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859,374 | In 2012, NASA researchers Metzger, Muscatello, Mueller, and Mantovani argued for a so-called "bootstrapping approach" to start self-replicating factories in space. They developed this concept on the basis of In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) technologies that NASA has been developing to "live off the land" on the Moon or Mars. Their modeling showed that in just 20 to 40 years this industry could become self-sufficient then grow to large size, enabling greater exploration in space as well as providing benefits back to Earth. In 2014, Thomas Kalil of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy published on the White House blog an interview with Metzger on bootstrapping solar system civilization through self-replicating space industry. Kalil requested the public submit ideas for how "the Administration, the private sector, philanthropists, the research community, and storytellers can further these goals." Kalil connected this concept to what former NASA Chief technologist Mason Peck has dubbed "Massless Exploration", the ability to make everything in space so that you do not need to launch it from Earth. Peck has said, "...all the mass we need to explore the solar system is already in space. It's just in the wrong shape." In 2016, Metzger argued that fully self-replicating industry can be started over several decades by astronauts at a lunar outpost for a total cost (outpost plus starting the industry) of about a third of the space budgets of the International Space Station partner nations, and that this industry would solve Earth's energy and environmental problems in addition to providing massless exploration. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1600053 | 858,916 |
1,656,614 | Stations are fitted with coastal surveillance radars, frequency diversity radars, meteorological systems, optical sensors, electro-optical sensors, charge-coupled device (CCD) day cameras, Low Light TV (LLTV) night vision cameras, long-range thermal imagers, an Automatic Identification System (AIS), a distress alert transmission system (DATS), electronic warfare support measures, and very high frequency (VHF) radio communication systems. Each radar station transmits data to one of 12 Remote Operating Stations through two dedicated Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited lines each. The 12 Remote Operating Stations feed information to the four Joint Operations Centres (JOC) at Mumbai, Kochi, Visakhapatnam and Port Blair. JOCs are jointly staffed by Indian Navy and Coast Guard personnel, and also network with personnel from other agencies such as Customs, Intelligence Bureau, and the port authorities. JOCs in turn feed all information to the Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC) based in Gurugram Air Force Station, Haryana which is the nodal agency for maritime data fusion. All communications occur in real-time. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=69195684 | 1,655,681 |
2,104,711 | Dr. Karlsson's field of research is the regulation of hematopoietic stem cells and development of stem cell expansion protocols and gene therapy. He performed postdoctoral studies with Professor Arthur W. Nienhuis (1983-1986) at the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda Maryland, where he received a Fogarty International Research Collaboration Award. He served as Chief of the Molecular and Medical Genetics Section, Developmental and Metabolic Neurology Branch (DMNB), National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), NIH, 1988-1996. In 1995 he was recruited as a full professor to Lund University, Sweden, where he founded the Division of Molecular Medicine and Gene Therapy and has been head of this division for twenty years. He is also a founding and current member of the Lund Stem Cell Center, since 2003, and director of the Hemato-Linné Strategic Research Environment (2006-2016) funded through a 10-year Linnaeus grant from the Swedish Research Council. Dr. Karlsson also holds a consultant physician position at Skåne University Hospital, Sweden. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46693734 | 2,103,498 |
583,968 | Land seismic surveys tend to be large entities, requiring hundreds of tons of equipment and employing anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand people, deployed over vast areas for many months. There are a number of options available for a controlled seismic source in a land survey and particularly common choices are Vibroseis and dynamite. Vibroseis is a non-impulsive source that is cheap and efficient but requires flat ground to operate on, making its use more difficult in undeveloped areas. The method comprises one or more heavy, all-terrain vehicles lowering a steel plate onto the ground, which is then vibrated with a specific frequency distribution and amplitude. It produces a low energy density, allowing it to be used in cities and other built-up areas where dynamite would cause significant damage, though the large weight attached to a Vibroseis truck can cause its own environmental damage. Dynamite is an impulsive source that is regarded as the ideal geophysical source due to it producing an almost perfect impulse function but it has obvious environmental drawbacks. For a long time, it was the only seismic source available until weight dropping was introduced around 1954, allowing geophysicists to make a trade-off between image quality and environmental damage. Compared to Vibroseis, dynamite is also operationally inefficient because each source point needs to be drilled and the dynamite placed in the hole. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=676418 | 583,669 |
1,081,541 | Roy D'Andrade (1995) sees the history of cognitive anthropology proper as divisible into four phases. The first began in the 1950s with the explicit formulation of culture as knowledge by anthropologists such as Ward Goodenough and Anthony Wallace. From the late 1950s through the mid-1960s, attention focused on categorization, componential analysis (a technique borrowed from structuralist linguistics), and native or folk systems of knowledge (ethnoscience e.g., ethnobotany, ethnolinguistics and so on), as well as discoveries in patterns of color naming by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay. During the 1950s and 1960s, most of the work in cognitive anthropology was carried out at Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, Berkeley, University of California, Irvine, and the Harvard Department of Social Relations. The third phase looked at types of categories (Eleanor Rosch) and cultural models, drawing on schema theory, linguistic work on metaphor (George Lakoff, Mark Johnson). The current phase, beginning in the 1990s, has seen more focus on the problem of how cultural models are shared and distributed, as well as on motivation, with significant work taking place at UC San Diego, UCLA, UC Berkeley, University of Connecticut, and Australian National University, among others. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7055844 | 1,080,985 |
826,401 | There is a trend in academia for universities to be their own drug discovery enterprise. These facilities, which normally are found only in industry, are now increasingly found at universities as well. UCLA, for example, features an open access HTS laboratory Molecular Screening Shared Resources (MSSR, UCLA), which can screen more than 100,000 compounds a day on a routine basis. The open access policy ensures that researchers from all over the world can take advantage of this facility without lengthy intellectual property negotiations. With a compound library of over 200,000 small molecules, the MSSR has one of the largest compound deck of all universities on the west coast. Also, the MSSR features full functional genomics capabilities (genome wide siRNA, shRNA, cDNA and CRISPR) which are complementary to small molecule efforts: Functional genomics leverages HTS capabilities to execute genome wide screens which examine the function of each gene in the context of interest by either knocking each gene out or overexpressing it. Parallel access to high-throughput small molecule screen and a genome wide screen enables researchers to perform target identification and validation for given disease or the mode of action determination on a small molecule. The most accurate results can be obtained by use of "arrayed" functional genomics libraries, i.e. each library contains a single construct such as a single siRNA or cDNA. Functional genomics is typically paired with high content screening using e.g. epifluorescent microscopy or laser scanning cytometry. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=882729 | 825,957 |
1,327,440 | While developed countries often have exploited the most economical sites already with large benefits, many large-scale diversion/transfer schemes have been proposed in developing countries such as Brazil, African countries, India and China. These more modern transfers have been justified because of their potential economic and social benefits in more heavily populated areas, stemming from increased water demand for irrigation, industrial and municipal water supply, and renewable energy needs. These projects are also justified because of possible climate change and a concern over decreased water availability in the future; in that light, these projects thus tend to hedge against ensuing droughts and increasing demand. Projects conveying water between basins economically are often large and expensive, and involve major public and/or private infrastructure planning and coordination. In some cases where desired flow is not provided by gravity alone, additional use of energy is required for pumping water to the destination. Projects of this type can also be complicated in legal terms, since water and riparian rights are affected; this is especially true if the basin of origin is a transnational river. Furthermore, these transfers can have significant environmental impacts on aquatic ecosystems at the source. In some cases water conservation measures at the destination can make such water transfers less immediately necessary to alleviate water scarcity, delay their need to be built, or reduce their initial size and cost. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19725253 | 1,326,713 |
3,929 | Aristotle distinguished about 500 species of animals, arranging these in the "History of Animals" in a graded scale of perfection, a nonreligious version of the "scala naturae", with man at the top. His system had eleven grades of animal, from highest potential to lowest, expressed in their form at birth: the highest gave live birth to hot and wet creatures, the lowest laid cold, dry mineral-like eggs. Animals came above plants, and these in turn were above minerals. He grouped what the modern zoologist would call vertebrates as the hotter "animals with blood", and below them the colder invertebrates as "animals without blood". Those with blood were divided into the live-bearing (mammals), and the egg-laying (birds, reptiles, fish). Those without blood were insects, crustacea (non-shelled – cephalopods, and shelled) and the hard-shelled molluscs (bivalves and gastropods). He recognised that animals did not exactly fit into a linear scale, and noted various exceptions, such as that sharks had a placenta like the tetrapods. To a modern biologist, the explanation, not available to Aristotle, is convergent evolution. Philosophers of science have generally concluded that Aristotle was not interested in taxonomy, but zoologists who studied this question recently think otherwise. He believed that purposive final causes guided all natural processes; this teleological view justified his observed data as an expression of formal design. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=308 | 3,929 |
450,888 | One criticism of the book by "Kirkus Reviews" is that some of the scenarios or solutions in the book are a stretch or somewhat prophetic: "Tegmark's solutions to inevitable mass unemployment are a stretch." AI researcher Stuart J. Russell, writing in "Nature", said: "I am unlikely to disagree strongly with the premise of "Life 3.0". Life, Tegmark argues, may or may not spread through the Universe and 'flourish for billions or trillions of years' because of decisions we make now — a possibility both seductive and overwhelming." Writing in "Science", Haym Hirsh called it "a highly readable book that complements The Second Machine Age's economic perspective on the near-term implications of recent accomplishments in AI and the more detailed analysis of how we might get from where we are today to AGI and even the superhuman AI in ." "The Telegraph" called it "One of the very best overviews of the arguments around artificial intelligence". The "Christian Science Monitor" said "Although it's probably not his intention, much of what Tegmark writes will quietly terrify his readers." "Publishers Weekly" gave a positive review, but also stated that Tegmark's call for researching how to maintain control over superintelligent machines "sits awkwardly beside his acknowledgment that controlling such godlike entities will be almost impossible." "Library Journal" called it a "must-read" for technologists, but stated the book was not for the casual reader. The "Wall Street Journal" called it "lucid and engaging"; however, it cautioned readers that the controversial notion that superintelligence could run amok has more credence than it does few years ago, but is still fiercely opposed by many computer scientists. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=55090826 | 450,669 |
1,492,879 | Jameson's research into flotation began when he was at Imperial College London, in 1969. A colleague, Dr J. A. Kitchener of the Royal School of Mines, pointed out that many of the new mineral deposits being found around the world required fine grinding to separate the valuable particles from the rock in which they were embedded, and the flotation technologies available at the time were relatively inefficient for recovering fine particles. Kitchener felt that improvements could best be achieved by an increased knowledge of the physics of flotation, rather than the chemistry of the reagents. Jameson had gained some expertise in the properties of bubbles and particles in suspensions whilst a PhD student at Cambridge. He began research into the fluid mechanics of the flotation process and set in train a series of experimental projects into the effect of particle diameter and bubble size on the flotation rate constant. Much of the research was conducted by honours students in chemical engineering. Jameson accepted the challenge of coming up with practical solutions to remedy the situation, if these could be identified. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40142408 | 1,492,040 |
280,200 | The Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) is a self-report personality test developed over several decades of empirical research by Raymond B. Cattell, Maurice Tatsuoka and Herbert Eber. The 16PF provides a measure of personality and can also be used by psychologists, and other mental health professionals, as a clinical instrument to help diagnose psychiatric disorders, and help with prognosis and therapy planning. The 16PF can also provide information relevant to the clinical and counseling process, such as an individual's capacity for insight, self-esteem, cognitive style, internalization of standards, openness to change, capacity for empathy, level of interpersonal trust, quality of attachments, interpersonal needs, attitude toward authority, reaction toward dynamics of power, frustration tolerance, and coping style. Thus, the 16PF instrument provides clinicians with a normal-range measurement of anxiety, adjustment, emotional stability and behavioral problems. Clinicians can use 16PF results to identify effective strategies for establishing a working alliance, to develop a therapeutic plan, and to select effective therapeutic interventions or modes of treatment. It can also be used within other areas of psychology, such as career and occupational selection. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18334122 | 280,049 |
741,344 | While "C. tetani" is frequently benign in the soil or in the intestinal tracts of animals, it can sometimes cause the severe disease tetanus. Disease generally begins with spores entering the body through a wound. In deep wounds, such as those from a puncture or contaminated needle injection the combination of tissue death and limited exposure to surface air can result in a very low-oxygen environment, allowing "C. tetani" spores to germinate and grow. As "C. tetani" grows at the wound site, it releases the toxins tetanolysin and tetanospasmin as cells lyse. The function of tetanolysin is unclear, although it may help "C. tetani" to establish infection within a wound. Tetanospasmin ("tetanus toxin") is one of the most potent toxins known, with an estimated lethal dose less than 2.5 nanograms per kilogram of body weight, and is responsible for the symptoms of tetanus. Tetanospasmin spreads via the lymphatic system and bloodstream throughout the body, where it is taken up into various parts of the nervous system. In the nervous system, tetanospasmin acts by blocking the release of the inhibitory neurotransmitters glycine and gamma-aminobutyric acid at motor nerve endings. This blockade leads to the widespread activation of motor neurons and spasming of muscles throughout the body. These muscle spasms generally begin at the top of the body and move down, beginning about 8 days after infection with lockjaw, followed by spasms of the abdominal muscles and the limbs. Muscle spasms continue for several weeks. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13233321 | 740,952 |
922,010 | In 1988, historian Sherry A. Penney succeeded Robert A. Corrigan as chancellor. Penney had been serving as chancellor of academic programs, policy, and planning for the State University of New York system. Her tenure was initially marred by an economic downturn in Massachusetts. During the en masse failure of more than 1,000 of the more than 3,200 savings and loan associations in the United States between 1986 and 1995, and following a pair of stock market crashes in 1987 and 1989 and an oil price shock in 1990, the U.S. economy went into recession from July 1990 until March 1991. The unemployment rate in Massachusetts had increased from 2.4 percent in 1988 to 9.7 percent in 1992, leading to falling state revenue. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis responded by ordering all state agencies to cut their budgets in the 1989, 1990, and 1991 fiscal years (and sometimes multiple times during the same fiscal year), and return appropriations to the state treasury. Chancellor Penney oversaw the university return funds to the state government 11 times during the first four years of her tenure. (Dukakis would later arrange, in 1995, for part of the remaining funds from his 1988 presidential campaign be used to support a public service student internship program at UMass Boston, and beginning in 2000, has met with students in political science courses every year at the university along with former UMass System President and Massachusetts Senate President William Bulger.) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=99867 | 921,524 |
