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1,208,679 | The extreme complexity of most turbidite systems and beds has promoted the development of quantitative models of turbidity current behaviour inferred solely from their deposits. Small-scale laboratory experiments therefore offer one of the best means of studying their dynamics. Mathematical models can also provide significant insights into current dynamics. In the long term, numerical techniques are most likely the best hope of understanding and predicting three-dimensional turbidity current processes and deposits. In most cases, there are more variables than governing equations, and the models rely upon simplifying assumptions in order to achieve a result. The accuracy of the individual models thus depends upon the validity and choice of the assumptions made. Experimental results provide a means of constraining some of these variables as well as providing a test for such models. Physical data from field observations, or more practical from experiments, are still required in order to test the simplifying assumptions necessary in mathematical models. Most of what is known about large natural turbidity currents (i.e. those significant in terms of sediment transfer to the deep sea) is inferred from indirect sources, such as submarine cable breaks and heights of deposits above submarine valley floors. Although during the 2003 Tokachi-oki earthquake a large turbidity current was observed by the cabled observatory which provided direct observations, which is rarely achieved. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1763424 | 1,208,033 |
1,553,113 | In a review of 264 women diagnosed with anogenital papillary hidradenomas, patients ranged in age from 25 to 82 years (median: 49 years); in 25 cases where the information was available, the tumors had been present for 2–120 months (median: 12 months) with 13 patients reporting their tumor's presence for less than 1 year before diagnosis. All patients had a solitary tumor in the anogenital area except for one patient who presented with four clustered tumors. Most tumors involved the vulva (71.6%) and areas around the anus (14%) or space between the anus and vulva, i.e. the perineum (3.8%). Their lesions ranged in size from 0.2 to 2 centimeters (cm.) in largest dimension (median: 0.7 cm.). Smaller studies on one or a few females with anogenital papillary hidradenomas found that the tumors commonly presented as asymptomatic, well-confined, skin-colored, red, or bluish nodules in women of Caucasian origin between the ages of 25–66 years. The nodules were solid or cystic; 0.4 to 2.5 cm. in widest dimension; and usually located in the grooves (termed interlabial sulci or interlabial folds) between the labia majora and labia minora, the clitoris, or the region between the vulva and anus (i.e. Frenulum of labia minora). Ectopic papillary hidradenomas in women have been reported to occur on the scalp, eyelid, cheek, forehead, face, ear canal, and back. Nearly 50% of ectopic papillary hidradenoma have been diagnosed in men; these have occurred on the thigh, arm, armpit, face and eyelid. While usually symptomless, patients may complain that the tumor is ulcerated, bleeds, or is painful. This pain may be simple tenderness, more or less constant but usually mild, or, in females with anogenital lesions, dyspareunia. The rare cases of ectopic papillary hidradenoma in the external auditory canal have presented with unilateral conductive hearing loss sometimes associated with ear pain, drainage of ear fluid, or weakness of a facial muscle(s). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10375120 | 1,552,232 |
345,515 | In 1951, the Diesel-electric oil tanker "Auris", 12,290 deadweight tonnage (DWT) was used to obtain operating experience with a main propulsion gas turbine under service conditions at sea and so became the first ocean-going merchant ship to be powered by a gas turbine. Built by Hawthorn Leslie at Hebburn-on-Tyne, UK, in accordance with plans and specifications drawn up by the Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company and launched on the UK's Princess Elizabeth's 21st birthday in 1947, the ship was designed with an engine room layout that would allow for the experimental use of heavy fuel in one of its high-speed engines, as well as the future substitution of one of its diesel engines by a gas turbine. The "Auris" operated commercially as a tanker for three-and-a-half years with a diesel-electric propulsion unit as originally commissioned, but in 1951 one of its four diesel engines – which were known as "Faith", "Hope", "Charity" and "Prudence" – was replaced by the world's first marine gas turbine engine, a open-cycle gas turbo-alternator built by British Thompson-Houston Company in Rugby. Following successful sea trials off the Northumbrian coast, the "Auris" set sail from Hebburn-on-Tyne in October 1951 bound for Port Arthur in the US and then Curacao in the southern Caribbean returning to Avonmouth after 44 days at sea, successfully completing her historic trans-Atlantic crossing. During this time at sea the gas turbine burnt diesel fuel and operated without an involuntary stop or mechanical difficulty of any kind. She subsequently visited Swansea, Hull, Rotterdam, Oslo and Southampton covering a total of 13,211 nautical miles. The "Auris" then had all of its power plants replaced with a directly coupled gas turbine to become the first civilian ship to operate solely on gas turbine power. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=58664 | 345,334 |
408,751 | Campylobacter (meaning "curved bacteria") is a genus of Gram-negative bacteria. "Campylobacter" typically appear comma- or s-shaped, and are motile. Some "Campylobacter" species can infect humans, sometimes causing campylobacteriosis, a diarrhoeal disease in humans. Campylobacteriosis is usually self-limiting and antimicrobial treatment is often not required, except in severe cases or immunocompromised patients. The most known source for "Campylobacter" is poultry, but due to their diverse natural reservoir, "Campylobacter" spp. can also be transmitted "via" water. Other known sources of "Campylobacter" infections include food products, such as unpasteurised milk and contaminated fresh produce. Sometimes the source of infection can be direct contact with infected animals, which often carry "Campylobacter" asymptomatically. At least a dozen species of "Campylobacter" have been implicated in human disease, with "C. jejuni" (80–90%) and "C. coli" (5-10%) being the most common. "C. jejuni" is recognized as one of the main causes of bacterial foodborne disease in many developed countries. It is the number one cause of bacterial gastroentritis in Europe, with over 246,000 cases confirmed annually. "C. jejuni" infection can also cause bacteremia in immunocompromised people, while "C. lari" is a known cause of recurrent diarrhea in children. "C. fetus" can cause spontaneous abortions in cattle and sheep, and is an opportunistic pathogen in humans. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63587 | 408,550 |
688,665 | In addition to repeating and producing speech, the ADS appears to have a role in monitoring the quality of the speech output. Neuroanatomical evidence suggests that the ADS is equipped with descending connections from the IFG to the pSTG that relay information about motor activity (i.e., corollary discharges) in the vocal apparatus (mouth, tongue, vocal folds). This feedback marks the sound perceived during speech production as self-produced and can be used to adjust the vocal apparatus to increase the similarity between the perceived and emitted calls. Evidence for descending connections from the IFG to the pSTG has been offered by a study that electrically stimulated the IFG during surgical operations and reported the spread of activation to the pSTG-pSTS-Spt region A study that compared the ability of aphasic patients with frontal, parietal or temporal lobe damage to quickly and repeatedly articulate a string of syllables reported that damage to the frontal lobe interfered with the articulation of both identical syllabic strings ("Bababa") and non-identical syllabic strings ("Badaga"), whereas patients with temporal or parietal lobe damage only exhibited impairment when articulating non-identical syllabic strings. Because the patients with temporal and parietal lobe damage were capable of repeating the syllabic string in the first task, their speech perception and production appears to be relatively preserved, and their deficit in the second task is therefore due to impaired monitoring. Demonstrating the role of the descending ADS connections in monitoring emitted calls, an fMRI study instructed participants to speak under normal conditions or when hearing a modified version of their own voice (delayed first formant) and reported that hearing a distorted version of one's own voice results in increased activation in the pSTG. Further demonstrating that the ADS facilitates motor feedback during mimicry is an intra-cortical recording study that contrasted speech perception and repetition. The authors reported that, in addition to activation in the IPL and IFG, speech repetition is characterized by stronger activation in the pSTG than during speech perception. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1732213 | 688,304 |
215,316 | Over the winter of 1938–1939, Arnold transferred a group of experienced officers headed by Lt. Col. Carl A. Spaatz to his headquarters as an unofficial air staff to lay out a plan that would increase the Air Corps to 50,000 men by June 1941. The expansion program of the Air Corps was characterized by repeated upward revision of goals for increasing aircraft production, combat unit totals, the training of new personnel, and construction of new bases. New combat groups were created by detaching cadres from the existing 15 Regular groups to provide the core of the new units, with each older group providing the basis for an average of three new groups. Graduates of an expanded flight training program filled out the new groups and replaced the experienced personnel transferred from the older groups, resulting in a steady decline in the overall level of experience in the operational units. In essence, groups "self-trained" to proficiency standards set by training directives from the GHQAF. Unable to keep pace with the revised programs for expansion of combat groups, unit tactical training for all groups suffered from a shortage of equipment (particularly combat aircraft), an unavoidable preoccupation with administrative details during organization, and a lack of training facilities, especially bombing and gunnery ranges, leaving a "vast gap between the desired status of training in combat units and their actual status immediately prior to ... Pearl Harbor." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23869026 | 215,208 |
1,863,381 | The goal of GEAR UP is to increase the number of these students who matriculate into in-state public universities. The grant operates on a six-year grant program. The grants are divided into two groups: state grants and partnership grants. State grants must include a plan to contact students prior to the prospective students arriving as university students. The plan must show an intention to increase the rate of college-going for low-income students in addition to providing a scholarship to students. In addition, it must prepare students to succeed at the college level. Partnership grants have the same goals, however, they are only required to fulfill the early intervention component. Partnership grants may support scholarship efforts for low-income students as well. Both grant types work to assist cohorts of students, beginning in the seventh grade. This cohort is followed by the grant program throughout high school, with some students receiving scholarships to help them attend in-state public universities. For a State agency to be eligible to apply for a GEAR UP grant, the agency must be designated by the governor of that State. Each state may only apply for up to one GEAR UP grant at a time. For partnership grants, applying partnerships must consist of "one or more local educational agencies and one or more degree-granting institutions of higher education and not less than two other community organizations or other entities such as businesses, professional organizations, or state agencies" to be eligible. Unlike state grants, partnerships may apply for, and receive, multiple partnership grants concurrently. All applicants are able to access Grants.gov to retrieve the application (that may be downloaded and completed offline) and then upload the complete application back to the website. Applicants that are awarded grants ("grantees") are required to submit annual performance reports to ensure that their implementation of these funds falls in line with the mission of the US Department of Education. Nationally, GEAR UP programs have at least helped to spur some interest about college in low-income communities. in 2006, 66 percent of student survey respondents had spoken with someone about college entrance requirements. Of this same population, 55% of students were able to speak with someone about the availability of financial aid. Funding for the program has grown in recent years, increasing from $301,639,000 in fiscal year 2015, to $322,754,000 in fiscal year 2016, to 339,752,985 in fiscal year 2017. On March 21, 2018, Congress agreed to increase the national funding for GEAR UP programs by 2.9 percent. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20641385 | 1,862,311 |
1,309,925 | The needs and beliefs of Banpo society created the prototype Chinese urban form. The springtime sacred procreation sites became, in time, the Holy Place called "bo" . Moreover, the connection between ancestors, earth, and fertility developed into a theory of "qi" energy and "fengshui" geomancy. The "Book of Burial" elaborates this theory. Man is considered concentrated "qi" (, lit. 'atmosphere'), when his bones are returned to the earth they become re-energized by "qi". The living descendants are affected by the "qi" generated from the bones of their ancestors, "as a lute string will pick of the vibration of another lute string near it." In this theory, the world was an active matrix of "qi" into which graves, houses, and cities must be carefully inserted by fengshui principals to maintain harmony. The shape of this world was described by a parallel cosmology of a round heaven revolving around a square earth. This "gaitian" cosmology (, lit. 'canopy-heavens theory') originated from neolithic astronomy. This cosmic diagram is depicted on jade "bi" and "cong" used to talk to sky and earth spirits, respectively. In particular, Yangshao pottery decorated with Big Dipper inscribed on a nine-in-one square (earth) surrounded by a circle (heaven) already depicts a cosmic diagram of earth divided into nine parts. This nine-in-square, in time, became basis of the well-field system, which was the basic geometric and legal module of urban-regional planning. Likewise, the Great Hall became the prototype of later palaces and imperial cities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23945936 | 1,309,207 |
630,132 | One of these stations was to be located on the coast near Orford Ness, and Bawdsey Manor was selected to become the main centre for all radar research. To put a radar defence in place as quickly as possible, Watson-Watt and his team created devices using existing components, rather than creating new components for the project, and the team did not take additional time to refine and improve the devices. So long as the prototype radars were in workable condition, they were put into production. They conducted "full scale" tests of a fixed radar radio tower system, attempting to detect an incoming bomber by radio signals for interception by a fighter. The tests were a complete failure, with the fighter only seeing the bomber after it had passed its target. The problem was not the radar but the flow of information from trackers from the Observer Corps to the fighters, which took many steps and was very slow. Henry Tizard, Patrick Blackett, and Hugh Dowding immediately set to work on this problem, designing a 'command and control air defence reporting system' with several layers of reporting that were eventually sent to a single large room for mapping. Observers watching the maps would then tell the fighters what to do via direct communications. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37206 | 629,794 |
1,830,573 | Scheibel also spent time working as a psychiatric consultant for Camarillo State Hospital, at which he encountered primarily patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was able to obtain brain tissue samples from people with schizophrenia that were about to be discarded from the hospital, and he then focused his research around studying this disease using Golgi techniques. Despite new findings regarding diseased-cell morphology, Scheibel set his work aside to focus on the severe progression of Mila's illness. These findings were then presented several years later at the Society for Biological Psychiatry Meeting in Chicago (Scheibel and Kovelman, 1981). Prior to the presentation, in 1979, Scheibel was invited to give a talk at the University of California, Berkeley by Professor Marian Diamond, a scientist whom he had never met. Scheibel found it difficult to forget "Marian's dynamic personality and sensitivity," and as a result, their relationship grew for several years. They then married each other in 1982 and continued to work at their respective universities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=66282493 | 1,829,527 |
884,052 | Drugs function by binding to specific locations on target molecules and causing some desired change, such as disabling a target or causing a conformational change. Ideally, a drug should act very specifically, and bind only to its target without interfering with other biological functions. However, it is difficult to precisely determine where and how tightly two molecules will bind. Due to limits in computing power, current "in silico" methods usually must trade speed for accuracy; e.g., use rapid protein docking methods instead of computationally costly free energy calculations. Folding@home's computing performance allows researchers to use both methods, and evaluate their efficiency and reliability. Computer-assisted drug design has the potential to expedite and lower the costs of drug discovery. In 2010, Folding@home used MSMs and free energy calculations to predict the native state of the villin protein to within 1.8 angstrom (Å) root mean square deviation (RMSD) from the crystalline structure experimentally determined through X-ray crystallography. This accuracy has implications to future protein structure prediction methods, including for intrinsically unstructured proteins. Scientists have used Folding@home to research drug resistance by studying vancomycin, an antibiotic drug of last resort, and beta-lactamase, a protein that can break down antibiotics like penicillin. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=413102 | 883,588 |
