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1,947,973 | In 1990, Macagno et al., integrated the results from several studies, once again emphasizing the evolutionary conservation of the overall phenomena: Leech neurons, like those of other invertebrates and those of vertebrates, undergo specific interactions during development which allow the definition of the adult morphologies and synaptic connections. That morphology reflects the developmental compromise between the potential of the neuron to grow and the constraints placed upon that growth by internal and external factors. Thus, the self-recognizing mechanism would be useful not only to self-avoidance but also as a means of individualization. During development, competition among neurons of the same type for a limited supply required for process growth and maintenance would occur, with one cell gaining space at the expense of others. Inhibitory interactions were also invoked, and this placed the phenomena of self-recognition in the bigger picture of the axon guidance process. Together, these studies led to the view that neural circuit assembly emerged as a result of a relatively small number of different signals and their receptors, some acting in a graded fashion and in different combinations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42073672 | 1,946,860 |
477,074 | The interim report of the NPE partnership classifies electric vehicles in 3 categories, all-electric city cars, family cars and light trucks with an electric range for city transport. Development is sketched in phases 2010–2013, 2014–2017, 2018–2020 and post-2020 with the government goal to get 1 million electric cars up to 2020 and 6 million electric cars up to 2030 (for comparison there are 44 million cars in Germany in 2010). Batteries are not expected to show great advancements in terms of capacity but the safety will increase and the prices will fall to 250-€300 /kWh in the 2018-2020 time frame. In the post-2020 time frame new battery types are expected – instead of lithium-ion the fourth generation batteries will be introduced to the mobility market including lithium-air, lithium-sulfur and zinc-air batteries. As for charging stations a wide network of fast-charging points is considered possible with 22 kW (400 V 32 A) stations to be introduced in 2010-2013 and 44 kW (400 V 63 A) stations to be introduced in 2014–2017. For the time beyond 2020 there is an expectation of charging stations at 60 kW (400 V DC 150 A) allowing to charge the standard 20kWh battery pack to 80% in less than 10 minutes whereas this station type requires integration with smart grid technology and a strict worldwide standard (including SAE procedures). The "early adoptors" of electric vehicles are identified to be from the middle class owning multiple cars as well as owning a garage – the existence of a public network of charging stations is considered to be not (sic!) a prerequisite for market introduction in the first phases. Instead government funds should back the investments in privately owned charging stations for example with faster tax write off and cheap credits from the government KfW bank. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21079741 | 476,834 |
909,286 | In 2011, as the world's population passed the seven billion mark Ehrlich has argued that the next two billion people on Earth would cause more damage than the previous two billion because we are now increasingly having to resort to using more marginal and environmentally damaging resources. As of 2013, Ehrlich continues to perform policy research concerning population and resource issues, with an emphasis upon endangered species, cultural evolution, environmental ethics, and the preservation of genetic resources. Along with Dr. Gretchen Daily, he has performed work in countryside biogeography; that is, the study of making human-disturbed areas hospitable to biodiversity. His research group at Stanford University examines extensively natural populations of the Bay checkerspot butterfly ("Euphydryas editha bayensis"). The population-related disaster that Ehrlich predicted has largely failed to materialize, including the "hundreds of millions" of starvation deaths in the 1970s and the tens of millions of deaths in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. Slowing of population growth rates and new food production technologies have increased the food supply faster than the population. Nonetheless, Ehrlich continues to stand by his general thesis that the human population is too large, posing a direct threat to human survival and the environment of the planet. Indeed, he states that if he were to write the book today, "My language would be even more apocalyptic." In 2018, he emphasized his view that the optimum population size is between 1.5 and 2 billion people. In 2022, he was a contributor to the "Scientists' warning on population," published by "Science of the Total Environment", which estimated that a sustainable population would be between 2 and 4 billion people. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=359542 | 908,807 |
1,099,907 | When games are more story-driven than action-driven, culturalising them can be challenging because of all the premises the designers are taking for granted in the development of the plot. Asian gamers seem to prefer more childlike characters, while Western countries might emphasize adult features. An example of the changes that are likely to happen during localization is "Fatal Frame" (known in Japan as "Zero" and known in Europe as "Project Zero") (Tecmo 2001). In the original Japanese version the protagonist, Miku, was a frightened seventeen-year-old girl looking for her brother Mafuyu who disappeared after entering a haunted mansion. In the US and European versions Miku is nineteen, has Western features, and is not wearing the original Japanese school uniform. Unfortunately, developers did not think necessary to change her brother's appearance, so when players do find Mafuyu at the end of the game they do not seem to be blood-related. While most games only need small changes to be localized for another region, there are also games that had to be thematically overhauled for a new region. For example, efforts to localize the Nintendo DS rhythm game "Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan" for the western world led to a completely new and thematically different game, "Elite Beat Agents", which reuses "Ouendan"s gameplay but is re-themed to feature special agents helping people around the world instead of oendan cheering people in Japan, due to "Ouendan"s innate reliance on Japanese culture making a plain localization of that game unviable. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8735708 | 1,099,347 |
1,533,286 | While fMRI studies on deception have claimed detection accuracy as high as 90% many have problems with implementing this style of detection. At a basic level administering, fMRIs is extremely difficult and costly. Only yes or no answers can be used which allows for flexibility in the truth and style of lying. fMRI requires the participant to remain still for long periods and little movements can create issues with the scan. Some people are unable to take one such as those with medical conditions, claustrophobia, or implants. When looking at deception specifically, there is little research on non-compliant individuals. The criminal justice system interacts with many types of criminals that are not often taken into account in fMRI studies such as addicts, juveniles, mentally unstable, and the elderly. Studies have been done on Chinese individuals and their language and cultural differences did not change results, as well as a study (S. Spence 2011) on that 52 schizophrenic patients, 27 of whom were experiencing delusions at the time of the study. While these studies are promising, the lack of extensive research on the populations that would be most affected by fMRIs being admitted into the legal system is a huge drawback. As well, fMRI deception tests look only at changes in activity in the brain which similarly to the polygraph does not show directly that lying is occurring. If dealing with complex styles of lying or questions the need for a control condition is critical to differentiate from other higher emotional states unrelated to deception. Some studies, such as Ganis et al.., have shown that it is possible to fool an fMRI by learning countermeasures. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=68534966 | 1,532,418 |
370,876 | The Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) Electronic Challenge was created by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2012. Participants of the Challenge are manufacturers of electronics and electronic retailers. These companies collect end-of-life (EOL) electronics at various locations and send them to a certified, third-party recycler. Program participants are then able publicly promote and report 100% responsible recycling for their companies. The Electronics TakeBack Coalition (ETBC) is a campaign aimed at protecting human health and limiting environmental effects where electronics are being produced, used, and discarded. The ETBC aims to place responsibility for disposal of technology products on electronic manufacturers and brand owners, primarily through community promotions and legal enforcement initiatives. It provides recommendations for consumer recycling and a list of recyclers judged environmentally responsible. While there have been major benefits from the rise in recycling and waste collection created by producers and consumers, such as valuable materials being recovered and kept away from landfill and incineration, there are still many problems present with the EPR system including "how to ensure proper enforcement of recycling standards, what to do about waste with positive net value, and the role of competition," (Kunz et al.). Many stakeholders agreed there needs to be a higher standard of accountability and efficiency to improve the systems of recycling everywhere, as well as the growing amount of waste being an opportunity more so than downfall since it gives us more chances to create an efficient system. To make recycling competition more cost-effective, the producers agreed that there needs to be a higher drive for competition because it allows them to have a wider range of producer responsibility organizations to choose from for e-waste recycling. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3887690 | 370,682 |
405,840 | A team from Magnavox led by George Kent turned the prototype console into a final product. They designed the exterior of the machine and re-engineered some of the internals with consultation from Baer and Harrison; they removed the ability to display color, used only the three dial controller, and changed the system of selecting games from a dial to separate game cards that modified the console's circuitry when plugged into the console. At the time, color televisions were still seen as a luxury item, and the ability to show color would have added additional expense and time spent dealing with FCC testing and regulations. The internal circuitry had been designed with discrete components rather than integrated circuits due to cost concerns, and although integrated circuits were becoming common by 1972 Magnavox did not redesign the circuitry to use them. The games for the system were designed by Ron Bradford of Bradford/Cout Design and adman Steve Lehner, based largely on the ones developed by Baer, Harrison, and Rusch. The product planning for the console was initially overseen by Bob Wiles of the color television division, but was turned over to product manager Bob Fritsche as its own category of product in September 1971. Magnavox named the console first as the Skill-O-Vision while testing, and then released it as the Odyssey. The rifle game was turned into a separately sold add-on game, "Shooting Gallery", and Magnavox added paper money, playing cards, and poker chips to the console, to go along with the plastic overlays for the games designed by Bradford that enhanced the primitive visuals. The new additions helped raise the price of the console to . Baer was upset with the board game additions, which he felt were pointless add-ons that would go unused by players. Magnavox performed market surveys and playtests in Los Angeles and Grand Rapids, Michigan, and demonstrated it to dealers in Las Vegas in May 1972. The console was publicly unveiled at a press event at the Tavern on the Green in New York City on May 22, 1972. Magnavox announced the system's launch date of September 1972, with availability restricted to dealers in 18 metropolitan areas, and demonstrated it for the next few months to Magnavox dealerships and media. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=77262 | 405,640 |
1,832,731 | After the Second World War, a small technical elite arose in developing countries such as India, Pakistan, Brazil, and Iraq who had been educated as scientists in the industrialized world. They spearheaded the development of science in these countries, presuming that by pushing for Manhattan project-type enterprises in nuclear power, electronics, pharmaceuticals, or space exploration they could leapfrog the dismally low level of development of science establishments in their countries. India, for example, started a nuclear energy program that mobilized thousands of technicians and cost hundreds of millions of dollars but had limited success. Though China, North Korea, India and Pakistan have been successful in deploying nuclear weapons and some of them e.g. China and India have launched fairly successful space programs, (for example, Chandrayaan I ("Sanskrit" चंद्रयान-1), which literally means "Moon Craft," is an unmanned lunar mission by the Indian Space Research Organisation and it hopes to land a motorised rover on the moon in 2010 or 2011 as a part of its second Chandrayaan mission; Chang'e I, China's moon probing project is proceeding in full swing in a well-organized way), the fact remains that most of the scientists responsible for these deeds had received their terminal education from some institution or university in US or Europe. In addition there have been hardly any Nobel laureates in science who have conducted the path-breaking research in a native science establishment. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12082329 | 1,831,683 |
507,693 | Sherrington's origins have been discussed in several published sources: Chris Moss and Susan Hunter, in the Journal of Medical Biography of January 2018, presented an article discussing the potential origins of Charles Sherrington, i.e. whether he was born in India of unknown parents, or was the illegitimate child of Caleb Rose and Anne Sherrington. Erling Norrby, PhD, in "Nobel Prizes and Notable Discoveries" (2016) observed: "His family origin apparently is not properly given in his official biography. Considering that motherhood is a matter of fact and fatherhood a matter of opinion, it can be noted that his father was not James Norton Sherrington, from whom his family name was derived. Charles was born 9 years after the death of his presumed father. Instead Charles and his two brothers were the illegitimate sons of Caleb Rose, a highly regarded Ipswich surgeon." In "Ipswich Town: A History", Susan Gardiner writes: "George and William Sherrington, along with their older brother, Charles, were almost certainly the illegitimate sons of Anne Brookes, née Thurtell and Caleb Rose, a leading surgeon from Ipswich, with whom she was living in College Road, Islington at the time that all three boys were born. No father was named in the baptism register of St James' Church, Clerkenwell, and there is no official record of the registration of any of their births. It was claimed they were the sons of a country doctor, James Norton Sherrington. However, it was with Caleb Rose that Anne and the three Sherrington boys moved to Anglesea Road, Ipswich in 1860 and the couple were married in 1880 after Caleb's first wife had died." Of James Norton Sherrington, Judith Swazey, in "Reflexes and Motor Integration: Sherrington's Concept of Integrative Action" (1969), quotes Charles Scott Sherrington's son, Carr Sherrington: "James N. Sherrington was always called Mr. and I have no knowledge that he was a Dr. either in law or in medicine... [He] was mainly interested in art and was a personal friend of J. B. Crone and other painters." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=772653 | 507,429 |
1,206,867 | The treatment regimens for BIA-ALCL recommended by 1) a multidisciplinary expert review panel, 2) the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, and 3) the French National Cancer Institute (Agence Nationale de Sécurité du Médicament [ANSM]) are very similar, commonly used, and summarized here. BIA-ALCL staging is done to identify patients with BIA-ALCL confined to the implant, capsule, and effusion from more disseminated disease. The staging preferably employs the TMN system designed to stage solid tumors. This is based on historical data suggesting that BIA-ALCL progresses locally like solid tumors rather than liquid tumors such as other lymphomas. BIA-ALCL patients have surgical removal of the implant, capsule, and associated masses. Patients with localized disease (e.g. TMN stage 1A to 2A) that is completely excised by removal of the implant, the entire capsule, and any masses (must leave negative resection margins) receive no further therapy. About 85% of all BIA-ALCL patients should qualify to receive this treatment regimen. Patients with unresectable chest wall invasion, regional lymph node involvement (i.e. TMN Stage 2B to 4), or residual disease after surgery receive an aggressive adjuvant chemotherapy regimen such as EPOCH, CHOP, or CHOP plus etoposide. Alternatively, the immunotherapeutic drug, brentuximab vedotin, may be used as initial therapy alone or in combination with a chemotherapy regimen to treat disseminated disease. While larger studies are needed, case reports suggest that brentuximab vedotin may be effective frontline monotherapy, either after surgical excision or as primary treatment for unresectable BIA-ALCL. Radiation therapy has been used in cases that have unresectable chest wall invasion (NMN stage IIE). Although the number of cases evaluated is low, 93% of patients without a mass and 72% with a mass achieved complete remission; median survival for disease having a discrete breast mass was 12 years but was beyond 12 years and not reached over the study period for patients not having a discrete breast mass. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1034755 | 1,206,221 |
685,567 | In 1885, President Grover Cleveland appointed a joint Army, Navy, and civilian board, headed by Secretary of War William Crowninshield Endicott, known as the Board of Fortifications. The findings of the board illustrated a grim picture of existing defenses in its 1886 report and recommended a massive $127 million construction program of breech-loading cannons, mortars, floating batteries, and submarine mines for some 29 locations on the U.S. coastline. Most of the board's recommendations were adopted. This led to a large-scale modernization program of harbor and coastal defenses in the United States, especially the construction of modern reinforced concrete fortifications and the installation of large caliber breech-loading artillery and mortar batteries. Typically, Endicott period projects were not fortresses, but a system of well-dispersed emplacements with a few large guns in each location. The structures were usually open-topped concrete walls protected by sloped earthworks. Many of these featured disappearing guns, which sat protected behind the walls, but could be raised to fire. With a few exceptions early in the program, Endicott forts had no significant defenses against a land attack. Controlled mine fields were a critical component of the defense, and smaller guns were also employed to protect the mine fields from minesweeping vessels. An extensive fire control system was developed and provided for the forts of each Artillery District. Most of the Endicott fortifications were constructed from 1895 through 1905. As the defenses were constructed, each harbor or river's installations were controlled by Artillery Districts, renamed Coast Defense Commands in 1913 and Harbor Defense Commands in 1925. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13422946 | 685,210 |
