text stringlengths 17 3.36M | source stringlengths 3 333 | __index_level_0__ int64 0 518k |
|---|---|---|
2 base encoding 2 Base Encoding, also called SOLiD (sequencing by oligonucleotide ligation and detection), is a next-generation sequencing technology developed by Applied Biosystems and has been commercially available since 2008. These technologies generate hundreds of thousands of small sequence reads at one time. Well-known examples of such DNA sequencing methods include 454 pyrosequencing (introduced in 2005), the Solexa system (introduced in 2006) and the SOLiD system (introduced in 2007). These methods have reduced the cost from $0.01/base in 2004 to nearly $0.0001/base in 2006 and increased the sequencing capacity from 1,000,000 bases/machine/day in 2004 to more than 100,000,000 bases/machine/day in 2006. 2-base encoding is based on ligation sequencing rather than sequencing by synthesis. However, instead of using fluorescent labeled 9-mer probes that distinguish only 6 bases, 2-base encoding takes advantage of fluorescent labeled 8-mer probes that distinguish the two 3 prime most bases but can be cycled similar to the Macevicz method, thus greater than 6bp reads can be obtained (25-50bp published, 50bp in NCBI in Feb 2008). The enables reading each base twice without performing twice the work. The general steps common to many of these next-generation sequencing techniques include: In 1988, Whiteley "et al." demonstrated the use of fluorescently labeled oligonucleotide ligation for the detection of DNA variants. In 1995 Macevicz demonstrated repeated ligation of oligonucleotides to detect contiguous DNA variants | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15791844 | 296,859 |
Aqueous Wastes from Petroleum and Petrochemical Plants is a book about the composition and treatment of the various wastewater streams produced in the hydrocarbon processing industries (i.e., oil refineries, petrochemical plants and natural gas processing plants). When it was published in 1967, it was the first book devoted to that subject. The book is notable for being the first technical publication of a method for the rigorous tray-by-tray design of steam distillation towers for removing hydrogen sulfide from oil refinery wastewaters. Such towers are commonly referred to as sour water strippers. The design method was also presented at a World Petroleum Congress Meeting shortly after the book was published. The subjects covered in the book include wastewater pollutants and the pertinent governmental regulations, oil refinery and petrochemical plant wastewater effluents, treatment methods, miscellaneous effluents, data on the cost of various wastewater treatment methods, and an extensive reference list. The book became a classic in its field and is available in major university, public and industrial libraries worldwide. The book has no ISBN because they were not in use in 1967. The Library of Congress catalog number (LCCN) is 67019834 and the British Library system number is 012759691. It is no longer in print, but photocopies can be obtained from the ProQuest Company's "Books On Demand" service. One of the book reviews is that of Dr. Nelson V | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7082603 | 55,904 |
Microsoft The project promotes the idea of Firmware as a Service. In the same month, announced the open source implementation of Windows Forms and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) which will allow for further movement of the company toward the transparent release of key frameworks used in developing Windows desktop applications and software. December also saw the company discontinue the Edge project in favor of Chromium backends for their browsers. February 20, 2019 Corp said it will offer its cyber security service AccountGuard to 12 new markets in Europe including Germany, France and Spain, to close security gaps and protect customers in political space from hacking. In February 2019, hundreds of employees protested the company's war profiteering from a $480 million contract to develop virtual reality headsets for the United States Army. On March 26, 2020 announced it was acquiring Affirmed Networks for about $1.35 billion. Due to the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic announced that is closing all of its retail stores indefinitely due to health concerns. The company is run by a board of directors made up of mostly company outsiders, as is customary for publicly traded companies. Members of the board of directors as of January 2018 are Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, Reid Hoffman, Hugh Johnston, Teri List-Stoll, Charles Noski, Helmut Panke, Sandi Peterson, Penny Pritzker, Charles Scharf, Arne Sorenson, John W. Stanton, John W. Thompson and Padmasree Warrior | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19001 | 116,474 |
1L6 The is a 7 pin miniature vacuum tube of the pentagrid converter type. It was developed in the United States by Sylvania. It is very similar electrically to its predecessors, the Loktal-based 1LA6 and 1LC6. Released in 1949 for the Zenith Trans-Oceanic shortwave portable radio, this tube was in commercial production until the early 1960s . The was to be a specialty tube, produced in small quantities by very few manufacturers, mostly Sylvania for use by just a few manufacturers of shortwave portables, such as Zenith - in their Trans-Oceanics - and its short-lived rivals, such as the Hallicrafters TW-1000 and the RCA Strat-O-World and very few others. In fact, Zenith, Crosley and more than a few others used it in many radios. based multi-band radios were made by Crosley, Airline (Montgomery Ward house-brand), Silvertone (Sears house brand), Hallicrafters, FADA, and several others. When the US military commissioned two versions of the Trans-Oceanics, they stockpiled 1L6s in the uncounted thousands, some of which still show up at surplus sales. It was offered to Zenith by Sylvania in place of the larger 1LA6 - for which Zenith made production line changes as the first Miniature-Tube T/O was starting production. The original G500 chassis was punched for a Locktal socket, Zenith changed the phenolic wafer socket to accommodate the smaller tube. NOTE: a 1LA6 (or a 1LC6) will work as a near drop-in replacement for the with the use of an adapter socket. The closest European analog to the is the DK92. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3445878 | 371,007 |
Qanat The inhabitants of Neyshaboor used to come to Abdollah bin Tahir in order to request him to intervene, for they fought over their qanats and found the relevant instruction or law on qanat as a solution neither in the prophet's quotations nor in the clerics’ writings. So Abdollah bin Tahir managed to bring together all the clergymen from throughout Khorasan and Iraq to compile a book entitled "Alghani" (The Book of Qanat). This book collected all the rulings on qanats which could be of use to whoever wanted to judge a dispute over this issue. Gardizi added that this book was still applicable to his time, and everyone made references to this book. One can deduce from these facts that during the above-mentioned period the number of qanats was so considerable that the authorities were prompted to put together some legal instructions concerning them. Also it shows that from the ninth to eleventh centuries the qanats that were the hub of the agricultural systems were also of interest to the government. Apart from The Book of Alghani, which is considered as a law booklet focusing on qanat-related rulings based on Islamic principles, there is another book about groundwater written by Karaji in 1010. This book, entitled "Extraction of Hidden Waters", examines just the technical issues associated with the qanat and tries to answer the common questions such as how to construct and repair a qanat, how to find a groundwater supply, how to do leveling, etc. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=536059 | 347,025 |
Service innovation Few economic development agencies at the member state level, and fewer still at the regional level, have translated this new thinking on services innovation into policy action. Finland is an exception, where knowledge intensive business services have been a focus of much regional work (esp. the Uusimaa region). Finland has been active in thinking about the policy implications of services innovation. This has seen TEKES – the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation – launch the "SERVE" initiative, designed to support ‘Finnish companies and research organisations in the development of innovative service concepts that can be reproduced or replicated and where some technology or systematic method is applied .’ Germany has also undertaken initiatives for services R&D, and Canada and Norway have programs as well. Ireland has been considering a services-focused innovation policy, with "Forfás" – its national policy and advisory board for enterprise, trade, science, technology and innovation – having undertaken a review of Ireland’s existing policy and support measures for innovation, and outlined options for a new policy and framework environment in support of service innovation activity. At the regional level, limited information is available on how Europe’s regions are responding to the challenges presented by service innovation. [CM International] has recently published a European survey on services innovation and regional policy responses | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12643716 | 490,832 |
Form liner This sound/retaining wall, located in Morgan City, LA, was to be the first use ever of graphic inlays in form liner. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17750835 | 298,343 |
Volcano plot (statistics) In statistics, a volcano plot is a type of scatter-plot that is used to quickly identify changes in large data sets composed of replicate data. It plots significance versus fold-change on the y and x axes, respectively. These plots are increasingly common in omic experiments such as genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics where one often has a list of many thousands of replicate data points between two conditions and one wishes to quickly identify the most meaningful changes. A volcano plot combines a measure of statistical significance from a statistical test (e.g., a p value from an ANOVA model) with the magnitude of the change, enabling quick visual identification of those data-points (genes, etc.) that display large magnitude changes that are also statistically significant. A volcano plot is constructed by plotting the negative log of the p value on the y axis (usually base 10). This results in data points with low p values (highly significant) appearing toward the top of the plot. The x axis is the log of the fold change between the two conditions. The log of the fold change is used so that changes in both directions appear equidistant from the center. Plotting points in this way results in two regions of interest in the plot: those points that are found toward the top of the plot that are far to either the left- or right-hand sides. These represent values that display large magnitude fold changes (hence being left or right of center) as well as high statistical significance (hence being toward the top) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25668921 | 170,219 |
Hydraulic cylinder Generally speaking, Elastomer seals made from nitrile rubber, Polyurethane or other materials are best in lower temperature environments, while seals made of Fluorocarbon Viton are better for higher temperatures. Metallic seals are also available and commonly use cast iron for the seal material. Rod seals are dynamic seals and generally are single acting. The compounds of rod seals are nitrile rubber, Polyurethane, or Fluorocarbon Viton. Wipers / scrapers are used to eliminate contaminants such as moisture, dirt, and dust, which can cause extensive damage to cylinder walls, rods, seals and other components. The common compound for wipers is polyurethane. Metallic scrapers are used for sub zero temperature applications, and applications where foreign materials can deposit on the rod. The bearing elements / wear bands are used to eliminate metal to metal contact. The wear bands are designed as per the side load requirements. The primary compounds used for wear bands are filled PTFE, woven fabric reinforced polyester resin and bronze There are many component parts that make up the internal portion of a hydraulic cylinder. All of these pieces combine to create a fully functioning component. There are primarily two main styles of hydraulic cylinder construction used in industry: tie rod style cylinders and welded body style cylinders. Tie rod style hydraulic cylinders use high strength threaded steel rods to hold the two end caps to the cylinder barrel. They are most often seen in industrial factory applications | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3232420 | 427,005 |
Customer profitability A common phrase within a company is something like: “We had a good year, and the business units delivered $400,000 in profits.” When customers are considered, it is often using an average such as “We made a profit of $2.50 a customer.” Although these can be useful metrics, they sometimes disguise an important fact that not all customers are equal and, worse yet, some are unprofitable. Simply put, rather than measuring the “average customer,” we can learn a lot by finding out what each customer contributes to our bottom line. Quite often a very small percentage of the firm’s best customers will account for a large portion of firm profit. Although this is a natural consequence of variability in profitability across customers, firms benefit from knowing exactly who the best customers are and how much they contribute to firm profit. At the other end of the distribution, firms sometimes find that their worst customers actually cost more to serve than the revenue they deliver. These unprofitable customers actually detract from overall firm profitability. The firm would be better off if they had never acquired these customers in the first place. is the difference between the revenues earned from and the costs associated with the customer relationship during a specified period. In theory, this is a trouble-free calculation. Find out the cost to serve each customer and the revenues associated with each customer for a given period | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12429186 | 490,713 |
Numerical aperture In air, the angular aperture of the lens is approximately twice this value (within the paraxial approximation). The NA is generally measured with respect to a particular object or image point and will vary as that point is moved. In microscopy, NA generally refers to object-space NA unless otherwise noted. In microscopy, NA is important because it indicates the resolving power of a lens. The size of the finest detail that can be resolved is proportional to , where is the wavelength of the light. A lens with a larger numerical aperture will be able to visualize finer details than a lens with a smaller numerical aperture. Assuming quality (diffraction-limited) optics, lenses with larger numerical apertures collect more light and will generally provide a brighter image, but will provide shallower depth of field. is used to define the "pit size" in optical disc formats. Increasing the magnification and the numerical aperture of the objective reduces the working distance, i.e. the distance between front lens and specimen. is not typically used in photography. Instead, the angular aperture of a lens (or an imaging mirror) is expressed by the f-number, written or , which is defined as the ratio of the focal length to the diameter of the entrance pupil : This ratio is related to the image-space numerical aperture when the lens is focused at infinity. Based on the diagram at the right, the image-space numerical aperture of the lens is: thus , assuming normal use in air () | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=41432 | 22,887 |
Phra Chedi Klang Nam is a chedi in Rayong Province. was built approximately 2 kilometers away from Rayong city and it is located in the middle of the mouth of the Rayong River. Tourists can travel to everyday from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m., at Tambon Pak Nam, Amphoe Muaeng, Rayong. The Chedi (pagoda) was constructed in 1873 by Kate Yomjinda, who was the Rayong provincial administrator at the time. The feature of pagoda looks like large white bell which stands 10 meters high and the ground is reddish-brown brick. Once the Chedi used to symbolise reaching Rayong for sailors. Now the people ofRayong esteem the and it is a symbol of Rayong. The tourists should travel to during the twelfth lunar month because at that time the annual celebration takes place. In November during the Loy Krathong festival, festival for paying respect to the Phra Mae Kong Ka, people can join the festival at and there is Thai traditional boat racing as well. In mid-December every year, there is an offering robes to Buddhist monks and cover clothes for pagoda tradition. Two men cover the apex of pagoda by a 6 meter long red cloth. The area around is covered by pine trees, so the weather is pretty good. People usually go there to relax and have a picnic. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=53929725 | 337,011 |
