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1,359,078 | "Rickettsia typhi" is a causative agent of murine typhus (endemic typhus) in humans and is distributed worldwide. It is an acute, febrile illness that is mainly transmitted by the fleas of rodents, commonly associated with cities and ports where urban rats ("Rattus rattus" and "Rattus norvegicus") are abundant. Humans acquire infection by inhalation or by self-inoculating infected fleas or flea feces into skin when they visit disease-endemic areas infested with rats. Most patients present with a fever, and many have a rash and headache, although it can also lead to disseminated, multisystem disease including infections of the brain, lung, liver, kidney, and heart endothelia. As these signs and symptoms are similar to those produced by other diseases, including other rickettsiae, murine typhus is difficult to diagnose clinically. In addition to non-uniform and non-specific symptoms, there is a lack of diagnostic tests effective during the acute stages of the illness, leading to delayed appropriate treatment. Murine typhus may generally be clinically mild, but severe and even fatal cases have been reported. The severity of murine typhus infection has been associated with age, race, and delayed diagnosis. Doxycycline is the antibiotic of choice as it is shown to shorten the course of illness, although 99% of those infected will clear the disease within weeks without specific treatment. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20321247 | 1,358,327 |
405,346 | "" is the official expansion pack for "StarCraft", developed by Blizzard Entertainment and Saffire. Released for Windows and Mac OS in the United States on December 18, 1998, the expansion directly continues the events of "StarCraft". The expansion's story continues only days after the conclusion of the original game. It starts with the Protoss' struggle to ensure the survival of their species and continues with the intervention of the United Earth Directorate into local Terran affairs. The livelihood of both the Protoss and the previously silent Earth government is then threatened by the ever-increasing power of Sarah Kerrigan and her Zerg broods. In addition, the expansion introduces new features and improvements. A total of seven new units with different functions and abilities are included, the artificial intelligence behavior was modified, new graphical tilesets for terrain were added, and the game's level editor received improved scripting tools to facilitate cut scenes with the in-game engine. The expansion received critical praise for fixing various balance issues with the original game, development attention on par with that of a full game, and for continuing with single player campaigns that were heavily story-driven. In April 2017, Starcraft received its first update in over 8 years, and Brood War was released for free to both PC and MAC. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14271726 | 405,146 |
430,272 | The components of the FBE formulation are weighed and pre-blended in high speed mixers. The mix is then transferred to a high-shear extruder. FBE extruders incorporate a single or dual screw setup, rotating within a fixed clamshell barrel. A temperature range from 50 °C to 100 °C is used within the extruder barrel. This setup compresses the FBE blend, while heating and melting it to a semi-liquid form. During this process, the ingredients of the molten mix are dispersed thoroughly. Because of the fast operation of the extruder and relatively low temperature within the barrel, the epoxy and hardener components will not undergo a significant chemical reaction. The molten extrudate then passes between cold-rollers and becomes a solid, brittle sheet. It then moves to a “Kibbler”, which chops it into smaller chips. These chips are ground, using high speed grinders (classifiers) to a particle size of less than 150 micrometers (standard specifications requires 100% pass through in 250 micrometer sieves and maximum 3% retains in 150 micrometer sieve). The final product is packaged in closed containers, with particular care given to avoid moisture contamination. Normal storage temperatures of FBE powder coatings are below in air-conditioned warehouses. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3181969 | 430,060 |
1,785,954 | Applications of his theories and mathematical models have had a profound effect in the field. Peppas and his students originated the novel muco- and bioadhesive systems that interact molecularly with the mucus and tissue and have been able to prolong bioavailability of proteins and peptides in the blood. As a result of his work, a number of biomedical polymers and commercial delivery devices have been launched. Peppas was the first to develop novel toxic-free poly(vinyl alcohol) gels by the freezing-thawing technique in 1975. These gels became very successful articular cartilage replacement systems. In 1978, he developed the same systems for "in situ" replacement of vocal cords. In 1979 his group pioneered the use of hydrogels in drug delivery applications, including epidermal bioadhesive systems and systems for the release of theophylline, proxyphylline, diltiazem, and oxprenolol. Peppas' lab has developed new technologies of oral delivery systems for insulin and other proteins. These devices release insulin orally, "protecting" the insulin throughout its transport in the stomach, upper small intestine, and, eventually, blood, and bypassing diabetics' need for several daily injections. The same technology has been used for the transmucosal (oral, buccal) delivery of calcitonin (for treatment of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women) and interferon-alpha (for cancer therapy), and is being investigated for interferon-beta release for multiple sclerotic patients. Peppas was one of the pioneers of intelligent biomaterials, and medical devices. Using intelligent polymers as early as 1980, Peppas and his group were the first to use such pH-sensitive and temperature-sensitive systems for modulated release of streptokinase and other fibrinolytic enzymes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20887787 | 1,784,950 |
766,234 | With adult specimens estimated up to ) and with a weight estimated up to , "Microraptor" was among the smallest-known non-avian dinosaurs. Holtz estimated it at . An estimate by Benson "et al." in 2012 was that "Microraptor" had a maximum length of . Aside from their extremely small size, "Microraptor" were among the first non-avialan dinosaurs discovered with the impressions of feathers and wings. Seven specimens of "M. zhaoianus" have been described in detail, from which most feather impressions are known. Unusual even among early birds and feathered dinosaurs, "Microraptor" is one of the few known bird precursors to sport long flight feathers on the legs as well as the wings. Their bodies had a thick covering of feathers, with a diamond-shaped fan on the end of the tail (possibly for added stability during flight). Xu "et al." (2003) compared the longer plumes on "Microraptor"s head to those of the Philippine eagle. Bands of dark and light present on some specimens may indicate color patterns present in life, though at least some individuals almost certainly possessed an iridescent black coloration. Several anatomical features found in "Microraptor", such as a combination of unserrated and partially serrated teeth with constricted 'waists', and unusually long upper arm bones, are shared with both primitive avians and primitive troodontids. "Microraptor" is particularly similar to the basal troodontid "Sinovenator"; in their 2002 description of two "M. zhaoianus" specimens, Hwang "et al." note that this is not particularly surprising, given that both "Microraptor" and "Sinovenator" are very primitive members of two closely related groups, and both are close to the deinonychosaurian split between dromaeosaurids and troodontids. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1025693 | 765,824 |
1,505,918 | The BioGRID was originally published and released as simply the General Repository for Interaction Datasets but was later renamed to the BioGRID in order to more concisely describe the project, and help distinguish it from several GRID Computing projects with a similar name. Originally separated into organism specific databases, the newest version now provides a unified front end allowing for searches across several organisms simultaneously. The BioGRID was developed initially as a project at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital but has since expanded to include teams at the Institut de Recherche en Immunologie et en Cancérologie at the Université de Montréal and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University. The BioGRID's original focus was on curation of binary protein-protein and genetic interactions, but has expanded over several updates to incorporate curated post-translational modification data, chemical interaction data, and complex multi-gene/protein interactions. Moreover, on a monthly basis, the BioGRID continues to expand curated data and also develop and release new tools, data from comprehensive targeted curation projects, and perform targeted scientific analysis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4400671 | 1,505,072 |
27,409 | Following the reconstruction of circuit facilities, the race was resumed in 1949 with renewed interest from major automobile manufacturers. 1949 was also Ferrari's first victory, the 166MM of Luigi Chinetti and Peter Mitchell-Thomson. After the formation of the World Sportscar Championship in 1953, of which Le Mans was a part, Ferrari, Aston Martin, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar and many others began sending multiple cars backed by their respective factories to compete for overall wins against their competitors. This competitiveness sometimes resulted in tragedy, as in the 1955 Le Mans disaster during the race in which Pierre Levegh's car crashed into a crowd of spectators, killing more than 80 people. The incident led to the widespread introduction of safety measures, not only at the circuit but elsewhere in the motorsport world. The entire pit complex was razed and rebuilt further back following the accident, allowing the pit straight to be widened. However, there was still no barrier between the track and the pit lane. Safety standards improved, but the cars got faster. The move from open-cockpit roadsters to closed-cockpit coupés resulted in speeds of over on the Mulsanne. Ford entered the picture with the GT40, finally ending Ferrari's dominance with four straight wins (1966–1969) before the 1960s ended and the cars and the race changed substantially. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1401596 | 27,399 |
807,357 | In cases such as the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami or the 2011 Arab Spring movements, citizen journalists were seen to have been significant sources of facts and information in relation to the events. These were re-broadcast by news outlets, and more importantly, re-circulated by and to other internet users. As Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin state in their book Remediation: Understanding New Media (1999): "The liveness of the Web is a refashioned version of the liveness of broadcast television" However, it is commonly political events (such as 'Occupy' movements or the Iran Elections of 2009) that tend to raise ethical questions and concerns. In the latter example, there had been efforts made by the Iranian government in censoring and prohibiting the spread of internal happenings to the outside by its citizen journalists. This occurrence questioned the importance of the spread of crucial information regarding the issue, and the source from which it came from (citizen journalists, government authorities, etc.). This goes to prove how the internet "enables new forms of human action and expression [but] at the same time it disables [it]" Information and Communication Technoethics also identifies ways to develop ethical frameworks of research structures in order to capture the essence of new technologies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=699052 | 806,927 |
1,442,984 | Another Florentine civic showpiece of sculpture was the Orsanmichele, a building the guilds owned together, and used for various purposes. The interior had been given a large tabernacle by Orcagna, probably as a votive offering for the end of the Black Death in the 1360s. The ground floor had originally been open, and used as a trading hall and meeting place, but by 1380 the spaces between the outside pilasters had been walled up, and the ground floor was the guilds' church (still with offices above, now these are the museum with the original statues). There was already a plan for each of the guilds to place a statue on a pilaster, but only one had been done by then. At the end of the century the scheme was revived, and the earliest of the statues in place until they were replaced by copies in modern times is dated 1399, the latest 1601. But there was a burst of activity between 1411 and 1429. The height of the niches, on a busy street, was just a few feet above passers-by. The delay was caused by the dilatoriness of the guilds, but has resulted in a series of works, by the leading sculptors of the day, that display excellently the development of the Florentine style, and especially the cross-currents within it in the years before 1430. Most of the statues are of the patron saints of each guild. There are 14 statues or groups, two by Donatello, two by Ghiberti, and the "Christ and St Thomas" by Verrocchio (completed c. 1480). Ghiberti's "Saint John the Baptist" (1412) was the earliest of the six in bronze, still very much in the International Gothic style. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=70696882 | 1,442,171 |
884,059 | The disease causing PrPSc is proteinase K resistant and insoluble. Attempts to purify it from the brains of infected animals invariably yield heterogeneous mixtures and aggregated states that are not amenable to characterization by NMR spectroscopy or X-ray crystallography. However, it is a general consensus that PrPSc contains a high percentage of tightly stacked β-sheets than the normal PrPc that renders the protein insoluble and resistant to proteinase. Using techniques of cryoelectron microscopy and structural modeling based on similar common protein structures, it has been discovered that PrPSc contains ß-sheets in the region of aa 81–95 to aa 171, while the carboxy terminal structure is supposedly preserved, retaining the disulfide-linked α-helical conformation in the normal PrPc. These ß-sheets form a parallel left-handed beta-helix. Three PrPSc molecules are believed to form a primary unit and therefore build the basis for the so-called scrapie-associated fibrils. The catalytic activity depends on the size of the particle. PrPSc particles which consist of only 14-28 PrPc molecules exhibit the highest rate of infectivity and conversion. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=413102 | 883,595 |
2,172,550 | Improving the resolution and enhancing the instrumentation with user-friendly hardware and software will make AFM/NSOM coupled with IR/Raman a useful characterization tool in many areas including biomedical, materials and life sciences. For example, this technique was used in detecting the spin-cast thin film of poly(dimethylsiloxane) with polystyrene on it by scanning the tip over the sample. The shape and size of polystyrene fragments was detected at a high spatial resolution due to its high absorption at specific resonance frequencies. Other examples include inorganic boron nitride thin films characterization with IR-NSOM. The images of single molecule rhodamine 6G (Rh-6G) was obtained with a spatial resolution of 50 nm. These techniques can be also used in numerous biological related applications including the analysis of plant materials, bone, and single cells. Biological application was demonstrated by detecting details of conformation changes of cholesteryl-oleate caused by FEL irradiation with a spatial resolution below the diffraction limit. Researchers also used Raman/NSOM in tracking the formation of energy-storing polymer polyhydroxybutyrate in bacteria "Rhodobacter capsulatus". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31760032 | 2,171,309 |
60,335 | In 1980, the Indian Air Force (IAF) learned of a successful approach by Pakistan to the US that year to purchase F-16A/B fighters, delivery of which was to commence in 1982. By late 1980, the IAF had quickly convinced the Indian government to purchase an equally potent aircraft, as its MiG-21s and MiG-23s were inferior to the F-16. When evaluating the Mirage F1 earlier, it became aware of a high-performance prototype of the Mirage 2000 in the flight-testing phase. No other aircraft of this potential was being offered for export. An internal assessment of the Mirage 2000 was carried out and the Indian government felt that the French plane was more advanced and a superior response to the F-16s that the US was to supply to Pakistan, and approached France for 150 Mirage 2000s. In October 1982, the country placed an order with Dassault for 36 single-seat Mirage 2000Hs and four twin-seat Mirage 2000THs (with "H" standing for "Hindustan") with the possibility of a follow-on purchase of nine aircraft (eight single- and one twin-seater aircraft) as war, maintenance and attrition reserve. The purchase of 150 aircraft, could well have paved the way for joint production with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, but the number of aircraft ordered (40+9) was too small for such an arrangement. India nevertheless had the option to produce a number of Mirage 2000s under license that was later scrapped due to the country's close relationship with the Soviet Union. This led to the induction of the MiG-29 instead, overriding reservations expressed by the IAF. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=381535 | 60,310 |
990,099 | The Phantom's service as a frontline fighter would be short-lived. Its limited range and light armament – notably, its inability to carry bombs – made it best suited for duty as a point-defence interceptor aircraft. However, its speed and rate of climb were only slightly better than existing propeller-powered fighters and fell short of other contemporary jets, such as the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, prompting concerns that the Phantom would be outmatched by future enemy jets it might soon face. Moreover, recent experience in World War II had demonstrated the value of naval fighters that could double as fighter-bombers, a capability the Phantom lacked. Finally, the aircraft exhibited some design deficiencies – its navigational avionics were poor, it could not accommodate newly developed ejection seats, and the location of the machine guns in the upper nose caused pilots to be dazzled by muzzle flash. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11761 | 989,582 |
