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74,954 | A fast Fourier transform (FFT) is an algorithm that computes the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of a sequence, or its inverse (IDFT). Fourier analysis converts a signal from its original domain (often time or space) to a representation in the frequency domain and vice versa. The DFT is obtained by decomposing a sequence of values into components of different frequencies. This operation is useful in many fields, but computing it directly from the definition is often too slow to be practical. An FFT rapidly computes such transformations by factorizing the DFT matrix into a product of sparse (mostly zero) factors. As a result, it manages to reduce the complexity of computing the DFT from formula_1, which arises if one simply applies the definition of DFT, to formula_2, where formula_3 is the data size. The difference in speed can be enormous, especially for long data sets where "N" may be in the thousands or millions. In the presence of round-off error, many FFT algorithms are much more accurate than evaluating the DFT definition directly or indirectly. There are many different FFT algorithms based on a wide range of published theories, from simple complex-number arithmetic to group theory and number theory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11512 | 74,927 |
1,437,766 | When looking at data related to individual molecules, one usually can construct propagators, and jumping time probability density functions, of the first order, the second order and so on, whereas from bulk experiments, one usually obtains the decay of a correlation function. From the information contained in these unique functions (obtained from individual molecules), one can extract a relatively clear picture on the way the system behaves; e.g. its kinetic scheme, or its potential of activity, or its reduced dimensions form. In particular, one can construct (many properties of) the reaction pathway of an enzyme when monitoring the activity of an individual enzyme. Additionally, significant aspects regarding the analysis of single molecule data—such as fitting methods and tests for homogeneous populations—have been described by several authors. On the other hand, there are several issues with the analysis of single molecule data including construction of a low noise environment and insulated pipet tips, filtering some of the remaining unwanted components (noise) found in recordings, and the length of time required for data analysis (pre-processing, unambiguous event detection, plotting data, fitting kinetic schemes, etc.). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2781940 | 1,436,957 |
931,595 | The zircons from the Western Australian Jack Hills returned an age of 4.404 billion years, interpreted to be the age of crystallization. These zircons also show another feature; their oxygen isotopic composition has been interpreted to indicate that more than 4.4 billion years ago there was already water on the surface of Earth. The importance and accuracy of these interpretations is currently the subject of scientific debate. It may be that the oxygen isotopes and other compositional features (the rare-earth elements) record more recent hydrothermal alteration of the zircons rather than the composition of the magma at the time of their original crystallization. In a paper published in the journal "Earth and Planetary Science Letters", a team of scientists suggest that rocky continents and liquid water existed at least 4.3 billion years ago and were subjected to heavy weathering by an acrid climate. Using an ion microprobe to analyze isotope ratios of the element lithium in zircons from the Jack Hills in Western Australia, and comparing these chemical fingerprints to lithium compositions in zircons from continental crust and primitive rocks similar to Earth's mantle, they found evidence that the young planet already had the beginnings of continents, relatively cool temperatures and liquid water by the time the Australian zircons formed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4087668 | 931,103 |
1,131,229 | Before SHG was used for imaging, the first demonstration of SHG was performed in 1961 by P. A. Franken, G. Weinreich, C. W. Peters, and A. E. Hill at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor using a quartz sample. In 1968, SHG from interfaces was discovered by Bloembergen and has since been used as a tool for characterizing surfaces and probing interface dynamics. In 1971, Fine and Hansen reported the first observation of SHG from biological tissue samples. In 1974, Hellwarth and Christensen first reported the integration of SHG and microscopy by imaging SHG signals from polycrystalline ZnSe. In 1977, Colin Sheppard imaged various SHG crystals with a scanning optical microscope. The first biological imaging experiments were done by Freund and Deutsch in 1986 to study the orientation of collagen fibers in rat tail tendon. In 1993, Lewis examined the second-harmonic response of styryl dyes in electric fields. He also showed work on imaging live cells. In 2006, Goro Mizutani group developed a non-scanning SHG microscope that significantly shortens the time required for observation of large samples, even if the two-photons wide-field microscope was published in 1996 and could have been used to detect SHG. The non-scanning SHG microscope was used for observation of plant starch, megamolecule, spider silk and so on. In 2010 SHG was extended to whole-animal in vivo imaging. In 2019, SHG applications widened when it was applied to the use of selectively imaging agrochemicals directly on leaf surfaces to provide a way to evaluate the effectiveness of pesticides. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12641022 | 1,130,640 |
2,045,657 | In the early 1960s the HMDC, originally known as the Government Data Center, was established as part of a national movement for all universities to collect, consolidate, and share social science research data. This movement eventually became known as the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the largest collection of social science data in the world. In the early days associates of the Government Data Center were responsible for managing the distribution of ICPSR tapes housed in Harvard's Office of Information Technology. In 1987 all holdings within the facility were transferred to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Department of Government (located in Harvard's Littauer building) and in recognition of the widespread use of the facility's data by Harvard scholars the name was changed to the Harvard Data Center. At this time some of the earliest local computer networks, which contained statistical software and computing resources, were established; in addition, associates began transitioning the facility's holdings from tape to more modern media. In the early 1990s associates of the Harvard Data Center played a major role in a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that established a research training program in political economy for various educational institutions. Later on, in 1996, facility associates entered into an agreement with MIT to extend services to MIT users, thus changing the name to the Harvard-MIT Data Center (HMDC). In 1999 HMDC associates were awarded a multimillion-dollar grant by the NSF and five other funding agencies to create an open-source, digital library for quantitative research data; associates of the facility continue to receive additional grants and funding support from vendors, such as the NSF and the Library of Congress, to continue their research and development projects. In 2005, after the facility was transferred into Harvard's new Center for Government and International Studies complex, the HMDC became a founding member of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS), and in 2007 HMDC associates launched their new online data center, the Dataverse Network repository. Today, the HMDC continues to serve the social science community by providing technology support for research, education, and administration. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40346741 | 2,044,476 |
298,580 | In the early 18th century, the disease was seen as similar to smallpox, due to its analogous symptoms. The personal physician of the pope, Giovanni Maria Lancisi, recommended the destruction of all infected and exposed animals. This policy was not very popular and was used only sparingly in the first part of the century. Later, it was used successfully in several countries, although it was sometimes seen as too costly or drastic, and depended on a strong central authority to be effective (which was notably lacking in the Dutch Republic). Because of these downsides, numerous attempts were made to inoculate animals against the disease. These attempts met with varying success, but the procedure was not widely used and was no longer practiced at all in 19th-century Western or Central Europe. Rinderpest was an immense problem, but inoculation was not a valid solution. In many cases, it caused too many losses. Even more importantly, it perpetuated the circulation of the virus in the cattle population. The pioneers of inoculation did contribute significantly to knowledge about infectious diseases. Their experiments confirmed the concepts of those who saw infectious diseases as caused by specific agents, and were the first to recognize maternally derived immunity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=501921 | 298,420 |
88,604 | In the book "Feeding Everyone No Matter What", under the worst-case scenario predictions of nuclear winter, the authors present various unconventional food possibilities. These include natural-gas-digesting bacteria, the most well known being Methylococcus capsulatus, that is presently used as a feed in fish farming; bark bread, a long-standing famine food utilizing the edible inner bark of trees and part of Scandinavian history during the Little Ice Age; increased fungiculture or mushrooms such as the honey fungi that grow directly on moist wood without sunlight; and variations of wood or cellulosic biofuel production, which typically already creates edible sugars/xylitol from inedible cellulose, as an intermediate product before the final step of alcohol generation. One of the book's authors, mechanical engineer David Denkenberger, states that mushrooms could theoretically feed everyone for three years. Seaweed, like mushrooms, can also grow in low-light conditions. Dandelions and tree needles could provide Vitamin C, and bacteria could provide Vitamin E. More conventional cold-weather crops such as potatoes might get sufficient sunlight at the equator to remain feasible. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22171 | 88,568 |
701,888 | Current remediation methods may vary, but expensive treatment costs persist. The cost efficiency of treatments can be increased through the use of models that are able to accurately predict ecosystem responses to various inputs; thus enabling restoration groups to determine the overall most effective treatment combination. Biotic indicators present within stream ecosystems impacted by valley fill (VF) activity and AMD are valuable assets to increase the cost efficiency of restoration efforts. Mayflies (Order Ephemeroptera) are abundant in streams in the Appalachian Mountain region. They are highly sensitive to water quality, as their immature forms require unpolluted water. VF and AMD are the leading causes of water chemistry and habitat alterations in this region, the driving factors limiting mayfly populations. Thus, they can be utilized as an effective indicator species to quantify restoration progress through modeling efforts focused on mountaintop mining driven changes in adjacent ecosystems. Effectively developed biotic response models can improve and refine restoration efforts by establishing target indicator species population goals and by enabling the monitoring and assessment of water chemistry and habitat changes impacting particular species. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1685995 | 701,523 |
1,905,635 | Several other advantages are associated with the use of non-linear absorption, i.e. high spatial resolution, enhanced penetration depth, improved background discrimination and reduced photodamage to living specimens. In addition, the fact that TPA transitions obey different selection rules than OPA (even-parity vs. odd-parity) leads to think that in chiral molecules ECD and TPCD should present different spectral features, thus making the two methods complementary. TPCD is very sensitive to small structural and conformational distortions of chiral molecules, and therefore, is potentially useful for the fundamental study of optically active molecules. Finally, TPCD has the potential to penetrate into the far-UV region, where important structural/conformational information is typically obscure to ECD. This would enable the discovery of new information about molecular systems of interest such as, peptides, biological macromolecules (allowing for a deeper understanding of diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's) and potential candidates for negative refractive index (for the developing of cloaking devices). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=41383199 | 1,904,540 |
1,306,037 | The initial suspicion was that the fiberglass fairing placed on top of the capsule to sit in place of the absent LES had broken loose and punctured the Atlas's LOX tank. NASA's Owen Maynard, who was involved in Mercury systems engineering, led the recovery of the MA-1 capsule from the sea floor (in which he performed a 30-foot free-dive to find one particular missing component of the capsule). He stated in an oral history interview that his post-flight calculations showed the skin of the launch vehicle just below the spacecraft would have buckled due to the combined drag, acceleration, and bending loads which exceeded the resisting tensile stress in the skin provided by internal pressure. Maynard recalled that "The problem of mating the Mercury capsule to the Atlas was far from being properly resolved at the time of MA-1." Based on that finding, NASA specified that future Mercury-Atlas launch vehicles add doublers to the skin structure in that area, and that future launch trajectories be shallowed to reduce pitch angle rate, to reduce the bending stress on the launch vehicle. In fact, Atlas 50D already had slightly thicker skin than Big Joe's booster (Atlas 10D) but only on the RP-1 tank while the LOX tank still had the standard thin-gauge Atlas ICBM skin. This failure mode did not recur on those subsequent launches. There were also suspicions that the lack of a launch escape system had negatively affected the booster's aerodynamic profile. Convair engineers had argued that including the LES was necessary both from an aerodynamic standpoint and for data-gathering purposes, but Mercury program officials ultimately ruled against it. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=728340 | 1,305,321 |
1,564,443 | In 2008, she became an associate professor, then a SNU Distinguished Fellow in 2010, and a full professor in 2013. Located in Seoul National University, she began working with the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in 2012 as the founding director of the Center for RNA Research. her lab focuses on RNA-mediated gene regulation research, specifically investigating post-transcriptional gene regulation mediated by microRNAs (miRNAs). The lab employs biochemistry, molecular biology, genetic, biophysical, and computational approaches. Research is focused on miRNAs, which are small non-coding RNAs involved in practically all working aspects of eukaryotic cells. Tight control of miRNA is vital to normal functioning cells. If dysregulated, miRNAs can often be linked to human diseases such as cancer. By focusing on the miRNA biogenesis, Dr. Kim's lab has made major contributions to the understanding of miRNAs are created and processed in animal cells. These studies can potentially open the doors to new forms of cancer treatment and stem cell engineering. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33971823 | 1,563,556 |
111,969 | The Scientific Revolution was enabled by advances in book production. Before the advent of the printing press, introduced in Europe in the 1440s by Johannes Gutenberg, there was no mass market on the continent for scientific treatises, as there had been for religious books. Printing decisively changed the way scientific knowledge was created, as well as how it was disseminated. It enabled accurate diagrams, maps, anatomical drawings, and representations of flora and fauna to be reproduced, and printing made scholarly books more widely accessible, allowing researchers to consult ancient texts freely and to compare their own observations with those of fellow scholars. Although printers' blunders still often resulted in the spread of false data (for instance, in Galileo Galilei's "Sidereus Nuncius" (The Starry Messenger), published in Venice in 1610, his telescopic images of the lunar surface mistakenly appeared back to front), the development of engraved metal plates allowed accurate visual information to be made permanent, a change from previously, when woodcut illustrations deteriorated through repetitive use. The ability to access previous scientific research meant that researchers did not have to always start from scratch in making sense of their own observational data. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29544 | 111,924 |
1,682,090 | Stadler was invited by a Hungarian count, Georg Festitics, to help organize a school of music in Keszthely near the Plattensee. The result, Stadler's 50-page "Musick Plan" of 1800, represents a thoughtful and organized side of Stadler one might not have suspected to exist (the original is preserved in the National Hungarian Library in Budapest). The document, based on a set of questions provided by the count, recommends a rigorous education, combining performance, music theory and composition with schooling in a broad range of subjects. Examples of Stadler's priorities include study of the violin, singing and piano (also requiring students to learn to tune a piano), a 'general education' (because otherwise one becomes a 'half thing'), as well as an understanding of the psychology of performance. He also has wise words on how to behave in the profession, suggesting instrumentalists 'not to drown out singers, not hold back or press forward in tempo, not publicly censure another's chance mistake, nor ridicule their colleagues'. A list of repertoire and theoretical texts is found at the end of the document, and includes mention of a forthcoming method for the clarinet, to be written by Stadler himself. The "Musick Plan" serves to habilitate Stadler's reputation, at least partially. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=219080 | 1,681,147 |