1,159,781 | In the Mozart "Piano Concerto No. 21" in 2015, according to Matt Palm of the "Orlando Sentinel", "Tao's energetic work blended seamlessly with his fellow musicians to create both elegance and exuberance." Scott Cantrell of "The Dallas Morning News" called Tao's Aaron Copland piano sonata "gripping ... finely timed and layered, but the rhythmic quirks of the "scherzo" would have been set in higher relief at a marginally slower pace", and thought of his Rachmaninoff "Études-Tableaux, Op. 39" that "the F-sharp minor felt a bit pressed, and the D minor was pushed and pulled about too much. The A minor ... was ravishing, though, and the D major was genuinely exciting". Steven Kruger of "New York Arts" wrote that Tao's "was the best performance of the Rachmaninoff "Paganini Variations" I have ever heard, on or off disc. Tao was so vivid, he might as well have been Gershwin at the keyboard. Every note was electric. And the last movement of the Prokofiev Seventh Sonata, offered as an encore, simply made everyone's jaw drop." Peter Dobrin of Philly.com wrote that, in Saint-Saëns' Piano Concerto No. 2, Tao "kept his monstrous technique on a leash [and] used it for sincerity and wit – waiting a split second in certain entrances for a flash of humor, or holding back for emphasis. The opening was moving, and the way he paced mounting intensity in the last minutes uncovered the best in this work". In a performance of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in 2016, John Shulson of "The Virginia Gazette" commented that Tao's "performance ... was one of the most thrilling to be heard on stage with this symphony. ... Tao was the master of the Rachmaninoff and its many moods, offering inspired lyricism and ponderous power." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33615494 | 1,159,166 |
1,864,208 | During his career Schwan did much to improve the emerging field of biomedical engineering, developed its first Ph.D. program, and produced more than 300 technical papers and gave countless lectures. He is best known for many biophysical studies related to electrical properties of cells and tissues, and on non-thermal mechanisms of interaction of fields with biological systems. He innovative works include the large low-frequency dielectric dispersion that is found in biological material, and electrically induced forces on cells. He was the pioneer in recognizing the possible health hazards of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields. He proposed a safe limit for human exposure to microwave energy of 100 W/m2 (based on thermal analysis) to the U.S. Navy in 1953, which became the basis for the present IEEE C95.1 safety standards used in the western world. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12722607 | 1,863,136 |
452,186 | Spectroscopic studies of superflares allow their properties to be determined in more detail, in the hope of detecting the cause of the flares. The first studies were made using the high dispersion spectrograph on the Subaru telescope in Hawaii. Some 50 apparently solar-type stars, known from the Kepler observations to show superflare activity, have been examined in detail. Of these, only 16 showed evidence of being visual or spectroscopic binaries; these were excluded since close binaries are frequently active, while in the case of visual binaries there is the chance of activity taking place on the companion. Spectroscopy allows accurate determinations of the effective temperature, the surface gravity and the abundance of elements beyond helium ('metallicity'); most of the 34 single stars proved to be main sequence stars of spectral type G and similar composition to the Sun. Since properties such as temperature and surface gravity change over the lifetime of a star, stellar evolution theory allows an estimate of the age of a star: in most cases the age appeared to be above several hundred million years. This is important since very young stars are known to be much more active. Nine of the stars conformed to the narrower definition of solar-type given above, with temperatures greater than 5600 K and rotation periods longer than 10 days; some had periods above 20 or even 30 days. Only five of the 34 could be described as fast rotators. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24728109 | 451,967 |
346,903 | In 2010, German tabloid "Bild" reported that German Army experts had concerns that the helicopter was not yet ready for the transportation of combat troops. They stated that the seats were rated for only 110 kg (240 lb), not considered enough for a fully equipped soldier. Heavy infantry weapons could not be adequately secured and the cabin floor was prone to damage, citing an anecdote of damage caused by footwear. The helicopter could only land on firm ground, with obstacles not exceeding 16 cm (6.3 in). Troops carrying full equipment could not use the rear ramp due to weight-limitations placed on it. Adding a door machine gun was not possible due to space taken by troop ingress and egress; there was also no provision for fast roping or paratrooper equipment. In response, the German Defense Ministry proclaimed that this article referred to a prototype, not to the production model; the specifications for which were not even finalised at the time. The prototype evaluation and its results were described as a normal procedure in an ongoing design process. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=513911 | 346,722 |
1,447,463 | Currently, reverse osmosis and vacuum-evaporation technologies are used to concentrate juices and other food liquids. In commercial operations, juice is normally concentrated by evaporation. Since 1962, the Thermally Accelerated Short Time Evaporator (TASTE) has been widely used. TASTE evaporators are efficient, sanitary, easy to clean, of high capacity, simple to operate, and of relatively low cost. On the other hand, there is some heat damage to the product caused by the high-temperature steam treatment. This treatment results in product quality and aroma losses. Because of the low value of the film coefficient between steam and treated juice, heat transfer between them is very inefficient. It leads to the cumbersome construction of TASTE plants. The alternative is to concentrate juice and food liquid by a cooling and freezing process. In this case crystals of pure water are removed from the juice, wine, or beer by crystallization. The aroma, color, and flavor remain in the concentrated medium. The quality of freeze-concentrated products cannot be achieved by any other technology. The main advantages in comparison with other freezing techniques are low energy expenditure and the possibility to tune the rate of the phase change from liquid to solid ice, which in turn increases the production of pure water ice crystals and simplifies the separation of concentrated juice or food liquid and ice crystals. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25087021 | 1,446,647 |
1,585,187 | The physical and chemical state of a surface or object have direct impact on the emissivity, reflectance and refractance of electromagnetic radiation. Sensors on remote sensing instruments capture radiation, which can be translated back to deduce the physio-chemical properties of the surface. Water content, temperature, roughness and colour are characteristics often deduced from the spectral characteristics of the surface. A sensor on a satellite returns the composite signal for a certain area inside the footprint called a cell, the size of the unique cells is referred to as the spatial resolution. The spatial resolution of a sensor is determined by the distance from earth and the available bandwidth for data transfer. A satellite passes over the same location consistently through time with the same interval called the revisit-time or temporal resolution. Sensors can not have both a very high temporal and spatial resolution so a tradeoff has to be made specific for the goal of the mission. Sensors on satellites have measuring errors, caused by for example atmospheric interference, geolocation imprecision and topographic distortion. Complete derived products from remote sensing often use simple calculations or algorithms to transform the spectral signature from a cell to a physical value. All methods of transferring spectral data has certain biases which can contribute to the measurement errors of the final result. Often surface characteristics can be deduced with very low error margins due to data corrections, using onboard data or models, and a physically correct translation of spectral characteristics to physio-chemical characteristics. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=67696353 | 1,584,296 |
1,297,359 | As the sport grew in the 1960s and 1970s, each nation devised its own set of rules and regulations. The need for more clearly defined and consistent rules for international competitions led to the formation of an ARDF working group by the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) in the late 1970s. The first ARDF event to use the new standardized rules was the 1980 World Championship. These rules have been revised and updated over the years, increasing the number of gender and age categories into which competitors are classified, as well as formalizing the start and finish line procedures. While some variations exist, these standardized rules have since been used worldwide for ARDF competitions, and the IARU has become the principal international organization promoting the sport. The IARU divides the world into three "regions" for administrative purposes. These regions correspond with the three regions used by the International Telecommunication Union for its regulatory purposes, but the IARU has also used these regions for sports administration. The first IARU Region I (Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and ex-USSR) Championship was held in 1993 in Chtelnica, Slovakia, the first IARU Region III (Asia and Oceania) Championship was held in 1993 in Beijing, China, and the first IARU Region II (North and South America) Championship was held in 1999 in Portland, Oregon, USA. In addition to participation in international events, most nations with active ARDF organizations hold annual national championships using the IARU rules. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3058028 | 1,296,648 |
737,408 | CTA1 is then free to bind with a human partner protein called ADP-ribosylation factor 6 (Arf6); binding to Arf6 drives a change in the shape of CTA1 which exposes its active site and enables its catalytic activity. The CTA1 fragment catalyses ADP-ribosylation of the Gs alpha subunit (Gα) proteins using NAD. The ADP-ribosylation causes the Gα subunit to lose its catalytic activity of GTP hydrolysis into GDP + P, thus maintaining Gα in its activated state. Increased Gα activation leads to increased adenylate cyclase activity, which increases the intracellular concentration of 3',5'-cyclic AMP (cAMP) to more than 100-fold over normal and over-activates cytosolic PKA. These active PKA then phosphorylate the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) chloride channel proteins, which leads to ATP-mediated efflux of chloride ions and leads to secretion of HO, Na, K, and HCO into the intestinal lumen. In addition, the entry of Na and consequently the entry of water into enterocytes are diminished. The combined effects result in rapid fluid loss from the intestine, up to 2 liters per hour, leading to severe dehydration and other factors associated with cholera, including a rice-water stool. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5499945 | 737,019 |
2,081,936 | In order to enable new ways to interactively explore the VEP's massive volume datasets, Michael Doyle created the zMap system, using the Visible Human Project image data for the first prototype. In 2011, Doyle collaborated with Steven Landers, Maurice Pescitelli, and others to use zMap to create an interactive tool that allows the user to select desired sets of anatomical structures for automated generation of 3D Quicktime VR visualizations. The system used the resources available in the Eolas AnatLab knowledgebase, which has over 2200 structures identified involving a total of over 4600 sections and 700,000 annotations overall, to access the anatomical structure surface information for individual structures. This surface information was then used to automatically extract the contained volumetric image data and convert the data into a format compatible with the Osirix volume imaging system. Automated scripts then controlled Osirix in the creation of a 3D visualization of the group of selected anatomical structures. Photorealistic results were obtained by using the original color voxel information from the original Visible Human cryosection images to color the surface of the 3D reconstruction. The system then automatically progressed through a pre-defined set of rotations to generate the set of image frames required to create a Quicktime VR (QTVR) interactive movie. This system thereby allowed an anatomy instructor to quickly and easily generate customized interactive 3D reconstructions for use in the classroom. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=70238111 | 2,080,736 |
32,819 | The use of low doses of quetiapine for insomnia, while common, is not recommended; there is little evidence of benefit and concerns regarding adverse effects. A 2022 network meta-analysis of 154 double-blind, randomized controlled trials of drug therapies vs. placebo for insomnia in adults found that quetiapine did not demonstrate any short-term benefits in sleep quality. Quetiapine, specifically, had an effect size (standardized mean difference) against placebo for treatment of insomnia of 0.05 (95% –1.21 to 1.11) at 4weeks of treatment, with the certainty of evidence rated as very low. Doses of quetiapine used for insomnia have ranged from 12.5 to 800mg, with low doses of 25 to 200mg being the most typical. Regardless of the dose used, some of the more serious adverse effects may still possibly occur at the lower dosing ranges, such as dyslipidemia and neutropenia. These safety concerns at low doses are corroborated by Danish observational studies that showed use of specifically low-dose quetiapine (prescriptions filled for tablet strengths >50 mg were excluded) was associated with an increased risk of major cardiovascular events as compared to use of Z-drugs, with most of the risk being driven by cardiovascular death. Laboratory data from an unpublished analysis of the same cohort also support the lack of dose-dependency of metabolic side effects, as new use of low-dose quetiapine was associated with a risk of increased fasting triglycerides at 1-year follow-up. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=185384 | 32,807 |
1,049,304 | Sales of amber were alleged to help fund the Kachin conflict by various news organisations in 2019. Interest in this discussion rose in March 2020 after the highly publicised description of "Oculudentavis," which made the cover of "Nature". On April 21, 2020, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) published a letter of recommendation to journal editors asking for “a moratorium on publication for any fossil specimens purchased from sources in Myanmar after June 2017 when the Myanmar military began its campaign to seize control of the amber mining”. On April 23, 2020 "Acta Palaeontologica Polonica" stated that it would not accept papers on Burmese amber material collected from 2017 onwards, after the Burmese military took control of the deposit, requiring "certification or other demonstrable evidence, that they were acquired before the date both legally and ethically". On May 13, 2020, the "Journal of Systematic Palaeontology" published an editorial stating that it would no longer consider papers based whole or in part on Burmese amber material, regardless of whether in historic collections or not. On 30 June 2020, a statement from the International Palaeoentomological Society was published in response to the SVP, criticising the proposal to ban publishing on Burmese amber material. In August 2020, a comment from over 50 authors was published in "PalZ" responding to the SVP statement. The authors disagreed with the proposal of a moratorium, describing the focus on the Burmese amber as "arbitrary" and that "The SVP’s recommendation for a moratorium on Burmese amber affects fossil non-vertebrate research much more than fossil vertebrate research and clearly does not represent this part of the palaeontological community." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=48679019 | 1,048,758 |
1,471,585 | "I'm really fortunate to be given the crew members that I have on this mission. It's myself and six others. We do swap one of our crew members with the expedition crew member on board. So Greg goes up, Greg stays on station and Garrett comes home. But the crew that was assigned to me—I'm really fortunate to have some really talented people. Ken Ham, as a pilot, knows the orbiter better than anybody I've seen. This is his first flight. My lead EVA crew member is Mike Fossum who did three spacewalks on my previous flight, STS-121. We've flown together before. I have all the confidence in the world in his ability to execute these EVAs. Karen Nyberg, my MS1, sits on the flight deck for ascent and entry. She's also the lead for all the robotic arm operations. She'll be flying three robotic arms in space, incredibly motivated, well ahead of the game and I expect great things from her. Ron Garan is my flight engineer, a colonel in the Air Force. This is going to be his first time in space as well as is Karen's and Ken's and he's doing three spacewalks. So he's got a lot on his plate. He's been doing great during training and he's going to have the opportunity to prove himself during these three spacewalks. I kind of wish it was me getting to go outside. I can't do that, but we expect great things from Ron as well. And then I have Aki Hoshide, our Japanese crew member, who grew up in New Jersey kind of like me. That's an interesting thing about our flight—we have four people from New Jersey on the mission. I look at Aki as the payload commander. He is responsible for that Japanese laboratory and he has taken on that responsibility as completely as I could have hoped for. All through our training he's been very much focused on the Japanese lab, making sure it's ready to go, making sure we're completely trained on the systems and everything we have to do. I've given him a lot of responsibility and he's completely taken it on." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6002579 | 1,470,757 |
1,343,659 | Microdialysis is a minimally-invasive sampling technique that is used for continuous measurement of free, unbound analyte concentrations in the extracellular fluid of virtually any tissue. Analytes may include endogenous molecules (e.g. neurotransmitter, hormones, glucose, etc.) to assess their biochemical functions in the body, or exogenous compounds (e.g. pharmaceuticals) to determine their distribution within the body. The microdialysis technique requires the insertion of a small microdialysis catheter (also referred to as microdialysis probe) into the tissue of interest. The microdialysis probe is designed to mimic a blood capillary and consists of a shaft with a semipermeable hollow fiber membrane at its tip, which is connected to inlet and outlet tubing. The probe is continuously perfused with an aqueous solution (perfusate) that closely resembles the (ionic) composition of the surrounding tissue fluid at a low flow rate of approximately 0.1-5μL/min. Once inserted into the tissue or (body)fluid of interest, small solutes can cross the semipermeable membrane by passive diffusion. The direction of the analyte flow is determined by the respective concentration gradient and allows the usage of microdialysis probes as sampling as well as delivery tools. The solution leaving the probe (dialysate) is collected at certain time intervals for analysis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2279144 | 1,342,923 |
