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IEEE 1355 If a receiver loses calibration, it can either send a reset command, or simply hold its transmitter low, causing a calibration failure in the other link. The link is only shutdown if both nodes request a shutdown. Side A sends STOP_REQ, side B responds with STOP_ACK if it is ready to shut down, or STOP_NACK if it is not ready. Side B must perform the same sequence. "HS-FO" stands for "High Speed Fiber Optical." This is the fastest slice, and has the longest range, as well. It sends a gigabit/second up to 3000 meters. The character and higher levels are just like HS-SE-10. The cable is very similar to the other optical cable, TS-FO-02, except for the mandatory label and the connector, which should be IEC-1754-6. However, in older cables, it is often exactly the same as TS-FO-02, except for the label. HS-FO-10 and TS-FO-02 will not interoperate. This cable can have 62.5 micrometer multimode cable, 50 micrometer multimode cable, or 9 micrometer single-mode cable. These vary in expense and the distances they permit: 100 meters, 1000 meters, and 3000 meters respectively. For multimode fiber, on the transmitter, the launch power is generally -12 decibels. The wavelength is 760-900 nanometer (near infrared). On the receiver, the dynamic range is 10 decibels, and the sensitivity is -21 decibels at with a bit error rate of one bit in 10 bits. For single mode fiber, on the transmitter, the launch power is generally -12 decibels. The wavelength is 1250-1340 nanometers (farther infrared) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3423785 | 124,654 |
Memorandum of conversation (abbrev.: MEMCON) and also memorandum of a conversation and memo to the file refers to a method of contemporaneous documentation of a conversation in the form of a memorandum used by the United States federal government. "The Weekly Standard" characterized the use of the tactic in the U.S. government as among "the most basic ways of Washington". Typically an individual will document the events of the conversation as soon as possible after the occurrence. All material statements and discussed items are quoted and described as accurately as possible soon after the discussion and filed for future reference. Memcons function as documentation of historical events, such as conversations between heads of state and law enforcement officials. Specific developments discussed, the time of the meeting, location, and individuals in attendance are all documented in-depth within the memo. United States Department of Justice attorneys and Federal Bureau of Investigation special agents commonly make use of memoranda of conversation. A majority of intermediate-rank managerial staff and bureaucrats within the U.S. federal government consistently make use of the method. The creation of a memorandum of understanding allows federal employees to memorialize and keep a record of their conversations and transactions. Memoranda to file are used in investigations in the private sector. For example, the fraud unit of a large corporation may use memoranda to file, to report individual interviews and significant telephone conversations | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=54071918 | 474,580 |
Electrostatic loudspeaker The concomitant air load, often insignificant in dynamic speakers, is usually tens of grams because of the large coupling surface, thus contributing to the damping of resonance buildup by the air itself to a significant, though not complete, degree. Electrostatics can also be executed as full-range designs, lacking the usual crossover filters and enclosures that could color or distort the sound. Since many electrostatic speakers are tall and thin designs without an enclosure, they act as a vertical dipole line source. This makes for rather different acoustic behavior in rooms compared to conventional electrodynamic loudspeakers. Generally speaking, a large-panel dipole radiator is more demanding of a proper physical placement within a room when compared to a conventional box speaker, but, once there, it is less likely to excite bad-sounding room resonances, and its direct-to-reflected sound ratio is higher by some 4–5 decibels. This in turn leads to more accurate stereo reproduction of recordings that contain proper stereo information and venue ambience. Planar (flat) drivers tend to be very directional giving them good imaging qualities, on the condition that they have been carefully placed relative to the listener and the sound-reflecting surfaces in the room. Curved panels have been built, making the placement requirements a bit less stringent, but sacrificing imaging precision somewhat | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=196048 | 394,627 |
History of sound recording The history of sound recording - which has progressed in waves, driven by the invention and commercial introduction of new technologies — can be roughly divided into four main periods: Experiments in capturing sound on a recording medium for preservation and reproduction began in earnest during the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s. Many pioneering attempts to record and reproduce sound were made during the latter half of the 19th century – notably Scott's Phonautograph of 1857 – and these efforts culminated in the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison in 1877. Digital recording emerged in the late 20th century and has since flourished with the popularity of digital music and online streaming services. The earliest practical recording technologies were entirely mechanical devices. These recorders typically used a large conical horn to collect and focus the physical air pressure of the sound waves produced by the human voice or musical instruments. A sensitive membrane or diaphragm, located at the apex of the cone, was connected to an articulated scriber or stylus, and as the changing air pressure moved the diaphragm back and forth, the stylus scratched or incised an analogue of the sound waves onto a moving recording medium, such as a roll of coated paper, or a cylinder or disc coated with a soft material such as wax or a soft metal | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4556078 | 282,566 |
Copper Bronze artifacts from the Vinča culture date to 4500 BC. Sumerian and Egyptian artifacts of copper and bronze alloys date to 3000 BC. The Bronze Age began in Southeastern Europe around 3700–3300 BC, in Northwestern Europe about 2500 BC. It ended with the beginning of the Iron Age, 2000–1000 BC in the Near East, and 600 BC in Northern Europe. The transition between the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age was formerly termed the Chalcolithic period (copper-stone), when copper tools were used with stone tools. The term has gradually fallen out of favor because in some parts of the world, the Chalcolithic and Neolithic are coterminous at both ends. Brass, an alloy of copper and zinc, is of much more recent origin. It was known to the Greeks, but became a significant supplement to bronze during the Roman Empire. In Greece, copper was known by the name "chalkos" (χαλκός). It was an important resource for the Romans, Greeks and other ancient peoples. In Roman times, it was known as "aes Cyprium", "aes" being the generic Latin term for copper alloys and "Cyprium" from Cyprus, where much copper was mined. The phrase was simplified to "cuprum", hence the English "copper". Aphrodite (Venus in Rome) represented copper in mythology and alchemy because of its lustrous beauty and its ancient use in producing mirrors; Cyprus was sacred to the goddess. The seven heavenly bodies known to the ancients were associated with the seven metals known in antiquity, and Venus was assigned to copper | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=125293 | 58,269 |
IEC 60906-1 Modern injection moulding technology enables robust and safe plugs to be smaller than the Schuko and BS 1363 systems, which were designed in the early and mid 20th century respectively. The and BS 1363 systems have some common safety features in that plugs and sockets are polarized, and that sockets are required to have shutters for the line and neutral pins. An advantage of the plug types is smaller physical sizes. The plugs are also rated for up to 16 amperes, while the BS 1363 plugs are rated for 13 amperes. The unfused IEC 60906-1 is incompatible with UK law which requires an appropriately rated fuse in the plug to protect the attached flexible cord. The system also avoids the problems of the Schuko and French systems currently used in most of Europe and large parts of Asia: The grounded IEC 60906-1 plug (IEC designation "Type N") looks similar to the Swiss SEV 1011 type 12 plug (IEC designation "Type J"). However, the latter has smaller diameter pins (4.0 mm), the ground pin is offset more (5 mm), and it is only rated for 10 A. Therefore, there is no compatibility between these grounded 3-pin plugs. The two types of plug systems also differ in that IEC 60906-1 plugs (both 2 pin ungrounded and 3 pin grounded) always have been defined to have partially sleeved line and neutral pins, while the Swiss type 11 (ungrounded) and type 12 (grounded) plugs formerly were allowed to be without partially sleeved pins | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2342825 | 372,599 |
Electric vehicle Such a system was patented in 2000 by Dr Gordon Dower and three road-licensed prototypes have been built by the Ridek Corporation in Point Roberts, Washington. Dower proposed that an individual might own only the body (or perhaps a few different style bodies) for their vehicle, and would lease the chassis from a pool, thereby reducing the depreciation costs associated with vehicle ownership. Conventional electric double-layer capacitors are being worked to achieve the energy density of lithium ion batteries, offering almost unlimited lifespans and no environmental issues. High-K electric double-layer capacitors, such as EEStor's EESU, could improve lithium ion energy density several times over if they can be produced. Lithium-sulphur batteries offer . Sodium-ion batteries promise with only minimal expansion/contraction during charge/discharge and a very high surface area. Researchers from one of the Ukrainian state universities claim that they have manufactured samples of pseudocapacitor based on Li-ion intercalation process with specific energy, which seem to be at least two times improvement in comparison to typical Li-ion batteries. The United Nations in Geneva (UNECE) has adopted the first international regulation (Regulation 100) on safety of both fully electric and hybrid electric cars, with the intent of ensuring that cars with a high voltage electric power train, such as hybrid and fully EVs, are as safe as combustion-powered cars | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=279350 | 391,187 |
History of radar (Telefunken was the largest supplier of radio products in Germany) There, Wilhelm Tolmé Runge had told him that no vacuum tubes were available for these frequencies. In fact, Runge was already experimenting with high-frequency transmitters and had Telefunken's tube department working on cm-wavelength devices. In the summer of 1935, Runge, now Director of Telefunken's Radio Research Laboratory, initiated an internally funded project in radio-based detection. Using Barkhausen-Kurz tubes, a 50 cm (600 MHz) receiver and 0.5-W transmitter were built. With the antennas placed flat on the ground some distance apart, Runge arranged for an aircraft to fly overhead and found that the receiver gave a strong Doppler-beat interference signal. Runge, now with Hans Hollmann as a consultant, continued in developing a 1.8 m (170 MHz) system using pulse-modulation. Wilhelm Stepp developed a transmit-receive device (a duplexer) for allowing a common antenna. Stepp also code-named the system "Darmstadt" after his home town, starting the practice in Telefunken of giving the systems names of cities. The system, with only a few watts transmitter power, was first tested in February 1936, detecting an aircraft at about distance. This led the "Luftwaffe" to fund the development of a 50 cm (600 MHz) gun-laying system, the "Würzburg". Since before the First World War, Standard Elektrik Lorenz had been the main supplier of communication equipment for the German military and was the main rival of Telefunken | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1280053 | 249,108 |
Imd pathway The is a broadly-conserved NF-κB immune signalling pathway of insects and some arthropods that regulates a potent antibacterial defence response. The pathway is named after the discovery of a mutation causing severe immune deficiency (the gene was named ""Imd"" for "immune deficiency"). The was first discovered in 1995 using "Drosophila" fruit flies by Bruno Lemaitre and colleagues, who also later discovered that the "Drosophila" Toll gene regulated defence against Gram-positive bacteria and fungi. Together the Toll and Imd pathways have formed a paradigm of insect immune signalling; as of September 2, 2019, these two landmark discovery papers have been cited collectively over 5000 times since publication on Google Scholar. The responds to signals produced by Gram-negative bacteria. Peptidoglycan recognition proteins (PGRPs) sense DAP-type peptidoglycan, which activates the Imd signalling cascade. This culminates in the translocation of the NF-κB transcription factor Relish, leading to production of antimicrobial peptides and other effectors. Insects lacking Imd signalling either naturally or by genetic manipulation are extremely susceptible to infection by a wide variety of pathogens and especially bacteria. The bears a number of similarities to mammalian TNFR signalling, though many of the intracellular regulatory proteins of Imd signalling also bear homology to different signalling cascades of human Toll-like receptors | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=61669935 | 92,812 |
Plating Depending on the alloy system, an electroplated alloy may be solid solution strengthened or precipitation hardened by heat treatment to improve the plating's physical and chemical properties. Nickel-Cobalt is a common electroplated alloy. Metal matrix composite plating can be manufactured when a substrate is plated in a bath containing a suspension of ceramic particles. Careful selection of the size and composition of the particles can fine-tune the deposit for wear resistance, high temperature performance, or mechanical strength. Tungsten carbide, silicon carbide, chromium carbide, and aluminum oxide (alumina) are commonly used in composite electroplating. Cadmium plating is under scrutiny because of the environmental toxicity of the cadmium metal. Cadmium plating is widely used in some applications in the aerospace, military, and aviation fields. However, it is being phased out due to its toxicity. Cadmium plating (or "cad. plating") offers a long list of technical advantages such as excellent corrosion resistance even at relatively low thickness and in salt atmospheres, softness and malleability, freedom from sticky and/or bulky corrosion products, galvanic compatibility with aluminum, freedom from stick-slip thus allowing reliable torquing of plated threads, can be dyed to many colors and clear, has good lubricity and solderability, and works well either as a final finish or as a paint base | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1208416 | 49,572 |
Biomimetics Engineers could in principle use such a material, if it could be reengineered to have a long enough life, for parachute lines, suspension bridge cables, artificial ligaments for medicine, and other purposes. The self-sharpening teeth of many animals have been copied to make better cutting tools. New ceramics that exhibit giant electret hysteresis have also been realized. In general in biological systems, self healing occurs via chemical signals released at the site of fracture which initiate a systemic response that transport repairing agents to the fracture site thereby promoting autonomic healing. To demonstrate the use of micro-vascular networks for autonomic healing, researchers developed a microvascular coating–substrate architecture that mimics human skin. Bio-inspired self-healing structural color hydrogels that maintain the stability of an inverse opal structure and its resultant structural colors were developed. A self-repairing membrane inspired by rapid self-sealing processes in plants was developed for inflatable light weight structures such as rubber boats or Tensairity® constructions. The researchers applied a thin soft cellular polyurethane foam coating on the inside of a fabric substrate, which closes the crack if the membrane is punctured with a spike. Self-healing materials, polymers and composite materials capable of mending cracks have been produced based on biological materials. Surfaces that recreate properties of shark skin are intended to enable more efficient movement through water | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45784 | 323,675 |
