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1,200,559 | The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) ordered one vessel, HMAS "Success", of a modified design in September 1979. A second vessel was planned in 1980, but not optioned. Construction of "Success" was slow and costs increased. The modified "Durance"-class oiler is in length, with a beam of , and a draught of , with a full load displacement of . Propulsion machinery consists of two SEMT-Pielstick 16 PC2.5 V 400 diesel motors, which supply to the ship's two propeller shafts. Top speed is , and the ship has a range of at . "Success" has a total capacity of 10,200 tonnes of cargo: 8,707 tonnes of diesel fuel, 975 tonnes of aviation fuel, 250 tonnes of munitions (including guided missiles and torpedoes), 116 tonnes of water, 95 tonnes of components and naval stores, and 57 tonnes of food and other consumables. Fuel and liquid stores can be transferred from four points (two on each side), allowing "Success" to replenish two ships simultaneously, while solid cargo can be moved via vertical replenishment (with a hangar and helipad for a single Sea King, Seahawk, or Squirrel helicopter), or by boat (the RAN LCVP "T 7" is carried on a starboard forward davit). The ship is armed with seven 12.7 mm machine guns, and is fitted for but not with a Mark 15 Phalanx CIWS. The sensor suite includes two Kelvin Hughes Type 100G navigation radars. Ship's company is made up of 25 officers and 212 sailors. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1454215 | 1,199,918 |
10,115 | The prospect of sabotage was always present, and sometimes suspected when there were equipment failures. While there were some problems believed to be the result of careless or disgruntled employees, there were no confirmed instances of Axis-instigated sabotage. However, on 10 March 1945, a Japanese fire balloon struck a power line, and the resulting power surge caused the three reactors at Hanford to be temporarily shut down. With so many people involved, security was a difficult task. A special Counter Intelligence Corps detachment was formed to handle the project's security issues. By 1943, it was clear that the Soviet Union was attempting to penetrate the project. Lieutenant Colonel Boris T. Pash, the head of the Counter Intelligence Branch of the Western Defense Command, investigated suspected Soviet espionage at the Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley. Oppenheimer informed Pash that he had been approached by a fellow professor at Berkeley, Haakon Chevalier, about passing information to the Soviet Union. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19603 | 10,111 |
299,742 | According to Porsche, it retained the monocoque from 2016, but 60 to 70% of the 2017 car was new, with the largest alterations being to its aerodynamic demands. This included a major redesign of the front of the 919 Hybrid with wider arches for the front wheels to make it less aerodynamically sensitive from small bits of discarded rubber from the track surface. To the car's side, a new channel from the monocoque to the wheel arch was made visible, along with redesigned rearward air intakes for the radiators to cool the engine. New cost-cutting regulations mandated LMP1 teams to slow the cars and use just two aerodynamic packages for the season, restricting the amount of flexibility depending on the type of track. One aerodynamic alteration raised the front splitter to lower its cornering speeds and featured two strakes on its underside. Porsche elected for a low-downforce package that minimised air resistance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and a second that compensated for an increased amount of drag and downforce for tighter circuits. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=41368349 | 299,581 |
2,237,321 | The Huskies, with a 5–2–1 record to this point, entered their November 4–5 home series against Minnesota State ranked #16 in the USCHO.com poll. It was the first time the team had been nationally ranked in four years. The first game turned into a "battle [between] two hot goaltenders", and the only goal occurred on a Michigan Tech power play when Ryan Furne's 90‑foot shot toward Mavericks goaltender Austin Lee "took a strange hop just outside the crease" and crossed the goal line. Minnesota State failed to score on six power play opportunities and Josh Robinson stopped all 29 shots. In the second game, Huskies goals from Jacob Johnstone, Blake Pietila and Tanner Kero were matched by Minnesota State, and the game was tied 3–3 after two periods. The Mavericks took advantage of Michigan Tech's penalties and sloppy defensive play in the third period and scored two more goals against Josh Robinson, plus an empty-net goal, to win the game 6–3. "It's tough to lose at home like that, but we're going into an off week, and we have a lot of time to fix things we need to get better at", said Brett Olson. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=34618144 | 2,236,050 |
1,935,604 | World War II had spawned major national efforts in many forms of scientific research—continued in peacetime—that required computationally intensive analysis; the thirst for information about the new Moore School computing machines had not been slaked, but instead intensified, by the distribution of von Neumann's notes on the EDVAC's logical design. Rather than allow themselves to be inundated with requests for demonstrations or slow progress in computer research by withholding the benefits of the Moore School's expertise until papers could be published formally, the administration, including Dean Harold Pender, Prof. Carl Chambers, and Director of Research Irven Travis, respectively proposed, organized, and secured funding for what they envisioned as a lecture series for between 30 and 40 participants enrolled by select invitation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6477918 | 1,934,496 |
693,520 | Computers did not exist when Hohmann transfer orbits were first proposed (1925) and were slow, expensive and unreliable when gravitational slingshots were developed (1959). Recent advances in computing have made it possible to exploit many more features of the gravity fields of astronomical bodies and thus calculate even lower-cost trajectories. Paths have been calculated which link the Lagrange points of the various planets into the so-called Interplanetary Transport Network. Such "fuzzy orbits" use significantly less energy than Hohmann transfers but are much, much slower. They aren't practical for human crewed missions because they generally take years or decades, but may be useful for high-volume transport of low-value commodities if humanity develops a space-based economy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15111 | 693,157 |
348,876 | Surveying the veteran-related evidence pertaining to the Gulf War, a 2001 editorial in the "BMJ" concluded that it was not possible to justify claims of radiation-induced lung cancer and leukaemia in veterans of that conflict. While agreeing with the editorial's conclusion, a reply noted that its finding in the negative was guaranteed, given that "global dose estimates or results of mathematical modelling are too inaccurate to be used as dose values for an individual veteran", and that, as of April 2001, no practical method of measuring the expected small doses that each individual veteran would receive had been suggested. The author of the reply, a radiation scientist, went on to suggest a method that had been used several times before, including after the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Despite the widespread use of DU in the Iraq War, at least a year after the conflict began, testing for UK troops was still only in the discussion phase. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37514 | 348,694 |
2,156,085 | In 2005, Kellogg won a commission from the Philadelphia Orchestra to write a work celebrating the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin, which he titled "Ben". In celebration of the orchestra's 90th anniversary, in 2016 he received a commission from the Colorado Springs Philharmonic composing Halcyon Skies from Katharine Lee Bates's original poem America the Beautiful. "The phrase was later changed to 'spacious skies' and both terms reflect the open vistas and beautiful blue skies that define Colorado" said Kellogg. The World Premiere of Halcyon Skies was performed by the Colorado Springs Philharmonic at the Pikes Peak Center for the Performing Arts on January 21, 2017 with Kellogg in attendance. Kellogg received a performance from the Colorado Symphony Orchestra of "Refracted Skies", commissioned to celebrate the opening of the Denver Art Museum's new addition. Kellogg received a commission from the Kansas City Symphony, composing "The Golden Spike" to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad. "The Golden Spike" received its world premiere in Kansas City's Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts on October 4, 2019. Writing the next day for KC Studio Magazine, reviewer Libby Hansen noted ""For The Golden Spike, Kellogg explored the power, glory, and pain of rampant, unhindered progress, bringing out these elements in the race for a transcontinental railway, which was completed (May 10,) 1869."" Kellogg has also received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Barlow Endowment ASCAP, and BMI. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7304119 | 2,154,854 |
949,748 | In 2003, a study compared the behavior and ethics of chimpanzees, wolves and humans. Cooperation among humans' closest genetic relative is limited to occasional hunting episodes or the persecution of a competitor for personal advantage, which had to be tempered if humans were to become domesticated. One might therefore argue that the closest approximation to human morality that can be found in nature is that of the grey wolf. Wolves are among the most gregarious and cooperative of animals on the planet, and their ability to cooperate in well-coordinated drives to hunt prey, carry items too heavy for an individual, provisioning not only their own young but also the other pack members, babysitting etc. are rivaled only by that of human societies. Similar forms of cooperation are observed in two closely related canids, the African wild dog and the Asian dhole, therefore it is reasonable to assume that canid sociality and cooperation are old traits that in terms of evolution predate human sociality and cooperation. Today's wolves may even be less social than their ancestors, as they have lost access to large herds of ungulates and now tend more toward a lifestyle similar to coyotes, jackals, and even foxes. Social sharing within families may be a trait that early humans learned from wolves, and, with wolves digging dens long before humans constructed huts, it is not clear who domesticated whom. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5141410 | 949,244 |
1,673,470 | SNOMED was originally conceived by Côté as an extension of the design of the Systematized Nomenclature of Pathology (SNOP) applicable for all medicine. SNOP was originally designed by Arnold Pratt to describe pathological specimens according to their morphology and anatomy (topography). The ambitious development of SNOMED required many more axes (see multi-axial design, below). SNOMED was jointly proposed for development to the College of American Pathologists by Côté and Pratt. The former was appointed as editorial chair of the Committee on Nomenclature and Classification of Diseases of the CAP and developed the SNOMED from 1973 to 1997. In 1998, Kent Spackman was appointed to chair this committee and spearheaded the transformation of the multi-axis systems into a highly computable form (See SNOMED CT): a directed acyclic graph anchored in formal representation logic. In 2007, the newly formed International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO) acquired all the Intellectual Property of SNOMED CT and all antecedent SNOMED versions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2556015 | 1,672,528 |
388,096 | In 1984, Sharma became the first Indian citizen to enter space when he flew aboard the Soviet rocket Soyuz T-11 launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic on 3 April 1984. The Soyuz T-11 spacecraft carrying cosmonauts including Sharma docked and transferred the three member Soviet-Indian international crew, consisting of the ship's commander, Yury Malyshev, and flight engineer, Gennadi Strekalov, to the Salyut 7 Orbital Station. Sharma spent 7days, 21hours, and 40minutes aboard the Salyut 7 during which his team conducted scientific and technical studies which included forty-threeexperimental sessions. His work was mainly in the fields of bio-medicine and remote sensing. The crew held a joint television news conference with officials in Moscow and then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. When Indira Gandhi asked Sharma how India looked from outer space, he replied, ""Sare Jahan Se Accha"" (the best in the world). This is the title of a patriotic poem by Iqbal that had been written when India was under British colonial rule, that continues to be popular today. With Sharma's voyage aboard Soyuz T-11, India became the 14thnation to send a man to outer space. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=362086 | 387,901 |
785,848 | Bob Holzman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California established JPL's Computer Graphics Lab in 1977 as a group with technology expertise in visualizing data being returned from NASA missions. On the advice of Ivan Sutherland, Holzman hired a graduate student from Utah named Jim Blinn. Blinn had worked with imaging techniques at Utah, and developed them into a system for NASA's visualization tasks. He produced a series of widely seen "fly-by" simulations, including the Voyager, Pioneer and Galileo spacecraft fly-bys of Jupiter, Saturn and their moons. He also worked with Carl Sagan, creating animations for his "" TV series. Blinn developed many influential new modelling techniques, and wrote papers on them for the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), in their journal "Computer Graphics and Applications". Some of these included environment mapping, improved highlight modelling, "blobby" modelling, simulation of wrinkled surfaces, and simulation of butts and dusty surfaces. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30797574 | 785,425 |
1,306,660 | In June 1983, the first class of 13 US Army students began in the basement of Bell Hall at Fort Leavenworth. Initially, there were some internal problems with facilities and scheduling, and in the school's early years there was uncertainty whether its graduates would be accepted and how they would perform in the force. When the first class graduated in 1984, SAMS had already become "the symbol for intellectual renaissance in the officer corps". When the first director, Wass de Czege, was succeeded by Colonel Richard Sennreich in 1985, the school was already beginning to produce results and the US Army and the college regarded SAMS as a "useful experiment". By 1987, enrollment of high-quality officers had risen and sister services were becoming interested in sending students to SAMS. The program's growing popularity and reputation also began attracting students from allied countries. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47720 | 1,305,944 |
