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55,714 | The basis of the system is the 20 mm M61 Vulcan Gatling gun autocannon, used by the United States military on various tactical aircraft since 1959, linked to a K band fire control radar system for acquiring and tracking targets. This proven system was combined with a purpose-made mounting, capable of fast elevation and traverse speeds, to track incoming targets. An entirely self-contained unit, the mounting houses the gun, an automated fire-control system and all other major components, enabling it to automatically search for, detect, track, engage, and confirm kills using its computer-controlled radar system. Owing to this self-contained nature, Phalanx is ideal for support ships, which lack integrated targeting systems and generally have limited sensors. The entire unit has a mass between . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=89872 | 55,691 |
477,338 | Osteopontin is implicated in PDAC (pancreatic adenocarcinoma) disease progression. It is expressed as one of three splice variants in PDAC, with osteopontin-a expressed in nearly all PDAC, osteopontin-b expression correlating with survival, and osteopontin-c correlating with metastatic disease . Because PDAC secretes alternatively spliced forms of osteopontin, it shows potential for tumor- and disease stage-specific targeting. Although the exact mechanisms of osteopontin signaling in PDAC are unknown, it binds to CD44 and integrins to trigger processes such as tumor progression and complement inhibition. Osteopontin also drives metastasis by triggering the release of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and matrix metalloprotease (MMP), which is inhibited by knocking down osteopontin. This process is also stimulated by nicotine, which is the proposed mechanism by which smokers experience elevated PC risk. Osteopontin is being explored as a marker for PC. It was found to perform better than CA19.9 in discerning IPMN [80] and resectable PDAC from pancreatitis . Antiosteopontin antibodies are being developed, including hu1A12, which inhibited metastasis in an in vivo study and also when hybridized with the anti-VEGF antibody bevacizumab . At least one clinical trial is exploring the use of osteopontin as a marker of intratumoral hypoxia. However, this marker remains relatively unexplored. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2876332 | 477,098 |
740,859 | Galileo Galilei, the father of mechanics and part time biomechanic was born 21 years after the death of Copernicus. Galileo spent many years in medical school and often questioned everything his professors taught. He found that the professors could not prove what they taught so he moved onto mathematics where everything had to be proven. Then, at the age of 25, he went to Pisa and taught mathematics. He was a very good lecturer and students would leave their other instructors to hear him speak, so he was forced to resign. He then became a professor at an even more prestigious school in Padua. His spirit and teachings would lead the world once again in the direction of science. Over his years of science, Galileo made a lot of biomechanical aspects known. For example, he discovered that "animals' masses increase disproportionately to their size, and their bones must consequently also disproportionately increase in girth, adapting to loadbearing rather than mere size. The bending strength of a tubular structure such as a bone is increased relative to its weight by making it hollow and increasing its diameter. Marine animals can be larger than terrestrial animals because the water's buoyancy relieves their tissues of weight." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=105355 | 740,467 |
1,949,868 | Annually, over 1.6 million people die as a result of pathogens from contaminated water. In the developing world, 2,200 children die per day from waterborne diseases. Per World Health Organization (WHO) standards, for water to be considered clean enough for drinking, bacteria should be undetectable in any 100 mL sample. The primary contaminants of water are pathogens, such as the bacteria "Campylobacter, Clostridium, Salmonella, Staphylococcous, Anabaena, Microcystis," worms such as "Schistosoma mansoni," and "Taenia saginata," protozoans such as "Entamoeba histolytica" and "Giardia duodenalis," and viruses and fungi such as enteroviruses and microsporidia. Outbreaks of waterborne diseases, such as cholera, have affected millions in the 19th and 20th centuries over the course of several pandemics, usually as a result of inadequate wastewater treatment systems and general sanitation. This is not a problem of decades past, however. As recently as 2015, it was found that 1.3 billion people are at risk for cholera annually, with 2.86 million annual cases and an estimated 95,000 deaths. Cholera is just one example of waterborne disease, however, and more broadly, 780 million people worldwide still lack access to clean drinking water. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=62073693 | 1,948,747 |
1,993,059 | The 2-oxoglutarate (2OG)-dependent oxygenases are a superfamily of non-haem iron dependent oxygenases, most of which use the Krebs cycle intermediate, 2OG, as a co-substrate. The group are interested in understanding these enzymes for their ability to catalyse synthetically difficult or 'impossible' reactions ("e.g." the stereoselective hydroxylation of unactivated carbon-hydrogen bonds), for their diverse physiological roles, and for their links to disease. The research focuses on members of the family that are linked to disease, or can be targeted for the treatment of disease. Techniques involved in this interdisciplinary research include proteomics, X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, biological mass spectrometry, molecular biology, enzyme kinetics, protein-directed dynamic combinatorial chemistry and organic synthesis/medicinal chemistry. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=51277415 | 1,991,916 |
2,152,401 | Italy's Salvatore Antibo, who was the strongest pre-race favourite to win also this final, having taken the 10,000-metre European title with a solo run, fell at the start, and therefore had to run faster than the other runners for the first 700 metres, in order to catch them. Portugal's Domingos Castro first led the race, but soon thereafter France's Cyrille Laventure took the lead. Laventure was still leading the race at 3,000 metres in 8:09.15, and at 4,000 metres in 10:53.34. Despite the moderate pace, almost all runners were still in the lead group at this point. On the second last back straight, Castro accelerated past Laventure into the lead, and the main group's runners started to string out. Castro was still leading the race at 4,600 metres, in an informal time of 12:26.2 or 12:26.3. Antibo, Britain's Gary Staines, Poland's Slawomir Majusiak, Laventure, and Finland's Risto Ulmala were chasing Castro. On the final back straight, Staines tried to sprint past Antibo, who accelerated into the lead, leaving Castro behind. At the start of the final bend, Staines sprinted past Antibo. In the second half of the bend, however, Antibo furiously kicked past Staines. Some metres behind the leading duo, Majusiak accelerated past the fading Castro. Several metres behind the second pair of runners, Sweden's Jonny Danielsson passed Ulmala. Despite celebrating his victory in the final metres, Antibo defeated Staines by almost half a second, while Majusiak secured the bronze medal. Danielsson ran the home straight several metres faster than the exhausted Castro, but he still lost to the tiny Portuguese runner by under 0.2 seconds. (The Big European Championships Book / Suuri EM-kirja (Finland, c. 1990); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P_fSAPbYgM Salvatore Antibo vince i 5.000 a Spalato 90.) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14432022 | 2,151,170 |
2,003,106 | Frank Sanchez developed the original language semantics, syntax, parser, compiler and optimizer, database interface, schema binding, intrinsic classes and methods over the Christmas holiday in 1998 and early 1999. He was assisted in the development of the initial commercial releases (version 1 - 2) by the late Bob Chiang, the Head of Data-Qwik tool development at Sanchez, and Mark Spier, a Senior Software Developer with Sanchez at the time. Sanchez Computer Associates (SCAI) was acquired by Fidelity National Financial (FNF), now FIS, in April 2004. In later versions the compiler has been maintained and significantly enhanced by Frans Witte, a Senior Technical Lead at FIS, and Dan Russell, formerly the Head of Technology Development at Sanchez and now a remote Senior Technical consultant to FIS. Frans and Dan have focused on implementing the database independent features of the language, and more recently the Java source target code. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17687494 | 2,001,958 |
402,834 | Science and mathematics in the Islamic world during the Middle Ages followed various models and modes of funding varied based primarily on scholars. It was extensive patronage and strong intellectual policies implemented by specific rulers that allowed scientific knowledge to develop in many areas. Funding for translation of scientific texts in other languages was ongoing throughout the reign of certain caliphs, and it turned out that certain scholars became experts in the works they translated and in turn received further support for continuing to develop certain sciences. As these sciences received wider attention from the elite, more scholars were invited and funded to study particular sciences. An example of a translator and mathematician who benefited from this type of support was al-Khawarizmi. A notable feature of many scholars working under Muslim rule in medieval times is that they were often polymaths. Examples include the work on optics, maths and astronomy of Ibn al-Haytham. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18902 | 402,634 |
1,687,918 | MreB controls the width of rod-shaped bacteria, such as "Escherichia coli". A mutant "E. coli" that creates defective MreB proteins will be spherical instead of rod-like. Also, most bacteria that are naturally spherical do not have the gene encoding MreB. Members of the Chlamydiota are a notable exception, as these bacteria utilize the protein for localized septal peptidoglycan synthesis. Prokaryotes carrying the "mreB" gene can also be helical in shape. MreB has long been thought to form a helical filament underneath the cytoplasmic membrane, however, this model has been brought into question by three recent publications showing that filaments cannot be seen by electron cryotomography and that GFP-MreB can be seen as patches moving around the cell circumference. It has been shown to interact with several proteins that are proven to be involved in length growth (for instance PBP2). Therefore, it probably directs the synthesis and insertion of new peptidoglycan building units into the existing peptidoglycan layer to allow length growth of the bacteria. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=501178 | 1,686,972 |
103,229 | The XP-80 had a conventional all-metal airframe, with a slim low wing and tricycle landing gear. Like most early jets designed during World War II—and before the Allies captured German research data that confirmed the speed advantages of swept-wings—the XP-80 had straight wings, similar to previous propeller-driven fighters. It was the first operational jet fighter to have its engine in the fuselage, a format previously used in the pioneering German Heinkel He 178 V1 of 1939, and the later British Gloster E.28/39 demonstrator of 1941. Other early jets generally had two engines because of their limited power, these being mounted in external nacelles for easier maintenance. With the advent of more powerful British jet engines, fuselage mounting was more effective, and it was used by nearly all subsequent fighter aircraft. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=78035 | 103,184 |
360,814 | By the early 20th century balloon, or airship, guns, for land and naval use were attracting attention. Various types of ammunition were proposed, high explosive, incendiary, bullet-chains, rod bullets and shrapnel. The need for some form of tracer or smoke trail was articulated. Fuzing options were also examined, both impact and time types. Mountings were generally pedestal type but could be on field platforms. Trials were underway in most countries in Europe but only Krupp, Erhardt, Vickers Maxim, and Schneider had published any information by 1910. Krupp's designs included adaptations of their 65 mm 9-pounder, a 75 mm 12-pounder, and even a 105 mm gun. Erhardt also had a 12-pounder, while Vickers Maxim offered a 3-pounder and Schneider a 47 mm. The French balloon gun appeared in 1910, it was an 11-pounder but mounted on a vehicle, with a total uncrewed weight of 2 tons. However, since balloons were slow moving, sights were simple. But the challenges of faster moving aeroplanes were recognised. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=146640 | 360,626 |
960,832 | In April, a month after reaching South America, he wrote to his sister Caroline that he was struggling to write letters, partly due to "writing everything in my journal". A few weeks later at Botafogo, tired and short of time, he sent her "in a packet, my commonplace Journal.— I have taken a fit of disgust with it & want to get it out of my sight, any of you that like may read it.— a great deal is absolutely childish: Remember however this, that it is written solely to make me remember this voyage, & that it is not a record of facts but of my thoughts". He invited criticisms. In reply, his sister Catherine praised his "interesting and entertaining" descriptions, "Susan read the Journal aloud to Papa, who was interested, and liked it very much". His Wedgwood relatives had asked to see it at Maer Hall. Darwin left that "entirely in your hands.— I suspect the first part is abominaly childish, if so do not send it to Maer.— Also, do not send it by the Coach, (it may appear ridiculous to you) but I would as soon loose a piece of my memory as it.— I feel it is of such consequence to my preserving a just recollection of the different places we visit." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=291973 | 960,323 |
2,142,606 | The 2016–17 Washington Huskies women's basketball team represented University of Washington during the 2016–17 NCAA Division I women's basketball season. The Huskies, led by fourth year head coach Mike Neighbors, played their home games at Alaska Airlines Arena and were members of the Pac-12 Conference. In the final regular season game for the Huskies on February 25, 2017, Kelsey Plum scored a Pac-12 record 57 points in an 84–77 win over Utah to set NCAA Division I women's basketball career scoring record. They finished the season 29–6, 15–3 in Pac-12 play to finish in a tie for second place. They were upset by the 10 seed Oregon in the quarterfinals of Pac-12 women's tournament. They received an at-large bid of the NCAA women's tournament where they defeated Montana State and Oklahoma in the first and second rounds before losing to Mississippi State in the sweet sixteen. With 29 wins in the regular season, the most wins in school history. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50117617 | 2,141,375 |