637,095 | Molluscs have such diverse shapes that many textbooks base their descriptions of molluscan anatomy on a generalized or "hypothetical ancestral mollusc". This generalized mollusc is unsegmented and bilaterally symmetrical with an underside consisting of a single muscular foot. Beyond that it has three further key features. Firstly, it has a muscular cloak called a mantle covering its viscera and containing a significant cavity used for breathing and excretion. A shell secreted by the mantle covers the upper surface. Secondly (apart from bivalves) it has a rasping tongue called a radula used for feeding. Thirdly, it has a nervous system including a complex digestive system using microscopic, muscle-powered hairs called cilia to exude mucus. The generalized mollusc has two paired nerve cords (three in bivalves). The brain, in species that have one, encircles the esophagus. Most molluscs have eyes and all have sensors detecting chemicals, vibrations, and touch. The simplest type of molluscan reproductive system relies on external fertilization, but more complex variations occur. All produce eggs, from which may emerge trochophore larvae, more complex veliger larvae, or miniature adults. The depiction is rather similar to modern monoplacophorans, and some suggest it may resemble very early molluscs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15182882 | 636,756 |
1,932,282 | Humans have strongly altered nighttime lighting. This light pollution has had serious impacts on species that rely on visual cues for navigation. One recent study of rodent communities showed that brighter nights led to community-level changes in foraging behavior; while less predator-susceptible species foraged heavily, those species susceptible to predation reduced their foraging activity as a result of their increased nighttime visibility. Birds are also heavily influenced by light pollution. For example, ecologists have found that lights on tall structures can disorient migrating birds, leading to millions of deaths each year. These findings have guided recent conservation efforts. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has created a set of guidelines to reduce the impacts of lighting on migratory birds, such as limiting tower construction, limiting the height of towers, and keeping towers away from migratory zones. In addition, Programs such as the Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) in Toronto have reduced bird collisions by reducing the light emissions of tall buildings. Studies have also found that artificial lighting disrupts the orientation of baby sea turtles. This, in turn, has increased mortality in sea turtle populations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10013549 | 1,931,174 |
1,557,197 | In April 2019, Prendergast gave a wide-ranging interview to the music magazine Hot Press. He was involved in several controversies, most notably over branding and "Take Back Trinity", a student movement to resist commercialisation within the university. He was often accused of being out of touch with student and staff concerns. Despite this he wrote a monthly article for the "Irish Times" on Higher Education espousing his views on how Irish higher education should develop, one of which proposed a Cabinet Minister and associated Department for Higher Education. This idea, considered far-fetched at the time, was implemented by the new Taoiseach Micheál Martin, his main change in the new government formation. Prendergast gave his last speech as Provost to Northern Ireland alumni advocating special measures for NI students not to have to pay the non-EU fee post-Brexit. The students’ final assessment of Prendergast was probably a good summary: “His trademark lack of regard for the on-the-ground effects of his decisions had a certain nobility to it. One may disagree with them, but at least there was no pretence of consensus building”. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=769190 | 1,556,312 |
1,616,820 | G P Thomson (son of J J Thomson) replaced Callender in 1932, and worked in part on nuclear physics and atomic weaponry. He was followed P. M. S. Blackett as head in around 1953, with the construction of the new Physics building starting at about the same time. Blackett refocused efforts from low-energy physics to high-energy nuclear physics, and under him research started into cosmic rays and the use of bubble chambers, with the first liquid hydrogen bubble chamber in Western Europe being constructed at the department. Work on satellite instrumentation resulted in departmentally designed equipment ending up on NASA satellites in 1962. Physics continued in the new “old” RCS building until the new Physics building was finished in 1961, which subsequently became known as the Blackett Laboratory. In 2019, it was announced that the laboratory would be constructing a magnetometer instrument for the European Space Agency Solar Orbiter in a mission to study the Sun. The satellite launched on an Atlas V from the Cape Canaveral AFS, Florida on the 9 February, 2020. In November 2019, a team of Imperial physicists was chosen to design parts of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, which is to be a long baseline accelerator neutrino experiment in the United States. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38233237 | 1,615,909 |
680,349 | Many of the Proteaceae have specialised proteoid roots, masses of lateral roots and hairs forming a radial absorptive surface, produced in the leaf litter layer during seasonal growth, and usually shrivelling at the end of the growth season. They are an adaptation to growth in poor, phosphorus-deficient soils, greatly increasing the plants' access to scarce water and nutrients by exuding carboxylates that mobilise previously unavailable phosphorus. They also increase the root's absorption surface, but this is a minor feature, as it also increases competition for nutrients against its own root clusters. However, this adaptation leaves them highly vulnerable to dieback caused by the "Phytophthora cinnamomi" water mould, and generally intolerant of fertilization. Due to these specialized proteoid roots, the Proteaceae are one of few flowering plant families that do not form symbioses with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. They exude large amounts of organic acids (citric acid and malic acid) every 2–3 days in order to aid the mobilization and absorption of phosphate. Many species are fire-adapted (pyrophytes), meaning they have strategies for surviving fires that sweep through their habitat. Some are resprouters, and have a thick rootstock buried in the ground that shoots up new stems after a fire, and others are reseeders, meaning the adult plants are killed by the fire, but disperse their seeds, which are stimulated by the smoke to take root and grow. The heat was previously thought to have stimulated growth, but the chemicals in the smoke have now been shown to cause it. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5713772 | 679,995 |
689,484 | The ability of plants to develop and thrive is dependent on conditions such as microgravity and cosmic radiation in space. China has been experimenting with this theory by sending seeds into space, testing to see if space flights will cause genetic mutations. Since 1987, China has cultivated 66 mutant varieties from space through their space-breeding program. Chromosomal aberrations greatly increased when seeds were sent into aerospace compared to their earth-bound counterparts. The effect of space flight on seeds depends on their species and variety. For example, space-bred wheat saw a large growth in seed germination in compared to its Earth-bound control, but space-bred rice had no visible advantage compared to its control. For the varieties that were positively mutated by space flight, their growth potential exceeded that of not only their Earth-grown counterparts, but also their irradiated counterparts on Earth. Compared to traditional mutagenic techniques, space-bred mutations have greater efficacy in that they experience positive effects on their first generation of mutation, whereas irradiated crops often see no advantageous mutations in their first generations. Though multiple experiments have shown the positive effects of space flight on seed mutation, there is no clear connection as to what aspect of aerospace has produced such advantageous mutations. There is much speculation around cosmic radiation being the source of chromosomal aberrations, but so far, there has been no concrete evidence of such connection. Though China's space-breeding program has been shown to be very successful, the program requires a large budget and technological support that many other countries are either unwilling or unable to provide, meaning this program is unfeasible outside of China. Due to such restraints, scientists have been trying to replicate space condition on Earth in order to promote the same expedient space-born mutations on Earth. One such replication is a magnetic field-free space (MF), which produces an area with a weaker magnetic field than that of Earth. MF treatment produced mutagenic results, and has been used to cultivate new mutant varieties of rice and alfalfa. Other replications of space conditions include irradiation of seeds by a heavy 7 Li-ion beam or mixed high-energy particles. These space-bred varieties are already being introduced to the public. In 2011, during the National Lotus Flowers Exhibition in China, a mutant lotus, called the "Outer Space Sun", was shown at the flower show. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31552410 | 689,122 |
1,713,560 | It was not until the last quarter of the 19th century that any real advance was made in the study of economic entomology. Among the early writings, besides the book of Curtis, there was a publication by Pohl and Kollar, entitled "Insects Injurious to Gardeners, Foresters and Farmers", published in 1837, and Taschenberg's "Praktische Insecktenkunde". During the 19th century Italian entomologists made significant progress in controlling diseases of the silkworm moth, in the control of agricultural pests and in stored product entomology. Significant figures were: Agostino Bassi ( 1773–1856), Camillo Rondani (1808–1879), Adolfo Targioni Tozzetti (1823–1902), Pietro Stefanelli (1835, 1919), Camillo Acqua (1863–1936) Antonio Berlese (1863–1927), Gustavo Leonardi(1869–1918) and Enrico Verson (1845–1927). In France Etienne Laurent Joseph Hippolyte Boyer de Fonscolombe, Charles Jean-Baptiste Amyot, Émile Blanchard, Valéry Mayet and Claude Charles Goureau were early workers, as was Jean Victoire Audouin, the author of "Histoire des insectes nuisibles à la vigne et particulièrement de la Pyrale", Philippe Alexandre Jules Künckel d'Herculais, Joseph Jean Baptiste Géhin and Maurice Jean Auguste Girard. American literature began as far back as 1788, when a report on the Hessian fly was issued by Sir Joseph Banks; in 1817 Thomas Say began his writings; while in 1856 Asa Fitch started his report on "Noxious Insects of New York". Also in America, Matthew Cooke wrote "Treatise on the Insects Injurious to Fruit and Fruit Trees of the State of California, and Remedies Recommended for Their Extermination", published in 1881. The Englishman Frederick Vincent Theobald wrote A textbook of agricultural zoology in 1890. It became a standard text worldwide. Notable foresters were Herman von Nördlinger (1818–1897) and Julius Theodor Christian Ratzeburg (1801–1871). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3966878 | 1,712,594 |
832,718 | Work on scalable oversight largely occurs within formalisms such as POMDPs. Existing formalisms assume that the agent's algorithm is executed outside the environment (i.e. not physically embedded in it). Embedded agency is another major strand of research which attempts to solve problems arising from the mismatch between such theoretical frameworks and real agents we might build. For example, even if the scalable oversight problem is solved, an agent which is able to gain access to the computer it is running on may still have an incentive to tamper with its reward function in order to get much more reward than its human supervisors give it. A list of examples of specification gaming from DeepMind researcher Victoria Krakovna includes a genetic algorithm that learned to delete the file containing its target output so that it was rewarded for outputting nothing. This class of problems has been formalised using causal incentive diagrams. Researchers at Oxford and DeepMind have argued that such problematic behavior is highly likely in advanced systems, and that advanced systems would seek power to stay in control of their reward signal indefinitely and certainly. They suggest a range of potential approaches to address this open problem. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50785023 | 832,269 |
1,016,272 | The Multispectral Scanner (MSS) onboard Landsat missions 1 through 5 was originally built with an engineering solution that allowed the United States to develop Landsat-1 at least five years ahead of the French SPOT. The original MSS had a fused silica dinner-plate mirror epoxy bonded to three invar tangent bars mounted to base of a nickel/gold brazed Invar frame in a Serrurier truss that was arranged with four "Hobbs-Links" (conceived by Dr. Gregg Hobbs), crossing at mid-truss. This construct ensured the secondary mirror would simply oscillate about the primary optic axis to maintain focus despite vibration inherent from the beryllium scan mirror. In contrast, SPOT first used charge-coupled device (CCD) arrays to stare without need for a scanner. However, LANDSAT data prices climbed from US$250 per computer compatible data tape and US$10 for black-and-white print to US$4,400 for data tape and US$2,700 for black-and-white print by 1984, making SPOT data a much more affordable option for satellite imaging data. This was a direct result of the commercialization efforts begun under the Carter administration, though finally completed under the Reagan administration. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=387175 | 1,015,749 |
438,748 | The psychologist Harry Guntrip wrote that its publication "greatly stimulated the discussion of the nature of scientific knowledge", including by philosophers who did not completely agree with Popper, such as Thomas Kuhn and Horace Romano Harré. The psychiatrist Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology, valued the work. The biographer Vincent Brome recalls Jung remarking in 1938 that it exposed "some of the shortcomings of science". The philosopher Paul Ricœur endorsed "procedures of invalidation" similar to Popper's criteria for falsifiability. The historian Peter Gay described the work as "an important treatise in epistemology". The philosopher Bryan Magee considered Popper's criticisms of logical positivism "devastating". In his view, Popper's most important argument against logical positivism is that, while it claimed to be a scientific theory of the world, its central tenet, the verification principle, effectively destroyed all of science. The physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont argued that critiques of Popper's work have provoked an "irrationalist drift", and that a significant part of the problems that currently affect the philosophy of science "can be traced to ambiguities or inadequacies" in "The Logic of Scientific Discovery". The essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his book , mentions Popper's theory of falsification as a way to combat the effects of confirmation bias, crediting his "insight concerning the fundamental, severe, and incurable unpredictability of the world." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=157720 | 438,534 |
1,399,248 | After the end of World War I, the OCO was reorganized into four major parts in 1919 to accommodate for peacetime operations requirements: the General Office, the Manufacturing Service, the Field Service, and the Technical Staff. In 1935, the Research Division was created at Aberdeen Proving Ground and placed under the control of the Technical Staff. Led by Colonel Hermann H. Zornig, the Research Division initially consisted of only thirty people; however, despite the small staff size, the group supervised six different sections of ballistic work: Interior Ballistics, Exterior Ballistics, Ballistics Measurements, Ordnance Engineering, Computing, and War Reserve. The Internal Ballistics Section was responsible for mathematical and experimental research that advanced the theory of interior ballistics and the investigation of gun design principles. It also conducted effect-of-fire investigations, which studied the behavior of projectiles and bombs as well as their individual components as they approached a target. The Exterior Ballistics Section focused on the trajectories and flight characteristics of projectiles and bombs, which influenced the design of new munitions. The Ballistics Measurements Section developed improved ballistic measuring devices, while the Ordnance Engineering Section made kinematic and mechanical analyses of gun mechanisms and gun mounts. The Computing Section was tasked with preparing firing and bombing tables for standard ammunition and bombs, and the War Reserve Section was responsible for the surveillance of stored ammunition. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30865936 | 1,398,473 |
515,582 | The habit of some plants to move in the direction of the Sun, a form of tropism, was already known by the Ancient Greeks. They named one of those plants after that property "Heliotropium", meaning "sun turn". The Greeks assumed it to be a passive effect, presumably the loss of fluid on the illuminated side, that did not need further study. Aristotle's logic that plants are passive and immobile organisms prevailed. In the 19th century, however, botanists discovered that growth processes in the plant were involved, and conducted increasingly in-depth experiments. A. P. de Candolle called this phenomenon in "any" plant "heliotropism" (1832). It was renamed phototropism in 1892, because it is a response to light rather than to the sun, and because the phototropism of algae in lab studies at that time strongly depended on the brightness (positive phototropic for weak light, and negative phototropic for bright light, like sunlight). A botanist studying this subject in the lab, at the cellular and subcellular level, or using artificial light, is more likely to employ the more abstract word phototropism, a term which includes artificial light as well as natural sunlight. The French scientist Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan was one of the first to study heliotropism when he experimented with the "Mimosa pudica" plant. The phenomenon was studied by Charles Darwin and published in his penultimate 1880 book "The Power of Movement in Plants" , a work which included other stimuli to plant movement such as gravity, moisture and touch. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1213674 | 515,316 |