Agricultural biotechnology Agricultural biotechnology, also known as agritech, is an area of agricultural science involving the use of scientific tools and techniques, including genetic engineering, molecular markers, molecular diagnostics, vaccines, and tissue culture, to modify living organisms: plants, animals, and microorganisms. Crop biotechnology is one aspect of agricultural biotechnology which has been greatly developed upon in recent times. Desired trait are exported from a particular species of Crop to an entirely different species. These transgene crops possess desirable characteristics in terms of flavor, colour of flowers, growth rate, size of harvested products and resistance to diseases and pests. Farmers have manipulated plants and animals through selective breeding for tens of thousands of years in order to create desired traits. In the 20th century, a surge in technology resulted in an increase in agricultural biotechnology through the selection of traits like increased yield, pest resistance, drought resistance, and herbicide resistance. The first food product produced through biotechnology was sold in 1990, and by 2003, 7 million farmers were utilizing biotech crops. More than 85% of these farmers were located in developing countries. Traditional crossbreeding has been used for centuries to improve crop quality and quantity. Crossbreeding mates two sexually compatible species to create a new and special variety with the desired traits of the parents | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=93829 | 192,748 |
Selin Balci Balcı, trained in biology, finds her samples in tree bark and soil from her backyard, and sometimes collaborates with her plant pathologist husband for colorful natural material, and stores her specimens in the refrigerator in test tubes. In recent years, Balcı has moved from boards to framed works, and uses Yupo paper as a support, which can withstand the mold growth and emphasizes the texture of her medium. After sterilizing her Yupo paper, she coats it in potato dextrose agar to feed the colonies, and waits one to two months for her composition to grow. Although she has used the term "living" to describe her works, she no longer exhibits living specimens—instead she allows them to dry out and prevents new growth with a layer of acrylic. Along with boards and frames, she has recently exhibited her works in Petri dishes arranged in shapes such as a map of the world or on Yupo paper covered with watch glasses to magnify certain elements of the growths. Balcı studies how microorganisms behave and relate to one another before beginning new projects, and is interested in how their interactions reflect conflicts and boundaries in the human world. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=53622930 | 187,129 |
Anisotropic Network Model The (ANM) is a simple yet powerful tool made for Normal Mode Analysis of proteins, which has been successfully applied for exploring the relation between function and dynamics for many proteins. It is essentially an Elastic Network Model for the Cα atoms with a step function for the dependence of the force constants on the inter-particle distance. The was introduced in 2000 (Atilgan et al., 2001; Doruker et al., 2000), inspired by the pioneering work of Tirion (1996), succeeded by the development of the Gaussian network model (GNM) (Bahar et al., 1997; Haliloglu et al., 1997), and by the work of Hinsen (1998) who first demonstrated the validity of performing EN NMA at residue level. It represents the biological macromolecule as an elastic mass-and-spring network, to explain the internal motions of a protein subject to a harmonic potential. In the network each node is the Cα atom of the residue and the springs represent the interactions between the nodes. The overall potential is the sum of harmonic potentials between interacting nodes. To describe the internal motions of the spring connecting the two atoms, there is only one degree of freedom. Qualitatively, this corresponds to the compression and expansion of the spring in a direction given by the locations of the two atoms. In other words, ANM is an extension of the Gaussian Network Model to three coordinates per atom, thus accounting for directionality | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27211693 | 71,355 |
Antedated cheque In banking, antedated refers to cheques which have been written by the drawer, and dated at some point in the past. In the United States antedated cheques are described in the Uniform Commercial Code's Article 3, Section 113. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5913665 | 499,259 |
George Fleming (engineer) On 23 May 2001 Fleming was elected a fellow of the Transport Research Foundation at which point he was deputy dean of engineering at the University of Birmingham. Fleming served as chairman of the Association of Environmental and Ecological Clerks of Works from its formation until January 2018. Fleming was involved in the planning of the Glasgow Garden Festival and the programme of regeneration that followed it. His academic work had shown that dredgings from the River Clyde contained valuable nutrients washed down from upstream agricultural land and, once treated to remove heavy metals, could be re-used as opposed to being discarded as previous. Fleming generated topsoil for the garden festival this way and subsequently licensed the technology used to a company that sold the material under the brand name ClydeSoil. Fleming also made bricks from the material and investigated whether it could be applied to rivers in Hong Kong and Egypt. He also looked at the possibility of making soil from other waste materials such as quarry dust, forestry waste, paper mill sludge, fish farming by-products and sewage sludge. In addition Fleming developed a surfacing material for roads and sports fields made from a combination of waste, tar, asphalt, tyre rubber and aggregate. At around the time of the festival Fleming established the Landlab, a research unit that studies the self-renewing properties of soil | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=58835485 | 306,082 |
Novel ecosystem Novel ecosystems are the hallmark of the recently proposed anthropocene epoch. They have no natural analogs due to human alterations on global climate systems, invasive species, a global mass extinction, and disruption of the global nitrogen cycle. Novel ecosystems are creating many different kinds of dilemmas for conservation biologists. On a more local scale, abandoned lots, agricultural land, old buildings, field boundary stone walls or residential gardens provide study sites on the history and dynamics of ecology in novel ecosystems. Ellis (2008) identifies twenty-one different kinds of anthropogenic biomes that sort into the following groups: 1) dense settlements, 2) villages, 3) croplands, 4) rangeland, 5) forested, and 6) wildlands. These anthropogenic biomes (or anthromes for short) create the technosphere that surrounds us and are populated with diverse technologies (or technodiversity for short). Within these anthromes the human species (one species out of billions) appropriates 23.8% of the global net primary production. "This is a remarkable impact on the biosphere caused by just one species." Noosphere (sometimes noösphere) is the "sphere of human thought". The word is derived from the Greek "νοῦς" (nous "mind") + "σφαῖρα" (sphaira "sphere"), in lexical analogy to "atmosphere" and "biosphere". Introduced by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 1922 in his Cosmogenesis" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=32086877 | 188,000 |
Chemical revolution When describing the task of reinventing chemical nomenclature, Lavoisier attempted to harness the new centrality of chemistry by making the rather hyperbolic claim that: Much of the reasoning behind Antoine Lavoisier being named the "father of modern chemistry" and the start of the chemical revolution lay in his ability to mathematize the field, pushing chemistry to use the experimental methods utilized in other "more exact sciences." Lavoisier changed the field of chemistry by keeping meticulous balance sheets in his research, attempting to show that through the transformation of chemical species the total amount of substance was conserved. Lavoisier used instrumentation for thermometric and barometric measurements in his experiments, and collaborated with Pierre Simon de Laplace in the invention of the calorimeter, an instrument for measuring heat changes in a reaction. In attempting to dismantle phlogiston theory and implement his own theory of combustion, Lavoisier utilized multiple apparatuses. These included a red-hot iron gun barrel which was designed to have water run through it and decompose, and an alteration of the apparatus which implemented a pneumatic trough at one end, a thermometer, and a barometer. The precision of his measurements was a requirement in convincing opposition of his theories about water as a compound, with instrumentation designed by himself implemented in his research. Despite having precise measurements for his work, Lavoisier faced a large amount of opposition in his research | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3543408 | 74,609 |
Creeping normality The authors state that owners of family businesses are more likely to notice the small changes than a large corporation, although "detecting a problem is no guarantee of the ability to solve it". In his thesis, Ki Chon states that the increase in cybercrime fits the pattern for creeping normality. The number of websites involved in "hacking and cybercrime activities" has increased at a slow and steady pace, mostly below society's awareness. Peter Ho referred to creeping normality in his four-part IPS-Nathan lecture series in spring of 2017. In regard to several issues Singapore is facing, he claimed that "things get just a little bit worse each year than the year before, but not bad enough for anyone to notice". As an example, he used the increase in flooding in Singapore. He stated that the country did not realize the problem was caused by rising temperatures due to catastrophic climate change and not poor drainage, as first suspected. Researchers at the University of Central Florida looked into the evolving media landscape on the University's campuses and argued that there has been a gradual shift to offer more online classes, resources, and a technology and media-rich environment. They characterized the "ubiquitous presence of media and technology" on campuses as an example of creeping normality. Alex de Waal has discussed the timescale over which disasters like famine occur | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1957465 | 304,844 |
San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge In April 1932, the preliminary final plan and design of the bridge was presented by Chief Engineer Charles Purcell to Col. Walter E. Garrison, Director of the State Department of Public Works, and to Ralph Modjeski, head of the Board of Engineering Consultants. Both agencies approved and preparation of the final design proceeded. Before work got underway, 12 massive underwater telephone cables were moved 1,000 feet north of the proposed bridge route by crews of the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Co. during the summer of 1931. Construction began on July 9, 1933. Ultimately, twenty-four men would die constructing the bridge. The western section of the bridge between San Francisco and Yerba Buena Island presented an enormous engineering challenge. The bay was up to deep in places and the soil required new foundation-laying techniques. A single main suspension span some in length was considered but rejected, as it would have required too much fill and reduced wharfage space at San Francisco, had less vertical clearance for shipping, and cost more than the design ultimately adopted. The solution was to construct a massive concrete anchorage halfway between San Francisco and the island, and to build a main suspension span on each side of this central anchorage. East of Yerba Buena Island, the bay to Oakland was spanned by a combination of double cantilever, five long-span through-trusses, and a truss causeway, forming the longest bridge of its kind at the time | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=165926 | 358,856 |
.NET Remoting is a Microsoft application programming interface (API) for interprocess communication released in 2002 with the 1.0 version of .NET Framework. It is one in a series of Microsoft technologies that began in 1990 with the first version of Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) for 16-bit Windows. Intermediate steps in the development of these technologies were Component Object Model (COM) released in 1993 and updated in 1995 as COM-95, Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM), released in 1997 (and renamed Active X), and COM+ with its Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), released in 2000. It is now superseded by Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), which is part of the .NET Framework 3.0. Like its family members and similar technologies such as Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and Java's remote method invocation (RMI), is complex, yet its essence is straightforward. With the assistance of operating system and network agents, a client process sends a message to a server process and receives a reply. allows an application to make an object (termed "remotable object") available across "remoting boundaries", which includes different appdomains, processes or even different computers connected by a network. The runtime hosts the listener for requests to the object in the appdomain of the server application | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4890471 | 120,549 |
Communications system It acts as a conversion device. At the transmitting end it converts high frequency current into electromagnetic waves. At the receiving end it transforms electromagnetic waves into electrical signals that is fed into the input of the receiver. several types of antenna are used in communication. Examples of communications subsystems include the Defense Communications System (DCS). A tactical communications system is a communications system that (a) is used within, or in direct support of tactical forces (b) is designed to meet the requirements of changing tactical situations and varying environmental conditions, (c) provides securable communications, such as voice, data, and video, among mobile users to facilitate command and control within, and in support of, tactical forces, and (d) usually requires extremely short installation times, usually on the order of hours, in order to meet the requirements of frequent relocation. An Emergency communication system is any system (typically computer based) that is organized for the primary purpose of supporting the two way communication of emergency messages between both individuals and groups of individuals. These systems are commonly designed to integrate the cross-communication of messages between are variety of communication technologies. An Automatic call distributor (ACD) is a communication system that automatically queues, assigns and connects callers to handlers | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40925 | 295,644 |
VideoNow The is a portable video player produced by Hasbro and released by their subsidiary Tiger Electronics in 2003. The systems use discs called PVDs (which stands for Personal Video Disc), which can store about 30 minutes (half an hour) of video, the length of an average TV show with commercials (a typical TV episode is about 20–23 minutes without them), so each PVD contains only one episode, with trailers at the end to use the leftover time on most PVDs, including Nickelodeon PVDs. Video data is stored on the left audio channel with audio on the right channel, thus making it impossible to achieve stereo sound on the system, which only plays mono. The video plays at about 15 frames per second. Most of the shows were from Nickelodeon, such as "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "The Fairly OddParents", and later they released shows from Cartoon Network, such as "Ed, Edd n Eddy" and "Dexter's Laboratory". A small amount of movies were also released on the system, but due to the limited space on a PVD, said movies would have to be released on at least three discs, depending on the length of said film. Hasbro also produced editing software for creating custom Color PVDs called the Media Wizard in 2005, which came with blank PVD media. A number of unofficial solutions are available for creating the oddly-formatted files, including a plug-in for the popular video processing program Virtual Dub. The files can then be burned to a CD-R using standard CD burning software, and the disc cut down to the required size | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1936304 | 304,688 |