441,920 | Material is put on a sinter machine in two layers. The bottom layer may vary in thickness from . A 12 to 20 mm sinter fraction is used, also referred to as the hearth layer. The second, covering layer consists of mixed materials, making for a total bed height of . The mixed materials are applied with drum feeders and roll feeders, which distributes the nodules in certain depth throughout the sinterring machine . The upper layer is smoothed using a leveler. The material, also known as a charge, enters the ignition furnace into rows of multi-slit burners. In the case of one plant, the first (ignition) zone has eleven burners. The next (soaking/annealing) zone typically offers 12 burners. Air is sucked from the bottom of the bed of mixed material throughout the sintering machine. Fire penetrates the mixed material gradually, until it reaches the hearth layer. This end point of burning is called burn through point (BTP). The hearth layer, which is nothing but sinter in smaller size, restricts sticking of hot sinter with pallets. BTP is achieved in a certain zone of sinter machine, to optimize the process, by means of several temperature measuring instrument placed throughout the sinter machine. After completion of burning, the mix converts into sinter, which then breaks into smaller size by sinter breaker. After breaking into small sizes, it cools down in cooler (linear or circular) by means of forced air. At discharge of sinter cooler, temperature of sinter is maintained as low, so that the hot sinter can be transported by a conveyor belt made of rubber. Necessary precautions are taken to trace any existence of fire in the belt and necessary extinguishing is done by spraying water. Then this product is being passed through a jaw-crusher, where the size of sinter is further reduced (~ 50 mm) into smaller size. Then the complete mixture is being passed through two screens. Smallest sinter fines (< 5 mm) are stored in proportioning bins and reused for preparing sinter again through mixing and nodulizing drum and fed to sinter machine for burning. A part of the smaller one ( 5 – 20 mm) is used for hearth layer in sinter machine and the rest is taken to the blast furnace along with the biggest sized sinters. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33126504 | 441,705 |
1,259,389 | Saint-Quentin-la-Poterie is about 5 km north of Uzès and some 30 km north of Nîmes. Joseph was one of ten children born to a family of horticulturists in the service of the duc d'Uzès. All hands being needed in the fields, Joseph was not sent to school. By the age of 17 he had proved his worth as a gardener, and the duke offered him a post at his mansion in Paris. Joseph took the opportunity to attend evening classes and learned to read and write. When friends of the duke began to ask his advice, his horizons widened and he started to make the high-level contacts that were to define his later career. In 1846 he left the duke's service to take up a post at the Tuileries Gardens near the Louvre. Responsible for the orangery, he began to look for a more durable form of container for the orange trees, which were moved from the open air into the greenhouses during the winter. He began to make them of cement (mixed with sand, cinders, and/or crushed firebricks) and reinforced them with a grid of iron rods. There was a general notion at the time that thermal expansion and contraction of embedded iron would rupture the concrete. It seems that Monier spent some years experimenting with his containers in order to prove that this was not the case. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10286525 | 1,258,702 |
7,860 | Through the 1970s the hand-held electronic calculator underwent rapid development. The red LED and blue/green vacuum fluorescent displays consumed a lot of power and the calculators either had a short battery life (often measured in hours, so rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries were common) or were large so that they could take larger, higher capacity batteries. In the early 1970s liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) were in their infancy and there was a great deal of concern that they only had a short operating lifetime. Busicom introduced the Busicom "LE-120A "HANDY"" calculator, the first pocket-sized calculator and the first with an LED display, and announced the Busicom "LC" with LCD. However, there were problems with this display and the calculator never went on sale. The first successful calculators with LCDs were manufactured by Rockwell International and sold from 1972 by other companies under such names as: Dataking "LC-800", Harden "DT/12", Ibico "086", Lloyds "40", Lloyds "100", Prismatic "500" (a.k.a. "P500"), Rapid Data "Rapidman 1208LC". The LCDs were an early form using the "Dynamic Scattering Mode DSM" with the numbers appearing as bright against a dark background. To present a high-contrast display these models illuminated the LCD using a filament lamp and solid plastic light guide, which negated the low power consumption of the display. These models appear to have been sold only for a year or two. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7593 | 7,857 |
983,271 | In 1738, variolation was added to the second edition of "Chambers' Cyclopædia", which in its time was an authority of knowledge for the literary class. Later in 1754, variolation received the sanction of the Royal College of Physicians. All of this made England the international center of variolation, attracting visitors from all over the world to explore this "new" method of prevention. The nation also acted as a magnet for those who sought to introduce the benefits of variolation to their own countries. A remarkable example of this is the introduction of variolation into Russia. Thomas Dimsdale, a prominent banker, politician, and physician, was invited to visit St Petersburg to variolate Catherine the Great. In 1769, he variolated Catherine, her 14-year-old son Grand Duke Paul, and over 140 prominent members of the Court. The results were successful. Dimsdale was created a baron of the Russian Empire, and awarded £10,000, with £2000 for expenses and an annuity of £500. His son, who accompanied him, was also rewarded. In case Dimsdale's variolations had ended badly, Catherine had arranged a relay of horses to carry them safely out of the country. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=34062507 | 982,757 |
1,468,139 | For an orientable vector bundle formula_27 a spin structure exists on formula_2 if and only if the second Stiefel–Whitney class formula_29 vanishes. This is a result of Armand Borel and Friedrich Hirzebruch. Furthermore, in the case formula_30 is spin, the number of spin structures are in bijection with formula_31. These results can be easily proven using a spectral sequence argument for the associated principal formula_32-bundle formula_33. Notice this gives a fibrationformula_34hence the Serre spectral sequence can be applied. From general theory of spectral sequences, there is an exact sequenceformula_35whereformula_36In addition, formula_37 and formula_38 for some filtration on formula_39, hence we get a mapformula_40giving an exact sequenceformula_41Now, a spin structure is exactly a double covering of formula_42 fitting into a commutative diagramformula_43where the two left vertical maps are the double covering maps. Now, double coverings of formula_42 are in bijection with index formula_45 subgroups of formula_46, which is in bijection with the set of group morphisms formula_47. But, from Hurewicz theorem and change of coefficients, this is exactly the cohomology group formula_39. Applying the same argument to formula_32, the non-trivial covering formula_50 corresponds to formula_51, and the map to formula_52 is precisely the formula_53 of the second Stiefel–Whitney class, hence formula_54. If it vanishes, then the inverse image of formula_55 under the mapformula_56is the set of double coverings giving spin structures. Now, this subset of formula_39 can be identified with formula_31, showing this latter cohomology group classifies the various spin structures on the vector bundle formula_30. This can be done by looking at the long exact sequence of homotopy groups of the fibrationformula_60and applying formula_61, giving the sequence of cohomology groupsformula_62Because formula_31 is the kernel, and the inverse image of formula_64 is in bijection with the kernel, we have the desired result. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2844303 | 1,467,315 |
1,458,289 | It has also been argued that the United Nations mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) may increase pressure to convert or modify other ecosystems, especially savannahs and wetlands, for food or biofuel, even though those ecosystems also have high carbon sequestration potential. Globally, for example, peatlands cover only 3% of the land surface but store twice the amount of carbon as all the world's forests, whilst mangrove forests and saltmarshes are examples of relatively low-biomass ecosystems with high levels of productivity and carbon sequestration. Other researchers have argued that REDD is a critical component of an effective global biosequestration strategy that could provide significant benefits, such as the conservation of biodiversity, particularly if it moves away from focusing on protecting forests that are most cost-effective for reducing carbon emissions (such as those in Brazil where agricultural opportunity costs are relatively low, unlike Asia, which has sizeable revenues from oil palm, rubber, rice, and maize). They argue REDD could be varied to allow funding of programs to slow peat degradation in Indonesia and target protection of biodiversity in "hot spot"—areas with high species richness and relatively little remaining forest. Some purchasers, they maintain, of REDD carbon credits, such as multinational corporations or nations, might pay a premium to save imperiled eco-systems or areas with high-profile species. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24603722 | 1,457,469 |
1,477,308 | Multidisciplinary approaches have been shown to be effective in increasing activity levels and participation in multiple sclerosis. Studies investigating information provision in support of patient understanding and participation suggest that while interventions (written information, decision aids, coaching, educational programmes) may increase patient knowledge, the evidence of an effect on decision making and quality of life is mixed and low certainty. Due to the paucity of randomized controlled studies, there is limited evidence of the overall efficacy of individual therapy disciplines, though there is good evidence that specific approaches, such as exercise, psychology therapies, particularly cognitive behavioral approaches and energy conservation instruction are effective. More specifically psychological interventions seem useful in the treatment of depression, while evidence on effectiveness for other uses such as the treatment of cognitive impairments or vocational counseling is less strong. Cognitive training, alone or combined with other neuropsychological interventions, may show positive effects for memory and attention though firm conclusions are not possible given small sample numbers, variable methodology, interventions and outcome measures. The effectiveness of palliative approaches in addition to standard care is uncertain, due to lack of evidence. It is difficult to be specific about what types of rehabilitation will be most beneficial because therapies are tailored to meet the individual's specific needs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7663818 | 1,476,476 |
1,666,427 | The need to adapt to higher altitudes pushed for the development of browsing behaviour due to the lack of low and easily accessible grass, a factor which likely contributed to the evolution of curiosity in goats and their ability to digest plants which would otherwise be poisonous. It also resulted in the development of the ability to climb trees and rocks, an ability distinctive to goats as they are the only bovids to regularly practise such behaviour. The popular conception of goats as creatures who can eat any type of material, and who are difficult to contain with fencing, arises from the aforementioned traits which came as a result of the need to adapt to an unusual environment. The difficulty in containing goats with fences also arises from their naturally high intelligence, which developed in response to a harsh, mountainous terrain. Although they are social and live in groups their bonds are relatively weak and they often do not stay close together, especially when eating, a result of living in an environment comparatively safe from predators. This is also reflected in the unusual behaviour of goat mothers who will allow their children to lie somewhat spread out from each other, in stark contrast to Sheep who make sure their offspring remain close together. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60746925 | 1,665,488 |
1,541,170 | A novel strategy utilizes highly-tailorable diffusion based nanocarriers for the delivery of genetic material, allowing for non-transgenic, non-destructive plant transformation. The method specificity is highly dependent on the properties of the material utilized, with key factors including size, polarity, and surface chemistry. Some approaches to diffusion based delivery have used Nano-Structured-DNA, carbon nanotubes, and other nanoparticles as vesicles for the delivery of genetic information. . These methods typically rely on functionalization of the surface or manipulation of porosity of a nanocarrier in order to optimize the loading and delivery of genetic information. DNA nanostructures have been shown to be a highly programmable modality in terms of delivery of small interfering RNA (siRNA), exploring the optimal design parameters necessary for plant cell internalization. A recent study utilizing DNA loaded CNTs was able to successfully express desired traits in various mature model plant systems- and even isolated Eruca sativa protoplasts while managing to protect and maintain the fidelity of the transferred genetic material. Lastly, porous nanoparticles have been shown to be an effective DNA delivering agent for plant transformations- with efficiency depending on pore size and strand length. All in all, these diffusion based gene transformation methodologies offer a cheaper mode of plant gene transformation with lower impact to plant tissue, lower transformation efficiencies, and little to no risk of DNA incorporation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63883339 | 1,540,297 |
878,727 | Bohr evidently misunderstood Einstein's argument about the quantum mechanical violation of relativistic causality (locality) and instead focused on the consistency of quantum indeterminacy. Bohr's response was to illustrate Einstein's idea more clearly using the diagram in Figure C. (Figure C shows a fixed screen S that is bolted down. Then try to imagine one that can slide up or down along a rod instead of a fixed bolt.) Bohr observes that extremely precise knowledge of any (potential) vertical motion of the screen is an essential presupposition in Einstein's argument. In fact, if its velocity in the direction "X" "before" the passage of the particle is not known with a precision substantially greater than that induced by the recoil (that is, if it were already moving vertically with an unknown and greater velocity than that which it derives as a consequence of the contact with the particle), then the determination of its motion after the passage of the particle would not give the information we seek. However, Bohr continues, an extremely precise determination of the velocity of the screen, when one applies the principle of indeterminacy, implies an inevitable imprecision of its position in the direction "X". Before the process even begins, the screen would therefore occupy an indeterminate position at least to a certain extent (defined by the formalism). Now consider, for example, the point "d" in figure A, where the interference is destructive. Any displacement of the first screen would make the lengths of the two paths, "a–b–d" and "a–c–d", different from those indicated in the figure. If the difference between the two paths varies by half a wavelength, at point "d" there will be constructive rather than destructive interference. The ideal experiment must average over all the possible positions of the screen S, and, for every position, there corresponds, for a certain fixed point "F", a different type of interference, from the perfectly destructive to the perfectly constructive. The effect of this averaging is that the pattern of interference on the screen "F" will be uniformly grey. Once more, our attempt to evidence the corpuscular aspects in "S" has destroyed the possibility of interference in "F", which depends crucially on the wave aspects. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1025272 | 878,264 |
803,130 | The magnitude and capacity of these systems makes the Ames Arc Jet Complex unique. The largest power supply can deliver 75 megawatts (MW) for a 30-minute duration or 150 MW for a 15-second duration. This power capacity, in combination with a high-volume 5-stage steam ejector vacuum-pumping system, enables facility operations to match high-altitude atmospheric flight conditions with samples of relatively large size. The Thermo-Physics Facilities Branch operates four arc jet facilities. The Interaction Heating Facility (IHF), with an available power of over 60-MW, is one of the highest-power arc jets available. It is a very flexible facility, capable of long run times of up to one hour, and able to test large samples in both a stagnation and flat plate configuration. The Panel Test Facility (PTF) uses a unique semielliptic nozzle for testing panel sections. Powered by a 20-MW arc heater, the PTF can perform tests on samples for up to 20 minutes. The Turbulent Flow Duct provides supersonic, turbulent high temperature air flows over flat surfaces. The TFD is powered by a 20-MW Hüls arc heater and can test samples in size. The Aerodynamic Heating Facility (AHF) has similar characteristics to the IHF arc heater, offering a wide range of operating conditions, sample sizes and extended test times. A cold-air-mixing plenum allows for simulations of ascent or high-speed flight conditions. Catalycity studies using air or nitrogen can be performed in this flexible rig. A 5-arm model support system allows the user to maximize testing efficiency. The AHF can be configured with either a Hüls or segmented arc heater, up to 20-MW. 1 MW is enough power to supply 750 homes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47477 | 802,701 |