1,504,109 | The late, eminent Canadian theoretician Bruce Trigger suggested archaeologists continue to rigorously evaluate each history based on "evidence of greater or lesser completeness and accuracy and on more or less sound reasoning" (1997: ix). Advocating a continued use of careful, objective assessment of such qualities can help integrate different aspects of the past into a more complete, holistic picture of history (ibid). The anthropological-Indigenous collaborative model inevitably raises hackles because at some point, somebody's truth is going to have to be truer than someone else's to move forward (or it will be presented as such; Cooper 2006). Where archaeologists' version of events contradicts First Nations' beliefs about their history, is each obliged to challenge others' myth-building? "If archaeologists knowingly treat the beliefs of Indian differently from those of Euro-Canadians," writes Trigger, "there is a danger that the discipline will descend into mythography, political opportunism, and bad science" (x). While he asserts that "the only morally defensible option" (x) in such cases is to report the truth (as far as it can be known), the real, social implications this could have on relationships predicated on goodwill and respect may be severe. Trigger acknowledges the influence that both cultural relativism and the great white guilt have on archaeologists looking to do the right thing, but maintains that above all, archaeology must retain the scientific method if it can hope to "refute claims being made by fascists, sexists, racists, and Indian-haters" (x). He insists that archaeologists have a responsibility not only to educate people, but to do so "honestly and frankly" (x) and to credit individuals with the ability to form their own opinions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21924068 | 1,503,263 |
1,056,520 | A wide variety of boron delivery agents have been synthesized. The first, which has mainly been used in Japan, is a polyhedral borane anion, sodium borocaptate or BSH (), and the second is a dihydroxyboryl derivative of phenylalanine, called boronophenylalanine or BPA. The latter has been used in many clinical trials. Following administration of either BPA or BSH by intravenous infusion, the tumor site is irradiated with neutrons, the source of which, until recently, has been specially designed nuclear reactors and now is neutron accelerators. Until 1994, low-energy (< 0.5 eV) thermal neutron beams were used in Japan and the United States, but since they have a limited depth of penetration in tissues, higher energy (> .5eV < 10 keV) epithermal neutron beams, which have a greater depth of penetration, were used in clinical trials in the United States, Europe, Japan, Argentina, Taiwan, and China until recently when accelerators replaced the reactors. In theory BNCT is a highly selective type of radiation therapy that can target tumor cells without causing radiation damage to the adjacent normal cells and tissues. Doses up to 60–70 grays (Gy) can be delivered to the tumor cells in one or two applications compared to 6–7 weeks for conventional fractionated external beam photon irradiation. However, the effectiveness of BNCT is dependent upon a relatively homogeneous cellular distribution of B within the tumor, and more specifically within the constituent tumor cells, and this is still one of the main unsolved problems that have limited its success. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=32637211 | 1,055,972 |
372,420 | In 1928, British RAF College Cranwell cadet Frank Whittle formally submitted his ideas for a turbojet to his superiors. In October 1929 he developed his ideas further. On 16 January 1930 in England, Whittle submitted his first patent (granted in 1932). The patent showed a two-stage axial compressor feeding a single-sided centrifugal compressor. Practical axial compressors were made possible by ideas from A.A. Griffith in a seminal paper in 1926 ("An Aerodynamic Theory of Turbine Design"). Whittle later concentrated on the simpler centrifugal compressor only, for a variety of practical reasons. A Whittle engine was the first turbojet to run, the Power Jets WU, on 12 April 1937. It was liquid-fuelled. Whittle's team experienced near-panic during the first start attempts when the engine accelerated out of control to a relatively high speed despite the fuel supply being cut off. It was subsequently found that fuel had leaked into the combustion chamber during pre-start motoring checks and accumulated in pools, so the engine would not stop accelerating until all the leaked fuel had burned off. Whittle was unable to interest the government in his invention, and development continued at a slow pace. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=181823 | 372,225 |
88,864 | A carbine is a firearm similar to a rifle in form and intended usage, but generally shorter or smaller than the typical "full-size" hunting or battle rifle of a similar time period, and sometimes using a smaller or less-powerful cartridge. Carbines were and are typically used by members of the military in roles that are expected to engage in combat, but where a full-size rifle would be an impediment to the primary duties of that soldier (vehicle drivers, field commanders and support staff, airborne troops, engineers, etc.). Carbines are also common in law enforcement and among civilian owners where similar size, space, and/or power concerns may exist. Carbines, like rifles, can be single-shot, repeating-action, semi-automatic, or select-fire/fully automatic, generally depending on the time period and intended market. Common historical examples include the Winchester Model 1892, Lee–Enfield "Jungle Carbine", SKS, M1 carbine (no relation to the larger M1 Garand) and M4 carbine (a more compact variant of the current M16 rifle). Modern U.S. civilian carbines include compact customizations of the AR-15, Ruger Mini-14, Beretta Cx4 Storm, Kel-Tec SUB-2000, bolt-action rifles generally falling under the specifications of a scout rifle, and aftermarket conversion kits for popular pistols including the M1911 and Glock models. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11966 | 88,828 |
1,354,125 | The WZ-1224, designed throughout the late 1970s, is a Chinese attempt to design a western-style main battle tank. In the 1970s, China had the opportunity to send military officials to visit KraussMaffei, the main producer of the Leopard 2. Chinese officers seems interested to the Leopard 2, especially its mobility, but the People's Liberation Army was unable to procure the tank or the license to produce it due to its financial strain and possible maintenance problems. (Ironically, as of 2022, KraussMaffei is owned by ChemChina, a Chinese state-owned enterprise) Due to this, China decided to start development of new tanks with western technical support to lower the production and maintenance costs. In August 1978, a Fifth Machine Industry Ministry conference in Datong, Shanxi deemed a new main battle tank necessary to combat the Soviet T-72, one of the most advanced tanks of its time. The conference resulted in a new tank project with specifications including a mass of 43-45 tonnes, a 120mm smoothbore gun that is able to penetrate the T-72 in the range of 2000 meters, a new 900-1000hp engine, giving the tank a hypothetical top speed of 65km/h and an average speed of 45km/h, as well as a NBC protection system and a fire extinguishing system. Finally, due to China's lack of road infrastructure and bridgelaying vehicles, the new tank is required to have deep fording abilities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=43410769 | 1,353,378 |
258,196 | In a high energy injury to the midfoot, such as a fall from a height or a motor vehicle accident, the diagnosis of a Lisfranc injury should, in theory at least, pose less of a challenge. There will be deformity of the midfoot and X-ray abnormalities should be obvious. Further, the nature of the injury will create heightened clinical suspicion and there may even be disruption of the overlying skin and compromise of the blood supply. Typical X-ray findings would include a gap between the base of the first and second toes. The diagnosis becomes more challenging in the case of low energy incidents, such as might occur with a twisting injury on the racquetball court, or when an American Football lineman is forced back upon a foot that is already in a fully plantar flexed position. Then, there may only be complaint of inability to bear weight and some mild swelling of the forefoot or midfoot. Bruising of the arch has been described as diagnostic in these circumstances but may well be absent. Typically, conventional radiography of the foot is utilized with standard non-weight bearing views, supplemented by weight bearing views which may demonstrate widening of the interval between the first and second toes, if the initial views fail to show abnormality. Unfortunately, radiographs in such circumstances have a sensitivity of 50% when non-weight bearing and 85% when weight bearing, meaning that they will appear normal in 15% of cases where a Lisfranc injury actually exists. In the case of apparently normal x-rays, if clinical suspicion remains, advanced imaging such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT scan) is a logical next step. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2299386 | 258,062 |
482,338 | Microorganisms are at the heart of Arctic and Antarctic food webs. These polar environments contain a diverse range of bacterial, archaeal, and eukaryotic microbial communities that, along with viruses, are important components of the polar ecosystems. They are found in a range of habitats, including subglacial lakes and cryoconite holes, making the cold biomes of these polar regions replete with metabolically diverse microorganisms and sites of active biogeochemical cycling. These environments, that cover approximately one-fifth of the surface of the Earth and that are inhospitable to human life, are home to unique microbial communities. The resident microbiota of the two regions has a similarity of only about 30%—not necessarily surprising given the limited connectivity of the polar oceans and the difference in freshwater supply, coming from glacial melts and rivers that drain into the Southern Ocean and the Arctic Ocean, respectively. The separation is not just by distance: Antarctica is surrounded by the Southern Ocean that is driven by the strong Antarctic Circumpolar Current, whereas the Arctic is ringed by landmasses. Such different topographies resulted as the two continents moved to the opposite polar regions of the planet ~40–25 million years ago. Magnetic and gravity data point to the evolution of the Arctic, driven by the Amerasian and Eurasian basins, from 145–61 million years ago to a cold polar region of water and ice surrounded by land. Antarctica was formed from the breakup of the super-continent, Gondwana, a landmass surrounded by the Southern Ocean. The Antarctic continent is permanently covered with glacial ice, with only 0.4% of its area comprising exposed land dotted with lakes and ponds. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60927729 | 482,094 |
1,913,665 | Born Mary Letitia Somerville Fisher, she was the daughter of historian H. A. L. Fisher and Lettice Fisher, the founder of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child. She was educated at Oxford High School. She obtained her first degree (in Classics) from Somerville College, Oxford, and then studied abroad, researching the grain supply of ancient Rome. During the Second World War she worked for the British Ministry of Information and for the BBC, and after the war went into the Colonial Office with responsibility at various times for Gibraltar, Malta and Cyprus. In 1955, she married senior civil servant John Sloman Bennett, who would be happy to take a back seat when she took over as Principal of the women's college, St Hilda's, from Kathleen Major in 1965. She was not the obvious choice but she proved ideal. Student power was on the increase and Bennett resisted making protest difficult. It was said that students were encouraged by her to join demonstrations. She resisted the move to mixed colleges as she thought that the men's colleges just wanted to cherry pick her best students. As a result St Hilda's was behind the curve when it finally admitted men as well. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3071706 | 1,912,566 |
1,159,780 | In 2014, Matt Dixon wrote of Tao's Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3: "The level of precision on display was beyond impressive, and the closing minutes of the third and final movement revealed an energy that was simply exhilarating. Tao's ... approach to the music itself was dynamic, unusually expressive, and engaging, with the technical mastery always serving to aid in the interpretation." Margared Sandresky of the "Winston-Salem Journal" commented of his Rachmaninoff "Rhapsody": "Tao ... realized with ease both the prodigious technical difficulties and the many varied expressive demands of the piece, leading the orchestra players on a merry chase as the difficult passage work streamed from his fingers like mercury." Scott Smith of "The Baltimore Sun" stated of his performance of Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 that Tao possesses "an ability to communicate clearly, no matter how thorny a score may become ... Tao brought remarkable spontaneity and colorful phrasing. ... There was always musicality, not just virtuosity". Of his Rachmaninoff "Rhapsody", Gregory Sullivan Isaacs of TheaterJones judged that Tao "displayed impeccable technique ... clean and crystal clear, bordering on brittle. Some warmth throughout, not just in the lush melodic parts, would have been welcome. ... This is not to say that his performance lacked nuance, because there were many lovely turns of phrases. However, it left the impression that he was impatient to get through the slow parts and back to the flights of virtuosity. ... But there is no denying Tao's brilliance and technical mastery. All of the above reservations about the performance are the sins of the young." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33615494 | 1,159,165 |
2,092,443 | Chapter Five, The Engine of Evolution, looks at examples natural selection, which Darwin (along with Alfred Russell Wallace, working independently) proposed as the mechanism for evolution. Coyne rebuts the claim that "evolution says everything happens by chance." Natural selection is non-random, as it selects the traits which are adaptive and discards those that are not: "It is a powerful molding force, accumulating genes that have a greater chance of being passed on than others, and in so doing making individuals ever better able to cope with their environment." He quotes Richard Dawkins's definition of natural selection: "the non-random survival of random variants." Coyne points to examples of natural selection in the lab, such as the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria and Richard Lenski's "E. coli" long term evolution experiment, and examples seen in the wild, such as Peter and Rosemary Grant's study of Darwin's finches in the Galápagos Islands. He rebuts the claim that evolution cannot create complexity: since natural selection is non-random, it can create complex adaptations by selecting for advantageous variations. In an experiment by Barry Hall, "E. coli" that had the gene for lactase deleted evolved the ability to digest lactose with another enzyme. Creationists claim that the mammalian eye is too complex to have evolved, but there are extant species with simpler, but useful, eyes, such as the eyespot of the planarian and pinhole camera eye of the chambered nautilus. He describes a mathematical model by Dan-Eric Nilsson and Susanne Pelger which found that complex eyes can evolve in fewer than 400,000 years. Given that the oldest fossils of mammals with eyes are 550 million years old, there has been time for eyes to have evolved several times. In fact, eyes have evolved several times independently, another example of convergent evolution. And Nilsson and Pelger's model was deliberately conservative, so eyes can evolve in even less time. He quotes Pelger and Nilsson: "It is obvious that the eye was never a real threat to Darwin's theory of evolution." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=34245540 | 2,091,238 |
149,583 | It is believed to stem from a production process monitoring used during World War II because traditional "end of the pipe" testing on artillery shells' firing mechanisms could not be performed, and a large percentage of the artillery shells made at the time were either duds or misfiring. HACCP itself was conceived in the 1960s when the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) asked Pillsbury to design and manufacture the first foods for space flights. Since then, HACCP has been recognized internationally as a logical tool for adapting traditional inspection methods to a modern, science-based, food safety system. Based on risk-assessment, HACCP plans allow both industry and government to allocate their resources efficiently by establishing and auditing safe food production practices. In 1994, the organization International HACCP Alliance was established, initially to assist the US meat and poultry industries with implementing HACCP. As of 2007, its membership spread over other professional and industrial areas. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=316849 | 149,515 |
196,206 | During a spelunking expedition, Palmer and his students, along with his girlfriend, lawyer Jean Loring, find themselves trapped in a cave. In desperation, Palmer secretly uses the lens he has carried with him to shrink himself to be able to climb through a small opening in the fallen rocks sealing the cave, knowing he will likely explode. Using a diamond engagement ring, Palmer enlarges the hole sufficiently and descends to the floor to try to alert the others of the escape route before dying. However, upon entering the lens' beam, he finds himself returned to normal size and without danger of exploding. As the lens is covered with cave moisture, Palmer believes this has altered the beam to allow this strange effect. When subsequent experiments still result in objects exploding, Palmer concludes some unknown force in his own body allows him to safely size-shift. He decides to use this effect to become a superhero. A retcon in "Brightest Day: The Atom Special" (July 2010) removes the influence of his exotic physical makeup, tying his survival instead to the discovery of a "compression matrix," a fabric able to spread the effects of the ray on the entire body, stabilizing it. The prototype matrix later became his costume. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4971776 | 196,106 |