481,601 | Starting from a base time unit, TAF-DPS first creates two types of cycles T and T. These two types of cycles are then used in an interleaved fashion to produce the clock pulse train. As a result, TAF-DPS is able to address the problems of arbitrary-frequency-generation and instantaneous-frequency-switching more effectively. The first circuit technology of utilizing the TAF concept (although subconsciously) is the “Flying-Adder frequency synthesis architecture or“Flying-Adder PLL”, which is developed in late 1990s. Since the introduction of TAF concept in 2008, the development of a frequency synthesis technology that works on TAF formally kicks off. A detailed description of this technology can be found in those books and this short tutorial. As development progresses, it gradually becomes clear that TAF-DPS is a circuit level enabler for system level innovation. It can be used in many areas other than clock signal generation. Its impact is significant since clock signal is the most important signal in electronics, establishing the flow-of-time inside the electronic world. This profound influence is being seen in this directional change in Moore's Law from space to time. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10792995 | 481,357 |
493,647 | In cases where the first-generation hybrids are viable but infertile, fertility can be restored by whole genome duplication (polyploidy), resulting in reproductive isolation and polyploid speciation. Polyploid speciation is commonly observed in plants because their nature allows them to support genome duplications. Polyploids are considered a new species because the occurrence of a whole genome duplication imposes post-zygotic barriers, which enable reproductive isolation between parent populations and hybrid offspring. Polyploids can arise through single step mutations or through triploid bridges. In single step mutations, allopolyploids are the result of unreduced gametes in crosses between divergent lineages. The F1 hybrids produced from these mutations are infertile due to failure of bivalent pairing of chromosomes and segregation into gametes which leads to the production of unreduced gametes by single division meiosis, which results in unreduced, diploid (2N) gametes. Triploid bridges occur in low frequencies in populations and are produced when unreduced gametes combine with haploid (1N) gametes to produce a triploid offspring that can function as a bridge to the formation of tetraploids. In both paths, the polyploid hybrids are reproductively isolated from the parents due to the difference in ploidy. Polyploids manage to remain in populations because they generally experience less inbreeding depression and have higher self-fertility. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7474152 | 493,392 |
729,730 | In 1808, the extraordinary refraction of calcite was investigated experimentally, with unprecedented accuracy, by Étienne-Louis Malus, and found to be consistent with Huygens's spheroid construction, not Newton's "Rule". Malus, encouraged by Pierre-Simon Laplace, then sought to explain this law in corpuscular terms: from the known relation between the incident and refracted ray directions, Malus derived the corpuscular velocity (as a function of direction) that would satisfy Maupertuis's "least action" principle. But, as Young pointed out, the existence of such a velocity law was guaranteed by Huygens's spheroid, because Huygens's construction leads to Fermat's principle, which becomes Maupertuis's principle if the ray speed is replaced by the reciprocal of the particle speed! The corpuscularists had not found a "force" law that would yield the alleged velocity law, except by a circular argument in which a force acting at the "surface" of the crystal inexplicably depended on the direction of the (possibly subsequent) velocity "within" the crystal. Worse, it was doubtful that any such force would satisfy the conditions of Maupertuis's principle. In contrast, Young proceeded to show that "a medium more easily compressible in one direction than in any direction perpendicular to it, as if it consisted of an infinite number of parallel plates connected by a substance somewhat less elastic" admits spheroidal longitudinal wavefronts, as Huygens supposed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1141 | 729,346 |
933,020 | The laboratory was founded on August 26, 1931, by Ernest Lawrence, as the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley, associated with the Physics Department. It centered physics research around his new instrument, the cyclotron, a type of particle accelerator for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939. Throughout the 1930s, Lawrence pushed to create larger and larger machines for physics research, courting private philanthropists for funding. He was the first to develop a large team to build big projects to make discoveries in basic research. Eventually these machines grew too large to be held on the university grounds, and in 1940 the lab moved to its current site atop the hill above campus. Part of the team put together during this period includes two other young scientists who went on to direct large laboratories: J. Robert Oppenheimer, who directed Los Alamos Laboratory, and Robert Wilson, who directed Fermilab. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=62214 | 932,528 |
742,510 | Growth and mitogen signals are transmitted downstream of the ERK pathway are incorporated into multiple positive feedback loops to generate a bistable switch at the level of E2F activation. This occurs due to three main interactions during late G1 phase. The first is a result of mitogen stimulation though the ERK leading to the expression of the transcription factor Myc, which is a direct activator of E2F. The second pathway is a result of ERK activation leading to the accumulation of active complexes of Cyclin D and Cdk4/6 which destabilize Rb via phosphorylation and further serve to activate E2F and promote expression of its targets. Finally, these interactions are all reinforced by an additional positive feedback loop by E2F on itself, as its own expression leads to production of the active complex of Cyclin E and CDK2, which further serves to lock in a cell's decision to enter S-phase. As a result, when serum concentration is increased in a gradual manner, most mammalian cells respond in a switch-like manner in entering S-phase. This mitogen stimulated, bistable E2F switch is exhibits hysteresis, as cells are inhibited from returning to G1 even after mitogen withdrawal post E2F activation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5618682 | 742,117 |
1,794,850 | A European consortium called "ActMAP" (Actualize Map) is (in their words) "developing standardised mechanisms to update existing map database content and enable dynamic attachment of information to the digital in-vehicle map". The ActMAP consortium comprises ERTICO (coordinator), BMW, CRF Fiat Research Centre, DaimlerChrysler, Navigon, Navteq, Tele Atlas, and Siemens VDO Automotive. They have finished most of their work and published a number of reports, which were submitted to the ISO committee TC204 WG3 for standardization. Their reports serve as a good starting point and reference for the work of this project. An important issue their reports address is dealing with the complexity of multiple map suppliers, using proprietary formats, coupled with multiple data suppliers and multiple versions of in-vehicles maps. They resolve this by using an open intermediate map format expressed with XML and based on the concepts of the ISO standard GDF 4.0. All modifications to a supplier's database are first converted to this intermediate format, stored on a server and then converted to each format used within individual vehicles. They assume that each car has a "baseline" map from a map supplier and that this baseline defines reference identifiers (e.g. map segment ID) for most features to be updated. For features with no reference identifier in the baseline, they propose using a "generic" reference that is discovered heuristically using map matching as described by a proposed standard called "AGORA" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10971939 | 1,793,841 |
884,787 | On May 22, 2009, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan said the virus must be closely monitored in the southern hemisphere, as it could mix with ordinary seasonal influenza and change in unpredictable ways. Experts writing in the July issue of "The New England Journal of Medicine" noted that historically, pandemic viruses have evolved between seasons, and the current strain may become more severe or transmissible in the coming months. They therefore stressed the importance of international cooperation to engage in proper surveillance to help monitor changes in the virus's behavior, which will aid in both "vaccine targeting" and interpreting illness patterns in the fall of 2009. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22817589 | 884,323 |
18,099 | The equivalent model for export to the UK is the "C-130K", known by the Royal Air Force (RAF) as the "Hercules C.1". The "C-130H-30" ("Hercules C.3" in RAF service) is a stretched version of the original Hercules, achieved by inserting a 100 in (2.54 m) plug aft of the cockpit and an 80 in (2.03 m) plug at the rear of the fuselage. A single C-130K was purchased by the Met Office for use by its Meteorological Research Flight, where it was classified as the "Hercules W.2". This aircraft was heavily modified, with its most prominent feature being the long red and white striped atmospheric probe on the nose and the move of the weather radar into a pod above the forward fuselage. This aircraft, named "Snoopy", was withdrawn in 2001 and was then modified by Marshall of Cambridge Aerospace as a flight testbed for the A400M turbine engine, the TP400. The C-130K is used by the RAF Falcons for parachute drops. Three C-130Ks (Hercules C Mk.1P) were upgraded and sold to the Austrian Air Force in 2002. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7697 | 18,093 |
780,632 | Richard Garriott, creator of "Ultima Online", recollects the term being coined during production phase when they attempted to create a self-regulating virtual ecology system, whereby players may leverage new internet access (a revolutionary technology at the time) to interact and harvest in-game resources. Although the virtual ecology functioned as intended during in-house testing, its natural balance failed "almost instantaneously" due to players killing off every living wildlife across the playable area faster than the spawning system could operate. Garriott's production team attempted to mitigate this issue by separating the global player base into separate sessions, and rewriting part of "Ultima Online" fictional connection to the end of "", where the defeat of its antagonist Mondain also led to the creation of multiverse "shards". This modification provided Garriott's team with the fictional basis needed to justify creating copies of the virtual environment. However, the game's sharp rise to critical acclaim also meant that the new multiverse virtual ecology system was quickly overwhelmed as well. After several months of testing, Garriott's team decided to abandon the feature altogether, and stripped the game of its functionality. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19467605 | 780,214 |
697,630 | The U.S. Army had shown interest in the idea of self-loading (semiautomatic) rifles before World War I. Combat experience during that war had made clear two general points: that the standard caliber .30-06 rifle cartridge was excessively powerful for the ranges (500 yards and less) where infantry combat was likely to take place, and that bolt-action rifles such as the M1903 Springfield were seriously lacking in firepower and second-shot hit capability. The U.S. Army Ordnance Bureau had no problem in soliciting designs and prototype weapons from inventors, and sought to facilitate their work by supplying barrels and other hardware that the inventors were likely not to be able to fabricate. However, such a traditional way of developing new weapons all too often saw potentially worthwhile designs wash out of the testing process due to a lack of engineering skills and experience both in the design and manufacturing phases. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4845231 | 697,266 |
2,076,898 | In 1885, Wilhelm von Bezold was appointed to the newly established Chair for Meteorology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, and as the director of the Prussian Meteorological Institute, both in Berlin. He profoundly restructured the institute, and hired three scientific commissioners on 1 April 1886, among whom was the physician and meteorologist Richard Aßmann from Magdeburg. Aßmann had been working since 1883 on a measurement device that could measure the air temperature accurately in spite of the disruptive effect of solar radiation. In 1887, Aßmann joined the Society for Promotion of Aeronautics (founded in 1881) together with other early Berlin meteorologists, where he got to know the engineer Hans Bartsch von Sigsfeld. Sigsfeld had worked on the same problem for the aviation department (established in 1884) of the Railway Troops of the Prussian Army. Together, they developed the Aßmann aspiration psychrometer, which excluded the influence of sunlight through shielding and permanent ventilation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=55432762 | 2,075,699 |
361,289 | Increasingly, people use treated or even untreated sewage for irrigation to produce crops. Cities provide lucrative markets for fresh produce, so are attractive to farmers. Because agriculture has to compete for increasingly scarce water resources with industry and municipal users, there is often no alternative for farmers but to use water polluted with sewage directly to water their crops. There can be significant health hazards related to using water loaded with pathogens in this way. The World Health Organization developed guidelines for safe use of wastewater in 2006. They advocate a ‘multiple-barrier’ approach to wastewater use, where farmers are encouraged to adopt various risk-reducing behaviors. These include ceasing irrigation a few days before harvesting to allow pathogens to die off in the sunlight, applying water carefully so it does not contaminate leaves likely to be eaten raw, cleaning vegetables with disinfectant or allowing fecal sludge used in farming to dry before being used as a human manure. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16079692 | 361,100 |
90,584 | Wesleyan was long known as the "Singing College of New England." The university's "tradition as a 'singing college' had its roots in the vitality of Methodist hymnody." Glee clubs were formed "for special occasions from the mid-1840s through the 1860s". In 1862, however, a university glee club made the first tour of Wesleyan singers. The Wesleyan glee club organized by students frequently traveled and performed from the mid-19th century through the mid-20th century and was considered among the best collegiate glee clubs in the late 19th century. It traveled widely giving concerts, including being received twice at the White House (in 1901 by President McKinley and again in 1928 by President Coolidge) and being recorded onto a phonograph record by Thomas Edison. University alumni published the first edition of "The Wesleyan Song Book" in 1901. Subsequently, the Glee Club twice won the National Intercollegiate Glee Club Competition at Carnegie Hall. Since the Glee Club's disbanding, the tradition of choral singing has been carried on by the Wesleyan Singers, later renamed the Wesleyan Concert Choir, and then renamed again The Wesleyan Ensemble Singers (2010). This tradition also continues today in several student-run a cappella groups on campus, including the Wesleyan Spirits, the university's oldest group. There are at least 10 groups that perform on campus regularly, with others occasionally created and disbanded. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=241865 | 90,544 |