History of videotelephony It was limited by analog phone line connection speeds of about 19 Kilobits per second, the video portion being 11,200 bit/s, and with a maximum frame rate of 10 frames per second, but typically much slower, as low as a third of a video frame per second. The VideoPhone 2500 used proprietary technology protocols, including AT&T's Global VideoPhone Standard (GVS). Again, AT&T met with very little commercial success, selling only about 30,000 units, mainly outside the United States. Despite AT&T's various videophone products meeting with commercial failure, they were widely viewed as technical successes which expanded the limits of the telecommunications sciences in several areas. Its videotelephony programs were critically acclaimed for their technical brilliance and even the novel uses they experimented with. The research and development programs conducted by Bell Labs were highly notable for their beyond-the-state-of-the-art results produced in materials science, advanced telecommunications, microelectronics and information technologies. AT&T's published research additionally helped pave the way for other companies to later enter the field of videoconferencing. The company's videophones also generated significant media coverage in science journals, the general news media and in popular culture. The image of a futuristic AT&T videophone being casually used in the science fiction film , became iconic of both the movie and, arguably, the public's general view of the future | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=37419576 | 286,305 |
Amazon Coin is a digital payment method created by Amazon.com. Currently, the coins can only be used to purchase software for Kindle, Kindle Fire, and Android devices from within an app or from the Amazon Appstore. Amazon introduced Amazon Coins on July 13, 2013 in the United States and gave 500 free coins valued $5/£3 to all users of Kindle Fire devices, who could use the coins to purchase apps, games, and in-app purchases on the Amazon Appstore. However, in 2014, Amazon started allowing all Android users in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States to earn, buy, and spend Amazon Coins on the Appstore using Android phones and tablets. Users could also get discounts when they bought the coins in bulk and earn coins through certain apps on the Appstore. In 2014, with the release of the Fire Phone, Amazon offered app developers 500,000 Amazon Coins for each paid app or app with in-app purchasing developed and optimized for the Fire Phone. Amazon has called Amazon Coins a "virtual currency". However, the Coins operate like other digital gift cards. One is worth one cent. However, like many coupons, they cannot be redeemed for cash. However, they can be transferred to another Amazon account. Purchased Coins do not expire, but some promotional Coins expire just over one year from the date they are acquired. When a customer buys software with Amazon Coins, the developer is paid in conventional currency. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=39292620 | 503,651 |
AI accelerator An is a class of specialized hardware accelerator or computer system designed to accelerate artificial intelligence applications, especially artificial neural networks, machine vision and machine learning. Typical applications include algorithms for robotics, internet of things and other data-intensive or sensor-driven tasks. They are often manycore designs and generally focus on low-precision arithmetic, novel dataflow architectures or in-memory computing capability. , a typical AI integrated circuit chip contains billions of MOSFET transistors. A number of vendor-specific terms exist for devices in this category, and it is an emerging technology without a dominant design. Computer systems have frequently complemented the CPU with special purpose accelerators for specialized tasks, known as coprocessors. Notable application-specific hardware units include video cards for graphics, sound cards, graphics processing units and digital signal processors. As deep learning and artificial intelligence workloads rose in prominence in the 2010s, specialized hardware units were developed or adapted from existing products to accelerate these tasks. As early as 1993, digital signal processors were used as neural network accelerators e.g. to accelerate optical character recognition software. In the 1990s, there were also attempts to create parallel high-throughput systems for workstations aimed at various applications, including neural network simulations | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=50827978 | 397,160 |
AN thread Originally parts were made compliant to the specification MIL-F-5509, but they are now controlled under SAE AS (Aerospace Standards) specifications AS4841 through AS4843 and AS4975. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=863608 | 96,703 |
Gradient descent All, type = "l") Here is an implementation in the Rust programming language: fn derivative(x: &f32) -> f32 { fn main() { Here is an implementation in the Haskell programming language: df :: Double -> Double df x = 4 * x ** 3 - 9 * x ** 2 gradientDescent :: Double -> Double -> Double -> Double -> IO Double gradientDescent gamma precision previousStepSize curX = runGradientDescent :: IO Double runGradientDescent = gradientDescent gamma precision previousStepSize curX Here is an implementation in the Go programming language: package main import ( //Derivative function func derivatedFunction(f func(float64) float64) func(float64) float64 { func f(x float64) float64 { func gradientDescendent() float64 { func main() { can be extended to handle constraints by including a projection onto the set of constraints. This method is only feasible when the projection is efficiently computable on a computer. Under suitable assumptions, this method converges. This method is a specific case of the forward-backward algorithm for monotone inclusions (which includes convex programming and variational inequalities). Another extension of gradient descent is due to Yurii Nesterov from 1983, and has been subsequently generalized. He provides a simple modification of the algorithm that enables faster convergence for convex problems. For unconstrained smooth problems the method is called the Fast Gradient Method (FGM) or the Accelerated Gradient Method (AGM) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=201489 | 138,612 |
Thermodynamic system It is characterized by presence of flows of matter and energy. For this topic, very often the bodies considered have smooth spatial inhomogeneities, so that spatial gradients, for example a temperature gradient, are well enough defined. Thus the description of non-equilibrium thermodynamic systems is a field theory, more complicated than the theory of equilibrium thermodynamics. Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is a growing subject, not an established edifice. In general, it is not possible to find an exactly defined entropy for non-equilibrium problems. For many non-equilibrium thermodynamical problems, an approximately defined quantity called 'time rate of entropy production' is very useful. Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is mostly beyond the scope of the present article. Another kind of thermodynamic system is considered in engineering. It takes part in a flow process. The account is in terms that approximate, well enough in practice in many cases, equilibrium thermodynamical concepts. This is mostly beyond the scope of the present article, and is set out in other articles, for example the article Flow process. The first to create the concept of a thermodynamic system was the French physicist Sadi Carnot whose 1824 "Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire" studied what he called the "working substance", e.g., typically a body of water vapor, in steam engines, in regards to the system's ability to do work when heat is applied to it | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=425850 | 59,799 |
Genetic screen A simplified screening method is beneficial because it allows for a larger number of individuals to be screened, thereby increasing the probability of generating and identifying mutants of interest. Since natural allelic mutations are rare, prior to screening geneticists often mutagenize a population of individuals by exposing them to a known mutagen, such as a chemical or radiation, thereby generating a much higher frequency of chromosomal mutations. In some organisms mutagens can be useful for performing saturation screens. Saturation screens are used to uncover all genes involved in a particular phenotype of an organism or species. The screen is carried out by mapping mutants of a biological process until no new genes/gene mutations can be found. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus were the first individuals to perform this type of screening procedure. Many screening variations have been devised to elucidate a gene that leads to a mutant phenotype of interest. An enhancer screen begins with a mutant individual that has an affected process of interest with a known gene mutation. The screen can then be used to identify additional genes or gene mutations that play a role in that biological or physiological process. A genetic enhancer screen identifies mutations which enhance a phenotype of interest in an already mutant individual. The phenotype of the double mutant (individual with both the enhancer and original background mutation) is more prominent than either of the single mutant phenotypes | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=340952 | 168,377 |
Applied Economics Letters is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering applied economics. It was established in 1994 and is published 21 times per year by Routledge. It is a companion journal to "Applied Economics". The editor-in-chief is Mark P. Taylor (Warwick Business School). According to the "Journal Citation Reports", the journal has a 2017 impact factor of 0.504. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=49234247 | 504,837 |
Hughes AN/TSQ-51 Air Defense Command and Coordination System The was a transportable electronic fire distribution center for automated command and control of remote Nike missile launch batteries. The radar netting system replace the vacuum tube AN/FSG-1 in 6 United States Missile Master bunkers after the upgrade was approved by the United States Department of Defense in 1963; and additional deployments were at Homestead-Miami, Florida, and Providence, Rhode Island, to replace Battery Integration and Radar DIsplay Equipment (BIRDIE) systems; as well as at San Francisco. As with the AN/FSG-1, the AN/TSQ-51 could provide fire control for 24 Nike batteries, but the smaller AN/TSQ-51 could be fielded in 2 trailers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=33117043 | 128,443 |
Jibbigo was a mobile offline language translation application that was developed by Mobile Technologies, LLC and Dr. Alex Waibel, a professor at Carnegie Mellon. is an offline voice translator and does not need phone or data connectivity to function. Spanish-English was released in September, 2009 as the first offline Speech Translation application. The company has since expanded its offerings to include ten language pairs sold on both Apple's App Store and Google Play. In Jibbigo, the user holds down a record button and says a phrase. The phrase then appears as text in both languages and is spoken aloud in the target language. The app also includes an add name function, a background dictionary, and other features. On iOS, it is compatible with VoiceOver for vision impaired users. was featured on an episode of "Popular Science - Future Of" by the Science Channel in early 2010 and the PBS Nova episode "The Smartest Machine on Earth" in 2011. In August 2013, it was announced that Facebook was acquiring the company. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30881797 | 136,445 |
Wake Up to Money is an early morning financial radio programme on BBC Radio 5 Live. It is broadcast from 05:15 to 06:00 each weekday. The programme was established when Radio 5 Live began broadcasting in March 1994. It has been produced by the Business Programmes section of BBC Radio which produces for Radio 4 and 5 Live in the Business and Economics unit. It began as a fifteen-minute programme, starting at 05:45, as part of the "Morning Reports" programme. It became a programme in its own right on 29 April 2002, starting at 05:30. The format was updated in early 2014: the broadcast time was extended to 45 minutes with the show starting at 05:15. Louise Cooper (Mon & Tue) or Mickey Clark (Wed-Fri) provides the shares news on the FTSE 100 Index, the commodities prices and currencies' markets, and has more knowledge of companies' financial performance, history, and corporate structure. Adam Parsons provides the personal finance (e.g. mortgages or insurance) knowledge. There is an element of (cheeky sarcasm) humour to the programme. Executives from companies are invited for live discussions on the programme. Guests are often invited from industry trade groups, such as the CBI, IoD, FSB, or government economic organisations, such as Business Link, university business schools, or watchdogs. In 2008/09, the banks featured heavily; rarely had a programme not mentioned the state of the UK banks or the Financial Services Authority. Frequent guests include David Buik, and Justin Urquhart Stewart of Seven Investment Management | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25177404 | 510,557 |
Open web steel joist As a non-profit organization of active manufacturers, the Institute cooperates with governmental and business agencies to establish steel joist standards. Continuing research and updating are included in this work. Load tables and specifications are published by the SJI in five categories: K-Series, LH-Series, DLH-Series, CJ-Series, and Joist Girders. Load tables are available in both Allowable Stress Design (ASD) and Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD). The first joist in 1923 was a Warren truss type, with top and bottom chords of round bars and a web formed from a single continuous bent bar. Various other types were developed, but problems also followed because each manufacturer had their own design and fabrication standards. Architects, engineers and builders found it difficult to compare rated capacities and to use fully the economies of steel joist construction. Members of the industry began to organize the Institute, and in 1928 the first standard specifications were adopted, followed in 1929 by the first load table. The joists covered by these early standards were later identified as open web steel joists, SJ-Series. Open Web Steel Joists, K-Series, were primarily developed to provide structural support for floors and roofs of buildings. They possess multiple advantages and features which have resulted in their wide use and acceptance throughout the United States and other countries. K-Series Joists are standardized regarding depths, spans, and load-carrying capacities | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17206404 | 313,473 |