Field electron emission This function "s" was first tabulated correctly (as a function of the Nordheim parameter "y") by Burgess, Kroemer and Houston in 1953; and a modern treatment that gives "s" as function of the scaled barrier field "f" for a Schottky-Nordheim barrier is given in. However, it has long been clear that, for practical emitter operation, the value of "s" lies in the range 0.9 to 1. In practice, due to the extra complexity involved in taking the slope correction factor into detailed account, many authors (in effect) put "σ" = 1 in eq. (49), thereby generating a systematic error in their estimated values of "β" and/or "γ", thought usually to be around 5%. However, empirical equation (42) – which in principle is more general than Fowler-Nordheim-type equations - brings with it possible new ways of analyzing field emission "i"-"V" data. In general, it may be assumed that the parameter "B" in the empirical equation is related to the unreduced height "H" of some characteristic barrier seen by tunneling electrons by (In most cases, but not necessarily all, "H" would be equal to the local work-function; certainly this is true for metals.) The issue is how to determine the value of "B" by experiment. There are two obvious ways. (1) Suppose that eq. (43) can be used to determine a reasonably accurate experimental value of "κ", from the slope of a plot of form [–dln{"i"}/d(1/"V") vs. "V"]. In this case, a second plot, of ln("i")/"V" vs. 1/"V", should be an exact straight line of slope –"B" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=293392 | 449,581 |
Western blot Nitrocellulose membranes are cheaper than PVDF, but are far more fragile and cannot withstand repeated probings. Total protein staining allows the total protein that has been successfully transferred to the membrane to be visualised, allowing the user to check the uniformity of protein transfer and to perform subsequent normalization of the target protein with the actual protein amount per lane. Normalization with the so-called "loading control" was based on immunostaining of housekeeping proteins in the classical procedure, but is heading toward total protein staining recently, due to multiple benefits. At least seven different approaches for total protein staining have been described for western blot normalization: Ponceau S, stain-free techniques, Sypro Ruby, Epicocconone, Coomassie R-350, Amido Black, and Cy5. In order to avoid noise of signal, total protein staining should be performed before blocking of the membrane. Nevertheless, post-antibody stainings have been described as well. Since the membrane has been chosen for its ability to bind protein and as both antibodies and the target are proteins, steps must be taken to prevent the interactions between the membrane and the antibody used for detection of the target protein. Blocking of non-specific binding is achieved by placing the membrane in a dilute solution of protein – typically 3–5% bovine serum albumin (BSA) or non-fat dry milk (both are inexpensive) in tris-buffered saline (TBS) or I-Block, with a minute percentage (0 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=174030 | 181,874 |
Social peer-to-peer processes Rather, they rely almost exclusively on the P2P technologies described above. Thus, Internet media are used for communication and learning on a continuous basis, prior to the mobilizations, and also during the mobilizations. Independent Internet media platforms such as Indymedia, as well as the skillful use of mobile phones, are used for real-time response management, undertaken by small groups that use buddy-list technologies, and sometimes open-source programs that have been explicitly designed for political activism such as TextMob. Many reports have appeared, including those described in Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs, about the political significance of SMS in organizing successful protests and ‘democratic revolutions’. The network model allows for a more fluid organization that does not fix any group in a permanent adversarial position. Various temporary coalitions are created on an ad hoc basis depending on the issues. The following is a list of individuals who have made contributions to the peer-to-peer paradigm. MIT Press, 2004 (power as embedded in the digital protocols governing networked systems) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2148069 | 294,637 |
Yokneam Illit The family ties and school friendships led to mixed Yokneam-Megiddo parents groups in both communities and nearly all sports activities and many other after-school activities being fully integrated. Today, it is extremely rare to find a local team representing only or only the Megiddo Regional Council. The Partnership2Gether program, which partnered and the Megiddo Regional Council on the Israeli side, with the Jewish communities of Atlanta, GA and St. Louis, MO on the US side, helped institutionalize cooperation between the municipality and the Megiddo Regional Council. The impact on joint community leadership not only affected Yokneam-Megiddo, but also created an ongoing relationship between the Jewish communities of Atlanta and St. Louis. This cross-pollination has led to an integrated economic ecosystem that help support the high-tech companies in Yokneam Illit. Examples of this cooperation can be seen in the activities of the Southeast chapter of the US-Israel Chamber of Commerce in Atlanta, and the success of companies like Given Imaging. Given Imaging, which began as a small startup in Yokneam Illit, leveraged its special relationship with the Southeast chapter of the US-Israel Chamber of Commerce when it opened its Marketing headquarters in Atlanta, GA | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1215588 | 294,070 |
Bangalore The two main music seasons in are in April–May during the Ram Navami festival, and in September–October during the Dusshera festival, when music activities by cultural organisations are at their peak. Though both classical and contemporary music are played in Bangalore, the dominant music genre in urban is rock music. has its own subgenre of music, "Rock", which is an amalgamation of classic rock, hard rock and heavy metal, with a bit of jazz and blues in it. Notable bands from include Raghu Dixit Project, Kryptos, Inner Sanctum, Agam, All the fat children, and Swaratma. The city hosted the Miss World 1996 beauty pageant. Until the early 19th century, education in was mainly run by religious leaders and restricted to students of that religion. The western system of education was introduced during the rule of Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar. Subsequently, the British Wesleyan Mission established the first English school in 1832 known as Wesleyan Canarese School. The fathers of the Paris Foreign Missions established the St. Joseph's European School in 1858. The High School was started by the Mysore government in 1858 and the Bishop Cotton Boys' School was started in 1865 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=44275267 | 229,459 |
Avobenzone (data page) Avobenzone (data page) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5340335 | 78,664 |
2008 Liechtenstein tax affair The "Wall Street Journal" indicated on February 19, 2008, the name of the informant who apparently lives now in Australia and had sold the data to tax ministries of a number of countries, including the United States. A number of raids were conducted in Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt and other cities. Several banks were searched including Bankhaus Metzler, the Hauck & Aufhäuser bank, Dresdner Bank, UBS in Munich and the Berenberg Bank in Hamburg. In the meantime revenue offices also noted a higher number of voluntary self-incriminations - this will avoid or reduce punitive damages - for possible tax evasions by people with financial assets in Liechtenstein. While the BND received the data in 2006, the LGT Group indicated that in 2002 secret information had been stolen but the informant had been caught and tried in 2003, and all material had been returned. The informant also had sold data to the government of the United States. After the affair broke open, Senator Carl Levin, chairman of a senate investigations committee, indicated his intention to probe to what degree American citizens have used the LGT bank to evade taxes. In July 2008 the U.S. Subcommittee determined that the offshore tax haven saved $100 billion per year for the U.S. taxpayer. Specifically mentioned were Switzerland's UBS AG and Liechtenstein's LGT Group. The report indicates that the LGT Group contributed to a "culture of secrecy and deception" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15855374 | 492,687 |
Ovatiovermis is a genus of filter-feeding lobopodian known from the Burgess Shale. Like many lobopodians, it had nine pairs of lobopods (legs). It was well adapted to filter-feeding and probably did so from the nearest high vantage point. "Ovatiovermis" had nine pairs of lobopods. The first two pairs were elongate and had approximately 20 pairs of spines on each lobopod, with a bifid claw at each tip. The third to sixth pairs of lobopods were shorter and their paired spines were much smaller. On these four pairs of lobopods the spines were only large near the tip. The last three pairs of lobopods did not have the paired spines, showing that these spines were used for filter-feeding. Instead these lobopods had hooked claws with which it could grip one of the corals or sponges found at the time and rear up into the current. At the anterior end of the animal it had an evertible proboscis, with its mouth at the end. This would probably have been used to suck any particles of food which had been caught off the spines, possibly in a similar manner to a sea cucumber. Its head was not well separated from the body. Also on the head "Ovatiovermis" had two small (0.1mm diameter) and probably very primitive visual organs. Close examination of the fossils revealed traces of calcium compounds in the claws of the back three legs and around the mouth and proboscis. There were also calcium traces found in the gut, but this may have been fragments of shell attached to its food rather than the animal`s organs | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=53703716 | 187,172 |
Laser peening In addition to the work being done in these countries and Spain, laser peening programs were initiated in China, Britain, Germany and several other countries. The continuing growth of the technology and its applications led to the appearance of several commercial laser shock peening providers in the early 2000s. GE Aviation and LSP Technologies were the first companies performing laser peening commercially, having licensed the technology from Battelle. GE Aviation performed laser peening for its aerospace engine components and LSP Technologies marketed laser shock peening services and equipment to a broader industrial base. In the late 1990s, Metal Improvement Company (MIC is now part of Curtis Wright Surface Technologies) partnered with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to develop its own laser peening capabilities. In Japan, Toshiba Corporation expanded the commercial applications of its LPwC system to pressurized water reactors, and in 2002 implemented fiber optic beam delivery to the underwater laser peening head. Toshiba also redesigned the laser and beam delivery into a compact system, enabling the entire system to be inserted into the pressure vessel. This system was ready for commercial use in 2013 MIC developed and adapted laser shock peening for forming the wing shapes on the Boeing 747–8. The growth of industrial suppliers and commercial proof of laser peening technology lead to many companies adopting laser peening technology to solve and prevent problems | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7465720 | 42,468 |
Dendral Heuristic is a program that uses mass spectra or other experimental data together with knowledge base of chemistry, to produce a set of possible chemical structures that may be responsible for producing the data. A mass spectrum of a compound is produced by a mass spectrometer, and is used to determine its molecular weight, the sum of the masses of its atomic constituents. For example, the compound water (H2O), has a molecular weight of 18 since hydrogen has a mass of 1.01 and oxygen 16.00, and its mass spectrum has a peak at 18 units. Heuristic would use this input mass and the knowledge of atomic mass numbers and valence rules, to determine the possible combinations of atomic constituents whose mass would add up to 18. As the weight increases and the molecules become more complex, the number of possible compounds increases drastically. Thus, a program that is able to reduce this number of candidate solutions through the process of hypothesis formation is essential. New graph-theoretic algorithms were invented by Lederberg, Harold Brown, and others that generate all graphs with a specified set of nodes and connection-types (chemical atoms and bonds) -- with or without cycles. Moreover, the team was able to prove mathematically that the generator is complete, in that it produces all graphs with the specified nodes and edges, and that it is non-redundant, in that the output contains no equivalent graphs (e.g., mirror images) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=557912 | 26,167 |
Paddington Reservoir The aesthetics of the spatial qualities presented by that space are particularly evocative of nineteenth century and are unique to the earliest reservoirs. The place has a strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group in New South Wales for social, cultural or spiritual reasons. The reservoir was an essential component of the infrastructure which supported the development of the suburb of Paddington. The reservoir had an important role as an open space in a densely built -up city suburb. The reservoir roof had been a well used, popular recreation space, held in high regard by local inhabitants. The place has potential to yield information that will contribute to an understanding of the cultural or natural history of New South Wales. is significant for its ability to demonstrate advances in technology and local manufacturing expertise over time. It demonstrates the waterproofing technology of the period. The level of workmanship and care throughout is also informative showing the range of skills and craftsmanship available in the local building trades. The place possesses uncommon, rare or endangered aspects of the cultural or natural history of New South Wales. The is a component of the first reservoir system designed to supply Sydney City and surrounds. The reservoir is the second of the two reservoirs in the system. Paddington is the only nineteenth century reservoir which is out of commission and capable of being available for public inspection on a regular basis | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27937500 | 362,298 |
Herbert Fröhlich (9 December 1905 – 23 January 1991) FRS was a German-born British physicist. In 1927, Fröhlich entered Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich to study physics, and received his doctorate under Arnold Sommerfeld in 1930. His first position was as Privatdozent at the University of Freiburg. Due to rising anti-Semitism and the Deutsche Physik movement under Adolf Hitler, and at the invitation of Yakov Frenkel, Fröhlich went to the Soviet Union, in 1933, to work at the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in Leningrad. During the Great Purge following the murder of Sergei Kirov, he fled to England in 1935. Except for a short visit to the Netherlands and a brief internment during World War II, he worked in Nevill Francis Mott's department, at the University of Bristol, until 1948, rising to the position of Reader. At the invitation of James Chadwick, he took the Chair for Theoretical Physics at the University of Liverpool. In 1950 Bell Telephone Laboratories offered Fröhlich their endowed professorial position at Princeton University. However, at Liverpool he had a purely research post which was attractive to him. He was then newly married to an American, (Audrey) Fanchon Aungst, who was studying linguistic philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford under P. F. Strawson, and who did not want to return to the United States at that time | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4388722 | 411,036 |
Induced stem cells This epigenetic memory does not necessarily manifest itself at the pluripotency stage – iPSCs derived from different tissues exhibit proper morphology, express pluripotency markers and are able to differentiate into the three embryonic layers in vitro and in vivo. However, this epigenetic memory may manifest during re-differentiation into specific cell types that require the specific loci bearing residual epigenetic marks. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36315057 | 332 |
