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1,850,476 | Torquato has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the randomness of condensed phases of matter through the identification of sensitive order metrics. He is one of the world's experts on packing problems, including pioneering the notion of the "maximally random jammed" state of particle packings, identifying a Kepler-like conjecture for the densest packings of nonspherical particles, and providing strong theoretical evidence that the densest sphere packings in high dimensions (a problem of importance in digital communications) are counterintuitively disordered, not ordered as in our three-dimensional world. He has devised the premier algorithm to reconstruct microstructures of random media. Torquato formulated the first comprehensive cellular automaton model of cancer growth. He has made seminal contributions to the study of random heterogeneous materials, including writing the highly acclaimed treatise on this subject called "Random Heterogeneous Materials." He is one of the world's authorities on "materials by design" using optimization techniques, including "inverse" statistical mechanics. More recently he introduced a new exotic state of matter called "disordered hyperuniformity", which is intermediate between a crystal and liquid. These states of matter are endowed with novel physical properties. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38397364 | 1,849,415 |
1,096,117 | A key paper by Tolman, Ritchie, and Kalish in 1946 demonstrated that rats learned the layout of a maze, which they explored freely without reinforcement. After some trials, a food item was placed to a certain point of the maze, and the rats learned to navigate to that point very quickly. However, Hull and his followers were able to produce alternative explanations of Tolman's findings, and the debate between S-S and S-R learning theories became increasingly complicated. Skinner's iconoclastic paper of 1950, entitled ""Are theories of learning necessary?"", persuaded many psychologists interested in animal learning that it was more productive to focus on the behavior itself rather than using it to make hypotheses about mental states. The influence of Tolman's ideas faded temporarily in the later 1950s and 1960s. However, his achievements had been considerable. His 1938 and 1955 papers, produced to answer Hull's charge that he left the rat "buried in thought" in the maze, unable to respond, anticipated and prepared the ground for much later work in cognitive psychology, as psychologists began to discover and apply decision theory – a stream of work that was recognized by the award of a Nobel prize to Daniel Kahneman in 2002. In his 1948 paper ""Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men"", Tolman introduced the concept of a cognitive map, which has found extensive application in almost every field of psychology, frequently among scientists who are unaware that they are using the early ideas that were formulated to explain the behavior of rats in mazes. Tolman assessed both response learning and place learning. Response learning is when the rat knows that the response of going a certain way in the maze will always lead to food; place learning is when the rats learn to associate the food in a specific spot each time. In his trials he observed that all of the rats in the place-learning maze learned to run the correct path within eight trials and that none of the response-learning rats learned that quickly, and some did not even learn it at all after seventy-two trials. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=442101 | 1,095,557 |
1,935,046 | Eight seasons of excavations led by the Spitsbergen Mesozoic Research Group on the island of Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Norway from 2004 to 2012 recovered 29 ichthyosaur specimens from outcrops of the Slottsmøya Member lagerstätte, which belongs to the greater Agardhfjellet Formation. These outcrops likely date to the Volgian (which roughly corresponds to the Tithonian-early Berriasian) based on ammonite biostratigraphy. From these, numerous new genera and species of ichthyosaur were described including "Cryopterygius kristiansenae" (later recognized to be synonymous with "Undorosaurus gorodischensis"), "Palvennia hoybergeti" (named for PalVenn, the Friends of the Palaeontological Museum in Oslo, whose expedition led to the discovery of the type specimen), and "Janusaurus lundi" (named for the mountain Janusfjellet, where the specimen was found). "Janusaurus" and "Palvennia" were both named off of less extensive material the "Cryopterygius", but both were recognizably distinct to that genus and were deemed to be distinct genera. An additional ichthyosaur specimen was prepared at the University of Oslo and subsequently described in 2016: PMO 222.655, the holotype of "Keilhauia nui", discovered from the Berriasian portions of the Slottsmøya Member in 2010. This specimen comprises an articulated partial skeleton, which was preserved lying on its left side, including part of the snout, the dorsal and anterior caudal vertebrae, the right forelimb and pectoral girdle, the majority of the pubic girdle, and both of the femora. The genus name "Keilhauia" honours the Norwegian geologist Baltazar Mathias Keilhau, who conducted an expedition to Spitsbergen in 1827. Meanwhile, the species name "nui" is derived from the acronym of the environmental organization Natur og Ungdom, the fiftieth anniversary of which occurred in 2017. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27649944 | 1,933,938 |
1,405,727 | CPOE systems can take years to install and configure. Despite ample evidence of the potential to reduce medication errors, adoption of this technology by doctors and hospitals in the United States has been slowed by resistance to changes in physician's practice patterns, costs and training time involved, and concern with interoperability and compliance with future national standards. According to a study by RAND Health, the US healthcare system could save more than 81 billion dollars annually, reduce adverse medical events and improve the quality of care if it were to widely adopt CPOE and other health information technology. As more hospitals become aware of the financial benefits of CPOE, and more physicians with a familiarity with computers enter practice, increased use of CPOE is predicted. Several high-profile failures of CPOE implementation have occurred, so a major effort must be focused on change management, including restructuring workflows, dealing with physicians' resistance to change, and creating a collaborative environment. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2021968 | 1,404,937 |
676,054 | SVD-S (6V3) – Attempts to reduce the length of the rifle for use by marines, mechanized infantry, and paratroopers began in 1978 by adding a folding buttstock and a separate pistol grip. Initially, preexisting stock designs were used (such as the one from the AKS-74), but ergonomic problems necessitated the design of a unique folding stock. The final design was chosen out of a variety of prototypes and adopted in 1995, which had a metal stock which folded to the right as to not be interfered by the optic mount and also had a shortened barrel. The stock included a rubber shoulder pad and cheek riser. The barrel was also given a heavier profile, the receiver housing was strengthened, the gas cylinder block was improved and a ported, and a shorter conical flash suppressor was adopted. The SVDSN (6V3N) variants, much like the SVDN variants, are simply equipped with various night vision devices. SVDG (6V1-10) – A smoothbore SVD with a 10mm bore developed alongside the modern intermediate cartridge program to use the experimental 3 mm APFSDS projectile, originally designed for use in standard machine guns. The design was not implemented due to the poor terminal ballistics of the projectile and the complexity of the new weapon. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=337494 | 675,701 |
293,331 | Excretion and sloppy feeding (the physical breakdown of food source) make up 80% and 20% of crustacean zooplankton-mediated DOM release respectively. In the same study, fecal pellet leaching was found to be an insignificant contributor. For protozoan grazers, DOM is released primarily through excretion and egestion and gelatinous zooplankton can also release DOM through the production of mucus. Leaching of fecal pellets can extend from hours to days after initial egestion and its effects can vary depending on food concentration and quality. Various factors can affect how much DOM is released from zooplankton individuals or populations. Absorption efficiency (AE) is the proportion of food absorbed by plankton that determines how available the consumed organic materials are in meeting the required physiological demands. Depending on the feeding rate and prey composition, variations in AE may lead to variations in fecal pellet production, and thus regulates how much organic material is recycled back to the marine environment. Low feeding rates typically lead to high AE and small, dense pellets, while high feeding rates typically lead to low AE and larger pellets with more organic content. Another contributing factor to DOM release is respiration rate. Physical factors such as oxygen availability, pH, and light conditions may affect overall oxygen consumption and how much carbon is loss from zooplankton in the form of respired CO. The relative sizes of zooplankton and prey also mediate how much carbon is released via sloppy feeding. Smaller prey are ingested whole, whereas larger prey may be fed on more “sloppily”, that is more biomatter is released through inefficient consumption. There is also evidence that diet composition can impact nutrient release, with carnivorous diets releasing more dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and ammonium than omnivorous diets. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50558 | 293,173 |
67,123 | The Laboratory turned to an alternative, albeit more technically difficult, design, an implosion-type nuclear weapon. In September 1943, mathematician John von Neumann had proposed a design in which a fissile core would be surrounded by two different high explosives that produced shock waves of different speeds. Alternating the faster- and slower-burning explosives in a carefully calculated configuration would produce a compressive wave upon their simultaneous detonation. This so-called "explosive lens" focused the shock waves inward with enough force to rapidly compress the plutonium core to several times its original density. This reduced the size of a critical mass, making it supercritical. It also activated a small neutron source at the center of the core, the initiator, which assured that the chain reaction began in earnest at the right moment. Such a complicated process required research and experimentation in engineering and hydrodynamics before a practical design could be developed. The entire Los Alamos Laboratory was reorganized in August 1944 to focus on the design of a workable implosion bomb. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60033 | 67,098 |
230,859 | While at medical school, Spielrein continued to assist Jung in the laboratory as she had done as an in-patient. She also attended his ward rounds and met him socially. The strong feelings she had developed towards him as his hospital patient continued during her first three years at medical school, and she developed a fantasy of having a child with him to be called Siegfried. She did not have further therapy from him, although from around late 1907 he informally tried to analyze her wish for his child. In the summer of 1908, as she entered her fourth year at medical school, she and Jung began to have increasingly intimate encounters, which she described in her diaries as "poetry". There are differing views as to whether they had sexual intercourse. John Launer has reviewed the evidence from her diaries and their letters in his 2015 biography of Spielrein, "Sex Versus Survival. The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein". He concluded that they had consensual and erotic physical contact but stopped short of sexual penetration. This is supported by Spielrein's statement in a letter to her mother: "So far we have stayed at the level of poetry that is not dangerous." Lance Owens further summarized the documentary evidence in his 2015 study, "Jung in Love: The Mysterium in Liber Novus", Zvi Lothane, a Freudian psychoanalyst and scholar of psychoanalytic history, makes the most robust and well-supported case against a consummated sexual relationship between the pair. Lothane summarizes his conclusions: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2425513 | 230,741 |
262,772 | Weapons designed to cause temporary blindness, known as dazzlers, are used by military and sometimes law enforcement organizations. Incidents of pilots being exposed to lasers while flying have prompted aviation authorities to implement special procedures to deal with such hazards. Laser weapons capable of directly damaging or destroying a target in combat are still in the experimental stage. The general idea of laser-beam weaponry is to hit a target with a train of brief pulses of light. The power needed to project a high-powered laser beam of this kind is beyond the limit of current mobile power technology, thus favoring chemically powered gas dynamic lasers. Example experimental systems included MIRACL and the Tactical High Energy Laser, which are now discontinued. The United States Navy has tested the very short range (1 mile), 30-kW Laser Weapon System or LaWS to be used against targets like small UAVs, rocket-propelled grenades, and visible motorboat or helicopter engines. It has been defined as "six welding lasers strapped together." A 60 kW system, HELIOS, is being developed for destroyer class ships . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4714516 | 262,633 |
622,576 | The intensity of the input signal can be obtained by counting (photon counting) the number of output pulses within a measurement time period. This is useful for applications such as low light imaging, PET scanning and fluorescence lifetime microscopy. However, while the avalanche recovery circuit is quenching the avalanche and restoring bias, the SPAD cannot detect further photon arrivals. Any photons, (or dark counts or after-pulses), that reach the detector during this brief period are not counted. As the number of photons increases such that the (statistical) time interval between photons gets within a factor of ten or so of the avalanche recovery time, missing counts become statistically significant and the count rate begins to depart from a linear relationship with detected light level. At this point the SPAD begins to saturate. If the light level were to increase further, ultimately to the point where the SPAD immediately avalanches the moment the avalanche recovery circuit restores bias, the count rate reaches a maximum defined purely by the avalanche recovery time in the case of active quenching (hundred million counts per second or more). This can be harmful to the SPAD as it will be experiencing avalanche current nearly continuously. In the passive case, saturation may lead to the count rate decreasing once the maximum is reached. This is called paralysis, whereby a photon arriving as the SPAD is passively recharging, has a lower detection probability, but can extend the dead time. It is worth noting that passive quenching, while simpler to implement in terms of circuitry, incurs a 1/e reduction in maximum counting rates. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=972711 | 622,244 |
118,669 | The mathematical models used in classical electromagnetism, quantum electrodynamics (QED) and the Standard Model all view the electromagnetic vacuum as a linear system with no overall observable consequence. For example, in the case of the Casimir effect, Lamb shift, and so on these phenomena can be explained by alternative mechanisms other than action of the vacuum by arbitrary changes to the normal ordering of field operators. See the alternative theories section. This is a consequence of viewing electromagnetism as a U(1) gauge theory, which topologically does not allow the complex interaction of a field with and on itself. In higher symmetry groups and in reality, the vacuum is not a calm, randomly fluctuating, largely immaterial and passive substance, but at times can be viewed as a turbulent virtual plasma that can have complex vortices (i.e. solitons vis-à-vis particles), entangled states and a rich nonlinear structure. There are many observed nonlinear physical electromagnetic phenomena such as Aharonov–Bohm (AB) and Altshuler–Aronov–Spivak (AAS) effects, Berry, Aharonov–Anandan, Pancharatnam and Chiao–Wu phase rotation effects, Josephson effect, Quantum Hall effect, the De Haas–Van Alphen effect, the Sagnac effect and many other physically observable phenomena which would indicate that the electromagnetic potential field has real physical meaning rather than being a mathematical artifact and therefore an all encompassing theory would not confine electromagnetism as a local force as is currently done, but as a SU(2) gauge theory or higher geometry. Higher symmetries allow for nonlinear, aperiodic behaviour which manifest as a variety of complex non-equilibrium phenomena that do not arise in the linearised U(1) theory, such as multiple stable states, symmetry breaking, chaos and emergence. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=84400 | 118,623 |
1,568,962 | A diet that is rich in fruit and vegetables significantly reduces the risk of several diseases. Retinoids and vitamins A, C, and E are probably the most well-known and studied natural radioprotectors, but hormones (e.g., melatonin), glutathione, superoxide dismutase, and phytochemicals from plant extracts (including green tea and cruciferous vegetables), as well as metals (especially selenium, zinc, and copper salts) are also under study as dietary supplements for individuals, including astronauts, who have been overexposed to radiation. Antioxidants should provide reduced or no protection against the initial damage from densely ionizing radiation such as HZE nuclei, because the direct effect is more important than the free-radical-mediated indirect radiation damage at high LET. However, there is an expectation that some benefits should occur for persistent oxidative damage that is related to inflammation and immune responses. Some recent experiments suggest that, at least for acute high-dose irradiation, an efficient radioprotection by dietary supplements can be achieved, even in the case of exposure to high-LET radiation. Although there is evidence that dietary antioxidants (especially strawberries) can protect the CNS from the deleterious effects of high doses of HZE particles, because the mechanisms of biological effects are different at low dose-rates compared to those of acute irradiation, new studies for protracted exposures will be needed to understand the potential benefits of biological countermeasures. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=39761773 | 1,568,075 |