1,739,912 | Larger fish, like catfish and freshwater bass, are preferred by adults more than in length. Particularly small fish are likely to be eaten only in case of sudden encounter, mostly in shallow, dry-season ponds where not much effort is needed to catch the small, agile prey. Most observed fishing by crocodiles takes place in waters less than deep and fish are often caught when they swim into contact with the crocodile's head, even literally right into the reptile's mouth. Across much of their range, they take any fish they encounter, but largish and relatively sluggish mesopredator fish such as lungfish and "Barbus" carp seem to be most widely reported. Many other genera are taken widely and relatively regularly, including "Tilapia" (which was the most significant prey genus in Lake Turkana), "Clarias", "Haplochromis", and "Mormyrus". In Uganda and Zambia, lungfish comprised nearly two-thirds of the piscivorian diet for crocodiles. Similarly, in Lake Baringo, the lungfish is the crocodile's main prey and the crocodile is the lungfish's primary predator. In the Okavango Delta, the African pikes ("Hepsetus" spp.) were the leading prey group for subadults, comprising more than a fourth of the diet. Extremely large fish, such as Nile perch ("Lates niloticus"), goliath tigerfish ("Hydrocynus goliath"), and even sharks, are taken on occasion, in addition to big catfish, such as "Bagrus" spp. and "Clarias gariepinus", which are preyed upon quite regularly in areas where they are common. In the Zambezi River and Lake St. Lucia, Nile crocodiles have been known to prey on bull sharks ("Carcharhinus leucas") and sand tiger sharks ("Carcharias taurus"). The largest fishes attacked in such cases may potentially weigh more than . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=69545874 | 1,738,932 |
1,518,492 | It is a common observation that tumors are stiffer than the surrounding tissue, and even serves as the basis for breast cancer self-examination. In fact, breast cancer tissue has been reported to be as much as ten times stiffer than normal tissue. Furthermore, a growing and metastasizing tumor involves the cooperation of many different cell types, like fibroblasts and endothelial cells, that possess different rigidities and could result in local stiffness gradients that guide cell migration. There is increasing evidence that durotaxis plays a role in cancer metastasis. Experiments in mice have demonstrated that tumor cells preferentially invade into the adjacent stroma along stiff collagen fibers. These stiff collagen alignments can be used to identify focal sites of breast tumor cell microinvasion. Pregnancy, which has various links to breast cancer incidence and prognosis, involves postpartum breast involution that relies on collagen remodeling and inflammation that converts these collagen fibers into stiffer counterparts, thus establishing a potential link between pregnancy and metastatic properties. Though some research shows that stiffer tumors are indicative of increased metastasis and decreased survival (which contradicts the concept that durotactic cells should be more attracted to the tumor and metastasize less), this is not counter intuitive because collagen-dependent integrin signaling has a wide range of consequences beyond durotaxis, including inhibition of the tumor suppressor PTEN via upregulation of the miRNA miR-18a. Moreover, there is evidence that increased tumor stiffness does in fact correlate with decreased metastasis, as the principle of durotaxis would suggest. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1087977 | 1,517,634 |
305,245 | In Asia, states with socialist economies—such as the People's Republic of China, North Korea, Laos and Vietnam—have largely moved away from centralised economic planning in the 21st century, placing a greater emphasis on markets. Forms include the Chinese socialist market economy and the Vietnamese socialist-oriented market economy. They use state-owned corporate management models as opposed to modelling socialist enterprise on traditional management styles employed by government agencies. In China living standards continued to improve rapidly despite the Great Recession, but centralised political control remained tight. Brian Reynolds Myers in his book "The Cleanest Race", later supported by other academics, dismisses the idea that "Juche" is North Korea's leading ideology, regarding its public exaltation as designed to deceive foreigners and that it exists to be praised and not actually read, pointing out that North Korea's constitution of 2009 omits all mention of communism. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47246185 | 305,082 |
1,793,252 | From one perspective the most important element of China's science and technology system has been its human capital — its trained scientists and engineers. By the 1980s it was widely recognized in the Chinese press that scientists, like all intellectuals, had been poorly treated, underpaid, and burdened with difficult living conditions that reduced their productivity. In many cases scientists' abilities were wasted because they were assigned to jobs outside their expertise or because their institute already had all the professionals in their field it needed and there was no way for them to change jobs. Many Chinese science policy writers were familiar with the conclusion of Western specialists that scientific progress and the effective application of science to practical problems are facilitated by personnel mobility. Accordingly, the March 1985 party Central Committee decision called for reform of the personnel system to promote a "rational flow" of scientific and technical personnel. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14246598 | 1,792,243 |
504,860 | A plain text text entry form, by contrast, may use a simpler method, setting a fixed and arbitrary display width within which the caret always ‘wraps around’, only scrolling up or down a line as the caret reaches the wrap point at the start/end of the current first/last line, in order to keep the edit point in view as it moves to the previous/next line of text. All other scrolling must be manually controlled by the user by use of scroll bars, mouse wheel, or Page Up/Page Down keys. Another alternate form of control is used in some spreadsheets when the Scroll Lock key is activated. In this case the caret is locked to the centre of the screen and the cursor keys instead move the worksheet itself ‘underneath’ the static caret, instead of the caret moving ‘over’ the sheet. The margins that trigger a scrolling action are effectively increased to their maximum possible size (vs the minimum possible with the web edit box), causing the caret to be re-centered any time it attempts to move. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1819393 | 504,598 |
711,133 | Most ABC transporters that mediate the uptake of nutrients and other molecules in bacteria rely on a high-affinity solute binding protein (BP). BPs are soluble proteins located in the periplasmic space between the inner and outer membranes of gram-negative bacteria. Gram-positive microorganisms lack a periplasm such that their binding protein is often a lipoprotein bound to the external face of the cell membrane. Some gram-positive bacteria have BPs fused to the transmembrane domain of the transporter itself. The first successful x-ray crystal structure of an intact ABC importer is the molybdenum transporter (ModBC-A) from "Archaeoglobus fulgidus". Atomic-resolution structures of three other bacterial importers, "E. coli" BtuCD, "E. coli" maltose transporter (MalFGK-E), and the putative metal-chelate transporter of "Haemophilus influenzae", HI1470/1, have also been determined. The structures provided detailed pictures of the interaction of the transmembrane and ABC domains as well as revealed two different conformations with an opening in two opposite directions. Another common feature of importers is that each NBD is bound to one TMD primarily through a short cytoplasmic helix of the TMD, the "coupling helix". This portion of the EAA loop docks in a surface cleft formed between the RecA-like and helical ABC subdomains and lies approximately parallel to the membrane bilayer. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1551873 | 710,762 |
866,876 | Repeated bursts of FRB 121102 have initiated multiple origin hypotheses. A coherent emission phenomenon known as superradiance, which involves large-scale entangled quantum mechanical states possibly arising in environments such as active galactic nuclei, has been proposed to explain these and other associated observations with FRBs (e.g. high event rate, repeatability, variable intensity profiles). In July 2019, astronomers reported that "non-repeating" Fast Radio Bursts may not be one-off events, but actually FRB repeaters with repeat events that have gone undetected and, further, that FRBs may be formed by events that have not yet been seen or considered. Additional possibilities include that FRBs may originate from nearby stellar flares. A FRB with multiple periodic component peaks lasting over 3 seconds was reported in 2022. A neutron star has been proposed as the origin of this FRB. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40408388 | 866,416 |
883,128 | Noting that digitisers and related electronics technology had significantly progressed since the inception of FTMW spectroscopy, B.H. Pate at the University of Virginia designed a spectrometer which retains many advantages of the Balle-Flygare FT-MW spectrometer while innovating in (i) the use of a high speed (>4 GS/s) arbitrary waveform generator to generate a "chirped" microwave polarisation pulse that sweeps up to 12 GHz in frequency in less than a microsecond and (ii) the use of a high speed (>40 GS/s) oscilloscope to digitise and Fourier transform the molecular free induction decay. The result is an instrument that allows the study of weakly bound molecules but which is able to exploit a measurement bandwidth (12 GHz) that is greatly enhanced compared with the Balle-Flygare FTMW spectrometer. Modified versions of the original CP-FTMW spectrometer have been constructed by a number of groups in the United States, Canada and Europe. The instrument offers a broadband capability that is highly complementary to the high sensitivity and resolution offered by the Balle-Flygare design. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=531239 | 882,664 |
1,684,618 | Phylostratigraphy is limited by the set of closely related genomes that are available, and results are dependent on BLAST search criteria. In addition, it is often difficult to determine based on lack of observed sequence similarity whether a novel gene has emerged "de novo" or has diverged from an ancestral gene beyond recognition, for instance following a duplication event. This was pointed out by a study that simulated the evolution of genes of equal age and found that distant orthologs can be undetectable for rapidly evolving genes. On the other hand, when accounting for changes in the rate of evolution in young regions of genes, a phylostratigraphic approach was more accurate at assigning gene ages in simulated data. Subsequent studies using simulated evolution found that phylostratigraphy failed to detect an ortholog in the most distantly related species for 13.9% of "D. melanogaster" genes and 11.4% of "S. cerevisiae" genes. However, a reanalysis of studies that used phylostratigraphy in yeast, fruit flies and humans found that even when accounting for such error rates and excluding difficult-to-stratify genes from the analyses, the qualitative conclusions were unaffected. The impact of phylostratigraphic bias on studies examining various features of "de novo" genes remains debated. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60852153 | 1,683,673 |
1,413,526 | Neoanalysis is quite separate from 19th century Analysis. It is the study of the relationship between the two Homeric epics and the "Epic Cycle": the extent to which Homer made use of earlier poetic material about the Trojan War, and the extent to which other epic poets made use of Homer. The main obstacle to this line of research – and, simultaneously, the main impetus for it – is the fact that the Cyclic epics do not survive except in summaries and isolated fragments. Ioannis Kakridis is usually regarded as the founding figure of this school of thought, with his 1949 book "Homeric Researches", but Wolfgang Kullmann's 1960 "Die Quellen der Ilias" ("The sources of the "Iliad"") is even more influential. Neoanalytic topics have become much more prominent in English-language scholarship since 1990, notably in a series of articles by M. L. West in "Classical Quarterly" and in Jonathan Burgess' 2001 book "The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle". The recent upsurge is due in no small part to the publication of three new editions of the fragmentary Greek epics, including a translation by West for the Loeb Classical Library series. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4076302 | 1,412,730 |
451,575 | Until recently most of the chemical characteristics of astatine were inferred from comparison with other elements; however, important studies have already been done. The main difference between astatine and iodine is that the HAt molecule is chemically a hydride rather than a halide; however, in a fashion similar to the lighter halogens, it is known to form ionic astatides with metals. Bonds to nonmetals result in positive oxidation states, with +1 best portrayed by monohalides and their derivatives, while the higher are characterized by bond to oxygen and carbon. Attempts to synthesize astatine fluoride have been met with failure. The second longest-living astatine-211 is the only one to find a commercial use, being useful as an alpha emitter in medicine; however, only extremely small quantities are used, and in larger ones it is very hazardous, as it is intensely radioactive. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=181556 | 451,356 |
136,252 | The Vickers Valiant entered service in 1955, capable of carrying much heavier weapon loads (including the Blue Danube nuclear weapon) over longer ranges than the Canberra. This led to the Bomber Command force of Canberras equipped for high-level conventional bombing to be gradually phased out. This did not mean the end of the Canberra in front-line service, as it proved suitable for the low-level strike and ground-attack role, and versions dedicated to this role were brought into service. The interim B(I).6, converted from the B.6 by adding provision for a pack of four Hispano 20 mm cannon in the rear bomb bay and underwing pylons for bombs and rockets, entered service in 1955, with the definitive, new-build B(I).8, which added a new forward fuselage with a fighter-style canopy for the pilot, entering service in January 1956. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=201787 | 136,197 |
1,589,281 | Amasa Stone Bishop had recently taken over the AEC's fusion management from Arthur Ruark and formed a panel to review the Scylla V proposal, including members of the NRL and GE theta teams. They concluded that there was no convincing evidence that the energy losses being seen were due to end losses, and raised concerns about the effectiveness of dynamic stabilization as well as the possibility that the changing fields it required may simply induce new instabilities. The panel strongly suggested building one more linear machine, long, to test the concepts being introduced. Nevertheless, with no other projects, the system was approved, but on the proviso that it be targeted to researching the high-beta regime, not as a prototype power reactor. This marked the beginning of the shift of management of the overall goals of the program to Washington. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=70694704 | 1,588,387 |
993,199 | The removal of aggregated p16 INK 4A positive senescent cells can delay tissue dysfunction and ultimately extend life. In the 2011 "Nature" paper by Baker et al. a novel transgene, INK-ATTAC, was used to inducibly eliminate p16 INK4A-positive senescent cells by action of a small molecule-induced activation of caspase 8, resulting in apoptosis. A BubR1 H/H mouse model known to experience the clinicopathological characteristics of aging-infertility, abnormal curvature to the spine, sarcopenia, cataracts, fat loss, dermal thinning, arrhythmias, etc. was used to test the consequences of p16INK4a removal. In these mice p16 INK4a aggregates in aging tissues including the skeletal and eye muscle, and adipose tissues. Baker et al. found that if the senescent cells are removed, it is possible to delay age-associated disorders. Not only does p16 play an important role in aging, but also in auto-immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis that progressively lead to mobility impairment in advanced disease. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15354795 | 992,682 |