Plain old CLR object In software engineering, a plain old CLR object (POCO) is a simple object created in the Common Language Runtime (CLR) of the .NET Framework which is unencumbered by inheritance or attributes. This is often used in opposition to the complex or specialised objects that object-relational mapping frameworks often require. In essence, a POCO does not have any dependency on an external framework. "Plain Old CLR Object" is a play on the term "plain old Java object" from the Java EE programming world, which was coined by Martin Fowler in 2000. POCO is often expanded to "plain old C# object", though POCOs can be created with any language targeting the CLR. An alternative acronym sometimes used is "plain old .NET object". Some benefits of POCOs are: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3823978 | 125,259 |
History of electromagnetic theory Lord Kelvin and Sebastian Ferranti also developed early alternators, producing frequencies between 100 and 300 hertz. After 1891, polyphase alternators were introduced to supply currents of multiple differing phases. Later alternators were designed for varying alternating-current frequencies between sixteen and about one hundred hertz, for use with arc lighting, incandescent lighting and electric motors. The possibility of obtaining the electric current in large quantities, and economically, by means of dynamo electric machines gave impetus to the development of incandescent and arc lighting. Until these machines had attained a commercial basis voltaic batteries were the only available source of current for electric lighting and power. The cost of these batteries, however, and the difficulties of maintaining them in reliable operation were prohibitory of their use for practical lighting purposes. The date of the employment of arc and incandescent lamps may be set at about 1877. Even in 1880, however, but little headway had been made toward the general use of these illuminants; the rapid subsequent growth of this industry is a matter of general knowledge. The employment of storage batteries, which were originally termed secondary batteries or accumulators, began about 1879 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5951576 | 386,217 |
IDA Indoor Climate and Energy The IDA general purpose solver comes with a variable timestep, which guarantees that no event in the system will be missed. IDA ICE supports IFC BIM models generated by tools such as ArchiCAD, Revit, MagiCAD, and others. Geometry an shading on site can also be imported from SketchUp, Rhino or other geometry tools. Solar influx is evaluated through windows (also internal) with full 3D accounting for the local shading situation. Additionally it has an integrated geometry editor where building and zone geometry can be modeled with 2D architectural drawings or pictures serving as template. Climate files like EnergyPlus weather files (EPW) or ASHRAE climate files, can be downloaded and installed. The table-based input structure allows full interoperability with MS Excel and comparable software. Modern features like copy and paste and Drag&drop combined with visual input data check make input data management easier. IDA ICE output include tables, charts, reports and plots. 3D visualizations (both stills and animations) show geometry, solar shadings, color coded input data as well as results. Arrow animations in 3D visualize ventilation air flows, window energy balance, and wind driven flows. There are special reports for LEED submittal forms included. The diagram plots deliver vector graphics which allows detailed result analysis in custom reports. Results can be exported to Microsoft Word or Excel | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=57009374 | 129,858 |
Jožef Stefan Institute The (IJS) () is the largest research institute in Slovenia. The main research areas are physics, chemistry, molecular biology, biotechnology, information technologies, reactor physics, energy and environment. At the beginning of the 2013 the institute had 962 employees, 404 of them were Ph.D scientists. The mission of the is the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge at the frontiers of natural science and technology to the benefit of society at large through the pursuit of education, learning, research, and development of high technology at the highest international levels of excellence. The institute was founded by Yugoslav State Security in 1949 for atomic weapons research. Initially, the Vinča Nuclear Institute in Belgrade was established in 1948, followed by Rudjer Boskovic in Zagreb in 1949 and the as an Institute for Physics in the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. It is named after the distinguished 19th-century physicist Josef Stefan (), best known for his work on the Stefan–Boltzmann law of black-body radiation. IJS is today involved in a wide variety of fields of scientific and economic interest. After close to 60 years of scientific achievement, the institute has become part of the image of Slovenia. Over the last 60 years it has created a number of important institutions, such as the University of Nova Gorica, the Jožef Stefan International Postgraduate School and the Ljubljana Technology park. The institute has facilities in two locations | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=525062 | 119,672 |
Chief ethics officer The Chief Ethics Officer (EO) is a senior ranking individual in an organization. The primary role is to build a strong ethical culture within the organization. In order to perform these responsibilities the chief ethics officer must be given support, independence, and opportunity to influence key decision-making board members. The chief ethics officer normally reports to the chief executive officer, and have some access to the board of directors. Chief Ethics Officer role was redefined in 1991 for businesses, when Congress passed the Federal Guidelines for Organization (FSCO). Before 1991 this role existed in the financial services and the health care industry without much influence. Because of the rash of accounting scandals such as the Enron scandal, the need for chief ethics officers has increased tremendously. The role of chief ethics officers has increased since the passage of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOA), and amendments of the U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines (FSCO). The role of Chief Ethics Officer is no longer a figure head position. In 2002, after congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act and the Consumer Protection Act, the chief ethics officer's responsibilities expanded. The role both expanded and became more specific. The chief ethics officer is responsible for developing and distributing codes of ethics, developing training programs for employees, and monitoring and auditing compliance with government regulations | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=56726769 | 469,070 |
Brand licensing The rise of brand licensing did not begin until much later, when corporations found that consumers would actually pay money for products with the logos of their favorite brands on them. McDonald's play food, Burger King T-shirts and even ghastly Good Humor Halloween costumes became commonplace. Brand extensions later made the brand licensing marketplace much more lucrative, as companies realized they could make real dollars renting out their equity to manufacturers. Instead of spending untold millions to create a new brand, companies were willing to pay a royalty on net sales of their products to "rent" the product of an established brand name. Armor All auto vacuums, Breyers yogurt, TGI Friday's frozen appetizers, and Lucite nail polish are only a handful of the products carrying well-known brand names which are made under license by companies unrelated to the companies who own the brand. A company may choose to license its brand(s) when they believe there is strong consumer acceptance for brand extensions or products. For example, when Apple launched the iPod there was an immediate need for accessories such as headphones, charging and syncing stations and carrying cases. Apple decided not to manufacture these products and instead chose to have a licensee make the products. By doing so, Apple could offer branded "Earbud Headphones", "iPod docking stations" and "iPod socks." Each is made by a separate company but together offer the consumer an elegant solution. All of these accessories are sold by licensees | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5949300 | 499,295 |
Plasmonic nanolithography Srituravanich et al. has demonstrated the lithographic process experimentally with a 2D silver hole array mask; 90 nm hole arrays were produced at 365 nm wavelength, which is beyond diffraction limit. Zayats and Smolyaninov utilized a multi-layered metal film mask to enhance the subwavelength aperture; such structures can be realized by thin film deposition methods. Bowtie apertures and nanogaps were also suggested as alternative apertures. A version of the method, named as surface plasmon interference nanolithography by Liu et al., uses SPP interference patterns. Despite offering high resolution and throughput, plasmonic contact lithography is regarded as an expensive and complex method; contamination due to contact is also a limiting factor. Planar lens imaging nanolithography uses plasmonic lenses or negative-index superlenses, which were first proposed by Pendry. Many superlens designs, such as Pendry's thin silver film or Fang et al.'s superlens, benefit from plasmonic excitations to focus Fourier components of incoming light beyond the diffraction limit. Chaturvedi et al. has demonstrated the imaging of a 30 nm chromium grating through silver superlens photolithography at 380 nm, while Shi et al. simulated a 20 nm lithography resolution at 193 nm wavelength with an aluminum superlens. Srituravanich et al. has developed a mechanically adjustable, hovering plasmonic lens for maskless near-field nanolithography, whereas another maskless approach by Pan et al | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19953006 | 402,541 |
Puppet Master (Marvel Comics) The Puppet Master has exhibited an uncanny ability to cheat death, dodging mortal threats that have included bomb blasts, drownings, and even a giant squid attack. Liddleville would later be used against the Micronauts and X-Force. The jealous Puppet Master often uses his clay to manipulate the lives of the Fantastic Four, especially where his stepdaughter was concerned. He is particularly concerned with guarding his precious Alicia from marrying the likes of the Thing. But he is later just as outraged when she is engaged to Johnny Storm, also a member of the Fantastic Four. With the Thinker and the Wizard, Masters attempts to disrupt the wedding of the Human Torch and Alicia. The plan was to launch an attack on the church after the wedding ceremony, but when he sees how happy Alicia is to marry Johnny, Masters is overcome with remorse and turns on his associates, launching the Dragon Man against them: his wedding gift to Alicia and Johnny. Later, Masters is reformed, remarried, and has a stepson; the toys he crafts for his son inadvertently caused a battle between Power Pack and the alien Ciegramites. He reveals to the Thing that he had discovered that the Alicia Johnny had married was actually a Skrull. The Puppet Master has been shown on two occasions attempting to leave his (overtly) criminal life behind. In the first, he found some measure of spiritual enlightenment in the service of the billionaire philosopher/cultist Satori | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2182622 | 169,971 |
Mechanised agriculture As of 2010, approximately 10% of the processing orange acreage in Florida is harvested mechanically, mainly with citrus canopy shaker machines. Mechanization has progressed slowly due to the uncertainty of future economic benefits due to competition from Brazil and the transitory damage to orange trees when they are harvested. There has been an ongoing transition to mechanical harvesting of cling peaches (mostly used in canning) where the cost of labor is 70 percent of a grower's direct costs. In 2016, 12 percent of the cling peach tonnage from Yuba County and Sutter County in California will be mechanically harvested. Fresh peaches destined for direct consumer sales must still be hand-picked. As of 2007, mechanised harvesting of raisins is at 45%; however the rate has slowed due to high raisin demand and prices making the conversion away from hand labour less urgent. A new strain of grape developed by the USDA that drys on the vine and is easily harvested mechanically is expected to reduce the demand for labour. Strawberries are a high cost-high value crop with the economics supporting mechanisation. In 2005, picking and hauling costs were estimated at $594 per ton or 51% of the total grower cost. However, the delicate nature of fruit make it an unlikely candidate for mechanisation in the near future. A strawberry harvester developed by Shibuya Seiki and unveiled in Japan in 2013 is able to pick a strawberry every eight seconds | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2063352 | 422,661 |
Epiphany Eyewear are smartglasses developed by Vergence Labs. The glasses record video stored within the glasses' hardware for live-stream upload to a computer or social media. The glasses use smartphone technology. The head mounted display is a mobile computer and a high-definition camera. The glasses take photographic images, record or stream video to a smartphone or computer tablet. The style of the eyewear frames is similar to the basic designer-like frames made famous and worn by Buddy Holly. The multifunction plastic titanium framed glasses are controlled by pressing tactile buttons on the sidebar of the frame to activate the camera or determine the darkness of the sun glass lens. If a prescription eye glass lens is needed, a prescription lens with a Nominal Base Curve of 2 diopters can be installed by an optometrist. The eyewear are point of view shot (POV) video glasses with a computer inside the frames with multi-core processing, Wi-Fi and USB connectivity. The computer inside powers a high-definition camera to either take photographs or record motion picture video with sound. The eyewear software and apps allow integration with mobile devices to live-stream recordings and sound to social networks and YouGen.tv. The YouGen.tv website is an app platform provided and developed by Vergence Labs for users. The built-in physical computer memory can store 8 GB, 16 GB or up to 32 GB of data. The power is supplied by a rechargeable lithium ion battery | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=39359540 | 412,631 |
Essure For the method, three months after insertion a radiologist is supposed to perform a fluoroscopic procedure called a hysterosalpingogram, to confirm that the fallopian tubes are completely blocked and that the woman can rely on the inserts for birth control. A contrast agent (dye) is injected through the cervix, and an x-ray technologist takes photos of the coils to ensure no contrast leaks past the Essure. Serious side effects may include persistent pain, perforation of the uterus and fallopian tubes, and migration of the coils into the pelvis or abdomen. Because of the stainless steel medical staff needs to be notified before an MRI can be done. A physician places the coils into the fallopian tubes by a catheter passed from the vagina through the cervix and uterus. This occurs successfully between 63% and 100% of the time. Once in place, the ingrowth continues over a period of three months, resulting in blockage in the Fallopian tubes; the tissue barrier formed is supposed to prevent sperm from reaching an egg. During that intervening three-month period, women are advised to use an alternate contraceptive method. Unlike tubal ligation, it may not required a general anaesthetic (though is often done under general anaesthetic). Despite this, some women have reported considerable pain during the procedure. In one 2007 prospective study, the mean time for procedure was 6.8 minutes (range = 5–18 minutes). for a trained physician to perform and can be performed in a physician's office | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3693855 | 233,405 |
Knife switch These devices use a snap action mechanism which opens the switch contacts rapidly, and feature an arc chute where the arc caused by opening the switch is quenched. These devices also prevent injury due to accidental contact, as all of the current carrying metal parts of the switch are hidden within or surrounded by insulating guards. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11539646 | 373,206 |