696,884 | Headquartered in a Hackensack warehouse oozing with EPA hazards "something like 'rats and snakes and toxic waste'", the SWAT team worked every day even through Christmas Eve 1985, in what Don James called "the longest and hardest I ever worked consecutive days in my life" and what Howard Phillips called "every waking hour ... at the crack of dawn ... seven days a week". President Arakawa joined them at the warehouse and at retail stores, once running a TV up a flight of stairs just to follow in the whole team's footsteps. While unloading their products into stores, the Nintendo of America crew was confronted by strangers who resented any Japanese-influenced company in a time of international trade issues and cheap Japanese clones of American products. A security guard reportedly said, "You're working for the Japs? I hope you fall flat on your ass." Gail Tilden said, "I remember one woman coming up to me, and I don't know what sparked her to do this, but she came up to me and said, 'Nintendo. That's a Japanese company, right? ... I hope you "fail"!'". Retail staff resentful of the disastrous video game market rolled their eyes at Nintendo staff, with one manager looking at Nintendo's inventory and saying "Somebody told me I've got to sell this crap." The first sale came soon and quietly, of a Deluxe Set and the 15 additional games, to a gentleman who the team later realized was employed by an unspecified Japanese competitor. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1571248 | 696,520 |
414,436 | Clinical signs and symptoms of complement-mediated TMA can include abdominal pain, confusion, fatigue, edema (swelling), nausea/vomiting and diarrhea. aHUS often presents with malaise and fatigue, as well as microangiopathic anemia. However, severe abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea are unusual. Laboratory tests may also reveal low levels of platelets (cells in the blood that aid in clotting), elevated lactate dehydrogenase (LDH, a chemical released from damaged cells, and which is therefore a marker of cellular damage), decreased haptoglobin (indicative of the breakdown of red blood cells), anemia (low red blood cell count)/schistocytes (damaged red blood cells), elevated creatinine (indicative of kidney dysfunction), and proteinuria (indicative of kidney injury). Patients with aHUS often present with an abrupt onset of systemic signs and symptoms such as acute kidney failure, hypertension (high blood pressure), myocardial infarction (heart attack), stroke, lung complications, pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas), liver necrosis (death of liver cells or tissue), encephalopathy (brain dysfunction), seizure, or coma. Failure of neurologic, cardiac, kidney, and gastrointestinal (GI) organs, as well as death, can occur unpredictably at any time, either very quickly or following prolonged symptomatic or asymptomatic disease progression. For example, approximately 1 in 6 patients with aHUS initially will present with proteinuria or hematuria without acute kidney failure. Patients who survive the presenting signs and symptoms endure a chronic thrombotic and inflammatory state, which puts many of them at lifelong elevated risk of sudden blood clotting, kidney failure, other severe complications and premature death. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38187439 | 414,233 |
1,856,685 | Between 2004 and 2013, and contiguous with the "Early Islamic Bahrain" project, Insoll directed research examining the archaeology of indigenous African religions in Northern Ghana, with a particular focus on the Talensi of the Tong Hills, and subsequently the figurines of Koma Land. This was completed with research partners Dr Rachel MacLean and Prof. Benjamin Kankpeyeng for the first phase, and Prof. Kankpeyeng for the second phase. The project was initially funded by the British Academy and subsequently by the Wellcome Trust. In the Tong Hills the research, though primarily archaeological, also involved analysis of extant material culture, particularly in relation to shrines, as well as oral history, medicine, and the processes of recording and preserving cultural heritage and architecture. The results indicated that shrines could have significant archaeological ‘histories’, encompassing up to 1500 years, were containers of memory, and could be widely franchised. Shrines also blurred the categories of natural and human constructed sacred spaces. Community engagement was vital and the process of negotiation with shrines through the agency of sacrifice, and with elders, priests, and other members of the Talensi population was a key part of the research. Scientific techniques such as organic geochemistry and isotope analyses were also employed by team members as part of research on indigenous medicine and its archaeological signatures. The results were presented through a conference in the Wellcome Trust, "Shrines, Substances and Medicine in Africa: Archaeological, Anthropological, and Historical Perspectives" (2009), and publications. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38891541 | 1,855,617 |
80,275 | A 2015 ESPN profile praised Donnarumma's fundamental goalkeeping skills, identifying his large slender frame and reach, agility, and composed nature as his biggest strengths; writer Nick Dorrington additionally described the teenager as "a natural leader [with] the necessary confidence to organise a defence featuring players twice his age." Despite his tall and imposing stature, Donnarumma possesses good reactions, and is effective at stopping penalties. Matt Jones has also praised Donnarumma for his shot-stopping ability, and speed when rushing off his line to face opponents in one on one situations. Former Milan goalkeeper Christian Abbiati touted Donnarumma as a potential future captain for Milan in 2016, noting that Donnarumma's temperament, introverted character, and ability to withstand pressure were all the necessary qualities needed for him to succeed in this role. Although Donnarumma is regarded as being competent with the ball at his feet, pundits such as Mina Rzouki, Paolo Menicucci, and Sam Lopresti, as well as former goalkeeper Fernando Orsi, have cited his ball control and distribution, as well as his overall consistency, positioning, handling, punching technique, and his ability to defend crosses and command his box as areas in which he needs to improve as he gains more experience. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=48358672 | 80,242 |
27,820 | Rheticus's hopes were dashed when six years after the publication of "De Revolutionibus" Melanchthon published his "Initia Doctrinae Physicae" presenting three grounds to reject Copernicanism. These were "the evidence of the senses, the thousand-year consensus of men of science, and the authority of the Bible". Blasting the new theory Melanchthon wrote, "Out of love for novelty or in order to make a show of their cleverness, some people have argued that the earth moves. They maintain that neither the eighth sphere nor the sun moves, whereas they attribute motion to the other celestial spheres, and also place the earth among the heavenly bodies. Nor were these jokes invented recently. There is still extant Archimedes's book on "The Sand Reckoner"; in which he reports that Aristarchus of Samos propounded the paradox that the sun stands still and the earth revolves around the sun. Even though subtle experts institute many investigations for the sake of exercising their ingenuity, nevertheless public proclamation of absurd opinions is indecent and sets a harmful example." Melanchthon went on to cite Bible passages and then declare "Encouraged by this divine evidence, let us cherish the truth and let us not permit ourselves to be alienated from it by the tricks of those who deem it an intellectual honor to introduce confusion into the arts." In the first edition of "Initia Doctrinae Physicae", Melanchthon even questioned Copernicus's character claiming his motivation was "either from love of novelty or from desire to appear clever", these more personal attacks were largely removed by the second edition in 1550. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=323592 | 27,810 |
798,612 | The perennially-popular "Looney Tunes" characters made a comeback. While the older shorts continued to enjoy countless reruns and compilation specials (and a few compilation films), new "Looney Tunes" short features were made in the 1990s. Inspired by the success of Disney's "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and a series of Nike and McDonald's commercials teaming the characters with basketball superstar Michael Jordan, the studio produced the live-action/animation combo "Space Jam" in 1996. The film received mixed reviews, but was a major commercial success. However, another 2003 feature, "", was a box-office flop, grossing about three-quarter of its $80 million budget worldwide ($ in current terms), but received more positive critical reviews. Other modern "Looney Tunes" projects were in a different vein. Unlike the original shorts, "Taz-Mania" (1991-1995) and "Baby Looney Tunes" (2001-2006) were aimed primarily at young children, while "Loonatics Unleashed" (2005-2007) was a controversial revamping of the characters in the distant future. "The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries" (1995-2000) and "Duck Dodgers" (2003-2005) were very well received shows and were relatively more faithful to the original shorts. "The Looney Tunes Show" (2011-2014) was a modern more adult-oriented sitcom and "" (2015-2020) was a modernized series of Bugs Bunny shorts in the "Looney Tunes" tradition, but both shows still got a slightly better reception from audiences than "Baby Looney Tunes" or "Loonatics Unleashed". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=141959 | 798,187 |
1,231,488 | This enzyme's function positions type I cells to uniquely take advantage of their mitochondria. However, AMPK is an enzyme found in many more types of cells than chemoreceptors because it helps regulate metabolism. The difference may actually lie in the cell's metabolism, rather than the AMPK enzyme; peripheral chemoreceptors display very high background rates of oxygen consumption, supported by its dense network of capillaries. Since its base rate of cellular respiration is so high, its AMPK would be more sensitive to reductions in blood borne oxygen, thus allowing it to respond to small variations in oxygen content before other cells begin to feel the effects of its absence. In this way, transduction in peripheral chemoreceptor cells is relatively unique. It does not require any specialized proteins that change shape in the presence of light or a specific receptor site for a particular tastant. Its necessary components include merely the mitochondria and an enzyme used to regulate its activity common to all aerobic cells, a suite of potassium and calcium channels and neurotransmitters common to many types of nerve cells, and a well-endowed version of the vasculature supporting all aerobic cells. Further research should identify why type I cells exhibit such a high metabolic rate compared to other cell types, as this may be the truly unique feature of the receptor. And thus, a receptor for an aerobic organism's most basic energy source is composed of collection of cell structures common throughout the body. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9044842 | 1,230,826 |
54,318 | During mid-1943, Adolf Hitler envisioned the Me 262 as a ground-attack/bomber aircraft rather than a defensive interceptor. The configuration of a high-speed, light-payload "Schnellbomber" ("fast bomber") was intended to penetrate enemy airspace during the expected Allied invasion of France. His edict resulted in the development of (and concentration on) the "Sturmvogel" variant. Hitler's interference helped to extend the delay in bringing the "Schwalbe" into operation; (other factors contributed too; in particular, there were engine vibration problems which needed attention). In his memoirs, Albert Speer, then Minister of Armaments and War Production, claimed Hitler originally had blocked mass production of the Me 262, before agreeing in early 1944. Similar criticisms were voiced by Lieutenant General Adolf Galland. Hitler rejected arguments that the aircraft would be more effective as a fighter against the Allied bombers destroying large parts of Germany and wanted it as a bomber for revenge attacks. According to Speer, Hitler felt its superior speed compared to other fighters of the era meant it could not be attacked, and so preferred it for high altitude straight flying. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20488 | 54,298 |
1,973,564 | He led the 3d Platoon to the rescue of a similar unit which had been surrounded in an enemy counterattack at Oberhoffen, France. As he advanced along a street, he observed several Germans crossing a field about 100 yards away. Running into a barn, he took up a position in a window and swept the hostile troops with submachine gun fire, killing 6, wounding others, and completely disorganizing the group. His platoon then moved forward through intermittent sniper fire and made contact with the besieged Americans. When the 2 platoons had been reorganized, Sgt. Dahlgren continued to advance along the street until he drew fire from an enemy-held house. In the face of machine pistol and rifle fire, he ran toward the building, hurled a grenade through the door, and blasted his way inside with his gun. This aggressive attack so rattled the Germans that all 8 men who held the strongpoint immediately surrendered. As Sgt. Dahlgren started toward the next house, hostile machinegun fire drove him to cover. He secured rifle grenades, stepped to an exposed position, and calmly launched his missiles from a difficult angle until he had destroyed the machinegun and killed its 2 operators. He moved to the rear of the house and suddenly came under the fire of a machinegun emplaced in a barn. Throwing a grenade into the structure, he rushed the position, firing his weapon as he ran; within, he overwhelmed 5 Germans. After reorganizing his unit he advanced to clear hostile riflemen from the building where he had destroyed the machinegun. He entered the house by a window and trapped the Germans in the cellar, where he tossed grenades into their midst, wounding several and forcing 10 more to surrender. While reconnoitering another street with a comrade, he heard German voices in a house. An attack with rifle grenades drove the hostile troops to the cellar. Sgt. Dahlgren entered the building, kicked open the cellar door, and, firing several bursts down the stairway, called for the trapped enemy to surrender. Sixteen soldiers filed out with their hands in the air. The bold leadership and magnificent courage displayed by Sgt. Dahlgren in his heroic attacks were in a large measure responsible for repulsing an enemy counterattack and saving an American platoon from great danger. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15828980 | 1,972,429 |
617,463 | Strauss and Trott built a partnership of 118 before the England captain edged to Michael Clarke at first slip just before the lunch break on day three. With the final ball of the morning session, Prior drove a ball from North to the off side and hit Ricky Ponting at silly point square in the jaw. The Australian captain, looked nonplussed, simply spat out some blood. After lunch, Prior was run out while attempting to sneak a run, despite hitting the ball straight to Katich, who threw down the stumps at the bowler's end. The next man in was Andrew Flintoff, playing in his final Test innings, and he added 22 off 18 before being caught on the long-on boundary. A lofted straight drive from England's most promising all-round prospect, Stuart Broad, brought up the 400 lead, but an attempted slog found his top edge and he was caught by Ponting off North for 29. Meanwhile, Trott progressed towards his maiden Test century, ably supported by Graeme Swann, who reached his half-century in just 44 balls. However, the England spinner was eventually caught behind, top-edging a pull shot off a bouncer from Hilfenhaus. Trott then became the 18th England cricketer to make a century on debut with a four off Hilfenhaus's next over, but he and Anderson only managed to add another 31 before Trott was caught by North at point off Stuart Clark, prompting a declaration from Andrew Strauss. England's score of 373/9 declared meant that in order to win the match Australia would need to make 546 runs in just over two days on a pitch that had not yet produced more than 400 over the course of the match. England, on the other hand, needed only to take 10 Australian wickets. The Australian openers managed to get to 80 without loss by the end of play. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8708994 | 617,149 |
1,105,102 | Taylor hoped to build a computer network to connect the ARPA-sponsored projects together, if nothing else, to let him communicate to all of them through one terminal. By June 1966, Taylor had been named director of IPTO; in this capacity, he shepherded the ARPANET project until 1969. Taylor had convinced ARPA director Charles M. Herzfeld to fund a network project earlier in February 1966, and Herzfeld transferred a million dollars from a ballistic missile defense program to Taylor's budget. Taylor hired Larry Roberts from MIT Lincoln Laboratory to be its first program manager. Roberts first resisted moving to Washington DC, until Herzfeld reminded the director of Lincoln Laboratory that ARPA dominated its funding. Licklider continued to provide guidance, and Wesley A. Clark suggested the use of a dedicated computer, called the Interface Message Processor at each node of the network instead of centralized control. At the 1967 Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, a member of Donald Davies' team (Roger Scantlebury) presented their research on packet switching and suggested it for use in the ARPANET. ARPA issued a request for quotation (RFQ) to build the system, which was awarded to Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN). ATT Bell Labs and IBM Research were invited to join, but were not interested. At a pivotal meeting in 1967 most participants resisted testing the new network; they thought it would slow down their research. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1002038 | 1,104,539 |
1,829,826 | "P. fragariae" was first observed in 1921 in Scotland. The actual infectious agent was not identified until 1940 by Clarence James Hickman. The disease was not found in the United States until 1935 when it was reported in eastern Illinois. Once discovered, a survey was done to identify other states that had the disease. It was found in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Michigan. Some farmers claimed that they had been observing the disease as early as 1925, so it is thought this disease could have developed at the same time as the Scottish outbreak. The disease is widespread and in many cases causes devastation to strawberry plants and strawberry production. Little about exact numbers has been found and may not have been recorded. Some information suggests that after a severe outbreak farmers could see yields as low as . On average, one uninfected hectare of strawberry plants would produce about of strawberries. One estimate reported that farmers in Nova Scotia lost 78% of their strawberries in one season. They lost almost . The disease is extremely devastating to raspberries as well. Raspberry plantations are huge capital investments that can take 10 to 15 years of production to earn back the initial investment. This disease can wipe out entire plantations in only a few years, effectively ruining a starting raspberry farm. "P. fragariae" is important wherever strawberries and raspberries are grown and where conditions are ideal. The countries it affects most are the U.S., China, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, and the UK. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11466323 | 1,828,785 |