Nyquist stability criterion The stability of formula_6 is determined by the values of its poles: for stability, the real part of every pole must be negative. If formula_6 is formed by closing a negative unity feedback loop around the open-loop transfer function formula_16, then the roots of the characteristic equation are also the zeros of formula_17, or simply the roots of formula_18. From complex analysis, a contour formula_19 drawn in the complex formula_20 plane, encompassing but not passing through any number of zeros and poles of a function formula_21, can be mapped to another plane (named formula_21plane) by the function formula_23. Precisely, each complex point formula_20 in the contour formula_19 is mapped to the point formula_21 in the new formula_21 plane yielding a new contour. The Nyquist plot of formula_21, which is the contour formula_29 will encircle the point formula_30 of the formula_21 plane formula_32 times, where formula_33 by Cauchy's argument principle. Here formula_34 and formula_35 are, respectively, the number of zeros of formula_36 and poles of formula_21 inside the contour formula_19. Note that we count encirclements in the formula_21 plane in the same sense as the contour formula_19 and that encirclements in the opposite direction are "negative" encirclements. That is, we consider clockwise encirclements to be positive and counterclockwise encirclements to be negative. Instead of Cauchy's argument principle, the original paper by Harry Nyquist in 1932 uses a less elegant approach | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1697331 | 375,391 |
Credit derivative Credit derivatives are fundamentally divided into two categories: funded credit derivatives and unfunded credit derivatives. An unfunded credit derivative is a bilateral contract between two counterparties, where each party is responsible for making its payments under the contract (i.e., payments of premiums and any cash or physical settlement amount) itself without recourse to other assets. A funded credit derivative involves the protection seller (the party that assumes the credit risk) making an initial payment that is used to settle any potential credit events. (The protection buyer, however, still may be exposed to the "credit risk" of the "protection seller" itself. This is known as counterparty risk.) Unfunded credit derivative products include the following products: Funded credit derivative products include the following products: The credit default swap or CDS has become the cornerstone product of the credit derivatives market. This product represents over thirty percent of the credit derivatives market. The product has many variations, including where there is a basket or portfolio of reference entities, although fundamentally, the principles remain the same. A powerful recent variation has been gathering market share of late: credit default swaps which relate to asset-backed securities. A credit linked note is a note whose cash flow depends upon an event, which may be a default, change in credit spread, or rating change | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=265089 | 490,523 |
Living Building Challenge Lastly, the Beauty petal focuses on encouraging project teams to put in genuine and thoughtful efforts into beautifying the project. Although beauty is not subjectively defined in the framework, it is stressed that beauty should be a goal in order to inspire and elevate the lives of the occupants, visitors, and neighbors. Certification is based on actual, rather than modeled or anticipated, performance. Therefore, projects must be operational for at least 12 consecutive months prior to evaluation. Types of projects which can be certified include but are not limited to existing or new buildings, single-family residential, multi-family residential, institutional buildings (government, education, research, or religious), commercial (offices, hospitality, retail), and medical or laboratory buildings. There are 3 certification pathways, Living Building Certification, Petal Certification, and Zero Energy Certification a project can pursue, all of which are awarded on performance. This is full certification where projects have achieved all imperatives applicable to their typology (see Table 1 for this breakdown). Projects must meet all assigned Imperatives and have proven performance through at least 12 consecutive months of operation. The table below shows the breakdown of each petal and each building type's required imperatives: Note: All imperatives are required unless "not required" is listed in the cell. If a project has scale jumping applicable for an imperative, the imperative is still required | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28479203 | 362,621 |
Xpeak Xpeaker is a collection of software projects, integrally developed by Cashware, with the philosophy of Open Source and commercialized under a dual license the XPEAKER PUBLIC LICENSE and a commercial licence. Xpeaker includes the following elements: An Eclipse Plugin which permits: Made up of: High level API for access to Services. Xpeaking permits access to said services from different programming languages (Java, C, C++, C#, Pascal) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25881569 | 378,111 |
Obliterative bronchiolitis Generally occurs after a viral infection of adenovirus (types 3, 7, and 21), measles (rubeola), mycoplasma, CMV, influenza, and parainfluenza. Swyer-James syndrome is a rare complication of obliterative bronchiolitis caused by measles or adenovirus. Post-infectious obliterative bronchiolitis is most common in the southern hemisphere particularly in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Australia, Chile and New Zealand. There was a large prevalence of the disease in these areas during the 1990s and early 2000s. In one hospital in Buenos Aires, the Ricardo Gutiérrez Children's hospital, the disease accounted for 14% of their inpatient respiratory population from 1993 to 2002. As such, much of the information about post-infectious obliterative bronchiolitis has come from research out of South America. The most significant risk factors for the disease are infection with adenovirus and the need for ventilator support. In contrast with another cause of obliterative bronchiolitis in children, Steven's Johnson's syndrome, post-infectious obliterative bronchiolitis tends to be a chronic but non-progressive disease. The disease can have varying impact on children and their quality of life, which has been studied by lung function tests, as well as their exercise tolerance. Children with lower lung function based on their pulmonary function testing, have lower exercise tolerance, which compounds the impact of the disease on cardiovascular function as they are not able to maintain age appropriate aerobic fitness | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3935481 | 41,616 |
Transfer case To engage the four-wheel-drive low setting, the vehicle must be stopped and the transmission must be shifted to neutral, then the four-wheel-drive low can be selected. Electronic Shift On-the-Fly (ESOF) transfer cases have a dash-mounted selector switch or buttons with front sealed automatic locking axle hubs or drive flanges. Unlike the manual transfer case, this system has a transfer case motor. To engage the four-wheel-drive system the vehicle must be moving at a lower speeds. The speed at which 4x4 can be engaged depends on the vehicle. This is only for the four-wheel-drive high setting. To engage the four-wheel-drive low setting, the vehicle must be stopped and the transmission must be shifted to neutral, then the four-wheel-drive low can be selected. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=827863 | 310,101 |
Victor A. Prather Award The is an award established by the American Astronautical Society "to promote understanding of high altitude environment on humans." It is awarded to "researchers, engineers and flight crew members in the field of extravehicular protection or activity in space." The award is in honor of Victor A. Prather, a Naval flight surgeon. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27093859 | 177,415 |
Robert Kraichnan He is also survived by his second wife, Judy Moore-Kraichnan, an artist and photographer who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In the 1950s, his work was focused on quantum field theory and the quantum mechanical many-body problem, developing starting in 1957 a method for finding a self-consistent formulation for many-body field theories, "N-random-coupling-models", in which N copies of a microscopic theory are coupled together in a random way. Following earlier work of Andrei Kolmogorov (1941), Lars Onsager (1945), Werner Heisenberg (1948), Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and others on the statistical theory of turbulence, Kraichnan developed a field-theoretic approach to fluid flow in 1957 derived from approaches to the quantum many-body problem—the "Direct Interaction Approximation". In 1964/5, he recast this approach in the Lagrangian picture, discovering a scaling correction which he had earlier incorrectly ignored. The statistical theory of turbulence in viscous liquids describes the fluid flow by a scale-invariant distribution of the velocity field, which means that the typical size of the velocity as a function of wavenumber is a power-law. In steady state, larger scale eddies at long wavelengths disintegrate into smaller ones, dissipating their energy into smaller length scales. This type of dissipation is not caused by friction on the molecular level, but by the nonlinear effects of the Navier–Stokes equations | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16182822 | 314,585 |
Comparison of file archivers The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of file archivers. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. They are neither all-inclusive nor are some entries necessarily up to date. Unless otherwise specified in the footnotes section, comparisons are based on the stable versions—"without" add-ons, extensions or external programs. "Note: Archivers names in purple are no longer in development." Basic general information about the archivers: creator/company, license/price etc. The operating systems the archivers can run on without emulation or compatibility layer. Linux Ubuntu's own GUI "Archive manager," for example, can open and create many archive formats (including Rar archives) even to the extent of splitting into parts and encryption and ability to be read by the "native program". This is presumably a "compatibility layer." Notes: Information about what common archiver features are implemented natively (without third-party add-ons). Notes: Information about what archive formats the archivers can read. External links lead to information about support in future versions of the archiver or extensions that provide such functionality. Note that gzip, bzip2 and xz are rather compression formats than archive formats. Notes: Information about what archive formats the archivers can write and create. External links lead to information about support in future versions of the archiver or extensions that provide such functionality | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1504233 | 109,447 |
Inflatable Detectable leaks can be caused by holes (from punctures or tears) on the material, the separating of seams, the separating of valve parts, or an improperly shut or improperly closing valve. Even if an inflatable possesses no macroscopic leaks, the gas inside will usually diffuse out of the inflatable, albeit at a much slower rate, until equilibrium is reached with the pressure outside the inflatable. Many inflatables are made of material that does not stretch upon inflation; a notable exception of this is the balloon, whose rubber stretches greatly when inflated. The airship is usually inflated with helium as it is lighter than air and does not burn unlike hydrogen airships such as the Hindenburg. Inflatables are also used for the construction of specific sports pitches, military quick-assembly tents, camping tent air beams, and noise makers. aircraft including the Goodyear Inflatoplane have been used. Inflation by dynamic ram-air is providing wings for hang gliding and paragliding. Inflatables came very much into the public eye as architectural and domestic objects when synthetic materials became commonplace. Iconic structures like the US Pavilion at the 1970 Osaka Expo by Davis and Brody and Victor Lundy's travelling pavilion for the Atomic Energy Commission popularized the idea that inflatables can be a way to build large structures with very extendend interior spans without pillars | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=294860 | 320,916 |
Radiation hardening is the process of making electronic components and circuits resistant to damage or malfunction caused by high levels of ionizing radiation (particle radiation and high-energy electromagnetic radiation), especially for environments in outer space and high-altitude flight, around nuclear reactors and particle accelerators, or during nuclear accidents or nuclear warfare. Most semiconductor electronic components are susceptible to radiation damage, and radiation-hardened components are based on their non-hardened equivalents, with some design and manufacturing variations that reduce the susceptibility to radiation damage. Due to the extensive development and testing required to produce a radiation-tolerant design of a microelectronic chip, radiation-hardened chips tend to lag behind the most recent developments. Radiation-hardened products are typically tested to one or more resultant effects tests, including total ionizing dose (TID), enhanced low dose rate effects (ELDRS), neutron and proton displacement damage, and single event effects (SEE, SET, SEL and SEB). Environments with high levels of ionizing radiation create special design challenges. A single charged particle can knock thousands of electrons loose, causing electronic noise and signal spikes. In the case of digital circuits, this can cause results which are inaccurate or unintelligible. This is a particularly serious problem in the design of satellites, spacecraft, military aircraft, nuclear power stations, and nuclear weapons | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1041641 | 119,037 |
Kenneth Greisen In 1966 he published the theory of the GZK cutoff, independently of the Russians Georgiy Zatsepin and Vadim Kuzmin who in 1966 also published their version of the same theory. In 1966 he joined the AAS. In 1969 he was one of the founders of the Section for High Energy Astrophysics Division of the AAS and, in 1970 and 1971, was the first chair of this division. At Cornell University in 1969 he led a group of faculty members who modernized the university's physics curriculum. In 1974 he was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Rossi and Greisen built an apparatus, centered around a Geiger-Müller counter, to distinguish the altitude dependence of hard (mesotron, "i.e." muon) and soft (electron) cosmic ray secondaries. The goal of Rossi and Greisen was to confirm that the lifetimes of the muons depended upon their energy as predicted by the theory of special relativity. The data presented in Greisen's thesis was taken at altitudes of 249,1616, 3240, and 4300 meters at Echo Lake, Colorado. Greisen's thesis work was cited many times over the ensuing decades. "From 1943 to 1946 Greisen was a member of the group of physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. As one of the leaders of the denotation team, he was an observer at the Trinity test on 16 July 1945. His eyewitness report of that world-changing event is an important historical document. His comment "My God! It worked!" was typical of him." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38279543 | 286,683 |
Fibre-reinforced plastic In 1939 Russia was reported to have constructed a passenger boat of plastic materials, and the United States a fuselage and wings of an aircraft. The first car to have a fibre-glass body was the 1946 Stout Scarab. Only one of this model was built. The Ford prototype of 1941 could have been the first plastic car, but there is some uncertainty around the materials used as it was destroyed shortly afterwards. The first fibre-reinforced plastic plane was either the Fairchild F-46, first flown on 12 May 1937, or the Californian built Bennett Plastic Plane. A fibreglass fuselage was used on a modified Vultee BT-13A designated the XBT-16 based at Wright Field in late 1942. In 1943, further experiments were undertaken building structural aircraft parts from composite materials resulting in the first plane, a Vultee BT-15, with a GFRP fuselage, designated the XBT-19, being flown in 1944. A significant development in the tooling for GFRP components had been made by Republic Aviation Corporation in 1943. Carbon fibre production began in the late 1950s and was used, though not widely, in British industry beginning in the early 1960s. Aramid fibres were being produced around this time also, appearing first under the trade name Nomex by DuPont. Today, each of these fibres is used widely in industry for any applications that require plastics with specific strength or elastic qualities | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=944339 | 319,617 |