1,826,791 | "Emiliania huxleyi" (EHUX) coccolithophore-derived asymmetric coccoliths stand out as candidates for the choice of a nano/mesoscopic object with broken symmetry and well-defined morphology. Besides the thermodynamical stability because of their calcite composition, the critical advantage of EHUX coccoliths is their distinctive and sophisticated asymmetric morphology. EHUX coccoliths are characterised by several hammer-headed ribs placed to form a proximal and distal disc connected by a central ring. These discs have different sizes but also allow the coccolith to have a curvature, partly resembling a wagon wheel. EHUX coccoliths can be isolated from EHUX coccolithophores, a unique group of unicellular marine algae that are the primary producers of biogenic calcite in the ocean. Coccolithophores can intracellularly produce intricate three-dimensional mineral structures, such as calcium carbonate scales (i.e., coccoliths), in a process that is driven continuously by a specialized vesicle. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=68657567 | 1,825,752 |
258,649 | The suppression of reproduction by dominant individuals is the most common mechanism that maintains the hierarchy. In eusocial mammals this is mainly achieved by aggressive interactions between the potential reproductive females. In eusocial insects, aggressive interactions are common determinants of reproductive status, such as in the bumblebee "Bombus bifarius", the paper wasp "Polistes annularis" and in the ants "Dinoponera australis" and "D. quadriceps". In general, aggressive interactions are ritualistic and involve antennation (drumming), abdomen curling and very rarely mandible bouts and stinging. The winner of the interaction may walk over the subordinated, that in turn assumes a prostrated posture. To be effective, these regulatory mechanisms must include traits that make an individual rank position readily recognizable by its nestmates. The composition of the lipid layer on the cuticle of social insects is the clue used by nestmates to recognize each other in the colony, and to discover each insect's reproductive status (and rank). Visual cues may also transmit the same information. Paper wasps "Polistes dominulus" have individual "facial badges" that permit them to recognize each other and to identify the status of each individual. Individuals whose badges were modified by painting were aggressively treated by their nestmates; this makes advertising a false ranking status costly, and may help to suppress such advertising. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1096688 | 258,515 |
984,588 | There have been several episodes in which large numbers of people were severely poisoned by food contaminated with high levels of methylmercury, notably the dumping of industrial waste that resulted in the pollution and subsequent mass poisoning in Minamata and Niigata, Japan and the situation in Iraq in the 1960s and 1970s in which wheat treated with methylmercury as a preservative and intended as seed grain was fed to animals and directly consumed by people (see Basra poison grain disaster). These episodes resulted in neurological symptoms including paresthesias, loss of physical coordination, difficulty in speech, narrowing of the visual field, hearing impairment, blindness, and death. Children who had been exposed in utero through their mothers' ingestion were also affected with a range of symptoms including motor difficulties, sensory problems and intellectual disability. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1370244 | 984,074 |
1,108,519 | Another possible biosignature might be morphology since the shape and size of certain objects may potentially indicate the presence of past or present life. For example, microscopic magnetite crystals in the Martian meteorite ALH84001 are one of the longest-debated of several potential biosignatures in that specimen. The possible biomineral studied in the Martian ALH84001 meteorite includes putative microbial fossils, tiny rock-like structures whose shape was a potential biosignature because it resembled known bacteria. Most scientists ultimately concluded that these were far too small to be fossilized cells. A consensus that has emerged from these discussions, and is now seen as a critical requirement, is the demand for further lines of evidence in addition to any morphological data that supports such extraordinary claims. Currently, the scientific consensus is that "morphology alone cannot be used unambiguously as a tool for primitive life detection." Interpretation of morphology is notoriously subjective, and its use alone has led to numerous errors of interpretation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1072857 | 1,107,954 |
2,007,964 | In its Summer 2006 edition, "History Today" published an article by Brian James, describing how three military historians, Christina Goulter and Gary Sheffield as well as Gordon, who teach on the higher command and staff course at Shrivenham, had reached the conclusion that it was the Royal Navy and not the Royal Air Force that prevented a German invasion of the British Isles in 1940 during the Second World War. The article quotes Andrew Gordon stating "It really is time to put away this enduring myth. To claim that Germany failed to invade in 1940 because of what was done by phenomenally brave and skilled young men of Fighter Command is hogwash. The Germans stayed away because while the Royal Navy existed they had not a hope in hell of capturing these islands. The Navy had ships in sufficient numbers to have overwhelmed any invasion fleet." On publication the article drew some attention, despite it not being a wholly original new thesis, having been first posited by Duncan Grinnell-Milne in his book "Silent Victory" (1940). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1741938 | 2,006,813 |
333,399 | Evidence has emerged showing that lipid signaling is a vital part of the cell signaling. Lipid signaling may occur via activation of G protein-coupled or nuclear receptors, and members of several different lipid categories have been identified as signaling molecules and cellular messengers. These include sphingosine-1-phosphate, a sphingolipid derived from ceramide that is a potent messenger molecule involved in regulating calcium mobilization, cell growth, and apoptosis; diacylglycerol (DAG) and the phosphatidylinositol phosphates (PIPs), involved in calcium-mediated activation of protein kinase C; the prostaglandins, which are one type of fatty-acid derived eicosanoid involved in inflammation and immunity; the steroid hormones such as estrogen, testosterone and cortisol, which modulate a host of functions such as reproduction, metabolism and blood pressure; and the oxysterols such as 25-hydroxy-cholesterol that are liver X receptor agonists. Phosphatidylserine lipids are known to be involved in signaling for the phagocytosis of apoptotic cells or pieces of cells. They accomplish this by being exposed to the extracellular face of the cell membrane after the inactivation of flippases which place them exclusively on the cytosolic side and the activation of scramblases, which scramble the orientation of the phospholipids. After this occurs, other cells recognize the phosphatidylserines and phagocytosize the cells or cell fragments exposing them. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17940 | 333,221 |
1,625,503 | From 1890 to 1892, the ship was re-boilered at the Imperial Arsenal on the Golden Horn. In 1892, "Asar-i Tevfik" and the ironclad were ordered to reinforce the Cretan Squadron during a period of unrest on the island, but neither vessel was capable of going to sea, owing to leaky boiler tubes. Following the Greco-Turkish War in 1897, which highlighted the seriously degraded state of the Ottoman fleet, the government decided to begin a naval reconstruction program. The first stage was to rebuild the older armored warships, including "Asar-i Tevfik". Requests for proposals were sent to foreign shipyards, and in October 1898 the Gio. Ansaldo & C. shipyard in Genoa requested permission to survey the ship and the ironclad . Both vessels were accordingly sent to Genoa in January 1899, arriving on the 28th. There she was briefly laid up. Instead, "Asar-i Tevfik" was transferred to the Germaniawerft shipyard in Kiel, Germany for a major reconstruction, arriving on 29 May 1900, with the transport "İzmir". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45446048 | 1,624,587 |
331,187 | In "The Guide for the Perplexed", Maimonides declares his intention to conceal from the average reader his explanations of esoteric meanings of Torah. The nature of these "secrets" is debated. Religious Jewish rationalists, and the mainstream academic view, read Maimonides' Aristotelianism as a mutually-exclusive alternative metaphysics to Kabbalah. Some academics hold that Maimonides' project fought against the Proto-Kabbalah of his time. However, many Kabbalists and their heirs read Maimonides according to Kabbalah or as an actual covert subscriber to Kabbalah, due to the similarities between the Kabbalistic approach and Maimonides' approach toward interpreting the Bible with metaphor, Maimonides' understanding of God through attributes of action, thought and negative attributes, Maimonides' description of the roles of the imagination and intellect in life, sin, and prophesy, Maimonides' assertion that the commandments have a function that can be understood, and Maimonides' description of a 3-tiered cosmic order whereby God's will is implemented through a system of angels. According to this, he employed rationalism to defend Judaism rather than limit inquiry of only to rationalism. His rationalism, if not taken as an opposition, also assisted the Kabbalists, purifying their transmitted teaching from mistaken corporeal interpretations that could have been made from Hekhalot literature, though Kabbalists held that their theosophy alone allowed human access to Divine mysteries. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19445 | 331,010 |
1,191,706 | Principal advantages of motor generators include very high fault current ratings and clean output current. Solid state electronics can be damaged very quickly, so the microprocessor control systems react very quickly to over-correct conditions to place the converter in a safe, idle mode; or to trip the output circuit breaker. Motor generators, being of 1930s design, are heavily overbuilt. These rugged machines can absorb large load transients and demanding fault conditions, while continuing to remain online. Their output waveform is also perfectly sinusoidal without noise or higher harmonic output. They can actually absorb harmonic noise produced by solid-state devices, effectively serving as a filter. These attributes, combined with their high fault-current capability, make them desirable in a stabilizing role within the power system. Amtrak has retained two of the original converter plants and plans to overhaul them and continue their operation indefinitely. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20193516 | 1,191,071 |
1,069,790 | Gold first became interested in the origins of petroleum in the 1950s, postulating a theory on the abiogenic formation of fossil fuels. Gold engaged in thorough discussion on the matter with Fred Hoyle, who even included a chapter on "Gold's Pore Theory" in his 1955 book "Frontiers in Astronomy". In the late 1970s, just as the United States faced another major energy crisis, Gold resurrected his work on petroleum. In 1977, a research submarine near the Galapagos Islands discovered a number of thriving ecosystems down on the ocean floor, living alongside hydrothermal vents. Later expeditions found that these vents were host to a number of organisms, including giant tube worms and albino crabs, that survived off heat-loving chemosynthetic microbes. The discovery of life in this adverse environment led Gold to reconsider the established interpretation of biogenic petroleum formation. Gold believed that "biology is just a branch of thermodynamics" and that the history of life is just "a gradual systematic development toward more efficient ways of degrading energy". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=156331 | 1,069,236 |
912,160 | Soon after the SN 1987A outburst, three major groups embarked in a photometric monitoring of the supernova: the [[South African Astronomical Observatory]] (SAAO), the [[Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory]] (CTIO), and the [[European Southern Observatory]] (ESO). In particular, the ESO team reported an [[infrared excess]] which became apparent beginning less than one month after the explosion (March 11, 1987). Three possible interpretations for it were discussed in this work: the infrared echo hypothesis was discarded, and [[thermal emission]] from dust that could have condensed in the ejecta was favoured (in which case the estimated temperature at that epoch was ~ 1250 K, and the dust mass was approximately ). The possibility that the IR excess could be produced by optically thick [[free-free emission]] seemed unlikely because the luminosity in UV photons needed to keep the envelope ionized was much larger than what was available, but it was not ruled out in view of the eventuality of electron scattering, which had not been considered. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28930 | 911,681 |
1,521,858 | Albuminuria is caused by microvascular damage in the kidneys, hemolysis and endothelial dysfunction. From the increased GFR and the ischemic injury caused by the polymerization of sickle cells, scar tissue develops in the glomeruli which reduces the ability of the glomerulus to properly filter proteins leading to proteinuria. The chronic hemolysis causes the release of iron and free hemoglobin in the kidneys. The iron builds up and leaves deposits in the kidneys, and this causes the overproduction of mesangial cells eventually leading to interstitial and glomerular fibrosis. The free plasma hemoglobin contains cytotoxic heme groups which damage renal tubular epithelial cells and the hemoglobin ends up in the filtrate causing hemoglobinuria. Though the hemoglobin can be reabsorbed in the proximal tubules through binding cubilin and megalin, in doing so it competes with albumin, so the build up of hemoglobin in the filtrate reduces albumin resorption which can worsen albuminuria. When it comes to endothelial dysfunction, there is a correlation between soluble FMS-like tyrosine kinase-1 (sFLT-1) and worsening albuminuria. This is because sFLT-1 prevents the binding of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) to a splice variant of its receptor (VEGFR-1) which induces endothelial dysfunction. This as well as other factors that reduce endothelial function such as stress, hypoxia, inflammation, leads to a production of endothelin-1 and this reduces the bioavailability of nitric oxide and releases reactive oxygen species. This induces widening of inter-podocyte radii and lowers the number of podocytes which increases the amount of albumin that is filtered in the glomerulus and worsens albuminuria. The use of endothelin receptor antagonism could have the potential effect to be renally protective. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21751036 | 1,520,997 |