82,389 | The creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was authorized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1958 for the purpose of forming and executing research and development projects to expand the frontiers of technology and science, and able to reach far beyond immediate military requirements. The two relevant acts are the Supplemental Military Construction Authorization (Air Force) (Public Law 85-325) and Department of Defense Directive 5105.15, in February 1958. It was placed within the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and counted approximately 150 people. Its creation was directly attributed to the launching of Sputnik and to U.S. realization that the Soviet Union had developed the capacity to rapidly exploit military technology. Initial funding of ARPA was $520 million. ARPA's first director, Roy Johnson, left a $160,000 management job at General Electric for an $18,000 job at ARPA. Herbert York from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was hired as his scientific assistant. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8957 | 82,355 |
830,375 | The principal architects of the new system, John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White, created a plan which was endorsed by the 42 countries attending the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, formally known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference. The plan involved nations agreeing to a system of fixed but adjustable exchange rates so that the currencies were pegged against the dollar, with the dollar itself convertible into gold. So in effect this was a gold – dollar exchange standard. There were a number of improvements on the old gold standard. Two international institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank were created. A key part of their function was to replace private finance as a more reliable source of lending for investment projects in developing states. At the time the soon to be defeated powers of Germany and Japan were envisaged as states soon to be in need of such development, and there was a desire from both the US and Britain not to see the defeated powers saddled with punitive sanctions that would inflict lasting pain on future generations. The new exchange rate system allowed countries facing economic hardship to devalue their currencies by up to 10% against the dollar (more if approved by the IMF) – thus they would not be forced to undergo deflation to stay in the gold standard. A system of capital controls was introduced to protect countries from the damaging effects of capital flight and to allow countries to pursue independent macro economic policies | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22024384 | 829,928 |
665,685 | To ease the impact on employment in the UK aircraft industry from the cancellation of home-grown programs, the aircraft had a high British content. The main modification was the replacement of the General Electric J79 by the British-made Rolls-Royce Spey powerplant. These engines (RB 168-25R Spey Mk 202/203s) were more powerful than the J79s ( afterburning thrust) and had a lower fuel consumption (power-specific fuel consumption was around ). The rear fuselage was heavily modified to accommodate the larger Speys and the air intakes enlarged to permit the greater airflow they required. These aircraft were equipped with an AN/AWG-11 radar system, which was a version of the Westinghouse AN/AWG-10 built under licence by Ferranti, equipped with a Doppler unit to allow some basic look-down capabilities. The bombing system was the anglicized version of the Lear/Siegler AN/ABJ-7. Fleet Air Arm Phantoms were fitted with a double-telescoping front landing gear strut that could extend , the increased angle of attack being necessary for catapult launches from the smaller British carriers. Other British contractors, including Short Brothers and British Aircraft Corporation, built sub-assemblies and supplied parts to the United States where the aircraft were assembled by McDonnell Douglas at Saint Louis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13567676 | 665,338 |
1,880,693 | Renner's research interests focus on the phylogenetics, mating system evolution, and biogeography of flowering plants, in both temperate and tropical regions. Renner's early research was on the phylogeny and reproductive biology of plants. She has also worked on dioecy and sex chromosomes in plants. The use of genetic tools enables Renner to track the movement of plants across ocean basins, define the separation of land masses following the breakup of Pangaea 153 million years ago, and define the origin of agricultural crops including cucumbers and melons and gourds. Renner's work on watermelons revealed that they originate from the northeast Africa in the Kordofan area and not South Africa as previously indicated. She has tracked the relationship between "Philidris nagasau" ants and "Squamellaria" plants over the past 3 million years, an interaction that is a type of farming because the ants place seeds into tree bark and then return later to eat the resulting growth. Her research followed the co-evolution between sword-billed hummingbirds and passion flowers, an interaction that has been gained and lost multiple times over the past 11 million years. In urban areas, her research on bees, how they collect pollen, and the role of flower strips in attracting bees is relevant given the impact of climate change on interactions between plants and insects. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=43831341 | 1,879,612 |
108,677 | Pauling then proposed that deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was a triple helix; his model contained several basic mistakes, including a proposal of neutral phosphate groups, an idea that conflicted with the acidity of DNA. Sir Lawrence Bragg had been disappointed that Pauling had won the race to find the alpha helix structure of proteins. Bragg's team had made a fundamental error in making their models of protein by not recognizing the planar nature of the peptide bond. When it was learned at the Cavendish Laboratory that Pauling was working on molecular models of the structure of DNA, James Watson and Francis Crick were allowed to make a molecular model of DNA. They later benefited from unpublished data from Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin at King's College which showed evidence for a helix and planar base stacking along the helix axis. Early in 1953 Watson and Crick proposed a correct structure for the DNA double helix. Pauling later cited several reasons to explain how he had been misled about the structure of DNA, among them misleading density data and the lack of high quality X-ray diffraction photographs. During the time Pauling was researching the problem, Rosalind Franklin in England was creating the world's best images. They were key to Watson's and Crick's success. Pauling did not see them before devising his mistaken DNA structure, although his assistant Robert Corey did see at least some of them, while taking Pauling's place at a summer 1952 protein conference in England. Pauling had been prevented from attending because his passport was withheld by the State Department on suspicion that he had Communist sympathies. This led to the legend that Pauling missed the structure of DNA because of the politics of the day (this was at the start of the McCarthy period in the United States). Politics did not play a critical role. Not only did Corey see the images at the time, but Pauling himself regained his passport within a few weeks and toured English laboratories well before writing his DNA paper. He had ample opportunity to visit Franklin's lab and see her work, but chose not to. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37342 | 108,632 |
372,376 | In reality, neither the U.S. Army nor U.S. Navy was in shape for war in terms of manpower, size, military hardware or experience. The Navy had fine ships but Wilson had been using them to threaten Mexico, and the fleet's readiness had suffered. The crews of the "Texas" and the "New York", the two newest and largest battleships, had never fired a gun, and the morale of the sailors was low. The Army and Navy air forces were tiny in size. Despite the flood of new weapons systems unveiled in the war in Europe, the Army was paying scant attention. For example, it was making no studies of trench warfare, poison gas or tanks, and was unfamiliar with the rapid evolution of aerial warfare. The Democrats in Congress tried to cut the military budget in 1915. The Preparedness movement effectively exploited the surge of outrage over the "Lusitania" in May 1915, forcing the Democrats to promise some improvements to the military and naval forces. Wilson, less fearful of the Navy, embraced a long-term building program designed to make the fleet the equal of the British Royal Navy by the mid-1920s, although this would not come to pass until World War II. "Realism" was at work here; the admirals were Mahanians and they therefore wanted a surface fleet of heavy battleships second to none—that is, equal to Great Britain. The facts of submarine warfare (which necessitated destroyers, not battleships) and the possibilities of imminent war with the German Empire (or with Britain, for that matter), were simply ignored. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25604889 | 372,181 |
495,917 | People who are to undergo DHCA surgery are placed on cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB), a procedure that uses an external heart-lung machine that can artificially replace the function of the heart and lungs. A portion of the circulating blood supply is removed and stored for later replacement, with the remaining blood diluted by added fluids with the objective of reducing viscosity and clotting tendencies at cold temperature. The remaining diluted blood is cooled by the heart-lung machine until hypothermia causes the heart to stop beating normally, after which the blood pump of the heart-lung machine continues blood circulation through the body. Corticosteroids are typically given 6–8 hours before surgery as it has shown to have neuroprotective properties to decrease risk of neurological dysfunction by decreasing the release of inflammatory cytokines. Glucose is eliminated from all intravenous solutions to reduce the risk of hyperglycemia. In order for accurate hemodynamic monitoring, arterial monitoring is typically placed in the femoral or radial artery. Temperature taken from two separate sites, typically the bladder and nasopharynx, is used to estimate brain and body temperatures. Cardioplegic drugs may be administered to ensure the heart stops beating completely (asystole), which is protective of both the heart and brain when circulation is later stopped. Cooling continues until the brain is inactivated by the cold, and electrocerebral silence (flatline EEG) is attained. The blood pump is then switched off, and the interval of circulatory arrest begins. At this time more blood is drained to reduce residual blood pressure if surgery on a cerebral aneurysm is to be performed to help create a bloodless surgical field. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6891706 | 495,661 |
2,126,622 | The squadron assembled at its combat station, RAF Great Ashfield, England, and began participating in the strategic bombing campaign against Germany, flying its first combat mission on 17 July 1943. The unit carried out attacks on industrial targets, including communications centers as well as air bases in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway, striking targets as far away as Poland. On 17 August 1943, the squadron participated in an attack on the Messerschmitt aircraft factory at Regensburg, which involved a long flight over heavily defended enemy territory with little protection from escorting fighters. For this mission, the squadron received the Distinguished Unit Citation. On 12 May 1944, the squadron flew with the 385th Group as it led the 4th Combat Bombardment Wing through heavy opposition to attack an airplane repair facility at Zwickau. An estimated 200 enemy fighters attacked the bomber stream, heavily disordering its formation. The bombers were able to reform and achieved a high degree of accuracy with their bombs. For this attack, the 551st received a second DUC. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25923571 | 2,125,401 |
18,748 | The M855A1 was put to the test at the 2012 National Rifle Association's National High-Power Rifle Championship at Camp Perry, Ohio in August 2012. The shooter for the Army was Rob Harbison, a contractor supporting small caliber ammunition capability development at Fort Benning Georgia. This was a special event for the Project Manager for Maneuver Ammunition Systems and the Army's Maneuver Center of Excellence as it was an opportunity to showcase the capabilities of the Enhanced Performance Round. With an M16 loaded with M855A1 ammo, Harbison fired a perfect 200 points in the Coast Guard Trophy Match, which is 20 shots fired from the sitting position at 200 yards, finishing 17th out of 365 competitors. He also scored a perfect 100 on the final string of ten shots during the Air Force Cup Trophy Match, fired at 600 yards from the prone position, which is 10 shots in a row within the 12-inch, 10-point ring at 600 yards with combat ammunition. Harbison was happy with the performance of the EPR, with his scores showing that the Army's newest general purpose round is accurate enough to go toe-to-toe in the competition with the best ammo that can be bought or hand-loaded. Harbison even said, "I don't think I could have scored any higher if I was using match-grade competition ammunition." The M855A1 was not fired from 1:7 in rifled barrels used in standard Army rifles, but special Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU) match-grade 1:8 in rifled barrels, which produce more accurate results when firing 62-grain rounds. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=35022 | 18,740 |
278,418 | Pol η (eta), Pol ι (iota), and Pol κ (kappa), are Family Y DNA polymerases involved in the DNA repair by translation synthesis and encoded by genes POLH, POLI, and POLK respectively. Members of Family Y have five common motifs to aid in binding the substrate and primer terminus and they all include the typical right hand thumb, palm and finger domains with added domains like little finger (LF), polymerase-associated domain (PAD), or wrist. The active site, however, differs between family members due to the different lesions being repaired. Polymerases in Family Y are low-fidelity polymerases, but have been proven to do more good than harm as mutations that affect the polymerase can cause various diseases, such as skin cancer and Xeroderma Pigmentosum Variant (XPS). The importance of these polymerases is evidenced by the fact that gene encoding DNA polymerase η is referred as XPV, because loss of this gene results in the disease Xeroderma Pigmentosum Variant. Pol η is particularly important for allowing accurate translesion synthesis of DNA damage resulting from ultraviolet radiation. The functionality of Pol κ is not completely understood, but researchers have found two probable functions. Pol κ is thought to act as an extender or an inserter of a specific base at certain DNA lesions. All three translesion synthesis polymerases, along with Rev1, are recruited to damaged lesions via stalled replicative DNA polymerases. There are two pathways of damage repair leading researchers to conclude that the chosen pathway depends on which strand contains the damage, the leading or lagging strand. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=235926 | 278,268 |
641,008 | In an attempt to overcome the subjective weakness of Cattell's (1966) scree test, presented two families of non-graphical solutions. The first method, coined the optimal coordinate (OC), attempts to determine the location of the scree by measuring the gradients associated with eigenvalues and their preceding coordinates. The second method, coined the acceleration factor (AF), pertains to a numerical solution for determining the coordinate where the slope of the curve changes most abruptly. Both of these methods have out-performed the K1 method in simulation. In the Ruscio and Roche study (2012), the OC method was correct 74.03% of the time rivaling the PA technique (76.42%). The AF method was correct 45.91% of the time with a tendency toward under-estimation. Both the OC and AF methods, generated with the use of Pearson correlation coefficients, were reviewed in Ruscio and Roche's (2012) simulation study. Results suggested that both techniques performed quite well under ordinal response categories of two to seven (C = 2-7) and quasi-continuous (C = 10 or 20) data situations. Given the accuracy of these procedures under simulation, they are highly recommended for determining the number of factors to retain in EFA. It is one of Courtney's 5 recommended modern procedures. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24688832 | 640,669 |
790,528 | In 2018, as part of a trade war between the U.S. and China, US President Trump imposed tariffs on imported solar cells. The push for tariffs to protect American manufacturing and jobs in the solar power industry began in April 2017, when a bankrupt Georgia-based solar cell maker filed a trade complaint that a flood of cheap imports put them at a severe disadvantage. In response, the President imposed 30% tariffs of solar imports in January 2018. The solar industry is currently one of the fastest growing in the United States, employing more than 250,000 people as of 2018. On one hand, these tariffs forced the cancellation or scaling down of many projects and restrict the ability of companies to recruit more workers. On the other hand, they have the intended effect of incentivizing domestic manufacturing. Many solar power companies are transitioning towards automation and consequently will become less dependent on imports, especially from China. Analysts believe Trump's tariffs have made a clear impact. Without them, the manufacturing capacity for solar cells in the United States would likely not have increased significantly, from 1.8 gigawatts in 2017 to at least 3.4 gigawatts in 2018, they argue. However, because of the increasing reliance on automation, not that many new jobs will be created, while profits will flow to other countries, as many firms are foreign. By 2019, the solar power industry has recovered from the initial setbacks due to Trump's tariffs, thanks to initiatives from various states, such as California. Moreover, it is receiving considerable support from the Department of Energy. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) launched the "American-made Solar Prize" competition in June 2018 and has handed out tens to hundreds of thousand of dollars in cash prizes for the most promising solar cell designs. Prices of solar cells continue to decline. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15497918 | 790,103 |