NIXT The NIXT, or Normal Incidence X-ray Telescope, was a sounding rocket payload flown in the 1990s by Professor Leon Golub of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, to prototype normal-incidence (conventional) optical designs in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) solar imaging. In the EUV, the surface of the Sun appears dark, and hot structures in the solar corona appear bright; this allows study of the structure and dynamics of the solar corona near the surface of the Sun, which is not possible using visible light. and its sister rocket, the MSSTA, were the prototypes for all normal-incidence EUV imaging instruments in use today, including SOHO/EIT, TRACE, and STEREO/SECCHI. In 1989, a sounding rocket launch detected soft X-Rays coming from a Solar flare. It was launched when the solar event was detected to allow high resolution imaging of the Sun's corona. Results from the observations were presented in 1990 in different papers. was launched throughout the early 1990s and a paper summarizing the results from these mission was published in 1996. A successor program to NIXT, was the TXI (Tunable XUV Imager) sounding rocket program | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21625898 | 10,381 |
Secondary research Making your own summary based on secondary sources can create biases and misinterpretations which can have a negative impact on the research project. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9348311 | 472,839 |
Workflow engine A workflow engine is a software application that manages business processes. It is a key component in workflow technology and typically makes use of a database server. A workflow engine manages and monitors the state of activities in a workflow, such as the processing and approval of a loan application form, and determines which new activity to transition to according to defined processes (workflows). The actions may be anything from saving an application form in a document management system to sending a reminder e-mail to users or escalating overdue items to management. A workflow engine facilitates the flow of information, tasks, and events. Workflow engines may also be referred to as Workflow Orchestration Engines. Workflow engines mainly have three functions: A workflow engine is a core technique for task allocation software, such as business process management, in which the workflow engine allocates tasks to different executors while communicating data among participants. A workflow engine can execute any arbitrary sequence of steps, for example, a healthcare data analysis. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7711975 | 463,694 |
W. Clark Still (born 1946) is an American organic chemist. As a distinguished professor at Columbia University, Clark Still made significant contributions to the field of organic chemistry, particularly in the areas of natural product synthesis, reaction development, conformational analysis, macrocyclic stereocontrol, and computational chemistry. Still and coworkers also developed the purification technique known as flash column chromatography which is widely used for the purification of organic compounds. In 1979, Still reported the first total synthesis of periplanone B, the potent sex pheromone of the American cockroach. Although the structural connectivity of this compound had been established spectroscopically, Still's synthesis confirmed the relative stereochemical relationships present in this natural product. A key step in this synthesis makes use of an anionic oxy-Cope rearrangement to form the macrocyclic 10-membered ring found in periplanone B. In this transformation, the initial tertiary alcohol was treated with potassium hydride and 18-crown-6 at elevated temperature to induce the rearrangement, and the resulting enolate was trapped with chlorotrimethylsilane to form the macrocyclic silyl enol ether as a single diastereomer. This intermediate was then transformed into a key enone substrate over the course of five steps including Rubottom oxidation, TBS protection of the secondary alcohol, and formation of the exocyclic alkene via a selenoxide rearrangements | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42848711 | 21,174 |
Wnt signaling pathway While these pathways overlap with components associated with PCP and Wnt/Calcium signaling, they are considered distinct pathways because they produce different responses. In order to ensure proper functioning, Wnt signaling is constantly regulated at several points along its signaling pathways.<ref name="doi:10.1016/j.sbi.2014.10.003"></ref> For example, Wnt proteins are palmitoylated. The protein "porcupine" mediates this process, which means that it helps regulate when the Wnt ligand is secreted by determining when it is fully formed. Secretion is further controlled with proteins such as GPR177 (wntless) and evenness interrupted and complexes such as the retromer complex.<ref name="doi10.1016/j.devcel.2009.06.016"></ref> Upon secretion, the ligand can be prevented from reaching its receptor through the binding of proteins such as the stabilizers Dally and glypican 3 (GPC3), which inhibit diffusion. In cancer cells, both the heparan sulfate chains and the core protein of GPC3 are involved in regulating Wnt binding and activation for cell proliferation. Wnt recognizes a heparan sulfate structure on GPC3, which contains IdoA2S and GlcNS6S, and the 3-O-sulfation in GlcNS6S3S enhances the binding of Wnt to the heparan sulfate glypican. A cysteine-rich domain at the N-lobe of GPC3 has been identified to form a Wnt-binding hydrophobic groove including phenylalanine-41 that interacts with Wnt. Blocking the Wnt binding domain using a nanobody called HN3 can inhibit Wnt activation | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1209057 | 49,583 |
Train noise is vehicle noise created by trains. Noises may be heard inside the train and outside. Various parts of a train produce noise, and different kinds of train wheels produce different amounts of noise. Noise barriers can attenuate these noises. Subway systems, light rail transit and freight trains can send loud train noise into neighborhoods. Organizations such as the World Health Organization and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have set guidelines for noise level decibel limits for rapid transit. Diesel-electric locomotives have various sounds associated with them, although in more recent years newer locomotives have become much quieter due to Federally-mandated noise regulations. However, there are still times that a locomotive may develop a defect in its turbocharger, which produces a whine that can be heard for many miles. While this is rare, and usually the said locomotive gets put into the shop quickly, the noise has been compared to an air raid siren, a UFO, or just a very large leaf blower. It appears to be the most common on EMD units equipped with the 710 prime mover, although any turbocharged locomotive may develop this problem. __notoc__ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2320500 | 428,850 |
Fullerene A fullerene is an allotrope of carbon whose molecule consists of carbon atoms connected by single and double bonds so as to form a closed or partially closed mesh, with fused rings of five to seven atoms. The molecule may be a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, tube, or many other shapes and sizes. Graphene (isolated atomic layers of graphite), which is a flat mesh of regular hexagonal rings, can be seen as an extreme member of the family. Fullerenes with a closed mesh topology are informally denoted by their empirical formula C, often written C"n", where "n" is the number of carbon atoms. However, for some values of "n" there maybe more than one [[ The family is named after [[buckminsterfullerene]] (C), the most famous member, which in turn is named after [[Buckminster Fuller]]. The closed fullerenes, especially C, are also informally called buckyballs for their resemblance to the standard [[ball (association football)|ball]] of [[association football|association football ("soccer")]]. Nested closed fullerenes have been named bucky onions. Cylindrical fullerenes are also called [[carbon nanotubes]] or buckytubes. The bulk solid form of pure or mixed fullerenes is called fullerite. Fullerenes had been predicted for some time, but only after their accidental synthesis in 1985 were they detected in nature and outer space | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10628 | 301,484 |
Bell Laboratories Layered Space-Time Bell Laboratories Layer Space-Time (BLAST) is a transceiver architecture for offering spatial multiplexing over multiple-antenna wireless communication systems. Such systems have multiple antennas at both the transmitter and the receiver in an effort to exploit the many different paths between the two in a highly-scattering wireless environment. BLAST was developed by Gerard Foschini at Lucent Technologies' Bell Laboratories (now Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs). By careful allocation of the data to be transmitted to the transmitting antennas, multiple data streams can be transmitted simultaneously within a single frequency band — the data capacity of the system then grows directly in line with the number of antennas (subject to certain assumptions). This represents a significant advance on current, single-antenna systems. V-BLAST (Vertical-Bell Laboratories Layered Space-Time) is a detection algorithm to the receipt of multi-antenna MIMO systems. Available for the first time in 1996 at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey in the United States by Gerard J. Foschini. He proceeded simply to eliminate interference caused successively issuers. Its principle is quite simple: to make a first detection of the most powerful signal. It regenerates the received signal from this user from this decision. Then, the signal is regenerated subtracted from the received signal and, with this new signal, it proceeds to the detection of the second user's most powerful, since it has already cleared the first and so forth | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=13464844 | 371,581 |
Boolean satisfiability problem Nevertheless, as of 2007, heuristic SAT-algorithms are able to solve problem instances involving tens of thousands of variables and formulas consisting of millions of symbols, which is sufficient for many practical SAT problems from, e.g., artificial intelligence, circuit design, and automatic theorem proving. A "propositional logic formula", also called "Boolean expression", is built from variables, operators AND (conjunction, also denoted by ∧), OR (disjunction, ∨), NOT (negation, ¬), and parentheses. A formula is said to be "satisfiable" if it can be made TRUE by assigning appropriate logical values (i.e. TRUE, FALSE) to its variables. The "Boolean satisfiability problem" (SAT) is, given a formula, to check whether it is satisfiable. This decision problem is of central importance in many areas of computer science, including theoretical computer science, complexity theory, algorithmics, cryptography and artificial intelligence. There are several special cases of the in which the formulas are required to have a particular structure. A "literal" is either a variable, called "positive literal", or the negation of a variable, called "negative literal". A "clause" is a disjunction of literals (or a single literal). A clause is called a "Horn clause" if it contains at most one positive literal. A formula is in "conjunctive normal form" (CNF) if it is a conjunction of clauses (or a single clause). For example, is a positive literal, is a negative literal, is a clause | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4715 | 134,821 |
Defence Technical Undergraduate Scheme The (DTUS) is a university sponsorship programme for students who want to join the Royal Navy, British Army, Royal Air Force or Engineering and Science branch of the Ministry of Defence (MOD) Civil Service as technical officers after they graduate; Army sponsored students are destined for either the Royal Corps of Signals, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Royal Engineers or The Royal Logistic Corps. Students on the scheme are sponsored by the MOD to study accredited technical degree programmes. The aim of DTUS is ‘to educate and develop selected individuals to prepare them for further training and careers as engineer or technical officers in the Armed Forces or as graduate entrants to the MOD Civil Service’. The DTUS was created following the 2001 Defence Training Review (DTR). The DTR identified that the Royal Navy, British Army, Royal Air Force and MOD Civil Service had difficulties in recruiting engineering officers. As a result, DTUS was created whereby sponsored students study at eleven partner universities (Aston, Birmingham, Cambridge, Imperial College, Loughborough, Newcastle, Northumbria, Portsmouth, Southampton and Strathclyde). DTUS students are able to choose the partner university they wish to study at and select a degree course that has been approved by their sponsoring service. Whilst at their partner university, all students belong to a support unit who are responsible for their leadership development, mentorship and administration | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14487752 | 204,150 |
Mooryati Soedibyo The granddaughter of Sri Susuhunan Pakoe Boewono X Surakarta Sunanate is famous for everything related to beauty, traditional herbal medicine, and palace environment]. Since the age of 3 years he lived in the Surakarta Palace which is known as a cultural source of Java. In the palace, she received a traditional education that emphasized manners, classical dance, karawitan, batik, saliro ngadi busono, knowing nutritious plants, concocting herbs, and traditional cosmetics from natural ingredients, Javanese literary language, songs with mocopat style, Old Javanese script, and other arts. In 1973, the hobby of drinking herbal medicine Mooryati Soedibyo, which had been done since she was young, finally developed as a business. The concoction of the recipe for Surakarta Sunanate which was originally given to his friends, finally turned into a business. Its products began to be exported to approximately 20 countries, including Russia, the Netherlands, Japan, South Africa, the Middle East, Malaysia and Brunei. The product also developed into 800 products, ranging from toddlers, general, super, and premium. Starting with a product for parents up to the teenage daughter. Soedibyo founded the cosmetics company in 1975. The company also operates its own spa resorts. In 2002, she was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young Indonesia, She has served as a member of the Regional Representative Council and as a member and vice chairperson of the People's Consultative Assembly | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=54015869 | 474,554 |
Modern synthesis (20th century) The work of Fisher, Haldane and Wright helped to found the discipline of theoretical population genetics. Theodosius Dobzhansky, an emigrant from the Soviet Union to the United States, who had been a postdoctoral worker in Morgan's fruit fly lab, was one of the first to apply genetics to natural populations. He worked mostly with "Drosophila pseudoobscura". He says pointedly: "Russia has a variety of climates from the Arctic to sub-tropical... Exclusively laboratory workers who neither possess nor wish to have any knowledge of living beings in nature were and are in a minority." Not surprisingly, there were other Russian geneticists with similar ideas, though for some time their work was known to only a few in the West. His 1937 work "Genetics and the Origin of Species" was a key step in bridging the gap between population geneticists and field naturalists. It presented the conclusions reached by Fisher, Haldane, and especially Wright in their highly mathematical papers in a form that was easily accessible to others. Further, Dobzhansky asserted that evolution was based on material genes, arranged in a string on physical hereditary structures, the chromosomes, and linked more or less strongly to each other according to their physical distances from each other on the chromosomes. As with Haldane and Fisher, Dobzhansky's "evolutionary genetics" was a genuine science, now unifying cell biology, genetics, and both micro- and macroevolution | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=97536 | 192,799 |