2,142,411 | Another former president of the American Economic Association, Georgescu-Roegen, also began to dissent from orthodox economics for reasons not dissimilar to Boulding. In his classic work, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, Georgescu-Roegen issued a call for the end of the circular flow diagrams used in mainstream thought and textbooks in which the production and circulation process are detached from the physical reality, the scale, of the planet's resources and pollution sinks. He called for greater attention to be given to the second law of thermodynamics – that it be treated as a cornerstone of the mainstream paradigm. Boulding can be seen as addressing this call. Once one considers the possibility that labor can be seen as an intermediate surrogate for more fundamental factors, like know-how, materials and energy, then it is a short step to treat (as Boulding sometimes does) capital as a surrogate for know-how and land as surrogate for material resources and the traditional factors of production, land, labor and capital, are easily rearticulated as know-how, energy and materials. If and when that sort of transformation in thought takes place, professional attention will immediately be focused on the throughput resulting from the production and consumption process. With the rising perception of environmental degradation and the unrelenting thrust of the environmental movement, there is every reason to expect the profession to include throughput as a centerpiece in the production process. Boulding's factors of production accomplish this task. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=872384 | 2,141,180 |
2,081,485 | In 1960, the library was moved to the former St. Joseph's Chapel, where it remained until the Folsom Library was built. In 1963, Amos Eaton hall was to be remodeled to house RPI’s department of mathematics. Dr. Richard G. Folsom speculated that the first phase in renovating it was initially expected to cost approximately $400,000. The National Science Foundation was to grant $142,000 of the total amount. The original cost of the building was $320,000. The initial plan for this renovation included making the above ground basement area to become a machine room and offices for graduate assistants. The first floor was for computing laboratory. The second floor was for the faculty offices as well as graduate assistants. It would also contain a conference lounge and research library. These renovations were in demand for the expanding enrollment for undergraduate and graduate students specifically in mathematics. The second phase of this renovation was to provide more offices, seminar rooms, as well as additional classrooms to the third and fourth floors. Harrison and Mero designed this remodeling that was to take place. In 1963, it was generally recognized as the “first to use the laboratory method in a regular course in science,” according to New Yorks Times Record. After renovation, the hall was opened on April 22, 1965 at 10 am. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7798741 | 2,080,285 |
116,087 | Two new promising thin film technologies are copper zinc tin sulfide (CuZnSnS or CZTS), zinc phosphide (ZnP) and single-walled carbon nano-tubes (SWCNT). These thin films are currently only produced in the lab but may be commercialized in the future. The manufacturing of CZTS and (ZnP) processes are expected to be similar to those of current thin film technologies of CIGS and CdTe, respectively. While the absorber layer of SWCNT PV is expected to be synthesized with CoMoCAT method. by Contrary to established thin films such as CIGS and CdTe, CZTS, ZnP, and SWCNT PVs are made from earth abundant, nontoxic materials and have the potential to produce more electricity annually than the current worldwide consumption. While CZTS and ZnP offer good promise for these reasons, the specific environmental implications of their commercial production are not yet known. Global warming potential of CZTS and ZnP were found 38 and 30 grams CO-eq/kWh while their corresponding EPBT were found 1.85 and 0.78 years, respectively. Overall, CdTe and ZnP have similar environmental impacts but can slightly outperform CIGS and CZTS. A study on environmental impacts of SWCNT PVs by Celik et al., including an existing 1% efficient device and a theoretical 28% efficient device, found that, compared to monocrystalline Si, the environmental impacts from 1% SWCNT was ∼18 times higher due mainly to the short lifetime of three years. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=652531 | 116,042 |
258,501 | Certification systems are important to the agriculture community and to consumers as these standards determine the sustainability of produce. Numerous sustainability standards and certification systems exist, including organic certification, Rainforest Alliance, Fair Trade, UTZ Certified, GlobalGAP, Bird Friendly, and the Common Code for the Coffee Community (4C). These standards specify rules that producers, manufacturers and traders need to follow so that the things they do, make, or grow do not hurt people and the environment. These standards are also known as Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) that are private standards that require products to meet specific economic, social or environmental sustainability metrics. The requirements can refer to product quality or attributes, but also to production and processing methods, as well as transportation. VSS are mostly designed and marketed by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or private firms and they are adopted by actors up and down the value chain, from farmers to retailers. Certifications and labels are used to signal the successful implementation of a VSS. According to the ITC standards map the mostly covered products by standards are agricultural products. Around 500 VSS today apply to key exports of many developing countries, such as coffee, tea, bananas, cocoa, palm oil, timber, cotton, and organic agri-foods. VSS are found to reduce eutrophication, water use, greenhouse gas emissions, and natural ecosystem conversion. And thus are considered as a potential tool for sustainable agriculture. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=216143 | 258,367 |
739,239 | QSTEM analysis can be achieved using commonplace software and programming languages, such as MatLab or Python, with the help of toolboxes and plug-ins that serve to expedite the process. This is analysis that can be performed virtually anywhere. Consequently, the largest roadblock is acquiring a high-resolution, aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope that can provide the images necessary to provide accurate quantification of structural properties at the atomic level. Most university research groups, for example, require permission to use such high-end electron microscopes at national lab facilities, which requires excessive time commitment. Universal challenges mainly involve becoming accustomed to the programming language desired and writing software that can tackle the very specific problems for a given material system. For example, one can imagine how a different analysis technique, and thus a separate image processing algorithm, is necessary for studying ideal cubic versus complex monoclinic structures. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1823144 | 738,847 |
1,654,405 | As of 2007, there is almost universal agreement in the astrophysics community that the long-duration bursts are associated with the deaths of massive stars in a specific kind of supernova-like event commonly referred to as a collapsar or hypernova. Very massive stars are able to fuse material in their centers all the way to iron, at which point a star cannot continue to generate energy by fusion and collapses, in this case, immediately forming a black hole. Matter from the star around the core rains down towards the center and (for rapidly rotating stars) swirls into a high-density accretion disk. The infall of this material into the black hole drives a pair of jets out along the rotational axis, where the matter density is much lower than in the accretion disk, towards the poles of the star at velocities approaching the speed of light, creating a relativistic shock wave at the front. If the star is not surrounded by a thick, diffuse hydrogen envelope, the jets' material can pummel all the way to the stellar surface. The leading shock actually accelerates as the density of the stellar matter it travels through decreases, and by the time it reaches the surface of the star it may be traveling with a Lorentz factor of 100 or higher (that is, a velocity of 0.9999 times the speed of light). Once it reaches the surface, the shock wave breaks out into space, with much of its energy released in the form of gamma-rays. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13640867 | 1,653,473 |
1,934,981 | The conservation-restoration of panel paintings involves preventive and treatment measures taken by paintings conservators to slow deterioration, preserve, and repair damage. Panel paintings consist of a wood support, a ground (linen or parchment sized with glues, resin, and gesso), and an image layer (encaustic, tempera, oil). They are typically constructed of two or more panels joined together by crossbeam braces which can separate due to age and material instability caused by fluctuations in relative humidity and temperature. These factors compromise structural integrity and can lead to warping and paint flaking. Because wood is particularly susceptible to pest damage, an IPM plan and regulation of the conditions in storage and display are essential. Past treatments that have fallen out of favor because they can cause permanent damage include transfer of the painting onto a new support, planing, and heavy cradling. Today's conservators often have to remediate damage from previous restoration efforts. Modern conservation-restoration techniques favor minimal intervention that accommodates wood's natural tendency to react to environmental changes. Treatments may include applying flexible battens to minimize deformation or simply leaving distortions alone, instead focusing on preventive care to preserve the artwork in its original state. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=53622622 | 1,933,873 |
1,499,073 | Members of the genus "Thermococcus" are typically irregularly shaped coccoid species, ranging in size from 0.6 to 2.0 μm in diameter. Some species of "Thermococcus" are immobile, and some species have motility, using flagella as their main mode of movement. These flagella typically exist at a specific pole of the organism. This movement has been seen at room or at high temperatures, depending on the specific organism. In some species, these microorganisms can aggregate and form white-gray plaques. Species under "Thermococcus" typically thrive at temperatures between 60 and 105 °C, either in the presence of black smokers (hydrothermal vents), or freshwater springs. Species in this genus are strictly anaerobes, and are thermophilic, found in a variety depths, such as in hydrothermal vents 2500m below the ocean surface, but also centimeters below the water surface in geothermal springs. These organisms thrive at pH levels of 5.6-7.9. Members of this genus have been found in many hydrothermal vent systems in the world, including from the seas of Japan, to off the coasts of California. Sodium Chloride salt is typically present in these locations at 1%-3% concentration, but is not a required substrate for these organisms, as one study showed "Thermococcus" members living in fresh hot water systems in New Zealand, but they do require a low concentration of lithium ions for growth. "Thermococcus" members are described as heterotrophic, chemotrophic, and are organotrophic sulfanogens; using elemental sulfur and carbon sources including amino acids, carbohydrates, and organic acids such as pyruvate. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12816678 | 1,498,229 |
1,772,864 | Thalamocortical dysrhythmia (TCD) is a proposed explanation for certain cognitive disorders. It occurs upon the disruption of normal gamma-band electrical activity between the cortex and thalamic neurons during awakened, conscious states. This disorder is associated with diseases and conditions such as neuropathic pain, tinnitus, and Parkinson's disease and is characterized by the presence of unusually low-frequency resonance in the thalamocortical system. TCD is associated with disruption of many brain functions including cognition, sensory perception, and motor control and occurs when thalamocortical neurons become inappropriately hyperpolarized, allowing T-type calcium channels to activate and the oscillatory properties of the thalamocortical neurons to change. A repeated burst of action potentials occurs at lower frequencies in the 4–10 Hz range. These bursts can be sustained by inhibition from the thalamic reticular nucleus and may cause an activation of cortical regions that are normally inhibited by gamma-band activity during resonance column formation. While the effect of the deviation from normal patterns of gamma oscillatory activity during conscious perception is not entirely settled, it is proposed that the phenomenon can be used to explain chronic pain in cases where there is no specific peripheral nerve damage. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14824490 | 1,771,867 |
1,965,858 | On 6 April 1917 the United States declared war on the "Imperial German Government" and the Coast Guard was placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Navy for the duration of the war by executive order signed by President Woodrow Wilson. Duties for "Unalga" did not change under Navy control initially and she left for her usual summer patrol work in Alaskan waters on 4 May. At the end of the summer cruise, she was assigned submarine tender duties with the Twelfth Naval District and home-ported at San Pedro, California, arriving 17 October. On 6 May 1918 she left Seattle for her usual Alaska patrol work, but in late May the captain was notified by radio to report to Unalaska to assist with an influenza epidemic. The crew tended eighty sick persons, distributed food, made coffins and buried the dead. In mid-June "Unalga" steamed to Bristol Bay and up the Nushagak River to Dillingham, Alaska providing medical services to the ill and burial details for the dead. By the end of June the epidemic had abated and "Unalga" resumed patrol work in the Gulf of Alaska. She returned to San Pedro and submarine tender duties on 17 October 1918. On 11 November 1918 the armistice ending World War I was concluded but Navy control of the Coast Guard did not end until 28 August 1919 when President Wilson signed an order returning the Coast Guard to Treasury Department control. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42183952 | 1,964,729 |
502,165 | The Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) is a conceptual fusion-powered spacecraft engine, named for its ability to produce thrust from fusion without going through an intermediary electricity-generating step. The DFD uses a novel magnetic confinement and heating system, fueled with a mixture of helium-3 () and deuterium (D or ), to produce a high specific power, variable thrust and specific impulse, and a low-radiation spacecraft propulsion system. Fusion happens when atomic nuclei, comprising one species in a hot (100 keV or 1,120,000,000 K) plasma, a collection of electrically charged particles that includes electrons and ions fuse together, releasing enormous amounts of energy. In the DFD system, the plasma is confined in a torus-like magnetic field inside of a linear solenoidal coil and is heated by a rotating magnetic field to fusion temperatures. Bremsstrahlung and synchrotron radiation emitted from the plasma are captured and converted to electricity for communications, spacecraft station-keeping, and maintaining the plasma's temperature. This design uses a specially shaped radio frequency (RF) "antenna" to heat the plasma. The design also includes a rechargeable battery or a deuterium-oxygen auxiliary power unit to startup or restart DFD. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=57934418 | 501,907 |
1,769,415 | Since the 1950s, the capital construction industry has been plagued by excessive growth and compartmentalization. There were frequent cost overruns and construction delays, and resources were overtaxed. Project directors often failed to predict accurately the need for such elements as transportation, raw materials, and energy. A large number of small factories were built, providing surplus capacity at the national level but with deficient economies of scale at the plant level. Poor cooperation among ministries and provinces resulted in unnecessary duplication. Because each area strove for self-sufficiency in all phases of construction, specialization suffered. Since the early years of the People's Republic, overinvestment in construction has been a persistent problem. Fiscal reforms in 1979 and 1980 exacerbated overinvestment by allowing local governments to keep a much greater percentage of the revenue from enterprises in their respective areas. Local governments could then use the retained earnings to invest in factories in their areas. These investments, falling outside the national economic plan, interfered with the central government's control of capital investment. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14189344 | 1,768,421 |