2,008,278 | After his retirement as department head Inglis served as Vice-Provost of King's College from 1943 to 1947. He received a knighthood in the 1945 King's Birthday Honours, and in 1946 was appointed as chair of the committee charged with advising the Minister of War Transport on railway modernisation. Inglis continued to develop his theories on teaching engineering and wrote in the "Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers" in 1947 on the teaching of engineering mathematics: "Mathematics [required by engineers] though it must be sound and incisive as far as goes, need not be of that artistic and exalted quality which calls for the mentality of the real mathematician. It can be termed mathematics of the tin-opening variety, and in contrast to real mathematicians, engineers are more interested in the contents of the tin than in the elegance of the tin-opener employed". He published the textbook "Applied Mechanics for Engineers" in 1951, following which he spent three months as a visiting professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. His wife, Lady Eleanor Inglis, died on 1 April 1952, and Charles died eighteen days later at Southwold, Suffolk. The Cambridge University Engineering Department's Inglis Building is named in his honour. Inglis has been described as the greatest teacher of engineering of his time. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16975609 | 2,007,126 |
358,895 | Besides increasing the worldwide food supply, early in his career Borlaug stated that taking steps to decrease the rate of population growth will also be necessary to prevent food shortages. In his Nobel Lecture of 1970, Borlaug stated, "Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the 'Population Monster' ... If it continues to increase at the estimated present rate of two percent a year, the world population will reach 6.5 billion by the year 2000. Currently, with each second, or tick of the clock, about 2.2 additional people are added to the world population. The rhythm of increase will accelerate to 2.7, 3.3, and 4.0 for each tick of the clock by 1980, 1990, and 2000, respectively, unless man becomes more realistic and preoccupied about this impending doom. The tick-tock of the clock will continually grow louder and more menacing each decade. Where will it all end?" However, some observers have suggested that by the 1990s Borlaug had changed his position on population control. They point to a quote from the year 2000 in which he stated: "I now say that the world has the technology—either available or well advanced in the research pipeline—to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology? While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt ultra low-risk positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called 'organic' methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low income, food-deficit nations cannot." However, Borlaug remained on the advisory board of Population Media Center, an organization working to stabilize world population, until his death. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=275564 | 358,709 |
1,122,565 | In four books written from 1921 to 1934, Soddy carried on a "campaign for a radical restructuring of global monetary relationships", offering a perspective on economics rooted in physics – the laws of thermodynamics, in particular – and was "roundly dismissed as a crank". While most of his proposals – "to abandon the gold standard, let international exchange rates float, use federal surpluses and deficits as macroeconomic policy tools that could counter cyclical trends, and establish bureaus of economic statistics (including a consumer price index) in order to facilitate this effort" – are now conventional practice, his critique of fractional-reserve banking still "remains outside the bounds of conventional wisdom" although a recent paper by the IMF reinvigorated his proposals. Soddy wrote that financial debts grew exponentially at compound interest but the real economy was based on exhaustible stocks of fossil fuels. Energy obtained from the fossil fuels could not be used again. This criticism of economic growth is echoed by his intellectual heirs in the now emergent field of ecological economics. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11778 | 1,121,991 |
1,651,498 | Unlike ground-based magnetometers that can be oriented by the user to determine the direction of magnetic field, in space the user is linked by telecommunications to a satellite traveling at 25,000 km per hour. The magnetometers used need to give an accurate reading quickly to be able to deduce magnetic fields. Several strategies can be employed, it is easier to rotate a space craft about its axis than to carry the weight of an additional magnetometer. Another strategy is to increase the size of the rocket, or make the magnetometer lighter and more effective. One of the problems, for example in studying planets with low magnetic fields like Venus, does require more sensitive equipment. The equipment has necessarily needed to evolve for today's modern task. Ironically satellites launched more the 20 years ago still have working magnetometers in places where it would take decades to reach today, at the same time the latest equipment is being used to analyze changes in the Earth here at home. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18402950 | 1,650,566 |
417,582 | In the mid-1990s, a PhD from Caltech invented a method of analyzing and immobilizing genetic material on the surface of a modified semiconductor wafer. The CombiMatrix microarray ("CombiMatrix" refers to combinatorial chemistry on a matrix array) was born and received US patents in the late '90s. Located in Mukilteo, Washington, the company received several rounds of private financings and filed to go public in November 2000. Unfortunately, CombiMatrix missed its "IPO window" by a few months due to the turmoil that was happening in the financial markets in late 2000 and early 2001, and then the events of Sept. 11 2001 put the final "nail in the coffin" to the company's fundraising plans at the time. So, CombiMatrix shifted gears and began pursuing several funded R&D projects to further develop its proprietary microarray technology with outside entities such as Roche Applied Sciences in Europe, biotech researchers in Japan as well as the U.S. Department of Defense. In late 2002, CombiMatrix merged with and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Acacia Research Corporation of Newport Beach, California. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1666393 | 417,378 |
1,764,310 | Armagh Planetarium was established by the seventh director of Armagh Observatory, Dr. Eric Mervyn Lindsay, who, after twenty-five years of effort, secured funding from local councils and the Ministry of Commerce of Northern Ireland in 1965. In the same year Patrick Moore was appointed as Director of the Planetarium to oversee its construction. The planetarium cost £120,000 to build (included in this was £12,000 for the planetarium’s first projector) and was officially opened on 1 May 1968, although it had been open to the public for some months before that. Since then it has undergone many alterations: the main building was extended in 1974 to incorporate the Lindsay Hall of Astronomy, and a dome was created to house a 16" (400 mm) reflecting telescope for public use, currently the largest public telescope in Ireland. In addition, in 1994 a new exhibition hall, the Eartharium, was added due to increased interest in Earth Science. The Armagh Astropark, which opened in 1994, is a scale model of the solar system and the Universe contained in the grounds of the Armagh Observatory, with scale-sized stainless steel models of the Sun and planets. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3321817 | 1,763,317 |
1,640,737 | Chapter 19, “The Stability of Technology,” is a short chapter which seeks to finish off Part 2 by dealing with the question of “instabilities that have been discovered in technology” (144). Basically, given his critique, perhaps it would be better if technology were to disappear, or at least lose some influence. However, according to Borgmann, he finds “none of [the instabilities] fatal to the survival or affluence of the technological societies” (144). Why? Simply put, because “technology at its center is sufficiently resourceful to cope with its supposed flaws” (145). He goes on to explain how in several contexts. For example, the “spaceship earth” concept “provides the conceptual framework that makes it possible to deal technologically with the physical limits to growth, and it provides the rhetoric to make the technological solutions widely understandable and acceptable” (147). When the actual physical limits of the planet, in other words, seem to endanger technology, it finds a way to make the planet itself a device to be managed and sustained. The chapter and Part 2 end with a fascinating number of pages in which Borgmann tries to prognosticate on the topic of the upcoming (for him in 1984) “microelectronic revolution”—i.e., e.g., computers (148-153). The book has an admirably forward-looking sense of how big microelectronics will impact this entire issue, and ends by arguing—unsurprisingly—that they will be, however, “not revolutionary at all” “in another sense,” because they will only serve to further entrench the device paradigm. He thus ends by noting the need for “counterforces to technology,” the “focal practices” which will be the concern of Part 3 (153). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29772724 | 1,639,810 |
2,143,200 | In developed countries, more than 90% of young people use the internet regularly, running the potential for misinformation related to vaccination reaching a large proportion of society. This has also been challenging in low and middle income countries. In 1999, concern from public health officials regarding the dissemination of potentially harmful health information via the web led the WHO to establish the 'Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety' (GACVS), the purpose of which is to deliver an assembly of independent professionals that can advise both the public and those involved in national vaccine policy, after assessing evidence pertaining to vaccine safety concerns that require a quick and impactful response. In 2003, the WHO created the VSN, devised to "help counteract misinformation about vaccines" and deliver easily accessible information to up-to-date accurate evidence, by appraising websites that provide material on vaccination. The credibility and content criteria are defined by GACVS. As a result, the reliability and standards set by WHO's GACVS and available at VSN has been created to help people judge the quality of the website information they read. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65137159 | 2,141,969 |
1,001,625 | Ethidium bromide is commonly used to detect nucleic acids in molecular biology laboratories. In the case of DNA this is usually double-stranded DNA from PCRs, restriction digests, etc. Single-stranded RNA can also be detected, since it usually folds back onto itself and thus provides local base pairing for the dye to intercalate. Detection typically involves a gel containing nucleic acids placed on or under an ultraviolet lamp. Since ultraviolet light is harmful to eyes and skin, gels stained with ethidium bromide are usually viewed indirectly using an enclosed camera, with the fluorescent images recorded as photographs. Where direct viewing is needed, the viewer's eyes and exposed skin should be protected. In the laboratory the intercalating properties have long been used to minimize chromosomal condensation when a culture is exposed to mitotic arresting agents during harvest. The resulting slide preparations permit a higher degree of resolution, and thus more confidence in determining structural integrity of chromosomes upon microscopic analysis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=363891 | 1,001,107 |
671,004 | On 1 November 1918, the transfer being still unknown to Italy, two men of the Italian Regia Marina, Raffaele Paolucci and Raffaele Rossetti, rode a primitive manned torpedo (nicknamed "Mignatta" or "leech") into the naval base at Pola. Using limpet mines, they attacked "Jugoslavija" and the freighter "Wien". Traveling down the rows of battleships, the two men encountered "Jugoslavija" at around 4:40 am. Rossetti placed one canister of TNT on the hull of the battleship, timed to explode at 6:30 am. He then flooded the second canister, sinking it on the harbor floor close to the ship. The men had no breathing sets, and therefore had to keep their heads above water. They were discovered and taken prisoner just after placing the explosives under the battleship's hull. The Italians did not know that the Austrian government had handed over "Viribus Unitis", along with most of the Austro-Hungarian fleet, to the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. They were taken aboard "Jugoslavija", where they informed her new captain of what they had done but did not reveal the exact position of the explosives. Vuković then arranged for the two prisoners to be taken safely to the sister ship "Tegetthoff", and ordered the evacuation of the ship. The explosion did not happen at 6:30 am as predicted and Vuković, believing mistakenly that the Italians had lied, returned to the ship with many sailors. When the mines exploded shortly afterwards at 6:44 am, the battleship sank in 15 minutes; Vuković and 300–400 of the crew went down with her. The second explosive canister, lying on the bottom, exploded close to the freighter "Wien", resulting in her sinking. The two Italians were interned for a few days until the end of the war and were honored by the Kingdom of Italy with the Gold Medal of Military Valor. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1089216 | 670,652 |
1,116,821 | Though late Campanian dinosaurs on Laramidia were larger than most large modern animals (which require large species ranges due to heightened dietary needs), Sampson and colleagues found that they appeared to have had relatively small species ranges, which is more perplexing due to the high species-diversity of Laramidian dinosaurs. Though they apparently inhabited at least two semi-isolated regions, there is no evidence of a dispersal barrier, and there was less of a temperature gradient than today. The dinosaurs there appear to have been sensitive to latitudinal zonation in environment (potentially due to lowered physiologies or the environments being more productive), which possibly persisted for at least 1.5 million years. Alternatives to the existence of a barrier include that the discrete provinces were separated by zones of faunal mixing, or that there was a continuous gradient or cline throughout the altitude, with no distinct endemic zones. Possible physical barriers to dispersal include an unidentified mountain range from east to west, flooding in the plain regions by the Western Interior Seaway (which would have temporarily eliminated low-elevation habitats in central Laramidia), or a major river system. Sampson and colleagues considered it more likely that there had been a paleoclimatic or paleoenvironmental barrier to dispersal (an idea supported by divergent types of pollen in northern and southern Laramidia), but noted that more evidence is needed to investigate the nature of separation between faunal provinces in Laramidia. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28916285 | 1,116,248 |
1,618,060 | US forces entered the war in Afghanistan in 2001. Although there was fierce fighting such as the Battle of Tora Bora and Operation Anaconda, the IED threat remained generally low until later in the war. Afghanistan is a rural country with rough terrain, most of the roads are unimproved and due to the abundance of rivers many culverts are present. Because of this IED threats are numerous. Typically tactics include placing high yield IEDs weighing several hundred pounds deep underground causing massive damage. However, modern MRAP vehicles are capable of withholding most blasts. Another tactic is placing small IEDs at choke points, the vehicle becomes disabled and the passing troops are ambushed. Due to the decade long Soviet–Afghan War many Soviet mines are still used by Taliban fighters to make IEDs. RCPs are not designated units and are normally brought together from existing Combat Engineer and EOD units. They are then deployed to areas of need. Not all parts of Afghanistan are equally covered by RCPs, for example the remote FOB Salerno near Khost housed RCP7 and RCP9 and RCP13 which were composed of National Guard sappers and active duty EOD personnel, on the other hand Gradez had no dedicated RCP units and relied on nearby units from FOB Salerno, FOB Shank, and Orgun-E. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=43377068 | 1,617,147 |
1,629,992 | On September 1, 1939, the School was closed due to the war and occupation. Its activity was resumed in February 1945, when teaching at both Faculties was reactivated. Moreover, the educational offer, in particular in the area of economics, was expanded thanks to the establishment of the Central School of Accounting and Finance. The teaching staff has also increased. In the post-war years, a large migration of population was a common phenomenon in Poland. During that time many academic teachers and scientists from other academic centers decided to stay temporarily or permanently in Katowice. They contribution greatly influenced the School’s development and helped to ensure a high level of education. The graduates of the School of Social and Economic Sciences were professionals sought after by not only industrial enterprises, but also the government and local administration. The curriculum in place until 1948 was designed to include the needs of the local community and economic conditions characteristic to the region. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2667396 | 1,629,073 |