1,018,048 | With the experimental phase completed successfully, the Air Forces asked the Western Electric Company to proceed as rapidly as possible with the construction of the entire DEW Line. That was in December 1954, before the route to be followed in the eastern section had even been determined. The locations were surveyed out by John Anderson-Thompson. Siting crews covered the area – first from the air and then on the ground – to locate by scientific means the best sites for the main, auxiliary, and intermediate stations. These hardy men lived and worked under the most primitive conditions. They covered vast distances by airplanes, snowmobiles, and dog sleds, working in blinding snowstorms with temperatures so low that ordinary thermometers could not measure them. But they completed their part of the job on schedule and set the stage for the small army of men and machines that followed. The line consisted of 63 stations stretching from Alaska to Baffin Island, covering nearly . The United States agreed to pay for and construct the line, and to employ Canadian labour as much as possible. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=614142 | 1,017,524 |
60,709 | Rooted in the patronage of churches and royal courts in Western Europe, surviving early medieval music is chiefly religious, monophonic and vocal, with the music of ancient Greece and Rome influencing its thought and theory. The earliest extant music manuscripts date from the Carolingian Empire (800–888), around the time which Western plainchant gradually unified into what is termed Gregorian chant. Musical centers existed at the Abbey of Saint Gall, the Abbey of Saint Martial and Saint Emmeram's Abbey, while the 11th century saw the development of staff notation and increasing output from medieval music theorists. By the mid-12th century France became the major European musical center: the religious Notre-Dame school first fully explored organized rhythms and polyphony, while secular music flourished with the troubadour and "trouvère" traditions led by poet-musician nobles. This culminated in the court sponsored French "ars nova" and Italian Trecento, which evolved into "ars subtilior", a stylistic movement of extreme rhythmic diversity. Beginning in the early 15th century, Renaissance composers of the influential Franco-Flemish School built off the harmonic principles in the English "contenance angloise", bringing choral music to new standards, particularly the mass and motet. Northern Italy soon emerged as the central musical region, where the Roman School engaged in highly sophisticated methods of polyphony in genres such as the madrigal, which inspired the brief English Madrigal School. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6668778 | 60,684 |
1,213,571 | Individuals with acalculia generally live normal lives, unless there are other disabilities or traumatic injuries present that prevent normal living. Details from a case study published in 2003 described the condition of a 55-year-old woman living with acalculia. "In addition to writing and calculation deficits, both spelling and reading had declined. Lapses of memory occurred occasionally. Despite these deficits, daily living activities remained intact". Another case study published in 1990 described the condition and management of a former female accountant who had "suffered a small circumscribed left parietal subdural hematoma in an auto accident." She was able to speak, read, and write normally, but she was unable to perform simple addition past the number ten. The case study reports that the patient also demonstrated "severe finger agnosia, and in fact the finger agnosia appeared to be directly related to her inability to perform calculations." The patient was somewhat able to manage her acalculia by visiting a therapist who worked with her specifically on finger recognition tasks, especially on finger calculations. This therapy raised her mathematical ability to a high school level after she received treatment for a number of months. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2959427 | 1,212,919 |
711,116 | Human ABC transporters are involved in several diseases that arise from polymorphisms in ABC genes and rarely due to complete loss of function of single ABC proteins. Such diseases include Mendelian diseases and complex genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis, adrenoleukodystrophy, Stargardt disease, Tangier disease, immune deficiencies, progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis, Dubin–Johnson syndrome, Pseudoxanthoma elasticum, persistent hyperinsulinemic hypoglycemia of infancy due to focal adenomatous hyperplasia, X-linked sideroblastosis and anemia, age-related macular degeneration, familial hypoapoproteinemia, Retinitis pigmentosum, cone rod dystrophy, and others. The human ABCB (MDR/TAP) family is responsible for multiple drug resistance (MDR) against a variety of structurally unrelated drugs. ABCB1 or MDR1 P-glycoprotein is also involved in other biological processes for which lipid transport is the main function. It is found to mediate the secretion of the steroid aldosterone by the adrenals, and its inhibition blocked the migration of dendritic immune cells, possibly related to the outward transport of the lipid platelet activating factor (PAF). It has also been reported that ABCB1 mediates transport of cortisol and dexamethasone, but not of progesterone in ABCB1 transfected cells. MDR1 can also transport cholesterol, short-chain and long-chain analogs of phosphatidylcholine (PC), phosphatidylethanolamine (PE), phosphatidylserine (PS), sphingomyelin (SM), and glucosylceramide (GlcCer). Multispecific transport of diverse endogenous lipids through the MDR1 transporter can possibly affect the transbilayer distribution of lipids, in particular of species normally predominant on the inner plasma membrane leaflet such as PS and PE. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1551873 | 710,745 |
1,754,539 | E-Science or eScience is computationally intensive science that is carried out in highly distributed network environments, or science that uses immense data sets that require grid computing; the term sometimes includes technologies that enable distributed collaboration, such as the Access Grid. The term was created by John Taylor, the Director General of the United Kingdom's Office of Science and Technology in 1999 and was used to describe a large funding initiative starting in November 2000. E-science has been more broadly interpreted since then, as "the application of computer technology to the undertaking of modern scientific investigation, including the preparation, experimentation, data collection, results dissemination, and long-term storage and accessibility of all materials generated through the scientific process. These may include data modeling and analysis, electronic/digitized laboratory notebooks, raw and fitted data sets, manuscript production and draft versions, pre-prints, and print and/or electronic publications." In 2014, IEEE eScience Conference Series condensed the definition to "eScience promotes innovation in collaborative, computationally- or data-intensive research across all disciplines, throughout the research lifecycle" in one of the working definitions used by the organizers. E-science encompasses "what is often referred to as big data [which] has revolutionized science... [such as] the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN... [that] generates around 780 terabytes per year... highly data intensive modern fields of science...that generate large amounts of E-science data include: computational biology, bioinformatics, genomics" and the human digital footprint for the social sciences. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1001976 | 1,753,549 |
262,683 | Radiation-absorbent material (RAM), often as paints, are used especially on the edges of metal surfaces. While the material and thickness of RAM coatings can vary, the way they work is the same: absorb radiated energy from a ground- or air-based radar station into the coating and convert it to heat rather than reflect it back. Current technologies include dielectric composites and metal fibers containing ferrite isotopes. Ceramic composite coating is a new type of material systems which can sustain at higher temperatures with better sand erosion resistance and thermal resistance. Paint comprises depositing pyramid-like colonies on the reflecting superficies with the gaps filled with ferrite-based RAM. The pyramidal structure deflects the incident radar energy in the maze of RAM. One commonly used material is called "iron ball paint". It contains microscopic iron spheres that resonate in tune with incoming radio waves and dissipate most of their energy as heat, leaving little to reflect back to detectors. FSS are planar periodic structures that behave like filters to electromagnetic energy. The considered frequency-selective surfaces are composed of conducting patch elements pasted on the ferrite layer. FSS are used for filtration and microwave absorption. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=262577 | 262,544 |
1,612,692 | Tools that were unearthed at this site, including bone harpoons, barbed points and quartz tools used for tool-making, cutting, or scraping are indicative of previous human occupation of Homo sapiens and the relationship these people had with the environment. The close proximity to Lake Edward provided these occupants with an abundance of resources. The remains of bones from animals like fish, hippopotamus, buffalo, and antelope demonstrated taphonomy consistent with cutting, revealing the dietary habits of these past people. The remains found at this site allow for the characterization of a hunter-fisher-gatherer community that shows reliance on the surrounding environment along with complex social and cognitive behaviors. Climate and environmental changes also attributed to this "fisherman settlement" as the increase in rainfall led to the tradition of fishing after "sedentarisation and the introduction of animal breeding." The wetter climatic conditions of the early to mid-Holocene have led Ishango to be interpreted as an "aquatic civilization" following the climate changes spread rapidly across eastern and northern Africa during this time period. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10832363 | 1,611,787 |
2,152,851 | In 2020 Hayman was one of 22 international experts who worked with contributors from the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, and the World Health Organization to produce a report commissioned by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) that documented interactions between biodiversity and human drivers of disease emergence. Recommendations made by the report included having more disease-risk health assessments in public projects, governments budgeting adequately for the economic costs of pandemics, stopping the international trade of high-risk species and valuing the knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities to inform pandemic prevention programmes. Hayman said the goal of the team was to make the link between factors causing biodiversity crises, and those causing infections to go from wildlife to people. In an interview in the New Zealand media, Hayman said of the report [that] "we showed the same things causing the biodiversity loss and extinction of species are also leading to coronavirus novel infections, things like consuming lots of wildlife or putting roads in tropical forests." He later contributed to a workshop, The IPBES Bureau and Multidisciplinary Expert Panel, Platform Workshop. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=70083782 | 2,151,620 |
398,112 | Maps of the period generally depicted a large continent named "Terra Australis Incognita" of highly variable shape and extent. This land was posited by Ptolemy as a counterbalance to the extensive continental areas in the northern hemisphere. Marcus Tullius Cicero used the term "cingulus australis" ("southern zone") in referring to the Antipodes in "Somnium Scipionis" ("Dream of Scipio"). Due to a lack of exploration and various misunderstandings, its existence was not fully abandoned until circumnavigation of the area during the second voyage of James Cook in the 1770s showed that if it existed, it was much smaller than imagined previously. The first confirmed landing on Antarctica was only during the First Russian Antarctic Expedition in 1820, and the coastline of Queen Maud Land did not see significant exploration before Norwegian expeditions began in 1891. In 1513, Cape Horn had not yet been discovered, and indeed Ferdinand Magellan's voyage of circumnavigation was not to set sail for another six years. It is unclear whether the mapmaker saw South America itself as part of the unknown southern lands (as shown in the Miller Atlas), or whether (as Dutch thought) he drew what was then known of the coast with substantial distortion. Dutch holds that there is no reason to believe that the map is the product of genuine knowledge of the Antarctic coast. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1615421 | 397,916 |
71,189 | A significant portion of the United States' mustard agent stockpile was stored at the Edgewood Area of Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. Approximately 1,621 tons of mustard agents were stored in one-ton containers on the base under heavy guard. A chemical neutralization plant was built on the proving ground and neutralized the last of this stockpile in February 2005. This stockpile had priority because of the potential for quick reduction of risk to the community. The nearest schools were fitted with overpressurization machinery to protect the students and faculty in the event of a catastrophic explosion and fire at the site. These projects, as well as planning, equipment, and training assistance, were provided to the surrounding community as a part of the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP), a joint program of the Army and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Unexploded shells containing mustard gases and other chemical agents are still present in several test ranges in proximity to schools in the Edgewood area, but the smaller amounts of poison gas () present considerably lower risks. These remnants are being detected and excavated systematically for disposal. The U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency oversaw disposal of several other chemical weapons stockpiles located across the United States in compliance with international chemical weapons treaties. These include the complete incineration of the chemical weapons stockpiled in Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, and Oregon. Earlier, this agency had also completed destruction of the chemical weapons stockpile located on Johnston Atoll located south of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The largest mustard agent stockpile, at approximately 6,200 short tons, was stored at the Deseret Chemical Depot in northern Utah. The incineration of this stockpile began in 2006. In May 2011, the last of the mustard agents in the stockpile were incinerated at the Deseret Chemical Depot, and the last artillery shells containing mustard gas were incinerated in January 2012. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46126 | 71,162 |
1,033,379 | The Foreign Legion was created by a royal ordinance issued by King Louis Philippe, at the suggestion of Minister of War Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult, on March 9, 1831. Nine days later on March 18, 1831, an additional directive was issued restricting membership in the newly formed Legion to foreigners. The latter directive reflected the initial purpose of the Foreign Legion as a mechanism to lessen the potential disruption to the provisional French government and the newly enthroned House of Orléans posed by the large influx of foreigners following the collapse of the Bourbon Restoration in the previous year's July Revolution. Some of these foreigners in France were the remnants of regiments formed during the campaigns of Napoleon of Germans, Swedes, Poles, Hungarians, and others. These foreign veterans had been left with little means and professional military training which proved to be of concern the French government. Many had flocked to France following the July Revolution or came to France following failures of the revolutionary or independence movements throughout Europe; in addition to an influx of idealistic revolutionaries and nationalist, France also became home to large numbers of immigrants who had removed from their countries of origin for economic or personal reasons. This influx of foreigners had become a significant burden for the newly established French government's administrative capabilities; for example during March 1831 a depot established in Langres, France to accommodate these recent immigrants had been inundated to point of overstretch. Furthermore, French military operations in Algeria, which had commenced under Charles X, had proven unpopular with portions of the French populace as the campaign, despite its initial success, had become bogged down in the occupation of that country. The formation of the Foreign Legion would help address the domestic threat of dissidents fomenting political instability while contributing to government's colonial endeavors in Algeria. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8868718 | 1,032,843 |
668,160 | The American Museum of Natural History mounted the first full skeletal reconstruction of "Edaphosaurus" as ""Naosaurus claviger"" (a synonym of "Edaphosaurus pogonias") for public display in 1907 under the scientific direction of H.F. Osborn, along with W.D. Matthew. The main part of the ""Naosaurus"" skeleton was a set of dorsal vertebrae with high spines (AMNH 4015) from a partial "Edaphosaurus pogonias" specimen found by the fossil collector Charles H. Sternberg in Hog Creek, Texas in 1896. Because of the still incomplete knowledge of "Edaphosaurus" at the time, the rest of the mount was a "conjectural" composite of various real fossil bones collected in different places with other parts recreated in plaster, including a skull (AMNH 4081) based on "Dimetrodon" (per E.D. Cope, and despite Case's already expressed doubts about such a skull for ""Naosaurus"") and a hypothetical short tail (per Case). As ""Naosaurus"" was thought to be a close relative of "Dimetrodon" rather than "Edaphosaurus", slender limbs (AMNH 4057) probably belonging to "Dimetrodon dollovianus" were also mounted with this composite specimen, rather than the correct, stockier limbs now known for "Edaphosaurus". The big "Dimetrodon"-derived skull on the museum skeleton was later replaced with one modeled on "Edaphosaurus cruciger", based on more updated research. The museum eventually dismantled the entire composite restoration and by the 1950s only displayed the original set of "Edaphosaurus pogonias" sail vertebrae alone on the wall in Brontosaur Hall next to an accurate, fully mounted fossil skeleton of the smaller species "Edaphosaurus boanerges" (a nearly complete specimen (AMNH 7003) collected from Archer County, Texas, by A.S. Romer in 1939). The fossil "Edaphosaurus pogonias" sail spines (AMNH 4015) were remounted in the 1990s with a recreated skull (but without other skeletal parts) in a metal armature shaped in the outline of the entire animal as part of the new Hall of Primitive Mammals, which opened at the American Museum of Natural History in 1996 after major renovations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2607200 | 667,811 |
1,415,554 | The morphology of pygmy pipehorses suggests that they are an evolutionary link between pipefishes and seahorses, and that seahorses are upright-swimming pygmy pipehorses. Molecular dating indicates that "Hippocampus" and "Idiotropiscis" diverged from a common ancestor during the Late Oligocene. During this time, tectonic events in the Indo-West Pacific resulted in the formation of shallow-water areas, which considerably changed marine habitats in this region. Particularly important was the establishment of vast seagrass meadows where there had previously been deeper water. This has led to speculation that the earliest seahorses managed to establish themselves as a new species because, unlike pygmy pipehorses, they were selectively favoured in such habitats. Not only can seahorses manoeuver exceptionally well in dense seagrass meadows, but the upright seagrass blades would have provided camouflage for their bodies and in that way improved their ability to ambush prey and avoid detection by predators. An alternative explanation for the evolution from pygmy pipehorse to seahorse is based on the finding that a vertically bent head is more efficient in capturing prey because it increases the animal's strike distance, which is considered particularly useful in tail-attached sit-and-wait predators. In that case, the evolution of an upright posture would merely be a means of maximising the angle between head and abdominal axis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27655974 | 1,414,757 |