Business ethics The word property is value loaded and associated with the personal qualities of propriety and respectability, also implies questions relating to ownership. A 'proper' person owns and is true to herself or himself, and is thus genuine, perfect and pure. Modern discourse on property emerged by the turn of the 17th century within theological discussions of that time. For instance, John Locke justified property rights saying that God had made "the earth, and all inferior creatures, [in] common to all men". In 1802 Utilitarian Jeremy Bentham stated, "property and law are born together and die together". One argument for property ownership is that it enhances individual liberty by extending the line of non-interference by the state or others around the person. Seen from this perspective, property right is absolute and property has a special and distinctive character that precedes its legal protection. Blackstone conceptualized property as the "sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe". During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, slavery spread to European colonies including America, where colonial legislatures defined the legal status of slaves as a form of property. During this time settlers began the centuries-long process of dispossessing the natives of America of millions of acres of land | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4770 | 493,894 |
CS gas has been and is still routinely used by Greek riot police (MAT) in order to quell student and labour protests, as well as riots. CS was used to quell a protest in Lusaka, Zambia in July 1997 and the 1999 WTO riots in Seattle. Amnesty International reported that it had been manufactured by the UK company Pains-Wessex. Subsequently, Amnesty called for an export ban when the receiving regime is either not fully trained in the use of CS, or had shown usage "contrary to the manufacturer’s instructions". In September 2000, the "Guardian" newspaper revealed how a UK company, HPP, used legal loopholes to export CS to a private security company in Rwanda, in breach of United Nations sanctions. The "Guardian" also reported that CS was used by the Hutu militia in Rwanda to flush Tutsis out of buildings before hacking them to death. CS has been used by the government in South Africa; by Israel against Palestinians and Israelis; by the South Korean government in Seoul, and during the Balkan conflicts by Serbia. In Malta it was used by police between 1981 and 1987 to the detriment of Nationalist Party Supporters. CS tear gas was used at the G8 protests in Genoa, Italy and Quebec City, Canada during the FTAA anti-globalization demonstrations during the Quebec City Summit of the Americas. The Malaysia Federal Reserve Unit has also been known to use CS tear gas against its citizens who rallied for clean and fair elections under what were called Bersih rallies in 2011 and 2012 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=172147 | 36,472 |
Lime kiln Permanent lime kilns fall into two broad categories: "flare kilns" also known as "intermittent" or "periodic" kilns; and "draw kilns" also known as "perpetual" or "running" kilns. In a flare kiln, a bottom layer of coal was built up and the kiln above filled solely with chalk. The fire was alight for several days, and then the entire kiln was emptied of the lime. In a draw kiln, usually a stone structure, the chalk or limestone was layered with wood, coal or coke and lit. As it burnt through, lime was extracted from the bottom of the kiln, through the draw hole. Further layers of stone and fuel were added to the top. The common feature of early kilns was an egg-cup shaped burning chamber, with an air inlet at the base (the "eye"), constructed of brick. Limestone was crushed (often by hand) to fairly uniform lumps – fine stone was rejected. Successive dome-shaped layers of limestone and wood or coal were built up in the kiln on grate bars across the eye. When loading was complete, the kiln was kindled at the bottom, and the fire gradually spread upwards through the charge. When burnt through, the lime was cooled and raked out through the base. Fine ash dropped out and was rejected with the "riddlings". Only lump stone could be used, because the charge needed to "breathe" during firing. This also limited the size of kilns and explains why kilns were all much the same size. Above a certain diameter, the half-burned charge would be likely to collapse under its own weight, extinguishing the fire | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=177934 | 36,821 |
Dell Walker was also instrumental in recruiting members to the board of directors when the company went public in 1988. Walker retired in 1990 due to health, and Michael hired Morton Meyerson, former CEO and president of Electronic Data Systems to transform the company from a fast-growing medium-sized firm into a billion-dollar enterprise. The company dropped the PC's Limited name in 1987 to become Computer Corporation and began expanding globally. In June 1988, Dell's market capitalization grew from $30 million to $80 million from its June 22 initial public offering of 3.5 million shares at $8.50 a share. In 1992, "Fortune" magazine included Computer Corporation in its list of the world's 500 largest companies, making Michael the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company ever. In 1993, to complement its own direct sales channel planned to sell PCs at big-box retail outlets such as Wal-Mart, which would have brought in an additional $125 million in annual revenue. Bain consultant Kevin Rollins persuaded Michael to pull out of these deals, believing they would be money losers in the long run. Margins at retail were thin at best and left the reseller channel in 1994. Rollins would soon join full-time and eventually become the company President and CEO. Originally, did not emphasize the consumer market, due to the higher costs and unacceptably-low profit margins in selling to individuals and households; this changed when the company's Internet site took off in 1996 and 1997 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=102490 | 408,646 |
Seven Bridges of Königsberg There is a variation in which the nodes are "identified"—each node is given a unique name or color. The northern bank of the river is occupied by the "Schloß", or castle, of the "Blue Prince"; the southern by that of the Red Prince. The east bank is home to the Bridge's "Ritcher", or church; and on the small island in the center is a "Gasthaus", or inn. It is understood that the problems to follow should be taken in order, and begin with a statement of the original problem: It being customary among the townsmen, after some hours in the "Gasthaus", to attempt to "walk the bridges", many have returned for more refreshment claiming success. However, none have been able to repeat the feat by the light of day. Bridge 8: "The Blue Prince", having analyzed the town's bridge system by means of graph theory, concludes that the bridges cannot be walked. He contrives a stealthy plan to build an eighth bridge so that he can begin in the evening at his "Schloß", walk the bridges, and end at the "Gasthaus" to brag of his victory. Of course, he wants the "Red Prince" to be unable to recur the triumph from the "Red Castle". "Where does the Blue Prince build the eighth bridge?" Bridge 9: "The Red Prince", infuriated by his brother's Gordian solution to the problem, wants to build a ninth bridge, enabling "him" to begin at his "Schloß", walk the bridges, and end at the "Gasthaus" to rub dirt in his brother's face | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=192753 | 366,749 |
Surface properties of transition metal oxides E is the lowest energy of the conduction band,E is the Fermi energy(electrochemical energy of the electrons), E is the highest energy of the valence band, N is the effective mass and mobility of an electron in the conduction band (constant), and N is the effective mass and mobility of a valence band hole (constant). formula_4 formula_5 where "k" is Boltzmanns constant and "T" is the absolute temperature in kelvins. The use of quantum mechanics perturbation theory can aid in calculating the probability of an electronic transition taking place. The probability is proportional to the square of the amplitude of the radiation field, E, and the square of the transition dipole moment |μ|. formula_6 The quantum yield for an ideal system undergoing photocatalytic events is measured as the number of events occurring per photon absorbed. The typical assumption in determining the quantum yield is that all photons are absorbed on the semiconductor surface, and the quantum yield is referred to as the apparent quantum yield. This assumption is necessary due to the difficulty in measuring the actual photons absorbed by the solid surface. The relation between the quantum yield, the rate of charge transfer, k, and the electron/hole recombination rate, k, is given by the following equation. formula_7 Photoinduced molecular transformations at transition metal oxide surfaces can be organized in two general classes | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=32005737 | 76,297 |
Self-driving truck made early developments in 2013 with the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University to improve efficiency and reduce cost at various mining and construction sites. Companies such as Codelco Chilean State Mining Company, Suncor Energy, a Canadian energy company, and Rio Tinto Group were among the first to replace human-operated trucks with driverless commercial trucks run by computers. Otto, demonstrated their self-driving trucks on the highway before being acquired by Uber in August 2016. In May 2017, San Francisco-based startup Embark announced a partnership with truck manufacturer Peterbilt to test and deploy autonomous technology in Peterbilt's vehicles. Waymo has also said to be testing autonomous technology in trucks, however no timeline has been given for the project. In April 2016, trucks from major manufacturers including Volvo and the Daimler Company completed a week of autonomous driving across Europe, organized by the Dutch, in an effort to get self-driving trucks on the road. Volvo has also developed its own autonomous trucks, called Vera. In 2016, Anheuser-Busch Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. joined together and successfully made the first commercial delivery of beer using a self-driving truck. No human action had involved in the driving process and the truck travelled 120 miles. Another big player investing in this technology is Google, through its spin-off Waymo which also delivers freights in Atlanta | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=57198929 | 264,612 |
Berlin Wall Since the end of the War, the Soviets together with like-minded East Germans created a new Soviet-style regime in the Soviet Zone and later the GDR, on a centrally planned socialist economic model with nationalized means of production, and with repressive police state institutions, under party dictatorship of the SED similar to the party dictatorship of the Soviet Communist Party in the USSR. At the same time, a parallel regime was established under the strict control of the Western powers in the zones of post-war Germany occupied by them, culminating in the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, which initially claimed to be the sole legitimate power in all of Germany, East and West. The material standard of life in the Western zones of Berlin began to improve quickly, and residents of the Soviet Zone soon began leaving for the West in large numbers, fleeing hunger, poverty and repression in the Soviet Zone for a better life in the West. Soon residents of other parts of the Soviet Zone began to escape to the West through Berlin, and this migration, called in Germany "Republikflucht", deprived the Soviet Zone not only of working forces desperately needed for post-war reconstruction, but disproportionately highly educated people, which came to be known as the "Brain Drain" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3722 | 223,178 |
Phosphoinositide phospholipase C (PLC) (, "triphosphoinositide phosphodiesterase", "phosphoinositidase C", "1-phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate phosphodiesterase", "monophosphatidylinositol phosphodiesterase", "phosphatidylinositol phospholipase C", "PI-PLC", "1-phosphatidyl-D-myo-inositol-4,5-bisphosphate inositoltrisphosphohydrolase") is a family of eukaryotic intracellular enzymes that play an important role in signal transduction processes. These enzymes belong to a larger superfamily of Phospholipase C. Other families of phospholipase C enzymes have been identified in bacteria and trypanosomes. Phospholipases C are phosphodiesterases. Phospholipase Cs participate in phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PIP) metabolism and lipid signaling pathways in a calcium-dependent manner. At present, the family consists of six sub-families comprising a total of 13 separate isoforms that differ in their mode of activation, expression levels, catalytic regulation, cellular localization, membrane binding avidity and tissue distribution. All are capable of catalyzing the hydrolysis of PIP into two important second messenger molecules, which go on to alter cell responses such as proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis, cytoskeleton remodeling, vesicular trafficking, ion channel conductance, endocrine function and neurotransmission | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3233543 | 72,614 |
Photochromic lens The glass version of these lenses achieve their photochromic properties through the embedding of microcrystalline silver halides (usually silver chloride) in a glass substrate. Plastic photochromic lenses use organic photochromic molecules (for example oxazines and naphthopyrans) to achieve the reversible darkening effect. These lenses darken when exposed to ultraviolet light of the intensity present in sunlight, but not in artificial light. In the presence of UV-A light (wavelengths of 320–400 nm), electrons from the glass combine with the colorless silver cations to form elemental silver. Because elemental silver is visible, the lenses appear darker. <chem>Cl- -> Cl + e-</chem> <chem>Ag+ + e- -> Ag </chem> Back in the shade, this reaction is reversed. The silver returns to its original ionic state, and the lenses become clear. <chem>Cu^2+ + Ag -> Cu+ + Ag+</chem> With the photochromic material dispersed in the glass substrate, the degree of darkening depends on the thickness of glass, which poses problems with variable-thickness lenses in prescription glasses. With plastic lenses, the material is typically embedded into the surface layer of the plastic in a uniform thickness of up to 150 µm. Typically, photochromic lenses darken substantially in response to UV light in less than one minute, and continue to darken a little more over the next fifteen minutes | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4759830 | 91,665 |
Trump wall The Trump wall, commonly referred to as "the wall", is a colloquial name for a proposed expansion of the Mexico–United States barrier during the U.S. presidency of Donald Trump. Throughout his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump called for the construction of a much larger border wall, claiming that if elected, he would "build the wall and make Mexico pay for it." At the time, President of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto said that his country would not pay for the wall. In January 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13767, which formally directed the U.S. government to begin attempting wall construction along the Mexican border using existing federal funding; actual construction did not begin at this time due to the significant expense and lack of clarity on how it would be funded. In 2018–19 the federal government was partly shut down for 35 days because of Trump's insistence that he would veto any spending bill that did not include $5.7 billion in border wall funding. In February 2019, Trump signed a declaration of National Emergency, saying that the situation at the U.S.–Mexico border is a crisis requiring money allocated for other purposes to be used to build the wall. Congress passed a joint resolution to overturn the emergency order, but Trump vetoed the resolution. In July 2019, the Supreme Court approved the reallocation of $2.5 billion in Department of Defense anti-drug funding to construct the wall while other legal proceedings continue; in September 2019, an additional $3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=49919158 | 299,120 |
