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776,137 | At the knuckle end, single ball joints are typically used, in which case the steering loads have to be taken via a steering arm, and the wishbones look A- or L-shaped. An L-shaped arm is generally preferred on passenger vehicles because it allows a better compromise of handling and comfort to be tuned in. The bushing in line with the wheel can be kept relatively stiff to effectively handle cornering loads while the off-line joint can be softer to allow the wheel to recess under fore-aft impact loads. For a rear suspension, a pair of joints can be used at both ends of the arm, making them more H-shaped in plan view. Alternatively, a fixed-length driveshaft can perform the function of a wishbone as long as the shape of the other wishbone provides control of the upright. This arrangement has been successfully used in the Jaguar IRS. In elevation view, the suspension is a 4-bar link, and it is easy to work out the camber gain (see camber angle) and other parameters for a given set of bushing or ball-joint locations. The various bushings or ball joints do not have to be on horizontal axes, parallel to the vehicle centre line. If they are set at an angle, then anti-dive and anti-squat geometry can be dialled in. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1108499 | 775,721 |
47,591 | Hydrazine reflux is commonly used for reducing SLGO to SLG(R), but titrations show that only around 20–30% of the carboxylic groups are lost, leaving a significant number available for chemical attachment. Analysis of SLG(R) generated by this route reveals that the system is unstable and using a room temperature stirring with HCl (< 1.0 M) leads to around 60% loss of COOH functionality. Room temperature treatment of SLGO with carbodiimides leads to the collapse of the individual sheets into star-like clusters that exhibited poor subsequent reactivity with amines (c. 3–5% conversion of the intermediate to the final amide). It is apparent that conventional chemical treatment of carboxylic groups on SLGO generates morphological changes of individual sheets that leads to a reduction in chemical reactivity, which may potentially limit their use in composite synthesis. Therefore, chemical reactions types have been explored. SLGO has also been grafted with polyallylamine, cross-linked through epoxy groups. When filtered into graphene oxide paper, these composites exhibit increased stiffness and strength relative to unmodified graphene oxide paper. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=911833 | 47,571 |
517,547 | Masten Space Systems has experience in rapid reusable rocket-powered vehicles, with their Xombie, Xoie, and Xaero vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) designs having already met or exceeded the 10 flights in 10 days objective set by the program. Although the company consists of approximately 30 employees and is headquartered in a small building at the Mojave Air and Space Port, they have spent years flying various small VTVL systems on short hops at the spaceport, serving as test beds for guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) systems designed to safely land spacecraft on the Moon and potentially other planets. Their concept showed a VTVL system taking off vertically from a launch pad with wings and a tail fin. Masten Space Systems was partnered with XCOR Aerospace for Phase 1A. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40514015 | 517,278 |
975,778 | Although usually trivalent, europium readily forms divalent compounds. This behavior is unusual for most lanthanides, which almost exclusively form compounds with an oxidation state of +3. The +2 state has an electron configuration 4"f" because the half-filled "f"-shell provides more stability. In terms of size and coordination number, europium(II) and barium(II) are similar. The sulfates of both barium and europium(II) are also highly insoluble in water. Divalent europium is a mild reducing agent, oxidizing in air to form Eu(III) compounds. In anaerobic, and particularly geothermal conditions, the divalent form is sufficiently stable that it tends to be incorporated into minerals of calcium and the other alkaline earths. This ion-exchange process is the basis of the "negative europium anomaly", the low europium content in many lanthanide minerals such as monazite, relative to the chondritic abundance. Bastnäsite tends to show less of a negative europium anomaly than does monazite, and hence is the major source of europium today. The development of easy methods to separate divalent europium from the other (trivalent) lanthanides made europium accessible even when present in low concentration, as it usually is. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9477 | 975,267 |
848,654 | Like NODs, NLRPs contain C-terminal LRRs, which appear to act as a regulatory domain and may be involved in the recognition of microbial pathogens. Also like NODs, these proteins contain a nucleotide binding site (NBS) for nucleoside triphosphates. Interaction with other proteins (e.g. the adaptor molecule ASC) is mediated via N-terminal pyrin (PYD) domain. There are 14 members of this protein subfamily in humans (called NLRP1 to NLRP14). NLRP3 and NLRP4 are responsible for the inflammasome activation. NLRP3 can be activated and give rise to NLRP3 inflammasome by ATP, bacterial pore-forming toxins, alum and crystals. Alongside the listed molecules, which lead to activation of NLRP3 inflammasome, the assembly and activation can also be induced by K efflux, Ca influx, disruption of lysosomes and ROS originating from mitochondria. The NLRP3 inflammasome is essential for induction of effective immune response. The NLRP3 inflammasome can be induced by a wide range of stimuli in contrast to the NLRP4 inflammasome, which binds more limited number and variety of ligands and works in a complex with NAIP protein. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1903231 | 848,204 |
347,969 | There are some research projects that are investigating brain simulation using more sophisticated neural models, implemented on conventional computing architectures. The Artificial Intelligence System project implemented non-real time simulations of a "brain" (with 10 neurons) in 2005. It took 50 days on a cluster of 27 processors to simulate 1 second of a model. The Blue Brain project used one of the fastest supercomputer architectures in the world, IBM's Blue Gene platform, to create a real time simulation of a single rat neocortical column consisting of approximately 10,000 neurons and 10 synapses in 2006. A longer-term goal is to build a detailed, functional simulation of the physiological processes in the human brain: "It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years," Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project said in 2009 at the TED conference in Oxford. There have also been controversial claims to have simulated a cat brain. Neuro-silicon interfaces have been proposed as an alternative implementation strategy that may scale better. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=586357 | 347,787 |
487,922 | In the 1960s, Stanford R. Ovshinsky of Energy Conversion Devices first explored the properties of chalcogenide glasses as a potential memory technology. In 1969, Charles Sie published a dissertation at Iowa State University that both described and demonstrated the feasibility of a phase-change-memory device by integrating chalcogenide film with a diode array. A cinematographic study in 1970 established that the phase-change-memory mechanism in chalcogenide glass involves electric-field-induced crystalline filament growth. In the September 1970 issue of "Electronics", Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, published an article on the technology. However, material quality and power consumption issues prevented commercialization of the technology. More recently, interest and research have resumed as flash and DRAM memory technologies are expected to encounter scaling difficulties as chip lithography shrinks. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=850973 | 487,672 |
775,863 | Phylogenetic studies strongly suggest that PVs normally evolve together with their mammalian and bird host species, but adaptive radiations, occasional zoonotic events and recombinations may also impact their diversification. Their basic genomic organization appears maintained for a period exceeding 100 million years, and these sequence comparisons have laid the foundation for a PV taxonomy, which is now officially recognized by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. All PVs form the family "Papillomaviridae", which is distinct from the "Polyomaviridae" thus eliminating the term "Papovaviridae". Major branches of the phylogenetic tree of PVs are considered genera, which are identified by Greek letters. Minor branches are considered species and unite PV types that are genomically distinct without exhibiting known biological differences. This new taxonomic system does not affect the traditional identification and characterization of PV "types" and their independent isolates with minor genomic differences, referred to as "subtypes" and "variants", all of which are taxa below the level of "species". Additionally, phylogenetic groupings at higher taxonomic level have been proposed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=606000 | 775,447 |
1,007,255 | Hurley had objected to the violent and gory scenes seen in the first-season episode "", written by Tracy Tormé, and Tormé continued to feel alienated by Hurley. Tormé stepped down from his role as co-executive story editor, taking credit instead as a creative consultant. Following Hurley's modifications to Tormé's scripts for "The Royale" and "", Tormé elected to be credited under a pseudonym only. At one point, Roddenberry had thought that Tormé would become eventual showrunner, but the writer left due to the re-writes required under Hurley's tenure. Hannah Louise Shearer also left the team between seasons, due to differences with Hurley, but contributed stories in later seasons. Other writers joined the team during the second season, including "The Tears of the Singers" author Melinda M. Snodgrass, who sold the script for "". Hans Beimler and Richard Manning were hired in the newly created positions of executive script consultants. They had both been story editors for the final eight episodes of the first season. Snodgrass later explained that, "Once I came on board there suddenly seemed to be this climate of discussion among the writers about what we wanted to do with the show. My impression was that this was a new phenomenon. We were a little bit more on the same wavelength." She was hired as a story editor following the submission of her first episode, alongside Leonard Mlodinow and Scott Rubenstein. The other two editors left after four more episodes, with Snodgrass remaining as the sole story editor for the rest of the season. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38229146 | 1,006,735 |
788,621 | WVSU is located on land once occupied by mound builder Native Americans. The British government granted the site to George Washington for his service in the British military during the French and Indian War. It was subsequently sold and operated as a plantation, using enslaved labor. During the early 19th century, the son of Virginia Governor William H. Cabell, Samuel I. Cabell, moved to the Kanawha River valley and married Mary Barnes, a former slave, who bore thirteen children. He bought the property in 1853 and much to the displeasure of their white neighbors, took elaborate precautions to ensure that Mary, his wife, and their children would inherit his wealth and not be sold into slavery, including officially emancipating Mary and their then-living children in 1858. Sam Cabell was murdered shortly after the American Civil War and the creation of the state of West Virginia. Two decades later, his daughter Maria Cabell-Hurt sold some land to the new state to permit creation of the "West Virginia Colored Institute", since Sam's descendants and neighbors had to send their children across the Ohio River to Ohio for higher education. Sam and Mary Cabell and their children are buried on the campus; some descendants continue to live nearby. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1245250 | 788,197 |
1,196,715 | The company was founded in 1912 by Karl Meissner and Paul Wurst. For the first 50 years of its existence, Meissner + Wurst mainly produced extraction units, fans and equipment for ventilation technology. In the 1960s, Meissner + Wurst established itself as a pioneer in the development of cleanroom technology. Since the 1990s, the company expanded worldwide by extending its business areas, founding new branch offices and acquiring companies. Jenoptik took over Meissner + Wurst in October 1994 and merged it with Zander Klimatechnik AG from Nuremberg in August 1998 to form M+W Zander. The building services engineering division was spun off from the group in a management buyout under the name M+W Zander Gebäudetechnik GmbH in 2004 and was renamed Caverion Deutschland GmbH in February 2007. In 2005 the Swiss investor Springwater Capital took over M+W Zander, and in 2008 the facility management division was transferred to HSG, which belongs to the Bilfinger Group. Since then, the company has operated under the name of M+W Group, or M+W for short, and is 100% owned by the Austrian holding company Stumpf Group since 2009. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=64768525 | 1,196,075 |
654,334 | In the 2000s, sampling began to reach an all-time high; Jay-Z's album "The Blueprint" helped put producers Kanye West and Just Blaze on the map for their sampling of soul records. Kanye West himself scored early hits with "Through the Wire" and "Jesus Walks." His 2004 album, "The College Dropout", included two sampled hits featuring Twista which led to the Chicago rapper's "Kamikaze" selling platinum. On September 7, 2004, however, a U.S. Court of Appeals in Nashville changed the nature of musical copyright infringement by ruling that a license is needed in every case of sampling, where previously a small portion of the song could be copied without repercussion. The law immediately began rarefying samples in hip-hop; in a 2005 interview with Scratch magazine, Dr. Dre announced he was moving more toward instrumentation, and in 2006 The Notorious B.I.G.'s 1994 debut album "Ready to Die" was temporarily pulled from shelves for a retroactive sample clearance issue. As a result, more major producers and artists have moved further away from sampling and toward live instrumentation, such as Wu-Tang's RZA and Mos Def. There were often questions of originality and authenticity that followed the use of sampling. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3555227 | 653,990 |
1,873,397 | From the end of the Samurai reign in 1877 to the early 20th century, SMR was still largely confined, (though slowly spreading), to Fukuoka city on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu where the art first was created and thrived. The main proponent of SMR in Fukuoka during this time was Shiraishi Hanjiro, a former Kuroda-clan warrior ("ashigaru"), who had trained in and received a joint-license from the two largest surviving jo-branches of SMR. Among Shiraishis top students were Shimizu Takaji, Otofuji Ichizô and Takayama Kiroku, Takayama being the senior. After receiving an invitation from the Tokyo martial arts scene to perform a demonstration of SMR, Shimizu and Takayama established a Tokyo SMR-group which held a close working relationship with martial arts supporters such as Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo. Shiraishi died in 1927 and there now existed two main lines (or "branches") of SMR. The oldest of the two was found in Fukuoka, now under the leadership of Otofuji with the one in Tokyo under Shimizu. Takayama, the senior of the three students of Shiraishi, died in the 1930s leaving Shimizu with a position of great influence in the SMR-scene as the senior-most student of Shiriashi, (Otofuji being his junior), that would last up to his death in 1978. Although Otofuji was one of Shiraishis top-students he was unable to assume the role that Shimizu had held in Tokyo. By the 1970s the Tokyo and Fukuoka SMR-communities had fully developed into separate branches with their own leaders. Unlike Otofuji, Shimizu was a senior of both the Fukuoka and Tokyo SMR, with great knowledge and influence over both. With Shimizus death Otofuji were not in a strong enough position to claim complete authority over the SMR-community and no sort of agreement could be made over who should formally succeed Shimizu. The position of Headmaster of the SMR-community as a whole could not be filled. Otofuji would remain the leader of Kyushu SMR until his death in 1998. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8705842 | 1,872,320 |