652,713 | Radium (Ra, atomic number 88), is an almost pure-white alkaline earth metal, but it readily oxidizes, reacting with nitrogen (rather than oxygen) on exposure to air, becoming black in color. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive; the most stable isotope is radium-226, which has a half-life of 1601 years and decays into radon gas. Because of such instability, radium is luminescent, glowing a faint blue. Radium, in the form of radium chloride, was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898. They extracted the radium compound from uraninite and published the discovery at the French Academy of Sciences five days later. Radium was isolated in its metallic state by Marie Curie and André-Louis Debierne through the electrolysis of radium chloride in 1910. Since its discovery, it has given names such as radium A and radium C to several isotopes of other elements that are decay products of radium-226. In nature, radium is found in uranium ores in trace amounts as small as a seventh of a gram per ton of uraninite. Radium is not necessary for living organisms, and adverse health effects are likely when it is incorporated into biochemical processes because of its radioactivity and chemical reactivity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=199081 | 652,371 |
189,837 | The next attempt at reform came from Cleomenes III, the son of King Leonidas. In 229 BC, Cleomenes led an attack on Megalopolis, hence provoking war with Achaea. Aratus, who led the Achaean League forces, adopted a very cautious strategy, despite having 20,000 to Cleomenes 5000 men. Cleomenes was faced with obstruction from the Ephors which probably reflected a general lack of enthusiasm amongst the citizens of Sparta. Nonetheless he succeeded in defeating Aratus. With this success behind him he left the citizen troops in the field and with the mercenaries, marched on Sparta to stage a coup d'état. The ephorate was abolished – indeed four out of five of them had been killed during Cleomenes' seizure of power. Land was redistributed enabling a widening of the citizen body. Debts were cancelled. Cleomenes gave to Sphaerus, his stoic advisor, the task of restoring the old severe training and simple life. Historian Peter Green comments that giving such a responsibility to a non-Spartan was a telling indication of the extent that Sparta had lost her Lycurgian traditions. These reforms excited hostility amongst the wealthy of the Peloponnese who feared social revolution. For others, especially among the poor, Cleomenes inspired hope. This hope was quickly dashed when Cleomenes started taking cities and it became obvious that social reform outside Sparta was the last thing on his mind. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19375990 | 189,740 |
553,191 | Industrial radiography appears to have one of the worst safety profiles of the radiation professions, possibly because there are many operators using strong gamma sources (> 2 Ci) in remote sites with little supervision when compared with workers within the nuclear industry or within hospitals. Due to the levels of radiation present whilst they are working many radiographers are also required to work late at night when there are few other people present as most industrial radiography is carried out 'in the open' rather than in purpose built exposure booths or rooms. Fatigue, carelessness and lack of proper training are the three most common factors attributed to industrial radiography accidents. Many of the "lost source" accidents commented on by the International Atomic Energy Agency involve radiography equipment. Lost source accidents have the potential to cause a considerable loss of human life. One scenario is that a passerby finds the radiography source and not knowing what it is, takes it home. The person shortly afterwards becomes ill and dies as a result of the radiation dose. The source remains in their home where it continues to irradiate other members of the household. Such an event occurred in March 1984 in Casablanca, Morocco. This is related to the more famous Goiânia accident, where a related chain of events caused members of the public to be exposed to radiation sources. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6856520 | 552,902 |
1,235,334 | BBN is best known for its DARPA-sponsored research. It has made notable advances in a wide variety of fields, including acoustics, computer technologies, quantum information, and synthetic biology. In recent years, BBN has led a wide range of research and development projects, including the standardization effort for the security extension to the Border Gateway Protocol (BGPsec), mobile ad hoc networks, advanced speech recognition, the military's Boomerang mobile shooter detection system, cognitive radio spectrum use via the DARPA XG program. In the early 2000s, BBN created the world's first quantum key distribution network, the DARPA Quantum Network, which operated for 3 years across Cambridge and Boston, and which included the world's first fully operational prototype of a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector. BBN also led the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) project for the National Science Foundation, which ultimately built out programmable "future Internet" infrastructure across approximately 60 university campuses. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=252539 | 1,234,671 |
2,237,202 | The photon beam focusing to a spot size down to nanometric scale has been routinely achieved in a few well-known X-ray-based methods, such as scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM) and scanning photoemission microscopy (SPEM). However, these techniques are much less demanding because they typically use incident photon energies higher than 150 eV and require non-angle resolved measurements, only recording integrated signals proportional to the X-Ray absorption coefficient and core-level photoelectrons, respectively. In both cases, the Fresnel Zone Plates (FZPs) performance is the essential component determining the lateral resolution, varying from micro- to nanometric lateral resolution. Nowadays, several companies in the market provide FZPs with a resolution better than 30 nm, which has facilitated the construction and operation of several x-Ray based microscopes such as STXM and SPEM instruments in different synchrotron radiation facilities like Elettra, ALS, CLS, and MAX-lab, among others. Nano-ARPES technique, however, requires much lower incident photon energy, typically from 6 eV to 100 eV) to detect those photoelectrons emitted by the electronic states below and close to the Fermi level, which cross-section increases as the incident photon energy decreases. An alternative k-space imaging approach is based on energy-filtered photoemission microscopes (PEEMs), The lateral resolution is achieved using an electron optical column instead of focalizing the incident photon beam. This full-field k-space version of PEEM is available commercially. However, for this commercially available full-field PEEM version with k-space imaging, achieving high energy and momentum resolution is challenging. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=72420474 | 2,235,931 |
779,978 | "Spirit"'s dead wheel turned out to have a silver lining. As it was traveling in March 2007, pulling the dead wheel behind, the wheel scraped off the upper layer of the Martian soil, uncovering a patch of ground that scientists say shows evidence of a past environment that would have been perfect for microbial life. It is similar to areas on Earth where water or steam from hot springs came into contact with volcanic rocks. On Earth, these are locations that tend to teem with bacteria, said rover chief scientist Steve Squyres. "We're really excited about this," he told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The area is extremely rich in silica–the main ingredient of window glass. The researchers have now concluded that the bright material must have been produced in one of two ways. One: hot-spring deposits produced when water dissolved silica at one location and then carried it to another (i.e. a geyser). Two: acidic steam rising through cracks in rocks stripped them of their mineral components, leaving silica behind. "The important thing is that whether it is one hypothesis or the other, the implications for the former habitability of Mars are pretty much the same," Squyres explained to BBC News. Hot water provides an environment in which microbes can thrive and the precipitation of that silica entombs and preserves them. Squyres added, "You can go to hot springs and you can go to fumaroles and at either place on Earth it is teeming with life – microbial life." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=421049 | 779,561 |
1,923,516 | Extending beyond nutritional symbioses, microbial symbionts can alter the reproduction, development, and growth of their hosts. Specific bacterial strains in marine biofilms often directly control the recruitment of planktonic larvae and propagules, either by inhibiting settlement or by serving as a settlement cue. For example, the settlement of zoospores from the green alga Ulva intestinalis onto the biofilms of specific bacteria is mediated by their attraction to the quorum-sensing molecule, acyl-homoserine lactone, secreted by the bacteria. Classic examples of marine host–microbe developmental dependence include the observation that algal cultures grown in isolation exhibited abnormal morphologies and the subsequent discovery of morphogenesis-inducing compounds, such as thallusin, secreted by epiphytic bacterial symbionts. Bacteria are also known to influence the growth of marine plants, macroalgae, and phytoplankton by secreting phytohormones such as indole acetic acid and cytokinin-type hormones. In the marine choanoflagellate Salpingoeca rosetta, both multicellularity and reproduction are triggered by specific bacterial cues, offering a view into the origins of bacterial control over animal development (reviewed by Woznica and King. The benefit to the bacteria, in return, is that they receive physical space to colonize at particular points in the water column typically accessible only to planktonic microbes. Perhaps the best-studied example of intimate host–microbe interactions controlling animal development is the Hawaiian bobtail squid Euprymna scolopes. It lives in a mutualistic symbiosis with the bioluminescent bacteria Aliivibrio fischeri. The bacteria are fed a solution of sugars and amino acids by the host and, in return, provide bioluminescence for countershading and predator avoidance. This mutualism with microbes provides a selective advantage for the squid in predator–prey interactions. Another invertebrate example can be found in tubeworms, in which Hydroides elegans metamorphosis is mediated by a bacterial inducer and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling in biofilms. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=62893752 | 1,922,413 |
411,720 | Despite the apparent extinction of Etruscan, it appears that Etruscan religious rites continued much later, continuing to use the Etruscan names of deities and possibly with some liturgical usage of the language. In late Republican and early Augustan times, various Latin sources including Cicero noted the esteemed reputation of Etruscan soothsayers. An episode where lightning struck an inscription with the name Caesar, turning it into Aesar, was interpreted to have been a premonition of the deification of Caesar because of the resemblance to Etruscan , meaning 'gods', although this indicates knowledge of a single word and not the language. Centuries later and long after Etruscan is thought to have died out, Ammianus Marcellinus reports that Julian the Apostate, the last pagan Emperor, apparently had Etruscan soothsayers accompany him on his military campaigns with books on war, lightning and celestial events, but the language of these books is unknown. According to Zosimus, when Rome was faced with destruction by Alaric in 408 AD, the protection of nearby Etruscan towns was attributed to Etruscan pagan priests who claimed to have summoned a raging thunderstorm, and they offered their services "in the ancestral manner" to Rome as well, but the devout Christians of Rome refused the offer, preferring death to help by pagans. Freeman notes that these events may indicate that a limited theological knowledge of Etruscan may have survived among the priestly caste much longer. One 19th-century writer argued in 1892 that Etruscan deities retained an influence on early modern Tuscan folklore. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9455 | 411,518 |
93,884 | However, it was soon realized that submarines could approach enemy coastlines undetected and decrease the warning time (the time between detection of the missile launch and the impact of the missile) from as much as half an hour to possibly under three minutes. This effect was especially significant to the United States, Britain and China, whose capitals of Washington D.C., London, and Beijing all lay within 100 miles (160 km) of their coasts. Moscow was much more secure from this type of threat, due to its considerable distance from the sea. This greatly increased the credibility of a "surprise first strike" by one faction and (theoretically) made it possible to knock out or disrupt the chain of command of a target nation before any counterstrike could be ordered (known as a "decapitation strike"). It strengthened the notion that a nuclear war could possibly be "won", resulting not only in greatly increased tensions and increasing calls for fail-deadly control systems, but also in a dramatic increase in military spending. The submarines and their missile systems were very expensive, and one fully equipped nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed missile submarine could cost more than the entire GNP of a developing country. It was also calculated, however, that the greatest cost came in the development of "both" sea- and land-based anti-submarine defenses and in improving and strengthening the "chain of command", and as a result, military spending skyrocketed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36880 | 93,843 |
828,071 | At that time, the CMB appeared to be perfectly uniform excluding the distortion caused by the Doppler effect as mentioned above. This result contradicted observations of the universe, with various structures such as galaxies and galaxy clusters indicating that the universe was relatively heterogeneous on a small scale. However, these structures formed slowly. Thus, if the universe is heterogeneous today, it would have been heterogeneous at the time of the emission of the CMB as well, and observable today through weak variations in the temperature of the CMB. It was the detection of these anisotropies that Smoot was working on in the late 1970s. He then proposed to NASA a project involving a satellite equipped with a detector that was similar to the one mounted on the U-2 but was more sensitive and not influenced by air pollution. The proposal was accepted and incorporated as one of the instruments of the satellite COBE, which cost $160 million. COBE was launched on November 18, 1989, after a delay owing to the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger. After more than two years of observation and analysis, the COBE research team announced on 23 April 1992 that the satellite had detected tiny fluctuations in the CMB, a breakthrough in the study of the early universe. The observations were "evidence for the birth of the universe" and led Smoot to say regarding the importance of his discovery that "if you're religious, it's like looking at God." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7267936 | 827,627 |
1,989,084 | The techniques of passive solar building design were practiced for thousands of years, by necessity, before the advent of mechanical heating and cooling. It has remained a traditional part of vernacular architecture in many countries. There is evidence that ancient cultures considered factors such as solar orientation, thermal mass and ventilation in the construction of residential dwellings. Fully developed solar architecture and urban planning methods were first employed by the Greeks and Chinese who oriented their buildings toward the south to provide light and warmth. Nearly two and a half millennia ago, the ancient Greek philosopher Aeschylus wrote: "Only primitives & barbarians lack knowledge of houses turned to face the Winter sun." Similarly, Socrates said: "Now, supposing a house to have a southern aspect, sunshine during winter will steal in under the verandah, but in summer, when the sun traverses a path right over our heads, the roof will afford an agreeable shade, will it not?" Roman bathhouses had large south facing windows. Solar design was largely abandoned in Europe after the Fall of Rome but continued unabated in China where cosmological traditions associate the south with summer, warmth and health. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15163138 | 1,987,942 |
323,554 | The APY-9 radar has been suspected of being capable of detecting fighter-sized stealth aircraft, which are typically optimized against high frequencies like Ka, Ku, X, C and parts of the S-bands. Small aircraft lack the size or weight allowances for all-spectrum low-observable features, leaving a vulnerability to detection by the UHF-band APY-9 radar, potentially detecting fifth-generation fighters like the Russian Sukhoi Su-57 and the Chinese Chengdu J-20 and Shenyang J-31. Historically, UHF radars had resolution and detection issues that made them ineffective for accurate targeting and fire control; Northrop Grumman and Lockheed claim that the APY-9 has solved these shortcomings in the APY-9 using advanced electronic scanning and high digital computing power via space/time adaptive processing. According to the Navy's NIFC-CA concept, the E-2D could guide fleet weapons, such as AIM-120 AMRAAM and SM-6 missiles, onto targets beyond a launch platform's detection range or capabilities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=56075 | 323,382 |
1,810,449 | The Faculty of Arts can trace its history back to 1906, when the Calgary Normal School was established as a vocational school for teaching. Initially housed in Central School (later as James Short School), the School later moved in 1908 to the McDougall School to accommodate the growing student body. The School over time, began to offer introductory courses from the arts, sciences, engineering, and commerce. During this early history, the School moved several times: as an occupant of the west wing of the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art (then referred simply as "Tech"), to King Edward School in 1940, and back to the west wing of the Tech campus in 1945. By 1945, the School was replaced with university level courses, operating as an extension of the University of Alberta Faculty of Education. During this time, Calgary had become the largest Canadian city without a home-grown University. Calgarians were determined to change that fact and formed the "University Committee" as a vehicle to accelerate the effort to transform the Calgary branch into a full-fledged University. In 1948, the Committee published its first official proposal addressing the need for a "University of Southern Alberta," to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce. The name was later rejected due to its acronym, USA, as to prevent confusion with the United States of America. In 1951, the Calgary branch started to offer first-year Bachelor of Arts and Sciences programmes under the newly established Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In the same year, the Arts and Science Society (ASS) was created to address student "grievances" for the newly established Faculty. This organisation would later become the Faculty of Arts Student's Association (FASA). In 1960 the Calgary branch, known then as the University of Alberta in Calgary (UAC), had moved from the west wing of the Tech campus, to its current location near University Heights. The founding buildings of the new campus were the Arts and Education (present-day Administration) and the Science and Engineering (present-day Science A) buildings, providing instructional courses for the "soft and hard sciences" respectively. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=51387853 | 1,809,426 |