1,342,597 | At Imperial College London, Crisanti has established the technologies to eliminate the human malaria vector Anopheles gambiae. Crisanti's work exploits the biological properties of a class of selfish genetic elements (homing endonuclease) to develop a gene transfer technology. Using such technology, Crisanti has developed genetically manipulated mosquitoes producing a male-only progeny. In the future, further refinements of the technology may lead to the development of vector control tools based on the release of just a few genetically modified mosquitoes. Via natural breeding, the genes can effectively spread to large field mosquito populations, reducing malaria-spreading mosquito numbers in the wild and ultimately decreasing malaria incidence. In 2018, Crisanti and colleagues demonstrated that CRISPR/Cas9 can be programmed to attack a conserved region of the sex determination gene, "doublesex," which impairs female mosquito development and could spread effectively to 100% of a population in a few generations. This study represents the first time that researchers have been able to block the reproductive capacity of a complex organism in the laboratory using designer molecular approaches. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45492721 | 1,341,863 |
781,919 | Allostery is a direct and efficient means for regulation of biological macromolecule function, produced by the binding of a ligand at an allosteric site topographically distinct from the orthosteric site. Due to the often high receptor selectivity and lower target-based toxicity, allosteric regulation is also expected to play an increasing role in drug discovery and bioengineering. The AlloSteric Database (ASD) provides a central resource for the display, search and analysis of the structure, function and related annotation for allosteric molecules. Currently, ASD contains allosteric proteins from more than 100 species and modulators in three categories (activators, inhibitors, and regulators). Each protein is annotated with detailed description of allostery, biological process and related diseases, and each modulator with binding affinity, physicochemical properties and therapeutic area. Integrating the information of allosteric proteins in ASD should allow the prediction of allostery for unknown proteins, to be followed with experimental validation. In addition, modulators curated in ASD can be used to investigate potential allosteric targets for a query compound, and can help chemists to implement structure modifications for novel allosteric drug design. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=106256 | 781,500 |
411,131 | In physics, the term "theory" is generally used for a mathematical framework—derived from a small set of basic postulates (usually symmetries—like equality of locations in space or in time, or identity of electrons, etc.)—that is capable of producing experimental predictions for a given category of physical systems. A good example is classical electromagnetism, which encompasses results derived from gauge symmetry (sometimes called gauge invariance) in a form of a few equations called Maxwell's equations. The specific mathematical aspects of classical electromagnetic theory are termed "laws of electromagnetism", reflecting the level of consistent and reproducible evidence that supports them. Within electromagnetic theory generally, there are numerous hypotheses about how electromagnetism applies to specific situations. Many of these hypotheses are already considered to be adequately tested, with new ones always in the making and perhaps untested. An example of the latter might be the radiation reaction force. As of 2009, its effects on the periodic motion of charges are detectable in synchrotrons, but only as "averaged" effects over time. Some researchers are now considering experiments that could observe these effects at the instantaneous level (i.e. not averaged over time). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=198507 | 410,929 |
1,632,258 | APOLLO is based on measuring the time-of-flight of a short-pulse laser reflected from a distant target—in this case the retroreflector arrays on the Moon. Each burst of light lasts 100 picoseconds (ps). One millimeter in range corresponds to only 6.7 ps of round-trip travel time. However, the retroreflectors on the Moon introduce more than one millimeter of error themselves. They are not usually at an exact right angle to the incoming beam, so the different corner cubes of the retroreflectors are at different distances from the transmitter. This is because the Moon, although it keeps one face to the Earth, does not do so exactly—it wobbles from side to side and up and down, by as much as 10° in magnitude. (See libration.) These librations occur since the Moon rotates at constant speed, but has an elliptical and inclined orbit. This effect may seem small, but it is not only measurable, it forms the largest unknown in finding the range, since there is no way to tell which corner cube reflected each photon. The biggest array, the Apollo 15 reflector, can have a corner-to-corner range spread of ≈ 1.2 sin (10°) m, or 210 mm, or about 1.4 ns of round-trip time. The root-mean-square (RMS) range spread is then about 400 ps. To determine the distance to the reflector to 1 mm precision, or 7 ps, by averaging, the measurement needs at least (400/7) ≈ 3000 photons. This explains why a much larger system is needed to improve the existing measurements—the pre-APOLLO 2 cm RMS range precision required only about 10 photons, even at the worst-case orientation of the retroreflector array. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=848057 | 1,631,336 |
948,698 | In the initial stages of the Internet (ARPANET), addressing of hosts on the network was achieved by static translation tables that mapped hostnames to IP addresses. The tables were maintained manually in form of the host file. The Domain Name System brought a method of distributing the same address information automatically online through recursive queries to remote databases configured for each network, or domain. Even this DNS facility still used static lookup tables at each participating node. IP addresses, once assigned to a particular host, rarely changed and the mechanism was initially sufficient. However, the rapid growth of the Internet and the proliferation of personal computers in the workplace and in homes created the substantial burden for administrators of keeping track of assigned IP addresses and managing their address space. The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) allowed enterprises and Internet service providers (ISPs) to assign addresses to computers automatically as they powered up. In addition, this helped conserve the address space available, since not all devices might be actively used at all times and addresses could be assigned as needed. This feature required that DNS servers be kept current automatically as well. The first implementations of "dynamic DNS" fulfilled this purpose: Host computers gained the feature to notify their respective DNS server of the address they had received from a DHCP server or through self-configuration. This protocol-based DNS update method was documented and standardized in IETF publication in 1997 and has become a standard part of the DNS protocol (see also nsupdate program). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=80150 | 948,194 |
1,730,840 | To date, roughly 350 mutations in "MYBPC3" have been identified, and in large part, the mutations result in protein truncation, shifts in reading frames, and premature termination codons. Genetic studies have revealed significant overlap between genotypes and phenotypes as "MYBPC3" mutations can lead to various forms of cardiomyopathies, such as dilated cardiomyopathy and left ventricular noncompaction cardiomyopathy. In patients with isolated or familial cases of dilated cardiomyoathy, "MYBPC3" mutations represented the second highest number of known mutations. Furthermore, a 25-bp intronic "MYBPC3" deletion leading to protein truncation is present in 4% of the population in South India and is associated with a higher risk to develop heart failure. Founder "MYBPC3" mutations have been reported in Iceland, Italy, The Netherlands, Japan, France and Finland, where they represent a large percentage of cases with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. All of them are truncating mutations, resulting in a shorter protein, lacking the regulatory phosphorylatable M motif and/or major binding domains to other sarcomeric proteins. A body of evidence indicates that patients with more than 1 mutation often develop a more severe phenotype, and a significant fraction of childhood-onset hypertrophic cardiomyopathy(14%) is caused by compound genetic variants. This suggests that a gene-dosage effect might be responsible for manifestations at a younger age. A total of 51 cases of homozygotes or compound heterozygotes have been reported, most of them with double truncating "MYBPC3" mutations and associated with severe cardiomyopathy, leading to heart failure and death within the first year of life. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14726020 | 1,729,865 |
1,340,048 | The MAHLE Stirling engine develops 25 kW for use in renewable power generation applications. The engine was designed for use with a solar mirror dish configuration to collect and focus the Sun's heat on to the engine's heat exchanger to provide power. The engine employs four cylinders which are arranged in a square (U4) pattern using two crankshafts geared together using a configuration known as 'double leading Alpha'. This compact and symmetrical cylinder arrangement minimises heat losses and offers the best thermodynamic efficiency. The pistons are double-acting, with pressurised hydrogen at up to 200 bar above and below. A cross-head arrangement with a sliding gas seal is used to connect to the connecting rod and seal the lower volume. Extensive CAE analysis calculations were used to guide and validate the design in the concept phase. A dedicated 1-D Thermodynamic simulation software was developed to assist with optimising the geometry of the engine. During the concept development phase, four prototype engines and two seal development rigs were built for testing, as using solar energy as the heat source is not feasible for concept development the natural gas burner technology from the MAHLE Powertrain foundry was used to maintain the engine heat exchanger at a continuous 750 °C. The engine exceeded its performance targets by achieving up to 26 kW and a peak thermal efficiency of up to 43%. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26026024 | 1,339,315 |
224,819 | Having devised a means of measuring gamma radiation, Chadwick proceeded to measure the absorption of gamma rays by various gases and liquids. This time the resulting paper was published under his name alone. He was awarded his Master of Science (MSc) degree in 1912, and was appointed a Beyer Fellow. The following year he was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship, which allowed him to study and research at a university in continental Europe. He elected to go to the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin in 1913, to study beta radiation under Hans Geiger. Using Geiger's recently developed Geiger counter, which provided more accuracy than the earlier photographic techniques, he was able to demonstrate that beta radiation did not produce discrete lines, as has been previously thought, but rather a continuous spectrum with peaks in certain regions. On a visit to Geiger's laboratory, Albert Einstein told Chadwick that: "I can explain either of these things, but I can't explain them both at the same time." The continuous spectrum would remain an unexplained phenomenon for many years. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=174316 | 224,704 |
1,294,680 | Saaty has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (2005), and the "Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales" (Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences, 1971). In 1973, he received the Lester R. Ford Award from the Mathematical Association of America for expository excellence in his paper "Thirteen Colorful Variations on Guthrie's Four-color Conjecture" on the four color problem, and in 2000 he was awarded the gold medal of the International Society on Multi-criteria Decision Making. He is the 2007 recipient of the Akao Prize of the QFD Institute. In 2008, he received the INFORMS Impact Prize for his development of the Analytic Hierarchy Process. The Impact Prize is awarded every two years to recognize contributions that have had a broad impact on the fields of operations research and the management sciences. Emphasis is placed on the breadth of the impact of an idea or body of research. In 2011 he was awarded, in a , the Doktor Honoris Causa degree by Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. In December 2011 he received the Herbert Simon Award for Outstanding Contribution in Information Technology and Decision Making for the paper "The Possibility Of Group Welfare Functions" coauthored with Professor Luis G. Vargas, published in the International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making (IJITDM), Most of the university scholars are working on the basis he provided, Anum Bakhtyar. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=528429 | 1,293,969 |
847,629 | Supermarine Spitfire variants powered by early model Rolls-Royce Merlin engines mostly utilised single-speed, single-stage superchargers. The British Supermarine Spitfire was the only Allied fighter aircraft of the Second World War to fight in front line service from the beginnings of the conflict, in September 1939, through to the end in August 1945. Post-war, the Spitfire's service career continued into the 1950s. The basic airframe proved to be extremely adaptable, capable of taking far more powerful engines and far greater loads than its original role as a short-range interceptor had called for. This would lead to 19 "marks" of Spitfire and 52 sub-variants being produced throughout the Second World War, and beyond. The many changes were made in order to fulfil Royal Air Force requirements and to successfully engage in combat with ever-improving enemy aircraft. With the death of the original designer, Reginald J. Mitchell, in June 1937, all variants of the Spitfire were designed by his successor, Joseph Smith, and a team of engineers and draftsmen. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16070159 | 847,179 |
1,224,959 | Researchers have conducted two NASA-funded international studies of psychological and interpersonal issues during on-orbit missions to the Mir and the International Space Station. Both crew members and mission control personnel were studied. The Mir sample involved 13 astronauts and cosmonauts and 58 American and Russian mission control personnel. The corresponding numbers in the ISS study were 17 space travelers and 128 people on Earth. Subjects completed a weekly questionnaire that included items from a number of valid and reliable measures that assessed mood and group dynamics. Both studies had similar findings. There was significant evidence for the displacement of tension and negative emotions from the crew members to mission control personnel. The support role of the commander was significantly and positively related to group cohesion among crew members, and both the task and support roles of the team leader were significantly related to cohesion among people in mission control. Crew members scored higher in cultural sophistication than mission control personnel. Russians reported greater language flexibility than Americans. Americans scored higher on a measure of work pressure than Russians, but Russians reported higher levels of tension on the ISS than Americans. There were no significant changes in levels of emotion and group interpersonal climate over time. Specifically, there was no evidence for a general worsening of mood and cohesion after the halfway point of the missions, an occurrence some have called the 3rd quarter phenomenon. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40399131 | 1,224,299 |
117,144 | Citing a need to avoid confusion, distinguish itself from the University of Pennsylvania, and return to its roots by identifying itself with the city, the Western University of Pennsylvania, by act of the state legislature, was renamed the University of Pittsburgh in the summer of 1908. During this time, the university had also outgrown its accommodations on what is now the North Side of Pittsburgh and its departments had been scattered throughout the city for years. To consolidate all of its components on one campus, WUP bought of land in December 1907 in what is now the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh and began relocating departments there by 1909. The initial campus plan for the new location centered on the winning submission from a national architectural contest that incorporated a Greek Acropolis design by Henry Hornbostel for 30 buildings. However, due to financial and other constraints, only four of the buildings were constructed in this style, of which only Thaw Hall remains today. In the fall of 1909, the university became the first college to adopt the panther as its mascot. It was also during this period that the university, led by Chancellor Samuel McCormick, again held off pressures to abandon the school's commitment to liberal education in favor of more technical-based training. During his administration, McCormick also led the university into a new level of national recognition, expansion, and growth, as well as beginning institutional support of athletics. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=239870 | 117,099 |