358,019 | The Mk II round-nosed bullet was found to be unsatisfactory when used in combat, particularly when compared to the "dum-dum" expanding bullet rounds issued in limited numbers in 1897 during the Chitral and Tirah expeditions of 1897–98 on the North West Frontier of India. This led to the 1898 introduction of the "Cartridge S.A. ball .303 inch Cordite Mark III", basically the original 215-grain (13.9 g) bullet with the jacketing cut back to expose the lead in the nose. The Mk III load, however, was almost immediately withdrawn as a result of production issues leading to the introduction of the similar Mk IV hollow-point loading in February of the next year, which was put into mass production in Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Following the pivotal Battle of Omdurman of the Mahdist War, Major Mathias of the Royal Army Medical Corps observed a young man who had been struck twice by Mark IV bullets: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1036189 | 357,833 |
1,683,286 | The Newark Lowlands of the Newark Basin extends into New York between the Hudson Highlands and the Manhattan Prong. The basin formed beginning 220 million years ago during the late Triassic as Pangea rifted apart. Failed rift basins like the Newark Basin filled with thick sequences of sediment. The Stockton Formation is the lowest unit, with feldspar rich sandstone and conglomerate alternating with layers of shale mudstone. A rift valley lake deposited the mudstone and black shale of the middle unit—the Lockatong Formation—which holds extremely well preserved fossilized freshwater fish. This is, in turn, is overlain by the red-brown shale mudstone and sandstone of the Brunswick Formation which merges with the Hammer Creek Conglomerate. Because rifting thinned the crust, magma upwelled and intruded the basin, producing the feldspar and pyroxene dominant diabase of the Palisades Sill and an almost pure layer olivine up to six meters thick. The sill intruded 195 million years ago in the Early Jurassic. Cooling of the melt led to columnar fracture giving its column-like appearance. Fractional crystallization of what may have been the same magma also left behind the Ladentown Basalt. Lakeshore mud preserved the footprints of a predatory coelophysis in New York along with fossilized fish, clams and arthropods. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=58666550 | 1,682,343 |
1,676,847 | The reliability of the method based on Friedman's empirical age equation ("x²=kt", where "x" is the thickness of the hydration rim, "k" is the diffusion coefficient, and "t" is the time) is questioned from several grounds regarding temperature dependence, square root of time and determination of diffusion rate per sample and per site, apart of some successful attempts on the procedure and applications. The SIMS-SS age calculation procedure is separated into two major steps. The first step concerns the calculation of a 3rd order fitting polynomial of the SIMS profile (eq. 1). The second stage regards the determination of the saturation layer, i.e. its depth and concentration. The whole computing processing is embedded in stand-alone software created in Matlab (version 7.0.1) software package with a graphical user interface and executable under Windows XP. Thus, the SIMS-SS age equation in years before present is given in eq. 2: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2188925 | 1,675,905 |
988,391 | Ken Thompson, a programmer in the Labs' computing research department, had worked on Multics. He decided to write his own operating system. While he still had access to the Multics environment, he wrote simulations for the new file and paging system on it. He also programmed a game called "Space Travel", but it needed a more efficient and less expensive machine to run on, and eventually he found a little-used Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-7 at Bell Labs. On the PDP-7, in 1969, a team of Bell Labs researchers led by Thompson and Ritchie, including Rudd Canaday, implemented a hierarchical file system, the concepts of computer processes and device files, a command-line interpreter, and some small utility programs, modeled on the corresponding features in Multics, but simplified. The resulting system, much smaller and simpler than Multics, was to become Unix. In about a month's time, in August 1969, Thompson had implemented a self-hosting operating system with an assembler, editor and shell, using a GECOS machine for bootstrapping. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2333752 | 987,875 |
1,046,602 | "O. lignaria" is among 4000 native bee species of North America, and its species is divided by the Rocky Mountains into two subspecies, "O. l. propinqua" (western subspecies) and "O. l. lignaria" (eastern subspecies). The majority of research has been conducted in western orchards on the western subspecies. Efforts at establishing them outside their native range have met with mixed results. Researchers in one eastern study (Virginia / North Carolina) using the eastern "O. l. lignaria" found them to prefer the native Redbud over the orchard fruits. They do not overwinter in Florida and the Gulf Coast because of the lack of cold winter temperatures needed in its development cycle. In the almond industry, where bloom time is early, the bee is raised under artificial conditions that trick it into emerging several weeks early, coincident with the almond bloom. While in much of the northwest conditions make it is easy to propagate "O. l. propinqua", orchards are not always able to establish a self sustaining population and often require importation of additional bees; on this research is continuing. In general, it is recommended that propagation and subsequent transport be confined to the bee's natural boundaries; commercial enterprise does not always respect these boundaries. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2934741 | 1,046,057 |
1,354,308 | The establishment of environmental anthropology can be credited to Julian Steward, a cultural ecologist who studied how the Shosone of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and Rocky mountains adapted their environment. His efforts to define culture were based upon topography, climate, and resources and their accessibility. Other important early cultural ecologists were Roy Rappaport and Marvin Harris. Their work used systems theories to explain how societies worked to maintain homeostasis through feedback loops. Harris' work in India, for example, examined the sacred cow in India as an ecological adaptation because of its importance for milk production, dung for fuel and fertilizers, and labor for plowing. These approaches has since been since criticized for narrowly assuming the state of societies as static and not exploring the ways cultures change and develop over time. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27050403 | 1,353,560 |
123,656 | Construction Operations Building information exchange (COBie) is also associated with BIM. COBie was devised by Bill East of the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 2007, and helps capture and record equipment lists, product data sheets, warranties, spare parts lists, and preventive maintenance schedules. This information is used to support operations, maintenance and asset management once a built asset is in service. In December 2011, it was approved by the US-based National Institute of Building Sciences as part of its National Building Information Model (NBIMS-US) standard. COBie has been incorporated into software, and may take several forms including spreadsheet, IFC, and ifcXML. In early 2013 BuildingSMART was working on a lightweight XML format, COBieLite, which became available for review in April 2013. In September 2014, a code of practice regarding COBie was issued as a British Standard: BS 1192-4. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3978080 | 123,605 |
1,886,542 | The spacecraft was launched on 15 November 1972 into an initial orbit of about of apogee, of perigee, 1.90° of orbital inclination, with an orbital period of 95.40 minutes. from the San Marco platform off the coast of Kenya, Africa, into a nearly equatorial orbit. The orbiting spacecraft was in the shape of a cylinder approximately in diameter and in length. Four solar paddles were used to recharge a 6 amp-h, eight-cell, nickel–cadmium battery and provide power to the spacecraft and telescope experiment. The spacecraft was spin stabilized by an internal wheel, and a magnetically torqued commandable control system was used to point the spin axis of the spacecraft to any point of the sky within approximately 1°. The experiment axis lay along this axis allowing the telescope to look at any selected region of the sky with its ± 30° acceptance aperture. The nominal spin rate was 1/12 rpm. Data were taken at 1000 bps and could be recorded on an onboard tape recorder and simultaneously transmitted in real time. The recorded data were transmitted once per orbit. This required approximately 5 minutes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16045065 | 1,885,460 |
322,696 | Dvořák was born in Nelahozeves, near Prague, in the Austrian Empire, and was the eldest son of František Dvořák (1814–94) and his wife, Anna, née Zdeňková (1820–82). František worked as an innkeeper, a professional player of the zither, and a butcher. Anna was the daughter of Josef Zdeněk, the bailiff of the Prince of Lobkowicz. Anna and František married on 17 November 1840. Dvořák was the first of 14 children, eight of whom survived infancy. Dvořák was baptized as a Roman Catholic in the village's church of St. Andrew. Dvořák's years in Nelahozeves nurtured his strong Christian faith and the love for his Bohemian heritage that so strongly influenced his music. In 1847, Dvořák entered primary school and was taught to play violin by his teacher Joseph Spitz. He showed early talent and skill, playing in a village band and in church. František was pleased with his son's gifts. At the age of 13, through the influence of his father, Dvořák was sent to Zlonice to live with his uncle Antonín Zdenĕk in order to learn the German language. His first composition, the "Forget-Me-Not Polka in C (Polka pomněnka)" was written possibly as early as 1855. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=76572 | 322,524 |
812,528 | A pair of French astronomers, Pierre Bouguer and Charles Marie de La Condamine, were the first to attempt the experiment, conducting their measurements on the volcano Chimborazo. At the time, this lay in the "Real Audiencia of Quito" of the Viceroyalty of Peru, and is now in the province of Chimborazo in the Republic of Ecuador. Their expedition had left France for South America in 1735 to try to measure the meridian arc length of one degree of latitude near the equator, but they took advantage of the opportunity to attempt the deflection experiment. In December 1738, under very difficult conditions of terrain and climate, they conducted a pair of measurements at altitudes of 4,680 and 4,340 m. Bouguer wrote in a 1749 paper that they had been able to detect a deflection of 8 seconds of arc, but he downplayed the significance of their results, suggesting that the experiment would be better carried out under easier conditions in France or England. He added that the experiment had at least proved that the Earth could not be a hollow shell, as some thinkers of the day, including Edmond Halley, had suggested. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20865567 | 812,095 |
119,053 | In the initial stage of Cold War, bombers were expected to attack flying higher and faster, even at transonic speeds. Initial transonic and supersonic fighters had modest internal fuel tanks in their slim fuselages, but a very high fuel consumption. This led fighter prototypes emphasizing acceleration and operational ceiling, with a sacrifice on the loiter time, essentially limiting them to point defense role. Such were the mixed jet/rocket power Republic XF-91 or Saunders Roe SR.53. The Soviet and Western trials with zero-length launch were also related. None of these found practical use. Designs that depended solely on jet engines achieved more success with the F-104 Starfighter (initial A version) and the English Electric Lightning. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=142759 | 119,005 |
910,974 | The British had built up a very large worldwide Empire, which peaked in size in 1922, after more than half a century of unchallenged global supremacy. The cumulative costs of fighting two world wars, however, placed a heavy burden upon the home economy, and after 1945 the British Empire rapidly began to disintegrate, with all the major colonies gaining independence. By the mid-to-late 1950s, the UK's status as a superpower was gone in the face of the United States and the Soviet Union. Most former colonies joined the "Commonwealth of Nations", an organisation of fully independent nations now with equal status to the UK. However it attempted no major collective policies. The last major colony, Hong Kong, was handed over to China in 1997. Fourteen British Overseas Territories maintain a constitutional link to the UK, but are not part of the country per se. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31731 | 910,495 |
51,671 | If assuming a radius of 1 AU, then the compressive strength of the material forming the sphere would have to be immense to prevent implosion due to the star's gravity. Any arbitrarily selected point on the surface of the sphere can be viewed as being under the pressure of the base of a dome 1 AU in height under the Sun's gravity at that distance. Indeed, it can be viewed as being at the base of an infinite number of arbitrarily selected domes, but because much of the force from any one arbitrary dome is counteracted by those of another, the net force on that point is immense, but finite. No known or theorized material is strong enough to withstand this pressure, and form a rigid, static sphere around a star. It has been proposed by Paul Birch (in relation to smaller "Supra-Jupiter" constructions around a large planet rather than a star) that it may be possible to support a Dyson shell by dynamic means similar to those used in a space fountain. Masses travelling in circular tracks on the inside of the sphere, at velocities significantly greater than orbital velocity, would press outwards on magnetic bearings due to centrifugal force. For a Dyson shell of 1 AU radius around a star with the same mass as the Sun, a mass travelling ten times the orbital velocity (297.9 km/s) would support 99 (a = v/r) times its own mass in additional shell structure. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8586 | 51,651 |