1,157,911 | In the HiTOP framework, psychopathology of given patient is no longer described with a list of categorical diagnoses, but as a profile on dimensions with varying degrees of severity and including all levels from components and traits through spectra and superspectra. HiTOP explicitly acknowledges the clinical reality that no clear divisions are empirically supported between most mental disorders and normality or, oftentimes, even between neighboring disorders. In practice, clinical decisions are not simply whether to treat the patient or not (reflecting whether the disorder is present or not). Rather, a graded set of interventions varying in intensity is typically deployed in response to a corresponding level of clinical need. HiTOP profile is compatible with this approach, and multiple ranges can be specified on a given dimension to guide the choice of intervention. Currently there is no evidence that compares treatment outcomes using HiTOP model results to conventional approaches including the DSM. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=68802534 | 1,157,298 |
1,238,475 | Other plants that are considered to be protocarnivorous have sticky trichomes on some surface, such as the flower scape and bud of "Stylidium" and "Plumbago", the bracts of "Passiflora", and leaves of "Roridula". The trichomes of "Stylidium", which appear below the flower, have been known to trap and kill small insects since their discovery several centuries ago, but their purpose remained ambiguous. In November 2006, Dr. Douglas Darnowski published a paper describing the active digestion of proteins when they come in contact with a trichome of a "Stylidium" species grown in aseptic tissue culture, proving that the plant, rather than the surface microbes, was the source of protease production. Darnowski asserts in that paper that given this evidence, "Stylidium" species are properly called carnivorous, though in order to fulfill the strict definition of carnivory it needs to be proven that they are capable of absorbing nutrients derived from prey and that this adaptation gives the plants some competitive advantage. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9270823 | 1,237,808 |
1,182,599 | The first commando raid was Operation Collar, which took place on 24/25 June 1940. The raid was not carried out by a commando unit, but by one of their predecessors, No.11 Independent Company. Under the command of Major Ronnie Tod it was an offensive reconnaissance on the French coast south of Boulogne-sur-Mer and Le Touquet. The operation was a limited success, and the only British injury was a bullet graze to Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Clarke (who was there as an observer), while at least two German soldiers were killed. A second and similarly inconsequential attack, Operation Ambassador, was launched on the German-occupied island of Guernsey on the night of 14 July 1940, by men drawn from H Troop of No. 3 Commando under command of John Durnford-Slater and No. 11 Independent Company. One unit landed on the wrong island, another disembarked from its launch into water that came over their heads. Intelligence had indicated that there was a large German barracks on the island but the Commandos only discovered empty buildings. On their return to the beach they discovered that heavy seas had forced their launch off shore and they then had to swim out to sea to get picked up. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27342087 | 1,181,974 |
290,123 | Alfred Binet published "Mental Fatigue" in 1898, in which he attempted to apply the experimental method to educational psychology. In this experimental method he advocated for two types of experiments, experiments done in the lab and experiments done in the classroom. In 1904 he was appointed the Minister of Public Education. This is when he began to look for a way to distinguish children with developmental disabilities. Binet strongly supported special education programs because he believed that "abnormality" could be cured. The Binet-Simon test was the first intelligence test and was the first to distinguish between "normal children" and those with developmental disabilities. Binet believed that it was important to study individual differences between age groups and children of the same age. He also believed that it was important for teachers to take into account individual students' strengths and also the needs of the classroom as a whole when teaching and creating a good learning environment. He also believed that it was important to train teachers in observation so that they would be able to see individual differences among children and adjust the curriculum to the students. Binet also emphasized that practice of material was important. In 1916 Lewis Terman revised the Binet-Simon so that the average score was always 100. The test became known as the Stanford-Binet and was one of the most widely used tests of intelligence. Terman, unlike Binet, was interested in using intelligence test to identify gifted children who had high intelligence. In his longitudinal study of gifted children, who became known as the Termites, Terman found that gifted children become gifted adults. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10332 | 289,966 |
184,163 | Beta thalassemia is a hereditary disease allowing for a preventative treatment by carrier screening and prenatal diagnosis. It can be prevented if one parent has normal genes, giving rise to screenings that empower carriers to select partners with normal hemoglobin. A study aimed at detecting the genes that could give rise to offspring with sickle cell disease. Patients diagnosed with beta thalassemia have MCH ≤ 26 pg and an RDW < 19. Of 10,148 patients, 1,739 patients had a hemoglobin phenotype and RDW consistent with beta thalassemia. After the narrowing of patients, the HbA2 levels were tested presenting 77 patients with beta thalassemia. This screening procedure proved insensitive in populations of West African ancestry because of the indicators has high prevalence of alpha thalassemia. Countries have programs distributing information about the reproductive risks associated with carriers of haemoglobinopathies. Thalassemia carrier screening programs have educational programs in schools, armed forces, and through mass media as well as providing counseling to carriers and carrier couples. Screening has shown reduced incidence; by 1995 the prevalence in Italy reduced from 1:250 to 1:4000, and a 95% decrease in that region. The decrease in incidence has benefitted those affected with thalassemia, as the demand for blood has decreased, therefore improving the supply of treatment. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5309210 | 184,066 |
2,194,125 | The men's coxed pair rowing competition at the 1980 Summer Olympics took place at Krylatskoye Sports Complex Canoeing and Rowing Basin, Moscow, Soviet Union. The event was held from 20 to 27 July. There were 11 boats (33 competitors) from 11 nations, with each nation limited to a single boat in the event. The event was won by Harald Jährling, Friedrich-Wilhelm Ulrich, and coxswain Georg Spohr of East Germany, the first men to successfully repeat as Olympic champions in the event (Conn Findlay was the only previous man to have two gold medals in the coxed pair, winning non-consecutively in 1956 and 1964 with different crews). It was also the first time that a crew of the same three men earned multiple medals of any colour. East Germany's three straight medals matched the United States (with gold in 1932, 1956, and 1964) for most among nations to that point. Silver went to the Soviet Union again, though with an entirely different team from its 1976 runner-up crew; the silver medalists this time were Viktor Pereverzev, Gennadi Kryuçkin, and cox Aleksandr Lukyanov. Duško Mrduljaš, Zlatko Celent, and cox Josip Reić earned Yugoslavia's first medal in the event with their bronze. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=48578562 | 2,192,875 |
1,896,206 | During the first week of November 1994, a large area of disturbed weather developed just north of Panama over the southwestern Caribbean Sea. A tropical wave passed through the area and gave it mild convection. A second wave passed through the area on November 6 and introduced cyclonic circulation to the disturbance. Over the next two days, the system gradually organized and sparked a deep convection off Nicaragua's southeast coast. This organization, with initial maximum sustained winds of 30 mph (45 km/h), was designated Tropical Depression Twelve. Moving northwest, the storm began to slowly strengthen and its upper-level outflow became favorable to further development. Spots of convection flared on the morning of November 9; banding features appeared as its center made landfall on the northeastern Nicaraguan coast near Puerto Cabezas. A full day later a trough to the storm's northwest over the Gulf of Mexico moved the depression offshore, to the northeast, and over the warm waters of the western Caribbean Sea. Fueled by these warm waters, on the night of November 9, it strengthened into Tropical Storm Gordon with 40 mph (65 km/h) winds. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18435348 | 1,895,122 |
398,877 | In January, at the 2016 Tata Steel Chess Tournament, Caruana shared second (along with Ding Liren) with a score of 8 points out of 13 (+5-2=6), defeating Michael Adams, Wei Yi, Loek Van Wely, Pavel Eljanov, and Ding Liren, and losing to David Navara and Evgeny Tomashevsky. Had he defeated Tomashevsky, he would have at least tied for 1st place with Magnus Carlsen. Through this tournament, he gained 7 rating points and moved to #3 in the world. By March, as part of the qualification cycle for the World Chess Championship 2016, Caruana participated in the Candidates Tournament 2016, held in Moscow, Russia, from March 10–30 in the Central Telegraph (Центральный телеграф) Building. The lineup of the tournament included Viswanathan Anand, Hikaru Nakamura, Sergey Karjakin, Peter Svidler, Veselin Topalov, Anish Giri, and Levon Aronian. In the final round Caruana had Black against Sergey Karjakin in a winner-takes-all game. A complex position developed in which he made a mistake and was eventually defeated, making Karjakin the official challenger. Caruana eventually finished with a +1 score. On April 25, Caruana became US Chess Champion for the first time, after defeating IM Akshat Chandra in the last round of the US Chess Championship. He finished the tournament with 8.5 points out of 11 games, and went undefeated. The field consisted of world top ten players Hikaru Nakamura and Wesley So; top 100 players Ray Robson, Sam Shankland, Gata Kamsky, and Alexander Onischuk; GMs Alexander Shabalov, Varuzhan Akobian, Jeffery Xiong and Aleksandr Lenderman; and IM Akshat Chandra. In September, he played first board of the US Team at the 42nd Chess Olympiad. The US team won the gold medal, while Caruana won the bronze medal for first board. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10837948 | 398,679 |
277,887 | For patients with C. diff infections that fail to be resolved with traditional antibiotic regimens, fecal microbiome transplants boasts an average cure rate of >90%. In a review of 317 patients, it was shown to lead to resolution in 92% of the persistent and recurrent disease cases. It is clear that restoration of gut flora is paramount in the struggle against recurrent CDI. With effective antibiotic therapy, C. difficile can be reduced and natural colonization resistance can develop over time as the natural microbial community recovers. Reinfection or recurrence may occur before this process is complete. Fecal microbiota transplant may expedite this recovery by directly replacing the missing microbial community members. However, human-derived fecal matter is difficult to standardize and has multiple potential risks, including the transfer of infectious material and long-term consequences of inoculating the gut with a foreign fecal material. As a result, further research is necessary to study the long term effective outcomes of FMT. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=466440 | 277,737 |
1,527,499 | In 1834 Phillips was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. During later years he received honorary degrees of LL.D. from Dublin and Cambridge, and D.C.L. from Oxford; while in 1845 he was awarded the Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London. In 1840 he resigned his charge of the York museum and was appointed to the staff of the geological survey of Great Britain managed by Henry De la Beche. Phillips spent some time studying the Palaeozoic fossils of Devon, Cornwall and West Somerset, of which he published a descriptive memoir (in 1841). During that same year, he published the first global geologic time scale, which ordered rock strata according to the types of fossils found within. This helped standardize the usage of the terms Paleozoic period, which he extended to a longer period than it had had by previous usage, and Mesozoic period, the latter being his own invention. He also made a detailed survey of the region of the Malvern Hills, of which he prepared the elaborate account that appears in vol. ii. of the Memoirs of the Survey (1848). In 1844 he became professor of geology for the University of Dublin. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=430626 | 1,526,635 |
335,058 | Exhaust steam is directed upwards out of the locomotive through the chimney, by way of a nozzle called a blastpipe, creating the familiar "chuffing" sound of the steam locomotive. The blastpipe is placed at a strategic point inside the smokebox that is at the same time traversed by the combustion gases drawn through the boiler and grate by the action of the steam blast. The combining of the two streams, steam and exhaust gases, is crucial to the efficiency of any steam locomotive, and the internal profiles of the chimney (or, strictly speaking, the "ejector") require careful design and adjustment. This has been the object of intensive studies by a number of engineers (and often ignored by others, sometimes with catastrophic consequences). The fact that the draught depends on the exhaust pressure means that power delivery and power generation are automatically self-adjusting. Among other things, a balance has to be struck between obtaining sufficient draught for combustion whilst giving the exhaust gases and particles sufficient time to be consumed. In the past, a strong draught could lift the fire off the grate, or cause the ejection of unburnt particles of fuel, dirt and pollution for which steam locomotives had an unenviable reputation. Moreover, the pumping action of the exhaust has the counter-effect of exerting "back pressure" on the side of the piston receiving steam, thus slightly reducing cylinder power. Designing the exhaust ejector became a specific science, with engineers such as Chapelon, Giesl and Porta making large improvements in thermal efficiency and a significant reduction in maintenance time and pollution. A similar system was used by some early gasoline/kerosene tractor manufacturers (Advance-Rumely/Hart-Parr) – the exhaust gas volume was vented through a cooling tower, allowing the steam exhaust to draw more air past the radiator. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=196788 | 334,880 |
961,913 | The Green Revolution of the 1960s and '70s introduced sturdier plants that could support the heavier grain loads resulting from intensive fertilizer use. Pesticide imports by 11 Southeast Asian countries grew nearly sevenfold in value between 1990 and 2010, according to FAO statistics, with disastrous results. Rice farmers become accustomed to spraying soon after planting, triggered by signs of the leaf folder moth, which appears early in the growing season. It causes only superficial damage and doesn't reduce yields. In 1986, Indonesia banned 57 pesticides and completely stopped subsidizing their use. Progress was reversed in the 2000s, when growing production capacity, particularly in China, reduced prices. Rice production in Asia more than doubled. But it left farmers believing more is better—whether it's seed, fertilizer, or pesticides. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=420764 | 961,404 |