1,087,612 | One of the reasons for interest in "this particular" rather elaborate urn model (i.e. with duplication and then replacement of each ball drawn) is that it provides an example in which the count (initially "x" black and "y" white) of balls in the urn is "not" concealed, which is able to approximate the correct updating of "subjective" probabilities appropriate to a "different" case in which the original urn content "is" concealed while ordinary sampling with replacement is conducted (without the Pólya ball-duplication). Because of the simple "sampling with replacement" scheme in this second case, the urn content is now "static", but this greater simplicity is compensated for by the assumption that the urn content is now "unknown" to an observer. A Bayesian analysis of the observer's uncertainty about the urn's initial content can be made, using a "particular choice" of (conjugate) prior distribution. Specifically, suppose that an observer knows that the urn contains only identical balls, each coloured either black or white, but he does not know the absolute number of balls present, nor the proportion that are of each colour. Suppose that he holds prior beliefs about these unknowns: for him the probability distribution of the urn content is well approximated by some prior distribution for the total number of balls in the urn, and a beta prior distribution with parameters "(x,y)" for the initial proportion of these which are black, this proportion being (for him) considered approximately independent of the total number. Then the process of outcomes of a succession of draws from the urn (with replacement but without the duplication) has "approximately the same probability law" as does the above Pólya scheme in which the actual urn content was not hidden from him. The approximation error here relates to the fact that an urn containing a known finite number "m" of balls of course cannot have an "exactly" beta-distributed unknown proportion of black balls, since the domain of possible values for that proportion are confined to being multiples of formula_1, rather than having the full freedom to assume any value in the continuous unit interval, as would an "exactly" beta distributed proportion. This slightly informal account is provided for reason of motivation, and can be made more mathematically precise. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28955783 | 1,087,053 |
45,163 | General relativity has emerged as a highly successful model of gravitation and cosmology, which has so far passed many unambiguous observational and experimental tests. However, there are strong indications that the theory is incomplete. The problem of quantum gravity and the question of the reality of spacetime singularities remain open. Observational data that is taken as evidence for dark energy and dark matter could indicate the need for new physics. Even taken as is, general relativity is rich with possibilities for further exploration. Mathematical relativists seek to understand the nature of singularities and the fundamental properties of Einstein's equations, while numerical relativists run increasingly powerful computer simulations (such as those describing merging black holes). In February 2016, it was announced that the existence of gravitational waves was directly detected by the Advanced LIGO team on 14 September 2015. A century after its introduction, general relativity remains a highly active area of research. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12024 | 45,146 |
1,011,092 | The passacaglia proved an enduring form throughout the twentieth century and beyond. In mid-century, one writer stated that "despite the inevitable lag in the performance of new music, there are more twentieth-century passacaglias in the active repertory of performers than baroque works in this form". Three composers especially identified with the passacaglia are Benjamin Britten, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Paul Hindemith. In his operas, Britten often uses a passacaglia to create the climactic moment of the drama. Examples are found in "Peter Grimes", "Billy Budd", "The Turn of the Screw", "Death in Venice", and even in the comic opera "Albert Herring". Britten also employed the form in smaller vocal forms, such as the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (1943) and "The Holy Sonnets of John Donne" (1945) for voice and piano, as well as in purely instrumental compositions, notably in the second and third Cello suites, the second and third string quartets, the Cello Symphony, and the "Nocturnal after John Dowland" for guitar. Shostakovich restricted his use of the passacaglia to instrumental forms, the most notable examples being found in his Tenth String Quartet, Second Piano Trio, Eighth and Fifteenth Symphonies, and First Violin Concerto. Hindemith employed the form to conclude his 1938 ballet, "Nobilissima Visione", and it is also found in his early Sonata for viola solo, Op. 11, No. 5 (1919) and the second movement of the song cycle "Das Marienleben" (1948), as well as in later works such as the Fifth String Quartet and the Octet for winds and strings. Igor Stravinsky used the form for the central movement of his Septet (1953), a transitional work between his neoclassical and serial periods. A passacaglia is also found in the finale of Witold Lutosławski's Concerto for Orchestra. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=185258 | 1,010,571 |
1,234,544 | The LIDAR system consisted of a 180 mJ, 1064 nm wavelength Nd-YAG (Yttrium-Aluminum-Garnet) laser transmitter which transmitted pulses to the lunar surface. The laser produced a pulse with a width less than 10 ns. At 1064 nm wavelength, the pulse had an energy of 171 mJ with a divergence less than 500 microrad. At 532 nm, it had a 9 mJ pulse with a 4 millirad divergence. The reflected pulse travelled through the High-Resolution Camera telescope, where it was split off by a dichroic filter to a silicon avalanche photodiode detector. The detector was a single 0.5 × 0.5 mm cell SiAPD receiver with a field of view of 0.057 square degrees. The laser had a mass of 1250 g, the receiver was housed in the 1120 g HIRES camera. The travel time of a pulse gave the range to the surface. The LIDAR memory could save up to six return detections per laser firing, with a threshold set for the best compromise between missed detections and false alarms. The returns were stored in 39.972 m range bins, equal to the resolution of the 14-bit clock counter. The LIDAR has a nominal range of 500 km, but altimetric data was gathered for altitudes up to 640 km, which allowed coverage from 60 degrees south to 60 degrees north by the end of the lunar phase of the mission. The vertical resolution is 40 m, and the horizontal spot resolution is about 100 m. The across track spacing of the measurements at the equator was about 40 km. One measurement was made each second over a 45-minute period during each orbit, giving an along track spacing of 1–2 km. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=82872 | 1,233,881 |
535,132 | Prior to federation each self-governing colony had operated its own naval force. These navies were small and lacked blue water capabilities, forcing the separate colonies to subsidise the cost of a British naval squadron in their waters for decades. The colonies maintained control over their respective navies until 1 March 1901, when the Commonwealth Naval Force was created. This new force also lacked blue water capable ships, and ultimately did not lead to a change in Australian naval policy. In 1907 Prime Minister Alfred Deakin and Creswell, while attending the Imperial Conference in London, sought the British Government's agreement to end the subsidy system and develop an Australian navy. The Admiralty rejected and resented the challenge, but suggested diplomatically that a small fleet of destroyers and submarines would be sufficient. Deakin was unimpressed, and in 1908 invited the American Great White Fleet to visit Australia. This visit fired public enthusiasm for a modern navy and in part led to the order of two 700-ton destroyers. The surge in German naval construction prompted the Admiralty to change their position however and the Royal Australian Navy was subsequently formed in 1911, absorbing the Commonwealth Naval Force. On 4 October 1913, the new fleet steamed through Sydney Heads, consisting of the battlecruiser , three light cruisers, and three destroyers, while several other ships were still under construction. And as a consequence the navy entered the First World War as a formidable force. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1323516 | 534,853 |
593,634 | The Association of Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP) provides a certification for CRAs, specific to the job function performed. The ACRP offers the designation of Certified Clinical Research Associate (CCRA®). In order to become accredited as a CCRA®, the Clinical Research Associate must pass a CCRA® examination in addition to meeting other specific requirements. Before taking the exam, the potential applicant must show that they "work independently of the investigative staff conducting the research at the site or institution," in order to ensure that the person will not have the opportunity to alter any data. The applicant must also show that they have worked a required number of hours in accordance with study protocols and Good Clinical Practices, including making sure that adverse drug reactions are reported and all necessary documentation is completed. The number of hours that must be completed performing these activities is based on the level of education achieved; for example, someone who has only graduated from high school must perform 6,000 hours, but a registered nurse, person with a bachelor's, masters, or doctorate of medicine degree must only perform 3,000 hours. The ACRP's CRA certification program is accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA), the accrediting body of the Institute for Credentialing Excellence. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2449402 | 593,330 |
2,178,277 | Apoptosis is an essential process for the development of multicellular organisms. Its role is to remove excess cells during development (e.g. sculpting the digits of vertebrates), as well as being responsible for detaching damaged, potentially dangerous, cells. Because of its extreme importance, this pathway has been shown to be vastly conserved throughout evolution. One event that is capable of triggering this type of programmed cell death is the activation of the JNK (c-Jun N-terminal kinase) signalling pathway, due to stress caused by chromosomal instability (CIN). The apoptosis pathway is regulated by caspases, a family of proteases that lead to the disassembling of the cell by cleaving protein targets following an aspartate residue. In response to certain apoptotic stimuli, the inactive caspases zymogens turn into active enzymes that start a cascade of caspases-induced proteolytic cleavage processes which culminate with the DNA decomposition and the cell death. Next, neighbouring cells or macrophages (often called apoptotic bodies) engulf whatever is left of the dwindled cell in order to minimize its effect on the surrounding ones, and at the same time to avoid inducing an immune response in the body. Studies link failure of apoptosis activation with the development of some types of cancer. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65720315 | 2,177,032 |
426,126 | A unique feature of the MCASOM curriculum are the selectives, which have been shown to increase medical student academic productivity and the desire to conduct future research. There are twenty-eight undesignated weeks between blocks spread out during the first two years. Twelve of these weeks can be used as vacation or for dedicated USMLE Step 1 study time. The other sixteen must be spent doing something medically-related for at least 20 hours per week—these are termed selectives. Selectives allow students to shadow physicians, learn surgical skills, volunteer in free clinics, remediate courses, or do research. Each student is eligible for up to $1,500 in travel funding per year in order to visit other Mayo Clinic campuses, present research, or serve indigent patients. Established selective options include the Bounce Day course in emergency preparedness, Regenerative Medicine and Surgery, and Mission:BRAIN global health trips with Professor of Neurologic Surgery Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=56382717 | 425,918 |
774,455 | Stalinists and their followers challenge this view - they claim that socialism was established in the Soviet Union after Joseph Stalin came to power in the late 1920s and instituted the system of five-year plans in 1928. The 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union, known as the Fundamental Law of Victorious Socialism, embodied the claim that the foundations for socialism had been laid. In 1924 Stalin introduced the theory of socialism in one country, which argued that socialism can be built in a single country, despite existing within a global capitalist economic system. Nevertheless, it was recognized that the stage during which developed socialism would be built would be a lengthy one and would not be achieved by the Soviet Union on its own. According to the official textbooks, the first stage of the transition period from capitalism to socialism had been completed by the 1970s in the European socialist countries (except Poland and Yugoslavia) and in Mongolia and Cuba. The next stage of developed socialism would not be reached until "the economic integration of the socialist states becomes a major factor of their economic progress" and social relations had been reconstructed on "collectivist principles". Communist writers accepted that during the earlier stages in constructing socialism the exchange of commodities on the basis of the average socially necessary labour embodied within them occurred and involved the mediation of money. Socialist planned economies were systems of commodity production, but this was directed in a conscious way towards meeting the needs of the people and not left to the "anarchy of the market". At the stage of developed socialism, "the state of dictatorship of the proletariat changes into a state of all people reflecting the increasing homogeneity of society" and the "evening out of economic development levels" within and between socialist countries. It would provide the foundations for a further stage of perfected socialist society, where an abundance of goods permitted their distribution according to need. Only then could the world socialist system progress towards the higher phase of communism. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=43069513 | 774,039 |
399,352 | The root words "photo", "litho", and "graphy" all have Greek origins, with the meanings 'light', 'stone' and 'writing' respectively. As suggested by the name compounded from them, "photolithography" is a printing method (originally based on the use of limestone printing plates) in which light plays an essential role. In the 1820s, Nicephore Niepce invented a photographic process that used Bitumen of Judea, a natural asphalt, as the first photoresist. A thin coating of the bitumen on a sheet of metal, glass or stone became less soluble where it was exposed to light; the unexposed parts could then be rinsed away with a suitable solvent, baring the material beneath, which was then chemically etched in an acid bath to produce a printing plate. The light-sensitivity of bitumen was very poor and very long exposures were required, but despite the later introduction of more sensitive alternatives, its low cost and superb resistance to strong acids prolonged its commercial life into the early 20th century. In 1940, Oskar Süß created a "positive" photoresist by using diazonaphthoquinone, which worked in the opposite manner: the coating was initially insoluble and was rendered soluble where it was exposed to light. In 1954, Louis Plambeck Jr. developed the Dycryl polymeric letterpress plate, which made the platemaking process faster. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23748 | 399,154 |
119,056 | As an alternative, longer-range designs with extended loiter times were considered. These "area defense interceptors" or "area defense fighters" were in general larger designs intended to stay on lengthy patrol and protect a much larger area from attack, depending on greater detection capabilities, both in the aircraft themselves and operating with AWACS, rather than high speed to reach targets. The exemplar of this concept was the Tupolev Tu-28. The later Panavia Tornado ADV was able to achieve long range in a smaller airframe through the use of more efficient engines. Rather than focusing on acceleration and climb rate, the design emphasis is on range and missile carrying capacity, which together translate into combat endurance, look-down/shoot-down radars good enough to detect and track fast moving interdictors against ground clutter, and the capability to provide guidance to air-to-air missiles (AAM) against these targets. High speed and acceleration was put into long-range and medium-range AAMs, and agility into short range dog fighting AAMs, rather than into the aircraft themselves. They were first to introduce all-weather avionics, assuring successful operations during night, rain, snow, or fog. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=142759 | 119,008 |
1,729,300 | According to Thomas and Davenport (1985), early reports of spoilage in mayonnaise and salad dressing due to "Z. bailii" date back to the beginning of the 20th century. More detailed investigations in the 1940s and 1950s confirmed that "Z. bailii" was the main spoiler in cucumber pickles, sundry pickled vegetable mixes, acidified sauces, etc. Around the same time, fermentation spoilage incidents occasionally appeared in fruit syrups and beverages preserved with moderate benzoic acid levels (0.04 - 0.05% (w/w)). Again, "Z. bailii" was identified as the spoilage source. Nowadays, despite great improvements in formulation control, food processing equipment and sanitation technologies (e.g. automated clean-in-place), the yeast remains highly problematic in sauces, acidified foods, pickled or brined vegetables, fruit concentrates and various non-carbonated fruit drinks. "Z. bailii" is also well recognized as one of the main spoilers in wines due to its high resistance to combinations of ethanol and organic acids at low pH. Furthermore, the spoilage by this yeast has been expanding into new food categories such as prepared mustards, fruit-flavoured carbonated soft drinks containing citrus, apple and grape juice concentrates. The ability of "Z. bailii" in spoiling a wide range of foods is a reflection of its high resistance to many stress factors. Therefore, it has been included in the list of most dangerous spoilage yeasts by several authors. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4374802 | 1,728,326 |