924,159 | Reference libraries are used for the taxonomic identification, also called annotation, of sequences obtained from barcoding or metabarcoding. These databases contain the DNA barcodes assigned to previously identified taxa. Most reference libraries do not cover all species within an organism group, and new entries are continually created. In the case of macro- and many microorganisms (such as algae), these reference libraries require detailed documentation (sampling location and date, person who collected it, image, etc.) and authoritative taxonomic identification of the voucher specimen, as well as submission of sequences in a particular format. However, such standards are fulfilled for only a small number of species. The process also requires the storage of voucher specimens in museum collections, herbaria and other collaborating institutions. Both taxonomically comprehensive coverage and content quality are important for identification accuracy. In the microbial world, there is no DNA information for most species names, and many DNA sequences cannot be assigned to any Linnaean binomial. Several reference databases exist depending on the organism group and the genetic marker used. There are smaller, national databases (e.g. FinBOL), and large consortia like the International Barcode of Life Project (iBOL). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30872162 | 923,673 |
681,348 | Acknowledging that vase painters in ancient Greece were regarded as craftsmen rather than artists, Exekias is nevertheless considered by today's art historians to be an accomplished artist whose work can be compared with "major" paintings (murals and panel paintings) of that period. His contemporaries apparently recognized this as well. The Berlin Collection of Classical Antiquities in the Altes Museum contains the remnants of a series of his votive tablets. The complete series probably had 16 individual panels. Placing such an order with a potter and vase painter is likely to be unique in antiquity and is evidence of the high reputation of this artist. The tablets show grieving for a dead Athenian woman as well as her lying in state and being transported to a gravesite. Exekias conveys both the grief and the dignity of the figures. One special feature, for example, is that the leader of the funeral procession turns his face to look at the viewer directly, so to speak. The depiction of the horses is also unique; they have individual temperaments and are not reduced to their function as noble animals, as is otherwise customary on vases. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1076046 | 680,992 |
227,922 | California Senator Dianne Feinstein signaled approval of the decision to permanently close the plant, stating "I firmly believe this is the right thing to do for the more than 7 million Californians who live within 50 miles of San Onofre." However, Representative Darrell Issa, whose voting district includes the nuclear station, was more downbeat, saying "our communities now face the loss of employment for more than a thousand highly skilled workers and an essential local source of low-cost, clean energy." Issa also pledged to work to improve the prospects for nuclear power nationwide. In contrast, Sierra Club Director Kathryn Phillips applauded the move, saying in a statement that "We hope, especially, that the utilities will take this opportunity to help get more locally generated renewable energy, such as rooftop solar, into their portfolios." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1780952 | 227,805 |
762,743 | As an example, consider the process of electing the president of the United States. At one level we observe that any U.S. citizen over 35 may run for president, so this process may appear too unconstrained for useful prediction. Yet further investigation demonstrates that only certain public individuals (current and former presidents and vice presidents, senators, state governors, popular military commanders, mayors of very large cities, celebrities, etc.) receive the appropriate "social credentials" that are historical prerequisites for election. Thus, with a minimum of effort at formulating the problem for statistical prediction, a much-reduced pool of candidates can be described, improving our probabilistic foresight. Applying further statistical intelligence to this problem, we can observe that in certain election prediction markets such as the Iowa Electronic Markets, reliable forecasts have been generated over long spans of time and conditions, with results superior to individual experts or polls. Such markets, which may be operated publicly or as an internal market, are just one of several promising frontiers in predictive futures research. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1508301 | 762,335 |
690,080 | On May 27, 1957 a Mark 17 was unintentionally jettisoned from a B-36 just south of Albuquerque, New Mexico's Kirtland AFB. The device fell through the closed bomb bay doors of the bomber, which was approaching Kirtland at an altitude of . The device's conventional explosives destroyed it on impact, leaving a crater in diameter and deep. Though a chain reaction was impossible because the plutonium pits were stored separately on the plane as a safety measure, the incident spread radioactive contamination and debris over a area. The military thoroughly cleaned up and decontaminated the site although a few fragments of the bomb - some still radioactive - are occasionally found in the area. A marker was placed on the site in 1996 by the Center for Land Use Interpretation, however it was subsequently removed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12284292 | 689,717 |
1,542,431 | The soliton hypothesis in neuroscience is a model that claims to explain how action potentials are initiated and conducted along axons based on a thermodynamic theory of nerve pulse propagation. It proposes that the signals travel along the cell's membrane in the form of certain kinds of solitary sound (or density) pulses that can be modeled as solitons. The model is proposed as an alternative to the Hodgkin–Huxley model in which action potentials: voltage-gated ion channels in the membrane open and allow sodium ions to enter the cell (inward current). The resulting decrease in membrane potential opens nearby voltage-gated sodium channels, thus propagating the action potential. The transmembrane potential is restored by delayed opening of potassium channels. Soliton hypothesis proponents assert that energy is mainly conserved during propagation except dissipation losses; Measured temperature changes are completely inconsistent with the Hodgkin-Huxley model. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9986646 | 1,541,558 |
20,127 | Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control is the prime contractor on the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement upgrade (MSE) to the Patriot air defense system which will make the missile more agile and extend its range by up to 50%. Patriot's PAC-3 MSE interceptor was selected as the primary interceptor for the new MEADS system when its design and development program began in 2004. MEADS is designed with plug-and-fight capabilities to support data exchange with external sensors and launchers through standardized open protocols for integrated air and missile defense (IAMD), so that MEADS elements can interoperate with allied forces on the move, attaching to and detaching from the battle management network as necessary. It was scheduled to enter service alongside Patriot by 2014, with expectations that existing Patriot batteries will be gradually upgraded with MEADS technology in the long run. Because of economic conditions, in 2013 the U.S. chose to upgrade its Patriot missiles instead of buying the MEADS system. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=52024 | 20,119 |
1,363,100 | There are two fundamentally different ways this has been approached. The first is based on an assumption that there is a level of supersaturation which does not produce symptomatic bubble formation and is based on empirical observations of the maximum decompression rate which does not result in an unacceptable rate of symptoms. This approach seeks to maximise the concentration gradient providing there are no symptoms, and commonly uses a slightly modified exponential half-time model. The second assumes that bubbles will form at any level of supersaturation where the total gas tension in the tissue is greater than the ambient pressure and that gas in bubbles is eliminated more slowly than dissolved gas. These philosophies result in differing characteristics of the decompression profiles derived for the two models: The critical supersaturation approach gives relatively rapid initial ascents, which maximize the concentration gradient, and long shallow stops, while the bubble models require slower ascents, with deeper first stops, but may have shorter shallow stops. This approach uses a variety of models. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38814223 | 1,362,347 |
168,009 | On November 29, 1944, the procedure was first tried on an eighteen-month-old infant named Eileen Saxon. The blue baby syndrome had made her lips and fingers turn blue, with the rest of her skin having a very faint blue tinge. She could only take a few steps before beginning to breathe heavily. Because no instruments for cardiac surgery then existed, Thomas adapted the needles and clamps for the procedure from those in use in the animal lab. During the surgery itself, at Blalock's request, Thomas stood on a step stool at Blalock's shoulder and coached him step by step through the procedure. Thomas performed the operation hundreds of times on a dog, whereas Blalock did so only once as Thomas' assistant. The surgery was not completely successful, though it did prolong the infant's life for several months. Blalock and his team operated again on an 11-year-old girl, this time with complete success, and the patient was able to leave the hospital three weeks after the surgery. Next, they operated upon a six-year-old boy, who dramatically regained his color at the end of the surgery. The three cases formed the basis for the article that was published in the May 1945 issue of the "Journal of the American Medical Association", giving credit to Blalock and Taussig for the procedure. Thomas received no mention. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=679723 | 167,919 |
42,536 | By the time of the Korean War in 1950, the Thompson had seen much use by the U.S. and South Korean military, even though the Thompson had been replaced as standard-issue by the M3/M3A1. With huge numbers of guns available in army ordnance arsenals, the Thompson remained classed as Limited Standard or Substitute Standard long after the standardization of the M3/M3A1. Many Thompsons were distributed to the US-backed Nationalist Chinese armed forces as military aid before the fall of Chiang Kai-shek's government to Mao Zedong's communist forces at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 (Thompsons had already been widely used throughout China since the 1920s, at a time when several Chinese warlords and their military factions running various parts of the fragmented country made purchases of the weapon and then subsequently produced many local copies). During the Korean War, US troops were surprised to encounter communist Chinese troops armed with Thompsons (amongst other captured US-made Nationalist Chinese and American firearms), especially during unexpected night-time assaults which became a prominent Chinese combat tactic in the conflict. The gun's ability to deliver large quantities of short-range automatic assault fire proved very useful in both defense and assault during the early part of the war when it was constantly mobile and shifting back and forth. Many Chinese Thompsons were captured and placed into service with American soldiers and marines for the remaining period of the war. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=95006 | 42,521 |
1,508,277 | In 1962, "The New Yorker" published a series of essays by Rachel Carson, later published in book form as "Silent Spring", that publicized the negative effects of pesticide use on wildlife. This, along with new evidence that pesticides could have negative impacts on human health, helped spur the creation of the modern environmental movement. Several government agencies, such as the Public Health Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the President's Science Advisory Committee, found evidence that pesticides were negatively affecting human health. There were attempts throughout the 60's to pass legislation reforming FIFRA. The proposals included: moving FIFRA authority from the USDA to the FDA, providing greater public access to pesticide registration data, and mandating better interagency cooperation. None of these proposals gained enough support to pass in both the House and Senate. However, Congress passed an amendment to FIFRA in 1964 allowing the USDA to suspend or cancel a pesticide's registration in order to "prevent an imminent health hazard". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31728658 | 1,507,429 |
153,592 | Prior to a planned procedure, the anesthesiologist reviews medical records or interviews the patient to obtain information regarding their medical history and determine their perioperative risk. Base on the interview, the anesthesiologist develops an anesthetic plan and determines the best combination of drugs and dosages for the procedure. Additional monitoring devices may be necessary to ensure a safe and effective procedure. Key factors in this evaluation are the patient's age, gender, body mass index, medical and surgical history, current medications, and fasting time. Thorough and accurate preoperative evaluation is crucial for the effective safety of the anesthetic plan. For example, a patient who consumes significant quantities of alcohol or illicit drugs could be undermedicated during the procedure if they fail to disclose this fact, and this could lead to anaesthesia awareness or intraoperative hypertension. Commonly used medications can also interact with anaesthetics, and failure to disclose such usage can increase the risk during the operation. Inaccurate timing of last meal can also increase the risk for aspiration of food, and lead to serious complications. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=398561 | 153,522 |
