's colors were similar to those of the defunct Imperial Russian Air Service. No connection existed between the US roundel and other Allied forces' military aircraft services, beyond the fact that the United States had joined the Allies of World War I and was using a tricolor roundel in what was now an available order. Tsarist aircraft often used a significantly larger white central circle, while the narrower red and blue rings on such large white-centered variant insignia were often separated with additional white rings. From at least as early as the timeframe of the deployment of the "First Marine Aviation Force" in France during July 1918 until roughly 1922, the USMC's aviation units added an American eagle atop the roundel and a fouled anchor superimposed behind the roundel, mimicking the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor emblem on the fuselage sides in the manner of a unit insignia. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36055216 | 662,157 |
243,660 | The authenticity of Philo's description of a cardan suspension has been doubted by some authors on the ground that the part of Philo's "Pneumatica" which describes the use of the gimbal survived only in an Arabic translation of the early 9th century. Thus, as late as 1965, the sinologist Joseph Needham suspected Arab interpolation. However, Carra de Vaux, author of the French translation which still provides the basis for modern scholars, regards the "Pneumatics" as essentially genuine. The historian of technology George Sarton (1959) also asserts that it is safe to assume the Arabic version is a faithful copying of Philo's original, and credits Philon explicitly with the invention. So does his colleague Michael Lewis (2001). In fact, research by the latter scholar (1997) demonstrates that the Arab copy contains sequences of Greek letters which fell out of use after the 1st century, thereby strengthening the case that it is a faithful copy of the Hellenistic original, a view recently also shared by the classicist Andrew Wilson (2002). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=342078 | 243,533 |
760,915 | In April 1942, the RAF's Air Fighting Development Unit (AFDU) tested the Mustang and found its performance inadequate at higher altitudes. As such, it was to be used to replace the P-40 in Army Cooperation Command squadrons, but the commanding officer was so impressed with its maneuverability and low-altitude speeds, he invited Ronnie Harker (from Rolls-Royce's Flight Test establishment) to fly it. Rolls-Royce engineers rapidly realized equipping the Mustang with a Merlin 61 engine with its two-speed two-stage supercharger would substantially improve performance. The company started converting five aircraft as the Mustang Mk X. Apart from the engine installation, which utilized custom-built engine mounts designed by Rolls-Royce and a standard -diameter four-bladed Rotol propeller from a Spitfire Mk IX, the Mk X was a straightforward adaptation of the Mk I airframe, keeping the same radiator duct design. The Vice-Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Sir Wilfrid R. Freeman, lobbied vociferously for Merlin-powered Mustangs, insisting two of the five experimental Mustang Xs be handed over to Carl Spaatz for trials and evaluation by the U.S. Eighth Air Force in Britain. The high-altitude performance improvement was remarkable: the Mk X (serial number AM208) reached at , and "AL975" tested at an absolute ceiling of . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18854620 | 760,509 |
1,811,864 | Moore is the former nautical archaeology curator at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, North Carolina and is considered the project expert on Blackbeard. Currently he is the Director of Archaeology and Research for Intersal, Inc. which discovered the "Queen Anne's Revenge". He has appeared in the documentaries "Drain the Oceans Pirate Ships of the Caribbean" (National Geographic), "Real Pirates of the Caribbean" (History Channel), "Secrets of the Dead: Blackbeard's Lost Ship" (PBS), "Secrets: Blackbeard's Ship" (Smithsonian Channel), the "Pirates" episode of "Biography" and on the "Pirate Tech" episode of "Modern Marvels". He was also responsible for much of the underwater mapping on the "Queen Anne's Revenge" wrecksite and updating the site plan. The "Queen Anne's Revenge" lies in 28 feet (8.5m) of water about one mile (1.6 km) offshore of Fort Macon State Park (34°41′44″N 76°41′20″W), Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. Thirty-one cannons have been identified to date and more than 250,000 artifacts have been recovered. The cannon are of different origins such as; Swedish, English and possibly French, and of different sizes as would be expected with a colonial pirate crew. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33839434 | 1,810,831 |