Neuronal cell cycle It is still unknown why these neurons are able to pass through the G1/S checkpoint and not induce apoptosis through E2F1. Cell cycle re-entry usually causes apoptosis. However, in some neurodegenerative diseases, re-entry into the cell cycle occurs. The neurons that are able to re-enter the cell cycle are much more likely to undergo apoptosis and lead to the disease phenotypes. In Alzheimer’s disease, affected neurons show signs of DNA replication such as phosphorylated Mcm2 and cell cycle regulators cyclin D, Cdk4, phosphorylated Rb, E2F1, and cyclin E. Not much is currently known about the direct mechanism by which the cell cycle is reactivated, however it is possible that MiR26b may regulate the activation of cell cycle progression by upregulating cyclin E1 and downregulating p27Kip1 (Busser et al., 1998; Yang et al., 2003). Alzheimer diseased neurons rarely exhibit the ability to enter mitosis and, if they don’t undergo rapid mitosis, can survive for long periods of time in a tetraploid state. These neurons are able to enter the S phase and replicate their DNA, however they become blocked in the G2 state. In affected and unaffected tetraploid neurons, during development and during the progression of the disease, passing the G2/M checkpoint leads to cell death. This hints that the G2/M checkpoint aids in the survival of tetraploid neurons | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=59402306 | 158,259 |
Endangered river The river is one of the main tributaries of the Yazoo River in the U.S. state of Mississippi but is threatened by the Yazoo Backwater Area Pumping Plant project which they say has the potential to damage 200,000 acres of important wetland. The World Resources Institute's Aqueduct project evaluated, mapped, and rated the state of the water supplies for 100 river basins in areas of high population. Their list highlighted the dangers to the Qom River, Yongding River, Brantas River, and Heray Rud River amongst others. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=57230548 | 180,286 |
Eicher Polaris Multix He also praised the possibilities opened up by the Multix's power generation capability, suggesting it could be used "to light up homes, power tools or even run a DJ console." "Multix AX+" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=47664875 | 468,418 |
Torus semicircularis From an evolutionary standpoint, research has been conducted in turtles to connect the distribution of calcium-binding proteins in the torus semicircularis among birds and mammals to a common reptile predecessor. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=58586045 | 157,975 |
System Information (Windows) System Information (codice_1) is a system profiler included with Microsoft Windows that displays diagnostic and troubleshooting information related to the operating system, hardware and software. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=42200192 | 105,504 |
Green infrastructure In particular work has been undertaken to look at the economic value of green infrastructure, the linkage between grey and green infrastructure and also to identify areas where green infrastructure may play critical role in helping to overcome issues such as risks of flood or poor air quality. In March 2011, a prototype Green Infrastructure Valuation Toolkit was launched. The Toolkit is available under a Creative Commons license, and provides a range of tools that provide economic valuation of green infrastructure interventions. The toolkit has been trialled in a number of areas and strategies, including the Liverpool Green Infrastructure Strategy. In 2012, the Greater London Authority published the All London Green Grid Supplementary Planning Guidance (ALGG SPG) which proposes an integrated network of green and open spaces together with the Blue Ribbon Network of rivers and waterways. The ALGG SPG aims to promote the concept of green infrastructure, and increase its delivery by boroughs, developers, and communities, to benefit areas such as sustainable travel, flood management, healthy living and the economic and social uplift these support. Green Infrastructure is being promoted as an effective and efficient response to projected climate change. Green Infrastructure may include geodiversity objectives. programs managed by EPA and partner organizations are intended to improve water quality generally through more extensive management of stormwater runoff | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10040229 | 358,335 |
Doom9 is also known for being the main discussion forum for many major video encoding tools, such as x264, AviSynth and MeGUI. Due to the concentration of forum members who have technical backgrounds, there have been various software projects developed and maintained by forum members. These include: members have also contributed significantly to various software projects, including: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11060935 | 263,016 |
Dynamic window approach In robotics motion planning, the dynamic window approach is an online collision avoidance strategy for mobile robots developed by Dieter Fox, Wolfram Burgard, and Sebastian Thrun in 1997. Unlike other avoidance methods, the dynamic window approach is derived directly from the dynamics of the robot, and is especially designed to deal with the constraints imposed by limited velocities and accelerations of the robot. It consists of two main components, first generating a valid search space, and second selecting an optimal solution in the search space. In Fox et al. the search space is restricted to safe circular trajectories that can be reached within a short time interval and are free from collisions. The optimization goal is to select a heading and velocity that brings the robot to the goal with the maximum clearance from any obstacle. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=18207532 | 289,788 |
Sodium hydroxide Similar to the hydration of sulfuric acid, dissolution of solid sodium hydroxide in water is a highly exothermic reaction where a large amount of heat is liberated, posing a threat to safety through the possibility of splashing. The resulting solution is usually colorless and odorless. As with other alkaline solutions, it feels slippery with skin contact due to the process of saponification that occurs between NaOH and natural skin oils. Sodium hydroxide, NaOH, as a fluid solution, demonstrates a characteristic viscosity, 78 mPa·s that is much greater than water (1.0 mPa·s) and near that of olive oil (85 mPa·s) at room temperature. The viscosity of NaOH, as with any chemical, is inversely related to its service temperature; meaning viscosity decreases as temperature increases, and vice versa. The viscosity of sodium hydroxide plays a direct role in its application as well as its storage. can form several hydrates NaOH·"n", which result in a complex solubility diagram that was described in detail by S. U. Pickering in 1893. The known hydrates and the approximate ranges of temperature and concentration (mass percent of NaOH) of their saturated water solutions are: Early reports refer to hydrates with "n" = 0.5 or "n" = 2/3, but later careful investigations failed to confirm their existence. The only hydrates with stable melting points are NaOH· (65.10 °C) and NaOH·3.5 (15.38 °C) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=57877 | 207,899 |
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface In November 2003, Linus Torvalds—author of the Linux kernel—described ACPI as "a complete design disaster in every way". In 2001, other senior Linux software developers like Alan Cox expressed concerns about the requirements that bytecode from an external source must be run by the kernel with full privileges, as well as the overall complexity of the ACPI specification. In 2014, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, compared ACPI with Trojan horses. The ACPI Component Architecture (ACPICA), mainly written by Intel's engineers, provides an open-source platform-independent reference implementation of the operating system–related ACPI code. The ACPICA code is used by Linux, Haiku and FreeBSD, which supplement it with their operating-system specific code. The first revision of the ACPI specification was released in December 1996, supporting 16 and 32-bit addressing spaces. It was not until August 2000 that ACPI received 64-bit address support as well as support for multiprocessor workstations and servers with revision 2.0. In September 2004, revision 3.0 was released, bringing to the ACPI specification support for SATA controllers, PCI Express bus, multiprocessor support for more than 256 processors, ambient light sensors and user-presence devices, as well as extending the thermal model beyond the previous processor-centric support. Released in June 2009, revision 4.0 of the ACPI specification added various new features to the design; most notable are the USB 3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2432697 | 302,180 |
University Church of St Mary the Virgin Around the same time, St Thomas chantry, now a vestry, was added. The nave and aisle windows have panel tracery and flamboyant battlemented parapets with gargoyles and pinnacles. The interior space has six-bay arcades with shafted piers, between the clerestory windows are canopied niches with archangels holding shields. The roof has traceried spandrels, the chancel has transomed windows, the sedilia is decorated with cusped arches and a frieze of vine leaves. The reredos is 15th century and contains seven ornamental canopied niches containing statues of 1933. Restorations were carried out by Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1856-57 and 1861–62 and by Sir Thomas Graham Jackson in 1894, the parapet and pinnacles are mostly Scott's work. De Brome's chapel has a two-bay arcade with continuous hollow chamfered arches with Perpendicular windows. The tall arch in this aisle, connecting with the tower is a 15th-century remodelling of a late 13th century window. Monuments include a slab with indents of a brass cross and the Virgin and Child, thought to commemorate Adam de Brome, from 1332, though the tomb chest is modern. The wall monuments in the nave and chancel are from the late 17th century and 18th century. The floor slab to Amy Robsart, wife of Robert Dudley, is modern. The church furnishings were refitted in 1826-28 with gothic pews and galleries, the canopied pulpit, the font and Chancellor's throne under the west gallery were designed by Thomas Plowman | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5258071 | 322,147 |
Detective quantum efficiency Even if a digital system has very high LSR, it can't take advantage of the resolution if it has low DQE, which prevents the detection of very small objects. A study comparing film/screen and digital imaging demonstrates that a digital system with high DQE can improve one's ability to detect small, low-contrast objects – even though the digital system may have substantially lower Limiting Spatial Resolution (LSR) than film. Reducing radiation dose is another potential advantage of digital x-ray technology; and high DQE should make significant contributions to this equation. Compared with film/screen imaging, a digital detector with high DQE has the potential to deliver significant object-detectability improvements at an equivalent dose, or to permit object detectability comparable to film's at reduced dose. Equally important, high DQE provides the requisite foundation for advanced digital applications - dual-energy imaging, tomosynthesis, and low-dose fluoro, for instance. Combined with advanced image-processing algorithms and fast acquisition and readout capability, high DQE is key to making such applications as these clinically practical in the years to come. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24577049 | 405,995 |
ACM/IEEE Supercomputing Conference The program includes professional development programs, opportunities to learn from mentors, and engagement with SC's technical sessions. SCinet is SC's research network. Started in 1991, SCinet features emerging technologies for very high bandwidth, low latency wide area network communications in addition to operational services necessary to provide conference attendees with connectivity to the commodity Internet and to many national research and engineering networks. Since its establishment in 1988, and until 1995, the full name of the conference was the "ACM/IEEE Supercomputing Conference" (sometimes: "ACM/IEEE Conference on Supercomputing"). The conference's abbreviated (and more commonly used) formal name was "Supercomputing 'XY", where XY denotes the last two digits of the year. In 1996, according to the archived front matter of the conference proceedings, the full name was changed to the ACM/IEEE "International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communications". The latter document further announced that, as of 1997, the conference will undergo a name change and will be called "SC97: High Performance Networking and Computing" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26528420 | 132,775 |
Rhodium is a fission product of uranium-235: each kilogram of fission product contains a significant amount of the lighter platinum group metals. Used nuclear fuel is therefore a potential source of rhodium, but the extraction is complex and expensive, and the presence of rhodium radioisotopes requires a period of cooling storage for multiple half-lives of the longest-lived isotope (Rh with a half-life of 3.3 years, and Rh with a half-life of 2.9 years), or about 10 years. These factors make the source unattractive and no large-scale extraction has been attempted. The primary use of this element is in automobiles as a catalytic converter, changing harmful unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxide exhaust emissions into less noxious gases. Of 30,000 kg of rhodium consumed worldwide in 2012, 81% (24,300 kg) went into this application, and 8,060 kg was recovered from old converters. About 964 kg of rhodium was used in the glass industry, mostly for production of fiberglass and flat-panel glass, and 2,520 kg was used in the chemical industry. is preferable to the other platinum metals in the reduction of nitrogen oxides to nitrogen and oxygen: catalysts are used in a number of industrial processes, notably in catalytic carbonylation of methanol to produce acetic acid by the Monsanto process. It is also used to catalyze addition of hydrosilanes to molecular double bonds, a process important in manufacture of certain silicone rubbers. catalysts are also used to reduce benzene to cyclohexane | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25601 | 96,894 |
Offset agreement The first is referred to as "Direct Commercial Sale" and it is a company to government sale. The second way is referred to as "Foreign Military Sales", that is a government to government sale. A Direct Commercial Sale is highly supervised by U.S. Government and even by the U.S. Congress, in spite of its free market appearance. The arms trade, because of its connection with national security, is never free from strict government supervision. For a sale to a foreign country's Defense Department, a U.S. defense firm must be licensed. It is checked by the Defense Department and by the State Department, and, in the case of relevant sales, even authorized or vetoed by U.S. Congress. Direct Commercial Sales are highly regulated because of security, political, and commercial reasons. Even from the point of view of indirect and non-military offset agreements, U.S. Defense companies and their subcontractors (offset fulfillers) must present detailed report of their offset activities to the Commerce Department, Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). Foreign Military Sales are indirect sales of weapons produced by one or more U.S. contractors through an agency of the Department of Defense, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA). In a way, DSCA acts as Prime Contractor's agent in promoting and selling U.S. made weapons to foreign countries. The known FMS disadvantage is that DSCA adds to the final sale price a small percentage for its own administrative costs; the advantage is some free training with U.S | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19688599 | 481,606 |