1,286,198 | SNAI1 and other epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) genes are regulated by several genes and molecules including Wnt and prostaglandins. Wnt3a is a master regulator of paraxial presomatic mesoderm cells (PSM) which differentiate into the musculoskeleton of the trunk and tail. Other genes, most of which act downstream of Wnt include Msx1, Pax3, and Mesogenin 1 (Msgn1). Msgn1 activates SNAI1 by binding to its enhancer and activating SNAI1 to induce EMT. MSGN1 also regulates many of the same genes as SNAI1 to ensure EMT activation, granting the system redundancy. This suggests that Msgn1 and SNAI1 act together through a feed forward mechanism. When Msgn1 is deleted, the mesodermal progenitors do not move from the primitive streak (PS) but still show mesenchymal morphology. This suggests that the Msgn1/SNAI1 axis mostly functions to drive cell movement. Prostaglandin E2 (PE2), an important hormone in homeostasis and maintaining normal fertility and pregnancy, stabilizes SNAI1 post-transcriptionally and, therefore, also plays a role in embryogenesis. When the prostaglandin signaling pathway is compromised, SNAI1 transcriptional repressor activity decreases, increasing E-cadherin protein levels during gastrulation. However, this does not prevent gastrulation from occurring. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14754943 | 1,285,497 |
275,248 | LDH A and the possibility of inhibiting its activity has been identified as a promising target in cancer treatments focused on preventing carcinogenic cells from proliferating. Chemical inhibition of LDH A has demonstrated marked changes in metabolic processes and overall survival of carcinoma cells. Oxamate is a cytosolic inhibitor of LDH A that significantly decreases ATP production in tumorous cells as well as increasing production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). These ROS drive cancer cell proliferation by activating kinases that drive cell cycle progression growth factors at low concentrations, but can damage DNA through oxidative stress at higher concentrations. Secondary lipid oxidation products can also inactivate LDH and impact its ability to regenerate NADH, directly disrupting the enzymes ability to convert lactate to pyruvate. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14626122 | 275,100 |
1,035,817 | Video games are inherently incentive-based systems with the player being rewarded for solving a problem or completing a mission, while meeting certain criteria. As a result, video games train a systematic way of thinking as well as an understanding for how different variables affect each other. Furthermore, video games can constantly and automatically assess the learner's ability at any given moment due to the software-based nature of the medium; modular education structures tend to deliver assessments in large chunks and present a relatively limited picture of student progress. Multiple research articles have suggested that this mode of learning can be more enjoyable and show positive outcomes on student motivation, finding game was equal or more effective than conventional instruction. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10527118 | 1,035,277 |
1,131,627 | Sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P), like Sph, is composed of a single hydrophobic chain and has sufficient solubility to move between membranes. S1P is formed by phosphorylation of sphingosine by sphingosine kinase (SK). The phosphate group of the product can be detached (dephosphorylated) to regenerate sphingosine via S1P phosphatase enzymes or S1P can be broken down by S1P lyase enzymes to ethanolamine phosphate and hexadecenal. Similar to Sph, its second messenger function is not yet clear. However, there is substantial evidence that implicates S1P to cell survival, cell migration, and inflammation. Certain growth-inducing proteins such as platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF), insulin-like growth factor (IGF) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) promote the formation of SK enzymes, leading to increased levels of S1P. Other factors that induce SK include cellular communication molecules called cytokines, such as tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα) and interleukin-1 (IL-1), hypoxia or lack of oxygen supply in cells, oxidized low-density lipoproteins (oxLDL) and several immune complexes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5419130 | 1,131,036 |
1,222,863 | The first major evidence for the existence of prevalent clonal hematopoiesis in healthy people was put forth in the 1990s. Using the HUMARA assay, scientists found that there was nonrandom X-inactivation of the X chromosome in the blood of some healthy women. This means that a greater than expected proportion of the blood had the silencing of one specific X chromosome in the chromosome pair. Just as the observation of the same DNA mutation in a subset of cells suggests a single founding source, this X-inactivation skew suggests that a greater than expected number of cells are being generated from the same precursor. Importantly, these findings described an increase in this nonrandom skewing with increasing age, hinting that unobserved mutations acquired with age could be driving a clonal expansion. In a similar vein, other studies using the HUMARA technology had found that hematologic malignancies are clonal diseases even when there is no apparent chromosomal abnormality, and that there are pre-leukemic clonal populations which precede acute myeloid leukemia (AML). As the HUMARA assay is based on the epigenetic state of cells, the underlying genetic determinants of the clonal expansion remained to be uncovered. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=53925411 | 1,222,204 |
1,489,211 | Capsaicin and RTX, elicit burning pain by activating a non-selective cation channel expressed on sensory nerve endings. When capsaicin was found to have analgesic effects in preclinical studies much emphasis was put into the research of the receptor/channel that capsaicin binds to and activates. Besides being activated by capsaicin, TRPV1 also responds to a wide range of exogenous and endogenous chemical ligands as well as physical stimuli such as heat over 42 °C and changes in more diverse activators such as protons (acid, pH<6). TRPV1 is also subject to regulation by changes in membrane potential and this intrinsic voltage-dependence is thought to underlie the gating mechanism of this non-selective cation channel which leads to the influx of sodium and calcium ions. Importantly, TRPV1 activity is also subject to regulation by a host of intracellular signaling cascades such as G-protein coupled receptor signaling, that are implicated in the responses to algogenic agents, inflammatory mediators and injury. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24763498 | 1,488,372 |
1,645,560 | In 1919, with the emergence of an organized revolutionary socialist Left Wing faction in the Socialist Party, Cohen cast his lot with the insurgents. In January 1919 a joint meeting of representatives of all the SP branches of Local Greater New York was called. The meeting was chaired by Julius Gerber, Executive Secretary of Local Greater New York who did his best to steer the meeting away from the passionate discussion of strategy and tactics which the Left Wing members desired. When delegates from Queens attempted to win the floor at 11:30 pm, only to be ruled out of order, a number of radicals bolted the hall and gathered in a meeting room of their own. A City Committee of 14 was elected, with Max Cohen as Executive Secretary. The group was to compose a manifesto and wage a campaign to win over the rank and file of the party to the ideas of revolutionary socialism. It was this group which wrote the famous Left Wing Manifesto, a document extensively revised by Louis C. Fraina, editor of the weekly newspaper of the Left Wing Section, Local Boston, "The Revolutionary Age." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24081303 | 1,644,632 |
423,553 | Microorganisms, by their omnipresence, impact the entire biosphere. Microbial life plays a primary role in regulating biogeochemical systems in virtually all of our planet's environments, including some of the most extreme, from frozen environments and acidic lakes, to hydrothermal vents at the bottom of deepest oceans, and some of the most familiar, such as the human small intestine. As a consequence of the quantitative magnitude of microbial life (calculated as cells; eight orders of magnitude greater than the number of stars in the observable universe) microbes, by virtue of their biomass alone, constitute a significant carbon sink. Aside from carbon fixation, microorganisms' key collective metabolic processes (including nitrogen fixation, methane metabolism, and sulfur metabolism) control global biogeochemical cycling. The immensity of microorganisms' production is such that, even in the total absence of eukaryotic life, these processes would likely continue unchanged. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1057083 | 423,346 |
912,585 | Ocean thermal gradient can be used to enhance rainfall and moderate the high ambient summer temperatures in tropics to benefit enormously the mankind and the flora and fauna. When sea surface temperatures are relatively high on an area, lower atmospheric pressure area is formed compared to atmospheric pressure prevailing on the nearby land mass inducing winds from the landmass towards the ocean. Oceanward winds are dry and warm which would not contribute to good rainfall on the landmass compared to landward moist winds. For adequate rainfall and comfortable summer ambient temperatures (below 35 °C) on the landmass, it is preferred to have landward moist winds from the ocean. Creating high pressure zones by artificial upwelling on sea area selectively can also be used to deflect / guide the normal monsoon global winds towards the landmass. Artificial upwelling of nutrient-rich deep ocean water to the surface also enhances fisheries growth in areas with tropical and temperate weather. It would also lead to enhanced carbon sequestration by the oceans from improved algae growth and mass gain by glaciers from the extra snow fall mitigating sea level rise or global warming process. Tropical cyclones also do not pass through the high pressure zones as they intensify by gaining energy from the warm surface waters of the sea. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=68498 | 912,106 |
1,258,460 | This model (and the HP-19 series that used the same clamshell design and internals) had one design problem that affected many units: the springs inside the unit that made contact with its three N-sized batteries made a considerably strong force, and the notches on the case in which the lid edges slid were too thin and shallow. Even if the case itself was sturdy enough, those notches were under extreme pressure, most especially while the user was opening or closing the lid (such as during the replacement of the batteries). As the lid edges were made of a harder metal, the plastic notches in the case were prone to cracking or breaking, even in carefully kept devices. Surviving examples of the earlier versions of this calculator frequently have rubber bands around or tape over the cover to hold it in place (including the image attached to this article). This defect was later remedied on the HP-19BII, by putting the battery cover underneath the chassis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5791181 | 1,257,773 |
1,358,663 | Under physiological conditions, many cells and tissue types are exposed to only low levels of light. As a result, it is important to minimize the exposure of live cells to high doses of ultraviolet (UV), infrared (IR), or fluorescence exciting wavelengths of light, which can damage DNA, raise cellular temperatures, and cause photobleaching respectively. High-energy photons absorbed by the fluorophores and the sample are emitted at longer wavelengths proportional to the Stokes shift. However, cellular organelles can be damaged when the photon energy produces chemical and molecular changes rather than being re-emitted. It is believed that the primary culprit in the light-induced toxicity experienced by live cells is a result of free radicals produced by the excitation of fluorescent molecules. These free radicals are highly reactive and cause the destruction of cellular components, which can result in non-physiological behavior. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37587408 | 1,357,913 |
1,452,500 | Manufacturers and users of nanoparticles may perform characterization of their products for process control or verification and validation purposes. The properties of nanoparticles are sensitive to small variations in the processes used to synthesize and process them. Thus, nanoparticles prepared by seemingly identical processes must be characterized to determine if they are actually equivalent. Any material or dimensional property of a nanomaterial can be heterogeneous, and these can lead to heterogeneity in their functional properties. Generally, uniform collections are desired. It is advantageous to minimize heterogeneity during the initial synthesis, stabilization, and functionalization processes, rather than through downstream purification steps that decrease yield. Batch-to-batch reproducibility is also desirable. Unlike research-oriented nanometrology, industrial measurements emphasize reducing time, cost, and number of measured metrics, and must be performed under ambient conditions during a production process. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=54992011 | 1,451,683 |
2,128,581 | From 1972 to 1974 Dr Hartley was chairman of the UK Inter-University Committee on Computing. He was a member of the Computer Board for Universities and Research Councils – which allocated government funds to purchase the large and expensive computers that the institutions needed – from 1979 to 1983 where he had special responsibility for network development. From 1981 to 1986 he was a member of the Prime Minister's Information Technology Advisory Panel. Having become a Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS) in 1968, Dr Hartley served on its Council in 1970–73, 1977–1980 and 1988 to 1990, was a Vice-President from 1987 to 1990, Deputy President in 1998–99 and President in 1999–2000. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=41556635 | 2,127,358 |
160,318 | Performance could be especially problematic because early expert systems were built using tools (such as earlier Lisp versions) that interpreted code expressions without first compiling them. This provided a powerful development environment, but with the drawback that it was virtually impossible to match the efficiency of the fastest compiled languages (such as C). System and database integration were difficult for early expert systems because the tools were mostly in languages and platforms that were neither familiar to nor welcome in most corporate IT environments – programming languages such as Lisp and Prolog, and hardware platforms such as Lisp machines and personal computers. As a result, much effort in the later stages of expert system tool development was focused on integrating with legacy environments such as COBOL and large database systems, and on porting to more standard platforms. These issues were resolved mainly by the client–server paradigm shift, as PCs were gradually accepted in the IT environment as a legitimate platform for serious business system development and as affordable minicomputer servers provided the processing power needed for AI applications. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10136 | 160,233 |