546,222 | The Army was considerably expanded in early 1942 in response to the Japanese threat to Australia. During this year the Army's strength peaked at eleven infantry divisions—the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th Divisions—and three armoured divisions—the 1st, 2nd and 3rd—organised into the First and Second Armies, and I, II and III Corps, as well as many support and service units. In August 1942, the Army had a strength of 476,000 men. This force proved larger than what Australia's population and industry could sustain; by late 1942 the number of personnel who needed to be inducted each month to make good losses caused by sickness and combat was much larger than the numbers who were becoming eligible for service, and the allocation of a high proportion of Australia's limited supply of manpower to the military was inhibiting the expansion of the munitions industry and other key sectors of the economy. The Army was also unbalanced as a large majority its personnel were employed in arms corps undertaking combat and combat support roles. Heavily reliant upon its allies for logistical support, it required more personnel in support arms such as ordnance and transport to be functional as a self-sufficient organisation. This situation was most acute in 1942; at that time there were 137,236 men serving arms corps such as infantry, cavalry and armour, while there were just 29,079 in ordnance. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22738876 | 545,936 |
581,169 | The first remains of tyrannosaurids were uncovered during expeditions led by the Geological Survey of Canada, which located numerous scattered teeth. These distinctive dinosaur teeth were given the name "Deinodon" ("terrible tooth") by Joseph Leidy in 1856. In 1892 Edward Drinker Cope described more tyrannosaur material in the form of isolated vertebrae, and gave this animal the name "Manospondylus gigas". This discovery was mostly overlooked for over a century, and caused controversy in the early 2000s when it was discovered that this material actually belonged to, and had name priority over, "Tyrannosaurus rex". Later in 1905 Henry Fairfield Osborn described two tyrannosaur specimens that had been collected in Montana and Wyoming during a 1902 expedition of the American Museum of Natural History, led by Barnum Brown. Initially, Osborn considered these to be distinct species. The first, he named "Dynamosaurus imperiosus" ("emperor power lizard"), and the second, "Tyrannosaurus rex" ("king tyrant lizard"). A year later, Osborn recognized that these two specimens actually came from the same species. Despite the fact that "Dynamosaurus" had been found first, the name "Tyrannosaurus" had appeared one page earlier in his original article describing both specimens. Therefore, according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), the name "Tyrannosaurus" was used. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9430305 | 580,872 |
493,446 | Percy was a tall, physically impressive man, "of serious expression but with an attractive manner". He has been variously described as belligerent and eccentric, with "surges of wild energy subsiding into sloth". The Jesuit priest Father John Gerard wrote that in his youth Percy had "been very wild more than ordinary, and much given to fighting", while the Jesuit Oswald Tesimond thought he had been "rather wild and given to the gay life, a man who relied much on his sword and personal courage." According to both men, Percy's conversion to Catholicism was a calming influence, but biographer Mark Nicholls, who calls Percy "a pugnacious character", says that this was only true to a point. His excesses did not prevent him from joining Northumberland during his command in the Low Countries, held from 1600–1601, for which he was rewarded with £200. The earl also appointed Percy his receiver of rents in Cumberland and Northumberland, in 1603. Henry Percy was considered a supporter of the Catholic cause, and on several occasions before 1603, suspecting that Queen Elizabeth I did not have long to live, he entrusted Thomas with the delivery of secret correspondence to and from her probable successor, King James VI of Scotland. Northumberland's uncle had been executed for his involvement in the Rising of the North, a plot to replace Elizabeth with James's mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. He planned to make up for his family's disgrace by building a strong relationship with James, but also wished to counter the influence of Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, whose father Lord Burghley (it was rumoured) James believed had been responsible for Mary's death. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1452052 | 493,191 |
677,844 | On average, Communications service providers utilize an average of just 35 to 40 percent of available network capacity. Recently, telecommunications software vendors such as Telcordia and Ericsson have promoted yield management as a strategy for communications service providers to generate additional revenue and reduce capital expenditures by maximizing subscriber use of available network bandwidth. Approaches include basing a strategy on innovative services explicitly designed to use only spare capacity and borrowing proven methods from the airline industry. The approach can be more difficult to implement in the telecommunications industry than the airlines sector because of the difficulty to control and sometimes refuse network access to customers. Similarities that exist between the airline and telecom industries include a large sunk cost combined with low marginal cost, perishable inventory, reservations, pricing flexibility and the opportunity to upsell. Differences that present challenges for communications service providers include low-value transactions and overall network complexity. Suggested approaches to executing a successful yield management strategy include accurate network information collection, bandwidth capacity allocation that doesn’t impact service quality, the deployment of service management software such as real time policy and real-time charging, and using new marketing channels to target consumers with innovative services. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1053994 | 677,490 |
326,913 | By May 2014, nine aircraft had been delivered, completing the core fleet. Further deliveries were for a "surge capability", available to the RAF when needed, but otherwise available to AirTanker for "release to the civil market, less its military equipment or to partner nations in a military capacity with the MoD's agreement". By 14 March 2016, all 14 Voyagers had been delivered. In November 2015, it was announced that a Voyager would be refitted to carry government ministers and members of the Royal Family on official visits. The refit cost £10m but was claimed to save roughly £775,000 annually compared to charter flights. ZZ336 is fitted with 158 seats and is known as Vespina. It entered service on 6 May 2016, the then Prime Minister David Cameron made his first flight on it to attend the 2016 Warsaw NATO summit. In June 2020, ZZ336 received a new livery based on the colours of the Union Flag at the request of the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Although undertaken as a part of routine maintenance, the new livery's cost was stated to be approximately £900,000. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=616482 | 326,739 |
826,454 | The amount of sensory data collected poses a huge storage problem, and will require real-time signal processing to reduce the raw data to relevant derived information. In mid 2011 it was estimated the array could generate an exabyte a day of raw data, which could be compressed to around 10 petabytes. China, a founding member of the project, has designed and constructed the first prototype of the regional data processing centre. An Tao, head of the SKA group of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, stated, "It will generate data streams far beyond the total Internet traffic worldwide." The Tianhe-2 supercomputer was used in 2016 to train the software. The processing of the project will be performed on Chinese designed and manufactured Virtex-7 processors by Xilinx, integrated into platforms by the CSIRO. China has pushed for a unified beam forming design that has led other major countries to drop out of the project. Canada continues to use Altera Stratix-10 processors (by Intel). It is illegal for any US company to export high end Intel FPGAs or any related CSP design details or firmware to China amid the US-embargo which will severely limit cooperation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=792246 | 826,010 |
1,114,649 | Space vehicles for sub-orbital and orbital flights from the Eastern and Western Test Ranges were destroyed if they endangered populated areas by crossing pre-determined destruct lines encompassing the safe flight launch corridor. To assist the RSO in making a flight termination decision, there are many indicators showing the condition of the space vehicle in flight. These included booster chamber pressures, vertical plane charts (later supplanted by computer-generated destruct lines), and height and speed indicators. Supporting the RSO for this information were a supporting team of RSOs reporting from profile and horizontal parallel wires used at lift-off (before radar could capture the vehicle) and telemetry indicators. After initial lift-off, flight information is captured with X- and C-band radars, and S-Band telemetry receivers from vehicle-borne transmitters. At the Eastern Test Range, S and C-Band antennas were located in the Bahamas and as far as the island of Antigua, after which the space vehicle finished its propulsion stages or is in orbit. Two switches were used, ARM and DESTRUCT. The ARM switch shut down propulsion for liquid propelled vehicles, and the DESTRUCT ignited the primacord surrounding the fuel tanks. In the case of crewed flight, the vehicle would be allowed to fly to apogee before the DESTRUCT was transmitted. This would allow the astronauts the maximum amount of time for their self-ejection. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16537446 | 1,114,081 |
336,523 | Lockheed is pushing for funding for the development of an extended-range (ER) version of the THAAD to counter maturing threats posed by hypersonic glide vehicles that adversaries may deploy, namely the Chinese WU-14, to penetrate the gap between low- and high-altitude missile defenses. The company performed static fire trials of a modified THAAD booster in 2006 and continued to fund the project until 2008. The current -diameter single-stage booster design would be expanded to a first stage for greater range with a second "kick stage" to close the distance to the target and provide improved velocity at burnout and more lateral movement during an engagement. Although the kill vehicle would not need redesign, the ground-based launcher would have only five missiles instead of eight. As of 2020, THAAD-ER is only an industry concept, but Lockheed believes that the Missile Defense Agency will show interest because of the weapons under development by potential adversaries. If funding for the THAAD-ER begins in 2020, a system could be produced by 2024 to provide an interim capability against a rudimentary hypersonic threat. The Pentagon is researching whether other technologies like directed energy weapons and railguns are better solutions for missile defense; these are expected to become available in the mid to late 2020s. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1034696 | 336,344 |
60,008 | Sampson had continued his studies of the material since 1989. In 1994, in a talk during the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, he named "Taxon C" as a new genus and species, "Achelousaurus horneri"; although his abstract was published, it did not identify a holotype, a name-bearing specimen, and genera published in conference abstracts are not considered valid by the ICZN. In 1995, in a subsequent article, Sampson formally named "Achelousaurus horneri", indicating specimen MOR 485 as the holotype. The generic name consists of the words "Achelous", the name of a Greek mythological figure, and "saurus", which is Latinized Greek for lizard. Achelous (Ἀχελῷος) is a Greek river deity and a shapeshifter who was able to transform himself into anything. During a fight with Hercules, the mythical hero, Achelous took the form of a bull, but lost the battle when one of his horns was removed. This allusion is a reference to the supposedly transitional traits of the dinosaur and the characteristic loss of horns through ontogenetic and phylogenetic development, and thus through individual change and evolution. Dodson, in 1996, praised the generic name for being original and intelligent. The specific name honors Jack Horner, for his research on the dinosaurs of the Two Medicine Formation in Montana. Sampson also named "Taxon B" as the genus "Einiosaurus" in the same article wherein "Achelousaurus" was described. He said paleontologists needed to be cautious when naming new ceratopsian genera because their intraspecific variation (i.e., variation within a species) might be mistaken for interspecific differences (between species). Until 1995, only one new genus of centrosaurine dinosaur had been named since "Pachyrhinosaurus" in 1950, namely "Avaceratops" in 1986. "Achelousaurus" thus holds particular importance for being one of the few ceratopsid genera named in the late twentieth century. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1792493 | 59,983 |
1,968,292 | Clayton's promotion to full professor at Rice University was brisk (1963–69). In 1989 he resigned to accept an offer from Clemson University in South Carolina to guide the establishment of a research program in astrophysics. Clemson University had launched an effort to move into the top 20 of public universities, and Clayton's hire was part of that plan. He resides with Nancy in historic G. W. Gignilliat House (1898) in Seneca, South Carolina (pop. 8,000), seven miles from the city of Clemson. They jointly have one son who grew up in that house, Andrew, born in 1987 in Houston. Clayton's three previous children arose from his earlier marriages. A son (Donald Douglas Clayton b.1960, Pasadena CA) lives in Houston and a daughter (Alia Clayton Fisher, b. 1977, Houston) lives with her husband and four children in Longmont, Colorado. Another son, Devon Clayton (b. 1961 Pasadena), died in 1996 in Seneca SC. Clayton has one brother (d. 1980) and two sisters living in Texas, two of whom were also born in Iowa. Clayton's mother and father had both been born on family farms in Fontanelle IA to parents who had lived their entire lives on Fontanelle farms. Their own parents had immigrated to Iowa near 1850 from England and Germany. Two of Clayton's great grandfathers (Kembery and Clayton) fought in the Civil War (North). Robert M. Clayton fought in Sherman's Army at the battle of Atlanta. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36061850 | 1,967,162 |
833,432 | MUMPS is a language intended for and designed to build database applications. Secondary language features were included to help programmers make applications using minimal computing resources. The original implementations were interpreted, though modern implementations may be fully or partially compiled. Individual "programs" run in memory "partitions". Early MUMPS memory partitions were limited to 2048 bytes so aggressive abbreviation greatly aided multi-programming on severely resource limited hardware, because more than one MUMPS job could fit into the very small memories extant in hardware at the time. The ability to provide multi-user systems was another language design feature. The word "Multi-Programming" in the acronym points to this. Even the earliest machines running MUMPS supported multiple jobs running at the same time. With the change from mini-computers to micro-computers a few years later, even a "single user PC" with a single 8-bit CPU and 16K or 64K of memory could support multiple users, who could connect to it from (non-graphical) video display terminals. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19723 | 832,983 |
109,081 | Galileo Galilei, made key improvements on the thermometer and telescope which allowed him to observe and clearly describe the solar system. Descartes was not only a pioneer of analytic geometry but formulated a theory of mechanics and advanced ideas about the origins of animal movement and perception. Vision interested the physicists Young and Helmholtz, who also studied optics, hearing and music. Newton extended Descartes's mathematics by inventing calculus (at the same time as Leibniz). He provided a comprehensive formulation of classical mechanics and investigated light and optics. Fourier founded a new branch of mathematics — infinite, periodic series — studied heat flow and infrared radiation, and discovered the greenhouse effect. Girolamo Cardano, Blaise Pascal Pierre de Fermat, Von Neumann, Turing, Khinchin, Markov and Wiener, all mathematicians, made major contributions to science and probability theory, including the ideas behind computers, and some of the foundations of statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics. Many mathematically inclined scientists, including Galileo, were also musicians. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26997 | 109,036 |
1,328,584 | Variable incidence allowed the fuselage to be kept at the optimum angle for good visibility whilst maintaining lift – particularly useful for a carrier-borne aircraft and with tail-wheel undercarriage. The incidence could be varied from 2 degrees when the flap setting was neutral, to 16 degrees when the flaps were lowered to 60 degrees. The lift coefficient with the wing at this setting was 3.9 (double that of conventional and contemporary aircraft), giving a stalling speed of 57 knots. Since it was intended for carrier use, the wing also folded – a remarkable technical achievement in view of the small increase in structural weight involved. The undercarriage was a fixed tailwheel type to save complexity. It would have been very challenging to retract the landing gear into the wings. It was primarily of wooden construction, in common with the Armstrong Whitworth Albemarle bomber since, when it was being built, there was a danger of light alloy being in short supply. The Exe was cancelled in 1938, and the Rolls-Royce Merlin was substituted in the design. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12441671 | 1,327,856 |