Microprocessor In the mid-1980s to early 1990s, a crop of new high-performance reduced instruction set computer (RISC) microprocessors appeared, influenced by discrete RISC-like CPU designs such as the IBM 801 and others. RISC microprocessors were initially used in special-purpose machines and Unix workstations, but then gained wide acceptance in other roles. The first commercial RISC microprocessor design was released in 1984, by MIPS Computer Systems, the 32-bit R2000 (the R1000 was not released). In 1986, HP released its first system with a PA-RISC CPU. In 1987, in the non-Unix Acorn computers' 32-bit, then cache-less, ARM2-based Acorn Archimedes became the first commercial success using the ARM architecture, then known as Acorn RISC Machine (ARM); first silicon ARM1 in 1985. The R3000 made the design truly practical, and the R4000 introduced the world's first commercially available 64-bit RISC microprocessor. Competing projects would result in the IBM POWER and Sun SPARC architectures. Soon every major vendor was releasing a RISC design, including the AT&T CRISP, AMD 29000, Intel i860 and Intel i960, Motorola 88000, DEC Alpha. In the late 1990s, only two 64-bit RISC architectures were still produced in volume for non-embedded applications: SPARC and Power ISA, but as ARM has become increasingly powerful, in the early 2010s, it became the third RISC architecture in the general computing segment | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19553 | 224,219 |
St Boniface's Church, Bunbury The stone screen to the Ridley chapel, a chantry chapel constructed in 1527 on the instructions of Sir Ralph (Raufe) Egerton of Ridley, is "the only substantial painted medieval screen to survive in Cheshire". Twelve painted figures also survive from a former parclose screen of around 1450, which include Saint Catherine, Saint Apollonia, and Saint Anthony of Egypt; they were restored in 1988 and are currently mounted along the south wall. In several windows there are fragments of original stained glass. Windows by Kempe dated 1905 are in the south chancel wall, and in the north chancel wall are windows dated 1952 by R. C. Evetts. The glass in the east and west windows and in the east window of the north aisle is by Christopher Webb of St Albans. Sir Hugh Calveley (died 23 April 1394) was an English knight and commander, who took part in the Hundred Years' War, gaining fame during the War of the Breton Succession and the Castilian Civil War. He held various military posts in Brittany and Normandy. He founded the college of which St Boniface was the collegiate church, in the 1380s. His alabaster tomb and effigy is in the centre of the chancel and is enclosed within contemporary ironwork, though there is some doubt as to whether he was in fact buried there. The niches in the sarcophagus originally contained weepers (small figures of mourners). The effigy was likely commissioned by Sir Robert Knolles | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12442716 | 348,173 |
Faramir Colles is an area of small hills on Titan, the largest moon of the planet Saturn. The hills are located near Titan's equator at 4° north and 153° east within the Shangri-La region. is named after Faramir, a Gondorian prince in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle Earth who appears most prominently in "The Lord of the Rings". The name follows a convention that Titanean colles (hills or small knobs) are named after characters in Tolkien's work. The name was formally announced on December 19, 2012. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38061717 | 634 |
Equation of time The following discussion describes a reasonably accurate (agreeing with Almanac data to within 3 seconds over a wide range of years) algorithm for the equation of time that is well known to astronomers. It also shows how to obtain a simple approximate formula (accurate to within 1 minute over a large time interval), that can be easily evaluated with a calculator and provides the simple explanation of the phenomenon that was used previously in this article. The precise definition of the equation of time is The quantities occurring in this equation are Here time and angle are quantities that are related by factors such as: 2 radians = 360° = 1 day = 24 hours. The difference, EOT, is measurable since GHA is an angle that can be measured and Universal Time, UT, is a scale for the measurement of time. The offset by = 180° = 12 hours from UT is needed because UT is zero at mean midnight while GMHA = 0 at mean noon. Both GHA and GMHA, like all physical angles, have a mathematical, but not a physical discontinuity at their respective (apparent and mean) noon. Despite the mathematical discontinuities of its components, EOT is defined as a continuous function by adding (or subtracting) 24 hours in the small time interval between the discontinuities in GHA and GMHA. According to the definitions of the angles on the celestial sphere (see hour angle) where: On substituting into the equation of time, it is Like the formula for GHA above, one can write , where the last term is the right ascension of the mean Sun | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=438948 | 278,033 |
Gas meter A gas meter is a specialized flow meter, used to measure the volume of fuel gases such as natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas. Gas meters are used at residential, commercial, and industrial buildings that consume fuel gas supplied by a gas utility. Gases are more difficult to measure than liquids, because measured volumes are highly affected by temperature and pressure. Gas meters measure a defined volume, regardless of the pressurized quantity or quality of the gas flowing through the meter. Temperature, pressure, and heating value compensation must be made to measure actual amount and value of gas moving through a meter. Several different designs of gas meters are in common use, depending on the volumetric flow rate of gas to be measured, the range of flows anticipated, the type of gas being measured, and other factors. Gas meters that exist in colder climates in buildings built prior to the 1970s were typically located inside the home, typically in the basement or garage. Since then, the vast majority are now placed outside though there are a few exceptions especially in older cities. These are the most common type of gas meter, seen in almost all residential and small commercial installations. Within the meter there are two or more chambers formed by movable diaphragms. With the gas flow directed by internal valves, the chambers alternately fill and expel gas, producing a nearly continuous flow through the meter | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1420809 | 311,584 |
Shakespeare's Globe This inspired the founding of a number of Centres around the world, an activity in which Wanamaker also participated. Many people maintained that a faithful Globe reconstruction was impossible to achieve due to the complications in the 16th-century design and modern fire safety requirements; however, Wanamaker persevered in his vision for over 20 years and a new Globe theatre was eventually built according to a design based on the research of historical adviser John Orrell. It was Wanamaker's wish that the new building recreate the Globe as it existed during most of Shakespeare's time there; that is, the 1599 building rather than its 1614 replacement. A study was made of what was known of the construction of The Theatre, the building from which the 1599 Globe obtained much of its timber, as a starting point for the modern building's design. To this were added: examinations of other surviving London buildings from the latter part of the 16th century; comparisons with other theatres of the period (particularly the Fortune Playhouse, for which the building contract survives); and contemporary drawings and descriptions of the first Globe. For practical reasons, some features of the 1614 rebuilding were incorporated into the modern design, such as the external staircases. The design team consisted of architect Theo Crosby of Pentagram, structural and services engineer Buro Happold, and quantity surveyors from Boyden & Co | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2116548 | 339,595 |
Allegheny Portage Railroad " Nearly half a century later, the graded roadbeds of the descending section east of the Gallitzin Tunnel were re-railed with standard gauge freight tracks. The line reopened as a freight bypass line in 1904. Pennsylvania Railroad successor Conrail abandoned this line to Hollidaysburg and most of the branch trackage along the Juniata River in 1981 and removed the rails. Today, the remains of the railroad are preserved within the National Historic Site operated by the National Park Service. The site was established on in 1964 and is about west of Altoona, in Blair and Cambria counties. The park service operates a visitor center with interpretive exhibits near the old line. Nearby is the Samuel Lemon House, a tavern located alongside the railroad near Cresson that was a popular stop for railroad passengers; it has been converted into a historical museum by the National Park Service. The NPS also maintains a length of reconstructed track, an engine house with exhibits, a picnic area, and hiking trails. A skew arch bridge, a masterwork of cut stone construction, is another feature of the site near the Lemon House. The bridge is long on the south elevation, long on the north elevation, and high. It was the only bridge on the line that was built to carry a road. The Staple Bend Tunnel is preserved in a separate unit of the historic site, east of Johnstown. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=647644 | 338,142 |
ISASMELT The problem was solved by allowing cool air to mix with the hot waste gas to lower the temperature to a level at which the baghouse could operate. This reduced the plant’s capacity because it was again limited by the volume of gas that could be filtered by the baghouse. The lead demonstration plant was mothballed in 1995 because there was insufficient concentrate to keep both it and the rest of the lead smelter operating. It was too small to treat all the Mount Isa lead concentrate by itself. The first commercial primary-lead furnace was installed at the Yunnan Chihong Zinc and Germanium Company Limited (YCZG) greenfield zinc and lead smelting complex at Qujing in Yunnan Province in China. This furnace was part of a plant consisting of the furnace and a blast furnace specially designed to treat high-lead slag. The furnace was designed to produce both the slag and lead bullion, with about 40% of the lead in the concentrate being converted to lead bullion in the furnace. The ISASMELT–blast furnace combination was designed to treat 160,000 t/y of lead concentrate. The second commercial primary-lead furnace was commissioned at Kazzinc’s smelting complex at Ust-Kamenogorsk in Kazakhstan in 2012. It is designed to treat 300,000 t/y of lead concentrate, again using an ISASMELT–blast furnace combination. YCZG is constructing another lead at a new greenfield smelter in Huize in China, and this is due to be commissioned in 2013 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=39223191 | 17,686 |
Micrograph Since the early 1970s individuals have been using the microscope as an artistic instrument. Websites and traveling art exhibits such as the Nikon Small World and Olympus Bioscapes have featured a range of images for the sole purpose of artistic enjoyment. Some collaborative groups, such as the Paper Project have also incorporated microscopic imagery into tactile art pieces as well as 3D immersive rooms and dance performances. In 2015, photographer and gemologist Danny J. Sanchez photographed mineral and gemstone interiors in works referred to as "otherworldly." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1391856 | 39,874 |
Copper was first used in ancient Britain in about the 3rd or 2nd century BC. In North America, copper mining began with marginal workings by Native Americans. Native copper is known to have been extracted from sites on Isle Royale with primitive stone tools between 800 and 1600. metallurgy was flourishing in South America, particularly in Peru around 1000 AD. burial ornamentals from the 15th century have been uncovered, but the metal's commercial production did not start until the early 20th century. The cultural role of copper has been important, particularly in currency. Romans in the 6th through 3rd centuries BC used copper lumps as money. At first, the copper itself was valued, but gradually the shape and look of the copper became more important. Julius Caesar had his own coins made from brass, while Octavianus Augustus Caesar's coins were made from Cu-Pb-Sn alloys. With an estimated annual output of around 15,000 t, Roman copper mining and smelting activities reached a scale unsurpassed until the time of the Industrial Revolution; the provinces most intensely mined were those of Hispania, Cyprus and in Central Europe. The gates of the Temple of Jerusalem used Corinthian bronze treated with depletion gilding. The process was most prevalent in Alexandria, where alchemy is thought to have begun. In ancient India, copper was used in the holistic medical science Ayurveda for surgical instruments and other medical equipment | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=125293 | 58,270 |
Biology In one sense, the first modern ethologist was Charles Darwin, whose book, "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," influenced many ethologists to come. Biogeography studies the spatial distribution of organisms on the Earth, focusing on such topics as plate tectonics, climate change, dispersal and migration, and cladistics. Despite the profound advances made over recent decades in our understanding of life's fundamental processes, some basic problems have remained unresolved. Some examples are Origin of life. While there is very good evidence for the abiotic origin of biological compounds such as amino acids, nucleotides and lipids, it is largely unclear how these molecules came together to form the first cells. Related is the question of extra-terrestrial life. If we understand how life originated on earth, we can predict more reliably which conditions are required to generate life on other planets. Aging. At present, there is no consensus view on the underlying cause of aging. Various competing theories are outlined in Ageing Theories. Pattern formation. We have a good understanding of pattern formation in some systems, such as the early insect embryo, but the generation of many patterns in nature cannot be explained easily, e.g. the stripes in zebras or many snakes, such as coral snakes. While we know that the patterns are generated by selective activation or repression of genes, many of these genes and their regulatory mechanisms remain unknown | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=9127632 | 14,796 |
Homeotic gene In evolutionary developmental biology, homeotic genes are genes which regulate the development of anatomical structures in various organisms such as echinoderms, insects, mammals, and plants. Homeotic genes often encode transcription factor proteins, and these proteins affect development by regulating downstream gene networks involved in body patterning. Mutations in homeotic genes cause displaced body parts (homeosis), such as antennae growing at the posterior of the fly instead of at the head. Mutations that lead to development of ectopic structures are usually lethal. There are several subsets of homeotic genes. They include many of the Hox and ParaHox genes that are important for segmentation. Hox genes are found in bilateral animals, including "Drosophila" (in which they were first discovered) and humans. Hox genes are a subset of the homeobox genes. The Hox genes are often conserved across species, so some of the Hox genes of "Drosophila" are homologous to those in humans. In general, Hox genes play a role of regulating expression of genes as well as aiding in development and assignment of specific structures during embryonic growth. This can range from segmentation in "Drosophila" to central nervous system (CNS) development in vertebrates. Both Hox and ParaHox are grouped as HOX-Like (HOXL) genes, a subset of the ANTP class (named after the "Drosophila" gene, Antennapedia). They also include the MADS-box-containing genes involved in the ABC model of flower development | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21893031 | 141,146 |