1,238,234 | But there is never any evidence or assertion by Briselli or contention by Barber that Briselli found the third movement too difficult to play. As to the upcoming premiere performance, in place of the Barber, Briselli substituted Dvořák's Violin Concerto. Barber's letter of December 14 to Fels identifies his intention with regard to the third movement: Barber (now teaching at the Curtis Institute) set up a test of playability to assure himself what he was giving to Briselli was "practical and playable." A Curtis student, Herbert Baumel, was known to be an excellent sight reader, and he was asked to study the finale for a couple of hours, then to join Barber in pianist Josef Hofmann's studio. After reviewing the music, Baumel went to the studio to discover an audience of Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti, Mary Louise Curtis Bok (founder of the Curtis Institute), and Edith Braun, a friend of Mrs. Bok. In the correspondence Barber writes, "My friends ... liked it, so did I." In early 1940 there was a private performance by Baumel with the Curtis Institute Orchestra under Fritz Reiner. That performance brought the piece to the further attention of Eugene Ormandy, who soon scheduled its official premiere in a pair of performances by Albert Spalding with the Philadelphia Orchestra in the Academy of Music in February 1941. [The actual premiere was on February 7.] Those performances were followed on February 11, 1941, by a repeat performance in Carnegie Hall, and from that point, the piece rapidly entered the standard violin and orchestral repertoire, and has become one of the most frequently performed of all 20th-century concertos. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3828005 | 1,237,568 |
1,610,380 | As time went on, figs were spread from their indigenous region of Western Asia, and their comfortable home in the Mediterranean, throughout many other places around the world (of course, despite their increasing ability to grow in many different regions, the Mediterranean still remains the ideal location for the raising of figs). They migrated into Afghanistan and expanded to southern Germany and the Canary Islands. They made their way to England and then China, and eventually to Japan, South Africa, India, Australia, the United States (California to be more specific.), and of course many other places around the globe. Figs soon found themselves woven into the economy of many different countries. The production, import, and export of figs is vital in some regions. For example, in 2010, Turkey was the number one exporter and producer of figs in the world, producing around 24% of the world's supply and exporting around 254, 838 metric tons. Egypt was the second largest producer, producing around 184,972 metric tons. Austria trailed Turkey as the second largest exporter, exporting somewhere near 6,131 metric tons. In 2009, France, Austria, and Germany were the top 3 importers of figs, with Canada trailing as number 4. The demand for figs has remained steady for many years and it looks as though it will stay that way for a while, or perhaps even increase, which would of course be good news for the countries that lead in the fig trade. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=53472620 | 1,609,475 |
680,537 | Some historians, such as Roland Chrisjohn, director of Native Studies at St. Thomas University, have argued that some European colonists, having discovered that indigenous populations were not immune to certain diseases, deliberately spread diseases to gain military advantages and subjugate local peoples. In his book "The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada," Chrisjohn argues that the Canadian government followed a deliberate policy amounting to genocide against native populations. During the siege of British-held Fort Pitt in Pontiac's War, the fort's commander, Simeon Ecuyer and his subordinate William Trent distributed blankets infected with smallpox to a Lenape delegation outside the fort. During the conflict, Colonel Henry Bouquet discussed plans to deliberately infect hostile Native American tribes with his superior, General Sir Jeffery Amherst, who wrote back approvingly of Bouquet's suggestion. Historians have been divided on the effectiveness of this particular incident in causing a smallpox outbreak among Native Americans in the region, though it has been recognized as one of the first instances of biological warfare. During the 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic, some scholars argued that the U.S. Army intentionally spread smallpox to Native American tribes, with scholar Ann F. Ramenofsky stating that "in the nineteenth century, the U.S. Army sent contaminated blankets to Native Americans, especially Plains groups, to control the Indian problem." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5090455 | 680,182 |
1,612,963 | Malicious actors who may benefit from physical access to information assets include computer crackers, corporate spies, and fraudsters. The value of information assets is self-evident in the case of, say, stolen laptops or servers that can be sold-on for cash, but the information content is often far more valuable, for example encryption keys or passwords (used to gain access to further systems and information), trade secrets and other intellectual property (inherently valuable or valuable because of the commercial advantages they confer), and credit card numbers (used to commit identity fraud and further theft). Furthermore, the loss, theft or damage of computer systems, plus power interruptions, mechanical/electronic failures and other physical incidents prevent them being used, typically causing disruption and consequential costs or losses. Unauthorized disclosure of confidential information, and even the coercive threat of such disclosure, can be damaging as we saw in the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack at the end of 2014 and in numerous privacy breach incidents. Even in the absence of evidence that disclosed personal information has actually been exploited, the very fact that it is no longer secured and under the control of its rightful owners is itself a potentially harmful privacy impact. Substantial fines, adverse publicity/reputational damage and other noncompliance penalties and impacts that flow from serious privacy breaches are best avoided, regardless of cause! | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7089085 | 1,612,058 |
604,271 | This arrangement lasted only until the War Department implemented the executive order on May 24 by issuing General Order No. 51 to coordinate the two independent agencies, with an eventual goal of creating a "Director of Air Service". (The term "Air Service" had been in use in France since June 13, 1917, to describe the function of aviation units attached to the American Expeditionary Force.) It delayed the appointment of a director as long as the BAP operated as a separate executive bureau. In August, the Senate completed its investigation of the Aircraft Board, and while it found no criminal culpability, it reported that massive waste and delay in production had occurred. As a result, the Director of Aircraft Production (who was also chairman of the Aircraft Board), John D. Ryan, was appointed to the vacant position of Second Assistant Secretary of War and designated as Director of Air Service, nominally in charge of the DMA. The Department of Justice report followed two months later and also blamed the delays on administrative and organizational deficiencies in the Aviation Section. Ryan's appointment came too late for any effective consolidation of both agencies, continuing an obstructive division of authority that was never resolved during the war. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=662917 | 603,961 |
1,266,844 | A lack of standards for making concrete blocks resulted in a negative perception of concrete for construction. An editorial by Charles C. Brown in the September 1904 issue of "Municipal Engineering" discussed the idea of forming an organization to bring order and standard practices to the industry. In 1905 the National Association of Cement Users was formally organized and adopted a constitution and bylaws. Richard Humphrey was elected its first President. The first committees were appointed at the 1905 convention in Indianapolis and offered preliminary reports on a number of subject areas. The first complete committee reports were offered at the 1907 convention. The association's first official headquarters was established in 1908 at Richard Humphrey's office in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Clerical and editorial help was brought on to more effectively organize conventions and publish proceedings of the institute. The "Standard Building Regulations for the Use of Reinforced Concrete" was adopted at the 1910 convention and became the association's first reinforced concrete building code. By 1912 the association had adopted 14 standards. At the December 1912 convention the association approved publication of a monthly journal of proceedings. In July 1913 the Board of Direction of NACU decided to change its name to the American Concrete Institute. The new name was deemed to be more descriptive of the work being conducted within the institute. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15440560 | 1,266,155 |
1,545,739 | Analysts would deliberate and report on significant activity changes, their importance and the implications and provide warning messages that would indicate an upcoming crisis. According to Gentry and Gordon, the US has used the colour green, yellow and red to convey crisis as part of their waning messages. This method extended into the 1980s when Able Archer (created by NATO) and Project RYAN (created by the Soviet Union/ Warsaw Pact) were being developed to attack opposing nations. Alongside US surveillance mechanisms, the Soviet/ Warsaw Pact participated in a process of similar tactics out of fear of a possible nuclear attack from the west. Gentry and Gordon conclude that the Indicator and Warning method proved a good long term technique that was able to combat "large-scale military- threat situations." Its scientific analysis of variables allowed governments to determine appropriate reactions to enemy activity. Because it is a largely reactive methodology, results remain uncertain until they are carried out in the real world. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47355403 | 1,544,865 |
419,612 | The proclamation of the independence of Ukraine in 1991 brought about radical changes in every sphere of university life. Professor, Doctor Ivan Vakarchuk, a renowned scholar in the field of theoretical physics, had been rector of the university from 1990 to 2013. Meeting the requirements arising in recent years new faculties and departments have been set up: the Faculty of International Relations and the Faculty of Philosophy (1992), the Faculty of Pre-Entrance University Preparation (1997), the Chair of Translation Studies and Comparative Linguistics (1998). Since 1997 the following new units have come into existence within the teaching and research framework of the university: the Law College, The Humanities Centre, The Institute of Literature Studies, The Italian Language and Culture Resource Centre. The teaching staff of the university has increased amounting to 981, with scholarly degrees awarded to over two-thirds of the entire teaching staff. There are over one hundred laboratories and working units as well as the Computing Centre functioning here. The Zoological, Geological, Mineralogical Museums together with those of Numismatics, Sphragistics, and Archeology are stimulating the interests of students. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2271241 | 419,407 |
742,349 | Previous considerations represent typical problems characterizing terrestrial radio links using microwaves for the so-called backbone networks: hop lengths of a few tens of kilometers (typically 10 to 60 km) were largely used until the 1990s. Frequency bands below 10 GHz, and above all, the information to be transmitted, were a stream containing a fixed capacity block. The target was to supply the requested availability for the whole block (Plesiochronous digital hierarchy, PDH, or synchronous digital hierarchy, SDH). Fading and/or multipath affecting the link for short time period during the day had to be counteracted by the diversity architecture. During 1990s microwave radio links begun widely to be used for urban links in cellular network. Requirements regarding link distance changed to shorter hops (less than 10 km, typically 3 to 5 km), and frequency increased to bands between 11 and 43 GHz and more recently, up to 86 GHz (E-band). Furthermore, link planning deals more with intense rainfall and less with multipath, so diversity schemes became less used. Another big change that occurred during the last decade was an evolution toward packet radio transmission. Therefore, new countermeasures, such as adaptive modulation, have been adopted. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5540651 | 741,957 |
1,578,780 | Intrabeam, (Carl Zeiss AG, Germany) received FDA and CE approval in 1999 and is a miniature mobile X-ray source which emits low-energy X-ray radiation (max. 50 kV) in isotropic distribution. Due to the higher ionization density caused by soft X-ray radiation in the tissue, the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of low-energy X-rays on tumor cells is higher when compared to high-energy X-rays or gamma rays which are delivered by linear accelerators. The radiation which is produced by low-energy mobile radiation systems has a limited range. For this reason, conventional walls are regarded sufficient to stop the radiation scatter produced in the operating room and no extra measures for radiation protection are necessary. This makes IORT accessible for more hospitals. Targeted intra-operative radiotherapy is a low-energy IORT technique. Evaluation of the long-term outcomes in patients who were treated with TARGIT-IORT for breast cancer confirmed that it is as effective as whole breast external beam radiotherapy in controlling cancer, and also reduces deaths from other causes as shown in a large international randomised clinical trial published in the "British Medical Journal". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11146999 | 1,577,890 |
1,003,893 | It remains a difficult medical challenge to prevent the sudden cardiac death of athletes, typically defined as natural, unexpected death from cardiac arrest within one hour of the onset of collapse symptoms, excluding additional time on mechanical life support. (Wider definitions of sudden death are also in use, but not usually applied to the athletic situation.) Most causes relate to congenital or acquired cardiovascular disease with no symptoms noted before the fatal event. The prevalence of any single, associated condition is low, probably less than 0.3% of the population in the athletes' age group, and the sensitivity and specificity of common screening tests leave much to be desired. The single most important predictor is fainting or near-fainting during exercise, which should require detailed explanation and investigation. The victims include many well-known names, especially in professional soccer, and close relatives are often at risk for similar cardiac problems. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37416497 | 1,003,375 |
1,184,611 | According to historians, the small number of scientific personnel undoubtedly influenced the results and outcomes of the expedition. Bulkeley emphasized a big contrast with the that was conducted only four years before and was sponsored with private funds. The Kotzebue's crew included four scientists for whom an extended scientific program was prepared. If on "Rurik" oceanographic observations could be conducted for 318 days in a row, then Bellingshausen had to turn to oceanography and meteorology from case to case. Conducted data on magnetic declination was not processed and not included in the final report on the expedition; it was published only in 1840 by request of Carl Friedrich Gauss. Moreover, most of the time that was spent on scientific observations, Simonov dedicated to the time-consuming process of reconciling ship chronometers. 70 out of 155 pages of Simonov's scientific report were dedicated to these calculations, which constituted 40% out of the total volume. Chronometers reconciliation took place in Rio, during stays in Sydney and the Cook Strait. Only during the second staying in Rio, the crew was able to measure 2320 lunar distances; besides, these data should still be processed before calculating the magnitude of the correction and the daily movement of the chronometer. Simonov conducted observations in the open sea as well: on October 29 and 30, and on November 1, 1819, 410 lunar distances were measured. On March 18, 1820, instrumental observation of lunar eclipse was carried out. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40880361 | 1,183,983 |
1,495,120 | In order to survive, plants must be able to respond to many biotic and abiotic stresses, including pathogen attack, piercing/sucking insects, herbivory, and mechanical wounding. These stresses activate specialized signal transduction pathways, which are specific to the stressor and the amount of tissue damage inflicted. Similar to mechanical wounding, chewing insects, such as the tobacco hornworm (Manduca sexta, one of the major pests of tomato), cause extensive tissue damage activating the jasmonic acid (JA)-mediated response (Walling 2000). This JA-mediated response revolves around the octadecanoid pathway, which is responsible for the synthesis of JA and several other potent signaling molecules, and ends in the regulation of two sets of genes whose expression changes over time. The early genes amplify the wounding signal and can be detected 30 minutes to 2 hours after damage (Ryan 2000). Late gene expression can be seen 4–24 hours after wounding. Products of late-response genes act as deterrents to chewing-insect feeding, often by decreasing the nutritional value of the food ingested or interfering with insect gut function (Walling 2000). For example, serine proteinase inhibitors (Pins) interfere with digestive proteases in the insect gut and polyphenol oxidases (PPO) act to decrease the nutritive value of plant leaves after ingestion by herbivores (Johnson et al. 1989; Ryan 2000; Orozco-Cardenas 2001). Please see the Picture 3 for a summary of the wound response in tomato. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11213172 | 1,494,279 |