Biofeedback Budzynski and Stoyva (1969) showed that EMG biofeedback could reduce frontalis muscle (forehead) contraction. They demonstrated in 1973 that analog (proportional) and binary (ON or OFF) visual EMG biofeedback were equally helpful in lowering masseter SEMG levels. McNulty, Gevirtz, Hubbard, and Berkoff (1994) proposed that sympathetic nervous system innervation of muscle spindles underlies trigger points. Budzynski, Stoyva, Adler, and Mullaney (1973) reported that auditory frontalis EMG biofeedback combined with home relaxation practice lowered tension headache frequency and frontalis EMG levels. A control group that received noncontingent (false) auditory feedback did not improve. This study helped make the frontalis muscle the placement-of-choice in EMG assessment and treatment of headache and other psychophysiological disorders. Sargent, Green, and Walters (1972, 1973) demonstrated that hand-warming could abort migraines and that autogenic biofeedback training could reduce headache activity. The early Menninger migraine studies, although methodologically weak (no pretreatment baselines, control groups, or random assignment to conditions), strongly influenced migraine treatment. A 2013 review classified biofeedback among the techniques that might be of benefit in the management of chronic migraine | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=292906 | 167,705 |
Eight dimensions of quality Farmers, for example, are especially sensitive to downtime during the short harvest season. Reliable equipment can mean the difference between a good year and spoiled crops. But consumers on other markets are more attuned than ever to product reliability too. Computers and copying machines certainly compare on this basis. Reliability may be closely related to performance. For instance, a product specification may define parameters for up-time, or acceptable failure rates. Reliability is a major contributor to brand or company image, and is considered a fundamental dimension of quality by most end-users. For example, recent market research shows that, especially for women, reliability has become an automobile's most desired attribute. The dimension of conformance depicts to what extent a product’s design and operating characteristics meet established standards. This dimension owes the most to the traditional approaches to quality pioneered by experts like Juran. All products and services involve specifications of some sort. When products are developed, these specifications are set and a target is set, for instance the materials used or the dimension of the product. Not only the target but also the tolerance (the range of permitted deviation from the target) is defined. One problem with this approach is that there is little interest in whether the specifications have been met exactly as long as the tolerance limits are met. On the one hand, this can lead to the so-called “tolerance stack-up” | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38008659 | 495,956 |
Ofatumumab (trade name Arzerra, also known as HuMax-CD20) is a fully human monoclonal antibody to CD20, which appears to inhibit early-stage B lymphocyte activation. It is FDA approved for treating chronic lymphocytic leukemia that is refractory to fludarabine and alemtuzumab (Campath) and has also shown potential in treating follicular lymphoma, diffuse large B cell lymphoma, rheumatoid arthritis and relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis. has also received conditional approval in Europe for the treatment of refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia. This makes ofatumumab the first marketing application for an antibody produced by Genmab, as well as the first human monoclonal antibody which targets the CD20 molecule that will be available for patients with refractory CLL. Its only indication that has received regulatory approval is chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Adverse effects by frequency:<br> Very common (>10% frequency): Common (1-10% frequency):' Uncommon (0.1-1% frequency): Rare (<0.1% frequency): has received a black box warning regarding the potential for it to cause progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy and hepatitis B reactivation. Likewise it is also advised that doctors watch cautiously for small bowel obstruction, neutropenia, thrombocytopenia, infusion reactions or an increased risk for infection. It is contraindicated in individuals that have hypersensitivity to ofatumumab or any of its excipients. No formal drug interaction studies have been conducted with ofatumumab | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9700674 | 153,629 |
Platinum nanoparticle While those nanoparticles with alternative shapes—such as cuboidal, oval, or floral—and sizes of 5–18 nm showed biocompatibility and no biologically toxic properties. Secondly, out of the three varieties of platinum nanoparticles which exhibited biocompatibility, two showed an increase in bacterial cell growth. The paper introduces many hypotheses for why these observations were made, but based on other works and basic knowledge of bacterial cell membranes, the reasoning behind the size dependent toxicity observation seems to be twofold. One: The smaller, spherically shaped nanoparticles are able to pass through cell membranes simply due to their reduced size, as well as their shape-compatibility with the typically spherical pores of most cell membranes. Although this hypothesis needs to be further supported by future work, the authors did cite another paper which tracked the respiratory intake of platinum nanoparticles. This group found that 10 µm platinum nanoparticles are absorbed by the mucus of the bronchi and trachea, and can travel no further through the respiratory tract. However, 2.5 µm particles showed an ability to pass through this mucus layer, and reach much deeper into the respiratory tract. Also the larger, uniquely shaped nanoparticles are too large to pass through the pores of the cell membrane, and/or have shapes which are incompatible with the more spherically shaped pores of the cellular membrane | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19230109 | 63,365 |
Radio jamming Jamming has also occasionally been used by the governments of Germany (during WW2), Israel, Cuba, Iraq, Iran (Iraq and Iran war, 1980–1988), China, North and South Korea and several Latin American countries, as well as by Ireland against pirate radio stations such as Radio Nova. The United Kingdom government used two coordinated, separately located transmitters to jam the offshore radio ship, Radio North Sea International off the coast of Britain in 1970. In occupied Europe the Nazis attempted to jam broadcasts to the continent from the BBC and other allied stations. Along with increasing transmitter power and adding extra frequencies, attempts were made to counteract the jamming by dropping leaflets over cities instructing listeners to construct a directional loop aerial that would enable them to hear the stations through the jamming. In the Netherlands such aerials were nicknamed "moffenzeef" (English: "kraut sieve"). Since the Soviet Union started jamming Western radio broadcasts to the Soviet Union in 1948 the primary targets have been the BBC External Broadcasting Services, Voice of America (VOA) and RFE/RL. Western nations had allowed jamming prior to World War II, but in the post-War era the Western view has been that jamming violates the freedom of information while the Soviet view has been that under the international law principle of national sovereignty jamming is an acceptable response to foreign radio broadcasts | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1838227 | 375,587 |
Plant morphology or phytomorphology is the study of the physical form and external structure of plants. This is usually considered distinct from plant anatomy, which is the study of the internal structure of plants, especially at the microscopic level. is useful in the visual identification of plants. "represents a study of the development, form, and structure of plants, and, by implication, an attempt to interpret these on the basis of similarity of plan and origin". There are four major areas of investigation in plant morphology, and each overlaps with another field of the biological sciences. First of all, morphology is comparative, meaning that the morphologist examines structures in many different plants of the same or different species, then draws comparisons and formulates ideas about similarities. When structures in different species are believed to exist and develop as a result of common, inherited genetic pathways, those structures are termed homologous. For example, the leaves of pine, oak, and cabbage all look very different, but share certain basic structures and arrangement of parts. The homology of leaves is an easy conclusion to make. The plant morphologist goes further, and discovers that the spines of cactus also share the same basic structure and development as leaves in other plants, and therefore cactus spines are homologous to leaves as well. This aspect of plant morphology overlaps with the study of plant evolution and paleobotany | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7556348 | 162,153 |
Solar-assisted heat pump Compared to geothermal heat pumps, the main advantage is that the installation of a piping field in the soil is not required, which results in a lower cost of investment (drilling accounts for about 50% of the cost of a geothermal heat pump system) and in more flexibility of machine installation, even in areas in which there is limited available space. Furthermore, there are no risks related to possible thermal soil impoverishment. Similarly to air source heat pumps, solar-assisted heat pump performance is affected by atmospheric conditions, although this effect is less significant. performance is generally affected by varying solar radiation intensity rather than air temperature oscillation. This produces a greater SCOP (Seasonal COP). Additionally, evaporation temperature of the working fluid is higher than in air source heat pumps, so in general the coefficient of performance is significantly higher. In general, a heat pump can evaporate at temperatures below the ambient temperature. In a solar-assisted heat pump this generates a temperature distribution of the thermal panels below that temperature. In this condition thermal losses of the panels towards the environment become additional available energy to the heat pump. In this case it is possible that the thermal efficiency of solar panels is more than 100% | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50889773 | 289,044 |
Expert systems for mortgages "The system identifies the legal requirements for closing the loans by considering the numerous individual features specific to each particular loan. It was felt that an expert system could provide significant benefits to this process, which is extremely complex and involves large amounts of money. To our knowledge, expert systems technology had not previously been applied to this domain. Successful development and implementation of the system resulted in the realization of the anticipated benefits, and a few others as well". The use of expert systems in law is illustrated by the QuickForm Contracts system. It uses a rule-based methodology to automate the drafting of approximately 60 types of agreements for technology and general business transactions. Users answer a series of term sheet level conceptual questions. The system then uses the data recipe to select interchangeable clauses to create a near-custom agreement. The system cuts the time to draft a first-cut document from several days to about 5 minutes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14693144 | 492,219 |
Green chemistry Traditionally, succinic acid is produced from petroleum-based feedstocks. BioAmber has developed process and technology that produces succinic acid from the fermentation of renewable feedstocks at a lower cost and lower energy expenditure than the petroleum equivalent while sequestering CO rather than emitting it. Several laboratory chemicals are controversial from the perspective of Green chemistry. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology created a "Green" Alternatives Wizard to help identify alternatives. Ethidium bromide, xylene, mercury, and formaldehyde have been identified as "worst offenders" which have alternatives. Solvents in particular make a large contribution to the environmental impact of chemical manufacturing and there is a growing focus on introducing Greener solvents into the earliest stage of development of these processes: laboratory-scale reaction and purification methods. In the Pharmaceutical Industry, both GSK and Pfizer have published Solvent Selection Guides for their Drug Discovery chemists. In 2007, The EU put into place the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) program, which requires companies to provide data showing that their products are safe. This regulation (1907/2006) ensures not only the assessment of the chemicals' hazards as well as risks during their uses but also includes measures for banning or restricting/authorising uses of specific substances | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=936085 | 5,871 |
Double subscript notation Power supply pins on integrated circuits utilize the same letters for denoting what kind of voltage the pin would receive. For example, a power input labeled V would be a positive input that would presumably connect to the collector pin of a BJT transistor in the circuit, and likewise respectively with other subscripted letters. The format used is the same as for notations described above, though without the connotation of V meaning the voltage from a collector pin to collector pin; the repetition avoids confusion as such an expression would not exist. The table above shows only the originally denoted letters; others have found their way into use over time, such as S and D for the Source and Drain of a FET, respectively. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4253861 | 121,548 |
Musicmaster (software) The corporate headquarters are located at 8330 Lyndon B Johnson Freeway, Suite B1050, Dallas, Texas, USA 75243. The main phone number is 469-717-0100. MusicMaster currently generates schedules for radio stations all over the world, as well as music television networks, satellite broadcasters, and cable television channels, Internet streams, syndicated programs, restaurants and nightclubs. Clients include: SiriusXM Satellite Radio, Saga Communications, Inc., MTV Networks / Viacom, MusicChoice, Univision, Entercom, Emmis Communications, E. W. Scripps Company, Cox Media Group, Spanish Broadcasting, Midwest Communications, and many more across the globe. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18026384 | 402,161 |
ZND detonation model The is a one-dimensional model for the process of detonation of an explosive. It was proposed during World War II independently by Y. B. Zel'dovich, John von Neumann, and Werner Döring, hence the name. This model admits finite-rate chemical reactions and thus the process of detonation consists of the following stages. First, an infinitesimally thin shock wave compresses the explosive to a high pressure called the von Neumann spike. At the von Neumann spike point the explosive still remains unreacted. The spike marks the onset of the zone of exothermic chemical reaction, which finishes at the Chapman-Jouguet state. After that, the detonation products expand backward. In the reference frame in which the shock is stationary, the flow following the shock is subsonic. Because of this, energy release behind the shock is able to be transported acoustically to the shock for its support. For a self-propagating detonation, the shock relaxes to a speed given by the Chapman–Jouguet condition, which induces the material at the end of the reaction zone to have a locally sonic speed in the reference frame in which the shock is stationary. In effect, all of the chemical energy is harnessed to propagate the shock wave forward. However, in the 1960s, experiments revealed that gas-phase detonations were most often characterized by unsteady, three-dimensional structures, which can only in an averaged sense be predicted by one-dimensional steady theories. Indeed, such waves are quenched as their structure is destroyed | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25772247 | 62,357 |
Hans von Halban Although he maintained that he did not divulge any nuclear secrets to his previous boss (Joliot-Curie), General Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, had Halban removed from his job in Montreal, and replaced by John Cockcroft. Furthermore, Halban was not allowed to leave North America for a year, nor to work. Contrary to his expectations, Halban was not invited back to the Collège de France after the war. Instead, he was invited back to England by Frederick Lindemann (Lord Cherwell) to lead a team at the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University, closely connected to the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (the Harwell Laboratory). After eight productive years at Oxford, Halban was invited back to France in 1954 by the Prime Minister, Pierre Mendès-France, to direct the building of a nuclear research laboratory at Saclay, outside Paris, which greatly expanded the French Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (Atomic Energy Commission). He took up the appointment in 1955, following his divorce from his wife Aline, who shortly afterwards married Isaiah Berlin. The CEA Saclay laboratory developed the independent French nuclear bomb and oversaw the development of French civil nuclear energy. Due to ill health, Halban was obliged to retire in 1961. He spent the last three years of his life in Paris and Crans-sur-Sierre, Switzerland with his third wife, Micheline (nėe Lazard-Vernier) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11492834 | 263,469 |