2,198,587 | During the dramatic landscape transition occurring throughout Beringia from the Pleistocene LGM into the early Holocene the arid tundra was replaced as shrubs expanded in warmer and wetter periods, eventually creating the mosaic of peatlands, boreal forest, and thaw lakes that characterizes the region today. During this time the boreal forest again advanced northward as beavers and trees (spruce, birch, and poplar) expanded on the Seward Peninsula, eventually expanding beyond even the 20th century extent of these species. However, the onset of neoglacial cooling after the Holocene climatic optimum restricted these species to their present distribution as relatively cool climatic conditions likely limited reproduction of taller stature vegetation. At the beginning stages of the transition from the LGM into the middle Holocene thermal maximum the landscape continued to transform as peatland and thaw lakes formed at high rate. However, these changes reached a peak between 11 and 10 ka prior to decreasing throughout the early Holocene as changing seasonality rather than temperature alone modified landscape processes and vegetation shifts. Shifting range limits and plant assemblages were further impacted by soil type, as a result vegetation change was not controlled by climatic conditions alone. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=58657379 | 2,197,336 |
677,910 | The earlier stated complexities with solving topology optimization problems using binary variables has caused the community to search for other options. One is the modelling of the densities with continuous variables. The material densities can now also attain values between zero and one. Gradient based algorithms that handle large amounts of continuous variables and multiple constraints are available. But the material properties have to be modelled in a continuous setting. This is done through interpolation. One of the most implemented interpolation methodologies is the Solid Isotropic Material with Penalisation method (SIMP). This interpolation is essentially a power law formula_10. It interpolates the Young's modulus of the material to the scalar selection field. The value of the penalisation parameter formula_11 is generally taken between formula_12. This has been shown to confirm the micro-structure of the materials. In the SIMP method a lower bound on the Young's modulus is added, formula_13, to make sure the derivatives of the objective function are non-zero when the density becomes zero. The higher the penalisation factor, the more SIMP penalises the algorithm in the use of non-binary densities. Unfortunately, the penalisation parameter also introduces non-convexities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1082645 | 677,556 |
874,992 | Beginning in 1915, Bayer set up a number of shell corporations and subsidiaries in the United States, to hedge against the possibility of losing control of its American assets if the U.S. should enter the war and to allow Bayer to enter other markets (e.g., army uniforms). After the U.S. declared war on Germany in April 1917, alien property custodian A. Mitchell Palmer began investigating German-owned businesses, and soon turned his attention to Bayer. To avoid having to surrender all profits and assets to the government, Bayer's management shifted the stock to a new company, nominally owned by Americans but controlled by the German-American Bayer leaders. Palmer, however, soon uncovered this scheme and seized all of Bayer's American holdings. After the Trading with the Enemy Act was amended to allow sale of these holdings, the government auctioned off the Rensselaer plant and all Bayer's American patents and trademarks, including even the Bayer brand name and the Bayer cross logo. It was bought by a patent medicine company, Sterling Products, Inc. The rights to Bayer Aspirin and the U.S. rights to the Bayer name and trademarks were sold back to Bayer AG in 1994 for US$1 billion. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16283254 | 874,530 |
1,282,990 | The major medical application for which this design technology was invented in the 1980s was for imaging the human heart, specifically to detect coronary calcium. The heart never stops moving, and some important structures, such as arteries, move several times their diameter during each heartbeat. Rapid imaging is therefore important to prevent blurring of moving structures during the scan. EBT detection of calcium deposits is accurate, fast and involves lower exposure to ionising radiation than conventional CT. Patients are exposed to radiation for a shorter period as it is faster in creating multiple images of the heart. The most advanced current commercial designs can perform image sweeps in as little as 0.025 seconds. By comparison, the fastest mechanically swept X-ray tube designs require about 0.25 seconds to perform an image sweep. For reference, current coronary artery angiography imaging is usually performed at 30 frames/second or 0.033 seconds/frame; EBT is far closer to this than mechanically swept CT machines. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=907710 | 1,282,294 |
299,757 | Entering the season-closing 6 Hours of Bahrain, Bernhard, Hartley and Webber led the World Endurance Drivers' Championship by 12 points over Lotterer, Fässler and Tréluyer's No. 7 Audi; a fifth-place finish by them and a first-place finish by their rivals would lose them the title. They increased their advantage by one point after Hartley and Bernhard set the fastest two-lap average in qualifying. This also ensured that Porsche won every pole position of 2015. Jani and Lieb began from second. Bernhard lost five laps due to a broken throttle actuator and a front axle energy recovery system failure in the fifth hour. Webber completed the race on hybrid power in fifth to secure his, Hartley's and Bernhard's first Drivers' Championship. Dumas, Jani and Lieb beat the mechanically impaired Audi cars in a mid-race battle for the No. 18 team's only win of 2015. Competing with the 919 Hybrid for the second successive year, Porsche accumulated 344 points to win the World Manufacturers' Championship. At the inaugural post-season rookie test at the Bahrain International Circuit, GP2 Series driver Mitch Evans and two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Juan Pablo Montoya shared a 919 Hybrid. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=41368349 | 299,596 |