State National Bank (El Paso, Texas) The State National Bank is a historic building in El Paso, Texas. It was built in 1921 for the State National Bank, El Paso's oldest bank founded four decades earlier. It was built on the site of a former building for the same bank completed in 1881, which was El Paso's "first real building." The 1921 building was designed by Trost & Trost, and its construction cost $165,000. With "the latest technological developments", it cost $250,000. The interior was a single lofty room with roof supported by steel girders that eliminated need for interior columns. The bank moved into the building in January 1922. It was expanded by renting adjacent property 10 years later, which was annexed permanently in 1942. It was further expanded to the south in 1948. The building has been listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places listings in El Paso County, Texas|National Register of Historic Places]] since September 24, 1980. [[Category:National Register of Historic Places in El Paso County, Texas]] [[Category:Buildings and structures completed in 1922]] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=59907028 | 306,692 |
Chilled water Adequate space must be included in building design for the physical plant and access to equipment. The chilled water, having absorbed heat from the air, is sent via return lines back to the utility facility, where the process described in the previous section occurs. Utility generated chilled water eliminates the need for chillers and cooling towers at the property, reduces capital outlays and eliminates ongoing maintenance costs. The physical space saved can also become rentable, increasing revenue. Utility supplied chilled water has been used successfully since the 1960s in many cities, and technological advances in the equipment, controls and trenchless installation have increased efficiency and lowered costs. The advantage of utility-supplied chilled water is based on economy of scale. A utility can operate one large system more economically than a customer can operate the individual system in one building. The utility's system also has back-up capacity to protect against sudden outages. The cost of such "insurance" is also markedly lower than what it would be for an individual structure. The use of utility supplied chilled water is most cost effective when it is designed into the building's infrastructure or when chiller/cooling tower equipment must be replaced. Commercial customers often lower their air conditioning costs from 10-20% by purchasing chilled water | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19920701 | 261,369 |
Luis Walter Alvarez One of the first projects was to build equipment to transition from the British long-wave radar to the new microwave centimeter-band radar made possible by the cavity magnetron. In working on the Microwave Early Warning system (MEW), Alvarez invented a linear dipole array antenna that not only suppressed the unwanted side lobes of the radiation field, but also could be electronically scanned without the need for mechanical scanning. This was the first microwave phased-array antenna, and Alvarez used it not only in MEW but in two additional radar systems. The antenna enabled the Eagle precision bombing radar to support precision bombing in bad weather or through clouds. It was completed rather late in the war; although a number of B-29s were equipped with Eagle and it worked well, it came too late to make much difference. The radar system for which Alvarez is best known and which has played a major role in aviation, most particularly in the post war Berlin airlift, was Ground Controlled Approach (GCA). Using Alvarez's dipole antenna to achieve a very high angular resolution, GCA allows ground-based radar operators watching special precision displays to guide a landing airplane to the runway by transmitting verbal commands to the pilot. The system was simple, direct, and worked well, even with previously untrained pilots. It was so successful that the military continued to use it for many years after the war, and it was still in use in some countries in the 1980s | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=320445 | 236,577 |
Time Inc. In September 2010, entered into a licensing agreement with Kolkata-based ABP Group, one of India's largest media conglomerates, to publish "Fortune India" magazine and the yearly Fortune India 500 list. Griffin was ousted after a brief tenure, eventually being replaced by Laura Lang, who served about a year. On March 6, 2013, Time Warner announced plans to spin-off into a publicly traded company. Time Warner's chairman/CEO Jeff Bewkes said that the split would allow Time Warner to focus entirely on its television and film businesses, and to focus on its core print media businesses. It was announced in May 2014 that would become a publicly traded company on June 6 of that year. The spinoff was completed on June 9, 2014. As of September 13, 2016, Rich Battista was promoted to president and CEO, replacing Joseph A. Ripp. purchased American Express Publishing Corporation's suite of titles, including "Travel + Leisure", "Food & Wine", "Departures", "Black Ink" and "Executive Travel" on October 1, 2013. On January 14, 2014, announced that Colin Bodell was joining the company in the newly created position of Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. However, he was let go May 19, 2016 On February 5, 2014, announced that it was cutting 500 jobs with most of the layoffs at American Express Publishing. From April 2014 to mid-2017, the Chairman of was Joseph A. Ripp, who had been Chief Executive since September 2013 and continued as Executive Chairman when replaced as CEO by Battista | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6696324 | 499,904 |
Backstage Capitol Theatre The was built in 1933 in Delhi, Ontario, Canada by Robert Hambleton on the site of the Community Hall that burnt down earlier that same year. The theatre was a focal point in the community for close to 40 years. Competition from television caused the theatre to close its doors in the late 1960s. It was later reopened as the Golden Leaf Restaurant and remained in operation until the late 1990s. Converted back into a theatre, the historic building is now known as the Backstage Capitol and is the home of a local dance and theatre groups. Delhi's Backstage Capitol Theatre, with its superior acoustics and intimate setting, attracts audiences and performers alike from all over North America. Open year-round, the theatre not only plays host to children's programs, live performances and concerts, it is also a sought after venue for weddings and other private functions with its European courtyard setting. Thousands of people looking for a unique venue have walked through the doors of the Theatre. Re-opened in 2008, the theatre has quickly become one of Norfolk's most popular destinations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=10975521 | 364,517 |
Walsh diagram Next, single-point energies are performed for a series of geometries displaced from the above-determined equilibrium geometry. Single-point energies (SPEs) are calculations of potential energy surfaces of a molecule for a specific arrangement of the atoms in that molecule. In conducting these calculations, bond lengths remain constant (at equilibrium values) and only the bond angle should be altered from its equilibrium value. The single-point computation for each geometry can then be plotted versus bond angle to produce the representative Walsh diagram. For the simplest AH molecular system, Walsh produced the first angular correlation diagram by plotting the ab initio orbital energy curves for the canonical molecular orbitals while changing the bond angle from 90° to 180°. As the bond angle is distorted, the energy for each of the orbitals can be followed along the lines, allowing a quick approximation of molecular energy as a function of conformation. It is still unclear whether or not the Walsh ordinate considers nuclear repulsion, and this remains a topic of debate. A typical prediction result for water is a bond angle of 90°, which is not even close to the experimental derived value of 104°. At best the method is able to differentiate between a bent and linear molecule | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25420967 | 76,100 |
Fitts's law The formulation of Fitts's index of difficulty most frequently used in the human–computer interaction community is called the Shannon formulation: formula_4 This form was proposed by Scott MacKenzie, professor at York University, and named for its resemblance to the Shannon–Hartley theorem. It describes the transmission of information using bandwidth, signal strength and noise. In Fitts's law, the distance represents signal strength, while target width is noise. Using this form of the model, the difficulty of a pointing task was equated to a quantity of information transmitted (in units of bits) by performing the task. This was justified by the assertion that pointing reduces to an information processing task. Although no formal mathematical connection was established between and the Shannon-Hartley theorem it was inspired by, the Shannon form of the law has been used extensively, likely due to the appeal of quantifying motor actions using information theory. In 2002 the ISO 9241 was published, providing standards for human–computer interface testing, including the use of the Shannon form of Fitts's law. It has been shown that the information transmitted via serial keystrokes on a keyboard and the information implied by the "ID" for such a task are not consistent. The Shannon-Entropy results in a different information value than Fitts's law | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=57027 | 116,039 |
Two-dimensional materials As single layer and few-layer boron nitride nanosheets begin to oxidize and lose their electrical properties at 800 °C, they are excelle Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is a popular synthesis method to produce boron nitride because it is a highly controllable process that produces high quality and defect free monolayer and few-layer boron nitride nanosheets. In the majority of CVD methods, boron and nitride precursors react with a metal substrate at high temperature. This allows for nanosheets of a large area as the layers grow uniformly on the substrate. There is a wide range of boron and nitride precursors such as borazine and selection of these precursors depend on factors such as toxicity, stability, reactivity, and the nature of the CVD method. However, despite the high quality of the nanosheets synthesized by CVD, it is not a good method for the large scale production of boron nitride nanosheets for applications. While there are several mechanical cleaving methods to produce boron nitride nanosheets, they employ the same principle: using shear forces to break the Van der Waals interactions between the layers of boron nitride. The advantage of mechanical cleavage is that the nanosheets isolated from these techniques have few defects and retain the lateral size of the original substrate | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=43589512 | 393,765 |
William Newnham (engineer) William Langston Newnham (14 October 1888 – 15 March 1974) was a New Zealand civil engineer and engineering administrator. He was a key member of the Public Works Department for over forty years, working on the railways, including the Napier–Gisborne railway, Rimutaka deviation, the North Auckland main trunk, [the Stratford–main trunk link and the Otira rail tunnel. For many years he was a member of the Engineers Registration Board set up by the Engineers Registration Act 1924. In the 1952 New Year Honours Newnham was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=34107942 | 220,417 |
Scrolling In a WIMP-style graphical user interface (GUI), user-controlled scrolling is carried out by manipulating a scrollbar with a mouse, or using keyboard shortcuts, often the arrow keys. is often supported by text user interfaces and command line interfaces. Older computer terminals changed the entire contents of the display one screenful ("page") at a time; this paging mode requires fewer resources than scrolling. displays often also support page mode. Typically certain keys or key combinations page up or down; on PC-compatible keyboards the page up and page down keys or the space bar are used; earlier computers often used control key combinations. Some computer mice have a scroll wheel, which scrolls the display, often vertically, when rolled; others have scroll balls or tilt wheels which allow both vertical and horizontal scrolling. Some software supports other ways of scrolling. Adobe Reader has a mode identified by a small hand icon ("hand tool") on the document, which can then be dragged by clicking on it and moving the mouse as if sliding a large sheet of paper. When this feature is implemented on a touchscreen it is called "kinetic scrolling". Touch-screens often use "inertial scrolling", in which the scrolling motion of an object continues in a decaying fashion after release of the touch, simulating the appearance of an object with inertia. An early implementation of such behavior was in the "Star7" PDA of Sun Microsystems ca. 1991–1992. can be controlled in other software-dependent ways by a PC mouse | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=913183 | 417,299 |
Hydroxyethyl methyl cellulose is a gelling and thickening agent derived from cellulose. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22457321 | 17,199 |
Hydroboration They also exhibit higher reactivity toward alkynes. Pinacolborane is also widely used in a catalyst-free hydroborations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2331525 | 29,092 |
Lorenzo Sassoli de Bianchi (born in 1952) is an Italian businessman and philanthropist, currently President of Valsoia, an Italian health food company. He is president of the Italian Advertisers Association (Utenti Pubblicità Associati - UPA), President of the Milan Institute for Contemporary Arts (ICA Milano), Vice-President of the Italian National Federation of Cavalieri del Lavoro and holds board-level positions on a number of regional industrial associations and charities. On 22 May 2015, Sassoli de Bianchi was honoured for his services to enterprise with the Italian knighthood of Cavaliere del Lavoro, presented by the President of Italy His Excellency Sergio Mattarella. Born in Paris in 1952, Sassoli de Bianchi graduated in medicine at Bologna University, where he subsequently worked as a neurologist specialising in sleep diseases while studying Art History and Criticism at UIA University, Florence. In 1986, Sassoli de Bianchi joined the Board of Directors of the family company, distillers Buton, the makers of Vecchia Romagna brandy, where he was appointed Chief Executive Officer later in the year. Sassoli De Bianchi founded the health food company Valsoia in 1990. The company went public in 2006. Sassoli de Bianchi has been President of the Italian Advertisers Association (Utenti Pubblicità Associati – UPA) since June 2007 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17457873 | 498,143 |