Kangchu system Temenggong Abu Bakar began to issue contract-style letters of recognition to these Kangchu; the letters were known by their Malay name "Surat Tauliah". As the gambier and pepper plantations expanded in the 1870s, the more established Kangchu were entrusted with larger blocks of farms and made contracts with Chinese merchants from Singapore. The profits generated from harvests of these plantations formed the bulk of Johor's economy, and financed the development of Johor's infrastructure. Abu Bakar's relationship with the Chinese leaders was excellent, and he appointed many of them to political positions in the state. Of particular note, Abu Bakar appointed two Chinese leaders to the Johor State Council: a Kangchu from Chaozhou, Tan Hiok Nee, and a contractor from Taishan, Wong Ah Fook, who also owned gambier and pepper farms in Mersing in the 1880s. As the land along the river banks in Southern Johor was already taken by the earlier waves of Chinese settlers, newer Chinese settlers began migrating northwards in the 1870s and established new gambier and pepper plantations further north; new plantations were established in Yong Peng, Batu Pahat, Benut, Endau and Kota Tinggi. In particular, Abu Bakar actively encouraged Chinese settlers to establish plantations in Muar, shortly after the British Colonial Government ruled in favour of Abu Bakar over Tengku Alam Shah (Sultan Ali's eldest son) and his family, and granted Abu Bakar control of Muar | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12513126 | 511,567 |
Diboron tetrafluoride is a colorless gas. It can be formed by reacting boron monofluoride with boron trifluoride at low temperatures, taking care not to form higher polymers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17527026 | 43,489 |
Zobel network In particular, setting it as either an open circuit or a short circuit results in a simplified section circuit, called L–sections. These are shown above for the case of a high pass section with basic loss. The input port still presents an impedance of formula_41 (provided that the output is terminated in formula_41) but the output port no longer presents a constant impedance. Both the open-circuit and the short-circuit L–sections are capable of being reversed so that formula_41 is then presented at the output and the variable impedance is presented at the input. To retain the benefit of Zobel networks constant impedance, the variable impedance port must not face the line impedance. Nor should it face the variable impedance port of another half section. Facing the amplifier is acceptable since the input impedance of the amplifier is normally arranged to be formula_41 within acceptable tolerances. In other words, variable impedance must not face variable impedance. The Zobel networks described here can be used to equalise land lines composed of twisted pair or star quad cables. The balanced circuit nature of these lines delivers a good common mode rejection ratio (CMRR). To maintain the CMRR, circuits connected to the line should maintain the balance. For this reason, balanced versions of Zobel networks are sometimes required. This is achieved by halving the impedance of the series components and then putting identical components in the return leg of the circuit. A C–section is a balanced version of an L–section | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10760797 | 388,796 |
Cativa process The is a method for the production of acetic acid by the carbonylation of methanol. The technology, which is similar to the Monsanto process, was developed by BP Chemicals and is under license by BP Plc. The process is based on an iridium-containing catalyst, such as the complex [Ir(CO)I] (1). The Cativa and Monsanto processes are sufficiently similar that they can use the same chemical plant. Initial studies by Monsanto had shown iridium to be less active than rhodium for the carbonylation of methanol. Subsequent research, however, showed that the iridium catalyst could be promoted by ruthenium, and this combination leads to a catalyst that is superior to the rhodium-based systems. The switch from rhodium to iridium also allows the use of less water in the reaction mixture. This change reduces the number of drying columns necessary, decreases formation of by-products, such as propionic acid, and suppresses the water gas shift reaction. The catalytic cycle for the Cativa process, shown above, begins with the reaction of methyl iodide with the square planar active catalyst species (1) to form the octahedral iridium(III) species (2), the "fac"-isomer of [Ir(CO)(CH)I]. This oxidative addition reaction involves the formal insertion of the iridium(I) centre into the carbon-iodine bond of methyl iodide | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1943968 | 460,971 |
Intersection type Ideally, should not be applicable to any object having (possibly by chance) a method. //given a chicken, produces an egg; given a cow, produces milk let animalToFood: ((_: Chicken) => Egg) & ((_: Cow) => Milk) = Finally, the following program code demonstrates type safe use of the above definitions. var chicken = new Chicken(); var cow = new Cow(); var randomNumberGenerator = new RandomNumberGenerator(); console.log(randomNumberGenerator.produce()); //0.2626353555444987 //console.log(animalToFood(randomNumberGenerator)); //ERROR: Argument of type 'RandomNumberGenerator' is not assignable to parameter of type 'Cow' console.log(eatEgg(animalToFood(chicken))); //I ate an egg. //console.log(eatEgg(animalToFood(cow))); //ERROR: Argument of type 'Milk' is not assignable to parameter of type 'Egg' console.log(drinkMilk(animalToFood(cow))); //I drank some milk. //console.log(drinkMilk(animalToFood(chicken))); //ERROR: Argument of type 'Egg' is not assignable to parameter of type 'Milk' The above program code has the following properties: The above minimalist example can be realized using inheritance, for instance by deriving the classes and from a base class . However, in a larger setting, this could be disadvantageous. Introducing new classes into a class hierarchy is not necessarily justified for cross-cutting concerns, or maybe outright impossible, for example when using an external library | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24140211 | 138,998 |
Information logistics Information Logistics (IL) deals with the flow of information between human and / or machine actors within or between any number of organizations that in turn form a value creating network (see, e.g.). IL is closely related to information management, information operations and information technology. The term "Information Logistics (IL)" may be used in either of two ways: A term which is closely related to the first meaning of Information Logistics is "Data Logistics", a concept used in Computer Networking. "The study of solutions to problems in Computer Systems that flexibly span resources and services relating to Data Movement, Data Storage and Data Processing." [ref?] Systems that support general Data Logistics solutions thus must span the traditionally separate fields of Networking, File/Database Systems and Process Management. Data Logistics is a more general form of the term "Logistical Networking", used as the name of a particular network storage architecture and software stack. The goal of Information Logistics is to deliver the right product, consisting of the right information element, in the right format, at the right place at the right time for the right people at the right price and all of this is customer demand driven. If this goal is to be achieved, knowledge workers are best equipped with information for the task at hand for improved interaction with its customers and machines are enabled to respond automatically to meaningful information | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1939715 | 460,953 |
Operating point Also in case of an unstable operating point the law of the balance of the torques is always valid. But when the operating point is unstable then the characteristics of drive and machine are nearly parallel. In such a case a small change in torque will result in a big change of speed. In practice no device has a characteristics which is so thin that the intersection point can be clearly expected. Because of parallel characteristics, inner and outer friction as well as mechanical imperfections the unstable operating point is rather a band of possible operating states instead of a point. Running at an unstable operating point is therefore undesirable. The middle point on the curve in the third picture on the right is an unstable point, too. However the above-mentioned assumptions are not valid here. Torque and speed are the same but in case the speed will be increased only little then the torque of the drive will be much higher than the counter-torque of the machine. The same but vice versa applies when reducing the speed. For this reason this operating point does not have a stabilizing effect on the speed. The speed will run away to the left or the right side of the point and the drive will run stable there. In the lower right picture the electrical drive (AC motor) moves a conveyor belt. This type of machine has a nearly constant counter-torque over the whole range of speed | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25056597 | 211,095 |
Software engineer It is also illegal to use the title Engineer in Canada unless an individual is licensed. In Ontario, the Professional Engineers Act stipulates a minimum education level of a three-year diploma in technology from a College of Applied Arts and Technology or a degree in a relevant science area. However, engineering undergraduates and all other applicants are not allowed to use the title of engineer until they complete the minimum amount of work experience of four years in addition to completing the Professional Practice Examination (PPE). If the applicant does not hold an undergraduate engineering degree then they may have to take the Confirmatory Practice Exam or Specific Examination Program unless the exam requirements are waived by a committee. IT professionals with degrees in other fields (such as computer science or information systems) are restricted from using the title "Software Engineer", or wording "Software Engineer" in a title, depending on their province or territory of residence. In some instances, cases have been taken to court regarding the illegal use of the protected title "Engineer". Throughout the whole of Europe, suitably qualified engineers may obtain the professional European Engineer qualification. In France, the term " (engineer) is not a protected title and can be used by anyone, even by those who do not possess an academic degree | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=90471 | 408,530 |
List of formerly open-source software This is a list of notable software packages which were published as free and open-source software, or into the public domain, but were proprietized, such that later versions were only released under a proprietary software license. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=62402149 | 115,268 |
Governance in higher education Woodward" before the Yale Report of 1828 (where the former was catalyst from the later, each of which upheld the separation of church and state) private universities in the United States generally maintain remarkable autonomy from local, state, and federal government. Questions might be raised over the role of shared governance in private education. In "Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education", Quinn and Moore (2005) support values of shared governance in Jesuit Universities. Quinn notes the way in which Catholic colleges and universities adopted principles of shared governance throughout the 1960s. Moore begins by noting that the concept of shared governance is often viewed as inefficient in the corporate world. The author believes that shared governance is not a cumbersome system of management, but necessary given the organizational dynamics and complexities of university systems. By contrast to corporate trends, the author maintains that the corporate “one-size-fits-all” system could not effectively suit institutional needs. From which, the perspective then affirms the AAUP tradition of shared governance as a sound system of organization and management in higher education, “essential to the long term interests of colleges and universities if they wish to remain competitive and academically credible”. The way in which shared governance is realized in Catholic colleges and universities does vary from institution to institution | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9177274 | 472,709 |
Post in ground A post in ground construction, also called earthfast or hole-set posts, is a type of construction in which vertical, roof-bearing timbers, called posts, are in direct contact with the ground. They may be placed into excavated postholes, driven into the ground, or on sills which are set on the ground without a foundation. Earthfast construction is common from the Neolithic period to the present and is used worldwide. Post-in-the-ground construction is sometimes called an "impermanent" form such as for houses which are expected to last a decade or two before a better quality structure can be built. construction can also include sill on grade, wood-lined cellars, and pit houses. Most pre-historic and medieval wooden dwellings were built post in ground worldwide. This type of construction is often believed to be an intermediate form between a palisade construction and a stave construction. Because the postholes are easily detected in archaeological surveys, they can be distinguished from the other two. was one of the timber construction methods used for French colonial structures in New France specifically called poteaux-en-terre. The Japanese also used earthfast construction they call Hottate-bashira (literally "embedded pillars") until the eighteenth century. The Toguna shelter of the Dogon people in Africa uses post in ground construction. In the historical region of New France "poteaux-en-terre" was a historic style of earthfast timber framing | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24910628 | 284,345 |
BETT Bett or The Bett Show (formerly known as the British Educational Training and Technology Show) is a global series of education shows organised by Hyve Group marketing information technology in education. The flagship show is located in London, with satellite events in Kuala Lumpur, Sao Paulo and Dubai. The first Bett show was held in London in 1985, initially at the Barbican Centre. In 2002, it expanded to the National and Grand Halls at the Olympia exhibition centre, with a move to the ExCeL London in London's Docklands in 2013, its current venue. Bett celebrated its 30th anniversary at the 2014 show, which attracted 35,044 visitors from 113 countries. The show was first held in January 1985 as the "Hi Technology and Computers in Education Exhibition" at the Barbican Centre, central London, in association with the British Educational Suppliers Association. As the use of technology in education increased, so did the show, and had outgrown the Barbican by 1993, when the move to Olympia was made. The show has also expanded from being a purely technology show, and whilst it has played host to companies ranging from multinationals Microsoft, Google and Apple Inc. to small single-product firms, it has also created themed zones for exhibitors, such as those specialising in SEN provision. Introduced in 2015, the "Bett Futures" feature aimed at selecting and promoting 30 educational technology start-ups, selected by a panel of expert educators | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=20791096 | 117,702 |
2006 Missouri Constitutional Amendment 2 Because of the very close vote, the Institute asserted that the political climate in Missouri was too hostile for investment in stem cell research. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7690493 | 162,262 |