1,317,859 | Kistiakowsky was unhappy with the state of American knowledge of explosives and propellants. Conant established the Explosives Research Laboratory (ERL) near the laboratories of the Bureau of Mines in Bruceton, Pennsylvania in October 1940, and Kistiakowsky initially supervised its activities, making occasional visits; but Conant did not formally appoint him as its Technical Director until the spring of 1941. Although initially hampered by a shortage of facilities, the ERL grew from five staff in 1941 to a wartime peak of 162 full-time laboratory staff in 1945. An important field of research was RDX. This powerful explosive had been developed by the British before the war. The challenge was to develop an industrial process that could produce it on a large scale. RDX was also mixed with TNT to produce Composition B, which was widely used in various munitions, and torpex, which was used in torpedoes and depth charges. Pilot plants were in operation by May 1942, and large-scale production followed in 1943. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1074761 | 1,317,134 |
859,908 | Louis Figuier in his monumental work gives a full quotation of Denis Papin's paper published in 1690 in "Acta eruditorum" at Leipzig, entitled ""Nouvelle méthode pour obtenir à bas prix des forces considérables"" (A new method for cheaply obtaining considerable forces). It seems that the idea came to Papin whilst working with Robert Boyle at the Royal Society in London. Papin describes first pouring a small quantity of water into the bottom of a vertical cylinder, inserting a piston on a rod and after first evacuating the air below the piston, placing a fire beneath the cylinder to boil the water away and create enough steam pressure to raise the piston to the top end of the cylinder. The piston was then temporarily locked in the upper position by a spring catch engaging a notch in the rod. The fire was then removed, allowing the cylinder to cool, which condensed steam back into water, thus creating a vacuum beneath the piston. To the end of the piston rod was attached a cord passing over two pulleys and a weight hung down from the cord's end. Upon releasing the catch, the piston was sharply drawn down to the bottom of the cylinder by the pressure differential between the atmosphere and the created vacuum; enough force was thus generated to raise a weight. Although the engine certainly worked as far as it went, it was devised merely to demonstrate the principle and having got this far, Papin never developed it further, although in his paper he did write about the potential of boats driven by "firetubes". Instead he allowed himself to be distracted into developing a variant of the Savery engine. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=165062 | 859,450 |
1,043,816 | Although it became clear that TFTR would not reach break-even, experiments using tritium began in earnest in December 1993, the first such device to move primarily to this fuel. In 1994 it produced a then world-record of 10.7 megawatts of fusion power from a 50-50 D-T plasma (exceeded at JET in the UK, which generated 16MW from 24MW of injected thermal power input in 1997, which was the record until 2021). The two experiments had emphasized the alpha particles produced in the deuterium-tritium reactions, which are important for self-heating of the plasma and an important part of any operational design. In 1995, TFTR attained a world-record temperature of 510 million °C - more than 25 times that at the center of the sun. This later was beaten the following year by the JT-60 Tokamak which achieved an ion temperature of 522 million °C (45 keV). Also In 1995, TFTR scientists explored a new fundamental mode of plasma confinement -- enhanced reversed shear, to reduce plasma turbulence. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1417600 | 1,043,272 |
161,114 | Philosopher René Descartes expanded upon this idea and is most widely known for his work on the mind-body problem. Often Descartes's ideas were looked upon as overly philosophical and lacking in sufficient scientific foundation. Descartes focused much of his anatomical experimentation on the brain, paying special attention to the pineal gland – which he argued was the actual "seat of the soul." Still deeply rooted in a spiritual outlook towards the scientific world, the body was said to be mortal, and the soul immortal. The pineal gland was then thought to be the very place at which the mind would interact with the mortal and machine-like body. At the time, Descartes was convinced the mind had control over the behaviors of the body (controlling the person) – but also that the body could have influence over the mind, which is referred to as dualism. This idea that the mind essentially had control over the body, but the body could resist or even influence other behaviors, was a major turning point in the way many physiologists would look at the brain. The capabilities of the mind were observed to do much more than simply react, but also to be rational and function in organized, thoughtful ways – much more complex than he thought the animal world to be. These ideas, although disregarded by many and cast aside for years led the medical community to expand their own ideas of the brain and begin to understand in new ways just how intricate the workings of the brain really were, and the complete effects it had on daily life, as well as which treatments would be the most beneficial to helping those people living with a dysfunctional mind. The mind-body problem, spurred by René Descartes, continues to this day with many philosophical arguments both for and against his ideas. However controversial they were and remain today, the fresh and well-thought-out perspective Descartes presented has had long-lasting effects on the various disciplines of medicine, psychology, and much more, especially in putting an emphasis on separating the mind from the body in order to explain observable behaviors. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=288292 | 161,029 |
1,813,359 | Ions are accelerated to a given potential so that they have the same kinetic energy resulting in ions of different mass:charge (m/e) ratio to have different velocities. These ions then pass through a region of field free space in the flight tube, and spread out in time, with the higher mass ions arriving later at the end of the flight tube where a time-sensitive detection system produces a mass spectrum. The primary ions are pulsed into short bursts of less than 10 ns (the time scale of secondary ion emission after impact is negligible (<10 s)). The primary beam is pulsed by a rapid deflection across a small aperture or by off-axis deflection, followed by a curved magnetic field to compress the pulse in space. There is very high accelerating fields at the sample (high extraction voltage and small (mm) extraction gaps) to reduce the initial energy spread of the secondary ions. Some TOF systems further compensate for this energy spread by using non-linear flight tubes. One such design has a curved electrostatic path so that the more energetic ions are forced round the outer part of the bend. Another such design incorporates an electrostatic mirror in which the more energetic ions penetrate more deeply before reflection. In both designs, the faster ions have a longer flight path to offset their increased velocity, and all ions of the same mass arrive at the detector simultaneously. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13760947 | 1,812,325 |
561,093 | DSCOVR began as a proposal in 1998 by then-Vice President Al Gore for the purpose of whole-Earth observation at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point, from Earth. Originally known as Triana, named after Rodrigo de Triana, the first of Columbus's crew to sight land in the Americas, the spacecraft's original purpose was to provide a near-continuous view of the entire Earth and make that live image available via the Internet. Gore hoped not only to advance science with these images, but also to raise awareness of the Earth itself, updating the influential "Blue Marble" photograph that was taken by Apollo 17. In addition to an imaging camera, a radiometer would take the first direct measurements of how much sunlight is reflected and emitted from the whole Earth (albedo). This data could constitute a barometer for the process of global warming. The scientific goals expanded to measure the amount of solar energy reaching Earth, cloud patterns, weather systems, monitor the health of Earth's vegetation, and track the amount of UV light reaching the surface through the ozone layer. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=970684 | 560,804 |
1,497,475 | Going into 2005, Rollcentre had repaired SP1 chassis 004 for use in a two-car effort in the Le Mans Endurance Series. Chassis 004 had its Judd V10 replaced with a new Nissan engine, in a partnership with Nissan Motorsports to experiment with the engine to test the possibility of Nissan providing it as a customer unit in the future. Rollcentre had upgraded the SP1's gearbox with a paddle-shift unit in 2004 and now both cars had it. Rollcentre decided to debut their Nissan-powered SP1 at the 12 Hours of Sebring, although the car would fail to finish due to problems with the Nismo engine. Back in Europe after a switch from Dunlops to Michelins, Rollcentre's Judd-powered car would have strong performances, including three straight podium finishes, earning the car fourth place in the teams championship. The Nissan-powered car suffered various problems throughout the season, however, scoring no points until Nissan officially ended the project and a Judd engine was placed back in the car. For Le Mans, both cars were entered, with the Nissan-powered car yet again failing to finish, while the Judd-powered SP1 took a distant 16th-place finish after actually leading the race outright early Saturday evening, although the lead was never credited as it took place whilst the lead Audi was in the pits, and regained the lead going into Mulsanne corner. The car though was running a very strong 2nd place against strong opposition . A power steering fluid leak as night came on caused serious issues, requiring the team to pit stop almost double the nowmal amount and the race was gone. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10644769 | 1,496,632 |
877,058 | Later work has refined Witten's proposal. Witten had speculated that the extremal CFTs with larger cosmological constant may have monster symmetry much like the minimal case, but this was quickly ruled out by independent work of Gaiotto and Höhn. Work by Witten and Maloney () suggested that pure quantum gravity may not satisfy some consistency checks related to its partition function, unless some subtle properties of complex saddles work out favorably. However, Li–Song–Strominger () have suggested that a chiral quantum gravity theory proposed by Manschot in 2007 may have better stability properties, while being dual to the chiral part of the monster CFT, i.e., the monster vertex algebra. Duncan–Frenkel () produced additional evidence for this duality by using Rademacher sums to produce the McKay–Thompson series as (2 + 1)-dimensional gravity partition functions by a regularized sum over global torus-isogeny geometries. Furthermore, they conjectured the existence of a family of twisted chiral gravity theories parametrized by elements of the monster, suggesting a connection with generalized moonshine and gravitational instanton sums. At present, all of these ideas are still rather speculative, in part because 3d quantum gravity does not have a rigorous mathematical foundation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=728168 | 876,596 |
1,817,326 | Weltman became known when she co-authored a 2004 paper titled "Chameleon Cosmology" with Justin Khoury, which proposed a theory to explain dark energy. She was a 24-year-old graduate student at Columbia University at the time. Dark energy is proposed as an explanation for the accelerating expansion of the universe. Khoury and Weltman proposed the existence of a new force that drove this expansion, which changed depending on the environment it was in. It would be weak when particles were densely packed together, and strong when they were far apart. Thus, the theory suggests that in regions where matter is relatively dense, the chameleon force is difficult to detect; but in empty regions of space, it acts to push bodies apart and expand the universe. The theory was such that it could not be tested for ten years after it was proposed; however, in 2014 experimenters at the University of Nottingham developed a method that had the potential to test the theory. The theory evolved by Khoury and Weltman has been described as leading to "entire sub-fields in cosmology and experimental physics." Her work has been described as a continuation of the work of Albert Einstein. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50950373 | 1,816,291 |
257,782 | Minsky won the Turing Award (the greatest distinction in computer science) in 1969, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1982, the Japan Prize in 1990, the IJCAI Award for Research Excellence for 1991, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute for 2001. In 2006, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for co-founding the field of artificial intelligence, creating early neural networks and robots, and developing theories of human and machine cognition." In 2011, Minsky was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI Hall of Fame for the "significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligent systems". In 2014, Minsky won the Dan David Prize for "Artificial Intelligence, the Digital Mind". He was also awarded with the 2013 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Information and Communication Technologies category. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19639 | 257,648 |
1,161,027 | For all but the most tightly packed dipole arrays (the brickwork-like "gangbuster" low-pass filters), a first order understanding of FSS operation can be achieved by simply considering the scattering properties of a single periodic element in free space. A dipole or patch in free space will strongly reflect energy for wavelengths comparable in size to the object itself, for example when the dipole is 1/2 wavelength in length. For frequencies below this first resonance (and for frequencies between the first and second resonance), the object will reflect little energy. So, this resonance phenomenon observed with dipoles and patches leads naturally to the notion of modeling them as a resonant circuit connected in parallel across a transmission line - in this case the element is a series connection of a capacitor and inductor, which produces a reflective short circuit at resonance. This type of structure would be known as a band-reject or band-stop filter. Bandpass filters may be constructed using apertures in conducting planes, which are modeled as a shunt element consisting of a parallel connection of an inductor and a capacitor. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=43540545 | 1,160,411 |