1,614,664 | After it moved to Algeria as the first Marauder unit in that theater, arriving with just 15 aircraft and losing group commander Col. Alvord Rutherford over France en route, the 319th entered combat for the first time on 28 November, bombing and strafing warehouses, docks, and railroad yards at Sfax in Tunisia. From then to March 1943, the group bombed German and Italian targets in Tunisia and Libya, including airfields and enemy shipping along the Mediterranean Coast. The 319th trained in French Morocco from March, then returned to combat in June 1943, attacking enemy targets on Italian islands in the Mediterranean, including Sicily, Sardinia, and Pantelleria. From bases in Algeria and Tunisia, the group supported the Allied invasion of Italy, bombing bridges and marshalling yards during the late summer and early autumn of 1943. In November, it moved to Sardinia, to strike Axis targets in central Italy. Early in 1944, the 319th supported Allied ground forces as they advanced in the Cassino and Anzio areas. Later in the year, using North American B-25 Mitchell bombers the group attacked German supply lines in northern Italy, bombing bridges, marshalling yards, and roads. In March, it earned two Distinguished Unit Citations for raids on marshalling yards in Rome and Florence that damaged enemy communications without destroying cultural monuments. For supporting the Allied ground advance in Italy during April, May, and June 1944, the group earned the French Croix de Guerre with Palm. During the summer, it bombed bridges over the Po River in northern Italy using B-25 bombers to block the stream of German supplies and reinforcements going southward. The 319th Bombardment Group supported the invasion of southern France in August 1944 by attacking coastal batteries, radar stations, and bridges. From Corsica, it hit railroad bridges in Northern Italy and late in the year attacked railroad lines through the Brenner Pass that connected Germany and Austria with Italy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23827448 | 1,613,758 |
379,822 | Even as far back as WWII it was possible to incorporate a "ship counter" function in mine fuzes. This might set the mine to ignore the first two ships passing over it (which could be minesweepers deliberately trying to trigger mines) but detonate when the third ship passes overhead, which could be a high-value target such as an aircraft carrier or oil tanker. Even though modern mines are generally powered by a long life lithium battery, it is important to conserve power because they may need to remain active for months or even years. For this reason, most influence mines are designed to remain in a semi-dormant state until an unpowered (e.g. deflection of a mu-metal needle) or low-powered sensor detects the possible presence of a vessel, at which point the mine fuze powers up fully and the passive acoustic sensors will begin to operate for some minutes. It is possible to program computerised mines to delay activation for days or weeks after being laid. Similarly, they can be programmed to self-destruct or render themselves safe after a preset period of time. Generally, the more sophisticated the mine design, the more likely it is to have some form of anti-handling device to hinder clearance by divers or remotely piloted submersibles. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22102 | 379,627 |
916,260 | "The zone of optimal functioning theory" looks at each type each athlete and what level of arousal they need to perform best. This suggests that each athlete requires their own level of stress and arousal to feel motivated and perform well. This theory is specific but difficult to quantify. One proposed model for optimal functioning was proposed by Yuri Hanin. This model focuses on the interaction between natural emotional experience and the repetition of athletics. The combination of these concepts creates an emotional pattern that is stable to each individual. It takes into account positive, negative, optimal, and dysfunctional emotional experiences and how they effect athletic performance. Peak performance is when an athlete experiences this zone of optimal functioning. This stage is described as including dissociation and intense concentration to the point of being unaware of one's surroundings, lack of fatigue and pain, perceptual time-slowing, and feeling power and control. This state cannot be forced to happen, although athletes can develop control over several psychological variables that contribute to achieving peak performance. Sport psychologists try to give athletes the tools to have more control over reaching this peak performance level. These interventions targets controlling state anxiety and arousal level for the individual and task needs to maximize performance abilities. Some of the strategies used include cognitive reappraisal, breathing and relaxation, and hypnosis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25688228 | 915,778 |
122,254 | His work on catoptrics in Book V of the Book of Optics contains a discussion of what is now known as Alhazen's problem, first formulated by Ptolemy in 150 AD. It comprises drawing lines from two points in the plane of a circle meeting at a point on the circumference and making equal angles with the normal at that point. This is equivalent to finding the point on the edge of a circular billiard table at which a player must aim a cue ball at a given point to make it bounce off the table edge and hit another ball at a second given point. Thus, its main application in optics is to solve the problem, "Given a light source and a spherical mirror, find the point on the mirror where the light will be reflected to the eye of an observer." This leads to an equation of the fourth degree. This eventually led Alhazen to derive a formula for the sum of fourth powers, where previously only the formulas for the sums of squares and cubes had been stated. His method can be readily generalized to find the formula for the sum of any integral powers, although he did not himself do this (perhaps because he only needed the fourth power to calculate the volume of the paraboloid he was interested in). He used his result on sums of integral powers to perform what would now be called an integration, where the formulas for the sums of integral squares and fourth powers allowed him to calculate the volume of a paraboloid. Alhazen eventually solved the problem using conic sections and a geometric proof. His solution was extremely long and complicated and may not have been understood by mathematicians reading him in Latin translation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1645 | 122,205 |
1,725,943 | The DPG office headed by the Chief Executive Bernhard Nunner is located in the (physics conference centre in Bad Honnef), in the neighbourhood of the university and federal city of Bonn. The is not only a meeting place and discussion forum of outstanding significance for physics in Germany but also an international brand for the discipline of physics. Students and cutting edge scientists through to Nobel Prize winners meet here to share their thoughts and ideas on a scientific level. Teaching staffs also gladly come to Bad Honnef time and again to attend advanced training courses relating to pure physics and the didactic aspects of this discipline, in the seminars held by the DPG. The DPG is also present in Germany's capital Berlin. It has been running the Magnus-Haus in Berlin since its reunification with the Physical Society of East Germany in 1990. This urban palace completed in 1760 – bearing the name of the natural scientist Gustav Magnus – has close links to the history of the DPG: it was the regular meeting place of scholars during the 19th century that eventually resulted in the Physical Society of Berlin being founded in 1845, which later became the DPG. Today it is a venue for meetings and lectures on physical and socio-political issues. The Magnus-Haus is also home to the DPG's historical archive. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2961275 | 1,724,972 |
2,168,583 | The late 1950s saw important developments in how the federal government could play an increasing role in supporting interdisciplinary, collaborative research at academic institutions. The successful launch of the Russian space satellite Sputnik on October 4, 1957 had a profound impact on how scientific and technological research was carried out in the United States. Within a year of this date the federal government established two new agencies: The National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), which was to define US supported space exploration for the remainder of the century and beyond, and the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA, later DARPA) within the Department of Defense. ARPA was tasked with expanding the frontiers of technology and science, often with potential military applications. In addition, the National Defense Education Act of 1958 had the main purpose to greatly increase the number of trained engineers, scientists, and mathematicians, and included provisions for financial assistance. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30862721 | 2,167,346 |
2,004,514 | One day, some of the apprentice lab boys walked into Whitney's office and complained about feeling unwell. They had been working near high-frequency equipment all day. Whitney took this with skepticism, but allowed the boys to go home early for the day. The next day he had Dr. Glen Smith from the nearby hospital conspicuously sit-in with the boys to solve what was going on. Dr. Smith also developed a fever. Whitney ran experiments on cockroaches and mice, artificially increasing their internal temperatures with a high-frequency apparatus to get some more information. He eventually worked his way up to experimenting on a diseased dog and the dog was cured with one hour of treatment a day. Whitney recalled Dr. Julius Wagner-Jauregg's trials with purposely giving patients with brain disorders malarial injections to induce a fever in the hopes of curing them. Before progressing any further with this apparatus, he experimented on his self and found that it relieved his stiff shoulder pain. He progressed with his trials to Ellis Hospital. Then, he moved on to conducting trials at a clinic at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. He later worked with doctors from the Albany Medical College to perfect this device. The device operated by using a vacuum tube to create electromagnetic waves as long as a meter or as short as one ten-thousandth of a meter at maximum. Whitney formally wrote a paper regarding the theory of how this device treated bursitis by raising levels of lactic acid near muscles and transporting calcium bone deposits. After the paper was published in the G.E. Review, the G.E. X- Ray corporation branded this device as the "Inductotherm" and sold it to the masses. The "Inductotherm" is actually a diathermy device. It was for this that Whitney was later awarded with the French Legion of Honor. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6046838 | 2,003,365 |
2,203,409 | Additionally, toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by "Toxoplasma gondii "is prevalent in organic pastured systems for swine. Although commonly occurring in uncooked meat, toxoplasmosis has been also found in outdoor livestock systems, where controlled, indoor swine environments have been dramatically reduced. A large degree of risk does exist with the potential of Toxoplasma exposure, although many farms currently remain free of this pathogen. Although not as serious as other diseases (Toxoplasma gondii does affect and can kill animals with weak immune systems), uncooked meat from the animals in question can contain the disease. The significance of parasitic infections with respect to health and productivity in pigs under organic outdoor systems remains to be documented. Such diseases do pose risk in pasture systems. Since there are generally fewer population numbers, risk of transmission to other animals is lower, yet exposure to feces and cross-contamination from other animals is a possibility. Providing proper nutrition is necessary to avoid weak immune systems and provide greater resistance of pathogens—utilizing proper forages, grasses, and mineral availability are necessary. For instance, good quality forage can replace up to 50% of grain and supplement needs for many sows in pastures. Organic producers should maintain buffers and adequate housing to maintain proper swine health. The issue of cannibalism, by sows eating piglets, or pigs eating a diseased pig of the same size can be a concern. There is evidence that suggests this is a growing concern in outdoor and pasture systems. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=41194738 | 2,202,155 |
458,334 | Stories in the series frequently emphasize the internal struggles, passions, and tragedies of the characters, and the main plot often recedes into the background as the focus shifts to their personal lives. Other aspects explored are the relationships between characters, which range from love to rivalry. Other recurring situations that drive the plot include amnesia, a hero corrupted by an evil force, mistaken identity, and self-sacrifice. Esoteric and mystical elements also took a central role in several titles, though later titles such as "Final Fantasy XV" focused on simple narratives and understandable knowledge for its lore. The central conflict in many "Final Fantasy" games focuses on a group of characters battling an evil, and sometimes ancient, antagonist that dominates the game's world. Stories frequently involve a sovereign state in rebellion, with the protagonists taking part in the rebellion. The heroes are often destined to defeat the evil, and occasionally gather as a direct result of the antagonist's malicious actions. Twin antagonists, with the second main antagonist being hidden for the majority of the game, is also a recurring element. Other common plot and setting themes include the Gaia hypothesis, an apocalypse, and conflicts between advanced technology and nature. Most titles feature names inspired from various cultures' history, languages and mythology, including Asian, European, and Middle-Eastern. In-game items such as weapons follow this tradition: the two most notable are Excalibur and Masamune, derived respectively from the Arthurian sword and legendary Japanese swordsmith. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50576117 | 458,110 |
1,698,351 | The most important component for CAS is the development of an accurate model of the patient. This can be conducted through a number of medical imaging technologies including CT, MRI, x-rays, ultrasound plus many more. For the generation of this model, the anatomical region to be operated has to be scanned and uploaded into the computer system. It is possible to employ a number of scanning methods, with the datasets combined through data fusion techniques. The final objective is the creation of a 3D dataset that reproduces the exact geometrical situation of the normal and pathological tissues and structures of that region. Of the available scanning methods, the CT is preferred, because MRI data sets are known to have volumetric deformations that may lead to inaccuracies. An example data set can include the collection of data compiled with 180 CT slices, that are 1 mm apart, each having 512 by 512 pixels. The contrasts of the 3D dataset (with its tens of millions of pixels) provide the detail of soft vs hard tissue structures, and thus allow a computer to differentiate, and visually separate for a human, the different tissues and structures. The image data taken from a patient will often include intentional landmark features, in order to be able to later realign the virtual dataset against the actual patient during surgery. See patient registration. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15945619 | 1,697,397 |
1,231,487 | Transferring the signal to the medulla requires that neurotransmitter be released from the vesicles in the type I cells, and as with many other neural cells, this is triggered by an influx of calcium into the cell after membrane depolarization. The process of identifying signal transduction in interoceptors such as the peripheral chemoreceptors requires moving backward from membrane depolarization to discover the previous steps, often internal to the cell, that transduces blood chemicals to a neural signal. Up to this point, most research agrees that membrane depolarization is caused by inhibition of potassium channels that otherwise maintain the resting potential. As to the step before potassium channel inhibition, many mechanisms are proposed, none of which receive unanimous support from the research community. Multiple types of potassium channels respond to hypoxia, with significant differences between different species, and a number of different types for each species. Expression of potassium channels also changes throughout the lifetime. Some studies propose that heme-oxygenase 2 is the transducer; however, since its deletion in mice does not affect chemoreceptor oxygen sensitivity, this hypothesis is open to question. Another enzyme, AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), provides a mechanism that could apply not only to all types of potassium channels but also other oxygen-sensing tissues in the body, such as pulmonary vasculature and neonatal chromaffin cells. AMPK is an enzyme activated by an increase in the AMP:ATP ratio resulting from increasing cellular respiration. Once activated, the enzyme promotes production of ATP and suppresses reactions that consume it. AMPK activation is also a more appealing candidate because it can activate both of the two most common types of potassium channels. Another study identified that AMPK opens and closes potassium channels via phosphorylation, further underlining the link between the two. The role of AMPK in oxygen sensing in type-1 cells has however also recently been called into question. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9044842 | 1,230,825 |
238,742 | Epidural analgesia is considered a safer and more effective method of relieving pain in labor as compared to intravenous or oral analgesia. In a 2018 Cochrane review of studies which compared epidural analgesia with oral opiates, some advantages of epidural analgesia included better efficacy, fewer instances of naloxone use in newborns, and decreased risk of maternal hyperventilation. Some disadvantages of epidurals included an increase in the number of Caesarian sections required due to fetal distress, a longer labor, increased need for oxytocin to stimulate uterine contractions, an increased risk of low blood pressure and muscle weakness, as well as fever. However, the review found no difference in overall Caesarean delivery rates, and no evidence of negative effects to the baby soon after birth. Furthermore, the occurrence of long-term backache was unchanged after epidural use. Complications of epidural analgesia are rare, but may include headaches, dizziness, difficulty breathing and seizures for the mother. The child may experience a slow heartbeat, decreased ability to regulate temperature, and potential exposure to the drugs administered to the mother. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=985885 | 238,622 |