1,758,687 | A commonly studied prasinovirus, OtV5, as mentioned, infects the smallest currently known eukaryote, "Ostreococcus tauri". "O. tauri" is about 0.8 micrometers in diameter and is within the picosize fraction (0.2–2 micrometers). Picoeukaryotes, such as "Ostreococcus tauri" are widely distributed and contribute significantly to microbial biomass and total primary productivity. In oligotrophic environments, marine picophytoplankton account for up to 90% of the autotrophic biomass and thus are an important food source for nanoplanktonic and phagotrophic protists. As picoeukaryotes serve as the base for marine microbial food webs, they are intrinsic to the survival of higher trophic levels. "Ostreococcus tauri" has a rapid growth rate and dense blooms have been observed off the coasts of Long Island and California. Samples collected from Long Island bay were found to contain many virus-like particles, a likely cause for the decline of the bloom. Despite the large abundances of picoeukaryotes, these unicellular organisms are outnumbered by viruses by about ten to one. Viruses such as OtV5, play important roles in regulating phytoplankton populations, and through lysis of cells contribute to the recycling of nutrients back towards other microorganisms, otherwise known as the viral shunt. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7903516 | 1,757,694 |
200,006 | The kinetic theory in turn led to a revolutionary approach to science, the statistical mechanics of Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906) and Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903), which studies the statistics of microstates of a system and uses statistics to determine the state of a physical system. Interrelating the statistical likelihood of certain states of organization of these particles with the energy of those states, Clausius reinterpreted the dissipation of energy to be the statistical tendency of molecular configurations to pass toward increasingly likely, increasingly disorganized states (coining the term "entropy" to describe the disorganization of a state). The statistical versus absolute interpretations of the second law of thermodynamics set up a dispute that would last for several decades (producing arguments such as "Maxwell's demon"), and that would not be held to be definitively resolved until the behavior of atoms was firmly established in the early 20th century. In 1902, James Jeans found the length scale required for gravitational perturbations to grow in a static nearly homogeneous medium. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13758 | 199,903 |
1,912,124 | The ideas that led to the development of staffing theory came primarily from Roger Barker and Paul Gump, who were researchers stationed at the University of Kansas. Barker and Gump paved the road for what is now known as ecological psychology, as well as developing concepts such as behavior settings and synomorphy. In Barker and Gump's 1964 work, "Big School, Small School", the two researchers examined environmental factors as well as students' behaviors in multiple schools in northeast Kansas. More specifically, Barker and Gump were interested in whether the size of high schools had a significant effect on students' participation in and satisfaction with school activities. They started their investigation by calculating population (P) and the number of behavioral settings, or differentiation (D) values for each school. Some examples of the types of behavior settings are classes, halls, gymnasiums, administrator's offices, and lunch rooms. The data they collected had one primary interpretation: as P increases, so too does D, but not as fast. In other words, as population increases, the P/D ratio becomes smaller. These findings contradict the idea that big schools offer more opportunities for students. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37871911 | 1,911,025 |
209,371 | ALD is caused by mutations in "ABCD1", a gene located on the X chromosome that codes for ALD, a peroxisomal membrane transporter protein. The exact mechanism of the pathogenesis of the various forms of ALD is not known. Biochemically, individuals with ALD show very high levels of unbranched, saturated, very long chain fatty acids, particularly cerotic acid (26:0). The level of cerotic acid in plasma does not correlate with clinical presentation. Treatment options for ALD are limited. For the childhood cerebral form, stem cell transplant and gene therapy are options if the disease is detected early in the clinical course. Adrenal insufficiency in ALD patients can be successfully treated. ALD is the most common peroxisomal inborn error of metabolism, with an incidence estimated between 1:18,000 and 1:50,000. It does not have a significantly higher incidence in any specific ethnic group. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=52952 | 209,264 |