1,437,263 | The facility was built as a memorial to Kentuckians who had died during World War I, World War II and the Korean War. Later, the names of all Kentuckians who died in the Vietnam War were added. Originally, it had an official capacity of 12,000, making it the largest arena in the South at the time. However, the Coliseum frequently drew crowds of over 13,000 for many UK basketball games. A major renovation, completed in 1990, reduced the seating capacity to its current total of 8,500 and added an elaborate weight training facility, new offices for the basketball and athletics programs, a players' lounge, and a team meeting room. The seating is now mostly located on the sidelines, and the men's NCAA basketball championship banners still hang on the walls. The building is known for its air of great tradition. While it was the home of the UK men's basketball team, it hosted the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament ten times, four times as a regional site (1957, 1958, 1967, 1968) and six more as a sub-regional site (1955, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1967, 1975). As home to the University of Kentucky Wildcats, it saw two NCAA men's basketball national championship teams (1951, 1958), two NCAA men's basketball runner-up teams (1966, 1975), one NIT Men's Basketball champion (1976), and 16 Southeastern Conference (SEC) Men's Basketball regular season champions. Overall, in 26 seasons (1950–51 to 1975–76), the University of Kentucky Wildcats men's basketball team posted a home record of 307–38 (.890). Memorial hosted a first-round game in the 2009 National Invitation Tournament on March 17, 2009 between the Wildcats and the UNLV Runnin' Rebels, with the Wildcats winning 70–60. The game was held at Memorial instead of Rupp Arena due to a scheduling conflict with the KHSAA boys' high school basketball state tournament scheduled at Rupp that week. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2358427 | 1,436,454 |
950,472 | In the 17th century, as at the present time, the question of scientific priority was of great importance to scientists. However, during this period, scientific journals had just begun to appear, and the generally accepted mechanism for fixing priority by publishing information about the discovery had not yet been formed. Among the methods used by scientists were anagrams, sealed envelopes placed in a safe place, correspondence with other scientists, or a private message. A letter to the founder of the French Academy of Sciences, Marin Mersenne for a French scientist, or to the secretary of the Royal Society of London, Henry Oldenburg for English, had practically the status of a published article. The discoverer could 'time-stamp' the moment of his discovery, and prove that he knew of it at the point the letter was sealed, and had not copied it from anything subsequently published. Nevertheless, where an idea was subsequently published in conjunction with its use in a particularly valuable context, this might take priority over an earlier discoverer's work, which had no obvious application. Further, a mathematician's claim could be undermined by counter-claims that he had not truly invented an idea, but merely improved on someone else's idea, an improvement that required little skill, and was based on facts that were already known. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3671687 | 949,968 |
1,092,547 | Initial power output was quoted as 110 horsepower -- a little higher than the target figure -- at 3,900 rpm, a rather high power peak for those days. The torque curve was quite flat, however, with at least 180 pounds/feet available from 3,500 rpm all the way down to 400 rpm, which made for incredible top-gear performance. Though the Zephyr V-12 no more resembled previous Lincoln engines than the ubiquitous V-8 (despite sharing the latter's stroke), it was more like a "12-cylinder Ford" than a classic multi-cylinder powerplant in character. And it was not without problems. The main ones were inadequate crankcase ventilation that caused rapid sludge buildup in sustained low-rpm running, aggravated by poor oil flow, plus too-small water passages that led to overheating, bore warpage, and ring wear. To a degree, some of these maladies were dealt with during the Zephyr's first year, and Ford improved the engine by adopting hydraulic valve lifters for 1938 and cast-iron heads and oiling improvements for 1942. Yet this V-12 never shed its reputation for service troubles, though the postwar versions were actually quite reliable. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6610374 | 1,091,987 |
1,975,342 | A key tool in evidence-based medicine that holds promise for EBT is the systematic review. Historically, authors of reviews assessing the results of toxicological studies on a particular topic have searched, selected, and weighed the scientific evidence in a non-systematic and non-transparent way. Due to their narrative nature, these reviews tend to be subjective, potentially biased, and not readily reproducible. Two examples highlighting these deficiencies are the risk assessments of trichloroethylene and bisphenol A (BPA). Twenty-seven different risk assessments of the evidence that trichloroethylene causes cancer have come to substantially different conclusions. Assessments of BPA range from low risk of harm to the public to potential risks (for some populations), leading to different political decisions. Systematic reviews can help reducing such divergent views. In contrast with narrative reviews, they reflect a highly structured approach to reviewing and synthesizing the scientific literature while limiting bias. The steps to carrying out a systematic review include framing the question to be addressed; identifying and retrieving relevant studies; determining if any retrieved studies should be excluded from the analysis; and appraising the included studies in terms of their methodological quality and risk of bias. Ultimately the data should be synthesized across studies, if possible by a meta-analysis. A protocol of how the review will be conducted is prepared ahead of time and ideally should be registered and/or published. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40419859 | 1,974,205 |
1,423,697 | "Voyager 1" was first of the two probes to encounter the Jupiter system in March 1979. On approach to Jupiter in late February and early March 1979, "Voyager" imaging scientists noticed that Io appeared distinct from the other Galilean satellites. Its surface was orange in color and marked by dark spots, which were initially interpreted as the sites of impact craters. Among the most intriguing features was a heart-shaped, dark ring across that would later turn out to be the plume deposit of the volcano Pele. The data from the Ultraviolet Spectrometer (UVS) revealed a torus of plasma composed of sulfur ions at the orbit of Io, but tilted to match the equator of Jupiter's magnetic field. The Low-Energy Charged Particle (LECP) detector encountered streams of sodium, sulfur, and oxygen ions prior to entering Jupiter's magnetosphere, material that the LECP science team suspected originated from Io. In the hours prior to "Voyager 1"'s encounter with Io, the spacecraft acquired images for a global map with a resolution of at least per pixel over the satellite's leading hemisphere (the side that faces the moon's direction of motion around Jupiter) down to less than per pixel over portions of the sub-Jovian hemisphere (the "near" side of Io). The images returned during the approach revealed a strange, multi-colored landscape devoid of impact craters, unlike the other planetary surfaces imaged to that point such as the Moon, Mars, and Mercury. The dark spots in earlier images resembled volcanic calderas more than they did the impact craters seen on those other worlds. Stunned by the oddity of Io's surface, Voyager imaging scientist Laurence Soderblom at a pre-encounter press conference joked, "this one we got all figured out...<nowiki>[Io]</nowiki> is covered with thin candy shells of anything from sulfates and sulfur and salts to all kinds of strange things." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26237277 | 1,422,896 |
2,117,872 | Humankind's closest ancestors, the great apes, have evolved a number of specialized behaviors: orangutans are specialists at climbing trees, while chimpanzees and gorillas have evolved to walk on their knuckles. However, in considering non-behavioral specializations, Penn et al. (2008) argue that the "profound continuity" Charles Darwin noted between human and non-human animals in the biological domain is matched by a "profound discontinuity" between human and non-human animal minds. In contrast, in addition to cognitive-behavioral adaptations, it is possible that chimpanzees have acquired more socially advanced skills through natural selection, including self-recognition (indicated by chimpanzees' established ability to pass the "mirror test"). This task—in which a successful trial is simply one in which an animal recognizes itself in a mirror—is thought to be a basic building block of theory of mind development. Rhesus monkeys have also been shown to realize when they remember certain events and items, which is considered to be an instrumental building block in the formation of social relationships, as one must remember who owes him favors, who he can trust, and who he should avoid in order to prosper in the community. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3286366 | 2,116,654 |
730,215 | In the early 19th century Jean Baptiste Lamarck used fossils to argue for his theory of the transmutation of species. Fossil finds, and the emerging evidence that life had changed over time, fueled speculation on this topic during the next few decades. Robert Chambers used fossil evidence in his 1844 popular science book "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation", which advocated an evolutionary origin for the cosmos as well as for life on earth. Like Lamarck's theory it maintained that life had progressed from the simple to the complex. These early evolutionary ideas were widely discussed in scientific circles but were not accepted into the scientific mainstream. Many of the critics of transmutational ideas used fossil evidence in their arguments. In the same paper that coined the term dinosaur Richard Owen pointed out that dinosaurs were at least as sophisticated and complex as modern reptiles, which he claimed contradicted transmutational theories. Hugh Miller would make a similar argument, pointing out that the fossil fish found in the Old Red Sandstone formation were fully as complex as any later fish, and not the primitive forms alleged by "Vestiges". While these early evolutionary theories failed to become accepted as mainstream science, the debates over them would help pave the way for the acceptance of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection a few years later. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7991116 | 729,830 |
538,342 | In October 1666 two fishermen caught a huge female shark near the town of Livorno, and Ferdinando II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, ordered its head to be sent to Steensen. Steensen dissected the head and published his findings in 1667. He noted that the shark's teeth bore a striking resemblance to certain stony objects, found embedded within rock formations, that his learned contemporaries were calling "glossopetrae" or "tongue stones". Ancient authorities, such as the Roman author Pliny the Elder, in his "Naturalis Historia", had suggested that these stones fell from the sky or from the Moon. Others were of the opinion, also following ancient authors, that fossils naturally grew in the rocks. Steensen's contemporary Athanasius Kircher, for example, attributed fossils to a "lapidifying virtue diffused through the whole body of the geocosm", considered an inherent characteristic of the earth – an Aristotelian approach. Fabio Colonna, however, had already shown by burning the material to show that "glossopetrae" were organic matter (limestone) rather than soil minerals, in his treatise "De glossopetris dissertatio" published in 1616. Steensen added to Colonna's theory a discussion on the differences in composition between glossopetrae and living sharks' teeth, arguing that the chemical composition of fossils could be altered without changing their form, using the contemporary corpuscular theory of matter. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=69641 | 538,063 |
2,147,277 | The China–Brazil Earth Resources Satellites (CBERS) programme embraces a family of remote-sensing satellites built jointly by Brazil and China which provide coverage of the world's land areas. CBERS-1 functioned from October 1999 to July 2003, CBERS-2 from October 2003 to June 2008 and CBERS-2B from September 2007 to May 2010. CBERS-3 was launched in 2011 and CBERS-4 in 2014. CBERS-3 and CBERS-4 are each equipped with four cameras with bands in visible, near-infrared, middle and thermal infrared Brazil and China share the responsibility for, and cost of, building the satellites. In Brazil, the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) designs half of the subsystems and contracts them to the Brazilian space industry. As of 2010, the Brazilian participation in the programme amounted to a total cost of about US$500 million, with 60% of investment taking the form of industrial contracts. Data obtained from the CBERS satellites are released within a free and open data policy. From 2004 to 2010, more than 1.5 million images were delivered to users in Brazil, Latin America and China. These images have applications in forestry and agriculture assessment, urban management and geological mapping. Brazil uses the images to survey deforestation in Amazonia and to assess land use associated with cash crops such as sugarcane and soybeans and with large-scale cattle ranching. China and Brazil have agreed on a joint strategy for facilitating international access to remotesensing data in Africa. Since 2012, African ground stations in South Africa, the Canary Islands, Egypt, and Gabonhave been receiving CBERS data which they are entitled to share. The CBERS programme thus enables Brazil and China to contribute to global environmental policy-making. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=53042476 | 2,146,046 |
73,695 | Wiles worked on that task for six years in near-total secrecy, covering up his efforts by releasing prior work in small segments as separate papers and confiding only in his wife. His initial study suggested proof by induction, and he based his initial work and first significant breakthrough on Galois theory before switching to an attempt to extend horizontal Iwasawa theory for the inductive argument around 1990–91 when it seemed that there was no existing approach adequate to the problem. However, by mid-1991, Iwasawa theory also seemed to not be reaching the central issues in the problem. In response, he approached colleagues to seek out any hints of cutting-edge research and new techniques, and discovered an Euler system recently developed by Victor Kolyvagin and Matthias Flach that seemed "tailor made" for the inductive part of his proof. Wiles studied and extended this approach, which worked. Since his work relied extensively on this approach, which was new to mathematics and to Wiles, in January 1993 he asked his Princeton colleague, Nick Katz, to help him check his reasoning for subtle errors. Their conclusion at the time was that the techniques Wiles used seemed to work correctly. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19021953 | 73,668 |
379,847 | In March 1945, Operation Starvation began in earnest, using 160 of LeMay's B-29 Superfortress bombers to attack Japan's inner zone. Almost half of the mines were the US-built Mark 25 model, carrying of explosives and weighing about . Other mines used included the smaller Mark 26. Fifteen B-29s were lost while 293 Japanese merchant ships were sunk or damaged. Twelve thousand aerial mines were laid, a significant barrier to Japan's access to outside resources. Prince Fumimaro Konoe said after the war that the aerial mining by B-29s had been "equally as effective as the B-29 attacks on Japanese industry at the closing stages of the war when all food supplies and critical material were prevented from reaching the Japanese home islands." The United States Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific War) concluded that it would have been more efficient to combine the United States's effective anti-shipping submarine effort with land- and carrier-based air power to strike harder against merchant shipping and begin a more extensive aerial mining campaign earlier in the war. Survey analysts projected that this would have starved Japan, forcing an earlier end to the war. After the war, Dr. Johnson looked at the Japan inner zone shipping results, comparing the total economic cost of submarine-delivered mines versus air-dropped mines and found that, though 1 in 12 submarine mines connected with the enemy as opposed to 1 in 21 for aircraft mines, the aerial mining operation was about ten times less expensive per enemy ton sunk. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22102 | 379,652 |
1,066,977 | In simplest terms, a potential energy surface or PES is a mathematical or graphical representation of the relation between energy of a molecule and its geometry. The methods for describing the potential energy are broken down into a classical mechanics interpretation (molecular mechanics) and a quantum mechanical interpretation. In the quantum mechanical interpretation an exact expression for energy can be obtained for any molecule derived from quantum principles (although an infinite basis set may be required) but ab initio calculations/methods will often use approximations to reduce computational cost. Molecular mechanics is empirically based and potential energy is described as a function of component terms that correspond to individual potential functions such as torsion, stretches, bends, Van der Waals energies, electrostatics and cross terms. Each component potential function is fit to experimental data or properties predicted by "ab initio" calculations. Molecular mechanics is useful in predicting equilibrium geometries and transition states as well as relative conformational stability. As a reaction occurs the atoms of the molecules involved will generally undergo some change in spatial orientation through internal motion as well as its electronic environment. Distortions in the geometric parameters result in a deviation from the equilibrium geometry (local energy minima). These changes in geometry of a molecule or interactions between molecules are dynamic processes which call for understanding all the forces operating within the system. Since these forces can be mathematically derived as first derivative of potential energy with respect to a displacement, it makes sense to map the potential energy of the system as a function of geometric parameters , , and so on. The potential energy at given values of the geometric parameters is represented as a hyper-surface (when ) or a surface (when ). Mathematically, it can be written as | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14149235 | 1,066,423 |
1,155,351 | Effective bone substitute materials should exhibit good mechanical strength along with adequate bioactivity. Bioactivity, which is often gauged in terms of dissolution rates and the formation of a mineral layer on the implant surface in-vivo, can be enhanced in biomaterials, in particular hydroxyapatite, by modifying the composition and structure by doping. As an alternative to hydroxyaptatite systems, Chitosan composites have been thoroughly studied as one material to use for artificial bone. Chitosan by itself can be easily modified into complex shapes that include porous structures, making it suitable for cell growth and osteoconduction. In addition, chitosan scaffolds are biocompatible and biodegradable, but have low toughness, and the material itself is not osteoconductive. Hydroxyapatite, on the other hand, features excellent biocompatibility but is hindered by its brittle nature. When implemented with hydroxyapatite as a composite, both the toughness and osteoconductivity significantly improve, making the composite a viable option for material for artificial bone. Chitosan can also be used with carbon nanotubes, which have a high Young's modulus (1.0–1.8 TPa), tensile strength (30–200 GPa), elongation at break (10–30%), and aspect ratio (>1,000). Carbon nanotubes are very small in size, chemically and structurally stable, and bioactive. The composite formed by carbon nanotubes and chitosan greatly improves the toughness of chitosan. Nanostructured artificial nacre is another option for creating artificial bone. Natural nacre is composed of an arrangement of organic and inorganic layers similar to brick and mortar. This along with the ionic crosslinking of tightly folded molecules allow nacre to have high strength and toughness. Artificial nacre that mimicked both the structure and the effect of the ionic bonds had a tensile strength similar to natural nacre as well as an ultimate Young's modulus similar to lamellar bone. From a mechanical standpoint, this material would be a viable option for artificial bone. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23035006 | 1,154,741 |