994,888 | Spatial interaction or "gravity models" estimate the flow of people, material or information between locations in geographic space. Factors can include origin propulsive variables such as the number of commuters in residential areas, destination attractiveness variables such as the amount of office space in employment areas, and proximity relationships between the locations measured in terms such as driving distance or travel time. In addition, the topological, or connective, relationships between areas must be identified, particularly considering the often conflicting relationship between distance and topology; for example, two spatially close neighborhoods may not display any significant interaction if they are separated by a highway. After specifying the functional forms of these relationships, the analyst can estimate model parameters using observed flow data and standard estimation techniques such as ordinary least squares or maximum likelihood. Competing destinations versions of spatial interaction models include the proximity among the destinations (or origins) in addition to the origin-destination proximity; this captures the effects of destination (origin) clustering on flows. Computational methods such as artificial neural networks can also estimate spatial interaction relationships among locations and can handle noisy and qualitative data. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3190431 | 994,371 |
1,446,845 | The T bar was installed on the west side of the lodge, in the lower portion of the current Daisy chairlift. The #1 chair—now called Blue—and #2 chair—called Yellow until 2007 until being renamed "Stadium", also the name of a central run below the lift—provided access to intermediate and advanced skill terrain. It was one of the two original lifts when Mount Hood Meadows opened in January, 1968. At that time, Yellow was referred to simply as "The North Lift", rising 548 vertical feet from the base area and accessing terrain in the northern portion of the ski area's permit area. The name was later changed to Yellow reinforced with painting of the chairs. For the 2007–08 season, a new drive and chairs removed the color; a naming contest resulted in it becoming "Stadium" which hosts many ski racing events each season. The new name tributes recreational skiers and snowboarders who run gates or participate in events. #3 chair was built in 1968, now Easy Rider, was called Red before the chairs were upgraded around 1995. In 1972, the T-bar was removed to build chair #4 (now Daisy). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4337736 | 1,446,029 |
1,818,591 | Ciulli remained in Cambridge University to conduct post-doctoral research on fragment-based drug discovery with Professor Abell and Professor Tom L. Blundell, under a College Junior Research Fellowship. Between February and June 2009, Ciulli went to Yale University as Human Frontier Science Programme visiting fellow to visit the laboratory of Professor Craig Crews before returning to Cambridge University to start his independent research career. While at Cambridge, Ciulli was the group leader in the Department of Chemistry, Director of Studies in Chemistry and BBSRC David Phillis Fellow at Christ's College. In April 2013, he took up a Readership in Chemical & Structural Biology as a principal investigator within the Division of Biological Chemistry and Drug Discovery in the University of Dundee. Ciulli was promoted as the Professor of Chemical & Structural Biology in the same division in October 2016. In 2017, he co-founded Amphista Therapeutics, a company that focuses on developing drugs based on targeted protein degradation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65464719 | 1,817,556 |
1,080,318 | I was then, as you may recall, one of the early ones who applied Operations Research and the new methods of Quantitative Analysis to specific BUSINESS PROBLEMS—rather than, as they had been originally developed for, to military or scientific problems. I had led teams applying the new methodology in two of the world’s largest companies—GE and AT&T. We had successfully solved several major production and technical problems for these companies—and my clients were highly satisfied. But I was not—we had solved TECHNICAL problems but our work had no impact on the organizations and on their mindsets. On the contrary: we had all but convinced the managements of these two big companies that QUANTITATIVE MANIPULATION was a substitute for THINKING. And then your work and your example showed us—or at least, it showed me—that the QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS comes AFTER the THINKING—it validates the thinking; it shows up intellectual sloppiness and uncritical reliance on precedent, on untested assumptions and on the seemingly “obvious.” But it does not substitute for hard, rigorous, intellectually challenging THINKING. It demands it, though—but does not replace it. This is, of course, what YOU mean BY system. And your work in those far-away days thus saved me—as it saved countless others—from either descending into mindless “model building” – the disease that all but destroyed so many of the Business Schools in the last decades—or from sloppiness parading as ‘insight.’ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1045270 | 1,079,763 |
650,529 | Far from being an uneventful cruise, "Mariner 10"s three-month journey to Venus was fraught with technical malfunctions, which kept mission control on edge. Donna Shirley recounted her team's frustration: "It seemed as if we were always just patching Mariner 10 together long enough to get it on to the next phase and next crisis". A trajectory correction maneuver was made on 13 November 1973. Immediately afterward, the star-tracker locked onto a bright flake of paint which had come off the spacecraft and lost tracking on the guide star Canopus. An automated safety protocol recovered Canopus, but the problem of flaking paint recurred throughout the mission. The on-board computer also experienced unscheduled resets occasionally, which necessitated reconfiguring the clock sequence and subsystems. Periodic problems with the high-gain antenna also occurred during the cruise. On 8 January 1974, a malfunction thought to be caused by a short-circuited diode occurred in the power subsystem. As a result, the main booster regulator and inverter failed, leaving the spacecraft dependent on the redundant regulator. Mission planners feared that the same problem could recur in the redundant system and cripple the spacecraft. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38785 | 650,188 |
327,825 | The chrome-lined, four-groove, 9.27mm caliber barrel is pressed and pinned to the frame through a precision-machined ring. The 7 kg recoil spring wraps around and is guided by the barrel. The spring-loaded trigger guard is pivoted down and swung to either side on the frame, allowing removal of the slide. The front sight is integrally machined into the slide, and a 3–4 mm wide textured strip is engraved on top of the slide in order to prevent aim-disturbing glare. The rear sight is dovetailed into the slide and multiple heights are available to adjust the impact point. The extractor is of an external spring-loaded type, and features a prominent flange preventing loss if a case should rupture. The breech face is deeply recessed in order to aid in extraction and ejection reliability. The stamped sheet steel slide-lock lever has a tail serving the purpose of ejector. The one-piece, wraparound bakelite or plastic grip is reinforced with steel inserts and has a detent inside the screw bushing preventing unscrewing during firing. The sheet-metal mainspring housed inside the grip panel powers the hammer in both the main and rebound stroke, the trigger and the disconnector, while its lower end is the heel and spring of the magazine catch. The sear spring also serves another function, powering the slide lock lever. Makarov pistol parts seldom break with normal usage, and are easily serviced using few tools. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=565883 | 327,651 |
1,547,683 | In the United States, textbooks such as Noah Webster's Speller promulgated specific knowledge to be taught to people at specific ages. Chicago superintendent William Harvey Wells expanded this approach by creating a course of instruction for Chicago Public Schools, which he codified in "A Graded Course of Instruction for Public Schools". Thus, the first learning standards originated as a result of content in textbooks, rather than through a systematic, democratic approach. In 1892, the National Education Association convened the Committee of Ten, which codified the first learning standards designed for a national high school audience. One year later, in 1893, the Committee of Fifteen on Elementary Education was formed to determine a standard number of years for elementary education, establish the content and sequence for elementary grades, and explicate a standardized course of training for elementary school teachers. However, the Committee of Fifteen's work focused primarily on defining the timing, content and teacher training for urban schools. As a result, the National Education Agency further formed the Committee of Twelve on the Rural School Problem and, in 1897, released a report intended to bring about the "...widespread consolidation of American rural schools, [to mirror] the conglomerating urban areas of the country...". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9008442 | 1,546,805 |
1,314,914 | In higher plants, the absorption of light continues to increase as light intensity increases, while the capacity for photosynthesis tends to saturate. Therefore, there is the potential for the absorption of excess light energy by photosynthetic light harvesting systems. This excess excitation energy leads to an increase in the lifetime of singlet excited chlorophyll, increasing the chances of the formation of long-lived chlorophyll triplet states by inter-system crossing. Triplet chlorophyll is a potent photosensitiser of molecular oxygen forming singlet oxygen which can cause oxidative damage to the pigments, lipids and proteins of the photosynthetic thylakoid membrane. To counter this problem, one photoprotective mechanism is so-called non-photochemical quenching (NPQ), which relies upon the conversion and dissipation of the excess excitation energy into heat. NPQ involves conformational changes within the light harvesting proteins of photosystem (PS) II that bring about a change in pigment interactions causing the formation of energy traps. The conformational changes are stimulated by a combination of transmembrane proton gradient, the photosystem II subunit S (PsBs) and the enzymatic conversion of the carotenoid violaxanthin to zeaxanthin (the xanthophyll cycle). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19316605 | 1,314,193 |
1,929,359 | Several methods exist that seek to achieve advanced control of motorized neural prosthetics. Chronic brain implants record neuronal signals from the motor cortex, while methods such as EEG and fMRI obtain motor commands non-invasively. The recorded signals are decoded into electrical signals, and input into assistive devices or motorized prosthetics. Traditional myoelectric prostheses utilize surface EMG signals from the remains of the amputated limb. For example, a patient may flex a shoulder muscle in order to generate EMG signals that may be used to send “bend elbow” command to the prosthesis. However, there are shortcomings to all of these methods. Chronic implants fail over a period of time because neuronal signal degrade due to tissue immune response to foreign bodies. EEG and fMRI do not obtain as strong signals as direct electrode implant. Traditional myoelectric prostheses are unable to provide multiple control signals simultaneously, thus only one action can be performed at a time. They are also unnatural to use because the users have to use muscles (such as shoulder) that are not normally involved with lower arm functions to control lower arm functions (such as opening and closing hands). The solution to these problems could include a completely different concept of neural interface. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14464294 | 1,928,254 |
269,511 | In 1857 Rudolf Clausius developed a similar, but more sophisticated version of the theory, which included translational and, contrary to Krönig, also rotational and vibrational molecular motions. In this same work he introduced the concept of mean free path of a particle. In 1859, after reading a paper about the diffusion of molecules by Clausius, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell formulated the Maxwell distribution of molecular velocities, which gave the proportion of molecules having a certain velocity in a specific range. This was the first-ever statistical law in physics. Maxwell also gave the first mechanical argument that molecular collisions entail an equalization of temperatures and hence a tendency towards equilibrium. In his 1873 thirteen page article 'Molecules', Maxwell states: "we are told that an 'atom' is a material point, invested and surrounded by 'potential forces' and that when 'flying molecules' strike against a solid body in constant succession it causes what is called pressure of air and other gases." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=64204 | 269,364 |
107,018 | Conceptually, in the term "species-essence", the word "species" describes the intrinsic human mental essence that is characterized by a "plurality of interests" and "psychological dynamism," whereby every individual has the desire and the tendency to engage in the many activities that promote mutual human survival and psychological well-being, by means of emotional connections with other people, with society. The psychic value of a human consists in being able to conceive (think) of the ends of their actions as purposeful ideas, which are distinct from the actions required to realize a given idea. That is, humans are able to objectify their intentions by means of an idea of themselves as "the subject" and an idea of the thing that they produce, "the object." Conversely, unlike a human being an animal does not objectify itself as "the subject" nor its products as ideas, "the object," because an animal engages in directly self-sustaining actions that have neither a future intention, nor a conscious intention. Whereas a person's "Gattungswesen" does not exist independently of specific, historically conditioned activities, the essential nature of a human being is actualized when an individual—within their given historical circumstance—is free to subordinate their will to the internal demands they have imposed upon themselves by their imagination and not the external demands imposed upon individuals by other people. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=177102 | 106,973 |
1,233,742 | As evidenced by many professional athletes who have overcome EIB using some combination of accepted treatments, the prognosis is usually very good. Olympic swimmers Tom Dolan, Amy Van Dyken, and Nancy Hogshead, Olympic track star Jackie Joyner-Kersee, baseball Hall of Famer Catfish Hunter, and American football player Jerome Bettis are among the many who have done so. Tour de France winner Chris Froome reported that he suffers from the condition, after being spotted using a nasal inhaler during race. Other athletes with EIB include racing cyclist Simon Yates, distance runner Paula Radcliffe and cross-country skier Marit Bjørgen. Research by sports scientist John Dickinson found that 70 percent of UK-based members of the British swimming team had some form of asthma, as did a third of cyclists, compared to a national asthma rate of eight to ten percent, whilst a study by the United States Olympic Committee in 2000 found that half of cross-country skiers had EIB. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3193479 | 1,233,079 |
382,802 | Dutch mathematician Willebrord Snellius (a.k.a. Snel van Royen) introduced the modern systematic use of triangulation. In 1615 he surveyed the distance from Alkmaar to Breda, approximately . He underestimated this distance by 3.5%. The survey was a chain of quadrangles containing 33 triangles in all. Snell showed how planar formulae could be corrected to allow for the curvature of the earth. He also showed how to resect, or calculate, the position of a point inside a triangle using the angles cast between the vertices at the unknown point. These could be measured more accurately than bearings of the vertices, which depended on a compass. His work established the idea of surveying a primary network of control points, and locating subsidiary points inside the primary network later. Between 1733 and 1740, Jacques Cassini and his son César undertook the first triangulation of France. They included a re-surveying of the meridian arc, leading to the publication in 1745 of the first map of France constructed on rigorous principles. By this time triangulation methods were well established for local map-making. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60891 | 382,607 |