1,156,212 | Generally, to reduce the concentration polarization, increased flow rates of the solutions between the membranes as well as spacers promoting turbulence are applied [5, 6]. This technique results in better mixing of the solution and in reducing the thickness of the diffusion boundary layer, which is defined as the region in the vicinity of an electrode or a membrane where the concentrations are different from their value in the bulk solution. In electrodialysis, additional mixing of the solution may be obtained by applying an elevated voltage where current-induced convection occurs as gravitational convection or electroconvection. Electroconvection is defined as current-induced volume transport when an electric field is imposed through the charged solution. Several mechanisms of electroconvection are discussed. In dilute solutions, electroconvection allows increasing current density several times higher than the limiting current density. Electroconvection refers to electrokinetic phenomena, which are important in microfluidic devices. Thus, there is a bridge between membrane science and micro/nanofluidics. Fruitful ideas are transferred from microfluidics: novel conceptions of electro-membrane devices for water desalination in overlimiting current range have been proposed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=41601329 | 1,155,602 |
1,754,857 | There are many types of nanoindenters in current use differing mainly on their tip geometry. Among the numerous available geometries are three and four sided pyramids, wedges, cones, cylinders, filaments, and spheres. Several geometries have become a well established common standard due to their extended use and well known properties; such as Berkovich, cube corner, Vickers, and Knoop nanoindenters. To meet the high precision required, nanoindenters must be made following the definitions of ISO 14577-2, and be inspected and measured with equipment and standards traceable to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The tip end of the indenter can be made sharp, flat, or rounded to a cylindrical or spherical shape. The material for most nanoindenters is diamond and sapphire, although other hard materials can be used such as quartz, silicon, tungsten, steel, tungsten carbide and almost any other hard metal or ceramic material. Diamond is the most commonly used material for nanoindentation due to its properties of hardness, thermal conductivity, and chemical inertness. In some cases electrically conductive diamond may be needed for special applications and is also available. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21370273 | 1,753,867 |
1,530,012 | The company was founded on 5 September 2001 by Michael Simms when the similarly oriented Loki Software filed for bankruptcy. Simms had previously founded the Tux Games retailer a few years earlier, and the collapse of Loki would have gravely affected his available stock. Linux Game Publishing had initially tried to pick up the support rights to many of Loki's titles, but in the end it was only able to acquire the rights to "MindRover: The Europa Project". It was able, however, to independently pick up the publishing rights to "Creatures: Internet Edition" as well as the rights to the port of "" which was previously being developed by Tribsoft. Empowered by the addition of former Loki employee Mike Phillips, LGP released its first title on 21 December 2001. In 2002 Ryan C. Gordon (a.k.a. icculus, former Loki Software) started porting the puzzle game "Candy Cruncher" to Linux and he was looking for beta testers. The first Linux version of Candy Cruncher was released in 2002 by Pyrogon (an indie game company founded by former employee of 3dfx and id Software Brian Hook) as a digital download. LGP took interest in publishing Pyrogon games on physical CDs, and on 10 September 2002, LGP and Pyrogon announced a publishing partnership for Pyrogon's Linux titles. Upon learning about the release of "Postal 2" in 2003, Ryan decided to contact the developer behind it wondering if they would be interested in him making a port of the game to Linux. Loki had previously ported the original "Postal" to Linux, and he was interested in keeping the franchise compatible. Running with Scissors agreed, and the finished port was shipped on 14 February 2005, with LGP initially handling the publishing of the Linux version. In 2003, Hyperion Entertainment and Metropolis Software extended their existing license agreement for "Gorky 17". Linux gaming developers Steven Fuller and Joe Tennies joined the Hyperion Entertainment game development team and they ported Gorky 17 to Linux, which three years later was published by LGP. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3615941 | 1,529,148 |
1,153,501 | The Council in London had advised the settlers ""to sit "(set)" down"" possibly ""on some island that is strong by nature... and not overburthened with woods... so far up as a bark" (barque)" of 50 tons will float ... perchance .. a hundred miles from the river's mouth" "with no native people to inhabit between you and the sea coast"." Probably the key factor which swayed Wingfield into selecting Jamestown, was Ralph Lane's error at Roanoke in 1584, having the ships a mile from their camp – and, as an experienced soldier not wanting to split his force, therefore kept his heaviest ship with them. So, on 12 May, Wingfield vetoed Archer's Hope, the first site proposed, as too visible (thus easily bombarded by foreign ships' guns). At Jamestown, the ships could be secured to the overhanging trees – even the 120-ton Susan Constant. That Wingfield (who as a "suitor" was instructed by the King to site their ""abode and habitation... and to begin their ...first plantation"" at any place he thought ""fit and convenient"") succeeded in rejecting Archer's Hope (i.e. haven), and selected the present Jamestown site (some upriver), showed that he was a tough character. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2173289 | 1,152,891 |
269,838 | The "Royal Commission on River Pollution", established in 1865, and the formation of the "Royal Commission on Sewage Disposal" in 1898 led to the selection in 1908 of BOD as the definitive test for organic pollution of rivers. Five days was chosen as an appropriate test period because this is supposedly the longest time that river water takes to travel from source to estuary in the U.K. In its sixth report the Royal Commission recommended that the standard set should be 15 parts by weight per million of water. However, in the Ninth report the commission had revised the recommended standard: An effluent taking up 2–0 parts dissolved oxygen per 100,000 would be found by a simple calculation to require dilution with at least 8 volumes of river water taking up 0.2 part if the resulting mixture was not to take up more than 0.4 part. Our experience indicated that in a large majority of cases the volume of river water would exceed 8 times the volume of effluent, and that the figure of 2–0 parts dissolved oxygen per 100,000, which had been shown to be practicable, would be a safe figure to adopt for the purposes of a general standard, taken in conjunction with the condition that the effluent should not contain more than 3–0 parts per 100,000 of suspended solids. This was the cornerstone 20:30 (BOD:Suspended Solids) + full nitrification standard which was used as a yardstick in the U.K. up to the 1970s for sewage works effluent quality. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=420598 | 269,691 |
337,635 | Prior to this paper, limited information-theoretic ideas had been developed at Bell Labs, all implicitly assuming events of equal probability. Harry Nyquist's 1924 paper, "Certain Factors Affecting Telegraph Speed", contains a theoretical section quantifying "intelligence" and the "line speed" at which it can be transmitted by a communication system, giving the relation (recalling the Boltzmann constant), where "W" is the speed of transmission of intelligence, "m" is the number of different voltage levels to choose from at each time step, and "K" is a constant. Ralph Hartley's 1928 paper, "Transmission of Information", uses the word "information" as a measurable quantity, reflecting the receiver's ability to distinguish one sequence of symbols from any other, thus quantifying information as , where "S" was the number of possible symbols, and "n" the number of symbols in a transmission. The unit of information was therefore the decimal digit, which since has sometimes been called the hartley in his honor as a unit or scale or measure of information. Alan Turing in 1940 used similar ideas as part of the statistical analysis of the breaking of the German second world war Enigma ciphers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14773 | 337,456 |
1,066,769 | Tshilidzi Marwala and Evan Hurwitz in their book observed that the advent of intelligent online buying platforms such as Amazon and technologies such as flexible manufacturing offers the opportunity for individualized supply and demand curves to be produced. They observed that these reduce the degree of arbitrage in the market, permit for individualized pricing for the same product and brings fairness and efficiency into the market. Furthermore, with Evan Hurwitz in their book they observed that decision making and predicting machines that are executed using artificial intelligence and other machine learning techniques reduce the biases and variances of the errors on decision making and thus make decisions in a closer manner to the conclusions of rational expectations theory than human decision makers. Marwala and Bo Xing have also studied the relationship between blockchain and artificial intelligence. In his response to Bill Gates, Marwala has also brought to the attention of the difficulty of taxing robots given the fact that a great deal of the devices that we use have robotics features. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7406885 | 1,066,215 |
147,129 | The vital role of miRNAs in gene expression is significant to addiction, specifically alcoholism. Chronic alcohol abuse results in persistent changes in brain function mediated in part by alterations in gene expression. miRNA global regulation of many downstream genes deems significant regarding the reorganization or synaptic connections or long term neural adaptations involving the behavioral change from alcohol consumption to withdrawal and/or dependence. Up to 35 different miRNAs have been found to be altered in the alcoholic post-mortem brain, all of which target genes that include the regulation of the cell cycle, apoptosis, cell adhesion, nervous system development and cell signaling. Altered miRNA levels were found in the medial prefrontal cortex of alcohol-dependent mice, suggesting the role of miRNA in orchestrating translational imbalances and the creation of differentially expressed proteins within an area of the brain where complex cognitive behavior and decision making likely originate. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=156964 | 147,071 |
2,016,892 | The ship was assigned to the Baltic Fleet upon completion, but she was not fully equipped until around 1872 and her trials continued until 1873. "Admiral Spiridov" accidentally rammed the monitor in Kronstadt harbor in 1871, but was only slightly damaged. Steam-powered steering gear was installed in the ship in 1887 and she was reclassified as a coast-defense ironclad on 13 February 1892. By this time, her role in Russian war plans was to defend the Gulf of Riga against an anticipated German amphibious landing. In 1900, "Admiral Spiridov" was assigned to the Kronstadt Engineering School as a training ship. She was transferred to the Port of Kronstadt on 31 March 1907 for disposal. The ship was stricken on 14 August and "Admiral Spiridov" became a stationary coal-storage barge. Her subsequent fate is unknown. One source suggests that she and her sister , and the two s, were used as floating piers for the railroad bridge over the Svir River during the construction of the Saint Petersburg–Murmansk Railroad in 1916 before being scrapped in the 1920s. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47216206 | 2,015,730 |
2,137,768 | Eric Salzman reviewed the album on LP in "Stereo Review" in November 1978. Despite the advocacy of acolytes such as Bruno Walter, he wrote, Vienna had been slow to recognize that Gustav Mahler was on the same exalted level as Anton Bruckner. Leonard Bernstein had helped to open the city's ears to Mahler's genius, and Claudio Abbado, a former protégé of Bernstein's, was following in his footsteps. His reading of the Fourth Symphony explored a spectrum of sound and emotion that recalled Bernstein's way with Mahler without ever quite equalling Bernstein's extravagance. He captured "[Mahler's] long line with a sureness, delicacy and glow of feeling that is most moving". None of Mahler's other symphonies was more Viennese in spirit than the Fourth, and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra was altogether at home in its radiant happiness. Their playing was "consistently wonderful without ever being lost in a welter of details". Frederica von Stade's performance of the final movement's Wunderhorn song did not spoil its innocent simplicity with unwarranted sophistication. The album as a whole was a genial, endearing addition to Mahler's discography. There had been a time when his music had been thought too difficult for anyone but a few specialists. The charm and accessibility of Abbado's disc made it easy to imagine that the composer's popularity would continue to grow, in Vienna as elsewhere. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=61490366 | 2,136,538 |
2,177,562 | In 1955 he was awarded a D, Phil. degree by the University of Oxford, where as well as curating he was an administrator, teacher and researcher. He was a major contributor to the knowledge of the European Chalcid fauna, especially the Pteromalidae, Mymaridae and the Eulophidae. Nora was also interested in entomology and often joined Marcus on collecting expeditions and she collected the type specimen of the striking Braconid "Chorebus norae" on one such trip to Madeira, which Graham named in her honour. He retained his links with Dublin where he worked on Trinity College's Haliday Collection, carefully curating the collection to restore its scientific utility. The research he conducted during his visits to Trinity College enabled him to make many important discoveries and as a result of the field work he conducted in Ireland, he was able to add many species of chalcid wasp to the list of those found in Ireland, some beong new to science. Among the pteromalids he found in Ireland many have yet to be found in Britain He retired from the Hope in 1981, and made his last visit to Dublin in 1984. During his career he described 60 new genera and 475 species of Hymenoptera. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=54315447 | 2,176,317 |
954,696 | In no prior period had one decade brought so many changes for the university as the 1960s. The decade represented an unparalleled period of growth. From 1960 to 1970, student enrollment tripled, rising from 5,600 to 16,800. This tremendous influx would have been enough in itself to transform the way the university was perceived, from both the inside and the outside. As it turned out, the changes were even more comprehensive. The university campus at Blindern was expanded, and the number of academic and administrative employees rose. The number of academic positions doubled, from fewer than 500 to around 1,200. The increase in the number of students and staff transformed traditional forms of work and organisation. The expansion of the Blindern complex allowed the accommodation of 7,000 students. The explosive rise in student numbers during the 1960s impacted the Blindern campus in particular. The faculties situated in central Oslo—Law and Medicine—experienced only a doubling in student enrollment during the 1960s, while the number of students in the humanities and social sciences tripled. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31800 | 954,191 |