652,876 | Major damage normally results in the cell dying or being unable to reproduce. This effect is responsible for acute radiation syndrome, but these heavily damaged cells cannot become cancerous. Lighter damage may leave a stable, partly functional cell that may be capable of proliferating and eventually developing into cancer, especially if tumor suppressor genes are damaged. The latest research suggests that mutagenic events do not occur immediately after irradiation. Instead, surviving cells appear to have acquired a genomic instability which causes an increased rate of mutations in future generations. The cell will then progress through multiple stages of neoplastic transformation that may culminate into a tumor after years of incubation. The neoplastic transformation can be divided into three major independent stages: morphological changes to the cell, acquisition of cellular immortality (losing normal, life-limiting cell regulatory processes), and adaptations that favor formation of a tumor. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=35993194 | 652,533 |
8,165 | Twentieth-century Chinese psychology originally modeled itself on U.S. psychology, with translations from American authors like William James, the establishment of university psychology departments and journals, and the establishment of groups including the Chinese Association of Psychological Testing (1930) and the Chinese Psychological Society (1937). Chinese psychologists were encouraged to focus on education and language learning. Chinese psychologists were drawn to the idea that education would enable modernization. John Dewey, who lectured to Chinese audiences between 1919 and 1921, had a significant influence on psychology in China. Chancellor T'sai Yuan-p'ei introduced him at Peking University as a greater thinker than Confucius. Kuo Zing-yang who received a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, became President of Zhejiang University and popularized behaviorism. After the Chinese Communist Party gained control of the country, the Stalinist Soviet Union became the major influence, with Marxism–Leninism the leading social doctrine and Pavlovian conditioning the approved means of behavior change. Chinese psychologists elaborated on Lenin's model of a "reflective" consciousness, envisioning an "active consciousness" () able to transcend material conditions through hard work and ideological struggle. They developed a concept of "recognition" () which referred to the interface between individual perceptions and the socially accepted worldview; failure to correspond with party doctrine was "incorrect recognition." Psychology education was centralized under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, supervised by the State Council. In 1951, the academy created a Psychology Research Office, which in 1956 became the Institute of Psychology. Because most leading psychologists were educated in the United States, the first concern of the academy was the re-education of these psychologists in the Soviet doctrines. Child psychology and pedagogy for the purpose of a nationally cohesive education remained a central goal of the discipline. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22921 | 8,162 |
870,509 | Redesigned PC cards were released in 1994, introducing the option of a faster 50 MHz 486SLC2 processor for a reported doubling of the performance over the fastest existing cards. Up to 16 MB of SIMM-profile RAM could be fitted, and a local hard drive controller was added. The supplied software was also upgraded to support Windows in a resolution of at up to 16 colours, and optional network driver support was available to use the card as a Novell NetWare client and for Windows for Workgroups 3.11. Pricing remained similar to earlier models. Reported performance was better than the previous generation of cards but "still slow compared to all but the most basic of modern PCs, but certainly usable". The Windows User benchmarks rated the performance as similar to a fast 386SX-based system or a "standard" 386DX-based system, with the faster processor yielding a more favourable rating, but with the hard drive and graphics tests bringing the overall rating down. Use of a hard drive fitted directly to the card, using its own dedicated IDE interface, was reported as providing up to ten times the level of hard drive performance relative to using the system's own drive, but use of the SmartDrive caching software made any resulting performance difference marginal. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63145 | 870,049 |
774,068 | Multidisciplinary research suggests that ongoing evolution could help explain the rise of certain medical conditions such as autism and autoimmune disorders. Autism and schizophrenia may be due to genes inherited from the mother and the father which are over-expressed and which fight a tug-of-war in the child's body. Allergies, asthma, and autoimmune disorders appear linked to higher standards of sanitation, which prevent the immune systems of modern humans from being exposed to various parasites and pathogens the way their ancestors' were, making them hypersensitive and more likely to overreact. The human body is not built from a professionally engineered blue print but a system shaped over long periods of time by evolution with all kinds of trade-offs and imperfections. Understanding the evolution of the human body can help medical doctors better understand and treat various disorders. Research in evolutionary medicine suggests that diseases are prevalent because natural selection favors reproduction over health and longevity. In addition, biological evolution is slower than cultural evolution and humans evolve more slowly than pathogens. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=54472601 | 773,652 |
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