1,689,903 | In 1933, U.S. President Roosevelt asked Compton to chair a new Scientific Advisory Board that lasted two years. This put him into a forefront of scientists that perceived a need for reliable scientific advice at the highest levels of government. The start of World War II motivated the start of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), created in 1940 under the chairmanship of Vannevar Bush. Compton was a member of the NDRC and became head of Division D which was responsible for assembling a group of academic and industrial engineers and scientists that would study primarily radar, fire control and thermal radiation. In 1941, the NDRC was assimilated into the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) where Compton chaired the United States Radar Mission to the United Kingdom. In August 1942, Roosevelt appointed Compton to the Rubber Survey Committee, which investigated and made recommendations to help resolve conflicts on technical direction in the development of synthetic rubber, arising due to the loss of rubber supply during the war. In 1945, Compton was selected as one of eight members of the Interim Committee appointed to advise President Harry S. Truman on the use of the atomic bomb. When Japan surrendered in 1945, World War II came to an end and Compton left the OSRD. In 1946, Compton chaired the President's Advisory Commission on Military Training. From 1946 to 1948, he was a member of the Naval Research Advisory Committee. Compton chaired the Joint Research and Development Board from 1948 to 1949, when he stepped down for health reasons. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2795717 | 1,688,957 |
883,517 | In 1991, the United States Congress passed the ISTEA Transportation Authorization bill, which instructed USDOT to "demonstrate an automated vehicle and highway system by 1997." The Federal Highway Administration took on this task, first with a series of Precursor Systems Analyses and then by establishing the National Automated Highway System Consortium (NAHSC). This cost-shared project was led by FHWA and General Motors, with Caltrans, Delco, Parsons Brinkerhoff, Bechtel, UC-Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, and Lockheed Martin as additional partners. Extensive systems engineering work and research culminated in Demo '97 on I-15 in San Diego, California, in which about 20 automated vehicles, including cars, buses, and trucks, were demonstrated to thousands of onlookers, attracting extensive media coverage. The demonstrations involved close-headway platooning intended to operate in segregated traffic, as well as "free agent" vehicles intended to operate in mixed traffic. Other carmakers were invited to demonstrate their systems, such that Toyota and Honda also participated. While the subsequent aim was to produce a system design to aid commercialization, the program was cancelled in the late 1990s due to tightening research budgets at USDOT. Overall funding for the program was in the range of $90 million. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=44787757 | 883,053 |
949,008 | Advances in quantitative proteomics would clearly enable more in-depth analysis of cellular systems. Another research frontier is the analysis of single cells, and protein covariation across single cells which reflects biological processes such as protein complex formation, immune functions, as well as cell cycle and priming of cancer cells for drug resistance Biological systems are subject to a variety of perturbations (cell cycle, cellular differentiation, carcinogenesis, environment (biophysical), etc.). Transcriptional and translational responses to these perturbations results in functional changes to the proteome implicated in response to the stimulus. Therefore, describing and quantifying proteome-wide changes in protein abundance is crucial towards understanding biological phenomenon more holistically, on the level of the entire system. In this way, proteomics can be seen as complementary to genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, metabolomics, and other -omics approaches in integrative analyses attempting to define biological phenotypes more comprehensively. As an example, "The Cancer Proteome Atlas" provides quantitative protein expression data for ~200 proteins in over 4,000 tumor samples with matched transcriptomic and genomic data from The Cancer Genome Atlas. Similar datasets in other cell types, tissue types, and species, particularly using deep shotgun mass spectrometry, will be an immensely important resource for research in fields like cancer biology, developmental and stem cell biology, medicine, and evolutionary biology. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=55172 | 948,504 |
38,782 | The heavy isotope N was first discovered by S. M. Naudé in 1929, and soon after heavy isotopes of the neighbouring elements oxygen and carbon were discovered. It presents one of the lowest thermal neutron capture cross-sections of all isotopes. It is frequently used in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to determine the structures of nitrogen-containing molecules, due to its fractional nuclear spin of one-half, which offers advantages for NMR such as narrower line width. N, though also theoretically usable, has an integer nuclear spin of one and thus has a quadrupole moment that leads to wider and less useful spectra. N NMR nevertheless has complications not encountered in the more common H and C NMR spectroscopy. The low natural abundance of N (0.36%) significantly reduces sensitivity, a problem which is only exacerbated by its low gyromagnetic ratio, (only 10.14% that of H). As a result, the signal-to-noise ratio for H is about 300 times as much as that for N at the same magnetic field strength. This may be somewhat alleviated by isotopic enrichment of N by chemical exchange or fractional distillation. N-enriched compounds have the advantage that under standard conditions, they do not undergo chemical exchange of their nitrogen atoms with atmospheric nitrogen, unlike compounds with labelled hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen isotopes that must be kept away from the atmosphere. The N:N ratio is commonly used in stable isotope analysis in the fields of geochemistry, hydrology, paleoclimatology and paleoceanography, where it is called "δ"N. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21175 | 38,768 |
1,040,181 | In the group of juveniles found together at Bayan Mandahu, the individuals were all oriented into the same direction, suggesting they represent a travelling true herd simultaneously killed and covered by a sandstorm. It is remarkable that the members of such groups are all of about the same age, having an average length of circa 1.5 metres. This could be explained by the larger individuals being able to extract themselves from the sand, leaving the small members of the herd behind but in that case it is strange that no very young animals were found, the smallest being about one metre in length. The concentration of fossils at Alag Teeg has been explained as caused by a drying pool, but later research showed the sediments were deposited during a flood. During their ontogenetic development, in juveniles at first the ribs fused with their vertebrae. The forelimbs strongly increased in robustness, while the hindlimbs did not become larger relative to the rest of the skeleton, indicating that the arms bore most of the weight. In the cervical halfrings, the underlying bone band developed outgrowths connecting it with the underlying osteoderms, which simultaneously fused to each other. On the skull, the "caputegulae" first ossified at the snout and the rear rim; gradually the ossification extended towards the middle regions. On the rest of the body, the ossification process progressed from the neck onwards in the direction of the tail. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3552833 | 1,039,640 |
162,158 | The Spring of 1926 saw the British government refuse to extend again the subsidy that had bought short-term peace for the coal industry. In April 1926 the owners locked out the miners when they rejected the coal mine owners' demands for longer hours and reduced pay. The backdrop to the dispute was a fall in the price of coal, an important element of the general deflationary tendency after the end of the First World War which was exacerbated by the adoption of fuel oil in place of coal. The general strike was led by the Trades Union Congress in support of the coal miners, but it failed. It was a nine-day nationwide walkout of one million railwaymen, transport workers, printers, dockers, ironworkers and steelworkers supporting the 1.5 million coal miners who had been locked out. The government had continued existing subsidies for an additional nine-months subsidy in 1925 seeking to achieve short-term peace in the coal industry. The TUC hope was the government would intervene to reorganise and rationalise the industry, and raise the subsidy. The Conservative government had stockpiled supplies and essential services continued with middle class volunteers. All three major parties opposed the strike. The general strike itself was largely non-violent, but the miners' lockout continued and there was violence in Scotland. It was the only general strike in British history and TUC leaders such as Ernest Bevin considered it a mistake. Most historians treat it as a singular event with few long-term consequences, but Martin Pugh says it accelerated the movement of working-class voters to the Labour Party, which led to future gains. The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 made general strikes illegal and ended the automatic payment of union members to the Labour Party. That act was largely repealed in 1946. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33643110 | 162,073 |
496,706 | The complexity of equations and the corresponding computer codes, as well as the cost of the computation, increases sharply with the highest level of excitation. For many applications CCSD, while relatively inexpensive, does not provide sufficient accuracy except for the smallest systems (approximately 2 to 4 electrons), and often an approximate treatment of triples is needed. The most well known coupled-cluster method that provides an estimate of connected triples is CCSD(T), which provides a good description of closed-shell molecules near the equilibrium geometry, but breaks down in more complicated situations such as bond breaking and diradicals. Another popular method that makes up for the failings of the standard CCSD(T) approach is -CC(2,3), where the triples contribution to the energy is computed from the difference between the exact solution and the CCSD energy and is not based on perturbation-theory arguments. More complicated coupled-cluster methods such as CCSDT and CCSDTQ are used only for high-accuracy calculations of small molecules. The inclusion of all "n" levels of excitation for the "n"-electron system gives the exact solution of the [[Schrödinger equation]] within the given [[basis set (chemistry)|basis set]], within the [[Born–Oppenheimer]] approximation (although schemes have also been drawn up to work without the BO approximation). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=429789 | 496,450 |
2,115,279 | The holotype of "Ruthenosaurus" was discovered in the summer 1970 by the paleontologists Denise Sigogneau-Russell and Donald Eugene Russell, during a prospecting survey carried out in Permian red sandstones outcropping in badlands on the western flank of the Cayla Hill near the commune of Valady, northwest of Rodez. An eroded vertebra picked up on the western slope of the hill led the scientists to explore the surrounding canyons, where they discovered a large articulated skeleton still in place in the sediments but damaged by erosion. The skull, neck, most of the limbs, and the tail were missing, probably destroyed by erosion. The known material includes ribs and vertebrae of 18 presacrals, three sacrals, and 12 anterior caudals; incomplete scapulocoracoids and interclavicule; right humerus badly crushed and damaged; left humerus in two pieces, shaft damaged, but proximal and distal heads well preserved; complete left ulna and nearly complete radius; complete right femur, complete right tibia, and proximal portion of right fibula; and the complete right pelvis overlain by vertebral column. On the southeastern flank of the same hill, but in older strata, the same team discovered the anterior part of a skeleton (including the skull) belonging to a smaller animal. This specimen was first assigned to a new species of the genus "Casea", "Casea rutena". But it is now regarded as a distinct genus named "Euromycter", with the new combination "Euromycter rutenus". The larger skeleton, found stratigraphycally 120 meters above the "Euromycter" level, remained largely unprepared until 2003. The few overlapping elements with "Euromycter" suggested that it belongs to a different taxon named "Ruthenosaurus russellorum" in 2011. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=32263206 | 2,114,064 |
462,612 | Additionally, to rationalize sensory dominance, Gori et al. (2008) advocates that the brain utilises the most direct source of information during sensory immaturity. In this case, orientation is primarily a visual characteristic. It can be derived directly from the object image that forms on the retina, irrespective of other visual factors. In fact, data shows that a functional property of neurons within primate visual cortices' are their discernment to orientation. In contrast, haptic orientation judgements are recovered through collaborated patterned stimulations, evidently an indirect source susceptible to interference. Likewise, when size is concerned haptic information coming from positions of the fingers is more immediate. Visual-size perceptions, alternatively, have to be computed using parameters such as slant and distance. Considering this, sensory dominance is a useful instinct to assist with calibration. During sensory immaturity, the more simple and robust information source could be used to tweak the accuracy of the alternate source. Follow-up work by Gori et al. (2012) showed that, at all ages, vision-size perceptions are near perfect when viewing objects within the haptic workspace (i.e. at arm's reach). However, systematic errors in perception appeared when the object was positioned beyond this zone. Children younger than 14 years tend to underestimate object size, whereas adults overestimated. However, if the object was returned to the haptic workspace, those visual biases disappeared. These results support the hypothesis that haptic information may educate visual perceptions. If sources are used for cross-calibration they cannot, therefore, be combined (integrated). Maintaining access to individual estimates is a trade-off for extra plasticity over accuracy, which could be beneficial in retrospect to the developing body. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1619306 | 462,383 |
733,858 | A survey of 67 studies reporting nonpaternity suggests that for men with high paternity confidence rates of nonpaternity are (excluding studies of unknown methodology) typically 1.9%, substantially less than the typical rates of 10% or higher cited by many researchers. Cuckolded fathers are rare in human populations. "Media and popular scientific literature often claim that many alleged fathers are being cuckolded into raising children that biologically are not their own," said Maarten Larmuseau of KU Leuven in Belgium. "Surprisingly, the estimated rates within human populations are quite low--around 1 or 2 percent." "Reliable data on contemporary populations that have become available over the last decade, mainly as supplementary results of medical studies, don't support the notion that one in 10 people don't know who their "real" fathers are. The findings suggest that any potential advantage of cheating in order to have children that are perhaps better endowed is offset for the majority of women by the potential costs, the researchers say. Those costs likely include spousal aggression, divorce, or reduced paternal investment by the social partner or his relatives. The observed low cuckoldry rates in contemporary and past human populations challenge clearly the well-known idea that women routinely 'shop around' for good genes by engaging in extra-pair copulations to obtain genetic benefits for their children," Larmuseau said. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50412926 | 733,471 |
832,397 | The first superscalar single-chip processors (Intel i960CA in 1989) used a simple scoreboarding scheduling like the CDC 6600 had quarter of a century earlier, but in 1992-1996 a rapid advancement of techniques, enabled by increasing transistor counts, saw proliferation down to personal computers. Motorola 88110 (1992) used a history buffer to revert instructions. Loads could be executed ahead of preceding stores. While stores and branches were waiting to start execution, subsequent instructions of other types could keep flowing through all the pipeline stages, including writeback. The 12-entry capacity of the history buffer placed a limit on the reorder distance. PowerPC 601 (1993) was an evolution of the RISC Single Chip, itself a simplification of POWER1. The 601 permitted branch and floating-point instructions to overtake the integer instructions already in the fetched-instruction-queue, the lowest four entries of which were scanned for dispatchability. In the case of a cache miss, loads and stores could be reordered. Only the link and count register could be renamed. In the fall of 1994 NexGen and IBM with Motorola brought the renaming of general-purpose registers to single-chip CPUs. NexGen's Nx586 was the first x86 processor capable of out-of-order execution, accomplished with micro-OPs. The re-ordering distance is up to 14 micro-OPs. PowerPC 603 renamed both the general-purpose and FP registers. Each of the four non-branch execution units can have one instruction wait in front of it without blocking the instruction flow to the other units. A five-entry re-order buffer lets no more than four instructions to overtake an unexecuted instruction. Due to a store buffer, a load can access cache ahead of a preceding store. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1002307 | 831,948 |
1,442,737 | Radio-frequency welding equipment, generally consists of: RF power generator, control unit, press, enclosure, electrodes, and sometimes a handling mechanism. The RF power generator converts line power to high-frequency, high-voltage power for welding. Typical voltages are 1kVAC - 1.5kVAC at a frequency of 27.12 MHz. The power needed for welding is based on the area of the weld, thickness, and the material. The control unit is the system used for operating the machine. The control unit is responsible for processing the information on the desired welding inputs such as force, power, and heating time, and instructing the other components of the machine to satisfy these process parameters. Some controllers are capable of monitoring outputs and adjusting parameters to ensure satisfactory welding. The press (or actuator) supplies the clamping force pneumatically or hydraulically. The electrodes are a pair of conductive structures that transmit the electric field through the members being joined. The electrodes contact the parts and apply the hold pressure prior to and during welding, and through solidification. Generally, the upper electrode projects from the upper fixture surface, while the lower electrode is a flat conductive surface. In some cases, the bottom electrode can project above the bottom fixture, to conform to geometry or to better localize melting through the reduction of stray electric field. Both electrodes can be fabricated with features to alter the finish of the welded surface. They are usually made of either brass, copper, or bronze. An RF enclosure or a cage that goes around the electrodes and open areas is used to protect the operator from injury including radio frequency radiation. Automated machines can be semi-automatic (requiring the operator to manipulate the parts) or fully automatic (where the machine is responsible for loading, transporting, and manipulating parts). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=57218852 | 1,441,924 |