440,226 | In 1793, French ambassador Edmond Charles Genêt (known as "Citizen Genêt") arrived in the United States. He systematically mobilized pro-French sentiment and encouraged Americans to support France's war against Britain and Spain. Genêt funded local Democratic-Republican Societies that attacked Federalists. He hoped for a favorable new treaty and for repayment of the debts owed to France. Acting aggressively, Genêt outfitted privateers that sailed with American crews under a French flag and attacked British shipping. He tried to organize expeditions of Americans to invade Spanish Louisiana and Spanish Florida. When Secretary of State Jefferson told Genêt he was pushing American friendship past the limit, Genêt threatened to go over the government's head and rouse public opinion on behalf of France. Even Jefferson agreed this was blatant foreign interference in domestic politics. Genêt's extremism seriously embarrassed the Jeffersonians and cooled popular support for promoting the French Revolution and getting involved in its wars. Recalled to Paris for execution, Genêt kept his head and instead went to New York, where he became a citizen and married the daughter of Governor Clinton. Jefferson left office, ending the coalition cabinet and allowing the Federalists to dominate. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16829738 | 440,012 |
750,744 | On August 8, 2011, a report, based on NASA studies with meteorites found on Earth, was published suggesting building blocks of RNA (adenine, guanine, and related organic molecules) may have been formed in outer space. In 2017, research using a numerical model suggested that a RNA world may have emerged in warm ponds on the early Earth, and that meteorites were a plausible and probable source of the RNA building blocks (ribose and nucleic acids) to these environments. On August 29, 2012, astronomers at Copenhagen University reported the detection of a specific sugar molecule, glycolaldehyde, in a distant star system. The molecule was found around the protostellar binary "IRAS 16293-2422", which is located 400 light years from Earth. Because glycolaldehyde is needed to form RNA, this finding suggests that complex organic molecules may form in stellar systems prior to the formation of planets, eventually arriving on young planets early in their formation. Nitriles, key molecular precursors of the RNA World scenario, are among the most abundant chemical families in the universe and have been found in molecular clouds in the center of the Milky Way, protostars of different masses, meteorites and comets, and also in the atmosphere of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25765 | 750,346 |
764,141 | By developing specific and controllable bioorthogonal reactions, scientists have opened up the possibility of hitting particular targets in complex cell lysates. Recently, scientists have adapted click chemistry for use in live cells, for example using small molecule probes that find and attach to their targets by click reactions. Despite challenges of cell permeability, bioorthogonality, background labeling, and reaction efficiency, click reactions have already proven useful in a new generation of pulldown experiments (in which particular targets can be isolated using, for instance, reporter molecules which bind to a certain column), and fluorescence spectrometry (in which the fluorophore is attached to a target of interest and the target quantified or located). More recently, novel methods have been used to incorporate click reaction partners onto and into biomolecules, including the incorporation of unnatural amino acids containing reactive groups into proteins and the modification of nucleotides. These techniques represent a part of the field of chemical biology, in which click chemistry plays a fundamental role by intentionally and specifically coupling modular units to various ends. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1850601 | 763,731 |
1,434,847 | Shortly after the launch of the Einstein Observatory, the CfA's Steven Weinberg won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on electroweak unification. The following decade saw the start of the landmark CfA Redshift Survey (the first attempt to map the large scale structure of the Universe), as well as the release of the "Field Report", a highly influential Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey chaired by the outgoing CfA Director George Field. He would be replaced in 1982 by Irwin Shapiro, who during his tenure as director (1982 to 2004) oversaw the expansion of the CfA's observing facilities around the world, including the newly named Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, the Infrared Telescope (IRT) aboard the Space Shuttle, the 6.5-meter Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT), the SOHO satellite, and the launch of Chandra in 1999. CfA-led discoveries throughout this period include canonical work on Supernova 1987A, the "CfA2 Great Wall" (then the largest known coherent structure in the Universe), the best-yet evidence for supermassive black holes, and the first convincing evidence for an extrasolar planet. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1505128 | 1,434,041 |
945,856 | In university rankings published in 2007 and 2008 by German magazines and periodicals ("Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Focus", etc.) the University of Freiburg has established itself as one of Germany's top universities. The faculties for law, medicine, economics, history, English studies, German studies, biology, dentistry, and pharmacology achieve especially high scores. In regards to the natural sciences, the University of Freiburg ranked sixth in Europe and second in Germany in a ranking from 2003 of the European Commission of the universities according to their overall impact on scientific research. The Centre for Higher Education Development, a German higher education think tank, periodically publishes comprehensive rankings of European Master's and PhD programs. In 2016, Freiburg garnered five spots in the top Excellence Group among seven subject fields examined. In a recent survey by the Nature Publishing Group, the "Nature Publishing Index - 2012 Global Top 100", the University of Freiburg was the highest-ranked German university and ranked 66th worldwide and 18th in Europe. A recent study, "Benchmarking China and Germany: An Analysis of Patent Portfolios of Universities and Research Organizations", was published in May 2013 and sought to evaluate leading universities and research institutions in Germany and China in regards to their patent applications. The study placed the University of Freiburg as the third-most innovative university in Germany in terms of total patent applications. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=298971 | 945,353 |
65,403 | Another critique is aimed mainly at "algeny" (a portmanteau of "alchemy" and "genetics"), which Jeremy Rifkin defined as "the upgrading of existing organisms and the design of wholly new ones with the intent of 'perfecting' their performance". It emphasizes the issue of biocomplexity and the unpredictability of attempts to guide the development of products of biological evolution. This argument, elaborated in particular by the biologist Stuart Newman, is based on the recognition that cloning and germline genetic engineering of animals are error-prone and inherently disruptive of embryonic development. Accordingly, so it is argued, it would create unacceptable risks to use such methods on human embryos. Performing experiments, particularly ones with permanent biological consequences, on developing humans would thus be in violation of accepted principles governing research on human subjects (see the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki). Moreover, because improvements in experimental outcomes in one species are not automatically transferable to a new species without further experimentation, it is claimed that there is no ethical route to genetic manipulation of humans at early developmental stages. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30299 | 65,378 |
2,073,013 | His basic research centers around the development of quantitative High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy, aided by computer-controlled microscope operation and image simulation, which enables direct determination of atomic structure in defective materials. His research also involves using electron-microscopy-based methods to characterize advanced materials such as semiconductor heterostructures, magnetic thin films and multilayers, and nanostructures. Semiconductor systems of interest include ternary and quaternary Group III nitride alloys for light-emitting diodes and lasers, and II–VI alloys, such as mercury cadmium telluride for detectors of infra-red radiation. Magnetic materials being studied include shape-memory alloys, as well as magnetic tunnel junctions, which are based on ferromagnet-insulator-ferromagnet combinations, that have promising applications for non-volatile, high-storage-density recording media. Off-axis electron holography is a particularly powerful approach since it permits quantitative visualization of nanoscale electric and magnetic fields, and we are using the technique to investigate the magnetization behavior and fringing fields associated with patterned nanostructures. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10342677 | 2,071,822 |
1,636,696 | Through his study of factors that control the onset of flowering, a quintessential adaptive trait, Weigel became interested in more general questions of evolution. Apart from work on genetic variation in environment-dependent developmental processes, his group is known for the generation of extensive genomic resources, such as the first haplotype map for a non-mammalian species. To further exploit and advance the understanding of genetic variation, Weigel and colleagues initiated the 1001 Genomes project for "Arabidopsis thaliana". Related to this is a new area of interest, in genetic barriers. In collaboration with Jeffery Dangl, his group discovered that such barriers in plants are often associated with autoimmunity. They could show that in certain hybrid offspring, specific gene products contributed by one of the parents may be inappropriately recognized as foreign and pathogenic, and thus trigger pervasive cell death throughout the plant. Most of the causal genes encode components of the immune system, indicating that there are constraints on the assembly of an optimal immune system. Several cases have been examined in detail and shown to be due to direct protein-protein interactions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27237858 | 1,635,771 |
842,962 | Gefitinib is well endured by humans, and treatment resulted in a symptom improvement rate of 43% (with 95% confidence in a 33%–53% interval) for patients that received 250 mg of Gefitinib and 35% (with 95% confidence in a 26%–45% interval) for those that received 500 mg. In the trial, epidermal growth factor receptor showed a rapid response to the inhibitor, as demonstrated by the improvement of the cancer symptoms. In each group, improvements were noted after a single week of epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor treatment. Gefitinib application once per day caused “rapid” symptom improvement and tumor regressions in non-small cell lung cancer patients. In the field of medical research, this is an especially significant example of the use of an inhibitor to treat tyrosine kinase-associated cancer. Chemotherapy, surgery, and radiotherapy were the only major options available prior to the discoveries made in this trial. The side-effects of Gefitinib oral treatment once per day were considered significant. Diarrhea was reported in 57% of patients in the 250 mg group and in 75% of the 500 mg group. One patient had diarrhea more severe than Grade 2, with up to six bowel movements in only one day. Also, a death occurred possibly due to epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor treatment; however, the correlation is not exactly clear. In addition, skin toxicity was observed in 62% of patients in the 250 mg group. Nevertheless, the side-effects of Gefitinib were only “generally mild, manageable, noncumulative, and reversible.” Unfortunately, ceasing to take the inhibitor may be the only reversal strategy of the unfavorable symptoms. Gefitinib still represents a reasonably safe and effective treatment compared to other cancer therapies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=51903 | 842,512 |
124,370 | Variant of the R-36MUTTKh with multiple warheads. It was probably designed to attack and destroy ICBMs and other hardened targets in the US. Its increasing accuracy made it possible to reduce the yield of the warheads and allowed an increase in the number of warheads from 8 to 10. According to some Western estimates, evidence suggested that it may be capable of carrying as many as 14 RVs (this may reflect observation of the deployment of countermeasures intended to overcome a ballistic missile defense, or to confuse American attack characterization systems). The flight-design tests of the R-36MUTTKh began on 31 October 1977 and in November 1979 the flight tests of the MIRVed missile were completed. The first three regiments were put on alert on 18 September 1979. During 1980 a total of 120 missiles were deployed, replacing the last remaining R-36 missiles. In 1982–1983 the remaining R-36M missiles were also replaced with the new R-36MUTTKh and the total number of deployed missiles reached the maximum 308 ceiling established in the SALT-1 treaty. The R-36MUTTKh force had the estimated capability to destroy 65 to 80 percent of US ICBM silos using two nuclear warheads against each. Even after this type of attack, it was estimated that more than 1000 R-36MUTTKh warheads would be available for further strikes against targets in the US. After 2009, the R-36MUTTKh were all eliminated in favor of the newer R-36M2. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1068559 | 124,319 |
261,305 | Polyphenols are a large, diverse group of compounds, making it difficult to determine their biological effects. They are not considered nutrients, as they are not used for growth, survival or reproduction, nor do they provide dietary energy. Therefore, they do not have recommended daily intake levels, as exist for Vitamins, minerals, and fiber in the European Union, United Kingdom, and United States. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration issued guidance to manufacturers that polyphenols cannot be mentioned on food labels as antioxidant nutrients unless physiological evidence exists to verify such a qualification and a Dietary Reference Intake value has been established, characteristics which have not been determined for polyphenols. In the European Union, two health claims were authorized between 2012 and 2015: 1) flavanols in cocoa solids at doses exceeding 200 mg per day may contribute to maintenance of vascular elasticity and normal blood flow; 2) olive oil polyphenols (5 mg of hydroxytyrosol and its derivatives (e.g. oleuropein complex and tyrosol) may "contribute to the protection of blood lipids from oxidative damage", if consumed daily. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=362892 | 261,168 |
1,447,101 | Ranger 3 was the first of the Block II Ranger designs. The basic vehicle was 3.1 m high and consisted of a lunar capsule covered with a balsa wood impact-limiter, 650 mm in diameter, a mono-propellant mid-course motor, a retrorocket with a thrust of 5080 pounds force (22.6 kN), and a gold- and chrome-plated hexagonal base 1.5 m in diameter. A large high-gain dish antenna was attached to the base. Two wing-like solar panels (5.2 m across) were attached to the base and deployed early in the flight. Power was generated by 8680 solar cells contained in the solar panels which charged an 11.5 kg 1 kW·h capacity AgZn launching and backup battery. Spacecraft control was provided by a solid-state computer and sequencer and an earth-controlled command system. Attitude control was provided by Sun and Earth sensors, gyroscopes, and pitch and roll jets. The telemetry system aboard the spacecraft consisted of two 960 MHz transmitters, one at 3 W power output and the other at 50 mW power output, the high-gain antenna, and an omnidirectional antenna. White paint, gold and chrome plating, and a silvered plastic sheet encasing the retrorocket furnished thermal control. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=82403 | 1,446,285 |
1,217,897 | Max Jaffe was a distinguished 19th-century German biochemist, pathologist, pharmacologist, and professor. He was born on July 25, 1841, in what was formerly Grünberg, Silesia and is now Zielona Góra, Poland. While attending medical school at the University of Berlin, he studied under Ludwig Traube and Wilhelm Kühne. Afterward, he worked as an assistant in a medical clinic in Königsberg. There, he co-authored a paper on putrid sputum with Ernst Viktor von Leyden that led to the discovery of certain characteristic putrid processes in the lungs. After earning his degree in internal medicine, he served in the Franco-Prussian War and was decorated with the Iron Cross Second Class. The title of "Extraordinary Professor of Medicinal Chemistry" was awarded to him in 1872 and the following year he became the first "Ordinary Professor of Pharmacology" at the University of Königsberg. He was promoted to director of the "Laboratory for Medical Chemistry and Experimental Pharmacology" in 1878 and became a member of the "Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina" in 1882. Aside from studying creatinine, he is also known for discovering urobilin and urobilinogen in urine and found that these compounds originated in bile. He died on October 26, 1911, in Berlin and is buried in the Weißensee Cemetery. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37425225 | 1,217,244 |