714,872 | The "Rivet Chip" and "Rivet Slice" aircraft have been used by NASA in support of various research programs. NASA first provided funding to modify and operate RB-57F 63-13501 to support the Earth Resources Satellite Program, with modifications taking place at Fort Worth between 26 September 1968 and 14 July 1969 as Project "Rivet Rap". Flying as NASA 925 and known as "ESA (Earth Survey Aircraft) No. 3", the WB-57F was used as a flying testbed for the evaluation of multispectral sensors in a "near-space" environment to collect data to be correlated with similar data collected at low altitude and on the ground. The Air Force contracted with NASA to provide the aircraft on the condition that its sensor package be easily removed to reconfigure the aircraft quickly for its national security mission if necessary. The "Rivet Rap" was therefore modified to carry aerodynamically faired, plug-in pallets developed by General Dynamics to house both NASA and Air Force primary mission equipment. These pallets fit into the bomb bay and connected with existing electrical and cooling outlets, and had removable operating consoles that could be fitted into the back seat station in the cockpit. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33576652 | 714,499 |
1,977,458 | When "F. novicida" and "F. tularensis" are grown, they appear to be morphologically very similar. They are both Gram-negative bacilli. Many tests have been done to try to distinguish if "F. novicida" and "F. tularensis" should be considered separate species. One of these tests involved growth on cysteine-glucose-blood agar (CGBA). "F. tularensis" took 2 to 7 days to appear on the CGBA, while "F. novicida" took only 24 hours to appear. "F. novicida" grows much more rapidly on CGBA than "F. tularensis". Another difference between the two is the virulence of "F. novicida" was lower. "F. tularensis" was highly virulent in the mice and cavies (guinea pigs) used in studies. It only took one to 10 cells of "F. tularensis" to kill the animal of either species, although "F. novicida" took 10 to 100 cells in cavies and up to a 1,000 cells in mice. The immunological differences, though, are the strongest evidence used to support the idea that "F. novicida" and "F. tularensis" are separate species. Nonliving vaccines provided no protection against the heterologous organism. However, these nonliving vaccines did provide protection against the homologous organism. The living vaccines provided protection and cross-protection. as well. No protection was demonstrated against "F. tularensis" when using an "F. novicida" vaccine in any experiment. Therefore, a fundamental difference appears to exist in the antigenic composition of the two organisms, which was also demonstrated by cross-absorption in passive cutaneous anaphylaxis test (PCAs). The ability of the given antigen to remove all reactivity from its homologous antiserum while leaving the heterologous antiserum intact indicates the lack of antigen identity. To many scientists, this is enough proof to consider "F. novicida" and "F. tularensis" as separate species. Much debate still occurs over how to classify the two organisms, and it is important for scientists to establish a species concept for this organism due to its medical relevance. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40853981 | 1,976,320 |
1,111,302 | The history of concern about the potential for gene doping follows the history of gene therapy, the medical use of genes to treat diseases, which was first clinically tested in the 1990s. Interest by the athletic community was especially spurred by the creation in a university lab of a "mighty mouse", created by administering a virus carrying the gene expressing insulin-like growth factor 1 to mice; the mice were stronger and remained strong even as they aged, without exercise. The lab had been seeking treatments for muscle wasting diseases, but when their work was made public, the lab was inundated with calls from athletes seeking the treatment, with one coach offering his whole team. The scientist told "The New York Times" in 2007: "I was quite surprised, I must admit. People would try to entice me, saying things like, 'It'll help advance your research.' Some offered to pay me." He also told the "Times" that every time similar research is published he gets calls and that he explains that, even should the treatment became ready for use in people, which would take years, there would be serious risks, including death; he also said that even after he explains this, the athletes still want it. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65683733 | 1,110,736 |
1,947,137 | Multiple Sclerosis is a neurological disease characterized by the immune system attacking and destroying the myelin sheaths that coat nerve fibers. Destruction of these sheaths leads to the slowing or loss of electrical transmission of messages across nerve cells and as a result, patients experience weakness, pain, and vision loss. It has been shown that vitamin D deficiency is associated with alteration to epigenetic markers and MS pathogenesis. Vitamin D plays an important role in suppressing autoimmunity and in particular Th17 autoimmunity. Th17 is a subset of T helper cells that secrete pro-inflammatory interleukin(IL)-17. Traditionally vitamin D suppresses transcription of IL17 via recruitment of HDAC2 to the IL17A promoter, however in those deficient in vitamin D, IL17 transcription is increased leading to a heightened inflammatory immune response. Increased expression of miRNA-326 in PBMC cells is also prevalent in those with MS and is known to encourage Th17 cell differentiation. Histone H3 citrullination, which alters the methylation of arginine residues and consequently chromatin structure and gene expression, has been shown to be increased in the brains of MS patients as well. Although more research is needed to understand the mechanism of how histone H3 citrullination contributes to demyelination, research demonstrates that inhibitors of the enzymes involved in this citrullination improve the outlook and progression of this disease. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=70058191 | 1,946,024 |
1,343,606 | IoT or the internet of things proves to be a potential resource for the future of wildlife tracking and research. This technology can range from Low Power Wide Area LWPA sensor networks attached to wildlife by safe adhesive to Cameras connected to the internet using machine learning to determine what images are interesting and categorize the photos. With LWPA, the applications are endless. All that needs to be done is to develop the sensors that attach to any animal. With the sensor's low power, changing the sensors’ batteries becomes less of a problem. The program Where's The Bear is a wildlife monitoring software by the Computer Science Department at the University of California Santa Barba. They use cameras as their sensors and machine learning to quantify the photos into empty pictures triggered by wind and rain. They are instead reporting those of different species of animals. To make the training process of the algorithm rapid, they used edited photos with animals inserted in the shot of the given sensors view to sense the different animals. This training was able to make the technology more accurate with fewer false positives and false negatives. This method increased the ability to categorize animals’ photos, proving a potential new technology for vast groups of people for commercial and public use | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6643829 | 1,342,870 |
1,550,028 | Varespladib is an inhibitor of the IIa, V, and X isoforms of secretory phospholipase A2 (sPLA2). The molecule acts as an anti-inflammatory agent by disrupting the first step of the arachidonic acid pathway of inflammation. From 2006 to 2012, varespladib was under active investigation by Anthera Pharmaceuticals as a potential therapy for several inflammatory diseases, including acute coronary syndrome and acute chest syndrome. The trial was halted in March 2012 due to inadequate efficacy. The selective sPLA2 inhibitor varespladib (IC50 value 0.009 μM in chromogenic assay, mole fraction 7.3X10-6) was studied in the VISTA-16 randomized clinical trial (clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT01130246) and the results were published in 2014. The sPLA2 inhibition by varespladib in this setting seemed to be potentially harmful, and thus not a useful strategy for reducing adverse cardiovascular outcomes from acute coronary syndrome. Since 2016, scientific research has focused on the use of Varespladib as an inhibitor of snake venom toxins using various types of in vitro and in vivo models. Varespladib showed a significant inhibitory effect to snake venom PLA which makes it a potential first-line drug candidate in snakebite envenomation therapy. In 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted varespladib orphan drug status for its potential to treat snakebite. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=32790202 | 1,549,147 |
118,683 | In 1951 Callen and Welton proved the quantum fluctuation-dissipation theorem (FDT) which was originally formulated in classical form by Nyquist (1928) as an explanation for observed Johnson noise in electric circuits. Fluctuation-dissipation theorem showed that when something dissipates energy, in an effectively irreversible way, a connected heat bath must also fluctuate. The fluctuations and the dissipation go hand in hand; it is impossible to have one without the other. The implication of FDT being that the vacuum could be treated as a heat bath coupled to a dissipative force and as such energy could, in part, be extracted from the vacuum for potentially useful work. Such a theory has met with resistance: Macdonald (1962) and Harris (1971) claimed that extracting power from the zero-point energy to be impossible, so FDT could not be true. Grau and Kleen (1982) and Kleen (1986), argued that the Johnson noise of a resistor connected to an antenna must satisfy Planck's thermal radiation formula, thus the noise must be zero at zero temperature and FDT must be invalid. Kiss (1988) pointed out that the existence of the zero-point term may indicate that there is a renormalization problem—i.e., a mathematical artifact—producing an unphysical term that is not actually present in measurements (in analogy with renormalization problems of ground states in quantum electrodynamics). Later, Abbott et al. (1996) arrived at a different but unclear conclusion that "zero-point energy is infinite thus it should be renormalized but not the 'zero-point fluctuations'". Despite such criticism, FDT has been shown to be true experimentally under certain quantum, non-classical conditions. Zero-point fluctuations can, and do, contribute towards systems which dissipate energy. A paper by Armen Allahverdyan and Theo Nieuwenhuizen in 2000 showed the feasibility of extracting zero-point energy for useful work from a single bath, without contradicting the laws of thermodynamics, by exploiting certain quantum mechanical properties. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=84400 | 118,636 |
339,764 | Using detailed information provided by Loyalist spies, the grenadier companies searched the small town for military supplies. When they arrived at Ephraim Jones's tavern, by the jail on the South Bridge road, they found the door barred shut, and Jones refused them entry. According to reports provided by local Loyalists, Pitcairn knew cannon had been buried on the property. Jones was ordered at gunpoint to show where the guns were buried. These turned out to be three massive pieces, firing 24-pound shot, that were much too heavy to use defensively, but very effective against fortifications, with sufficient range to bombard the city of Boston from other parts of nearby mainland. The grenadiers smashed the trunnions of these three guns so they could not be mounted. They also burned some gun carriages found in the village meetinghouse, and when the fire spread to the meetinghouse itself, local resident Martha Moulton persuaded the soldiers to help in a bucket brigade to save the building. Nearly a hundred barrels of flour and salted food were thrown into the millpond, as were 550 pounds of musket balls. Of the damage done, only that done to the cannon was significant. All of the shot and much of the food was recovered after the British left. During the search, the regulars were generally scrupulous in their treatment of the locals, including paying for food and drink consumed. This excessive politeness was used to advantage by the locals, who were able to misdirect searches from several smaller caches of militia supplies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4321886 | 339,584 |
585,851 | Similar options have been proposed to help rehabilitate the Chesapeake Bay where the principal problem is lack of filter-feeding organisms such as oysters responsible for keeping the water clean. Historically the Bay's oyster population was in the tens of billions, and they circulated the entire Bay volume in a matter of days. Due to pollution, disease and over-harvesting their population are a fraction of their historic levels. Water that was once clear for meters is now so turbid and sediment ridden that a wader may lose sight of their feet before their knees are wet. Oxygen is normally supplied by submerged aquatic vegetation via photosynthesis but pollution and sediments have reduced the plant populations , resulting in a reduction of dissolved oxygen levels rendering areas of the bay unsuitable for aerobic aquatic life. In a symbiotic relation the plants provide the oxygen needed for underwater organisms to proliferate, in exchange the filter feeders keep the water clean and thus clear enough for plants to have sufficient access to sunlight. Researchers have proposed that oxygenation through artificial means as a solution to help improve water quality. Aeration of hypoxic water bodies seems an appealing solution and it has been tried successfully many times on freshwater ponds and small lakes. However no one has undertaken an aeration project as large as an estuary. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3997177 | 585,551 |
781,193 | Most age categories of "Albertosaurus" are represented in the fossil record. Using bone histology, the age of an individual animal at the time of death can often be determined, allowing growth rates to be estimated and compared with other species. The youngest known "Albertosaurus" is a two-year-old discovered in the Dry Island bonebed, which would have weighed about 50 kilograms (110 lb) and measured slightly more than in length. The specimen from the same quarry is the oldest and largest known, at 28 years of age. When specimens of intermediate age and size are plotted on a graph, an "S"-shaped growth curve results, with the most rapid growth occurring in a four-year period ending around the sixteenth year of life, a pattern also seen in other tyrannosaurids. The growth rate during this phase was per year, based on an adult 1.3 tonnes. Other studies have suggested higher adult weights; this would affect the magnitude of the growth rate, but not the overall pattern. Tyrannosaurids similar in size to "Albertosaurus" had similar growth rates, although the much larger "Tyrannosaurus rex" grew at almost five times this rate ( per year) at its peak. The end of the rapid growth phase suggests the onset of sexual maturity in "Albertosaurus", although growth continued at a slower rate throughout the animals' lives. Sexual maturation while still actively growing appears to be a shared trait among small and large dinosaurs as well as in large mammals such as humans and elephants. This pattern of relatively early sexual maturation differs strikingly from the pattern in birds, which delay their sexual maturity until after they have finished growing. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1367 | 780,775 |
415,815 | Two factions argued over the types of ships to be ordered. One favored a navy centered on a small number of large warships, while the other preferred a larger navy of smaller warships. The latter originally prevailed with a bill authorizing the construction of three small battleships, three armored cruisers, six destroyers, twelve torpedo boats, three submarines, and two river monitors. Though the Brazilian government later eliminated the armored cruisers for monetary reasons, the Minister of the Navy, Admiral Júlio César de Noronha, signed a contract with Armstrong Whitworth for three battleships on 23 July 1906. While the first designs for these ships were derived from the Norwegian coastal defense ship and the British (originally Chilean) , the contracted ships were to follow Armstrong Whitworth's Design 439 (Design 188 in Vickers' files). They would displace 11,800 long tons (12,000 tonnes), have a speed of 19 knots (22 mph; 35 km/h), and be protected by belt armor of 9 inches (23 cm) and deck armor of 1.5 in (3.8 cm). Each ship would be armed with twelve 10-inch (25 cm) guns mounted in six twin turrets. These turrets would be mounted in a hexagonal configuration, similar to the later German s. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29900534 | 415,612 |
1,631,745 | sEH has a restricted substrate selectivity, and has not been shown to hydrolyze any toxic or mutagenic xenobiotics. Conversely, the sEH plays a major role in the in vivo metabolism of endogenous lipid epoxides, such as the EETs and squalene oxide, a key intermediate in the synthesis of cholesterol. EETs are lipid signaling molecules that function in an autocrine and paracrine manner. They are produced when arachidonic acid is metabolized by cytochrome p450s (CYPs). These enzymes epoxidize the double bonds in arachidonic acid to form four regioisomers. Arachidonic acid is also the precursor of the prostaglandins and the leukotrienes, which are produced by cyclooxygenases and lipoxygenases, respectively. These lipids play a role in asthma, pain, and inflammation and are the targets of several pharmaceuticals. The EET receptor or receptors have not been identified, but several tools for the study of EET biology have been developed, these include small molecule sEH inhibitors, EET mimics and sEH genetic models. Through the use of these tools, as well as the EETs themselves, the EETs have been found to have anti-inflammatory and vasoactive properties. Several disease models have been used, including Ang-II induced hypertension and surgical models of brain and heart ischemia. In vitro models such as isolated coronary rings and platelet aggregation assays have also been employed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=34520195 | 1,630,823 |