220,448 | In the early 19th century, uranium ore was recovered as a byproduct of mining in Saxony, Bohemia, and Cornwall. The first deliberate mining of radioactive ores took place in Joachimsthal, a silver-mining city now in the Czech Republic and origin of the word T(h)aler and from there dollar. Marie Skłodowska-Curie used pitchblende ore from Joachimsthal to isolate the element radium, a decay product of uranium. This discovery earned her her first Nobel Prize and represents an important step in the history of nuclear physics. Until World War II, uranium was mined primarily for its radium content; some carnotite deposits were mined primarily for the vanadium content. Sources for radium, contained in the uranium ore, were sought for use as luminous paint for watch dials and other instruments, as well as for health-related applications, some of which in retrospect were certainly harmful and some of which must be regarded as nuclear quackery even from a contemporary standpoint. Given that the half life of is almost 2.8 million times longer than that of , tons of uranium had to be processed to derive a few grams of radium, leaving large amounts of uranium with little economic uses. The byproduct uranium was used mostly as a yellow pigment. Ferrouranium started to be used by the Central Powers of World War I as a substitute for materials they could no longer import due to the British naval blockade. At the time both sides of the Ore Mountains were contained in territory controlled by the Central Powers, as the northern flank belonged to the German Empire whereas the southern flank belonged to Austria-Hungary. Given that uranium was mostly seen as a "waste product" in radium-mining at the time, a plentiful supply was available even without scaling up mining. While radium has legitimate evidence based applications in nuclear medicine, the availability of other radionuclides with more desirable properties has all but eliminated the market for radium. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4913827 | 220,339 |
1,727,158 | The Voltec drivetrain was initially demonstrated as E-Flex in the 2007 Chevrolet Volt concept vehicle that appeared in the North American International Auto Show which introduced the E-Flex drive system as an attempt to standardize many components of possible future electrically propelled vehicles, and to allow multiple interchangeable electricity-generating systems. The initial design as envisioned in the Volt combines an electric motor and lithium-ion battery plug-in system with a small engine (1.4 liter) powered by gasoline linked to a generator. The initial production Volt was propelled by an electric motor with a peak output of . Ordinarily, the Volt charged while at home overnight (plug-in hybrid-mode) through a charging port. A full charge reportedly takes 10-12 hours from a standard North American 120 V, 15 A household outlet, or 4 hours from a 240 V 15 A SAE J1772 electrical vehicle supply. The Refreshed 2016 Volt featured a 1.5L I4 engine generator that runs on regular, rather than premium gasoline, and an upgraded battery pack giving about 52 miles per charge vs. the 1st generation's 41 . | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15112871 | 1,726,184 |
942,666 | When electric motors started to become common in the early 20th century, many cone-head lathes were converted to electric power. At the same time the state of the art in gear and bearing practice was advancing to the point that manufacturers began to make fully geared headstocks, using gearboxes analogous to automobile transmissions to obtain various spindle speeds and feed rates while transmitting the higher amounts of power needed to take full advantage of high-speed steel tools. Cutting tools evolved once again, with the introduction of man-made carbides, and became widely introduced to general industry in the 1970s. Early carbides were attached to toolholders by brazing them into a machined 'nest' in the tool holders. Later designs allowed tips to be replaceable and multi faceted, allowing them to be reused. Carbides tolerate much higher machining speeds without wearing. This has led to machining times shortening, and therefore production growing. The demand for faster and more powerful lathes controlled the direction of lathe development. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2551777 | 942,164 |
1,838,118 | The Society of the Natural Sciences was established in 1850, under the patronage of Prince Henry, the newly appointed Governor of Luxembourg representing Grand Duke William III. The society's primary aim was the promotion of the natural sciences and natural history to the general population. To achieve this, the government put at the society's disposal a section of the city Athenaeum, now the National Library. Opening its doors in 1854, this area hosted a number of cabinets displaying fossil specimens, spread across three rooms. After almost four decades of this arrangement, pressure for display area caused the museum to move into its own premises, at the Vauban Barracks in Pfaffenthal, in 1892. However, these were criticised for being unattractive to visitors, hence undermining the museum's attempts to promote natural history to the general public.In 1922, the museum moved once again. he new site was the Old Gendarmerie, on the Fishmarket, in the historic heart of Luxembourg City, which the museum shared with the National Museum of History and Art. Purchased by the government, the building, along with a neighbouring house, were initially unsuitable for the housing of the museum, and the state embarked upon a renovation programme, during which time, the collections were closed to the general public, causing much public anger. The renovations had almost been completed by the outbreak of the Second World War, but the German occupation caused the museum to move again temporarily to protect its collections. Despite the war, the building in Fishmarket was virtually undamaged, allowing the museum to re-occupy the premises immediately. In 1946, a temporary installation was opened, marking the museum's return to its original purpose, thirty-four years after its closure. By 1952, the last room had been opened, marking a return to normal operation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8593995 | 1,837,069 |
804,587 | For last few years NewSpace Research & Technologies already started developing systems such as CATS Infinity. In 2017, Boeing helped in validating the UAV and was impressed by the design and technological advancement of Infinity in the field of aerospace engineering. The first flight of the system designed for high altitude pseudo satellite (HAPS) role was planned from 2019. It is a solar powered high altitude drone with an endurance level as far as 3 months at a cruising altitude of , weighing 500 kg. Infinity is designed to be equipped with terrain mapping camera and will have the capability of producing airborne real time cueing hyperspectral enhanced reconnaissance for deep strike aerial missions inside enemy territory. With a wingspan of 50 meters, the drone uses multiple ultra-lightweight electric motors that generates a speed of 90 to 100 kilometer per hour. New Space is working on high-density rechargeable Lithium-Sulphur batteries that will help constantly power the system for longer duration. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=66820762 | 804,158 |
973,460 | LEGO Mindstorms was released on 1 September 1998 at a retail price of $199. The entire production run (of between 60-100 thousand units) sold out within 3 months. Despite being aimed towards children, the kit quickly found an audience with adults and hackers of all ages; Lego company surveys had determined that seventy percent of Lego Mindstorms Hobbyists were adults. Shortly following the product's launch, hobbyists began sharing reverse-engineered versions of the RCX brick's Microcode and Firmware on the internet, leading to the development of alternative programming languages for the RCX such as "Not Quite C" (NQC) and alternative operating systems for the brick like legOS. The Lego Group was surprised by the products embrace by adult hobbyists, and was not sure how to respond to the sharing of proprietary code. The Mindstorms team would determine that the embrace of the product by the hacking community proved that the product was worth developing; In order to foster this burgeoning community, an official forum was established on the Lego website and a "right to hack" clause was added to end user license agreement of the Lego Mindstorms software. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=198856 | 972,950 |
1,193,706 | The rapid progress made by Pakistan in the IT and telecom sector during 2000–2002, under Professor Atta-ur-Rahman as Federal Minister, led to the spread of internet from 29 cities in the year 2000 to 1,000 cities, towns and villages by 2002, and the spread of fiber from 40 cities to 400 cities in this period. The first IT policy and implementation strategy was approved under the leadership of Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman, then Federal Minister of Science & technology, in August 2000 which laid the foundations of the development of this sector The internet prices were reduced sharply from $87,000 per month for a 2 MB line to only $3000 per month and later to $90 per month. The mobile telephony boom also occurred under the leadership of Atta-ur-Rahman, and it began by the drastic lowering of prices, bringing in of competition (Ufone) and changing the system so that the person receiving a call was no longer required to pay any charges. A satellite was placed in space (Paksat 1) at a cost of only $4 million. These changes in the IT infra-structure proved invaluable for the Higher education sector. Pakistan Educational Research Network was set up in 2004 through which one of the finest digital libraries was established in universities. In 2002, few university libraries could subscribe to a handful of journals. Today every student in every public sector university has free access to over 20,000 international journals with back volumes and over 60,000 books from 250 international publishers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20722416 | 1,193,066 |
798,164 | Fiberglass (glass-reinforced plastic or GRP) is typically used for production boats because of its ability to reuse a female mould as the foundation for the shape of the boat. The resulting structure is strong in tension but often needs to be either laid up with many heavy layers of resin-saturated fiberglass or reinforced with wood or foam in order to provide stiffness. GRP hulls are largely free of corrosion though not normally fireproof. These can be solid fiberglass or of the sandwich (cored) type, in which a core of balsa, foam or similar material is applied after the outer layer of fiberglass is laid to the mould, but before the inner skin is laid. This is similar to the next type, composite, but is not usually classified as composite, since the core material in this case does not provide much additional strength. It does, however, increase stiffness, which means that less resin and fiberglass cloth can be used in order to save weight. Most fibreglass boats are currently made in an open mould, with fibreglass and resin applied by hand (hand-lay-up method). Some are now constructed by vacuum infusion where the fibres are laid out and resin is pulled into the mould by atmospheric pressure. This can produce stronger parts with more glass and less resin, but takes special materials and more technical knowledge. Older fibreglass boats before 1990 were often not constructed in controlled temperature buildings leading to the widespread problem of fibreglass pox, where seawater seeped through small holes and caused delamination. The name comes from the multitude of surface pits in the outer gelcoat layer which resembles smallpox. Sometimes the problem was caused by atmospheric moisture being trapped in the layup during construction in humid weather. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=499365 | 797,739 |
830,635 | The ultraviolet light from an excimer laser is well absorbed by biological matter and organic compounds. Rather than burning or cutting material, the excimer laser adds enough energy to disrupt the molecular bonds of the surface tissue, which effectively disintegrates into the air in a tightly controlled manner through ablation rather than burning. Thus excimer lasers have the useful property that they can remove exceptionally fine layers of surface material with almost no heating or change to the remainder of the material which is left intact. These properties make excimer lasers well suited to precision micromachining organic material (including certain polymers and plastics), or delicate surgeries such as eye surgery LASIK. In 1980–1983, Rangaswamy Srinivasan, Samuel Blum and James J. Wynne at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center observed the effect of the ultraviolet excimer laser on biological materials. Intrigued, they investigated further, finding that the laser made clean, precise cuts that would be ideal for delicate surgeries. This resulted in a fundamental patent and Srinivasan, Blum and Wynne were elected to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2012, the team members were honored with National Medal of Technology and Innovation by the President Barack Obama for their work related to the excimer laser. Subsequent work introduced the excimer laser for use in angioplasty. Xenon chloride (308 nm) excimer lasers can also treat a variety of dermatological conditions including psoriasis, vitiligo, atopic dermatitis, alopecia areata and leukoderma. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=581704 | 830,187 |
481,017 | Since then, the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) has been working with a range of stakeholders on V2X. In 2012, a pre-deployment project was implemented in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 2800 vehicles covering cars, motorcycles, buses and HGV of different brands took part using equipment by different manufacturers. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) saw this model deployment as proof that road safety could be improved and that WAVE standard technology was interoperable. In August 2014, NHTSA published a report arguing vehicle-to-vehicle technology was technically proven as ready for deployment. In April 2014 it was reported that U.S. regulators were close to approving V2V standards for the U.S. market. On 20 August 2014 the NHTSA published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) in the Federal Register, arguing that the safety benefits of V2X communication could only be achieved, if a significant part of the vehicles fleet was equipped. Because of the lacking immediate benefit for early adopters the NHTSA proposed a mandatory introduction. On 25 June 2015, the US House of Representatives held a hearing on the matter, where again the NHTSA, as well as other stakeholders argued the case for V2X. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6206730 | 480,773 |
2,001,612 | In the 1950s described an operation using the gracilis muscle from the inner thigh and wrapping it around the anus to function as a new anal sphincter (neosphincter). Non dynamic graciloplasty was not particularly successful because the gracilis is mostly composed of type II, fast-twitch, fatiguable muscle fibres, whereas the sphincter ideally needs to be able to automatically contract for long periods. A neurostimulation device with an impulse generator can be implanted to adapt the muscle to prolonged contraction (dynamic graciloplasty). Over time, the muscle becomes mostly composed of type I, slow twitch, fatigue resistant fibres. The patient uses an external magnetic programming device to deactivate the electrical stimulation, relaxing the muscular contraction and enabling defecation at a voluntary time. Dynamic graciloplasty may be indicated for patients with a completely destroyed anal sphincter or a torn sphincter with a large gap between both ends that is not amenable to repair. The procedure involves detachment of the gracilis from the leg, preserving both its blood supply and innervation. The muscle is then moved to wrap around the anal canal completely, and also attached to the periosteum of the inferior ramus of the pubic bone. Various arrangements are described, depending upon the length of the gracilis. The implanted stimulator electrode is placed intramuscularly (within the muscle), very close to the gracilis nerve, and the impulse generator is placed subcutaneously (under the skin). The success rate of the operation is between 40 and 60%, and varies with surgeon experience. The complication rate is high, (infections 28%, device problems 15%, and | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38075591 | 2,000,465 |
786,870 | In September 2009, the "Army Times" and "Marine Corps Times" published reports that US Army researchers have begun the process of designing a version of the Abrams that will carry the M1A3 label. According to the reports, the Army is seeking to reduce the weight of the vehicle to approximately 60 tons from its current operational weight of roughly 75 tons. Additionally, the M1A3 may incorporate a new generation of advanced networking capabilities and enhanced armor protection. Other improvements are to include a lighter 120 mm gun, added road wheels with improved suspension, a more durable track, lighter armor, long-range precision armaments, and infrared camera and laser detectors. A new internal computer system is also planned, with current cabling replaced by fiber-optic cables that can reduce weight by two tons. The Army currently aimed to build prototypes by 2014 and to begin to field the first combat-ready M1A3s by 2017, however due to financial shortcomings and delays, there has yet to be a single tank produced (To the public's knowledge.) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25079265 | 786,447 |