1,211,762 | Planers and shapers are now obsolescent, because other machine tools (such as milling machines, broaching machines, and grinding machines) have mostly eclipsed them as the tools of choice for doing such work. However, they have not yet disappeared from the metalworking world. Planers are used by smaller tool and die shops within larger production facilities to maintain and repair large stamping dies and plastic injection molds. Additional uses include any other task where an abnormally large (usually in the range of 4'×8' or more) block of metal must be squared when a (quite massive) horizontal grinder or floor mill is unavailable, too expensive, or otherwise impractical in a given situation. As usual in the selection of machine tools, an old machine that is in hand, still works, and is long since paid-for has substantial cost advantage over a newer machine that would need to be purchased. This principle easily explains why "old-fashioned" techniques often have a long period of gradual obsolescence in industrial contexts, rather than a sharp drop-off of prevalence such as is seen in mass-consumer technology fashions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6086634 | 1,211,110 |
1,504,552 | Her other contributions to external organizations include serving on the Science and Engineering Research Council, the Council of the Royal Society, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, and the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. Starting in 1994, she served as a trustee of the British Museum for ten years. In October 2000, she became a governor of the Wellcome Trust, the world's largest biomedical research charity. In 2002 she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) and she is also a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales (FLSW). Between 2000 and 2005, she served as president of the Biochemical Society and was granted honorary membership of that body in 2008. The Wolfson Foundation, an independent charity that supports excellence in science and education, appointed her as a trustee in November 2013. In 2014, Thomas was elected as the second President of the Royal Society of Biology, succeeding Nancy Rothwell of the University of Manchester. In 2018 she was appointed Chancellor of Swansea University. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11568677 | 1,503,706 |
1,977,501 | Few, if any, rivalries in the ACHA match the history and stakes of UMass' frequent showdowns with Rhode Island. The two teams were founding members of the Eastern Collegiate Women's Hockey League in 2003–04, and are the only two to remain in the league through its entire existence. No fewer than 10 times in the 14 seasons where an ECWHL playoff has been held, the title game has been a UMass-URI contest, with the Rams enjoying a 7–3 advantage in those games (although the Minutemen have won the last three). Among the more memorable ECWHL championship games were two overtime contests, both won by URI, including a 5–4 result in 2005. Three years later, Rhode Island stormed out to a 3–0 lead after the first period, only to see UMass reply with four unanswered to take the lead in the third period. However, the Rams forced overtime with a late equalizer, allowing URI's Justine Ducie to win the trophy in the sixth minute of the third extra period. Most recently, Amber Greene's 26-save shutout allowed second-period goals by Brittani Lanzilli, Lanzilli again and Michaela Tosone to produce a 3–0 win on February 26, 2017. Even when not competing head to head, the league nearly always runs through at least one of the teams, as there have been only three regular season or playoff titles in ECWHL history won by anyone else (Northeastern won the regular season and playoff championships in 2010–11, Penn State took the regular season in 2011–12). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=54095645 | 1,976,363 |
1,140,798 | Novikov also carried out important research in geometric topology, being one of the pioneers with William Browder, Dennis Sullivan, and C. T. C. Wall of the surgery theory method for classifying high-dimensional manifolds. He proved the topological invariance of the rational Pontryagin classes, and posed the Novikov conjecture. This work was recognised by the award in 1970 of the Fields Medal. He was not allowed to travel to Nice to accept his medal, but he received it in 1971 when the International Mathematical Union met in Moscow. From about 1971 he moved to work in the field of isospectral flows, with connections to the theory of theta functions. Novikov's conjecture about the Riemann–Schottky problem (characterizing principally polarized abelian varieties that are the Jacobian of some algebraic curve) stated, essentially, that this was the case if and only if the corresponding theta function provided a solution to the Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation of soliton theory. This was proved by Takahiro Shiota (1986), following earlier work by Enrico Arbarello and Corrado de Concini (1984), and by Motohico Mulase (1984). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=628515 | 1,140,204 |
563,249 | Deep eutectic solvents or DESs are solutions of Lewis or Brønsted acids and bases which form a eutectic mixture. Deep eutectic solvents are highly tunable through varying the structure or relative ratio of parent components and thus have a wide variety of potential applications including catalytic, separation, and electrochemical processes. The parent components of deep eutectic solvents engage in a complex hydrogen bonding network which results in significant freezing point depression as compared to the parent compounds. The extent of freezing point depression observed in DESs is well illustrated by a mixture of choline chloride and urea in a 1:2 mole ratio. Choline chloride and urea are both solids at room temperature with melting points of 302°C (decomposition point) and 133°C respectively, yet the combination of the two in a 1:2 molar ratio forms a liquid with a freezing point of 12°C. DESs share similar properties to ionic liquids such as tunability and lack of flammability yet are distinct in that ionic liquids are neat salts composed exclusively of discrete ions. In contrast to ordinary solvents, such as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC), DESs are non-flammable, and possess low vapour pressures and toxicity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2777190 | 562,960 |
470,095 | In general, the objective events follow a set organizational outline from year to year. Language and literature focuses on a single novel or a set of plays in addition to multiple short literary selections which tend to be poems or excerpts from short stories. The art and music sections include several selections with which students must familiarize themselves in addition to historical information. Economics remains fairly static; 85% of the material focuses on a standard course of macroeconomics and microeconomics and the remaining 15% focuses on the year's topic. For example, in 2005 the themed material covered the economics of ancient Egypt and Rome. Science and social science reflect the season's theme. Unlike the other events, there is no basic information that carries over. The math curriculum has varied as well, occasionally dropping and adding new subjects or shifting the weight of particular subjects. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=562034 | 469,859 |
1,382,628 | In a typical reconstruction the first step is to generate random phases and combine them with the amplitude information from the reciprocal space pattern. Then a Fourier transform is applied back and forth to move between real space and reciprocal space with the modulus squared of the diffracted wave field set equal to the measured diffraction intensities in each cycle. By applying various constraints in real and reciprocal space the pattern evolves into an image after enough iterations of the HIO process. To ensure reproducibility the process is typically repeated with new sets of random phases with each run having typically hundreds to thousands of cycles. The constraints imposed in real and reciprocal space typically depend on the experimental setup and the sample to be imaged. The real space constraint is to restrict the imaged object to a confined region called the "support". For example, the object to be imaged can be initially assumed to reside in a region no larger than roughly the beam size. In some cases this constraint may be more restrictive, such as in a periodic support region for a uniformly spaced array of quantum dots. Other researchers have investigated imaging extended objects, that is, objects that are larger than the beam size, by applying other constraints. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13751165 | 1,381,863 |
353,476 | During the 18th century, systems of plant identification were developed comparable to dichotomous keys, where unidentified plants are placed into taxonomic groups (e.g. family, genus and species) by making a series of choices between pairs of characters. The choice and sequence of the characters may be artificial in keys designed purely for identification (diagnostic keys) or more closely related to the natural or phyletic order of the taxa in synoptic keys. By the 18th century, new plants for study were arriving in Europe in increasing numbers from newly discovered countries and the European colonies worldwide. In 1753, Carl von Linné (Carl Linnaeus) published his Species Plantarum, a hierarchical classification of plant species that remains the reference point for modern botanical nomenclature. This established a standardised binomial or two-part naming scheme where the first name represented the genus and the second identified the species within the genus. For the purposes of identification, Linnaeus's "Systema Sexuale" classified plants into 24 groups according to the number of their male sexual organs. The 24th group, "Cryptogamia", included all plants with concealed reproductive parts, mosses, liverworts, ferns, algae and fungi. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4183 | 353,293 |
570,594 | An evoked potential is the electrical response of the brain to a sensory stimulus. Regan constructed an analogue Fourier series analyzer to record harmonics of the evoked potential to flickering (sinusoidally modulated) light. Rather than integrating the sine and cosine products, Regan fed the signals to a two-pen recorder via lowpass filters. This allowed him to demonstrate that the brain attained a steady-state regime in which the amplitude and phase of the harmonics (frequency components) of the response were approximately constant over time. By analogy with the steady-state response of a resonant circuit that follows the initial transient response he defined an idealized steady-state evoked potential (SSEP) as a form of response to repetitive sensory stimulation in which the constituent frequency components of the response remain constant with time in both amplitude and phase. Although this definition implies a series of identical temporal waveforms, it is more helpful to define the SSEP in terms of the frequency components that are an alternative description of the time-domain waveform, because different frequency components can have quite different properties. For example, the properties of the high-frequency flicker SSEP (whose peak amplitude is near 40–50 Hz) correspond to the properties of the subsequently discovered magnocellular neurons in the retina of the macaque monkey, while the properties of the medium-frequency flicker SSEP ( whose amplitude peak is near 15–20 Hz) correspond to the properties of parvocellular neurons. Since a SSEP can be completely described in terms of the amplitude and phase of each frequency component it can be quantified more unequivocally than an averaged transient evoked potential. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=176315 | 570,304 |
1,749,745 | Founded in 1900 by Thomas Edison, Willis R. Whitney, and Charles Steinmetz, this lab defined industrial research for years to come. Elihu Thomson, one of the founding members of the laboratory, summed up the goal of the lab saying, "It does seem to me therefore that a Company as large as the General Electric Company, should not fail to continue investing and developing in new fields: there should, in fact, be a research laboratory for commercial applications of new principles, and even for the discovery of those principles." Furthermore, Edwin W. Rice, founding vice president, said they wanted to "establish a laboratory to be devoted exclusively to original research. It is hoped by this means that many profitable fields may be discovered." Whitney and the founders of the research lab took many of their lab ideals from a German university model. German universities allowed professors to research and experiment with their own interests to seek further knowledge without having commercial or economic interests in mind. Other German scientists also researched exclusively with business in mind. But, these two views contributed to a successful relationship between science and industry. It was this success that influenced Whitney in his vision for the GE Research Lab. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12990536 | 1,748,759 |
1,044,586 | The discussion in this section and the previous one urge the examination of how these research findings can affect teacher education. One of the first ways is that when a teacher understands the solution structure of word problems, they are likely to have an increased understanding of their students' comprehension levels. Each of these research studies supported the finding that, in many cases, students do not often struggle with executing the mathematical procedures. Rather, the comprehension gap comes from not having a firm understanding of the connections between the math concepts and the semantics of the realistic problems. As a teacher examines a student's solution process, understanding each of the steps will help them understand how to best accommodate their specific learning needs. Another thing to address is the importance of teaching and promoting multiple solution processes. Procedural fluency is often times taught without an emphasis on conceptual and applicable comprehension. This leaves students with a gap between their mathematical understanding and their realistic problem solving skills. The ways in which teachers can best prepare for and promote this type of learning will not be discussed here. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=297013 | 1,044,042 |
2,131,890 | It was formulated by British Museum paleontologist Richard Jefferies. The hypothesis has been disproven as of 2019; exceptional preservation of soft tissues in the single appendage of the stylophorans "Thoralicystis" and "Hanusia" revealed clear traces consistent with a water vascular system—an ambulacral canal with tube feet—covered by movable plates, where the calcichordate hypothesis would require the anatomy be a tail containing a notochord protected by fixed plates. The enlarged area at the base of the appendage, which in the calcichordate hypothesis would contain muscles to move the tail, contains an extension of the body cavity. The findings also disprove the hypothesis that the group were stalked echinoderms. Based on the internal anatomy, "calcichordates" (stylophorans) are revealed as echinoderms with a single, somewhat starfish-like arm that gathered food with tube feet and transferred it to a mouth at the base of the arm. The food-gathering arm may also have been used for locomotion, as in starfish. The fossils from the Bou Izargane "Lagerstätte" from the Lower Ordivician of Morocco were unknown to Jeffries; they had not been discovered when he formulated the hypothesis in the early 1960s based on the examination of a group of mitrate fossils, and were still unknown when he wrote subsequent papers in 1981 and 1997 defending the hypothesis. Stylophorans are classed as echinoderms based on their possession of at least two shared and unique features (apomorphies) of the phylum; stereom plates and a water vascular system. Because they show no sign of radial symmetry, the position of stylophorans within Echinodermata remains unresolved as of 2019. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27521928 | 2,130,665 |