357,247 | In 2021, Canadian anthropologist Mirjana Roksandic and colleagues recommended the complete dissolution of "H. heidelbergensis" and ""H. rhodesiensis"", as the name "rhodesiensis" honours English diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes who disenfranchised the black population in southern Africa. They classified all European "H. heidelbergensis" as "H. neanderthalensis", and synonymised "H. rhodesiensis" with a new species they named ""H. bodoensis"" which includes all African specimens, and potentially some from the Levant and the Balkans which have no Neanderthal-derived traits (namely Ceprano, Mala Balanica, HaZore'a and Nadaouiyeh Aïn Askar). "H. bodoensis" is supposed to represent the immediate ancestor of modern humans, but does not include the LCA of modern humans and Neanderthals. They suggested the confusing morphology of the Middle Pleistocene was caused by periodic "H. bodoensis" migration events into Europe following population collapses after glacial cycles, interbreeding with surviving indigenous populations. Their taxonomic recommendations were rejected by Stringer and others as they failed to explain how exactly their proposals would resolve anything, in addition to violating nomenclatural rules. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=442638 | 357,061 |
197,054 | The elasticity of materials is described by a stress–strain curve, which shows the relation between stress (the average restorative internal force per unit area) and strain (the relative deformation). The curve is generally nonlinear, but it can (by use of a Taylor series) be approximated as linear for sufficiently small deformations (in which higher-order terms are negligible). If the material is isotropic, the linearized stress–strain relationship is called Hooke's law, which is often presumed to apply up to the elastic limit for most metals or crystalline materials whereas nonlinear elasticity is generally required to model large deformations of rubbery materials even in the elastic range. For even higher stresses, materials exhibit plastic behavior, that is, they deform irreversibly and do not return to their original shape after stress is no longer applied. For rubber-like materials such as elastomers, the slope of the stress–strain curve increases with stress, meaning that rubbers progressively become more difficult to stretch, while for most metals, the gradient decreases at very high stresses, meaning that they progressively become easier to stretch. Elasticity is not exhibited only by solids; non-Newtonian fluids, such as viscoelastic fluids, will also exhibit elasticity in certain conditions quantified by the Deborah number. In response to a small, rapidly applied and removed strain, these fluids may deform and then return to their original shape. Under larger strains, or strains applied for longer periods of time, these fluids may start to flow like a viscous liquid. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=268923 | 196,953 |
110,159 | Casein contains a high number of proline amino acids which hinder the formation of common secondary structural motifs of proteins. There are also no disulfide bridges. As a result, it has relatively little tertiary structure. It is relatively hydrophobic, making it poorly soluble in water. It is found in milk as a suspension of particles, called casein micelles, which show only limited resemblance with surfactant-type micelles in a sense that the hydrophilic parts reside at the surface and they are spherical. However, in sharp contrast to surfactant micelles, the interior of a casein micelle is highly hydrated. The caseins in the micelles are held together by calcium ions and hydrophobic interactions. Any of several molecular models could account for the special conformation of casein in the micelles. One of them proposes the micellar nucleus is formed by several submicelles, the periphery consisting of microvellosities of κ-casein. Another model suggests the nucleus is formed by casein-interlinked fibrils. Finally, the most recent model proposes a double link among the caseins for gelling to take place. All three models consider micelles as colloidal particles formed by casein aggregates wrapped up in soluble κ-casein molecules. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=88935 | 110,114 |
753,898 | Garrett Morgan invented a safety hood smoke protection device after seeing firefighters struggling to withstand the suffocating smoke they encountered in the line of duty. His device used a moist sponge to filter out smoke and cool the air. It also took advantage of the way smoke and fumes tend to rise to higher positions while leaving a layer of more breathable air below, by using an air intake tube that dangled near the floor. The safety hood used a series of tubes to draw clean air of the lowest level the tubes could extend to. Smoke, being hotter than the air around it, rises, and by drawing air from the ground, the Safety Hood provided the user with a way to perform emergency respiration. He filed for a patent on the device in 1912, and founded a company called the National Safety Device Company in 1914 to market it. He was able to sell his invention around the country, sometimes using the tactic of having a hired white actor take credit rather than revealing himself as its inventor. For demonstrations of the device, he sometimes adopted the disguise of "Big Chief Mason", a purported full-blooded Indian from the Walpole Island Indian Reserve in Canada. He would demonstrate the device by building a noxious fire fueled by tar, sulfur, formaldehyde and manure inside an enclosed tent. Disguised as Big Chief Mason, he would enter the tent full of black smoke, and would remain there for 20 minutes before emerging unharmed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=314626 | 753,496 |
184,314 | Amundsen was born in Fredrikstad around 80 km from Christiania (now Oslo), Norway, in 1872, the son of a ship-owner. In 1893, he abandoned his medical studies at Christiania University and signed up as a seaman aboard the sealer "Magdalena" for a voyage to the Arctic. After several further voyages he qualified as a second mate; when not at sea, he developed his skills as a cross-country skier in the harsh environment of Norway's Hardangervidda plateau. In 1896, inspired by the polar exploits of his countryman Fridtjof Nansen, Amundsen joined the Belgian Antarctic Expedition as mate, aboard "Belgica" under Adrien de Gerlache. Early in 1898 the ship became trapped by pack ice in the Bellinghausen Sea, and was held fast for almost a year. The expedition thus became, involuntarily, the first to spend a complete winter in Antarctic waters, a period marked by depression, near-starvation, insanity, and scurvy among the crew. Amundsen remained dispassionate, recording everything and using the experience as an education in all aspects of polar exploration techniques, particularly aids, clothing and diet. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15021680 | 184,217 |
1,424,852 | The first instances of computation offloading were the use of simple sub-processors to handle Input/output processing through a separate system called Channel I/O. This concept improved overall system performance as the mainframe only needed to set parameters for the operations while the channel processors carried out the I/O formatting and processing. During the 1970s, coprocessors began being used to accelerate floating-point arithmetic faster than earlier 8-bit and 16-bit processors which used software. As a result, math coprocessors became common for scientific and engineering calculations. Another form of coprocessor was the graphics coprocessor. As image processing became more popular, specialized graphics chips began being used to offload the creation of images from the CPU. Coprocessors were common in most computers, however, declined in usage due to the development in microprocessor technologies which integrated many coprocessor functions. Dedicated graphics processing units, however, are still widely used for their effectiveness in many tasks including; image processing, machine learning, parallel computing, computer vision, and physical simulation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=43315156 | 1,424,050 |
698,689 | eDNA can be used to monitor species throughout the year and can be very useful in conservation monitoring. eDNA analysis has been successful at identifying many different taxa from aquatic plants, aquatic mammals, fishes, mussels, fungi and even parasites. eDNA has been used to study species while minimizing any stress inducing human interaction, allowing researchers to monitor species presence at larger spatial scales more efficiently. The most prevalent use in current research is using eDNA to study the locations of species at risk, invasive species, and keystone species across all environments. eDNA is especially useful for studying species with small populations because eDNA is sensitive enough to confirm the presence of a species with relatively little effort to collect data which can often be done with a soil sample or water sample. eDNA relies on the efficiency of genomic sequencing and analysis as well as the survey methods used which continue to become more efficient and cheaper. Some studies have shown that eDNA sampled from stream and inshore environment decayed to undetectable level at within about 48 hours. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46925036 | 698,325 |
1,947,134 | Graves’ disease is an autoimmune disease involving thyrotoxicosis, in which the body is affected by the overproduction of thyroid hormone as a result of the immune system attacking the thyroid gland. The overproduction of thyroid hormone is termed hyperthyroidism. Thyrotoxicosis can be caused by hyperthyroidism, thyroiditis, and other conditions. This is generally due to an increase in immunoglobulin antibodies that activate thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor. Like Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Graves’ disease is qualified as an autoimmune thyroid disease. The epigenetic processes involved in Hashimoto’s thyroiditis are also involved in Graves’ disease. Namely, these are the modification of histone methylation in Tg and skewed X chromosome inactivation. In the specific case of Graves’ disease, discoveries have been made showing the involvement of abnormal DNA methylation at certain CpG sites. This abnormal DNA methylation leads to interferon signaling and other dysregulated immune system-related processes in cases of Graves’ disease. The CpG promoter regions of many genes expressed in immune cells are shown to be hypomethylated in epigenetic analysis of Graves’ disease patients, meaning that these genes are over-expressed in these immune cells. For example, CD40L protein levels are observed to be high in patients recently diagnosed with Graves' disease. It has been shown that hypomethylation is observed at the CD40L gene. This gene codes for the CD40 ligand protein that binds the CD40 receptor and this binding activates an immune response. The over expression of this gene thus has been attributed to the onset of autoimmune-mediated hyperthyroidism. Additionally, histone methylation in peripheral blood mononuclear cells is abnormal in individuals with Graves’ disease. This abnormality, which manifests as hypermethylation, is observed in epigenetic modifier genes such as the CD3 gene family that regulates T cell behavior as well as the expression of other immune function genes. This results in a decrease of the expression of CD3 gene family members in individuals with Graves' disease. Additionally, the differential expression of certain non-coding RNAs has recently been implicated in the development of Graves’ disease, however more research is needed. These non-coding RNAs could potentially serve as biomarkers for Graves’ disease diagnosis upon further study. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=70058191 | 1,946,021 |
104,774 | After the 1972 Olympics, the clean and press were removed from the program due to difficulties in judging the event. Athletes had begun utilizing their hips and leaning backward substantially rather than "strictly" pressing the weight overhead with an upright torso. Once the weight had been cleaned to the shoulders, the press was commonly achieved with a "double layback," starting with a rapid hip thrust to generate upward momentum at the shoulders, followed by a second, more extreme form of the same movement to lower the shoulders again as the bar traveled upwards, before finally, the lifter recovered to an upright position with the bar overhead. Some athletes were able to initiate the press with a hip thrust so rapid that judges found it difficult to determine whether or not they had utilized any knee bend to generate additional force, something strictly prohibited in the rules. "Excessive layback" was also prohibited, but it was considered too difficult to determine what degree of layback constituted a rule violation. As a result, the clean and press were discontinued, and what remained were the two elements of the modern Olympic weightlifting program—the snatch and the clean and jerk. The snatch consists of lifting the barbell from the floor to an overhead position in one fluid motion. It is an exact lift that can be nullified by a lack of balance of the athlete. The clean and jerk consists of moving the barbell from the floor to overhead in 2 movements: from the floor to the shoulders, and from the shoulders to overhead. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33619 | 104,729 |
1,473,296 | The earliest known archaeological finds from Siberia date to the Lower Palaeolithic. In various places in West Siberia, the Baikal region and Yakutia, storage places from early Neolithic times have been found, which often remained in use for centuries. Alongside tent settlements which leave no traces in the ground, there were also huts, often dug slightly into the ground, whose walls and roofs were made of animal bone and reindeer antlers. Tools and weapons were mostly made from flint, slate and bone, with few discernable differences between them despite their immense chronological and geographical scope. In some settlements, early artworks have been found, which consist of human, animal and abstract sculptures and carvings. The Palaeolithic and Mesolithic inhabitants of Siberia were hunter-gatherers, whose prey consisted of mammoths and reindeer, and occasionally fish as well. In the 6th millennium BC, pottery spread across the whole of Siberia, which scholars treat as the beginning of the Siberian neolithic. Unlike Europe and the Near East, this event did not mark a major change in lifestyle, economy or culture. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14836781 | 1,472,465 |
897,480 | During the 1960s, 60% of all Triumph production was exported, which, along with the BSA's 80% exports, made the group susceptible to the Japanese expansion. By 1969 fully 50% of the US market for motorcycles more than 500 cc belonged to Triumph, but technological advances at Triumph had failed to match those of the foreign companies. Triumphs lacked electric start mechanisms, relied on push-rods rather than overhead cams, vibrated noticeably, often leaked oil and had antiquated electrical systems; while Japanese marques such as Honda were building more advanced features into attractive new motorcycles that sold for less than their British competitors. Triumph motorcycles, as a result, were nearly obsolete even when they were new. Further, Triumph's manufacturing processes were very labour-intensive and largely inefficient. Also disastrous, during the early 1970s the US government mandated that all motorcycle imports must have their gearshift and brake pedals in the Japanese configuration, which required expensive retooling of all the motorcycles for US sale. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=463234 | 897,007 |