192,659 | The purpose of a chronometer is to measure accurately the time of a known fixed location. This is particularly important for navigation. As the Earth rotates at a regular predictable rate, the time difference between the chronometer and the ship's local time can be used to calculate the longitude of the ship relative to the Prime Meridian (defined as 0°) (or another starting point) is accurately enough known, using spherical trigonometry. Practical celestial navigation usually requires a marine chronometer to measure time, a sextant to measure the angles, an almanac giving schedules of the coordinates of celestial objects, a set of sight reduction tables to help perform the height and azimuth computations, and a chart of the region. With sight reduction tables, the only calculations required are addition and subtraction. Most people can master simpler celestial navigation procedures after a day or two of instruction and practice, even using manual calculation methods. The use of a marine chronometer to determine longitude by chronometer permits navigators to obtain a reasonably accurate position fix. For every four seconds that the time source is in error, the east–west position may be off by up to just over one nautical mile as the angular speed of Earth is latitude dependent. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10553773 | 192,560 |
360,610 | Research in developmental psychology suggests that an infant's ability to imitate others lies at the origins of both theory of mind and other social-cognitive achievements like perspective-taking and empathy. According to Meltzoff, the infant's innate understanding that others are "like me" allows it to recognize the equivalence between the physical and mental states apparent in others and those felt by the self. For example, the infant uses his own experiences, orienting his head/eyes toward an object of interest to understand the movements of others who turn toward an object, that is, that they will generally attend to objects of interest or significance. Some researchers in comparative disciplines have hesitated to put a too-ponderous weight on imitation as a critical precursor to advanced human social-cognitive skills like mentalizing and empathizing, especially if true imitation is no longer employed by adults. A test of imitation by Alexandra Horowitz found that adult subjects imitated an experimenter demonstrating a novel task far less closely than children did. Horowitz points out that the precise psychological state underlying imitation is unclear and cannot, by itself, be used to draw conclusions about the mental states of humans. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=488083 | 360,422 |
709,733 | Michigan has had many successes as a program including a record-setting number of championships, total championship tournament appearances, and consecutive tournament appearances. In 2010, Michigan hosted a Guinness verified world record crowd in excess of 113,000 in an event known as The Big Chill. Players from the program have earned numerous honors, professional championships, international championships, individual statistical championships, team and individual records. The most recent head coach was Mel Pearson, a former assistant to coach Red Berenson who retired in 2017 after leading the program for 33 years. Berenson for nearly 50 years has continued to hold the school single-season goal scoring record, and was the second player in the program's history to win the Stanley Cup. The program has dozens of National Hockey League alumni and over twenty current players. They currently hold the record for the most titles at the Great Lakes Invitational with 17 titles respectively. Their traditional rival is Michigan State and the teams have played an annual game in Detroit since 1990, first at Joe Louis Arena but currently at Little Caesars Arena since 2018. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22165661 | 709,362 |
1,084,453 | The unusual features of therizinosaurs have led to several interpretations of their feeding behavior; there is no direct evidence of their diet, such as stomach contents and feeding traces. In 1970, Anatoly K. Rozhdestvensky suggested "Therizinosaurus"—the only member of the group known at the time—used its large claws to open termite mounds or gather fruits from trees. Barsbold and Perle pointed out in 1979 and 1980 that their peculiar features probably reflected a different evolutionary direction than those of more typical theropods, many of which were considered effective, active predators. Their delicate jaws, small, weak teeth and beaks, and short, compact feet indicated they would not have used the armaments of other theropods to procure food but could have preyed on fish. In 1983, Barsbold said the horny beak at the front of the jaws and weakened teeth at the back were common features among herbivorous dinosaurs but not of carnivorous theropods, and speculated this might indicate segnosaurs had shifted to herbivory. In 1984, Paul suggested they were herbivorous due to the similarities of their skulls to those of prosauropod and ornithischian dinosaurs, which include horny beaks, inset rows of teeth, and a shelf at the side of the jaws that indicated the presence of cheeks. Like ornithischians, they could, therefore, crop, manipulate, and chew plants in a sophisticated manner. He also suggested the ilia of the pelvis had sideways-flaring blades at the front similar to those of sauropods to support a large gut that was used to ferment and process food. Norman stated in 1985 the possibility "Segnosaurus" was an aquatic fish-eater could explain its small, pointed teeth and broad and perhaps webbed feet, but found it mysterious why it should have a horny beak. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=636977 | 1,083,896 |
460,401 | The "s"-process was seen to be needed from the relative abundances of isotopes of heavy elements and from a newly published table of abundances by Hans Suess and Harold Urey in 1956. Among other things, these data showed abundance peaks for strontium, barium, and lead, which, according to quantum mechanics and the nuclear shell model, are particularly stable nuclei, much like the noble gases are chemically inert. This implied that some abundant nuclei must be created by slow neutron capture, and it was only a matter of determining how other nuclei could be accounted for by such a process. A table apportioning the heavy isotopes between "s"-process and "r"-process was published in the famous BFH review paper in 1957. There it was also argued that the "s"-process occurs in red giant stars. In a particularly illustrative case, the element technetium, whose longest half-life is 4.2 million years, had been discovered in s-, M-, and N-type stars in 1952 by Paul W. Merrill. Since these stars were thought to be billions of years old, the presence of technetium in their outer atmospheres was taken as evidence of its recent creation there, probably unconnected with the nuclear fusion in the deep interior of the star that provides its power. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=352908 | 460,175 |
1,804,789 | Modern coring augers have changed little in decades: an ice coring auger patented in the US in 1932 closely resembles coring augers in use eighty years later. The US military's Frost Effects Laboratory (FEL) developed an ice mechanics testing kit that included a coring auger in the late 1940s; the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment (SIPRE), a successor organization, refined the design in the early 1950s, and the resulting auger, known as the SIPRE auger, is still in wide use. It was modified slightly by the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL), another successor organization, in the 1960s, and is sometimes known as the CRREL auger for that reason. An auger developed in the 1970s by the Polar Ice Core Office (PICO), then based in Lincoln, Nebraska, is also still widely used. A coring auger designed at the University of Copenhagen in the 1980s was used for the first time at Camp Century, and since then has been frequently used in Greenland. In 2009, the US Ice Drilling Design and Operations group (IDDO) began work on an improved hand auger design and a version was successfully tested in the field during the 2012–2013 field season at WAIS Divide. As of 2017 IDDO maintains both 3-inch and 4-inch diameter versions of the new auger for the use of US ice drilling research programs, and these are now the most-requested hand augers provided by IDDO. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=55125362 | 1,803,774 |
305,211 | In the UK, cabinet minister Herbert Morrison famously argued that, "Socialism is what the Labour government does", and Anthony Crosland argued that capitalism had been ended. However many socialists within the social democracy, at rank and file level as well as in a minority in the leadership such as Aneurin Bevan, feared the 'return of the 1930s' unless capitalism was ended, either directly or over a definite period of time. They criticised the government for not going further to take over the commanding heights of the economy. Bevan demanded that the "main streams of economic activity are brought under public direction" with economic planning, and criticised the Labour Party's implementation of nationalisation for not empowering the workers in the nationalised industries with democratic control over their operation. In the post war period, many Trotskyists expected at first the pattern of financial instability and recession to return. Instead the capitalist world, now led by the United States, embarked on a prolonged boom which lasted until 1973. Rising living standards across Europe and North America alongside low unemployment, was achieved, in the view of the socialists, by the efforts of trade union struggle, social reform by social democracy, and the ushering in of what was termed a "mixed economy". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47246185 | 305,049 |
2,114,017 | Equally important to the refinements in laboratory methods was the realization by archaeologists that they needed to pay close attention to the kinds of samples they submitted for dating. This was especially the case for wood charcoal, perhaps the most commonly dated material from Polynesian sites. In the early years of radiocarbon dating, the tendency was to select the largest pieces of charcoal. The problem, of course, was that such samples in many cases included old growth timber, which had an “in built” age that was potentially much older than the time at which the wood was actually burnt in the hearth or oven. Therefore, the date returned by the radiocarbon lab may have been an accurate indication of the age of the timber, but not of the “target date” of human use of the site. Further because coastal sites were common, there was also the likelihood of older drift wood was used for fuel with age already built in. Accordingly, in the early 1990s scientists began a taxonomic identification of wood charcoal based on anatomical characteristics by comparison to a reference collection of known woody plant species for the particular region or island which allowed scientists to refine their samples for testing further. Unfortunately, not all archaeologists working Polynesia had availed themselves of these advances casting doubt in the field of study for a time. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50026325 | 2,112,802 |
913,412 | Analogously to how natural light-gated ion channels such as channelrhodopsin-2 allows optical control of ion flux, which is especially useful in neuroscience, natural light-controlled signal transduction proteins also allow optical control of biochemical pathways, including both second-messenger generation and protein-protein interactions, which is especially useful in studying cell and developmental biology. In 2002, the first example of using photoproteins from another organism for controlling a biochemical pathway was demonstrated using the light-induced interaction between plant phytochrome and phytochrome-interacting factor (PIF) to control gene transcription in yeast. By fusing phytochrome to a DNA-binding domain and PIF to a transcriptional activation domain, transcriptional activation of genes recognized by the DNA-binding domain could be induced by light. This study anticipated aspects of the later development of optogenetics in the brain, for example, by suggesting that "Directed light delivery by fiber optics has the potential to target selected cells or tissues, even within larger, more-opaque organisms." The literature has been inconsistent as to whether control of cellular biochemistry with photoproteins should be subsumed within the definition of optogenetics, as optogenetics in common usage refers specifically to the control of neuronal firing with opsins, and as control of neuronal firing with opsins postdates and utilizes distinct mechanisms from control of cellular biochemistry with photoproteins. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14958673 | 912,933 |
103,688 | Lutheran scholar Jeremiah Ohl writes:Zwingli and others for the sake of saving the Word rejected all plastic art; Luther, with an equal concern for the Word, but far more conservative, would have all the arts to be the servants of the Gospel. "I am not of the opinion" said [Luther], "that through the Gospel all the arts should be banished and driven away, as some zealots want to make us believe; but I wish to see them all, especially music, in the service of Him Who gave and created them." Again he says: "I have myself heard those who oppose pictures, read from my German Bible.… But this contains many pictures of God, of the angels, of men, and of animals, especially in the Revelation of St. John, in the books of Moses, and in the book of Joshua. We therefore kindly beg these fanatics to permit us also to paint these pictures on the wall that they may be remembered and better understood, inasmuch as they can harm as little on the walls as in books. Would to God that I could persuade those who can afford it to paint the whole Bible on their houses, inside and outside, so that all might see; this would indeed be a Christian work. For I am convinced that it is God's will that we should hear and learn what He has done, especially what Christ suffered. But when I hear these things and meditate upon them, I find it impossible not to picture them in my heart. Whether I want to or not, when I hear, of Christ, a human form hanging upon a cross rises up in my heart: just as I see my natural face reflected when I look into water. Now if it is not sinful for me to have Christ's picture in my heart, why should it be sinful to have it before my eyes?The Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who had pragmatic reasons to support the Dutch Revolt (the rebels, like himself, were fighting against Spain) also completely approved of their act of "destroying idols," which accorded well with Muslim teachings. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15085 | 103,643 |
274,129 | In DIC, the processes of coagulation and fibrinolysis are dysregulated, and the result is widespread clotting with resultant bleeding. Regardless of the triggering event of DIC, once initiated, the pathophysiology of DIC is similar in all conditions. One critical mediator of DIC is the release of a transmembrane glycoprotein called tissue factor (TF). TF is present on the surface of many cell types (including endothelial cells, macrophages, and monocytes) and is not normally in contact with the general circulation, but is exposed to the circulation after vascular damage. For example, TF is released in response to exposure to cytokines (particularly interleukin 1), tumor necrosis factor, and endotoxin. This plays a major role in the development of DIC in septic conditions. TF is also abundant in tissues of the lungs, brain, and placenta. This helps to explain why DIC readily develops in patients with extensive trauma. Upon exposure to blood and platelets, TF binds with activated factor VIIa (normally present in trace amounts in the blood), forming the extrinsic tenase complex. This complex further activates factor IX and X to IXa and Xa, respectively, leading to the common coagulation pathway and the subsequent formation of thrombin and fibrin. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=238124 | 273,981 |
96,743 | The primary coil's resonant frequency is tuned to that of the secondary, by using low-power oscillations, then increasing the power (and retuning if necessary) until the system operates properly at maximum power. While tuning, a small projection (called a "breakout bump") is often added to the top terminal in order to stimulate corona and spark discharges (sometimes called streamers) into the surrounding air. Tuning can then be adjusted so as to achieve the longest streamers at a given power level, corresponding to a frequency match between the primary and secondary coil. Capacitive "loading" by the streamers tends to lower the resonant frequency of a Tesla coil operating under full power. A toroidal topload is often preferred to other shapes, such as a sphere. A toroid with a major diameter that is much larger than the secondary diameter provides improved shaping of the electric field at the topload. This provides better protection of the secondary winding (from damaging streamer strikes) than a sphere of similar diameter. And, a toroid permits fairly independent control of topload capacitance versus spark breakout voltage. A toroid's capacitance is mainly a function of its major diameter, while the spark breakout voltage is mainly a function of its minor diameter. A grid dip oscillator (GDO) is sometimes used to help facilitate initial tuning and aid in design. The resonant frequency of the secondary can be difficult to determine except by using a GDO or other experimental method, whereas the physical properties of the primary more closely represent lumped approximations of RF tank design. In this schema the secondary is built somewhat arbitrarily in imitation of other successful designs, or entirely so with supplies on hand, its resonant frequency is measured and the primary designed to suit. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=39113 | 96,702 |
693,345 | During World War II, Pascual Jordan first suggested that since the positive energy of a star's mass and the negative energy of its gravitational field together may have zero total energy, conservation of energy would not prevent a star being created by a quantum transition of the vacuum. George Gamow recounted putting this idea to Albert Einstein: "Einstein stopped in his tracks and, since we were crossing a street, several cars had to stop to avoid running us down". Elaboration of the concept was slow, with the first notable calculation being performed by Richard Feynman in 1962. The first known publication on the topic was in 1973, when Edward Tryon proposed in the journal "Nature" that the universe emerged from a large-scale quantum fluctuation of vacuum energy, resulting in its positive mass-energy being exactly balanced by its negative gravitational potential energy. In the subsequent decades, development of the concept was constantly plagued by the dependence of the calculated masses on the selection of the coordinate systems. In particular, a problem arises due to energy associated with coordinate systems co-rotating with the entire universe. A first constraint was derived in 1987 when Alan Guth published a proof of gravitational energy being negative to matter associated mass-energy. The question of the mechanism permitting generation of both positive and negative energy from null initial solution was not understood, and an "ad hoc" solution with cyclic time was proposed by Stephen Hawking in 1988. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26499561 | 692,982 |