1,616,847 | The remarkable stability of cyclotides means that they have an exciting range of potential applications centred on either their intrinsic biological activities or the possibility of using the CCK motif as a scaffold for stabilizing biologically active epitopes. Interest in these has recently intensified with the publications of a chemical methodology capable of synthetically producing cyclotides with high yields, and the amenability of the CCK framework to amino-acid substitutions. But for molecules to be useful in a therapeutic setting they require useful biopharmaceutical characteristics such as resistance to proteolysis and membrane permeability. The membrane interactive surface area and moment of the cyclotides are determinants in the prediction of their biological activities. A recent study on related cystine knot proteins as drug candidates showed that cystine knots do permeate well through rat small intestinal mucosa relative to non-cystine knot peptide drugs such as insulin and bacitracin. Furthermore, enzymatic digestion of cystine knot peptide drugs was associated with only a few proteases and it was suggested that this limitation may be overcome by mutating out particular cleavage sites. Thus, certain cystine knot proteins satisfy the basic criteria for drug delivery and represent exciting novel candidates as scaffolds for peptide drug delivery. The diverse range of intrinsic activities of cyclotides also continues to hold promise for a wide range of applications in the agricultural fields against insects and nematodes, especially those from Clitoria ternatea. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9947355 | 1,615,936 |
516,324 | In June 2021, the State Minister of Internal Security, Home Affairs and Disaster Management presented the "Sir John Kotelawala National Defence University Bill (Special Provisions)", proposing legislative changes to the governing structure of the KDU. Controversially, the proposed Bill placed KDU management under the Defence Ministry, with a senior officer of the armed services serving as the president or vice-chancellor, rather than under the Ministry of Higher Education, as is the norm. This bill has been challenged by several groups including scholars and university students that have claimed the move could lead to privatization and militarization of the higher education in Sri Lanka. It has been claimed that the bill would allow the KDU to continue function independent of the University Grants Commission and it will excludes the KDU from the purview of the UGC per its funding "Sir John Kotelawala Defence Academy Act, No. 68 of 1981". These groups further claim that any university that intends to offer civil education should not function without UGC control and quality assurance. For example, Article 15 2 (1) of the Bill explicitly specifies that the KDU is formed outside of the jurisdiction of the UGC Act No. 16 of 1978. As a result, unlike other state universities and higher education institutes in Sri Lanka that are governed by the UGC, KDU has the authority to regulate itself. In actuality, the KDU statute legalizes a full parallel military administration structure for civil higher education purposes with autonomy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10216898 | 516,055 |
1,973,251 | Nagaraja has done research on DNA topoisomerases, topology modulation, regulation of gene expression to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms and their importance in cellular function. Understanding the biology of the pathogen that causes TB has been a major research effort. As a result, several seminal contributions have been made leading to potential applications. His interaction with industry includes – development of commercial biotech products such as restriction enzymes and other DNA transaction enzymes, design and development of high fidelity restriction enzyme, new inhibitors for the generation of lead molecules as a step for novel therapeutics against tuberculosis. These have been successfully applied and resulted in international patents. Under his guidance, 21 students have completed doctoral degree and 10 students are at various stages of their PhD. In addition, a large number of project assistants, summer fellows and postdoctoral researchers are trained under him. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=51789475 | 1,972,116 |
54,356 | After Willy Messerschmitt's death in 1978, the former Me 262 pilot Hans Guido Mutke claimed to have exceeded Mach 1 on 9 April 1945 in a Me 262 in a "straight-down" 90° dive. This claim relies solely on Mutke's memory of the incident, which recalls effects other Me 262 pilots observed below the speed of sound at high indicated airspeed, but with no altitude reading required to determine the speed. The pitot tube used to measure airspeed in aircraft can give falsely elevated readings as the pressure builds up inside the tube at high speeds. The Me 262 wing had only a slight sweep, incorporated for trim (center of gravity) reasons and likely would have suffered structural failure due to divergence at high transonic speeds. The Me 262 V9, Werknummer 130 004, with "Stammkennzeichen" of VI+AD, was prepared as the HG I test airframe with the low-profile "Rennkabine" racing-canopy and may have achieved an unofficial record speed for a turbojet-powered aircraft of , altitude unspecified, even with the recorded wartime airspeed record being set on 6 July 1944, by another Messerschmitt design—the Me 163B V18 rocket fighter setting a record, but landing with a nearly disintegrated rudder surface. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20488 | 54,336 |
141,249 | The answers to many remaining mysteries of Enceladus had to wait until the arrival of the "Cassini" spacecraft on July 1, 2004, when it entered orbit around Saturn. Given the results from the "Voyager 2" images, Enceladus was considered a priority target by the "Cassini" mission planners, and several targeted flybys within 1,500 km of the surface were planned as well as numerous, "non-targeted" opportunities within 100,000 km of Enceladus. The flybys have yielded significant information concerning Enceladus's surface, as well as the discovery of water vapor with traces of simple hydrocarbons venting from the geologically active south polar region. These discoveries prompted the adjustment of "Cassini's" flight plan to allow closer flybys of Enceladus, including an encounter in March 2008 that took it to within 48 km of the surface. "Cassini's" extended mission included seven close flybys of Enceladus between July 2008 and July 2010, including two passes at only 50 km in the later half of 2008. "Cassini" performed a flyby on October 28, 2015, passing as close as and through a plume. Confirmation of molecular hydrogen () would be an independent line of evidence that hydrothermal activity is taking place in the Enceladus seafloor, increasing its habitability. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=208430 | 141,192 |
1,381,293 | Around the outbreak of World War I in 1914 it was noted that the rapid development of dreadnought battleships might soon render US coast defenses obsolescent. These had been constructed 1895-1915 under the Endicott and Taft programs. The United States Army's initial response was to place some existing 12-inch guns on high-angle long-range mountings. This program had barely commenced when the American entry into World War I occurred in April 1917. The Coast Artillery Corps was tasked with operating almost all US-manned heavy and railway artillery in that war, as they were the only component of the Army experienced with large guns and having significant troop strength. Among several types of French-made railway artillery weapons operated by the Coast Artillery were two 400 mm (15.75 inch) Modele 1916 howitzers. This weapon combined a large shell with a high trajectory, dropping almost straight down onto enemy trenches and fortifications. The Coast Artillery wanted to use this capability for plunging fire against the thin deck armor of enemy ships. Initially a single developmental 16-inch howitzer M1918, 18 calibers long, was produced and mounted on a railway carriage. Testing with this showed that a somewhat longer weapon, allowing greater range, would be suitable for coastal defense. This originated the 16-inch M1920 howitzer, 25 calibers long. The high-angle M1920 barbette carriage was designed to allow plunging fire with an elevation of 65 degrees. A similar carriage was also developed for the 16-inch gun M1919, 50 calibers long, with the same elevation and for the same reason. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=52254496 | 1,380,530 |
782,612 | By 1975, the zoo could no longer expand, and it had to be moved out of the city because of space constraints and increased noise pollution due to the city's high-density traffic. Hence it was planned in 1976 to maintain the animals in the zoo in good simulated conditions. In 1976, the Tamil Nadu Forest Department set aside in the Vandalur Reserve Forest on the outskirts of the city to build the current zoo, which is the largest zoological garden in India and the Indian Subcontinent and one of the largest in the world. Work started in 1979 at an initial cost of 75 million, and the zoo in its new premises was officially opened to public on 24 July 1985 by the then chief minister of Tamil Nadu M. G. Ramachandran, when most of the works were completed. In the beginning, the area was nothing more than a scrub jungle, with practically no tree cover. The zoo authorities and people from surrounding villages collected seeds of different trees from neighbouring areas and afforested the zoo area. In 2001, of land next to the park was acquired to build a rescue and rehabilitation centre for confiscated and abandoned wild animals, increasing the park's size to . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30870670 | 782,193 |
358,206 | While at Uraniborg, Tycho maintained correspondence with scientists and astronomers across Europe. He inquired about other astronomers' observations and shared his own technological advances to help them achieve more accurate observations. Thus, his correspondence was crucial to his research. Often, correspondence was not just private communication between scholars, but also a way to disseminate results and arguments and to build progress and scientific consensus. Through correspondence, Tycho was involved in several personal disputes with critics of his theories. Prominent among them were John Craig, a Scottish physician who was a strong believer in the authority of the Aristotelian worldview, and Nicolaus Reimers Baer, known as Ursus, an astronomer at the Imperial court in Prague, whom Tycho accused of having plagiarized his cosmological model. Craig refused to accept Tycho's conclusion that the comet of 1577 had to be located within the aetherial sphere rather than within the atmosphere of Earth. Craig tried to contradict Tycho by using his own observations of the comet, and by questioning his methodology. Tycho published an "apologia" (a defense) of his conclusions, in which he provided additional arguments, as well as condemning Craig's ideas in strong language for being incompetent. Another dispute concerned the mathematician Paul Wittich, who, after staying on Hven in 1580, taught Count Wilhelm of Kassel and his astronomer Christoph Rothmann to build copies of Tycho's instruments without permission from Tycho. In turn, Craig, who had studied with Wittich, accused Tycho of minimizing Wittich's role in developing some of the trigonometric methods used by Tycho. In his dealings with these disputes, Tycho made sure to leverage his support in the scientific community, by publishing and disseminating his own answers and arguments. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30027 | 358,020 |
207,546 | Strong research funding helped elite American universities dominate global rankings in the early 21st century, making them attractive to international students, professors and researchers. Other countries, though, are offering incentives to compete for researchers as funding is threatened in the US and US dominance of international tables has lessened. The system has also been blighted by fly-by-night schools, diploma mills, visa mills, and predatory for-profit colleges. There have been some attempts to reform the system through federal policy such as gainful employment regulations, but they have been met by resistance. According to Pew Research Center and Gallup poll surveys, public opinion about colleges has been declining, especially among Republicans and the white working class. The higher education industry has been criticized for being unnecessarily expensive, providing a difficult-to-measure service which is seen as vital but in which providers are paid for inputs instead of outputs, which is beset with federal regulations that drive up costs, and payments coming from third parties, not users. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3189597 | 207,439 |
843,041 | Four outstanding mathematicians arose during the Song Dynasty and Yuan Dynasty, particularly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: Yang Hui, Qin Jiushao, Li Zhi (Li Ye), and Zhu Shijie. Yang Hui, Qin Jiushao, Zhu Shijie all used the Horner-Ruffini method six hundred years earlier to solve certain types of simultaneous equations, roots, quadratic, cubic, and quartic equations. Yang Hui was also the first person in history to discover and prove "Pascal's Triangle", along with its binomial proof (although the earliest mention of the Pascal's triangle in China exists before the eleventh century AD). Li Zhi on the other hand, investigated on a form of algebraic geometry based on tiān yuán shù. His book; Ceyuan haijing revolutionized the idea of inscribing a circle into triangles, by turning this geometry problem by algebra instead of the traditional method of using Pythagorean theorem. Guo Shoujing of this era also worked on spherical trigonometry for precise astronomical calculations. At this point of mathematical history, a lot of modern western mathematics were already discovered by Chinese mathematicians. Things grew quiet for a time until the thirteenth century Renaissance of Chinese math. This saw Chinese mathematicians solving equations with methods Europe would not know until the eighteenth century. The high point of this era came with Zhu Shijie's two books "Suanxue qimeng" and the "Siyuan yujian". In one case he reportedly gave a method equivalent to Gauss's pivotal condensation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1524543 | 842,591 |
1,587,957 | Stimulated by the possibilities of the new Space Age, Rosen wanted it to be some kind of space program. Because at that time international telephony was very expensive and hard to arrange, and transoceanic television was impossible, he decided it should be some kind of communication satellite since these problems could be solved that way. He began to research what kind of communication satellite system would work best for this purpose. At the time, Rosen was unaware of science writer Arthur C. Clarke's 1945 description of a geosynchronous satellite, but he was aware of the conventional wisdom regarding geostationary satellites, expressed most stridently by the highly regarded Bell Labs, at that time the world's leading communications R&D entity, in a March 1959 IRE Journal titled “Transoceanic Communications Via Satellites,” written by John Pierce and Rudy Kompfner. They expressed the view that geostationary satellites would be too heavy to be launched by the rockets that were then available. And, even if geostationary satellites could be launched, their presumed complexity would prevent them from having a long enough lifetime to be commercially viable. Rosen, in reading their paper, felt otherwise. He reasoned that since Bell Labs designed communication equipment for ground applications, it had little incentive for keeping the weight down. Also, he was confident that his previous experience in guided missile design was more relevant for designing the control system for such a satellite and that the supposedly-complex control system the authors claimed would be necessary would not be needed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10150062 | 1,587,063 |
982,640 | Modern automobiles have complex instrumentation. In addition to displays of engine rotational speed and vehicle linear speed, there are also displays of battery voltage and current, fluid levels, fluid temperatures, distance traveled and feedbacks of various controls (turn signals, parking brake, headlights, transmission position). Cautions may be displayed for special problems (fuel low, check engine, tire pressure low, door ajar, seat belt unfastened). Problems are recorded so they can be reported to diagnostic equipment. Navigation systems can provide voice commands to reach a destination. Automotive instrumentation must be cheap and reliable over long periods in harsh environments. There may be independent airbag systems which contain sensors, logic and actuators. Anti-skid braking systems use sensors to control the brakes, while cruise control affects throttle position. A wide variety of services can be provided via communication links as the OnStar system. Autonomous cars (with exotic instrumentation) have been demonstrated. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47403 | 982,128 |
1,410,528 | During the Second World War, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, with about 25,300 soldiers, fought in the Allied campaigns in Italy. This participation with the Allies was a contradiction to the quasi-Fascist policies established by Getúlio Vargas's Estado Novo campaign. However, with the increasing trade with and diplomatic efforts by the United States and United Kingdom, in 1941 Brazil permitted the US to set up air bases in the states of Bahia, Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Norte, where the city of Natal received part of the U.S. Navy's VP-52 patrol squadron. Also, the U.S. Task Force 3 established itself in Brazil, including a squad equipped to attack submarines and merchant vessels which tried to exchange goods with Japan. Besides being technically neutral, the increasing cooperation with the Allies led the Brazilian government to announce, on 28 January 1942 the decision to sever diplomatic relations with Germany, Japan and Italy. In July 1942, around thirteen Brazilian merchant vessels were sunk by German U-boats. About one hundred people died as a result of these attacks, most being crew members. At the time, Vargas decided not to take further measures against the Axis in an attempt to avoid an escalation of the conflict involving Brazil. However, in August 1942, one single German submarine, , sank five Brazilian vessels in two days, causing more than six hundred deaths: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5748261 | 1,409,736 |
1,988,053 | Jordan contributes 75% of the Arabic content on the Internet. In fact, the ICT sector is the fastest-growing sector in the Jordanian economy with a 25% annual growth rate. The sector accounts for more than 84,000 jobs and contributes 12% to GDP. There are 400 companies in Jordan operating across the spectrum of telecom, information technology (IT), on-line and mobile content, business outsourcing and video game development. It has been estimated that these subsections of the ICT industry will create over 18,000 jobs between 2015 and 2020. Roba al Assi, a Jordanian blogger who currently works at Bayt.com managing the sub-division, Bayt Communities, attributes much of the credit for Jordan's booming ICT sector to the open source community, citing groups and organizations like the Jordan Open Source Association, GeekFest and Amman Tech Tuesdays. 'What helps is that we are a country of human resources, as opposed to natural resources', he has said. 'In the absence of money and more lucrative industries, the Jordanian youth has spent the past decade building its passion for the "you can do what you want attitude" of our industry'. Al Issi adds the information technology educational structure to the list of Jordanian assets. 'Historically, most of the large web start-ups have been Jordanian in origin, like Manitoba, al-Bawaba and Jeeran,' she adds. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47911441 | 1,986,911 |