970,872 | LLNL was, in particular, well funded and started a laser fusion development program. Their Janus laser started operation in 1974, and validated the approach of using Nd:glass lasers for high power devices. Focusing problems were explored in the Long path and Cyclops lasers, which led to the larger Argus laser. None of these were intended to be practical devices, but they increased confidence that the approach was valid. At the time it was believed that making a much larger device of the Cyclops type could both compress and heat targets, leading to ignition. This misconception was based on extrapolation of the fusion yields seen from experiments utilizing the so-called "exploding pusher" fuel capsule. During the late 1970s and early 1980s the estimates for laser energy on target needed to achieve ignition doubled almost yearly as plasma instabilities and laser-plasma energy coupling loss modes were increasingly understood. The realization that exploding pusher target designs and single-digit kilojoule (kJ) laser irradiation intensities would never scale to high yields led to the effort to increase laser energies to the 100 kJ level in the UV band and to the production of advanced ablator and cryogenic DT ice target designs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40323 | 970,362 |
694,020 | Although most work on host-microbe interactions has been focused on animal systems such as corals, sponges, or humans, there is a substantial body of literature on plant holobionts. Plant-associated microbial communities impact both key components of the fitness of plants, growth and survival, and are shaped by nutrient availability and plant defense mechanisms. Several habitats have been described to harbor plant-associated microbes, including the rhizoplane (surface of root tissue), the rhizosphere (periphery of the roots), the endosphere (inside plant tissue), and the phyllosphere (total above-ground surface area). The holobiont concept originally suggested that a significant fraction of the microbiome genome together with the host genome is transmitted from one generation to the next and thus can propagate unique properties of the holobiont". In this regard, studies have shown that seeds can play such a role. Evidence of this process have been recently proven showing that the majority, up to 95%, of the seed microbiome is mistranslated across generations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50652399 | 693,657 |
2,242,408 | Based on the G36, Heckler & Koch also created the semi-automatic SL8 rifle and the straight-pull, bolt-action R8, which are offered to the civilian sport shooting markets. The SL8 is substantially different from the G36, it has a modified receiver and a thumbhole stock with a cheek rest, which is integral with the trigger group. The SL8 has a heavy profile, extended, barrel that does not have a flash hider or bayonet lug. The rifle uses a 10-round single-stack magazine and an extended top rail used to mount a wide variety of Picatinny-standard optics. Mounted to the rail are a set of iron sights with a hooded foresight and adjustable flip rear aperture. The SL8 can also mount the G36 carry handle and integrated sight assembly, after removing the mechanical iron sights. The SL8 has an unloaded weight of 4.3 kg, overall length of 980–1030 mm and a trigger rated at . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=698999 | 2,241,137 |
1,701,368 | Paramphistomiasis causes enteritis and anaemia in livestocks mammals and result in substantial production and economic losses. Adults attach to the villi in the rumens of the hosts and sap nutrients from the intestine, although they can wander into the bile and pancreatic ducts, as do other trematodes. Pathological symptoms are produced by immature flukes. When the young flukes start to gather in the intestine, there is a watery and fetid diarrhoea which is often associated with high mortality (even up to 80–90%) in ruminants. At a given time, as many as 30,000 flukes may accumulate, fervently attacking the duodenal mucosa to induce acute enteritis. Surprisingly, the adult flukes are regarded as commensals and non-pathogenic. However, they do cause the intestinal villi to erode and instil inflammation. Liver tissue are generally damaged extensively, indicated by swelling, haemorrhage, discolouration, necrosis, bile duct hyperplasia, and fibrosis. Paramphistomiasis is responsible for severe economic losses to milk, meat and wool production since the flukes take nutrients from their hosts, which leads to weight loss and physiological decline. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38839913 | 1,700,413 |
1,870,429 | Electrophilic ligands make covalent modifications to specific cysteine residues in the cytoplasmic amino-terminus that increase the probability of channel opening. Although both Na and Ca can enter TRPA1, the channel normally has a preference towards Ca and the intracellular calcium concentration increases more rapidly than the sodium concentration. WaTx interacts differently with the channel compared to reactive electrophiles. WaTx non-covalently binds to the allosteric nexus and initiates interactions with an integrated complex between the N-terminal cysteine-rich linker (S4-S5) and C-terminal TRP-like domains. This prevents the open channel from closing, as opposed to increasing the probability of opening, and results in a prolonged duration of the channel's open state. With WaTx bound in open state, TRPA1 lacks a preference for Ca over Na, which accounts for the lower calcium permeability. Consequently, both electrophilic ligands and WaTx trigger a pain response, but the calcium levels that result from WaTx are too low to initiate subsequent neuropeptide release and neurogenic inflammation. This suggests that WaTx may act only to open the ion permeation gate of TRPA1, without dilating the selectivity filter (dilation of the selectivity filter having been proposed to underlie enhanced calcium permeability of TRPA1 after activation by classical electrophilic irritants). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=61980431 | 1,869,352 |
349,340 | Expressionism, which appeared in Germany between 1910 and 1925, was a counter-movement against the strictly functional architecture of the Bauhaus and Werkbund. Its advocates, including Bruno Taut, Hans Poelzig, Fritz Hoger and Erich Mendelsohn, wanted to create architecture that was poetic, expressive, and optimistic. Many expressionist architects had fought in World War I and their experiences, combined with the political turmoil and social upheaval that followed the German Revolution of 1919, resulted in a utopian outlook and a romantic socialist agenda. Economic conditions severely limited the number of built commissions between 1914 and the mid–1920s, As result, many of the most innovative expressionist projects, including Bruno Taut's "Alpine Architecture" and Hermann Finsterlin's "Formspiels", remained on paper. Scenography for theatre and films provided another outlet for the expressionist imagination, and provided supplemental incomes for designers attempting to challenge conventions in a harsh economic climate. A particular type, using bricks to create its forms (rather than concrete) is known as Brick Expressionism. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=315927 | 349,158 |
1,980,114 | Jeffrey A. Bluestone (born 1954) is the A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professor of Metabolism and Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco (as of January 2022), and was, for a number of years, an earlier executive vice chancellor and provost of that university. He began the UCSF affiliation in 2000, after earlier extended positions at the NCI-NIH, and at The University of Chicago. Bluestone earned his undergraduate and masters degrees in microbiology from Rutgers State University, and his doctoral degree in immunology from Cornell Graduate School of Medical Science. His current research is focused on understanding T cell activation and immune tolerance in autoimmunity and organ transplantation. As of April 2016, he was also serving as the president and CEO of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, but since left to become the Chief Executive Officer and President of Sonoma Biotherapeutics in 2019. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=51242417 | 1,978,976 |
1,847,469 | The neurobehavioral assessment battery that was used in the Van Dongen et al. study included the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT). The PVT - which determines alertness and the effects of fatigue on cognitive performance (as determined by lapses in response time and accuracy of responses) by measuring the speed with which subjects respond to a visual or auditory stimulus (by pressing a response button) - has become a standard laboratory tool for the assessment of sustained performance in a variety of experimental conditions. The PVT detects changes in basic neurobehavioral performance that involve vigilant attention, response speed, and impulsivity; and it has been extensively validated in ground-based laboratory studies to detect cognitive deficits that are caused by a variety of factors (e.g., restricted sleep, sleep/wake shifts, motion sickness, residual sedation from sleep medications). The PVT is an optimal tool for repeated use, in contrast to some other cognitive measures, as studies have shown no minimal learning effects and aptitude differences when using the PVT. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36677584 | 1,846,412 |
1,069,785 | In 1968, a Cambridge radio astronomy postgraduate student Jocelyn Bell Burnell and her doctoral adviser Antony Hewish discovered a pulsing radio source with a period of 1.33 seconds. The source – which was termed "pulsar" – emitted beams of electromagnetic radiation at a very short and consistent interval. Gold proposed that these objects were rapidly rotating neutron stars. Gold argued that due to their strong magnetic fields and high rotational speed, pulsars would emit radiation similar to a rotating beacon. Gold's conclusion was initially not well received by the scientific community; in fact, he was refused permission to present his theory at the first international conference on pulsars. However, Gold's theory became widely accepted following the discovery of a pulsar in the Crab Nebula using the Arecibo radio telescope, opening the door for future advancements in solid-state physics and astronomy. Anthony Tucker of "The Guardian" remarked that Gold's discovery paved the way for Stephen Hawking's groundbreaking research into black holes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=156331 | 1,069,231 |
227,731 | The United States Navy (USN) Project Affirm was established at Naval Air Station Quonset Point on 18 April 1942 to develop night fighting equipment and tactics. Aircraft selection was limited to single-engine, single-seat planes by the requirement to be capable of operating from aircraft carriers. Urgency for the night-fighting role increased when Japanese aircraft successfully harassed naval forces on night raids in the Solomon Islands. The Japanese Navy had long screened new recruits for exceptional night vision, using the best on their ships and aircraft instead of developing new equipment for this role. VF(N)-75 was established as the first USN night fighter squadron on 10 April 1943. Six pilots with six aircraft were sent to the South Pacific on 1 August 1943. A Night Fighter Training Unit (NFTU) was established at Charlestown, Rhode Island, on 25 August 1943 using radar-equipped Douglas SBD Dauntless training aircraft to allow instructors to accompany student pilots. USN carrier-launched fighter combat missions began in January 1944 with six-plane detachments of single-engined Grumman F6F Hellcat and Vought F4U Corsair fighters fitted with compact, microwave-band radar sets in wing-mounted pods. The specially trained night fighter and torpedo planes of Night Air Group 41 (NAG-41) began flying from in August 1944. NAG-41 achieved full night status on 1 October 1944 in time to participate in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Night fighter patrols effectively countered "kamikaze" attacks timed to arrive during twilight conditions at dawn or dusk. In several cases these USN aircraft were used on raids of their own. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=164906 | 227,614 |
1,275,748 | Some early submarine cables were laid with just their insulation for protection. This was often unsuccessful. The cables were easily damaged and some attempts to lay them failed because they would not sink. The configuration found to work well was to twist the cable cores together, bind them with tarred hemp, wind a tarred cord around the whole group of cores, and then protect the assembled cores with iron wires twisted around them. The Gutta Percha Company never made completed cables of this sort, sending them to another company for finishing instead. These companies were specialists in the manufacturing of wire rope. R.S. Newall and Company in Tyne and Wear, Glass, Elliot & Company, and W. T. Henley in London. were the principal companies involved in this early work. In 1864, the Gutta Percha Company merged with Glass, Elliot to form the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company (Telcon). John Pender instigated this becoming chairman. Pender, with a consortium including Thomas Brassey and Daniel Gooch, bought the SS "Great Eastern", a huge, failing passenger ship built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. They converted it into a cable layer. Telcon chartered the ship using it on some of the major cable installations around the world. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60245762 | 1,275,055 |
1,964,411 | The School's curriculum has been revised several times in response to internal and external environment and responding to accreditation standards. Among the highlights are early clinical experiences, use of simulators in pre-clinical laboratories, treatment patient-centered comprehensive, competency-based assessment, innovative educational methods as standardized patients, scientific evidence-based learning among others. The School of Dentistry has taken a leadership role in the international community. Graduate programs have received professional Central and South America and Spain for training in various specialized areas of dentistry. An excellent example of this initiative is the school's contribution to the development of dental curriculum at the University of Granada, in its decision to establish a separate School of Dental Medicine, satisfy the requirements of the European Economic Community. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22281259 | 1,963,283 |
34,199 | It would appear that living organisms are remarkably inefficient (in the physical sense) in their use of the energy they receive (chemical or radiant energy); most machines manage higher efficiencies. In growing organisms the energy that is converted to heat serves a vital purpose, as it allows the organism tissue to be highly ordered with regard to the molecules it is built from. The second law of thermodynamics states that energy (and matter) tends to become more evenly spread out across the universe: to concentrate energy (or matter) in one specific place, it is necessary to spread out a greater amount of energy (as heat) across the remainder of the universe ("the surroundings"). Simpler organisms can achieve higher energy efficiencies than more complex ones, but the complex organisms can occupy ecological niches that are not available to their simpler brethren. The conversion of a portion of the chemical energy to heat at each step in a metabolic pathway is the physical reason behind the pyramid of biomass observed in ecology. As an example, to take just the first step in the food chain: of the estimated 124.7 Pg/a of carbon that is fixed by photosynthesis, 64.3 Pg/a (52%) are used for the metabolism of green plants, i.e. reconverted into carbon dioxide and heat. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9649 | 34,187 |