1,854,478 | Since the beginning of the biotechnology revolution, much research has been also focused on using genetically modified endophytes to improve plant yields and defensive properties. The genetic basis of response to herbivory is being explored in tall fescue, where it appears the production of jasmonic acid may play a role in downregulation of the host plant's chemical defense pathways when a fungal endophyte is present. In some cases, fungi that are closely associated with their hosts have transferred genes for secondary metabolite production to the host genome, which could help to explain multiple origins of chemical defenses within the phylogeny of various groups of plants. This represents an important line of inquiry to pursue, especially in regards to understanding the chemical pathways that can be utilized in biotechnological applications. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31533830 | 1,853,412 |
329,426 | The rules of chess have evolved much over the centuries from the early chess-like games played in India in the 6th century. For much of that time the rules have varied from area to area. The modern rules first took form in southern Europe during the 13th century, giving more mobility to pieces that previously had more restricted movement (such as the queen and bishop). Such modified rules entered into an accepted form during the late 15th century or early 16th century. The basic moves of the king, rook, and knight are unchanged. A pawn originally did not have the option of moving two squares on its first move, and promoted only to a queen upon reaching the eighth rank. The queen was originally the "fers" or "farzin", which could move one square diagonally in any direction. In European chess it became able to leap two squares diagonally, forwards, backwards, or to left or right on its first move; some areas also gave this right to a newly promoted pawn. In the Persian and Arabic game the bishop was a "pīl" (Persian) or "fīl" (Arabic) (meaning "elephant") which moved two squares diagonally with jump. In the Middle Ages the pawn could only be promoted to the equivalent of a queen (which at that time was a weak piece) if it reached its eighth rank. During the 12th century, the squares on the board sometimes alternated colors, and this became the standard in the 13th century; whence the word "chequered"/"checkered". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=48907 | 329,251 |
178,146 | Development for ".hack" began in early 2000 with the aim of shocking and surprising the player and creating a distinctive product. CyberConnect2's president Hiroshi Matsuyama played a key role in developing the concept for the series. A number of core ideas, including "slaying dragons or being a thief in London" were explored, but these were rejected in favor of an "offline/online game". Matsuyama said that this would give young gamers an opportunity to experience online play without paying monthly fees or needing powerful Internet connections. The developers looked at a number of MMORPGs such as "Phantasy Star Online", "Ultima Online", and "Final Fantasy XI" for inspiration, and drew influences from the prior works of character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto ("Neon Genesis Evangelion") and scenario writer Kazunori Itō ("Ghost in the Shell"). Itō noted that casting the player into the role of a subscriber of "The World" creates a unique story-telling situation which draws the player deeper into the plot. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=240931 | 178,053 |
209,486 | In 1985, members of the diverse genus "Streptococcus" were reclassified into "Lactococcus", "Enterococcus", "Vagococcus", and "Streptococcus" based on biochemical characteristics, as well as molecular features. Formerly, streptococci were segregated primarily based on serology, which has proven to correlate well with the current taxonomic definitions. Lactococci (formerly Lancefield group N streptococci) are used extensively as fermentation starters in dairy production, with humans estimated to consume 10 lactococci annually. Partly due to their industrial relevance, both "L. lactis" subspecies ("L. l. lactis" and "L. l. cremoris") are widely used as generic LAB models for research. "L. lactis" ssp. "cremoris", used in the production of hard cheeses, is represented by the laboratory strains LM0230 and MG1363. In similar manner, "L. lactis" ssp. "lactis" is employed in soft cheese fermentations, with the workhorse strain IL1403 ubiquitous in LAB research laboratories. In 2001, Bolotin "et al." sequenced the genome of IL1403, which coincided with a significant shift of resources to understanding LAB genomics and related applications. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3907316 | 209,379 |
614,934 | Lie detection commonly involves the polygraph, and is used to test both styles of deception. It detects autonomic reactions, such as micro-expressions, breathing rate, skin conductivity, and heart rate. Microexpressions are the brief and incomplete nonverbal changes in expression while the rest show an activation of the nervous system. These changes in body functions are not easily controlled by the conscious mind. They also may consider respiration rate, blood pressure, capillary dilation, and muscular movement. While taking a polygraph test the subject wears a blood pressure device to measure blood pressure fluctuations. Respiration is measured by wearing pneumographs around the chest, and finally electrodes are placed on the subject's fingers to measure skin conductivity. To determine truth it is assumed the subject will show more signs of fear when answering the control questions, known to the examiner, compared with the relevant questions, where the answers are not known. Polygraphs focus more on the exams predictive value of guilt by comparing the responses of the participant to control questions, irrelevant questions, and relevant questions to gauge arousal, which is then interpreted as a display of fear and deception is assumed. If a person is showing a deception there will be changes in the autonomic arousal responses to the relevant questions. Results are considered inconclusive if there is no fluctuation in any of the questions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5067510 | 614,620 |
1,526,357 | Agent-based modeling has been used to simulate attack behavior of the mountain pine beetle (MPB), "Dendroctonus ponderosae", in order to evaluate how different harvesting policies influence spatial characteristics of the forest and spatial propagation of the MPB infestation over time. About two-thirds of the land in British Columbia, Canada is covered by forests that are constantly being modified by natural disturbances such as fire, disease, and insect infestation. Forest resources make up approximately 15% of the province's economy, so infestations caused by insects such as the MPB can have significant impacts on the economy. The MPB outbreaks are considered a major natural disturbance that can result in widespread mortality of the lodgepole pine tree, one of the most abundant commercial tree species in British Columbia. Insect outbreaks have resulted in the death of trees over areas of several thousand square kilometers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29782518 | 1,525,494 |
1,122,188 | "Schizosaccharomyces pombe" was first discovered in 1893 when a group working in a Brewery Association Laboratory in Germany was looking at sediment found in millet beer imported from East Africa that gave it an acidic taste. The term schizo, meaning "split" or "fission", had previously been used to describe other Schizosaccharomycetes. The addition of the word pombe was due to its isolation from East African beer, as pombe means "beer" in Swahili. The standard "S. pombe" strains were isolated by Urs Leupold in 1946 and 1947 from a culture that he obtained from the yeast collection in Delft, The Netherlands. It was deposited there by A. Osterwalder under the name "S. pombe" var. "liquefaciens", after he isolated it in 1924 from French wine (most probably rancid) at the Federal Experimental Station of Vini- and Horticulture in Wädenswil, Switzerland. The culture used by Urs Leupold contained (besides others) cells with the mating types h90 (strain 968), h- (strain 972), and h+ (strain 975). Subsequent to this, there have been two large efforts to isolate "S. pombe" from fruit, nectar, or fermentations: one by Florenzano et al. in the vineyards of western Sicily, and the other by Gomes et al. (2002) in four regions of southeast Brazil. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=318669 | 1,121,614 |
344,475 | In October 2010, the CIPM voted to submit a resolution for consideration at the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM), to "take note of an intention" that the kilogram be defined in terms of the Planck constant, (which has dimensions of energy times time, thus mass × length / time) together with other physical constants. This resolution was accepted by the 24th conference of the CGPM in October 2011 and further discussed at the 25th conference in 2014. Although the Committee recognised that significant progress had been made, they concluded that the data did not yet appear sufficiently robust to adopt the revised definition, and that work should continue to enable the adoption at the 26th meeting, scheduled for 2018. Such a definition would theoretically permit any apparatus that was capable of delineating the kilogram in terms of the Planck constant to be used as long as it possessed sufficient precision, accuracy and stability. The Kibble balance is one way to do this. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16619 | 344,294 |
1,338,067 | In 1887 Brayton constructed a 4 stroke engine that used a glowing platinum igniter as a source for ignition and a metered pressurized injection system with an oil atomizing direct fuel injector (U.S. patent #432,114). Brayton states: “I have discovered that heavy oils can be mechanically converted into a finely divided condition within a firing portion of the cylinder, or in a communicating firing chamber.” Another part reads, “I have for the first time, so far as my knowledge extends, regulated speed by variably controlling the direct discharge of liquid fuel into the combustion chamber or cylinder into a finely divided condition highly favorable to immediate combustion.” This was likely the first engine to use a lean-burn system to regulate engine speed and output. In this manner, the engine fired on every power stroke and speed and output were controlled solely by the quantity of fuel injected. Bosch later further developed this type of metered injection system. In 1890 Brayton filed a patent (granted in 1892) for another 4 stroke engine with an air blast fuel injection system ( U.S. patent# 432,260) . Rudolf Diesel's first engines used an air blast atomization system that was very similar to Brayton's . Unlike Diesel's engine Brayton's engine was fairly low compression. The ignition source was a constantly glowing mesh of platinum. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3541653 | 1,337,336 |
987,181 | Engel et al. (2014) replicated Woolley et al.'s findings applying an accelerated battery of tasks with a first factor in the factor analysis explaining 49% of the between-group variance in performance with the following factors explaining less than half of this amount. Moreover, they found a similar result for groups working together online communicating only via text and confirmed the role of female proportion and social sensitivity in causing collective intelligence in both cases. Similarly to Wolley et al., they also measured social sensitivity with the RME which is actually meant to measure people's ability to detect mental states in other peoples' eyes. The online collaborating participants, however, did neither know nor see each other at all. The authors conclude that scores on the RME must be related to a broader set of abilities of social reasoning than only drawing inferences from other people's eye expressions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20756850 | 986,665 |
1,652,190 | A well designed toxicokinetic study may involve several different strategies and depends on the scientific question to be answered. Controlled acute and repeated toxicokinetic animal studies are useful to identify a chemical's biological persistence, tissue and whole body half-life, and its potential to bioaccumulate. Toxicokinetic profiles can change with increasing exposure duration or dose. Real world environmental exposures generally occur as low level mixtures, such as from air, water, food, or tobacco products. Mixture effects may differ from individual chemical toxicokinetic profiles because of chemical interactions, synergistic, or competitive processes. For other reasons, it is equally important to characterize the toxicokinetics of individual chemicals constituents found in mixtures as information on behavior or fate of the individual chemical can help explain environmental, human, and wildlife biomonitoring studies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1112289 | 1,651,258 |
1,624,775 | In the summer of 2011, a paper appeared in "Science" describing a new class of slope features with characteristics that suggest formation by seasonal releases of liquid water. (See H and I in Photo Gallery.) Called "recurring slope lineae" (RSL), the features received a considerable amount of media attention. RSLs are narrow (0.5 to 5 meters) dark markings that preferentially occur on steep, equator-facing slopes in the southern hemisphere between latitudes 48°S to 32°S. Repeat HiRISE images show that the markings appear and grow incrementally during warm seasons and fade in cold seasons. RSLs bear only a superficial resemblance to dark slope streaks. They are much smaller in width and have a different pattern of geographic occurrence and slope properties than dark slope streaks. RSLs seem to occur on bedrock slopes with seasonally high surface temperatures of 250–300K (-23–27 °C). These location may favor the flow of briney fluids emerging from seeps at certain times of the Martian year. Unlike RSLs, dark slope streaks appear to occur sporadically throughout the Martian year, and their triggering seems unrelated to season or large regional events. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22240072 | 1,623,859 |