1,690,105 | The diagnosis of DPB requires analysis of the lungs and bronchiolar tissues, which can require a lung biopsy, or the more preferred high resolution computed tomography (HRCT) scan of the lungs. The diagnostic criteria include severe inflammation in all layers of the respiratory bronchioles and lung tissue lesions that appear as nodules within the terminal and respiratory bronchioles in both lungs. The nodules in DPB appear as opaque lumps when viewed on X-rays of the lung, and can cause airway obstruction, which is evaluated by a pulmonary function test, or PFT. Lung X-rays can also reveal dilation of the bronchiolar passages, another sign of DPB. HRCT scans often show blockages of some bronchiolar passages with mucus, which is referred to as the "tree-in-bud" pattern. Hypoxemia, another sign of breathing difficulty, is revealed by measuring the oxygen and carbon dioxide content of the blood, using a blood test called arterial blood gas. Other findings observed with DPB include the proliferation of lymphocytes (white blood cells that fight infection), neutrophils, and foamy histiocytes (tissue macrophages) in the lung lining. Bacteria such as "H. influenzae" and "P. aeruginosa" are also detectable, with the latter becoming more prominent as the disease progresses. The white blood, bacterial and other cellular content of the blood can be measured by taking a complete blood count (CBC). Elevated levels of IgG and IgA (classes of immunoglobulins) may be seen, as well as the presence of rheumatoid factor (an indicator of autoimmunity). Hemagglutination, a clumping of red blood cells in response to the presence of antibodies in the blood, may also occur. Neutrophils, beta-defensins, leukotrienes, and chemokines can also be detected in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid injected then removed from the bronchiolar airways of individuals with DPB, for evaluation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17337043 | 1,689,159 |
69,914 | News spread quickly of the new discovery, which was correctly seen as an entirely novel physical effect with great scientific—and potentially practical—possibilities. Meitner's and Frisch's interpretation of the discovery of Hahn and Strassmann crossed the Atlantic Ocean with Niels Bohr, who was to lecture at Princeton University. I.I. Rabi and Willis Lamb, two Columbia University physicists working at Princeton, heard the news and carried it back to Columbia. Rabi said he told Enrico Fermi; Fermi gave credit to Lamb. Bohr soon thereafter went from Princeton to Columbia to see Fermi. Not finding Fermi in his office, Bohr went down to the cyclotron area and found Herbert L. Anderson. Bohr grabbed him by the shoulder and said: “Young man, let me explain to you about something new and exciting in physics.” It was clear to a number of scientists at Columbia that they should try to detect the energy released in the nuclear fission of uranium from neutron bombardment. On 25 January 1939, a Columbia University team conducted the first nuclear fission experiment in the United States, which was done in the basement of Pupin Hall. The experiment involved placing uranium oxide inside of an ionization chamber and irradiating it with neutrons, and measuring the energy thus released. The results confirmed that fission was occurring and hinted strongly that it was the isotope uranium 235 in particular that was fissioning. The next day, the Fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics began in Washington, D.C. under the joint auspices of the George Washington University and the Carnegie Institution of Washington. There, the news on nuclear fission was spread even further, which fostered many more experimental demonstrations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22054 | 69,887 |
838,566 | The first description of a person with FSHD in medical literature appears in an autopsy report by Jean Cruveilhier in 1852. In 1868, Duchenne published his seminal work on Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and as part of its differential was a description of FSHD. First in 1874, then with a more commonly cited publication in 1884, and again with pictures in 1885, the French physicians Louis Landouzy and Joseph Dejerine published details of the disease, recognizing it as a distinct clinical entity, and thus FSHD is sometimes referred to as Landouzy Dejerine disease. In their paper of 1886, Landouzy and Dejerine drew attention to the familial nature of the disorder and mentioned that four generations were affected in the kindred that they had investigated. Formal definition of FSHD's clinical features did not occur until 1952 when a large Utah family with FSHD was studied. Beginning about 1980 an increasing interest in FSHD led to increased understanding of the great variability in the disease and a growing understanding of the genetic and pathophysiological complexities. By the late 1990s, researchers were finally beginning to understand the regions of chromosome 4 associated with FSHD. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2570824 | 838,117 |
1,487,409 | The IOC/UNESCO is composed of its Member States (147 in 2014), an Assembly, an Executive Council and a Secretariat. The Secretariat is based in Paris, France. Additionally the IOC has a number of Subsidiary Bodies: three regional sub-commissions (IOCARIBE, IOCAFRICA, and WESTPAC), and programme and project offices in Apia (Samoa), Bangkok (Thailand), Cartagena (Colombia), Copenhagen (Denmark), Jakarta (Indonesia), Kingston (Jamaica), Nairobi (Kenya), Muscat (Oman), Perth (Australia), and Port-au-Prince (Haiti). The JCOMM in situ Observations Programme Support Centre, currently hosted in Toulouse (France), is in the process of moving to Brest (France). Additionally, IOC has a strong presence in Oostende (Belgium), where the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) and the Secretariat for the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) are based. Under IOC mandate, the IODE coordinates since 1961 the exchange of information and data between the IOC Member States and its national oceanographic data centers. As for OBIS, it was established by the Census of Marine Life program (www.coml.org), and developed between 2000 and 2010 as an evolving strategic alliance of people and organizations sharing a vision to make marine biogeographic data, from all over the world, freely available over the World Wide Web. Any organization, consortium, project or individual may contribute data to OBIS. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=478797 | 1,486,571 |
876,023 | The extensive degree of human use of the Planet's resources, mostly via land use, results in various levels of impact on "actual NPP" (NPP). Although in some regions, such as the Nile valley, irrigation has resulted in a considerable increase in primary production, in most of the Planet there is a notable trend of "NPP reduction due to land changes" (ΔNPP) of 9.6% across global land-mass. In addition to this, end consumption by people raises the total HANPP to 23.8% of "potential vegetation" (NPP). It is estimated that, in 2000, 34% of the Earth's ice-free land area (12% cropland; 22% pasture) was devoted to human agriculture. This disproportionate amount reduces the energy available to other species, having a marked impact on biodiversity, flows of carbon, water and energy, and ecosystem services, and scientists have questioned how large this fraction can be before these services begin to break down. Reductions in NPP are also expected in the ocean as a result of ongoing climate change, potentially impacting marine ecosystems (~10% of global biodiversity) and goods and services (1-5% of global total) that the oceans provide. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=208303 | 875,561 |
375,793 | In December 2010, "The Economist" reported that the demand for nuclear power was softening in America. In recent years, utilities have shown an interest in about 30 new reactors, but the number with any serious prospect of being built as of the end of 2010 was about a dozen, as some companies had withdrawn their applications for licenses to build. Exelon has withdrawn its application for a license for a twin-unit nuclear plant in Victoria County, Texas, citing lower electricity demand projections. The decision has left the country's largest nuclear operator without a direct role in what the nuclear industry hopes is a nuclear renaissance. Ground has been broken on two new nuclear plants with a total of four reactors. The Obama administration was seeking the expansion of a loan guarantee program but as of December 2010 had been unable to commit all the loan guarantee money already approved by Congress. Since talk a few years ago of a “nuclear renaissance”, gas prices have fallen and old reactors are getting license extensions. The only reactor to finish construction after 1996 was at Watts Bar, Tennessee, is an old unit, begun in 1973, whose construction was suspended in 1988, and was resumed in 2007. It became operational in October 2016. Of the 100 reactors operating in the U.S., ground was broken on all of them in 1974 or earlier. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4131402 | 375,598 |
1,368,571 | Kaplan has expressed that this theme continued into the aesthetics of the game, commenting, "when it comes to the setting and art style and tone of the universe, a lot of games like to approach the future in either a very dystopian way, or a post-apocalyptic way," and adding, "we wanted to make something bright and welcoming, that featured a lot of deep, rich colors. A lot of the modern realistic games tend to focus on gritty gray, brown palettes." Several of the initial maps, Ilios, Dorado, and Nepal, were developed based on the idea of vacation spots and drew from various imagery of those locations. Kaplan noted that Dorado, set in Mexico, was inspired by a photograph they found while searching for images of colorful Mexican towns, but only later realized that the photo was that of Manarola, Italy. Others, like the Hollywood map, were created by a multicultural team that used only their perception of what Hollywood was like, rather than any reference material, with the result being better than a realistic version, according to Kaplan. A more recent map, Oasis, set in Iraq, was portrayed as "one of the most technologically-advanced places in the world" to contrast how other games set in the near-future present the country as ravaged by war. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=55762533 | 1,367,815 |
97,481 | Some drugs can cause a neutralizing immune response, meaning that the immune system produces neutralizing antibodies that counteract the action of the drugs, particularly if the drugs are administered repeatedly, or in larger doses. This limits the effectiveness of drugs based on larger peptides and proteins (which are typically larger than 6000 Da). In some cases, the drug itself is not immunogenic, but may be co-administered with an immunogenic compound, as is sometimes the case for Taxol. Computational methods have been developed to predict the immunogenicity of peptides and proteins, which are particularly useful in designing therapeutic antibodies, assessing likely virulence of mutations in viral coat particles, and validation of proposed peptide-based drug treatments. Early techniques relied mainly on the observation that hydrophilic amino acids are overrepresented in epitope regions than hydrophobic amino acids; however, more recent developments rely on machine learning techniques using databases of existing known epitopes, usually on well-studied virus proteins, as a training set. A publicly accessible database has been established for the cataloguing of epitopes from pathogens known to be recognizable by B cells. The emerging field of bioinformatics-based studies of immunogenicity is referred to as "immunoinformatics". Immunoproteomics is the study of large sets of proteins (proteomics) involved in the immune response. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14958 | 97,440 |
377,421 | The threat to humans in developed countries is rising as a result of social trends: the increase in organic farming, which uses manure and sewage sludge rather than artificial fertilizers, spreads parasites both directly and via the droppings of seagulls which feed on manure and sludge; the increasing popularity of raw or lightly cooked foods; imports of meat, seafood and salad vegetables from high-risk areas; and, as an underlying cause, reduced awareness of parasites compared with other public health issues such as pollution. In less-developed countries, inadequate sanitation and the use of human feces (night soil) as fertilizer or to enrich fish farm ponds continues to spread parasitic platyhelminths, whilst poorly designed water-supply and irrigation projects have provided additional channels for their spread. People in these countries usually cannot afford the cost of fuel required to cook food thoroughly enough to kill parasites. Controlling parasites that infect humans and livestock has become more difficult, as many species have become resistant to drugs that used to be effective, mainly for killing juveniles in meat. While poorer countries still struggle with unintentional infection, cases have been reported of intentional infection in the US by dieters who are desperate for rapid weight-loss. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24151 | 377,226 |
1,813,932 | In the early 20th century, as the Bahá'í Faith was expanding in the United States, the Bahá'í community viewed the issue of race according to another Bahá'í principle – the oneness of humanity – which had been expressed earlier but was further substantiated by 1912 during `Abdu'l-Bahá's talks to American audiences. The idea of interracial unity was counter to views of the majority of scientists of the coming decades and for a time in government policies, which endorsed eugenics as legal steps against Indigenous Americans, people of African descent, and generally People of Color, and other practices according to white-society standards, and similarly in other countries such as when the religion was banned in Germany under the Nazis. However, the American Bahá'í community did not respond by denigrating the scholarly thought of the day, but rather by supporting the then-minority view of scholars who opposed scientific racism. Marion Carpenter, a notable early American Bahá'í youth, is quoted in 1925 saying “Not religion or science, but religion and science, the combination of faith and reason, is the teaching of Bahá’u’lláh to the world today.” The American scientist Herbert Miller defended interracial unity at a Bahá'í-sponsored "World Unity Conference" in 1926 in Cleveland. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2353883 | 1,812,898 |
1,625,732 | In 1910, Samuel Black resigned, and was replaced by Edward L. Hardy, who had previously served as the principal of San Diego High School. He increased the faculty size from 19 to 27 in 1912 to meet the demands of increased enrollment. The annual salary for the president increased to $4,000 (from $3,400) in 1915 and salaries for the faculty and administration ranged from $600–2,500 (compared to the national average of $687 for all industries except for farm labor). Hardy argued for the pay increases, claiming increases would "give merited and much needed relief...[and] will be entirely justified by the increased good of the service." More buildings were added after appropriations of funds in 1907 and total expenditures for the campus reached $312,000. Even with the expansion, by 1910 space was limited, so the training school dropped the high school program, although it still taught the elementary and intermediate grades (7th and 8th grades). In 1914, of the 136 new students for the school year, 17 were from California counties (excluding San Diego), while 26 were from other states. This proportion would remain common throughout the school's history as the majority of its students were from the San Diego area. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20079555 | 1,624,814 |
2,167,602 | In the R1 Iliffe and his colleagues introduced a protection scheme for all data objects. The manipulation of references to memory (termed "codewords") was restricted to privileged code, preventing some types of program error. Codewords referenced vectors of data items, sequences of instructions or other codewords . Storage was accessed by reference to a codeword and this was resolved to a conventional address or program counter giving direct access to store when necessary. The system provided functions to create, manage and update codewords, for example changing them to reflect storage management decisions. It also supported an algebraic programming language (called Genie) which was implemented using object-oriented design concepts in 1961. The Genie compiler and associated assembler were unusual in enabling the entire system to be treated as an object-management discipline. Genie was also amongst the first languages to include intrinsic operations on real and complex vectors and matrices. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60155126 | 2,166,365 |
406,978 | For expression profiling, or high-throughput analysis of many genes within a sample, quantitative PCR may be performed for hundreds of genes simultaneously in the case of low-density arrays. A second approach is the hybridization microarray. A single array or "chip" may contain probes to determine transcript levels for every known gene in the genome of one or more organisms. Alternatively, "tag based" technologies like Serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) and RNA-Seq, which can provide a relative measure of the cellular concentration of different mRNAs, can be used. An advantage of tag-based methods is the "open architecture", allowing for the exact measurement of any transcript, with a known or unknown sequence. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) such as RNA-Seq is another approach, producing vast quantities of sequence data that can be matched to a reference genome. Although NGS is comparatively time-consuming, expensive, and resource-intensive, it can identify single-nucleotide polymorphisms, splice-variants, and novel genes, and can also be used to profile expression in organisms for which little or no sequence information is available. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=159266 | 406,777 |