1,479,717 | Most fossils of "Wiwaxia" are disorganized armor plates and spines, but, after examining dozens of them, Conway Morris reconstructed them as slug-like animals covered in rows of overlapping armor plates, with two rows of longer spines projecting upwards. Since 1990, there has been an intense debate about whether "Wiwaxia" was more closely related to molluscs or to polychaete annelids. Supporters of a close relationship with molluscs maintained that a pair of bars, running across the mouth and armed with backward-pointing teeth, were a rudimentary form of the radula, the toothed tongue that molluscs use to scrape up food and convey it back to the throat. Nicholas Butterfield, the one academic who has so far published articles placing "Wiwaxia" closer to polychaetes, stated that "Wiwaxia"′s two-row feeding apparatus could not have performed the sophisticated functions of the multi-row, conveyor-belt radula, suggesting instead that "Wiwaxia"′s apparatus was like the side-by-side pair of toothed bars found in some polychaetes. Later he found some fragmentary fossils, 5 to 10 million years before the Burgess Shale, that he regarded as a much more convincing early radula. Butterfield has also described "Wiwaxia"′s armor plates and spines as similar in internal structure to the chetae ("hairs") of polychaetes. Supporters of the link with molluscs have stated that "Wiwaxia" shows no signs of segmentation, appendages in front of the mouth, or "legs—–all of which are typical polychaete features. One writer adopted a neutral position, saying he saw no strong grounds for classifying "Wiwaxia" as a proto-annelid or a proto-mollusc, although he thought the objections against classification as a proto-annelid were the stronger. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22547077 | 1,478,883 |
1,021,296 | Some studies attempt to go deeper into the preindustrial past. In 2018, one such paper suggested that the last 150 years of AMOC showed exceptional weakness when compared to the previous 1500 years, and it indicated a discrepancy in the modeled timing of AMOC decline after the Little Ice Age. In February 2021, a study published in "Nature Geoscience" reported that the preceding millennium had seen an unprecedented weakening of the AMOC, an indication that the change was caused by human actions. Its co-author said that AMOC had already slowed by about 15%, with impacts now being seen: "In 20 to 30 years it is likely to weaken further, and that will inevitably influence our weather, so we would see an increase in storms and heatwaves in Europe, and sea level rises on the east coast of the US." In February 2022, "Nature Geoscience" published a "Matters Arising" commentary article co-authored by 17 scientists, which disputed those findings and argued that the long-term AMOC trend remains uncertain. The journal had also published a response from the authors of 2021 study to "Matters Arising" article, where they defended their findings. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5097491 | 1,020,767 |
934,531 | Starting in the 1960s new solid-state devices capable of delaying the transmitter signal in a controlled way were introduced. That led to the first practical large-scale passive electronically scanned array, or simply phased array radar. PESAs took a signal from a single source, split it into hundreds of paths, selectively delayed some of them, and sent them to individual antennas. The radio signals from the separate antennas overlapped in space, and the interference patterns between the individual signals was controlled to reinforce the signal in certain directions, and mute it in all others. The delays could be easily controlled electronically, allowing the beam to be steered very quickly without moving the antenna. A PESA can scan a volume of space much quicker than a traditional mechanical system. Thanks to progress in electronics, PESAs added the ability to produce several active beams, allowing them to continue scanning the sky while at the same time focusing smaller beams on certain targets for tracking or guiding semi-active radar homing missiles. PESAs quickly became widespread on ships and large fixed emplacements in the 1960s, followed by airborne sensors as the electronics shrank. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5760411 | 934,039 |
895,691 | Another challenge to the hypothesis involves the paucity of non-technological evidence of a kind we would expect to find transmitted from east to west; cave paintings of a kind associated with the Cave of Altamira in Spain, for example, are without close parallel in the New World. In response, Bradley and Stanford contend that it was "a very specific subset of the Solutrean who formed the parent group that adapted to a maritime environment and eventually made it across the north Atlantic ice-front to colonize the east coast of the Americas" and that this group may not have exhibited the full range of Solutrean cultural traits. A carved piece of bone depicting a mammoth found near the Vero man site in Florida was dated between 20,000–13,000 BP. It is described as possibly being the oldest art object yet found in the Americas. Art historian Barbara Olins has compared the Vero carving to "Franco-Cantabrian" drawings and engravings of mammoths. She notes that the San of southern Africa developed a realistic manner of representing animals similar to the "Franco-Cantabrian" style, hinting that such a style could have evolved in North America independently. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8413101 | 895,220 |
897,788 | With a diameter of up to , and a height reaching , "Prototaxites" fossils are remnants of by far the largest organism discovered from the period of its existence. Viewed from afar, the fossils take the form of tree-trunks, spreading slightly near their base in a fashion that suggests a connection to unpreserved root-like structures. Infilled casts which may represent the spaces formerly occupied by "roots" of "Prototaxites" are common in early Devonian strata. Concentric growth rings, sometimes containing embedded plant material, suggest that the organism grew sporadically by the addition of external layers. It is probable that the preserved "trunks" represent the fruiting body, or "sporophore", of a fungus, which would have been fuelled by a mycelium, a net of dispersed filaments ("hyphae"). On a microscopic scale, the fossils consist of narrow tube-like structures, which weave around one another. These come in two types: skeletal "tubes", 20–50 μm across, have thick (2–6 μm) walls and are undivided for their length, and generative "filaments", which are thinner (5–10 μm diameter) and branch frequently; these mesh together to form the organism's matrix. These thinner filaments are septate—that is to say, they bear internal walls. These septa are perforate—i.e. they contain a pore, a trait only present in the modern red algae and fungi. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10857884 | 897,314 |
1,517,500 | A microbial biosensor based on carbon nanotube (CNT) modified electrodes was developed. Pseudomonas putida DSM 50026 cells were used as the biological component and the measurement was based on the respiratory activity of the cells estimated from electrochemical measurements. The cells were immobilized on carbon nanotube (CNT) modified carbon paste electrodes (CPE) by means of a redox osmium polymer. The osmium polymer efficiently shuttled electrons between redox enzymes located in the cell wall of the cells and promoted a stable binding to the electrode surface. The effect of varying the amounts of CNT and osmium polymer, on the response to glucose was investigated to find the optimum composition of the sensor. The effects of pH and temperature were also examined. After the optimisation studies, the system was characterised by using glucose as a substrate. Moreover, the microbial biosensor was also prepared by using phenol adapted bacteria and then, calibrated to phenol. After that, it was applied for phenol detection in an artificial waste water sample. The study found that whole cell P. putida biosensors using Os-redox polymers could be good alternatives for the analysis of different substrates such as glucose as well as xenobiotics in the absence of oxygen with high sensitivity because of the fast electron collection efficiency between the Os-redox polymer and the bacterial cells. The use of optimum amounts of CNTs and the Os redox mediator provided better sensor sensitivity by promoting the electron transfer within the structure of the biosensor. The main disadvantages were the high surface area of CNTs that increased the background current and the diffusion problem of electrons that occurred due to overlapping of the diffusion layers formed at closely spaced CNTs in the film. However, these problems could be overcome by optimising the CNT and polymer amounts. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22444556 | 1,516,648 |
2,105,990 | Five Mid-American Conference teams opened up their season on November 13, the first Friday after the 2009–10 NCAA Division I men's basketball season began. Miami first played the Tigers of Towson University in their home court in Maryland. While the RedHawks were able to build to a 42–37 lead at halftime, Towson would go on a 10–2 run in the second half and eventually sealing the victory with a final score of 82–71. Northern Illinois would also begin their season with a loss, losing 55–77 against intrastate opponent Northwestern Ohio began their season with a win Ohio Valley University by a score of 101–72 in the Convocation Center. Five Ohio players reached double-digits in scoring, led by Ivo Baltic who had 20 points in that game. Ball State was also able to begin the season with a victory, theirs over Horizon League opponent Valparaiso. Six players from Ball State were able to score over ten points, which is the first time in over ten years that it has been accomplished by a team. The Cardinals won by a score of 88–78. Finally, Kent State began their season by hosting a version of the 2009 Hispanic College Fund Classic. Their first match-up in that tournament was against the Samford Bulldogs. The Golden Flashes snuck out a win in that game, 69–66, to keep their home opener streak at 13 games. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24903336 | 2,104,777 |
1,803,573 | Developed for use with English-speaking patients aged 16 to 89 years, WTAR is a “hold” test, a type of neuropsychological test that relies on abilities thought to be unaffected by cognitive decline associated with neurological damage. In the design of WTAR, the demographic prediction tables were co-normed with the widely used Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS). This gives it an advantage for comparative analyses on predicted and actual general intellectual and memory function over similar reading tests such as the National Adult Reading Test (NART), which do not share normative data sets with the other widely used Wechsler assessments. Using vocabulary level as a correlate to IQ, the test relies on reading recognition’s resistance to the cognitive impacts of brain damage to estimate premorbid function. The patient is presented with irregularly spelled words and prompted to pronounce each; the irregular grapheme-to-phoneme translations (such as the “gh” in the word "tough") in the prompts make it difficult pronounce without having previously learned the word. Since the patient cannot apply standard pronunciation rules to complete the task, the examiner can assess their vocabulary by their ability to pronounce the irregularly spelled words, and by extension, estimate their premorbid IQ. WTAR was published in 2001 by Pearson. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37966045 | 1,802,559 |
674,813 | The pumping engine for use in mines was a great success. In 1782 the firm sought to modify Watt's invention so that the engine had a rotary motion, making it suitable for use in mills and factories. On a 1781 visit to Wales Boulton had seen a powerful copper-rolling mill driven by water, and when told it was often inoperable in the summer due to drought suggested that a steam engine would remedy that defect. Boulton wrote to Watt urging the modification of the engine, warning that they were reaching the limits of the pumping engine market: "There is no other Cornwall to be found, and the most likely line for increasing the consumption of our engines is the application of them to mills, which is certainly an extensive field." Watt spent much of 1782 on the modification project, and though he was concerned that few orders would result, completed it at the end of the year. One order was received in 1782, and several others from mills and breweries soon after. George III toured the Whitbread brewery in London, and was impressed by the engine there (now preserved at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia). As a demonstration, Boulton used two engines to grind wheat at the rate of 150 bushels per hour in his new Albion Mill in London. While the mill was not financially successful, according to historian Jenny Uglow it served as a "publicity stunt "par excellence"" for the firm's latest innovation. Before its 1791 destruction by fire, the mill's fame, according to early historian Samuel Smiles, "spread far and wide", and orders for rotative engines poured in not only from Britain but from the United States and the West Indies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=250764 | 674,460 |
1,754,503 | Tin(II) selenide may be soon used in energy harvesting. Tin(II) selenide has demonstrated the ability to convert waste heat into electrical energy. SnSe has exhibited the highest thermoelectric material efficiency, measured by the unitless ZT parameter, of any known material (~2.62 at 923 K along the b axis and ~2.3 along the c axis). When coupled with the Carnot efficiency for heat conversion, the overall energy conversion efficiency of approximately 25%. In order for this thermoelectric process to work, a thermoelectric generator must take advantage of the temperature difference experienced by two legs of a thermocouple junction. Each leg is composed of a specific material that is optimized at the operating temperature range of interest. SnSe would serve as the p-type semiconductor leg. Such a material needs to have low total thermal conductivity, high electrical conductivity, and high Seebeck coefficient according to the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT. Even though the record-high efficiency is most likely due to low thermal conductivity of the crystal, the electronic structure may have as important role: SnSe has highly anisotropic valence band structure, which consists of multiple valleys that act as independent channels for very mobile, low effective-mass charge transport within, and heavy-carrier conductivity perpendicular to the layers. While, historically, lead telluride and silicon-germanium have been used, these materials have suffered from heat conduction through the material. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5302107 | 1,753,513 |
2,048,373 | Green campaigned for a new code of practice in the British Standards framework for the design of ship-to-shore walkways. This followed the September 1994 Prins Filip ferry disaster in which a walkway linking the ferry to the Port of Ramsgate had collapsed during passenger embarkation killing six people and seriously injuring seven others. A weld failure was the immediate cause of the collapse but investigations showed errors were made during design, construction, maintenance and inspection of the linkspan structure. Green lobbied the newly elected Labour government in summer 1997, requesting a meeting on the matter with deputy prime minister John Prescott. He eventually received an offer to meet with health and safety minister Angela Eagle in 1998 though this was postponed at least once. Despite the support of an April 1999 Construction Industry Research and Information Association report no progress had been made by 2000. Green was supported in his campaign by fellow former ICE President Roger Norman Sainsbury. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=58133798 | 2,047,192 |
2,111,470 | ISSP followed its contemporary developments, in its first 20 years focusing on issues like the Cold War, nuclear proliferation, European security, crisis management, low intensity conflict and intelligence. Shortly after the end of the Cold War, in 1991, the ISSP in cooperation with Columbia University's International Security Policy Program, and the National Strategy Information Center, conducted an extensive curriculum review. This joint effort resulted in the publication of two books: "Security Studies for the 1990s" (1993) followed by an updated "Security Studies for the 21st Century" (1997). In them, security specialists were asked to review the curriculum of their subfields in light of the dramatic changes in global politics, with each author providing a syllabus for a graduate course along with analysis essays, and brief critiques. The books advocated for a broadened scope of the field, that had previously over-emphasized deterrence (in the Western alliance and the post-1945), to also include peace missions, non-military instruments of power and the influence of culture and values. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42183140 | 2,110,255 |
1,573,123 | Patch-seq can be done in any model system including cell culture for neurons. Neurons for culture may be collected from neuronal tissue then disassociated or made from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), neurons that have been grown out of human stem cell lines. Cell culture preparation is the easiest to apply patch clamp to and give the experimenter control over what ligands the neuron is exposed to, for instance hormones or neurotransmitters. The benefit of total experimental control however also means the neurons are not subject to the natural environment they would be exposed to during development. As mention previously the position their dendrites and axons extend into as well as the neuron's position with a brain structure is incredibly important for understanding its role within a circuit. Many preparations exist for brain slices from different animal species. Owing to the presence of cell or debris in the way of the pipette and a target cell the preparation will need to be slightly modified, often slight positive pressure is applied to the pipette to prevent any unintended seals from forming. If understanding how behavior is tied to the dynamics of the neuronal events is of interest it is possible to record "in vivo" as well. Though adapting patch clamp for "in vivo" studies can be very difficult for mechanical reasons especially during a behavioral task but has been done. Automated "in vivo" patch clamp methods have been developed. Very little difference exists between preparations for mammalian species though the greater diversity of neuronal sizes in non-human primate and primate cortex may necessitate using different tip diameters and pressures for forming seals without killing target neurons. Patch-seq is also applied to non-neuronal studies such as pancreatic or cardiac cells. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=66692692 | 1,572,234 |