1,564,242 | During these twelve years, besides the work of a busy police court, which brought him into intimate contact with social problems, he found time to study chemistry, and attended lectures at the Birkbeck Institute (which later became Birkbeck College). George Chaloner, the chemistry teacher at the Institute, remarked one evening that "the man who eliminates phosphorus by means of the Bessemer converter will make his fortune." This caught the attention of Thomas, and he set himself the task of solving the problem of eliminating phosphorus from iron produced by Bessemer converters. By the end of 1875 he was convinced that he had discovered a method. He communicated his theory to his cousin, Percy Gilchrist, who was a chemist at the former Blaenavon Ironworks, Blaenavon in Wales, and experiments were made which proved satisfactory. Edward Martin, manager of the Blaenavon Works, gave facilities for conducting the experiments on a larger scale and undertook to help in taking out a patent. In March 1878, the first public announcement of the discovery was made at the meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute; Thomas and Gilchrist took out a patent in May, but without attracting much attention. In September a paper was written by Thomas and Gilchrist on the "Elimination of Phosphorus in the Bessemer Converter" for the autumn meeting of this institute, but it was not read until May 1879. Thomas, however, made the acquaintance of Edward Windsor Richards, the manager of Bolckow Vaughan & Co's works at Cleveland, Yorkshire, whom he interested in the process, and from this time the success of the invention was assured and domestic and foreign patents were taken out. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2350906 | 1,563,355 |
1,570,878 | The Department of Cellular & Molecular Medicine (CMM) is a large dynamic interdisciplinary department consisting of 30 faculty researchers and teaching staff, as well as 63 cross-appointed or adjunct members. It offers graduate programs at the M.Sc and Ph.D. level, as well as post-doctoral training. The department maintains an active and well-funded multi-disciplinary research program for the study of normal and pathological cell function in a variety of physiological systems. Specific faculty research interests include computational biology, cancer, cardiovascular regulation, growth and development, the gastrointestinal system, renal function, obesity and diabetes, pharmacology and neuroscience. CMM was formed from the combined resources of three former departments of the University of Ottawa: Physiology, Pharmacology and Anatomy & Neurobiology. CMM is part of the Ottawa Health Sciences Centre, a medical complex which also includes the Ottawa Hospital (General Campus), Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), the Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre, (OHRI) Ottawa Health Research Institute (General Campus), the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4163101 | 1,569,990 |
405,078 | Apart from the quantum efficiency it depends on the incident photon flux and the exposure time, which is equivalent to the exposure and the sensor area; since the exposure is the integration time multiplied with the image plane illuminance, and illuminance is the luminous flux per unit area. Thus for equal exposures, the signal to noise ratios of two different size sensors of equal quantum efficiency and pixel count will (for a given final image size) be in proportion to the square root of the sensor area (or the linear scale factor of the sensor). If the exposure is constrained by the need to achieve some required depth of field (with the same shutter speed) then the exposures will be in inverse relation to the sensor area, producing the interesting result that if depth of field is a constraint, image shot noise is not dependent on sensor area. For identical f-number lenses the signal to noise ratio increases as square root of the pixel area, or linearly with pixel pitch. As typical f-numbers for lenses for cell phones and DSLR are in the same range f/1.5-f/2 it is interesting to compare performance of cameras with small and big sensors. A good cell phone camera with typical pixel size 1.1 μm (Samsung A8) would have about 3 times worse SNR due to shot noise than a 3.7 μm pixel interchangeable lens camera (Panasonic G85) and 5 times worse than a 6 μm full frame camera (Sony A7 III). Taking into consideration the dynamic range makes the difference even more prominent. As such the trend of increasing the number of "megapixels" in cell phone cameras during last 10 years was caused rather by marketing strategy to sell "more megapixels" than by attempts to improve image quality. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10497504 | 404,878 |
1,901,354 | Developers face an additional financial burden when employing passive design methods, as they must pay an architect to design an environmentally friendly building without any subsidies to offset the costs. Furthermore, building codes often fail to accommodate more innovative approaches to promoting green design, such as conserving energy, reducing waste, and improving air quality – some of which may be more cost-effective than the methods prescribed by the code. The IgCC addressed some aspects of this issue in its 2015 version by introducing a compliance pathway based on the energy use of the building over a three year period, where a building will be required to meet baseline requirements outlined in the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). This allows developers to make the best decisions for their projects, rather than being restricted to pre-defined parameters. Using a similar outcome-based approach could prove useful in increasing the attractiveness of IgCC to jurisdictions and developers alike. In order to make the code more realistic and applicable to most places, it is important to consider the input of local stakeholders and make sure the code is tailored to their specific needs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26864757 | 1,900,265 |
1,720,137 | L1 is involved in neuron-neuron adhesion, neurite fasciculation, outgrowth of neurites, cerebellar granule cell migration, neurite outgrowth on Schwann cells and interactions among epithelial cells of intestinal crypts. As a consequence, mutations in the L1CAM gene cause the Nervous System to malfunction. The main disorders linked to this mutation are known by the acronym CRASH or can be also referred as L1 syndrome. This includes disorders such as HSAS, MASA syndrome, agenesis of the corpus callosum and spastic paraplegia. Lower limb spasticity, mental retardation, hydrocephalus and flexion deformity of the thumbs are some of the symptoms expressed mostly in male individuals who suffer from this condition. Although the pathological mechanisms leading to L1 syndrome are still unknown, about 200 mutations of the L1CAM gene have been identified and then associated with the syndrom. These mutations mostly affect structurally important key residues in the extracellular region of L1 causing alterations in the protein binding properties, which correlate to the impairment of neuronal physiological mechanisms such as cell adhesion or specific interacting with other molecules. Ankyrin interaction with L1CAM is an example of a protein binding that fails in CRASH patients due to a mutation that causes leucine and histidine to replace serine and tyrosine respectively, in the SFIGQY motif, where ankyrin should be bound in the L1CAM family cytoplasmic terminus. Ankyrin-L1CAM interaction is involved in the growth cone initiation, consequently, a failure in this interaction causes neurites to not reach synaptic target. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1648200 | 1,719,167 |
13,892 | In 2005, futurist Ray Kurzweil claimed the next technological revolution would rest upon advances in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics, with robotics being the most impactful of the three. Genetic engineering will allow far greater control over human biological nature through a process called directed evolution. Some thinkers believe that this may shatter our sense of self, and have urged for renewed public debate exploring the issue more thoroughly; others fear that directed evolution could lead to eugenics or extreme social inequality. Nanotechnology will grant us the ability to manipulate matter "at the molecular and atomic scale", which could allow us to reshape ourselves and our environment in fundamental ways. Nanobots could be used within the human body to destroy cancer cells or form new body parts, blurring the line between biology and technology. Autonomous robots have undergone rapid progress, and are expected to replace humans at many dangerous tasks, including search and rescue, bomb disposal, firefighting, and war. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29816 | 13,887 |
2,624 | Throughout the 2000s when the U.S. was primarily involved in asymmetric warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, the USAF's procurement goal of 381 F-22s was questioned over rising costs, initial reliability and availability problems, limited multirole versatility, and a lack of relevant adversaries for air combat missions. In 2006, Comptroller General of the United States David Walker found that "the DoD has not demonstrated the need" for more investment in the F-22, and further opposition was expressed by Bush Administration Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and his successor Robert Gates, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon R. England, and Chairman of U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Senators John Warner and John McCain. Under Rumsfeld, procurement was severely cut to 183 aircraft. The F-22 lost influential supporters in 2008 after the forced resignations of Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force General T. Michael Moseley. In November 2008, Gates stated that the F-22 lacked relevance in asymmetric post-Cold War conflicts, and in April 2009, under the Obama Administration, he called for production to end in FY 2011 after completing 187 F-22s. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=66299 | 2,624 |
354,381 | Organofluorines exhibit biopersistence due to the strength of the carbon–fluorine bond. Perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs), which are sparingly water-soluble owing to their acidic functional groups, are noted persistent organic pollutants; perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) are most often researched. PFAAs have been found in trace quantities worldwide from polar bears to humans, with PFOS and PFOA known to reside in breast milk and the blood of newborn babies. A 2013 review showed a slight correlation between groundwater and soil PFAA levels and human activity; there was no clear pattern of one chemical dominating, and higher amounts of PFOS were correlated to higher amounts of PFOA. In the body, PFAAs bind to proteins such as serum albumin; they tend to concentrate within humans in the liver and blood before excretion through the kidneys. Dwell time in the body varies greatly by species, with half-lives of days in rodents, and years in humans. High doses of PFOS and PFOA cause cancer and death in newborn rodents but human studies have not established an effect at current exposure levels. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17481271 | 354,198 |
1,112,335 | A significant problem causing much conflict in some regions, for instance in Bangladesh, are the land use rights. With shrimp farming, a new industry expanded into coastal areas and started to make exclusive use of previously public resources. In some areas, the rapid expansion resulted in the local coastal population being denied access to the coast by a continuous strip of shrimp farms with serious impacts on the local fisheries. Such problems were compounded by poor ecological practices that caused a degradation of common resources (such as excessive use of freshwater to control the salinity of the ponds, causing the water table to sink and leading to the salination of freshwater aquifers by an inflow of salt water). With growing experience, countries usually introduced stronger governmental regulations and have taken steps to mitigate such problems, for instance through land zoning legislations. Some late adopters have even managed to avoid some problems through proactive legislation, e.g. Mexico. The situation in Mexico is unique owing to the strongly government-regulated market. Even after the liberalisation in the early 1990s, most shrimp farms are still owned and controlled by locals or local co-ops (""). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2167405 | 1,111,769 |
1,766,346 | In the early 2000s, the company faced significant financial issues: in April 2001, the company's US$225 million credit line was in default, and during FY2001, Geac posted a loss of US$169 million on revenues of US$552 million. Geac updated some of its legacy software replaced its management team, ultimately tapping its chairman, Charles S. Jones, to be the CEO, Donna DeWinter to be the CFO (Ms. De Winter is currently CEO of Nexient Learning), and made Craig Thorburn the senior vice president of acquisitions (while he was a partner at Blake, Cassels & Graydon). Geac then paid off its bank loans, and significantly improved its profit margins, and its stock began to increase. It listed on the NASDAQ. It also embarked on a strategy of establishing a single focus for its software products around selling software to the chief financial officer of client organizations. It profitably divested its real estate software operations after making it profitable and a growing business, and acquired two business performance management companies: Comshare () and Extensity (). Geac also obtained a $150 million credit line and fended off a proxy fight brought by Crescendo Partners. In March 2006, the company was acquired by Infor Global Solutions for US$1 billion, or $11.10 per share, compared to US$1.12 five years earlier, providing the investors a 10x return. In Fiscal 2001, the company posted a US$169.1 million loss, and in fiscal 2005, Geac posted net income of US$77 million. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28396947 | 1,765,352 |
338,320 | "Brachiosaurus" is thought to have been a high browser, feeding on foliage well above the ground. Even if it did not hold its neck near vertical, and instead had a less inclined neck, its head height may still have been over above the ground. It probably fed mostly on foliage above . This does not preclude the possibility that it also fed lower at times, between up. Its diet likely consisted of ginkgos, conifers, tree ferns, and large cycads, with intake estimated at of plant matter daily in a 2007 study. Brachiosaurid feeding involved simple up-and-down jaw motion. As in other sauropods, animals would have swallowed plant matter without further oral processing, and relied on hindgut fermentation for food processing. The teeth were somewhat spoon-shaped and chisel-like. Such teeth are optimized for non-selective nipping, and the relatively broad jaws could crop large amounts of plant material. Even if a "Brachiosaurus" of forty tonnes would have needed half a tonne of fodder, its dietary needs could have been met by a normal cropping action of the head. If it fed sixteen hours per day, biting off between a tenth and two-thirds of a kilogram, taking between one and six bites per minute, its daily food intake would have equaled roughly 1.5 percent of its body mass, comparable to the requirement of a modern elephant. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20598015 | 338,140 |
616,034 | Gertrude Hildreth was a psychologist with the Lincoln School at Teacher's College, Columbia then at Brooklyn College in New York. She authored many books including the first book pertaining to school psychology titled, "Psychological Service for School Problems" written in 1930. The book discussed applying the science of psychology to address the perceived problems in schools. The main focus of the book was on applied educational psychology to improve learning outcomes. Hildreth listed 11 problems that can be solved by applying psychological techniques, including: instructional problems in the classroom, assessment of achievement, interpretation of test results, instructional groupings of students for optimal outcomes, vocational guidance, curriculum development, and investigations of exceptional pupils. Hildreth emphasized the importance of collaboration with parents and teachers. She is also known for her development of the Metropolitan Readiness Tests and for her contribution to the Metropolitan Achievement test. In 1933 and 1939 Hildreth published a bibliography of Mental Tests and Rating Scales encompassing a 50-year time period and over 4,000 titles. She wrote approximately 200 articles and bulletins and had an international reputation for her work in education. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=466785 | 615,720 |
817,774 | The cadherin family is essential in maintaining the cell-cell contact and regulating cytoskeletal complexes. The cadherin superfamily includes cadherins, protocadherins, desmogleins, desmocollins, and more. In structure, they share "cadherin repeats", which are the extracellular Ca-binding domains. There are multiple classes of cadherin molecules, each designated with a prefix (in general, noting the types of tissue with which it is associated). Classical cadherins maintain the tone of tissues by forming a homodimer in cis while desmosomal cadherins are heterodimeric. The intracellular portion of classical cadherins interacts with a complex of proteins that allows connection to the actin cytoskeleton. Although classical cadherins take a role in cell layer formation and structure formation, desmosomal cadherins focus on resisting cell damage. Desmosomal cadherins are responsible to maintain the function of desmosomes that is to overturn the mechanical stress of the tissues. Similar to classical cadherins, desmosomal cadherins have a single transmembrane domain, five EC repeats, and an intracellular domain. Two types of desmosomal cadherins exist, and they are called desmogleins and desmocollins that contain an intracellular anchor and cadherin like sequence (ICS). The adaptor proteins that associate with desmosomal cadherins are plakoglobin (related to formula_1-catenin), plakophilins (p120 catenin subfamily), and desmoplakins. The major function of desmoplakins to bind to intermediate filament thorough interaction with plakoglobin that attaches to ICS of desmogleins and desmocollins and plakophilins. Typical cadherins are different from other types of cadherins and consist of one or more extracellular repeat domains. The components that build an atypical cadherin are flamingo (seven pass transmembrane) and Dcad102F-like cadherins. Their job is to take part in signaling pathway instead of performing cell-cell adhesion. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1201933 | 817,337 |