National Tsunami Warning Center Construction of the observatory installations, the task of engineering and assembling the data systems, and the hookup of the extensive telecommunications and data telemetry network was completed in the summer of 1967. With the dedication of the Palmer Observatory on September 2, 1967, the Alaska Regional Tsunami Warning System (ARTWS) became operational. Originally, the tsunami warning responsibility for Alaska was shared by the three observatories located at Palmer, Adak and Sitka. Sitka, a seismological observatory since 1904, and Fairbanks were the only two seismic stations operating in Alaska in 1964. The responsibilities of Adak and Sitka were limited to issuing a tsunami warning for events occurring within 300 miles of their location. In later years, the responsibility to provide tsunami warning services for Alaska was transferred from the Adak and Sitka observatories to the Palmer Observatory. Sitka and Adak Observatories were eventually closed in the early 1990s, although the seismic instrumentation is still maintained. In 1973, the Palmer Observatory was transferred to the National Weather Service's Alaska Region and changed its name to Alaska Tsunami Warning Center (ATWC). In 1982, its area of responsibility (AOR) was enlarged to include the issuing of tsunami warnings to California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia for potential tsunamigenic earthquakes occurring in their coastal areas | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31151358 | 352,778 |
Second product syndrome Companies can depend too much on the insights derived from their previous success and lose sight of the fact that the information and insights can be outdated and irrelevant to the second product development. Having these existing insights at hand can lead an overconfident entrepreneur into believing himself already knows about their target audience and not undertaking a second and in-depth analysis for the second product. Initial customers of a startup's first and second product may vary and the problems the company has to solve for customers may either have been addressed or needed to be addressed in a new way. Startups become victims of the second product syndrome if they assume the product development in one space fully meets all the needs of its customers. Another reason leading to the second product syndrome is the existing costs of the businesses which limit their desire to test repeatedly of their new product fit in the market. In order to achieve cost minimisation, companies wish to use the same infrastructure, distribution channels and design of the first product for the second product. This method only works if the second product is manufactured using the same infrastructure, distributed via the same channels and have a similar aesthetics as the first product. Companies can become victims of the second product syndrome if they assume all the existing infrastructure, channel relationship and design style will be capable of adapting to all its future products | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=60785330 | 494,511 |
QDGC S means the square is south of equator, and E means it is East of the zero meridian. The numbers refer to longitudinal and latitudinal degree. A square with no sublevel reference is also called level 0. This is square based on a full degree longitude by a full degree latitude. The level 0 squares are themselves divided into four. To get smaller squares the above squares are again divided in four - giving us a total of 16 squares within a degree square. The names for the new level of squares are named the same way. The full reference of a square could then be: The number of squares for each level can be calculated with this formula: number of squares = (2) Table showing level, number of squares and an example reference: To decide which name a specific longitude latitude value belongs to it is possible to use the code provided on this Github project: Download shapefiles datasets here: Related websites | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2245722 | 203,415 |
Kia Uvo The UVO eServices with 8" Nav head unit requires a USB connection to transfer telematics data, while others use Bluetooth for data transfer. All head units can connect with Bluetooth for phone and audio functions. In 2014, the app was re-skinned and new features were added. On compatible 2015 vehicles, the UVO app will display Trip Info and My Car Zone. The UVO app serves as a web interface for vehicles that do not have embedded web capabilities. Data is transferred from the UVO head unit to the app via Bluetooth or USB, which is then transferred to the web and viewable from both the app and the web. The original UVO was released on 2011 vehicles. Features include voice commands, Bluetooth, jukebox, and a rear-view camera. UVO was replaced by UVO eServices on most models by the 2014 model year. Although the standard version was discontinued, it is still used in 2015 LX, EX Sedonas. UVO eServices was the first UVO to interface with MyUVO.com and the UVO mobile app. It was introduced on 2013 model year Optima, Optima Hybrid, and Sportage. In addition to having all of the features on the original UVO, UVO eServices has Parking Minder, Enhanced Roadside Assist, and Vehicle Diagnostics. On 2015 model year vehicles, Trip Info and My Car Zone features are included. UVO eServices with 7" Nav was introduced alongside UVO eServices on some 2013 models. In addition to all of the features of UVO and UVO eServices, the 7" Nav version has Navigation and My POIs | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25766740 | 243,922 |
Isotopic shift This shift reflects the differing Reduced mass for the affected bonds. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22303694 | 17,052 |
Features new to Windows XP Windows XP introduced many features not found in previous versions of Windows. With the introduction of Windows XP, the C++ based software-only GDI+ subsystem was introduced to replace certain GDI functions. GDI+ adds anti-aliased 2D graphics, textures, floating point coordinates, gradient shading, more complex path management, bicubic filtering, intrinsic support for modern graphics-file formats like JPEG and PNG, and support for composition of affine transformations in the 2D view pipeline. GDI+ uses ARGB values to represent color. Use of these features is apparent in Windows XP's user interface (transparent desktop icon labels, drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop, shadows under menus, translucent blue selection rectangle in Windows Explorer, sliding task panes and taskbar buttons), and several of its applications such as Microsoft Paint, Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, "Photo Printing Wizard", My Pictures Slideshow screensaver, and their presence in the basic graphics layer greatly simplifies implementations of vector-graphics systems such as Flash or SVG. The GDI+ dynamic library can be shipped with an application and used under older versions of Windows. The total number of GDI handles per session is also raised in Windows XP from 16384 to 65536 (configurable through the registry). Windows XP shipped with DirectX 8.1 which brings major new features to DirectX Graphics besides DirectX Audio (both DirectSound and DirectMusic), DirectPlay, DirectInput and DirectShow | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=3463130 | 124,706 |
Cadmium poisoning Hydrogen peroxide can also convert thiol groups on proteins into nonfunctional sulfonic acids and is also capable of directly attacking nuclear DNA. This oxidative stress causes the afflicted cell to manufacture large amounts of inflammatory cytokines. Increased concentrations of urinary beta-2 microglobulin can be an early indicator of kidney dysfunction in persons chronically exposed to low but excessive levels of environmental cadmium. The urinary beta-2 microglobulin test is an indirect method of measuring cadmium exposure. Under some circumstances, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration requires screening for kidney damage in workers with long-term exposure to high levels of cadmium. Blood or urine cadmium concentrations provide a better index of excessive exposure in industrial situations or following acute poisoning, whereas organ tissue (lung, liver, kidney) cadmium concentrations may be useful in fatalities resulting from either acute or chronic poisoning. Cadmium concentrations in healthy persons without excessive cadmium exposure are generally less than 1 μg/L in either blood or urine. The ACGIH biological exposure indices for blood and urine cadmium levels are 5 μg/L and 5 μg/g creatinine, respectively, in random specimens. Persons who have sustained kidney damage due to chronic cadmium exposure often have blood or urine cadmium levels in a range of 25-50 μg/L or 25-75 μg/g creatinine, respectively | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1603557 | 98,030 |
Explosive boiling or phase explosion In thermodynamics, explosive boiling or phase explosion is a method whereby a superheated metastable liquid undergoes an explosive liquid-vapor phase transition into a stable two-phase state because of a massive homogeneous nucleation of vapor bubbles. This concept was pioneered by M. M. Martynyuk in 1976 and then later advanced by Fucke and Seydel. Explosive boiling can be best described by a p-T phase diagram. Figure on right shows a typical p-T phase diagram of a substance. The binodal line or the coexistence curve is a thermodynamic state where at that specific temperature and pressure, liquid and vapor can coexist. The spinodal line on right is the boundary of absolute instability of a solution to decomposition into multiple phases. A typical heating process is shown using red ink. If the heating process is relatively slow, the liquid has enough time to relax to an equilibrium state and the liquid follows the binodal curve, the Clausius–Clapeyron relation is still valid. During this time heterogeneous evaporation occurs in the substance with bubbles nucleating from impurity sites, surfaces, grain boundaries etc. On the other hand, if the heating process is fast enough that the substance cannot reach binodal curve through heterogeneous boiling, the liquid becomes superheated with its temperature above boiling point at a given pressure. System then shifts away from the binodal and continues to follow the red curve and thus approaches towards spinodal | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38721699 | 32,858 |
National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program In the most extreme of these cases, a 2006 petitioner successfully claimed that a hepatitis B vaccine caused her multiple sclerosis despite several studies showing that the vaccine neither causes nor worsens the disease, and despite a conclusion by the Institute of Medicine that evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship. In 2008 the federal government settled a case brought to the vaccine court by the family of Hannah Poling, a girl who developed autistic-like symptoms after receiving a series of vaccines in a single day. The vaccines given were DTaP, Hib, MMR, varicella, and inactivated polio. Poling was diagnosed months later with encephalopathy (brain disease) caused by a mitochondrial enzyme deficit, a mitochondrial disorder; it is not unusual for children with such deficits to develop neurologic signs between their first and second years. There is little scientific research in the area: no scientific studies show whether childhood vaccines can cause or contribute to mitochondrial disease, and there is no scientific evidence that vaccinations damage the brains of children with mitochondrial disorders. Although many parents view this ruling as confirming that vaccines cause regressive autism, most children with autism do not seem to have mitochondrial disorders, and the case was settled without proof of causation. With the commencement of hearings in the case of "Cedillo v | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=6952874 | 55,690 |
Prism (surveying) In surveying, a prism is a corner cube or retroreflector, normally attached on a surveying pole, used as a target for distance measurement using, for example, a total station. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=57329245 | 350,285 |
Americium Several studies have been reported on the biosorption and bioaccumulation of americium by bacteria and fungi. The isotope Am (half-life 141 years) has the largest cross sections for absorption of thermal neutrons (5,700 barns), that results in a small critical mass for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The critical mass for a bare Am sphere is about 9–14 kg (the uncertainty results from insufficient knowledge of its material properties). It can be lowered to 3–5 kg with a metal reflector and should become even smaller with a water reflector. Such small critical mass is favorable for portable nuclear weapons, but those based on Am are not known yet, probably because of its scarcity and high price. The critical masses of two other readily available isotopes, Am and Am, are relatively high – 57.6 to 75.6 kg for Am and 209 kg for Am. Scarcity and high price yet hinder application of americium as a nuclear fuel in nuclear reactors. There are proposals of very compact 10-kW high-flux reactors using as little as 20 grams of Am. Such low-power reactors would be relatively safe to use as neutron sources for radiation therapy in hospitals. About 19 isotopes and 8 nuclear isomers are known for americium. There are two long-lived alpha-emitters; Am has a half-life of 7,370 years and is the most stable isotope, and Am has a half-life of 432.2 years. The most stable nuclear isomer is Am; it has a long half-life of 141 years. The half-lives of other isotopes and isomers range from 0.64 microseconds for Am to 50 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=900 | 87,161 |
Hermann Lemp born: Heinrich Joseph (August 8, 1862 – March 31, 1954) was a Swiss-American electrical engineer; he is credited as the inventor of the modern system of diesel electric traction co-ordination and control. Born and educated in Switzerland, he emigrated to America aged 19, hoping to work with T. A. Edison. He joined Edison General Electric and worked with Edison on electrical projects, including one of Edison's first electric locomotives. A short while later he joined Elihu Thomson, of the Thomson-Houston Company. That company became part of General Electric (GE), to which Edison acted as consultant. He met Rudolf Diesel on his visit to the USA in 1911, and was an invited observer at the trials of Diesel's direct-drive locomotive in 1912. The diesel engine was too powerful for the mechanical gears. Lemp, with his colleagues, persuaded GE that diesel traction had a future, but that a non-mechanical transmission system was required. The proposed transmission was electrical, using the diesel engine to power a generator that supplied current to the traction motors. However, such a system would need a device to coordinate engine and generator output. He invented one, patented in 1914. This patent provided the basis for the systems used by many other locomotive and diesel makers. GE did not enter the locomotive field then, but did authorize the purchase of Junker's patent for high speed diesel engines, and the manufacture of some small experimental locomotives | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11590599 | 439,238 |
Malnutrition Overeating is also a problem in countries where hunger and poverty persist. In China, consumption of high-fat foods has increased while consumption of rice and other goods has decreased. Overeating leads to many diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, that may result in death. In Bangladesh, poor socioeconomic position was associated with chronic malnutrition since it inhibits purchase of nutritious foods such as milk, meat, poultry, and fruits. As much as food shortages may be a contributing factor to malnutrition in countries with lack of technology, the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) has estimated that eighty percent of malnourished children living in the developing world live in countries that produce food surpluses. The economist Amartya Sen observed that, in recent decades, famine has always been a problem of food distribution and/or poverty, as there has been sufficient food to feed the whole population of the world. He states that malnutrition and famine were more related to problems of food distribution and purchasing power. It is argued that commodity speculators are increasing the cost of food. As the real estate bubble in the United States was collapsing, it is said that trillions of dollars moved to invest in food and primary commodities, causing the 2007–2008 food price crisis. The use of biofuels as a replacement for traditional fuels raises the price of food | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=258979 | 141,858 |
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