1,955,160 | Peter Philip Edwards FRSC FRS (born 1949, Liverpool) is British Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and former Head of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford. Edwards is the recipient of the Corday-Morgan Medal (1985), the Tilden Lectureship (1993–94) and Liversidge Award (1999) of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1996 and was awarded the 2003 Hughes Medal of the Royal Society "for his distinguished work as a solid state chemist. He has made seminal contributions to fields including superconductivity and the behaviour of metal nanoparticles, and has greatly advanced our understanding of the phenomenology of the metal-insulator transition". In 2009 Edwards was elected to the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and he was elected Einstein Professor for 2011 by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2012 he was awarded the Bakerian Lecture by the Royal Society "in recognition of decisive contributions to the physics, chemistry and materials science of condensed matter, including work on the metal-insulator transition". In the spring of 2012 he was elected International Member of the American Philosophical Society; one of only four people from the UK in that year to be awarded this honour across all subjects and disciplines. Later in 2012 he was awarded the Worshipful Company of Armourers and Brasiers Materials Science Venture Prize for his work on new, low-cost, high-performance conducting oxide coatings for solar cells and optoelectronic materials. In the Autumn of 2013 he was elected Member of Academia Europaea, and he was elected as a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21436139 | 1,954,038 |
1,023,513 | Most sintering furnaces contain three zones with three different properties that help to carry out the six steps above. The first zone, commonly coined the burn-off or purge stage, is designed to combust air, burn any contaminants such as lubricant or binders, and slowly raise the temperature of the compact materials. If the temperature of the compact parts is raised too quickly, the air in the pores will be at a very high internal pressure which could lead to expansion or fracture of the part. The second zone, known as the high-temperature stage, is used to produce solid-state diffusion and particle bonding. The material is seeking to lower its surface energy and does so by moving toward the points of contact between particles. The contact points become larger and eventually a solid mass with small pores is created. The third zone, also called the cooling period, is used to cool down the parts while still in a controlled atmosphere. This is an important zone as it prevents oxidation from immediate contact with the air or a phenomenon known as rapid cooling. All of the three stages must be carried out in a controlled atmosphere containing no oxygen. Hydrogen, nitrogen, dissociated ammonia, and cracked hydrocarbons are common gases pumped into the furnace zones providing a reducing atmosphere, preventing oxide formation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=495768 | 1,022,980 |
601,856 | By December 2013, the UCLASS concept aircraft had shifted around significantly. Original requirements that were for a relatively simple ISR platform, were changed to a "heavy-end" ISR and strike aircraft with growth for weapons and sensors. It was planned to weigh , about the size of the F-14 Tomcat and much larger than the X-47B, and be around in length, longer than the F/A-18 Super Hornet, with endurance potentially up to 14 hours. Other roles were being considered such as an aerial refueling platform to extend the range of fighters, transferring of fuel and still staying airborne for up to 7.5 hours. The four industry teams pushed back against the idea of a more capable UCLASS because the specifications would be significantly different from aircraft they developed for the PDR phase, and cost per aircraft would also increase from $35-$50 million to $100 million. Top-level UCLASS requirements of providing 24-hour persistent ISR coverage from the carrier at “tactically significant” ranges with limited strike capabilities at mid-to-long ranges remained fixed since spring 2013, though detailed specifications had been refined. Cost constraints drove Navy requirements for the UCLASS. One requirement that had remained constant was for the aircraft to conduct ISR orbits at tactically significant ranges for $150 million, meaning two air vehicles costing $75 million each can cover one orbit if they have an endurance of 14 hours. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=39092723 | 601,547 |
1,094,320 | About 8,000 students (winter semester 2011/12) in currently 26 B.A. and M.A. programmes make the Faculty of Arts and Humanities HHU's largest unit. It offers the prestigious M.A. in European Studies, a unique one-year English-taught course especially designed for exceptional graduates from universities in Israel, Palestine and Jordan. Recently, the program became increasingly popular with graduates from other regions globally. The German-French master programme Media Culture Analysis / Analyse de Pratiques Culturelles, enables students to obtain a double diploma of both the HHU and the University of Nantes. At doctoral level the academy of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, PhilGrad, offers a broad range of counselling and career-relevant courses. Further support for structured doctorates provide programmes in the history of art (RTG 1678), in linguistics (research training in CRC 991), in ageing-related studies and in democracy research (Link.De) as well as within two German-Italian programmes (Interculturality and Communication, "Doctor Europaeus"). Among the research hubs in the faculty are linguistics (CRC 991), politics (Research Unit 1381), ancient history (funded by the NRW Academy for the Arts and Sciences), the history of art, and editing studies (complete works editions of Max Weber and Martin Buber in progress). Beyond that, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities contributes to HHU's Institute of German and International Party Law and Party Research (PRuF). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1020838 | 1,093,760 |
1,133,439 | Current literature suggests women have higher level of social cognition. A 2012 review published in the journal "Neuropsychologia" found that women are better at recognizing facial effects, expression processing and emotions in general. Men were only better at recognizing specific behaviour which includes anger, aggression and threatening cues. A 2012 study published in the journal "Neuropsychology" with a sample of 3,500 individuals from ages 8–21, found that females outperformed males on face memory and all social cognition tests. In 2014, another study published in the journal "Cerebral Cortex" found that females had larger activity in the right temporal cortex, an essential core of the social brain connected to perception and understanding the social behaviour of others such as intentions, emotions, and expectations. In 2014, a meta-analysis of 215 study sample by researcher A.E. Johnson and D Voyeur in the journal "Cognition and Emotion" found overall female advantage in emotional recognition. Other studies have also indicated greater female superiority to discriminate vocal and facial expression regardless of valence, and also being able to accurately process emotional speech. Studies have also found males to be slower in making social judgments than females. Structural studies with MRI neuroimaging has also shown that women have bigger regional grey matter volumes in a number of regions related to social information processing including the Inferior frontal cortex and bigger cortical folding in the Inferior frontal cortex and parietal cortex Researchers suppose that these sex differences in social cognition predisposes males to high rates of autism spectrum disorders which is characterized by lower social cognition. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=49026556 | 1,132,846 |
1,841,423 | In the context of conservation biology, genomic technologies such as the production of large-scale sequencing data sets via DNA sequencing can be used to highlight the relevant aspects of the biology of wildlife species for which management actions may be required. This may involve the estimation of recent demographic events, genetic variations, divergence between species and population structure. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are useful to examine the role of natural selection at the genome level, to identify the loci associated with fitness, local adaptation, inbreeding, depression or disease susceptibility. The access to all these data and the interrogation of genome-wide variation of SNP markers can help the identification of the genetic changes that influence the fitness of wild species and are also important to evaluate the potential respond to changing environments. NGS projects are expected to rapidly increase the number of threatened species for which assembled genomes and detailed information on sequence variation are available and the data will advance investigations relevant to the conservation of biological diversity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=62084317 | 1,840,371 |
1,908,792 | In a case study by the Harvard Business school, a diverse group of talented individuals came together at Music Games International, a small start-up company looking to release an innovative “music puzzle” game that would serve as educational software for children and as a music entertainment product. In the team, there was a marketing, sales management, and business development expert, an award-winning composer and pianist, an internationally acclaimed composer with substantial experience in electronic/computer compositions, a graduate student in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, a Music Business Management and Music Production and Engineering dual degree with expertise in computer music applications, and two MBA candidates in the Harvard business school (HBS). Even though each individual on the team was skilled in their area of expertise, the group quickly ran into problems that negatively affected the group’s performance. There were disagreements that ran unresolved and frustrations as meetings became long without accomplishing much. Team members wanted to take the product in different directions causing rifts within the team. A side formed that wanted to market the product to the education industry while the others wanted to market the product to the entertainment industry. One of the members “felt that the greatest divide within the team came from the contrast between the creative impulses of the musicians and the more pragmatic approach of the HBS students.” The lack of cohesion among the team and personality conflicts lead to observable tension and heated discussions. A team member remarked after a few months on the team, "if the team continued to operate as it had so far, it had little chance of putting together a coherent business plan." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=44480752 | 1,907,694 |
495,748 | Radio is the dominant information tool to reach wide audiences in isolated, mountainous regions. The US military has deployed RIABs throughout Afghanistan in order to communicate with the residents. Due to a 70 percent illiteracy rate and lack of education in Afghanistan, radio is a vital communications tool used to broadcast information where radio ownership exceeds 80 percent. The United States military operates approximately 100 RIABs and hire local Afghan DJs in Afghanistan to broadcast information and host call-in shows. The United States Army employed RIAB systems to broadcast anti-Taliban and anti-Al Qaeda messages and countered Taliban propaganda by pushing onto Taliban frequencies in Paktia Province. One advantage of employing RIAB systems is the ability to broadcast vital information immediately to a large audience in the event of a crisis. One Afghan DJ has 50,000 listeners. Nawa District Governor Abdul Manaf uses the local RIAB station to conduct weekly call-in shows and believes the RIAB system is one of his best communication tools to inform a large audience. In Afghanistan's Paktika province, which has a literacy rate of two percent, an estimated 92 percent of the residents listen to the radio every day. Radio programs transmitted using RIAB systems provide beneficial information to Afghan farmers in remote areas. In the isolated, mountainous Wazi Kwah district of Paktika Province, a RIAB system supplies the only source of outside news. Afghan National Army commanders use the RIAB to communicate to villagers and elders and provide thoughts to the community. Afghans can use information distributed by the United States military such as how to react to an approaching military convoy or purpose or use of U.S.-sponsored agriculture programs. For general news, Afghans can also use other information outlets such as the BBC or VOA because RIAB systems are controlled by the US military. Special Operations first employed RIAB systems in Afghanistan in 2005 which improved their ability to supply information to and communicate with the local population in their areas of operation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=35596153 | 495,492 |
341,204 | Vacuum tubes used as switches made electronic computing possible for the first time, but the cost and relatively short mean time to failure of tubes were limiting factors. "The common wisdom was that valves—which, like light bulbs, contained a hot glowing filament—could never be used satisfactorily in large numbers, for they were unreliable, and in a large installation too many would fail in too short a time". Tommy Flowers, who later designed "Colossus", "discovered that, so long as valves were switched on and left on, they could operate reliably for very long periods, especially if their 'heaters' were run on a reduced current". In 1934 Flowers built a successful experimental installation using over 3,000 tubes in small independent modules; when a tube failed, it was possible to switch off one module and keep the others going, thereby reducing the risk of another tube failure being caused; this installation was accepted by the Post Office (who operated telephone exchanges). Flowers was also a pioneer of using tubes as very fast (compared to electromechanical devices) electronic switches. Later work confirmed that tube unreliability was not as serious an issue as generally believed; the 1946 ENIAC, with over 17,000 tubes, had a tube failure (which took 15 minutes to locate) on average every two days. The quality of the tubes was a factor, and the diversion of skilled people during the Second World War lowered the general quality of tubes. During the war Colossus was instrumental in breaking German codes. After the war, development continued with tube-based computers including, military computers ENIAC and Whirlwind, the Ferranti Mark 1 (one of the first commercially available electronic computers), and UNIVAC I, also available commercially. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=32496 | 341,023 |
2,089,700 | Due to student agitations, university reform and a new university law Ernst Fiala left the TU Berlin in 1970 and changed to Volkswagen Group in Wolfsburg. There, he took over the central research department and since March 1972 temporary supervision of the research and development department. In 1973 he was appointed Volkswagen board member and remained in this role until 1988. In his time the introduction of the Volkswagen Golf Mk1, which came on the market in 1974, replacing the Beetle and became one of the most successful vehicles. In expanding the vehicle range by the Polo, Derby and Jetta als well as the VW commercial vehicle program (VW LT), he had to deal with the consequences of the 1973 oil crisis, the growing environmental awareness and the increased safety requirements. He had a share in the development of the catalytic converter, the lowering of the drag coefficient, making the diesel engine suitable for middle-class cars and the track-stabilized steering. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60080450 | 2,088,497 |
498,642 | Ron Lake started work on GML in the fall of 1998, following earlier work on XML encodings for radio broadcasting. Lake presented his early ideas to an OGC meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, in February 1999, under the title xGML. This introduced the idea of a GeoDOM, and the notion of Geographic Styling Language (GSL) based on XSL. Akifumi Nakai of NTT Data also presented at the same meeting on work partly underway at NTT Data on an XML encoding called G-XML, which was targeted at location–based services. In April 1999, Galdos created the XBed team (with CubeWerx, Oracle Corporation, MapInfo Corporation, NTT Data, Mitsubishi, and Compusult as subcontractors). Xbed was focused on the use of XML for geospatial. This led to the creation of SFXML (Simple Features XML) with input from Galdos, US Census, and NTT Data. Galdos demonstrated an early map style engine pulling data from an Oracle-based "GML" data server (precursor of the WFS) at the first OGC Web Map Test Bed in September 1999. In October 1999, Galdos Systems rewrote the SFXML draft document into a Request for Comment, and changed the name of the language to GML (Geography Markup Language). This document introduced several key ideas that became the foundation of GML, including the 1) Object-Property-Value rule, 2) Remote properties (via rdf:resource), and 3) the decision to use application schemas rather than a set of static schemas. The paper also proposed that the language be based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF) rather than on the DTDs used to that point. These issues, including the use of RDF, were hotly debated within the OGC community during 1999 and 2000, with the result that the final GML Recommendation Paper contained three GML profiles – two based on DTD, and one on RDF – with one of the DTD's using a static schema approach. This passed as a Recommendation Paper at the OGC in May 2000. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=203653 | 498,385 |
1,093,657 | Diplodocids also had long, whip-like tails, which were thick at the base and tapered off to be very thin at the end. Computer simulations have shown that the diplodocids could have easily snapped their tails, like a bullwhip. This could generate a sonic boom in excess of 200 decibels, and may have been used in mating displays, or to drive off predators. There is some circumstantial evidence supporting this as well: a number of diplodocids have been found with fused or damaged tail vertebrae, which may be a symptom of cracking their tails: these are particularly common between the 18th and the 25th caudal vertebra, a region the authors consider a transitional zone between the stiff muscular base and the flexible whiplike section. However, Rega (2012) notes that "Camarasaurus", while lacking a tailwhip, displays a similar level of caudal co-ossification, and that "Mamenchisaurus", while having the same pattern of vertebral metrics, lacks a tailwhip and doesn't display fusion in any "transitional region". Also, the crush fractures which would be expected if the tail was used as a whip have never been found in diplodocids. More recently, Baron (2020) considers the use of the tail as a bullwhip unlikely because of the potentially catastrophic muscle and skeletal damage such speeds could cause on the large and heavy tail. Instead, he proposes that the tails might have been used as a tactile organ to keep in touch with the individuals behind and on the sides in a group while migrating, which could have augmented cohesion and allowed communication among individuals while limiting more energetically demanding activities like stopping to search for dispersed individuals, turning to visually check on individuals behind, or communicating vocally. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1137870 | 1,093,097 |