504,929 | Developed from 2020 to 2021 by a team of US Air Force development groups and industry partners, Rapid Dragon has all of its capabilities self-contained on its disposable drop pallet; allowing a standard military cargo plane to be used at any time as a standoff strategic bomber before reverting back to regular transport missions. For example, a C-130 could launch 12 JASSM cruise missiles from a safe distance of 1000 to 1900 kilometers from target with the use of two Rapid Dragon pallets. The larger C-17 could accommodate 5 Rapid Dragon pallets, each carrying 9 missiles for a mission, with a total payload of 45 missiles with 500kg warheads. In a test over the Gulf of Mexico on December 16, 2021, an armed Rapid Dragon received target data from a distant command and control node in flight, used the data to target its armed JASSM, was airdropped from the aircraft, and successfully deployed its payloads with the live missile destroying its naval target. The other 3 bays of the 4 pack palette had ballast rounds with the same shape and weight in order to test the system's method of preventing missile releases from conflicting with each other. To maintain consistent stability during drops, these non-munition ballast rounds will continue to be used for missions requiring fewer missiles than the module's full capacity. The cargo plane, an MC-130J, was flown by an Air Force Special Operations Command operational flight crew and carried a 4 pack version of the Rapid Dragon missile module. The airdrop crew treated the load as a standard supply drop with the pallet's Rapid Dragon's control unit autonomously receiving command and control data to be used for programming the JASSM's targeting data. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=71379304 | 504,667 |
1,505,647 | As genome sequencing costs dropped steeply over the 2000s, acquiring enough markers on enough subjects for reliable estimates using very distantly related individuals became possible. An early application of the method to humans came with Visscher et al. 2006/2007, which used SNP markers to estimate the actual relatedness of siblings and estimate heritability from the direct genetics. In humans, unlike the original animal/plant applications, relatedness is usually known with high confidence in the 'wild population', and the benefit of GCTA is connected more to avoiding assumptions of classic behavioral genetics designs and verifying their results, and partitioning heritability by SNP class and chromosomes. The first use of GCTA proper in humans was published in 2010, finding 45% of variance in human height can be explained by the included SNPs. (Large GWASes on height have since confirmed the estimate.) The GCTA algorithm was then described and a software implementation published in 2011. It has since been used to study a wide variety of biological, medical, psychiatric, and psychological traits in humans, and inspired many variant approaches. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50613151 | 1,504,801 |
1,178,033 | In 2009 North Korea announced its intention to build an indigenous experimental light water reactor (LWR) and the uranium enrichment technology to provide its nuclear fuel. In 2010 a 2,000 gas centrifuge uranium enrichment plant to produce low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel began operating, and construction started on the experimental 25 to 30 MWe LWR, with a target operation date for the reactor of 2012. In November 2011, satellite imagery indicated that the LWR construction was progressing rapidly, with the concrete structures largely completed. The LWR is being built on the site of the demolished cooling tower of the experimental Magnox reactor. Following the building of this experimental LWR, North Korea intends to build larger LWRs for electricity generation. Initial estimates were that the reactor would be put into operation in 2013, but the reactor was not externally complete until 2016. In 2017, several activities were noted involving construction, dam was built to provide sufficient amount of water for cooling system, switchyard and connections to transmission line were made along with facilities presumably used for maintenance and repair. Activity that suggests components were being transferred to the building were noted too. In 2018, it was believed that the preliminary testing of the reactor had started and that the reactor would begin to operate 2018 or 2019. The reactor is linked to power grid with an expected output is 25 to 30 megawatts, which is enough to supply electricity for about 50,000 inhabitants. However, there are no clear indications - such as steam from the generator building - that the LWR has commenced operation as of August 30, 2021. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=507777 | 1,177,409 |
992,846 | Nutting ordered an initial production run of 1,500 units of "Computer Space", an optimistic decision given that a hit arcade game at the time would sell around 2,000 units, though a handful had reached 10,000. Reception to the game from distributors was mixed. While some were excited by the game, others felt it confusing and would amount to nothing more than a passing fad at best. By spring 1972 the game had sold over 1,000 units, and according to Bushnell in 1976 ended up selling between 1,300 and 1,500 units. While this was a commercial success, making over , it was a disappointment to Nutting, which had been hoping for a large-scale success like "Computer Quiz". The game's relative lack of success was attributed to the complexity of its controls and a steep learning curve, which pushed away customers used to less complex games. Bushnell noted that the locations in which the game did well, like the Dutch Goose playtest location, were generally located near university campuses; the general market for coin-operated games, however, was in working-class bars, where the patrons were less interested in deciphering a complicated game. In the documentary "Video Game Invasion: The History of a Global Obsession", Bushnell explained, "Sure, I loved it, and all my friends loved it, but all my friends were engineers. It was a little too complicated for the guy with the beer in the bar." Bushnell has also stated that part of the difficulty lay in the novelty of the game; he said that even a few years later the controls and gameplay would have been more understandable to players who would have seen other video games by then. Conversely, Bushnell and Dabney have said that the game's novelty was also part of its appeal to players—most people had never seen a television screen displaying images being controlled by a person in front of it, rather than displaying a broadcast from a remote television station. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=292879 | 992,329 |
147,985 | Nanoparticles present possible dangers, both medically and environmentally. Most of these are due to the high surface to volume ratio, which can make the particles very reactive or catalytic. They are also thought to aggregate on phospholipid bilayers and pass through cell membranes in organisms, and their interactions with biological systems are relatively unknown. However, it is unlikely the particles would enter the cell nucleus, Golgi complex, endoplasmic reticulum or other internal cellular components due to the particle size and intercellular agglomeration. A recent study looking at the effects of ZnO nanoparticles on human immune cells has found varying levels of susceptibility to cytotoxicity. There are concerns that pharmaceutical companies, seeking regulatory approval for nano-reformulations of existing medicines, are relying on safety data produced during clinical studies of the earlier, pre-reformulation version of the medicine. This could result in regulatory bodies, such as the FDA, missing new side effects that are specific to the nano-reformulation. However considerable research has demonstrated that zinc nanoparticles are not absorbed into the bloodstream in vivo. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1234517 | 147,926 |
310,343 | The first shipment of Panzer I's was brought under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma in "Gruppe Thoma" (also referred to as "Panzergruppe Drohne"). Gruppe Thoma formed part of Gruppe Imker, the ground formations of the German Condor Legion, who fought on the side of Franco's Nationalists. Between July and October, a rapid Nationalist advance from Seville to Toledo placed them in position to take the Spanish capital, Madrid. The Nationalist advance and the fall of the town of Illescas to Nationalist armies on 18 October 1936 caused the government of the Popular Front's Second Republic to flee to Barcelona and Valencia. In an attempt to gain crucial time for Madrid's defence, Soviet tanks were deployed south of the city under the command of Colonel Krivoshein before the end of October. At this time, several T-26 tanks under the command of Captain Paul Arman were thrown into a Republican counterattack directed towards the town of Torrejon de Velasco in an attempt to cut off the Nationalist advance north. This was the first tank battle in the Spanish Civil War. Despite initial success, poor communication between the Soviet Republican armor and Spanish Republican infantry caused the isolation of Captain Arman's force and the subsequent destruction of a number of tanks. This battle also marked the first use of the molotov cocktail against tanks. Ritter von Thoma's Panzer Is fought for the Nationalists only days later on 30 October and immediately experienced problems. As the Nationalist armor advanced, it was engaged by the Commune de Paris battalion, equipped with Soviet BA-10 armored cars. The 45-millimeter (1.7 in) gun in the BA-10 was more than sufficient to knock out the thinly armored Panzer I at ranges of over 500 meters (550 yd). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29073044 | 310,175 |
835,921 | The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 allocated US$1.3 billion for an expansion of the existing Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program over three years. While the program's first round of competition in 2010 focused on funding development of various human spaceflight technologies in the private sector as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, its second round, CCDev 2, focused on proposals for spacecraft capable of shuttling astronauts to and from the ISS. The competition for CCDev 2 funding concluded in April 2011, with Blue Origin receiving US$22 million to develop its biconic nose cone capsule concept, SpaceX receiving US$75 million to develop a crewed version of their Dragon spacecraft and a human-rated Falcon 9 launch vehicle, the Sierra Nevada Corporation receiving US$80 million to develop the Dream Chaser, and Boeing receiving US$92.3 million to develop the CST-100 Starliner. SpaceX had previously been contracted by NASA to operate ISS resupply flights with their Dragon spacecraft, as part of NASA's Commercial Resupply Services. The program's third round, Commercial Crew integrated Capability (CCiCap), aimed to financially support the development of winning proposals over 21 months through to May 2014, in preparation for crewed missions to the ISS within five years. Despite winning awards in CCDev 1 and CCDev 2, Blue Origin decided against competing in CCiCap, opting instead to rely on private investment from their owner, Jeff Bezos, to continue development on crewed spaceflight. The competition for CCiCap funding ended in August 2012, with US$212.5 million allocated to Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser, US$440 million allocated to SpaceX's Crew Dragon, and US$460 million allocated to Boeing's Starliner. While Alliant Techsystems's integrated Liberty launch vehicle and spacecraft was a finalist, it was rejected due to concerns about the lack of detail in Alliant Techsystems's proposal. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=64072812 | 835,472 |
1,258,926 | In a location where the imbalancing effects of adiabatic advection are acting to drive upward motion (where formula_47 in Eq. 1), the inertia of the geostrophic wind field (that is, its propensity to carry on forward) is creating a demand for decreasing thickness formula_48 in order for thermal wind balance to continue to hold. For instance, when there is an approaching upper-level cyclone or trough above the level in question, the part of formula_5 attributable to the first term in Eq. 1 is upward motion needed to create the increasingly cool air column that is required hypsometrically under the falling heights. That adiabatic reasoning must be supplemented by an appreciation of feedbacks from flow-dependent heating, such as latent heat release. If latent heat is released as air cools, then an additional upward motion will be required based on Eq. (9) to counteract its effect, in order to still create the necessary cool core. Another way to think about such a feedback is to consider an effective static stability that is smaller in saturated air than in unsaturated air, although a complication of that view is that latent heating mediated by convection need not be vertically local to the altitude where cooling by formula_5 triggers its formation. For this reason, retaining a separate Q term like Equation (9) is a useful approach. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15618376 | 1,258,239 |
584,657 | The window of economic advantage in metal injection molded parts lies in complexity and volume for small-size parts. MIM materials are comparable to metal formed by competing methods, and final products are used in a broad range of industrial, commercial, medical, dental, firearms, aerospace, and automotive applications. Dimensional tolerances of ±0.3% are common and machining is required for closer tolerances. MIM can produce parts where it is difficult, or even impossible, to efficiently manufacture an item through other means of fabrication. Ideally, at least 75 dimensional specifications in a component of just 25 mm maximum size and 10 g mass is best – as for example required for watch cases, cellular telephone plugs, and laptop computer hinges. Increased costs for traditional manufacturing methods inherent to part complexity, such as internal/external threads, miniaturization, or identity marking, typically do not increase the cost in a MIM operation due to the flexibility of injection molding. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2793738 | 584,357 |
1,764,341 | The EAT was developed for a study examining possible sociocultural factors contributing to the increased prevalence of anorexia nervosa and other milder variants of the disorder. This original study examined groups of highly competitive dance students and fashion models, who by career choice must focus increased attention and control over their body shapes. The EAT was used as a standardized measure of disturbed "eating attitudes" typical of anorexia nervosa. The study showed that significantly more dance students and fashion models scored above a cutoff score compared to those in a female non-clinical sample of college women. These findings were seen as support for the theory that sociocultural factors, emphasizing thinness as a marker for beauty and success for women, play a role in the increased incidence of anorexia nervosa observed in the "Twiggy era" of the 1970s and 1980s. The sociocultural hypothesis does not seem controversial today, but in the early 1980s, there was almost no mention of culture as a possible contributing factor in eating disorders. In 1998, the EAT was adopted by the National Eating Disorder Screening program based on recognition of a need for screening large populations of college and high school students for the purpose of early identification of anorexia nervosa related symptoms. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10920058 | 1,763,348 |
1,370,729 | From 1937 Burnet was involved in a variety of scientific and public policy bodies, starting with a position on a government advisory council on polio. After he became the director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in 1944, he was considered a public figure and overcame shyness to become a good public speaker. He recognised the importance of co-operation with the media if the general public was to understand science and scientists, and his writings and lectures played an important part in the formulation of public attitudes and policy in Australia on a variety of biological topics. However, despite making many appearances on radio and television, he never became at ease with interviews and had to be selective with outreach engagements due to the many invitations he received, and tended to accept those that had the potential to promote the Institute. Over time, he began to increase his activism, as he felt more confident that he would be able to make an impact as his reputation grew, especially after winning the Nobel Prize, and even more so after his retirement from the directorship of the Institute. Although Burnet was not naturally outgoing, he saw it as the social responsibility of a scientific leader and scholar to publicly speak out and impart wisdom and foresight to the wider community. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=417493 | 1,369,973 |
1,238,239 | The earliest provisions for seismic resistance were the requirement to design for a lateral force equal to a proportion of the building weight (applied at each floor level). This approach was adopted in the appendix of the 1927 Uniform Building Code (UBC), which was used on the west coast of the United States. It later became clear that the dynamic properties of the structure affected the loads generated during an earthquake. In the Los Angeles County Building Code of 1943 a provision to vary the load based on the number of floor levels was adopted (based on research carried out at Caltech in collaboration with Stanford University and the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, which started in 1937). The concept of "response spectra" was developed in the 1930s, but it wasn't until 1952 that a joint committee of the San Francisco Section of the ASCE and the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California (SEAONC) proposed using the building period (the inverse of the frequency) to determine lateral forces. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1800557 | 1,237,573 |
2,074,353 | "Mycobacterium tuberculosis" (Mtb) is the etiologic agent of the disease tuberculosis, which kills approximately 1.4 million people each year. Mtb's arduous treatment regimen and the recent emergence of increasingly drug-resistant Mtb strains have given rise to an urgent need for the development of new anti-tubercular drugs. The mycobacterial proteasome, a large proteolytic complex is important for both Mtb virulence and resistance to the host's antimicrobial nitric oxide response, is a potential therapeutic target. Proteins can be targeted for proteasomal degradation in Mtb by the pupylation pathway, a process that is functionally analogous to eukaryotic ubiquitination. Pupylation centers around the small protein modifier Pup (prokaryotic ubiquitin-like protein), which is covalently ligated to a protein to target it for proteolysis. Despite advances in understanding of the Pup-proteasome system, no group has yet recapitulated robust degradation of a native substrate by the Mtb proteasome in vitro, implying that additional unknown factors are necessary for proteasomal activity. To search for such factors, researchers used a catalytically in active "proteasome trap" that stabilizes proteasomal interactions to identify novel proteasome-associated proteins, in 2014. PafE copurified with the proteasome trap in high abundance and co-occurs evolutionarily with the prokaryotic 20S core particle. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50781211 | 2,073,157 |