1,414,135 | In September 1948, at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), President Truman, with Condon sitting nearby on the dais, denounced Rep. Thomas and HUAC on the grounds that vital scientific research "may be made impossible by the creation of an atmosphere in which no man feels safe against the public airing of unfounded rumors, gossip and vilification". He called HUAC's activities "the most un-American thing we have to contend with today. It is the climate of a totalitarian country". Condon opposed any cooperation with Congressional attempts to identify security risks within the scientific community. In June 1949, in a sharply critical letter to Oppenheimer, who had provided information to HUAC about a colleague, he wrote: "I have lost a good deal of sleep trying to figure out how you could have talked this way about a man whom you have known for so long, and of whom you know so well what a good physicist and good citizen he is." In July 1949, he testified before a Senate subcommittee that was considering rules governing the operation of Senate committees. He criticized Thomas and the HUAC for holding closed hearings and then leaking information that denigrated his loyalty and that of other scientists. He said that the committee denied his and his colleagues' requests for public hearings so they could respond. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1907745 | 1,413,339 |
533,148 | Conversely, critics have drawn attention to the fact that "teaching and learning are interrupted because faculty, in an effort to control plagiarism and protect notions of intellectual capital, are forced to engage with the students as detectives rather than as teachers, advisors, or mentors. The focus on controlling plagiarism among students is critiqued as unnecessarily legalistic and the rules more rigid than those necessarily accorded to intellectual property law (Marsh, 2004)". Similarly, contributions made from a societal perspective question or critique previously unexamined assumptions of the "inherent goodness, universality, and absoluteness of independence, originality, and authorship (Valentine, 2006). Authors who write about the societal dimension such as Ede and Lundsford (2001) do not suggest the elimination of notions of individual authorship and the unconditional acceptance of copying and collaboration in its place. Rather, the societal dimension highlights the need to consider both and the importance of deconstructing how the idea of the "individual author" might be serving (or not serving) the goals of teaching (learning), service, and research. Postsecondary education institutions are urged to step back from the mindless or fear-based ready adoption of the "turnitin culture" (Maruca, 2005) to allow for such question asking in the spirit of enhancing academic integrity and the teaching and learning environment." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26690992 | 532,869 |
1,745,842 | Poisoning, both intentional and unintentional, is also a threat. The usual targets of carrion-poisoning are species such as coyotes, red fox and gray wolves, which are considered pests that threaten livestock. However, golden eagles are occasionally targeted as well for the same reasons. The main cause of mortality for golden eagles in Britain has been poisoning, 51 eagles have been verified to be killed by poisoning from 1980 to 2008 but the actual number killed is probably higher. A disproportionate amount of golden eagle poisonings in Scotland from 1981 to 2000 were linked to grouse moors (where grouse are kept for the pleasure of shooting) and were probably caused by gamekeepers deliberately poisoning eagles and foxes to keep their stock of grouse high. It is estimated that the adult survival rate is reduced by 3% to 5% in Scotland by intentional poisonings. In the 1980s, California ground squirrels, considered agricultural pests, were poisoned by the anticoagulant rodenticide, Chlorophacinone. In turn, the poisonings caused golden eagles, as one of the major natural predators of California ground squirrels, to die in turn. At least 10 individuals died in 1971 from eating Thallium(I) sulfate–laced pronghorn set out by sheep ranchers in Wyoming; despite public outcries, poisoning by sheep ranchers continued into the 1980s. In the 20th century, organochloride and heavy metal poisonings were also commonplace, but these have declined due to tighter regulations on pollution. In southern Idaho, 10 out of 17 golden eagles examined were found to have had exposure to lead. Golden eagles did not prove as susceptible to poisoning from the pesticide DDT as other large raptors, probably because of their diet of mammals. Eggs from golden eagle nests that were collected after 1946 in North America had shell thicknesses similar to (less than a 10% difference) those collected in earlier years. However, in Scotland egg shell thickness did decrease by around 10% from 1951 to 1965. A dead golden eagle collected on the Isle of Lewis had the highest concentration of organochlorine known from a modern bird in Scotland. The higher effects of organochlorines in Scotland may be due to the fact that birds there consume a relatively high quantity of seabirds, as opposed to North America, where this practice is rare. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50585577 | 1,744,858 |
443,452 | processing activities carried out in a particular cognitive function (such as language), in a manner analogous to computer flowcharts that depict the processes and decisions carried out by a computer program. Box-and-arrow models differ widely in the number of unseen psychological processes they describe and thus in the number of boxes they contain. Some have only one or two boxes between the input and output signals (e.g., Menn, 1978; Smith, 1973), whereas others have multiple boxes representing complex relationships between a number of different information-processing events (e.g., Hewlett, 1990; Hewlett, Gibbon, & Cohen- McKenzie, 1998; Stackhouse & Wells, 1997). The most important box, however, and the source of much ongoing debate, is that representing the underlying representation (or UR). In essence, an underlying representation captures information stored in a child's mind about a word he or she knows and uses. As the following description of several models will illustrate, the nature of this information and thus the type(s) of representation present in the child's knowledge base have captured the attention of researchers for some time. (Elise Baker et al. Psycholinguistic Models of Speech Development and Their Application to Clinical Practice. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. June 2001. 44. p 685–702.) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=355240 | 443,237 |
865,813 | The first buildings were finished in 1933 and housed the Departments of Chemistry, Physics and Anatomy. These departments later moved to newer buildings at the campus and the original building complex now house Department of Psychology and Department of Political Science. The construction of the first stage was funded solely by donations which totaled 935,000 Dkr and the buildings covered an area of 4,190m. One of the most generous contributors to the first stage was "De Forenede Teglværker i Aarhus" ("The United Tileworks of Aarhus") led by director K. Nymark. "Forenede Teglværker" decided to donate 1 million yellow bricks and tiles worth c. 50,000 Dkr and later decided to extend the donation to all bricks needed. The inauguration on 11 September 1933, marked the first official use of the name Aarhus University and was celebrated in a tent on campus, attended by King Christian X, Queen Alexandrine, their son Crown Prince Frederick and Prime Minister Stauning together with 1000 invited guests. On 23 April 1934, Aarhus University was given permission to hold examinations by the king and on 10 October 1935, Professor Dr. phil. Ernst Frandsen was appointed the first rector of the university. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=401280 | 865,353 |
121,199 | Webley & Scott (P. Webley & Son before merger with W & C Scott in 1897) produced a range of revolvers from the mid 19th to late 20th centuries. As early as 1853 P. Webley and J. Webley began production of their first patented single action cap and ball revolvers. Later under the trade name of P. Webley and Son, manufacturing included their own calibre rim-fire solid frame revolver as well as licensed copies of Smith & Wesson's Tip up break action revolvers. The quintessential hinged frame, centre-fire revolvers for which the Webley name is best known first began production/development in the early 1870s most notably with the Webley-Pryse (1877) and Webley-Kaufman (1881) models. The W.G. or Webley-Government models produced from 1885 through to the early 1900s, are the most popular of the commercial top break revolvers and many were the private purchase choice of British military officers and target shooters in the period, coming in a .476/.455 calibre. However other short-barrel solid-frame revolvers, including the Webley RIC (Royal Irish Constabulary) model and the British Bulldog revolver, designed to be carried in a coat pocket for self-defence were far more commonplace during the period. Today, the best-known are the range of military revolvers, which were in service use across two World Wars and numerous colonial conflicts. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=627020 | 121,150 |
1,810,259 | These inner ear regeneration studies were published on 4 December 2019 and only involved non-human cells. This therapy is cutting edge and is likely decades away from clinical application. While preclinical and clinical successes in adeno-associated virus-mediated gene therapies in humans have attributed to the popularity of this therapeutic viral vector, continued study and increased understanding of the associated therapeutic challenges will build the foundation for future clinical success. The inner ear sensory epithelium is highly conserved among vertebrates, which gives hope that animal models, especially mammal models such as mice, are very applicable to clinical use in humans. The development of human therapies require research in human mammalian cells, perhaps inner ear epithelial organoids. Studies in-vivo context are also necessary in clinical trials. These trials typically take many years; they are often unsuccessful and result in unpublished data. Reprogramming cells into another cell type by way of a pluripotent progenitor cell, including adenovirus delivery methods, risks the disrupting the genome, which may trigger the formation of a tumor/cancer. There is a long road ahead for hair cell regeneration in humans. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=65609198 | 1,809,237 |
1,070,724 | The existence of overlapping genes was first identified in the virus ΦX174, whose genome was the first DNA genome ever sequenced by Frederick Sanger in 1977. Previous analysis of ΦX174, a small single-stranded DNA bacteriophage that infected the bacteria Escherichia coli, suggested that the proteins produced during infection required coding sequences longer than the measured length of its genome. Analysis of the fully sequenced 5386 nucleotide genome showed that the virus possessed extensive overlap between coding regions, revealing that some genes (like genes D and E) were translated from the same DNA sequences but in different reading frames. An alternative start site within the genome replication gene A of ΦX174 was shown to express a truncated protein with an identical coding sequence to the C-terminus of the original A protein but possessing a different function It was concluded that other undiscovered sites of polypeptide synthesis could be hidden through the genome due to overlapping genes. An identified de novo gene of another overlapping gene locus was shown to express a novel protein that induces lysis of E. coli by inhibiting biosynthesis of its cell wall[56], suggesting that de novo protein creation through the process of overprinting can be a significant factor in the evolution of pathogenicity of viruses. Another example is the "ORF3d" gene in the SARS-CoV 2 virus. Overlapping genes are particularly common in viral genomes. Some studies attribute this observation to selective pressure toward small genome sizes mediated by the physical constraints of packaging the genome in a viral capsid, particularly one of icosahedral geometry. However, other studies dispute this conclusion and argue that the distribution of overlaps in viral genomes is more likely to reflect overprinting as the evolutionary origin of overlapping viral genes. Overprinting is a common source of "de novo" genes in viruses. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=35960023 | 1,070,170 |
1,679,130 | The Medium-Energy Neutral Atom (MENA) imager on IMAGE is one of three instruments designed to make observations of the Earth's magnetospheric environment using neutral atom imaging. MENA is a slit-type imager designed to detect energetic neutral hydrogen and oxygen atoms with energies ranging from 1 to 30 keV. The instrument determines the time of flight and incidence angle of the incoming ENAs. From these raw data it calculates their trajectory and velocity and generates images of the magnetospheric regions from which they are emitted. The imager consists of three identical sensor heads mounted on a DPU. The three sensor heads are mounted side by side on top of the DPU. The middle sensor looks straight ahead, with a 107° field of view in the plane of the spin axis. The look directions of the two side sensors are offset from that of the middle sensor by 20°. This 20° offset compensates for a 20° blind spot in the center of each detector. The resulting field of view in the plane of the spin axis is 147°. The MENA DPU consists of a single 16-bit Harris RTX2010 microcontroller operating at 4.91 MHz, look-up tables used to process the raw data, a low-voltage power supply, a high-voltage controller, and, for each of the three sensors, the front end time of flight and pulse height electronics and high-voltage power supplies. The DPU communicates with the sensor heads and the Central Instrument Data Processor (CIDP). It monitors instrument health and safety and receives and processes the raw sensor data, producing one image every two minutes (i. e. each spacecraft spin period). It transmits this image, together with a selection of the raw sensor data, event rate data, and housekeeping data, to the CIDP for downlink to Earth. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1090498 | 1,678,187 |
173,418 | The M-4 was made mostly of aircraft aluminum alloys with some steel and magnesium components. It had wings swept at 35-degrees and powered initially by four Mikulin AM-3A engines with a maximum thrust of 85.8 kN (8,750 kgp; 19,290 lbf), but later upgraded to RD-3M-500 turbojets with a maximum thrust of 93.2 kN (9,500 kgp; 20,940 lbf). There were 18 bladder fuel tanks in the fuselage and wings, providing a total fuel capacity of 123,600 liters (32,610 US gallons); this gave the aircraft a range of , although this fell short of the range initially specified. It had a payload of 24 tonnes (26.4 tons) in various configurations. Defensive armament consisted of six AM-23 23 mm cannons with a rate of fire of 1,250 rpm each in a manned twin tail turret with 400 rounds per gun and two twin remote controlled turrets in the top and bottom fuselage with 300 rounds per gun each. The aircraft had a crew of eight: a navigator/bombardier in the nose; pilot and copilot in the cockpit; radar operator/navigator, flight engineer/gunner, radio operator/gunner, and dorsal turret gunner in a compartment behind the cockpit; and a tail gunner. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=820638 | 173,327 |
255,783 | A more recent discovery appears to demonstrate the scope of the destruction from the impact alone, however. In a March 2019 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of twelve scientists revealed the contents of the Tanis fossil site discovered near Bowman, North Dakota, that appeared to show a devastating mass destruction of an ancient lake and its inhabitants at the time of the Chicxulub impact. In the paper, the group reports that the geology of the site is strewn with fossilized trees and remains of fish and other animals. The lead researcher, Robert A. DePalma of the University of Kansas, was quoted in the New York Times as stating that "You would be blind to miss the carcasses sticking out... It is impossible to miss when you see the outcrop". Evidence correlating this find to the Chicxulub impact included tektites bearing "the unique chemical signature of other tektites associated with the Chicxulub event" found in the gills of fish fossils and embedded in amber, an iridium-rich top layer that is considered another signature of the event, and an atypical lack of evidence for scavenging perhaps suggesting that there were few survivors. The exact mechanism of the site's destruction has been debated as either an impact-caused tsunami or lake and river seiche activity triggered by post-impact earthquakes, though there has yet been no firm conclusion upon which researchers have settled. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8688 | 255,649 |
142,795 | Sulfonamide drugs were the first broadly effective antibacterials to be used systemically, and paved the way for the antibiotic revolution in medicine. The first sulfonamide, trade-named Prontosil, was a prodrug. Experiments with Prontosil began in 1932 in the laboratories of Bayer AG, at that time a component of the huge German chemical trust IG Farben. The Bayer team believed that coal-tar dyes which are able to bind preferentially to bacteria and parasites might be used to attack harmful organisms in the body. After years of fruitless trial-and-error work on hundreds of dyes, a team led by physician/researcher Gerhard Domagk (working under the general direction of IG Farben executive Heinrich Hörlein) finally found one that worked: a red dye synthesized by Bayer chemist Josef Klarer that had remarkable effects on stopping some bacterial infections in mice. The first official communication about the breakthrough discovery was not published until 1935, more than two years after the drug was patented by Klarer and his research partner Fritz Mietzsch. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=499685 | 142,737 |