1,979,613 | Commercial demand for computer-generated rendering is on the rise. There is a large growing demand of architectural visualization services worldwide. This has mainly been accelerated by the advancements in computing technology and allowing architectural animations to become cheaper. There are numerous real-time rendering engines that differ from the traditional method of multiple stitched still images together. This allows architectural animation to be far cheaper and less labor-intensive. However, it usually doesn't have the same photo realism. Typically, members of the AIA (American Institute of Architects) and NAHB (National Association of Home Builders) prefer to use 3D animations and single renderings for their customers before starting on a construction project. These professionals often find their clients are unable to grasp the complexity and spatial qualities of large projects without the help of computer generated visual aids. The animations and renderings are usually supplied by small animation studios. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11377382 | 1,978,475 |
1,570,031 | This Eurasian subgenus, the second largest, is complex and has had a confusing taxonomic history and is extremely diverse, morphologically. It is distributed from the Mediterranean to the Near and Middle East, to north-western China and Pakistan in the east, and southern Siberia in the north. The centre of diversity is Central Asia where it evolved, but its ancestry is located in East Asia. The 2006 classification of Fritsch and colleagues included 150 species but this has continued to grow. An extensive molecular based study in 2010 confirmed its monophyly but showed that the traditional sections were either para- or polyphyletic. On the other hand, a number of monophyletic subgroups were recognised, with about 40 clades, although their exact relationships remained not fully resolved. Consequently, traditional sections required considerable re-alignment. Eventually 160 species and subspecies were recognised in 20 sections and 22 subsections. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=51760209 | 1,569,143 |
1,012,294 | Cospas-Sarsat is an international satellite-based search and rescue system, established by Canada, France, the United States, and Russia. These four countries jointly helped develop the 406 MHz Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB), an element of the GMDSS designed to operate with Cospas-Sarsat system. These automatic-activating EPIRBs, now required on SOLAS ships, commercial fishing vessels, and all passenger ships, are designed to transmit to alert rescue coordination centers via the satellite system from anywhere in the world. The original COSPAS/SARSAT system used polar orbiting satellites, but in recent years the system has been expanded to also include 4 geostationary satellites. Newest designs incorporate GPS receivers to transmit highly accurate positions (within about 20 metres) of the distress position. EPIRB manufacturers offer AIS (Automatic Identification System) enabled beacons. 406 MHz EPIRBs transmit an ID which is linked to a database of information about the vessel. Typically a vessel has a unique ID: MMSI. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=508209 | 1,011,773 |
545,492 | The low-powered, graphite-moderated GLEEP, which stood for Graphite Low Energy Experimental Pile, was designed by the Montreal Laboratory, and became the first nuclear reactor to operate in Western Europe when it was started on 15 August 1947. This was followed by BEPO, a 6 MW research reactor designed by AERE, on 3 July 1948. Because heavy water was unavailable in Britain, BEPO was designed and built as a graphite-moderated reactor. Harwell was involved in the design of reactors at Windscale, and the chemical separation plant there. The passage of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) in August 1946, made it clear that the UK would no longer be allowed access to the United States' atomic research. This partly resulted from the arrest for espionage of Alan Nunn May in February 1946. Cockcroft helped negotiate a new, more informal and unsigned agreement with the Americans that was announced on 7 January 1948, known as the "Modus Vivendi". The renewed cooperation that he hoped for under the agreement proved illusory. The development of the independent British nuclear deterrent led to the Atomic Energy Act being amended in 1958, and to a resumption of the nuclear Special Relationship between America and Britain under the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=352564 | 545,206 |
1,445,387 | A major advantage of Laguerre's method is that it is almost guaranteed to converge to "some" root of the polynomial "no matter where the initial approximation is chosen". This is in contrast to other methods such as the Newton–Raphson method which may fail to converge for poorly chosen initial guesses. It may even converge to a complex root of the polynomial, because of the square root being taken in the calculation of above may be of a negative number. This may be considered an advantage or a liability depending on the application to which the method is being used. Empirical evidence has shown that convergence failure is extremely rare, making this a good candidate for a general purpose polynomial root finding algorithm. However, given the fairly limited theoretical understanding of the algorithm, many numerical analysts are hesitant to use it as such, and prefer better understood methods such as the Jenkins–Traub algorithm, for which more solid theory has been developed. Nevertheless, the algorithm is fairly simple to use compared to these other "sure-fire" methods, easy enough to be used by hand or with the aid of a pocket calculator when an automatic computer is unavailable. The speed at which the method converges means that one is only very rarely required to compute more than a few iterations to get high accuracy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1136614 | 1,444,571 |
1,001,999 | Irwin was born March 17, 1930, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, of Scottish and Irish descent, to parents James William Irwin (1896–1979), a U.S. Army World War I veteran, and Elsa Mathilda Irwin (; 1899–1993). Irwin's grandparents emigrated to the U.S. from Altmore Parish at Pomeroy in County Tyrone, Ireland (now Northern Ireland) around 1859. At about the age of 12, he informed his mother about his desire to go to the Moon, letting her know that he might be the first person to do so (he ended up being the eighth). He graduated from East High School in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1947. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Naval Science from the United States Naval Academy in 1951, and Master of Science degrees in Aeronautical Engineering and Instrumentation Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1957. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=321993 | 1,001,481 |
482,808 | The tower was designed by Rodgers and Poor, a New York City architectural firm; the design was officially selected on February 14, 1930. Prior to the memorial's construction, the War Department selected Captain William H. Kindervater of the Quartermaster Corps to prepare the site for construction and to manage the area landscaping. To secure the sandy foundation, Captain Kindervater selected bermuda grass to be planted on Kill Devil Hill and the surrounding area. He also ordered a special fertilizer to be spread throughout the area to promote grass and shrubbery growth and decided to build a fence to prevent animal grazing. With a strong foundation in place, the Office of the Quartermaster selected Marine Captain John A. Gilman to preside over the construction project. Construction began in October 1931 and with a budget of $213,000 (equivalent to $ in ), the memorial was completed in November 1932. In the end, 1,200 tons () of granite, more than 2,000 tons () of gravel, more than 800 tons () of sand and almost 400 tons () of cement were used to build the structure, along with numerous other materials. It is constructed of granite mined at the North Carolina Granite Corporation Quarry Complex. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2323825 | 482,564 |
323,962 | Excitation contraction coupling is the process by which a muscular action potential in the muscle fiber causes the myofibrils to contract. This process relies on a direct coupling between the sarcoplasmic reticulum calcium release channel RYR1 (ryanodine receptor 1), and voltage-gated L-type calcium channels (identified as dihydropyridine receptors, DHPRs). DHPRs are located on the sarcolemma (which includes the surface sarcolemma and the transverse tubules), while the RyRs reside across the SR membrane. The close apposition of a transverse tubule and two SR regions containing RyRs is described as a triad and is predominantly where excitation–contraction coupling takes place. Excitation–contraction coupling occurs when depolarization of skeletal muscle cell results in a muscle action potential, which spreads across the cell surface and into the muscle fiber's network of T-tubules, thereby depolarizing the inner portion of the muscle fiber. Depolarization of the inner portions activates dihydropyridine receptors in the terminal cisternae, which are close to ryanodine receptors in the adjacent sarcoplasmic reticulum. The activated dihydropyridine receptors physically interact with ryanodine receptors to activate them via foot processes (involving conformational changes that allosterically activates the ryanodine receptors). As the ryanodine receptors open, is released from the sarcoplasmic reticulum into the local junctional space and diffuses into the bulk cytoplasm to cause a calcium spark. Note that the sarcoplasmic reticulum has a large calcium buffering capacity partially due to a calcium-binding protein called calsequestrin. The near synchronous activation of thousands of calcium sparks by the action potential causes a cell-wide increase in calcium giving rise to the upstroke of the calcium transient. The released into the cytosol binds to Troponin C by the actin filaments, to allow crossbridge cycling, producing force and, in some situations, motion. The sarco/endoplasmic reticulum calcium-ATPase (SERCA) actively pumps back into the sarcoplasmic reticulum. As declines back to resting levels, the force declines and relaxation occurs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=380541 | 323,790 |
908,904 | HPAI A(H5N1) is considered an avian disease, although there is some evidence of limited human-to-human transmission of the virus. A risk factor for contracting the virus is handling of infected poultry, but transmission of the virus from infected birds to humans has been characterized as inefficient. Still, around 60% of humans known to have been infected with the Asian strain of HPAI A(H5N1) have died from it, and H5N1 may mutate or reassort into a strain capable of efficient human-to-human transmission. In 2003, world-renowned virologist Robert G. Webster published an article titled "The world is teetering on the edge of a pandemic that could kill a large fraction of the human population" in "American Scientist". He called for adequate resources to fight what he sees as a major world threat to possibly billions of lives. On September 29, 2005, David Nabarro, the newly appointed Senior United Nations System Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza, warned the world that an outbreak of avian influenza could kill anywhere between 5 million and 150 million people. Experts have identified key events (creating new clades, infecting new species, spreading to new areas) marking the progression of an avian flu virus towards becoming pandemic, and many of those key events have occurred more rapidly than expected. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1019908 | 908,425 |
1,017,868 | The KJ Series 2 Verada also saw the introduction of "Tiptronic" to their five-speed automatic transmissions, whereas inside, there were a new instrument cluster, two-tone black/slate or black/sandstone colour schemes and chrome gearshift surrounds. The Ei gained a power adjustable driver's seat, while the Xi also featured with a power adjustable front passenger seat and Nardi wood gearshift knob. The range was expanded with the arrival of the limited-edition GTV. Specifically, this Verada was powered by the 3.5-litre "high output" V6 engine of the Magna Sports and VR-X, the upgraded VR-X sports suspension and black brake callipers, new design 17-inch alloy wheels shod with 225/50 Bridgestone tyres, the Sports' boot lid spoiler and rear muffler, and unique interior fittings comprising an eight-speak sound system with a four-disc in-dash CD player, satellite navigation, black leather seats with perforated inserts, black leather door inserts and console lid, and a Nardi wood steering wheel and gear knob. This model became a permanent range fixture from March 2003, when it was rebadged GTVi. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=903910 | 1,017,344 |
504,627 | In 1955, Haloid signed a new agreement with Battelle granting it full title to Carlson's xerography patents, in exchange for fifty thousand shares of Haloid stock. Carlson received forty percent of the cash and stock from that deal, due to his agreement with Battelle. That same year, the British motion picture company Rank Organisation was looking for a product to sit alongside a small business it had making camera lenses. Thomas A Law, who was the head of that business, found his answer in a scientific magazine he picked up by chance. He read about an invention that could produce copies of documents as good as the original. Mr Law tracked down the backers – Haloid. In order to exploit those patents in Europe, Haloid partnered with the Rank Organisation in a joint venture called Rank Xerox. As photocopying took the world by storm, so did Rank's profits. According to Graham Dowson, later Rank's chief executive, it was "a stroke of luck that turned out to be a touch of genius … If Tom Law had not seen that magazine, we would not have known about xerography – or at least not before it was too late". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=358498 | 504,365 |
1,851,141 | A jet stream perturbation model is employed by Weather Logistics UK, which simulates the diversion of the air streams in the upper atmosphere. North Atlantic air flow modelling is simulated by combining a monthly jet stream climatology input calculated at 20 to 30°W, with different blocking high patterns. The jet stream input is generated by thermal wind balance calculations at 316mbars (6 to 9 km aloft) in the mid-latitude range from 40 to 60°N. Long term blocking patterns are determined by the weather forecaster, who identifies the likely position and strength of North Atlantic Highs from synoptic charts, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) patterns. The model is based on the knowledge that low pressure systems at the surface are steered by the fast ribbons (jet streams) of air in the upper atmosphere. The jet stream - blocking interaction model simulation examines the sea surface temperature field using data from NOAA tracked along the ocean on a path to the British Isles. The principal theory suggests that long term weather patterns act on longer time scales, so large blocking patterns are thought to appear in a similar locations repeatedly over several months. With a good knowledge of blocking high patterns, the model performs with an impressive accuracy that is useful to the end user. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6187453 | 1,850,080 |