72,813 | Robert Sedgewick's PhD thesis in 1975 is considered a milestone in the study of Quicksort where he resolved many open problems related to the analysis of various pivot selection schemes including Samplesort, adaptive partitioning by Van Emden as well as derivation of expected number of comparisons and swaps. Jon Bentley and Doug McIlroy in 1993 incorporated various improvements for use in programming libraries, including a technique to deal with equal elements and a pivot scheme known as "pseudomedian of nine," where a sample of nine elements is divided into groups of three and then the median of the three medians from three groups is chosen. Bentley described another simpler and compact partitioning scheme in his book "Programming Pearls" that he attributed to Nico Lomuto. Later Bentley wrote that he used Hoare's version for years but never really understood it but Lomuto's version was simple enough to prove correct. Bentley described Quicksort as the "most beautiful code I had ever written" in the same essay. Lomuto's partition scheme was also popularized by the textbook "Introduction to Algorithms" although it is inferior to Hoare's scheme because it does three times more swaps on average and degrades to runtime when all elements are equal. McIlroy would further produce an"AntiQuicksort" () function in 1998, which consistently drives even his 1993 variant of Quicksort into quadratic behavior by producing adversarial data on-the-fly. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3268249 | 72,786 |
1,244,485 | Five pumping stations kept the mains pressurised, assisted by accumulators. The original station was at Falcon Wharf, Bankside, but this was replaced by four stations at Wapping, Rotherhithe, Grosvenor Road in Pimlico and City Road in Clerkenwell. A fifth station at East India Docks was originally operated by the Port of London Authority, but was taken over and connected to the system. The stations used steam engines until 1953, when Grosvenor Road station was converted to use electric motors, and following the success of this project, the other four were also converted. The electric motors allowed much smaller accumulators to be used, since they were then only controlling the pressure and flow, rather than storing power. While the network supplied lifts, cranes and dockgates, it also powered the cabaret platform at the Savoy Hotel, and from 1937, the 720-tonne three-section central floor at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre, which could be raised or lowered relative to the main floor to convert between a swimming pool and an exhibition hall. The London system contracted during the Second World War, due to the destruction of customers' machinery and premises. Following the hostilities, large areas of London were reconstructed, and the re-routing of pressure mains was much more difficult than the provision of an electric supply, so that by 1954 the number of machines had fallen to 4,286. The company was wound up in 1977. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4488634 | 1,243,812 |
1,342,964 | Gramicidin S was discovered by Russian microbiologist Georgyi Frantsevitch Gause and his wife Maria Brazhnikova in 1942. Within the year Gramicidin S was being used in Soviet military hospitals to treat infection and eventually found usage at the front lines of combat by 1946. Gause was awarded the Stalin Prize for Medicine for his discovery in 1946. In 1944, Gramicidin S was sent by the Ministry of Health of the USSR to Great Britain via the International Red Cross in a collaborative effort to establish the exact structure. English chemist Richard Synge proved that the compound was an original antibiotic and a polypeptide using paper chromatography. He would later go on to receive the Nobel Prize for his work in chromatography. The crystal structure was finally established by Dorothy Hodgkin and Gerhard Schmidt; Margaret Thatcher worked for a term in 1947 with Gerhard Schmidt on the antibiotic Gramicidin S, as an undergraduate research project. The importance of Gramicidin S and antibiotic research in general was so great that Gause was not persecuted during the period of Lysenkoism in the USSR, while many of his colleagues were. Indeed, it was his need for developing new strains to mass-produce antibiotics that allowed politically sanctioned collaborations with geneticists like Joseph Rapoport and Alexander Malinovsky, who would both actively participate in the downfall of Lysenkoism. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2747566 | 1,342,228 |
1,962,451 | Using funds secured by Mohl, Botta conducted extensive excavations at Nineveh. Because the ruins of the ancient city were hidden very deep below layers upon layers of later settlement and agricultural activities, Botta never reached them. At the same time as the excavation project at Nineveh failed to conjure up anything of note, the ruins of Dur-Sharrukin were rediscovered by chance. After Botta heard from the locals in 1843 that some finds had been made at the village of Khorsabad, 20 kilometers to the northeast, Botta transferred his efforts there. Through excavations headed by Botta and his associate Victor Place, the ruins of Sargon's ancient palace were quickly discovered. Botta did not know what he had found given that cuneiform had not yet been decoded, and simply referred to the site as a "monument" in his writings. The great works of art found at Dur-Sharrukin included great reliefs and stone "lamassus". The discovery was swiftly communicated in scholarly circles by Mohl in Paris. In 1847, the first ever exhibition on Assyrian sculptures was held in the Louvre, composed of finds from Sargon's palace. After returning to Europe in the late 1840s, Botta compiled an elaborate report on the findings, complete with numerous drawings of the reliefs made by the artist Eugène Flandin. The report, published in 1849, showcased the majesty of Assyrian art and architecture and garnered exceptional interest. Under Botta and Place, virtually the entire palace was excavated, as were portions of the surrounding town. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=70245846 | 1,961,323 |
746,543 | The tight limitations of the "Washington Naval Treaty" raised many challenges and required difficult compromises if they were to be met. To avoid the class being outgunned by the new ships of foreign navies, especially as by the mid-1930s the Treaty had been renounced by Japan and Italy, Churchill wrote to the First Lord of the Admiralty in 1936, voicing strong objections to the proposed armament of ten 14-inch guns. His proposal was for nine 16-inch guns. However, when completed "King George V" mounted ten guns. They were mounted in one Mark II twin turret forward and two Mark III quadruple turrets, one forward and one aft. They could be elevated 40 degrees and depressed 3 degrees. Training arcs were: "A" turret, 286 degrees; "B" turret, 270 degrees and "Y" turret, 270 degrees. Training and elevating was achieved through a hydraulic drive, with rates of two and eight degrees per second, respectively. A full gun broadside weighed 15,950 pounds; a salvo could be fired every 30 seconds. The quadruple turrets weighed 1,582 tons, the twin turret 915 tons. The turrets were designed by the Vickers Armstrong's Elswick Works, but sets of each type of equipment were manufactured by Vickers Armstrongs in Barrow. A considerable amount of design effort was expended to make the turrets as flashtight as possible. This complicated the mechanical design of the turrets, particularly the quadruple mountings. Due to insufficient clearances and slightly distorted link mechanisms, failures in the intricate safety interlocks in the loading sequence for antiflash precautions caused jams during drills and practice firing. During the summer of 1941 the "King George V"-class battleships had their main armament turrets and turret linkages modified to correct the operational faults revealed during "Bismarck"s final operation. HMS "King George V" used an Admiralty Fire Control Table Mark IX to control her main armament. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=485616 | 746,148 |
109,709 | As per the latest official notification released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, AIIMS, JIPMER -Puducherry, PGIMER -Chandigarh & all INIs (Institutes of National Importance) were directed to not to conduct any Undergraduate entrance exams from 2020 onwards. Government has said that from 2020 session onwards, all such undergraduate admissions would be taken up only through a single national level examination NEET-UG conducted by NTA (National Testing Agency). Many field experts however criticized this exam unification, specifically with respect to AIIMS (New Delhi), citing the reason that the level of questions in AIIMS-UG entrance exams (for both MBBS & BSc Nursing courses separately) used to be of such a higher & deep logical-conceptual thinking capabilities, that they eventually served a greater advantage for selecting the most desirable students for such scientific courses. And that was something really crucial for the main objectives for which AIIMS (New Delhi) was established, which are cutting-edge research, medical innovations and to demonstrate high standards of medical education to all medical colleges and allied institutions in India. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=61795854 | 109,664 |
986,698 | More than 50,000 students have graduated since its first class of 9 students in 1885 and about 300 of today's active duty admirals, and generals and senior executive service leaders are alumni. The college's joint professional military education (JPME) programs prepare leaders for the challenges of operational and strategic leadership over the remainder of their careers as decision makers and problem solvers. More than 1,900 students have graduated from the Maritime Staff Operators Course, 200 from the Executive Level OLW Course, and more than 450 U.S. and international flag and general officers from the Flag Course. Just as its educational programs have expanded in depth and reach, so have the research and analysis efforts conducted by its Center for Naval Warfare Studies. Through war games, conferences, workshops, and publications, its research arm provides direct curriculum support to its educational programs and focused, task-driven analysis for fleet customers and government agencies across the national security spectrum. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=534468 | 986,183 |
772,488 | The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has published a list of yearly technical system targets for on-board hydrogen storage for light-duty fuel cell vehicles which guide researchers in the field (5.5 wt %/40 g L by 2017; 7.5 wt %/70 g L ultimate). Materials with high porosity and high surface area such as MOFs have been designed and synthesized in an effort to meet these targets. These adsorptive materials generally work via physical adsorption rather than chemisorption due to the large HOMO-LUMO gap and low HOMO energy level of molecular hydrogen. A benchmark material to this end is MOF-177 which was found to store hydrogen at 7.5 wt % with a volumetric capacity of 32 g L at 77 K and 70 bar. MOF-177 consists of [ZnO] clusters interconnected by 1,3,5-benzebetribenzoate organic linkers and has a measured BET surface area of 4630 m g. Another exemplary material is PCN-61 which exhibits a hydrogen uptake of 6.24 wt % and 42.5 g L at 35 bar and 77 K and 2.25 wt % at atmospheric pressure. PCN-61 consists of [Cu] paddle-wheel units connected through 5,5,5-benzene-1,3,5-triyltris(1-ethynyl-2-isophthalate) organic linkers and has a measured BET surface area of 3000 m g. Despite these promising MOF examples, the classes of synthetic porous materials with the highest performance for practical hydrogen storage are activated carbon and covalent organic frameworks (COFs). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9821563 | 772,073 |
992,841 | In January 1971, Bushnell and Dabney founded Syzygy Engineering as an official company, now with a cash amount of US$350 each. They approached Ampex and a prior manager of Dabney's with their prototype, but found no interest. The major arcade game manufacturers were based out of Chicago at the time, limiting their ability to demonstrate their idea to an existing firm. During a dentist appointment in early 1971, Bushnell told the dentist about the game and that he was looking for a manufacturer; the dentist in turn referred him to another patient of his, Dave Ralstin, the sales manager for Nutting Associates in Mountain View, California. Nutting had been founded in 1966 on the basis of "Computer Quiz", an analog quiz arcade game, and by 1971 was looking for another hit game. After meeting with Bushnell, Nutting felt that his game was the potential success it needed to replace falling sales of "Computer Quiz" updates, as quiz games were growing less popular and it did not have an engineering team that could design successful new games. Nutting not only agreed to manufacture the game but also hired Bushnell as their chief engineer. Furthermore, Syzygy Engineering retained ownership of the game, even though Nutting agreed to give Syzygy space to build the prototype and to manufacture the game once complete. Syzygy would be paid five percent of each cabinet sold. Bushnell negotiated to work on "Cosmic Combat" outside of normal working hours until it went into production in order to keep it conceptually separate from his new job at Nutting, so as to prevent Nutting from later claiming ownership due to paying for time or materials spent building the game. Dabney remained at Ampex until the summer, when he resigned to join Bushnell at Nutting, as he was initially unwilling to leave the stable job he had worked at for ten years without more proof that the game could be a success. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=292879 | 992,324 |
1,685,848 | Provenance (from the French provenir, "to come from"), is the place of origin or earliest known history of something. In geology (specifically, in sedimentary petrology), the term provenance deals with the question where sediments originate from. The purpose of sedimentary provenance studies is to reconstruct and to interpret the history of sediment from parent rocks at a source area to detritus at a burial place. The ultimate goal of provenance studies is to investigate the characteristics of a source area by analyzing the composition and texture of sediments. The studies of provenance involve the following aspects: "(1) the source(s) of the particles that make up the rocks, (2) the erosion and transport mechanisms that moved the particles from source areas to depositional sites, (3) the depositional setting and depositional processes responsible for sedimentation of the particles (the depositional environment), and (4) the physical and chemical conditions of the burial environment and diagenetic changes that occur in siliciclastic sediment during burial and uplift". Provenance studies are conducted to investigate many scientific questions, for example, the growth history of continental crust, collision time of Indian and Asian plates, Asian monsoon intensity, and Himalayan exhumation Meanwhile, the provenance methods are widely used in the oil and gas industry. "Relations between provenance and basin are important for hydrocarbon exploration because sand frameworks of contrasting detrital compositions respond differently to diagenesis, and thus display different trends of porosity reduction with depth of burial." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=44007076 | 1,684,902 |
1,210,388 | Despite their effectiveness, chemical fire extinguishing agents are not without disadvantages. In the early 20th century, carbon tetrachloride was extensively used as a dry cleaning solvent, a refrigerant and as a fire extinguishing agent. In time, it was found carbon tetrachloride could lead to severe health effects. From the mid-1960s Halon 1301 was the industry standard for protecting high-value assets from the threat of fire. Halon 1301 had many benefits as a fire suppression agent; it is fast-acting, safe for assets and required minimal storage space. Halon 1301's major drawbacks are that it depletes atmospheric ozone and is potentially harmful to humans. Since 1987, some 191 nations have signed The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer. The Protocol is an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of a number of substances believed to be responsible for ozone depletion. Among these were halogenated hydrocarbons often used in fire suppression. As a result, manufacturers have focused on alternatives to Halon 1301 and Halon 1211 (halogenated hydrocarbons). A number of countries have also taken steps to mandate the removal of installed Halon systems. Most notably these include Germany and Australia, the first two countries in the world to require this action. In both of these countries complete removal of installed Halon systems has been completed except for a very few essential-use applications. The European Union is currently undergoing a similar mandated removal of installed Halon systems. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16292798 | 1,209,741 |
1,007,521 | As previously mentioned, chronic alcoholism is known to be associated with significant brain damage. The pronounced shrinkage in the frontal lobes and cerebellum of alcoholics correlates with serious impairments in executive and psychomotor functions. However, longitudinal studies suggest that some of these brain damages are partially reversible with abstinence"." In response to drinking cessation, bodies of gray and white matter including the cerebral cortex, the limbic system (amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus), the cerebellum, and the brainstem all showed a general increase in brain volume. Similarly, ventricular enlargement—which reflects atrophy of surrounding brain regions—is also reduced in abstinent alcoholics. Following extended sobriety, the volume of the lateral and third ventricles was decreased, and abstainers showed an improvement in working memory and balance. Finally, evidence for the recovery of brain volume with continued sobriety is supported by the improvement in neuropsychological performance. Compared to the control participants, abstinent alcoholic patients scored significantly better on tests measuring cognitive, sensory, and motor functions including abstract reasoning, memory, visuospatial ability, and gait and balance. That being said, while short-term abstinence suffices to produce structural and functional recovery, some alcohol-induced brain changes may persist even after long-term sobriety. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1732125 | 1,007,001 |
1,204,103 | "S. pneumoniae" is normally found in the nose and throat of 5–10% of healthy adults and 20–40% of healthy children. It can be found in higher amounts in certain environments, especially those where people are spending a great deal of time in close proximity to each other (day-care centers, military barracks). It attaches to nasopharyngeal cells through interaction of bacterial surface adhesins. This normal colonization can become infectious if the organisms are carried into areas such as the Eustachian tube or nasal sinuses where it can cause otitis media and sinusitis, respectively. Pneumonia occurs if the organisms are inhaled into the lungs and not cleared (again, viral infection, or smoking-induced ciliary paralysis might be contributing factors). The organism's polysaccharide capsule makes it resistant to phagocytosis and if there is no pre-existing anticapsular antibody alveolar macrophages cannot adequately kill the pneumococci. The organism spreads to the blood stream (where it can cause bacteremia) and is carried to the meninges, joint spaces, bones, and peritoneal cavity, and may result in meningitis, brain abscess, septic arthritis, or osteomyelitis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20246683 | 1,203,458 |