470,102 | In 2000, several coaches who had led their teams to Nationals during the 1990s resigned in protest over Academic Decathlon's decision to sell nearly $1,000 of study materials rather than simply providing topics for students to independently research. Teams felt obligated to buy the guides because USAD based the official tests on them. Teams also denounced the hundreds of errors they found in the official guides; coaches were sometimes forced to instruct their students to deliberately give the wrong answer in the official competition. Richard Golenko, coach of the 1996 J. Frank Dobie High School team that won the national competition, said that the decision to market guides shifted Academic Decathlon's emphasis to memorization over critical thinking. Coach Jim Hatem of Los Angeles and Coach Mark Johnson of El Camino's 1998 winning team fumed over esoteric "trick" questions that USAD had begun asking. James Alvino, USAD's executive director at that time, argued that the expensive study materials were necessary to continue funding nearly 75% of the program's $1,750,000 operating budget and to provide a fairer playing field for less wealthy schools, but did acknowledge that USAD would attempt to reduce prices, remove the more trivial questions, and base smaller portions of the tests on the official "Resource Guide". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=562034 | 469,866 |
599,864 | The critical first step in homology modeling is the identification of the best template structure, if indeed any are available. The simplest method of template identification relies on serial pairwise sequence alignments aided by database search techniques such as FASTA and BLAST. More sensitive methods based on multiple sequence alignment – of which PSI-BLAST is the most common example – iteratively update their position-specific scoring matrix to successively identify more distantly related homologs. This family of methods has been shown to produce a larger number of potential templates and to identify better templates for sequences that have only distant relationships to any solved structure. Protein threading, also known as fold recognition or 3D-1D alignment, can also be used as a search technique for identifying templates to be used in traditional homology modeling methods. Recent CASP experiments indicate that some protein threading methods such as RaptorX indeed are more sensitive than purely sequence(profile)-based methods when only distantly-related templates are available for the proteins under prediction. When performing a BLAST search, a reliable first approach is to identify hits with a sufficiently low "E"-value, which are considered sufficiently close in evolution to make a reliable homology model. Other factors may tip the balance in marginal cases; for example, the template may have a function similar to that of the query sequence, or it may belong to a homologous operon. However, a template with a poor "E"-value should generally not be chosen, even if it is the only one available, since it may well have a wrong structure, leading to the production of a misguided model. A better approach is to submit the primary sequence to fold-recognition servers or, better still, consensus meta-servers which improve upon individual fold-recognition servers by identifying similarities (consensus) among independent predictions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7026278 | 599,558 |
343,320 | Talbot's early silver chloride "sensitive paper" experiments required camera exposures of an hour or more. In 1841, Talbot invented the calotype process, which, like Daguerre's process, used the principle of chemical development of a faint or invisible "latent" image to reduce the exposure time to a few minutes. Paper with a coating of silver iodide was exposed in the camera and developed into a translucent negative image. Unlike a daguerreotype, which could only be copied by photographing it with a camera, a calotype negative could be used to make a large number of positive prints by simple contact printing. The calotype had yet another distinction compared to other early photographic processes, in that the finished product lacked fine clarity due to its translucent paper negative. This was seen as a positive attribute for portraits because it softened the appearance of the human face. Talbot patented this process, which greatly limited its adoption, and spent many years pressing lawsuits against alleged infringers. He attempted to enforce a very broad interpretation of his patent, earning himself the ill will of photographers who were using the related glass-based processes later introduced by other inventors, but he was eventually defeated. Nonetheless, Talbot's developed-out silver halide negative process is the basic technology used by chemical film cameras today. Hippolyte Bayard had also developed a method of photography but delayed announcing it, and so was not recognized as its inventor. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2435889 | 343,139 |
582,434 | Birbal Sahni was born in Bhera, Shahpur District, in today's Pakistani Punjab, on 14 November 1891. He was the third child of Ishwar Devi and the pioneer Indian meteorologist and scientist Lala Ruchi Ram Sahni who lived in Lahore. The family came from Dera Ismail Khan and they frequently made visits to Bhera which was close to the Salt Range and Khewra's geology may have interested Birbal at a young age. Birbal was also influenced into science by his grandfather who owned a banking business at Dera Ismail Khan and conducted amateur research in chemistry. Ruchi Ram was a professor of chemistry at Lahore and was also a social activist with an interest in the emancipation of women. Ruchi Ram had studied at Manchester and worked with Ernest Rutherford and Niels Bohr. Every summer, Ruchi Ram would take his sons on long treks in the Himalayas, visiting Pathankot, Rohtang, Narkanda, Chini Pass, Amarnath, Machoi Glacier and Jozila Pass between 1907 and 1911. Ruchi Ram was involved in the non-co-operation movement since the Jallianwala Bagh massacre as well as the Brahmo Samaj movement. The proximity of their house to Bradlaugh Hall made their home a centre of political activity and house guests included Motilal Nehru, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Sarojini Naidu, and Madan Mohan Malaviya. Birbal Sahni received his early education in India at the Mission and Central Model School Lahore, Government College University, Lahore (where his father worked, receiving a B.Sc. in 1911) and Punjab University. The family library included books in science, literary classics and he learnt botany under Shiv Ram Kashyap (1882-1934), the "father of Indian bryology" and travelled with Kashyap to Chamba, Leh, Baltal, Uri, Poonch and Gulmarg between 1920 and 1923. He followed his brothers to England and graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1914. He later studied under Albert Seward, and was awarded the D.Sc. degree of the University of London in 1919. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1844265 | 582,136 |
1,107,256 | One of the most common feature extraction methods is based on correlating measured system response quantities, such a vibration amplitude or frequency, with the first-hand observations of the degrading system. Another method of developing features for damage identification is to apply engineered flaws, similar to ones expected in actual operating conditions, to systems and develop an initial understanding of the parameters that are sensitive to the expected damage. The flawed system can also be used to validate that the diagnostic measurements are sensitive enough to distinguish between features identified from the undamaged and damaged system. The use of analytical tools such as experimentally-validated finite element models can be a great asset in this process. In many cases the analytical tools are used to perform numerical experiments where the flaws are introduced through computer simulation. Damage accumulation testing, during which significant structural components of the system under study are degraded by subjecting them to realistic loading conditions, can also be used to identify appropriate features. This process may involve induced-damage testing, fatigue testing, corrosion growth, or temperature cycling to accumulate certain types of damage in an accelerated fashion. Insight into the appropriate features can be gained from several types of analytical and experimental studies as described above and is usually the result of information obtained from some combination of these studies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3069503 | 1,106,692 |
1,739,335 | Hypercycle theory proposed that hypercycles are not the final state of organization, and further development of more complicated systems is possible by enveloping the hypercycle in some kind of membrane. After evolution of compartments, a genome integration of the hypercycle can proceed by linking its members into a single chain, which forms a precursor of a genome. After that, the whole individualized and compartmentalized hypercycle can behave like a simple self-replicating entity. Compartmentalization provides some advantages for a system that has already established a linkage between units. Without compartments, genome integration would boost competition by limiting space and resources. Moreover, adaptive evolution requires the package of transmissible information for advantageous mutations in order not to aid less-efficient copies of the gene. The first advantage is that it maintains a high local concentration of molecules, which helps to locally increase the rate of synthesis. Secondly, it keeps the effect of mutations local, while at the same time affecting the whole compartment. This favours preservation of beneficial mutations, because it prevents them from spreading away. At the same time, harmful mutations cannot pollute the entire system if they are enclosed by the membrane. Instead, only the contaminated compartment is destroyed, without affecting other compartments. In that way, compartmentalization allows for selection for genotypic mutations. Thirdly, membranes protect against environmental factors because they constitute a barrier for high-weight molecules or UV irradiation. Finally, the membrane surface can work as a catalyst. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29491519 | 1,738,358 |
1,383,417 | The black glazed type is most closely associated with the Brighton's early architecture: such tiles had the extra advantage of reflecting light in a visually attractive way. Black mathematical tiles started to appear in the 1760s, soon after the town began to grow in earnest as its reputation as a health resort became known. When Patcham Place, a mid 16th-century house in nearby Patcham (now part of the city of Brighton and Hove), was rebuilt in 1764, it was clad entirely in the tiles. Royal Crescent, Brighton's first unified architectural set piece and first residential development built to face the sea, was faced in the same material when it was built between 1799 and 1807. When Pool Valley—the site where a winterbourne drained into the English Channel—was built over in the 1790s, one of the first buildings erected there was a mathematical tiled two-storey shop. Both the building (now known as 9 Pool Valley) and the façade survive. All three of these have Grade II* listed status, indicating that in the context of England's architecture they are "particularly important ... [and] of more than special interest". Other examples can be seen at Grand Parade—the east side of Old Steine, developed haphazardly with large houses in a variety of styles and materials in the early 19th century; York Place, a fashionable address when built in the 1800s; and Market Street in The Lanes, Brighton's ancient core of narrow streets. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26108571 | 1,382,650 |
1,864,301 | A study published in 2010 by scientists at the University of Arkansas, North Dakota State University, California State University and the US Environmental Protection Agency showed that about 83 percent of wild or weedy canola tested contained genetically modified herbicide resistance genes. According to the researchers, the lack of reports in the US suggests inadequate oversight and monitoring protocols are in place in the US. The development of weeds resistant to glyphosate, the most commonly applied herbicide, could mean that farmers must return to more labour-intensive methods to control weeds, use more dangerous herbicides or till the soil (so increasing then risk of erosion). A 2010 report by the National Academy of Sciences stated that the advent of glyphosate-herbicide resistant weeds could cause the genetically engineered crops to lose their effectiveness unless farmers also use other established weed management strategies. In Australia, some of a 2010 planting of Monsanto's Roundup-Ready (RR) canola blew across a neighboring organic farm. The organic farm lost its organic certification and the organic farmer sued the GM farmer - so far without success. The certifier called it "contamination" and in the 2014 judgement the judge called it an "incursion" and rejected claims for nuisance, negligence and damages. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8160680 | 1,863,229 |
1,663,445 | During World War II, a Nazi barricade resulted in a severe famine in the Western Netherlands. Where food was previously plentiful, supplies immediately were cut off in November 1944, resulting in a period of starvation that lasted until spring of 1945. The Dutch people survived on as little as 30% of their daily needed caloric intake, and tens of thousands of people died. Analyses of the orderly health records from this time period allow for a systematic comparison of the effects of fetal starvation. Individuals who were in utero during the Hunger Winter were subject to different outcomes depending on the period of time in which they were conceived. Those who were in the first trimester during the three-month siege were likely to be born normal size, having caught up with typical development. However, these normal size babies developed high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity. Contrary to this group, those who were in the third trimester during the siege, who presumably had been well nourished up until the last few months of gestation, were born small. But, these small babies stayed small their entire lives, and did not develop higher rates of obesity or disease. Surprisingly, effects continued to be seen in the offspring of the individuals who were fetuses at the time of the famine. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47957160 | 1,662,510 |
816,815 | The contention that the scene depicts the festival for Athena is fraught with problems. Later sources indicate that a number of classes of individual who performed a role in the procession are not present in the frieze, these include: the hoplites, the allies in the Delian League, the "skiaphoroi" or umbrella bearers, the female "hydraiphoroi" (only male hydrai bearers are portrayed), the "thetes", slaves, metics, the Panathenaic ship, and some would suggest the "kanephoros", although there is evidence that she is accounted for. That what we now see was meant to be a generic image of the religious festival is problematic since no other temple sculpture depicts a contemporary event involving mortals. Locating the scene in mythical or historical time has been the principal difficulty of the line of inquiry. John Boardman has suggested that the cavalry portray the heroization of the "Marathonomachoi", the hoplites who fell at Marathon in 490, and that, therefore these riders were the Athenians who took part in the last pre-war Greater Panathenaia. In support, he points out the number of horsemen, chariot passengers (but not charioteers), grooms, and marshals comes to the same as the number Herodotos gives for the Athenian dead: 192. Equally suggestive of a reference to the Persian Wars is the similarity several scholars have noted of the frieze to the Apadana sculpture in Persepolis. This has variously been posited to be democratic Athens counter-posing itself to oriental tyranny, or, aristocratic Athens emulating the Imperial East. Further to this zeitgeist argument there is J.J. Politt’s contention that the frieze embodies a Periclean manifesto, which favours the cultural institutions of "agones" (or contests, as witnessed by the "apobatai"), sacrifices, and military training as well as a number of other democratic virtues. More recent scholarship pursuing this vein has made the frieze a site of ideological tension between the elite and the "demos" with perhaps, only the aristocracy present, and merely veiled reference to the ten tribes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2147375 | 816,379 |
2,002,931 | Following the 1876 Medical Act, it was illegal for academic institutions to prevent access to medical education based on gender. The first medical school for women in Britain was established in 1874 by Dr Sophia Jex-Blake in anticipation of this law. The London School of Medicine for Women quickly became part of the University of London, with clinical teaching at the Royal Free Hospital. Edith's sister Florence was a student at the school, she graduated in medicine with honours in 1895 (MB BS) and obtained her MD in 1898. Meanwhile, Edith gained an appointment as a physics lecturer at the school in 1899. Her first tasks were to set up a physics laboratory and design the physics course. The laboratory was planned for 20 students, and the course content was pure physics, as required by university regulations; it included mechanics, magnetism, electricity, optics, sound, heat and energy. In her Lancet Obituary, an ex-student of hers noted: “Her lectures on physics mostly developed into informal talks, during which Miss Stoney, usually in a blue pinafore, scratched on a blackboard with coloured chalks, turning anxiously at intervals to ask ‘Have you taken my point?’. She was perhaps too good a mathematician … to understand the difficulties of the average medical student, but experience had taught her how distressing these could be”. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42895806 | 2,001,783 |
258,672 | Although many group-living animal species have a hierarchy of some form, some species have more fluid and flexible social groupings, where rank does not need to be rigidly enforced, and low-ranking group members may enjoy a wider degree of social flexibility. Some animal societies are "democratic", with low-ranking group members being able to influence which group member is leader and which one is not. Sometimes dominant animals must maintain alliances with subordinates and grant them favours to receive their support in order to retain their dominant rank. In chimpanzees, the alpha male may need to tolerate lower-ranking group members hovering near fertile females or taking portions of his meals. Other examples can include Muriqui monkeys. Within their groups, there is abundant food and females will mate promiscuously. Because of this, males gain very little in fighting over females who are, in turn, too large and strong for males to monopolize or control, so males do not appear to form especially prominent ranks between them, with several males mating with the same female in view of each other. This type of mating style is also present in manatees, removing their need to engage in serious fighting. Among female elephants, leadership roles are not acquired by sheer brute force, but instead through seniority, and other females can collectively show preferences for where the herd can travel. In hamadryas baboons, several high-ranking males will share a similar rank, with no single male being an absolute leader. Female bats also have a somewhat fluid social structure, in which rank is not strongly enforced. Bonobos are matriarchal, yet their social groups are also generally quite flexible, and serious aggression is quite rare between them. In olive baboons, certain animals are dominant in certain contexts, but not in others. Prime age male olive baboons claim feeding priority, yet baboons of any age or sex can initiate and govern the group's collective movements. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1096688 | 258,538 |