1,799,142 | Oxygen transportation, DNA synthesis, myelin synthesis, oxidative phosphorylation, and neurotransmitter synthesis and metabolism are all biological processes that require iron; however, an iron imbalance can result in neurotoxicity causing oxidation and modification of lipids, proteins, carbohydrates, and DNA. Hypoxic conditions in severely anemic individuals may cause brain damage resulting in cognitive impairment. When iron levels in the brain are disrupted neurophysiological mechanisms and cognition are affected, potentially resulting in long-term behavioral changes and may affect attention span, intelligence, sensory perception functions, mood, and behavior. Neuropathies such as ADHD, autism, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder are seen in iron deficient individuals. However, excessive iron accumulation can be seen in neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease. Iron is needed to develop the central nervous system (CNS), endocrine system, autoimmune system, and brain. Iron is involved with the development and functioning of different neurotransmitter systems and large iron quantities are required for the myelination of white brain matter. Abnormal myelination of white matter due to iron deficiency during development may be related to the onset of psychological disorders in adolescents. Decreased iron concentration results in a reduction of neurotransmitter levels, in turn leading to poor myelination and delayed neuromaturation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=34730803 | 1,798,133 |
871,781 | He was conscious of the stressful loneliness of command. He knew of the suicides both of Captain Stokes and of his uncle Viscount Castlereagh, who had cut his own throat in 1822 while in government office. FitzRoy talked to Beaufort in August 1831, asking him to find a suitable gentleman companion for the voyage. Such a companion should share his scientific tastes, make good use of the expedition's opportunities for researching natural history, dine with him as an equal, and provide a semblance of normal human friendship. While those Beaufort first approached (including Professor J. S. Henslow of the University of Cambridge) turned the opportunity down, FitzRoy eventually approved Charles Darwin for the position. Before they left England, FitzRoy gave Darwin a copy of the first volume of Charles Lyell's "Principles of Geology", a book the captain had read that explained terrestrial features as the outcome of a gradual process taking place over extremely long periods. FitzRoy took a request from Lyell to record observations on geological features, such as erratic boulders. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=271121 | 871,321 |
1,302,581 | In vitro studies on differentiation have used the pre-committed preadipocyte lineage, such as 3T3-L1 and 3T3-F442A cell line, or preadipocytes isolated from the stromal-vascular fraction of white adipose tissue. In vitro differentiation is a highly ordered process. Firstly, proliferating preadipocytes arrest growth usually by contact inhibition. The growth arrest followed by the earliest events, including a morphological change of preadipocyte from the fibroblast-shape to the round-shape and the induction of transcription factors C/EBPβ, and C/EBPδ. The second phase of growth arrest is the expression of two key transcription factors PPARγ and C/EBPα which promote expression of genes that confer the characteristics of mature adipocytes. These genes include adipocyte protein (aP2), insulin receptor, glycerophosphate dehydrogenase, fatty acid synthase, acetyl CoA carboxylase, glucose transporter type 4 (Glut 4) and so on. Through this process, lipid droplets accumulate in the adipocyte. However, preadipocytes cell lines have difficult to different to differentiate into adipocytes. Preadipocytes display CD45 CD31 CD34 CD29 SCA1 CD24 surface markers can proliferate and differentiate to adipocytes in vivo. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24390945 | 1,301,867 |
17,464 | Among its alumni, faculty and researchers, Berkeley has more Nobel laureates (107), Turing Award winners (25), Fields Medalists (14), and Wolf Prize winners (30) than any other public university in the nation; it is affiliated with 34 Pulitzer Prizes, 19 Academy Awards, and more MacArthur "Genius Grants" (108) and National Medals of Science (68) than any other public institution. The university has produced seven heads of state or government; six chief justices, including Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren; 22 cabinet-level officials; 11 governors; and 25 living billionaires. It is also a leading producer of Fulbright Scholars, MacArthur Fellows, and Marshall Scholars. Berkeley alumni, widely recognized for their entrepreneurship, have founded numerous notable companies, including Apple, Tesla, Intel, eBay, SoftBank, AIG, and Morgan Stanley. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31922 | 17,459 |
1,090,747 | Agni-I is a single stage, solid fuel, road and rail mobile, Short-range ballistic missile (SRBM). The need for the Agni-I was felt after the Kargil war with Pakistan. It took DRDO 15 months to develop the Agni-I after having completed Agni-II development. It is propelled by solid fuel. Maneuvering RV body-lift aerodynamics give it the ability to correct trajectory errors and reduce thermal stresses. The MRV has a velocity correction package to correct launch trajectory variances. Some Agni RV versions use a set of solid fueled thruster cartridges of predetermined impulse, allowing the onboard guidance controller to trim velocity, using discrete combination of impulse quanta along the desired spatial orientation. The 15 metre tall Agni-I missile, weighing about 12 tonnes, is capable of carrying both conventional as well as nuclear warheads of 1,000 kg. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20746661 | 1,090,187 |
1,787,752 | The twentieth century was again characterized by increases in scope and scale of chemical production. Pigments like cadmium selenide, manganese blue, molybdenum red, and bismuth vanadate were synthesized. High purity titanium dioxide and zinc oxide were produced for the first time on an industrial scale and introduced synthetic white pigments. The first insoluble organic pigments, the red naphthols, containing neither acid nor basic groups, were produced and sold. Furthermore, the quality of the new dyes increased. Chemist Rene Bohn developed a brilliant blue vat dye, indanthrone, with excellent color fastness in 1901. BASF(Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik), the largest manufacturer of vat dyes, sold it as Indanthren Blue RS, along with the synthetic indigo they placed on the market in 1897. Allegedly James Morton, a leader in England's textile industry, was out walking when he saw some tapestries he produced using aniline dyes had already faded, despite only recently being put on display. He was so dismayed that he began to have dye samples exposed to the sun to check for light-fastness. He then employed a Scottish chemist named John Christie to synthesize dyes based on the chemical structures that were more stable to sunlight, and began to market the dyes in his products as "fast dyes", or "sundour", which can translate to "hard to move" in Scots. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=62919428 | 1,786,747 |
2,018,179 | The eleventh NECSS in 2019 featured keynote speaker Carl Zimmer with a talk called "Heredity: Its Powers, Perversions, and Potential", in which he spoke about the potential consequences of home genetic tests without guidance from medical professionals. Brian Wecht, Jay Novella, and Steven Novella explored how skeptical and scientific characters are portrayed in media in an interactive workshop called "How Science and Skepticism are Portrayed in Pop Culture". Other workshops include "Psychology of Magic" with mentalist Eric Walton and "Shaping Your Child's Behavior with Science" with Jocelyn Novella and Liz Gaston. Cara Santa Maria and Mary Roach sat down for a conversation about Roach's body of work, including her books "", "", and "Packing for Mars". Some of the talks dealt with social issues such as racial bias and atheism in the black community. Odaelys Walwyn's talk explored the lack of STEM career accessibility to the black community and Debbie Goddard spoke about reaching out to those in the black community who may be questioning their faith. The "Skeptical Extravaganza of Special Significance" was also a feature of NECSS 2019. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45569283 | 2,017,016 |
424,958 | The main shared characteristic found across all Scolecophidia is a fossorial nature, either living underground or within logs and leaf litter. Aside from this, thus far the reproduction remains understudied with all Scolecophidia studied thus far being noted to be oviparous, with elongate eggs noted in both leptotyphlopids and typhlopids. Foraging behaviors vary across families, but all feed on invertebrates. Some of their main food sources include ant or termite eggs, which are tracked down by following chemical cues left by these invertebrates to create trails. "Tricheilostomata macrolepis" has been seen climbing up trees and waving its head side to side vertically to detect chemical cues in the air to locate insect nests. In a study on the Leptotyphlopidae, some species were found to specialize in eating only termites or ants; some rely on binge feeding patterns, while others do not. While these snakes are often difficult to locate due to their burrowing habits, they are more often seen above ground after rain due to flooding that occurs in burrows. The ancestral nature of the Scolecophidia has resulted in the use of these organisms as models for evolutionary studies in Serpentes to better understand evolution of reproduction, morphology, and feeding habits. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12763479 | 424,750 |
19,634 | After ingesting psilocybin, a wide range of subjective effects may be experienced: feelings of disorientation, lethargy, giddiness, euphoria, joy, and depression. In one study, 31% of volunteers given a high dose reported feelings of significant fear and 17% experienced transient paranoia. In studies at Johns Hopkins among those given a moderate dose (but still enough to "give a high probability of a profound and beneficial experience"), negative experiences were rare, whereas 1/3 of those given the high dose experienced anxiety or paranoia. Low doses can induce hallucinatory effects. Closed-eye hallucinations may occur, where the affected individual sees multicolored geometric shapes and vivid imaginative sequences. Some individuals report synesthesia, such as tactile sensations when viewing colors. At higher doses, psilocybin can lead to "intensification of affective responses, enhanced ability for introspection, regression to primitive and childlike thinking, and activation of vivid memory traces with pronounced emotional undertones". Open-eye visual hallucinations are common, and may be very detailed although rarely confused with reality. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38468 | 19,626 |
1,933,883 | In 1997 Sadler Aircraft Corp. partnered with Türk Havacılık ve Uzay Sanayii A.Ş. (TUSAŞ — Turkish Aerospace Industries Inc.) to adapt the Piranha for the Turkish military, resulting in the TG-X1 Bat. This very light single-seat attack and surveillance aircraft made its debut flight in February 1997. Chevy V8 engine was installed with titanium conrods. The vision of pilot was excellent and performance was superior to helicopters with a fraction of the cost. Aircraft has foldable wings and can take-off from unprepared runways. Prototype aircraft was crash landed in one of the flight tests due to engine failure. Sadler due to low altitude tried to land the aircraft to the runway that he took off. He survived with minor injuries. Aircraft was fixed and flew many more test flights. McDonnell Douglas/Boeing (MDHC) M230LF 30 mm cannon (This cannon is used on AH-64 Apache attack helicopters) was brought to the prototype shop but never installed on TG-X1. Project was cancelled due to lack of interest from military. Members of the design team remember him as a sharp, mission focused, bold pilot and as a practical engineer. One and only prototype aircraft is still intact and kept in TUSAŞ perimeter. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=68222537 | 1,932,775 |
758,123 | About the same time, scholars in European universities began to address the implications of the rediscovered philosophy of Aristotle and astronomy of Ptolemy. Both astronomical scholars and popular writers considered the implications of the nested sphere model for the dimensions of the universe. Campanus of Novara's introductory astronomical text, the "Theorica planetarum", used the model of nesting spheres to compute the distances of the various planets from the Earth, which he gave as 22,612 Earth radii or 73,387,747 miles. In his "Opus Majus", Roger Bacon cited Al-Farghānī's distance to the stars of 20,110 Earth radii, or 65,357,700 miles, from which he computed the circumference of the universe to be 410,818,517 miles. Clear evidence that this model was thought to represent physical reality is the accounts found in Bacon's "Opus Majus" of the time needed to walk to the Moon and in the popular Middle English "South English Legendary", that it would take 8,000 years to reach the highest starry heaven. General understanding of the dimensions of the universe derived from the nested sphere model reached wider audiences through the presentations in Hebrew by Moses Maimonides, in French by Gossuin of Metz, and in Italian by Dante Alighieri. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=383129 | 757,718 |
1,862,270 | Biofilms are also being considered for producing bulk chemicals using biofilm fermentation, which is a type of biorefinery. Some products such as high fructose corn syrup and the commodity chemical acrylamide are manufactured using immobilized biocatalysts. However, the method of immobilization can be expensive and the process can deactivate the biocatalyst leading to decreased activity over time. These factors can make it challenging to use immobilized biocatalysts to produce bulk chemicals and fuels that often have a low market price. Thus, biofilm fermentations have been considered as a way to increase the yield of organic acids and alcohols in a way that is more commercially feasible. Strains of bacteria that are known for producing the chemical of interest are grown on carriers that can be made from a variety of materials. For example, "zymomonas mobilis" and "Saccharomyces cerevisiae" on plastic and plastic-composite supports have been investigated for increasing ethanol yield. Research has also been conducted for synthesizing butanol, lactic acid, acetone, and more. At commercial scale, acetic acid bacteria in a trickle bed biofilm reactor has been used to produce vinegar. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16807527 | 1,861,201 |
292,145 | Surface-mount technology was developed in the 1960s. By 1986 surface mounted components accounted for 10% of the market at most, but was rapidly gaining popularity. By the late 1990s, the great majority of high-tech electronic printed circuit assemblies were dominated by surface mount devices. Much of the pioneering work in this technology was done by IBM. The design approach first demonstrated by IBM in 1960 in a small-scale computer was later applied in the Launch Vehicle Digital Computer used in the Instrument Unit that guided all Saturn IB and Saturn V vehicles. Components were mechanically redesigned to have small metal tabs or end caps that could be directly soldered to the surface of the PCB. Components became much smaller and component placement on both sides of a board became far more common with surface mounting than through-hole mounting, allowing much higher circuit densities and smaller circuit boards and, in turn, machines or subassemblies containing the boards. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=232333 | 291,987 |
957,750 | Prior to the merger, Bristol had eschewed the subsonic airliner market in favour of working on the Bristol 223 supersonic transport, The effort continued under BAC and was eventually merged with similar efforts underway at the French aircraft company Sud Aviation, resulting in the Anglo-French Concorde. Described by "Flight International" as an "aviation icon" and "one of aerospace's most ambitious but commercially flawed projects", sales of the type were lackluster against conventional subsonic airliners, primarily due to the emergence of wide-body aircraft, such as the Boeing 747, which made subsonic airliners significantly more efficient. While by March 1969, the consortium had arrangements totalling 74 options from 16 airlines, only two airlines, Air France and the British Overseas Airways Corporation, would proceed with their orders. Scheduled services commenced on 21 January 1976 on both the London–Bahrain and Paris–Rio de Janeiro routes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=81087 | 957,244 |