485,892 | The Hellenistic armies based their strength on the pike-bearing phalanx, the legacy of Philip II and Alexander the Great. Throughout the age of the Diadochi and the Epigonoi, the phalanx, as the line of the pikemen was commonly referred to by ancient authors, remained the backbone of armies as diverse as those of Antiochos III and Philip V. The phalanx was an infantry formation, characterized by dense ranks and pikes (sarissas). Their soldiers (known as phalangites) ranged from professional warriors, drilled in tactics, weapon use and formation, typically of Greek origin; to basically trained, non-Greek villagers, as was the case in the army of Ptolemy Philopator, the victor of Raphia. Certain reforms in the weight of the phalangite equipment and the conscription methods used, turned the phalanx from a maneuverable formation into a bulky, slow moving steam roller, whose charge no enemy was able to withstand. Maneuvers like the fake retreat of Phillip II at Chaeronea or the oblique advance of Alexander at Arbela were never again attempted, but nonetheless, as long as the phalanx remained on relatively level terrain and its flanks were kept secure, it was not conquered by any other formation. Although it has been argued that the role of the phalanx on the battlefield was to act as an anchor for the entire army, holding the enemy in place, pushing him back, exerting a heavy toll on enemy morale, while the cavalry struck the enemy flanks and delivered the fatal blow to cripple their opponents, in most battles it was used as the main weapon to achieve victory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9050031 | 485,643 |
1,026,410 | Abelisaurids, especially "Majungasaurus", may instead have been adapted for a feeding strategy more similar to modern felids, with short and broad snouts, that bite once and hold on until the prey is subdued. "Majungasaurus" had an even broader snout than other abelisaurids, and other aspects of its anatomy may also support the bite-and-hold hypothesis. The neck was strengthened, with robust vertebrae, interlocking ribs and ossified tendons, as well as reinforced muscle attachment sites on the vertebrae and the back of the skull. These muscles would have been able to hold the head steady despite the struggles of its prey. Abelisaurid skulls were also strengthened in many areas by bone mineralized out of the skin, creating the characteristic rough texture of the bones. This is particularly true of "Majungasaurus", where the nasal bones were fused and thickened for strength. On the other hand, the lower jaw of "Majungasaurus" sported a large fenestra (opening) on each side, as seen in other ceratosaurs, as well as synovial joints between certain bones that allowed a high degree of flexibility in the lower jaw, although not to the extent seen in snakes. This may have been an adaptation to prevent the fracture of the lower jaw when holding onto a struggling prey animal. The front teeth of the upper jaw were more robust than the rest, to provide an anchor point for the bite, while the low crown height of "Majungasaurus" teeth prevented them from breaking off during a struggle. Finally, unlike the teeth of "Allosaurus" and most other theropods, which were curved on both the front and back, abelisaurids like "Majungasaurus" had teeth curved on the front edge but straighter on the back (cutting) edge. This structure may have served to prevent slicing, and instead holding the teeth in place when biting. Examination of the teeth of "Majungasaurus" indicates that the theropod replaced its teeth anywhere from 2-13 times faster than other theropods, replacing the entire set within a span of two months. Gnawing on bone may have been a significant reason for such rapid tooth replacement. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4590393 | 1,025,876 |
1,918,706 | He was appointed National Director for Clinical Quality and Efficiency by Jeremy Hunt in October 2015. When appointed he said that surgical patients were at risk of infections because beds were not “ring-fenced” for those undergoing the same types of procedures. There was a 25-fold variation in infection rates for the same procedure in different hospitals. He had visited 211 hospitals and seen unwanted variation in practice. He thought that some consultants carrying out too few procedures to become sufficiently skilled, and in some places junior staff were given too much responsibility. His report on hip replacement concluded that at least 35 operations a year were needed before a surgeon could produce acceptable results. He produced tables showing the data both for hospitals and for individual surgeons and this had striking effects. The number of infections and failed operations fell, as did the cost of follow-up surgery and litigation. His "Getting it Right First Time" (GIRFT) expanded into 40 medical and surgical specialities. Jeremy Hunt attributes this to the "unusual combination of competitiveness and altruism that is innate to most doctors". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=52980237 | 1,917,606 |
2,134,470 | While the GH model has often been compared with the ground breaking model of Wiener and Rosenblueth developed earlier for the same purpose, the analogy is incorrect because the latter is not a CA. See for example, in which it is stated that "The organization of muscle cells, the contraction of muscle, the dependence of the activity of the medium on the activity of its component elements, problems of memory, reliability, and mobility were formulated by Wiener in the form of definitions and theorems for a three-phase threshold-invariant continuous excitable medium." Even this statement is misleading, however. By reading the original paper carefully, it can be seen that neither the time, the medium, nor the state are discrete. This is immediately obvious as regards the time and the medium. Wiener and Rosenblueth do say, though, that "There are three conditions in which any given region of the fiber can exist." They name these as the "active", the "refractory", and the "rest" states. However, in the next paragraph they refine this by identifying the rest state with the number 1, the active state with the number 0, and the refractory state with the open interval (0,1) on the real line. The number assigned to a give point at a given time is called its "epoch number" at that time. Thus, the "state space" is the interval [0,1]. And in the next paragraph we find "..behind every wave front moving freely there will be a band of fixed width within which the recovery process is taking place." A wave therefore consists of a "front", a smooth curve of points with epoch number 0 which moves in the plane with constant speed, followed by a refractory region of points with epoch number in (0,1), of constant width (depending on the velocity), and leaving behind a rest region of points with epoch number 1. This is far from a cellular automata, and is more correctly called a "geometric" model. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=39435644 | 2,133,245 |
1,362,792 | Multimodal human-computer interaction refers to the "interaction with the virtual and physical environment through natural modes of communication", This implies that multimodal interaction enables a more free and natural communication, interfacing users with automated systems in both input and output. Specifically, multimodal systems can offer a flexible, efficient and usable environment allowing users to interact through input modalities, such as speech, handwriting, hand gesture and gaze, and to receive information by the system through output modalities, such as speech synthesis, smart graphics and other modalities, opportunely combined. Then a multimodal system has to recognize the inputs from the different modalities combining them according to temporal and contextual constraints in order to allow their interpretation. This process is known as multimodal fusion, and it is the object of several research works from nineties to now. The fused inputs are interpreted by the system. Naturalness and flexibility can produce more than one interpretation for each different modality (channel) and for their simultaneous use, and they consequently can produce multimodal ambiguity generally due to imprecision, noises or other similar factors. For solving ambiguities, several methods have been proposed. Finally the system returns to the user outputs through the various modal channels (disaggregated) arranged according to a consistent feedback (fission). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2081243 | 1,362,039 |
1,568,039 | While the rotating dish antenna can no longer spin as designed, the rest of the instrument remains functional and data transmission capabilities remain intact, although it cannot determine the surface vector wind. It can, however, still measure radar backscatter at a fixed azimuth angle. QuikSCAT is being used in this reduced mode to cross-calibrate other scatterometers in hopes of providing long-term and consistent surface wind datasets over multiple on-orbit scatterometer platforms, including the operational European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) on MetOp-A and MetOp-B, India's Oceansat-2 scatterometer operated by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), and the China's HaiYang-2A (HY-2A) scatterometer operated by China's National Satellite Ocean Application Service, as well as future NASA scatterometer missions in development. A NASA Senior Review panel in 2011 endorsed the continuation of the QuikSCAT mission with these modified objectives through 2018. QuikSCAT was declared fully decommissioned on October 2, 2018. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3465350 | 1,567,152 |
17,485 | Requirements for undergraduate degrees are set by four authorities: the University of California system, the Berkeley campus, the college or school, and the department. These requirements include an entry-level writing requirement before enrollment (typically fulfilled by minimum scores on standardized admissions exams such as the SAT or ACT), completing coursework on "American History and Institutions" before or after enrollment by taking an introductory class, passing an "American Cultures Breadth" class at Berkeley, as well as requirements for reading and composition and specific requirements declared by the department and school. Three-hour final examinations are required in most undergraduate classes and take place over a week following the last day of instruction in mid-December for the Fall semester and in mid-May for the Spring semester. Academic grades are reported on a four-point, five-letter scale (A through F) with grade points being modified by three-tenths of point for pluses and minuses, save for the A+, which carries just four points. Requirements for academic honors are specified by individual schools and colleges, scholarly prizes are typically awarded by departments, and students are elected to honor societies based on these organizations' criteria. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31922 | 17,480 |
722,464 | Stephen Crane (1871–1900), born in Newark, New Jersey, had roots going back to the American Revolutionary War era, soldiers, clergymen, sheriffs, judges, and farmers who had lived a century earlier. Primarily a journalist who also wrote fiction, essays, poetry, and plays, Crane saw life at its rawest in slums and on battlefields. His haunting Civil War novel "The Red Badge of Courage" was published to great acclaim in 1895, but he barely had time to bask in the attention before he died at 28, having neglected his health. He has enjoyed continued success since his death—as a champion of the common man, a realist, and a symbolist. Crane's "" (1893) is one of the best, if not the earliest, naturalistic American novel. It is the harrowing story of a poor, sensitive girl whose uneducated, alcoholic parents utterly fail her. In love, and eager to escape her violent home, she allows herself to be seduced into living with a young man, who soon deserts her. When her self-righteous mother rejects her, Maggie becomes a prostitute to survive, but soon dies. Crane's earthy subject matter and his objective, scientific style, devoid of moralizing, earmark Maggie as a naturalist work. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11382737 | 722,084 |
526,537 | The opening of the 19th century was marked by an increase in interest in the connection between climate and plant distribution. Carl Willdenow (1765–1812) examined the connection between seed dispersal and distribution, the nature of plant associations and the impact of geological history. He noticed the similarities between the floras of N America and N Asia, the Cape and Australia, and he explored the ideas of "centre of diversity" and "centre of origin". German Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) and Frenchman Aime Bonpland (1773–1858) published a massive and highly influential 30 volume work on their travels; Robert Brown (1773–1852) noted the similarities between the floras of S Africa, Australia and India, while Joakim Schouw (1789–1852) explored more deeply than anyone else the influence on plant distribution of temperature, soil factors, especially soil water, and light, work that was continued by Alphonse de Candolle (1806–1893). Joseph Hooker (1817–1911) pushed the boundaries of floristic studies with his work on Antarctica, India and the Middle East with special attention to endemism. August Grisebach (1814–1879) in " (1872) examined physiognomy in relation to climate and in America geographic studies were pioneered by Asa Gray (1810–1888). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25007304 | 526,264 |
281,362 | Though generally regarded as a positive for the area due to the economic impact, Cal Poly has received criticism for both the behavior of students upsetting the community, and the effects on local housing market. Parties and gatherings have gotten wilder due to an increased student body size and social media presence, leading to the university being named the #9 party school in California by Niche. In 2017, the median home price in San Luis Obispo was $530,000. In May 2018, Zillow estimated that the median home value has increased to $694,027. While the city has been building hundreds of single family housing on the south end of town, large areas of the north end in older neighborhoods have been converted to rental student housing because of a major increase in the number of students admitted to and attending the university and the lack of university supplied housing. The university is currently building housing on campus to attempt to house up to 65% of students and plans to cap enrollment at 25,000, meaning that 11,250 students must find off-campus housing. This has created an affordability crisis for the city itself, as most apartments that would generally be occupied by lower income families and individuals are now occupied solely by Cal Poly students, reducing supply and pushing low-income residents outside of the city. Approximately 27% of the residents live below the poverty line, a similar percentage to Cleveland, Ohio. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=433230 | 281,209 |
1,095,759 | Flavonoids are one class of secondary plant metabolites that are also known as Vitamin P or citrin. These metabolites are mostly used in plants to produce yellow and other pigments which play a big role in coloring the plants. In addition, Flavonoids are readily ingested by humans and they seem to display important anti-inflammatory, anti-allergic and anti-cancer activities. Flavonoids are also found to be powerful anti-oxidants and researchers are looking into their ability to prevent cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Flavonoids help prevent cancer by inducing certain mechanisms that may help to kill cancer cells, and researches believe that when the body processes extra flavonoid compounds, it triggers specific enzymes that fight carcinogens. Good dietary sources of Flavonoids are all citrus fruits, which contain the specific flavanoids hesperidins, quercitrin, and rutin, berries, tea, dark chocolate and red wine and many of the health benefits attributed to these foods come from the Flavonoids they contain. Flavonoids are synthesized by the phenylpropanoid metabolic pathway where the amino acid phenylalanine is used to produce 4-coumaryol-CoA, and this is then combined with malonyl-CoA to produce chalcones which are backbones of Flavonoids Chalcones are aromatic ketones with two phenyl rings that are important in many biological compounds. The closure of chalcones causes the formation of the flavonoid structure. Flavonoids are also closely related to flavones which are actually a sub class of flavonoids, and are the yellow pigments in plants. In addition to flavones, 11 other subclasses of Flavonoids including, isoflavones, flavans, flavanones, flavanols, flavanolols, anthocyanidins, catechins (including proanthocyanidins), leukoanthocyanidins, dihydrochalcones, and aurones. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31336624 | 1,095,199 |
1,245,606 | Drepanosaurs are notable for their distinctive, triangular skulls, which resemble the skulls of birds. Some drepanosaurs, such as "Avicranium," had pointed, toothless, bird-like beaks. This similarity to birds may have led to the misattribution of what may be a drepanosaur skull to the would-be "first bird," "Protoavis".Drepanosaurs featured a suite of bizarre, almost chameleon-like skeletal features. Above the shoulders of most species was a specialized "hump" formed from fusion of the vertebrae, possibly used for advanced muscle attachments to the neck, and allowing for quick forward-striking movement of the head (perhaps to catch insects). Many had derived hands with two fingers opposed to the remaining three, an adaptation for grasping branches. Some individuals of "Megalancosaurus" (possibly exclusive to either males or females) had a primate-like opposable toe on each foot, perhaps used by one sex for extra grip during mating. Most species had broad, prehensile tails, sometimes tipped with a large "claw," again to aid in climbing. These tails, tall and flat like those of newts and crocodiles, have led some researches to conclude that they were aquatic rather than arboreal. In 2004, Senter dismissed this idea, while Colbert and Olsen, in their description of "Hypuronector", state that while other drepanosaurs were probably arboreal, "Hypuronector" was uniquely adapted to aquatic life. The tail of this genus was extremely deep and non-prehensile: much more fin-like than members of the more exclusive group Drepanosauridae. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10333756 | 1,244,931 |