1,565,507 | The great majority of photogeochemical research is performed in the laboratory, as it is easier to demonstrate and observe a particular reaction under controlled conditions. This includes confirming the identity of materials, designing reaction vessels, controlling light sources, and adjusting the reaction atmosphere. However, observation of natural phenomena often provides initial inspiration for further study. For example, during the 1970s it was generally agreed that nitrous oxide (NO) has a short residence time in the troposphere, although the actual explanation for its removal was unknown. Since NO does not absorb light at wavelengths greater than 280 nm, direct photolysis had been discarded as a possible explanation. It was then observed that light would decompose chloromethanes when they were absorbed on silica sand, and this occurred at wavelengths far above the absorption spectra for these compounds. The same phenomenon was observed for NO, leading to the conclusion that particulate matter in the atmosphere is responsible for the destruction of NO via surface-sensitized photolysis. Indeed, the idea of such a sink for atmospheric NO was supported by several reports of low concentrations of NO in the air above deserts, where there is a high amount of suspended particulate matter. As another example, the observation that the amount of nitrous acid in the atmosphere greatly increases during the day lead to insight into the surface photochemistry of humic acids and soils and an explanation for the original observation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47664587 | 1,564,620 |
1,120,186 | The lunar gravity was studied from this orbit. After two orbital adjustments were performed on 18 and 19 September the perilune was decreased to 15.1 km, as well as the inclination altered in preparation for landing. At perilune at 05:12 UTC on 20 September, the main braking engine was fired, initiating the descent to the lunar surface. Six minutes later, at 05:18 UT, the spacecraft safely soft-landed in its target area at 0°41' south latitude and 56°18' east longitude, in the northeast area of Mare Fecunditatis (Sea of Fertility) approximately 100 kilometers west of Webb crater and 150 km north of Langrenus crater. This was the first landing made in the lunar night side, as the Sun had set about 60 hours earlier. The main descent engine cut off at an altitude of 20 m, and the landing jets cut off at 2 m height at a velocity less than 2.4 m/s, followed by vertical free fall. The mass of the spacecraft at landing was 1,880 kilograms. Less than an hour after landing, at 06:03 UT, an automatic drill penetrated the lunar surface to collect a soil sample. After drilling for seven minutes, the drill reached a stop at 35 centimeters depth and then withdrew its sample and lifted it in an arc to the top of the spacecraft, depositing the lunar material in a small spherical capsule mounted on the main spacecraft bus. The column of regolith in the drill tube was then transferred to the soil sample container. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=99165 | 1,119,613 |
859,919 | In early versions, the valves or "plugs" as they were then called, were operated manually by the "plug man" but the repetitive action demanded precise timing, making automatic action desirable. This was obtained by means of a "plug tree" which was a beam suspended vertically alongside the cylinder from a small arch head by crossed chains, its function being to open and close the valves automatically when the beam reached certain positions, by means of tappets and escapement mechanisms using weights. On the 1712 engine, the water feed pump was attached to the bottom of the plug tree, but later engines had the pump outside suspended from a separate small arch-head. There is a common legend that in 1713 a "cock boy" named Humphrey Potter, whose duty it was to open and shut the valves of an engine he attended, made the engine self-acting by causing the beam itself to open and close the valves by suitable cords and catches (known as the "potter cord"); however the plug tree device (the first form of valve gear) was very likely established practice before 1715, and is clearly depicted in the earliest known images of Newcomen engines by Henry Beighton (1717) (believed by Hulse to depict the 1714 Griff colliery engine) and by Thomas Barney (1719) (depicting the 1712 Dudley Castle engine). Because of the very heavy steam demands, the engine had to be periodically stopped and restarted, but even this process was automated by means of a buoy rising and falling in a vertical stand pipe fixed to the boiler. The buoy was attached to the "scoggen", a weighted lever that worked a stop blocking the water injection valve shut until more steam had been raised. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=165062 | 859,461 |
727,934 | As the sizes got smaller, one would have to redesign tools because the relative strength of various forces would change. Gravity would become less important, and Van der Waals forces such as surface tension would become more important. Feynman mentioned these scaling issues during his talk. Nobody has yet attempted to implement this thought experiment; some types of biological enzymes and enzyme complexes (especially ribosomes) function chemically in a way close to Feynman's vision. Feynman also mentioned in his lecture that it might be better eventually to use glass or plastic because their greater uniformity would avoid problems in the very small scale (metals and crystals are separated into domains where the lattice structure prevails). This could be a good reason to make machines and electronics out of glass and plastic. At present, there are electronic components made of both materials. In glass, there are optical fiber cables that amplify the light pulses at regular intervals, using glass doped with the rare-earth element erbium. The doped glass is spliced into the fiber and pumped by a laser operating at a different frequency. In plastic, field effect transistors are being made with polythiophene, a polymer invented by Alan J. Heeger et al. that becomes an electrical conductor when oxidized. By 2016, a factor of just 20 in electron mobility separated plastic from silicon. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23680 | 727,551 |
451,315 | This was a beginning, where CSIR-NEERI's expertise was developed to give the society solutions to existing problems. From 1990, environmental biotechnology and genomics have emerged as useful tools for sustainable development. The Institute now deals with micro-niches, in which ‘how the DNA structure can be used as a tool to analyse and provide solutions to environmental pollution problems’ is studied. From a microscopic organism to impact assessment of the mega projects like Sethusamudram, the Institute covers all aspects of R&D in environmental science and engineering. The Institute now houses a bacterial culture bank of 1200 bacteria that have been identified sequencing the 16S rRNA genes. These are used in bioremediation as well as in bio-prospecting, The Institute has demonstrated rejuvenation of mine spoil dumpsites and continue to develop additional expertise through an integrated biotechnological approach for detoxification of degraded lands. The technology for solidification / stabilization and immobilization of arsenic bearing hazardous wastes was implemented in Zuari Industries Ltd., Goa. The Institute was involved in providing solutions to some of the pollution problems due to industrial and municipal wastewater discharge in places such as Delhi and Tirupur. The Institute is also involved in the development of analytical protocols for some of the emerging pollutants like dioxins and furans, mercury, trace contaminants besides routine analytical services in environmental monitoring. On the societal front, the Institute offered its services during environmental crises, for example, it has provided drinking water in the areas affected by floods in Rajasthan as well as hilly regions of the country and safe drinking water in fluoride affected areas. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16085921 | 451,096 |
1,286,890 | Moerner was born in Pleasanton, California, in 1953 June 24 the son of Bertha Frances (Robinson) and William Alfred Moerner. He was a boy scout, with the Boy Scouts of America and became an Eagle Scout. He attended Washington University in St. Louis for undergraduate studies as an Alexander S. Langsdorf Engineering Fellow, and obtained three degrees: a B.S. in physics with Final Honors, a B.S. in electrical engineering with Final Honors, and an A.B. in mathematics "summa cum laude" in 1975. This was followed by graduate study, partially supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, at Cornell University in the group of Albert J. Sievers III. Here he received an M.S. degree and a Ph.D. degree in physics in 1978 and 1982, respectively. His doctoral thesis was on vibrational relaxation dynamics of an IR-laser-excited molecular impurity mode in alkali halide lattices. Throughout his school years, Moerner was a straight A student from 1963 to 1982, and won both the Dean's Award for Unusually Exceptional Academic Achievement as well as the Ethan A. H. Shepley Award for Outstanding Achievement when he graduated from college. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5824132 | 1,286,189 |
1,830,150 | The system consists of multiple components, including a high-order adaptive optics system, a coronagraph, a calibration interferometer, and an integral field spectrograph. The adaptive optics system, being built at LLNL, uses a MEMS deformable mirror from Boston Micromachines Corporation to correct wavefront errors induced by motion of air in the atmosphere and the optics in the telescope. The coronagraph, being built at AMNH, blocks out the light from the star being observed, which is necessary in order to see a much dimmer companion. Before sending the GPI at Gemini South it was essential to test the coronagraph by reproducing the exact experimental conditions in which it was going to be used. A Photon etc. tunable laser source was used for this and helped determine that, at its most efficient wavelength, the imager could detect a planet only slightly more massive than Jupiter around a 100-million-year-old Sun-like star. The spectrograph, developed by UCLA and Montreal, images and takes spectra of any detected companion to the star, with a spectral resolving power of 34 - 83, depending on wavelength. The expected instrument performance will allow for detection of companions one ten millionth as bright as their hosts at angular separations of roughly 0.2-1 arcseconds, down to an H band magnitude of 23. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26437656 | 1,829,104 |
1,751,541 | Contrary to most studies focusing on the nucleus accumbens, Febo et al. suggested that the reward brain circuitry is not the only system involved in addictive behaviors. Previous knowledge has suggested that stimulants induce changes in gene expression in the main parts of mesolimbic circuitry (including the ventral tegmental area, ventral striatum/nucleus accumbens, and prefrontal cortex) and play a big role in development and maintenance of addicted state and chromatin remodeling. They applied this knowledge to investigate whether these gene expression changes are involved in cocaine-related behavioral and molecular adaptations. They found unexpected patterns of brain activation in awake rats that were exposed to sodium butyrate, an HDAC inhibitor (or HDACi). An acute dose resulted in widespread BOLD (blood-oxygen-level dependent) activation in the forebrain and midbrain, but cocaine-induced activation was significantly attenuated after repeat exposure. Sodium butyrate co-treatment with cocaine restored pronounced BOLD activation after successive cocaine treatments. These suggest that the brain's initial response to repeated cocaine exposure triggers a desensitization mechanism which can be overturned by pretreatment with sodium butyrate. The neural circuitry for the epigenetic modifications contributing to cocaine sensitivity was not limited to the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system (“reward system”) as they expected. Instead, they saw corticolimbic circuitry (implicated in emotion and memory) had a bigger role in HDACi related alterations of reward behaviors. Evidence that HDACi-mediated enhancement of a stimulant's sensitizing effects is context-specific, and involves associative learning. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=35822485 | 1,750,555 |
801,337 | To be clear, it is very unlikely that a single study could disprove all definitions of free will. Definitions of free will can vary wildly, and each must be considered separately in light of existing empirical evidence. There have also been a number of problems regarding studies of free will. Particularly in earlier studies, research relied on self-reported measures of conscious awareness, but introspective estimates of event timing were found to be biased or inaccurate in some cases. There is no agreed-upon measure of brain activity corresponding to conscious generation of intentions, choices, or decisions, making studying processes related to consciousness difficult. The conclusions drawn from measurements that "have" been made are debatable too, as they don't necessarily tell, for example, what a sudden dip in the readings represents. Such a dip might have nothing to do with unconscious decision because many other mental processes are going on while performing the task. Although early studies mainly used electroencephalography, more recent studies have used fMRI, single-neuron recordings, and other measures. Researcher Itzhak Fried says that available studies do at least suggest that consciousness comes in a later stage of decision making than previously expected – challenging any versions of "free will" where intention occurs at the beginning of the human decision process. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26565579 | 800,909 |
1,973,548 | A standard approximation strategy for polymer field theories is the mean field (MF) approximation, which consists in replacing the many-body interaction term in the action by a term where all bodies of the system interact with an average effective field. This approach reduces any multi-body problem into an effective one-body problem by assuming that the partition function integral of the model is dominated by a single field configuration. A major benefit of solving problems with the MF approximation, or its numerical implementation commonly referred to as the self-consistent field theory (SCFT), is that it often provides some useful insights into the properties and behavior of complex many-body systems at relatively low computational cost. Successful applications of this approximation strategy can be found for various systems of polymers and complex fluids, like e.g. strongly segregated block copolymers of high molecular weight, highly concentrated neutral polymer solutions or highly concentrated block polyelectrolyte (PE) solutions (Schmid 1998, Matsen 2002, Fredrickson 2002). There are, however, a multitude of cases for which SCFT provides inaccurate or even qualitatively incorrect results (Baeurle 2006a). These comprise neutral polymer or polyelectrolyte solutions in dilute and semidilute concentration regimes, block copolymers near their order-disorder transition, polymer blends near their phase transitions, etc. In such situations the partition function integral defining the field-theoretic model is not entirely dominated by a single MF configuration and field configurations far from it can make important contributions, which require the use of more sophisticated calculation techniques beyond the MF level of approximation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19668009 | 1,972,413 |
2,023,828 | At an annual award ceremony held in various locations, the ATAS presents the winner with a copper, gold, nickel and silver statuette of a winged woman holding an atom that was designed by engineer Louis McManus. It was first presented at the 55th Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards ceremony in September 2003. Motion picture equipment company Panavision was selected as the inaugural recipient for its work in developing "specialty camera items, cranes and dollies, Video assists, 35mm optics, cameras, lighting, trucks and grips". Since then, another 16 agencies, companies and institutions have received the award and none have won more than once. No award was given between 2005 and 2007 and in 2020. It has been presented to two separate recipients for different reasons in a calendar year once, in 2010, to the Desilu production company and the Digidesign audio technology firm. As of the 74th Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards, Arri is the most recent winner in this category "for its more than a century of designing and manufacturing camera and lighting systems as well as its development of systemic technological solutions and service networks for a worldwide complex of film, broadcast, and media industries". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19358586 | 2,022,664 |
1,907,886 | The diagnosis of PT-DLBCL depends on examining the histology, i.e. microscopic anatomy, of biopsy samples taken from the tumors. Most of these tumors are large, e.g. ~6 centimeters, and show medium- to large-sized lymphoid tumor B-cells that resemble centroblasts diffusely infiltrating and effacing the architecture of the involved tissue. Non-malignant T-cell lymphocytes are interspersed with the malignant B-cells and when present in high numbers (i.e. >15% of nucleated cells) may be indicative of a more favorable prognosis. These neoplastic tumor cells express various B-cell marker proteins including CD19, CD20, CD22, and CD79a. They may also express CD10 (30-60% of cases), IRF4 (35-65% of cases), and nuclear BCL6 (60-90% of cases); ~80% of cases are "double expressers" of the protein products of the "MYC" and "BCL2" genes, cMYC and Bcl-2, respectively. They are rapidly proliferating cells as determined by testing for Ki-67 staining. In at least seventy-five percent of cases, these malignant cells can be classified as being nongerminal center activated B-cell, i.e. ABC, rather than germinal center B-cell, i.e. GBC, variants of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, not otherwise specified (see variants of DLBCL, NOS). Fluorescence in situ hybridization, DNA sequencing, and other gene analyses of these cells can be used to identify the gene-related abnormalities detailed in the above Pathophysiology section. Given the propensity of this tumor to spread beyond the testes and to relapse at extra-testicular sites (see following section), all patients should be examined for the stage of their disease. Generally, this staging should include positron emission tomography, computed tomography, or magnetic resonance imaging; lumbar puncture (i.e. spinal tap) with examination of the cerebral spinal fluid obtained from spinal taps for the presence of malignant B-cells; and in cases where these tests are negative, bone marrow examination for the presence of malignant B-cells. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63040871 | 1,906,790 |
370,634 | The idea of the production line has been used multiple times in history prior to Henry Ford: the Venetian Arsenal (1104); Smith's pin manufacturing, in the Wealth of Nations (1776) or Brunel's Portsmouth Block Mills (1802). Ransom Olds was the first to manufacture cars using the assembly line system, but Henry Ford developed the first auto assembly system where a car chassis was moved through the assembly line by a conveyor belt while workers added components to it until the car was completed. During World War II, the growth of computing power led to further development of efficient manufacturing methods and the use of advanced mathematical and statistical tools. This was supported by the development of academic programs in industrial and systems engineering disciplines, as well as fields of operations research and management science (as multi-disciplinary fields of problem solving). While systems engineering concentrated on the broad characteristics of the relationships between inputs and outputs of generic systems, operations researchers concentrated on solving specific and focused problems. The synergy of operations research and systems engineering allowed for the realization of solving large scale and complex problems in the modern era. Recently, the development of faster and smaller computers, intelligent systems, and the World Wide Web has opened new opportunities for operations, manufacturing, production, and service systems. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1993994 | 370,440 |