1,026,100 | Class switching occurs by a mechanism called class switch recombination (CSR) binding. Class switch recombination is a biological mechanism that allows the class of antibody produced by an activated B cell to change during a process known as isotype or class switching. During CSR, portions of the antibody heavy chain locus are removed from the chromosome, and the gene segments surrounding the deleted portion are rejoined to retain a functional antibody gene that produces antibody of a different isotype. Double-stranded breaks are generated in DNA at conserved nucleotide motifs, called switch (S) regions, which are upstream from gene segments that encode the constant regions of antibody heavy chains; these occur adjacent to all heavy chain constant region genes with the exception of the δ-chain. DNA is nicked and broken at two selected S-regions by the activity of a series of enzymes, including activation-induced (cytidine) deaminase (AID), uracil DNA glycosylase and apyrimidic/apurinic (AP)-endonucleases. The intervening DNA between the S-regions is subsequently deleted from the chromosome, removing unwanted μ or δ heavy chain constant region exons and allowing substitution of a γ, α or ε constant region gene segment. The free ends of the DNA are rejoined by a process called non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) to link the variable domain exon to the desired downstream constant domain exon of the antibody heavy chain. In the absence of non-homologous end joining, free ends of DNA may be rejoined by an alternative pathway biased toward microhomology joins. With the exception of the μ and δ genes, only one antibody class is expressed by a B cell at any point in time. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10469455 | 1,025,566 |
2,050,831 | Klein has pioneered methods of radiative transfer and adaptive mesh refinement applied to computational astrophysics over the last several decades. He played a central role in the development of the radiation-driven implosion model for induced star formation and in developing the leading theory of stellar winds for "hot stars". He has pursued a broad range of problems ranging from star formation to high energy physics, including the interactions of supernovae shocks with interstellar clouds, the formation of low and high mass stars, accretion onto neutron stars, and Compton-heated winds from accretion disks. He established the Berkeley Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics Group with Christopher McKee to develop the technique of adaptive mesh refinement for numerical simulations of astrophysical fluid dynamics. In addition, he has applied these simulations to scaled laboratory astrophysics experiments. He was recognized by fellowships in both the American Physical Society (APS) in 2003 and the American Astronomical Society in 2021 for his contributions to computational astrophysics. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1851347 | 2,049,650 |
2,169,346 | The idea that would eventually lead to Raman optical activity appeared for the first time during Barron’s D.Phil. research, when he discovered a new fundamental scattering process involving interference between light waves scattered via the molecular polarizability and optical activity tensors and which generates a small ellipticity/circularity in the scattered light. This was published with Peter Atkins in 1969. with the final definitive theory published with David Buckingham in 1971. The first observations, made in Buckingham’s laboratory, were published in 1973, and constituted the first observations of the long-sought optical activity in vibrational transitions of chiral molecules. Barron developed his extension of Lord Kelvin’s definition of chirality to include motion, first published in 1986 , in order to critically assess external physical influences able to induce an enantiomeric excess in reactions that would otherwise produce a racemic product, something that had been controversial ever since the time of Louis Pasteur and had resulted in many futile experiments. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22947259 | 2,168,108 |
1,870,668 | The flexibility and utility of EWMN allows it to be applied in a wide variety of fields. It has been used to record movements and forms of the hands and fingers in sign language; in the composition of dances, and the recording of folk dances; it has been used in the fields of medicine, the Feldenkrais Method and sports. The notation has also been used to record the courting behavior of jackals, and other ethological research. It was used in the field of graphic and kinetic visual art, and a computer system has been written to plot any movement that can be recorded in EWMN. The notation can easily lend itself to applications in the fields of robotics, animation or motion picture. The system was successfully used to detect the very first movement patterns which are a precursor to the development of Autism. The research carried out by Prof. Philip Teitelbaum and Osnat Teitelbaum at the University of Florida was based entirely on the use of EW to study infant movements. It shows that specific movement patterns appearing in the first few months of life can be a reliable predictor of the later development of Autism and Asperger's Syndrome. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14697459 | 1,869,591 |
1,092,086 | The lexical syllabus is a form of the propositional paradigm that takes 'word' as the unit of analysis and content for syllabus design. Various vocabulary selection studies can be traced back to the 1920s and 1930s (West 1926; Ogden 1930; Faucet et al. 1936), and recent advances in techniques for the computer analysis of large databases of authentic text have helped to resuscitate this line of work. The modern lexical syllabus is discussed in Sinclair & Renouf (1988), who state that the main benefit of a lexical syllabus is that it emphasizes utility - the student learns that which is most valuable because it is most frequent. Related work on collocation is reported by Sinclair (1987) and Kennedy (1989), and the Collins COBUILD English Course (Willis & Willis 1988) is cited as an exemplary pedagogic implementation of the work, though "in fact, however, the COBUILD textbooks utilize one of the more complex hybrid syllabi in current ESL texts" (Long & Crookes 1993:23). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25074933 | 1,091,526 |
238,912 | A 2008 study of all adult twins in Sweden (more than 7,600 twins) found that same-sex behaviour was explained by both heritable genetic factors and "unique environmental" factors (which can include the prenatal environment during gestation, exposure to illness in early life, peer groups not shared with a twin, etc.), although a twin study cannot identify which factor is at play. Influences of the "shared environment" (influences including the family environment, rearing, shared peer groups, culture and societal views, and sharing the same school and community) had no effect for men, and a weak effect for women. This is consistent with the common finding that parenting and culture appears to play no role in male sexual orientation, but may play some small role in women. The study concludes that genetic influences on any lifetime same-sex partner were stronger for men than women, and that "it has been suggested individual differences in heterosexual and homosexual behavior result from unique environmental factors such as prenatal exposure to sex hormones, progressive maternal immunization to sex-specific proteins, or neurodevelopmental factors", although does not rule out other variables. The use of all adult twins in Sweden was designed to address the criticism of volunteer studies, in which a potential bias towards participation by gay twins may influence the results: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=51614 | 238,792 |
426,816 | Chevaline's existence, along with its formerly secret codename, was revealed by the Secretary of State for Defence, Francis Pym, during a debate in the House of Commons on 24 January 1980. Sea trials were held in November 1980. The system became operational in mid-1982 on "Renown", followed by "Revenge" in 1983, "Resolution" in 1985, and "Repulse" in 1987. One hundred A-3TK warheads were produced between 1979 and 1982. The final cost reached £1,025 million. However, the Public Accounts Committee noted that due to inflation, £1 billion in April 1981 (equivalent to £ in ) was not significantly greater than £235 million in April 1972 (equivalent to £ in ). What disturbed the committee more was that a major project had gone on for a decade without any disclosure of its costs to Parliament or any requirement that they should be. The range of the Chevaline system was compared to range of the original system, which reduced the sea-room in which British submarines could hide. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=35942972 | 426,607 |
1,519,470 | Until his retirement in July 2015, Borucki was the chief investigator for the "Kepler" space telescope, designed to hunt for exoplanets with the transit method. The telescope has detected 3253 confirmed planets and thousands of likely planet candidates as of December 6, 2022. For his work, he has received the NASA Outstanding Leadership Award, the "Popular Mechanics" Breakthrough Award in 2009, and the NASA Systems Engineering Excellence Award in 2010, and the Lancelot M. Berkeley Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy in 2011. He received the 2013 Henry Draper Medal from the United States National Academy of Sciences "For his founding concept, unflagging advocacy, and visionary leadership during the development of NASA's Kepler mission, which has uncovered myriad planets and solar systems with unforeseen and surprising properties." and the 2015 Shaw Prize in Astronomy for "his conceiving and leading the Kepler mission, which greatly advanced knowledge of both extrasolar planetary systems and stellar interiors." In 2016, he was named as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38164008 | 1,518,612 |
55,808 | Based on the size of the vertebrae, "Titanoboa" is the largest snake in the paleontological record. In modern constrictors like boids and pythonids, increased body size is achieved through larger vertebrae rather than an increase in the number of bones making up the skeleton, allowing for length estimates based on individual bones. Based on comparison between the undistorted "Titanoboa" vertebrae and the skeleton of modern boas, Head and colleagues found that the analysed specimens fit a position towards the later half of the precloacal vertebral column, approximately 60 to 65% back from the first two neck vertebrae. Using this method, initial size estimates proposed a total body length of approximately (± ). The later discovery of skull material allowed for size estimates based on skull to body length proportions. Applying anaconda proportions to the skull of "Titanoboa" results in a total body length of around (± ). Weight was determined by comparing "Titanoboa" to the extant green anaconda and the southern rock python, resulting in a weight between and (mean estimate ). These estimates far exceeds the largest modern snakes, the green anaconda and the reticulated python and the previous record holder, the madtsoid "Gigantophis". The existence of eight additional specimens of similar size to the one used in these calculations implies that "Titanoboa" reached such massive proportions regularly. In 2016, Feldman and his colleagues estimated that a long individual would have weighed at maximum based on their equation to estimate the body size of boids. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21396352 | 55,784 |
453,889 | East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania offers 68 undergraduate major programs with 24 available concentrations, the largest of which (by enrollment) are Health and Physical Education K-12, Elementary Education, Biological Sciences, Business Management, Computer Science, Psychology, and Secondary Education. ESU has majors in Health Services Administration and Industrial Physics as well as graduate study programs. ESU's extended learning program offers professional development training in Building Information Modeling (BIM). The current student-to-professor ratio stands at 19:1. The breakdown of traditional students consists of 56% female, 44% male, 24% out of state, and 1% international from 9 different countries. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2991130 | 453,668 |
1,098,130 | In 1941, field artillery units began converting to the new 105 mm M2 Howitzer, and some M1897s were removed from their towed carriages and installed on the half-track M3 Gun Motor Carriage (GMC). The towed version and the M3 GMC was used by American Tank Destroyer battalions during operations in the North African and Italian campaigns. M3 GMCs were also used in the Pacific theater during the Philippines campaign and by Marine Regimental Weapons Companies until 1944. Their performance in an anti-tank role was adequate against Japanese and Italian armor but inadequate against late war German armor. M3 GMCs remained in use with the British in Italy and North West Europe in small numbers until the end of the war. Towed guns were also used for training and on March 8, 1945, they were declared obsolete and retired. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=66810188 | 1,097,570 |
1,352,552 | Medal of Honor Citation: "The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pride in presenting the Medal of Honor (Posthumously) to Private First Class Sadao S. Munemori (ASN: 39019023), United States Army, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action above and beyond the call of duty while serving with Company A, 100th Infantry Battalion, 442d Regimental Combat Team, attached to the 92d Infantry Division, in action against the enemy on 5 April 1945. Private First Class Munemori fought with great gallantry and intrepidity near Seravezza, Italy. When his unit was pinned down by grazing fire from the enemy's strong mountain defense and command of the squad devolved on him with the wounding of its regular leader, he made frontal, one-man attacks through direct fire and knocked out two machine guns with grenades. Withdrawing under murderous fire and showers of grenades from other enemy emplacements, he had nearly reached a shell crater occupied by two of his men when an unexploded grenade bounced on his helmet and rolled toward his helpless comrades. He arose into the withering fire, dived for the missile and smothered its blast with his body. By his swift, supremely heroic action Private First Class Munemori saved two of his men at the cost of his own life and did much to clear the path for his company's victorious advance." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60044 | 1,351,806 |
2,033,409 | Meltzer studied physics at the University of Cape Town with a bachelor's degree in 1934, and was briefly a physics demonstrator in Cape Town. He emigrated to Great Britain, where he worked for the Marconi Company and, after the start of the Second World War, for the Telecommunications Research Establishment conducting research on radar. In 1941 he enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and from 1943 taught radar and electronics to military personnel at the University of Aberdeen. After the war he went into industry (Mullard's Radio Valve Company, from 1949 in the research laboratories of EMI). In 1953 he received his doctorate from the University of London in mathematical physics with Reinhold Furth (1893–1979). In 1955 he became a lecturer and later a reader in the electrical engineering department of the University of Edinburgh, doing research in electronics (both semiconductors and tubes). His research on ion propulsion resulted in an invitation from NASA to Stanford University in 1962. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=67785679 | 2,032,237 |
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