1,404,793 | Donabedian received the degree of BA in 1940 and MD in 1944 and subsequently worked at the English Mission Hospital in Jerusalem, making a brief trip to England. As local war broke out over the partition of Palestine in 1948, he moved to the American University of Beirut where he occupied a number of teaching positions and became medical officer to the whole university. He became aware of his limitations as an administrator and developed a growing interest in the quality of health provision and in public health. An opportunity arose to study epidemiology and health services administration at Harvard, where he received his MPH degree (magna cum laude) in 1955. Not wishing to return to Lebanon due to political unrest, he received sponsorship to stay in the USA with his wife and children. He became a non-clinical teacher and researcher at New York Medical College from 1957 to 1961, when he was recruited by the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. He spent the rest of his professional life there, becoming Nathan Sinai Distinguished Professor of Public Health in 1979, and continuing to work as emeritus professor until his death, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, in 2000. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33517932 | 1,404,003 |
627,325 | In December 1991, Pakistani palaeontologist Mohammad Arif and Dutch–American palaeontologist Hans Thewissen were jointly funded by Howard University and the Geological Survey of Pakistan to recover land mammal fossils in the Kala Chitta Hills of Punjab, Pakistan. On 3 January 1992, they recovered a small, thick rib fragment. Later in the field season, while surveying the upper Kuldana Formation, Thewissen discovered a femur (thigh bone) and proximal portion of the tibia (upper portion of the shin) which clearly belonged to a mammal. An hour later, Arif discovered the rest of the skeleton, and the two began excavation the next day. At first, Thewissen speculated the fossils belonged to an anthracobunid (a large semi-aquatic mammal), until he found the teeth near the end of the field season, which were characteristically cetacean (living cetaceans are whales, dolphins, and porpoises). Thewissen, at the time, could not afford to excavate and store everything, so he took the skull with him to the United States, while Arif kept the rest in two crates which used to hold oranges. In October 1992, Thewissen presented his research of the skull to a vertebrate palaeontology convention in Toronto, Canada. The next year, American palaeontologist Philip D. Gingerich paid for the rest of the skeleton to be shipped to the United States. In 1994, the formal description of the remains was published by Thewissen, mammal palaeontologist Sayed Taseer Hussain, and Arif. They identified the remains as clearly belonging to an amphibious cetacean, and so they named it "Ambulocetus natans". The genus name comes from Latin "ambulare" "to walk" and "cetus" "whale", and the species name "natans" "swimming". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=893602 | 626,992 |
780,036 | Between 1919 and 1927, Queen Elizabeth underwent numerous modifications, including the enlargement of the foremast top. Rangefinders were installed on the gun turrets "B" and "X" as well as high angle rangefinders at the forward wheelhouse. Another high angle range finder was installed at the forward conning tower. The 76 mm guns were replaced by 102 mm guns. Radio direction finding equipment was installed at the aft end of the command platform with antenna above the helm station, the bridge superstructure was modified and funnels were combined into one unit. Furthermore, the superstructures for accommodating signal personnel and equipment were extended and the yards on the foremast were removed. In her 1937–1941 rebuild she was fitted with a tower bridge in place of her old bridge; her 6-inch (152 mm) guns were removed and replaced by 20 (10 × 2) 4.5 in (114 mm) guns in ten double turrets and several smaller anti-aircraft guns; horizontal armour was added; engines and boilers were replaced; and the elevation of her main battery was increased to 30 degrees. Deck armour was increased to 5 inches over the magazines, 2.5 inches over the machinery, while the new 4.5" guns had between 1 and 2 inches of armour. She also received facilities for aircraft with a launching catapult amidships New fire control equipment was installed, including the HACS Mk IV AA fire control system and the Admiralty Fire Control Table Mk VII for surface fire control of the main armament. This reconstruction was completed in January 1941, when Britain had been at war for over a year. The ship was fitted with flying-off platforms mounted on the roofs of 'B' and 'X' turrets by February 1919, from which fighters and reconnaissance aircraft could launch. The platform was removed from 'X' turret during her 1926–1927 refit; the other platform was removed sometime later. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=485634 | 779,619 |
229,876 | Although earlier microprocessors were commonly used in mass-produced devices such as calculators, cash registers, computer terminals, industrial robots, and other applications, the 8080 saw greater success in a wider set of applications, and is largely credited with starting the microcomputer industry. Several factors contributed to its popularity: its 40-pin package made it easier to interface than the 18-pin 8008, and also made its data bus more efficient; its NMOS implementation gave it faster transistors than those of the P-type metal-oxide-semiconductor logic (PMOS) 8008, while also simplifying interfacing by making it TTL-compatible; a wider variety of support chips were available; its instruction set was enhanced over the 8008; and its full 16-bit address bus (versus the 14-bit one of the 8008) enabled it to access 64 KB of memory, four times more than the 8008's range of 16 KB. It was used in the Altair 8800 and subsequent S-100 bus personal computers until it was replaced by the Z80 in this role, and was the original target CPU for CP/M operating systems developed by Gary Kildall. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15062 | 229,759 |
1,272,932 | Although the TWI program funding for application of the programs in the USA by the government ended in 1945, the US government did fund the introduction to the war-torn nations of Europe and Asia. Several private groups continued to provide TWI in the US and abroad. Channing Dooley, Walter Dietz, Mike Kane and Bill Conover (collectively known as "the Four Horsemen") continued the development of the 'J' programs by establishing the TWI Foundation. This group was responsible for continuing the spread of TWI throughout Europe and Asia. The Director of one of the district offices established TWI, Inc., and was hired by the US Government to provide TWI training in Japan. It was especially well received in Japan, where TWI formed the basis of the kaizen culture in industry. "Kaizen", known by such names as "Quality Circles" in the West, was successfully harnessed by Toyota Motor Corporation in conjunction with the Lean or Just In Time principles of Taiichi Ohno. In the foreword to Dinero's book "Training Within Industry", John Shook relates a story in which a Toyota trainer brought out an old copy of a TWI service manual to prove to him that American workers at NUMMI could be taught using the "Japanese" methods used at Toyota. Thus, TWI was the forerunner of what is today regarded as a Japanese creation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3746815 | 1,272,241 |
275,721 | As the formula shows, the COP of a heat pump system can be improved by reducing the temperature gap formula_26 minus formula_27 at which the system works. For a heating system this would mean two things: 1) reducing the output temperature to around which requires piped floor, wall or ceiling heating, or oversized water to air heaters and 2) increasing the input temperature (e.g. by using an oversized ground source or by access to a solar-assisted thermal bank ). Accurately determining thermal conductivity will allow for much more precise ground loop or borehole sizing, resulting in higher return temperatures and a more efficient system. For an air cooler, COP could be improved by using ground water as an input instead of air, and by reducing temperature drop on output side through increasing air flow. For both systems, also increasing the size of pipes and air canals would help to reduce noise and the energy consumption of pumps (and ventilators) by decreasing the speed of fluid which in turn lower the Reynolds number and hence the turbulence (and noise) and the head loss (see hydraulic head). The heat pump itself can be improved by increasing the size of the internal heat exchangers which in turn increase the efficiency (and the cost) relative to the power of the compressor, and also by reducing the system's internal temperature gap over the compressor. Obviously, this latter measure makes such heat pumps unsuitable to produce high temperatures which means that a separate machine is needed for producing hot tap water. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=542054 | 275,571 |
1,594,521 | Datta, born on 2 February 1944, secured a PhD from Calcutta University for his doctoral work done at Bose Institute. He later followed it up by obtaining the degree of Doctor of Science (DSc) from Calcutta University. His doctoral work at Bose Institute was facilitated by a fellowship from the Government of India from 1964 to 1968. After this he moved to New York as a research associate at the Public Health Research Institute to continue research till 1971. His next move was to the University of California, Los Angeles, as assistant virologist, where he spent three years. Returning to India in 1975, he joined Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) at its School of Life Sciences and rose to the rank of a professor in 1978. He held several positions at JNU such as that of the dean from 1983 to 1985 and that of the rector from 1993 to 1996, eventually becoming the vice chancellor of the university in 1996 and holding the post till 2002. During this period, he also served as visiting scientist at Roche Institute of Molecular Biology for two academic years, 1976–77 and 1980–81. In 2002, when the National Centre for Plant Genome Research was upgraded as an autonomous institution under a new name, "National Institute of Plant Genome Research", Datta was appointed as its founder director. He worked at the institute till his superannuation in 2008. At the end of his official career, he was recognized as the emeritus professor by the Jawaharlal Nehru University and as the distinguished emeritus scientist and professor emeritus by the National Institute of Plant Genome Research.<ref name="Professors Emeritus/Emerita"></ref> | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=48434015 | 1,593,624 |
1,810,471 | The suspects who knowingly vandalised campus property have consistently claimed the work was done for the art. The five individuals responsible, who have been later identified as arts alumni, were Joane Cardinal-Schubert, Tony Acosta, Robin Laurence, Catherine McAvity, and Rita McKeough. Cardinal-Schubert has stated that the amphibious hero of the poem is a "metaphor for a student...lost in space." The exact dating of this self-termed "happening" has not been entirely confirmed. However McLaughlin, has hypothesised "the sixth floor segment quotes from a Gauntlet article of Oct. 18, 1974, citing "turmoil, confusion and acrimony" in the political science department, and narrowing Leon's probable date of authorship.," indicating that the "happening" took place around 1974.""I find this particular [seventh] floor in a state of turmoil, confusion, and acrimony!*" (Footnote: see the Gauntlet of Thursday Oct. 18/74)"The main character himself has been a source of debate, particularly the stylistic naming choice of "Leon" for an adventurous frog. Campus historians Peter Fortna, Martina King, and Doug McColl have theorised that the name Leon might have been inspired by professor emeritus of Biological Sciences, Dr. Leon W. Browder. This was partly due to his academic tenure coinciding with the speculated period of the early 1970s. Strangely enough, Browder was fondly remembered for his research on early embryonic development for "Xenopus laevis", commonly referred to as the African Clawed Frog. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=51387853 | 1,809,448 |
1,356,724 | Notable alumni of Senior House include Janos Pasztor (Nuclear Engineering, 1979), former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations; John Brusger (Chemistry, 1978) founder of Newbury Comics; Lawrence Summers (Economics, 1975), former president of Harvard University and former Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton Administration; Bruce Morrison (Chemistry, 1965), United States Representative for the 3rd Congressional District of Connecticut, 1983–1991; Moshe Arens (Mechanical Engineering, 1947), former member of the Israeli Knesset, defense minister, and ambassador to the United States; Gordon S. Brown (Electrical Engineering, 1931), former Dean of Engineering at MIT and a pioneer in the development of automatic-feedback systems and numerically controlled machine tools. Former Senior House faculty residents include Swiss musicologist, composer, pianist and conductor Ernst Levy; and John B. Goodenough, awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of the lithium-ion battery, lived in Senior House as faculty resident in the 1950s and 60s when he was part of an interdisciplinary team responsible for developing random access memory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7341483 | 1,355,974 |
533,064 | Cells in many ways can be seen as their own form of naturally occurring wetware, similar to the concept that the human brain is the preexisting model system for complex wetware. In his book "Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell" (2009) Dennis Bray explains his theory that cells, which are the most basic form of life, are just a highly complex computational structure, like a computer. To simplify one of his arguments a cell can be seen as a type of computer, utilizing its own structured architecture. In this architecture, much like a traditional computer, many smaller components operate in tandem to receive input, process the information, and compute an output. In an overly simplified, non-technical analysis, cellular function can be broken into the following components: Information and instructions for execution are stored as DNA in the cell, RNA acts as a source for distinctly encoded input, processed by ribosomes and other transcription factors to access and process the DNA and to output a protein. Bray's argument in favor of viewing cells and cellular structures as models of natural computational devices is important when considering the more applied theories of wetware in relation to biorobotics. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2530148 | 532,785 |
493,670 | In fact Usmanova et al. 2008 suggested that short-interspersed nuclear elements can serve as direct signals in chromatin rearrangement and structure. The paper examined the global distribution of SINEs in mouse and human chromosomes and determined that this distribution was very similar to genomic distributions of genes and CpG motifs. The distribution of SINEs to genes was significantly more similar than that of other non-coding genetic elements and even differed significantly from the distribution of long-interspersed nuclear elements. This suggested that the SINE distribution was not a mere accident caused by LINE-mediated retrotransposition but rather that SINEs possessed a role in gene-regulation. Furthermore, SINEs frequently contain motifs for YY1 polycomb proteins. YY1 is a zinc-finger protein that acts as a transcriptional repressor for a wide-variety of genes essential for development and signaling. Polycomb protein YY1 is believed to mediate the activity of histone deacetylases and histone acetyltransferases to facilitate chromatin re-organization; this is often to facilitate the formation of heterochromatin (gene-silencing state). Thus, the analysis suggests that short-interspersed nuclear elements can function as a ‘signal-booster' in the polycomb-dependent silencing of gene-sets through chromatin re-organization. In essence, it is the cumulative effect of many types of interactions that leads to the difference between euchromatin, which is not tightly packed and generally more accessible to transcriptional machinery, and heterochromatin, which is tightly packed and generally not accessible to transcriptional machinery; SINEs seem to play an evolutionary role in this process. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=49982814 | 493,415 |
2,102,474 | Harris was born in 1947. He received his PhD from Cornell University in 1970, where his dissertation was entitled "A Model for Adaptive Problem Solving Applied to Natural Language Acquisition". It focused on the process of how a robot might learn a language's vocabulary and grammar from exploring a room receiving commentary from a human. He then became an assistant professor, and later an associate professor, of Mathematics at Dartmouth College, and developed the first computer educational programs at the university. In 1973 he developed the Dartmouth Computer Chess Program, where he led a team of undergraduates to develop a computer chess program that competed in national computer chess tournaments. Harris also worked in helping machines solve language problems. As a researcher, he studied the area of Natural Language Data Base Query, providing the ability to ask ordinary English questions about the contents of computer databases. The research system was named ROBOT. Early papers of his were published in journals including the "International Journal of Man-Machine Studies" and the "Journal of Cybernetics". In 1977 Harris was a Visiting Professor at the MIT AI Lab. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=61086319 | 2,101,262 |