2,092,433 | Chapter Three, Remnants: Vestiges, Embryos and Bad Design, examines examples of bad design in nature. Coyne looks at vestigial traits like the wings of flightless birds, the eyes of sightless animals, and the pelvic girdle and hind-limb bones of whales. He also looks at atavisms, the spontaneous recurrences of ancestral traits, such as horses born with extra toes. Evolution predicts the existence of pseudogenes, segments of DNA which were functional genes in an ancestor but have been inactivated by mutation. This prediction is confirmed, as the human genome contains thousands of pseudogenes. An example is the pseudogene for L-gulonolactone oxidase, the enzyme which produces Vitamin C in most mammals but not in the haplorhine suborder of primates, which includes humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans (hence why people must consume Vitamin C to avoid scurvy). That the same pseudogene is present in all these species is evidence that they share a recent common ancestor. Evolution makes another testable prediction: since humans are more closely related to chimpanzees than gorillas, and to gorillas than orangutans, the pseudogene should be most similar between humans and chimpanzees, less similar between humans and gorillas, and least similar between humans orangutans (it acts as a molecular clock). That is exactly what we find, and what we have found for the thousands of other pseudogenes that have been sequenced. Other species have pseudogenes; dolphins have pseudogenes for olfactory receptor proteins which they inherited from their land-dwelling ancestors, and the platypus, which lacks a stomach, still has pseudogenes for digestive enzymes. Finally, he examines evidence from embryology, such as the existence of lanugo in the fetuses of many mammals, including humans. (Lanugo also appears in fetal whales and dolphins, further evidence they are descended from land-dwelling mammals.) Coyne begins the chapter by citing Theodosius Dobzhansky's quote that "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution", and concludes by arguing that vestigial traits, atavisms and pseudogenes can only be explained by common descent. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=34245540 | 2,091,228 |
1,182,217 | Back at Cambridge, his final exams loomed. A "desperate" Charles focused on his studies and got private tuition from Henslow whose subjects were mathematics and theology. This term he had to study Euclid and learn Paley's "Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy", though this old text was becoming outdated. It opposed arguments for increased democracy, but saw no divine right of rule for the sovereign or the state, only "expediency". Government could be opposed if grievances outweighed the danger and expense to society. The judgement was "Every man for himself". These ideas had suited the conditions of reasonable rule prevailing when the text was published in 1785, but in 1830 they were dangerous ideas. At this time the French king was deposed by middle class republicans and given refuge in England by the Tory government. In response, radical street protests demanded suffrage, equality and freedom of religion. Then in November the Tory administration collapsed and the Whigs took over. Paley's text even supported abolition of the "Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican faith" which every student at Cambridge (and Oxford University) was required to sign. Henslow insisted that "he should be grieved if a single word... was altered" and emphasised the need to respect authority. This happened even as campaigns of civil disobedience spread to starving agricultural labourers and villages close to Cambridge suffered riots and arson attacks. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2087722 | 1,181,592 |
1,790,447 | RFID was first used in the late 1980s primarily for motor racing and became more widely adopted in athletic events in the mid-1990s upon the release of low cost 134 kHz transponders and readers from Texas Instruments. This technology formed the basis of electronic sports timing for the world's largest running events as well as for cycling, triathlon and skiing. Some manufacturers made improvements to the technology to handle larger numbers of transponders in the read field or improve the tolerance of their systems to low-frequency noise. These low-frequency systems are still used a lot today. Other manufacturers developed their own proprietary RFID systems usually as an offshoot to more industrial applications. These latter systems attempted to get around the problem of reading large numbers of transponders in a read field by using the High Frequency 13.56 MHz RFID methodology that allowed transponders to use anti-collision algorithms to avoid tags interfering with each other's signal during the down-link between transponder and reader. Active transponder systems continued to mature and despite their much higher cost they retained market share in the high speed sports like motor racing, cycling and ice skating. Active systems are also used at high-profile events such as the Olympics due to their very high read rates and time-stamping precision. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9918051 | 1,789,441 |
479,645 | Clinical neuropsychology focuses on the brain and goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. As a clinician a clinical neuropsychologist offers their services by addressing three steps; assessment, diagnosis, and treatment. The term clinical neuropsychologist was first made by Sir William Osler on April 16, 1913. While clinical neuropsychology was not a focus until the 20th century evidence of brain and behavior treatment and studies are seen as far back as the neolithic area when trephination, a crude surgery in which a piece of the skull is removed, has been observed in skulls. As a profession, clinical neuropsychology is a subspecialty beneath clinical psychology. During World War I (1914–1918) the early term shell shock was first observed in soldiers who survived the war. This was the beginning of efforts to understand traumatic events and how they affected people. During the Great Depression (1929–1941) further stressors caused shell shock like symptoms to emerge. In World War II (1939–1945) the term shell shock was changed to battle fatigue and clinical neuropsychology became even more involved with attempting to solve the puzzle of peoples' continued signs of trauma and distress. The Veterans Administration or VA was created in 1930 which increased the call for clinical neuropsychologists and by extension the need for training. The Korean (1950–1953) and Vietnam Wars (1960–1973) further solidified the need for treatment by trained clinical neuropsychologists. In 1985 the term post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD was coined and the understanding that traumatic events of all kinds could cause PTSD started to evolve. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=605564 | 479,405 |
1,526,926 | Following the war, Smagorinsky concluded his studies. He originally aspired to be a naval architect, but was not admitted to the Webb Institute. He then turned to meteorology as a career and educational focus. As a doctoral student, while serving the remainder of his army commitment, he attended a lecture on weather forecasting conducted by Jule Charney, and asked a series of pointed questions during the question-and-answer session following the talk. Charney, a prominent atmospheric scientist, invited Smagorinsky to the Princeton, NJ Institute for Advanced Study to examine the possible predictability of large-scale motions in the middle troposphere (the lower part of the atmosphere) using the new electronic computer being designed by John von Neumann. In April 1950, Smagorinsky participated in a major milestone of modern meteorology; together with Ragnar Fjørtoft, John Freeman, and George Platzman, he worked with Charney to solve Charney's simplest equations on the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC). His wife Margaret Smagorinsky (née Knoepfel) was also a member of the team that programmed the ENIAC computer, and was the first woman statistician hired by the Weather Bureau. Von Neumann's new Princeton computer had been delayed so arrangements were made with the Army to use its computer at Aberdeen, Maryland. The results were realistic enough to demonstrate that weather prediction by numerical process was a promising prospect. After the ENIAC work, Smagorinsky moved to the Institute for Advanced Study to work with Charney and von Neumann on the development of a radical new approach to weather forecasting that employed the new technology of the computer. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5194620 | 1,526,062 |
1,536,462 | The University was founded in 1967 as the State Engineering School of Offenburg. Initially only the Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering courses were offered. In 1970 the present campus was opened in the Badstraße Street, Offenburg. 1971 the conversion of the School of Engineering into the "Fachhochschule" of Offenburg followed. In 1978, the curriculum was expanded to include Economic courses. Therefore, the new faculty Economics was founded. It was decided, also due to space limitations, that the new faculty will get its own campus in a former monastery of the nearby town of Gengenbach. In 1984, already 1100 students studied in four faculties at the University of Applied Sciences Offenburg. To supplement the courses offered and for the sake of cooperation with the local publishing company Hubert Burda Media, 1996, the course Media and Information Sciences was established. In the same year the Institute for Applied Research was founded, which deals with research and research contracts from industry. In 2000, the University got the deserved reward for the continuous development. The Donors' Association for German Science awarded the University of Applied Sciences Offenburg the award "reform university". At the same time, the Graduate School of Offenburg University of Applied Sciences was founded, which today serves and coordinates four international study programs. As part of the transition to the Bachelor/Master's degrees (Bologna process) in 2005, the "Fachhochschule" Offenburg has been renamed to "Hochschule" Offenburg. 2007, the construction of a proper building for the Faculty of Media and Information Sciences was started. After 2 years of construction the new building was inaugurated in October 2009. The inauguration exercises were attended by the then Prime Minister of Baden-Wuerttemberg Günther Oettinger and the media entrepreneur Hubert Burda. Currently, about 3250 students study at the University of Offenburg. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31880821 | 1,535,594 |
1,931,254 | He was born in Middlesex, and after leaving Hendon County Grammar School he attended University College London, where he was awarded a BSc in 1966 with first class honours and a PhD in 1969 under Michael Rosemeyer. After leaving UCL he spent two years at the University of Washington doing postgraduate work with Edmond H. Fischer before returning to Britain in 1971 to become a lecturer at the University of Dundee, where he continues to work. He was made a reader in 1978 and gained a personal chair in 1981. In 1982 he was made a fellow of the European Molecular Biology Organization, and in 1984 he became a Royal Society Research professor and elected a fellow of both the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Royal Society. In 1990 he was made Director of the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit, a position he held until 2012. Also in 1990 he was made a fellow of the Academia Europaea. In 1993 he was made a fellow of UCL and in the 1998 Queen's Birthday Honours was knighted, served as a founding member of the Academy of Medical Sciences and was made an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists. In 2006 it was announced that Sir Philip Cohen would be taking over as president of the Biochemical Society. In 2008, Philip established and was Director of the SCottish Institute for ceLL Signalling (SCILLS). In 2012, the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit expanded its research focus and absorbed SCILLS to become the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit. He was Director of the Division of Signal Transduction Therapy from its founding in 1998 until 2012. He is currently Deputy Director. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11354163 | 1,930,146 |
398,703 | After the French physicist Pierre Curie's discovery of piezoelectricity in 1880, ultrasonic waves could be deliberately generated for industry. In 1940, the American acoustical physicist Floyd Firestone devised the first ultrasonic echo imaging device, the Supersonic Reflectoscope, to detect internal flaws in metal castings. In 1941, Austrian neurologist Karl Theo Dussik, in collaboration with his brother, Friedrich, a physicist, was likely the first person to image the human body ultrasonically, outlining the ventricles of a human brain. Ultrasonic energy was first applied to the human body for medical purposes by Dr George Ludwig at the Naval Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, in the late 1940s. English-born physicist John Wild (1914–2009) first used ultrasound to assess the thickness of bowel tissue as early as 1949; he has been described as the "father of medical ultrasound". Subsequent advances took place concurrently in several countries but was not until 1961 when David Robinson and George Kossoff's work at the Australian Department of Health resulted in the first commercially practical water bath ultrasonic scanner. In 1963 Meyerdirk & Wright launched production of the first commercial, hand-held, articulated arm, compound contact B-mode scanner, which made ultrasound generally available for medical use. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=143357 | 398,507 |
746,876 | Lacking trigonometry from high school, she was consequently rejected for an economics Ph.D. at UCLA. She was admitted to UCLA's graduate program in political science, where she was awarded an M.A. in 1962 and a Ph.D. in 1965. The teams of graduate students she was involved with were analyzing the political economic effects of a group of groundwater basins in Southern California. Specifically, Ostrom was assigned to look at the West Basin. She found it is very difficult to manage a common-pool resource when it is used between individuals. The locals were pumping too much groundwater and salt water seeped into the basin. Ostrom was impressed with how people from conflicting and overlapping jurisdictions who depended on that source found incentives to settle contradictions and solve the problem. She made the study of this collaboration the topic of her dissertation, laying the foundation for the study of "shared resources". The postgraduate seminar was led by Vincent Ostrom, an associate professor of political science, 14 years her senior, whom she married in 1963. This marked the beginning of a lifelong partnership named "love and contestation," as Ostrom put it in her dedication to her seminal 1990 book, "Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5033761 | 746,481 |
511,846 | The construction of closed PBRs avoids system-related water losses and minimises contamination. Though closed systems have better productivity compared to open systems due to the advantages mentioned, they still need to be improved to make them suitable for production of low price commodities as cell density remains low due to several limiting factors. All modern photobioreactors have tried to balance between a thin layer of culture suspension, optimized light application, low pumping energy consumption, capital expenditure and microbial purity. However, light attenuation and increased carbon dioxide requirements with growth are the two most inevitable changes in phototrophic cultures that severely limits productivity of photobioreactors. The accumulation of photosynthetic oxygen with growth of microalgae in photobioreactors is also believed to be a significant limiting factor; however, it has been recently shown with the help of kinetic models that dissolved oxygen levels as high as 400% air saturation are not inhibitory when cell density is high enough to attenuate light at later stages of microalgal cultures. Many different systems have been tested, but only a few approaches were able to perform at an industrial scale. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6737988 | 511,580 |
1,474,402 | The conversion to full-time bipedalism in our distant ancestors is the main argument for the adaptations our muscle structure and function have made. By having to center the force of gravity on two feet, the human thigh bone developed an inward slope down to the knee which may have allowed their gluteal abductors to adapt to the stress and build the necessary muscle. This allows the human to manage their balance on a single foot and when “in-stride” during walking. Muscles near the ankle helped provide the push during walking and running. There are many advantages and disadvantages to this altered posture and gait. The ability to grab something with four appendages was lost but what was gained was the ability to hold a club or throw a spear and use the other free hand for another task. This adaptation also helped humans stand up straight with locked knees for longer periods of time. The plantaris muscle in the foot which helped our ancestors grab and manipulate objects like chimps do, has adapted to its new evolutionary role appropriately, becoming so underdeveloped that it cannot grip or grab anything, the foot has grown more elongated as a result and now 9% of humans are born without it. Homo sapiens benefitted by becoming a better defender and hunter. An increase in running as a hunting and survival activity was perhaps fundamental to this development. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=32156908 | 1,473,571 |
415,643 | The Weapon System 117L program, initially intending to perform a variety of task under different sub-systems, was broken into three different programs in 1959. The Discoverer Program, better known as Corona, was a photographic reconnaissance satellite that ejected film for recovery in-atmosphere. The Discoverers were launched using a Thor-Agena booster, with Discoverer 1 becoming the first satellite to enter a polar orbit and Discoverer 2 was the first to have three-axis stabilization. In 1960, Discoverer 13 was the first to return a capsule when it crashed into the Pacific Ocean and Discoverer 14 marked the first successful return of film when it was recovered in-air by a 6593d Test Squadron Fairchild JC-119 Flying Boxcar. The Satellite and Missile Observation Program (SAMOS), was intended as a heavier counterpart to Discoverer and used the Atlas-Agena booster. SAMOS was intended to collect photographic and electromagnetic reconnaissance data, but instead of returning film capsules to earth, SAMOS would electronically transmit the data to ground stations. However, the technology for electro-optical film readout was not mature and it was canceled by Undersecretary of the Air Force Joseph V. Charyk. The Missile Defense Alarm System (MIDAS) was the third program derived from WS 117L and focused on providing missile warning of ICBMs using infrared sensors. Initial plans called for a constellation of eight spacecraft in polar orbits to monitor the Soviet Union, however due to early satellite failures it remained a test program until 1968. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10179560 | 415,440 |
422,090 | In August 1940 Blackett became scientific adviser to Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Pile, Commander in Chief of Anti-Aircraft Command and thus began the work that resulted in the field of study known as operational research (OR). He was director of Operational Research with the Admiralty from 1942 to 1945, and his work with E. J. Williams improved the survival odds of convoys, presented counter-intuitive but correct recommendations for the armour-plating of aircraft and achieved many other successes. His aim, he said, was to find numbers on which to base strategy, not gusts of emotion. During the war he criticised the assumptions in Lord Cherwell's dehousing paper and sided with Tizard who argued that fewer resources should go to RAF Bomber Command for the area bombing offensive and more to the other armed forces, as his studies had shown the ineffectiveness of the bombing strategies, as opposed to the importance of fighting of the German U-boats, which were heavily affecting the war effort with their sinkings of merchant ships. In this opinion he chafed against the existing military authority and was cut out of various circles of communications. However, after the war, the Allied Strategic Bombing Survey proved Blackett correct. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=326834 | 421,884 |