2,131,537 | MMI officially opened its doors under the name Midland Macromolecular Institute in the fall of 1972, although the facility had been in operation for the previous year. The building had broken ground in the spring of 1970, and it, like many of Midland's buildings from that era, was designed by local architect Alden B. Dow. The institute hosted a three-day dedication beginning September 28, 1972 with opening ceremonies that featured more than 400 scientists from throughout the world, chamber music from the Cleveland Quartet, several presentations and public tours. The featured speakers for the ceremonies were Dr. Herman Francis Mark, considered by many to be the father of macromolecular sciences, and Dr. Paul J. Flory, who two years later would be awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Two other speakers were Prof. Dr. Donald Lyman and Prof. Dr. Edgar Andrews. Other notable attendees included Dr. Melvin Calvin, the 1961 winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry; Dr. Charles Overberger, then the vice-president for research at the University of Michigan; and Herbert D. "Ted" Doan, president of the Michigan Foundation for Advanced Research, which was MMI's primary financial backer in its early days. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24131391 | 2,130,312 |
1,340,199 | Sporadic use of astronavigation in aviation can be found in numerous long distance flights performed during the 1920s and even amid the First World War. During these early days of aviation, those individual officers that chose to employ astronavigation often attempted to simplify the traditional procedures of marine navigators in this new operating context. Amid the 1930s, the Royal Air Force (RAF) became seriously interested in the widespread use of astronavigation for nighttime flights. During November 1937, astronavigation was formally endorsed to be a part of standard navigation procedure amongst general reconnaissance and twin-engine bomber pilots. Two years later, a specialised bubble sextant was designed for the service, which became a preferred tool for this form of navigation. Typically, there would be a suspension arm mounted in the vicinity of the astrodome, upon which the sextant could be mounted via a swivel clip affixed to the top of the instrument. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6867743 | 1,339,466 |
1,923,672 | The first two vessels of the 1887 budget— and —were built in government shipyards according to de Bussy's plans, but for the third vessel, he issued the requirements prepared in February to private shipyards for competing designs. Five yards responded by 30 April 1886, and the proposal from was selected; this vessel became , the first member of the . By this time, an extraordinary budget was passed for 1887 that included three more small cruisers. One of these, , was ordered to de Bussy's design, while the other two became "Troude"-class cruisers. As work on the "Forbin"-class ships progressed, the design was altered. The ships were intended to have five torpedo tubes, but on 23 June 1887, the fifth tube, which was to have been placed in the stern, was deleted. "Forbin" was completed in 1888 with the original armament, but just two main battery guns was found to be insufficient, particularly compared to foreign counterparts, and so another pair of guns was added before "Forbin" entered active service and the other two vessels were completed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63125847 | 1,922,569 |
2,016,297 | Nitric oxide is a ubiquitous small molecule that is integrated in a wide variety of physiological processes including smooth muscle vasodilation, platelet disaggregation, neurotransmission, and immune response to bacterial infection. Overproduction of this signaling molecule can be lethal to cells by poisoning cellular energy production. The most sensitive targets of NO are aconitase, an enzyme that catalyzes the isomerization of citrate to isocitrate in the citric acid cycle, and cytochrome oxidase, the last enzyme in the respiratory electron transport chain of mitochondria. Additionally NO, with its lone radical on the nitrogen atom, is implicated in a number of secondary mechanisms of toxicity, including catalase inhibition (resulting in hydrogen peroxide toxicity), Fe-S center iron liberation, and the formation of dinitosyl-iron complexes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14045844 | 2,015,135 |
1,764,827 | Thus far, we have focused rather exclusively on the dynamical breakdown of laminar flow into turbulence triggered by a weak magnetic field, but it is also the case that the resulting highly agitated flow can act back on this same magnetic field. Embedded magnetic field lines are stretched by the turbulent flow, and it is possible that systematic field amplification could result. The process by which fluid motions are converted to magnetic field energy is known as a dynamo (Moffatt, 1978); the two best studied examples are the Earth's liquid outer core and the layers close to the surface of the Sun. Dynamo activity in these regions is thought to be responsible for maintaining the terrestrial and solar magnetic fields. In both of these cases thermal convection is likely to be the primary energy source, though in the case of the Sun differential rotation may also play an important role. Whether the MRI is an efficient dynamo process in accretion disks is currently an area of active research (Fromang and Papaloizou, 2007). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12010787 | 1,763,834 |
309,483 | The finale in particular came in for criticism that it did not live up to the promise of the earlier movements. An early reviewer found that "[t]he finale has much value, which I am far from denying it; however, it cannot very well escape from the charge of great bizarrerie." Another agreed that "[t]he finale pleased less, and that "the artist often wanted only to play games with the audience without taking its enjoyment into account simply in order to unloose a strange mood and, at the same time, to let his originality sparkle thereby". An exhaustive review of the work in a leading music journal made an observation that may still be familiar to first-time listeners: "this finale is long, very long; contrived, very contrived; indeed, several of [its] merits lie somewhat hidden. They presuppose a great deal if they are to be discovered and enjoyed, as they must be, in the very moment of their appearance, and not for the first time on paper afterwards." A review of an 1827 performance in London wrote that this particular performance "most properly ended with the funeral march, omitting the other parts, which are entirely inconsistent with the avowed design of the composition". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=242291 | 309,318 |
935,693 | The Poales are the most economically important order of monocots and possibly the most important order of plants in general. Within the order, by far the most important family economically is the family of grasses (Poaceae, syn. Gramineae), which includes the starch staples barley, maize, millet, rice, and wheat as well as bamboos (mostly used structurally, like wood, but somewhat as vegetables), and a few "seasonings" like sugarcane and lemongrass. Graminoids, especially the grasses, are typically dominant in open (low moisture but not yet arid, or also fire climax) habitats like prairie/steppe and savannah and thus form a large proportion of the forage of grazing livestock. Possibly due to pastoral nostalgia or simply a desire for open areas for play, they dominate most Western yards as lawns, which consume vast sums of money in upkeep (artificial grazing—mowing—for aesthetics and to keep the allergenic flowers suppressed, irrigation, and fertilizer). Many Bromeliaceae are used as ornamental plants (and one, the pineapple, is internationally grown in the tropics for fruit). Many wetland species of sedges, rushes, grasses, and cattails are important habitat plants for waterfowl, are used in weaving chair seats, and (especially cattails) were important pre-agricultural food sources for man. Two sedges, chufa ("Cyperus esculentus", also a significant weed) and water chestnut ("Eleocharis dulcis") are still at least locally important wetland starchy root crops. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23212 | 935,199 |
1,431,715 | On being infected with the blight bacteria (1 and 3), the bacterial cells inject the effectors created to develop resistance genes within the host nuclei. When host R proteins recognize the bacteria, some specific mechanisms are activated through signaling pathways. Genes of the ERF IX3 group are transcribed parallel to ROS production (t = 3h; 2: localization of HO in resistant leaves). Accumulation of salicylic acid in the systematic resistance stage culminates after the burst leading to activation of a 9- or 13-Lox gene (t = 9h), transcription of Ethylene-response transcription factors(ERF) genes, and synthesis of OPDA/JA (t = 12h). At the same time, flavonoids and total peroxidase activity are also released to aid in resisting the bacteria. The resistance aims at stopping bacterial growth (7: green line) as compared to growth in susceptible plants (7: blue line) and is preceded by the collapse of cells (6: condensation of the cytoplasm of HR cells), concluding the HR cycle (Jalloul et al., 2015). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38325904 | 1,430,911 |
3,341 | Not until 1904 was a documented solution offered. Ernest Rutherford suggested that the Sun's output could be maintained by an internal source of heat, and suggested radioactive decay as the source. However, it would be Albert Einstein who would provide the essential clue to the source of the Sun's energy output with his mass–energy equivalence relation . In 1920, Sir Arthur Eddington proposed that the pressures and temperatures at the core of the Sun could produce a nuclear fusion reaction that merged hydrogen (protons) into helium nuclei, resulting in a production of energy from the net change in mass. The preponderance of hydrogen in the Sun was confirmed in 1925 by Cecilia Payne using the ionization theory developed by Meghnad Saha. The theoretical concept of fusion was developed in the 1930s by the astrophysicists Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Hans Bethe. Hans Bethe calculated the details of the two main energy-producing nuclear reactions that power the Sun. In 1957, Margaret Burbidge, Geoffrey Burbidge, William Fowler and Fred Hoyle showed that most of the elements in the universe have been synthesized by nuclear reactions inside stars, some like the Sun. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26751 | 3,341 |
1,215,099 | The college ran into financial difficulties in the 2010s due to the changes in higher education in the United Kingdom. Undergraduate student recruitment declined after the cap on tuition fees was raised to £9,000 per annum in 2012, resulting in the Society of Jesus subsidising the college with millions of pounds: Claire Ozanne, the college's final principal, also highlighted the impact of the administrative burden of quality assurance assessments such as the Teaching and Research Excellence Frameworks on small institutions like Heythrop. Despite explorations with other academies, strategic partnership talks with St Mary's University, Twickenham, and an offer from the University of Roehampton for Heythrop to affiliate as one of its constituent colleges, no solution was found and in 2015 the decision was made to wind down and close by 2019. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=533358 | 1,214,447 |
1,576,922 | As compared to inhalation, intratracheal instillation allows greater control over the dose and location of the substance, is cheaper and less technically demanding, allows lower amounts of scarce or expensive substances to be used, allows substances to be tested that can be inhaled by humans but not small mammals, and minimizes exposure to laboratory workers and to the skin of laboratory animals. Disadvantages include its nonphysiological and invasive nature, the confounding effects of the delivery vehicle and anesthesia, and the fact that it bypasses the upper respiratory tract. Instillation results in a less uniform distribution of the substance than inhalation, and the substance is cleared from the respiratory tract more slowly. Their results provide a quick screen of potential toxicity and can be used to test its mechanism, but may not be directly applicable to occupational exposure that occurs over an extended period. Some of these difficulties are overcome by another method, pharyngeal aspiration, which is less technically difficult and causes less trauma to the animal, and has a pulmonary deposition pattern more similar to inhalation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=53214717 | 1,576,033 |
534,979 | There, in a small hut since he was denied access to British hospitals at his arrival, he made his greatest discovery: that of the pathogen which causes the disease. Dr Kitasato Shibasaburō, also in Hong Kong, had identified a bacterium several days earlier. There is controversy whether this was the same pneumococci or a mix of the two. Because Kitasato's initial reports were vague and somewhat contradictory, some give Yersin sole credit for the discovery. However, a 1976 thorough analysis of the morphology of the organism discovered by Kitasato determined that "we are confident that Kitasato had examined the plague bacillus in Hong Kong in late June and early July 1894", only days after Yersin announced his own discovery on 20 June, and that Kitasato "should not be denied this credit". The plague bacillus develops better at lower temperatures, so Yersin's less well-equipped lab turned out to be an advantage in the race with Kitasato, who used an incubator. Therefore, although at first named “Kitasato-Yersin bacillus” by the scientific community, the microbe will later assume only the latter's name because of the one identified by Kitasato, a type of streptococcus, cannot be found in the lymphatic glands. Yersin was also able to demonstrate for the first time that the same bacillus was present in the rodent as well as in the human disease, thus underlining the possible means of transmission. This important discovery was communicated to the French Academy of Sciences in the same year, by his colleague Emile Duclaux, in a classic paper titled "La peste bubonique à Hong-Kong". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=727904 | 534,700 |