1,880,498 | As a child, he suffered from repeated respiratory infections. Although he was accepted for entry to Trinity College, Cambridge, ill health postponed his start, and he went instead to the University College of the South West, now the University of Exeter, in 1942. He graduated two years later with a first class honours external BSc in physics. In February 1945 he started his war-time ‘essential work’ at Unilever Research Laboratories in Cheshire, where he carried out X-ray crystallography on crystals of pure soaps. In addition, part-time study earned him a London University external MSc in 1947. Later that year he took a one-year position at the Cavendish Laboratory and in 1948 started on a PhD under W H Taylor, working on developing new and improved techniques for X-ray powder diffractometry. He finished writing his PhD thesis in 1952, and immediately sailed on the Caronia in April, bound for the Philips Laboratories at Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, where he continued the study of diffraction techniques. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21436253 | 1,879,417 |
892,846 | Drug delivery refers to technology used to present a drug to a pre-determined region of the body for drug emission and absorption. Principles relating to route of administration, metabolism, site of specific targeting, and toxicity are most important within this field. Drugs administered orally (through mouth) are usually encapsulated in some structure in order to protect the drug from immune and biological responses. These structures aim to keep the drug intact until its site of action and release it at a correct dosage when exposed to a specific marker. Corn and potato starch are often used for this as they contain 60-80% amylopectin. They are mostly used in solid preparations: powders, granules, capsules, and tablets. As a natural polysaccharide, it has a compatible nature with anatomical structures and molecules. This prevents any sort of negative immune response, which is a highly controversial topic in drug delivery. Biodegradability of starch allows it to keep the drug intact until reaching its site of action. This allows the drug to avoid low pH situations such as the digestive system. Native starch can also be modified in physical, chemical, and enzymatic ways to improve mechanical or biochemical properties. Within drug delivery, physical modification include treatment under mechanical forces, heat, or pressure. Chemical modifications attempt to alter molecular structure which can include breaking or addition of bonds. Treating starch with enzymes can allow for increased water solubility. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=542686 | 892,376 |
1,984,777 | In October 1991, protesters from the Lambs of Christ, shouting "Susan kills babies!" surrounded Wicklund's home and camped outside for weeks. Her daughter Sonja had to go to school in a police car. The protesters blockaded Wicklund's driveway with cement barrels to try to stop her from going to work; she sneaked through the woods to get a ride from a friend. Twice during that month, Wicklund's house was broken into; nothing was taken, but Wicklund said, "I think they just wanted to show me they could get in." She believes that she was tracked down when a protester wrote down her license plate number and found her home address in a public database; the incident, and other use of license plate numbers by anti-abortion protesters, led Rep. Jim Moran to introduce the Driver's Privacy Protection Act in 1992. It also prompted a permanent restraining order prohibiting several groups and individuals, including the Lambs of Christ, from following Wicklund. During the siege, protesters passed leaflets around Sonja's school that said "Sonja's mom kills babies"; a protester was found in the school library searching yearbooks for a picture of Sonja. One of the protesters was Shelley Shannon, who in 1993 shot Doctor George Tiller several times in the arms prior to Tiller's 2009 shooting murder by Scott Roeder. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31853775 | 1,983,638 |
408,580 | Many niche disciplines of environmental science have emerged over the years, although climatology is one of the most known topics. Since the 2000s, environmental scientists have focused on modeling the effects of climate change and encouraging global cooperation to minimize potential damages. In 2002, the Society for the Environment as well as the Institute of Air Quality Management were founded to share knowledge and develop solutions around the world. Later, in 2008, the United Kingdom became the first country to pass legislation (the Climate Change Act) that aims to reduce carbon dioxide output to a specified threshold. In 2016 the Kyoto Protocol became the Paris Agreement, which sets concrete goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and restricts Earth’s rise in temperature to a 2 degrees Celsius maximum. The agreement is one of the most expansive international efforts to limit the effects of global warming to date. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=64919 | 408,379 |
1,535,687 | During the last three to four decades, especially, psychology has expanded worldwide and assumed a global presence. Stevens and Gielen (2007) and some others have estimated that there are over one million psychologists. This estimate is based on local definitions of what it means to be a professional psychologist: in most countries the prerequisite is a Master's degree or Diploma in psychology, whereas in others (e.g., Brazil) a professionally oriented Bachelor’s degree that incorporates a period of supervised practice enables one to gain admission to a licensing examination. The global estimate includes well over 320,000 psychologists in Europe, at least 250,000 in Latin America, and 225,000 in the United States. The country with the highest density of psychologists is Argentina. In addition, psychology has gained ground in East and Southeast Asia and is increasingly visible in Muslim countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Iran, and Lebanon (Ahmed & Gielen, 1998; Baker, 2012; Stevens & Wedding, 2004). In sub-Saharan Africa, psychology is well developed in South Africa, but less present though expanding in the other regions. For more detailed information, see the edited volume by Stevens and Wedding (2004) which includes analyses of the status of psychology in 27 countries located on all inhabited continents. The handbook by Baker (2012) reviews the respective histories of psychology in 27 countries and regions around the world while the volume by Rich and Gielen (2015) focuses on 17 past and present pathfinders in the realm of international psychology. The contributions respectively to Moodley, Gielen, and Wu (2013) and Gerstein et al. (2009) analyze the status of counseling psychology and psychotherapy in numerous countries. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12691183 | 1,534,819 |
1,663,332 | SOX was envisioned to use a powerful (≈150 kCi) and innovative antineutrino generator made of Ce-144/Pr-144 and possibly a later Cr-51 neutrino generator, which would require a much shorter data-taking campaign. These generators would be located at short distance (8.5 m) from the Borexino detector -under it, in fact: in a pit built "ex-profeso" before the detector was erected, with the idea it could be used for the insertion of such radioactive sources- and would yield tens of thousands of clean neutrino interactions in the internal volume of the Borexino detector. A high precision (<1% uncertainty) twin-calorimetry campaign would be carried out before deployment in the pit, at the end of data-taking and possibly at some point during the experimental run, in order to provide an independent precise measurement of the source's activity, in order to accomplish a low-uncertainty rate analysis. Shape analyses for the source's antineutrino signal have also been developed in order to increase the experiment's sensitivity, covering the whole high-significance "anomaly" phase space that is still left where light sterile neutrinos could lie in. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22137484 | 1,662,397 |
1,470,618 | Fossils referrable to "Lesothosaurus" may have been known from as early as 1959, when a right dentary (lower jawbone) fragment bearing three teeth was collected by French geologist Jean Fabre from the Red Beds of the Upper Elliot Formation near Mapheteng in Lesotho, Southern Africa, dating to the Early Jurassic (199(?)-190 million years ago). The dentary was described as the holotype of a new genus and species, "Fabrosaurus australis", by paleontologist Leonard Ginsburg in 1964. Ginsburg placed it in the family Scelidosauridae and diagnosed it based on its unusual tooth morphology when compared to the only other contemporary ornithischian "Heterodontosaurus". Due to its fragmentary nature, "Fabrosaurus" is now seen as a "nomen dubium", though the holotype is likely from an individual of "Lesothosaurus". The holotype was all that was known until expeditions by the London University College to the same site in Lesotho from 1963 to 1964 recovered scores of fossils from "Lesothosaurus", including a partial skeleton including a skull and another isolated partial skull (NHMUK PV RU B17 & NHMUK PV RU B23). These specimens were described in the 1970s as belonging to "Fabrosaurus" by geologist Richard A. Thulborn. A joint expedition between the NHMUK, London University College, Yale University, and the South African Museum collected many additional specimens of "Lesothosaurus" from the same site in 1967-68. This included very well preserved cranial material, some of the best known, that was described in the 1991. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=610601 | 1,469,793 |
2,162,844 | One of the most popular uses of radiofluorination is its application in PET scans. Positron emission tomography (PET) is a widely used imaging technique in the field of nuclear medicine. With applications in research and in diagnosis, a PET scan can be used to image tumors, diagnose brain disease, and monitor brain or heart function [8,9,12]. These images are created with the aid of radiotracers that emit positrons which decay via an annihilation reaction to generate two 510 KeV photons that are then detected and used to reconstruct images using the same software utilized in X-Ray CT units. The gamma rays are then emitted nearly 180 degrees from each other and their detection allows the ability to pinpoint the source, thus creating an image. One of the most popular isotopes used as a positron emitting radiotracer is fluorine-18. This isotope is particularly advantageous due to its short half-life of approximately 109.8 min, its decay being 97% positron emission, its ease of production, and its energy being low (0.64 MeV). Therefore, the radiofluorination procedure is incorporates the radioactive isotope of choice in order to create the images. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=41585022 | 2,161,609 |
653,231 | In an attempt to avoid destroying normal ideas of cause and effect, some theoreticians suggested that information about whether there was or was not a second beam-splitter installed could somehow be transmitted from the end point of the experimental device back to the photon as it was just entering that experimental device, thus permitting it to make the proper "decision." So Wheeler proposed a cosmic version of his experiment. In that thought experiment he asks what would happen if a quasar or other galaxy millions or billions of light years away from Earth passes its light around an intervening galaxy or cluster of galaxies that would act as a gravitational lens. A photon heading exactly towards Earth would encounter the distortion of space in the vicinity of the intervening massive galaxy. At that point it would have to "decide" whether to go by one way around the lensing galaxy, traveling as a particle, or go both ways around by traveling as a wave. When the photon arrived at an astronomical observatory at Earth, what would happen? Due to the gravitational lensing, telescopes in the observatory see two images of the same quasar, one to the left of the lensing galaxy and one to the right of it. If the photon has traveled as a particle and comes into the barrel of a telescope aimed at the left quasar image it must have decided to travel as a particle all those millions of years, or so say some experimenters. That telescope is pointing the wrong way to pick up anything from the other quasar image. If the photon traveled as a particle and went the other way around, then it will only be picked up by the telescope pointing at the right "quasar." So millions of years ago the photon decided to travel in its guise of particle and randomly chose the other path. But the experimenters now decide to try something else. They direct the output of the two telescopes into a beam-splitter, as diagrammed, and discover that one output is very bright (indicating positive interference) and that the other output is essentially zero, indicating that the incoming wavefunction pairs have self-cancelled. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3474980 | 652,888 |
731,872 | Theoretical ancestors to predictive coding date back as early as 1860 with Helmholtz's concept of unconscious inference. Unconscious inference refers to the idea that the human brain fills in visual information to make sense of a scene. For example, if something is relatively smaller than another object in the visual field, the brain uses that information as a likely cue of depth, such that the perceiver ultimately (and involuntarily) experiences depth. The understanding of perception as the interaction between sensory stimuli (bottom-up) and conceptual knowledge (top-down) continued to be established by Jerome Bruner who, starting in the 1940s, studied the ways in which needs, motivations and expectations influence perception, research that came to be known as 'New Look' psychology. In 1981, McClelland and Rumelhart in their seminal paper examined the interaction between processing features (lines and contours) which form letters, which in turn form words. While the features suggest the presence of a word, they found that when letters were situated in the context of a word, people were able to identify them faster than when they were situated in a non-word without semantic context. McClelland and Rumelhart's parallel processing model describes perception as the meeting of top-down (conceptual) and bottom-up (sensory) elements. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=53953041 | 731,485 |
467,758 | The ICER can be used as a decision rule in resource allocation. If a decision-maker is able to establish a willingness-to-pay value for the outcome of interest, it is possible to adopt this value as a threshold. If for a given intervention the ICER is above this threshold it will be deemed too expensive and thus should not be funded, whereas if the ICER lies below the threshold the intervention can be judged cost-effective. This approach has to some extent been adopted in relation to QALYs; for example, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) adopts a nominal cost-per-QALY threshold of £20,000 to £30,000. As such, the ICER facilitates comparison of interventions across various disease states and treatments. In 2009, NICE set the nominal cost-per-QALY threshold at £50,000 for end-of-life care because dying patients typically benefit from any treatment for a matter of months, making the treatment's QALYs small. In 2016, NICE set the cost-per-QALY threshold at £100,000 for treatments for rare conditions because, otherwise, drugs for a small number of patients would not be profitable. The use of ICERs therefore provides an opportunity to help contain health care costs while minimizing adverse health consequences. Treatments for patients who are near death offer few QALYs simply because the typical patient has only months left to benefit from treatment. They also provide to policy makers information on where resources should be allocated when they are limited. As health care costs have continued to rise, many new clinical trials are attempting to integrate ICER into results to provide more evidence of potential benefit. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=265132 | 467,523 |
668,829 | Components of PPE include gloves, gowns, bonnets, shoe covers, face shields, CPR masks, goggles, surgical masks, and respirators. How many components are used and how the components are used is often determined by regulations or the infection control protocol of the facility in question, which in turn are derived from knowledge of the mechanism of transmission of the pathogen(s) of concern. Many or most of these items are disposable to avoid carrying infectious materials from one patient to another patient and to avoid difficult or costly disinfection. In the US, OSHA requires the immediate removal and disinfection or disposal of a worker's PPE prior to leaving the work area where exposure to infectious material took place. For health care professionals who may come into contact with highly infectious bodily fluids, using personal protective coverings on exposed body parts improves protection. Breathable personal protective equipment improves user-satisfaction and may offer a similar level of protection. In addition, adding tabs and other modifications to the protective equipment may reduce the risk of contamination during donning and doffing (putting on and taking off the equipment). Implementing an evidence-based donning and doffing protocol such as a one-step glove and gown removal technique, giving oral instructions while donning and doffing, double gloving, and the use of glove disinfection may also improve protection for health care professionals. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3331179 | 668,480 |