2,045,559 | Larger fungi (usually referred to as macrofungi or macromycetes) are of particular interest because of their importance as food resources and as a component of traditional culture in many places in the world. Moreover, many basidiomycetes and ascomycetes with conspicuous sporocarps often play an important role as ectomycorrhizal mycobionts of trees and shrubs of boreal forests in the northern hemisphere and are important elements in many areas of the southern hemisphere. Although Guatemalan macrofungi have not been as yet extensively surveyed, a preliminary checklist encompasses some 350 species of macromycetes (31 ascomycetes and 319 basidiomycetes) occurring in 163 genera and 20 ascomycetous and basidiomycetous orders. Recently, 12 species of Ascomycetes where cited, with the new records, there are now 44 ascomycete species known from Guatemala Most available observations pertain to the highlands, in the departments of Alta Verapaz, Baja Verapaz, Chimaltenango, Guatemala, El Quiché, Huehuetenango, and Quetzaltenango, while the wide lowland Petén region has been scantly explored, despite the fact that it accounts for about one third of Guatemala's area and, together with adjacent areas of Belize and southern Mexico, comprise the largest unbroken tract of tropical forest north of the Brazilian Amazon. At the order level, "Agaricales" was found to host the larger number of species (almost one third of the entire set), followed by "Polyporales" and "Boletales". The most represented genera are "Amanita", "Russula", "Lactarius", "Laccaria", "Suillus". Intriguingly, all these genera are ectomycorrhizal with the several "Pinus" and "Quercus" species that form extensive pine and mixed forests of the highlands, and/or with the endangered "Abies guatemalensis" (pinabete), most abundant between 2800–3200 m elevation on the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes in western Guatemala. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=35239323 | 2,044,378 |
1,599,495 | His recent work has focused on applying a computational materials science approach to study materials failure in biological systems, including the investigation of material breakdown in a variety of diseases and other extreme conditions across multiple time- and length-scales. His key contributions lie in the field of deformation and failure of structural protein materials such as collagen and silk, where his work revealed universal material design paradigms that enable protein materials to provide enhanced and diverse functionality despite limited resources (energy, material volume, weak building blocks such as H-bonds, etc.), and demonstrated how these mechanisms break down under extreme conditions and disease (impact, trauma, mutations, flaws, etc.). The impact of his work has been the establishment of the universality-diversity paradigm, explaining how multifunctionality (diversity) of material properties in biology is achieved by changing structural arrangements of few (universal) constituents rather than inventing new building blocks, or through reliance of the quality of building blocks. Some of Buehler's current work involves the use of ologs, a category-theoretic framework for knowledge representation, to encode the structure-function relationships inherent in hierarchical materials. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2257165 | 1,598,595 |
2,146,243 | As of January 2018, of the known, surviving bound sets, that held by the Natural History Museum, London (subscribed for by the Earl of Sheffield) originally comprised second edition versions of parts 1 - 30 but was corrected some time prior to 1911 by the separate acquisition of a first edition of Volume I. The set belonging to the Linnaen Society is all good except that it contains a number of uncoloured illustrations. The copy held by The British Library is, according to their catalogue of 1884, a complete 8 volume set reissued in London in 1862. Another at The Smithsonian is made up from three part sets, lacks 117 plates with 3 plates uncoloured but is in reasonable overall condition. A complete set of first edition plates and text, systematically arranged and bound in contemporary half calf covers was originally owned by the Physical Society of Guy's Hospital, then Kings College Hospital and is now held within the Wellcome Collection. It is in generally good condition but suffers strong paper toning and appears mainly to comprise end-of-run impressions as they are all comparatively coarse and lack much of the finest detail. Curtis's own set, now with the Royal Entomological Society, includes all the reprints. A reportedly complete set, chronologically bound in 16 volumes, is held by Melbourne Museum. It was acquired by the museum in July, 1857 (via MacMillan of London), but its condition and make-up have not yet been investigated. Another set is held by the National Library of Ireland, another is to be found in the London library of the Royal Horticultural Society and a third by the Ulster Museum once belonged to George Crawford Hyndman. Two copies are catalogued by University of California, Berkeley libraries; one of which is incomplete, mis-bound, with reprints and at least one duplication (plate 638). Their second copy has not been located. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8145404 | 2,145,012 |
165,351 | The Indian grammarian-philosopher Bhartrhari (late fifth century AD) dealt with paradoxes such as the liar in a section of one of the chapters of his magnum opus the Vākyapadīya. Bhartrhari's solution fits into his general approach to language, thought and reality, which has been characterized by some as "relativistic", "non-committal" or "perspectivistic". With regard to the liar paradox ("sarvam mithyā bravīmi" "everything I am saying is false") Bhartrhari identifies a hidden parameter that can change unproblematic situations in daily communication into a stubborn paradox. Bhartrhari's solution can be understood in terms of the solution proposed in 1992 by Julian Roberts: "Paradoxes consume themselves. But we can keep apart the warring sides of the contradiction by the simple expedient of temporal contextualisation: what is 'true' with respect to one point in time need not be so in another ... The overall force of the 'Austinian' argument is not merely that 'things change', but that rationality is essentially temporal in that we need time in order to reconcile and manage what would otherwise be mutually destructive states." According to Robert's suggestion, it is the factor "time" which allows us to reconcile the separated "parts of the world" that play a crucial role in the solution of Barwise and Etchemendy. The capacity of time to prevent a direct confrontation of the two "parts of the world" is here external to the "liar". In the light of Bhartrhari's analysis, however, the extension in time that separates two perspectives on the world or two "parts of the world" – the part before and the part after the function accomplishes its task – is inherent in any "function": also the function to signify which underlies each statement, including the "liar". The unsolvable paradox – a situation in which we have either contradiction ("virodha") or infinite regress ("anavasthā") – arises, in case of the liar and other paradoxes such as the unsignifiability paradox (Bhartrhari's paradox), when abstraction is made from this function ("vyāpāra") and its extension in time, by accepting a simultaneous, opposite function ("apara vyāpāra") undoing the previous one. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17967 | 165,266 |
914,588 | There are various methods to treat otosclerosis. However the method of choice is a procedure known as stapedectomy. Early attempts at hearing restoration via the simple freeing of the stapes from its sclerotic attachments to the oval window were met with temporary improvement in hearing, but the conductive hearing loss would almost always recur. A stapedectomy consists of removing a portion of the sclerotic stapes footplate and replacing it with a middle ear implant that is secured to the incus. This procedure restores continuity of ossicular movement and allows transmission of sound waves from the eardrum to the inner ear. A modern variant of this surgery called a stapedotomy, is performed by drilling a small hole in the stapes footplate with a micro-drill or a laser, and the insertion of a piston-like prothesis. The success rate of either surgery depends greatly on the skill and the familiarity with the procedure of the surgeon. However, comparisons have shown stapedotomy to yield results at least as good as stapedectomy, with fewer complications, and thus stapedotomy is preferred in normal circumstances. Recently, Endoscopic stapedotomy has been gaining popularity since its first description by Professor Tarabichi in 1999. The endsocope provides much better view of the stapes footplate without removal of bone to access that structure. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=247891 | 914,109 |
2,058,485 | Research by Zuckerman et al. published in 1951, established a central dogma that neo-oogenesis in mammals does not occur postnatally. These conclusions were supported by other researches, such as Peters et al., who investigated DNA synthesis in oocytes during embryonic development. However, since they didn’t study oogenesis postnatally, they could not make any conclusions about postnatal oogenesis. In 1967, Loannou et al., studied proliferation of oogonia and sought to identify whether they were undergoing mitosis. They would be able to show this if there was observance of mitotic activity and whether or not they were contributing to stem cell populations. To do this, they used haematoxylin stains to stain for mitotic divisions. However, these results were inconclusive as they did not have oocyte markers and thus could not say for sure that these cells were a part of the stem cell population. A number of scientists have since then used mathematical models to suggest that, without an oocyte stem cell (OSC) population, the female mammal will not have enough oocytes to complete their reproductive lives due to rate of atresia during the normal cycle is significant. However, in 2004, new research by Jonathan Tilly and colleagues came about to suggest that a new population of stem cells in female mammals does exist, which could possibly be used for personalized therapeutics. Using mouse studies, they were able to detect OSCs that were able to generate new eggs within these mouse ovaries. Tilly et al. used GFP to try to label the OSCs, but they didn’t know exactly where to find these stem cell populations, so it is difficult to say whether somatic cells or stem cells were labeled. This study challenged previously expected notions, as it contradicted the central dogma of oogenesis, and has thus led to a rapid increase in the amount of researching being conducted to suggest whether there does indeed exist oocyte stem cells in the mammalian ovary. Lineage tracing and other studies, following initial observations in Tilly's lab, have found no supporting evidence for oogonial stem cells. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=51777983 | 2,057,300 |
1,753,822 | He was born at Reading, Berkshire, the son of John Howard Hinton, Baptist minister and author of the "History and Topography of the United States" and other works. James was educated at his grandfather's school near Oxford, and at the Nonconformist school at Harpenden, and in 1838, on his father's removal to London, was apprenticed to a woollen-draper in Whitechapel. After working there for about a year he became clerk in an insurance office. His evenings were spent in intense study, and this, combined with a concentration on moral problems, so affected his health that, aged eighteen, he tried to seek refuge from his own thoughts by running away to sea. His intention having been discovered, he was sent, on the advice of his doctor, to St Bartholomew's Hospital to study for the medical profession. After receiving his diploma in 1847, he was for some time assistant surgeon at Newport, Essex, but the same year he went out to Sierra Leone to take medical charge of the free labourers on their voyage thence to Jamaica, where he stayed some time. He returned to England in 1850, and entered into partnership with a surgeon in London, where he soon had his interest awakened specially in aural surgery, and also studied physiology. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=252312 | 1,752,832 |
2,187,623 | A large number of events in the field of science, research and education were held in Germany and Brazil from April 2010 to April 2011. The slogan "sustainable:innovative" guided Brazilian and German universities, research institutions, scientists and students as they came together to exchange information on a wide variety of issues related to sustainability and innovation and to launch new bilateral projects. The aim of these activities was to raise awareness of the diversity and excellence of German-Brazilian bilateral science cooperation and to give fresh impetus to scientific and technological cooperation. More than 100 events took place, including 60 'best practice' projects which received more than 1 million euros in funding from the BMBF. Highlights of the Science Year included the Brazil Week at Münster University, a road show in Brazil which showcased Germany as a location for research, the "Eye of the Sky" touring exhibition of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and a promotional tour through Brazil to attract students to come to study in Germany. The German-Brazilian Year launched the foundation of an agricultural research laboratory at the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA) under the umbrella of the Helmholtz Research Centre Jülich. Since 2012 the two institutions have been working in close cooperation in the field of plant breeding. A workshop on the topic "Creating Value from Bio-Resources", also held during the Science Year, marked the start of greater cooperation in this field of research. The cooperation is meant to help both countries in the development towards a bio-based economy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40565294 | 2,186,375 |
289,779 | Nevertheless, propeller aircraft "were" able to approach their critical Mach number, different for each aircraft, in a dive. Unfortunately, doing so led to numerous crashes for a variety of reasons. Flying the Mitsubishi Zero, pilots sometimes flew at full power into terrain because the rapidly increasing forces acting on the control surfaces of their aircraft overpowered them. In this case, several attempts to fix it only made the problem worse. Likewise, the flexing caused by the low torsional stiffness of the Supermarine Spitfire's wings caused them, in turn, to counteract aileron control inputs, leading to a condition known as "control reversal". This was solved in later models with changes to the wing. Worse still, a particularly dangerous interaction of the airflow between the wings and tail surfaces of diving Lockheed P-38 Lightnings made "pulling out" of dives difficult; however, the problem was later solved by the addition of a "dive flap" that upset the airflow under these circumstances. Flutter due to the formation of shock waves on curved surfaces was another major problem, which led most famously to the breakup of a de Havilland Swallow and death of its pilot Geoffrey de Havilland, Jr. on 27 September 1946. A similar problem is thought to have been the cause of the 1943 crash of the BI-1 rocket aircraft in the Soviet Union. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=166072 | 289,622 |
854,532 | On September 29, 2006 (sol ), MRO took its first high resolution image from its science orbit. This image is said to resolve items as small as 90 cm (3 feet) in diameter. On October 6, NASA released detailed pictures from the MRO of Victoria crater along with the "Opportunity" rover on the rim above it. In November, problems began to surface in the operation of two MRO spacecraft instruments. A stepping mechanism in the Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) skipped on multiple occasions resulting in a field of view that is slightly out of position. By December normal operations of the instrument was suspended, although a mitigation strategy allows the instrument to continue making most of its intended observations. Also, an increase in noise and resulting bad pixels has been observed in several CCDs of the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). Operation of this camera with a longer warm-up time has alleviated the issue. However, the cause is still unknown and may return. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=453326 | 854,077 |
1,505,388 | In 2007, Huang experimentally observed optical superoscillation phenomenon in the diffraction patterns of light transmitted through quasi-periodic nanohole arrays. Optical foci much smaller than the diffraction limit were observed. The results matched simulations without evanescent waves. In 2009, Huang et al further developed theoretical models to design superoscillation masks that can achieve extreme light concentration and imaging with arbitrary resolution. A practical method for constructing superoscillations and a discussion of their potential for quantum field theory were given by Achim Kempf. Chremmos and Fikioris have proposed a method for constructing superoscillations that approximate a desired polynomial with arbitrary accuracy within a given interval. In 2013 experimental generation of arbitrarily shaped diffractionless superoscillatory optical beams has been demonstrated. Two years later, in 2015, it was shown experimentally that super-oscillations can generate features that are many-fold smaller than the diffraction limit. The experiment was done using visible light, demonstrating enhanced resolution of 35 nm. Kempf and Ferreira proved that superoscillations come at the expense of a dynamical range that has to increase exponentially with the number of superoscillations and polynomially with the frequency of the superoscillations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23376006 | 1,504,542 |
466,484 | When symbiotic gut flora populations are disrupted (e.g., by antibiotics), one becomes more vulnerable to pathogens. The rapid evolution of antibiotic resistance places an enormous selective pressure on the advantageous alleles of resistance passed down to future generations. The Red Queen hypothesis shows that the evolutionary arms race between pathogenic bacteria and humans is a constant battle for evolutionary advantages in outcompeting each other. The evolutionary arms race between the rapidly evolving virulence factors of the bacteria and the treatment practices of modern medicine requires evolutionary biologists to understand the mechanisms of resistance in these pathogenic bacteria, especially considering the growing number of infected hospitalized patients. The evolved virulence factors pose a threat to patients in hospitals, who are immunocompromised from illness or antibiotic treatment. Virulence factors are the characteristics that the evolved bacteria have developed to increase pathogenicity. One of the virulence factors of "C". "difficile" that largely constitutes its resistance to antibiotics is its toxins: enterotoxin TcdA and cytotoxin TcdB. Toxins produce spores that are difficult to inactivate and remove from the environment. This is especially true in hospitals where an infected patient's room may contain spores for up to 20 weeks. Combating the threat of the rapid spread of CDIs is therefore dependent on hospital sanitation practices removing spores from the environment. A study published in the "American Journal of Gastroenterology" found that to control the spread of CDIs glove use, hand hygiene, disposable thermometers and disinfection of the environment are necessary practices in health facilities. The virulence of this pathogen is remarkable and may take a radical change at sanitation approaches used in hospitals to control CDI outbreaks. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5745363 | 466,251 |
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