128,683 | From the 1930s to the late 1950s, works by Vening-Meinesz, Holmes, Umbgrove, and numerous others outlined concepts that were close or nearly identical to modern plate tectonics theory. In particular, the English geologist Arthur Holmes proposed in 1920 that plate junctions might lie beneath the sea, and in 1928 that convection currents within the mantle might be the driving force. Holmes' views were particularly influential: in his bestselling textbook, "Principles of Physical Geology," he included a chapter on continental drift, proposing that Earth's mantle contained convection cells which dissipated radioactive heat and moved the crust at the surface. Holmes' proposal resolved the phase disequilibrium objection (the underlying fluid was kept from solidifying by radioactive heating from the core). However, scientific communication in the '30 and '40s was inhibited by World War II, and the theory still required work to avoid foundering on the orogeny and isostasy objections. Worse, the most viable forms of the theory predicted the existence of convection cell boundaries reaching deep into the earth, that had yet to be observed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6056 | 128,631 |
260,689 | The player administers a space program operated by Kerbals, a species of small green humanoids, who have constructed a spaceport called the Kerbal Space Center (KSC) on their home planet, Kerbin. From this space center players can create rockets, aircraft, spaceplanes, rovers, and other craft from a provided set of components. Once built, the craft can be launched by players from the KSC launch pad or runway in an attempt to complete player-set or game-directed missions while avoiding partial or catastrophic failure (such as lack of fuel or structural failure). Players control their spacecraft in three dimensions with little assistance other than a Stability Assist System (SAS) to keep their rocket oriented. Provided it maintains sufficient thrust and fuel, a spacecraft can enter orbit or even travel to other celestial bodies. To visualize vehicle trajectory, the player must switch into map mode; this displays the orbit or trajectory of the player vehicle, as well as the position and trajectory of other spacecraft and planetary bodies. These planets and other vehicles can be targeted to view information needed for rendezvous and docking, such as ascending and descending nodes, target direction, and relative velocity to the target. While in map mode, players can also access maneuver nodes to plan out trajectory changes in advance, which helps in accurately planning burns. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33134040 | 260,554 |
670,192 | The Bible names some half-dozen star groups, but authorities differ widely as to their identity. In a striking passage, the Prophet Amos glorifies the Creator as "Him that made Kimah and Kesil", rendered in the Vulgate as Arcturus and Orion. Now Kimah certainly does not mean Arcturus. The word, which occurs twice in the Book of Job (; ), is treated in the Septuagint version as equivalent to the Pleiades. This, also, is the meaning given to it in the Talmud (TB Brachot 58b) and throughout Syrian literature; it is supported by etymological evidences, the Hebrew term being obviously related to the Arabic root "kum" (accumulate), and the Assyrian "kamu" (to bind); while the "chains of Kimah", referred to in the sacred text, not inaptly figure the coercive power imparting unity to a multiple object. The associated constellation Kesil is doubtless no other than Orion. Yet, in the first of the passages in Job where it figures, the Septuagint gives Herper; in the second, the Vulgate quite irrelevantly inserts Arcturus; Carsten Niebuhr (1733–1815) understood Kesil to mean Sirius; Thomas Hyde (1636–1703) held that it indicated Canopus. Now "kesil" signifies in Hebrew "impious", adjectives expressive of the stupid criminality which belongs to the legendary character of giants; and the stars of Orion irresistibly suggest a huge figure striding across the sky. The Arabs accordingly named the constellation "Al-gebbar", "the giant", the Syriac equivalent being "Gabbara" in old Syriac version of the Bible known as "Peshitta". We may then safely admit that Kimah and Kesil did actually designate the Pleiades and Orion. But further interpretations are considerably more obscure. The Jewish Biblical Commentator Rashi says that Kimah emits cold, and that is what makes winter so cold. However, Kesil emits heat preventing the winter from getting too cold. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47321321 | 669,842 |
157,872 | The development of the APCI interface for LC-MS started with Horning and collaborators in the early 1973. However, its commercial application was introduced at the beginning of the 1990s after Henion and collaborators improved the LC-APCI-MS interface in 1986. The APCI ion source/ interface can be used to analyze small, neutral, relatively non-polar, and thermally stable molecules (e.g., steroids, lipids, and fat soluble vitamins). These compounds are not well ionized using ESI. In addition, APCI can also handle mobile phase streams containing buffering agents. The liquid from the LC system is pumped through a capillary and there is also nebulization at the tip, where a corona discharge takes place. First, the ionizing gas surrounding the interface and the mobile phase solvent are subject to chemical ionization at the ion source. Later, these ions react with the analyte and transfer their charge. The sample ions then pass through small orifice skimmers by means of or ion-focusing lenses. Once inside the high vacuum region, the ions are subject to mass analysis. This interface can be operated in positive and negative charge modes and singly-charged ions are mainly produced. APCI ion source can also handle flow rates between 500 and 2000 μl/min and it can be directly connected to conventional 4.6 mm ID columns. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2378378 | 157,800 |
926,516 | Bussard's study also attracted the attention of John von Neumann, who formed an ad hoc committee for nuclear propulsion of missiles. Mark Mills, the assistant director at Livermore was its chairman, and its other members were Norris Bradbury from LASL; Edward Teller and Herbert York from Livermore; Abe Silverstein, the associate director of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory, a federal agency that conducted aeronautical research; and Allen F. Donovan from Ramo-Wooldridge, an aerospace corporation. After hearing input on several designs, the Mills committee recommended in March 1955 that development proceed, with the aim of producing a nuclear rocket upper stage for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). York created a new division at Livermore, and Bradbury created a new one called N Division at LASL under the leadership of Raemer Schreiber, to pursue it. In March 1956, the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP), the agency responsible for the management of the national nuclear weapons stockpile, recommended allocating $100 million to the nuclear rocket engine project over three years for the two laboratories to conduct feasibility studies and the construction of test facilities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=712716 | 926,030 |
1,828,777 | FDTD modeling has helped establish the fundamental physics foundation of Prof. Backman's spectroscopic microscopy technique for early detection of human cancers. Work has progressed from the early FDTD studies reported in Dec. 2008 in "Proc. National Academy of Sciences USA" to the analytical and FDTD modeling advances reported in July 2013 in "Physical Review Letters". The latter paper rigorously shows that spectroscopic microscopy permits determining the nature of deeply subdiffraction three-dimensional refractive-index fluctuations of a linear, label-free dielectric medium in the far zone. Using visible light, this means that statistical fluctuations of intracellular media as fine as 20 nm can be characterized. The resulting wide range of distance scales that can be characterized within a cell may permit correlations to be developed appropriate for field-effect detection of a wide variety of early-stage cancers with clinically useful sensitivity and specificity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6071706 | 1,827,737 |
532,702 | Star trackers, which require high sensitivity, may become confused by sunlight reflected from the spacecraft, or by exhaust gas plumes from the spacecraft thrusters (either sunlight reflection or contamination of the star tracker window). Star trackers are also susceptible to a variety of errors (low spatial frequency, high spatial frequency, temporal, ...) in addition to a variety of optical sources of error (spherical aberration, chromatic aberration, etc.). There are also many potential sources of confusion for the star identification algorithm (planets, comets, supernovae, the bimodal character of the point spread function for adjacent stars, other nearby satellites, point-source light pollution from large cities on Earth, ...). There are roughly 57 bright navigational stars in common use. However, for more complex missions, entire star field databases are used to determine spacecraft orientation. A typical star catalog for high-fidelity attitude determination is originated from a standard base catalog (for example from the United States Naval Observatory) and then filtered to remove problematic stars, for example due to apparent magnitude variability, color index uncertainty, or a location within the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram implying unreliability. These types of star catalogs can have thousands of stars stored in memory on board the spacecraft, or else processed using tools at the ground station and then uploaded. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3472310 | 532,423 |
292,985 | A small PV system is capable of providing enough AC electricity to power a single home, or an isolated device in the form of AC or DC electric. Military and civilian Earth observation satellites, street lights, construction and traffic signs, electric cars, solar-powered tents, and electric aircraft may contain integrated photovoltaic systems to provide a primary or auxiliary power source in the form of AC or DC power, depending on the design and power demands. In 2013, rooftop systems accounted for 60 percent of worldwide installations. However, there is a trend away from rooftop and towards utility-scale PV systems, as the focus of new PV installations is also shifting from Europe to countries in the sunbelt region of the planet where opposition to ground-mounted solar farms is less accentuated. Portable and mobile PV systems provide electrical power independent of utility connections, for "off the grid" operation. Such systems are so commonly used on recreational vehicles and boats that there are retailers specializing in these applications and products specifically targeted to them. Since recreational vehicles (RV) normally carry batteries and operate lighting and other systems on nominally 12-volt DC power, RV systems normally operate in a voltage range that can charge 12-volt batteries directly, so addition of a PV system requires only panels, a charge controller, and wiring. Solar systems on recreation vehicles are usually constrained in wattage by the physical size of the RV's roof space. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15677755 | 292,827 |
1,486,671 | Lt Dolores "Dee" O'Hara (born 1935) and Lt Shirley Sineath were the first nurses assigned to work with the seven Project Mercury astronauts. Lieutenant O'Hara was the official staff nurse while Lieutenant Sineath was assigned as a surgical nurse on the recovery team.[5] Before her career with NASA, O’Hara worked as a registered nurse in the labor and delivery ward of Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, FL. In 1959, she was called into the office of Colonel Knauf (the commander of the hospital). Knauf offered her a job as a nurse for Project Mercury and she accepted. Part of the reason O'Hara was selected for the team was so that she could gain the trust of the astronauts. NASA figured if the astronauts trusted their nurses, they would inform them when they were feeling ill—something they wouldn't tell their flight surgeons for fear that their flight would be grounded. In an interview conducted in 2002, O’Hara described her job as being to "go aboard recovery ships…be available [to] set up little hospitals aboard ships, should there be a problem upon landing" and to "put together these medical kits and everything that people on board the ships would need to treat an injured astronaut." Additionally, it was O'Hara's responsibility to perform the pre-flight physicals, which included height, weight, temperatures and blood pressure measurements.[3] Following her career as a nurse to astronauts, O'Hara transferred to a role as manager of the Human Research Facility at Ames Research center in 1974, where she worked until her retirement in 1997. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33958232 | 1,485,833 |
124,125 | Popper was interested in the overall learning process in science, to quasi-induction, which he also called the "path of science". However, Popper did not show much interest in these reasoning patterns, which he globally referred to as psychologism. He did not deny the possibility of some kind of psychological explanation for the learning process, especially when psychology is seen as an extension of biology, but he felt that these biological explanations were not within the scope of epistemology. Popper proposed an evolutionary mechanism to explain the success of science, which is much in line with Johnson-Laird's view that "induction is just something that animals, including human beings, do to make life possible", but Popper did not consider it a part of his epistemology. He wrote that his interest was mainly in the "logic" of science and that epistemology should be concerned with logical aspects only. Instead of asking why science succeeds he considered the pragmatic problem of induction. This problem is not how to justify a theory or what is the global mechanism for the success of science but only what methodology do we use to pick one theory among theories that are already conjectured. His methodological answer to the latter question is that we pick the theory that is the most tested with the available technology: "the one, which in the light of our "critical discussion", appears to be the best so far". By his own account, because only a negative approach was supported by logic, Popper adopted a negative methodology. The purpose of his methodology is to prevent "the policy of immunizing our theories against refutation". It also supports some "dogmatic attitude" in defending theories against criticism, because this allows the process to be more complete. This negative view of science was much criticized and not only by Johnson-Laird. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11283 | 124,074 |
1,449,731 | Together with the Royal Australian Army Dental Corps and the Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps, the RAAMC is responsible for providing the Australian Army's health capability. The corps is tasked with providing the Army with a range of medical services, ranging from pre hospital care including emergency battlefield care, initial wound surgery, post operative care, rehabilitation, and preventive and aviation medical support. Regular and reserve soldiers and officers of the RAAMC perform a variety of functions, with graduates of the 18-month Regular first appointment course at the Royal Military College, Duntroon and its modularised Reserve equivalent, filling command, leadership and management roles as general service officers tasked with facilitating the efficient co-ordination, administration and management of specialist troops including medical officers, pathologists, radiographers, operating theatre technicians, paramedics, preventive medicine operators, and medical technicians. Personnel within these trades are posted to a variety of units including close, general and health support battalions that are located around the country and provide support to the three regular Army manoeuvre brigades – the 1st, 3rd and 7th Brigades – and the Reserve 2nd Division. Deployed combat formations based around infantry battalions, or armoured, artillery and engineer regiments include RAAMC personnel, who are provided by detaching individuals or sub-units as required. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1880461 | 1,448,915 |
500,506 | In July 2012, several media outlets reported Flynn as saying that women had, for the first time in a century, surpassed men on IQ tests based on a study he conducted in 2010. However, Flynn announced that the media had seriously distorted his results and went beyond his findings, revealing that he had instead discovered that the differences between men and women on one particular test, the Raven's Progressive Matrices, had become minimal in five modernised nations (whereas before 1982 women had scored significantly lower). Women, he argued, caught up with men in these nations as a result of exposure to modernity by entering the professions and being allowed greater educational access. Therefore, he said, when a total account of the Flynn effect is considered, women's closing the gap had moved them up in IQ slightly faster than men as a result. Flynn had previously documented this same trend among ethnic minorities and other disadvantaged groups. According to Flynn, the sexes are "dead equal on cognitive factors ... in their ability to deal with using logic on the abstract problems of Raven's", but that temperamental differences in the way boys and girls take the tests likely account for the tiny variations in mean scores, rather than any difference in intellectual ability. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16573 | 500,249 |
290,268 | Another potential devastating effect of nuclear war is termed nuclear winter. The idea become popularized in mainstream culture during the 1980s, when Richard P. Turco, Owen Toon, Thomas P. Ackerman, James B. Pollack and Carl Sagan collaborated and produced a scientific study which suggested the Earth's weather and climate can be severely impacted by nuclear war. The main idea is that once a conflict begins and the aggressors start detonating nuclear weapons, the explosions will eject small particles from the Earth's surface into the atmosphere as well as nuclear particles. It's also assumed that fires will break out and become widespread, similar to what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the end of WWII, which will cause soot and other harmful particles to also be introduced into the atmosphere. Once these harmful particles are lofted, strong upper level winds in the troposphere can transport them thousands of kilometers and can end up transporting nuclear fallout and also alter the Earth's radiation budget. Once enough small particles are in the atmosphere, they can act as cloud condensation nuclei which will cause global cloud coverage to increase which in turn blocks incoming solar insolation and starts a global cooling period. This is not unlike one of the leading theories about the extinction of most dinosaur species, in that a large explosion ejected small particulate matter into the atmosphere and resulted in a global catastrophe characterized by cooler temperatures, acid rain, and the KT Layer. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4380587 | 290,111 |
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