919,308 | The Spanish flu pandemic lasted from 1918 to 1920. Various estimates say it killed between 17 million and 100 million people This pandemic has been described as "the greatest medical holocaust in history" and may have killed as many people as the Black Death, although the Black Death is estimated to have killed over a fifth of the world's population at the time, a significantly higher proportion. This huge death toll was caused by an extremely high infection rate of up to 50% and the extreme severity of the symptoms, suspected to be caused by cytokine storms. Indeed, symptoms in 1918 were so unusual that initially influenza was misdiagnosed as dengue, cholera, or typhoid. One observer wrote, "One of the most striking of the complications was hemorrhage from mucous membranes, especially from the nose, stomach, and intestine. Bleeding from the ears and petechial hemorrhages in the skin also occurred." The majority of deaths were from bacterial pneumonia, a secondary infection caused by influenza, but the virus also killed people directly, causing massive hemorrhages and edema in the lung. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2888063 | 918,823 |
143,746 | Following the 1994 Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impacts with Jupiter, Edward Teller proposed, to a collective of U.S. and Russian ex-Cold War weapons designers in a 1995 planetary defense workshop meeting at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), that they collaborate to design a one-gigaton nuclear explosive device, which would be equivalent to the kinetic energy of a asteroid. The theoretical one-gigaton device would weigh about 25–30 tons, light enough to be lifted on the Energia rocket. It could be used to instantaneously vaporize a asteroid, divert the paths of ELE-class asteroids (greater than in diameter) within short notice of a few months. With one year of notice, and at an interception location no closer than Jupiter, it could also deal with the even rarer short period comets that can come out of the Kuiper belt and transit past Earth orbit within two years. For comets of this class, with a maximum estimated diameter of , Chiron served as the hypothetical threat. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=174069 | 143,688 |
1,120,869 | Heterospory is advantageous in that having two different types of spores increases the likeliness that plants would successfully produce offspring. Heterosporous spores can respond independently to selection by ecological conditions in order to strengthen male and female reproductive function. Heterospory evolved from homospory many times, but the species in which it first appeared are now extinct. Heterospory is thought to have emerged in the Devonian era, mostly in wet/damp places based on fossil record evidence. In addition to being an outcome of competition for light, it is thought that heterospory was more successful in wetter areas because the megaspore could move more easily around in an aquatic environment while microspores were more easily dispersed by wind. Differing sized spores have been observed in many fossilized plant species. For example, the species "Lepidophloios", also known as the scale tree, has been shown in fossils to have been heterosporous; The scale tree had separate cones containing either male or female spores on the same plant. Modern heterosporous plants such as many ferns exhibit endospory, in which a megagametophyte is fertilized by a microgametophyte all while still inside the spore wall, gaining nutrients from the inside of spore. Both heterospory and endospory seem to be one of the many precursors to seed plants and the ovary. Heterosporic plants that produce seeds are their most successful and widespread descendants. Seed plants constitute the largest subsection of heterosporic plants. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15154845 | 1,120,295 |
1,459,996 | Objects for decorating churches such as crosses, reliquaries, altar frontals and treasure bindings for books were all made of or covered by gold, embellished with gems, enamels, crystals, and cameos. This was a much older style, but the Ottonian version has distinctive features, with very busy decoration of surfaces, often gems raised up from the main surface on little gold towers, accompanied by "beehive" projections in gold wire, and figurative reliefs in repoussé gold decorating areas between the bars of enamel and gem decoration. Relics were assuming increasing importance, sometimes political, in this period, and so increasingly rich reliquaries were made to hold them. In such works the gems do not merely create an impression of richness, but served both to offer a foretaste of the bejewelled nature of the Celestial city, and particular types of gem were believed to have actual powerful properties in various "scientific", medical and magical respects, as set out in the popular lapidary books. The few surviving pieces of secular jewellery are in similar styles, including the crown worn by Otto III as a child, which he presented to the Golden Madonna of Essen after he outgrew it. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2162018 | 1,459,174 |
1,931,279 | In 1869, the Superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta, Thomas Anderson, fell ill (left for Europe and died in 1870) and in 1871, the Secretary of State for India selected King as a successor. King took up the position and was also a Professor of Botany in the Medical College of Bengal. King was faced by the destruction wrought by two cyclones in 1864 and 1867. King was also involved in matters associated with tea and cinchona cultivation. While on an official visit to the Nilgiris in July 1872, he developed symptoms of pulmonary phthisis(tuberculosis). He was treated in Coonoor before moving to Europe. He spent a year in the Riviera and returned to Calcutta to resume duties in November 1873. King restructured the Calcutta Botanical Gardens, raising the level of the ground, creating ponds and laying out footpaths and conservatories. A fireproof herbarium was also constructed based on plans from Kew. King also altered the garden design from one segregated linearly on the basis of taxonomy to one based on regions with combinations of species showing the natural plant associations. He began the journal, the "Annals of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1844120 | 1,930,171 |
974,843 | Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two people on the Moon. Neil Armstrong became the first person to step onto the lunar surface on July 21, 1969, at 02:56 UTC; Buzz Aldrin joined him 19 minutes later. Only limited radio bandwidth was available to transmit the video signal from the lunar landings, which needed to be multiplexed with other communication and telemetry channels beamed from the Lunar Module "Eagle", back to Earth. Therefore, Apollo 11's moonwalk video was transmitted from the Apollo TV camera in a monochrome SSTV format at 10 frames per second (fps) with 320 lines of resolution, progressively scanned. These SSTV signals were received by radio telescopes at Parkes Observatory in Australia, the Goldstone tracking station in California, and Honeysuckle Creek tracking station, also in Australia. The camera's video format was incompatible with existing NTSC, PAL, and SECAM broadcast television standards. It needed to be converted before it could be shown on broadcast television networks. This live conversion was crude, essentially using a video camera pointing at a high-quality TV monitor. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6549167 | 974,332 |
1,826,963 | Besides covalent bonds, the linkage between catalytic particles and pure CNTs can also be achieved by noncovalent interactions such as van der Waals interactions, hydrogen bonding, π-π stacking, and electrostatic interactions. The surfactant sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) is widely used to attach diverse nanoparticles including Pt, EuF, TbF and SiO to multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). In another approach which utilizes hydrophobic capping agents, for instance, octanethiols and dodecanethiols, both coverage and morphology of the hybrid materials can be well controlled by modifying the length and functional groups of the chains. A similar route is to make use of the delocalized π electrons of CNTs as well as those in aromatic organic compounds containing polar group terminated alkyl chains. The most distinguished advantage of this method is that pyrene compounds are absorpted on CNTs, which improves the solubility of CNTs, together with dispersibility and charge transfer ability of loaded nanoparticles. In another simple and facile approach where electrostatic interactions are utilized, ionic polyelectrolytes are deposited on CNTs so as to attract charged nanoparticles. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33178140 | 1,825,924 |
182,354 | In 1992, National Basketball Association (NBA) players participated in the 1992 Summer Olympics. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman (an NBA executive in 1992) commented that the "[NBA]'s worldwide awareness grew dramatically". He hoped that NHL participation would "get exposure like the world has never seen for hockey". The typical NBA season is held in the winter and spring, so the Summer Olympics do not conflict with the regular season schedule. Bettman "floated a concept of moving hockey to the Summer Games", but this was rejected because of the Olympic Charter. In March 1995, Bettman, René Fasel, IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch and NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow met in Geneva, Switzerland. They reached an agreement that allowed NHL players to participate in the Olympics, starting with the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan. The deal was officially announced by the NHL on 2 October 1995. Bettman said: "We're doing this to build the game of hockey, pure and simple, we think whatever benefits are recouped, it will end up making this game bigger, stronger and healthier." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1855215 | 182,258 |
930,611 | Erasmus' reconstruction was based on a wide range of arguments, derived from the philological knowledge available at his time. In the main, he strove for a more regular correspondence of letters to sounds, assuming that different letters must have stood for different sounds, and same letters for same sounds. That led him, for instance, to posit that the various letters which in the iotacist system all denoted must have had different values, and that , , , , , were all diphthongs with a closing offglide. He also insisted on taking the accounts of ancient grammarians literally, for instance where they described vowels as being distinctively long and short, or the acute and circumflex accents as being clearly distinguished by pitch contours. In addition, he drew on evidence from word correspondences between Greek and Latin as well as some other European languages. Some of his arguments in this direction are, in hindsight, mistaken, because he naturally lacked much of the knowledge developed through later linguistic work. Thus, he could not distinguish between Latin-Greek word relations based on loans (e.g. — ') on the one hand, and those based on common descent from Indo-European (e.g. — ') on the other. He also fell victim to a few spurious relations due to mere accidental similarity (e.g. Greek 'to sacrifice' — French ", 'to kill'). In other areas, his arguments are of quite the same kind as those used by modern linguistics, e.g. where he argues on the basis of cross-dialectal correspondences within Greek that must have been a rather open "e"-sound, close to . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3110015 | 930,120 |
237,543 | In "The Social Conquest of Earth" (2012), the entomologist E. O. Wilson contends that although the selfish-gene approach was accepted "until 2010 [when] Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita, and I demonstrated that inclusive fitness theory, often called kin selection theory, is both mathematically and biologically incorrect." Chapter 18 of "The Social Conquest of Earth" describes the deficiencies of kin selection and outlines group selection, which Wilson argues is a more realistic model of social evolution. He criticises earlier approaches to social evolution, saying: "...unwarranted faith in the central role of kinship in social evolution has led to the reversal of the usual order in which biological research is conducted. The proven best way in evolutionary biology, as in most of science, is to define a problem arising during empirical research, then select or devise the theory that is needed to solve it. Almost all research in inclusive-fitness theory has been the opposite: hypothesize the key roles of kinship and kin selection, then look for evidence to test that hypothesis." According to Wilson: "People must have a tribe...Experiments conducted over many years by social psychologists have revealed how swiftly and decisively people divide into groups, and then discriminate in favor of the one to which they belong." (pp. 57, 59) According to Wilson: "Different parts of the brain have evolved by group selection to create groupishness." (p. 61) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=44190 | 237,424 |
961,331 | However, the standard does not specify any particular timing for any particular transfer — that's up to the system designers. Generally (the way it is done on most military aircraft), the Bus Controller has a schedule of transfers that covers the majority of transfers, often organized into a major frame or major cycle, which is often subdivided into minor cycles. In such a cyclic executive schedule structure, transfers that occur in every minor cycle (rate group 1) happen at the highest rate, typically 50 Hz, transfers that occur in every other minor cycle, of which there are two groups (rate group 2.1 and 2.2) happen at the next highest rate, e.g. 25 Hz. Similarly, there are four groups (3.1, 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4) at, e.g., 12.5 Hz and so on. Hence, where this scheduling structure is used, the transfers are all at harmonically related frequencies, e.g. 50, 25, 12.5, 6.25, 3.125, and 1.5625 Hz (for a major frame comprising 32 minor cycles at 50 Hz). Whilst RTs cannot start a transfer directly on their own, the standard does include a method for when an RT needs to transmit data that is not automatically scheduled by the Bus Controller. These transfers are often called acyclic transfers as they are outside the structure used by the cyclic executive. In this sequence, an RT requests transmission through a bit in the status word, the Service Request bit. Generally, this causes the Bus Controller to transmit a Transmit Vector Word Mode Code command. However, where an RT only has one possible acyclic transfer, the Bus Controller can skip this part. The vector word is transmitted by the RT as a single 16-bit data word. The format of this vector word is not defined in the standard, so the system designers must specify what values from what RTs mean what action the Bus Controller is to take. This may be to schedule an acyclic transfer either immediately or at the end of the current minor cycle. This means that the Bus Controller has to poll all the Remote Terminals connected to the data bus, generally at least once in a major cycle. RTs with higher-priority functions (for example, those operating the aircraft control surfaces) are polled more frequently. Lower-priority functions are polled less frequently. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1441618 | 960,822 |
571,410 | Gerald Zaltman is associated with one of the first experiments in neuromarketing. In the late 1990s, both Gemma Calvert (UK) and Gerald Zaltman (US) had established consumer neuroscience companies. Marketing professor Gerald Zaltman patented the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique (ZMET) in the 1990s to sell advertising. ZMET explored the human subconscious with specially selected sets of images that cause a positive emotional response and activate hidden images, metaphors stimulating the purchase. Graphical collages were constructed on the base of detected images, which lays in the basis for commercials. ZMET quickly gained popularity among hundreds of major companies-customers including Coca-Cola, General Motors, Nestle, and Procter & Gamble. Zaltman and his associates were employed by those organizations to investigate brain scans and observe the neural activity of consumers. In 1999, he began to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to show correlations between consumer brain activity and marketing stimuli. Zaltman's marketing research methods enhanced psychological research used in marketing tools. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2663218 | 571,119 |