1,142,839 | n-3 DPA (i.e. 7"Z",10"Z",13"Z",16"Z",19"Z"-docosahexaenoic acid)-derived resolvins are recently identified SPM. In the model system used to identify them, human platelets pretreated with aspirin to form acetylated COX2 or the statin, atorvastatin, to form S-ntrosylated and thereby modify this enzyme's activity metabolize n-3 DPA to form a 13"R"-hydroperoxy-n-3 DPA intermediate which is passed over to nearby human neutrophils; these cell then metabolize the intermediate to four poly-hydroxyl metabolites termed resolvin T1 (RvT1), RvT2, RvT3, and RvT4. (The chirality of their hydroxyl residues has not yet been determined.) These T series resolvins also form in mice undergoing experimental inflammatory responses and have potent in vitro and in vivo anti-inflammatory activity; they are particularly effective in reducing the systemic inflammation as well as increasing the survival of mice injected with lethal doses of E. coli bacteria. Another set of newly described n-3 DPA resolvins, RvD1, RvD2, and RvD5, have been named based on their presumed structural analogies to the DHS-derived resolvins RvD1, RvD2, and RvD5, respectively. These three n-3 DPA-derived resolvins have not been defined with respect to the chirality of their hydroxyl residues or the Cis–trans isomerism of their double bonds but do possess potent anti-inflammatory activity in animal models and human cells; they also have protective actions in increasing the survival of mice subjected to E. coli sepsis. The following table lists the structural formulae (DPA stands for docosapentaenoic acid), major activities, cellular receptor targets (where known), and Wikipedia pages giving further information on the activity and syntheses. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50704695 | 1,142,242 |
863,845 | In the first edition of "Principles", the first volume briefly set out Lyell's concept of a steady state with no real progression of fossils. The sole exception was the advent of humanity, with no great physical distinction from animals, but with absolutely unique intellectual and moral qualities. The second volume dismissed Lamarck's claims of animal forms arising from habits, continuous spontaneous generation of new life, and man having evolved from lower forms. Lyell explicitly rejected Lamarck's concept of transmutation of species, drawing on Cuvier's arguments, and concluded that species had been created with stable attributes. He discussed the geographical distribution of plants and animals, and proposed that every species of plant or animal was descended from a pair or individual, originated in response to differing external conditions. Species would regularly go extinct, in a "struggle for existence" between hybrids, or a "war one with another" due to population pressure. He was vague about how replacement species formed, portraying this as an infrequent occurrence which could rarely be observed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7472 | 863,385 |
75,766 | Soon after, following a similar protocol to Kolmer, Brodie proceeded with self experimentation upon himself and his co-workers at the NYC Health Department laboratory. Brodie's progress was eagerly covered by popular press as the public hoped for a successful vaccine to become available. Such reporting did not make mention of the 12 children in a New York City Asylum who were subjected to early safety trials. As none of the subjects experienced ill effects, Dr. Park, described by contemporaries as "never one to let grass grow under his feet," declared the vaccine safe. When a severe polio outbreak overwhelmed Kern County, California it became the first trial site for the new vaccine on very short notice. Between November 1934 - May 1935, over 1,500 doses of the vaccine were administered in Kern County. While initial results were very promising, insufficient staffing and poor protocol design left Brodie open to criticism when he published the California results in August 1935. Through private physicians, Brodie also conducted a broader field study, including 9,000 children who received the vaccine and 4,500 age- and location-matched controls who did not receive a vaccine. Again, results were promising. Of those who received the vaccine, only a few went on to develop polio. Most had been exposed prior to vaccination and none had received the full series of vaccine doses being studied. Additionally, a polio epidemic in Raleigh, North Carolina provided an opportunity for the U.S. Public Health Service to conduct a highly structured trial of the Brodie vaccine using funding from the Birthday Ball Commission. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=192198 | 75,738 |
646,793 | By 1810, Slater held part ownership in three factories in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In 1823, he bought a mill in Connecticut. He also built factories to make the textile manufacturing machinery used by many of the region's mills and formed a partnership with his brother-in-law to produce iron for use in machinery construction. But Slater spread himself too thin and was unable to coordinate or integrate his many different business interests. He refused to go outside his family to hire managers, and, after 1829, he made his sons partners in the new umbrella firm of Samuel Slater and Sons. His son Horatio Nelson Slater completely reorganized the family business, introduced cost-cutting measures, and giving up old-fashioned procedures. Slater & Company became one of the leading manufacturing companies in the United States. Due to the oppressive rules and working conditions and a proposed cut of 25% in the wages of women workers by Slater and the other Mill Owners near Pawtucket, in 1824, this area was the site of the first factory strike in US history. Thus beginning the long struggle for human rights between factory workers and owners, which is continuing today. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=362607 | 646,453 |
1,738,275 | A major phased enhancement programme to provide high-integrity packet switched data, including mobile X.25 packet access, international interfacing and the development of equipment for use in armoured vehicles commenced in 1984 and was completed in 1992. BAE Systems was the appointed design authority for supporting the system throughout its post-design phase. This covers the full range of support services from components and equipment up to network level. During the 1991 Operation Granby, Ptarmigan was deployed extensively throughout the operational area with extended satellite trunk links, and was heavily used by British and Allied forces. The system gained further in-service use when deployed in support of the International Peace Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia. Total investment in Ptarmigan by mid-1992 was approaching £1 billion. In August 1993, a £22 million contract was awarded to modify the system to allow deployment over long distances with satellite links. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18312776 | 1,737,298 |
274,450 | Following the awarding of the contract, a preliminary design review was carried out in September 1972, followed by a critical design review in September 1976 after which the engine's design was set and construction of the first set of flight-capable engines began. A final review of all the Space Shuttle's components, including the engines, was conducted in 1979. The design reviews operated in parallel with several test milestones, initial tests consisting of individual engine components which identified shortcomings with various areas of the design, including the HPFTP, HPOTP, valves, nozzle, and fuel pre-burners. The individual engine component tests were followed by the first test of a complete engine (0002) on March 16, 1977. NASA specified that, prior to the Shuttle's first flight, the engines must have undergone at least 65,000 seconds of testing, a milestone that was reached on March 23, 1980, with the engine having undergone 110,253 seconds of testing by the time of STS-1 both on test stands at Stennis Space Center and installed on the Main Propulsion Test Article (MPTA). The first set of engines (2005, 2006 and 2007) was delivered to Kennedy Space Center in 1979 and installed on , before being removed in 1980 for further testing and reinstalled on the orbiter. The engines, which were of the first manned orbital flight (FMOF) configuration and certified for operation at 100% rated power level (RPL), were operated in a twenty-second flight readiness firing on February 20, 1981, and, after inspection, declared ready for flight. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=680000 | 274,302 |
1,811,076 | O'Connor has also led a successful conservation project at the Abydos site. King Khasekhemwy of the Second Dynasty was the last early Egyptian king to have been buried at Abydos, and his funerary monument, Shunet el-Zebib, is the last standing monument of its kind in the area. With walls reaching 12 metres tall in some parts of the complex, Shunet el-Zebib is one of the oldest mud brick buildings in the world, but, over more than 4000 years it has collapsed in some places and is at risk of further destruction as a rising water table, wind, rain erosion, and animals digging into it for burrows have compromised its stability. From 2008 to 2009 O'Connor led a project to keep the structure standing. This conservation work focused on supporting the current structure through the sealing of animal burrows (mostly those of hornets and foxes), and reinforcing structurally unstable walls through the fabrication and use of 150,000 mud bricks, made and put in place by local workers. Support for the project was provided by O'Connor's employer at the time, New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, as well as the World Monuments Fund and the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. Additional financing for the project was provided through the American Research Center in Egypt's EAP, EAC and AEF grants, which were funded by the USAID program. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4659471 | 1,810,043 |
144,573 | In 2011, "The Lancet" published a study by the UK-based "PACE trial management group", which reported success with graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome; a follow-up study was published in "Lancet Psychiatry" in 2015. The studies attracted criticism from some patients and researchers, especially with regard to data analysis that was different from that described in the original protocol. In a 2015 "Slate" article, biostatistician Bruce Levin of Columbia University was quoted saying "The Lancet needs to stop circling the wagons and be open", and that "one of the tenets of good science is transparency"; while Ronald Davis of Stanford University said: "the Lancet should step up to the plate and pull that paper". Horton defended "The Lancet"'s publication of the trial and called the critics: "a fairly small, but highly organized, very vocal and very damaging group of individuals who have, I would say, actually hijacked this agenda and distorted the debate so that it actually harms the overwhelming majority of patients." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=463899 | 144,515 |
533,068 | Cognitive biology evaluates cognition as a basic biological function. W. Tecumseh Fitch, a professor of cognitive biology at the University of Vienna, is a leading theorist on ideas of cellular intentionality. The idea is that not only do whole organisms have a sense of "aboutness" of intentionality, but that single cells also carry a sense of intentionality through cells' ability to adapt and reorganize in response to certain stimuli. Fitch discusses the idea of nano-intentionality, specifically in regards to neurons, in their ability to adjust rearrangements in order to create neural networks. He discusses the ability of cells such as neurons to respond independently to stimuli such as damage to be what he considers "intrinsic intentionality" in cells, explaining that "[w]hile at a vastly simpler level than intentionality at the human cognitive level, I propose that this basic capacity of living things [response to stimuli] provides the necessary building blocks for cognition, and higher-order intentionality." Fitch describes the value of his research to specific areas of computer science such as artificial intelligence and computer architecture. He states that "[I]f a researcher aims to make a conscious machine, doing it with rigid switches (whether vacuum tubes or static silicon chips) is barking up the wrong tree." Fitch believes that an important aspect of the development of areas such as artificial intelligence is wetware with nano-intentionalility, and autonomous ability to adapt and restructure itself. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2530148 | 532,789 |
379,242 | Outside the United States, mifepristone is marketed and distributed by Exelgyn Laboratories under the tradename Mifegyne. It was approved for use in France in 1988 (initial marketing in 1989), the United Kingdom in 1991, Sweden in 1992, then Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland in 1999. In 2000, it was approved in Norway, Russia and Ukraine. Serbia and Montenegro approved it in 2001, Belarus and Latvia in 2002, Estonia in 2003, Moldova in 2004, Albania and Hungary in 2005, Portugal in 2007, Romania in 2008, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Slovenia in 2013. In Italy, clinical trials have been constrained by protocols requiring women be hospitalized for three days, but the drug was finally approved on 30 July 2009 (officialized later in the year), despite strong opposition from the Vatican. In Italy, the pill must be prescribed and used in a clinical structure and is not sold at chemists. It was approved in Hungary in 2005, but as of 2005 had not been released on the market yet, and was the target of protests. Mifepristone is currently licensed in Ireland for use of abortions up to 12 weeks since it was legalised in 2018. Mifepristone is not available in Poland, where abortion is highly restricted. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=181415 | 379,047 |
1,280,820 | The medical establishment controlling the London teaching hospitals, including the Royal College of Surgeons, was restricted to Anglicans and dominated by the aristocracy who saw perfect animal design as proof of a natural theology supporting their ideas of God-given rank and privilege. Since the 1820s large numbers of private medical schools joined by the new London University had introduced the "philosophical anatomy" of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire based on unity of plan compatible with the transmutation of species, implying ideas of progressive improvement and supporting radical demands for democracy. This anatomy had already spread from Paris to the medical schools of Edinburgh, and the new London schools attracted Scots, including Grant. Numerous journals now promoted these radical ideas, including Thomas Wakley's "The Lancet" (started in 1823 with support from William Cobbett and William Lawrence, whose 1819 publication of evolutionary ideas the Crown had prosecuted for blasphemy). In response, the medical establishment gave support to the idealist biology of Joseph Henry Green (1791–1863) and of his younger protégé Richard Owen (1804–1892), based on the vitalism of German "Naturphilosophie" and Platonic idealism, which saw anatomical forms as "archetypes" in the Divine mind, imposed through "descensive" powers of delegation of divine authority in accordance with traditional hierarchies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1632764 | 1,280,125 |
1,690,407 | Originally, CRREL cold-room facilities used trichloroethylene (TCE) as a refrigerant. At the time there were few known environmental hazards attributed to TCE. Subsequently, TCE has been identified as a carcinogen. In 1970, an industrial accident resulted in a spill of approximately 3,000 gallons of TCE. In 1978, TCE was introduced into the ground via an experimental well. After the 1990 discovery of TCE in groundwater, CRREL embarked on a remediation plan, approved by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (NHDES), with assistance from the U.S. Army Toxic and Hazardous Materials Agency and the Corps of Engineers New England Division. NHDES reports that CRREL no longer stores TCE on site and the remediation of TCE in the groundwater is subject to monitoring in test wells. According to an Army press release cited in the local newspaper, the Army expanded monitoring of TCE at other locations on the CRREL campus and found some elevated readings in 2011. Thereafter, they initiated a monitoring well and soil sampling program to map the concentrations of the substance on the site. The information gained should lead to a new cleanup strategy for the site, according to the 2012 report. Army environmental specialists have detected TCE at neighboring residential and school properties. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3571931 | 1,689,461 |
738,809 | Simply due to the high number of microorganisms in MBRs, the pollutants uptake rate can be increased. This leads to better degradation in a given time span or to smaller required reactor volumes. In comparison to the conventional activated sludge process (ASP) which typically achieves 95 percent, COD removal can be increased to 96 to 99 percent in MBRs (see table,). COD and BOD5 removal is found to increase with MLSS concentration. Above 15 g/L COD removal becomes almost independent of biomass concentration at >96 percent. Arbitrary high MLSS concentrations are not employed, however, as oxygen transfer is impeded due to higher and non-Newtonian fluid viscosity. Kinetics may also differ due to easier substrate access. In ASP, flocs may reach several 100 μm in size. This means that the substrate can reach the active sites only by diffusion which causes an additional resistance and limits the overall reaction rate (diffusion-controlled). Hydrodynamic stress in MBRs reduces floc size (to 3.5 μm in side stream MBRs) and thereby increases the apparent reaction rate. Like in the conventional ASP, sludge yield is decreased at higher SRT or biomass concentration. Little or no sludge is produced at sludge loading rates of 0.01 kgCOD/(kgMLSS d). Because of the imposed biomass concentration limit, such low loading rates would result in enormous tank sizes or long HRTs in conventional ASP. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16743975 | 738,418 |
1,344,626 | Due to growing concerns surrounding global warming and climate change, as well as the rise of technological improvements, architectural bionics became primarily focused on more efficient ways to achieve modern sustainability. An example of the modern architectural bionic movement includes the "30 St Mary Axe" (2003), which is heavily inspired by the 'Venus Flower Basket Sponge', a sea creature with a lattice-like exoskeleton and round shape that disperses force from water currents. The building's design features an aluminium coated steel diagrid structure. This allows for passive cooling, heating, ventilating and lighting. Nicholas Grimshaw's, "The Eden Project" (2001) features a set of natural biomes with several geodesic domes inspired by bubbles joined together. These are made of three layers of Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), a form of plastic that provides a lighter steel frame and allows for more sunlight to enter the building in order to generate solar power. Its pillows are also built to be easily detachable from its steel frame should more efficient material be discovered in the future. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10582830 | 1,343,888 |
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