747,657 | Most of this first orbiter entry was flown automatically. An initial angle of attack of 40° had to be maintained until through the most severe aerodynamic heating after which it was gradually reduced. At about altitude a light pink air glow caused by entry heating became visible, and both crew members lowered their visors. "Columbia" had to maneuver "cross range" of its orbital ground track to reach the planned landing site during the entry. Consequently, a roll into a right bank was flown when the air density had increased sufficiently to raise dynamic pressure to (with speed still in excess of Mach 24 and approximately altitude). Automatic roll reversals to control energy dissipation rate and cross range steering were performed at around Mach 18.5 and Mach 9.8. The crew clearly observed the coast of California as "Columbia" crossed it near Big Sur at Mach 7 and . Both the Mach 4.8 and Mach 2.8 roll reversals were automatically initiated and manually completed by John Young. The last RCS jet firing took place at an altitude of — lower than desired (due to a predicted risk of combustion chamber explosion). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=177543 | 747,261 |
1,772,148 | Extracellular long-chained glucans synthesized from sucrose via glucosyltransferase enzymes help accumulate "S. sobrinus" on tooth enamel surfaces. The glucans provide a shelter for bacterial colonization, and the protected environment creates the perfect nesting ground for "S. sobrinus" and other microorganisms to sustain a stable community in the form of dental plaque. "S. sobrinus" in turn releases lactic acid in the anaerobic metabolism of glucose. Lactic acid demineralizes tooth enamel and fosters the initiation of dental caries. "S. sobrinus" has an optimal growth temperature of 37 °C and thrives in a slightly acidic environment at a pH of 6.3. This makes the human mouth a suitable habitat due to its acidic characteristics, favorable body temperature, and significant amount of food sugars passing through the mouth on a daily basis. However, these traits also indicate that "S. sobrinus" has a difficult time surviving outside the host of the human teeth. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21920242 | 1,771,151 |
182,051 | This circuit had two advantages. One was that by using the correct turns ratio, the impedance of the antenna could be matched to the impedance of the receiver, to transfer maximum RF power to the receiver. Impedance matching was important to achieve maximum receiving range in the unamplified receivers of this era. The coils usually had taps which could be selected by a multiposition switch. The second advantage was that due to "loose coupling" it had a much narrower bandwidth than a simple tuned circuit, and the bandwidth could be adjusted. Unlike in an ordinary transformer, the two coils were "loosely coupled"; separated physically so not all the magnetic field from the primary passed through the secondary, reducing the mutual inductance. This gave the coupled tuned circuits much "sharper" tuning, a narrower bandwidth than a single tuned circuit. In the "Navy type" loose coupler "(see picture)", widely used with crystal receivers, the smaller secondary coil was mounted on a rack which could be slid in or out of the primary coil, to vary the mutual inductance between the coils. When the operator encountered an interfering signal at a nearby frequency, the secondary could be slid further out of the primary, reducing the coupling, which narrowed the bandwidth, rejecting the interfering signal. A disadvantage was that all three adjustments in the loose coupler - primary tuning, secondary tuning, and coupling - were interactive; changing one changed the others. So tuning in a new station was a process of successive adjustments. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=491851 | 181,955 |
55,111 | Although the simplest reflexes may be mediated by circuits lying entirely within the spinal cord, more complex responses rely on signal processing in the brain. For example, when an object in the periphery of the visual field moves, and a person looks toward it many stages of signal processing are initiated. The initial sensory response, in the retina of the eye, and the final motor response, in the oculomotor nuclei of the brain stem, are not all that different from those in a simple reflex, but the intermediate stages are completely different. Instead of a one or two step chain of processing, the visual signals pass through perhaps a dozen stages of integration, involving the thalamus, cerebral cortex, basal ganglia, superior colliculus, cerebellum, and several brainstem nuclei. These areas perform signal-processing functions that include feature detection, perceptual analysis, memory recall, decision-making, and motor planning. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21944 | 55,088 |
548,937 | In 1981, Mlodinow joined the faculty at Caltech. Later, he was named an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow and worked at the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Munich, Germany. In 1986, Mlodinow left full-time academia to begin a writing career. In addition to his books, he wrote many episodes for a number of television series including "" and "MacGyver", created computer games with director Steven Spielberg and actor Robin Williams, and wrote the screenplay for the 2009 film "Beyond the Horizon". He also continued to conduct research in theoretical physics, and again joined the faculty of Caltech in 2005, leaving in 2013. His latest work in physics concerns the arrow of time, quantum decoherence, and the relation between discrete quantum random walks and the relativistic equations of quantum theory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1920940 | 548,649 |
61,352 | From the mid-2000s, the university began a number of multimillion-dollar expansion projects. In 2008, the University of Chicago announced plans to establish the Milton Friedman Institute, which attracted both support and controversy from faculty members and The institute would cost around $200 million and occupy the buildings of the Chicago Theological Seminary. During the same year, investor David G. Booth donated $300 million to the university's Booth School of Business, which is the largest gift in the university's history and the largest gift ever to any business school. In 2009, planning or construction on several new buildings, half of which cost $100 million or more, was underway. Since 2011, major construction projects have included the Jules and Gwen Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery, a ten-story medical research center, and further additions to the medical campus of the University of Chicago Medical Center. In 2014 the university launched the public phase of a $4.5 billion fundraising campaign. In September 2015, the university received $100 million from The Pearson Family Foundation to establish The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts and The Pearson Global Forum at the Harris School of Public Policy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=32127 | 61,327 |
918,672 | Production and maintenance of the 004 was done at the Junkers works at Magdeburg, under the supervision of Otto Hartkopf. Completed engines earned a reputation for unreliability; the time between major overhauls (not technically a time between overhaul) was thirty to fifty hours, and may have been as low as ten, though a skilled flyer could double the interval. (The competing BMW 003's was about fifty.) The process involved replacing compressor blades, (which suffered the most damage, usually from ingesting stones and such, later known as fodding) and turbine blades damaged by the high thermodynamic loads. The Germans were known to use both specially-designed wire framed hemispherical cages and/or flat circular covers over the intakes to prevent ingestion of foreign matter into their aircraft jet engines' intakes while on the ground. The compressor and turbine blades' life could be extended by re-balancing the rotors during routine maintenance; the Riedel two-stroke starter engine and the turbojet's governor would also be examined and replaced as needed. Combustors required maintenance every twenty hours, and replacement at 200. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=401054 | 918,189 |
1,512,742 | To positively identify features as having evolved through CNE, several approaches are possible. The basic notion of CNE is that features which have evolved through CNE are complex ones but do not provide an advantage in fitness over their simpler ancestors. That is to say, an unnecessary complexification has occurred. In some cases, phylogeny can be used to inspect ancestral versions of systems and to see if those ancestral versions were simpler and, if they were, if the rise in complexity came with an advantage in fitness (i.e. acted as an adaptation). While it is not straight forward to identify how adaptive the emergence of a complex feature was, some methods are available. If the more complex system has the same downstream effects in its biochemical pathway as the ancestral and simpler system, this suggests that the complexification did not carry with it any increase in fitness. This approach is simpler when analyzing complex traits of which evolved more recently and are taxonomically restricted in a few lineages because "derived features can be more easily compared to their sisters and inferred ancestors". The 'gold standard' approach for identifying cases of CNE involves direct experimentation, where ancestral versions of genes and systems are reconstructed and their properties directly identified. The first example of this involved analysis of components of a V-ATPase proton pump in fungal lineages. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=69815407 | 1,511,891 |
654,256 | The Water Footprint Network is an international learning community (a non-profit foundation under Dutch law) which serves as a platform for sharing knowledge, tools and innovations among governments, businesses and communities concerned about growing water scarcity and increasing water pollution levels, and their impacts on people and nature. The network consists of around 100 partners from all sectors – producers, investors, suppliers and regulators – as well as non-governmental organisations and academics. It describes its mission as follows: To provide science-based, practical solutions and strategic insights that empower companies, governments, individuals and small-scale producers to transform the way we use and share fresh water within earth's limits. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18962147 | 653,912 |
1,351,781 | In the United States, an important effort to create a graduate program in learning sciences took place in 1983 when Jan Hawkins and Roy Pea proposed a joint program between Bank Street College and The New School for Social Research. Called "Psychology, Education, and Technology" (PET), the program was supported through a planning grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. However, the program required hiring new faculty, and the institutions never established such a program. In 1988, Roger Schank's arrival at Northwestern University contributed to the development of the Institute for Learning Sciences. In 1991, Northwestern initiated the first LS doctoral program, designed and launched by Pea as its first director. The program accepted their first student cohort in1992; following Pea's new position as dean, Brian Reiser took over the program directorship. Since that time, many additional high-quality LS graduate programs have appeared globally, and the field continues to gain recognition as an innovative and influential field for education research and design. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1182490 | 1,351,035 |
32,151 | Goldstine also writes of many quirks of intuition von Neumann had. One such quirk was that one time von Neumann had asked to review an old paper he had not published because he believed there was an error there yet he could not find it. After Goldstine found it, he exclaimed, "Damn it, of course. There is some instinct that kept me from publishing that paper and it must have been a realization that I had a mistake somewhere in it, but I just never knew where it was." Another one was his ability to lecture off old material many years after he had originally given it, Goldstine's example was based on material von Neumann had written in German but was now lecturing on in English, with Goldstine noting that the lecture was almost word for word, symbol for symbol the same. A final example Goldstine writes about was that one time von Neumann had difficulty proving something related to the bounds of eigenvalues, and some time later Goldstine saw in a paper in the Math Reviews where someone had proved a related theorem and described the theorem to von Neumann, who was then able to come to the blackboard and write down a proof. Goldstine says that just knowing that a proof was possible allowed von Neumann to see how to write it down even when previously he had difficulty. Likewise when he had difficulties he would not labor on and struggle with them as soon as he found them; instead he would go home and sleep on it and come back later with a solution. This style, 'taking the path of least resistance', sometimes meant that he could go off working on tangents simply because he saw how to do so. It also meant that while he could crush any small obstacles in his path while solving a problem, if the difficulty was great from the very beginning, he would simply switch to another problem. He would not labor on them or try to find weak spots from which he could break through. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15942 | 32,139 |
78,493 | The beta distribution achieves maximum differential entropy for Beta(1,1): the uniform probability density, for which all values in the domain of the distribution have equal density. This uniform distribution Beta(1,1) was suggested ("with a great deal of doubt") by Thomas Bayes as the prior probability distribution to express ignorance about the correct prior distribution. This prior distribution was adopted (apparently, from his writings, with little sign of doubt) by Pierre-Simon Laplace, and hence it was also known as the "Bayes-Laplace rule" or the "Laplace rule" of "inverse probability" in publications of the first half of the 20th century. In the later part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century, scientists realized that the assumption of uniform "equal" probability density depended on the actual functions (for example whether a linear or a logarithmic scale was most appropriate) and parametrizations used. In particular, the behavior near the ends of distributions with finite support (for example near "x" = 0, for a distribution with initial support at "x" = 0) required particular attention. Keynes ( Ch.XXX, p. 381) criticized the use of Bayes's uniform prior probability (Beta(1,1)) that all values between zero and one are equiprobable, as follows: "Thus experience, if it shows anything, shows that there is a very marked clustering of statistical ratios in the neighborhoods of zero and unity, of those for positive theories and for correlations between positive qualities in the neighborhood of zero, and of those for negative theories and for correlations between negative qualities in the neighborhood of unity. " | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=207074 | 78,461 |
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