831,729 | By working to improve said factors, corporations can achieve their goals of increased output at lower costs, while potentially creating optimal levels of customer satisfaction. There are numerous reasons why each of these factors correlates to overall improvement. For example, making software user interfaces easier to understand reduces the need for extensive training. The improved interface tends to lower the time needed to perform tasks, and so would both raise the productivity levels for employees and reduce development time (and thus costs). Each of the aforementioned factors are not mutually exclusive; rather they should be understood to work in conjunction to form the overall workplace environment. In the 2010s, usability is recognized as an important software quality attribute, earning its place among more traditional attributes such as performance, robustness and aesthetic appearance. Various academic programs focus on usability. Several usability consultancy companies have emerged, and traditional consultancy and design firms offer similar services. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=288276 | 831,280 |
2,175,151 | Disease and Disorders: NUMT insertion into the genome can be problematic. Transposition of NUMTs into genome has also been associated with human diseases. De novo integration of NUMT pseudogenes into the nuclear genome has an adverse effect in some cases, promoting various disorders and aging. MtDNA integration into coding genes in the germline cells has dramatic consequences for embryo development and, in many cases, is lethal. Few NUMT pseudogenes associated with diseases are found within exons or at the exon–intron boundaries of human genes. For example, the patients with mucolipidosis syndrome inherit a mutation caused by insertion of a 93bp fragment of mitochondrial ND5 into exon 2 of the R403C mucolipin gene. This is the first case of a heritable disorder due to the NUMT insert. Despite the small treatment group, Stem Cell transplant found to be effective and lysosomal enzyme levels seemed to normalize after transplant in at least one case. The Pallister–Hall syndrome, a developmental disorder, in another example, where a functional disorder of a key developmental gene results from a "de novo" insertion of a 72bp mtDNA fragment into "GLI3" exon 14 in chromosome 7, which results in central and postaxial polydactyly, bifid epiglottis, imperforate anus, renal abnormalities including cystic malformations, renal hypoplasia, ectopic ureteral implantation, and pulmonary segmentation anomalies such as bilateral bilobed lungs. A splice site mutation in the human gene for plasma factor VII that causes severe plasma factor VII deficiency, bleeding disease, results from a 251-bp NUMT insertion. As the last known example, a 36-bp insertion in exon 9 of the USH1C gene associated with Usher syndrome type IC is the NUMT. No certain curse has yet found for Usher syndrome, however, a current clinical study on 18 volunteers is taking place to determine the influence of UshStat both in a short and a long-term period. This study has been started in September 2013 and is estimated to be done by October 2023. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8564084 | 2,173,907 |
870,497 | The Archimedes models based on the ARM3 processor supported a completely new "arithmetic co-processor" or "floating-point accelerator" known as the FPA. Released in 1993 for the R260 workstation and the A540 and A5000 machines, priced at £99 plus VAT, the FPA device—known specifically as the FPA10—was fitted in a dedicated socket on the processor card for the R260 and A540, or in a motherboard socket in the A5000. It offered a peak throughput of 5 MFLOPS at 26 MHz. The models officially supporting the FPA had been introduced some time prior to availability of the device, and various ARM3 upgrade cards for earlier models had also been made available with an FPA socket in anticipation of eventual availability. Fabrication of the device was performed by GEC Plessey Semiconductors and was reported to be in "an advanced stage of production" in early 1993. Availability remained unclear, with ARM releasing technical details indicating that the chip, at 134,000 transistors was reportedly "Arm's most complex IC to date" and comparing its performance at "around 4 MFLOPS" to the MIPS R3010 floating-point co-processor, whilst claiming a substantial power consumption advantage. Further details were given upon the eventual release of the FPA10, stating a 26 MHz operating frequency and a power consumption of 250 mW. Reception from major software producers such as Computer Concepts and Colton Software was cautious, with the former's products not making any use of floating-point instructions and thus not standing to benefit, and with the latter's using such instructions but indicating skepticism about any significant benefits in performance. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63145 | 870,037 |
1,568,593 | Clinical use of this treatment was driven by women with breast cancer and advocacy groups, such as ACT UP; they believed that the FDA treatment approval process was too slow. Health Net's denial of Nelene Fox's transplant—a case involving insurance coverage of HDC/ABMT—ignited a public reaction and prompted change in access to treatment. Unlike new drugs, which are evaluated and approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), medical procedures are not officially regulated by any agency nor does there exist any statutory requirement to serve a similar function. Around 30,000 women received the HDC/ABMT procedure in the 1989–2002 period; the medical profession was divided in its commitment to clinical trials and sanctioned the procedure as better than existing treatment before there was proof from the scientific community—of the women who received the procedure, only about 1000 of them were enrolled in randomized clinical trials in the United States. In contrast, repeated assessments concluded that existing data did not support claims of the effectiveness of HDC/ABMT, leading to the high-priority phase 3 clinical trials in 1990–1991, which were supported by the effort of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), skeptical scientists, health insurance companies, and cancer groups. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38028125 | 1,567,706 |
1,744,739 | The society-wide events of November 1989 and the subsequent political developments marked a return to autonomy and academic freedoms for Czechoslovak higher education. In the first half of the 1990s, VSB in Ostrava underwent an extensive transformation. The change in study fields was triggered by the restructuring of the metallurgical industries and the downsizing programme in the mining sector. While preserving the traditional fields of study in which VSB Ostrava had maintained an exclusive position for decades, it was necessary to focus on other fields using new technologies and materials. The faculties thus had to respond to the current needs of the labour market in the content of individual degree programmes. A positive consequence of the revolutionary events was the opening of the borders, which enabled the establishment of contacts and contracts with foreign universities and research institutes and the involvement of the University in international scientific research programmes. The transformation of VSB into a polytechnic university was completed with the establishment of the independent Faculty of Electrical Engineering in 1991 and its name extension to the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1993. The change of the traditional name of the Faculty of Metallurgy to the Faculty of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering in 1991 was related to its new concept and the focus of its research and teaching activities in the field of materials science. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2819502 | 1,743,755 |
869,859 | Balloons were by then in use for both meteorology and military observation. Balloons can only be used in light winds, while kites can only be used in stronger winds. The American Samuel Franklin Cody, working in England, realised that the two types of craft between them allowed operation over a wide range of weather conditions. He developed Hargrave's basic design, adding additional lifting surfaces to create powerful man-lifting systems using multiple kites on a single line. Cody made many demonstrations of his system and would later sell four of his "war kite" systems to the Royal Navy. His kites also found use in carrying meteorological instruments aloft and he was made a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society. In 1905, Sapper Moreton of the British Army's balloon section was lifted by a kite at Aldershot under Cody's supervision. In 1906, Cody was appointed Chief Instructor in Kiting at the Army School of Ballooning in Aldershot. He soon also joined the newly established Army Balloon Factory at Farnborough and continued developing his war kites for the British Army. In his own time, he developed a manned "glider-kite" which was launched on a tether like a kite and then released to glide freely. In 1907, Cody next fitted an aircraft engine to a modified unmanned "power-kite", the precursor to his later aeroplanes, and flew it inside the Balloon Shed, along a wire suspended from poles, before the Prince and Princess of Wales. The British Army officially adopted his war kites for their Balloon Companies in 1908. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1607990 | 869,399 |
803,502 | Auxin hormones are proven to stimulate mitosis, cell production and regulate interfascicular and fascicular cambium. Applying auxin to the surface of a tree stump allowed decapitated shoots to continue secondary growth. The absence of auxin hormones will have a detrimental effect on a plant. It has been shown that mutants without auxin will exhibit increased spacing between the interfascicular cambiums and reduced growth of the vascular bundles. The mutant plant will therefore experience a decrease in water, nutrients, and photosynthates being transported throughout the plant, eventually leading to death. Auxin also regulates the two types of cell in the vascular cambium, ray and fusiform initials. Regulation of these initials ensures the connection and communication between xylem and phloem is maintained for the translocation of nourishment and sugars are safely being stored as an energy resource. Ethylene levels are high in plants with an active cambial zone and are still currently being studied. Gibberellin stimulates the cambial cell division and also regulates differentiation of the xylem tissues, with no effect on the rate of phloem differentiation. Differentiation is an essential process that changes these tissues into a more specialized type, leading to an important role in maintaining the life form of a plant. In poplar trees, high concentrations of gibberellin is positively correlated to an increase of cambial cell division and an increase of auxin in the cambial stem cells. Gibberellin is also responsible for the expansion of xylem through a signal traveling from the shoot to the root. Cytokinin hormone is known to regulate the rate of the cell division instead of the direction of cell differentiation. A study demonstrated that the mutants are found to have a reduction in stem and root growth but the secondary vascular pattern of the vascular bundles were not affected with a treatment of cytokinin. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=227675 | 803,073 |
966,192 | The modern evolutionary synthesis is the outcome of a merger of several different scientific fields to produce a more cohesive understanding of evolutionary theory. In the 1920s, Ronald Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane and Sewall Wright combined Darwin's theory of natural selection with statistical models of Mendelian genetics, founding the discipline of population genetics. In the 1930s and 1940s, efforts were made to merge population genetics, the observations of field naturalists on the distribution of species and sub species, and analysis of the fossil record into a unified explanatory model. The application of the principles of genetics to naturally occurring populations, by scientists such as Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr, advanced the understanding of the processes of evolution. Dobzhansky's 1937 work "Genetics and the Origin of Species" helped bridge the gap between genetics and field biology by presenting the mathematical work of the population geneticists in a form more useful to field biologists, and by showing that wild populations had much more genetic variability with geographically isolated subspecies and reservoirs of genetic diversity in recessive genes than the models of the early population geneticists had allowed for. Mayr, on the basis of an understanding of genes and direct observations of evolutionary processes from field research, introduced the biological species concept, which defined a species as a group of interbreeding or potentially interbreeding populations that are reproductively isolated from all other populations. Both Dobzhansky and Mayr emphasised the importance of subspecies reproductively isolated by geographical barriers in the emergence of new species. The palaeontologist George Gaylord Simpson helped to incorporate palaeontology with a statistical analysis of the fossil record that showed a pattern consistent with the branching and non-directional pathway of evolution of organisms predicted by the modern synthesis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19852895 | 965,682 |
1,342,426 | The School of Social Sciences and Humanities was opened in 1997, adding new disciplines to an educational center that had been primarily dedicated to Economics. The subsequent creation of the School of Music increased the number of programs in the Arts and Sciences. The Product Design Engineering and Law faculties were then created in 1999. This was followed by the creation of the Mathematics Engineering undergraduate program in 2002, the first of its kind in Colombia. Three new departments were added in 2004: Engineering Physics, Social Communication and Political Science. That same year the administration made the decision to rename the campus as "Park University" ("Universidad Parque"), adding ecological grounds that include a large lake, woods, and an unpaved parking area. Dr. Juan Luis Mejía's goal was to integrate the university with the urban background of the city, while at the same time improving and protecting its natural environment. The project was awarded the Premio Lápiz de Acero (Steel Pen Award) from the "Proyecto Diseño" magazine of Medellín in the "Public Spaces" category. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12776755 | 1,341,692 |
285,271 | In the context of education, good explanation in teaching is essential for unlocking the students' understanding of the subject. It develops students' logical thinking and provides guidance by inductive judgment to generalizing. Leinhardt (1990: 3-4) distinguished between two types of teaching related to explanations: instructional and disciplinary. According to Leinhardt (1990), instructional explanations aim to explain concepts, procedures, events, ideas and classes of problems in order to help students understand, learn and use information in a flexible way. Disciplinary explanations are built around a core of conventions within each particular discipline and try to explain what constitutes evidence, what is assumed, and what the agenda for the discipline is. They provide the legitimacy of new knowledge, reinterpret old knowledge, and challenge and address existing knowledge (Leinhardt 1990). From a learning perspective, explanation holds a special place as one of the core critical thinking skills (Facione 1990). Good critical thinkers, according to Facione (1998: 5), are those who can explain what they think and how they arrived at that judgment. The Delphi Study expert panel, cited by Facione (1998: 6), defined explanation as being able "to state the results of one's reasoning; to justify that reasoning in terms of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, and contextual considerations upon which one's results were based; and to present one's reasoning in the form of cogent arguments". Explanation that works (Lipton 2004) is one that is "sticky" (people remember it, think about it, and can repeat it, often even days or weeks later), is easily communicated (people can explain it to each other), and guides thinking in new and better directions (it leads to new kinds of reasoning, which are not only more constructive and accurate but more engaging). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=92028 | 285,117 |
2,073,287 | Baird's first medical job at Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary, included conducting clinical trials with Sir Derrick Dunlop (later the first Chairman of the Committee on the Safety of Drugs). Baird later worked as a medical officer in the Scottish Home and Health Department from 1968-1970, on 'developments in drugs, food additives and contaminants, nutrition and radioisotopes.' Baird was then appointed in 1971 as medical lecturer at Edinburgh's Western General Hospital. Her Professor John Strong asked Baird to set up one of the first clinics specifically designed for the management of patients with diabetes and endocrine conditions. Baird started the Metabolic Unit with close working between laboratory and clinical consultations not practical in a normal hospital ward. Baird developed this service to cover endocrine science, calcium metabolism, osteoporosis and other research, such as studying and treating diabetes in pregnancy, the impact of familial factors and obesity. Baird also collaborated closely with Anne Cooke, a leading immunologist working on animal models of disease and treatment, based in Cambridge. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63366091 | 2,072,096 |
1,614,516 | Shashidhara's researches were focused on developmental biology, specifically the development of limbs and the role played by Ultrabithorax, a Hox gene, functioning as a transcription factor. Studying Drosophila melanogaster (commonly known as fruit fly) as a model, he elucidated the molecular pathways Wnt, TGF-? and EGFR/Ras that impact the growth control and developed a "fly model" for studying Adenomatous polyposis coli, the colon cancer gene in humans. His studies are reported to have assisted in a wider understanding of the relation between genes and diseases in humans and in the development of cancer drug discovery systems. His research findings have been published in a number of articles published in peer-reviewed journals, several of them have been listed in online article repositories such as Metascience, PubMed, and ResearchGate. He has also published many general articles on adacemics and has delivered keynote addresses and featured talks. He served as the secretary-general of the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS), during 2015–2019 and is associated with the "Journal of Genetics" and "Current Science" as their associate editor and with "Scientific Reports" as a member of its editorial board. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=52156468 | 1,613,610 |
1,605,890 | Buggy, officially called Sweepstakes, is a race around Schenley Park. It can be thought of as a relay race with five runners, using the buggy vehicle as the baton. Entrants submit a small, usually torpedo-shaped, vehicle that is pushed uphill and then allowed to free-roll downhill. The driver (who–like all participants–must be a Carnegie Mellon student, and is almost always short, light, and female) lies down inside the vehicle with the steering and brake controls. The vehicles are completely unpowered, including the prohibition of energy storing devices such as flywheels. Brakes are required but generally rarely used. Often, brakes are applied only as a last resort to prevent a crash, or to slow the buggy at the finish for the pusher to catch up because the rules specify that the pusher must be in contact with buggy at the finish line or be disqualified. Drivers who have been forced to apply the brakes due to another driver cutting them off may appeal for a re-roll in another heat without penalty. The second-to-last corner of the race, a sharp 110-degree right turn, is affectionately called "The Chute" and is lined with hay bales to prevent potential driver and spectator injury. Speeds can be quite high in the chute, often in the vicinity of 35 mph. Student Dormitory Council (SDC) holds the current men's record of 2:02.16 and the current women's record of 2:23.27, both set in 2017. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4526632 | 1,604,986 |
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