Servomechanism Servomotors are used for both high-end and low-end applications. On the high end are precision industrial components that use a rotary encoder. On the low end are inexpensive radio control servos (RC servos) used in radio-controlled models which use a free-running motor and a simple potentiometer position sensor with an embedded controller. The term "servomotor" generally refers to a high-end industrial component while the term "servo" is most often used to describe the inexpensive devices that employ a potentiometer. Stepper motors are not considered to be servomotors, although they too are used to construct larger servomechanisms. Stepper motors have inherent angular positioning, owing to their construction, and this is generally used in an open-loop manner without feedback. They are generally used for medium-precision applications. RC servos are used to provide actuation for various mechanical systems such as the steering of a car, the control surfaces on a plane, or the rudder of a boat. Due to their affordability, reliability, and simplicity of control by microprocessors, they are often used in small-scale robotics applications. A standard RC receiver (or a microcontroller) sends pulse-width modulation (PWM) signals to the servo. The electronics inside the servo translate the width of the pulse into a position. When the servo is commanded to rotate, the motor is powered until the potentiometer reaches the value corresponding to the commanded position | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=325496 | 391,664 |
Integrated Services Digital Network Following this optional decoding is a dump of the bytes of the message in <offset> <hex> ... <hex> <ascii> ... <ascii> format. The RR messages at the beginning prior to the call are the keep alive messages. SETUP message indicate the start of the call. Each message is acknowledged by the other side with a RR. Specifications defining the physical layer and part of the data link layers of ISDN: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=15231 | 395,854 |
Sommerfeld number The shear stress in the lubricant can be represented as follows: Assuming a constant rate of shear, The torque required to shear the film is If a small radial load "W" acts on the shaft and hence the bearing, the frictional drag force can be considered equal to the product "fW", with the friction torque represented as Where If the small radial load "W" is considered negligible, setting the two expressions for torque equal to one another and solving for the coefficient of friction yields formula_9 Which is known as Petroff's Law or the Petroff equation. It provides a quick and simple means of obtaining reasonable estimates of coefficients of friction of lightly loaded bearings. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18147992 | 314,105 |
Antimicrobial resistance Antibiotics are fed to livestock to act as growth supplements, and a preventative measure to decrease the likelihood of infections. This results in the transfer of resistant bacterial strains into the food that humans eat, causing potentially fatal transfer of disease. While this practice does result in better yields and meat products, it is a major issue in terms of preventing antimicrobial resistance. The American Center for Science in the Public Interest linked a total of 35 food borne outbreaks from 1973 through 2009 where bacterial resistance to antibiotics was implicated, showing how this overuse in the food industry has and will continue to threaten public health. Not only are 80% of antibiotics sold in the United States used on animals, but 90% of those antibiotics are excreted in the urine and stool of livestock. Those antibiotics end up in fertilizer used for food, groundwater, and surface runoff, all of which could not only lead to the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria, but also serious environmental consequences. This isn't just a problem in the United States, but a global emerging threat. In a study published by the National Academy of Sciences mapping antimicrobial consumption in livestock globally, it was predicted that in the 228 countries studied, there would be a total 67% increase in consumption of antibiotics by livestock by 2030. In some countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa it is predicted that a 99% increase will occur | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1914 | 185,544 |
Interspecific competition The effects of interspecific competition can also reach communities and can even influence the evolution of species as they adapt to avoid competition. This evolution may result in the exclusion of a species in the habitat, niche separation, and local extinction. The changes of these species over time can also change communities as other species must adapt. The competitive exclusion principle, also called "Gause's law" which arose from mathematical analysis and simple competition models states that two species that use the same limiting resource in the same way in the same space and time cannot coexist and must diverge from each other over time in order for the two species to coexist. One species will often exhibit an advantage in resource use. This superior competitor will out-compete the other with more efficient use of the limiting resource. As a result, the inferior competitor will suffer a decline in population over time. It will be excluded from the area and replaced by the superior competitor. A well-documented example of competitive exclusion was observed to occur between Dolly Varden charr (Trout)("Salvelinus malma") and white spotted char (Trout)("S. leucomaenis") in Japan. Both of these species were morphologically similar but the former species was found primarily at higher elevations than the latter. Although there was a zone of overlap, each species excluded the other from its dominant region by becoming better adapted to its habitat over time | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6920233 | 152,797 |
Submarine communications cable Studies in 2003 and 2006 indicated that cables pose minimal impacts on life in these environments. In sampling sediment cores around cables and in areas removed from cables, there were few statistically significant differences in organism diversity or abundance. The main difference was that the cables provided an attachment point for anemones that typically could not grow in soft sediment areas. Data from 1877 to 1955 showed a total of 16 cable faults caused by the entanglement of various whales. Such deadly entanglements have entirely ceased with improved techniques for placement of modern coaxial and fibre-optic cables which have less tendency to self-coil when lying on the seabed. Submarine cables are problematic from the security perspective because maps of submarine cables are widely available. Publicly available maps are necessary so that shipping can avoid damaging vulnerable cables by accident. However, the availability of the locations of easily damaged cables means the information is also easily accessible to criminal agents. Governmental wiretapping also presents cybersecurity issues. Submarine cables are suffering from the inherent issue stemming from the historically established practice of cable laying. Since the cable connection is usually done by the private consortia, there is a problem with responsibility in the beginning | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45206 | 304,408 |
Camille Alphonse Faure (21 May 1840 – 14 September 1898) was a French chemical engineer who in 1881 significantly improved the design of the lead-acid battery, which had been invented by Gaston Planté in 1859. Faure's improvements greatly increased the capacity of such batteries and led directly to their manufacture on an industrial scale. He was born at Vizille and trained at the Ecole des Arts et Métiers at Aix. From 1874 until about 1880, he worked as a chemist at the new factory of the Cotton Powder Company at Uplees, Faversham, Kent, England. While there, he and the factory manager, George Trench, took out patents for Tonite (a new high explosive) (1874), and an improved dynamite detonator (1878). In 1880, Faure patented a method of coating lead plates with a paste of lead oxides, sulphuric acid and water, which was then cured by being gently warmed in a humid atmosphere. The curing process caused the paste to change to a mixture of lead sulphates which adhered to the lead plate. During charging the cured paste was converted into electrochemically active material (the "active mass") and gave a substantial increase in capacity compared with Planté's battery. This was a significant breakthrough that led to the industrial manufacture of lead-acid batteries, as now used for starting motor cars. Towards the end of his life Faure was granted further patents, among them ones for the manufacture of aluminium alloys and improvements to hot air engines and motor vehicle steering mechanisms. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3800868 | 75,329 |
Oncomatryx Biopharma S. L. is a pharmaceutical biotechnology company that develops personalized treatments against invasive cancer as well as tests for its early detection. Established by Laureano Simón, PhD, thus engages twofold in the fight against invasive kinds of cancer, such as pancreatic cancer or invasive breast cancer, all of which have high mortality rates. Oncomatryx's research focuses on peritumoral stroma, which has been found to take part in promoting cancer invasiveness and curtailing treatment efficacy. Laureano Simón began his business career in 2000 with the creation of Progenika Biopharma S.A., a personalized medicine company which was acquired by Grifols in February 2013. Dr. Simón holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Sciences (Molecular Biology) by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, a master's degree in Biotechnology by the University of Navarra, an MSc by the “University of Wisconsin-Madison” and a bachelor's degree in Pharmacy by the University of Santiago de Compostela. He has patented, among others, clinical products such as BLOODchip and LIPOchip. The company bases its R&D on the recent discovery that tumor cells generate changes in the cells that surround them as well as in the extracellular matrix, facilitating invasion metastases | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=41756826 | 6,483 |
Quantum scar Scars have occurred in investigations for potential applications of Rydberg states to quantum computing, specifically acting as qubits for quantum simulation. The particles of the system in an alternating ground state-Rydberg state configuration continually entangled and disentangled rather than remaining entangled and undergoing thermalization. Systems of the same atoms prepared with other initial states did thermalize as expected. The researchers dubbed the phenomenon "quantum many-body scarring". The area of quantum many-body scars is a subject of active research. The causes of quantum scarring are not well understood. Investigations are ongoing. One possible proposed explanation is that quantum scars represent integrable systems, or nearly do so, and this could prevent thermalization from ever occurring. This has drawn criticisms arguing that a non-integrable Hamiltonian underlies the theory. Fault-tolerant quantum computers are desired, as any perturbations to qubit states can cause the states to thermalize, leading loss of quantum information. Scarring of qubit states is seen as a potential way to protect qubit states from outside disturbances leading to decoherence and information loss. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=36722204 | 436,376 |
DNA-encoded chemical library A promising strategy for the construction of DNA-encoded libraries is represented by the use of multifunctional building blocks covalently conjugated to an oligonucleotide serving as a “core structure” for library synthesis. In a ‘pool-and-split’ fashion a set of multifunctional scaffolds undergo orthogonal reactions with series of suitable reactive partners. Following each reaction step, the identity of the modification is encoded by an enzymatic addition of DNA segment to the original DNA “core structure”. The use of "N"-protected amino acids covalently attached to a DNA fragment allow, after a suitable deprotection step, a further amide bond formation with a series of carboxylic acids or a reductive amination with aldehydes. Similarly, diene carboxylic acids used as scaffolds for library construction at the 5’-end of amino modified oligonucleotide, could be subjected to a Diels-Alder reaction with a variety of maleimide derivatives. After completion of the desired reaction step, the identity of the chemical moiety added to the oligonucleotide is established by the annealing of a partially complementary oligonucleotide and by a subsequent Klenow fill-in DNA-polymerization, yielding a double stranded DNA fragment. The synthetic and encoding strategies described above enable the facile construction of DNA-encoded libraries of a size up to 10 member compounds carrying two sets of “building blocks” | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22810768 | 17,508 |
TNF inhibitor A is a pharmaceutical drug that suppresses the physiologic response to tumor necrosis factor (TNF), which is part of the inflammatory response. TNF is involved in autoimmune and immune-mediated disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, hidradenitis suppurativa and refractory asthma, so TNF inhibitors may be used in their treatment. The important side effects of TNF inhibitors include lymphomas, infections (especially reactivation of latent tuberculosis), congestive heart failure, demyelinating disease, a lupus-like syndrome, induction of auto-antibodies, injection site reactions, and systemic side effects. The global market for TNF inhibitors in 2008 was $13.5 billion and $22 billion in 2009. Inhibition of TNF effects can be achieved with a monoclonal antibody such as infliximab (Remicade), adalimumab (Humira), certolizumab pegol (Cimzia), and golimumab (Simponi), or with a circulating receptor fusion protein such as etanercept (Enbrel). Thalidomide (Immunoprin) and its derivatives lenalidomide (Revlimid) and pomalidomide (Pomalyst, Imnovid) are also active against TNF. While most clinically useful TNF inhibitors are monoclonal antibodies, some are simple molecules such as xanthine derivatives (e.g. pentoxifylline) and bupropion. Bupropion is the active ingredient in the smoking cessation aid Zyban and the antidepressants Wellbutrin and Aplenzin | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6173922 | 183,774 |
DI unit False bypass (or simply 'bypass') occurs when the signal is routed through the device circuitry with buffering and no other intentional change to the signal. However, due to the nature of electrical designs there is almost always some slight change in the signal. The extent of change and how noticeable it may be can vary from unit to unit. A number of companies make combination preamplifier-DI units for electric bass, double bass, or for acoustic instruments which use piezoelectric pickups (e.g., a violin, acoustic guitar, mandolin, etc.). These units may be housed in a "stompbox" pedal format, in a small rackmount unit (often less than a full rack space), or in units designed to be clipped to a belt or attached to an instrument. These devices are often marketed as preamplifiers, even though they also contain DI box features. Preamplifiers for electric bass typically contain gain knobs, sometimes including an overdrive effect unit, equalizer knobs and, for some higher-end units, multiple channels (e.g., a "clean" channel and a "dirty" channel, with the latter containing an overdrive effect). Preamp-DI units for double bass and other acoustic instruments often omit the overdrive features, but add additional features that help to produce a good sound and tone for acoustic instruments, such as an audio compression effect, a phase inverter switch and a notch filter (the latter two features designed to help reduce unwanted audio feedback "howls") | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=365755 | 376,876 |
Arthur Casagrande At one stage during 1942–44, Casagrande went on to train a total of approximately 400 army officers on the soil mechanics aspects of airfield construction through a series of intensive four-week programmes at the request of the Army Corps of Engineers. Even though Terzaghi would later join Harvard (with the assistance of Casagrande) from Vienna out of concerns on the turbulent political landscape in Europe, Casagrande was effectively alone in the soil mechanics section because of Terzaghi's many periods of absence (Terzaghi would often be away to the University of Illinois collaborating with his close friend Ralph Peck) and disdain of administrative duties. The successful soil mechanics and foundation engineering programme at Harvard was hence often credited to Casagrande, and its particular emphasis on laboratory courses and seepage being an integral part of the curriculum would later form the basis of similar courses around the world. Casagrande was also credited for organizing the first ever International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering in 1936, which Terzaghi considered to be too much of a gamble given the early stage in soil mechanics at that time. The conference however turned out to be a success - it led to the establishment of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering - and has legitimately established soil mechanics as an essential part of civil engineering | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12952852 | 348,475 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.