115,983 | Gasdermin D (GSDMD) is a protein that in humans is encoded by the GSDMD gene and is a known target of the inflammasome and acts as an effector molecule of programmed cell death known as pyroptosis. This protein determines cell lysis to prevent pathogen replication and results in the release of the inflammatory cytokine interleukin-1β (IL-1β) into the extracellular space to recruit and activate immune cells at the site of infection. Inflammasome activation due to C.albicans infection triggers the release of a cytokine storm necessary to fight the pathogen. Excessive release of these pro-inflammatory mediators has been shown to exaggerate systemic inflammation leading to vascular injury and damage to vital organs. Unfortunately, Candida albicans therapy is often ineffective despite the availability of many antifungal drugs, mainly because of resistance phenomena. During conventional pyroptosis controlled by the inflammasome-GSDMD axis is hijacked by C. albicans to facilitate escape from macrophages through unfolding of hyphae and candidalysin, a fungal toxin released from hyphae. It has been shown that disruption of GSDMD in macrophages infected with Candida albicans reduces the fungal load. In addition, the presence of hyphae and candidalysin are key factors in the activation of GSDMD and the release of Candida from macrophages. Also using Candida-infected mice, inhibition of GSDMD has been shown to paradoxically improve prognosis and survival, indicating that this protein may be a potential therapeutic target in C. albicans-induced sepsis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=411673 | 115,938 |
1,044,761 | SRM has been used to identify the proteins encoded by wild-type and mutant genes (mutant proteins) and quantify their absolute copy numbers in tumors and biological fluids, thus answering the basic questions about the absolute copy number of proteins in a single cell, which will be essential in digital modelling of mammalian cells and human body, and the relative levels of genetically abnormal proteins in tumors, and proving useful for diagnostic applications. SRM has also been used as a method of triggering full product ion scans of peptides to either a) confirm the specificity of the SRM transition, or b) detect specific post-translational modifications which are below the limit of detection of standard MS analyses. In 2017, SRM has been developed to be a highly sensitive and reproducible mass spectrometry-based protein targeted detection platform (entitled "SAFE-SRM"), and it has been demonstrated that the SRM-based new pipeline has major advantages in clinical proteomics applications over traditional SRM pipelines, and it has demonstrated a dramatically improved diagnostic performance over that from antibody-based protein biomarker diagnostic methods, such as ELISA. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21953783 | 1,044,217 |
2,089,148 | The technological and economical developments of a last few decades have brought a revolutionary change in the way chemical processes and production facilities are designed and operated. Conventional process systems are now discarded whereas modern and next generation plants; however, tend to adopt state of the art clean technologies for environmental safety and to be highly integrated (utilizing recycle streams, energy recovery networks, etc.) to provide a more efficient utilization of natural resources. But this integration could make the process more difficult to run and control the plant. Subsequently, much interest in advanced control systems with modern control techniques has emerged and PSDC has carried out the widespread research regarding on the Process Design and Control field since 1994. Many of the research activities are focused on the industrial projects because of the unique feature of the laboratory. This allows the graduate students to get various industrial experiences with the capability for the able process engineer. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21187052 | 2,087,945 |
798,598 | In 1994, the death of Disney President and Chief Operating Officer Frank Wells, and the departure of studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg to co-found DreamWorks, left Michael Eisner in full control of the company. At the turn of the century, films such as "Dinosaur" (Disney's first CG animated feature), "", "Treasure Planet" and "Home on the Range" failed to meet the critical and commercial expectations set by the 1990s phenomena, in spite of exceptions such as "The Emperor's New Groove" and "Lilo & Stitch". At the same time, the high level of popular acclaim bestowed upon "Toy Story", the first film animated entirely using computer-generated imagery (CGI), sparked an industry trend. Based on the commercial success of Pixar's computer-generated animated films and another CGI fare (especially DreamWorks' "Shrek", which contained numerous jabs at Katzenberg's former workplace and boss), Disney came to believe that CGI was what the public wanted—so it ceased producing traditional two-dimensional animation after "Home on the Range", and switched exclusively to CGI starting with 2005's "Chicken Little". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=141959 | 798,173 |
1,250,200 | In the US, startup Aging2.0 launched in 2015 and has since organized 170 meet-up events, opened volunteer chapters in 30 countries and signed up 30 companies for its own accelerator program. Amongst these, SingFit “makes it easy for everyone to become a music therapist”, WalkJoy is a wearable sensor that measures a person’s gait and alerts caregivers when someone could be about to fall. Active Protective is a personal airbag that inflates to stop someone breaking their hip. And Vynca records a person’s dying wishes, so families aren’t unsure when the time comes. The company Honor, which connects seniors, caregivers and their families, recently raised $20 million, the biggest funding in the emerging category so far. In Europe, London-based AgeTech startup Birdie secured a €7 million Series A to help elderly adults live independently while independent living system Kraydel has raised over £1m in innovation and public sector grants to develop its smart device which sits on top of the TV, linking elderly people to their carers or family members, through their TV screens. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6079418 | 1,249,524 |
1,880,146 | In 1791, the French Academy of Sciences chose to define the metre as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North or South Pole. This replaced the earlier definition based on the period of a pendulum, because the force of Earth's gravity varies slightly over the surface of the Earth, which affects the period of a pendulum. To establish a universally accepted foundation for the definition of the metre, more accurate measurements of a meridian were needed. The French Academy of Sciences commissioned an expedition led by Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre and Pierre Méchain, lasting from 1792 to 1799, which attempted to accurately measure the distance between a belfry in Dunkerque and Montjuïc castle in Barcelona to estimate the length of the meridian arc through Dunkerque. This portion of the meridian, assumed to be the same length as the Paris meridian, was to serve as the basis for the length of the quarter meridian connecting the North Pole with the Equator. The problem with this approach is that the exact shape of the Earth is not a simple mathematical shape, such as a sphere or oblate spheroid, at the level of precision required for defining a standard of length. The irregular and particular shape of the Earth smoothed to sea level is represented by a mathematical model called a geoid, which literally means "Earth-shaped". Despite these issues, in 1793 France adopted this definition of the metre as its official unit of length based on provisional results from this expedition. However, it was later determined that the first prototype metre bar was short by about 200 micrometres because of miscalculation of the flattening of the Earth, making the prototype about 0.02% shorter than the original proposed definition of the metre. Regardless, this length became the French standard and was progressively adopted by other countries in Europe. This is why the polar circumference of the Earth is 40,008 km, instead of 40,000. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=64715804 | 1,879,065 |
444,116 | Two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials are ultrathin nanomaterials with a high degree of anisotropy and chemical functionality. 2D nanomaterials are highly diverse in terms of their mechanical, chemical, and optical properties, as well as in size, shape, biocompatibility, and degradability. These diverse properties make 2D nanomaterials suitable for a wide range of applications, including drug delivery, imaging, tissue engineering, biosensors, and gas sensors among others. However, their low-dimension nanostructure gives them some common characteristics. For example, 2D nanomaterials are the thinnest materials known, which means that they also possess the highest specific surface areas of all known materials. This characteristic makes these materials invaluable for applications requiring high levels of surface interactions on a small scale. As a result, 2D nanomaterials are being explored for use in drug delivery systems, where they can adsorb large numbers of drug molecules and enable superior control over release kinetics. Additionally, their exceptional surface area to volume ratios and typically high modulus values make them useful for improving the mechanical properties of biomedical nanocomposites and nanocomposite hydrogels, even at low concentrations. Their extreme thinness has been instrumental for breakthroughs in biosensing and gene sequencing. Moreover, the thinness of these molecules allows them to respond rapidly to external signals such as light, which has led to utility in optical therapies of all kinds, including imaging applications, photothermal therapy (PTT), and photodynamic therapy (PDT). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=43589512 | 443,901 |
399,627 | Like its predecessor, the BMD-4 is capable of parachuting from aircraft with the entire crew and passengers inside the vehicle which allows target engagement after landing to be instant. An Il-76 is able to transport two of these vehicles at a time in comparison to three BMD-1s and BMD-2s. Its engine is the 2V-06-2; the same as the BMD-3. This engine develops a total power of 450 horsepower (hp). The BMD-4 is also fully amphibious with two water jets mounted on each side of the back of the hull and can swim at speeds of up to 10 km/h in a Beaufort scale of 2. With a high power-to-weight ratio, the BMD-4 features superior acceleration in comparison to other infantry fighting vehicles. The maximum speed on a highway is 70 km/h and the BMD-4 can maneuver on a 60° gradient and a 35° side slope. The BMD-4 can cross 1.8 m trenches and climb 0.8 m tall obstacles. This vehicle's suspension is hydropneumatic and giving an adjustable ground clearing of 130–530 mm with the normal road clearance being 450 mm. The clearance is changed by the driver and can be changed within 10 seconds. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42534466 | 399,429 |
1,672,154 | In 1932, Rudolph Schindler (1888–1968) of Germany introduced the first semi-flexible gastroscope. This device had numerous lenses positioned throughout the tube and a miniature light bulb at the distal tip. The tube of this device was 75 centimeters long and 11 millimeters in diameter, and the distal portion was capable of a certain degree of flexion. Between 1945 and 1952, optical engineers (particularly Karl Storz (1911–1996) of the Karl Storz GmbH company of Germany, Harold Hopkins (1918–1995) of England and Mutsuo Sugiura of the Japanese Olympus Corporation) built upon this early work, leading to the development of the first "gastrocamera". In 1964, Fernando Alves Martins (born 17 June 1927) of Portugal applied optical fiber technology to one of these early gastrocameras to produce the first gastrocamera with a flexible fiberscope. Initially used in esophagogastroduodenoscopy, newer devices were developed in the late 1960s for use in bronchoscopy, rhinoscopy and laryngoscopy. The concept of using a fiberoptic endoscope for tracheal intubation was introduced by Peter Murphy, an English anesthetist, in 1967. By the mid-1980s, the flexible fiberoptic bronchoscope had become an indispensable instrument within the pulmonology and anesthesia communities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28862297 | 1,671,212 |
1,275,697 | The initial aim of the École des mines de Paris, namely to train high-level mining engineers, evolved with time to adapt to the technological and structural transformations undergone by society. Mines ParisTech has now become one of the most prestigious French engineering schools with a broad variety of subjects. Its students are trained to have management positions, work in research and development departments, or as operations officers, etc. They receive a well-rounded education in a variety of subjects, ranging from the most technical (Mathematics, Physics) to economics, social sciences or even art in order to be able to tackle the managing or engineering-related issues they are to face. Exchange programs are possible during the third semester with prestigious universities around the world, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), California Institute of Technology (Caltech), University of Hong Kong, National University of Singapore (NUS), Tokyo Tech, Seoul National University... | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=658839 | 1,275,004 |
1,542,799 | In 1999 he was appointed as Anglo American plc professor of mineral and process engineering at the University of Leeds where he was responsible for developing a new Institute of Particle Science and Engineering, a core development in re-development of chemical engineering at the University within the recently formed School of Process, Materials and Environmental Engineering. He was Head of the Department of Mining (2001–2003). He was director of British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) Research Alliance at University, responsible for development of new activities in nuclear energy waste processing (2000–2006). He was foundational Director of a regional Centre for Industrial Collaboration in Particle Science and Technology (2003–2006) and of the Leeds Nanomanufacturing Institute (2004–2010). He was appointed Pro-Vice-Chancellor (2005) responsible for leadership of enterprise, knowledge transfer and international strategy. He has a strong interest in design of appropriate innovation systems and effective translation of knowledge to society through commercial and not-for-profit routes in Europe and in developing communities in Middle East, Asia and Africa. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26669874 | 1,541,926 |
752,060 | In 1961, Congress held hearings and passed a $1.7 billion 1962 NASA appropriations bill which included $60 million for the new crewed spaceflight laboratory. A set of requirements for the new site was drawn up and released to the Congress and general public. These included: access to water transport by large barges, a moderate climate, availability of all-weather commercial jet service, a well-established industrial complex with supporting technical facilities and labor, close proximity to a culturally attractive community in the vicinity of an institution of higher education, a strong electric utility and water supply, at least of land, and certain specified cost parameters. In August 1961, Webb asked Associate Director of the Ames Research Center John F. Parsons to head a site-selection team, which included Philip Miller, Wesley Hjornevik, and I. Edward Campagna, the construction | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=177571 | 751,658 |
1,774,255 | The first true champion of the mechanic arts at Penn State was John Fraser, appointed as a professor of mathematics in 1865 and as president of the university in 1866 after Allen's resignation. Fraser's time in the Union army served him well at Penn State, becoming the school's first lecturer in military tactics, and military drill was substituted for farm labor for the students. Fraser aimed to expand upon Pugh's vision, and the first four courses added for the 1868-69 academic year were general science, literature, mechanical and civil engineering, and metallurgy, mineralogy, and mining. Each was a four-year curriculum leading to a Bachelor of Science degree. The falling enrollment numbers of the time – 145 students in 1864-65, 114 in 1866, 82 in 1867, and 30 in 1868, with no class graduating in 1867 – led to a cautious approach to the expansion of the curriculum: the catalogue for the 1868-69 academic year listed mechanical and civil engineering, but the trustees did not hire faculty to provide instruction. After Fraser's resignation in March 1868, the trustees dissolved the new curricula and reduced the total faculty to four (two of whom eventually resigned), and the university faced a severe lack of public confidence in the stability of the institution. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31430357 | 1,773,258 |
622,756 | The development of effective treatments for many proteopathies has been challenging. Because the proteopathies often involve different proteins arising from different sources, treatment strategies must be customized to each disorder; however, general therapeutic approaches include maintaining the function of affected organs, reducing the formation of the disease-causing proteins, preventing the proteins from misfolding and/or aggregating, or promoting their removal. For example, in Alzheimer's disease, researchers are seeking ways to reduce the production of the disease-associated protein Aβ by inhibiting the enzymes that free it from its parent protein. Another strategy is to use antibodies to neutralize specific proteins by active or passive immunization. In some proteopathies, inhibiting the toxic effects of protein oligomers might be beneficial. Amyloid A (AA) amyloidosis can be reduced by treating the inflammatory state that increases the amount of the protein in the blood (referred to as serum amyloid A, or SAA). In immunoglobulin light chain amyloidosis (AL amyloidosis), chemotherapy can be used to lower the number of the blood cells that make the light chain protein that forms amyloid in various bodily organs. Transthyretin (TTR) amyloidosis (ATTR) results from the deposition of misfolded TTR in multiple organs. Because TTR is mainly produced in the liver, TTR amyloidosis can be slowed in some hereditary cases by liver transplantation. TTR amyloidosis also can be treated by stabilizing the normal assemblies of the protein (called tetramers because they consist of four TTR molecules bound together). Stabilization prevents individual TTR molecules from escaping, misfolding, and aggregating into amyloid. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10348140 | 622,424 |