823,197 | Although habituation has been regarded as a learning process by some as early as 1887, its learning status remained controversial up until the 1920s - 1930s. While conceding that reflexes may "relax" or otherwise decrease with repeated stimulation, the "invariance doctrine" stipulated that reflexes should not remain constant and that variable reflexes were a pathological manifestation. Indeed, air pilots who showed habituation of post-rotational nystagmus reflex were sometimes ejected from or not recruited for service for World War I: on the grounds that a variable reflex response indicated either a defective vestibular apparatus or a lack of vigilance. Eventually, however, more research from the medical and scientific communities concluded that stimulus-dependent variability reflexes is clinically normal. The opposition to the considering habituation a form of learning was also based on the assumption that learning processes must produce novel behavioral responses and must occur in the cerebral cortex. Non-associative forms of learning such as habituation (and sensitization) do not produce novel (conditioned) responses but rather diminish a pre-existing (innate) responses and often are shown to depend on peripheral (non-cerebral) synaptic changes in the sensory-motor pathway. Most modern learning theorists, however, consider "any" behavioral change that occurs as a result of experience to be learning, so long as it cannot be accounted for by motor fatigue, sensory adaption, developmental changes or damage. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=599837 | 822,755 |
1,689,111 | Knowledge of the environmental factors at play on early Earth is required to investigate the prebiotic atmosphere. Much of what we know about the prebiotic environment comes from zircons - crystals of zirconium silicate (ZrSiO). Zircons are useful because they record the physical and chemical processes occurring on the prebiotic Earth during their formation and they are especially durable. Most zircons that are dated to the prebiotic time period are found at the Jack Hills formation of Western Australia, but they also occur elsewhere. Geochemical data from several prebiotic zircons show isotopic evidence for chemical change induced by liquid water, indicating that the prebiotic environment had a liquid ocean and a surface temperature that did not cause it to freeze or boil. It is unknown when exactly the continents emerged above this liquid ocean. This adds uncertainty to the interaction between Earth's prebiotic surface and atmosphere, as the presence of exposed land determines the rate of weathering processes and provides local environments that may be necessary for life to form. However, oceanic islands were likely. Additionally, the oxidation state of Earth's mantle was likely different at early times, which changes the fluxes of chemical species delivered to the atmosphere from volcanic outgassing. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=70910834 | 1,688,165 |
1,172,599 | Underwater cameras are usually popular models encased in a watertight pressure housing, though there have been a few notable exceptions, such as the Nikonos and Sea & Sea ranges, in which the camera body was the pressure housing. Controls are generally operated by movable links penetrating the watertight case, each requiring reliable seals, and each a potential leak. Compact and lightweight camera bodies with multiple controls packed into a small space tend to transform into bulky, heavy and expensive units when housed for moderately deep diving. Controls must be operable using thick gloves in cold water. Lighting varies depending on conditions, subject, lens, and other variables, and the use of modelling lights and external flash is common. These are usually supported by a camera tray and arms which allow the lightning to be aimed. This can make a camera setup very bulky and it may require most of the diver's attention. At the other extreme, a head-mounted sports video recorder may be triggered at the start of the dive and thereafter ignored until it is time to stop recording. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63557168 | 1,171,980 |
1,159,337 | A small RAF team that eventually numbered ten men was assigned to liaise with HER, under the command of Wing Commander John Rowlands. He was answerable to a committee at the Air Ministry, codenamed "Herod". They considered how atomic bombing missions would be flown, and prepared training courses and manuals on how the production weapon, codenamed Blue Danube, would be stored, handled and maintained. The ballistic casing of the bomb was designed at Farnborough. Rowlands was responsible for an important design change. For safety reasons, he wanted the core inserted like a plug while the bomber was in flight. Fuchs performed calculations of the nuclear physics involved at Harwell in 1948, and produced an alternative design that, while untried, could be used. The new British design incorporated a levitated pit, in which there was an air gap between the uranium tamper and the plutonium core. This gave the explosion time to build up momentum, similar in principle to a hammer hitting a nail. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=52573493 | 1,158,722 |
1,926,812 | Tom's research interests were many and varied, ranging from colour vision in apes and birds to artificial vision systems for CCTV cameras to visual search in complex scenes, including for camouflage detection. He was particularly interested in the spatial and spectral properties of natural scenes in relation to the properties of biological systems, and in studying these interactions in species other than humans, in natural environments from the African rain-forest to Bristol's Leigh Woods. With Susan Blackmore, he contributed to the discovery of change blindness and worked on why misjudgments of probability lead people to believe in the paranormal. He was also involved in attempts to create a conscious robot with Iain Gilchrist and Owen Holland (funded by the EPSRC Adventure Fund). Other collaborators, from many different fields, included C. Alejandro Párraga and David Tolhurst on computational modelling, Katerina Mania on virtual reality, and Innes Cuthill and Julian Partridge on bird vision. In the last year or so before he died, Tom had also become very interested in the area of empirical aesthetics, specifically with reference to the feeling of 'presence' as affected by factors like screen size when watching movies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45218368 | 1,925,708 |
1,906,064 | Having completed his studies, he was almost immediately appointed lecturer at the Institute of History of Art. Work on his doctoral thesis was interrupted by his arrest on 22 October 1950. Transported immediately to Warsaw in connection with the staged "British Embassy" Show trial and after lengthy interrogations, he was sentenced to ten years in prison in February 1952 for allegedly helping British and Vatican spies, as well as for extending his underground activities beyond the official date for disclosure, which, in any case, would probably have led to an earlier arrest. He spent five years and four months in prison in difficult conditions – firstly on remand in the cellars of the Ministry of Public Security in Koszykowa Street, and later in the infamous Mokotów Prison, both in Warsaw, and finally – after sentencing – in the prisons of Rawicz and Wronki. In the latter two he actively organised spiritual help for his fellow prisoners. Having got himself work in the prison hospital, he was instrumental in forging documents enabling the early release of a very large number of political prisoners. He himself was released on 6 March 1956 less than midway through his sentence. He was later cleared of all charges, probably in exchange for becoming an informer, especially on foreign trips. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28810330 | 1,904,968 |
2,140,673 | ALEXIS weighed 100 pounds, used 45 watts, and produced 10 kilobits/second of data. Position and time of arrival were recorded for each detected photon. ALEXIS was always in a survey-monitor mode, with no individual source pointings. It was suited for simultaneous observations with ground-based observers who prefer to observe sources at opposition. Coordinated observations needed not be arranged before the fact, because most sources in the anti-Sun hemisphere were observed and archived. ALEXIS was tracked from a single ground station in Los Alamos. Between ground station passes, data was stored in an on-board solid state memory of 78 Megabytes. ALEXIS, with its wide fields-of-view and well-defined wavelength bands, complemented the scanners on NASA's Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) and the ROSAT EUV Wide Field Camera (WFC), which were sensitive, narrow field-of-view, broad-band survey experiments. ALEXIS's results also highly complemented the data from EUVE's spectroscopy instrument. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1528806 | 2,139,443 |
1,538,958 | Norton-Griffiths ensured that tunnelling companies numbers 170 to 177 were ready for deployment in mid-February 1915. In the spring of that year, there was constant underground fighting in the Ypres Salient at Hooge, Hill 60, Railway Wood, Sanctuary Wood, St Eloi and The Bluff which required the deployment of new drafts of tunnellers for several months after the formation of the first eight companies. The lack of suitably experienced men led to some tunnelling companies starting work later than others. The number of units available to the BEF was also restricted by the need to provide effective counter-measures to the German mining activities. To make the tunnels safer and quicker to deploy, the British Army enlisted experienced coal miners, many outside their nominal recruitment policy. The first nine companies, numbers 170 to 178, were each commanded by a regular Royal Engineers officer. These companies each comprised 5 officers and 269 sappers; they were aided by additional infantrymen who were temporarily attached to the tunnellers as required, which almost doubled their numbers. The success of the first tunnelling companies formed under Norton-Griffiths' command led to mining being made a separate branch of the Engineer-in-Chief's office under Major-General S.R. Rice, and the appointment of an 'Inspector of Mines' at the GHQ Saint-Omer office of the Engineer-in-Chief. A second group of tunnelling companies were formed from Welsh miners from the 1st and 3rd Battalions of the Monmouthshire Regiment, who were attached to the 1st Northumberland Field Company of the Royal Engineers, which was a Territorial unit. The formation of twelve new tunnelling companies, between July and October 1915, helped to bring more men into action in other parts of the Western Front. Most British tunnelling companies were formed under Norton-Griffiths' leadership during 1915, and one more was added in 1916. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46673504 | 1,538,085 |
2,116,954 | Norton-Griffiths ensured that tunnelling companies numbers 170 to 177 were ready for deployment in mid-February 1915. In the spring of that year, there was constant underground fighting in the Ypres Salient at Hooge, Hill 60, Railway Wood, Sanctuary Wood, St Eloi and The Bluff which required the deployment of new drafts of tunnellers for several months after the formation of the first eight companies. The lack of suitably experienced men led to some tunnelling companies starting work later than others. The number of units available to the BEF was also restricted by the need to provide effective counter-measures to the German mining activities. To make the tunnels safer and quicker to deploy, the British Army enlisted experienced coal miners, many outside their nominal recruitment policy. The first nine companies, numbers 170 to 178, were each commanded by a regular Royal Engineers officer. These companies each comprised 5 officers and 269 sappers; they were aided by additional infantrymen who were temporarily attached to the tunnellers as required, which almost doubled their numbers. The success of the first tunnelling companies formed under Norton-Griffiths' command led to mining being made a separate branch of the Engineer-in-Chief's office under Major-General S.R. Rice, and the appointment of an 'Inspector of Mines' at the GHQ Saint-Omer office of the Engineer-in-Chief. A second group of tunnelling companies were formed from Welsh miners from the 1st and 3rd Battalions of the Monmouthshire Regiment, who were attached to the 1st Northumberland Field Company of the Royal Engineers, which was a Territorial unit. The formation of twelve new tunnelling companies, between July and October 1915, helped to bring more men into action in other parts of the Western Front. Most British tunnelling companies were formed under Norton-Griffiths' leadership during 1915, and one more was added in 1916. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46673318 | 2,115,736 |
732,875 | The first structural model of the oxygen-evolving complex was solved using X-ray crystallography from frozen protein crystals with a resolution of 3.8Å in 2001. Over the next years the resolution of the model was gradually increased to 2.9Å. While obtaining these structures was in itself a great feat, they did not show the oxygen-evolving complex in full detail. In 2011 the OEC of PSII was resolved to a level of 1.9Å revealing five oxygen atoms serving as oxo bridges linking the five metal atoms and four water molecules bound to the cluster; more than 1,300 water molecules were found in each photosystem II monomer, some forming extensive hydrogen-bonding networks that may serve as channels for protons, water or oxygen molecules. At this stage, it is suggested that the structures obtained by X-ray crystallography are biased, since there is evidence that the manganese atoms are reduced by the high-intensity X-rays used, altering the observed OEC structure. This incentivized researchers to take their crystals to a different X-ray facilities, called X-ray Free Electron Lasers, such as SLAC in the USA. In 2014 the structure observed in 2011 was confirmed. Knowing the structure of Photosystem II did not suffice to reveal how it works exactly. So now the race has started to solve the structure of Photosystem II at different stages in the mechanistic cycle (discussed below). Currently structures of the S1 state and the S3 state's have been published almost simultaneously from two different groups, showing the addition of an oxygen molecule designated O6 between Mn1 and Mn4, suggesting that this may be the site on the oxygen evolving complex, where oxygen is produced. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1126110 | 732,488 |
115,193 | The late 1870s saw the introduction of first large scale electrical systems with central generation stations to power Arc lamps, used to light whole streets, factory yards, or the interior of large warehouses. Some, such as Yablochkov arc lamps introduced in 1878, ran better on alternating current, and the development of these early AC generating systems was accompanied by the first use of the word "alternator". Supplying the proper amount of voltage from generating stations in these early systems was left up to the engineer's skill in "riding the load". In 1883 the Ganz Works invented the constant voltage generator that could produce a stated output voltage, regardless of the value of the actual load. The introduction of transformers in the mid-1880s led to the widespread use of alternating current and the use of alternators needed to produce it. After 1891, polyphase alternators were introduced to supply currents of multiple differing phases. Later alternators were designed for various alternating current frequencies between sixteen and about one hundred hertz, for use with arc lighting, incandescent lighting and electric motors. Specialized radio frequency alternators like the Alexanderson alternator were developed as longwave radio transmitters around World War 1 and used in a few high power wireless telegraphy stations before vacuum tube transmitters replaced them. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=223352 | 115,148 |
281,265 | USAAF project MX-798 was awarded to Hughes Aircraft in 1946 for an infrared tracking missile. The design used a simple reticle seeker and an active system to control roll during flight. This was replaced the next year by MX-904, calling for a supersonic version. At this stage the concept was for a defensive weapon fired rearward out of a long tube at the back end of bomber aircraft. In April 1949 the Firebird missile project was cancelled and MX-904 was redirected to be a forward-firing fighter weapon. The first test firings began in 1949, when it was given the designation AAM-A-2 (Air-to-air Missile, Air force, model 2) and the name Falcon. IR and semi-active radar homing (SARH) versions both entered service in 1956, and became known as the AIM-4 Falcon after 1962. The Falcon was a complex system offering limited performance, especially due to its lack of a proximity fuse, and managed only a 9% kill ratio in 54 firings during Operation Rolling Thunder in the Vietnam War. However, this relatively low success rate must be appreciated in the context of all these kills representing direct hits, something that was not true of every kill by other American AAMs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1396771 | 281,112 |
720,441 | The "Mir" space station and "Zvezda" had the same design problem of launching with all the hardware permanently installed. Russian (and Soviet) space doctrine has always been to fix the hardware onboard instead of simply replacing them like the US Orbital Segment (USOS) does with the 41.3 inch (105 cm) wide International Standard Payload Racks that can easily fit through the 51 inch (130 cm) wide hatch openings through the modules connected via the Common Berthing Mechanism (CBM). This means broken but unfixable hardware onboard the "Mir" modules and "Zvezda" end up being stuck there forever and can't be replaced. ESA Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano in 2020 said that the originally installed computers in "Zvezda" don't work anymore and the central command post's computers are now three Lenovo ThinkPad laptops. The broken computers' monitors, keyboard, and other devices are left there as it is but cannot be removed and replaced. The pre-installed Elektron oxygen generating system also has to be fixed frequently by cosmonauts instead of simply being replaced due to the problem of "Zvezda's" 78.74 cm (31 inch) wide hatch and the inability to replace the Elektron with another Elektron. Another reason why Elektrons can't be replaced is because the three Elektron units that were launched on "Zvezda" were the last units ever manufactured. The original manufacturers went out of business and the single engineer who made the tweaks for the Elektrons that were installed on "Zvezda" died with all his secrets and knowledge not passed to anybody else. In October 2020, the Elektron system malfunctioned yet again and had to be deactivated. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=694514 | 720,061 |
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