795,341 | A DAC consists of two opposing diamonds with a sample compressed between the polished culets (tips). Pressure may be monitored using a reference material whose behavior under pressure is known. Common pressure standards include ruby fluorescence, and various structurally simple metals, such as copper or platinum. The uniaxial pressure supplied by the DAC may be transformed into uniform hydrostatic pressure using a pressure-transmitting medium, such as argon, xenon, hydrogen, helium, paraffin oil or a mixture of methanol and ethanol. The pressure-transmitting medium is enclosed by a gasket and the two diamond anvils. The sample can be viewed through the diamonds and illuminated by X-rays and visible light. In this way, X-ray diffraction and fluorescence; optical absorption and photoluminescence; Mössbauer, Raman and Brillouin scattering; positron annihilation and other signals can be measured from materials under high pressure. Magnetic and microwave fields can be applied externally to the cell allowing nuclear magnetic resonance, electron paramagnetic resonance and other magnetic measurements. Attaching electrodes to the sample allows electrical and magnetoelectrical measurements as well as heating up the sample to a few thousand degrees. Much higher temperatures (up to 7000 K) can be achieved with laser-induced heating, and cooling down to millikelvins has been demonstrated. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=774220 | 794,916 |
344,662 | The historical development of the "stare" + ablative gerund progressive tense in those Romance languages that have it seems to have been a passage from a usage such as "sto pensando" 'I stand/stay (here) in thinking', in which the "stare" form carries the full semantic load of 'stand, stay' to grammaticalization of the construction as expression of progressive aspect (Similar in concept to the Early Modern English construction of "I am a-thinking"). The process of reanalysis that took place over time bleached the semantics of "stare" so that when used in combination with the gerund the form became solely a grammatical marker of subject and tense (e.g. "sto" = subject first person singular, present; "stavo" = subject first person singular, past), no longer a lexical verb with the semantics of 'stand' (not unlike the auxiliary in compound tenses that once meant 'have, possess', but is now semantically empty: "j'ai écrit", ho scritto", he escrito", etc.). Whereas "sto scappando" would once have been semantically strange at best (?'I stay escaping'), once grammaticalization was achieved, collocation with a verb of inherent mobility was no longer contradictory, and "sto scappando" could and did become the normal way to express 'I am escaping'. (Although it might be objected that in sentences like Spanish "la catedral está en la ciudad", "the cathedral is in the city" this is also unlikely to change, but all locations are expressed through "estar" in Spanish, as this usage originally conveyed the sense of "the cathedral "stands" in the city"). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=51962 | 344,481 |
671,008 | Following the "Anschluss" of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938, Adolf Hitler used Austria-Hungary's naval history to appeal to the Austrian public and obtain their support. Having lived in Vienna during the development of much of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, Hitler decided upon an "Austrian" sounding name for a German cruiser which was being constructed at Kiel. The cruiser was originally to be named "Tegetthoff" after Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, although concerns over the possible insult to Italy and Benito Mussolini of naming the cruiser after the Austrian victor of the Battle of Lissa, led the "Kriegsmarine" to adopt as the ship's namesake, after the Austrian general Prince Eugene of Savoy. "Prinz Eugen" had also served as the name for four Austrian naval ships between 1848 and 1918. She was launched on 22 August 1938, in a ceremony attended by Hitler and the Governor (German: "Reichsstatthalter") of Ostmark, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who made the christening speech. Also present at the launch was Regent of Hungary, Admiral Miklós Horthy. Horthy had previously commanded the "Tegetthoff"-class battleship "Prinz Eugen" from 24 November 1917 to 1 March 1918 and had commanded the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the final months of World War I. Horthy wife's, Magdolna Purgly, performed the christening. In reference to her originally planned name and in homage to the Austro-Hungarian Navy, the bell from "Tegetthoff" was presented to the German cruiser "Prinz Eugen" on 22 November 1942 by the Italian Regia Marina. After World War II, the bell from "Tegetthoff" was placed on display in Graz, Austria, where it can still be viewed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1089216 | 670,656 |
973,611 | In 960, Zhao Kuangyin staged a coup of his own to take over the dominant northern dynasty of the later Zhou, and founded the Song dynasty. He was able to finally reunite all the fragmented states of the south and put an end to the problem of military coups that had plagued China for the last century. The Song established its capital at Kaifeng on the Yellow river. It was during the reign of this dynasty that the Chinese started to produce gunpowder using saltpeter, sulfur and carbon. Some historians believe that the Chinese did not consider gunpowder a particularly important weapon, though in fact they were the first people to systematically use gunpowder as weapons on a wide scale. Even the Arabs, who had probably been using gunpowder much earlier than the Europeans, referred to potassium nitrate as 'Snow from China' and the Persians referred to it as "Chinese salt" or "salt from Chinese salt marshes" ( ). From about 1000 AD it had been mostly used in the form of firecrackers, and was used to improve existing weapons (for example), attached on spears for a shock burst upon engagement, or on arrows so they can fly faster mid air or be shot off in large salvos without the need of bows. In the 12th century, the Chinese were using crude hand grenades and were starting to use the earliest forms of rockets and cannons in addition to the aforementioned firecracker weapons. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23468036 | 973,101 |
1,868,650 | Neural cliques are network-level memory coding units in the hippocampus. They are functionally organized in a categorical and hierarchical manner. Researchers investigating the role of neural cliques have gained insight into the process of storing memories in the brain. Research evidence suggests that memory of events is achieved not through memorization of exact event details but through recreation of select images based on cognitive significance. This process enables the brain to exhibit large storage capacity and facilitates the capacity for abstract reasoning and generalization. Although several studies converges in the demonstration that real-time patterns of memory traces and sensory inputs are retained in the form of neural cliques, the topic is currently in active research in order to fully understand this biological code. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12154725 | 1,867,574 |
380,365 | The second model (Kenorland-Arctica) is based on both palaeomagnetic and geological evidence and proposes that the continental crust comprised a single supercontinent from until break-up during the Ediacaran Period after . The reconstruction is derived from the observation that palaeomagnetic poles converge to quasi-static positions for long intervals between ~2.72–2.115, 1.35–1.13, and with only small peripheral modifications to the reconstruction. During the intervening periods, the poles conform to a unified apparent polar wander path. Although it contrasts the first model, the first phase (Protopangea) essentially incorporates Vaalbara and Kenorland of the first model. The explanation for the prolonged duration of the Protopangea-Paleopangea supercontinent appears to be that lid tectonics (comparable to the tectonics operating on Mars and Venus) prevailed during Precambrian times. According to this theory, plate tectonics as seen on the contemporary Earth became dominant only during the latter part of geological times. This approach was widely criticized by many researchers as it uses incorrect application of paleomagnetic data. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28742 | 380,170 |
677,242 | KPF Urban Interface, abbreviated KPFui, is an interdisciplinary urban data analytics research initiative within KPF. Founded in 2012 by designer and educator Luc Wilson, KPFui experiments with enriching KPF's signature design process with objective, measurable data sourced from within the complex urban contexts that the firm works. Their unique computational tools enable designers and developers to assess building performance metrics early in a project's conception, analyzing such parameters as daylight, views, and wind, among others. Research is heavily focused on experimenting with data visualization, displaying such metrics "to be accessible and understandable," and consequently "fostering a dialogue that is thorough and inclusive" amongst architects, developers, and the public alike. KPFui implements its analytical studies across all scales, from KPF's design of the supertall tower to the expansive urban masterplan, located in cities around the globe. The KPFui team works out of the firm's New York office, at which KPF is headquartered. Since its initial founding, KPFui has applied its custom data-analytics tools to over 250 of the firm's projects, having become an integral part of the firm's design methodology. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1253625 | 676,889 |
1,502 | In 1948, Turing was appointed reader in the Mathematics Department at the Victoria University of Manchester. A year later, he became deputy director of the Computing Machine Laboratory, where he worked on software for one of the earliest stored-program computers—the Manchester Mark 1. Turing wrote the first version of the Programmer's Manual for this machine, and was recruited by Ferranti as a consultant in the development of their commercialised machine, the Ferranti Mark 1. He continued to be paid consultancy fees by Ferranti until his death. During this time, he continued to do more abstract work in mathematics,<ref name="doi10.1093/qjmam/1.1.287"></ref> and in "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" ("Mind", October 1950), Turing addressed the problem of artificial intelligence, and proposed an experiment that became known as the Turing test, an attempt to define a standard for a machine to be called "intelligent". The idea was that a computer could be said to "think" if a human interrogator could not tell it apart, through conversation, from a human being. In the paper, Turing suggested that rather than building a program to simulate the adult mind, it would be better to produce a simpler one to simulate a child's mind and then to subject it to a course of education. A reversed form of the Turing test is widely used on the Internet; the CAPTCHA test is intended to determine whether the user is a human or a computer. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1208 | 1,502 |
2,832 | The T-50's maiden flight was repeatedly postponed from early 2007 after encountering unspecified technical problems. In August 2009, Alexander Zelin acknowledged that problems with the engine and in technical research remained unsolved. On 28 February 2009, Sukhoi general director Mikhail Pogosyan announced that the airframe was almost finished and that the first prototype should be ready by August 2009. On 20 August 2009, Pogosyan said that the first flight would be by year's end. Konstantin Makiyenko, deputy head of the Moscow-based Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies said that "even with delays", the aircraft would likely make its first flight by January or February, adding that it would take five to ten years for commercial production. Flight testing was further delayed when Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov announced in December 2009 that the first trials would begin in 2010. The first taxi test was successfully completed on 24 December 2009, and the maiden flight of the first prototype aircraft, T-50-1, occurred on 29 January 2010. Piloted by Sukhoi test pilot Sergey Bogdan, the aircraft's 47-minute maiden flight took place at KnAAPO's Dzemgi Airport in the Russian Far East. Construction of the prototypes would progress slower than initially planned; by the end of October 2013, the test programme had amassed more than 450 flights across five aircraft. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2971192 | 2,832 |
1,859,839 | In 2014, the KIOST unveiled a six-legged robot that can walk the ocean floor. The robot is 2.4 x 2.4 x 1.3 meters in dimension. It weighs 650 kilos and contains 30 motors. In January 2017, after North Korea led nuclear tests at the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site, the KIOST published a study showing how radioactive materials from those tests probably traveled to the tip of Russia and Northern Japan. In July 2017, the KIOST partnered with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to further the Research Moored Array for African-Asian-Australian Monsoon Analysis and Prediction. In July 2018, when a South Korean company claimed to have found the wreck of a Russian warship (the "Dmitrii Donskoi") that hypothetically contained more than $130 billion in gold, the KIOST told the media it knew about the ship's location since 2003. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21541913 | 1,858,771 |
151,698 | Kurien and his mentor Patel were backed by some political leaders and bureaucrats who saw merit in their pioneering cooperative model: farmers willing to associate together for produce and willing to be led by professionals while being owners of the cooperative. India had just gained political freedom from a colonial power whom the leaders had seen extorting land tax unjustly from farmers suffering from crop failure. There had been many famines over the duration of that regime, so leaders were concerned over food security of the population. As a newly independent nation, there was a desire to gain self-sufficiency in its consumed produce and a thrust towards domestic production to substitute for imports. Moreover, these nationalist leaders were influenced by socialist ideals of formation of social capital more than the formation of capital assets, and the Gandhian philosophy of production by the masses triumphed mass-production in a resource-constrained nation. At the same time, the new government's policies were open to the skills and learnings of modern experts, research, technological prowess, and aid from the rest of the world. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=319519 | 151,630 |
252,809 | As EK 16 commenced small-scale combat operations with the Me 163B in May 1944, the Me 163B's unsurpassed velocity was something Allied fighter pilots were at a loss to counter. The "Komets" attacked singly or in pairs, often even faster than the intercepting fighters could dive. A typical Me 163 tactic was to fly vertically upward through the bombers at , climb to , then dive through the formation again, firing as they went. This approach afforded the pilot two brief chances to fire a few rounds from his cannons before gliding back to his airfield. The pilots reported it was possible to make four passes on a bomber, but only if it was flying alone. According to the historian Mano Ziegler, Nazi officials were allegedly considering using the Me 163 to directly ram into enemy aircraft in suicide attacks; this desperate tactic was never actually used. During early 1944, routine aerial reconnaissance flights over German aerodromes had made the Allies aware of the existence of the Me 163. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20486 | 252,676 |
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