5,974 | In the early years of operation, the analog computers would not always keep up with rapidly changing flight environmental inputs. If internal pressures became too great and the spike was incorrectly positioned, the shock wave would suddenly blow out the front of the inlet, called an "inlet unstart". During unstarts, afterburner extinctions were common. The remaining engine's asymmetrical thrust would cause the aircraft to yaw violently to one side. SAS, autopilot, and manual control inputs would fight the yawing, but often the extreme off-angle would reduce airflow in the opposite engine and stimulate "sympathetic stalls". This generated a rapid counter-yawing, often coupled with loud "banging" noises, and a rough ride during which crews' helmets would sometimes strike their cockpit canopies. One response to a single unstart was unstarting both inlets to prevent yawing, then restarting them both. After wind tunnel testing and computer modeling by NASA Dryden test center, Lockheed installed an electronic control to detect unstart conditions and perform this reset action without pilot intervention. During troubleshooting of the unstart issue, NASA also discovered the vortices from the nose chines were entering the engine and interfering with engine efficiency. NASA developed a computer to control the engine bypass doors which countered this issue and improved efficiency. Beginning in 1980, the analog inlet control system was replaced by a digital system, which reduced unstart instances. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=55245 | 5,971 |
934,913 | Cyclodextrins are prepared by enzymatic treatment of starch. Commonly cyclodextrin glycosyltransferase (CGTase) is employed along with α-amylase. First starch is liquified either by heat treatment or using α-amylase, then CGTase is added for the enzymatic conversion. CGTases produce mixtures of cyclodextrins, thus the product of the conversion results in a mixture of the three main types of cyclic molecules, in ratios that are strictly dependent on the enzyme used: each CGTase has its own characteristic α:β:γ synthesis ratio. Purification of the three types of cyclodextrins takes advantage of the different water solubility of the molecules: β-CD which is poorly water-soluble (18.5 g/L or 16.3mM) (at 25C) can be easily retrieved through crystallization while the more soluble α- and γ-CDs (145 and 232 g/L respectively) are usually purified by means of expensive and time consuming chromatography techniques. As an alternative a "complexing agent" can be added during the enzymatic conversion step: such agents (usually organic solvents like toluene, acetone or ethanol) form a complex with the desired cyclodextrin which subsequently precipitates. The complex formation drives the conversion of starch towards the synthesis of the precipitated cyclodextrin, thus enriching its content in the final mixture of products. Wacker Chemie AG uses dedicated enzymes, that can produce alpha-, beta- or gamma-cyclodextrin specifically. This is very valuable especially for the food industry, as only alpha- and gamma-cyclodextrin can be consumed without a daily intake limit. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1252800 | 934,419 |
591,692 | Vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) is a rhabdovirus, consisting of 5 genes encoded by a negative sense, single-stranded RNA genome. In nature, VSV infects insects as well as livestock, where it causes a relatively localized and non-fatal illness. The low pathogenicity of this virus is due in large part to its sensitivity to interferons, a class of proteins that are released into the tissues and bloodstream during infection. These molecules activate genetic anti-viral defence programs that protect cells from infection and prevent spread of the virus. However, in 2000, Stojdl, Lichty et al. demonstrated that defects in these pathways render cancer cells unresponsive to the protective effects of interferons and therefore highly sensitive to infection with VSV. Since VSV undergoes a rapid cytolytic replication cycle, infection leads to death of the malignant cell and roughly a 1000-fold amplification of virus within 24h. VSV is therefore highly suitable for therapeutic application, and several groups have gone on to show that systemically administered VSV can be delivered to a tumour site, where it replicates and induces disease regression, often leading to durable cures. Attenuation of the virus by engineering a deletion of Met-51 of the matrix protein ablates virtually all infection of normal tissues, while replication in tumour cells is unaffected. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1723667 | 591,390 |
1,855,231 | Spongiform degeneration of mouse brains caused by altering PI3P to PI(3,5)P2 conversion is associated with human Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) by accumulation of Lc3II, p62, and LAMP2 proteins, which also contributes to inclusion body disease. Manipulation of this signaling lipid involves culturing fibroblasts obtained by insertion of ETn2-beta(early transposon 2-beta) into intron 18 of FIG4 gene in vacuolar membrane of mice labeled pale tremor (plt). These fibroblasts fill with immunoreactive large vacuoles; but more importantly their abnormal concentration of PI(3,5)P2 demonstrates conserved function of mammalian FIG4 and late endosome-lysosome axis failure responsible for lack of apoptosis of neurons and Schwann cells (but large motor axons are still lost while demyelination still happens). In contrast, homozygous FIG4 defective (FIG4-/-) mice have a reduction of myelin, especially in optic nerves; but this detriment is rescued by an overexpression of human FIG4 I41T at low-level function. While FIG4-null adult mice have macroscopically normal brains with increments in apoptosis and neuronal density with delayed cell maturation, neonatal mice maintain all neurologic defects. FIG4 expression in mouse brain cells is also comparable to that of calvaria, osteoblasts, and bone marrow cells. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10829640 | 1,854,165 |
620,651 | In the Carpathian mountains, they tend to favor almost exclusively beech-dominated forests, normally at elevations of above sea level. Forest characteristics of these beech-dominated woods showed that during forest management showed they need at least of woods to persist, with parts of the forests needing to be at least 45–60 years old. Carpathian Ural owls typically occur far from human habitations and woodland edge not surrounded by forest and typically avoid parts of the forest with steep slopes or with dense undergrowth. Carpathian birds often preferred areas with glades that bear gaps between the trees often around or so and usually with plentiful broken trees. Young, post-dispersal owls in the Carpathians birds show less strong habitat preferences and may utilized wooded corridors that often are connected to remaining ideal habitat areas. Reportedly the countries of Slovakia, Slovenia then Romania have the most extensive ideal habitat in the Carpathians and resultingly have the highest local densities of Ural owls, perhaps in all of Europe. Forest predominant in beech were also seemingly preferred by the reintroduced Ural owls in Bavarian Forest, again with old growth preferred with plentiful sun exposure. Bavarian owls occurred in areas that were also often rich in large mammals since their preference for access to parts of the forest with broken trees and openings often coincided. Further north in Latvia, forests inhabited were usually far older than was prevalent in the regional environment, usually with a preference for forest areas with trees at least 80 years old. Finnish populations apparently most often occur in spruce dominated forest, usually having discreetly segregated forest preferences apart from sympatric species of owls except for the boreal owl, which also preferred spruce areas but occurred more regularly when the dominant Ural owls are scarce. In the taiga of western Finland, it was found that biodiversity was consistently higher in the vicinity of Ural owl nests than outside these vicinities, rendering the Ural owl as perhaps a “keystone species” for the local ecosystem. Riverine forests with birch and poplar are often utilized in the taiga as well as spruce or fir forests (montane taiga) in the Ussuri river area. Generally in northern climes such as Finland and western Russia, wherein the Lapland area the Ural owl is likely to reach the northernmost part of its range, it is adaptive to Subarctic areas possibly up to the tree line but does not adapt as well as the great grey owl to areas of dwarf forest just south of the tundra, generally needing taller, more mature forests to the south of this. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=815909 | 620,335 |
965,055 | Much of the stimulus for the treaty was increasing public unease about radioactive fallout as a result of above-ground or underwater nuclear testing, particularly given the increasing power of nuclear devices, as well as concern about the general environmental damage caused by testing. In 1952–53, the US and Soviet Union detonated their first thermonuclear weapons (hydrogen bombs), far more powerful than the atomic bombs tested and deployed since 1945. In 1954, the US Castle Bravo test at Bikini Atoll (part of Operation Castle) had a yield of 15 megatons of TNT, more than doubling the expected yield. The Castle Bravo test resulted in the worst radiological event in US history as radioactive particles spread over more than , affected inhabited areas (including Rongelap Atoll and Utirik Atoll), and sickened Japanese fishermen aboard the "Lucky Dragon" upon whom "ashes of death" had rained. In the same year, a Soviet test sent radioactive particles over Japan. Around the same time, victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima visited the US for medical care, which attracted significant public attention. In 1961, the Soviet Union tested the Tsar Bomba, which had a yield of 50 megatons and remains the most powerful man-made explosion in history, though due to a highly efficient detonation fallout was relatively limited. Between 1951 and 1958, the US conducted 166 atmospheric tests, the Soviet Union conducted 82, and Britain conducted 21; only 22 underground tests were conducted in this period (all by the US). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30592 | 964,546 |
822,629 | The visual ability of birds of prey is legendary, and the keenness of their eyesight is due to a variety of factors. Raptors have large eyes for their size, 1.4 times greater than the average for birds of the same weight, and the eye is tube-shaped to produce a larger retinal image. The resolving power of an eye depends both on the optics, large eyes with large apertures suffers less from diffraction and can have larger retinal images due to a long focal length, and on the density of receptor spacing. The retina has a large number of receptors per square millimeter, which determines the degree of visual acuity. The more receptors an animal has, the higher its ability to distinguish individual objects at a distance, especially when, as in raptors, each receptor is typically attached to a single ganglion. Many raptors have foveas with far more rods and cones than the human fovea (65,000/mm in American kestrel, 38,000 in humans) and this provides these birds with spectacular long distance vision. It is proposed that the shape of the deep central fovea of raptors can create a telephoto optical system, increasing the size of the retinal image in the fovea and thereby increasing the spatial resolution. Behavioural studies show that some large eyed raptors (Wedge-tailed eagle, Old world vultures) have a 2 times higher spatial resolution than humans, but many medium and small sized raptors have comparable or lower spatial resolution. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18416476 | 822,188 |
409,842 | On 4 June 1942, a conference regarding the project, initiated by Albert Speer as head of the "Reich Ministry for Armament and Ammunition" (RMBM: " Reichsministerium für Bewaffnung und Munition"; after late 1943 the Reich Ministry for Armament and War Production), decided on its continuation merely for the aim of energy production. On 9 June 1942, Adolf Hitler issued a decree for the reorganization of the RFR as a separate legal entity under the RMBM; the decree appointed Reich Marshal Hermann Göring as its president. The reorganization was done under the initiative of Minister Albert Speer of the RMBM; it was necessary as the RFR under Bernhard Rust the Minister of Science, Education and National Culture was ineffective and was not achieving its purpose. The hope was that Göring would manage the RFR with the same discipline and efficiency as he had the aviation sector. A meeting was held on 6 July 1942 to discuss the function of the RFR and set its agenda. The meeting was a turning point in National Socialism's attitude towards science, as well as recognition that the policies which drove Jewish scientists out of Germany were a mistake, as the Reich needed their expertise. Abraham Esau was appointed on 8 December 1942 as Hermann Göring's "Bevollmächtigter" (plenipotentiary) for nuclear physics research under the RFR; in December 1943, Esau was replaced by Walther Gerlach. In the final analysis, placing the RFR under Göring's administrative control had little effect on the German nuclear weapon project. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1397318 | 409,640 |
847,664 | Accordingly, a standard Mk I "K9834" (the 48th production Spitfire) was taken off the production line and modified for the attempt on the World Speed Record. All military equipment was removed and the hinged gun panels, radio door and flare chute opening were replaced with removable panels. A special "sprint" version of the Merlin II, running on a special "racing fuel" of gasoline, benzol and methanol, with a small amount of tetraethyl lead was able to generate 2,100 hp (1,565 kW) for short periods. This drove a Watts coarse pitch, four bladed wood propeller of in diameter. Cooling the more powerful engine was achieved using a pressurised water system. This required a deeper radiator inside a lengthened duct which extended to the trailing edge of the starboard wing. A larger diameter oil cooler was fitted under the port wing. The wingspan was reduced to 33 ft 9 in (10.28 m) and the wingtips were rounded. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16070159 | 847,214 |
851,909 | In writing instruction, support is typically presented in verbal form (discourse). The writing tutor engages the learner's attention, calibrates the task, motivates the student, identifies relevant task features, controls for frustration, and demonstrates as needed (Rodgers, 2004). Through joint activities, the teacher scaffolds conversation to maximize the development of a child's intrapsychological functioning. In this process, the adult controls the elements of the task that are beyond the child's ability, all the while increasing the expectations of what the child is able to do. Speech, a critical tool to scaffold thinking and responding, plays a crucial role in the development of higher psychological processes (Luria, 1979) because it enables thinking to be more abstract, flexible, and independent (Bodrova & Leong, 1996). From a Vygotskian perspective, talk and action work together with the sociocultural fabric of the writing event to shape a child's construction of awareness and performance (Dorn, 1996). Dialogue may range from casual talk to deliberate explanations of features of written language. The talk embedded in the actions of the literacy event shapes the child's learning as the tutor regulates his or her language to conform to the child's degrees of understanding. Clay (2005) shows that what may seem like casual conversational exchanges between tutor and student actually offer many opportunities for fostering cognitive development, language learning, story composition for writing, and reading comprehension. Conversations facilitate generative, constructive, experimental, and developmental speech and writing in the development of new ideas (Smagorinsky, 2007). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=263104 | 851,455 |
807,326 | Deepfake is a form of media in which one existing image or video is replaced or altered by someone else. Altering may include acting out fake content, false advertisement, hoaxes, and financial fraud. The technology of deepfakes may also use machine learning or artificial intelligence. Deepfakes propose an ethical dilemma due to how accessible they are as well as the implications on one’s integrity it may cause to viewers. Deepfakes reconsider the challenge of trustworthiness of the visual experience and can create negative consequences. Deepfakes contribute to the problem of “fake news” by enabling both the more widespread fabrication or manipulation of media that may be deliberately used for the purposes of disinformation. There are four categories of deepfakes: deepfake porn, deepfake political campaigns, deepfake for commercial use, and creative deepfakes. Deepfakes have many harmful effects such as deception, intimidation, and reputational harm. Deception causes views to synthesize a form of reality that did not exist before and may think of it as real footage. The contents of the footage may be detrimental depending on what it is. Detrimental information may include fraudulent voter information, candidate information, money fraud, etc. Intimidation may occur by targeting a certain audience with harmful threats to generate fear. An example of intimidation may be deepfake revenge pornography which also ties into reputational harm. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=699052 | 806,896 |
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